Guest Post: Deval's DeVille

Guest post by Susan Falkoff.

I was interested to catch up with Blue Mass Group today and learn that the consensus there is that the fuss over Deval’s new Cadillac is the result of partisan bickering. Among my acquaintances, the issue seemed to have more traction than on BMG. A former Grace Ross supporter wrote (as though I am Deval’s scheduler or personal assistant, which I’m not): “Pleeze give Deval a ride home soon in your sweet little hybrid... Does it make sense for the Guvner to be driven to work & back home in such a notorious gas guzzler, traffic hog, and ‘gangsta cah’?” I was definitely more disturbed by my friend’s crass use of racist stereotypes than by Deval’s choice of car but it bothered me when another leftie made a similar, if more gracefully phrased, comment today. It was reminiscent of when Deval took a hit among my acquaintances (some with significant personal wealth) over building a lavish second home in the Berkshires.

Personally, I agree with those on BMG who believe that the governor needs a presentable vehicle but I was surprised that BMG posts weren’t more concerned about mileage. I’d feel a lot better if I knew that mileage was at least one of the factors that were considered in the vehicle selection. Was a hybrid SUV even a contender? This is not an area where I would expect creative thinking from the state police. Did it even occur to anyone to run (no pun intended) this past the administration’s energy and environment people? Let Deval keep his Deville but I’ll be looking for the administration to demonstrate significant leadership and creativity around energy efficiency in lots of other ways.

Legislature Rejects Putting Committee Votes Online

While the news media is inexplicably obsessed with how Governor Patrick gets from point A to point B, the Massachusetts House just overwhelmingly rejected a simple measure that would increase their accountability to the public. From the Somerville Journal:

POST COMMITTEE ROLL CALLS ON WEBSITE (H 3746) House 20-127, rejected a new rule requiring that committee votes cast by legislators on bills heard by their committees be posted on the Legislature's website. Current rules require committee votes to be kept in the offices of the committee and be available for public inspection upon reasonable notice and during regular office hours. Supporters of the new rule said this would simply give people quick and easy access to the committee votes of their legislators. They noted that under current rules, a person has to drive to Boston during regular business hours in order to obtain this information. Opponents of the new rule said that the current system has worked well for years and should not be changed. (A "Yes" vote is for the new rule requiring that committee votes be posted on the Legislature's website. A "No" vote is against the requirement).

What possible reason could there be for legislators to be opposed to this other than a fear of added scrutiny? Is there something that I'm missing here? What has the current system worked well for other than for keeping the average person away from these roll call votes?

I'm not surprised that this measure failed. It's well known that the Massachusetts legislature is no fan of sunshine. Still, I would have thought it would do better than to fail by a six-to-one margin. This is public information, and the the state should be making it easy for the public to access.

Guest Post: Black Mark for Black Road Policy

Guest post by Susan Falkoff

Out-of-towners frequently comment on how, entering Watertown, they are delighted there is not a bit of snow on any of the roads. Our DPW Superintendent is proud of his “Black Road Policy” and he is often praised by locals, too, for doing a great job of clearing the roads.

While I hope that there are black roads today all the way from Steve's .08 acres to the hospital where his wife will soon deliver a baby (DPW take note!), heavy use of road salts visibly damages vegetation and also corrodes concrete and steel and harms beneficial soil organisms, birds, and aquatic life. Watertown spends a lot of money planting street trees and then allowing salting practices that make it impossible for them to thrive.

New Hampshire did an experiment several years ago and treated test sections of road with half the usual amount of salt on low-volume highways. Poorer driving conditions were noted on the test sections but safety was not significantly compromised. NH DOT concluded that reduced salt programs make sense where a highway is relatively flat, without hills and curves, and in a low speed/low volume section. Compared to country roads in New Hampshire, there must be a lot of those in Watertown. There’s more information about this study at http://www.des.state.nh.us/factsheets/wmb/wmb-4.htm.

