Governor Deval L. Patrick announced today that Arthur Bernard -- currently a Senior Advisor to the Governor -- has been appointed Chief of Staff in the Governor's office. Bernard will replace Doug Rubin who is leaving state government to join the Governor's re-election campaign.
"Arthur has become one of my closest and most trusted advisors since joining the team last year," said Governor Patrick. "His experience, judgment and level-headedness have been enormous assets to me already and make him perfectly suited to help lead our ambitious agenda."
Note that Rubin is not heading back to the private sector just yet; instead, he is shifting over to the Gov's political operation in preparation for 2010.
Here's hoping both that Rubin continues his engagement here on BMG, and that Mr. Bernard will do so as well. Congrats to both.
Exhausted, confused and extremely frightened, Owen immediately ran to the safety of a giant tortoise when we released him in Haller Park. Mzee, our 130 year old tortoise, just happened to be nearby and he was very surprised by Owen's odd behavior cowering behind him as a baby hippo does to its mother. Mzee quickly came to terms with his new friend and even returned signs of affection. The unusual relationship between this baby hippo and the ancient tortoise amazed people the world over and has featured in most countries on television and in news papers.
What is the moral of this story for Massachusetts politics?
(What did happen at Deerfield? Poor, poor Howie. - promoted by Bob)
Howie Carr's bizarre on-air rants against Tom Finneran are disturbing.
What the Hell did Finneran ever do to him? Is Howie a self-hating Irish Catholic?
To say Howie has 'no class" is a not only a huge understatement but an insult to the classless.
Tom Finneran is not crooked. His friends and political enemies know this.
Sal DiMasi is most likely a crook. But guess what? Nobody is surprised. He has always been suspect. Same for Dianne Wilkerson.
Charley Flaherty? Not a crook. But way too openly close with lobbyists. They got him for not declaring on his taxes that he stayed at a friend/lobbyists cape house for week. In other words he was supposed to declare the value of a weeks stay at the cottage and pay an income tax on it. T
But Howies has gone Joe McCarthy on us. Is Howie correct when he cries that the State House has many hacks, phonies, frauds, and lay-abouts? Yes. Was Joe McCarthy correct when he accused the Federal Government of having Communist spies working within it? Yes. (he was proven right, sort of, after the fall of the Soviet Union)
Is Howie a fraud when he makes himself out as a common man with Somerville roots? Of course he is.
Does Howie have to fake laugh to get through his four hour show filled with borderlines calling in with phony stories about welfare mothers in front of them at the check-out counter? Of course he does.
Howie has lived a sheltered life. He's not as street smart as he thinks.
Joe McCarthy was a nut and went way out of his way to needlessly ruin many lives. Biographies of Joe suggest he was fighting a host of demons.
Did something happen at Deerfield Academy that made Howie so bitter? What, if anything, did those prep school richie riches do to the son of the guy mowing the lawn?
I'm not a psychologist so no diagnosis coming from me. But his rants on Finneran are becoming sad to listen to. They don't make sense. And even if they did Howie's creepy obsession with him should cause concern. Many Howie listeners have become familiar with Finneran through his morning show. They don't see/hear the same person that Howie has been portraying him to be.
(Thanks, Rep. Sciortino. Once again, we have the Governor and progressive members of the legislature fighting for transparency, and a committee that meets in secret -- sort of like Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force -- trying to keep information hidden, probably so that the money involved can be channeled to friends and relatives. Thanks for the heads up on "Attachment F - Transparency of Tax Credit Results:" another way to separate legislators who support government for the people from those who support ... something else. - promoted by Bob)
Dear Members of BMG Community:
The state budget recently passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor included a provision on tax credit transparency. This provision relates to specific credits, such as the historic preservation and film industry tax credits. These credits are refundable or transferrable, essentially acting as a state grant. But unlike typical grant programs, details about tax credits are considered private information. In other words, companies that receive tax credits are treated differently than companies that receive state grants. Does this make sense?
The transparency provision originally included in the budget mandated that those receiving these credits report certain information back to the state, including the identity of the corporation receiving the credit and the employment data to show how many jobs the credit allowed the company to create.
Unfortunately, the budget that eventually emerged from the conference committee changed the transparency provisions in such a way as to remove some critical reporting details. The omission of this important information - such as the identity of the company receiving the credit - will makes it virtually impossible for the state or the public to determine the effectiveness of these tax credit programs. At a time when the state is cutting virtually every state program, including core essential services and local aid, it is outrageous that the public cannot find out the true value of these tax credits, which are provided in the tens of millions of dollars to corporations.
