We’re one week out from the MA-05 special election. Here are a few noteworthy developments.
- Globe endorses Tsongas. Not exactly a shocker, but here it is. We’re looking forward to the Ogo campaign seeking to have Globe reporters evicted from future debates! đŸ˜‰ The Globe correctly notes that “[t]he two differ most strikingly on the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program passed by Congress but vetoed by President Bush,” and takes Jim Idon’tknowski to task for continuing to refuse to state how he would vote on an attempt to override Bush’s veto. “Residents of the district should have no doubt about how their representative will vote on the override.” Idon’tknowski’s continuing refusal to say what he’d do on the Bush veto is deeply irresponsible, profoundly disrespectful to the people of the MA-05 district that he says he wants to represent, and IMHO disqualifies him from serious consideration for the job.
- Ogo’s “number one issue” — but only as of July. It’s been pretty obvious in the last few weeks that Team Ogo thinks illegal immigration is its ticket to DC. That’s pretty much all Ogo talks about anymore, and he told the Globe that it’s “his number one issue.” Yet, as I showed yesterday, the Ogo campaign displayed no interest in immigration for its first few months. And it’s not as if he didn’t have any positions on issues at that point — he actually had quite a list of talking points on a variety of issues. Just not on immigration. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that when the national Republican consultant class got a hold of this campaign, they decided that they had to redirect Ogo’s focus to something that their polling and focus groups tell them is a winner. And Ogo went along with it.
- Ogo has a new ad. It consists entirely of Ogo’s sister-in-law, Peg, talking about 9/11. Here’s a transcript.
John was a pilot just doing his job that day. I lost my husband. My daughters lost their dad. John’s brother Jim called shortly after and he rushed right over to our home. He came in and just stepped right up to the bat. I don’t know that we would have been able to keep this house and farm if it weren’t for Jim. He’s someone that you would want representing us in Congress.
With the greatest respect, I find there to be a disconnect between the last sentence and the rest of the ad. Bernstein has much more (along with a pretty good analysis of the largely self-inflicted crisis the Ogo campaign now finds itself in):
[I]n last week’s NECN debate, his answer to pretty much every non-immigration policy question was: “I don’t know, but there should be a bipartisan, non-bickering process to figure out the best solution.” … This is why SCHIP has posed such an existential crisis for his campaign. To put it plainly, in the SCHIP showdown, voters think that Bush is WAY more wicked suckier than the Congressional Democrats.
This is awfully bad luck for Ogo: who the hell knew that Congress would get together in a non-bickering, bipartisan fashion, and work out an imperfect but undoubtedly positive bill on a mom-pop-and-apple-pie issue, and that George Bush would veto it in such a grotesque fashion that polls show 85% of the public wants him overriden — a mindboggling level of public unanimity usually reserved for questions like “should the US try to prevent Iran from arming anti-American terrorists with nuclear weapons?” …
The topic was a disaster for him in last week’s NECN debate, and figures to be again in Tuesday night’s debate. Which brings me, finally, to the new ad, launching tomorrow, that this post is supposed to be about. Finally, Ogonowski’s campaign is trying to direct attention to the personal. But it’s barely even about him (and doesn’t at all draw a contrast with Tsongas). Instead, he goes for the tear ducts by dragging out his dead brother’s widow to talk about her fatherless kids. Oy…. Using her in an earlier ad, as part of a broader attempt to define Jim to people, I think would have worked. Now, in the final week of the campaign, it looks desperate and inauthentic and tacky.
Watch it:
- Last debate! Remember — tonight is the final debate. SCHIP veto … immigration … Iraq … 9/11 ad. Should be worth tuning in.
When you’re asking people for their votes, it might be a good idea to at least read the bills you’re being asked to help enact.
when the casino debacle was at it’s height, the selectman had to call for another meeting to vote on the agreement because nobody on the board bothered to read the 40 page agreement in the more than a week they had to do it.
but they did read it the second time, didn’t they? ogo? no indication of reading comprehension there. why should he do any homework when the GOP handlers are doing the thinking for him?