Guest Post: The Blame Game and DSS

Guest post by Susan Falkoff. Susan will be helping me out with occasional posts over the next few weeks for reasons that will be more obvious in a few days (I hope!). -- sco

While Steve was struck by dueling columnists commenting this week on Sen. Scott Brown's use of profanity, my attention was caught by diametrically opposed columns on the subject of the latest DSS tragedy. Commissioner Harry Spence was excoriated by Eileen McNamara on Sunday and exonerated by Adrian Walker on Monday for the death of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley due to an apparent overdose of prescription medication.

Seems to me that Walker got it just about right. DSS gets a report of a child who is possibly overmedicated. A social worker investigates, and is reassured by the doctor that the medication prescribed is appropriate. It would be absurd for DSS to assume the doctor was wrong. The parents administer the medication inappropriately. What I can’t tell from the press reports is how much of the problem was medication that was poorly prescribed by a licensed medical professional, or medication that was poorly administered by a very troubled parent. In either case, how on earth could Harry Spence be responsible for the girl's death?

Romney Fatigued By Self-Promotion

The Boston Phoenix's David Bernstein has a link to former Governor Mitt Romney's official presidential announcement. Frankly, after four years of Romney's act here in Massachusetts, I'm tired of the guy, but I just couldn't resist commenting on the snippet Bernstein excerpted in his blog.

Apparently Romney wants to bring innovation and transformation to government, because "We are weary of the bickering and bombast, fatigued by the posturing and self-promotion" of politics.

This from the guy who signed last year's health care law -- along with a bunch of rubes -- in a carefully choreographed ceremony at Faneuil Hall.

Perhaps he forgot about the fancy tokens he commissioned with his name on both sides and an emblazoned "LXX" -- for the 70th Governor of the Commonwealth.

I also seem to remember a glossy 24 page "progress report" -- paid for by his campaign -- that he put out in 2005 in the Boston Globe. There were three different pictures of him on the front cover of that, and eleven of them on the last page, including my favorite.

The guy who once told the Boston Globe "from now on it's me, me, me" after every one of his hand-picked legislative candidates lost in 2004 is sick of self promotion. Frankly, so am I. Good riddance.

More Words Wasted on Scott Brown's Meltdown

There are two very different pieces on Senator Scott Brown (R-Wrentham) and his profanity laced tirade in front of King Phillips High kids last week. In the Boston Globe, Brian McGrory decides that it serves those punk kids right for getting their words thrown back at them. McGrory uses the Brown controversy as an excuse to lament the quality of political discourse, particularly that on the Internet:

Politics long ago lost any of its politesse. People no longer simply disagree; they vilify each other's existence. They don't debate, but assault, the more personal the better, facts and logic be damned.

Never mind that McGrory seems to be under the illusion that this is a new phenomenon, he seems not to appreciate that Brown's impolitic reaction actually contributes to the low quality of political discourse. An authority figure publicly calling someone out for remarks on the Internet is a way to silence or intimidate that person, not to debate them. But that's no big deal, because those kids had it coming to them.

More thoughtful commentary can be found in Brown's hometown paper, the Sun Chronicle. An editorial today laments that Brown taught the kids the wrong lesson:

[T]here is a time, a tone and a context for retort and for demanding vindication.

While we empathize with Brown's wish to redress the postings, his decision to use an appearance on legislative issues to scold everyone came across as inappropriate, unjust and seemingly out of character.

Replying in kind diminished, for the moment, his stature as a grownup who should have known better.

...

Instead of peppering the entire audience with a regurgitation of the postings and naming students involved, he could have taken the high road.

Indeed. If Brown had responded with a degree of dignity, we'd be talking about how well he taught those kids how to respond to political attacks, not about whether it was appropriate for him to name names and use profanity.

Update: Now this is a more classy response -- Brown has offered one of the students who posted on facebook an internship in his office. Maybe he'll walk out of this not looking like a lunatic after all.

Guest Post: Moving Forward to a Standstill along the Charles River

Guest post by former (and future?) Watertown Town Councilor Susan Falkoff. For more information on development along the Charles River on Pleasant St, check out yesterday's article in Globe West or the discussion on H2OTown.