If President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are sincere in their professions of enthusiasm for democracy and popular rule, they should join every other state in the region and withdraw our ambassador from Honduras. They should also suspend all U.S. military aid to the country until its democratically elected president is restored. NYT reports:
The United States, which provides millions of dollars in aid to Honduras and maintains a military base there, is the only country in the region that has not withdrawn its ambassador from Honduras. France and Spain have also recalled their ambassadors.
If they don't, and if the military junta that has illegally seized control of our regional neighbor Honduras stays in place, we can chalk this up as another example of "saying one thing but doing another" that seems to be becoming an all too frequent pattern by the Obama administration.
BMG raised the most money for Obama for America of any blog in the country except for DailyKos. It pains me to see such a wide gap opening between the candidate we supported and the president we got. I accept that six months is not four years, and the 2012 presidential campaign will not begin for another year or two, but the record to date, especially considering the large Democratic majorities the administration has to work with, raises questions.
Following its passage by the House, we've been hearing this week what a disappointment Waxman-Markey is. Yes, many folks told us so beforehand. It's a vast legislative kludge, with giveaways and little legislative bribes galore. Guilty, guilty, guilty.
From the standpoint of averting global climate catastrophe, there's one bottom line. When we have multiple bottom lines, things get murky. Do you want a bill that gets us to 450 -- no, it's more like 350 ppm of atmospheric CO2 by 2050 -- the standard for containing the global catastrophe -- or do you want a law that is pure and free of giveaways to special interests?
Here's a thought exercise: Rather than pass judgement on how our political system works vis-a-vis monied interests (which I do all the time), let's look at how things actually could be expected to work out. If we're moving away from dirty energy, someone loses, and it's not just executives of "dirty" industries. Coal miners lose; refinery workers lose; and so forth.
We're talking about remaking our energy economy in the US. Like it or not, there are real people who are dependent on the mining economy. Yes, Coal Is The Enemy Of The Human Race -- but it also is the economic subsistence of a good chunk of America. That can't just be wished away.
With this understanding, it is a reasonable cost of doing business to provide a buffer for people affected by those industries. "Clean coal" has gotten billions in giveaways. Countless other industries have extracted their pounds of flesh. It's unconscionable to me that someone would privilege their own interests over that of the billions of people who will be affected by climate catastrophe; but in the context of American politics, we shouldn't be surprised that they'd want a sweetener.
I don't know if the law's provisions represent an appropriate price to pay for their cooperation in reaching a 450ppm/2050 standard. But I'm not surprised that there is a price tag. And actually, the CBO says it's a pretty small burden on taxpayers.
So, dealmaking will continue to happen in the Senate. The specifics matter. But right now, the most important thing is to strengthen Waxman-Markey's standard of 450ppm of CO2 by 2050. (cf: 350.org.)
From now until the Senate takes up this legislation, a good dose of shrillness (thanks Paul Krugman, and others) is definitely in order. We should be on war footing -- is less at stake now than with, say, Afghanistan in 2002? I sure would appreciate our President and Congress getting involved in this issue with the kind of urgency that the issue demands -- right now.
(We had a good conversation with the Mayor. You can listen any time with the player posted below. - promoted by David)
Last in our series of conversations with the candidates for Boston's top job. Call in on (347) 539-5813 to listen to the program live or to ask a question, or post your question in the comments.
You can also listen live, or any time after the show, by clicking below.
(Sore loser Republican Norm Coleman, who initially advised Franken to withdraw his early demand for a recount, has finally withdrawn. Now we will see if President Obama is a progressive ... or something else. - promoted by Bob)
From NYT: "The Minnesota Supreme Court has ordered that Democrat Al Franken be certified as the winner of the state's long-running Senate race."
Somebody call the Republican waahmbulance. What a bunch of sore losers.
(Bumped, because I'm still liveblogging, damn it. - promoted by Bob)
More from the Personal Democracy Forum. Liveblog of discussion with Frank Rich (NYT), Karen Tumulty (Time), Dan Gillmor (ASU prof.), Scott Simon (NPR), Andrew Rasiej (PDF, moderator).
Moderator leads it off: "Is it all going to work out in the end? Will journalism survive." [Sigh, yes it will all work out, it's a fairy tale, after all. ... Good lord. - Bob]
Rich: People didn't imagine that anyone would pay for television, but they did. Tumulty: terrifying time. I hope I'm still around when they work it out. Gillmore: cites FireDogLake's "donate now" solicitations to fund investigative journalism. We need lots of experiments. Simon: people aren't going to be content with the old pompous model of the industry: "this is the news." Cites use of Twitter and other new media as tools to improve journalism. In the old days, they were limited to the personal knowledge of people in the newsroom. Now they can access the knowledge of millions to find source material. Rich: New media can create its own deceptions. Sanford's staff Tweeted for him while he was in South America. Some people initially saw this as evidence the Appalachian Trail story was valid. NYT reporter Roger Cohen provided a useful corrective to the "false dawn" of the Twitter Revolution story. [Excellent points - Bob]. Liveblog continues on the flip.
