Friday Sampler

Another Friday, another list of things that I didn't get a chance to point out over the past week.

• Perfectly Legal: The Globe reports today that Independent Gubernatorial candidate Christy Mihos used a perfectly legal scheme to avoid sales and excise taxes on his 36-foot yacht. Mihos had his lawyer create a corporation in Rhode Island, where there is no sales tax on yachts, which bought the vessel. If you've read Perfectly Legal by David Kay Johnston, you know that this sort of thing goes on all the time and the super rich have ways of avoiding taxes that are not accessible to your average person.


• Star Profiles Sullivan: Speaking of Mihos, the Winchester Star this week profiles local boy John Sullivan, Mihos' hand-picked running mate and Winchester Town Moderator. If you know nothing about this guy, which is probably everyone other than Dan Kennedy, it's a decent enough introduction.


• Lynch on North-South Rail Link: Congressman Stephen Lynch along with Massachusetts Sierra Club Director James McCaffery wrote an Op-Ed in Wednesday's Globe in support of linking North Station and South Station by rail. The project, they estimate will cost $5.7 billion, but that figure, I understand includes enhancements not related to digging the mile long tunnel -- electrification of existing track, for example. The idea is a good one, and would finally create an uninterrupted transit line from Maine down to Florida, and being a regional project, the state would have help with funding. That said, I think area residents just will not have an appetite for large-scale transit projects any more, no matter how much sense they make. We're going to need a few years to forget about the Big Dig before anyone has the stomach for another tunnel under the city.


• Half-Time Governor: The year is about half over and Governor Mitt Romney has spent half of it out-of-state. Channel 5 crunched the numbers and found that in the first five months of 2006, "Romney has been on the road part or all of the day for 75 of the 151 days" -- just shy of 50%.


• Second Suffolk Write-In Primary: Be sure to check out last Sunday's Globe article on the Second Suffolk senate race where incumbent Senator Diane Wilkerson failed to get enough signatures to appear on the primary ballot and is now fighting off challenges from activist Sonia Chang-Diaz and Republican candidate Samiyah Diaz who are all trying to win the Democratic primary as write-ins. I wouldn't count out Wilkerson, but when no one's name appears on the ballot, anything can happen.


• 100 Grand for Watertown Square: The folks over at the Globe's blog suggested we look through the $700 million supplemental spending bill (PDF). Our share of it: $100,000 for the repairs and renovation of the Charles river landing at Watertown square. Does anyone know any more details about the renovation?

What's on your mind?

Laughing Liberally This Weekend and Next

We just got back from "a small basement in Somerville" where Jimmy Tingle hosted Laughing Liberally: An Evening of Left-Leaning Political Humor. If you're a left-leaning person who likes comedy, or a conservative who can take a couple jokes at your party's expense, I'd recommend checking it out.

The show featured comedians Jimmy Tingle, Tim McIntire, Katie Halper, Dean Obeidallah, Baratunde Thurston and Julie Goldman. The only ones I was familiar with before this evening were Jimmy Tingle, who does a bit every morning on our local Air America Affiliate, and Baratunde, who I met briefly at last month's "Crashing the Gate" book signing and who happened to give me a copy of his book years ago outside a Cambridge screening of Fahrenheit 9/11. All the performers were great and I laughed my ass off. Even my wife was impressed -- and she was skeptical before we left, asking me "is this going to just be all Bush jokes?" There were some, to be sure, but it was much more than that. I thought it was hilarious.

The next shows are June 16, 17 and the 22-24 at 7:30 PM; with an additional show on Saturdays at 10 PM. More information and videos at Drinking Liberally Cambridge. You can also buy tickets online.

Mitt's PAC Growing Up

My very first post on this blog nearly a year and a half ago was on Governor Mitt Romney's Commonwealth PAC, and how his spreading money around early primary states indicated that he'd be running for president in 2008. Since that time, Romney has continued fundraising for his PAC and what was then mostly a collection of Mitt's buddies from Bain Capital has now grown, according to the Boston Globe, into a $1.6 million group of state and Federal PACs. As a state-level figure, Gov. Romney is not prohibited from creating state-level PAC affiliates, which he has done in such key primary states as Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan. This creative solution allows him to raise money above and beyond the $5000 federal PAC limits. Now that Romney has declined to run for a second term for governor, he is also spending a lot more time fund raising for his PAC out-of-state. This is a huge change from a year ago when he denied that he had any control over what the PAC did with its money and who donated to it.

