Marjorie Arons-Barron

Patrick follows sober state-of-the-state address with focused $32 billion budget

2012-01-26T09:12:00.000-08:00

Governor Deval Patrick yesterday proposed a state budget to back up the state-of-the-state address he delivered on Monday. That speech was competently, if not soaringly, delivered, and urged a modest, focused agenda, which the budget seems geared to implement. His list of state accomplishments was gratifying: students who lead the nation in test results; greatest percentage covered by health insurance; moving from 47th in job creation to 5th; greatest drop in automobile insurance costs. Other accomplishments in clean energy, pension reform, moving families out of shelters.

Some of those votes were uncomfortable for the legislature, he acknowledged. There’s a lot still to be done. MBTA indebtedness, wrong-doing in the probation system, the messy, possibly illegal relationship between his lieutenant governor and former Chelsea Housing Authority heavy Michael McLaughlin – all must be uncomfortable for the Governor. He did not mention them.

Even while he was congratulating legislators on their shared accomplishments, he was setting forth three areas most in need of work: dealing with the long-term unemployed, managing the costs of health insurance, and crime. He also wants to fill the jobs gap by closing the skills gap, working with community colleges and, in the process, controlling that system much more centrally and partnering with business in the process. In that, he’ll have to win over a group of community college presidents very comfortable with their current powers. Plus, it’s unclear whether more centralization will bring any benefits to a system that will rely on collaboration between community colleges and local businesses.

In the area of health costs, he wants nothing less than to end the fee-for-service system, reimbursing on the basis of quality care. Insurers and providers are already moving in this direction. It will be interesting to see where the state injects itself into the process. He also breathed words once unimaginable for an elected Democrat, “medical malpractice reform.”

His calls for reforming mandatory sentencing and punishment of habitual offenders have been around for years, as ways of reforming the reforms of yesteryear. These issues are cyclical, but it will be fascinating to see if he can make a dent in the challenge. And how big a dent will be meaningful? His previous “success” in replacing police details with civilian flaggers seems, unfortunately, to have yielded little more than tokenism.

The Governor’s budget would increase by three percent, which he justifies by citing the need to invest more in education. He would eliminate the sales tax exemption on candy and soda, while hiking certain tobacco taxes. All this is a way of investing in health, but will fall most heavily on those with the lowest incomes.

He proposes closing a state hospital and a prison, which would eliminate 400 state jobs. See the Mass. Budget and Policy Center for more details. But can you really close a prison before you change the sentencing structure?

Typically, a Governor’s budget proposal is either dead on arrival in the legislature or, at most, the first step in a long conversation. This one will be no different.

Where the President’s state-of-the union speech was aspirational and occasionally inspiring, a campaign tract more than a blueprint for action, the Governor was modest, grounded and workmanlike, the voice of a politician rounding out his second term rather than reaching for one.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

State-of-the-Union speech paints vision and ignores political realities

2012-01-25T14:27:00.000-08:00

State-of-the-union speeches are supposed to be inspirational, and last night’s by President Obama achieved that goal. It certainly spoke to his Democratic base and evoked a vision of what those center and left-of-center want their country to be and do. The problem is that the President glided over the lessons of the 2011 annus horribilis and even 2010, when many of the ideas he floated last night were soundly rejected.

It’s fine that he portrayed his values, including a more active government role in job creation, supporting renewable energy and eliminating oil subsidies, growing the manufacturing sector, expanding the federal role in financing higher education. But he has to know that it’s likely that little will happen in a Presidential election year, that any of the larger items of his program won’t go through either branch of Congress now that it’s Republican-controlled, or at least dominated by Republican vetoes. Heck, he couldn’t get some of those same ideas through Congress when both branches were Democratic. On many issues, regional politics trumped partisan affiliation. Energy producers on both sides of the aisle are opposed to ending subsidies. And the Republicans see ending subsidies to oil companies as a tax increase, and everyone knows they reflexively refuse to support any tax increase.

Obama’s pitch to reform the tax code and the unfairness of the system will figure prominently as the Presidential campaign proceeds, and there are certainly many inequities that need to be addressed. But fairness for some means an increase for the wealthy, and, again, that’s not going to sail in the current political environment. It’s reassuring that the President is willing to take the criticisms of “class warfare” head on. (Who knew such inequities would also figure prominently in the GOP primaries?)

Obama didn’t just glide over the hugely negative political realities in Washington. He indulged in a kind of magical thinking worthy of Latin American authors. A major part of his approach to financing his programs was to take the money we will no longer be spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, use half to reduce the deficit and the other half to do “nation building here at home.” The fallacy here is that we have been deficit-financing the two wars. Not making the huge expenditures there doesn’t translate into money in the bank. The money was never there in the first place. Those wars plus the Bush tax cuts and an underfunded Medicare Part D together account for the expansion of the federal debt. So in the real world, rhetoric aside, there’s no net savings here to be achieved.

In the end, however, the State-of-the-Union address was an opportunity to paint a vision of values, if not a portrait of political possibilities. And, if the President had watered down that vision, cravenly bending to the negative atmosphere in Washington, he would have unacceptably moved the needle on where potential compromise might start and sold out the dreams of his most ardent supporters before the 2012 game had even begun.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

"God of Carnage" gets at dirty little secrets

2012-01-20T16:48:00.000-08:00

The Huntington Theatre’s God of Carnage is a hilarious deconstruction of sophisticated social interaction and marital relationships. Two urbane and successful New York couples get together in the wake of a playground incident in which one couple’s son has hit the other couple’s son with a stick and knocked out two of his teeth. Their discussion of how best to help their sons work through their differences and learn from the experience devolves into an expletive-laced, vicious attack by one couple on the other, then husband against wife, women against each other, men too. As their refined veneer is stripped away, their repressed rage boils to the surface and overflows, with stinging verbal attacks and physical outbursts, leaving the audience howling in uncomfortable laughter.

We saw the play the same day as the Republican primary process was continuing deeper into anger, savagery, marital accusations, challenges to financial success, charges of hypocrisy, and more. Art imitating life? So far, we have had 17 debates among the GOP contenders, a process that has led to the winnowing of the field, and we’ve learned a lot. But the intensity of the scrapping – and the distortions and obfuscations – have a playground quality to them, while the stakes are much higher.

The candidates are all twisting the truth, not quite at a so’s-your-mother level, but we’re getting there. Certainly, the over the-top rhetoric appeals to long festering resentments among the electorate, which helps to explain why Newt Gingrich’s piercing attacks on the media (Juan Williams on Monday, John King on Thursday) resonate so well with the crowd. Each of the candidates, in his turn, had said something biting enough to elicit cheers from the audience.

So, too, with God of Carnage. On its surface, it is a comedy, but playwright Yasmina Reza views her plays (including the brilliant send-up “Art”) as tragedy. “They are funny tragedy, but they are tragedy,” she says in the program notes. She also calls her genre “theatre of nerves.” So, too, with the political drama playing out again this week.

The "funny tragedy" and "theatre of nerves" is on display in South Carolina. Mitt Romney tries to be cute about when he’ll make his tax returns public, how many he’ll provide and which years. But his nervous laugh reveals underlying discomfort talking about his significant wealth and how he earned it. How he handles this matters, not just for how voters will react but what it says about his values, his policies, perspectives on societal divisions, the "politics of envy" and the appropriate boundaries of “creative destruction.”

Newt Gingrich’s well-planned attack on the media for looking at his personal life reveals a streak of overweening hypocrisy (remember his leadership on the Clinton impeachment). His calling Obama the “food stamp President” suggests if not the vicious racism that some have charged, then most definitely a willingness to play to lingering racism in South Carolina. For a self styled historian and scholar, his serial distortions of the truth are mind-boggling and laughable. ... and tragic when considering he could be a major party nominee. [Thank goodness for the fact checkers .]

The oft rehearsed, canned answers and policy sound bites have already begun to sound like elevator music. We yearn for unguarded moments, or revealed truths, when insights into character can be gleaned. Does Romney’s having strapped his dog, (in a crate with a hand-made windshield ) on the roof of his car on a long-distance trip to Canada, tell us more about him than the evolution of his policy positions? The image might be good for a laugh line in a sitcom, but it carries with it an uncomfortable touch of horror.

It’s easy to complain about our long drawn out Presidential campaign process. Still, it seems a year well spent as we peel the onion, getting to know the core of these characters, as they can’t help revealing themselves and their fitness to become the leader of the free world.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

The state of Menino’s city is a cut above

2012-01-18T11:52:00.000-08:00

Boston Mayor Tom Menino’s 19th state-of-the-city speech last night was a welcome relief from the nasty partisanship and overheated rhetoric of the national political scene.

Locally, Boston’s unemployment rate is 5.7 percent, two points lower than last year. Menino noted that the Innovation District he created in the Seaport area is bringing jobs to the area. He wants to upgrade Madison Park Technical High School to do a better job on vocational education, especially by creating work-study opportunities with businesses.

Due to his focus on lowering health costs for municipal workers by joining the state’s Group Insurance Commission, the city will now save some $70 million. More police are walking beats, and the incidence of crime is down, including homicide. (Which is especially good since the rate of bringing the murderers to justice is lower than other cities nationally.) The idea that a leading politician, albeit a municipal one, can walk the walk when it comes to neighborhood and community, to knowing each other and working together, is a breath of fresh air.

There are several reasons why his stated recommitment to changing the student assignment process and having more children attending schools closer to home makes sense. Those reasons include the byzantine assignment process itself, the $70 million spent on buses that could be spent on books and teaching, and the learning time lost when the buses are chronically late. But last night Hizzonah also reminded us, without using the race-loaded name “neighborhood school,” that even more is at stake in the effect of the student assignment process on the texture of the community.

You can pick any street, he said. Of 12 kids, they probably go to 12 different schools. He asked, “Have you met more than half the people on your street? More than half of the folks in your church? More than half the parents in your kids’ classrooms?” He continued, “The more we know each other, the more we’ll trust each other, and the more we’ll accomplish.”

Yes, Tom Menino is not a polished orator. Yes, he still often mangles the language, even when working off a teleprompter. [And I know the rap on him for micro-managing, especially when it comes to matters of real estate.] But there are times when something authentic about this politician comes through in a very compelling way. Last night was one of those times.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Warren, Brown seek the impossible in the ad game

2012-01-14T14:01:00.000-08:00

Senate candidates Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown are adopting a statesman-like posture in calling for the elimination of campaign ads paid for by outside groups. Each candidate, in doing so, can boast of support for a better, less distorted political process, one from which we would all benefit. But their recent exchange of letters and a voice mail message seems more like game playing….on both sides.

Brown wrote to Warren, urging that she denounce such outside ads. (There have been two anti-Brown ads by the League of Conservation Voters blasting him for his environmental stands.) Warren was the target of an ad run by a Carl Rove-backed group, picturing her as a radical professor claiming to have been the founding mother of the Occupy Movement and, at the same time, supporting bank bailouts. Warren agreed to Brown’s call to denounce outside ads and called for an “enforceable agreement,” according to the Boston Globe.

And that’s the point. The Supreme Court’s January 2010 decision in the Citizens United case banned limits on independent spending on behalf of candidates by individuals, corporations and unions. The First Amendment, the Court said in its expansive ruling, bars such constraints on political speech. This has opened the floodgates to spending “independent of the candidates.” So how can any agreement be enforceable? Remember the Weld-Kerry race and the voluntary spending limits which each accused the other of violating? Both did. There’s no price to be paid for denouncing such ads, and candidates who do so may be viewed more favorably than those who do not. In fact, we probably feel good that our Senate candidates are taking the right position.

Enforceable how and by whom? Other than a reversal of the Court’s decision, how can anyone stop independent groups from using the airwaves on behalf of one candidate or the other. Both the candidates should be honest about the futility of trying to do so.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Chest thumping on China gives insight into GOP candidates

2012-01-13T16:54:00.000-08:00

Mitt Romney should “get a grip” in considering how punitive the United States should be in responding to China’s often unfair (but enormously successful) industrial policy. So said former US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky after speaking to a crowd of more than 700 executives and professionals at The Boston Club’s Corporate Salute on Thursday.

Barshefsky, Ambassador in the Clinton Administration, had been asked about a debate discussion between Jon Huntsman and Romney about how the United States should deal with the powerful and growing Chinese economic threat. Romney had been defiant, wanting, in effect, to slap them around, and Huntsman took a more nuanced position born of information and experience as U. S. Ambassador to China

Barshefy said Romney should take a lesson from our experience with Cuba. She noted that, despite a harsh embargo against Cuba, Fidel Castro has outlasted 11 U.S. Presidents, none of whom was able to bend Cuba to our free-market brand of democracy. “Who does he (Romney) think he is,” she posed, adding that Huntsman’s approach to working with China was the better way to go. The other GOP candidates are closer to Romney and it appears Huntsman is now a dead man walking.

The Boston Club, which identifies a pool of top female talent for corporate leadership positions, holds the annual event was to honor Massachusetts-based corporations with two or more women directors. There are still 41 of the largest 100 companies in the Commonwealth with no women on their boards. Twenty-nine companies have neither a woman director nor a woman executive officer, despite growing evidence that board diversity adds measurably to a company’s bottom line and shareholder value. [ Full disclosure: I’ve been a longtime member of the Club’s Corporate Board Committee.]

Barshefsky’s focus was on the accelerated pace of global growth and the tenfold increase in global companies over the last 50 years, with large developed nations and poor, small ones “playing in the same sandbox.” Twelve rounds of trade talks have brought down many barriers to access, and all are feeling the pressures of intense competition. But, as I watch the candidates, I keep seeing posturing and cliches from the candidates, not a clear-eyed facing up to the today’s global economic realities.

China has become increasingly muscular. Japan now trades more with China than with the United States. So, too, do the other Asian nations and even Brazil. China, which has amassed $3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves and is aggressive in natural resource acquisition around the world, is virtually setting the global agenda.

At the same time, the economies of the United States, Europe and Japan have declined, are less able to withstand financial shocks, and are burdened with high unemployment, slow growth and the need for austerity measures. Just look to what’s happening with the Euro and Eurozone countries. There’s also a slow movement afoot to move away from the dollar to a basketful of currencies in international trade. The change may not happen in our lifetime, but it’s unsettlingly to those who assert American exceptionalism .

Barshevsky criticized leaders here and abroad who are limited by a win-lose mentality, and, troubled by domestic political strains, tend to blame China.

“It’s not too late to get our act together, to reassert our pre-eminence” she said. The answer, she later explained, lies not in a Romney-like bullying approach to China but in strengthening ourselves on the home front, ending the paralysis in Washington, grappling with our deficit and investing in things like education, to make ourselves stronger and reinforce our ability to compete.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Can S.C. trash talk stop Romney's big mo?

2012-01-11T12:36:00.000-08:00

By the numbers, Mitt Romney can’t have the GOP Presidential nomination wrapped up until late April. By then he could have aggregated enough of the 1144 delegates needed to win next summer’s convention to take off some time and go boating on Lake Winnipesauke. To date, only 40 delegates have been chosen, two percent of the total. Romney has 20 of them. And he still has to show he can win in the South, which, before the anticipated negative ad barrage in South Carolina, he is poised to do.

He certainly has what George H. W. Bush called “the big mo.” Romney is two for two (omitting that there may have been a 20-vote typo in his favor in the Iowa results) and garnered more than 40 percent of the vote in New Hampshire (better than he, or winner John McCain, did last time). Even more significantly, he won most of the constituencies identified by the pollsters and pundits. Even some Tea Party types (who are not numerous in the Granite State) found him acceptable. New Hampshire also lacks evangelicals, but they will be out in force in South Carolina, where former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum should do better. And Gingrich’s SuperPAC should test the power of negative advertising. Lee Atwater would have really enjoyed this campaign. Romney will still benefit, however, from a fragmented field of primary opponents.

Romney’s teleprompter-delivered speech last night was perfectly packaged and timed to maximize his audience. It had all the rhythm, alliteration, and parallel structures to qualify as an acceptance speech at the Tampa convention. It focused on President Obama rather than on any of the other GOP candidates, and had all the platitudes befitting a promise of “an America that is a land of opportunity and a beacon for freedom”. It was a window into the rest of the 2012 campaign, which, from Romney’s perspective, will be a choice between two destinies: Obama’s “European Socialist welfare state” careening toward bankruptcy and Mitt’s promise of a federal government that is “simpler, smaller and smarter.”

Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and 3rd place finisher Jon Huntsman have all pledged to go on to South Carolina. It will be very surprising if they all continue beyond that to Florida January 31, given the costs of campaigning there. Florida, by the way, starts the traditional GOP winner- take- all delegate computation, so, if Romney comes in first even with a low plurality, the locomotive sound you hear will be the Romney train steaming toward inevitability. February is mostly a caucus month, with two of the three primaries to be held in Michigan (home state to George Romney and Mitt as a child) and Arizona, a state with a sizable Mormon population, also home state to John McCain, who has endorsed Romney.

Romney has the money and the organization to surmount the bumps he may hit in less hospitable states, especially in the South, but those bumps should at a minimum make the trip a little more interesting for us political junkies, for whom an early decision would be a bit of a disappointment.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Kennedys return, this time to 4th congressional district

2012-01-08T17:51:00.000-08:00

So, Joe Kennedy III appears poised to return his famous family to political office. His father, Joe, was a Congressman from the 8th congressional district, that seat famously held by his uncle Jack before he became President. Young Joe has resigned from his post in the Middlesex District Attorney’s office and set up an exploratory committee. But, is he a shoo-in simply because of his name?

Not necessarily. Only need look only at his uncle Max Kennedy who, for a nanosecond in 2001, was a candidate for the late Joe Moakley’s seat in Congress. In his first political speech, he lost his place, got confused, and unaccountably giggled. Onlookers speculated he was caught off guard by the media hordes. In later presentations, he got some facts wrong and was perceived as stumbling and inept. In presentation coaching, I’ve often used that particular Kennedy oops as an example of someone who thought he could just go out there and not have to prepare for it. His candidacy was short-lived, as was that of the normally poised Caroline Kennedy, who briefly ran for U.S. Senate from New York, with similar results.

But, while not being a shoo-in, Joe Kennedy III could shape the race for the retiring Barney Frank’s district. As the Boston Globe noted this morning, people may not know Joe specifically, but they sure do know his family. Some voters will reject him due to lingering antipathy to the Kennedy family; others (including some blue-collar Democrats who voted for Scott Brown and want to atone for that) want to restore the dynasty.

We all, of course, have to find out much more about him: what his policy prescriptions are, how he responds to tough questions, what makes him tick. He is largely a blank slate, with a broad smile and engaging manner. The couple of times I’ve met him, he has demonstrated he has “the touch.” He's friendly and down to earth, looks you straight in the eye, seems to value the connection, however brief. Well pedigreed, he is said to be very bright. You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and my initial impression of Joe Kennedy III is very positive.

That said, he’ll have to prove that he should win rather than other candidates, such as Boston City Councilor Mike Ross. Ross has a solid track record, served as the Council President for two terms. and grew up in the 4th district. Ross’ father, Stephan Ross, is a well known Holocaust survivor, who worked with Kitty Dukakis to get the Holocaust Memorial in downtown Boston built. In a multicandidate primary, if ethnic identity plays a role, there is a significant Jewish vote in Newton, Brookline, and Sharon, which could figure measurably in the outcome.

But the new redistricting lines make the district far less liberal than that which sent Bob Drinan and Barney Frank to Congress for decades. Republican Sean Beilat, who ran last time, would be a credible opponent should he decide to run. Brookline School Committee member Elizabeth Childs, a psychiatrist, is already campaigning and will make Bielat work for the Republican nomination.

This all makes for a very interesting contest, one about which there are no foregone conclusions, Kennedy or not.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Voting with polls is the tail wagging the dog

2012-01-05T11:24:00.000-08:00

New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary is supposed to be retail politics at its most pure. The idea is that the candidates meet people from all walks of life, in every conceivable kind of setting, and the people make up their minds based on personal, elemental information gathering. At least, that’s the history and the theory.

Which is why a story on WBUR radio this morning was so disturbing. Reporter Fred Thys quotes N.H. primary voter Karen Eckilson at a Romney rally in Petersborough. She tells Thys “I was actually thinking of Huntsman, but I don’t think he can make it,” Eckilson said. “I don’t think he’s electable — poll numbers.”

If people vote based on polls, that diminishes the primary as a way to breathe life into a solid candidate with real potential for making a contribution, who may not have the money or ground organization to come fast out of the gate. Carry that to a logical conclusion, for that matter, and why have people vote at all? Just declare the winner to be the candidate with the greatest percentage of public opinion survey support on the first Tuesday after the first Monday or some other fixed point in time.

Polling is an inexact science, with wide variations in methodologies and margins of error. Polls often reflect undeveloped opinions and fail to reflect soft and changeable support for the candidates. Even in the entrance polls in Iowa, more than half those who voted for Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum said they hadn’t made up their minds until a day or less before the caucuses. Rick Santorum was ignored by the press because his poll numbers were so low. It's a vicious cycle, meaningless polls that often reflect name recognition.

Karen Eckilson is not alone in this wag-the-dog scenario. WBUR quotes a Suffolk University report that “Voters seem to be moving away from the former Utah governor [Jon Huntsman]and Texas Rep. Ron Paul toward being undecided again, as they reconsider their choices after the Iowa caucuses.”

If voters went by polls, Hillary Clinton would have been coronated before the first caucus in 2008. I keep thinking about how the late Minnesota Senator Gene McCarthy took his anti-Vietnam War message to every nook and cranny of New Hampshire. Opinion polls showed him at as little as 10 percent support, but he stuck with it. And many voters stuck with him, despite the polling numbers. When he garnered more than 42 percent, Lyndon Johnson announced his intention not to seek reelection as President.

Learning the party building benefits that accrued to the Democrats in 2008 from a drawn-out primary fight, Republicans this year for the first time have scrapped their winner-take-all balloting for the early stage of the process. The goal was to keep more candidates alive longer and kindle voter interest in the race.

If voters succumb to the polls and fail to vote their hearts and minds this early in the campaign, what else are we losing?

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Eight-vote landslide boosts Romney’s front-runner status

2012-01-04T11:39:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness for the Presidential race filling the vacuum created by a New England Patriots bye week. Waiting until 2:30 in the morning for Romney’s 8 point Iowa caucus margin of victory was a bit much however.

