Cirignano Half Way Off

The news from Worcester is not all good. In the Cirignano trial, the defense finally convinced Justice David Despotopulos that the case law should let a permit holding rally organizer physically remove a protester. So, he accepted a motion to drop the civil-rights violation charge.

By reading other accounts, it appears the Assistant DA Joseph Quinlan is not the experienced pro that defense lawyer Michael Gilleran is. In particular, the defense brought up a binder full of case law on the civil rights side, with no real rebuttal.

I confess that I had a vision that this would be a good lesson for the vigilante wingers who don't like that free-speech stuff — for others. So, the other charge of assault and battery against pro-equality demonstrator Sarah Loy is what's on deck.

According to those there, Larry will testify tomorrow morning, along with a few other defense witnesses. So far, it may still come to whom you can believe. Gilleran seems to be a real amoral pro, which may be the prime reason to hire an experienced trial lawyer. When I saw him arguing motions, Quinlan was competent, but no more. In fact, he seems a bit shy and timid. I suspect Gilleran would ask for your first born on a platter and when you turned him down, he'd continue on the next item on his list. He's tough.

Whine: This has been eating me up. I have not been able to go to the testimony phase of this trial because of a conference I have to attend.

You can get your info the same way I do.

• Pie and Coffee has detailed accounts for both days of testimony.
• There is crisp reporting centered on Loy's account at Bay Windows. They also discuss dropping the civil-rights charge.
  
• Then again, if you need a real giggle — police corruption, conspiracy, lies and paranoia — don't overlook MassResistance.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, same-sex marriage, Worcester, Cirignano, Despotopulos, Gilleran, Quinlan

Tsongas Sinks the Og

No honest person can call it a rout, but that wasn't required. Niki Tsongas' 51% of the 5th Congressional District's vote to lead challenger Jim Ogonowski's 45% is what we call a win in the political biz.

She was not particularly inspiring and he was a relative dullard and often cheap-shot artist. The special-election campaign to replace the status hungry, office quitting U.S. Rep. Marty Meehan was in many ways awkward. It was the political equivalent of a first date, first dance of high-school freshmen. Neither Democrat Tsongas nor Republican Ogonowski had political experience or even had run for office before.

Tag Ends: For the record, the final included three also-ran politicians. The report in the Lowell Sun ranked them at 2%, 1% and about 0%, for independents Patrick Murphy and Kurt Hayes, and Constitution Party Kevin Thompson.

On the face of it, both lead candidates played emotional cards again and again. One is the widow of a beloved U.S. Representative and Senator, and the other a brother of a pilot whose plane was hijacked and flown into a World Trade Tower on 9/11. More people voted for the widow.

Moniker note: In many blogs and even MSM, Ogonowski's mouth awkward Polish name has morphed into rock musician style Ogo for brevity. However, this gives him more punch along with more pronounceability. His gruffness makes me think of his as Og or the Og. Feel free to call him the great and powerful Og.

Family Lessons

As I am wont to ask my three boys, when we look at this election, what can we learn from this? I figure quite a bit.

You could start off real LITE and simple. Even though fairly progressive (but not real progressive) Dems have held this seat for a long time, the district is damned conservative by Massachusetts standards. Even voters who self-identify as socially liberal may be fiscally conservative, like guns, favor continuing the Iraq war to the end, and maybe even fear undocumented immigrants, even though that is a negligible problem there.

So the six percentage point victory is, on the surface, really a failure for the Dem. After all, many local and national Dems endorsed her and campaigned for her. So, did virtually all the big newspapers, except for very right wing Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, endorse Niki. Without thinking at all deeply about it, you could claim that her inability to skunk the Og in these circumstances is as much a failure as Democratic Rep. Chester Atkins who won reelection for this seat by an almost identical margin. The party replaced him in the next election (1992) with Marty Meehan, who ran much stronger.

If that's as far as you want to go, you can check out the low-thought, low-brow version at Hub Politics with This Tsucks: Tsongas Declares Victory and We Made Them Sweat. These are similar to the Og's whiny response to his loss. On the other hand, if Republicans or anyone is to learn real lessons from this defeat, they need to do a lot, lot better than these.

Getting Real

Republicans throughout the commonwealth, but particularly in such conservative areas should in fact take heart from the close race, even against an unproven amateur. They should be inspired to challenge incumbents as well as running for open seats. That would be a positive and welcome change from the many uncontested local, state and national seats, with no Republican or independent challengers.

The Og showed solid strength. While his support did not grow, it did hold steady for the several months of the short campaign. His ending up as whiny and mean should not obscure a victory nearly in hand.

It is unfortunate too that toward the end he ended up with a hypocritical public persona. His speeches and ads were unnecessarily nasty and dishonest. At the same time, he called Niki's ads out, even when they quoted him in context about S-CHIP. I can't believe that that alone cost him the election, but I would hope that future GOP candidates would be savvier and more honorable.

That kind of duplicity can occasionally work in town or other localized contests. It doesn't hold up well for a Congressional seat and would not weather a typical long campaign cycle. Then again, he was a much a first-timer as Niki. Mistakes were made.

Graciousness

Particularly for such relative unknowns, comportment and presentation account for a lot with many voters, more the older the voters are. Other Republicans can learn a bit from the Og here.

He was not entirely graceless in announcing concession, but close. This was the time to leave the best impression with those who voted for you and against you — powder for the next political shot. Of course, winner Niki had the better task; it is much easier to play nice when you are on top. The Og should practice his social and therefore political skills if he wants to run for this or another office.

Watch the clip and see how he is sadly cold. Then, he unfortunately makes no effort to stifle his crowd's chorus of boos on announcing his loss. Someone needs to dope slap him for that.

Throughout the announcement, he comes off as very chilly Midwestern, like one of Garrison Keillor's Lutherans. Although the Poles and Polish-Americans I have known are openly expressive, clearly his family culutre is not.

Consider that if there was ever a moment to show modest but sincere public display of affection, such a speech was it. You would expect him to look tenderly at his devoted wife and press a warm kiss of thanks on her lips. Instead, he went all Hollywood on her, turning his cheek for a quick, emotionless peck. In fact, in all his contacts with his family, he kissed no one. He gave a son a hug-like motion, but laterally. It was incidental quasi-affection.

The only real emotion he exhibited was in mentioning his late brother. He gave a gasp and seemed to have moist uvea in at least one eye. Considering that he used images of his brother's plane crashing into a skyscraper in his campaign, even that was somewhat blunted.

In contrast, Niki's speech seemed warm and gracious. While my sense from seeing her in public repeatedly is that she's not the world's most sincere person, but she's fine and in contrast to the Og's stiffness, she was positively charming.

While the Og remained to the end prickly and overly competitive, she was conciliatory (another lesson for the GOP guys). The Og said in his speech that "we taught them a thing or two." That came across like a bloodied sixth grader who lost his schoolyard slug fest but has to play tough anyway.

Interestingly enough, both used the phrase "hard-fought campaign." He played little soldier, while she thanked him as well as the also-rans, them for enriching and contributing to the discussion and debate in the campaign. Likewise, she stressed working together and cooperation for the betterment of the people of the district. He offered nothing remotely resembling that.

He seemed to have that mindset that a gracious loser is still a loser. He should mature a bit and grow out of that.

Underlying Themes

So how is it that a Dem candidate, even an unproven and inexperienced one, could eke a narrow victory in a solidly Democratic victory over an unproven and inexperienced Republican? Plus, this district is not permeated by a history of lefties, with the union exceptions of places like Lowell. Even in those, many voters are relatively conservative on many subjects.