Of course, Romney is going to need a lot more than $1.6 million if he's going to win a presidential primary. He will be dogged by accusations that he is too liberal on abortion and gay rights (!) as he found out most recently in Idaho, and last year in his home state of Michigan. There is a certain 'truthiness' to the governor of Massachusetts being liberal, so Romney can certainly expect his primary opponents to spend millions on negative advertising portraying him in that light.

Nobody's Laughing

Last week, gubernatorial candidate Chris Gabrieli set the cap on campaign spending for the Democratic primary at $15.36 million, the same number as the percentage he got at the Democratic Convention in Worcester that got him on the primary ballot. Gabrieli got to set the spending limit because he declined to participate in the state's public financing -- which would have set the cap at $1.5 million -- so the cap becomes the highest amount that any non-participating candidate declares they will spend. Recently, both of his Democratic competitors, Attorney General Tom Reilly and Deval Patrick, had already agreed to accept the public financing and released statements reacting to Gabreili's choice of cap. Patrick went so far as to record a video on the role of money in politics. He sent the following to his email list a few days ago:

[B]y choosing not to participate in the public financing, Chris gets to determine the spending cap for all of the campaigns. He set that cap at $15.36 million.

$15.36 million.

This is an unheard of amount for a gubernatorial primary in Massachusetts, and I feel it is an amount that sends a cynical message about our government and our political process. It reinforces the idea that politics is all about money and that elections can be bought.

In addition, today, I received the following email from the Reilly Campaign:

At the same time, my opponent has now declared that he is going to spend up to $15.36 million dollars in the three months between now and the September primary. That is in addition to the $3 million that he has already spent. That is an obscene amount of money by any standard. Worse still, he joked about the figure, as if spending limits and the amount of money in politics is some sort of punch line.

I believe it sends exactly the wrong message -- that the only people who can run for office are people of vast personal wealth.

Reilly goes on in his email to remind his supporters that he's the only candidate in the governor's race who's not a millionaire.

Conventional wisdom was that Gabrieli would set a high cap, one that neither of the other Democratic candidates would likely be able to reach. Still, my first thought was that it was bad form to treat the campaign finance as a joke, at the same time tweaking the delegates who put him on the ballot even though they were supporting other candidates (my second thought was to wonder if he's hiring a campaign blogger -- all that money's got to go somewhere, after all). The odd thing about it, is that by picking $15.36 million, Gabrieli made a news story out of it. If he had picked $8 or even $10 million, no one would have commented and he still would have plenty of leeway to outspend Reilly and Patrick. Clearly, he does not plan to spend the full amount -- the record for primary campaigns in Massachusetts is a modest-in-comparison $4.7 million. Instead, Gabrieli was forced to explain and defend the cap, and ended up pleading "C'mon, somebody, laugh!". I saw him on the news at one point saying "I hope you thought it was at least slightly humorous that I picked 15.36," (also quoted here). He kind of sounded like a bad stand-up comic whose joke just bombed imploring the audience for pity applause. I'm sure that's not the image that his campaign wanted to project.

Bad Timing for Healey Pension Plan?

Am I the only one who thinks that it's crazy for Kerry Healey to be pushing her new pension scheme right now? The Dow lost 100 points yesterday and is down nearly 800 since this time last month. Is this the environment that you want to sell switching guaranteed pensions over to 401(k) style plans? I'm looking at my 401(k) right now and, let me tell you, it's not pretty. Of course, having said that the market will probably rebound today just to prove me wrong.

Offering 401(k) plans will be cheaper for the state, that's true. That's why almost every corporation has dropped their pension plan in favor of them. That's a small comfort, however, to the worker that plans to retire at the bottom of a bear market.

I do think that consolidating local pension boards is probably a good idea. I've often thought that there are a lot of savings that can be had if we reduce the overhead for cities and towns by encouraging them to pool resources. I'm not sure I'd put all my eggs in one basket, so to speak, but I don't see any reason that there should be more than one pension board for every three cities and towns in Massachusetts.

Most Congressional Seats Unopposed

It appears that our Congressional delegation here in Massachusetts is going mostly unopposed this year. CQPolitics from Congressional Quarterly has the story here:

Republicans are fielding candidates in just three of the 10 districts: the 6th, where businessman Rick Barton is taking on five-term Democratic Rep. John F. Tierney; the 9th, where Jack E. Robinson III, a landslide loser to Kennedy in the 2000 Senate race, will oppose two-term Rep. Stephen F. Lynch; and the 10th, where businessman Jeff Beatty is taking on five-term Democratic Rep. Bill Delahunt.