Iowa starts the winnowing process. Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, despite having won last summer’s Iowa GOP fundraiser/straw poll and yesterday’s Iowa Coffee Bean Caucus (reported on by Fox), garnered just six percent of Tuesday’s real votes (half what Perry got) and, mercifully, has dropped out. [Please spare us these synthetic campaign gimmicks as well as pollsters who fail to measure the softness of candidate support] Following suit may be Texas Governor Rick Perry, who, despite deep pockets, failed to make it into the top tier. He has gone home to think things over. So where does that leave us?

Romney has a commanding lead (support, in recent polls, approaching 50%, more than double that of his closest rivals) in New Hampshire and seems poised to win the first-in-the-nation primary. That level of support has held since December, as has the support for former Speaker Newt Gingrich, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, and Jon Huntsman, all well behind Romney. At the bottom, former Pennsylvania Rick Santorum has doubled his N.H. support in the last month (from 5 percent), and it will be interesting to see what further traction he gets there in the wake of his running in a virtual dead heat with Romney in the Iowa caucuses. This will likely be Huntsman’s best shot, assuming non-Republicans, with no action on the Democratic side, decide to take GOP primary ballots.

Romney won in Iowa with the same result he received in his devastating loss there four years ago. However well he does in New Hampshire, there will be those who will be unimpressed, noting that he should do well due to his vacation home there, his 2008 campaigning there, and from his term governing nearby Massachusetts. The next real test may be South Carolina at the end of this month, a place where social conservatives hold sway and Romney may also have to deal with issues he has so far largely avoided. Santorum should do particularly well there.

Romney was largely spared the negative advertising launched against Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich (primarily by a super-PAC led by Romney friends and former staff that Romney claims he has no connection to, which may be legally and technically correct, but… ---heh, heh). That honeymoon is now over, and Romney will be the target of negative ads in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. Romney may not look so pretty to the Republican primary audience from here on. But with a divided opposition and proportional voting in the early contests , he should pick up chunks of delegates, even if bloodied. Ironically, savaging Romney as a “moderate” in Republican primaries, should, if he is the nominee, make him more attractive to Independents and disaffected Democrats in the general election.

The most reassuring line I’ve heard about Romney, probably the candidate Barack Obama least wants to run against, is from a Romney fundraiser who said , “Don’t worry about Romney; he doesn’t believe what he is saying.” But he will have to move more to the right in South Carolina, and we’ll be hearing more right-wing fealty from him. Given Romney’s history, It doesn’t take much to imagine the Obama team preparing the 2012 version of the 2004 anti-Kerry windsailing ads.

Like the Globe’s Brian McGrory, I, too, have dealt with Romney personally. Between his failed run against Ted Kennedy and his departure to save the Olympics, Mitt was part of my stable of panelists for my Sunday morning talk show, Five on Five. I always found him, as did McGrory, amiable, charming and even “moderate to the point of being nonpartisan.”

In his policy pronouncements, Romney was thoughtfully conservative, evidence-driven and generally quite reasonable. After quirky and self-indulgent Bill Weld, Romney took the role of governor and responsible government seriously. Those who remembered his parents and their commitment to public service, and how both were important role models for their son, had reason to be optimistic. That all started to change halfway into his gubernatorial term when he started running for President and faced having to court and win support among more hard right constituencies, nationally.

If he becomes the nominee, I still hold out hope for a thoughtful, rational and even-tempered discussion with Obama about the role of government and how to provide services, including health care, foster job creation and economic development, while attending to short and long term implications of the federal deficit. Yet, given the way money will be used in the general election, and the preference of both the news media and voters for campaigns as entertainment not enlightenment, that hope is probably naïve. Is Landslide Mitt really on his way? We’ll know more as the GOP process unfolds in the next few months.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Headline wishes for 2012

2011-12-31T08:22:00.000-08:00

My friend and colleague Tom Waseleski, editorial page editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, always prepares for New Year’s Day an aspirational list of headlines from which many of us could benefit. Here, with my own imprint, are the headlines I’d like to see in 2012.

National Jobless Rate Drops Below 7 Percent

Those Benefiting from New Health Care Law Organize to Defend it

GOP, Dems Achieve Deficit Reduction Grand Bargain

Congress Passes Dream Act

Congress Passes Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Patriots Win Super Bowl

Pakistan Routs Terrorist Strongholds

U.S. Withdraws from Afghanistan: Woman Elected President

Sanctions Work: Iran Accepts Nuclear Restraints

Buyers’ Remorse: Tea Party loses House seats

New Bookstores Thrive across State and Nation

Congress Closes Loopholes in U.S. Tax Code

Spring Comes Early to Massachusetts

Tough New Gambling Commission Becomes Model for Country

Patrick Health Cost Containment Law Embraced by All

Taxpayers Win: Cities and Towns Join Group Insurance Commission

Massachusetts Leads Nation in Creating New Businesses

Candidates Obama, Romney Thoughtfully Debate Role of Government

Boston Celtics Win More Games Than They Lose

Democrats Lead Fight to Raise Social Security Age

Republicans Support Raising Income Threshold for Social Security Tax

Fears of Arab Winter Unfounded

Bruins Repeat

Cure Found for Black Spots on Roses

Boston Schools Transfer Millions from Busing to Classroom

Bill Bellichick Speaks in Paragraphs

U.S. Companies Bring Offshore Jobs Home

Tech Support from Bangalore Call Centers becomes Comprehensible

Mayor Menino, Don Chiofaro DineTogether in new Greenway Restaurant

Eyesore Removed : Downtown Crossing Cuts Ribbon for Filene’s Replacement;

Wall Street Bonuses Pegged to Quality not Volume

Congress Votes Global Warming, Energy Independence Law; Obama Signs

US Passes China as Green Technology Leader

Red Sox Atone for 2011 Epic Meltdown

Arons-Barron's Husband Finishes Long-awaited Book

Best wishes for a happy, healthy and prosperous 2011.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong Il deaths trigger synthetic and real mourning

2011-12-20T06:59:00.000-08:00

The national mourning following the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is so staged as to be laughable. Its purpose was to reinforce the idea that people should cope with the “grief” by staying loyal to Kim Jong Il’s son, Kim Jong Un. This should be fodder for the next edition of Saturday Night Live. Far more convincing is the national mourning for Czech president Vaclav Havel.

Havel, Czechoslovakia’s dissident essayist and playwright also died this past weekend. He had led the human rights movement in the then-Soviet bloc and spent five years behind bars and decades under secret police scrutiny for challenging the Soviet regime. Contrary to Kim Jon Il’s embrace of militarism and nuclear threat, Havel, through his writings and moral authority, was the inspiration behind the bloodless end to 40 years of Communist rule, the so-called Velvet Revolution of 1989.

Havel was “the moral voice of his country and his era,’’ said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, as reported by Associated Press. “His humanity, humility and decency were an example for us all.’’

Havel's significance ws driven home to me in May of 1990, just after the Velvet Revolution. He had recently been elected the new republic’s first president after the Communists were forced out. I had the privilege of travelling for a month in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union as a member of the National Conference of Editorial Writers (now the Association of Opinion Journalists). The wall had come down in Berlin, and elections were underway during our visit there. We were in Bucharest for the first Romanian election since the downfall of Nicolae Ceausescu. And we were in Prague during the reorganization of government after the election of the first post-Communist president. The lilacs were in bloom across the city and countryside, and people were quite literally dancing in the streets of this charming, old world jewel of a town.

The Prague Spring Music Festival was about to take place. The opening concert was sold out. Hartford Courant editorial page editor Bob Schrepf had made the acquaintance of a couple of members of the Czech Philharmonic orchestra, who agreed to smuggle five of us up to the second balcony – standing room only. Bodies pressed together uncomfortably but no one complained; it must have been 95 degrees at that altitude in the small confines of a box. Satin gowns, which had probably been in storage since the Second World War, added to the pungent odor and intensity of the experience.

There were just two pieces on the program, the Czech national anthem and Smetana’s Ma Vlast, “my country,” in effect, a symphonic national anthem. The conductor was Rafael Kubilik, the aged maestro who had fled the country 40 years before with his wife and two suitcases, vowing never to return until his country was free. Just before Kubelik raised his baton, a ripple of excitement. Vaclav Havel appeared in the presidential box. The audience roared, and the music soared. Rose petals, from tossed bouquets, were strewn on the stage, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Emotion quite unlike the manufactured tears of the orchestrated crowds in North Korea.

The bloom is off the rose. Vaclav Klaus, a doctrinaire free-boot capitalist, narrow minded nationalist (who is reflexively opposing EU solutions to the current crisis), and singularly unpleasant man who demeaned Havel and his views both privately and publicly, succeeded Havel as president. Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and the promise of The Velvet Revolution was never as rich as that Prague Spring in 1990. Havel was less effective in office than he was working from the outside. But his death last weekend reminds us of the power a man’s character can have when his persona is imprinted on a people’s movement, when his words and charisma speak to anything being possible. He was a true symbol of the audacity of hope, and the power of language to inspire.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
photo Havel by Associated Press

Casino czar smart choice

2011-12-14T12:55:00.000-08:00

Naming Steve Crosby to chair the state’s newly created gambling commission is a very smart decision by Governor Patrick. If casinos are finally to be built in Massachusetts, at least there will be someone of integrity to oversee their licensing and operation. Crosby is well suited to carry out the goals of fairness and transparency. As he put it, his mission is to make sure that there are more of the good things to happen from casinos (jobs, for example) than there are the bad things.

In Pennsylvania, those bad things included “cronyism, patronage, back-room deals, overlooked criminal histories, and alleged mob ties in the industry,” according to the Boston Globe. If he keeps those problems at bay, then one might also hope for a minimum of the other bad things that happen around casinos, like prostitution, check kiting, addiction, though there’s no guarantee. I’m concerned about the tendency for states to backslide on carefully drawn gambling rules when they need more cash.

Crosby’s background includes a little bit of everything (including newspaper work, for The Real Paper, and developing the Smart Routes traffic monitoring company). He has thrived in the political arena, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. He campaigned for Boston Mayor Kevin White, a Democrat, in the 70’s, was chief of staff and budget director under Republican Governors Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift, and served as co-chair of Deval Patrick’s transition team on budget and finance.

It’s no wonder that political /public life is his passion. Crosby’s parents were dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrats. His mother, Jean, ran late Congressman Bob Drinan’s (Barney Frank’s predecessor) district office. His father, Harry, a WWII fighter plane navigator, was an anti-Vietnam War activist and a progressive member of the Newton Board of Aldermen.

Recently Steve Crosby has been Dean of the McCormack School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. One of his roles has been helping Chancellor Keith Motley in the development of a long-term strategic plan. That capacity for seeing the big picture and proceeding analytically and systematically should help him develop a solid grounding for the state’s approach to casino regulation.

My only concern is that he has promised the Governor just two years of the seven-year term to which he has been appointed. It’s hard to believe it will be long enough to get casino gambling established and running according to the rules that will be promulgated.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
Globe photo by Patrick Whittemore

All in the Family: Can Sleazy Aunt Betty and Crooked Brother-in-law Bob wreck a political career?

2011-12-09T05:18:00.000-08:00

Life is complicated, and family relationships make it all the more so, especially if you’re in the business of politics. The impact goes both ways, from long-suffering spouses standing bravely by a pol who has done wrong, to the politicians enduring the guilt by association with a ne’er-do-well cousin or in-law.

Debbie DiMasi, wife of former House Speaker Sal DiMasi (currently a guest of the federal government at a prison in Kentucky), insisted to Greater Boston’s Emily Rooney this week that her husband is innocent of all corruption charges. Di Masi himself, apparently indifferent to the embarrassing legacy of recent House Speakers, is starting an 8-year term, still asserting he isn’t guilty of steering nearly $20 million in contracts to a software firm in exchange for thousands of dollars. Former Illinois Governor Ron Blagojevich, sentenced Wednesday to 14 years, at least had the decency in the courtroom, finally, to acknowledge what he has done to his family. He said "I have nobody to blame but myself. ... I am just so incredibly sorry."

NY Congressman Anthony Weiner humiliated his wife by sending pictures of his private parts on the internet; NY Governor Eliot Spitzer, by consorting with call girls; South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford , by declaring his Argentinean mistress his “soul mate.” (Mrs. Sanford very publically didn’t stand by her man.) I’m not sure how sorry these pols were when they got caught with their pants down (metaphorically and, in Weiner’s case, for real) and lost their office. This scenario has become so commonplace that The Good Wife has become a top-rated television show.

Humiliation is a two-way street, as demonstrated by the Tierney/Eremian clan. U.S. Congressman John Tierney’s wife Patrice clearly has a family whose business is crime. In their case, the crime is of the illegal gambling sort. The Feds got their conviction, and yet another of her brothers is still on the lam in Antigua. Patrice herself had pled guilty to aiding and abetting the false filing of tax returns on behalf of the second brother and did 30 days in jail for being in “willful” denial about the nature of his Antigua business. Though most of the millions that went through the account went to pay for the Antigua-based brother’s taxes and his family expenses, she still legally derived certain monies from that account over several years.

As was made absolutely clear in different court proceedings, after extensive scrutiny by a very aggressive Office of the US Attorney in Boston, the Congressman was never implicated in any way in any of these illegal activities.

Ironically, and in perfect symmetry to the theme that a politician’s extended family may be the greatest curse he must endure, the best thing Tierney may have going for him,( in addition to his own progressive record in Congress), is that the sister of Rep. Richaed Tisei, likely his strongest Republican opponent, was reportedly arrested in August for possession of cocaine.

Tisei, like Tierney, has not been linked to any of his sister’s alleged conduct and also like Tierney, claims to have been unaware of any of his sister’s illegal activity.

None of this is new, and it doesn’t have to be fatal. Bill Clinton’s half brother Roger did a year in jail on a cocaine conviction. Hillary Clinton’s brother was suspected and aggressively pursued by the government of influence peddling. A judge ordered Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango to leave the country because she was here illegally. His uncle Onyango Obama was picked up on charges of drunk driving and held because of questions about his immigration status. Jimmy Carter had his outlandish brother Billy, a good ole boy who pushed Billy Beer and Libyan investments. Richard Nixon was regularly embarrassed by his brother Donald’s financial wheeling’s and dealings with the legendary Howard Hughes. Lyndon Johnson had to deal with his brother, Sam Houston Johnson, a shiftless alcoholic. And on and on and on.

The bottom line is that, if you’re in public life – whether you’re a politician, an actor/celebrity, or an editor – or the spouse of one-- it’s often not enough to be above reproach, like Caesar’s wife. You’d better hope that Caesar’s siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles and in-laws are equally free of skeletons in the closet. The challenge for the electorate, in today’s often thoughtless news media environment, is to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Barney Frank: the rudest Congressman you’ll ever miss

2011-11-28T13:39:00.000-08:00

The subtitle of Stuart Weisberg’s book Barney Frank is “the story of America’s only left-handed, gay, Jewish Congressman.” It could also be “ the story of the smartest, wittiest, rudest person in Congress in our lifetime.” It is also true that his decision not to run for reelection will leave a huge void.

Civility and humility were never Barney’s strongest suit. Everyone has “Barney” stories to tell. The doctor who participated in a meeting in his Washington office, appalled that the Congressman read a newspaper while his visitors presented their case on a pressing issue. The television producer whom he berated for asking him to arrive at the station a full half an hour before the candidates in his race were to debate. Saying please and thank you was an unnatural act.

One personal favorite occurred during a blinding snowstorm the night of the 1976 Presidential primary. We were both leaving the Copley Plaza Hotel after festivities there for primary winner Scoop Jackson and, across the hall, for primary loser Birch Bayh. (I had covered both events for the Ten O’Clock News on Channel 2.) Barney accosted me outside the St. James Street entrance, highly critical of something I had written in The Boston Phoenix about his candidate, Mo Udall (who privately was my choice as well). I was definitely overpowered in the exchange and finally, in exasperation, said, “Really, Barney, you are the most arrogant person I know.” Without missing a beat, Barney retorted, “Really, Marge, how many arrogant people do you know?” You never prevailed in verbal combat with Barney. Just ask his colleagues in Washington on both sides of the aisle. With a nice touch of self-deprecatory wit, Barney himself said today that one of the benefits of not running for re-election is “not having to pretend to be nice to people I don’t like.”

He was always quotable. Once, then-Boston Phoenix editor Bill Miller stepped out of his office into the newsroom and announced, “A hundred dollars to the first reporter who doesn’t quote Barney Frank in a story.” The combination of brains, often caustic wit and edge was just too tempting.

People in the 4th congressional district largely felt that Barney’s rudeness was the price they had to pay for his intelligence, hard work and unswerving support of mostly liberal causes. As a state legislator, he attacked Michael Dukakis in 1974 when the then-Governor cut welfare benefits. It continued when he succeeded anti-war Congressman Robert Drinan in 1981, espousing progressive policies and excoriating Reaganomics on the national scene. His position as a member, then chairman (now ranking minority member) of the Financial Services Committee enabled him to achieve much for those in need of affordable housing and access to credit. The Dodd-Frank Bill may be his most lasting legacy, though repealing it is a top goal of campaigning Republicans.

He was liberal, but not a stereotypical ideologue. He was also pragmatic. Like Ted Kennedy, Barney knew when to depart from liberal dogma, for example, and could reach across the aisle to get a deal done. From trucking deregulation (which I worked with him on for the PBS show The Advocates) to financial services and other issues, he rejected knee-jerk positions. He was an expert in working the legislative process in a way that has become increasingly alien in D.C. Identified with a wide variety of civil rights issues, he also had a libertarian streak, supporting, for example, online gambling. He was very attentive to the bread-and-butter issues of his district. He endeared himself to the fishermen in the southern part of his district, especially New Bedford, which he lost in the recent redistricting. His office ran a very good constituent service operation.

Barney was not without flaws. Before he came out, he got involved in a shameful sex scandal with a male prostitute that led to House reprimand and forced him to apologize to his colleagues and his constituents. He missed early signs of the crisis in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac but later, as committee chairman, worked to clamp down on sub-prime lending and other abusive practices.

He says he isn’t running for reelection because a) he wants to focus his attention in the next year to defending financial reform and to achieving deficit reduction in a way that doesn’t let the military off the hook; and b) he couldn’t fairly persuade 325,000 new constituents to support him while intending to retire, as he had planned, after just one more term. So he will retire at the end of 2012.

The only up note to come out of Barney’s press conference was his reassurance that he will retain an active voice in the public forum. His shoes will be difficult to fill, impossible in the short term, and not just because of the loss of seniority. Alan Khazei, who bowed out of the U.S. Senate race when Elizabeth Warren entered, has a similar philosophy, issue priorities, commitment to public service and fund-raising capacity to make a good run. But he’s not Barney Frank and will never be. Nor will anyone else.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Give thanks for one day off from politics

2011-11-24T10:45:00.000-08:00

There’s something mindless about preparing for Thanksgiving: getting out the good china and other holiday accoutrements, preparing the vegetables, concocting the cranberry sauce, cleaning and stuffing the turkey. It’s satisfying to know what the goal is, take the steps necessary to achieve it, and have the power to effect the outcome. It’s hard work, but the end is almost always worth it. (Maybe that’s why 93 percent of Americans surveyed by the Washington Post like the Thanksgiving holiday.)

To be sure, there’s the occasional politically contentious guest to curdle the gravy, but you can always take solace that your dinner table arguments are so nasty because the stakes are so low.

That can’t be said for the turkeys in Washington who actually do have the power to make a difference, but failed miserably in taking responsible steps to get the economy moving and set in motion a plan to curb the deficit. How can they have failed to understand how angry the vast majority of the American people are? Failed to recognize that the cynicism they are feeding could weaken this country both domestically and internationally.

The Supercommittee was not only a Superfailure but a Superfraud. Perhaps it was never going to work but was just a way of kicking the can down the road (as they like to do inside the Beltway) and get the debt ceiling lifted. Perhaps Washington officialdom assumes that sequestration will never be allowed to kick in but will simply represent another artificial deadline which our leaders will miss. The game plan is all too reminiscent of that Dr. Seuss line, “Could this go on all day and night? It could, you know, and it just might.”

Democrats and Republicans both been talking taxes pro and con, not serious deficit reduction. As the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein wrote, this impasse is all about the Bush tax cuts.
In the recent kabuki theater, the Democrats moved their plans a little to the right, and then the Republicans moved the markers further to the right. The Supercommittee’s failure to act could ironically go further and faster toward serious deficit reduction than either party has proposed. Unless the Republicans pull off an electoral perfect storm of overwhelming victories in House, Senate and Presidency, there’s a serious showdown coming.

But today is a day off from ruminating about all the unintended consequences, and frankly I like it that way.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Emerging Leaders poised to set course against same old, same old

2011-11-17T15:35:00.000-08:00

Recent shenanigans to sneak more money for racetracks into the casino gambling bill (about to go to) the Governor’s desk are yet another reminder of the self-interest of many leaders on Beacon Hill. The problem isn’t just political wheeling and dealing however. For generations in this tight city, insiders in various institutions , from finance to the arts, have held hold power very close and have failed to reach out to develop new generations of leadership.

But the times demand such new leadership, leadership that is open, diverse, collaborative and able to shape the global arena. Developing that leadership can’t be left to chance. One of the first to recognize that was former UMass Boston Chancellor Sherry Penney, who had also been interim president of the University of Massachusetts system. A prominent figure in the Greater Boston community and player in international leadership circles, Penney proposed a Center for Collaborative Leadership at the UMass Boston College of Management and persuaded then-State Street CEO Marsh Carter of its merits. He promptly gave her a quarter of a million dollars to start the effort. Carter, now head of the New York Stock Exchange, was in Boston recently, and the two, along with State Street Corporation’s George Russell, were honored for their contributions to the development of leadership in our community.

Thanks to their activities over the past decade, we now have a cohort of 400 young leaders from every sector, corporate, government and nonprofit. Forty percent are people of color, and over half are women. (Compare that with the 11 percent of women who now sit on the boards of the Globe 100 companies.) One of the Emerging Leaders fellows has been named CEO of a major unit of Sovereign Bank. Another heads Citibank’s efforts in Boston. A physician is head of public health for Massachusetts. Two fellows are heads of nonprofits. Many have been recognized by the Boston Business Journal in its “Forty under Forty” list. There are many other success stories.