His campaign fundamentally shifted when it became apparent that the RNC dropped handlers on him, and I don’t think it was for the better. I still agree with him more than not, but it pains me to see someone lose part of what would make them win for the sake of trying to win.
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And as for your first question, they voted in favor of the agreement, so no, I don’t think they did.
All too often that’s the problem with Democrats.
…I doubt very seriously that many of the people who were voting were lawyers. I also doubt that anyone on the town council (selectmen) were lawyers, either. As such, I suspect that very few people would understand the contract documents even if they read them.
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I suspect, but cannot prove, that the contract was negotiated between town counsel (town’s lawyer) and lawyers for the tribe. The town counsel would have gotten some “practical” input from the town council, and then drafted it into legal language. What town counsel (I hate homonyms) should have been asked to do, was to draft an “executive summary” of the contract–not exceeding a few pages–describing the contract’s provisions or impacts in layman’s language, and a few major issues of contention during the negotiations, that laymen could understand. Not to exceed, maybe, three pages. It isn’t particularly difficult to do–I’ve done it in more than a few cases.
…actually read the Patriot Act?
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To our nations’s detriment, nobody reads that shite. Or I sould say that bills are written as to discourage the reading and understand of the bills’ substance.
…A couple of days ago, someone posted that Ogonowski’s farm was on the order of 33 acres*. That would be barely enough land to feed his own family, and maybe a couple of others. That led me to wonder what his true employment is.
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*That also led me to wonder whether he, like GWBush, owns the farm as a photo op. Has anyone seen Ogonowski clearing brush?
He works the farm every day. It is a hay farm on the order of 100 acres. the 33 acres is what he lets Cambodian farmers use to learn how to grow their crops in New England.
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He gets up at 4:30 in the morning and puts in 3 hours a day on the farm before he even starts campaigning.
there’s a 4:30 AM too? Since when?
If you haven’t discovered 4:30 am via the all-night college party then you’re’ not getting your money’s worth from your government-subsidized post-secondary education.
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It’s around the same time when the birds start chirping, slightly before it becomes light out again.
If you haven’t discovered 4:30 am via the all-night college party…
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I have been told that, other than at fraternities, those are usually at ROTC installations.
I think in certain people’s minds verility and masculinity are tied to how hard and long one can party. Alcohol is so tied to machismo and men who can’t handle their liquor are feminized and called “a bitch”. Therefore, not wanting to be “a bitch”, men (especially college age men) will compensate by binge drinking and trying to last the longest.
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And of course the institutions you point out, fraternities and ROTC, are natural incubators for machismo and hyper-masculinity so they create a perfect strom for this type of compensation through drink.
Have you ever had sparks? It’s malt liquor and energy drink. Have enough of those and you can’t pass out or go to sleep so you just stay up drunk all night.
usually the night ends up going from light 3 am straight to like 6. You could swear those 3 hours in between never happend.
…it never happened.” That worked really well until camera phones.
what pictures will surface when my generation starts running for president.
I love the rumors on the nets that the CIA is mining Facebook and storing all the personal information for later use. I’m not saying that I’ve seen evidence supporting this adn i believe this is happeneing, but it seems something so easy for the CIA to do it’s hard to imagine them not doing this.
They have to take a picture of them and their friends stuffing their faces together every 30 seconds in between wifey jokes. Half the time, its an unsuspecting person doing something stupid in the background.
…work for the CIA?
…it may interest you in knowing that there is a cute program, GeoClock, that displays maps that show areas of sunlight, twilight and night, along with times of sunrise and sunset (and angles of solar azimuth and elevation). There’s a basic version available by share-ware, which includes a few maps, and a sale version that includes a lot of maps.
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GeoClock home page http://geoclock.home…
…nice work, if you can get it.