The Og and Niki started after the primary in nearly the same position they finished. Neither seemed to gain or lose many votes. There were even some obvious contrasts. She wants the Iraq troops as soon as practical; he's a stay-the-course guy. She favors liberal naturalization for undocumented immigrants; he offers no quarter.

The biggy is that Dems were tired and disappointed. The Og had no competition in the primary, but Niki was in a bruising and confusing primary. In particular, Eileen Donoghue, Barry Finegold, and Jamie Eldridge each had passionate followers. (Remember that I was strongly for the only progressive, Eldridge.) As a result, I suspect that quite a few disaffected Dems didn't bother to vote.

Lessons Learned

Yet, we shouldn't get tied up by the Og's gruffness. There's plenty for all sides to learn.

First and most obvious, GOPpers and indies should not assume that Dems will win such seats. There are tons of DINOs there. Just as some politicians join the dominant party for the best chance of election, many voters join for such perks as voting in primaries. There are lots of mugwumps who are nominal Democrats. Some of those uncontested offices are missed opportunities. The tricks are figuring out which ones and putting up the right candidates.

This may really be a blue state, but there are many shades and some damned pale pastels around. Massachusetts is not homogeneous, not universally liberal, and not all voters are liberal across all their political positions.

Many of us saw Niki as a relatively marginal and immature candidate. She was spongy on some issues and wrong on others, such as her fantasy that big medical concerns will give consumers reasonable prices if only the free market operates with minimal regulation. (Save me, nurse!)

This left plenty of chance for strong candidates with well articulated position and citizen benefits to run. Likewise, future races should see non-Dems step up in risky and undecided precincts, towns and districts. The Og didn't handle it well in toto, but his relative success against an inexperienced candidate should nonetheless be heartening.

The Og was surely in one of the best possible congressional districts to play social conservative and hawk. In fact, in immediate retrospect, he may have done even better if he hadn't qualified his war support. He always started with saying we shouldn't have gone in and followed up with, but as long as we're there... An unqualified position would certainly have played better with the conservatives, Dem and GOPpers alike.

Dems too damned well should pay attention. Most obviously, stay focused and don't assume that a Republican or independent can't win.

Moreover, they need to differentiate their positions and articulate them clearly. "Mumble, mumble, trust me" does not play as well as specific platforms and promises. Niki for one was short on those. Fortunately for her, the Og was even more of a waffle, not even saying how he'd vote on the highly visible S-CHIP override. Honk. Wrong answer, Jim. Thanks for playing.

Finally, it would benefit the Democratic party to grow some 'nads and stake out the progressive side of the future. As shown in the seminal Pew study from March, Congress has gone pretty far right of most American voters. This is the time to articulate progressive views and stop being so fearful. Americans think we ought to take care of each other, feed the poor, educate all and on and on.

The biggest plus there would be that Democrats would again be clearly distinctive from the mean-spirited and rich-favoring Republican Party. That's a lot of platform to stand and run on! That could be the future and it could once again start here.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Congress, 5th CD, Tsongas, Ogonowski, elections, Democrats, Republicans

Cirignano Trial By Pie and Coffee

Larry Cirignano's trial begins in earnest today, following motions and jury selection yesterday. I was in Boston for a conference all day, but Mike over at Pie and Coffee covered the morning here and the afternoon here. It's the next best thing to being there.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, same-sex marriage, Worcester, Cirignano, Despotopulos, Gilleran, Quinlan

Little Larry Cirignano Visits Court

I don't believe locking eyes with jurors is going to cut it, not for the middle-aged guy charged with tossing a young woman to the ground and saying his rights are worth more than hers. Yet today in Worcester District Court, he tried and that was just one peek into Larry Cirignano.

Unfortunately, neither the prosecutor nor the judge called the defense attorney on his conflation. Cirignano was executive director of CatholicVote, a private political advocacy group centered on reversing marriage equality in Massachusetts. His lawyer referred several times to his client doing the work of the Catholic Church. Of course, legally, the church cannot involve itself in such "work." In addition, while local Archbishop and Cardinal Sean O'Malley poses with Cirignano for pictures, the latter is not an employee of the archdiocese or any church arm. He may be up to dirty tricks that Pope Benedict approves of, but he's on his own as far as the church must be concerned.

My Fabulous Worcester Adventure

People pluses for the trip to today's opening of the trial include:

• Chatted with some nice folk I seldom see, like Bay Windows' Ethan Jacobs and Pie and Coffee's Mike Benedetti, who are each very pleasant and bright.
• Did not have to share space with the bad karma guy, Brian Camenker of MassResistance and Petulant Parents or whatever he calls it. (He walked in as court recessed for the day.)

Short the motions, we did not have a lot of action in courtroom 23 (fourth floor of the new Worcester court at 225 Main Street for those who can attend Wednesday, Thursday or Friday). There was time and proximity to gawk and surmise.

Varied Agonists

Sarah Loy, in her late 20s, is not threatening by anyone's standards. She is quiet, mousy, full bodied, with a warm smile and gentle mannerisms. In court on Tuesday, she wore a heavy gray sweater over a white shirt with black trousers. Her shoulder-length hair had a pony tail held by a scrunchie.

I spoke briefly with her to introduce myself, but intentionally did not interview her in case she was not to talk about the trial until she had given her testimony. She seems as pleasant and sincere as she looks.

Larry Cirignano gives a very different impression. He is what my grandparents' generation called slick, not a nice description. He gives the sense that he wants an advantage, the kind of guy you count your fingers after shaking his hand.

He arrived early and alert. He was black — wingtips, suit, and hair. He wore lawyerish wire rims and a dark tie with strong diagonal stripes and what appeared to be geese on the wing (probably those pesky Canada geese). His fashion statement was a GQ pocket square. His handkerchief had four points and seemed to have been pressed by a stream roller to wafer thinness. His thick hair was trimmed to a flatness that looked like you could roll out pie dough on top of his head. His appearance screamed, "Control!"

In this chair for most of five hours, he was still and seemingly relaxed. Larry is cool. He turned his head only when it was to his advantage — facing the judge, facing the jury, and even once smiling at Bay Windows reporter Ethan Jacobs. Also, perhaps it was the training of masses and standing, genuflecting and crossing at the right times, but whatever, he was eager to stand respectfully whenever it might please Justice David Despotopulos. There's no fault here; Larry is savvy.

The attorneys for prosecution and defense were not as remarkable. Assistant DA Joseph Quinlan is short and slender, with a winning smile and an odd scar in the middle of his right cheek. He dresses like he was in the old Filene's Basement picking up $100 suits at 65% off before that location clothes. Larry was much snazzier.

For the defense, Michael Gilleran (Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge) is stout and nearly bald with a white tonsure. Larry outdresses him too.

Legal Jousting

Mike was no jolly fellow though. When it came to making motions, he was brutal, or tried to be. He wanted to ask juror qualifications with heavy political portents of the trial, such as did potential jurors have beliefs about not letting the public vote on the anti-same-sex marriage amendment.

The judge denied that and denied both of their requests to insert religious queries. Instead, he got them to agree to general questions to be resolved at the sidebar for any juror who had concerns with those.

Gilleran also tried to control the plaza rally permit question. On the one hand, he cited numerous vaguely related case laws to suggest that if MFI had a permit for a rally, they could use reasonable force (shoving protesters instead of motioning for the cops?). On the other, he wanted to exclude the actual permit the group received, which did not use such exclusionary wording. The judge was nice about saying so, but he said the trial would mix it up and sort 'em out. He added that the city definitely had the right to limit activities by permit.

