Unsurprisingly — and, I’d add, appropriately — the state GOP has asked the Ethics Commission to look into allegations that a friend of Speaker Sal DiMasi, one Richard Vitale, engaged in lobbying without being a registered lobbyist, and while helping DiMasi out financially. Charley’s write-up of the story is here; the gory details are laid out by the Globe’s Andrea Estes and Stephen Kurkjian.
In addition to the Ethics Commission, Secretary of State Bill Galvin (who has supervision over lobbyists) has swung into action:
Secretary of State William F. Galvin warned Vitale to register as a lobbyist or face possible penalties, fines or “additional enforcement action.”
“We’re taking action,” Galvin said. “We’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again. We can’t let people collect fees to try to influence public policy without disclosure.”
Galvin’s office demanded the names of “all executive and legislative officials” Vitale met with or contacted and the dates, a list of all activities concerning ticket sales; the number of hours he spent on these activities, and his “salary, retainers, and any other payments or compensation attributable to lobbying efforts.” …
Galvin’s office also wrote to James Holzman, the head of ACE Ticket Worldwide, who arranged for the brokers to hire Vitale.
“If you have hired a legislative and/or executive agent who exceeds fifty hours or is compensated $5,000 or more during a six-month reporting period, you must register as a client who employs a lobbyist and report your activity to this office,” said the letter, signed by Marie Marra, supervisor, lobbyist section.
All good. Galvin and the Ethics Commission are doing the right thing by investigating; let’s hope they do so quickly and thoroughly.
And now for the comic relief: here’s Barney Keller, the state GOP’s spokesman, who manages in a single attempted attack on DiMasi to get the entire story completely wrong.
In an interview with the Globe last week, DiMasi said he had no idea Vitale was working on ticket broker legislation pending in the House….
“Speaker DiMasi can’t just throw his hands up and claim he had nothing to do with it,” charged Republican party spokesman Barney Keller. “This is a speaker who is more controlling than even Tom Finneran, so for him to deny that he had no influence on this bill is laughable.”
Uh, Barn? (You don’t mind if I call you “Barn,” do you?) First, you’ve got a big ol’ double negative going there. I think you meant “deny that he had any influence on this bill.” But second, Speaker DiMasi did not deny that he had any “influence on this bill.” To the contrary, in the original article, DiMasi expressly acknowledged his involvement and support:
DiMasi said neither he nor anyone on his staff ever spoke with Vitale about the ticket broker legislation; he said he ultimately backed and voted for a bill that favored the brokers because he thought it was good for consumers, too.
What DiMasi denied is that he had any idea that his friend Richard Vitale was working on it. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with the Speaker moving legislation through the House — that’s pretty much what he does. A problem could arise only if DiMasi was aware of Vitale’s involvement.
Even in a moment where the pressure should be all on the Dems, Keller screws it up. Leave it to the Massachusetts GOP to prove itself once again to be the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Laughable indeed.
this is beneath you.
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p>The Keller kid basically asked the one true question. “What did sal know, and when did he know it?”
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p>Keller points out that based on the speaker’s prior actions and the day to day operations of the chamber he runs, it is possibly unreasonable to believe that he did not have knowledge of Vitale’s involvement.
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p>Scalpers for crissake. Vitale wasn’t selling his services to the hair stylists association or the friends of Mother Theresa or the state candlepin bowling association, or the state insurance brokers association, or even NAMBLA
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p>He was selling his influence to ticket scalpers. Punks of all ages. And sometimes more.
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p>Note: Let someone else explain scalpers and how they work and who the work for and how they keep their ‘locations’ and how they get their tickets, and how they go home every night without ever getting arrested and how they…….
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p>David, what is hilarious is your quick effort to jump all over Jon Keller’s kid when he is absolutely right.
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p>This stinks BTW
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p>Scalpers for crissake. I’ve been muttering that since the story came out.
Read what Keller actually said, not what you wish he had said. Here’s what Keller said.
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p>
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p>Sorry, but that’s completely idiotic. He should have said something like he didn’t believe DiMasi’s claim that he had no idea that Vitale was in on this. But come on — DiMasi admitted that he backed the bill, so Keller’s statement is totally pointless.
It’s a Glob quote, not a written statement.
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p>So Sal’s only issue is grammatical? As if!
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p>Oh, and whre were the varied leading lights of the Democrat so-called Progressive Caucus? NONE of these heros has filed an Ethics Complaint, have they?
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p>Are we looking at the baaa-ing of Progressive Sheeple at budget time?
on them here.
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p>They’re just mad because Jon Keller blogged today about Black parents in D.C. demanding charter schools and the Washington Post supporting them.
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p>hey BMG
Ha Ha Ha Ha. Yey for Charter Schools! Yay for Jon Keller! Yay! for Barney Keller.
