The Joke Revue came early this week, and in the Herald of all places: Matt Stout reports in “Critics press lawmakers to oppose Robert DeLeo:”
DiMasi became the third speaker in a row to be convicted of a federal crime, and DeLeo, while never charged, was labeled by federal prosecutors last summer as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Probation Department corruption trial — a fact he admitted “taints” his legacy. …
“This is not about Bob DeLeo. It’s about the House as an institution,” said state Rep. Garrett Bradley.
Another member of DeLeo’s inner circle, state Rep. Paul Donato, said, “I don’t believe the speaker’s position is, ‘I want to be speaker and I don’t want to let go of it.’ ” And while DeLeo “changed his mind” on the term limits, Donato expects the majority of the House to support him.
So hilarious. What this power grab by DeLeo and his coterie of cronies demonstrates is the incompatibility of one party rule and democracy: apparently, the US Attorney is the only one who can generate turnover in the Speakers Office. (As a side note, a shout out to yesterday’s Comment of the Day from TheBestDefense on HesterPrynne’s post: “Here is a run down from SouthCoastToday on DeLeo patronage games. Carol DeLeo, his sister, Secretary of State’s office; now she’s at the State Auditor’s office. Vicki A. Mucci, his longtime girlfriend, the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. Ralph DeLeo, his cousin, Executive Office of Administration and Finance. Joseph DeLeo, his cousin, the Revere Police Department. Brian Mirasolo, his godson, acting chief probation officer, Administrative Office of the Trial Court. 15 people at the state Probation Department who contributed at least $850 apiece to his campaign” citing this 2011 Globe piece by Andrea Estes and Scott Allen).
For progressives, what it shows is the dreadful cost of the failure to develop an effective Progressive Caucus under Governor Patrick that could vote as a block and stand up to bullying like this. At the moment, they are scattered like gulls at the seashore, and BMG readers find themselves applauding the chair of the Mass GOP.
Shenanigans like this are an important part of the reason Charlie Baker beat established Democratic pol Martha Coakley (and Scott Brown, before him), and help explain why the largest political party in Massachusetts is Unenrolled.
judy-meredith says
1. 160 Representative Districts elect lots more Democrats creating enough members to get them characterized as one party rule as Democrats. I’ll take it.
2 Democratic policy making in the House already exists, those 160 Reps each have an opportunity to debate and vote. We don’t have a vote but we can stand outside the public policy arena as progressives and characterize them as bullies or seagulls.
TheBestDefense says
You know that the most important act of the legislature, the annual budget, is a cluster f*** via the amendment consolidation process in the House.
And criticizing legislators on BMG is not standing “outside the public policy arena.” Social media is part of the process and an increasingly important one. It sure scares the crap out of legislators. Our job as activists is to spread it wider so they feel more pressure.
I agree with you that a Democratic majority in both chambers is important since the GOP has moved increasingly to the right on tax issues and many social policies. But it does not mean I have to blindly accept liberal Dems saying “DeLeo made me do it.” Again, I remind you of the total whoring of the House when DiMasi got the Dems to oppose casinos and DeLeo got a majority to flop in the other direction. One of the most important policies of the decade was set because Bobby likes gambling.
Tell us how many times in the past decade you saw a debate on the House floor that changed the result of the vote. How many time has a Speaker lost a vote that he did not actually want to lose, just so he could give the members a fig leaf to take home?
judy-meredith says
And criticizing legislators on BMG is not standing “outside the public policy arena.
Posting on a blog with a cute handle is outside the public policy arena..I responded to Bob because he uses his real name, has standing as an editor and deserves respect.
Social media is part of the process and an increasingly important one. Yes.
It sure scares the crap out of legislators.
Only when it is well timed well organized constituent pressure with a winning message an achievable solution backed up with facts, not name calling or empty threats.
Our job as activists is to spread it wider so they feel more pressure.
You got that right anyway.
TheBestDefense says
I am not standing outside the public policy arena, words that you originally wrote. Posting on BMG is part of being an activist, especially since you have no idea who I am and what else I do.
Ask a bland question of one of the progressive Dems in the House about how they feel about being held to account on BMG. Watch them bristle, as well they should. Read the newspapers. Listen to the radio. This move is going to tank the reputations of Democratic legislators at a time when we need leadership that will stand up to Baker when he wields the axe to the deficit.
TheBestDefense says
the same person who applauds EB3 for his anonymous posts? What is your standard, so I can consider whether to comply?
judy-meredith says
She doesn’t ask us to take her seriously.
