Lynch's FB Page Sparks

Divisiveness aside, the chatter on U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch's campaign FB page has to be good for him. Even Bill Clinton haters are engaged in a simple event invite.

His folk posted a notice that the former President would be in Southie at a fund-raiser leading into a rally. Looking through 22 comments early this morning suggests:

• His people are reading his page
• Many are surprisingly conservative for Boston (but not South Boston)
• Clinton still hits people's buttons

I paste redacted comments below. The last names are gone (available on the FB page). I left the typos and casual language as befits the medium. I looked at the posters' FB pages and plugged in my estimates of age and such as reference.

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What They Thought

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Walter B.
you just lost my support.
Male, late middle age, white. No location. Activities: Going to Concerts, Pistol shooting, Kayaking, Riding My Harley.

Donna B.
Great news!
South Boston
Female, 40ish, white

Bettyanne L.
Good team I would vote for Clinton again in a a second We never had it so good when he was in office
Female, 40ish, white, likes Dropkick Murphys

Stephen F.
Well you will probably be looking at Hillary running, not Bill..
South Boston hometown, claims Chihuahua residence

Donna C.
SCORE!
Female, 40ish, white
Very liberal, works on a state rep campaign

Bettyanne L.
Your right but if I had to do it all over I would vote for him again Get out who we have we need to

John G.
President Clinton? nex tyou will ask OBAMA to Help you. Stepthen you lost my vote. Clinton is the main reason for this recession
No public info on background other than schools (Bunker Hill CC 1989)

Bettyanne L.
Stephen you will do just fine if people decide not to vote for you...You do what you beleive is right thanks to Bush and now Obama (Trash) ..We r seeing the toughest times ever..Hang in there buddy good choice you cant please everyone You will have more for you than against you watch and see...:-)

Joseph M.
Ronald Reagan is why we are in this recession. Clinton didn't do anything to help it along though.

I am definitely voting for Stephen Lynch even if he has a hack like Clinton campaigning for him.
Male, white, 30-40, arts and business degrees. From Dot to Milton

Steve L.
Steve,You have my support and friendship always (AKA Loyalty) BUT I would not attend this event. This"lieing president" was/is a fraud in the John Kerry et al tradition. Good Luck anyway !
Male, 50s, white, works for commonwealth

Bill W.
Who's bringing the cigars?! I agree with Mr. Long. Bill Clinton doesn't have a speck of integrity left.
Male, 40ish, white, Cambridge

Cheryl D.
I'm sure there are lots of us who would go ... its a difficult timeof day though.
Female, 50s, white

Jan V.
There are alot of former presidents that did much worse than what happened with President Clinton...and you cant count them on one hand.

Bill W.
Please , this guy is a disgrace and embarassment to our country.
Male, 50s, white, strong Irish-American identity

Paul.
A bunch of us will get over there early for this one. When a President of the United States comes to Boston to endorse a Congressman in a primary race, it speaks volumes about the type of leader that the Congressm...an is.

This event is not about President Clinton or his political philosphy. It is about Congressman Lynch and his body of work that draws the attention of a former President of the United States. The ability that the Congressman has to convey the thoughts, emotions, and unique character of South Boston and the 9th CD to National leaders including our current President is valuable to this region and I look forward to being there to witness that ability on Thursday.

"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend."
---Thomas Jefferson
Male, white, Foxborough, heavy enough to be indeterminate age, pyrotechnics company

Jan V.
i like him...good luck donna..wish i could be there. Met President Clinton once before, Linda and I at the Park Plaza...its exciting....Course, meeting President Reagan or president bush would have been much more exciting....yuck

Dennis C.
At least Clinton knows what we all have knowed for all these years. Steven Lynch is an honest hard working guy who works in the best interest for all of his district.
Male, 50s, white, South Boston

Bill W.
Ok, how about this my good friends! Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 for being a liar and a pervert! He will always be both of those. He can't take that back. Now , what if he offered your daughter a cigar?! I support Stephen Lynch but... please distance yourself from this pervert.

Sharon B.
SORRY, WILL BE OUT OF TOWN
Female, white, 50ish, Boston

William D.
Bill Clinton was still one of the best presidents we have ever had. Would you rather have the liar Bush back. There are other presidents who have done worse than Clinton. Lewinski was a grown woman she could have said NO, this does n...ot make the man a pervert. Bush should have been impeached for being a liar as well. At least when Clinton lied it didn't cost the country $747.3 billion. (estimated costs of the Iraq War). Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives on December 19, 1998, and acquitted by the Senate on February 12, 1999. The charges were largely partison.
Male, white, Greennville, S.C., hometown Quincy, 30-40

Bill W.
I love the way your liberal blindness blames it on a young female intern. Tell that to your wife. I suppose you have a daughter that you would trust with men of such great integrity. That statement about "no" shows your ignorance and disrespect towards women.And stop hiding behind that term partisan. It's way overused and inaccurate. It's a favorite of another liar friend of the working class, Barney Frank

William D.
I said nothing about blaming it on the intern. All I was stating is that she was a willing partner in the whole scheme of things. Although the way their whole "relationship" was wrong, they were both willing partners. I find it ironi...c that the man who started the whole impeachment procedings mr gingrich, later confessed that he had an affair out of wedlock. Yes what he did was wrong, but you say daughter like she was 5 years old. She was a grown woman, she knew what she was doing. They both did.Partisan may be overused, but it can't be denied. If the House was democratic controlled there would have been no impeachment by the house.

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What Can We Learn?

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Supporters of his Dem primary opponent, Mac D'Alessandro, may wonder how Lynch has been re-elected several times when he seems so conservative. Perhaps the flavor of over half those comments is a good indication.

Everyone commenting seemed to be white and middle aged. In other words, they share Lynch's personal profile.

Most have very strong opinions, particularly related to Clinton. While they are not in the highest voting percentage group, their passions suggest they will bother to cast in the primary. Moreover, that they commented and discussed so actively on just an event posting bodes well for the campaign. He has the attention of this group.

Both Clinton respecters and dissers indicate Lynch support. Two (Walter B. and John G.) are the exceptions, claiming this appearance cost their votes. One could surmise in a month and a half they would find other emotional bases for staying with Lynch.

Lynch is older than D'Alessandro. He isn't the savviest new-media user. Yet, his FB site seems effective. Mac has loyal supporters and a cheering section on his version, but he can't count on the Lynch campaign's incompetence.

Disclaimer: I have noted here and on Left Ahead! that we have invited Lynch to join us for a podcast repeatedly. The campaign has so far blown us off. We did get Mac though and hope for a bookend before the primary. Of course, we also hope for a Dem-candidate debate or two.