We’re going to need every one of these young leaders. You don’t have to look far to see how so many of the current generation in power is messing up, one of the reasons that spawned the Occupy Boston movement. Unfortunately, the Occupy movements, beyond slogans and a diffuse agenda, lacks pragmatic focus. It has yet to move from unbridled passion to a practical agenda and concerted action. It has even generated some health and safety problems. Regrettably, they lack the discipline of The Tea Party, which, for better or worse, has made itself a force to be reckoned with inside the political process.
It’s time for the next cohort of leaders, the Emerging Leaders fellows, to step up and, working within the system, offer strategies to make our society more just. Those of us who are a little long in the tooth need to create some breathing room and let these young leaders show what they can do. That will be a significant living legacy for the likes of Sherry Penney, Marsh Carter, George Russell, and others who have invested so much in training the next generation of leaders.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

MassInc shows how humor can bridge the political divide

2011-11-13T14:37:00.000-08:00

The unidentified “they” have often said that Boston’s three favorite pastimes are sports, politics and revenge – and not necessarily in that order. Thursday night’s MassInc’s 15-year anniversary celebration at the Kennedy Library brought together media and pols to wallow in a hilarious celebration in a bipartisan spirit of humor and across-the-aisle friendship that, I sometimes think, can only happen here.

The “Serious Fun Program” was hosted by WTKK radio hosts Jim Braude (also of NECN) and Margery Eagan (also of the Boston Herald.) Braude, who, when he started out at TEAM (Tax Equity Alliance for Massachusetts) and in broadcasting was pompous and self-righteous, has mellowed over the years into someone totally able to take a joke at his own expense and even to dish them out in a self-deprecating way. Eagan, ever his foil, is smart, warm and wonderful.

One priceless video showed Tom Menino, speaking in the low gruff, semi-breathless but threatening tones of The Godfather, doing a riff on someone posing as nemesis developer Don Chiaforo. In another video, Republican consultant Todd Domke’s son acted the persona of a PR consultant cozying up to specific reporters and columnists (unseen and unheard from at the other end of the phone), trying to pitch a story on a footbridge a client opposed. He changed his slithery and sycophantic pitches to meet the style of each identified columnist, from Howie Carr to Brian McGrory and Joan Vennochi. Again, hilarious.

A video showed Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray, microphone in hand, walking the Public Garden asking people on the street if they knew who is the lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth. The regular people did not. Former Lt. Gov’s Donald Dwight and Jane Swift did, but they had some humorous words of advice for Murray. The piece was a big hit.

Onstage, various politicians present and past participated in a quiz show, with Scott Harshbarger, Joe Malone, Kerry Healey and others all taking it on the chin as their foibles and failures were mocked.

I kept thinking how nice it would be if politicians in Washington today had the down-to-earth sense of self and insightful humor to interact with each other in this way. It might take us back to the days when Democrat Tip O’Neill and Republican Congressman Silvio Conte could duke it out on the floor of the House during the day, play poker and drink together at night and ultimately work out legislative compromises.

MassInc was founded by business executive Mitch Kurtzman after an unsuccessful run for Governor. His vision of a nonpartisan think tank, looking at public policy in a dispassionate way, engaging Republicans and Democrats alike in the deliberation of issues, was implemented by MassInc’s first president Tripp Jones. A host of talented people over the last 15 years have expanded on those early days, turning out regular issues of Commonwealth Magazine, which add so much depth to the public dialogue. We are all better off for their serious, substantive explorations and analyses. But Thursday night, we were all better off for the opportunity to laugh and be together.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Rick Perry’s lapse evokes sympathy more than ridicule

2011-11-11T07:27:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has read this blog over the past year knows I am no fan of Rick Perry. But there’s no way I would delight in what he experienced in Wednesday’s Republican debate when he forgot that the third agency he would abolish is the Energy Department. There is nothing to compare to the humiliation a person can experience when losing it on the public stage. The Boston Globe’s Scot Lehigh laid out his “Rick Perry moment” in this morning’s paper.

I am no stranger to this experience. Back in 1991, at the beginning of the first Gulf War -Desert Storm – I was airing regular editorials on WCVB-TV, Channel 5. Usually we taped the editorials, which ran three times a day, right after the news. But our then-news director Emily Rooney, my friend then and now, decided that, given the significance of the wartime situation, it was important for the editorials to be broadcast live. I agreed. Early afternoon, she handed my script to the producer of the six o’clock news to input on the teleprompter. At the prescribed time, I joined the anchors on the news set.

Natalie Jacobson said, “And now, with a Channel 5 editorial is editorial director Marjorie Arons-Barron.”

“Thanks, Nat,” I said and turned toward the ‘prompter. Alas, there was nothing there. The producer had neglected to input the script. And I didn’t have within reach my own typewritten version. The seriousness of the content meant it was not a time to vamp. After seconds, which seemed like hours, I lamely turned to Natalie and mumbled something about “the content isn’t there.” She deftly acknowledged there was a technical problem and led into the network’s nightly news program.

I was mortified, and everyone knew it. Reporters and producers poured out of their cubicles to console me, telling me of their own horror stories. Jim Boyd, with his script pages getting scrambled. Jorge Quiroga caught on camera taunting Tom Ellis on location at a chemical spill. Emily sent flowers the next day. But their kindness could not eliminate the fact that my “Rick Perry moment” was a little like skating in Rockefeller Center only to look down and discover I had no clothes on.

Rick Perry is lucky. He has ways to do damage control. Witness his quite funny appearance on David Letterman’s show, outlining the top ten reasons for his brain cramp.
The next night we went at it again. Natalie led off to me, saying “If you were with us last night, you know we had technical difficulty with our editorial. Here again is Channel Five’s editorial director Marjorie Arons-Barron.”

I thanked her and added, “And Nat, after that happened, the newsroom got a call from a viewer of the previous night’s lapse who said he’d “never agreed more with the station’s editorials.” I then turned to the camera, and this time all was well. I have the tape of the editorial that wasn’t there, but in 20 years, I’ve never had the stomach to look at it. Perhaps now I will.

Meanwhile, the media should spend more time focusing on the potential impact of eliminating the departments of commerce, energy and education and less time on the stark moment of the candidate's inability to name the third department that would face extinction.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Redistricting makes Democrats work harder

2011-11-10T14:51:00.000-08:00

Incumbent politicians like things just as they are. It’s comfortable. And it affords voters the opportunity to have their representatives build up the kind of seniority in Congress that leads to enhanced power on the national scene. But, as with all games of musical chairs, take away one seat, and change in inevitable.

Redistricting jars the comfortable. As Congressman Jim McGovern admitted to the New England Council on Tuesday, it’s hard to give up communities you’ve represented. You’ve built up relationships and invested “blood, sweat and tears” in your constituents’ well-being. In the redrawing of congressional district lines, Worcester-based McGovern has to give up Fall River, where he enjoyed overwhelming support.

Sixty-four percent of his district will be new to McGovern, but the liberal Democrat actually made out pretty well by picking up the college towns of Northampton and Amherst and surrounding communities , where his anti-war and anti-poverty concerns should find favor.

Not all his colleagues made out as well. Plans to put heavily Democratic Lawrence into John Tierney’s district, were scuttled when Senate President Therese Murray took steps to protect Niki Tsongas, the only female member of the delegation. His district took on more Republicans in Tewksbury, Billerica and part of Andover. Now the eight-term Democratic incumbent from Salem will likely face a credible Republican in the person of Senate minority leader Richard Tisei of Wakefield. This isn’t like running against a fringe Republican like Bill Hudak, a “birther” who ran against Tierney during the last congressional election. If Tisei faces off against Hudak in a primary race in 2012, Tierney strategist Michael Goldman says it may pull Tisei further to the right, making Tierney’s reelection bid easier. But, with Tierney dogged by the legal case against his wife’s family, charges in which Tierney himself has never been implicated, it’s a race that bears watching.

First-term Congressman Bill Keating, who moved to Quincy to run for his current district, will now be moving to his summer home in Bourne so he doesn’t have to run against incumbent Congressman Stephen Lynch in the new district comprising Southeast Massachusetts and Cape Cod. A map shows how much more compact that district has become, and that is surely a good thing. But Lynch’s district looks like a salamander that would make Gov. Elbridge Gerry proud.

The redrawing of Congressman Michael Capuano’s district, which now has a majority of minority residents, should, in the next few terms, facilitate for the first time a minority congressman or woman.

All these moves, and more, while being incumbent friendly, make Massachusetts’ new congressional map much more in tune with what the courts have described as fair district lines, with communities equal in population, more compact and more contiguous. The committee drawing the lines is to be congratulated. It’s hard to think the Massachusetts House and Senate will balk at the plan.

Would that the rest of the country did the same. The truth is that we are essentially a two-party system, and voters can only benefit from vigorous debate in districts where the outcome is not preordained. Part of the problem in Congress is that too many members come from ideologically pure districts of the right or left, and when in office feel no pressure or incentives to compromise. Believe it or not, long term incumbents themselves benefit from being validated by an informed electorate. With redistricting behind us, the next step is to get an informed electorate!

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Does it matter that “the 99 percent” are heard by the CEO of Freddie Mac?

2011-10-28T11:40:00.000-07:00

The irony wasn’t lost on some members of the CEO’s Club, lunching this week at the Boston Harbor Hotel to hear Freddie Mac Chief Executive Officer Ed Haldeman, Jr. discuss the restructuring of the agency that plays a key role in the home mortgage market. As Haldeman was laying out the need for transparency in Freddie Mac, or any possible successor entity, housing activists from Jamaica Plain were chanting and carrying signs outside the dining hall, calling for help with foreclosures and mortgage availability. While Haldeman interrupted his presentation to say he “understand(s) their concerns,” the giant window shades lining the hotel’s Wharf Room were quietly being lowered so the protesters couldn’t look in—or those inside couldn’t look out. For those who “got it,” the symbolism was compelling.

No doubt the demonstrators probably view those on the inside as having all the power and those on the outside as having none. They share that perspective with the Occupy Boston protesters down the street in Tent City. All these demonstrators are giving voice to their frustrations, though they have not advanced a concrete agenda for addressing our economic problems.

Some of the executives in attendance noted, not incorrectly, that the protests would be better carried out on Pennsylvania Avenue than Atlantic Avenue. But none expressed any confidence that Washington would agree on any solutions until after the 2012 election. Being told, by implication, to wait at least another year is what’s driving many of the protesters.

Haldeman has been on the job at Freddie Mac for just two years. His principal concern is getting private capital to return to the mortgage market. Right now, the government, especially Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae back 90 percent of the mortgage market, providing liquidity and stability, helping to keep interest rates low. The agencies are like private companies and have boards of directors, but are under the scrutiny of the Inspector General. The U.S. Treasury owns 80 percent of their stock. $65 billion of U.S. taxpayers dollars was appropriated to protect the solvency of Freddie Mac, and the agency is paying interest on that at the rate of $6.5 billion a year. It’s unclear if the taxpayers will ever get their money back. And the Obama Administration is considering phasing out Freddie and Fannie Mae altogether.

Haldeman wasn’t there for the meltdown, when worthless mortgages were bought from originators and wildly resold in the secondary market. While he notes that enabling people to buy homes they can’t afford isn’t doing anyone any good, he has been working with others to slow foreclosures through changing the rules for refinancing. Going forward, he calls for lowering the limits on how much people can borrow and raising what they need for down payments. He calls for more widespread availability of sound mortgage products, especially long-term fixed rate mortgages. It’s not clear that his philosophy of gradualism would pacify the most insistent of local demonstrators. Today proved nothing because it appears there was no interaction, before, during or afterwards. And, as Haldeman, noted he’s ultimately controlled by 535 members of Congress, each with a different set of priorities.

As put by an Associated Press story today, “the mid-decade housing boom and subsequent bust took a toll on virtually all age and race groups.” Haldeman insists there is still a role for government in backing mortgages for homeowners but is uncertain whether that will be Freddie Mac or a successor agency. The timing, he knows, depends on the political environment. So the anti-bank, anti-government protesters do their thing, on the outside of the meeting place trying to look in, and a seemingly competent and well-intentioned executive lays out the problem, with no end in sight to an audience short of answers.

President Obama, in the absence of Congressional action, sees his weak approval numbers and claims “we can’t wait, “ so he offers a band-aid to a piece of the problem. President Obama, in the absence of Congressional action, sees his weak re-election numbers and claims “we can’t wait, “ so he offers a band-aid to a piece of the problem. His likely opponent, as of now, Mitt Romney seems to advocate a Social Darwinist approach of letting nature take its course on foreclosure unraveling.

Could make for an interesting debate topic a year from now, but the lack of resolution or a even strong path out of the housing mess doesn’t augur well for any robust economic recovery in the months ahead.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Occupy Boston and the Wall Street/Washington mess

2011-10-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

A family medical crisis that keeps you from even reading the newspapers not only interrupts blog writing. It also gives you a distance from breaking events that provides perspective on what’s important and what’s not. For example, the obsession with the Red Sox collapse and the details of Theo’s new contract with the Chicago Cubs matter not a whit. Nor even does whether Mitt Romney invaded Rick Perry’s space by putting his hand on Perry’s shoulder in a face-down in the last GOP debate.

In emerging from the family medical situation, I am struck by the endurance of Occupy Boston. As a veteran of the anti-Vietnam War movement, I find it kind of reassuring that people today care enough to participate in this protest, even though the goals are still quite diffuse. Like its sister movements around the globe, it’s unclear what the ultimate outcome will be. But the cri de coeur is quite understandable when you read that 17.1% of Americans under 25 are out of work. Numbers in Europe are worse - 46.2% in Spain . Without systemic change, their future is likely to be a lot bleaker than that of their parents. As The Economist points out this week, it’s time to “tackle the causes, not the symptoms.”

There has been some talk (including from the highly respected Boston Municipal Research Bureau’s Sam Tyler) that the protesters should help defray the costs of police protection. But why should they do so any more than the Tea Partiers, SEIU, or fans gathering for local sports heroes victory parades ?

Occupy Boston is a demonstration of First Amendment rights and is a testament to the strength of our democracy. As long as a few bad apples, don’t despoil the protest, I find it moving. Wouldn’t it be a public relations coup of the first order if some of the one percent, society’s most privileged, were to contribute voluntarily to the costs? Can you imagine Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan donating $100K out of his own pocket to Boston for the public services incurred responding to those protesting the excesses of some of the financial institutions crushing the other 99 percent? His Boston office is half a block from tent city, at 100 Federal Street. Has he stopped by Occupy Boston? Others could follow. This gesture should be in addition to, not in place of, taking the high road in restructuring expeditiously a significant number bad housing loans in its portfolio and opening the spigot to provide business loans to deserving businesses.

We need a healthy banking system, probably one more like that envisioned by former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, the one that existed prior to the Clinton Administration’s signing of legislation ending the Glass-Steagall law and effectively deregulating banks. But, if you have any doubt about how Wall Street controls Washington (especially under Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner), check out Ron Suskind’s new book Confidence Men.

Suskind details the early years of the Obama Administration and how the President , who thrilled us as a candidate and may still be preferable to any of his opponents, has been an ineffective leader, even an ineffective manager. In the quiet of the Oval Office, what does the President - in the wake of his squandering earlier opportunities to do systemic financial sector reform - really feel about Occupy Boston, Occupy Wall Street and other protests?

We know Obama’s campaign will try to turn the protests to a campaign advantage. But the solutions to the problems lie in going after both Washington and Wall Street. And fixing things will require more than clever ads and bumper sticker slogans.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Transparency a hollow catch-word for Obama

2011-10-16T09:07:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama, both candidate and President, promised the American people the most transparent administration in our history. But the reality is far less than that. The Obama Justice Department is challenging a district court ruling that the Secret Service logs kept of visitors to the White House should be open records. According to Politico, the District Court Judge, Beryl Howell, (an Obama appointee) would make exceptions only for matters of security and (presumably legitimate) privacy considerations.

But the Obama administration took exception to her correct decision and is now appealing the lower court decision much the same way former Vice President Dick Cheney fought to keep secret the records of visits to his office from high-powered executives of oil and gas companies.

This should not surprise anyone who has tried to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) under the Obama administration to access Justice Department, State Department or other agency records. The Supreme Court has said that FOIA is a means for “citizens to know what their government is up to.” Such requests are routinely met with bureaucratic foot-dragging, obfuscation, and procedural encumbrances. One loyal Democratic member of the Massachusetts House delegation has ruefully concluded that the Obama Administration, while giving lip service to transparency, is no better on this issue than that of George W. Bush.

The plaintiff in this case is Judicial Watch, seeking records of those who have had access to the White House during 2009. Admittedly, Judicial Watch is an ultra conservative organization with a predilection for seeking accountability from Democratic administrations. But the principle of accountability applies to the Obama Administration no less than any other, especially given the President’s lofty pronouncements of transparency.

The President directed that FOIA "should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails." Obama has also directed that agencies shouldn’t withhold information just because "public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears."
But, while the Obama Administration may have declared a “new era of open government,” saying it doesn’t make it so.

The Secret Service, which keeps the records, maintains they are White House records and therefore not subject to FOIA, as regular agency records would be. This is just déjà vu all over again, yet another disappointing reminder that, instead of sailing with “The Audacity of Hope,” as we did in 2008, we are now experiencing the triumph of experience over hope.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Romney still on top after Republican GOP debate

2011-10-13T06:55:00.000-07:00

No one really laid a glove on him in the New Hampshire roundtable “debate” Tuesday night. Mitt Romney looked Presidential. He had the right balance of certitude and affability. He was confident but not angry. After years of flip-flopping, and despite being wrong in some of his assertions, he at long last projects consistency. After all these years of campaigning, months as putative front-runner, Romney really seems to have found himself. It’s remarkable how far an unnuanced combination of mechanistic touting of a balanced budget amendment, deregulatory zeal, China-bashing and no cut military budgets has carried him. But there remains little enthusiasm for him. He is the preferred choice of far fewer Republicans than other GOP front runners at a comparable point of time in recent history.

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, once seen as a formidable opponent of Romney, may turn out to have been something of a flash-in-the pan. While he avoided the melt-down of his previous debate performance, Perry was phlegmatic and skated the surface of issues. The moderator, the estimable Charlie Rose, was quoted in a post debate interview as observing that Perry never made eye contact with him, which would have indicated Perry wanted to re-engage in the conversation. But, if Perry can continue to raise money as he did last quarter, he will have staying power, regardless of his debate performances.

Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfathers’ Pizza, is strong on crust but light on filling. Still, it is remarkable that, in some polls, he has risen to the top with Romney, largely on strong debate performance and his ability to market his 9-9-9 plan for replacing our current tax structure with 9 percent each of corporate taxes, personal income and national sales taxes. His plan, sounding simple and novel to those without a sense of history, is merely a combination of old flat tax and “fair tax” nostrums, without details. As highly credentialed Republican policy analyst Bruce Barlett wrote in the New York Times, “The poor would pay more while the rich would have their taxes cut, with no guarantee that economic growth will increase and good reason to believe that the budget deficit will increase.”

Former Idaho Governor Jon Huntsman, is more of an authentic moderate than Romney and should do well with New Hampshire voters. But in debates, that are key in forming first impressions, and with a primary party electorate still heavily animated by the Tea Party agenda, he doesn’t emerge as a force to be reckoned with.

Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann remain also rans and contributed little to the dynamics on Tuesday night. Libertarian Paul has an intensely loyal core following, and Bachmann could theoretically be the heir to a sizeable part of the Sarah Palin vote, but neither seems to be gaining traction. Rick Santorum's "family values" campaign added even less to the debate.

Charlie Rose did a great job of keeping the focus consistently on the economy, following up with the candidates when warranted and still not making himself the center of attention. The other questioners did well. The format was the best of any debate to date, though I’d still have liked more drill down in the follow-ups and less of the candidates answering questions with non-responsive stump speech sound bites.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Warren passes her first test as one in a field of six

2011-10-06T14:09:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Warren demonstrated at this week’s debate that she is a real player, but, despite media raves, she didn’t necessarily hit the ball out of the park. The six Democratic candidates met Tuesday night in a non-debate at UMass Lowell, the event co-sponsored by the Boston Herald. The six were in agreement on virtually all the issues. The format permitted no follow up or real engagement. But it did permit the six to get out their core messages and somehow convey to the audience a sense of who they are. Perhaps this is all we can hope for a year ahead of next year’s primary.

For her part, Warren stressed her personal story, growing up “around the ragged edges of the middle class,” struggling to make ends meet, getting an education at public institutions, making it finally to her job at Harvard, and working to protect the consumer against the predatory practices of financial institutions. She was quick to point out that Forbes Magazine had named Scott Brown Wall Street’s favorite Senator and drily pointed out, “That’s probably not an award I’m going to get.”

Beyond her core message, what she successfully conveyed is her warmth and quick sense of humor. When a questionner, noting that Scott Brown had helped finance his college education by posing nude for Cosmo, asked the candidates how they had paid for school, she quipped, “I kept my clothes on. I borrowed money” Warren could actually be fun to follow.

Engineer Herb Robinson, who has absolutely no chance of winning, also demonstrated a sense of humor. In response to a time-wasting question about which super hero each candidate would choose to be, he said the answer was obvious, the Incredible Hulk, and jumped up to demonstrate his more than ample girth. Later, he attempted humor noting that, as an engineer, he knew the difference between hair spray and nuclear fallout. The “joke” sank like a rock.

City Year founder Alan Khazei promised to be the “ game changer” that Scott Brown had pledged to be, but didn’t deliver on. Khazei’s humor came in response to a question of legalization of marijuana. “I did inhale, and I enjoyed it.” But, he added, he doesn’t favor legalization. Khazei’s tone throughout the event seemed more poised, polished and confident than he did during his first campaign two years ago.

Immigration attorney Marisa DeFranco showed herself to be very spunky and confident. I’m sure that running for Senate will help her law practice. She’s feisty, articulate and very obviously courting the union vote as well as legal clients.

Bob Massie, a candidate for lieutenant governor in 1994, spoke of the battle he overcame with illness and implying he can come from behind in this race, too. He was not convincing, nor was three-term state rep Tom Conroy, who noted that he is the only candidate who has actually defeated a Republican incumbent.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see the primary boil down to a race between Khazei, who has raised a million dollars, and Warren. He tried to get her to agree not to accept PAC money and, as the race narrows, will probably try to don the mantle of the grassroots, anti-establishment candidate. Given their similarity on issues, however, it is their personalities and how effective voters think each would be in Washington that may be determinative.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Finding nuanced solutions to illegal immigration

2011-10-04T13:31:00.000-07:00

It’s amazing that illegal immigration has become such a hot-button issue even where the
population of undocumented workers is negligible. In Alabama, where about 3.5 percent of the population is foreign-born, a harsh new immigration law has caused many in that population to flee, taking children out of schools, avoiding trips to the hospital, even for child delivery, fearful to report crime. A federal judge upheld the new law, but, as the NY Times asks, does this “counterproductive cruelty” make sense?