TheBestDefense says
See the EB3 post today, for example. It seems pretty serious to me, and a good post at that.
jconway says
How should we tailor the message we send to our reps? Particularly since so many are voting on this the wrong way.
judy-meredith says
Think about how to apply that model to influencing internal rules of a legislative body.
Who are the constituents? What is their direct self interest in the solving the problem. What is the achievable solution? What is the timetable for influencing the process. …
SomervilleTom says
“How much did you know, and when did you know it”?
Until we get serious about investigating and prosecuting political corruption, NOTHING is going to change. Nothing.
SomervilleTom says
Sorry, but some of us have careers within professional communities where expressing political views is distinctly a career-limiting move. This is especially true for those of us who are old enough that ageism makes ANY threat to a good job more intense. Your attack on TBD’s decision to use a pseudonym is a misguided strawman. Your commentary is far more persuasive when it stays on-message.
My representative, Denise Provost, is already among the heroes (thankfully). She already knows how strongly I support her, I have encouraged her each of the several times we’ve met — most recently, at a block party in front of our home. I note, parenthetically, that she guessed that I was “SomervilleTom” on our first meeting and seemed genuinely pleased to meet me. She apparently does not share your aversion to pseudonyms).
It seems to me that the steps you describe are marvelously effective in an ideal world where no dark money circulates, no special perqs are exchanged for votes, and where mainstream media reports actual facts about actual issues.
Mr. DeLeo’s loud and self-serving denunciation of the Probation Department convictions speaks eloquently to the real motivations of this action. In the face of this arrogance and pervasive criminal corruption (aided and abetted by our former Attorney General), your suggestions will have about as much impact as a toy popgun against a tank.
In the real world of Massachusetts government in 2015, it seems to me that your formula is precisely what has produced the state government we now have.
I think Massachusetts needs rather more convictions from aggressive US Attorneys and rather less cluck-clucking from those who should, and I suggest probably do, know better.
chris-rich says
You have probably added more value over the course of your years than you took.
There is something deeply vile about employers who try to leverage their attempts at social control beyond the workplace by loading utterly spurious stresses on employees who have enough real ones.
In a way I’m pretty glad to have failed at all these aspirations and aims.
SomervilleTom says
I have learned, through much accumulated scar tissue, to deal with the world as it is, rather than as I want it to be, while relentlessly striving to change it as best I can.
Thankfully we still (at least for now) live in a society where control and manipulation is still mostly done through economic and political means rather than brute force. Sadly, I think that makes me part of the “privileged” class.
In most industries in America today, there are very few employers who don’t routinely search social media as part of the pre-screen of every job candidate. For those of us who choose politics and government as a career, real names and real opinions are probably a positive and perhaps even necessary part of a personal portfolio. For the rest of us, they introduce a dangerously unpredictable element to an already challenging process.
The disconnect between the political and real world is one of the more striking symptoms of the deep malaise of current Massachusetts government and those who make their careers from it.
chris-rich says
Otherwise you just have more zeros on an income statement at tax time.
I don’t generally like social media like face book for that reason, among many. It snoops and makes life a picnic for bullies and inquisitors. I stick with Google Plus because it is about building interesting bridges to strangers.
And when the platform defaults to affinities instead of kinship it makes everyone more thoughtful.
I’m surprised there hasn’t been more agitation to curtail HR department snooping maybe with some litigation teeth.
Peter Porcupine says
In many states, political speech and action are protected from retaliation.
Massachusetts is not one of them.
Of course, since retaliation is exercised mostly against Republicans, why would it be?
jconway says
A state government with a decidedly moderate-conservative Democratic supermajority and a moderately conservative Republican Governor who beat a moderate Democrat. Friends in Chicago used to be envious of our Senate and Congressional delegation, but then I would always be quick to remind them that our statehouse was in a race with theirs to be the most corrupt in the country. The last three speakers were dumb enough to get caught, DeLeo is smart enough to stick around like Madigan is here. They will be carried out in pine boxes, not in handcuffs.
And Madigan has successfully co-opted every reformer we elected, including two I campaigned for. ‘I’ll only ask for one vote during your time here, the first vote for Speaker, and that’s it”, but boy does that promise come with a hefty price tag. Our Attorney General is his daughter, I get that it’s awkward to investigate dad, what was Coakley’s excuse?
judy-meredith says
If they openly report on a bullying teacher of their disabled kid, on the lack of heat in their nursing home room, or their employer stealing their wages, or their spouses or parents beating them up. It’s human nature to be afraid of challenging those in power.