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Tags: massmarrier, Stephen Lynch, Bill Clinton, D'Alessandro, Facebook, Left Ahead!

D.C. SSM Ruling May Inspire

The most brutal tool in anti-gay/anti-equality box disappeared — at least temporarily — last week in D.C. The District's highest judiciary, the Court of Appeals, rejected a ballot initiative aimed at overturning legalized same-sex marriage there.

Delightfully enough, the strongly worded 81-page judgment in the 5 to 4 decision came down firmly against discrimination. Wingers have been gaming the system for some time using spurious let-the-people-vote ploys. This court didn't bite and didn't buy.

My favorite legal expert, NYU Professor Arthur S. Leonard, provides analysis. The crux is in the decision where the majority write they are bound by anti-discrimination law as well as Council authority:

Because appellants’ proposed initiative would authorize, or have the effect of authorizing, discrimination on a basis prohibited by the Human Rights Act, it was not a proper subject of initiative. Therefore, the Board acted lawfully in refusing to accept the initiative on that basis. (page 53)

The front man for the anti-SSM effort in D.C. is Bishop Henry R. Jackson Jr. of the Hope Christian Church, Beltsville, MD. Not surprisingly, he says he is a conservative Republican. His group's first effort was to stay implementation of SSM in March after the District Council had approved it. Courts denied that.

The legal beagles and funds for this quixotic effort are from the odious Alliance Defense Fund.

This is not precedent and not binding outside of the District. However, with other recent judicial and legislative trends, it suggests a growing courage and fairness among the usually timid judiciary. The laughable claim of wingers of activist judges legislating from the bench invariably comes only when they don't get their absolute way from courts. Having tried lawmakers, referenda/ballot initiatives and courts, there is much keening when they can't bludgeon the other side.

Here, they are likely to try and to fail appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. Unfortunately for them, as a Washington Post editorial suggests, this is not a U.S. Constitutional issue, rather a local one. When Second-Amendment folk got the D.C. handgun ban overturned, it was on the national-interest. Lackaday for the anti-SSM folk, as the editors put it, "There is no constitutional issue of national import or circuit split in the Jackson case. The court should decline to hear the matter and respect the District's right to home rule. "

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Naming Evils Tames Them

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Here indeed may be the D.C. Court of Appeals significance. The anti-SSM folk scream for states rights in defining marriage when it suits them and not when it doesn't.

The position of the MA Family Institute in their latest email is:

Until the District gives its people a voice, Bishop Harry Jackson's team is determined to bring the issue to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, the next--and final stop--in preserving the principle of self-governance that this city is supposed to symbolize. Do what you can to help Stand for Marriage and Alliance Defense Fund fight this agenda--starting with prayer for their team.

Prayer won't be enough here. Despite their bag of states who started one-man/one-woman marriage definition laws and amendments even before MA legalized SSM, even they tacitly admit the legislative and judicial trends here. The larger world as well as various U.S. States and now the District are edging toward individual liberties and honoring equality over discrimination — even for those homosexuals.

It may be decades before Texas and Florida allow marriage equality. Yet here and there and over there, we continue to bend toward justice in that arc so aptly described by Rev. Theodore Parker. The brutal tool of the emotionally founded ballot initiative has caused terrific personal, political and economic damage. I delight when a court or legislature limits these to justifiable purposes instead of discrimination.

Naming evils, as the D.C. Court of Appeals did, helps tame them. Moreover, courts and legislatures are finding the guts to say the obvious — there's no benefit to different-sex marriage from forbidding SSM. When anti-equality folk say they aren't bigots because they want to discriminate against SS couples, they increasingly hear, "Yes, you are."

Tags: massmarrier, same-sex marriage, marriage equality, D.C., Court of Appeals, Supreme Court

Small Biz, Small Beer

Our Great Recession should prompt us to shelve one of our great fantasies — that U.S. small businesses are still the driver and salvation of our economy.

I confess that in my long-ago days at Inc. Magazine, I would write and say how wonderful our readers were. I would also let the sources run off about how their companies and their industries were unique, in problems, opportunities and most of all in contributions to the nation. That was all delusion, fluff and fnord.

On one hand today though, MSM, bloggers and some government sorts have started saying the obvious aloud. That is American businesses have not carried their load and have not done their part in healing our economy. They haven't hired, expanded or even tried to return to previous employment levels.

The most obvious signs of this are the multi-billions and even trillions of cash big companies keep warm in their nests. Despite frighteningly low interest rates of return, big companies are worse than banks at risking anything. They are absurd arguments that would support Scientology's engram hypothesis. They've been burned and are damned if they'll risk anything, even if it puts more money in more hands to buy more stuff to grow the country.

Let's be plain about small businesses though, whether you use the 15, 50 or 500 employee benchmark. With a few exceptions, they have not stepped up. They are not showing the Inc. or even the John Wayne ideals. They are not showing guts, risk taking, concern for fellow Americans or any of that.

We hear much whining about banks not lending money for small-biz use. Instead what appears to have happened is that banks understandably are more demanding of applications than when they were fools lending a decade ago.

As a result, small business sorts may have to present a more detailed and grounded business plan for a loan and even shop around for banks that are sick of their money sitting stagnate. If that's too much to ask of business owners, perhaps they need to give their companies to their kids or employees who might show some gumption.

There's some fascinating reports on what small businesses are not doing as from:

• National Association for Business Economics (just maybe a slight increase in hiring)
• Inc. (only the most successful, biggest of the small, will be hiring)
• Small Business Administration (2008 report on troubles and how small-biz can deal)
• Two views of whether small biz will step up any time soon
• The White House thoughts on bribing (my word) small business with new tax credits to help

The current status remains. Businesses, including our allegedly heroic small ones, have not done their parts. They want more customers, more orders, more cash flowing to them. They are not risking, not hiring, and not acting to their billing.

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Tags: massmarrier, economy, employment, hiring, recession, bankers, small business

Paywalls as Tombstones

Some newspapers seem intent on hugging themselves to death, diminishing their audiences to nothing. After a couple of decades of watching the internet creep its way into every aspect of our lives, publishers big and small have run about flapping their figurative skirts squealing they had to monetize every aspect of their businesses.

Stupidly enough, this recently has turned often to paywalls, charging online visitors to see anything or read a single article. In a few cases, like the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal — whose articles can help people make money — they are successful. (I went on about that six months ago.)

In the main though, it's just dumb in almost all cases. They end up decreasing their audience, making their properties less desirable to advertisers and subscribers alike, and trivializing and minimizing their content.