Justice Despotopulos was also a bit of a caricature physically, in a good way. From his robe to his head, he was all in black — hair, eyebrows, glasses and five o'clock shadow. When he was amused by Gilleran's more absurd requests, you could see it in his raised brows.

He seems to have fun on the bench. At one point, Gilleran intoned that Cirignano was entitled to a jury of his peers. While this was surely not news to Despotopulos, the eyebrows popped up again and he chuckled in asking whether this meant they had to share Larry's beliefs on gay marriage.

The jury seemed benign enough, but aren't there any Black people in Worcester? The pool of three dozen had two, one of whom ended up impaneled in the six plus two alternates. It was a very blue-collar looking group, not at all slick. After the sidebars and a couple of peremptory challenges by each lawyer, Larry ended up with five men and three women.

As they were seated, Larry turned his gaze to the jury box and stared, apparently going for a human connection.

More Than A Misdemeanor

This trial is one of many opportunities to inform the extreme right wing sorts that they can't count on getting away with stifling others, much less physically attacking them. We who disagree with them and watch them have obligations too. First among those is to draw attention to what they are about. When they want to strip other Americans of the rights and privileges they relish, we must say that plainly. Everyone from voters to their peers to lawmakers to police need to see them for what they are and what they do.

If the Larry Cirignano sorts want to do their evil while pretending to be quintessential Americans, we must point out when they want to rob real Americans of their rights. That has been what Cirignano has been about professionally for a long time, earning a living trying to deprive homosexuals and others of equal rights. I call Larry out. That's not what America is about.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, same-sex marriage, Worcester, Cirignano, Despotopulos, Gilleran, Quinlan

Scary Strategies Open Anti-Equality Civil-Rights Trial

The crisply ironed four-point handkerchief and the wingtips belie the savage and unkempt mind of Larry Cirignano and his crew. In room 23 on the fourth floor of the new Worcester court building, his lawyer, Michael Gilleran laid some pretty heavy tracks. He pointed to where his client comes from and is headed.

Sadness: I have a conference in Boston on Wednesday and a meeting on Thursday morning that prevent me from attending the anticipated three days of argument and testimony. Fortunately for us all, Bay Windows' Ethan Jacobs should be there and deliver his reportage and analysis. Watch that space.

Background: Cirignano's arrest in December. His tortuous claims of innocence. The results of the investigation. A similar mentality from the woman who was photographed and seen by police coming around a street barrier separating pro- and anti-equality demonstrators to hit a pro-equality one in the face.

Alas, No Witnesses Yet

The first day in Worcester was motions, conferences and jury selection. The latter had no surprises, but the lawyer talk was most revealing.

Perhaps most fascinating in all these are two incredible glimpses into the minds of Cirignano and the face-hitting anti-SSM protester:

• Each claims justification in using physical force, even in these two cases where there were police present to ask for help and law enforcement. Both have held a he/she-made-me do it. We can't escape that this is the refuge of spouse and child abusers. "If they hadn't been there or said that, I wouldn't have had to beat them." Harrumph.
• Freedom of speech is for one side only, their side. This singularly unAmerican and unconstitutional attitude gets wrapped in Cirignano's package of having a permit to use the space. Yet, try as hard as Gilleran did to cite federal case law, including the shameful concept that the anti-SSM rally folk could use "reasonable force" to physically remove people instead of turning to the police, who were there. I think that's also called vigilantism.

Fortunately for reason, civility and legality, Justice David Despotopulos did not let the outrageous motions of Cirignano/Gilleran pass. He has a great sneer and chuckle. Without losing his cool, he repeatedly brought Gilleran back to planet Earth.

For example, Gilleran moved that everyone in the courtroom be forbidden from talking about the case during the trial. That would include the press, bloggers, others in the audience, everyone. The judge raised his eyebrows and asked if he expected an order that everyone not read newspapers or watch TV. Denied.

License to Mug

The scariest motion though centered on excluding protesters. Of course, it cited the Wacko Hurley case that wingers love to death. That is Hurley v. Irish American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston, in which the U.S. Supreme Court let a South Boston Irish-American group forbid gay Irish-American groups from marching in a privately funded St. Patrick's Day parade. It is rare to hear a First Amendment argument from an anti-gay lawyer that does not try to use and expand on this.

In this case, Gilleran held that Hurley gave the anti-SSM rally organizers an absolute right protected by the higher court and U.S. Constitution. That would be to keep anyone with differing views away from the Worcester City Hall plaza and distant from their rally, regardless of what the city permit stated.

As soon as he got into it, he began citing other case law claiming that the group could use that reasonable force to "self-help" as the expression goes. The judge again raised eyebrows and asked if there was a police detail there, which Gilleran admitted there was. The judge seems not to be a big fan of self-deputized private police forces.

He returned from a recess to allow testimony of the parks official who issued the permit, which does not license the Massachusetts Family Institute to physically remove anyone they choose.

I can see Gilleran trying (surely unsuccessfully) to appeal this absurd extension of the parade ruling to physical violence in forcing one group's freedom of speech to trump another's.

This Must Stop

This should be a seminal trial with implications far beyond central Massachusetts. For many years, particularly with the increasingly conservative Supreme Court and the past seven of POTUS who aggressively favors right wingers' rights over rights for all, the Cirignano and Gilleran sorts have pushed and nibbled. This looks like a clear instance of going to far and trying too many bluffs.

I'll do another post on some personal observations. For the legal matters, Cirignano's only hope in this jury trial is that Assistant DA Joseph Quinlan has big lapses when it comes to cross-examining witnesses. A lot of folk say they saw Cirignano run across an open courtyard to push a quiet and sincere woman to the ground. The evidence all points to his losing it in efforts to prevent her free speech. His I-had-the-right-to-because-she-didn't-belong-there defense sounds damned lame. I'm betting the jury doesn't buy it and three days from now, there is a guilty finding on both assault and battery, and civil rights violations.

We can be equally sure there will be unsuccessful appeals...followed by months and years of martyr talk. The rest of us though can say that he shouldn't have done it, and after he did, he should have taken a responsibility. That's what adults do, Larry.

Related coverage: Surprisingly, the Worcester Telegram had some good background and updates. They have been weak on this case. Look there for news on their reporter who is fighting being a witness.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, same-sex marriage, Worcester, Cirignano

Craig Earns Clown Nose

Squeeze the wheeze, Larry.

Nuff said.

Overpaying for Baa-d Management

Ovine owners and shareholders may bleat quietly, but they follow and herd. Whether they're sports fans or stockholders, they accept their fleecing.

The baseball version is particularly amusing in Boston. Now that the Sox won the World Series after a long hiatus and are back regularly playing with the big kids, the local fans are more passive than ever. (As a friend said after being in several consecutive bad relationships, "Beat me. Kick me. Make me write bad checks." Anything for love [or reflected athletic glory].)

The numbers should be sobering, enough to make even sheep rebel. We have by far the highest ticket prices in the world for baseball right here in Beantown. Boston's prices are more than double the national average. They have had the nation's highest prices for the previous nine years.

The big boys in what appear to be opaque pantyhose are certainly overpaid and the team owners treat the Sox as cash flow not a gentleman's diversion. A key irony here is that local management, media and fans have decried buying championships. That, of course, has been directed at the perennial winners, the Yankees. Unfortunately for us though, we are number two in the salary list and have no valid claim to higher ground. The Yankees at nearly $190 million and our Sox at over $143 million are the pigs at the trough contrasted to the Marlins ($31 million) and Devil Rays ($24 million).

The corporate parallel is CEOs. They are similarly overpaid to sluggers and hurlers. Some important differences are that they don't have short careers, injuries can't knock them out of play permanently, and there are only one or two top guys per corporate team.