Illegal immigration is not an inconsequential issue. As the Globe's Joan Vennochi has written, checking fingerprints of arrested suspects isn’t a “publicity stunt.” T.C. Boyle’s novel The Tortilla Curtain, set in southern California, is a spell-binding yarn about the clash of cultures when self-described progressives come up against the complex realities of illegal immigration. I had a tiny taste of this (and, dear readers, I know it was but a tiny taste, so don’t waste your time sending outraged comments) when I was at a standstill in backed up traffic under the old stone bridge on Route 9 in Wellesley.

An old beat-up Chevy rear-ended me. In parking lot conditions, I got out of my car and walked back to suggest to the driver that, as traffic was about to start moving, we pull off at the gas station up ahead to exchange papers. He nodded. Shortly thereafter, I pulled off and watched in amazement as the driver who had rear-ended me kept going, speeding west on Route 9.

Then it dawned on me. The fellow was certainly Hispanic looking. Perhaps he was here illegally, driving without a license or without insurance. Damage to my car was negligible. But what if it were not? What if an injury had been sustained?

The point is that there are reasons for the rules of the road, both in reality and metaphorically. And people who see problems with illegal immigration shouldn’t automatically be dismissed as heartless. There is room, however, for balanced solutions.

Proposals have been filed in the Massachusetts legislature to bar state contracts with companies that hire illegal aliens (already against federal law) or that use drivers without proper motor vehicle licenses. A proposal also supports communities that want to participate in the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency’s Secure Communities Program, as three sheriffs in the Commonwealth already do. The Patrick administration refuses to participate, claiming that to do so would deter illegal immigrants from seeking help from local police.

I have no problem with a proposal to require social security numbers or federal Tax ID numbers for anyone seeking a motor vehicle registration, and increase penalties for people driving without a license or using a fake ID.

I take issue, however, with those who would bar in-state tuition for illegal residents. Many who would use this benefit were brought here as toddlers by their “undocumented” parents. Those students have grown up here and attended public schools. They are highly motivated to get an advanced education. We are not talking about their going for free, simply having to pay the lower, in-state tuition in the state in which they reside. If they get that education, they will become part of a skilled workforce and more than pay it back in taxes. Support for in-state tuition is one of the only appealing positions taken by GOP Presidential candidate Rick Perry, which, sadly and ironically, is one of the reasons his candidacy is going south.

The federal Dream Act would give certain undocumented individuals, who had come here as children and lived here for several years prior to consideration under the bill, the ability to gain legal status, either through college or military service. Aren’t these the kind of hard-working people seeking to improve themselves or serve the country, the kind whom we would want to become upstanding tax-paying citizens, to strengthen our workforce and/or our military. Aren’t they talent to be embraced? Isn’t it counterproductive to deny them the opportunity and ensure they remain part of an underclass?

Unfortunately, once seen as a step toward comprehensive immigration reform, the Dream Act has died, suffocated by hyper-partisanship in Washington. Washington gridlock has led to states passing their own immigration laws, mostly punitive, which the Obama Justice Department is now challenging.
Immigration policy should be a federal matter, and state laws should be consistent. But if states are going to act, Massachusetts should be on the right side of the issue. And that means a nuanced understanding of what is reasonable, and what is not.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Red Sox sink like the great Titanic

2011-09-29T14:56:00.000-07:00

Karl Marx believed that religion is the opiate of the masses. I have always thought that sports are the true “opium of the people.” What better escape has there been from the news about the European debt crisis, volatile domestic financial markets, quotidian social incivilities, and the self-destructive atmosphere of current politics, than a summer in which the Red Sox were one of the two best teams in baseball? The “best team ever?” Better than the 1927 Yankees, 1990s Bulls or 1960s Celtics!

Today’s morning- after headache and nausea ( worse than that in 1978), the need for sports talk-show grief counseling, take me back to all those decades of what it truly means to be a suffering Red Sox fan. My grandmother, at whose knee I learned to love the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Red Sox, never knew what a Red Sox winning season was, though she was thoroughly versed in local legends Dom Dimaggio, Ted Williams, Jackie Jensen and Jimmy Piersall. My 11-year-old grandson lives on another planet. He has never known the traditional hometown failures, the soaring only to plummet. And here I am, buffeted by the drama of the day, trying to understand.

The two highest payrolls, New York and Philadelphia, won their divisions. But shelling out over $157 million didn’t cut it for the Red Sox. And, as Brian McGrory wrote, the “overpaid underachievers” of the 2011 team never represented Boston. Going with the most lucrative contract doesn’t equate to being an authentic part of the home town. Rooting for the Red Sox (or any team) may well be, as my husband claims, merely rooting for the Hessians and cheering for laundry. But there’s something more at play.

J.D. Drew, John Lackey and Carl Crawford together earned more than the entire Tampa Bay roster. Despite the obsession with sabermetrics and the errant celebration of Billy Beane, his progeny and statistics-driven Money Ball, Tampa Bay, which gave up its top stars last year to free agency and concentrated on nurturing its young players, has become the feel-good story of the season. . They showed heart, energy, and determination. As the Wall St. Journal notes, it’s about more than numbers. Don’t forget about “gut instinct, tradition, money, mystery – and plenty of dumb luck.”

An organization can amass all the talent on paper it wants, but the team has to execute on the field. A big payroll team may well win the World Series, and the Rays can crash early in the playoffs. But clearly Sox salaries were inversely proportionate to their September performance. Jim Rice, in his NESN post mortem, decried the spa-like orientation of the team and said that, though Theo or Terry might become scapegoats , the players themselves were most culpable.

In recent years, parts of Red Sox Nation have taken on a narcissistic swagger more reminiscent of Yankee fans. It’s sometimes cheaper to fly to Baltimore and go to Camden Yards than it is to park and visit Fenway. And Red Sox fans in Baltimore have been known to behave offensively not only to hapless Oriole fans inside the park, but boorishly to others in bars and on city streets. Add to that the classless behavior of some of our pitchers who during the season threw intentionally at Baltimore batters. Bad blood existed between the two teams right up to the end, and the last series between the erstwhile juggernaut Red Sox and the Eastern Division cellar dwellers had the makings of a mini morality play.

Yet we hung on until the very last minute, inoculated by 2004 and 2007, and sure that, like the Titantic, the great ship promoted as that “which God himself could not sink,” we would be victorious in the end.

Rather than being an escape from day-to-day conflict and challenge, the historic collapse of the Red Sox seems to be a metaphor what’s happening in the larger world. In both sports and politics, events have challenged our understanding of the way things are supposed to work. Unlike baseball, however, government and politics offer an opportunity to confront old questions with new answers. It is the beginning of a Massachusetts Senate race and a Presidential season. We can still set right the course of the ship of state. There’s nothing we can do about the 2011 Red Sox. As my grandmother would say, wait till next year.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

photos AP, Getty, AFP

Elizabeth Warren: Senate race off to a good start

2011-09-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Warren is one impressive lady and may turn into a rock star candidate. She spoke yesterday at the University of Massachusetts Boston, invited there months ago by Steve Crosby, Dean of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, to speak as an advocate for “reasonable regulatory reform.” The fact that the ballroom had standing room only and the overflow crowd spilled out into adjacent areas speaks to Warren’s instant appeal as a just-announced candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.

Watching her move among the crowd suggests what an effective candidate she may be. Warren is comfortable in her own skin, seeming to really enjoy shaking hands, taking pictures with and interacting with people. Unlike Attorney General Martha Coakley (brainy but stiff), Warren has the warmth and ease of a natural politician, and is anything but the Harvard elitist that Senator Scott Brown’s supporters will portray her to be. (Nor is she simply “the chick who just entered the race,” which is how an out-of-state Brown fundraiser who called our house offensively characterized her.)

Warren’s personal story is as compelling as Brown’s. She was the child of Depression-era parents in Dustbowl Oklahoma. (In 1889, her grandmother, aged 15, had driven a wagon west in that year’s land rush. The family never had much, but her grandmother saw her children gain their places in the world as a policeman, house painter, typist and clerk.) Warren’s father had a heart attack when she was in junior high. Their car was repossessed, and they feared losing their home. She earned money by babysitting and waiting tables, got married at 19 and had a baby at 22. Her schooling was at public institutions, far from “elitist” Harvard, where she now is a professor of law.

But, she said, she grew up at a time when America invested in kids like her, in public schools, highways, power grids, the G.I. Bill, Social Security and Medicare, “a time when parents knew their kids could do better than they did.” That, she says, began to change 30 years ago, when the cost of necessities rose while wages flattened, and people turned to debt to finance their fundamental activities. Washington, she said, changed the rules on debt, and financial institutions were free to work against the middle class, using as their weapons opaque and unintelligible fine print contracts. To Warren, the current financial crisis happened “one lousy mortgage at a time,” and “family by family.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she conceived, advocated for, saw through Congress, and started to implement was up against “the largest lobbying force on the face of the earth.” Its goal was transparency for consumers and accountability by financial institutions. Ultimately, 200 citizens groups joined her David-versus-Goliath cause. But from the time she was a small child, Warren has been one to challenge authority and to stand up and fight for what she believes in. She is rousing when speaking of the need for Washington to “stop giving tax breaks to wealthy corporations, while asking college students to drown in debt and seniors to live on less.”

As it turns out, Warren’s talk of “reasonable regulatory reform” was overpowered by the larger themes she gave voice to, fairness, concern for the middle class, and, above all, opportunity. It’s a positive message. And, while she’ll have to flesh out her candidacy and answer more specific questions (as Margery Eagan warns in Thursday's Boston Herald ), it was still very exciting to see what Brian McGrory calls “a new kind of contender,” with warmth, brains, inspirational story, guts and integrity.

Warren is unabashedly partisan, as noted in The Atlantic. And, when asked after her speech who in history might be her Senate role model, she replied "someone between (Wisconsin’s) William Proxmire and (Ohio’s) Howard Metzenbaum," two legendary zealous consumer advocates. But, to those who doubt she can work pragmatically across the aisle, as our toxic times seem to require, the successful creation of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is Exhibit A. Her vision is the kind of America many of us would aspire to. Elizabeth Warren’s entrance into the race has created a whole new dynamic in the Massachusetts Senate race.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Scott Harshbarger for casino czar

2011-09-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

It’s amazing that so much of the negotiation of a casino-and-slots bill has gone on behind closed doors. After proposals had sucked much of the oxygen out of the air last year, Governor Patrick and legislative leadership, especially House Speaker Robert DeLeo, collaborated secretly to reach agreement before a bill reached the legislative floor.

During the whole debate, there was precious little protest other than from former MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger. In the House, a good fight was put up by a handful that included Newton Representative Ruth Balser. The behind-the-scenes maneuvering had all the stench of former Speaker Sal DiMasi’s efforts to steer a technology contract to Cognos, which deal is on track to land DiMasi in jail.

As the Globe’s Dante Ramos pointed out on Sunday , Harshbarger has a long list of “good government” causes, from campaign finance to probation department reform. He is a purist when it comes to government process, and this process has been anything but pure.

In any number of passionate emails and reports, Harshbarger has warned against the serious adverse impacts that this industry will impose upon our Commonwealth: increased crime, corruption, addiction, and the cannibalization of local businesses. The casino industry, for its part, has spent a fortune on lobbyists to make sure that Massachusetts goes along with three resort casinos and one slots parlor.

According to Tom Grillo of the Boston Herald , a group that includes the League of Women Voters, the Council of Churches, and the National Association of Social Workers is exploring ways to sue to stop casino gambling in Massachusetts. But the horse seems to have left the barn.

It will take a significant regulatory bureaucracy to control and oversee what Harshbarger calls “this predatory industry.” We haven’t heard what the costs of that would be. The idea that it might be seeded by millions from the state’s rainy day fund is really perplexing. Nor has there been an airing of what kinds of revenues are likely to be generated by casinos, especially during a time of stubborn recession. I have yet to hear any thoughtful analysis from other would-be Commonwealth watchdogs, like the Auditor, Treasurer, Inspector General or legislative post-audit leaders.

If the bill goes through, and I wouldn’t bet against it, there will be a gambling commission to set regulations for the industry and monitor compliance with those regulations, but the parameters within which they can move are already circumscribed by the legislation. What’s to stop legislators from supporting this bill in exchange for employment when they retire?

Here’s a modest proposal: put Scott Harshbarger at the helm of that commission. He is about the only person I can think of who has the information, integrity and experience to represent the interests of the public when it comes to gambling.

Basically, it’s a roll of the dice as to whether enough jobs will materialize and revenues will roll in from the gambling industry. A good watchdog should be able to monitor whether the dice are loaded against us, and perhaps even mitigate potential damages.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

9/11 Remembrance – Words are not enough

2011-09-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

My daughter-in-law’s cousin Peter Goodrich, 33, of Sudbury died on Flight 175 that crashed into the World Trade Center South Tower. It seems that almost everyone in Massachusetts is connected in some way with one of the victims of that terrible day. And today, ten years later, hearing the names of the 3000 victims read at the memorial observance, it seems as if we are connected to all of them. As New York Michael Bloomberg said, “Each had a face, a story and a life cut out from under them.”

My husband and I were scheduled to leave Boston later in the day on 9/11, bound on American Airlines for Paris for the wedding of a dear friend’s son. Our bags were packed, and I was getting in a last-minute workout on the treadmill, watching the horror unfold on the morning news.

Our friend Barbara, her son the groom, and one brother were already in France awaiting wedding guests who were never to arrive. When the ceremony took place a few days later in Normandy, there were five from the groom’s side and 300 from the bride’s. The groom’s other brother was in New York, just exiting the subway near the World Trade Center.

Ironically, my husband was in a Boston hotel, at an early morning seminar on crisis communications, considering how best to respond to a simulated building disaster event, from legal, engineering, rescue and public relations perspectives. He left to the reality of people gathered at the hotel bar watching the first tower under attack and arrived at his law office to watch the hit on the second. Cell phone service between us was impossible.

Our older son, practicing law in New York, was in his office near Rockefeller Center, and I, not certain exactly where he was, tried frantically to locate him. His building was evacuated, and he and thousands of others were fleeing Manhattan on foot, walking hours to reach their homes. Again, cell service was impossible.

A month later, when my husband and I visited the stubbornly smoldering site, you could still smell the acrid odor of smoke and dust blocks away.

As with JFK’s assassination, virtually everyone can remember where he or she was at the time of the September 11 attacks. As Brian McGrory wrote in this morning’s Globe, “They are moments that were never meant to be memories, fleeting bits of life trapped in time.”

It was more than the unspeakable horror of the moment. More than the individual connections or associations. In that moment, America lost its innocence, and things changed forever.

The ceremony this morning at the beautiful World Trade Center memorial was profound. Coverage by the major networks was varied. It was great to see Tom Brokaw involved in NBC coverage to remind us of a time that network news had real gravitas. But most of the media provided too much commentary. CBS stayed longest with the reading , by a group of survivors, of the names of the victims, accompanied by the pictures of each. The simplicity of the names, seeing pictures of their faces, amplified by some personalized tributes, was powerful and spoke reams about the loss. And it reminded us of the diversity of this country, which is such an amazing source of strength.

CNN used graphics effectively, not only scrolling the names of the victims at the bottom of the screen but also printing out what was happening at that hour and minute on 9/11.

Touching in a different way was Paul Simon singing “The Sounds of Silence,” “people talking without speaking.”

Among the other powerful moments was Vice President Biden’s speech at the Pentagon, as good a speech as I have ever heard him deliver. He spoke of American resolve, and the fundamental misunderstanding by the terrorists that they would buckle our knees and crush our spirits. But, he said, they didn’t know us. Since 9/11, 2.8 million signed up for the military, showing up though they knew they would be in harm’s way. And they took the fight to Bin Laden and his affiliates. This has been the longest military engagement in our history. “The 9/11 generation of warriors ranks among the greatest America has ever produced, and it was born on 9/11.” Over 6000 have died, many thousands more have suffered life-changing injuries.

And he said, “The true legacy of 9/11 is that our spirit is mightier, the bonds that unite us are thicker, and the resolve is firmer” than the millions of tons of limestone and concrete the terrorist targeted.”

Eighty American soldiers wounded yesterday in Afghanistan (and two Afghanis killed) remind us that the changes in America - and the challenges it faces - endure. Seeing President Bush and Obama together with their wives make us grieve for the bipartisanship that prevailed briefly in the immediate wake of 9/11. That loss can be repaired if there’s a political will to do so. The losses sustained ten years ago cannot.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

President's jobs speech kicks off his 2012 campaign

2011-09-09T08:32:00.000-07:00

Before President Obama’s much heralded jobs speech last night, NPR’s Scott Horsley called it a “Hail Mary pass.” The reason we remember Doug Flutie’s “Hail Mary pass” is that it worked. Such last-ditch efforts don’t often result in touchdowns, and it’s unclear how we will remember what President Obama’s did last night.

Rhetorically, he made the most of it. Though we’ve heard most of it before, he was energized and forceful. Dare I say, leaderly? Or, as consultant Michael Goldman observed, “Who was that guy and what did they put in his cereal?”

To reinforce that the ball is in Congress’ court, he repeatedly exhorted it to “pass this bill and….,” we’ll get the benefits of extending unemployment benefits another year, “pass this bill and….,” we’ll provide tax cuts to companies hiring workers, generate credits to companies hiring veterans (even John Boehner applauded that one). The rhetorical device, and urging the people to reach out to their Congressmen, was effective …if people were listening.

Obama was also compelling in evoking the vision of an America that used to be, a nation that is tough and capable of meeting any challenge. He showed “the audacity of hope.”

On the other side, the President was somewhat slithery in his promise that the new jobs proposed in transportation and education “will be paid for.” He wants the $447 billion price tag incorporated into the mission of the 12-member “super committee” tasked with coming up with a deficit reduction plan by Thanksgiving. Obama will submit his proposal to that committee next week, but honk if you’re confident the committee will achieve what needs to be done.

The President kept intoning that many, if not most, of the strategies he is calling for have, in the past, had bipartisan support. Maybe then, but this is now. On this the Republicans were stone-faced. While we outside the beltway may agree that it is long past time to “stop the political circus,” it was chilling, but predictable, to see the Republicans sit on their hands when he spoke of traditional bipartisan support for such proposals or when he said “it’s time for us to meet our responsibilities.”

Obama did his best to create a sense of urgency. He reminded listeners that “the next election is 14 months away. The people who sent us here don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months.” With that line, everyone applauded.

According to the Wall St. Journal, Moody’s chief economist says the plan would add two points to GDP growth, add nearly 2 million jobs and reduce unemployment by a point. But Republicans are dead set against a new stimulus package, despite the nation's flat job growth and even the desperate need for infrastructure repair. And they're unlikely to support raising revenue by closing tax loopholes.

Some Democrats and independent economists believe the last stimulus wasn't big enough, and without it things would have been much worse. But, it's hard to prove a negative, and, in recent months more Americans have come to doubt the stimulus was the right approach.

With even lower public confidence today, it's unclear to what extent this approach will get some traction. If it doesn't, Obama may have used an unusual forum to kick off his 2012 reelection campaign, mimicking Harry Truman's 1948 successful run against a "do nothing Congress." Many of us have partisan conflict fatigue and want fresh faces and fresh ideas. But there's work to be done now. Meeting the challenge is hard, and the question remains as to whether the politicians are up to the task.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

ART's Porgy and Bess is a worthwhile update

2011-09-07T11:16:00.000-07:00

Forget the critics. The current Diane Paulus’ version of Porgy and Bess at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge (based on the Suzan-Lori Parks/Diedre Murphy adaption of the original) is wonderful. And Audra McDonald’s Bess is a stellar performance. McDonald, who has won Tony Awards for Carousel, Ragtime and Raisin in the Sun, has a huge operatic voice. Combining her not insignificant acting skills with magnificent music, superbly sung, this opera-turned-musical theatre is truly memorable.

Even before the opening, composer Stephen Sondheim wrote a scathing letter to the New York Times, excoriating director Paulus for shortening the Gershwin opera by half an hour and introducing some explanatory text to round out the characters. He was apoplectic that Paulus changed the ending to make it more upbeat.

I love opera, but I didn’t miss the recitative. For my part, the half hour left on the cutting room floor was not missed. The glorious, emotional arias nearly roll one into the other, which is fine with me. The story was told. It established context but didn’t interfere with the music, which, with Porgy and Bess, is why I go.

As for the controversial new “happy ending,” Paulus appears to have bowed to Sondheim and her other critics. In the August version Porgy and Bess leave Catfish Row together singing “I’m on My Way.” A real Broadway musical finale. In the current version, the drug-addled, anguished and morally weak Bess has left Porgy to pursue a new life in New York, and he, using his cane and a new leg brace, limps off to follow her. In the original Gershwin production, Porgy calls for his goat and goes off in his cart. The latest Cambridge ending is hardly upbeat. At best, it is ambiguous and delusional, and poignant. Its closer to Lincoln Center than the Great White Way.

Other critics have faulted Norm Lewis, ART’s Porgy. Curiously, Sondheim praises him, perhaps because he has worked with Lewis on Broadway. If anything, Lewis is simple outshone by McDonald in their duets. But Lewis’ performance is, at the very least, competent – and often much more. I’m more troubled by some of the ensemble numbers, where one voice dominates and the other two become an unintelligible blur.

Ben Brantley of the NY Times called ART’s Porgy an “anxious and confused production” that can’t decide whether it is opera or musical theater. Nor is he happy with the sparse set. But Christopher Akerlind’s lighting design saves the set with numerous dramatic effects and helps advance the story. And, however much of a hodge-podge Brantley apparently felt Porgy and Bess to be, he still said the Audra McDonald “made me understand ‘Porgy and Bess’ in a way I hadn’t before.”

Notwithstanding Sondheim, most of those who have seen the original opera or even the movie of Porgy and Bess will not feel betrayed by the ART production. Many will enjoy it thoroughly for the magnificent music, the emotional impact and the memorable performance of Audra McDonald.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

A tale of two cities: Boston and San Francisco

2011-09-04T13:02:00.000-07:00

Fenway

Going to two baseball games, a week apart, in San Francisco and Boston, invites comparisons between the two cities, and random thoughts how, in recent years, each has moved beyond its postcard personas.