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p>Now David becomes a tool. Stop it David. It’s unbecoming.
Do you know that for sure? No. Why not ask Andrea Estes yourself? estes AT globe DOT com.
…is kinda like Barry Bonds whining that there’s too much performance enhancing substance abuse in baseball. Who’s the GOP nominee? Ol’ Keating Five, never met a lobbyist I didn’t like McCain?
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p>That said, I wish I had a lucrative personal relationship with the Speaker of the House, too.
An admission that the Democrats on Beacon Hill are corrupt, no?
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p>Anyway, Porcupine and Eabo, another reason why the local GOP must forge an identity for itself that is independent of the national party. A return to its roots, as it were.
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p>You ought to be able to present an alternative to the Politburo on Beacon Hill without being subject to attack on Iraq, Halliburton, Jerry Falwell, and other issues that have no bearing on the government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
We will have a platform that is practically based by the middle of May. Something that is long overdue.
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p>
I have generally shunned your site (the few times I checked in, it was the Cheney fan club, and thus not to my taste), but that was an interesting thread.
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p>That you have posters who refer to the president occupant of the Oval Office as “George III” is a rather hopeful sign.
I’m skeptical that the MA GOP can create an identity separate for itself from the national GOP.
There will be some interesting things coming out mid may. Do stay tuned.
I think this was once so: Governor Weld rather famously didn’t get along well with Senator Helms, did he?– but has been less true in recent years.
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p>To an extent, this is an offshoot of the strategy of the national party to marginalize and oust moderates, on the theory that an appeal to the farthest portion of the base is the recipe for success. (A strategy that, one hopes, is soon to be spoken of only in the past tense.)
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p>But a lot of damage is self-inflicted. The candidates that ran in Romney’s effort to even the statehouse numbers a bit seemed to me to emphasize their social conservatism to the detriment of their fiscal conservatism. Not a recipe for success, at least not in New England.
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p>Romney’s own run to the right (I know you liked him; I did once as well) was damaging, in my view. Contrary to the stated belief on this blog, I think that it was this, rather than the power of hope or the grassroots, that killed Lt. Gov. Healy’s chances in ’06. That campaign was doomed by the need to recapture all of the people who voted for Weld and Celucci, and were downright PO’ed at Romney.
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p>More recently, the congressional campaign seemed to follow the national script: Illegal aliens! Teerorists! Eeek!
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p>It just strikes me that as long as the Mass GOP remains palatable to the Limbaughs, Savages, and Hannitys, then it is doomed to fail. It is like trying to sell pork sausage to the members of the JCC: just the wrong product for the targeted market.
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p>My two cents. I will watch out for what is coming in May, Eabo, thanks for the heads up.
The tools that both major parties use for voter ID come from the national committees, for example. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that these tools will highlight national issues in the identification. Still, the MassGOP knows that the Republican base in Massachusetts does not exactly coincide with the Republican base in, say, Texas. Similarly, the MassDems know that their base is different than the Democratic Party organisations in other states.
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p>Here’s the deal about the race for Congress: that was a race for the United States Congress. Thus, while it was a local race decided in a district, it was for a national office. National offices require the consideration of national ideas, so that’s why those themes were present.
I know why those themes were present, I’m saying that their presence was counter-productive.
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p>”These issues” were issues because the national GOP thought they might be helpful, nationally. “Helpful, nationally” in this sense is a handy way of saying “useless, locally.”
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p>I, and apparently my fellow Massachusetts voters, don’t elect people to Congress to address the issues that the national GOP thinks should be addressed, we vote for people to force (to the extent possible) Congress to address OUR issues, the opinions of Haley Barbour and Nacy Pelosi notwithstanding.
but I think you’ll have to form a third party if you ever want my vote. Why would anybody with character want to be associated with the party of 1. religious hypocrisy; 2. pandering to the rich; 3. “let’s your kids go fight a war for us”; 4. out-of-control spending; and 5. white-collar crime. The Democrats have their problems, but those problems are usually marked by situations in which Dems act like Republicans .
And national issues? I don’t think actors on Beacon Hill have anything to do with the war. Also, what activities of Republicans in Massachusetts suggest to you that they stand for any of the other four points?
that doesn’t mean I would vote for a local member, although I agree with that particular idea.
…it’s there job to disabuse me of that notion. Republican is a brand name, just like McDonald’s. I expect a McDonald’s in Kentucky to have the same french fries and mils shake as the ones in Massachusetts. And judging from the Republican voices heard in MA – Peter Porcupine, Eabo and Red Mass Group, Hub Politics, Mass Roots state party blog, etc, I don’t see any difference between them and the national party. None. The fires are the same.
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p>If they are different, they’re doing a suck job of getting their message out. But I think they are doing an adequate job of getting their message out and that message is that there is no difference in the philosophies between the national party and the MA Republicans.