Lynch is the only incumbent who is facing a primary challenger. He is expected to easily defeat Phil Dunkelbarger, who owns a seafood trading and export company.

I knew about challenges to Tierney and Delahuntt this year, but I had no idea that they were bringing Jack E. Robinson back out of the woodwork. Robinson was last seen losing to Secretary of State Bill Galvin in 2002. He is perhaps best known in Massachusetts for crashing his car during a live radio interview during his loss in 2000 to Senator Kennedy. The state party eventually withdrew their support from Robinson and he ended up barely even beating Libertarian candidate Carla Howell with 13% of the vote to her 12%.

Facts For Needle Debate

On Wednesday, the state Senate passed a bill that would legalize the sale of syringes without a prescription. Increasing the availability of these needles, supporters say, will help prevent the spread of diseases like AIDS and hepatitis B and C among intravenous drug users. More needles, less needle sharing, fewer opportunities to spread blood-borne disease.

The House passed a similar bill in November, but for some unexplained procedural reason must pass both houses again before going to Governor Mitt Romney who plans to veto the measure. Romney's spokesman raised fears of the program undermining our ability to enforce drug laws and claimed that we'd now be seeing dirty needles all over our parks and playgrounds. Kerry Healey, who also opposes the measure, called it a threat to public safety, since it makes it easier for drug users to use drugs.

Of course, what the bill's opponents don't ever seem to mention is that 47 other states already have this law on their books. If it were a public safety disaster, you would think that fewer than 94% of the US would allow over-the-counter sale of these needles. It also means that there should be lots of data about what actually happens once this law is implemented.

To my mind, there are four questions that I am interested in regarding this bill:

1) Does it reduce the spread of blood-borne diseases? If the law doesn't help curb AIDS and hepatitis, then there's no point in enacting it. Help Stop AIDS cites evidence from Connecticut that syringe sharing dropped 40% after enacting this law. Access to clean needles has been shown to reduce AIDS or hepatitis in New Haven, Tacoma, Australia and New York City.

2) Does it increase the use of illegal intravenous drugs? Opponents all claim that it makes using these drugs easier, so intuitively one might think that increasing the availability of needles will increase the use of drugs that require needles. The Drug Policy Alliance notes that there have been seven major government-funded reports which show that access to sterile syringes does not increase drug use. There have been no reports that contradict these findings. A study published in 2001 in the American Journal of Public Health found no statistically significant increase in IV drug use between cities where needles were available over-the-counter and those where they were not.

3) Does it increase the risk to law enforcement officers of needlestick injuries? If there are more needles available, will they be increasingly used as weapons? According to the Drug Policy Forum of MA, in Connecticut, there was a 66% decrease in syringe stick injuries to police officers over a six-month period after pharmacy sales legislation passed. I have not found any studies that show an increase in needlestick injuries after allowing over-the-counter sales of syringes.

4) Does it increase needle waste? The bill that was passed by the Senate just legalizes the sale of these needles, and is not a needle exchange program. With needle exchange programs, there is not a risk of increased needle waste because one has to return used needles before getting clean ones. To combat needle waste, the bill also proposes fines of up to $15,000 for needle litterers. It also creates needle collection centers through the department of health, medical facilities and the pharmacies themselves. A pilot program in Baltimore that created boxes for needle disposal was a success there.

Those questions answered, the only thing left to ask is why, since she is supposed to be an expert criminologist, Kerry Healey does not support these measures.

Mihos To Announce Lieutenant Tomorrow

The Phoenix's Adam Reilly has the scoop straight from Christy Mihos himself:

"It is someone who has earned it. Earned it in the sense that they've had a multifaceted career, and if anything ever happened to me, I would feel absolutely confident that that person could step in and...could do the job, and would finish the job, and would not ever look to run for anything else, or to leave the Commonwealth."

Whoever he picked would have to have been unenrolled since early March. As such, his pick is unlikely to be involved in recent electoral politics, unless he or she changed party affiliation months ago. Are there any prominent Massachusetts independents? Did he pull someone out of the political mothballs? Anyone have any guesses?

Part of me wonders if he's picked a more left-leaning person with the idea of running on a unity ticket.

UPDATE: The Globe says it's John J. Sullivan, Town Moderator of Winchester. Who?