As the ultimate print alter kaker Rupert Murdoch continues with plans to put paywalls everywhere he can. Little publishers more and more frequently seem to identify with him instead of their readers.

I've attended video god Steve Garfield's Boston Media Makers regularly for a few years. One lesson he's learned and repeatedly hits us with is to share the small to get big benefits. In his case, he is the nation's leading video blogger, author of the new definitive how-to book on it (Get Seen), consults for pay widely, and is a popular speaker. He gives it away to get those paying gigs.

On his site and others, including Rocket Boom and YouTube, he is a relentless and brilliant self-promoter. Going to any of his areas for free video makes viewers hungry. Some then pay him to make videos or teach them how. Others buy his book.

He decidedly does not live in terror of giving something for free. Unlike too many publishers, he lives in this century.

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Not Yours!

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My most recent awareness of this came when I wanted to check something on two papers' sites. One was local, the Winchester Star, and one from my distant past, the Hampshire Review in Romney, West Virginia. Both have installed highly restrictive paywalls...which is to laugh. Both need to look elsewhere instead of driving away their few readers.

For the Star, click on any headline and get a demand for a subscription instead of a view. That would be $24 for a year of online access, a more outrageous $60 for the digital edition by email, and the high end as befitting a privileged community of $88 for the physical paper in your mailbox. For the RE-vue as they say down there, you can get a truncated version of the weekly as a PDF for $13.95, the whole thing as a PDF for $24.95, or the actual paper mailed for $36.50. You can also send an email to start an order of $3 for a single, specified week's issue.

I have a bit of history with the Review. I spent my summers and holidays in Romney with my grandparents. Every Thursday morning before dawn, the egg and butter lady as well as the Review guy would open the unlocked back door to the kitchen to put their deliveries on the kitchen stool. The paper was a nickel. Everyone got it.

I also knew the now editor, Sallie Ailes See. She inherited the editorship from her father John, who got it from his father-in-law. She is invested literally and figuratively in the paper. She was not an ambitious or rapacious child and even had a full career as a public school teacher before her father retired and handed off the paper.

In both cases of the small papers, they just don't know what to do. They don't get it. Further, I see that the Review expects its audience to send it news, news tips, school news, business news, photos and videos. They might use them, but won't pay for them. That's the old one-way paywall and a terrible business model.

In fairness, neither community has breathtaking demographics. They serve small pubics with limited advertising potential and pretty much fixed subscription potential locally. Winchester's rich, but wee.

One approach to real or feared advertising declines would be to offset these with fees for online access. They can look longingly at the FT and WSJ, extrapolating their own increased cash flow. What the big financial kids have though is something to sell, something that offers a tangible return. Get the premium content from the financial rags, make some money and applaud yourself for smart investment. Spend anything at all for the local rag and you know you are a sap.

Of course in the relative bubble of a wealthy suburb or that of orchard country, parochialism is expected and seems desirable to many. Visitors may be tolerated, if viewed suspiciously, whether they arrive physically or digitally.

Registration and even cookie-based counts are a manageable bit of pain. Those mechanisms do require a little setup and management. However, they really aren't more trouble for the publisher than buying a turnkey payment system or paying a web developer to do the same. The differences are in philosophy.

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Fear of the Free

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The puerile fear that someone somewhere might somehow get something for free underlies much of paywall strategy. Phrasing it as, "we have to monetize this," may let the publisher pretend this is strictly a business decision. However, you can also look it like a restaurant charging for a bread tray or condiments. The small costs of doing business are often the seamless amenities that take a customer's visit comfortable. As such, they are much cheaper than advertising or other ways of attracting and keeping customers.

The localized dailies and weeklies are bound to fail in their ham-fisted paywall attempts. We can sympathize as they envy papers who can justify fee-to-view models, at least for their premium content. Yet the fact remains that the little guys are being lazy.

Think Steve Garfield. He gives away plenty, daily, and enough to get huge audiences. As one indication, he has 21, 462 followers as of this morning on his Twitter feed. Those are people he an point to all his content, free and pay.

If a Winchester Star or Hampshire Review wants to play this game, its publisher and editor can't dig back down into the same old dirty bag. These papers have to offer new and better products. They have to give away the online version and entice the audience with products they want to buy.

Local gossip is fun and we all enjoy it, but it's not enough for $24 or $88 a year. Where are the videos, features, maybe software or beyond? Publishers need to stop hugging themselves to death. Make it worth people's time and money to buy the premium content they won't be able to find anywhere else.

Get with the program!

Tags: massmarrier, harrumpher, newspapers, paywall, advertising, internet, Winchester Star, Hampshire Review, FT, WSJ, Steve Garfield

Lefty Legal Guy Calls for DOMA Appeal

My favorite legal analyst, NYU Law professor Arthur S. Leonard, has kept on the decisions invalidating DOMA in our U.S. District Court. He makes a strong, multi-pronged argument for the Obama administration to appeal.

A key component is that until either ruling voiding the Defense of Marriage Act withstands appeals at the federal level, its findings are not precedent for other cases. He also explains why the limited pleading in the Gill case will remain restricted to the plaintiff's filing unless it wins on appeal.

A bit scarier is the call for the feds to push for clarity on the 10th Amendment finding in the court here. As Leonard writes, "Judge Tauro's reasoning, while well-intentioned and reaching a happy result in this case, does not stand on firm precedential grounds, and seems to fly in the face of Supremacy Clause jurisprudence that goes unmentioned. " With many different laws reliant on the administration's presumption that federal needs trump states', that can't go unsettled.

Leonard has little sympathy with those who yell for Obama to let the rulings stand. I also wonder whether they have a strong overlap with those in the LGBT and lefty communities who have been terrified for any aspect of same-sex marriage to go to federal courts.

Instead of begging for a bye on the appeal, Leonard would like the appeal to go ahead. Meanwhile and more important to him would be lobbying Congress to repeal all of DOMA. Both houses have bills doing that in the works.

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Tags: massmarrier, Tauro, Gill, First Circuit, analysis, appeal, Arthur Leonard

Tobin Heads to New Battleground

As we expected, Boston City Councilor John Tobin was a good guest on Left Ahead today. He spoke openly and fully on nearly everything, personal and political alike.

Head over to Left Ahead through the link above to play or download the show or click here. It runs about an hour.

He's remarkably straight ahead. His only equivocation is whether he'll pursue his nearly life-long (since first grade) drive to become Boston's mayor. He honestly doesn't seem to know whether moving from city hall to VP of city and community affairs with Northeastern University will change that.