However, it is my firm belief that when it comes to the issues surrounding elections for state and local governments, national issues and national politicians are straw men and/or red herrings.
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p>I understand the value of a brand name. However, I must go back to your McDonald’s analogy: McDonald’s Corporation does not own every single McDonald’s location that exists; they sell franchises. The shops have core offerings that are essentially the same, but management practices and other menu items are at the discretion of the franchisee. That’s the point I’m trying to make: there are differences; they may not be on a grand scale, but there are differences, and the fact that some members of the party have difficulties in management and policy in the national government does not mean that others will have problems in state government. Also, I must reiterate that the concerns that voters have at these levels are different.
You say corruption, I say “lucrative personal relationship”, lol. Of course there is corruption on Beacon Hill.
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p>The problem I have is the voices of the GOP that I here in MA – my friends, GOP bloggers and commenters, etc – over-practice the “11th Commandment” to the point of intellectual dishonesty and laziness when it comes to the current administration and their accomplices in congress, its boondoggles, its rank corruption, its malfeasance, its malice etc. They’re apologists for the 935 lies the administration told, about WMDs, sending under equipped troops in to battle without body armor or the proper plating on Hum-vees, for Walter Reed and not providing enough for injured soldiers anywhere, for all the outrageous malfeasance with Katrina, Scooter Libby, domestic spying, all that BS that went down in the justice department from Gonzo to the US attorneys, lying about torture, Guantanamo, Abu Gharib, Haliburton, Blakwater, the missing guns and $13B in Iraq, stop-lossing, not keeping us safer in airports yet spending billions of dollars on the TSA, lying about al-Qaida and Iran, Lying about al-Qaida and Saddam, lying about FISA, etc.
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p>If they are repeatedly in denial about the facts and legitimacy of all of the above mentioned, if all they can do is be dismissive or change the subject on so many reality based concerns, why should I give an honest and fair hearing to any concern they raise, legit or otherwise? They obviously aren’t concerned with holding government accountable; they are only concerned with tarnishing democrats for their own political gain. As far as I’m concerned, any one who is an apologist for the far more obscene and destructive corruption perpetrated by Bush and company over the last 8 years is no better, perhaps worse, then the corrupt people who occupy the State House.
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p>If the Mass GOP wants more people to listen to what they are saying, they need to act like Washington is the crazy cousin and distance themselves into the waters of sanity. The Mass GOP needs to vocally denounce all the corrupt, malfeasant, and malicious bullshit that the national party has allowed to run wild over the last 8 years and start talking like Y2K John McCain. To paraphrase Rick Pitino: “Ronald Reagan isn’t walking through that door. Barry Goldwater isn’t walking through that door.”
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p>I know it’s sexy within the party to love Reagan all day long and argue who can identify as the truest “conservative” in the room, but truth is people on the state-level just want shit to work, like schools, roads, transportation, utilities, they want affordable housing and reasonable property taxes. They don’t care if there’s an (R) or a (D) next to the name. The national Republican brand is tarnished, so if the Mass GOP wants more success on the state-level, they should acknowledge the extreme sins and deep wounds inflicted on this nation and Massachusetts by the Bush-led machine and separate themselves into the appearance of an individualistic, independent entity.
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p>I just want government to work. Period. I have many reasons for not registering as a (D). I don’t believe in the machine politics practiced by either party. Granted, I’m a lefty now, but I thought I was moderate and voted for Bush in 2000. One of the major reasons I’m a hard-core progressive/liberal now is because I saw how the current style of Republican politics and “government” is just an abject failure. And because of that poor performance and bad behavior, I refuse to reward any (R) with my vote. I will not vote (R) again in the near future even if it means that I go to a write-in candidate. The only way I’ll ever go back to considering giving a Republican my vote is when they start showing the independence and conscious of people like retiring Senator Chuck Hagel and others like him. But as long as a GOPer on any level keeps pandering the current ideas of failure and corruption, I’ll vote for Lyndon LaRouche (shudder) before I vote Republican.
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p>This turned into an off-topic rant. Sorry everyone. But I refer back to my original analogy between the GOP and Barry Bonds.
(paraphrased) The Democrats take the position that government can solve every problem if it only had enough money, which can never be disproved.
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p>The Republicans take the position that government is incapable of solving any problems, and then get elected and prove it.
When PP tells a story about state representatives deserving re-election in order to send a message to Dubya, it really drives home the point that a lot of people on this weblog can’t separate national issues from local issues. Obviously, there is some degree of influence, but have you not heard of federalism?
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p>Just so you know, the national Republicans, especially in Congress, no longer stand for what Reagan and Goldwater stood for. Goldwater abhorred the direction it was going in, especially as the Religious Right gained influence, and he would be aghast at what they are up to now if he were around to see it. The national Republicans lost the overall “limited and good government” framework, but at the same time, the Feds generally don’t know the meaning of the word “budget.” I don’t think they ever have.