Punditry Roundup

First, on Sunday Joan Vennochi compared Deval Patrick to Howard Dean. It's a comparison I made just last week. What Vennochi leaves out in her parallel is that both candidates are seen as more liberal than they are by virtue of their supporters. Both are liberal-by-association more than anything else -- Dean was pilloried in Vermont by environmental groups, and Patrick spent most of his career as a corporate lawyer.

The Herald's Margery Egan has a very flattering column today on Patrick. Egan asks of Patrick, "What does he offer your semi-employed middle-aged guy in Waltham? Defeat of cynicism?" and then answers her question in the very next paragraph:

If I were Deval, I'd become Mr. Property Tax Relief Man, something he says he's working on.

Patrick, to me, is the only sane person talking about property tax relief. He needs to talk more about that and contrast his plan to increase local aid with Christy Mihos' scheme. Also, note the quote at the end of the column from former state Senator George Bachrach who briefly describes our early morning caucus planning sessions at the Watertown diner.

In today's Globe, Scot Lehigh gives some publicity to Patrick's grassroots strategy. He even mentions the community tool, which is the centerpiece of the campaign's Internet-based effort. Lehigh asks whether a strategy that focuses on organization at the local level can win in today's media saturated environment. Personally, I'm willing to give it a try. Democrats certainly haven't won by relying on campaign ads recently.

Last, but not least, Herald Reporter/Blogger Jay Fitzgerald posts part of an email I sent him before the convention in response to his claim that out-of-control moonbats would doom the Democrats' chances this November. I disagreed, but mostly I rejected his premise that Deval Patrick would walk away from this past weekend's convention as the sole remaining candidate.

Irregular Vote Totals For LG and SoS Races

A reader sent me a spreadsheet with this tally of the convention votes provided by the party today and pointed to some mystery with the vote totals. While the final percentages equal what the party reported, some of the results on the chart are a little strange and two in particular stand out. The first, and biggest discrepancy is that there are 100 extra votes for Lieutenant Governor in the Second Suffolk district. There were 184 votes cast in that district for Secretary of State (115 for Bonifaz, 66 for Galvin, 3 no votes) and 186 votes cast for Governor (15 for Gabrieli, 143 for Patrick, 24 for Reilly and 4 no votes). At the same time, the party reports 284 votes for Lieutenant Governor -- with Deb Goldberg getting 50, Tim Murray getting 137 and Andrea Silbert getting 91. At first I thought it might be a mistake in transcribing the results to the party's web page, but the sums and percentages check out with the extra hundred votes. It's hard to imagine that they would have missed something this large.

At the same time, the Plymouth & Barnstable District Secretary of State race is missing 50 votes. According to the party's web page, Galvin got 25 votes there while Bonifaz got 18, for a total of 43 votes. In the Governor and Lieutenant Governor races in that district, there were a total of 93 votes. Here are those vote totals in table format:

District	Total Votes SecState	Total Votes LG	Total Votes Gov
Second Suffolk	184	284	186
Plymouth & Barnstable	43	93	93

Now, I'm sure there's an explanation for these discrepancies, and they don't change who won the endorsement or who got on the ballot. It may just be that the campaigns didn't care to challenge the results for those offices. Still, I find it disturbing that there are these large anomalies in the vote totals, particularly after the party spent so many hours counting them on Saturday.

My Big Media Weekend

Okay, it's not much, but it's not every weekend that I'm on the local news and in the local paper. This Sunday, I was in the Boston Globe's Globe West section for the post I wrote a few weeks back with a map of Watertown after the sea level rises.

Not only that, but a co-worker told me this morning that he saw me on Channel 4 this weekend. Don't blink! You'll miss it. Just keep an eye out for the guy with his shirt on backwards.

Post-Convention Thoughts & Observations

I hope you all will forgive me for not blogging during this weekend's Democratic State Convention. For blogger's-eye-view coverage of what happened over the weekend, see the relevant posts at Left In Lowell, Mass Revolution Now and Blue Mass. Group. The papers all have their coverage, too, and I particluarly liked this report from the Globe.

As for myself, my experience was completely different. I was one of the Senate District "whips" for Deval Patrick on the convention floor. That meant I was responsible for making sure all of Deval Patrick's delegates were there and to record the votes for the campaign. As such, I was working during the convention -- in constant contact with the campaign -- and I honestly couldn't tell you much of what happened on the stage. I was working during most of the speeches -- I don't even remember the Secretary of State candidates even taking the stage -- and so I can't offer much by way of analysis myself.