Most CEOs, it seems, are not as gullible or delusional about their self-worth as pro athletes. They also take the compensation though.

As one example, in a report coming out today, two thirds of the company biggies admit they are overpaid. The Financial Times reports that investors and politicians through our current President G. W. Bush (himself a previously grossly overpaid sports executive) can't ignore the findings on this one.

In July and August, the National Association of Corporate Directors surveyed 70 CEOs and presidents. "Only 2.2 per cent of the nearly 70 chief executives and presidents involved in the survey said compensation was too low, while a third deemed it 'just right.'" That huge majority — two of three — "said the compensation of top executives was high, relative to their performance."

Amusingly, passive shareholders join boards and the executives in trying to justify irrational and excessive packages based on easy-to-obtain goals. They seem to love sports metaphors and compare the top guys to great athletes.

If fans are willing to pay the better part of a week's salary to take the family to see the Sox, that speaks to a free market. In fact that is much more like a free market than many of our cartel and oligopoly-like businesses, such as gasoline and cable services.

All of this reminds me of a friend's Harvard MBA thesis of several decades ago. His conclusion was that "the typical company would be better managed by an oak tree." Mid-term and longer performance (and sometimes even short-term) hardly ever exceeds stock indices and often is below that of the best bank returns for high-end savings. Putting the millions or billions into those handlers would outperform the CEOs' results.

Despite our plunging dollar and the extreme national debt racked up in the past seven years, we remain a relatively wealthy nation. If our ovine citizenry want to piss away large amounts on diversions, they can and do and will.

Corporate shareholders on the other hand expect to get decent returns for their investment. When the boards diminish their net with absurd CEO packages, the shareholders are seldom in a position to force change.

However, the FT suggests that this has gone on too long, too far. Along with lots of other data, this new report may well catalyze improvements, changes easy to understand and implement. Key, for one, is:

Nearly 60 per cent of the directors polled by the NACD said the reason for excessive pay packages was the absence of objective ways to measure an executive’s performance. Nearly half criticised the use of options and equity awards that reward executives when the company’s share price goes up, rather than when its operations improve.

It is ironic but positive that President Bush is joining this all to stop boards from rewarding the top guys for failing their companies.

Cross-posting: This seems like a natural for Harrumph! I'll put it over there too.

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Tags: massmarrier, CEOs, compensation, Red Sox, NACD, Financial Times

MassRidiculous Pimps Dirty Trick

Lackaday for the intellectual poverty of self-righteous. They can be so blinded by their single-minded hate that they let supposed cleverness substitute for reason and experience.

Consider if you will, Shari Worthington. This blogger, Republican, anti-gay, anti-same-sex marriage sort has been reduced to referring to herself in the third person. She also seems to be figuratively wetting her Depend™ disposables, thinking she's really pulled a fast one on those equality types.

She waited until October 29th to file a criminal complaint related to the Larry Cirignano trial, which starts this Tuesday. A really good recap of the complaint with a link to it is at Pie and Coffee. Also check the serious flaming at MassResistance on this trial.

You may recall that Cirignano goes on trial in Worcester, charged with shoving pro-equality demonstrator Sarah Loy to the ground. That would be assault and trying to deny her freedom of speech.

Worthington in her Worcester County Freedom Trail posting suffers from a bad case of Wingnut Cleverness Syndrome. She figures that her (not the DA's) filing a complaint that Loy disrupted a public assembly, will force Loy to refuse to testify against her attacker. As Shari wrote (exclamation point hers), "But this causes a big problem for Loy. If she testifies against Larry on Oct. 16, she risks incriminating herself in a trial against her!"

Pardon me while I laugh into my fedora. The likelihood of a sincere pro-equality woman such as Loy in being cowed into submission by the likelihood of 1) going to trial at all, 2) not having the charge tossed at the onset of trial, 3) being convicted, and 4) paying the maximum $50 fine is absurd.

I laugh again into my hat.

Follow-up: John over at Live, Love and Learn has a superior take on this filing and its motivations. As a bonus, he was an eyewitness, who can put the lie to the claim that she was at the podium area blocking anything.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, same-sex marriage, Worcester, Cirignano, Loy, Worthington

Read 'im and Wise Up

If you don't rifle the entire Sunday Boston Globe, you miss Careers, and if you miss Careers, you miss The Corporate Curmudgeon. Woe to those who do so.

I'm invested in Dale Dauten (that's he at the right). I had a source for many years, my mother. She was always a big reader, of magazines and newspapers as well as books. The Corporate Curmudgeon appeared in both the Albuquerque Journal and the Santa Fe New Mexican. She got both and always clipped Dauten's column from one to send me in her batch processing junk boxes, as she said, filled with such treasures, as well as chili ristras and her fabulous Scottish shortbread.

When she suddenly dropped dead (at home, as she had always wanted ["I don't want anyone wiping my bottom."], one of the collateral loses was no more Dauten columns. He is syndicated, but much bigger in the West. No one around here carried him.

Disclaimer: I am a huge fan of Dauten and was most certainly instrumental in getting his column in the Globe. Repeated letters, emails and a couple of calls did the trick. Well, I confess that getting multiple clippings of his very wise and often risible columns to a few key editors was certainly the real catalyst. After the fact, he sent me thanks, including one of his books.

With some exceptions in the Financial Times, business columns in the Globe and elsewhere are tedious, not too useful and certainly neither well written nor amusing. Dauten is quite the exception.

Check out today's on keeping your stereotyping from stunting your mind. Then there was last week's on the drivel of facades and trappings. That one had me laughing as it took me back a couple of decades to an interview I did with Mortimer Levitt, the founder of The Custom Shirt Shops. He was a prissy and highly opinionated sort, convinced that that an ill-fitting shirt doomed your public life. Like a shoemaker, barber, dentist or any such folk convinced that their trade defines society, Levitt showed slides of the famous, including John Kennedy in bad shirts. Kennedy wore a shirt much too small in the apparent delusion that he hadn't porked up. Fat oozed over his collar. Yet, as I recall, that somehow didn't hinder him professionally or in societal acceptance.

Do bother to find this column every Sunday.

The Globe puts The Corporate Curmudgeon in the now tiny tabloid supplement with the want ads. They then bury Careers in car or realty back pages. Apparently the idea is that folk out of work will tear apart the paper to find the ads. Unfortunately for the rest of us, they also bury what is usually the best column of the whole paper for the whole week. I wonder whether the business editors also dig a whole in their back yards and put favorite foods there.

I've run across numerous folk who weren't aware this column was there. Invariably, they thank me, always with a chuckle as they recall a column, when we meet next.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Boston+Globe, Corporate Curmudgeon, Dale Dauten

Arnie Tromps on Equality Again

Despite the vastly changed voter views from 2000, and despite petitions and hundreds of personal pleas, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did veto same-sex marriage...again.

The little feller MassEquality's Marc Solomon calls a wimp for his anti-gay/anti-equality stance has a real problem with democracy. He showed his gutlessness again on this issue yesterday. He once more said the courts should decide this.

The irony and duplicity should not be ignored here. In states like Massachusetts where courts mandate SSM or civil unions, wingers and bigots say it should have been the legislature. When the legislature decides (you know, that representative democracy thing that all but the smallest town meetings use) in places like California, the anti folk say it has to be the courts.

In his veto statement, L'il Arnie "said that all Californians are entitled to full protection under the law 'and should not be discriminated against based upon their sexual orientation.'" His accompanying action is "hypocrisy at its worst," said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California. "We find it shocking for the governor to say he opposes discrimination based on sexual orientation and then veto a bill that would have ended discrimination based on sexual orientation."