(Better and more useful discussion here than anything I've seen at the Personal Democracy Forum. - promoted by Bob)
As I noted earlier, there was very big news at the Supreme Court today -- and it wasn't the Ricci case. The biggest news was the non-decision in Citizens United v. FEC, in which the Court ordered reargument and briefing on whether two important campaign finance cases should be overruled. SCOTUSblog describes the issues presented as follows:
In the Austin [v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce] decision, the Court upheld the power of government to bar corporations from using funds from their own treasuries to support or oppose candidates for elected state offices. In the part of McConnell [v. FEC] that the Court will reconsider, the Justices upheld a provision of the 2002 campaign finance law that bars corporations and labor unions from using their treasury funds to pay for radio or TV ads, during election season, that refer to a candidate for Congress or the Presidency, and appear to urge a vote for or against such a candidate.
This case, in other words, is now about the opening of the floodgates of special interest money into the campaign system. Here's Rick Hasen, who has forgotten more about this stuff than most people will ever know:
If Republicans were wondering how their 2012 presidential candidate is going to compete against President Obama's $600 million fundraising juggernaut, the Supreme Court seems poised to provide an answer: unlimited corporate spending supporting the Republican candidate, or attacking Obama.... If after reargument in September, corporate limits fall - and limits on the money labor unions can spend on campaigns, with them - we may well look back on the 2008 election as a quaint time when the amounts spent on elections were relatively modest. Expect the floodgates to open, and the money to flow freely, as early as next year.
Hasen thinks, and I agree, that the Court is almost certain to overrule these cases (probably 5-4, or 5-3 if Sotomayor is not yet confirmed when the case is decided). We know for certain that Justices Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas will vote to overrule (they've said so in past cases). And it beggars belief to think that Roberts and Alito won't go along, given the opportunity -- Hasen reports that Alito has publicly expressed discontent with the current campaign finance cases, but has been unwilling to overrule past precedent until the issue was squarely presented and briefed. Now, it will be.
So once that happens, what next? Does it make any sense at all to retain paltry individual contribution limits like the federal $2,300 -- or the state's $500 (remember that a constitutional ruling will invalidate state campaign finance regulation on union and corporate expenditures too) -- when unions and corporations will be free to flood the airwaves with all the ads they can buy? Should we just make the whole thing a free-for-all, as long as all expenditures are immediately disclosed?
Memo to the hyperintelligence. Your New York City portalist hard at work here at the Jazz at Lincoln Center theater at the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle in the meat world to sit in on a few sessions at the 2009 Personal Democracy Forum.
The jargon is so thick I need a reality machete just to figure out what these people are talking about. Sadly, it's usually banal. There's more insight in an average fortune cookie. Lots of expensive (but casual!) shoes and hair gel in the house, though. So this is where all the Silicon Alley people have gone.
From the Machine is (Changing) Us, and the Dangerous Power of Sharing (Power) sessions. "In the past like paired with like." "Power must surrender power or be overwhelmed by it." "Group throw-weight." "What happens when you have ad-hocracies battling it out with hierarchies." "Anarcho-syndicalism" (Moderator: "Could you spell that please?").
This is the kind of thing that happens when consultants desperately try to justify their existence by saying meaningless things in a complicated way in the hope that someone will pay them to explain themselves. I'll let you know if anyone says anything worth your time.
A couple of Obama items to report, both via the quite conservative but nonetheless well-informed and insightful blawgers at Volokh.
First, President Obama made some promising comments at the White House reception honoring Pride Month on our old friend Don't Ask Don't Tell.
I want to say a word about "don't ask, don't tell." As I said before -- I'll say it again -- I believe "don't ask, don't tell" doesn't contribute to our national security. (Applause.) In fact, I believe preventing patriotic Americans from serving their country weakens our national security. (Applause.) ... I know that every day that passes without a resolution is a deep disappointment to those men and women who continue to be discharged under this policy -- patriots who often possess critical language skills and years of training and who've served this country well. But what I hope is that these cases underscore the urgency of reversing this policy not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it is essential for our national security.