Jeez. This is a state politician who is involved with some shady dealings. Last I checked, the RNC was not filing this complaint.
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p>Then again, you’re making the point in my internship report for me. 😉
Does the Mass GOP not endorse McCain? John McCain is the face of the Republican party right now because he is the party nominee. His rhetoric sets the tone for the party platform and direction of the GOP. If the MA GOP has separated itself from McCain, I haven’t heard about it.
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p>If the National GOP is irrelevant to the state party, why do both groups call themselves Republicans?
The MassGOP is affiliated with the Republican Party; three of its members, including the chairman, are on the RNC, and the MassGOP supports the RNC in terms of national issues and national elections. Operative word: national. THat includes the endorsement of Senator McCain as the nominee for president, and the MassGOP endorses his slate of electors in Massachusetts. However, this situation concerns the leader of a state legislature. Think federalism here.
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p>Senator McCain is the face of the Republican Party nationally. The face of the Massachusetts Republican Party would be the highest-ranking elected official, which would be either Brad Jones or Rich Tisei, whomever you think is officially higher. Or you could go with the chair. Still, that is not saying much, and believe me, the party is working on that.
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p>(Note how I did not say “we.” My internship ended a couple of weeks ago; I am working on the report. Now, I am just an unenrolled voter interested in actual electoral competition, although that could change at any point.)
Brad Jones or Rich Tisei are. I’ve never heard of them, let alone know what their views on the issue are.
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p>If you think regular folks associate the Mass GOP with Mssrs Jones and Tisei before they associate it with John McCain or even Mitt Romeny, then you’re mistaken.
Rep. Brad Jones (R-North Reading)
Sen. Rich Tisei (R-Wakefield)
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p>Just for your own information. Unfortunately, that is what the MassGOP is dealing with right now, with a lack of constitutional office holders. As I said, the party is working to change that.
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p>If you want to know their positions on issues, You can go to both Brad Jones and Rich Tisei.
Romney was his name….
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p>And as of this minute second, he hasn’t relesed his delegates – he’s urged them to support McCain, but they are still pledged to him – sort of like Edwards. Still, they are still pledged to vote for him on the first ballot…
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p>And, since we apportion, the split statewide was @ 60/40 – nobody else crossed the 15% threshhold, much to the chagrin of the Paulists.
Shows you how much I pay attention to the GOP. Forgive my ignorance, PP, and my selective short -term memory.
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p>tblade walks away with dunce cap
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p>In the words of JoeTS, Just kidding everyone. D’oh.
but neither address the post itself. First you have the issue at hand with Vitale, which David did point out that an investigation was appropriate, then he notes that he hopes it’s conducted quickly and appropriately. Does anyone have an issue with that?
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p>Then you have the GOP spokesperson, who is not ready for prime time apparently. The kid gets a slam dunk but hits the rim instead.
EB3 and PP, please take note!
“In a Post 9/11 World, the American people expect their leadership to be decisive. To have not shot Mr. Whittington in the face would have shown the quail that America is weak.”
~Rob Cordery of the Daily Show
Got any funny Wellstone jokes about ‘I believe I can Fly’?
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p>Accidents happen, to people great and regular. If a Democrat kills someone in a car crash, I am supposed to crack wise that he was only trying to steer the country in new direction?
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p>You need to stop looking to late night comics for your political analysis.
the daily show in over a year, but that doesn’t mean that quote isn’t funny. If we can’t poke fun at metaphors taking place in real life, I don’t know what we can.
so why not laugh at him, if it helps us suppress the counterproductive urge to dedicate the rest of our lives to hunting him down and personally wringing his godforsaken neck?
with all due respect you have a hair across your ass about Barney because he got you tossed out of the NECN debate. He will never be able to do anything right, and you’ve taken it out on his father and him repeatedly. What he said can be interpreted the way that Ernie Boch III interpreted it. That DiMasi knew Vitale was behind the bill.
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p>The important thing is that an ethics commission complaint was filed and this one will probably stick.
with all due respect, Barney did us a huge favor (and his then-boss a disservice) by getting us tossed out of the NECN debate. It generated a ton of publicity and discussion for and about BMG — as always happens in situations like that. It was a fine example of GOP amateur hour.
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p>And all due respect to you and Ernie, you’re wrong. I honestly cannot see how Barney’s grammatically challenged statement can be interpreted to refer to Vitale, since it mentions neither him nor his involvement, instead referring only to DiMasi and his “influence” over the bill — which as I’ve repeatedly noted, he has never denied.
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p>Feel free to launch into an extended exegesis of Barney’s statement to prove your point. But by doing so, you will only prove that Barney — who after all is supposed to be “communicating” for the state GOP (that’s his job title, right?) — didn’t communicate very effectively in this case.