AT&T Park

AT&T Park, with its views of sailboats and kayaks in the bay has a beautiful setting, and, as one of the newer parks, it comes close to Safeco in Seattle at the top of that list. Its seating and sightlines are better than Fenway’s, and its ballpark food, - from Ghirardelli ice cream, to redolent Gilroy garlic fries, to freshly made, hand-cut sushi - dwarfs Boston’s offerings in quality and often at a fraction of the price. Although AT&T is not as bad as the nearby wind-freezing Candlestick Park, when the fog rolls in you’re sitting in mist by the sixth inning. And despite winning the World Series last year, Giants management still feels the need to stage half-inning hokey “amusements” which makes the fan experience more like that at a minor league game. Give me the tradition, sights, smells and sounds of overpriced, even uncomfortable Fenway anytime. [BTW: I wore my Red Sox cap at the Giants game and received only positive comments,]

The San Francisco transit system is very user-friendly, clean, well lit, with up-to-the-minute information about how many minutes until your train arrives (usually just a few). Its employees are professional and eager to help you find your way. They are not condescending just because you don’t know your way around. On the T to the Red Sox game, the fare machine was going out of order, but still deducted my ticket. The conductor impatiently (and rudely) ordered me to pay a second time.

San Franciscans for years fought efforts large and small to improve both driving and public transportation. They have yet to have their Big Dig, and driving in the city is a mess. Most of the day is “rush hour.” Thank goodness it’s still a great walking city, like Boston, albeit one more challenging to legs and lungs.

When it comes to being green, S.F. may be a little more environmentally sensitive. Instead of hotels just having waste baskets in each room, hotels have waste baskets plus recycling bins in every room. And, in tourist areas like the Ferry Building’s farmers’ market, there are waste baskets, recycling bins and containers for organic waste. Bicycling is very big, and the last Friday of each month, cyclists overflow the bike lanes and virtually take over the main thoroughfares. And a few of them, as a protest against fossil fuels, do it buck naked. It’s a bit much, I must say.

I do feel that, while I can’t prove it, there seem to be fewer fat people in San Francisco. And I’m not referring to the naked cyclists. I do know that there seem to be a lot of options for healthy food. And, oh yes, there are, happily, many, many more Peet’s Coffee shops, along with the usual Starbucks dishwater to drink. Boston has come a long way as a dining city, but it still is no match for San Francisco. Where in Greater Boston can you get really great Greek food, like at Kokkari’s? Here lovers of authentic Greek cuisine have to rely on Greek Orthodox Church suppers and invitations to private homes.

As they’ve moved into the 21st century, the cities have become similar in many ways and have lost certain distinguishing characteristics. Just the way our North End is far less an Italian enclave today, so too would S. F.’s North Beach area be unrecognizable to the late Joe DiMaggio, who grew up there. While the two cities are noted for their cultural activities, sense of history, tourist appeal, and progressive politics, I am relieved that the Hub has never – and, I hope, will never, put a referendum on the ballot to outlaw circumcision (It was overturned in court.)

A generation or two ago, San Francisco had a distinct magic, which could make a Bostonian envious of its cosmopolitanism and self-conscious about our parochialism. I don’t feel that way any more.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
Photos by Jim Barron

GOP Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman: Obama’s nightmare opponent

2011-09-02T14:55:00.000-07:00

Former ambassador and Utah Governor Jon Huntsman is working New Hampshire hard to win next year’s Republican primary there as a linchpin of his presidential campaign. He still registers a scant two percent in national GOP polls, but he is far and away the most impressive of the Republican field. Were he to capture the nomination, he’d give President Obama a run for his money.

He is informed, articulate, reasonable, practical and, contrary to how he sometimes projects on television, quite forceful and “presidential.” Best, he doesn’t march in lock-step with his party.

Some examples. Had Huntsman been able to, he would have supported unequivocally the debt ceiling compromise. He agrees we may be experiencing global warming. He supports civil unions. He believes in evolution. And still he thinks he can prevail in the Republican primaries because, he says, people are sick and tired of the side show – they want substance.

That’s what he delivered when he spoke yesterday to a packed NH Institute of Politics/New England Council crowd at St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, NH. His plan for the U. S. economy is clearcut. He attacks our debt – equaling 70 percent of GDP – as “a cancer metastasizing in the country.” He calls for a balanced budget amendment, going after all sacred cows, favorably looking to solutions like those offered by the Simpson/Bowles Commission or the Ryan plan, and growing manufacturing. To do the latter, he’d reform the tax code, lowering all rates, eliminating all loopholes and deductions, cutting corporate welfare (while lowering the business tax) and undertaking regulatory reform. His targets there would be outright repeal of Dodd-Frank and “Obamacare,” and serious rollbacks at the EPA and FDA.

No one would ever mistake Huntsman for a Democrat or even a Republican in the Rockefeller-Nixon tradition. I disagree with him on many issues. But he is not blindly locked into the narrow, reflexive, doctrinaire ideology of the other GOP candidates.

And he brings a lot more to the foreign policy table than do his primary opponents. He has served under four U. S. Presidents—under Ronald Reagan, as part of the White House staff; under George H.W. Bush as ambassador to Singapore; under George W. Bush as trade representative; and, with that in his portfolio, as ambassador to China in the Obama administration.

While he is glad that Libya may be throwing off the shackles of Muammar Gaddafi, he doesn’t believe that Libya is or was a core U.S. concern. Nor does he believe we should be doing nation building in Afghanistan or Pakistan. “We need to shore up our own core,” he said, Pakistan and Afghanistan should take care of themselves.

China is probably the nation of greatest concern to the United States, especially in the global economy. As Ambassador to China, Huntsman lived there for two years, speaks fluent Mandarin and interacted with Chinese people from the highest officials to the people in the street. Imagine a president with that facility!

Before he took on that ambassadorial role, he served two terms as Governor of Utah, cutting taxes and earning accolades for his management of government. He left office with an 80 percent approval rating. Somewhere along the line, he was CEO of his family’s company. (And by the way, quite charmingly, he also rides a motorcycle and played keyboard in a band.)

Prevailing in the Republican primary is a stretch for him. Huntsman has already had to temporize on some long-held positions, especially in the area of green energy. He has not performed particularly well jumping through hoops in GOP debate situations, and his campaign is dogged by staff turmoil and reorganizations.

In a reasonable primary environment, he might have a chance. But GOP voters this year are out for raw red meat, or so the candidates believe. Huntsman may not be enough of a feral creature for them. That’s too bad, because a Huntsman-Obama race would be fascinating to watch and could lead to an informative public dialogue. Maybe this is just a national introductory tour, with the expectation that the party will select an unelectable purist, go down to ignominious defeat and leave him to pick up the pieces four years from now.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

New disaster insurance: don’t go.com

2011-08-31T10:52:00.000-07:00

My husband, Jim Barron, and I have finally hit on a way to finance our eventual retirement. Let’s call it don’tgo.com. Here’s how it would work. If you’re worried about a pending natural disaster, or even a financial one, pay us a hefty fee, and we’ll cancel whatever travel plans we have on the calendar.

Why, you ask?

There’s a pattern of terrible things happening when we go out of town. It doesn’t matter whether we are travelling for business or pleasure. Here are a few examples.

It started the year we were married. We left for Aruba just before the Great Blizzard of ’78. We were on the first plane to land at Logan, after it reopened. The eerie quiet and the mounds of snow made it seem like landing on the moon.

In October 1987, it was “Black Monday.” We sat in the lobby of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, watching American visitors rushing to telephones to call families, brokers, who knows who else? Their stricken faces said everything about the news of what remains, to this day, the largest-ever one-day drop (22.61 percent) in U.S. stock market history.

In 1992, we were travelling home from New Zealand when a nor’easter socked the state, leaving homeowners without power, surrounded by downed trees, ocean surge and inches of ice on everything. The storm sheared off the tops of several in a row of hemlock trees in our back yard. You can still see the effects today.

My husband was in Brussels and Paris on business while the rest of us suffered through the March 1993 “storm of the century” that paralyzed New England.

The system isn’t foolproof. Sometimes the cataclysm when we’re away isn’t bad. We watched the fall of the Berlin Wall from a newsroom in Quito, Ecuador. And sometimes we stay home and share in the trouble. I do know we were here for the April Fool’s blizzard of 1997 that dumped one to two feet of snow on our daffodils and left us without power for three days. But, on other occasions, I vividly remember returning from trips abroad, our ceilings dripping from ice dams, or our basement flooded and listening to neighbors’ horror stories of what we had missed.

On September 11, 2001 our bags were packed for a flight that very day to Paris from Boston, on American Airlines. Needless to say, the wedding we were to attend happened without us, with 300 present from the bride’s side and just three from the groom’s, a resident of Rhode Island.

In 2007, we were at a friend’s place in Florida, sitting by the pool in 80-degree weather, using our laptops to work from a distance, when heavy rains swelled the Charles River not far from our home. The MWRA pumping station failed, and our neighborhood joined the ranks of others across eastern Massachusetts that were under water. We were at the same (very generous) friends’ home in Florida last year for yet another “storm of the century.”

And last week, as you may have guessed, we had just arrived in California en route to a family wedding when Irene hit the North Carolina coast. We spent the day of the rehearsal dinner glued to The Weather Channel and Sunday, the day of the wedding, when the storm hit Massachusetts, supplementing our TV watching with laptop streaming video of NECN, checking thebostonchannel.com, wickedlocal.com and other websites, or on the phone with neighbors.

You get the idea. We leave. Disaster strikes. So we’ve been thinking: why not capitalize on it and get people to pay us to stay home?

I don’t mean to trivialize these events, most immediately Irene. There have been real tragedies. Lives have been lost and property destroyed. I don’t think the media over-dramatize (well, maybe a little). Dan Kennedy and Howard Kurtz joined a cadre of commentators asserting that it was a tropical storm named hurricane and a category 5 deluge of cable TV warnings.

That may be a question of style. I think the coverage was thorough, and I would rather be over-prepared by information than caught off-guard. Irene was not Katrina in general, but, for some people in the affected areas in several states, it was every bit as disastrous.

The politics of Irene are predictable, if discouraging. Congressman Eric Cantor says that federal aid to victims of Irene should be balanced by cuts in other programs.Presidential candidate Ron Paul goes even further, saying there should not be a federal response at all to a disaster of this ilk.

I guess that’s all the more reason to offer our disaster protection. I’ll let you know when dontgo.com is up and running.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Photo of blizzard of '78 by Ric Werme of Marlboro
Photo of Irene in Vermont by Burlington Free Press

Rick Perry: time to fact-check the "Texas Miracle"

2011-08-14T14:08:00.000-07:00

Driving down to Cohasset for a party celebrating Polly Logan, the 85 year old progressive-minded grande dame and happy warrior of Massachusetts Republican politics, on the same day as the Iowa Straw Poll, my husband and I talked about how far the Republican Party has shifted from the days of Frank Sargent, Ed Brooke, John Buckley, Nick Nikitas, Jacob Javits, Charlie Goodel, Tom Kuchel, Nelson Rockefeller, Leverett Saltonstall and Mark Hatfield. Even Richard Nixon, were he running in 2012 for Congress or the Presidency, would likely have a challenger from his right.

And now Texas Governor Rick Perry is joining the fray likely as Mitt Romney’s strongest rival. But who is Rick Perry, the part-time evangelist and decade plus-long incumbent whose unexamined record of job creation and “Texas exceptionalism” writers like George Will swoon over?

I first wrote about Perry last September, after meeting him in Dallas, and I’ve become increasingly puzzled why so many in the media continue to give him and his record a free ride. The chattering class opine about Perry’s liabilities on personal style and misrepresent his record on economic issues. Perhaps Mitt Romney will organize a truth squad to follow Perry around, passing out articles like the National Journal “Rick Perry and the Texas Way") and pointing to the following:

There is a lot less to Perry’s record on jobs than meets close scrutiny… and a lot less to emulate. He touts his record of job creation, producing more jobs than any other state, and even adding jobs during the recession. But Texas has benefitted mightily from the growth of its oil and gas industries and the spectacular jump in energy prices. We should remember that Alaska, Wyoming and North Dakota, also large oil and gas producers, all have even faster job growth rates than Texas.

And while Texas unemployment rate (8.2%) is less than the national average, it’s worse than that of 24 other states, including Massachusetts. (7.6 %)

And what kinds of jobs are being created in Texas? Yes, there are skilled jobs in the health, energy and other sectors. But its greatest job growth has been in positions needing cheap and unskilled labor, often coming without any benefits. And Perry hasn’t talked about how many of these celebrated jobs are being held by “ illegal aliens.” These are the jobs of the future? Perry may have successfully lured out-of- state firms to Texas because of low taxes and lax regulation, but he has lagged in growing a skilled workforce at home.

Texas has intentionally chosen not to invest in education. When faced with a $27 billion dollar budget deficit, it cut $4 billion from education programs, rather than dip into the state’s “rainy day” fund or raise taxes. Texas’ rank in per-pupil spending (2001-2008) dropped from 34th to 42nd in the nation. Texas is 50th, dead last, in high school graduation rate. And its college graduation rate is only 25.5% (#30), while Massachusetts ranks first, with 38.2%.

In 2009 the Select Commission on Higher Education and Global Competitiveness, appointed in part by Governor Perry, concluded that Texas "is not globally competitive" and "faces a downward spiral in both quality of life and economic competitiveness if it fails to educate more of its growing population (both youth and adults) to higher levels of attainment, knowledge and skills. The rate at which educational capacity is currently being developed is woefully inadequate." This was the same conclusion reached by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in its 2005 study, "Closing the Gaps." Perry’s draconian budget cuts this year only made matters worse. Who will ask him about this on the stump?

We all have images of Texas’ glittering wealth and think of Alabama, Mississippi and West Virginia at the other end of the spectrum. But all three of those relatively poor states have a greater share of its residents with health insurance. Texas is last; Massachusetts is first. And, in different surveys, Texas ranks last or next to last in share of children covered by health insurance. I wonder if Romney will point out how many in Texas use emergency rooms as their primary care providers? Maybe the two can debate health care “free riders” as exemplary self-reliant and responsible entrepreneurs?

It’s time to nail hypocrites like Perry who boast of balancing their budgets without raising taxes or using their emergency funds—but accepted over $6 billion in federal stimulus funds to close the gap! Anderson Cooper fact-checking Perry’s record, pointed out that, on the day Perry requested the federal stimulus money, “he released a post on his website telling voters to oppose the recovery act.”

Perry, announcing his candidacy for President, said :
When the state faced a huge budget shortfall this year, “we worked hard, we made tough decisions, we balanced our budget. Not by raising taxes but by setting priorities and cutting government spending.”

The Dallas News provided the needed context, explaining: “The state always balances its budget, as required under the Texas Constitution. But to accomplish it, lawmakers made deep cuts to health care, education, prisons and other state programs. The state also deferred many payments that will almost certainly mean a similar budget problem in 2013.”

We need more of this kind of journalism. The Texas economic myths and budget shortfall sleight of hand won’t just be Perry’s problem if he becomes President.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Polly Logan photo Channel 7

Escape from politics into books

2011-08-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

News that a huge (4’ deep and 190’ long) sinkhole has opened up under the I-90 Big Dig Tunnel seems to be a metaphor for how our political leaders continue letting us down. Summer hasn’t provided much respite either. That August is well underway, with kids returning from camp and the nighttime chirping of crickets getting louder, is a reminder that we still have several weeks left for the pleasures of summer reading. Some of the books I’ve enjoyed in the last six months include:

In the Garden of Beasts:Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson, the story of Berlin in the 1930’s from the perspective of American Ambassador William Dodd, a professor of history who wanted to be anywhere else, and his daughter, Martha, who partied and slept indiscriminately with Nazis, a Soviet spy and author Thomas Wolfe. The ambassador, by contrast, eschewed the pomp and lavish style of the diplomatic corps, ran afoul of many in the State Department, and was unable to persuade Hitler to tone down his vicious treatment of the Jews. Dodd’s first goal was to get Germany to repay U.S. debts, however, so initially his attitude toward Hitler verges on conciliation. A fascinating account of a highly placed family being swept along in the tide of history.

The Invisible Wall is a remarkable memoir by Harry Bernstein, writing this first book at the age of 96 years old. (There’s hope for us all.) It’s told from the perspective of Bernstein as a small child and recounts life in before the Great War in a Lancashire mill town. The “invisible wall” is the cultural divide running down the middle of the street, separating Jews from Christians. It’s a remarkable story of a boy, a family, and a culture of poor people on both sides of the street, brought together by a forbidden marriage, against the backdrop of WWI.

Unbroken, another non-fiction book by Seabiscuit author Lauren Hillenbrand, is the remarkable story of Louie Zamperini, an Olympic miler from California who joins the military during WWII, becomes a bombadier on a B-24, gets shot down and, with a buddy, survives more than 40 days in a raft in the South Pacific, only to be rescued……by the Japanese. He spends the rest of the war in a POW camp, the target of sadistic Japanese guards who subject him to unbelievable tortures and degradation. He emerges, as the title suggests, unbroken (or barely broken). This book is hard to put down.

A Ticket to the Circus is another memoir, this one by Norris Church Mailer, a hippie, sculptor, writer, teacher and beauty from Arkansas, the sixth (and last) wife of Norman Mailer, a fascinating if lurid author and one of the most distinctive American writers of the late 20th century. This memoir is not great writing but is compelling for being such an interesting story. Among Norris Church Mailer’s love affairs (albeit a short one) was one Bill Clinton. The Mailers spent much of their marriage in Provincetown, which makes reading this all the more fun.

Strength in What Remains if you haven’t read this quasi sequel to Tracy Kidder’s book about Partner in Health’s Paul Farmer (Mountains beyond Mountains), it’s not too late to do so. (It came out about two years ago.) Kidder tells the story of a medical student named Deo who escapes war-torn Burundi and Rwanda and somehow manages to get to New York, where he lives on the street until taken in by a nun (Sharon McKenna happens to have been a college classmate of mine). She finds him a couple to live with in Manhattan. He gets a degree at Columbia, goes to Dartmouth Medical School and returns home to Burundi to build a clinic there. It’s a moving story, very well told.

Speaking of war-torn nations, To the End of the Land by David Grossman is a fictionalized account of a family in Israel, mother, father, two grown sons of military age, and the traumas and tensions of living lives of uncertainty and peril. It’s about how the pain of their environment poisons their everyday life, and how a mother strives to protect her sons. A worthwhile reading experience.

Fictionalized stories about real people holds a special interest for me. In March, talented author Geraldine Brooks writes about March, the father of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women.” As a young man, March got work as an itinerant salesman in the South, learning first-hand about the treatment of slaves. He marries, becomes a minister and settles in Concord, where he and his wife become involved in the Underground Railroad. During the Civil War, he returns to the south as a chaplain for the troops (his absence having been recorded in Little Women). March’s politics are decidedly radical for the times, and his friendship with Emerson and Thoreau enriches this work of fiction, which is written as a journal. Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for this book, and her research and writing are outstanding.

Two other historical novels that are enjoyable reads are The Women, T.C. Boyle’s book about the four women (wives and mistresses) in the life of towering architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and The Paris Wife, about Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Hemingway. Boyle’s book is well written, weaving the stories in and out, starting with the most recent woman in Wright’s life and ending with the first. There is much overlapping. The Paris Wife is much more linear and interesting mostly for its weaving of the Hemingways’ lives with greats like Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound. Both books provide insight into some of the challenges of living with a great man, a creative genius, totally self-referential and absorbed, but T.C. Boyle’s book does it much better.

Finally, The Believers, a novel by Zoe Heller, about the family of a radical New York lawyer named Litvinoff (think William Kunstler as a prototype). Early in the book, about to begin a major trial, he has a stroke and goes into a coma. While he is in a coma (from which he never recovers) his family learns that he had had an earlier affair that had produced a son. Each member of the family copes in a different way, and story lines evolve with biting humor and self –discovery. A fast read but worth the trip.

I’ve taped the Iowa Republican debate from Thursday night, but frankly, I’d rather cling to the vestiges of August and indulge myself in the pleasures of summer reading.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Say it isn't so, Setti

2011-08-08T06:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a big fan of Newton Mayor Setti Warren, 19 months into his first term and now a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Scott Brown. As BlueMass Group pointed out, Setti has “the requisite political skills: The gift of gab; charisma; a strongly presented, concise, and persistent message; a sense of being well-grounded and good-humored.” His excellent innate communication skills have extended to running regular Town Hall meetings in all Newton wards to discuss residents’ budgetary and other concerns.

I’ve also been a big fan of the state’s giving cities and towns the right to join the state’s Group Insurance Commission to provide health insurance more affordably for their employees. Setti’s approach was to restate his support of collective bargaining and to say that he’d prefer to negotiate savings that would be equivalent to what could be achieved through joining the GIC. In the wake of concluding contracts with all ten Newton unions, Setti announced success in that regard and further asserted that the increases negotiated were well within the Prop 2 ½ framework, and would save the city $6 million over the next three years.

I’m puzzled about how this could be so. The City maintains it would have spent $100,000 more buying health insurance for its different bargaining units under the state health pool, the GIC. (Savings from the GIC wouldn't kick in during the first year.) But what the city may have saved in reducing projected growth in health care costs may well have been given away in other, salary-related provisions.

Take the three-year police contract, for example. While the average salary goes up only 1 percent the first year, by the time you add cost-of-living increases, step increases, longevity increases and lump sum payments, wages are up 2.8 percent. When you then add health insurance, the total package could well be over three percent. This could well compound and add to the city’s structural deficit. Plus, surprisingly, on June 30, 2014, the last day of this new three-year contract, the Mayor built an additional 10 percent pay raise over the ensuing three fiscal years, which weren’t even being negotiated right now.

Here's another wrinkle. The Quinn Bill started out with the superficially appealing notion of increased police pay for increased education, with the state and cities sharing the costs. But it proved unaffordable at the state level, leading the state to defund it. Not so Newton. Now Mayor Warren has agreed to extend Quinn-like benefits to Newton firefighters for the first time. They are now slated to get ten percent more pay if they get an associate’s degree, 20 percent for a full bachelor’s degree and 25 percent for a master’s degree. With this provision, it's difficult to see how the contracts negotiated stay within the desired 2 1/2 percent increase.

I support our city workers, their right to bargain collectively and their right to a decent salary and benefits. Are they worth the deal? Yes. Can we afford it at this time? No. I also support the taxpayers’ right to have all the information, without spin, to know what their tax dollars are going for and the long-term implications.