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Tags: massmarrier, California, Schwarzenegger, same sex marriage, veto

Craig in the Box Keeps Popping Up

It's not that Senator Larry Craig is back. It's that he won't go away, not matter what his Republican peers and ex-buddies do. Now the sure-fire, whiz-bang Senate Ethics Committee hearing that GOPpers demanded fizzled. The rich men's chamber of Congress lives by its rules, and according to the AP report, this process will roll and roll and roll.

In case you're a delicate sort who has avoided this redolent mess, Craig was caught in June in a sex sting at a Minneapolis airport toilet. To sidestep misdemeanor charges such as soliciting sex in public and prolonged peeping at a man in a stall, he cut a deal in a plea bargain for disorderly conduct -- paying the fine by mail nearly two months later. Since that, he has been the burr under the saddle of his party. His governor in Idaho wants him gone and has lined up his replacement, who would get 15 months of incumbency. His GOP party leaders and peers want him out of sight, not being yet another reminder to America that the GOP is the party of self-indulgent amorality and immorality. The party that impeached President Clinton for lying about a few blow jobs has made the Dems look pure.

Craig promised to resign, but didn't. He clarified that promise later by saying if he couldn't withdraw his guilty plea, he really, truly would resign. A Minnesota judge ruled that he couldn't, but Craig reneged on that too. Honor, they name is not Republican.

So, you ask, the Republicans demanded an ethics investigation to scare Craig into resigning, why don't they just call it off?

Well, according to the AP report, the rules don't permit chocking the juggernaut when it's rolling. As the story puts it, "Now Republicans are powerless to stop a process almost certain to do more political damage to the party in general than to a retiring senator."

The GOP's partial salvation is that while they threatened Craig with public hearings to embarrass him out of office (he literally has zero shame), they don't have to open the initial information gathering phase to the press and public. They are also helped a little by the reality that Dems can't demand public hearings and make a big deal out of it, without seeming like they are on a Bill-Clinton revenge jag and acting, well, like Republicans. Many Americans were disgusted by the impeachment hearings and process; Democrats want to stay on the good side of voters and get the most 2008 votes.

A disorderly conduct verdict like this does not require removal of a senator. However, it seems likely that the three Republicans and three Democrats on the Ethics Committee can fall back on "conduct or activity which does not directly relate to official duties, when such conduct unfavorably reflects on the institution as a whole."

There's certainly prima facie support for that here. However, the unique wrinkle in this case is that such cases can take years to complete, maybe longer than Craig's remaining 15 months in office. Meanwhile, Republicans would like Craig to vanish from the earth and from collective memories of voters, while Democrats try not to cackle at the idea that he will be news right into the 2008 elections.

The closest hint of the process we have so far came from Ethics Committee Chair Barbara Boxer. The statement from her office included, "If, at the end of the preliminary inquiry, the Ethics Committee decides to move into the adjudicatory phase, any hearings held would be public unless the committee votes to close them. But that is a decision that is made after we have completed our preliminary inquiry."

No one so far has been asked to testify or even think about testifying. Craig doesn't seem to care what further damage he does to Idaho or his party. He seems to have told everyone who asks him to quit to get lost. We might even end up with a Democratic U.S. Senator from Idaho for the first time since Frank Church. He has certainly robbed a replacement of the power of office as well as Idaho of any committee seats and influence.

This is an incredibly clumsy dance. I can't stop watching.

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Tags: massmarrier, honesty, Larry Craig, Idaho, Congress

Ogo Swirling Down the Drain

In the last week of the 5th CD special election campaign, I can't look away from Jim Ogonowski self-destructing. This Republican has been surprisingly close to Dem Niki Tsongas. He appears to have given that away.

He finally leapt into the whirlpool with his latest campaign ad. It shamelessly pimps his dead hero brother and his sister-in-law. See the video of this below.

That is extreme in tasteless political pandering, but then he doesn't have many cards to play. Reflected glory from his brother and sympathy for the widow have strong emotional pull. They don't seem to say anything meaningful about his qualifications for office, but votes are votes, eh? Well, maybe not for him.

The flailing rather than swimming continued with his subsequent indignation that anyone dare criticize his emotional manipulation. For hearty giggles, head over to Hub Politics and Red Mass Group, where they seem to have a flaming case of MassResistance disease. They can't use enough superlatives and hyperbole. Everything related to Niki's campaign "has aspired to reach new lows in politics -- even for Democrats" or "is absolute BS" or any of a long list of ad hominem insults (as in Chester Atkins, who used to hold the seat being contested is the "check-bouncing-unethical-former Congressman").

The comments continue the theme, but let's not hold Ogo responsible for remarks beyond his own. They are plenty damaging.

His statements suggest that these desperate, last-days theater will resonate with voters and let him close the narrow poll gap with Niki. Instead, our gentleman hay grower will almost certainly have lots more time to watch his crops dry. Even in one of the commonwealth's most conservative districts, using the noble dead as your political puppet will not play well.

Disclaimer: During the Dem primary months, I expressed my mixed thoughts about Niki. In particular, I strongly disagree with her fantasy that market forces will make big pharma and medical corporations offer good health care affordably. She's my candidate after the primary and Ogonowski keeps confirming that.



Mid-day Follow-up: Wowsers, Niki seems to have stayed above the nastiness on this too. She issued a statement saying she disagreed with Atkins' criticism of Ogo. In contrast to the Ogo sorts who alternately whine or spit, she commented,

"I strongly disagree with what Chet Atkins said and did and his comments are not reflective of my views. I’m the one running for Congress and he does not speak for me. This morning I spoke to Jim Ogonowski and I reached out to Peg Ogonowski. Their family has suffered a terrible loss and that should be respected.This goes against the tone of politics I’ve established on my campaign."

Pretty savvy...with considerable sangfroid with all the sniping from the right side.

Follow-up Follow-up: Oh, my, Jimmy failed this one too. He's back to being Jim Oh-Go-On. His graceless response to Niki's public apology and reaching out to him and his sister-in-law was to denigrate her actions and make a series of demands. That includes dropping Atkins from her supporter list and returning any contributions he made.

You can see the announcement here at Red Mass Group. It does not appear on his site yet.

He went on to continue to insult her in response — "She and her special interest group friends have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV, Mail and Radio this past week twisting words and deceiving voters."

Nice guy, eh? Just the sort of fellow you want speaking for you in Congress.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Congress, 5th CD, Tsongas, Ogonowski

Crossing the T in GLBT

Sit up and take your transgender lesson! Susan Stryker came down the aisle like the proverbial schoolmarm, replete with the ruler and note to bring back signed.

As a follow-up to our ENDA podcast, you should definitely click on Why the T in GLBT is here to stay in today's Salon. Her scathing rebuttal to and expansion on fellow Salon-oid John Aravosis' original question is simultaneously educating and amusing. She delivers her own sort of reconstructive surgery.

Spoilers would be inappropriate. Suffice it to say, reading her piece is quite a ride, starting from the image of a beggar at the banquet down to the reasons why gay men need to stop trying to exclude transgender folk...right now.

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Tags: massmarrier, Stryker, Aravosis, ENDA, GLBT, transgender, Salon

SSM OK by Dear Abby

Just Married, Just Married…
You have no complaint
You are what your are and you ain’t what you ain’t
So listen up Buster, and listen up good
Stop wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood
—John Prine

I believe if two people want to commit to each other, God bless 'em.
—Dear Abby

I know it's the daughter of the original Dear Abby, but my grandmother lived by the advice column. I have to wonder how it would be for her to hear Jeanne Phillips approve of same-sex marriage.