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BTW, I usually get up between 2:30AM and 5:30AM, so I’m not particularly impressed when someone claims to get up at 4:30AM.
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Also, it seems to me that hay pretty much grows on its own. What does he do during the three hours during much of the year?
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As another BTW, it seems to me that, if he gets up at 4:30 in the morning, and it’s during harvest time, it is likely that the hay will probably be damp from the dew. Even I know that dew will cause the hay to rot.
The family’s been farming for quite some time in Dracut, I think they know what will work and what won’t.
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It is sort of funny to hear you say “hay pretty much grows on its own”
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Where I work, those who don’t have any clue say “its only a software change.. only a few lines of code…”
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Lets just make it a given that he knows what he’s doing with the farm, just as I’m giving that Tsongas knows what she’s doing at Middlesex (whatever a dean does).
I thought the Globe could have saved valuable space if they just said “Vote for Tsongas she has a (D) after her name.” I did like the explanations on where the candidates stood on issues but for most voters the letter after the name is more important that stances on issues. I will try not to be shocked when the Herald endorses Ogo for the same (R)eason.
they usually endorse Democrats, but Niki Tsongas is about 100x better than Idon’tknowski – SCHIP just being the most obvious reason. Ogo’s position on SCHIP is weak, snivelling and not befit of someone deserving higher office. On second thought – weak and snivelling – he’d fit right in with the other Republicans there, maybe even top most of them for incompetence. Ya, let’s elect him.
Good afternoon. This is my first comment post on here; I have generally been a lurker, but too busy to actually post something. (Hey, grad school is serious stuff!) Also, I tend to post on sports-themed message boards.
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Anyway, it is clear that the SCHIP bill is generating a lot of interest from the public. In all honesty, health care is not an issue that gets me going in the morning. Perhaps it’s because I’m 24 and don’t suffer from serious maladies. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that these things can and do happen, but to me, there are other, more pressing concerns. Nonetheless, this bill seems reasonable, except for one specific point: the funding mechanism.
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The bill will pay for the SCHIP expansion through an increase in the federal tobacco excise duty. Now, a lot of my smoker (and dipper) friends are generally happy to know that they are contributing to the young, the sick, and the disadvantaged, and I will admit that I occasionally join them, and I take similar pride in those selected instances, but it doesn’t seem to me that encouraging tobacco consumption is sound public policy. That encouragement is essentially what will happen in order to prevent the funding sources from drying up. Therefore, while I have different reasoning, I actually agree with Dubya’s veto (The shock! The horror!). If Congress can come up with a bill with a better, more stable funding mechanism without alternative motives, then that would be great, and if that were to happen, and Dubya were to veto that one, then I would not support that, but one has to look at the entire bill and all provisions that specify its implementation.
Welcome to BMG.
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Traditionally, cigarette tax increases are for the opposite reason than encouraging consumption. The higher prices are meant to discourage people from buying cigarettes, and it does to some extent work.
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There is a flaw in using cig taxes to raise funds for the government, however, and that’s if the cig tax works and reduces consumption of them, your revenues do go down. However, to me, I’d rather have a flawed source of revenue than none, and as cig consumption goes down, you can adjust with other sources if necessary.
They advocated for a cigarette tax and regulation over the tobacco industry. This was to slow down smoking….
Change yer sig line and all hell breaks loose.
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Yeah yeah, bad web designer, not closing her tags. I go now. ;P
You just made my point. If they’re using tobacco excise duties (and it’s not just cigarettes, either) to fund certain programs that are important to the sponsors and/or the public, then they obviously want consumption to remain level, if not increase. Instead of “adjusting with other sources,” then why not start with the “other sources” and bypass the flawed revenue tactic? It makes much more sense, since the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. đŸ˜‰
Because it was the ONLY way to fund this program in the compromise, that’s why. Because Republicans made it that way.