It seems unlikely that the money saved in the growth of health costs is alone enough to solve the city’s long-term structural deficit. But even if these savings had a major impact on the fiscal 2012 budget, the other salary increases would seem to place a significant burden on the city in the out years. No wonder the unions stood by the mayor’s side at his announcement of the agreement and sang his praises.

The Aldermanic Finance Committee has already blessed the deal. The full Board of Aldermen is scheduled vote on the police contract this evening (August 8), and on other collective bargaining agreements later on. The aldermen with whom I have spoken are largely clueless about the content of the contracts. One even said to me, "In a strong-mayor government, we can't get involved." Huh?

An uninformed "yes" vote will probably make it difficult, if not impossible, to revisit the other contracts.
It would seem to make sense to delay the vote until the aldermen know what is in the contract and what its long-term impact will be.

It also seems reasonable to ask whether the mayor has given away the store in return for union support in the Senate race. It wouldn’t be the first time a politician has done this. That Setti Warren seems to have done so, given his great promise as a first-time candidate and newly elected official, is particularly disappointing. I tried reaching him for comment and clarification, to no avail.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

As markets tank, politicians hit the links, oblivious

2011-08-05T07:33:00.000-07:00

Recent memories of Cape Cod breezes, warm sunshine and gentle waves can’t dispel the acid taste left in the mouth by Congress’ despicable( and self-inflicted) game of chicken around raising the debt ceiling, followed by the eighth largest drop in stock market history. Small wonder that public disapproval of Congress is at 82 percent, according to a NY Times/CBS poll. That’s the highest disapproval since the Times started doing the poll in 1977. And Obama’s numbers are also down dramatically. (Can anyone explain to me why the President didn’t tie the debt ceiling rise to last year’s extension of the Bush tax cuts and thereby take it off the table?)

Nationally just 20 percent approve of the Tea Party, but they still exert disproportionate influence by threatening to run candidates in the Republican primaries against otherwise moderate Republicans who, without the fear from their Right, might act with reason.

So where are we? Where are our true leaders, those who are willing to put the country over ideology or personal self-interest. Notwithstanding the votes of many in the Massachusetts delegation against the debt ceiling deal (because of the threat to social safety net programs), I still feel those who were willing to hold their noses and compromise (on both sides of the aisle) did the right thing.

As reported by Yvonne Abraham, unflaggingly liberal Congressman Michael Capuano says he would have been willing to be the vote that killed the deal. He is quoted as saying he believes that the President would have gone the 14th Amendment route, acting to pay our debts even though the cost exceeded our debt limit and standing up to a possible impeachment vote in the House. Substituting a Constitutional crisis for a fiscal crisis was a Hobson’s choice.

Was Vice President Joe Biden speaking for himself or Obama when he told Capuano and Congressman Jim McGovern that, if necessary, the President, notwithstanding his public statements to the contrary, would use the 14th Amendment. The real question is how MA Congressmen would have voted if their votes had really been needed to avoid default. Would they really have voted with Michelle Bachmann and the others who were oblivious to the national security consequences?

It’s time to understand the lose-lose-lose debt ceiling circus has quickly become history. Only our disgust endures. That, and the challenges facing us now. Who will be the members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, and can they really pull off a reasonable combination of cuts and new revenues, without making more immediate cuts that will make matters worse?

Once again President Obama now says it’s time to “pivot” to jobs. But where have he and Congress been on this issue during the self-created debt ceiling distraction, while the recovery stalls and the country slips toward a double dip recession?

There has been marginal improvement in private sector jobs this year, but the unemployment rate has held high because of the dramatic increase in public sector layoffs. Those out of work or fearful of losing their livelihoods are unlikely to be the type of consumers necessary to drive a sustainable recovery. If Obama and the Democrats were unable to make revenues part of a winning argument in the recent political chess game , they are unlikely to push for even a bipartisan big-ticket investment like an infrastructure bank to rebuild faulty bridges, highways and energy grids. Trade deals and extension of the payroll tax cut can only go so far. Maybe we need another super committee to do what Congress can’t do on its own.

My husband and I had to cut our brief vacation even shorter because of client needs. Maybe the President and Congress should cut short their summer recess and fundraising and carry “their urgency from the final days of the debt ceiling debate into an immediate crisis conversation about jobs.”

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Surviving the debt ceiling crisis unscathed: highly unlikely

2011-07-26T11:32:00.000-07:00

At times, the debt ceiling debate has resembled a schoolyard brawl. We’ve heard everything but “so’s your mother!” But this squabble, now a bloody slugfest, has gotten very dangerous and, even if resolved, will have serious consequences for our nation.

Many experts now believe that Standard &Poor’s (or some other agency) will have no choice but to downgrade our credit rating. The manner in which our leaders have repeatedly failed to resolve what should have been a routine transaction will, according to many, inevitably lead to a loss of our AAA rating, raising interest rates and costing ordinary individuals more for mortgage, consumer credit, and student loan borrowing. (The Boehner plan would not avoid the downgrade threshold of the rating agencies.)

Our leaders’ reckless behavior has already hurt the nation’s reputation in the global community. This is no longer a country that everyone can depend upon to do what’s right, in a timely fashion. We have squandered our leadership credentials.

Even if the debt ceiling is raised by August 2, the factors that precipitated the brouhaha will remain unsolved. My former colleague Phil Balboni, CEO of GlobalPost.com , has just launched a weekly commentary series and, as always, has summed up expressively the profound and sweeping nature of our difficulties. China, for example, is now seeking alternatives to some of its US bond investments.

There are plenty of reasons things went from bad to worse and much blame to go around. It’s staggering that one of the most feasible outcomes of a debt ceiling resolution will be the creation of, yet again, a new bi-partisan commission to deal with our long-term indebtedness. Can you say “Simpson-Bowles?” “Rivlin-Ryan?” Equally appalling, depending on what is decided this week, is that we may have to go through the whole messy debt ceiling process again in six months.

President Obama vowed to veto any solution that would be a short-term fix. But the Republicans have rolled Obama, and he hasn’t so far been up to the task. (Knowing the Republicans would likely block a clean vote on raising the debt-ceiling, why didn’t he last year make it part of the Bush tax cut extension?) It seems now unlikely he would actually veto any debt ceiling bill, however undesirable, if it gets to his desk. He doesn’t want to own a default.

Obama seems to have yielded on nearly every point, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him cave on the short-term fix as well. The GOP is trying to leave him without any choice. The Republicans want this to be an issue in an election year. Obama does not. In this regard, his political interests and the country’s best interest coincide. It’s ironic that when people really understand the details, they side with Obama.

A National Journal poll showed that 46% trust Obama most to "make the right decisions" on the deficit while 34% said they place more faith in congressional Republicans. Regarding the debt ceiling, a virtually identical 46% leaned toward Obama and 35% chose the GOP. But Americans are split on whether there is any need or urgency to raise the debt ceiling in the first place.

Clearly, President Obama has repeatedly failed to use his bully pulpit effectively enough to educate the public about the dangers of default.

It doesn’t matter to the Republicans. Goaded by their Tea Party members, they seem intent – like the Slim Pickens character in the last scene of Dr. Strangelove – on riding the bomb to oblivion, waving their ten-gallon hats and crying “yee-hah!”

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Myra Kraft, a grand and grounded lady

2011-07-20T15:39:00.000-07:00

Back on January 14, 2006, after winning three successive Superbowls, the New England Patriots lost the AFC Divisional playoff to Denver by a score of 27 to 13. For days most New England fans felt depressed, hung over, a knot in the pits of their stomachs.

Two days after the loss, I stood behind Myra Kraft in a line for a donors’ reception before the Martin Luther King Day performance of the Boston Children’s Chorus. I expressed my condolences and wondered aloud at her even being ambulatory after the previous day’s outcome.

“Of course I’m ambulatory,” she said, “Really, Margie, It’s only entertainment.”

Patriots’ owner Bob Kraft’s wife Myra died this morning. Her devoted husband may not have been so philosophical in the wake of that painful playoff loss, but Myra ‘s reaction said a lot about who she was. She developed a sophisticated understanding of the intricacies of the game, but she never believed that players should only be held accountable for their behavior on the field.

The Patriots drafted college football star Christian Peter in the fifth round of the 1996 draft, just a month after his eighth conviction in seven years, many for violent acts. He also had settled two rape charges with a victim, the second attack allegedly occurring while his Nebraska teammates looked on. Myra was outraged and demanded the team give up all rights to him immediately. And the team did, explaining Peter’s behavior was “incompatible with our organization’s standards of acceptable conduct. " To Myra, you didn’t need to hire thugs to build a championship team.

She was grounded in solid values, not inclined to be swept away by things that, in the final analysis, don’t matter. That includes not just her perspective on sports and glitz, but on how she handled her significant wealth.

Our paths crossed over the years. Her demeanor was modest but her role in the charities and causes she cared about was hands-on and substantive, not just check-writing. She set a tone that should well be emulated throughout the philanthropic world.

The Kraft family – indeed, the whole community – has suffered an incalculable loss.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Partisan debt ceiling politics exasperating and dangerous

2011-07-13T05:26:00.000-07:00

Former Senator Alan Simspon, a Wyoming Republican, just about summed up my reaction to the debt ceiling impasse. He said that the extent to which pettiness has overcome patriotism is nothing short of disgusting. Despite Republican longstanding charges about Obama’s failure to embrace “American exceptionalism,” it is not he who is prepared to risk the economic consequences of failing to honor the full faith and credit of the United States, for the first time in its history. It is not Obama who’s willing to have the US dollar lose its “dominant role in the international financial system,” spook bond markets, have our creditors unload their investments in American debt, dramatically force up borrowing costs, and plunge us into another recession.

The debt ceiling law is a “pointless, dangerous historical relic” of World War I, which virtually no other advanced economy has. But few in Congress have the testicular fortitude to face the fact and repeal it. It’s too good a political pinata for posturing by an opposition party. Senator Obama did it with George W. Bush’s request. But after a ritual charade, in which individual solons get to vamp for CSPAN, Congress traditionally votes to honor our debts and raise the ceiling.

This year is different. Today’s impasse seems at least as much a function of hostility within the Republican Party as between Republicans and Democrats. Under the circumstances, the schism between Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor is contemptible.

The split seems driven as much by Cantor’s personal ambitions as his ideological rigidity. Playing to the most rigid ideologues on the right, Cantor undercut Boehner, opting for a smaller package that entailed cuts without new revenues and walked out of earlier budget talks.

As the President said, there is a “moral imperative to deal with the deficit in a meaningful way.” The big package Boehner and he were working on would tackle sacred cows on both sides – cutting spending even for defense and health and, gasp, raising revenues by closing loopholes. And they weren’t even closing loopholes before 2013. (God forbid that cutting the perks for hedge fund managers and owners of corporate jets might even remotely be suspected of dampening enthusiasm for job creation!)

We all need to realize that a default is not an abstraction: it means higher costs on car loans, credit card borrowing and mortgages. Real conservatives should oppose that.

I’d like to think this is just political theater, a game of chicken, leading up to – and, at the precipice, swerving away from – economic calamity, a strategy designed to wring out maximum budget concessions from the Democrats. But it seems too real to be just a “game” of chicken, and the risk is that, if the GOP refuses any kind of compromise, we’ll all end up fried.

The Speaker tried earlier this week to warn House Republicans that “they will quickly lose leverage in the debate as the country gets closer to the Aug. 2 debt default deadline and Wall Street” pushes for a deal. Right on cue, the Chamber of Commerce warned of dire consequences. But is anyone on the GOP right listening ?

In May, Boehner decried the nation’s debt as a “moral threat” and promised “real leadership,” not just kicking the can down the road. Three months later he’s wilting from the $4 trillion bargain he recently favored.

The Republican Pary, as David Brooks eloquently pointed out, may be more of a “psychological protest” than a “practical governing alternative.” Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform has scared congressmen and presidential candidates alike (including John Boehner and Mitt Romney) into signing a no-tax pledge, which Tea Party members treat as more sacred than their oaths to support the Constitution and keep the country running. (Remember, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush both took the pledge and raised taxes.) Norquist is closer to a Charles Manson anarchist than he is to an Edmund Burke conservative. Once again, Norquist’s followers are chugging the Kool Aid. (And nowadays, even Edmund Burke would have a primary challenger!)

The President’s strategy of laying claim to the middle, reengaging the Independents who helped him win in 2008, is good economics and politics, but people need more education. As David Leonhardt pointed out in today's Times, politicians continue to imply we can turn the clock back to an era of free lunches, in which we can have the world’s largest military, highest medical costs, and some of the lowest tax rates.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who wants to do nothing that might advantage the President, now is proposing a convoluted solution that would give Obama the power to raise the ceiling and, in doing so, set the President up for attacks he failed to deal responsibly with the national debt. The NY Times supports this fallback idea. Obama’s hope would be that voters blame Congress more. But absent a real deal, isn’t it better for Obama, the law professor, to simply use the clear language of the 14th amendment and say the Constitution made him do it?
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

The 14th Amendment: a solution to the debt ceiling impasse?

2011-07-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

What better day than Independence Day to contemplate the meaning of the U. S. Constitution? What better issue to use as context than the current debate about raising the debt ceiling?

Three groups of politicians, Republicans, Democrats and 59 Tea Party Congressmen, are at loggerheads. Sensible people among Republicans and Democrats know the debt ceiling must be raised to avoid a first-ever U.S.default on its financial obligations. But those sensible Republicans – Speaker John Boehner, for example – feel they can’t cut a deal with Democrats because the Tea Party stands ready to oppose them in the 2012 primary if they do the responsible thing.

A new discussion is getting some traction: the question of whether it is even Constitutional for Congress to refuse to pay debts that it has already authorized the government to incur through borrowing. Most of us know the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal rights under the law. Less known is the Amendment’s Section Four, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

In other words, refusing to lift the debt ceilng may be impermissible and the ceiling itself could be unconstitutional. With that line of thinking, the President could simply raise the debt ceiling without Congressional approval. MSNBC reporter Chuck Todd asked President Obama at his press conference this past week his opinion on using the 14th Amendment’s requirement to avoid default looming from Congressional obstinacy. The President did a tap dance, refusing to “put on my constitutional law professor hat.”

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says the 14th Amendment strategy is worth considering during the next debt crisis but this time around “it’s probably not ripe.” More tap dance.
MA Congressman Bill Keating was similarly dismissive at a meeting this week of the New England Council.

Senator John Cornyn, on Fox News Sunday, dismissed this as “crazy talk.”
The Republican alternative, prioritizing payments, would, according to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, be a de facto default. This is not a solution. (As one blogger put it, “if you had friends that were drowning in debt, would you tell them to immediately start defaulting on their mortgage, their car loans and their credit cards?”) So why not go the 14th Amendment route?

Default, for our first time in history, would, in today’s global economy , be a financial disaster. And a dysfunctional Congress, prepared to paralyze the government and risk a second great recession, needs something to save it from itself.

Failing to raise the debt ceiling and causing the nation to lose its excellent bond rating could be viewed as a national security matter. If the deficit is serious now, driving interest rates to double digit levels would make our bad economic situation exponentially worse.

Some scholars like (e.g. Garret Epps and Bruce Bartlett -) ) observe that invoking the 14th Amendment to prevent default is “no less justified than using American military power to protect against an armed invasion without a Congressional declaration of war.”
Jack Balkin traced the legislative history of the 14th amendment. His review, as Jonathan Chait points out in The New Republic, notes that the goal was to remove political opponents from using debt default as a way to extract revenge. “Section Four was placed in the Constitution to remove this weapon from ordinary politics”.

Isn’t this just such a situation?

To be sure, it could trigger a Constitutional showdown. Some of the Congressional Tea Party financial illiterates could bring suit to allow the U.S. to default on its obligations. If they won, the ensuing default crisis could be catastrophic . But would a majority of Supreme Court justices, (especially swing vote Anthony Kennedy,) none of whom has to face a Tea Party primary opponent, really ratify the Constitutionality of the US defaulting on its debts and turning the world economy on its head?

The 14th Amendment solution may even be a way out for Speaker Boehner and other similarly inclined Republicans. Taking the matter out of their hands would permit them to get the result they ultimately want while still posturing for those in their pitchfork-toting primary base.

Maybe Obama and Boehner talked about this when they played golf recently.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Much desired troop withdrawal from Afghanistan won’t be all happy endings

2011-06-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

Withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan will likely result in tragic outcomes, especially for women and children. But keeping U.S. forces there to prevent those problems would take many years, an unacceptable amount of resources and, in any event, would not, even then, guarantee success. That’s the bottom-line message to be taken from Congresswoman Niki Tsongas’ conversation this morning with the New England Council.

A member of the House Armed Services Committee, Tsongas has made several trips to Afghanistan. She spoke glowingly of the positive impact that the United States has had on women. Prisons have been upgraded so women, many of them locked up simply for fleeing domestic violence, don’t have to be separated from their children. Jail now offers a standard of living better than they had outside prison walls.

Tsongas visited a site near the Pakistan border where more than a thousand girls are getting a good education at a school we helped organize. The students there speak, in English, of wanting to become teachers and doctors. Moved by what she saw, Tsongas said we “can’t walk away from Afghan” women, but, in effect, she’s prepared to do just that.

She supports President Obama’s plan to draw down U.S. forces there, which will probably involve just such a walking away. In fact, Tsongas supports an even more aggressive rate of troop withdrawal. Asked about the warnings from General David Petraeus and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that even the President’s proposed draw-down creates undesirable risk, Tsongas explained that, despite those officials’ initial statements, both conceded in testimony that achieving the ends we might desire could take “forever” and that we can never do enough to bolster the fragility of Afghan society and government. Indeed, she added, "if we do everything right in Afghanistan but Pakistan doesn’t do its part, it's all for naught."

Also vulnerable are the national security forces we are training. Many of the Afghan recruits are just 16 or 17 years old. A quarter of those recruited leave every year. It’s a “revolving door,” making the fragility of the nation building even more apparent. Contrast those perilous gains to the lifelong impact on Americans injured in serving there, for whose care we will be paying for the rest of their lives.

Given the impossibility of “victory” in Afghanistan, the killing of Osama bin Laden provides an opportune moment to leave there. The successful mission in April shows that we can deal effectively in a more targeted strategy than placing tens of thousands of ground troops in harm’s way. The real problem today in Afghanistan is not Al Qaeda but the Taliban. Think about the girls school that so impressed Congresswoman Tsongas.

The late Sally Goodrich of North Adams started a school for girls in Afghanistan as a tribute to her son Peter, killed in the second plane to crash into the World Trade Center on 9/11. She raised $236,000 and got the school up and running, also supporting two other schools and an orphanage. She had no illusions about prospects for Afghanistan. Eventually, in 2009, the Taliban bombed the area and overran the school. Goodrich initially went to Afghanistan broken-hearted and quite probably, after the school’s early success, left there broken-hearted. (Sally herself succumbed to cancer last fall.)

As others have learned before we did, the sad truth is: no matter how long the U.S. stays in Afghanistan, the Taliban can wait us out. The American people are out of time, money and patience. President Obama is right: we need to do some nation building here on the home front, not thousands of miles away in a place that lacks the will to govern itself according to our rules of law, and where we never really defined what the end game was to be.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Whitey is evil incarnate, not Robin Hood

2011-06-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

One Southie resident interviewed on television about Whitey Bulger’s capture shrugged, “he’s a mobster; everyone has to have a profession,” or words to that effect. Others remembered Whitey’s reputed largesse, leaving money with a priest so people would have a turkey on Thanksgiving or an overcoat in the winter. This is James “Whitey” Bulger’s mythology, and it’s just that – myth, distortion and an insult to the families of Bulger’s victims.

Admittedly, this is a great news story, and it’s a story sure to keep on giving as the judicial process unfolds. No movie, not even starring Jack Nicholson as Whitey, could be as compelling as this real-life drama. The Herald’s Peter Gelzinis captured the latest moment, when, prior to being escorted from the courtroom, Whitey flashed a twisted smile, which Gelzinis calls “an ice-cold grin, tinged with defiance and a kind of sinister glee,” probably not unlike the last view Whitey’s victims had of him before he killed them.

I used to cover the St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in Southie, especially during the late ‘70’s and ‘80’s. It was fun listening to politicians from all camps roasting each other, trying to match barbs with the rapier wit of host and emcee, Senate President Bill Bulger. The breakfasts stopped being fun when the jokes were about Whitey. This cruel beast was no laughing matter, and it was infuriating that politicians from Governor Weld on down made it so to ingratiate themselves with the powerful Senate president. [Remember,Weld was the crime-busting US Attorney at the same time the FBI was cutting deals with Whitey.]

The 19 specific individuals he is accused of killing are just some of his victims, who may number 80 or more. We’re talking shootings, strangling, cutting off fingertips and gouging out teeth to hide the victim’s identity, terrorizing, extortion, drug-running and heaven knows what else.

Whitey Bulger is a study in contradictions. His physical fitness and grandfatherly demeanor; the steely eyes of a killer. His much touted love of animals; his total disregard for the two-legged kind. His reported touch of senile dementia; his decades-long socio-pathology. The $800,000 stashed in the walls of his Santa Monica apartment; the fact that his apartment was rent-controlled. The millions he supposedly has hidden away, possibly in vaults in foreign countries; his request for a public defender. His status as the FBI’s most wanted killer; his unassuming posture as an unremarkable elderly citizen. His long history of unremitting evil; the utter banality of his capture.

Brother Bill went to the arraignment. What would the life of this super intelligent, powerful leader have been without the big brother he had? Will we ever know what he knew and when he knew it?

The Boston FBI has still not recovered its reputation from the deals some of its members made when Whitey was an informant for them. But now it has brought him in.

Southie has moved beyond Whitey according to every conceivable measure, tribal hatred, street crime, violence, terror, racism. One of the most thoughtful pieces reflecting on this was Jim Carroll’s in today’s Boston Globe.
Perhaps the trial will disgorge long-hidden secrets and, in the process, be a catharsis.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Obama’s real deficit problem is the lack of enthusiasm among his supporters

2011-06-21T05:07:00.000-07:00

If President Obama loses his reelection bid in 2012, it may be because he has disappointed so many who had such high hopes for him in 2008. This surely is not true for a relative handful of individuals, who bundled campaign contributions and raised a lot of money for the President, and who were richly rewarded for their efforts.