In an interview with Yahoo News, she added, "That is the highest form of commitment, for heaven's sake." Later, she noted, "If gay Americans are not allowed to get married and have all the benefits that American citizens are entitled to by the Bill of Rights, they should get one hell of a tax break."

PFLAG just honored her as its first recipient of its Straight for Equality award. Their director, Jody Huckaby, noted "She is such a mainstream voice. If Dear Abby is talking about it, it gives other people permission to talk about it."

Phillips co-wrote the column for 20 years and has been the sole writer for the past five after her month's Alzheimer's forced the transition. Her mother, Pauline, referred a letter writer to PFLAG 23 years ago.

The column has millions of readers and a societal impact. While not at all lewd, Abby deals with many relationship and sexuality issues. As examples:

• She strongly believes that sexual orientation is innate and not a choice or lifestyle.
• She has urged parents to deal with their own prejudice when they fear their kid may be gay.
• She points to the countries that have legalized SSM, adding "...one day, perhaps, our country will, too."

The interview includes:

Right now, Abby, as Phillips prefers to be called, is working on a reply to a woman who wanted to know whether she should include childhood photographs of her transgender brother-in-law in a family album. The woman is worried what she will tell her children when they see pictures of their uncle as a little girl.

Phillips' guidance to Worried Reader will be simple, she said: Include the photos, of course. Silence is the enemy. Answer any questions the kids have honestly — Uncle John was born with a body of the wrong sex, so even when he was called Jane he was really John inside.

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Tags: massmarrier, Dear Abby, same-sex marriage, Jeanne Phillips, Yahoo News

Come Out, Come Out

Even though the Human Rights Campaign stumbled recently, they are still up to good things. Tomorrow, for a great example, is National Coming Out Day.

The call is for GLBT or straight-supporters to say it, and to talk about it. The HRC has a handy dandy brochure with talking points.

This is important stuff. We can look to Massachusetts rejecting the amendment to stop same-sex marriages and Maine's similarly rejecting yet another override to their gay-rights legislation. In both states, voters and lawmakers said it was the conversations with and awareness of GLBT self-outed folk, and supporters, that made the difference.

Tomorrow is a good day to make a difference.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Maine, closet, GLBT, coming out, HRC

Huge Reckoning for Native Americans

Can we think of any reason the nations and tribes we call Native Americans or Indians shouldn't trust the U.S. Government? Think. Think. Think.

Well, within four years, at least a portion of them may not have to just trust the Department of the Interior and Bureau of Indian Affairs. As a result of a 1996 lawsuit, Cobell v. Kempthorne, the world's largest accounting project is underway. In short, everyone will be able to see whether the Feds have been cheating on 320,000 individual accounts.

This Historical Accounting Project fort Individual Indian Money Accounts may show over $100 billion is due to the tribes and individuals who own over 56 million acres. Businesses typically lease these lands for grazing, water and mineral rights. The Feds have acted as trustees, negotiating, leasing, collecting, and paying. What they haven't done since 1887 is account for the deals.

Great White Fathers

The background seems typical of our treatment of Native Americans. It started in 1887 with the General Allotment Act (Dawes Severalty Act). This gave the U.S. President the power to survey and divvy up all Indian-owned lands. Individuals were to get between 40 and 160 acres, mostly of land deemed inferior.

One effect of this was that over 90 millions acres were declared surplus and sold to non-Indians at low rates. In other words, this was another theft. Then the remaining lands were in trust and the tribal and individual owners were relieved of the responsibility of having to manage any leases. Trust U.S.

The current status is that there are some records of over 320,000 accounts from 1938 through 2000, but no accounting in the way any government or business would consider it. In fact, according to an excellent piece on this in CFO Magazine, in 1989, accounting giant Arthur Andersen threw up its hands on a first stab at an audit "due to missing records and the lack of an audit trail in the bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) systems. It could reconcile only tribal accounts — and even then, only those opened after 1972.)"

Much of the background information here is from that article and I strongly recommend reading it all. This story can only get larger and more important.

Shameless Offer

You can imagine the reaction if a bank, brokerage or any business could not show what it had done with assets it manages for decades. In this case, the Feds were quick to insult the tribes and individuals with a low-ball offer.

The outside guesstimate of the plaintiffs is that at least $100 billion is owed. The actual amounts will emerge as the auditors tally up records of several hundred thousand boxes. Meanwhile, our honorable Executive Branch offered $7 billion over a decade to wipe out all tribal and individual claims, and prohibit any future related suits. As you can surmise, according to CFO, "The offer was seen by all tribes as an insult," notes Michael Marchand, chairman of the business council of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville (Washington) Reservation. "It was a clear signal that the Administration has no interest in settling anything."

There are also some nasty looking circumstances, such as 162 boxes of government forms of disbursements from 1900 to 1958 that the U.S. Treasury says it accidentally destroyed in 1999.

Because of the many millions of records, this audit will not be a full fiduciary accounting. Rather, it is likely to mean statistically sampling. With the many missing or incomplete records, this process lends itself to loaded judgments.

In addition, from here, it looks like the plaintiffs will be screwed in another way. At this date with the records methodologies over the past 120 years, they can't test that the DOI trustees negotiated in good faith and got a decent rate for the land use, much less that they provided a full payment to the owners. The records in more recent decades can help with the latter, but the former is that many clouds blown by.

This project will cost several hundred million dollars. That's not much considering the billions at stake.

At the very least, since this suit began, the Feds have been on notice that their handling of these millions of acres is on the record and in the public eye. Many of the records are gone or never existed. However, there should be enough information to provide a modicum of restitution.

Considering our treatment of Native Americans, none of us should be surprised that even the promises for an accounting were blown off for so long that it took legal action to veneer any responsibility or accountability.

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Tags: massmarrier, Native Americans, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Historical Accounting Project, CFO Magazine, Department of the Interior

8 Lips Flapping on ENDA

Never shy, nor cautious. we kicked the ENDA can up and down the hall yesterday during our weekly Left Ahead! podcast. The big bonus was that the guest was civil-rights activist Laurel, who comments regularly at all three of our blogs as well as that other local one, what's its header -- ah, yes, Blue Mass Group.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act is an important bill certain to pass the U.S. House by a substantial margin. It aims to add long overdue job protections for GLBT workers and managers. Rather, depending on what form it's in at any moment, that might just be GLB workers and managers.

Consider:

• Everyone's most and least favorite current POTUS surely would veto any gay-friendly bill.
• There is no corresponding ENDA in the U.S. Senate.
• Lead sponsor U.S. Rep. Barney Frank is clearly conflicted about the bill and eager to decouple the transgender (that troublesome T) from the bill.

Perhaps this could be one example of the dying old-style politics. Like throwing the servants, then the kids off the troika when the pack of wolves closes in, lawmakers love saying half a loaf is better than none and you must be pragmatic and take what you can get from Congress. Compromise and claim victory!

In addition, the Senate rules that require a supermajority of 60 to prevent filibusters have hobbled nearly all progressive platforms in Congress. The horse-trading and rush to dilute good legislation are truly the old way of doing business and many in Congress claim that can't and won't change. Yet, we don't have to foresee very far to note:

1. In a decade the majority of voters will be the youngest baby boomers and the children of baby boomers. They did not grow up with the old prejudices — race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, immigrants — as the norm for their parents and grandparents. Poll after poll and results where they vote show that they favor equality and live-and-let-live politics. They're a lot harder to manipulate with emotional lies.
2. A weary, declining nation looks at the devastation of right-wing fantasies of the past seven years. We all know of people who have died in unnecessary wars. We are more fearful for our safety than even in the Cold War. A budget surplus became a multi-trillion-dollar deficit, and our dollar and larger economy are crushing our future hopes.