Awesome! Getting rid of DADT is "essential for our national security"! And so, the Volokh blawger asks:
To deal with this grave and urgent threat to national security, the Commander-in-Chief announced that he will immediately:
(1) Suspend enforcement of DADT in its entirety for the duration of the war, claiming ample constitutional and statutory authority.
(2) Issue a stop-loss order barring DADT expulsions for certain classes of "mission-critical" specialists.
(3) Order the Defense Department to halt DADT investigations and other inquiries into soldiers' sexual orientation.
(4) Demand that Congress act now to repeal DADT.
(5) Ask that a plan be developed on an unspecified time schedule for the repeal of DADT at some indefinite point in the future.
(Pick one.)
Any of options 1-3 are well within the President's ample executive authority, IMHO, and option 4 would be a useful rhetorical device. Sadly, we know the answer to this quiz. From the earlier link:
[A]s commander in chief, in a time of war, I do have a responsibility to see that this change is administered in a practical way and a way that takes over the long term. That's why I've asked the secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a plan for how to thoroughly implement a repeal.
And yet, lest you think that President Obama is acting cautiously because he doesn't want to go all Dick Cheney on the issue of his executive authority, here we go:
[P]rovisions of this bill within sections 1110 to 1112 of title XI, and sections 1403 and 1404 of title XIV, would interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the Congress prior to such negotiations or discussions. I will not treat these provisions as limiting my ability to engage in foreign diplomacy or negotiations.
(I pledged. Will you? - promoted by Charley on the MTA)
I am on a 100-day, 16,000 mile, 48-state trek through the United States to collect stories from queer communities in hopes of advancing LGBT equality. The project is called Driving Equality. (http://drivingequality.com)
Since this journey began, I have received a ton of email from supporters and well-wishers. But I have also received hate mail from folks who disagree with the idea of equal rights for LGBT people. It is always a shock to receive an message like the one below:
"Gays deserve to die! They will all burn in the fires of Hell! I am going to knife their asses!"
I am never really sure how to respond to an email like this...until now. Most of you know that I love to run "A-Thons". I did a "Rick-A-Thon" when Rick Warren spoke at President Obama's inauguration, and I run "Phelps-A-Thons" all over the country to counter Fred Phelps' hateful "God Hates Fags" message.
(I'll have more on Waxman-Markey tomorrow -- very complex thoughts about the whole thing. But ramping up the activism is what we all need. It ain't "for the planet" -- it's for us. - promoted by Charley on the MTA)
Wow, Waxman-Markey narrowly passed last week; truly a historic occasion. This is cause to have a celebration - a chamber of congress has finally passed a bill aimed at reducing carbon emissions. The question of course is: what happens next? For many, that question is simple to answer - move on to the Senate to try to get it strengthened and sent on to the President.
Here in Massachusetts, we have a different approach. The window of opportunity we have leading up to Copenhagen is too important to miss. This summer 19 college and graduate students are devoting two months to bike through the state in Mass Climate Summer, a project of Massachusetts Power Shift, building a bigger, bolder, and better climate movement.
By all accounts, Waxman-Markey is not good enough. I'm not a climate scientist, heck I'm not a scientist at all, but it's not a difficult deduction. Simply: if we are currently at 388ppm of CO2, and the north polar ice cap may be completely gone during the summer months as early as 2013, then the overly optimistic trajectory of 450ppm for Waxman-Markey is not tolerable.
If 388ppm is leading to wildly accelerating feedback loops in the arctic (tundra methane and carbon release, rapidly heating ocean endangering Greenland's ice sheet, etc.) it's not too hard to realize we need to have a number lower than that, something around say, 350.
("Autobumping" a new term is born. - promoted by Bob)
I'm bumping my own diary that was FP'd earlier. This is an important subject, so I'd be pissa psyched, if you would rec it and let it hang for a bit. Both Ryepower12 & AnnEM were tracking Sen Kerry on this issue, so I'm hoping that they may have some feedback to share.
Rep. Tsongas is asking supporters to go to a couple of parades on July 4th, so I figure there will be an opportunity for some constituent lobbying. (Lot's of smiles. I don't like to ambush pols with the hardline at these sorts of things.) :v)
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Update:Strong Support (6.00 / 4)
Hi Jack, I saw your post and wanted to ensure that you knew of my strong support for a public option in health care reform.
-Niki
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Mr. Lynne follows up. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE:Kerry spokeswoman Jodi Seth responds with a statement: "Let's be clear, if Sen. Kerry had his way, there'd be no debate: we'd have universal coverage tomorrow with a strong public plan at its core. Sen. Kerry strongly supports a robust public option and has been pushing for it since day one of this debate. When he ran for president, he campaigned on a public option and everywhere he went he reminded the country that Congress shouldn't deny them the public health care that Members of Congress give themselves. The past five years have only strengthened that conviction. Any suggestion that he prefers proposals that would delay or trigger the implementation of a public plan is outright false, end of story. But it's no secret that the Finance Committee is looking at a whole range of progressive options with an eye on what can make its way to the president's desk to become law, and obviously if it's the only way to get universal health coverage then people will consider a trigger that ultimately guarantees a strong public option."