This week, the Center for Public Integrity issued a report that 200 of those bundlers got posts in the administration, as ambassadors, key staff appointees, or members of influential advisory boards.

According to the report, 184 of 556, about a third, of Obama bundlers or their spouses got administration appointments. But four out of every five of the biggest bundlers (who raised more than half a million dollars) got “key administration posts.”

This, despite then-candidate Obama’s pledge to end this business-as-usual approach to politics. Clinton did it. Both Bushes did it, and Presidents before that. That Obama has kept pace with his oft criticized predecessors is disappointing. In fact, Obama’s catering to big donors is even greater than that of George W. Bush.

Nor should we be mollified by a White House statement that having donated $50,000 or raised/bundled $500,000 didn’t ensure such plum posts as the reward but that having contributed handsomely shouldn’t disqualify someone. How unbelievably lame. And how unbelievably naïve of us even to have believed things would change.

There are other reasons for Obama supporters to be disappointed. As Congressman Michael Capuano pointed out at this week’s New England Council breakfast, in Washington’s polarized environment, the President has not been an effective negotiator. When Obama couldn’t get the Republicans to agree to a budget that included restoring the Bush tax cuts to family earnings over $250,000, he should have gone for a $500,000 cutoff, or even $1 million, just to walk away with something that established the principle that we can’t afford to continue the Bush tax cuts if we want to curb the deficit. Obama’s failure to bargain tough on that issue weakens his position in the debt ceiling showdown.

Obama’s actions in Libya, in apparent violation of the War Powers Act, is another disappointment, highly evocative of past Presidential adventurism and surprising from a President who taught Constitutional law. As Capuano, who is one of those suing the President for not going to Congress for approval of our Libyan military involvement, avers, “No one person should have the power to take the country to war…..If you can do it in Libya, you can do it in China or Iran. If Obama can do it, any president can do it.”

The overwhelming part of Obama’s base, like Capuano, will not defect to a different candidate, but at this point there’s clearly an enthusiasm deficit. How much might be measured by this quarter’s financing by small donors. An enthusiasm deficit could also play out in reduced Democratic turnout in next year’s election, particularly in such battleground states as North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado and Florida. How much excitement gets revived for Obama may hinge on whom the GOP selects for its nominee, and that is far from clear.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Photos from Getty Images and Reuters

Lesson of DiMasi: we can’t always bet on the character of those who lead us

2011-06-17T05:18:00.000-07:00

If there’s one thing to be learned from the sad demise of former House Speaker Sal DiMasi, it’s the need for transparency, doing the people’s business in the people view. If there’s one place it should be applied immediately, it’s in the dealings around casinos for Massachusetts that surely are going on behind closed doors.

There has been a lot of debate about the impact of casinos on our economy, the jobs they would generate, the revenues that would redound to the treasury. We’ve also heard dire warnings about how our quality of life would be affected, how business would be drawn away from proprietors of small enterprises, like restaurants and other entertainment venues, how casino gambling and accompanying slot machines (possibly at racetracks, called racinos) can mean crime, bankruptcy, domestic violence and suicide (not unlike heroin addiction).

Let’s for the moment willingly suspend our disbelief and accept that all the wonderful things touted by proponents will actually materialize, there’s still a lesson from the fall of DiMasi. Last year, disagreements over casinos between House Speaker Bob DeLeo and Governor Deval Patrick caused the legislative wheels to grind to a halt. This year, presumably to avoid that kind of debacle, the two branches are negotiating their differences behind closed doors.

But who’s in with them? Lobbyists for the casino industry? For Indian gaming? For the racetracks? For the labor unions? Who’s in there representing the public interest? Who's making sure that, as in the DiMasi case, the public is not deprived of "honest services" of our elected officials?

Perhaps transparency would shed light on what regulatory body is being designed to oversee, regulate and enforce rules for expanded gambling in the Commonwealth. Former Attorney General Scott Harshbarger decried “backroom dealing” in an interview with WBZ’s Jon Keller. He warns that we don’t have in place an appropriate mechanism to make sure that the promises being made for jobs and economic development actually occur. If there is to be a new regulatory body, who will be on it, what rules will they promulgate, how will they enforce them? Do we think that some of the problems that have happened in other states won’t happen here? Who besides the casino operators will benefit?

Whether we support or oppose casino gambling, we deserve answers to those questions in advance and a transparent process for making the plan.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

GOP Presidential field no more the “seven dwarfs” than the Dems in 1992

2011-06-15T16:35:00.000-07:00

No matter how unimpressive a party’s candidates for President in the beginning, by fall of 2012 at least one of them will seem Presidential. The Democrats’ underwhelming field in 1992 yielded Bill Clinton, who was a successful, two-term President despite being impeached for sexual lies. The current crop of GOP candidates, who debated Monday night in New Hampshire, were all presentable for this stage of the process. There were no egregious errors. My sense: at the end of the day, both Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann came out as "winners."

Putative front-runner Romney made no mistakes, was composed, didn’t waver with supposed vulnerabilities, looked the part and, even if you disagree with him on one or another issue, didn’t offend. What’s more, the other candidates focused on Barack Obama’s short-comings rather than taking pot shots at Romney. Even Tim Pawlenty, who had the day before linked Romney care with Obama care, danced away from it in the debate. When the other candidates refused to fault Romney on his flip-flop on abortion, moderator John King got them to agree that “the case is closed” on the authenticity of his position. So Romney sailed through the evening, even disingenuously saying that any of the field would be better than Obama. (Full disclosure: I like Romney personally. For years, he was a back-up panelist on my Five on Five program on WCVB-TV.)

Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann, while sparkling with slogans and sound bites, was no less substantive than Rick Santorum or Pawlenty. Nowhere evident was the wild, even out-of-control Tea Party Caucus chairman or the person whose really dumb quotes have been rivaled only by Sarah Palin. And who knew that, in addition to being a Congresswoman and, formerly, a corporate tax attorney, she is mother of five and foster-mother of 23! She soared here because expectations were so low.

The others neither distinguished themselves nor embarrassed themselves. Pizza businessman Michael Cain had the least to recommend him, but no one is taking him seriously.

With some slight differences among them, all of the Republicans would create jobs by cutting taxes – especially corporate and capital gains - and regulation, as well as repeal Dodd-Frank and the EPA. None would have supported the bail-out for the auto industry, which may have saved over a million jobs and which is being paid back.

All would repeal Obama-care and, in varying degrees, introduce more market dynamics into Medicare. Most preferred the old “don’t ask; don’t tell” approach to gays in the military but would listen to the military before going back to it. Gay marriage would be a no-no for all, with Pawlenty, Romney, Gingrich and Bachmann favoring a Constitutional ban on it.

The consensus was that Obama had failed in growing the economy, controlling the growth in government and, but for the demise of Osama bin Laden, failed in foreign policy. Former Ambassador John Huntsman, who did not participate in the debate, no doubt will have more light to shed on the latter. With Independents able to take either ballot in the New Hampshire primary and no contest to lure them into the Democratic side (Remember Obama v. Clinton in '08), they could play in the GOP arena and provide surprising support for Huntsman.

This debate was too much to cover with too many candidates. Future debates should focus on particular issue areas, e.g., the economy, energy and the environment, foreign policy and so on. For now, though, the Republicans are off to a decent start.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Spare us all the Anthony Weiners, on both sides of the aisle.

2011-06-12T14:23:00.000-07:00

Sleazy. Sordid. Tacky. Now, sick. In the wake of the revelation that Congressman Anthony Weiner had sexted a 17-year-old from Delaware, he announced he would take a leave of absence "to focus on becoming a better husband and healthier person." How do you treat undisciplined libido, narcissism, and insane risk-taking behavior?

This latest Weiner move represents what George Will calls “the medicalization of the crisis,” as in “I didn’t do it. My disease made me do it.”

There’s a long history of risky sexual behavior on both sides of the aisle, possibly related to the aphrodisiac of power and sense of entitlement that too many politicians develop. What we have seen in the Weiner scandal is disturbingly familiar: revelation (usually by media), denial, confession (usually with tears), apology and ultimately, for some, censure or resignation.

At least this time we were spared “the good wife” routine, in which the wronged missus stands by her man to help him uphold his reputation. Wife Huma Abedin, a key aide to Hillary Clinton, has been in Abu Dhabi travelling with the Secretary of State, and all eyes will be on her upon her return. But from a public perspective, whether she stands by him or gives him the boot doesn’t matter. The damage has been done.

Many scandal-mired politicians have come back, to be re-elected, to run for President, or to get lucrative television contracts. For renewal and redemption stories, we in Massachusetts need look no further than former Congressman Gerry Studds, Congressman Barney Frank, and certainly Senator Ted Kennedy. But part of their brands will always be defined by their transgressions – and how they responded when they were exposed. For today, at a time of unprecedented peril (two+ wars, the worse economic recession since the Great Depression, and jaw-dropping ideological polarization), this story is about more than Anthony Weiner, how he has compromised his effectiveness in the public debate or what he has done to his family.

Media frenzy about the Weiner scandal has stopped the Democrats in their tracks and changed the conversation from Medicare, the debt ceiling, the federal budget and jobs to the Congressman’s peccadilloes. The story has hijacked the public agenda and confirmed our sense that we are, as former Republican speech writer Peggy Noonan put it, “in an era of public decadence.”

MA fifth district Congresswoman Niki Tsongas is distinguished among the MA delegation in calling for Weiner to resign. Others have said they don’t want to get ahead of a House Ethics Committee investigation. Maybe so. But Tsongas seems to understand that Weiner’s excess of testosterone has created terrible fallout for public discourse at a time of enormous challenges. And, if Weiner isn't concerned enough about these critical issues to resign, then one hopes the census-driven redrawing of New York’s congressional districts will do the job for him.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Menino and business leaders in love fest

2011-06-02T11:03:00.000-07:00

Can you say “Mayor for life?” That was the unspoken message of the love-in Wednesday when Mayor Tom Menino spoke to the Boston College CEO’s Club. He has been at the helm in the Hub for an unprecedented 18 years, and still, according to Weber Shandwick executive Micho Spring, who introduced him, has a 74 percent approval rating. Of Boston’s 600,000+ residents, fully half say they have met him personally. Clearly he loves his job, and the city seems to love him. Or so it seemed in the Wharf Room at the Boston Harbor Hotel, where the luncheon was held.

The metrics of Menino’s success seem are compelling : AAA bond rating. Population growth outpacing that of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco; third among cities in job growth; greatest expansion in housing stock since 1960; violent crime down by 20 percent; homicide down 50 percent over last year; 3rd in Monster.com’s job markets index; $70 million in savings expected from new employee health insurance contract; extra payments paid to employee pension fund; significant reduction in high school drop-out rate; dead last in Wall Street Journal & Down Jones’s “misery index,” making Boston the least miserable city – and on and on and on, with Boston continuing to outperform its peers in many ways.

Especially celebratory were Menino’s remarks about the growth of his Innovation District in the Seaport area, and its concomitant creation of companies and jobs, patents issued to Boston inventors, FDA approval of Vertex’ hepatitis drug and the Vertex move to the Innovation District. As captured by Tom Grillo in The Boston Herald, he’s looking to bring venture capitalists into the district and expand opportunities for solar energy there.

With all the celebration, Menino remains 2400 jobs short of his program of summer jobs for youth, and he made a pitch for that. At the end, not only did he get a standing ovation, but the usually inquisitive CEO’s Club crowd didn’t bother to ask the Mayor any questions in the narrow Q & A window allowed. In the midst of such good cheer, might it have been unseemly?

It would have been helpful to hear Menino’s assessment of Memorial Day weekend’s holiday violence, especially in the Carson Beach area. What does it augur for the summer ahead, and what strategies does he have to deter and contain such incidents? How does he seek to resolve the conflicting jurisdictions of the Boston police and the staties? What about filling in the hole that used to be Filene’s basement, and what does he expect to achieve on “voluntary” expansion of PILOTs (Payments in lieu of taxes)? Also, what about the litter that mars the city’s public gathering places?

The Boston Municipal Research Bureau’s Sam Tyler would have liked to hear how hard Menino will push for fundamental reform in the teachers' contract now being negotiated. The bargaining teams have been at the table for more than a year. Tyler wonders if the union starts to play hardball and talk strike, will the Mayor stand up for the Superintendent and demand significant contract change in the contract or settle for less?

There are many challenges to talk about. I don’t blame the Mayor for not going there. From his perspective, the event has to be considered a huge public relations success. For would-be questioners in the audience, who also care about the city’s future, it was a lost opportunity.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Barney Frank’s back to his old self, provocative and, this time, unsettling

2011-05-24T04:14:00.000-07:00

It was vintage Barney Frank at last Friday’s meeting of the New England Council. He was savagely funny, insightful, acerbic and provocative. This was particularly true when he discussed the federal deficit and lifting the debt ceiling, the deadline for which seems to have now been moved from May back to August. He ruffled more than a few feathers.

“The debt limit isn’t being raised as a favor to me,” the Fourth District Congressman scoffed, noting “I didn’t vote for what caused that deficit (two wars and the Bush tax cuts).” And he’s right, a lot of the sanctimonious hand-wringing by so-called deficit hawks is being done by the very solons who advocated borrowing heavily against our grandchildren’s futures rather than call for shared post- 9/11 sacrifice and paying for our wars out of current revenues. These are also the same wise ones who told us that deficits caused by the Bush tax cuts didn’t matter and would be good for the economy.

We would expect neophyte legislators swept into office by Tea Party hysteria last fall to take reflexively stupid positions, saying simply as they have just “cut spending and we won’t default.” As Barney notes, there is waste everywhere in government, but it’s not layered around the edges and able to be easily trimmed. It’s marbled throughout the system and requires careful cutting. But that requires hard work, and is not susceptible to ham-handed demagoguery.

Frank agrees that Medicare needs to be addressed “but not alone,” adding people want to be well- treated when they’re sick. For years a prime Frank target has been what he calls unnecessary military spending , particularly that which is spent on the defense of NATO countries . The rationale for the post-WWII commitment protect them against Soviet communism is long gone.. Nor do we need the overkills from three different deterrent forces, the Army’s ICBM system; the Air Force’s SAC (Strategic Air Command) power and the Navy’s nuclear submarine fleet. Give up just one of the three, and you could save $15 billion - $20 billion a year.

He also asserts it’s time to leave both Iraq and Afghanistan. As for the enduring Al Qaeda threat, he added, we can’t create political will from the outside and …we can’t plug every rat-hole in the world.” Furthermore, he says: “We’re 3500 miles from Libya. France and Italy could spit and hit Libya if the winds are at their backs. Why does the world depend on us?” Big cuts can be made in DOD, but so far there are few takers on the other side.

So we return to the looming debt ceiling crisis. Barney correctly notes that an important point being missed is that the debt limit is not about the future, but about past obligations. But then he disturbingly concludes that, given the congressional impasse, we just may have to resign ourselves to not increasing the ceiling on schedule.

Applying an inapt domestic analogy to the international stage, he matter-of-factly says the inability of Republicans and Democrats to agree to a new cap may lead inevitably to a “temporary hiatus—a day, a week or two-- in our ability to pay our bills.” Seemingly untroubled by that outcome, he reminds us that Congress only passed the 2008 emergency Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) after an earlier NO vote sent the market to its biggest one day drop ever.

This shock therapy would mean the first time in United States history that this nation will have defaulted on the payment of principal and interest on government bonds. Frank’s apparent flippancy on this is more than a little unnerving. Failure to maintain the nation’s creditworthiness could have global implications, none of them pretty. It could plunge us back into recession, according to Alan Blinder , Princeton University economics professor and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, in the WSJ.
Interest rates would rise dramatically, Blinder warns, as other nations begin to see debt ceiling politics as a permanent part of American political gamesmanship. It could also affect the willingness of other countries to regard the US as a safe haven in troubled times and could hasten moves to switch investments to a basket of currencies, not the dollar.

The fact that some Republicans are willing to contemplate cuts of 40 percent so as not to exceed the debt ceiling is, as Frank says, “evidence of a dark, self-destructive impulse.” That Barney Frank would, even for the rhetorical sport of shocking his audience, at which he often excels, toy with going that route, is unsettling and discouraging.

Maybe I’m overreacting and this is just part of a clever Brer Rabbit strategy. But I fear it is really rooted in his very bleak assessment of the current political landscape. “John Boehner has lost control of the House,” he says. “The most right-wing elements have taken over.” The Tea Party is in charge because once-thoughtful Republican conservatives now fear losing their primaries to more radical right candidates. And the Senate, undemocratic and dysfunctional with its 60 vote distortion of the Constitution and American history, is little better.

If Tom Coburn walks away from one effort and Barney Frank from another, where are we to look for leadership? Ironically, the most reasoned recent response to the debt ceiling date came on WBUR's On Point from David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s old budget director, who took both parties to task and spoke truths that current politicians are afraid to embrace.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Herald v Obama saga reveals much about how politicians deal with the media

2011-05-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Mark Twain knew it to be true. The underlying message is no less true today, despite how communications technology has changed the nature of the media. It’s really disappointing that Barack Obama’s press staff may not get it.

They give the appearance of being intent on freezing out media who are hostile to him. Most recently, the Boston Herald whined that it was being denied access to the presidential visit to Boston on Wednesday and was barred from participation in a press pool. According to Media Nation critic Dan Kennedy, there was less to this than meets the eye. The White House rotates those in pool coverage of local Presidential visits; the Herald couldn’t participate in this pool because it was full, but could do so in a future one.

But Presidential media staff person Matt Lehrich (apparently David Axelrod’s nephew ) responded to the Herald’s complaint in a way that should get him fired. His response to the Herald implied that the White House was miffed when the paper ran a front-page op ed by Mitt Romney during a Presidential visit to Boston in March. The Herald quite properly publicized Lehrich’s email, which was to all intents and purposes a threat to retaliate by limiting access to media critical of the President.

Regardless of the facts, people are quite ready to believe that the Herald has been discriminated against because they remember how the President quite famously froze out Fox News, refusing for a long time to respond to Fox reporters or appear on the “fair and balanced” network.

Any hint of punitive press strategy seems just dumb. For one thing, it is counterproductive, spurring a spate of articles and commentary by the frozen ones, no fewer than five articles in Thursday morning’s Herald alone and more today. But it isn’t just that allegations of press discrimination prompts still more attention paid to the thin skin of the Administration. It conveys a sense that the Administration can’t stand up to criticism.

Such instances are legion. Governor Deval Patrick learned the hard way in his first term that you can’t let the media know they’re getting to you. You’re the person in power. You should be able to stand up to the pressure and deftly respond. It doesn’t matter if a certain media outlet isn’t particularly fair to you. A free press means that media of all stripes have the latitude to criticize you whether they’re right or wrong. You gain credibility by going head to head with your critics. And no reporter should be pressured to pull his or her punches for fear of getting frozen out.

My first personal exposure to Obama was in Chicago when he filled in for an ailing Studs Terkel at a meeting of the National Conference of Editorial Writers in 2006. Obama hadn’t yet been elected to the U.S. Senate. We were all impressed by his thoughtful, nuanced responses even to some contentious questions. I left with the feeling that here was a politician who knew how to communicate with opinion writers and wasn’t afraid of criticism. Increasingly, as those opinions have become more acerbic in some quarters, he and his media staff need to resist a bunker mentality when it comes to irritating reporters.

I feel the same way when Senator Scott Brown dodges questions, either by appearing to take both sides of an issue or literally by ducking out of a venue by the back door, which some reporters have experienced.

Politicians should understand how bad such behavior can make them look and direct their staffs accordingly. Then again, the public has such a low regard for the Fourth Estate that dodging or freezing out reporters may simply look like a low-risk strategy to protect their images in the short term, rather than an arrogant contempt for the public’s right to know.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Kirby Perkins lives on in the A+ winners honored by WCVB-TV

2011-05-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

Kirby Perkins was a great political reporter, a lot of fun and a good friend. He died of a heart attack 14 years ago at the shockingly young age of 49. While he rubbed elbows with every significant politician of the time, his most lasting public legacy comes from the series of profiles he initiated at Channel 5 called A+.

The station had long done a series called High Five, hailing stand-out athletes who also did well academically. But Kirby believed that society shouldn’t value performance in sports more than performance in academics. So he started the A+ series to celebrate high school students who did well academically, often against great odds. After his death, Channel 5 and Kirby’s widow, Emily Rooney, former Channel 5 news director and now anchor of WGBH’s Greater Boston, started the Kirby Perkins A+ Scholarship Fund, to award scholarships to some of those A+ students. [Full disclosure: my husband, Jim Barron, sits on the board of the Fund.]

This morning, the Kirby Perkins A+ Scholarship Fund awarded scholarships to six wonderful young graduating seniors.

Dorchester High’s Long Dang is the son of Vietnamese immigrants who never finished high school. He is valedictorian of his class, a champion debater and a leader in improving the sense of community at Dorchester High. He is going to Williams College.

Pingree School’s Thuly Tran is the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, whose family fled to a refugee camp in Malaysia, then to the Philippines and eventually landed in Lynn, Massachusetts. Described by a teacher as “an intellectual firecracker,” Thuly is fluent in at least four languages (including English, Mandarin and Spanish) and is off to Wellesley College in the fall.

Hull High’s Jamie Clasby had to grow up fast when her father, a firefighter, was paralyzed when a fire set off an explosion that lodged a bullet in his spine. She was six when it happened. He died when she was 15 years old. For years, Jamie was fully involved in caring for him while her mother worked fulltime. In everything she does, she follows her father’s exhortation that “Clasbys never quit.” Now off to Bridgewater State, her story is one of dedication and hard work to honor her father.

Boston English High’s Juan Colon’s father was incarcerated for five years, and he too had to grow up very fast, learning what road he wanted to go down. He chose education and hard work, went to the top of his class and is president of the National Honor Society. Helped by school programs and mentors, Juan now mentors other young people in the community. He is going to Boston College this fall.

Quincy High’s Gerald McCarthy has been blind since birth. Adopted from the Philippines, he is at the top of his class and a musician, playing piano, clarinet, guitar and tympani. He also composes and sings in a cappella choir. He will attend Eastern Nazarene College.

Taunton High’s Jasmine Payne grew up as the daughter of a disabled single mother . Despite very tough times in a strapped household, she emerged as an excellent student, sings in the school’s show choir, is a leader in school council, a debater and a varsity athlete. She views her mother as a model of persistence. Jasmine going to Spellman, wants a career in international relations.