Pleasant Street, Watertown – a rutted road with aging industrial buildings, auto body shops, older single family homes and small apartment buildings plunked down at random. Hidden behind it is the Charles River and a much-loved naturalistic multi-use path that is marred at several points by vistas of crumbling buildings and heavy industrial equipment. Pleasant Street is a fixer-upper -- and its catching on. A Lowe’s is planned for Waltham, with a corner of its parking lot jutting into Watertown. Next to that, a 300+ unit apartment complex is going up and its scale has startled and alarmed some. In my opinion, that project is well-designed and appropriate for the location, but only if future development isn’t higgledy-piggledy all around it.

Town Councilor Jonathan Hecht gets much credit for initiating the common sense idea that the town could plan for future development instead of approving projects piecemeal. Last week, the council wisely approved funding in the range of $40,000 - $55,000 for a six-month planning study. On Sunday, the Globe reported this shocking fact about the funding: in 1993, Stop and Shop agreed to pay the town $35,000 toward a similar study. “The study was never conducted, and town officials say they don't think the company ever paid up.” How often, one wonders, does a developer promise linkage and never deliver? I know of one similar example when, decades later, the Conservation Commission realized that promised plantings were never installed in the Watertown Mall parking lot. Does the town even have a mechanism to track linkage obligations?

Sen. Scott Brown Loses it in Front of Schoolkids

It's every high-school kid's dream nowadays, I guess -- make those kids who were slagging you on the Internet eat their words. Only Senator Scott Brown (R-Wrentham) is not a high-school kid. He's a state Senator. Yet that is exactly what he did when he went to King Phillip High School in Wrentham and angrily read off profanity-laden messages posted about him to a student's Facebook page over the objection of their teachers. In his defense, he says that he "called them on it" and that he was trying to show them the difference between hate speech and "respectful, proper speech." So, in his mind, it is hateful for high-school kids to act like, well, like high-school kids, but respectful and proper for him to go into that classroom and intimidate them.

Of course any comments on Facebook about Brown's family are out of line, and the kids should learn not only that, but also that anything they put on the Internet is not as private as they might imagine it to be. That's a valuable lesson for them. Still, the fact that Brown, a state Senator, was so thin skinned that he felt the need to confront these kids in-person and by name is crazy to me.

And this guy is supposed to be the Mass GOP's golden boy? What is he doing trolling around Facebook anyway? I guess now that the Republicans are completely out of power, he has time to sit around all day Googling himself.

Update: Mark Bail at Granby 01033 has this to add from his blog:

Is it time to give this kind of reaction a name? Homophobic Traumatic Street Disorder? First there was Larry Cirignano of Catholic Citizenship who (allegedly) pushed over a protester protesting an anti-equality rally. He recently left his post as the organization's executive director. Now, we have a senator who gets verbally agressive with high school students in public. The guy's lucky that none of the kids got video of him. Cellphones can do that now, and kids have been uploading teachers yelling at them.

Who's Running in District C?

Today's Watertown Tab has some speculation on who might replace Stephen Romanelli on the town council as he vacates his District C seat at the end of the year. I feel like his retirement has been rumored for some time, and the list of potential replacements that the Tab has come up with matches what I've been hearing. There's former town at-large councilors Susan Falkoff and Sandra Hoffman, former Council President Pam Piantadosi, Republican Town Committee chair Steve Aylward, and last fall's failed candidate for state Rep Keith Mercurio. My hunch is that the race will look different after the signatures are collected than it does now, and it will be interesting to see how it shakes out once everyone makes their decisions. One thing, though, that I noticed in the article bothered me. Apparently, Keith Mercurio is planning to move to Belmont:

[R]enovating his grandfather's home in Belmont for the past two years has become a labor of love for Mercurio, and the ultimate elimination factor if he follows through with purchasing and moving into the home.

"[Living there] would very sadly put me outside the district," he said. "If not for that, I would very much like to run for that seat."