Often we can bring those folk together in a series of public actions, including direct actions, to promote some policy change ..i.e stop and frisk, domestic abuse, nursing home standard enforcement…
With all respect to the many smart articulate people using handles on BMG, I really believe you could double, triple your influence if you were able to participate in in organized efforts promoting positive change openly.
Chris -Rich had a line about throwing spit balls from blogs not being affective but I can’t find it.
chris-rich says
I looked too and failed to find it, although it is an easy characterization to make. And one is always welcome to trope it and play with it.
At the end of the day, I’m pretty worthless as a quotable authority on much of anything. I am a zen guy and try to counter the chest puffing commonly seen by many males here by celebrating my inherent insignificance.
If an I observation made or an idea I floated has some intrinsic merit, that’s always nice, but really, I’m just working on artful ways to belabor the obvious.
Thanks, nonetheless.
SomervilleTom says
The question of real names versus pseudonyms is as old as the web. The arguments you make have been made before, as have their counterarguments. Pseudonyms have been used in literature for as long as there has been literature.
None of us has any way of knowing that you actually ARE “Judy Meredith”, the character you run here. I could have just as easily have chosen a handle of “Joseph Grabinsky” (made up name) and passed your “real name” threshold. “judy-meredith” might well be a clever imposter posting here with some private agenda involving the real “Judy Meredith”. You seem to respect and admire eb3, who also publishes here under a pseudonym.
I’m not sure you appreciate the difference between a bullying teacher or substandard nursing home and reputation in a relatively closed professional field. The former (and other examples you cite, with the possible exception of employers stealing wages) tend to be cases where society and government is willing and usually able to protect the victims who step forward. In the latter, society and government is generally very much on the side of (and often in the pocket of) the perpetrator. I do not view myself as a “victim”, I chose my profession and understood the consequences. Part of that choice is recognizing and living in the reality of its implications.
I do, by the way, “participate in in organized efforts promoting positive change openly” — I just don’t do so in an online community like this where every word is available to any search engine in perpetuity. I met Denise Provost, for the first time, while each of was marching in a demonstration outside a Davis Square restaurant that was stealing the wages of its employees.
Since you do post under your real name (presumably), I wish that you would use your notable influence both here and in real life to put a hard stop to the corruption that is destroying our government. If more progressive Democrats with influence and power made it crystal clear — in private as well as in public — that flagrant corruption such as displayed by Mr. DeLeo is completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated, then we might not need to have this conversation.
chris-rich says
I used to be fairly glib about it too but that’s because I have nothing to lose.
I’ve been a very minor public critter here since the 80s and even babysat bands at the Middle East Restaurant in 1990.
But, believe it or not, some people here work and support their families by working for fairly malevolent employers, especially the IT sector, which expects 70 hour weeks out of you, or else.
And it is ever ready to just jettison you the minute they can find someone younger, more earnest and cheaper to cover your job.
This is harrowing chronic stress that ages you fast and I hope Tom gets to ditch it with plenty of time to enjoy the easy and free life he busted his ass to earn before that stress wrecks him.
I just approach people here based on what they have to say. I may not always agree with Tom, but I sure as hell have a high regard for him and value his contributions without caring about their provenance.
Mark L. Bail says
that they eliminated state house and/or senate seats?
It was a mistake.
TheBestDefense says
membership was reduced from 240 to 160 members in 1976 as the result of a ballot question initiated by the Plague of Women Vultures (aka the League of Women Voters LOL). It ultimately gave the Speaker more control of the House.
The power of the Speaker to dole out committee Chairmanships (which means a pay raise), committee membership and staff levels lets him assert more control over the members and ALL Speakers us that power. The system would be far better if every Rep had a budget for staff as the Senate allows.
BTW, the complaints of legislators who did not get a raise this year rings hollow. Most have outside jobs or are attending grad school, positions that they could not have attained were it not for their status. One example: Sean Garbelly of Arlington was elected to the House and immediately enrolled in a masters degree program at Suffolk. How many other people would like to be paid almost $60,000 per year to attend grad school?
paulsimmons says
…giving various options in downsizing the House is here.
Insofar as the power of the Speaker is concerned, the dirty little secret is that most of the rank and file, including (privately) “progressives” prefer it that way.
This goes back to 1985 – 1991 when George Keverian was Speaker:
The result was chaos, and that chaos is embedded in the institutional memory of the House.
chris-rich says
It’s as if Massachusetts has mild versions of the polity problem in Russia.