He did speak on numerous issues, including:

• How the mayor and other councilors took his resignation
• How he and two long-term friends dickered on which would run for his seat
• Duties of universities and other non-profits to Boston
• Free Wi-Fi for citizens as a civil-rights issue
• Why universities should adopt one or more public schools
• PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes)
• His early political-race loses
• How he and Mayor Tom Menino settled disputes over the years
• Who would tell him when he had stupid ideas

Tobin's move promises much. Short-term, there's the excitement of a special election (not yet scheduled) with numerous challengers, including the Tobin-endorsed Matt O'Malley. Then in short order, I expect to hear Tobin being as active and innovative down on Huntington Avenue as he has been in town.

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Tags: massmarrier, Boston, Northeastern, John Tobin, city council, podcast, Left Ahead

Tobin Talks Beyond City Hall

This podcast should be fun. Boston's most prolific and innovative city councilor, John Tobin joins us on Left Ahead! for our weekly show. It streams live on BlogTalkRadio at 2:30 p.m. Eastern.

You can hit LA or BTR later to listen or download the show. Oh, yeah, and it will be our iTunes area as well.

As the councilor who seemingly does not sleep — full-tilt in city hall, running comedy clubs, active hubby and dad, church volunteer — he has long been the big idea guy. He proposed the most and most innovative legislation. In fact, he became famous for doing Boston versions of things the General Court should have done, sometimes shaming the big kids on the hill into action.

I"m sure we'll talk about the scramble to fill his seat, plus what his absence means. He'll surely tell us what this may do to his long-held mayoral ambitions. Of course, we'd love to know what he sees for Northeastern's role in the city, including the implications for the other major schools in this academic area to Cambridge and beyond.

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Tags: massmarrier, Boston, Northeastern, John Tobin, city council, podcast, Left Ahead

Tobin or Not Tobin

The Ula Café in upper JP has become one of City Councilor John Tobin's favorite constituent meeting joints. So that was an apt location for chatting with Matt O'Malley this morning.

I'd known him before in his MassEquality life as well as his recent job running Steve Grossman's campaign for MA treasurer. Now that Tobin has resigned starting next month to take a VP slot at Northeastern, O'Malley was first to say he was running for the district spot.

Tobin's shift and O'Malley's run have caught the local imagination mightily. David Bernstein over at Talking Politics seems to run one or two related items daily. The local papers have kept pace. In fact, I got to Ula first and picked up Bay Windows, The Bulletin, and the JP Gazette to skim. Each had a front-page article on them. Bay Windows had good background, centered on O'Malley's time as MassEquality political director. The print Gazette addressed O'Malley's likely contest with Tobin's chief of Staff Dave Isberg. Now the online update talks up the additional candidacy of former councilor and mayoral candidate Maura Hennigan's brother, James Hannigan III, for Tobin's seat.

It seems Isberg decided not to run, contemporary with Tobin endorsing O'Malley. The other John, that is At-Large Councilor John Connolly, also endorsed O'Malley. The Johns are unquestionably the legislative leaders of the body and their blessings should be quite a boost to O'Malley.

Over at Left Ahead, we'll have O'Malley on shortly. If Hennigan stays in, we'll likely invite him as well. The Tobin seat is key for several reasons. First, it covers two very active voter neighborhoods, JP and West Roxbury. Second, Tobin has been tireless in constituent services and communications as well as proposing legislation.

Today was a re-framing meeting. O'Malley had settled into Grossman's campaign guy for me and now he's a stand-alone. By the bye, he claims that Grossman understood, gave him his full support and was well situated with existing staff for the race to the September primary.

O'Malley does not shy away from such topics as the JP/WR differences. Among the most obvious is JP's 50% white residents to WR's 84%. The latter tend to be more politically and socially conservative in contrast to JP. He says he has lived in both, knows both, and sees no reason for anyone to play one neighborhood off another.

While some councilors dine off, or rather get re-elected repeatedly just off, constituent services, O'Malley intends to stick is neck out with positions and platforms. He did note that he has directed constituent services, including a stint with a D.C. councilor doing just that. However, he will be talking up his planks of education, public safety, environment and property taxes. He'll join us on Left Ahead when he's ready to detail is proposals in each area.

Not surprisingly, his tack sounds like Grossman's. The would-be MA treasurer came on our podcast with a full platform of specifics and a call for an expanded activism by the office. O'Malley appears prepared to do the same for himself. The this-is-what-I-got-show-yours attitude should liven up the campaign for the special election (not yet scheduled).

We local wonks have not gotten over Tobin's walking away from his well-entrenched and active council role. Particularly as he made it plain he want(ed)(s) to be Boston mayor and that he had intended to run in 2013. Being a university VP would make that between hard and impossible.

On the other hand, O'Malley has long coveted a council seat, and run for one twice. Tobin just couldn't pass up more money, a more relaxed schedule, and knowing him, I suspect a change from nine years of a certain sameness. Amusingly though, Tobin still runs comedy clubs and shows, is an active hubby and dad, and who knows what else. He may not know how to goof off in the way ordinary mortals do.

For his part, O'Malley couldn't pass up what is likely an excellent shot at playing the newer, younger, and who knows, maybe even better John Tobin.

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Tags: massmarrier, Boston, Matt O'Malley, John Tobin, city council

Lawyerly Analysis on DOMA Case

As always, Arthur Leonard, NYU law professor, does not disappoint. His analysis and projection of the twin U.S. District rulings invalidating DOMA are here. My comments on the rulings with links to them are here.

He provides a bit more background than other sources. Plus and of high interest to me, he breaks down the appeals sked and some of the players.

The feds have 60 days from July 8th to appeal, that would be the first full week of September. Possibilities before then include:

1. Congress repealing DOMA, making its invalidation moot.
2. The Justice Department would try what failed in California, asking for a stay of implementation because legislation on the act was pending. Leonard does not think that effort in the DOMA case is far enough along to convince any judge.
3. Justice could do nothing and let DOMA be invalidated without further fighting. I figure that's logical but not likely to happen with such an emotionally and politically loaded subject.
4. Justice could appeal to the First Circuit Court of Appeals (that includes Rhode Island, Maine and New Hampshire).

Leonard knows of those folk and breaks down the robed ones.

There are six active judges on the circuit, and three senior judges who continue to sit on some cases. Of the active judges, two were appointed by Clinton (Democrat) and one each by Presidents Ronald Reagan (Republican), George H.W. Bush (Republican), George W. Bush (Republican), and Barack Obama (Democrat). Thus, the active circuit judges are evenly divided among Democratic and Republican appointees. The three senior judges were all appointed by Republican Presidents: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. The 1^st Circuit Court of Appeals does not have an extensive history of rulings on LGBT rights issues.

