Blue Mass Group

From the local Bay State Bombast, part of the Political Shorts feature written by alert BMG reader (and Leno writer) Ben Alper for the OnlineOffbeat.com site: Three things to watch for in tomorrow’s Boston Marathon …    • When congratulating the winners, will Mayor Menino be provided with Kenyan, Ethiopian, and English translators?    • Will Gov. Deval Patrick watch the race on TV while exercising on his treadmill, thus allowing him to devote a chapter in his upcoming book to “the time I ran in the Boston Marathon.”    • Will the runners who finish the marathon vomit as much as the marchers who finish the St. Patrick’s Day Parade? From Dan Kurtzman’s Political Humor Blog: “Bush was on ‘Deal or No Deal.’ Apparently he didn’t feel he was ready for ‘Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?’” –David Letterman “Hillary, very confident, says she is ready for the 3 a.m. phone call, and McCain says he is ready for the 3 p.m. nap.” –David Letterman “No one talks about John McCain anymore because he won his side of the thing, and now he’s just wandering around. … So he’s trying to do things to get press, this week [...]

This is a huge loss to the Globe, and to all MA residents interested in health care reform: reporter Alice Dembner reportedly has taken a buy-out and will leave the paper in early May. And the incredible shrinking Globe continues its march toward … what?

As I noted earlier, foreclosure’s aren’t distributed randomly throughout the country, or even within a metro area.  They’re fairly concentrated in certain neighborhoods and towns.

And as these maps show, they’re strongly inversely correlated to income of the community.  Let me preemptively say this isn’t due to the Community Reinvestment Act, which precludes redlining poor areas for housing loans, as some conservatives keep trying to push.  As Ezra Klein noted here:

For those who left their abacus at home, that’s 80% of the loans which

were fully or largely outside CRA jurisdiction. More than that, the

non-CRA mortgage firms made subprime loans at twice the rate of CRA-covered firms. Which basically leaves a stake in the heart of this particular theory.

Well, here’s what we’ve all been waiting for. Enjoy, everyone. Let’s hope our kids can fix the mess that our great and glorious benefactor got us into.

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Every year, there are controversies over the “National Day of Prayer,” which has somehow become the exclusive province of the Dobson empire. This year it is being held on May first — and the fireworks have already started.

But lest you think that this is an obscure bit of Bush administration taxpayer financed pandering — note that even Democratic governors in blue states — such as our own Deval Patrick — are issuing proclamations as drafted by the Dobsons. See for yourself here. (Update by David: the MA proc can be viewed here.)  

The two %$#@s that write that trash gossip column for the Herald went off on a Globe writer today  for apparently appearing intoxicated at a Fox Network dinner event.  This same writer, the #%&*s reported, also wrote negative things in the Globe about the very same Fox Network event and after party entertainment. I’m confused. The charges leveled against him by the two ^%$# don’t rise to the level of water cooler chat, never mind headline news. Fox: the network owned by Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch: the man who use to own the Herald but was forced to sell. The Herald: owned by Pat Purcell. Pat Purcell: the man Rupert Murdoch wanted to sell the Herald to. The Herald sale: Murdoch made sure it was sold to his long time employee who did not have a pot to pee in. So anyway, this item about the Globe writer is so below the belt, so obviously duplicitous, so nasty, so unprofessional, so child like, so amateur like,  so lack of originality or creativity. So Herald like. Wow, you media types have a great profession. One for all and all for one.  Nice. What these &#@*s did in this column is the [...]

Matt Viser's got a must-read story in today's Globe about how that $200 million tax giveaway (oh no, I don't dare call it a loophole) got put into the close-the-loopholes bill in the House. Community activist Carl Nilsson stood outside the House chamber late one night this month and spoke with any elected representative who would stop. He asked them to vote against a last-minute corporate tax amendment, one that was heavily influenced by lobbyists and business groups. But nothing Nilsson said would matter. Behind closed doors, the decision had already been made by a handful of influential lawmakers. By 9 p.m., the five-page, highly technical amendment carried easily on a voice vote, with little public debate. I gotta run, so this post is kind of a placeholder … hold forth in the comments. For now, I'll just ask if Rep. Bosley or the Speaker believe that this kind of MO bolsters or diminishes public trust in the legislature. What exactly should we think of our House of Reps? — Update, more commentary: Some legislators have professed to be offended by Governors running against the legislature. Robert Travaglini once took offense at Gov-elect Patrick's contention that there was waste in [...]

Post-Pennsylvania, everyone is trying to decipher the meaning of Clinton’s not-really 10 percentage point victory there (or have just gotten tired of it all).  Many have concluded it doesn’t mean anything since the outcome was largely expected. Still others are calling it another Clinton comeback – even though its hard to buy that argument when earlier polls had her up by 20 points in the Keystone State. What exactly did she come back from – a bigger victory? And of course a lot of the commentary has focused again on how Obama can’t close the deal with white folks, especially those who don’t make much cash.  And that in turn is being spun out as a reason for why he would be in trouble in the general, because he can’t pull wins in the big rust-belt states.  But here again the analysis is simplistic, casting Obama’s struggles in blunt racial or classist terms, overlooking some important facts. And the biggest factor overlooked is gender.  Obama suffers at the hands of not just all white voters, but specifically white female voters.  Here from an article in the Seattle Times: White women, according to exit polls, made up 46 percent of those [...]

I recently tried to update my profile and all I managed to do was wipe it out. Even though I think I am following the procedures to input new data and it always denotes “changes saved”, nothing gets saved. I have been referred to the Soap Box Site by our editors but to date have received no response. So I ask is their one of you who knows way more than I might on what I could possibly be doing wrong.