Now, I don't begrudge anyone their choice of house, but don't you think that his potential move outside of town would have been pertinent information for us to have when he ran for the statehouse last fall? I don't remember seeing any "By the way, I might move to my dreamhouse in Belmont" in any of the literature I got from his campaign.

She's Back

I just saw former Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey on tonight's Greater Boston with Emily Rooney. I'm not sure why she was there, other than to perform her familiar job of talking up Mitt Romney, this time in the context of his Presidential campaign. I will give her credit, though. Rooney gave her two opportunities to go after current Governor Deval Patrick, who defeated her in November for that job. Healey did not rise to the bait. She said, simply, "Governor Patrick has been in office for one month, I think it would be premature," and that she should let him file the budget. I thought that was classy from someone who's campaign last year suffered because of its perceived classlessness.

Anyway, she was touting Mitt's conservative credentials, particularly the way he fought marriage equality, stem-cell research and plan B contraceptives. It got me thinking. Is that going to be the official Romney line? He's a true conservative, and here are three high-profile battles that he lost. He failed to stop gay marriage or the other conservative bugaboos. Is that going to be very reassuring to people who believe in these causes? "He failed in Massachusetts, but he fought the good fight!" doesn't seem like a compelling battle cry to me.

No Republicans in 14th Worcester Race

Yesterday was the deadline to submit signatures for the 14th Worcester seat being vacated by James B. Leary, who is now Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray's chief of staff. The primary election is scheduled for March 20th, and the general will be on April 17th. I called Worcester city hall this morning to get a list of the candidates who have submitted their nominating papers. They are Democrats Phil Palmieri, Jim O'Day, Paul Shea and Tammy Vescera, and unenrolled candidate Joseph Cariglia. Palmieri is the City Councilor for District 2 of Worcester and according to his official bio, a "retired probation officer with the Massachusetts Juvenile Justice system and a real estate developer." O'Day lives in the West Boylston part of the district and is a regional VP with the SEIU local 509. Shea is the owner of Paul J. Shea Advertising Specialties of Shrewsbury, according to the Worcester Telegram-Gazette and I couldn't confirm much about the other two. If the information I got from the Worcester Election Commission is complete, there will be no Republican candidate running in the special election.

Worcester Magazine has this report from the field:

It.s a hard race to judge financially, with pre-primary reports not due until March 12, and the candidates haven.t exactly been making a lot of noise outside their immediate circles. O.Day picked up the Neighbor-To-Neighbor endorsement, Shea.s lawn signs have begun to appear in the neighborhoods, and Palmieri has put together a good-sized war chest as of the end of 2006 to go along with the non-office-specific "Palmieri" bumper stickers (and he.s rumored to be making an official announcement in the next day or two), but beyond that, it.s been too quiet for a race this short.

There's another special election scheduled for the spring, the race to fill Rep. Robert Coughlin's seat in the 11th Norfolk District, which includes all of Dedham and Westwood and part of Walpole. The primary for that election will be April 17th (the same day as the 14th Worcester's general) and the general will be held on May 15.

Profile of Patrick/Obama Media Consultant

Christopher Hayes has an article on AlterNet about Senator Barack Obama's political advisor, David Axelrod, who was also Governor Deval Patrick's media consultant in his campaign. I've always thought that comparisons between Obama and Patrick were superficial, but there's no denying the similarities between their messages.

Given his rhetorical skills, Harvard Law pedigree, up-by-the-bootstraps bio and, well, his race, it is hard not to compare recently elected Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick to his friend Barack Obama. Both men entered crowded primaries in which they were definitively not favored. They both inspired a kind of personal pride among supporters that is rare in politics. On the evening of Obama's convincing primary victory, the crowd and the candidate joined in chanting, "Yes We Can!" and if you listen closely to video of Patrick rallies, you'll hear the crowd chanting the very same thing. When Patrick looked into the camera in one ad and said the state's problem wasn't a "deficit of dollars but a deficit of leadership," it was hard not to hear echoes of Obama's oft-used line that the country's biggest problem isn't a budget deficit but an "empathy deficit." And in Patrick's most effective ad, he stands on a stage delivering an impassioned speech to a crescendo of applause as Obama sits on a stool just behind him, nodding approvingly, his head perfectly framed in the shot.