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Tags: massmarrier, Tauro, Gill, First Circuit, analysis, appeal, Arthur Leonard

Double Chomp Out of DOMA

The Defense of Marriage Act got a long-overdue double dope slap yesterday in Boston. U.S. District Court Judge Joseph L. Tauro declared parts of DOMA violated the U.S. Constitution.

He found in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management that it violated due process and thus the Fifth Amendment. In the linked Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. Department of Health and Human Services, he found that it arbitrarily federalized a state power, thus violating the Tenth Amendment.

You can find the basics, the LITE coverage, in today's Globe. A beefier piece with some analysis and appeals projections appears in the NYTimes. Personally, I look forward to NYU Law School Professor Arthur S. Leonard's take it on when he gets a chance to write it up on his site.

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What's Next

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To get down to it, we speculate on appeals. Clearly the anti-LGBT forces will not slink to their lairs in awe of Tauro's legal reasoning. Even though the fairly timorous Obama administration mounted a weak defense of this openly discriminatory act, it did something. Now we can expect it to appeal each of these decisions.

Tauro wrote his dual decisions to clarify the underlying issues and make it harder for First Circuit Appeals judges to miss his points. He danced a bit on the federal powers issue, but in the main he called it accurately.

Amusingly enough, he slashed, burned and flushed the pathetic emotional arguments of many anti-gay sorts. They were not specific government defense claims, but Tauro cited the crazy ones, like marriage is only for procreation, and stomped on them with specifics.

We can nevertheless expect the feds to come at his judgment with assertions that their duty to mind our dollars trumps the Constitution. That would be in such cases as where a legally married veteran wants his husband buried beside him in a federal cemetery. Massachusetts OK'ed that, but the government says it will strip millions from the commonwealth's money if it wasted federal dollars by providing this benefit when DOMA is in force.

There were no state-to-state comity issues in these two cases. The parts of DOMA that permit, even encourage, states to reject another state's legal marriages presently remain. However, the huge questions of whether the feds can use its big money stick to deprive spouses and children of homosexual couples for no good reason was the basis of Tauro's decisions yesterday.

There will be appeals. There will be high-volume emotionalism by winger media and groups. There will be a year or two at least of regrouping and re-arguing. The huge issue of whether the feds can mess in domestic relations at the state level will be in the middle.

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What He Wrote

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Tauro is a crisp, reasoned writer. He is not one of those cowardly judges who writes in the this-but-that tone. For example, among his many powerful statements is one with two peachy-keen citations (see Gill, page 37):

In sum, this court is soundly convinced, based on the foregoing analysis, that the government’s proffered rationales, past and current, are without “footing in the realities of the subject addressed by [DOMA].” And “when the proffered rationales for a law are clearly and manifestly implausible, a reviewing court may infer that animus is the only explicable basis. [Because] animus alone cannot constitute a legitimate government interest,” this court finds that DOMA lacks a rational basis to support it.

He lists several places in both decisions in which the clear intent of DOMA is such discrimination.

To DOMA section 3, the judge ripped into the circuitous wording. The act admits states can determine who's married in each. Yet, it claims a Congressional, national interest in "...defend(ing) the institution of traditional heterosexual marriage." Tauro seems disgusted at the lack of scholarship in making sweeping claims for that alleged traditional marriage.

Moreover, he concludes (Gill p. 24):

But even if Congress believed at the time of DOMA’s passage that children had the best chance at success if raised jointly by their biological mothers and fathers, a desire to encourage heterosexual couples to procreate and rear their own children more responsibly would not provide a rational basis for denying federal recognition to same-sex marriages. Such denial does nothing to promote stability in heterosexual parenting. Rather, it “prevent[s] children of same-sex couples from enjoying the immeasurable advantages that flow from the assurance of a stable family structure,” when afforded equal recognition under federal law.

On the next page, he adds:

But more generally, this court cannot discern a means by which the federal government’s denial of benefits to same-sex spouses might encourage homosexual people to marry members of the opposite sex. And denying marriage-based benefits to same-sex spouses certainly bears no reasonable relation to any interest the government might have in making heterosexual marriages more secure.

What remains, therefore, is the possibility that Congress sought to deny recognition to same-sex marriages in order to make heterosexual marriage appear more valuable or desirable. But to the extent that this was the goal, Congress has achieved it “only by punishing same-sex couples who exercise their rights under state law.”

Repeatedly, he returns to equal protection. The product of the panic pot of the last decade, DOMA far exceeded federal authority with spurious claims of national need and interest. To wit, on page 28, Tauro writes that "the government's argument assumes that Congress has some interest in uniform definition of marriage for purposes of determining federal rights, benefits, and privileges. There is no such interest."

I suspect this will be the core of appeals against yesterday's ruling. The feds have over 1,100 regulations and laws that provide benefits based on marital status. Tauro ruled that at least as far as Massachusetts is concerned, the feds suddenly have to be fair and recognize marriages in SSM states for benefits pruposes. An appeal would necessarily require the government to say it really has a need to continue to discriminate openly against legally marriws same-sex couples. I expect it to do so.

Underlying the Gill case too is the well-established law and case law that the U.S. Constitution "neither knows nor toleratsd classes among citizens" (page 19). That is particularly damning in that DOMA exists to create just such an artificial distinction. In that, Tauro provides detailed analysis and concludes (page 21) "...this court is convinced that 'there exists no fairly conceivable set of facts that could ground a rational relationship' between DOMA and a legitimate government objective. DOMA, therefore, violates core constitutional principles of equal protection."

Similarly with the Commonwealth case, the issues are much narrower, but the tenor now familiar. Our AG sued to assert that DOMA forced MA into a conflict with its laws by mandating that it discriminate against and set up classes among its citizens. Here, medical benefits as well as those such as funereal ones fell under such mandates.

AG Martha Coakley charged that the feds far exceeded their power in forcing the state to discriminate against its legally married citizens or lose millions in federal funds. We common folk might call such action extortion; she did not.

The gist of the MA argument is that the states get all the powers that the Constitution does not assign to the federal government, particularly as covered in the Tenth Amendment. Trying to find some, any, justification, the federal government argued that it was only trying to spend our money wisely, so it had such powers that affect benefits, including who is married, regardless of state law.