Rooney exhorted these outstanding scholarship recipients to look beyond their immediate concerns and stay plugged into the news of the world. Awareness of global issues, she reminded them, is important to the community and to their own success.

Channel 5 meteorologist and feature reporter David Brown has done an outstanding job reporting on the A+ nominees. He immerses himself in their stories and is a genuinely enthusiastic booster.

If you’re interested in the Kirby Perkins A+ Scholarship Fund, check it out on thebostonchannel.com http://www.thebostonchannel.com/aplus/index.html, If you want to contribute, mail to the Kirby Perkins A+ Scholarship Fund, WCVB-TV, 5 TV Place, Needham, MA 02494.

Looking at these outstanding young people, I can only think how proud Kirby would be of this aspect of his enduring legacy.

Treasurer Steve Grossman is in high gear

2011-05-13T14:34:00.000-07:00

Mass. Treasurer Steve Grossman’s father used to quote Baltimore Orioles legendary third baseman Brooks Robinson, who often said, “Make optimism a way of life.” And that’s the attitude that Grossman reflects, predicting to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce today that the Commonwealth will come out of the recession better than it went in. If it does, steps that Grossman is taking as Treasurer will play a role in that.

His approach to governance is really refreshing. The four fundamentals of customer services he learned as a private businessman he is making cornerstones of his role as state treasurer: service, quality, value and professionalism. He says he intends to use his office to protect our money, create jobs, promote growth and enhance competitiveness.

A major focus is on the 85 percent of job growth that comes from small business. The biggest barrier to small business is access to capital, which is why he is placing up to $300 million in state deposits in community banks, up to $5 million each. Forty-six banks have signed up; his goal is 200 community banks. The idea is to support growth in small businesses, especially those owned by women, minorities and immigrant entrepreneurs, who have traditionally had difficulty getting capital from the largest banks.

The idea is that Massachusetts taxpayers’ money will be deposited in Massachusetts banks, loaned to Massachusetts businesses, and will create jobs in Massachusetts. Grossman talked about this during his campaign, and he is already moving on the idea. $55 million has already been allocated.

Grossman is also pushing for needed pension reform, including raising the retirement age for new state workers, eliminating incentives for early retirements and changing the way benefits are calculated. He’s taking on the pension issue because it is essential to reduce our indebtedness to be viewed positively by the ratings agencies in the credit markets.

Toward the same end, he wants to take some of the state’s increased tax revenues and build the rainy day fund back up to $1 billion. He notes that Massachusetts and Tennessee were the only two states given a positive outlook by the ratings agencies, and he wants to solidify that position.

Grossman also wants to use his role with the pension investment board to scrutinize the makeup of publicly held companies in the Commonwealth. Citing The Boston Club’s annual census of women directors, he noted that six years ago, ten percent of directors of the Globe 100 corporations were women; today 11.3 percent are women. “That’s not a lot of progress,” he observed, adding that the state with its proxy power can be more aggressive in pursuit of diversity within the framework of maximizing shareholder value. [Full disclosure: I serve on The Boston Club’s Corporate Board Committee.]

Mindful of the lack of faith in government, Grossman is working to put the state’s “checkbook” on line so we can all see what the government is spending its money on, the purposes of the expenditures, the vendors with whom it is doing business – in short, what’s going out and what’s coming in.

If Grossman succeeds in implementing his vision for the Treasurer’s office, he may well emerge as a leading candidate to succeed Deval Patrick as Governor, an office for which he ran unsuccessfully in 2002.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Setti Warren leaps into the U.S. Senate race

2011-05-10T04:25:00.000-07:00

Newton Mayor Setti Warren announced yesterday he was running for Scott Brown’s seat in the U.S. Senate. If you look at his video announcement , he comes across as just the kind of person who should represent the Commonwealth in D.C. He certainly reflects more of Ted Kennedy’s values than does Scott Brown. And, if you compare Warren to the early Ted Kennedy, before he became the Senator we love to lionize, Setti is smoother (in a positive sense), more thoughtful, more articulate and more poised.

The problem is that he has only been mayor for 16 months. While he’s done a good job in terms of making the Mayor’s office more accessible and crafting a responsible budget in tough times, the plain truth is that the city still needs him to do the job he was elected to do and that he pledged to do. He’s letting some people down by making this run, and they have told him so. And it’s not just that he’d be leaving if elected. He shouldn’t be taking the time away from the city to make the run. As Cong. Barney Frank said of the idea a couple of weeks ago, “If it was the last year of the term it would be different.”

So why would he do it? From Setti’s career perspective, he has nothing to lose. He takes a page from the Obama book that argued it’s easier to run for higher office when you have less of a record to defend. If he runs and wins, then Massachusetts has a more enlightened voice in the Senate, and the Democrats get a needed vote at the national level. If he runs and loses, he ticks off some Newtonites for taking the time to make the run, but raises his statewide visibility. If there is an Obama II and if John Kerry becomes Secretary of State, Setti is well positioned to become the leading candidate to replace Kerry, for whom he used to work.

Sure, everyone says Scott Brown can’t be beaten. He is the most popular politician in Massachusetts and has a ton of money in the bank. But his voting record has been too cute by half, voting, we are told, over 85 percent with the Republican leadership and sometimes voting in opposition to the people of Massachusetts (unemployment benefits extension is just one issue that comes to mind). He voted against Head Start and Pell Grants. He voted for health reform as a state senator and says he now opposes the national legislation as a U.S. Senator. Last week’s fiasco when Brown asserted he had seen the Osama bin Laden death photos (when millions of people already knew they were internet fakes) made him look like a fool. When he tried to cover by saying he had seen them in a briefing and that wasn’t true, he looked like a liar.

Despite his high popularity and lavish war chest, Scott Brown’s election in 2010 may have been a fluke. Setti Warren may be banking on that. And though relatively few people across the state know who the heck he is, no one with greater credibility has come forward. Think Clinton over George H.W. Bush, Carter over Ford. More to the point, think Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses in 2008.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Inflation not a worry for the next couple of years

2011-05-07T04:53:00.000-07:00

Dick Syron and John LaWare were affable enough heads of the Boston-based regional operation of the Federal Reserve System. But, when they were out in the community, they seemed to speak only with other businessmen and in highly selective institutional settings. Cathy Minehan did somewhat better. But the current president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Eric Rosengren, is a really effective communicator. And he seems to enjoy taking his economic analyses and projections, complete with Power Point, across the local landscape, explaining himself in down-to-earth language we can all understand.

Recently he’s been doing his dog-and-pony show around the region, earlier this week at a meeting of the New England Council. His goal is to answer the question of how monetary policy should be used to respond to dramatic price increases, especially when, as recently, food and fuel costs seem to be heading off the charts.

(I got a bag of red grapes home from the store to discover it cost $9. But food costs are a relatively small part of American economy. Imagine living in India or China, where food costs are so much larger a part of the national economy!)

Rosengren says the Fed shouldn’t do anything at this time. The causes of the spikes are not a function of monetary policy. Middle East instability affects the oil price. Troubles in Japan disrupted the global supply chain. Weather extremes, such as those in Russia and Australia, affected the global harvest. When you take food and energy volatility out of the formula for measuring inflation, the core inflation rate has really been pretty steady at a bit more than one percent. He doesn’t expect to see more than two percent over the next couple of years.

Meanwhile, he said, if the Fed were to raise rates in response to higher food and energy prices, it would put a damper on the economy and unacceptably slow our recovery. And that wouldn’t do anything to solve Middle East instability, weather affects on the harvest, or logistical disruption in Japan. Thursday, almost on cue, commodity prices—notably oil and food-- fell, apparently sparked by fears of the over-heating market.

An interesting sidebar is a difference of opinion brewing between Congressman Barney Frank, ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, and Rosengren. Frank has proposed legislation that would bar regional Federal Reserve Bank heads from voting with the Federal Reserve Board on whether or not to move interest rates in one direction or another.

Frank apparently believes that, in general, the regional heads are too close to the local businesses who voted them in and they’re too partisan and parochial. There’s evidence that this is what happens in other parts of the country.

Rosengren says the board is driven by data not politics and that local input is highly desirable. We’ve all benefited from a central bank that is not partisan, he added. This seems true for Rosengren. My question is: how do the other regional heads behave? I certainly want to hear more about this debate.

In the meanwhile, it’s good to have a Fed leader willing to speak to the whole community… and in English.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

State Department to Editorialists: Africa Is Not a Country

2011-05-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

“Press coverage of Africa is essential, good and insufficient,” Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson told a group of editorialists from the National Conference of Editorial Writers Monday in Washington. The head of the Bureau of African Affairs called for journalists to make sharper distinctions among the 53 states that make up the continent, 48 of which are Sub-Saharan.

There’s progress on the continent, he averred, urging writers not to focus just on stories of death and destruction, wars and famine. Africa comprises not just authoritarian regimes but many with good governance.

There is a democratic spring across the continent. There were just three democracies in the 1990’s. Today, some 20 sub-Saharan African nations are on their way to stable democracies. The United States has been actively involved in many of the 15-16 nations planning elections this year. Most notably, it has been helping Sudan bring about a successful referendum and transition to an independent state in the southern part of that country as of July 9.

The United States isn’t alone in seeing Africa – with its enormous mineral resources and pressing human needs - as central to its interests. China has come in in a big way. It has made clear its overriding interest is to extract oil and other minerals to support its own burgeoning economic development. And many African states have fallen under its sway. A byproduct of this is China’s attempt to woo Africa away from the influence of American media.

Unlike past administrations , we’re now told that United States Africa policy places Africa not at the periphery but at the center of our international interests. That policy has five “central pillars.

• Strengthening democracy and good governance.

• Promoting economic reform and sustaining economic development

• Dealing with enormous health challenges (HIV, malaria and tuberculosis) and food crises

• Working to prevent, mitigate and resolve crises in the Sudan, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Conakry

• Addressing global issues affecting Africa like terrorism and money-laundering - plus climate change, employment, and economic needs

Despite these generally applicable themes, remember, Africa is not a country. Differences among countries are real.

Take climate change, for example. The snow caps in Tanzania will be gone by the end of the decade. There is diminishing water in Lake Victoria. Snow is gone from Mt. Kenya., and some of the great rivers, needed to drive turbines in Kenya, are not flowing.

Africa has ten percent of the world’s population but 60 percent of AIDS cases, South Africa having the largest number.

The State Department’s Feed the Future program is a principal tool for creating sustainable agriculture, where the problems are pretty basic: seeds, fertilizer, water management and inefficient distribution system. Africa, says Carson, is capable not only of ending hunger at the family level but beginning to export as well. He looks to Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo for vigorous movement to self-sufficiency.

The bottom line: the media should look at Africa with as discerning an eye as we currently do in Asia, which itself was once considered a largely undifferentiated whole . Thirty-seven years in the Foreign Service, most of them spent in different Africa countries, combine to make Johnnie Carson the consummate professional and one who can articulate what such a discerning eye can see in analyzing the multiplicity of peoples, problems and promise on the African continent, at the center of our international interests.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

American opinion in line with Obama administration message on bin Laden

2011-05-03T15:22:00.000-07:00

A fresh Washington Post/Pew Research Center poll shows that while Americans feel really good about the demise of Osama bin Laden, few think we’re home free when it comes to the threat of terrorism. Seven in ten believe the world is more secure, but a scant five percent think that terrorism is no longer a danger. And that mirrors what the Obama Administration is saying.

Both the President and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, after expressing prayers for the families of the victims of 9/11 and praise for the courage of our military, intelligence experts and diplomatic officials on the front lines, warn that the death of Bin Laden doesn’t end the fight against Al Qaeda. Making her first public statement at the State Department yesterday, Clinton looked tired but together. She was strong but very measured in predicting the future.

The message to those who would do harm around the world: “you can’t wait us out; you can’t defeat us.” Clinton restated that the administration. As if speaking to reassure those people reflected in the Post/Pew poll, she said, “The fight continues, and we will never waver…..This is America. We rise to the challenge, we persevere and we get the job done.”

In making her public statement yesterday, Clinton took no questions. But afterwards, speaking informally with a small group of editorialists from the National Conference of Editorial Writers, she said, “Our goal is to shape the meaning and create the message.” They’re doing a good job at that.

She restated United States commitment to a “partnership” with Pakistan. As if to underline one of the reasons for that partnership, she reminded us that bin Laden had ordered the killing of many Pakistani men, women and children. Obviously, we still need the Pakistanis, however duplicitous and undependable, in meeting the challenge in Afghanistan, but Clinton wouldn’t be drawn into criticism of them. She avoided the concerns about Pakistani duplicity raised, for example, in Foreign Policy about “the Pakistani government’s web of deceit.”

A corollary message has to do with money. As the strategy in Afghanistan shifts from military to foreign aid as a tool for strengthening international security, we have to support the effort. The State Department budget has been cut by $8 billion, which otherwise would go for diplomatic and development work, conflict prevention and resolution, improving health and hunger and supporting American businesses in far-flung areas of the world. Economic development is an important arrow in the quiver of tools to fight terrorism.

Foreign aid as a concept gets little support among the American people. If asked about how much of the federal budget goes for foreign aid, a majority assume about 20-25 percent. Asked how much they think it should get, they say, oh, around 10 percent. In fact, it get just one percent of the federal budget.

If, indeed, people around the world look to America for its values and strength, then we need to view these kinds of diplomatic, economic and health initiatives as enduring necessities in the ongoing fight against terrorism.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Donald Trump a buffoon candidate, but will the birthers go away?

2011-04-27T13:27:00.000-07:00

Donald Trump takes credit for President Obama’s release of his full birth certificate, saying he’s proud that he (Trump) was “able to do something that no one else was able to do.” Well, if you say so, Donald. Guess you’re a can-do guy.

I’d like to think that this puts an end to the birther movement, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see supporters a) claim collusion between Obama and the Honolulu registry that produced the document; b) return to the assertion that the Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim (slurring the President’s credibility as a Christian and implying the unacceptability of all Muslims in the process; c) find some equally meaningless basis on which to condemn the President.

There are other reasons the attitude, if not the issue, won’t go away. Jerome Corsi, he of Swift Boat fame, is coming out with a book “proving” that Obama is not a U.S. citizen. Where's the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President will be available May 17. It was #1 on the Amazon best seller list last week but dropped to #27 following the release of the birth certificate.

One wonders why the President didn’t put out the birth certificate earlier and put an end to the issue. Is it too cynical to think he delayed because it made sense politically to let these idiots build up their momentum, only to snuff them out at the time of Obama’s choosing. Enter the Donald, a buffoon who nonetheless moved the issue to page one again. As one writer put it, the birthplace challenge was “ the primary wind beneath the hairwings of Donald Trump.” So what will the Donald do next?

A Trump candidacy seems both ludicrous and unlikely. Bill Maher and David Letterman (on the Letterman show) each bet a week’s salary on whether Trump would actually run. Maher said yes; Letterman, no) Would Trump really want to submit his financial records to the kind of scrutiny a serious candidacy would require? But the mere possibility, not to mention his first-place standing in some polls, has to be an embarrassment to the Republican Party, even if it is the party of Sarah Palin. Candidates like Mitt Romney or even Mike Huckabee are serious and, despite their occasional reliance on mindless slogans and contrived 30-second sound bites (as do most candidates), they’re perfectly capable of debating policy differences rooted in different political philosophies. Trump is decidedly not.

No doubt Trump is building a bigger audience for the end of The Apprentice season. If that’s his goal, more power to him. As the great American journalist and essayist H.L. Mencken wrote,” no one has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”

The political process is sometimes entertainment, but not always. For entertainment we can watch the royal wedding or the Red Sox. We need serious and thoughtful debate on the issues of the day, and political jokes should not trump political policy discussions.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Municipal health costs solution may be within sight

2011-04-24T08:53:00.000-07:00

Finally, some of our traditionally intimidated politicians are showing a bit of common sense on the issue of excessive health benefits for local public workers unions. We’re not there yet, but we’re moving in the right direction.

The problem is cost sharing, or, in the case of local public workers, lack of sharing. State employees in Massachusetts pay up to 25 percent of their premiums. Private sector works often pay 30 percent. Local workers typically pay a far less. Municipal employees also do far less cost sharing when it comes to deductibles and co-pays than do state workers and the rest of us, for that matter. All this is laid out in The Boston Globe by writer Sean Murphy. Check it out.

Health costs are sucking the oxygen out of municipal budgets, necessitating belt tightening that translates into job loss, larger class size, shortened library hours, and shrinking programs.

Governor Patrick took the first step in his first term by supporting a law permitting cities and towns to buy health insurance for municipal workers through the state’s Group Insurance Commission, which covers all state workers. But the change required the approval of 70 percent of the local union membership to join the GIC, which is a very high threshold and shows why only a couple of dozen communities were able to join. In the first year after joining the GIC, the first 15 communities to do so saved $35 million, according to The Boston Foundation.

Mayor Menino then filed a home rule petition in this legislative session allowing Boston to go forward without union approval. That bill is pending.

Rep. Marty Walsh filed a bill to give local officials and the unions 45 days to come up with acceptable cost-sharing arrangements. If they can’t, it would go to arbitration. That’s a recipe for delay and failure. Local officials grappling with cannibalized budgets are desperate to get their workers into the Group Insurance Commission. Frankly, if the plan is good enough for state workers, why wouldn’t it work for local public employees as well? Globe columnist Scot Lehigh absolutely nailed it in his column on why the arbitration approach is dead wrong.

House Speaker Bob DeLeo gives local officials the right to set copayments and deductibles without union approval but keeps the premium cost sharing on the bargaining table. That’s more power than private sector workers get, but it may be a compromise that can get through the legislative process.

AFL/CIO boss Robert Haynes has linked how legislators vote to union support in the next election. It’s the unions’ right, of course. Still, one hopes that our noble solons have the backbone to keep the plight of municipalities and local taxpayers and residents in mind when they cast their votes on this most important issue.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Recent encounter shows barriers to biker/driver peaceful coexistence

2011-04-22T07:47:00.000-07:00

At about 3:30 Thursday afternoon, a group of boys, older teenagers, on bicycles road swooped down Cambridge Street toward Charles Circle in Boston. Rather than riding single file in one lane, they simply rode ten abreast with little care about the danger they presented, both to drivers and especially to themselves. Note, I said, ten abreast. They were feeling their oats and obviously took pleasure in controlling the street, which as usual was heavily trafficked. There was no way around them, and no way through them.

Most drivers held back and refrained from honking, thinking these crazy kids must soon come to their senses and move over.

But one frustrated driver tried to exploit a gap in the middle of the pack and go through it. It didn’t work out too well. The white car sideswiped a weaving cyclist, who flew in one direction, his bike in the other. The car never stopped or pulled over. Fortunately, the bicycle rider picked himself up, retrieved his bike and his helmet and, somewhat shakily, rode to rejoin the other riders in the pack, who had stopped not far from the Liberty Hotel.

At the very same time, our car radio was reporting the Mayor’s announcement of a bike sharing plan for Boston, putting 600 rentable bikes at 61 stations across the city. It’s to be sort of a two-wheeled Zipcar system, with reasonably priced memberships that, according to City Hall, may generate 100,000 trips a year. Trips under 30 minutes will be free. I’ve seen a bike-sharing plan work effectively in Miami Beach. Other Greater Boston communities have plans similar to Hubway, and they’re a great idea, great for mobility, health, and the environment.

Yesterday afternoon, in a surreal moment, as the bike gang temporarily took over Cambridge Street, Menino’s voice came over the radio in a surreal declaration “the car is no longer king.” Well, maybe so, but the car is still 2000-3000 pounds of steel and a couple of hundred horsepower, and the bike rider, no matter how oblivious or delusional, is a poor match for that. By riding irresponsibly, an errant biker can wreak havoc to himself and others.

Who’s out there teaching bikers that they have to follow the same laws as cars do? Who’s going to enforce the requirement that bikers have to stop at red lights, signal when they’re taking turns and otherwise obey the rules of the road? When was the last time you saw a police officer pulling over a bike rider for an infraction? Do we need licensure tests to make sure that cyclists demonstrate they even know the rules? I hope not. We need Bikers and drivers to co-exist. The only way that will happen is if they both show their respect for each other by abiding by the law.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Ken Burns, the best of PBS, looks to individual and foundation funding for future projects

2011-04-14T08:41:00.000-07:00

Ken Burns, historian, film maker, story teller and recorder of people and events, has become something of an institution himself. His highly acclaimed body of work is gargantuan in scope and impact: The Civil War, Baseball, The War, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea; The West; Lewis & Clark. His films are sought out by teachers and by adults, whose history courses left them hungry for more. The films should be watched by more young people, who, studies show, believe the Americans and Germans fought together against the Russians in WWII.

During the 1980s, Burns met with President Ronald Reagan at a White House reception. The President enthusiastically encouraged his public- private funded Civil War series, noting that the government should prime the pump for projects like this but that the bulk of funding should be private. One wonders where Reagan would be today in the debate over PBS funding.

New England Council members got a sneak preview of “Prohibition” yesterday morning, Burns’ compelling new series that will air on PBS later this year. His planned projects stretch out to 1919 and include The Dust Bowl, The Roosevelts(Teddy, FDR and Eleanor), Vietnam, Country Music and two American biographies (Jackie Robinson and probably Ernest Hemingway). Burns is prolific, smart, and, as he displayed today, personally charming and articulate.

So, what was an intellectual, albeit a celebrity intellectual, doing in the midst of this gathering of corporate types? As Willy Sutton said in response to the question, “Why do you rob banks?” “Because that’s where the money is.” Burns’ remarkable films don’t come cheap. Projects in the pipeline will cost nearly $100 million. And they have to be supported not just by public dollars (e.g., public broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities), but also by corporations and individuals, particularly individual foundations.

Bank of America is the sole corporate sponsor. Public funding is under attack, and foundations that have been traditional sources have been hit by the recession. So, while Burns has already raised some $70 million, he is casting his net wider and is looking to raise the rest. Hence, the formation of The Better Angels Society, dedicated to “helping Ken Burns tell America’s stories.” The Society is seeking “significant” philanthropic donations, as in $100,000-$1,000,000. (A spokesperson confirmed that they wouldn’t turn their backs on smaller amounts. More information is available on www.thebetterangelssociety.org.

Burns’ work is very important, enhancing the ability of a diverse culture to understand what we, whatever our background or political philosophy, have to bind us together. As one retired executive in the audience observed, he intends to stay healthy and take care of himself so he’s around in 2019 to witness the fruits of Ken Burns’ labors.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.