Which brings us to something else the two men share: David Axelrod, the 51-year-old reporter turned media consultant who was the key media strategist for both men's campaigns. He's the one who wrote those ads, framed that shot and came up with the "Yes We Can" tag line. "I don't bring these messages to candidates," Axelrod says when I point out the similarities. "I look for candidates who exemplify and reflect those messages." In the cases of Obama and Patrick, he says, the work is a collaboration. "They take and improve on what you bring them; they deliver it well because they believe in it. It's like riffing with great musicians."

The rest of the article focuses on Axelrod's coming of age as a consultant in Chicago, and it's worth reading.

Anti-Escalation Bill on Beacon Hill

I got an email today from MoveOn.org Political Action announcing that state Rep. David Linsky (D-Natick) and Senator Karen Spilka (D-Framingham) have introduced legislation opposing the escalation in Iraq. The move is apparently part of a larger effort to get state legislatures to pass resolutions opposing troop increases, and they wanted to make sure that everyone contacts their legislators in support of the bill. There's more information about the effort at the Progressive States Network.

I'm not sure that the statehouse is the right place to have a debate on troop levels, but with Republicans in the Senate blocking debate on the war there, maybe it's just important for us to have a debate somewhere. I have not seen or read the resolution, but I'm sure it can't be anything more than symbolic since the state legislature has no jurisdiction over the armed forces. Normally, I'm skeptical of these sorts of symbolic gestures -- particularly since the President seems disinclined to alter course no matter who is opposed to him. Still, in this case I'm wondering if a vote of no confidence at the state level (not in Massachusetts, perhaps, but elsewhere) would bring some pressure on Congress to end the war sooner rather than later.

I hope Spilka and Linsky's bill gets a fair hearing on Beacon Hill.

.08 Acres Turns Two

Today marks the second blogiversary of .08 Acres -- it was two years ago today that I made my first post to the blog. My second year was markedly different from the first in that the first in that it was much more focused on activism. For the bulk of the year, I was involved as a volunteer for the Deval Patrick campaign and though I tried to be fair minded to the other Democratic candidates, I have already noted my regrets that I didn't blog more about the campaign. That said, of course, I don't regret any of the work I did for Deval Patrick, and I'd say it turned out rather well, even if it put a dent in my blog traffic.

The Massachusetts blogosphere is also very different than it was a year ago. During the election, Blue Mass. Group really came into its own, and now dominates the local progressive blog scene. They are a multimedia force, and rightfully so. Other smaller blogs popped up, but many of them have faded since November. We had our second all-blogosphere event, the Blogleft Lieutenant Governor's Forum last May, but despite its success, we haven't taken anything else on since. Perhaps we can use the off-year to increase our communication and collaborate on something again.

If you're new to the blog, here are some of my favorite posts from the past year:

• My behind-the-scenes look at how Deval Patrick delegates won the Watertown caucus.
• The analysis of turnout and loyalty in gubernatorial elections from 1998 and 2002, and the county breakdown of the 1998 gubernatorial election.
• Chats with Middlesex District Attorney candidates Jarret Barrios (who shortly thereafter dropped out) and Gerry Leone (who won the office unopposed).
• My reports from the Mass. Democratic Future Convention and the Mass Dems nominating convention
• The series of posts I wrote debunking gubernatorial candidate Kerry Healey's fear-mongering on over-the-counter sales of hypodermic needles.
• The review I wrote of Crashing the Gate, by Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos and Jerome Armstrong of MyDD.
• Some personal storys about my thoughts on 9/11 and the debate about detainee treatment.
• My liveblog of the Deval Patrick primary victory party at Blue Mass Group and subsequent analysis of the November gubernatorial election
• Some post-election thoughts on civic engagement following Deval Patrick's grassroots victory.

For highlights of year-one, check out my first blogaversary post. What does year three hold? I won't predict anything except that readers should expect a big announcement in the next two weeks or so. Stay tuned!