In his judgment on this case, Tauro included a long passage (Commonwealth, page 25) from a case that specifically defined this spending tack:

In South Dakota v. Dole,136 the Supreme Court held that “Spending Clause legislation must satisfy five requirements: (1) it must be in pursuit of the ‘general welfare,’ (2) conditions of funding must be imposed unambiguously, so states are cognizant of the consequences of their participation, (3) conditions must not be ‘unrelated to the federal interest in particular national projects or programs’ funded under the challenged legislation, (4) the legislation must not be barred by other constitutional provisions, and (5) the financial pressure created by the conditional grant of federal funds must not rise to the level of compulsion.

The feds have played loose with this approach before. They are invested in such control and I suspect the Tenth Amendment issue will be the hardest fight. Times are tight and they may well claim fiscal prudence. Unfortunately, if they try to do it both by setting us citizen classes and by taking prohibited powers, they have a damned hard sell.

In Commonwealth (page 27), the judgment is unequivocal:

And so, as DOMA imposes an unconstitutional condition on the receipt of federal funding, this court finds that the statute contravenes a well-established restriction on the exercise of Congress’ spending power. Because the government insists that DOMA is founded in this federal power and no other, this court finds that Congress has exceeded the scope of its authority.

On the next page, he concludes:

That DOMA plainly intrudes on a core area of state sovereignty—the ability to define the marital status of its citizens—also convinces this court that the statute violates the Tenth Amendment.

Congressional sorts seem as a group to hate to hear they may not be the bosses of the world. Yet, that's one role of federal courts, including the SCOTUS.

The decision gets a bit historical on this issue. Tauro cites pre-founding-fathers colonial control over marital statue (page 30). He also calls directly to the current SCOTUS on the next page with, "That the Supreme Court, over the past century, has repeatedly offered family law as an example of a quintessential area of state concern, also persuades this court that marital status determinations are an attribute of state sovereignty."

In fact, Tauro finds that DOMA actually strips Massachusetts of statehood, that is its ability "to fulfill its role in the Union" (pp. 33-34). The extortion-like call to do DOMA or lose millions by not discriminating was the core of Coakley's original filing.

Tauro wraps up this angle with (page 36):

This court has determined that it is clearly within the authority of the Commonwealth to recognize same-sex marriages among its residents, and to afford those individuals in same-sex marriages any benefits, rights, and privileges to which they are entitled by virtue of their marital status. The federal government, by enacting and enforcing DOMA, plainly encroaches upon the firmly entrenched province of the state, and, in doing so, offends the Tenth Amendment. For that reason, the statute is invalid.

He did his best to frame the appeals. He seems to have left out detailed discussions of other areas where the feds have nibbled away at states' rights in determining such benefits as immigration permission. We can be sure that any vigorous appeal will claim necessity in snatching those rights.

He managed to keep very complex law to under 40 pages in each decision. He telegraphed and then iterated the points he'd make. Tauro left little parsing room. The game is afoot.

Friday Update: The Washington Post runs a follow-up saying the Department of Justice is poring over Tauro's rulings and that other AGs may be considering their own DOMA challenges. Particularly as this goes to an appeal in the First Circuit, the principles become larger and more relevant to other states, such as the other four plus D.C. who have legalized SSM.

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Tags: massmarrier, Tauro, Gill, federal court, DOMA, NYTimes, Globe

DOMA Doomed (Temp.)

Delightfully, but not astonishingly, the U.S. District Court here in the gay-marriage-friendly commonwealth finds the obvious. Sure enough, DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) violated equal protection.

Federal Judge Joseph Tauro agreed with the MA AG contention that DOMA spits on the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That it, it took powers of the states and federalized them.

As recapped in Bay Windows, this was a double-down day, in the Gill case, Tauro also found that the same invidious act violated due process (5th Amendment). Honest to God, the scofflaw gay-bashers need to get a handle on history!

I'll go into details as I see the decisions. Meanwhile, be sure that even though the tepidly moderate Obama administration has little stomach for defending DOMA, this is likely to head up to the Supremes. If the SCOTUS decides to take this, we could finally get the action a brave President would have demanded two years ago.

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Tags: massmarrier, GLAD, Gill, federal court, DOMA, Bay Windows, Globe

Time for Church Credibility

Even my Roman Catholic friends have stopped. From our distances, there's no resolution to that church's self-created crises. Every chance archbishops all the way up have had to be wise, honest, and well, Christian, on big issues, they have failed.

Well, the Pope's not stupid is one stereotypical comment, as though position proves prudence. Alas, the big guy behaving stupidly repeatedly at length damns by deed.

As a non-Catholic, I had no intention of drawing any blood here...at least until the Belgium thingummy. The official Vatican reaction to raids there on RC offices as part of criminal probes rouses me though. It illustrates too clearly how troubled the thinking of the church hierarchy remains. They seem willing from Benedict down to destroy it all.

About sexual abuse by RC clerics, it has too long been obvious that nothing works until priests and nuns face any necessary criminal charges and penalties. The Vatican's attitude that some expanded form of the uniquely U.S. manifestation of separation of church and state protects their pedophiles is worse than stupid. In an era when the only growing areas for the church, as in Africa, demand such rights as marriage for clergy, there's much more at stake than keeping perverts out of jail or trying to minimize civil judgments.

A detailed history of the Vatican's role in this all appears in today's NYTimes. If you click that, be sure to also visit the interactive timeline on the current Pope's involvement.

Of prime importance in the article is that the authority and mechanisms from dealing with clerical abuses have been in place since 1922 — just not used. Moreover, bishops from various countries specified problems general and specific as well as spoke and wrote calls for action...before everything arrived where we are now.

So, there you have it, the Vatican down through at least archbishops stakes out a position that church law is all that is required. Unfortunately for this position, we aren't square in criminal and civil terms if a prelate counsels a transgressor or reassigns a child abuser. There should bes no wink, wink allowed.

With the figurative flapping of cassocks and search for smelling salts, RC officials decried Belgian judicial officials seizing national-archive records and even police searching two cardinals' tombs for hidden documents. In the end though, it may be particularly good that the Belgian authorities were so heavy handed. This could well highlight the limits of church authority over criminal conduct.

Here's a huge religious organization that has failed to police itself for centuries. When we hear their top administrators say, "Trust us. We have this under control," even my Catholic chum roll their eyes.

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Tags: massmarrier, Vatican, Belgium, child abuse

Flow-Through Icelandic Marriage

A quiet beneficiary of Iceland's new legalization of same-sex marriage was proponent Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir, Her relationship's legal upgrade suggests what will be in store in numerous U.S. states when they get their acts together.

A couple of weeks after the law change, she and long-term partner Jónina Léosdóttir filed for the automatic change from registered partnership to married. The request was validated 6/28. That was that...no scene, no ceremony and apparently no cake.