The political, military and economic blunders and inane policies are obvious failures to an increasing majority of us. Next year, we are almost certain to constitute a Congress and Executive Branch charged with righting our foundering nation.

What a monumental task that will be!

The confluence of a new generation of voters and the awareness of the older ones that so much of our fantasies are just that may reduce the pragmatism of failure that lawmakers say is necessary. We have had such periods before, such as the Progressive Era around WWI. Numerous laws and amendments that made life better for all Americans held sway over the timid and self-interested Reps and Senators. It looks like we're due for another such time.

The ENDA battle is an example. On the compromise side, you can listen to Barney Frank stake out his argument here and a cogent defense of that side was the lead editorial of last week's Bay Windows editorial. Those are powerful sets of reasons. Yet as Laurel noted yesterday, without an ENDA in the Senate and with the POTUS' veto looming, why not pass the right bill, the one including transgender rights, so that when a more honorable Congress assembles, they start with the proper expectations?

Many sources in the MSM as well as blogs have opinions and details on the irksome T on the end of GBLT. The best perspective I round was Monica Roberts at TransGriot. In her Transgender Community Hates HRC post, she provides the background of how many homosexuals, particularly men are uncomfortable with transgender folk and how some actively distance themselves, as Barney Frank has.

The trans community is small and has more problems coming out and being accepted — on the job or anywhere. Of course, that's solid justification for providing an ENDA that includes them.

Roberts makes a solid argument against splitting ENDA into a "'possible" GLB version, promising to add the T version in some unspecified future. She wrote:

So far the only states in which the gay and lesbian community has ‘come back’ for transgender people are Rhode Island (2001), California (2003), New Jersey (2006) and Vermont (2007). In New York they are still having a difficult time passing GENDA after transgender people were cut out of SONDA (N.Y.’s Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act) by gay rights advocating the same ‘we’ll come back for you’ incremental rights spin.

So, you can understand when Barney or the Human Rights Campaign says, "Trust us. We'll protect you...later," that transgender people are skeptical.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Congress, ENDA, GLBT, transgender, Barney Frank, Monica Roberts, Bay Windows

Plug Nasties Hitting Pro-Equality Rep

After a quick apology for being overbooked and not posting much here, I suggest that with bloggers like Frederick Clarkson, you are in good hands. Over at Talk To Action, he has a great post on how national money is trying to unseat one of our lawmaker heroes who helped defeat the anti-marriage equality amendment in June.

You may remember that Rep. Angelo Puppolo (12th Hampden, including Springfield) was one of those who wrestled with his conscience, and fairness and equality won. Suddenly, a new anti-gay group, the National Organization for Marriage put up a nasty billboard in Springfield on the Interstate lumping Puppolo with Judas Iscariot and Benedict Arnold.

Read Frederick's analysis and the background on who's involved in this. We can expect more as national groups target the only state with full marriage equality. When you are filled with bigotry, losing doesn't mean you rethink your position.

What you can do now to help Puppolo and other compassionate and civil-rights minded lawmakers working for us is in the post.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, amendment, same sex marriage, Puppolo, legislature, MassEquality

Judge Tells Craig No Dice

Just-barely-still Senator Larry Craig (Republican, of course – Idaho) should have remembered that many in the middle of this country don't particularly like liars and word tricksters. Hennepin County (Minneapolis) District Judge Charles Porter apparently had little sympathy for loose-lipped Larry. He rejected his appeal to withdraw his guilty plea in an airport men's room sex sting.

Of course, Craig didn't immediately quit the Senate, any more than he kept his pledge to resign if he couldn't withdraw the plea by the end of last month. The actual plea bargain was not for having or even soliciting public sex. Among the other original chargers was invading privacy by repeatedly staring at a man in a toilet stall through the dividers and door. Instead he paid $575 for disorderly conduct.

On the surface, that's a misdemeanor and does not require resignation from Congress. However, Santa Craig keeps giving to the Democrats with his words and actions. He constantly reminds the public of the preponderance of sexual shenanigans and illegal or immoral actions by members of his party. They make the Democrats look like abstinent aesthetes.

Judge Porter noted that Craig considered the plea bargain for six weeks before sending in the check and agreeing to it. He stated, "The defendant argues he pled in haste to prevent the allegation in this case from being publicized, thus doing damage to his political reputation. This pressure was entirely perceived by the defendant and was not a result of any action by the police, the prosecutor, or the court."

Porter concluded that there was no new evidence or any reason at all to permit the withdrawal of the plea. For the Democrats, that's kind of a pity. It seemed that Craig would be stupid enough to fight the original sheet of sex charges, keeping all the sleaze on view. I guess it's December 26th and there's won't be any more presents from this Santa.

Republicans in party HQ and Congress seem eager for Craig to move his dishonorable butt back to Boise. His governor, Butch Otter, has a short list of similarly reactionary replacement candidates. This surely was Larry's last lick. Even someone in the super-privileged role of U.S. Senator must be able to read the writing on this (bathroom) wall.

Wet the Pants Funny Follow-up: The WaPo reports this afternoon that Craig will continue to play Dem operative and fling his poo. As the Capital Briefing blog puts it, he changed his mind yet again after Judge Porter's ruling and will stay in the Senate, even though stripped of his Committee leader roles and with GOP Congressional leaders calling for a full, very public ethics hearing.

Larry says:

I am extremely disappointed with the ruling issued today. I am innocent of the charges against me. I continue to work with my legal team to explore my additional legal options.

I will continue to serve Idaho in the United States Senate, and there are several reasons for that. As I continued to work for Idaho over the past three weeks here in the Senate, I have seen that it is possible for me to work here effectively.

Over the course of my three terms in the Senate and five terms in the House, I have accumulated seniority and important committee assignments that are valuable to Idaho, not the least of which are my seats on the Appropriations Committee, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Veterans' Affairs Committee. A replacement would be highly unlikely to obtain these posts.

In addition, I will continue my effort to clear my name in the Senate Ethics Committee - something that is not possible if I am not serving in the Senate.

When my term has expired, I will retire and not seek reelection. I hope this provides the certainty Idaho needs and deserves.

What does he know that makes him hate the GOP so much?

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Tags: massmarrier, honesty, Larry Craig, Idaho, Congress

Burke Bites Again

In a Nemesis Award series, the fourth Chihuahua of Retribution goes again to a Christian fundamentalist who has decided that he'll judge and act as his God's agent of punishment. This is fairly similar to the previous awardee. I am a bit surprised that Roman Catholics are outpacing Protestants here.

It's been three years, but St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke manufactured another chance to snap and flap his cassock. Three years ago, he did his publicity hound thing with John Kerry, then running for POTUS. He proclaimed that if Kerry tried to take communion while in the neighborhood, he was flat out of luck. It seems although Burke wasn't the Pope, wasn't even Kerry's prelate, he would find a way to pretend to punish our Senator for voting for abortion rights and favoring stem-cell research.

Well, St. Louis isn't the center of much of anything, except bland lager. It's taken awhile for Burke to reprise the role he seems to relish. He certainly has failed his humility test, but I rather doubt any of his chums will call him on that.

This time, the bad guy is Republican POTUS-would-be Rudy Giuliani. Burke told the wires, ""If any politician approached me and he'd been admonished not to present himself, I'd not give (communion). To me, you have to be certain a person realizes he is persisting in a serious public sin."

It is fascinating that Burke would insinuate himself in matters that belong between Kerry, his God, his priest and his conscience.

