Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Comments

  1. Check out the testimonials from supporters.
    http://www.youtube.com/user/sa…

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    p>Disclosure: I am not formally affiliated to this campaign. Having slogged it out in NH for Obama, I have come to appreciate the power of audacity. My specific interest is the use of new media outreach tools. I expect Yoon to run a very tech savvy campaign.

  2. I just don’t see the appeal. I see Charlestown, South Boston, parts of Dorchester and West Roxbury voting Flaherty, city workers and a motley mixture staying with Mumbles and the JP, South End, Back Bay, Beacon Hill crowd saying “Isn’t he exotic and so new” as they walk their dogs….      

    • That’s some grade-A insider political analysis right there. But clearly you had a fear of failure as you wrote it.

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      p>If you’re going to start hating on the yuppies like it’s 1985, at least mention the Beemers with the carphones.  

  3. First Flaherty in his kitchen with his mixer and now Yoon in his living room with the ugly drapes. This kind of false populism from two elected officials making $87,500 a year as City Councillors is nauseating.

    • I think they’re just cheesy attempts to appear populistic. At $87K in salary, the drapes and mixer are not out of the question for their lives, but as attempts at symbolism, they’re small time and ineffectual. Flaherty seems to be stringing these kind of things together into a poor campaign, and Yoon hasn’t done enough yet to give me any impression. What the attempts remind me of is of the auto execs, on their second visit to DC, driving up to DC in hybrids as a cheesy PR attempt to overcome their insensitive cluelessness after having flown separately in oversized corporate jets for their first testimony before the Congressional committee.

  4. I was disappointed that there was no “green” plank on his issue page.  I’d be happy to talk with the campaign about what I think would be both (a) important for Boston, (b) politically and financially feasible, and (c) attractive to voters.

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    p>Folks who have been on BMG longer than five minutes know that this is what I spend a lot of time thinking about, and I’d sure love to see Yoon bring green to the mayor’s race…

    • Massachusetts is circling the bowl before going down the crapper and we are worried if a candidate has mercury light bulbs  and drives an electric car? Patrick couldn;t wait to order up his caddy and have the state police force a 52K SUV on him. From what I have read, Mr. Yoon has less than a scintillating resume and is AWOL more often than not from council meetings.
      How about a little common sense?

      • I wonder how thick a resume City Councilor Menino had at the moment Ray Flynn decamped for the Vatican. Anyone happen to know… i.e did he have more accomplishments than Yoon currently has?

        • Councilor Menino had served both as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and as Council President, the position from which he became Acting Mayor when Mayor Flynn departed for the Vatican.  His office put out a number of issue reports, one that I remember dealt with a comprehensive response to homelessness.

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          p>And as a district councilor, Menino took the lead on obtaining “Main Streets” designation for Roslindale Village from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and worked with then-State Agriculture Commissioner Gus Schumacher to bring a farmers market to the neighborhood center.  That relationship lated led to the creation of the first in the nation “city-wide” Main Streets effort once Menino was elected Mayor.

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          p>I can also remember him getting involved in supporting an affordable housing development in his district put forward by a local community development corporation. Despite considerable neighborhood opposition to the project, he stood fast in support of the CDC and the project eventually went forward.

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          p>Obligatory note – the writer formerly served in the Flynn and Menino Administrations, etc etc

    • He did mention making Boston a green city in the video.  It would be great to see more specifics on this.  Transit expansion?  Clean energy?  Let’s hear some proposals!

      • http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/08/22/boston_sets_green_standard_for_affordable_housing/

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        p>bostongreenbuilding.org

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        p>The City is also sponsoring a workshop on solar power and its prospects as we speak (Weds, March 4):

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        p>”the focus of the workshop will be on the outlook for solar power in Greater Boston given Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s goal to achieve 25 MW of solar power by 2015, the recent passage of the Massachusetts Green Communities Act, and the Obama Administration’s priorities”

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        p>And this from the City’s state legislative package:

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        p>”Some of the highlights of bills filed by Mayor Menino for the 2009-2010 legislative session include; establishing a green building income tax and excise tax credit; allowing tax deduction for businesses that provide home energy efficiency audits as a benefit of employment; expanding the range of solar hot water applications under current building codes; promoting commercial tenant energy efficiencies; promoting biothermal energy; and creating a groundwater protection tax credit for homeowners.”  

  5. Yes We Can and Together We Can are taken as slogans.

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    p>We need a new Can Contest to inspire the electorate.

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    p>Any ideas??

  7. Sam Yoon advocates for a more open Boston City Council. Ask for the stenographic machine record of public meetings of our Boston City Council. Councilors’ debate, testimony can be extracted for comment by everyone interested in Council proceedings and transactions.

  8. Sam Yoon, celebrated upon his Council election as the icon of diversity for the New Boston, the fresh face with new ideas, the “Yoon” in the Council’s minority “Team Unity,” etc etc, has been a crushing disappointment, as I wrote in my recent South End News column.  

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    p>I am still trying to get him to hold a hearing about Winthrop Square; to disclose the contents of a brazen private meeting of all the Councilors in the midst of their televised public meeting; to form the transparency committee he promised at his much-hailed December hearing; to call for the claw-back of the $23 million Hayward Place the Mayor gave the BRA and the $30 million in Hayward parking fees the Mayor is giving away to his developer friends; to call for the termination of the BRA’s urban renewal plans and the removal of our planning functions from the BRA’s conflicted hands; etc, etc.  I am asking him to speak up at the “budget crisis” meetings and reveal the mountains of money wasted by City Hall that should be relieving our deficit (if we really have one).

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    p>So far: nothing.

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    p>Being a public official is more than grand ideas and lofty public speaking.  It takes some courage to actually do something.  He’s had three years, with nothing significant to show for it.  This year, he is too busy campaigning, we are told, to meet with constituents (about uncomfortable topics, anyway), although we’ll be paying his $87,500 salary and the salaries and bonuses (yes, bonuses!) that his staff and the other under-worked (according to the notes of their own committee discussion, which he attended) Council employees get periodically via surreptitious Council votes.

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    p>The only fresh face with proven action-taking ability in the mayoral race so far is Kevin McCrea.  He walks the walk, and I know because I’ve walked it with him in one of his numerous good-government efforts, a four-year court fight against City Council for the open, transparent, democratic government Yoon and Michael Flaherty promise — even as they secretly commission a report on how to exempt themselves from the Open Meeting Law.

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