Despite the bizarre winger claims that SSM will disrupt the world and cause chaos at local registrars and their equivalent, the Icelandic example should be the norm here when and where it becomes licit. This is someone's business because Sigurdardóttir is head of state. Here's hoping the same happens soon at a state near you.

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Tags: massmarrier, Iceland, religion, same-sex marriage

Menino Takes a Knee

Well, if not hot gossip, it's at least warm. Sure enough, Boston Mayor Tom Menino won't be street cycling short-term.

I get to say that two city officials have told me that his knee rework has not healed as fast as he wants. Despite his promise last month at the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Avenue bike lanes, he may not be back on the saddle for weeks or months.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally met neighbor Daniel Linskey. (That is another good tale — more on it later.) He used to be Menino's driver and is still a good friend. He also happens to be the number one police officer, the chief superintendent.

I mentioned to him that I had been trying to get eminence gris et bleu to ride into his/our city hall from Hyde Park. Now that I've moved here, I figure I can inspire him to do more than tool around Readville. I ask him every time we meet.

However, Linskey said that he doesn't think Menino will be riding soon. In fact, his knee is still troublesome and the mayor and Police Commissioner Ed Davis swim instead. That apparently is part of Menino's therapy.

Then today at Bike Friday, Boston Bicycle Coordinator Nicole Freedman (shown in red to his blue) confirmed the delay. She said he has been limping around the fifth floor. However, she also said that he tells her he misses biking and will be back on two wheels as soon as he can.

There you have it, cycling fans, confirmation from two sources. That's about as good as hearsay gets.

I for one look forward to Da Mare's return to cycling. He is certainly a cycling champion in the sense of advocacy. My invitation to ride into town from our shared neighborhood remains.

Tags: massmarrier, cycling, Bike Week, Menino, Freedman

Polito Sets Off Wee IED

Plus and minus for MA treasurer candidate Karyn Polito. She tweeted today a teaser about the lousy state budget process. Then the link to her full piece on her website wasn't full at all.

On the plus side, she's willing to kick up some dust (even if there's only dust and no hard stuff). On the minus one, there's posturing and no content to her vague accusations. Today's bomb-ette looks like her flack wrote it and doesn't add to a LITE website. However, this is a key race with deep implications. If such shenanigans bring demands that she explain her vague, inflammatory rhetoric, maybe we'll get a debate going.

As it is, the two Dem candidates, the Steves Grossman and Murphy, and are too little known to voters. With one, Grossman, promising to remake the office into an activist one creating thousands of MA jobs, one, Murphy, saying he's the only one with adequate financial background to make key decisions, and one, Polito, saying she's the only fiscal conservative who can safeguard our billions, voters should know the candidates and office.

By the bye, you can hear the three say this and more on:

• Grossman on Left Ahead!
• Murphy on Left Ahead!
• Polito on Left Ahead!
• Grossman of BNN
• Murphy on BNN

I'm sure Chris Lovett will get to Polito very soon and complete is treasurer book shelf from his side.

We really need these three on stage and also in a studio with cameras whirring. Their positions are distinctive. The treasurer slot doesn't open often. We have that chance to restructure the office a little...or a lot.

Meanwhile, on the stump and at his site, Grossman has maintained his rabbit position. He started first and has considerable content in platform and intent. In terms of newish media, Murphy somehow got screwed out of a web presence with a still bare and barely functioning site. He does, however, make a sincere and substantial pitch in person.

To Polito's spongy attack, read it. The entire one-paragraph thingummy is:

STATEMENT OF KARYN POLITO ON THE STATE BUDGET

"The budget is held together with baling wire and bubble gum. Instead of dealing honestly with our fiscal problems, this budget puts off the hard and necessary decisions that confront us until after the next election. The truth is the spending cuts aren't big enough and there's too many one-time gimmicks and accounting tricks. The majority party is obviously backing themselves into another major tax increase next year by not cutting far enough. We need deeper, across-the-board spending cuts, and we need them now or we risk a much larger debt burden, higher taxes and even bigger cuts down the road."

Again, I appreciate any effort to draw attention to this crucial race. There's no content here other than the winger wheeze that Dems never make enough cuts. In fact, I'm surprised that she didn't plug in wasteful spending somewhere. Perhaps she figures that is implicit when she mentioned the majority party.

There's nothing of substance, but at least it opens up the right to ask, "What exactly, what specifically do you mean?" That's a start.

Let the debates begin!

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Tags: massmarrier, elections, Massachusetts, treasurer, Polito, Grossman, Murphy, debates

Baker Barking Badly

Let us watch to see how Charlie Baker's disingenuousness plays. Today's WRKO debate-like hour with him, Gov. Patrick, and Tim Cahill was more of the interviews he's been giving. In those, he plays plutocrat, sanitizing his professional history and claiming that if he thought of something, it's the world's fault they didn't make it happen.

A pivot for this race for governor will certainly be how well Baker's routine plays with voters. I don't buy it and as regular readers know, of the three I'm for Patrick.

I was thinking though that the first trio tussle would be where Baker rose above his recent act. He may be too gelled for that.

He came by his flat and aristocratic manner predictably. The first born of wealthy parents and Harvard grad, he seemed to have grown up with class trappings. Coming with that background is similarly expecting deference and the general crassness of speaking over people and shouting them down — as substitutes for superior reasoning.

That's the way the RKO show went and I tuned in and completed it wondering who'll buy into this. Perhaps that would include:

• MA Republicans, who are beyond eager to expand the Scott Brown victory as vindication of their politics. While not socially conservative enough for many in the GOP, Baker sure talks the fiscally conservative clichés well enough.
• Change for its own sake types, the tea party and similar types have not gotten enough blood from incumbents yet.
• The most gullible, who would take Baker literally when he brags on turning around a health-care corporation but skips over doing it with government subsidies and by jacking up premiums and accelerating costs to the public. Likewise, his plan to finance the Big Dig is the cause of present and future financial grief here, while he feigns distance.

Unfortunately for him, Baker also delivers his half-truths in a terrifically flat tone. He is neither charismatic nor particularly believable. Cahill has a bit more passion in his voice, but he is in the situation we have seen in the past gubernatorial and most recent U.S. Senate race, that of agreeing repeatedly with one or more opponents, seeming to have no ideas of his own. Patrick is pretty good and among the three comes off as by far the best and most credible speaker.

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Cut Me a Thin Slice

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The key aspect may be whether the possible Baker supporters can buy into his my-idea fantasy. He frequently returns to what he thought or said or proposed to unspecified people. If only they (as in the legislature or governor or someone else) had realized the brilliance of this ideas and then made them happen, all would be well. We'd be debt free and our health costs would be much lower, among other benefits.