A long-term UU minister (age 90) is coming to dinner tomorrow. I'll have to kick this around with him. Previously, he and I concurred that it must be a fine feeling to have all these options non-creedal clerics don't. Denying church rites, excommunicating, and threatening with eternal damnation and perpetual anguish are great theater and potentially useful tools.

Burke epitomizes the religious sorts who want to intrude into politics, but screech like a cat underfoot if government encroaches on any aspect of their business. I think of the U.S. and British insistence that publicly funded adoption agencies have to obey everyone's rules and consider homosexual prospective parents. Their response has been to fold shop, leaving the kids in orphanages or foster homes before such placements, while claiming their religious rights were trampled. Likewise, when they set up and run non-religious money-making programs and have to pay taxes on those, somehow this is a government interference.

Our Chihuahua today is yet another self-righteous sort who would intrude in politics and hold that as his duty. Harrumph.

As usual, Mayor 9/11 is cool about this, saying, "Archbishops have a right to their opinion." The highly insulated and apparently quite egotistical Burke though would surely consider his pronouncement well above a mere opinion.

Rudy also noted that he studied religion for four years, wanting to be a priest. He added:

So it's a very, very important part of my life. But I think in a democracy and in a government like ours, my religion is my way of looking at God, and other people have other ways of doing it, and some people don't believe in God. I think that's unfortunate. I think their life would be a lot fuller if they did, but they have that right.

Also, on the Christian Broadcasting Network, he pulled out the classic, "I'm guided very, very often about, 'Don't judge others, lest you be judged.'"

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Tags: massmarrier, Giuliani, Archbishop Burke, Catholic Charities, abortion, adoption, John Kerry

Legislative Reality Check

Nice is free, but sometimes you gotta come down. Thus it is with the Massachusetts House.

They can't get to progressive reform. They can't even get to long-delayed infrastructure. Our kids face mediocre schools and our bridges shudder when we drive on them.

This is the time to tell your own lawmakers in both houses to cut the crap and do what must be done. (Perhaps they need some Powdermilk Biscuits.) They, particularly in the House, where funding bills, originate have:

• Admitted we have been sitting on problems, ignoring them, for almost two decades.
• Quashed every funding proposal Gov. Deval Patrick has advanced.
• Restored nearly all private earmarks (pork) that he vetoed from the budget.
• Refuse to advance their own ideas.

It doesn't work, isn't logical, and must stop.

Now, Patrick has finally proposed casino gambling as a revenue source. Here and on LeftAhead!, I have given my objections to that. Yet, the legislature has cornered the state and is holding us ransom. Patrick at least has the savvy to portray gambling as just one industry he would foster for jobs as well as tax revenue. However, not only is that an unsure source, there's no turning back if we permit casinos, the revenue may be taking money from one pocket to put into another, we would surely have to commit a lot of money and time to roads and other concessions first, and it would be a long time before we'd see real cash flow from this.

Far, far better would we for us to tell House Speaker Sal DiMasi, Senate President Therese Murray, and Gov. Patrick that we demand feasible revenue sources that will start quickly. I'll be posting on some of the alternatives.

Consider for example, the benign Municipal Partnership Act, which would have given cities and towns a lot of flexibility to raise revenue and provide tax relief to seniors. It was killed unborn by the House.

Likewise, meals taxes determined by local towns were rejected out of hand by the legislative leaders. It works in cities and towns across the country and would be very fruitful in tourist areas like the Berkshires, Cape Cod, Cape Ann, and Boston.

The fanged, flying elephant though is business taxes. DiMasi seems paralyzed over even the concept of making businesses pay similar taxes to those they get in other states. They won't leave here for a small burden that is the cost of doing business everywhere else. They might not give Sal the biggest paying job after he leaves office, but there are a few million people here to consider.

Then there's the myth of Taxachusetts. That has a nice literary ring to it, but is very inaccurate. In effective tax rates (including things like property taxes), we are in the lower half of the nation. We really can't whine about needing to fix the highways and pay for good schools if we don't pay fair taxes. Didn't everyone's parents teach you get what you pay for? A blind, irrational fear of taxes can crush the commonwealth.

I welcome comments on the sensible and possible revenue sources. DiMasi, Murray and Patrick may not welcome them, but they need to hear them. Leave comments or go directly to them:

Governor Deval Patrick
Massachusetts State House
Room 360
Boston, MA 02133

Phone: 617.725.4005
online comments: http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=gov3utilities&sid=Agov3&U=Agov3_contact_us

Speaker of the House Salvatore F. DiMasi
State House
Room 356
State House
Boston, MA 02133

Phone: 617-722-2500
email: Rep.SalvatoreDiMasi@hou.state.ma.us

Senate President Therese Murray
State House
Room 330 Building Three, Room 319
Boston, MA 02133

Phone: (617) 722-1500
email: Therese.Murray@state.ma.us

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, Sal DiMasi, Therese Murray, taxes

Stealing from MSM

Omphaloskepsis Warning: Blogger on blogging.

As a paragon for the ambitious blogger, The Huffington Post has stolen from the rich and given to the rich. An analysis in today's Financial Times has almost everything right. Its thrust is that THP has taken what it needed from mainstream media while keeping the counterculture features of the best blogs. It has something for everyone and has bested MSM at their own game.

The numbers hint. Consider staffing up to 43 full-timers, with nine ad reps. (I always loved the newspaper and magazine term for their job, space sales — ooo, selling space.) They work in a newspaper-style bullpen with rows of PCs.

That's fat and thin at the same time. The bigger staff now supports real news on the front. The combo blog/news monster ranks five in Technorati popularity. Yet, they are doing it with a tiny fraction of a newspaper's staff.

The best quote of the analysis was THP Technology Director Jonah Perretti's. He calls this "the mullet strategy," "a reference to the infamous hairstyle that features a trim front and a scraggly back: 'It’s business up front, party in the back.'"

How they can pull it off (other than being funded by extremely plugged in, very entrepreneurial and sloppy rich patrons) is telling. As the piece puts it:

While they may not have the resources or brand recognition of established newspapers, Ms Huffington and her co-founder, Kenneth Lerer, believe they have advantages. One is that they do not have to maintain an army of reporters to gather news. Another is that they are not weighed down by a legacy business. That means that they have lower costs and can afford to take risks without unnerving long-time readers.

"That’s why these big media companies were never successful at launching cable channels in the 1980s," says Mr Lerer, a former Time Warner executive. "They had to buy them, and the same thing is happening now with the internet."

Having come out of newspapers and magazines, I can add that MSM greed is seldom matched with the risk-taking attitude necessary to pull off transitions. They are notorious for being cash rich and penurious. They almost all underpay staff. Their physical costs, even of those who own presses, are much smaller than nearly any other manufacturing operations. They also have great, quick cash flow, the envy of companies who have to warehouse and ship goods, which may end up being returned. MSM will get paid for their ads, without regard to fashion and other uncontrollable variables.

MSM is often inert, slow to change, and not innovative. As a group, they are like any company or person with inherited wealth. They are terrified of screwing up their sure thing.

Arianna Huffington clearly is not. Her mullet is showing and looking good.

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Tags: massmarrier, blogs, Huffington Post, Financial Times, newspapers, MSM, Jonah Perretti

Alas, No Human Pincushions

I'm trying to keep political posting down, and avoid the absurd, like Larry Craig.

For something completely different, over at Harrumph! you'll find:

• Racing pigs, bleating sheep, and side show recollections.
• A ghost building in Somerville.
• A rant on flight attendants.
• More on local beekeepers.

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Tags: massmarrier, Harrumph!