They accept autocracy because the alternative generally is a descent into chaotic anarchy. Yeltin looseness leads to Putin tightness.
paulsimmons says
..in 1996 after William Bulger left the Legislature.
chris-rich says
And the current set up might then be ward heeler perestroika?
While all this hand wringing ensues I did look at some data on 19th Suffolk.
There were fairly small numbers of voters deciding the issue in the last two rounds.
http://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_House_of_Representatives_Nineteenth_Suffolk_District
The 2014 voter drought you often cite is reflected there as well.
Mark L. Bail says
That’s an obscure document to dig up.
TheBestDefense says
Former State Rep John McDonough wrote this piece for Mass Inc’s magazine Commonwealth. He makes it clear it was messy, could have and should have been handled better but this comes from someone who was there doing tough work that few have handled so well since his departure.
http://commonwealthmagazine.org/uncategorized/the-speaker-who-believed-in-democracy/
Mark L. Bail says
my town (Dermot Shea) told my dad that this was a bad move, and my dad has never forgotten it. Minimizing democracy is rarely a good idea.
TheBestDefense says
was a very good man
Mark L. Bail says
I thought you might know him. He was a regular at our kitchen table when he was in Granby. My dad succeeded him as town moderator.
He gave us kids one of our best Christmas presents ever, a clown on some sort of cart or bike that went along a plastic track, including upside down. That was pretty cool in 1970.
His niece Madeline Blais wrote Uphill Walkers, a book about her family that mentions him. My mom is the person who says the title in the book.
TheBestDefense says
so sharp in his memory, so pleasantly critical (he had no problem with calling out mistakes) yet so nice… they just don’t make them like him anymore. I considered it an honor when we would have coffee and tea together.
sabutai says
New Hampshire’s Legislature is almost comically turgid. Can’t imagine how much can get done in a body of 424, which results ina ratio smaller than that of a selectman:resident in a medium town in Mass.
TheBestDefense says
the reduction in the House size was 1974, not 1976.
bluewatch says
The situation with DeLeo and entire legislature is, at best, embarrassing.
The stagnant, corrupt state legislature will ultimately lead to the resurgence of the republican party in this state.
Peter Porcupine says
You kvetch about Baker seeking to undo last minute appointments to boards and commissions, and then complain when the relatives of DeLeo et al get these jobs?
Pick a stance, any stance…..
TheBestDefense says
about Baker’s attempt to undo Patrick’s last minute appointments. I pointed out his team’s incompetence at even knowing which could be repealed. I pointed out that you were mistaken in saying Romney did not pack as many appointees in as he could (30% more than Patrick did). I pointed out that Deval, whether by nature or a higher degree of competence than Team Baker has demonstrated, did not repeal any of Romney’s appointees. I pointed out that two of Deval’s appointees that Baker terminated were donors to Baker, which I thought was a bit funny.
Yup, I stand by my comments about DeLeo and his buddies grabbing important full time public sector jobs. Go ahead, tell me why Kathleen Petrolati, wife of one of DeLeo’s hacks, deserved to run the electronic monitoring program with the Probation dept even though she had ZERO experience in the field. Dropping out of UMass and woking in a a bank ten years before, with no professional or academic experience in criminal justice does not make her qualified. She got her job through her husband and in a few years, got bumped up to a $108,000 salary.
When she testified during the Probation trial last year she said under oath
what she knew about electronic monitoring before her job interview, “Only what I gleaned from researching it on the Internet.”
Are you really defending Petro and the Democratic hackerama?
Mark L. Bail says
incompetence that lead to the lack of appointees. My mother was appointed to the board of the Holyoke Soldier’s Home by Mike Dukakis. When the GOP took over, she was replaced. When Patrick took over, the GOP appointee was not replaced, even though she was ready to get off the board. The Board, incidentally, is not a paid position.
TheBestDefense says
has a slightly different take on filling many of the appointed positions in state and local government. Some of it is due to a lack of urgency (people who hold office more than a year after their term expires is pretty common), some of it is due to political conflicts (I have seen Gov’s unwilling to appoint because there are two factions with their team who disagree) and some due to lack of attention.
I was appointed by the Duke to a local post one year after my predecessor’s term expired. He continued to serve until the minute I was sworn in.
Peter Porcupine says
Mr. Neer raised the question of DeLeo’s relations.
Don’t remember if you complained about Baker trying to limit appointees or not. Glad to hear you did not.