That sort of aristocratic pretense is all too much. He thinks or whispers and it is to his inferiors to run to battle with these flairs of brilliance. Cut me a very thin slice of that baloney, please, Lord Baker.

I suppose we each have our own Cassandra moments, thinking "I knew better all along." The fact that Baker would have the crust to use this openly in his campaign is another matter. In the RKO show, he got a bit of the obvious — if he said these things, he didn't believe them enough to work at them or try to make them happen. Moreover, his roles under two governors and as head of Harvard Pilgrim belie what he claims he wanted.

This sell becomes between hard and impossible. He'd better hope that the gullible contingent is huge this November.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, Charlie Baker, election, Cahill, WRKO

Warm to SSM in Iceland

Scale can mean speed in same-sex marriage. That is, smaller is often faster and more efficient.

Consider that volcanic place, Iceland. This weekend, the Althingi (parliament) enacted nationwide SSM. The vote was 49 to 0 (14 absent but not protesting).

There are a couple of contrasts and lessons for us. First, we can contrast size; Iceland has just over 0.1% of our population at about 320,000 to about 309 million. That can mean quick action, agility and even tolerance. Second, the head of state is openly gay — Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir. Her nomination and election may say more about the openness of the country than the SSM vote.

More to our issues here, religion was a consideration. That nation has a state church, Lutheran The National Church of Iceland. As here and elsewhere, clerics can solemnize same-sex marriages or pass on them. The sillies who swear that accommodating gay couples means the end of freedom of religion can't even claim that in Iceland.

Throughout Iceland, marriage can now be between two individuals instead of a man and a woman. No humans were harmed in the making of these unions.

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Tags: massmarrier, Iceland, religion, same-sex marriage

MA Primary Game Afoot

Drove me crazy, this constipated Dem convention today, though friends might say that would be a short trip. When pols and their surrogates orate, skeds shred...and they did. Finally, we know that we'll have primaries and debates for several offices.

That is very positive. The undercard of this year's MA election will give us that manifested cliché — the government we deserve. In particular, the treasurer, auditor and secretary can make powerful differences in how we conduct business and politics, as well as our economic health. We've been on cruise control in these offices for a long time. We finally get a chance to choose the same old or to demand newer and maybe better.

On the Dem side, today's convention decided that we'd have two primaries. For auditor (incumbent not running):

• Suzanne Bump
• Guy Glodis
• Michael Lake
  

For treasurer (incumbent not running, rather fantasies of governorship):

• Steve Grossman
• Steve Murphy
  

For secretary of the commonwealth, unfortunately, the opposition to incumbent Bill Galvin can't force a primary and debates because he is independent Jim Henderson. That means there'll be no primary and the final will be a three way with Henderson, Dem Galvin, and GOP Bill Campbell. This certainly deserves a series of debates, but Galvin may play caveman here. We'll try to get him solo on Left Ahead! to mix it up a bit.

The GOP has candidates to face off on the winners of the auditor and treasurer contests too. That would be Karyn Polito for treasurer and either Mary Connaughton or Kamal Jain for auditor, depending on who wins that spot in September.

So, we're not likely to to see or hear much on the final Dem v. GOP candidate for those two offices until six weeks before the November general.

The treasurer and secretary races in particular have the opportunity to make huge improvements...or not.

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Talking Candidates

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For some background, check out our Left Ahead! shows with Grossman, Murphy and Polito for treasurer and Henderson for secretary. When we get intraparty and interparty debates for treasurer, voters will have unusually clear distinctions and choices. My word, they'll have to think before smearing an oval! Listen to the trio's positions, but come in and come away with the concepts that Grossman has an activist and policy influencing plan for the office, Polito wants to play it fiscally and politically very conservative and Murphy comes in with a middle position. There's strategy and tactics everywhere in this race.

I hope that the secretary's race gets an elevated profile, particularly as there's a Republican to push Galvin from another side. The incumbent's campaign site looks like he isn't running at all, just expecting to continue in the role. On the other hand, Henderson wants to overhaul the processes of the office, making public info easily available to hoi polloi. He'd like to use 21st century technology to let us find out what we need. Those would be huge changes and well worthy of debates.

Here's to primaries, debates, and the truths and ideas revealed in the undercard races.

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Tags: massmarrier, elections, Massachusetts, treasurer, auditor, secretary, primary, debates

Wilkerson's Justice Crawl

Alas for the lovers of drama and those who attended civics classes, the Dianne Wilkerson case doesn't satisfy. Accustomed as we are to novels and movie and TV scripts, we hear that justice is supposed to be swift and sure. A peek into her world show the more typical white-collar version.

The former MA state senator had already been a low-level felon. She had not bothered paying taxes and she didn't seem to think her probation rules were worth following. However, yesterday she finally did what I and others had predicted long ago, pleaded guilty to soliciting and taking bribes.

The attitude of the local dailies' editorial boards varied. The Herald scolded her, although thinking it might shame her is absurd as she doesn't seem to have that gene. The Globe wanted more and more flesh, hers and Chuck Turner's.

I did get a chuckle seeing that the tabloid used a line I had heard before...from a Wilkerson friend and supporter. "Wilkerson was her own worst enemy," wrote the Herald's board. On a BNN segment where I spoke in favor of senate candidate Sonya Chang-Diaz, Joyce Ferriabough used the same line about Wilkerson. Her implication was that her friend was fine, except for disastrous lack of attention to details big and small.

The Globe on the other hand wanted prolonged public humiliation in the form of a trial. They couched that in terms of such a display revealing other corruption and the licensing process, which surely does need reform.

Of course, what this whole process already reveals is how white-collar justice, or lack of it works. We Americans dearly cling to the concepts related to swift and sure justice. We immediately say innocent until proven guilty when someone is charged and likely add that everyone deserves that day in court.

The Globe board seems to overlook another part of that — while people have the right to trial (set aside Gitmo), they also have the right to bypass trial with plea bargains and guilty pleas. Unlike a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing, they aren't testifying for a career reward and aren't compelled to undergo grilling.

This blog has had numerous comments on Wilkerson and these charges. Maybe the last will be when the judge sentences her in September. Then, we can expect a maximum of what the prosecutor recommends for the eight guilty pleas, four years in prison. That will probably end up being less than half that served. Then, even though her worst enemy has ruined her political career, she performed worthy deeds also and she'll find ways to earn a living.

We can leave it to others to lament how she destroyed the self she had built. It's shades of Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront — I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am...

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Tags: massmarrier, Boston, Massachusetts, corruption, Wilkerson, bribes