Some comments and random observations from my time on the floor:

• Deb Goldberg probably lost votes because of her video presentation. I didn't catch most of it, but I heard complaints from a couple different sources. Andrea Silbert won at least one vote for her speech.
• I had my Deval Patrick T-Shirt on backwards the entire day without noticing.
• Deval Patrick's speech reminded me why I agreed to do this. Other people said they were reenergized by it and offered to do whatever was necessary. When he asked people to stand with him, all his supporters stood up and raised their placards, I turned around -- I could see the entire convention hall from my vantage point at the front on the floor --and just saw a sea of blue. Not only that, but you could hear a pin drop during his speech, at least when people weren't cheering like crazy.
• Both Tom Reilly and Bill Galvin live in my State Senate district. Both candidates voted for themselves, but Reilly did not vote for a Lieutenant. I imagine that the other gubernatorial candidates did the same. Interestingly enough, Galvin did not cast a vote for Governor, even though he sent a phone message out to supporters in the days before the convention telling them to support Chris Gabrieli.
• Thank goodness Andrea Silbert and Tim Murray agreed to a voice vote on the second ballot. Someone asked me if I thought Silbert could have won on a roll call vote. If she forced people to stay for another vote, she would have lost whatever goodwill she had, and not only that but more of Murray's base was local than was Silbert's. His delegates would have stuck around; hers had a ferry to catch.
• Some of the more amusing and improbable rumors I overheard: an imposter in a Tom Reilly T-Shirt was trying to steal convention books from Reilly's whips; Gabrieli supporters were supposedly hanging out by the unpaid delegates table offering to pay the fees in exchange for votes.
• People kept asking me why it took so long for the party to count the votes when the campaigns likely already knew the results -- we were in every senate district writing them down. Apparently the delay occurred because the campaigns were challenging the vote results. This would have been a good time to vote on charter amendments, if only to pass the time.
• A group of delegates we had identified as Reilly supporters switched to Gabrieli en masse during the voting. I heard other whips saying similar things happened in their districts. Were we wrong, were they convinced or was a deal made? We may never know.
• I lost three pounds over the course of the convention day. I'm considering going on an all-convention diet.

I'd never been to a nominating convention before. In fact, I'd never volunteered for a candidate before. In 2002, I voted for Reich, but not much else. In '04, I sent John Kerry a check and voted for him in the general, but that's about it. Deval Patrick inspired me and countless other first-timers to finally get involved. I still can't believe that I went from bystander to coordinating on the convention floor in just a few months. Would I do it again? Ask me again in 2010. If we all work together, that one will be a re-nominating convention.

Convention Begins Tonight!

The convention starts tonight! If you're a delegate and can make it for the Friday session -- please do. Despite assurances from the state party that there will be no shenanigans, there are rumors still swirling.

There's not much time for a full post on anything, but I did want to note that the Havard Crimson, of all places has the best coverage of last night's rally with Deval Patrick and Senator Barack Obama. The event was great -- neither speaker disappointed. I've heard, and even said that comparisons between the two are superficial, but they both talked about messages of hope and community last night. Patrick has been accused of borrowing his message from Senator Obama, but I again heard echoes tonight of Patrick's 1994 speech. Let the record show that Patrick was talking about these themes since he started with the Clinton administration.

Also, the Globe today twice mentions our caucus success here in Watertown. Thanks again to all of you who helped make that happen!

Patrick Rally With Barack Obama Tonight

Tonight is the big pre-convention rally/fundraiser at the Hynes Convention center for Deval Patrick with special guest Senator Barack Obama (D-IL). It should be a great event, and I'm really looking forward to hearing both of these dynamic speakers one after the other. I'm sure there are a lot of people in Boston who were at the '04 DNC and heard Obama's keynote live. I watched it on TV, but both my wife and I were blown away. I hope the Senator's return to Boston is just as memorable.

Adrian Walker mentions the event today in his column. Here's what Patrick himself is saying about it:

"He represents the future of not just the Democratic Party, but of enlightened American leadership," Patrick said of Obama. "He's a thoughtful, serious person who's looking to be a problem solver, not just a partisan." He pauses. "Also, he's a rock star, and we can raise a lot of money."

The rest of that column is well worth reading and the beginning of a discussion of why some are reluctant to discuss race in the context of Patrick's candidacy.

If you'd like to go to the rally, you can get a your ticket on the 3rd floor of the Hynes Convention Center today between noon and the event start. The cost is $50 a ticket. They'll take checks or credit cards, but not cash. Doors open at 6:00PM.