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It’s flawed, but the alternative was no bill. So, I’d rather have it like this if we must. We’ll work out the details better when we have the White House and a veto-proof majority in the Senate and more votes in the House, if indeed the Republicans keep attacking defenseless 12 year olds and self-imploding like they’ve been doing.
It is painfully obvious to everyone (and not just administrators) that all aspects of public policy and public management have serious political overtones, and I have come to expect this in my studies, but can’t interested parties come up with a sensible approach to this matter, or any issue such as this one?
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Dr. Michael Siegel at BU School of Public Health has a decent writeup of this issue on his weblog.
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Oh, and Lynne, I wouldn’t get ahead of yourself by stating matter-of-factly “when we have the White House and a veto-proof majority….etc.” Now, if you’re an operative for the Democrats, then I understand that you have to think in that way, but nothing is absolute, especially since the general elections are over a year away.
No, I said “if the Republicans keep imploding.”
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And it’s pretty inevitable that we’re going to get the WH, make serious gains in the House and Senate, and if things go really well, a veto-proof majority. Hell, Sununu, an institution in my ol’ state of New Hamster, is probably going to lose. Sununu! In NH! The world is now upside down.
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In 2006, everyone was pessimistic. I mean, the tide had turned against Republicans, but…what about Rove? I mean, the juggernaut! In fact, they said, “Well, maybe we’ll get the House, but surely…not the Senate!”
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Well, we got both, in a sweep that was pretty decisive.
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So, since then, the Republican Way has only gotten less popular, they have taken even harder stances on the war, their presidential candidates tie themselves closer and closer to Bush as the race goes, and they keep handing us issues, including personally attacking a 12-year-old boy.
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Sure, Democrats are experts at snatching defeat right out from the jaws of victory…but looking at 2006, and the wind which blows still harder in our direction since, I can only conclude that the sailing will be even faster unless we’re stupid and pull the sails.
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Which I’m not saying can’t happen…just that the odds are pretty damn good that the climate is exceptionally favorable.
Bipartisan don’t go off the reservation Lynne, for you’ll reveal the truth.
… you get tax revenue from cigarettes, but overall it is a fiscal loser. As such, it might actually be that the savings generated from better health as consumption goes down more than makes up for any loss of tax revenue from the consumption side.
…disgusting.
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It is beyond me how someone can use his family, and the horrible death of his brother in a national tragedy in such a transparent appeal for sympathy and votes.
What was said in that commercial is a part of who Jim Ogonowski is. It has helped define him over the past 6 years.
the truth of what she said (except the last sentence, which as I noted in the post has nothing to do with what came before). But Bernstein’s right about the timing, don’tcha think?
…the simple fact is that we all deal with signifcant loss in our lives at some point and most of us rise to the challenges that are presented valiantly and some become heroes to their families as a result. Does that make someone qualified to serve in Congress? I don’t think so. Does the fact that the loss resulted from 9-11 make a difference? Again, I don’t think so. Would Mr. Ogonsowski have acted differently if his brother was killed in a car crash? I can’t imagine that would have been the case.
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That ad is, in my estimation, exploitation, pure and simple. It is also Mr. Ogonowski’s and his sister-in-law’s life experience so it is their’s to exploit as they see fit, but it is still exploitation.
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Peg Ogonowski was not forced to do the commercial. What was said in that commercial is a part of who Jim Ogonowski is.
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What does an ad like this tell anyone of who Jim Ogonowski is? He wasn’t piloting the plane on which his brother died. At most, it is a heartstring-tearing commercial that would allow him to bask in reflected glory–as I’ve mentioned on a comment thread downstream.
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As far as I can tell from your comments, Jim Ogonowski is someone who works three hours a day planting and cutting grass. (Hay is basically dried grass.) Actually, that raises another question, since he is in agriculture, does he get farm subsidies from the federal government? If so, how much? If he does, as far as I’m concerned he’s a welfare queen, and he shouldn’t bitch and moan about welfare paid to others.