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As JohnD has already noted, the Supreme Court today reversed the Second Circuit decision (in which SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor joined) that had upheld the city of New Haven's decision to throw out a test that appeared to favor white firefighters. In today's decision, Ricci v. DeStefano, the Supreme Court ordered judgment in favor of the firefighters, holding that the city's fear of litigation was not enough to justify throwing out the test. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, joined by the Four Horsemen (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito). Bottom line:
Confronted with arguments both for and against certifying the test results-and threats of a lawsuit either way-the City was required to make a difficult inquiry. But its hearings produced no strong evidence of a disparate-impact violation, and the City was not entitled to disregard the tests based solely on the racial disparity in the results.
Our holding today clarifies how Title VII applies to resolve competing expectations under the disparate-treatment and disparate-impact provisions. If, after it certifies the test results, the City faces a disparate-impact suit, then in light of our holding today it should be clear that the City would avoid disparate-impact liability based on the strong basis in evidence that, had it not certified the results, it would have been subject to disparate-treatment liability.
The decision was 5-4, with the usual suspects (Ginsburg, joined by Stevens, Souter, and Breyer) dissenting.
Did Judge Sotomayor get reversed? Yes, she did. But she got reversed 5-4, with the "conservatives" voting one way and the "liberals" voting the other. Sotomayor can justly be subjected to criticism for participating in the Second Circuit's curious decision to issue a very brief, unsigned opinion, as I've already discussed. But, given that 44% of the Supreme Court agreed with her, there's no basis for saying that Sotomayor's views on the merits of the case are out of the mainstream. So I frankly doubt that this case will have much effect on her confirmation. Had today's decision been 9-0 or 8-1 to reverse, that might have been a different story.
The other big news today, as reported by the excellent SCOTUSblog, is that the Court did not decide one of the cases argued this term. The case, Citizens United v. FEC, which asks "[w]hether federal campaign finance laws apply to a critical film about Senator Hillary Clinton intended to be shown in theaters and on-demand to cable subscribers," will instead be reargued in the fall, and the parties have been ordered to brief the following question:
"For the disposition of this case, should the Court overrule either or both Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and the part of McConnell v. FEC which addresses the facial validity of Section 203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002?"
Well, if that's not a signal, I don't know what is. Look for a potential campaign finance earthquake this fall -- Austinupheld a state law banning independent corporate expenditures to support or oppose political candidates.
Act Now to Save Non-Profit Jobs!
Support Legislation to Free Up Funds to Save Jobs!
Dear Friends,
Contact Speaker DeLeo and Chairman Charles Murphy today to urge them to bring UPMIFA, SB 2078 to a vote by July 1!
If the House votes in favor by July 1, UPMIFA will save jobs immediately and provide economic relief for cultural organizations of all sizes.
And, it will not cost the state a single penny!
Click here or paste this web address into your browser to send an e-mail right away. (It only takes a few moments)
The Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA) will ensure that public charities use the best investment practices of endowments while giving the charities more flexibility in using resources to meet critical needs. Under current laws, a public charity cannot use so called "underwater" endowment funds, where market losses have driven the fund value below its principal.
UPMIFA will free these funds to provide charities with desperately needed operating cash to maintain jobs and services. Because the non-profit sector is already shedding jobs, we are asking the Legislature to pass UPMIFA before July 1 to halt imminent layoffs. 14% of the Massachusetts work force is employed by non-profits.
UPMIFA has already been adopted by 34 states with pending legislation in 12 others. Drafted by the national Uniform Law Commission (www.upmifa.org), UPMIFA is endorsed by the American Bar Association, The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, The National Association of College and University Business Officers, and many Massachusetts organizations: including the Massachusetts Advocates for the Arts, Sciences and Humanities (MAASH).
We thank you again for your advocacy on this critical issue that will cost the state nothing, but will save many jobs across the Commonwealth.
I've explained in a bit more detail in this post why UPMIFA could really help struggling arts organizations and other non-profits. And it's absolutely true that UPMIFA will cost the state nothing -- it allows non-profits more access to money they already have but cannot use under current law.
This one's a no-brainer. The only reason I can see why this wouldn't happen is that the House doesn't get around to it. And that would be a real shame.
