State House News Service laid out the scenario last week. The parliamentary procedures described by SHNS basically said a compromise could be reached where the tracks don’t get slots but get a piece of the casino revenue to bolster their purses. As we all know the state and the tracks are partners in the racing business. That’s how it works. So, an increase in the tracks’ handle means more money for the state.
And best of all there will not be slots at the tracks ruining too many lives in Winthrop, East Boston, and Revere. Don’t get me wrong. There will still be machines in those towns, just like always, but not at the tracks.
This is win win for Bobby D.
He can tell Joe O’Donnell he tried. He gives new life to the place where his father worked for many many years, as do hundreds of his constituents.
Every speaker and senate president should do some big things for their district during the short time they have they gavel. Essex Community College in Lynn and U. Mass Boston are where they are mostly because of who the speaker was when they were built. Bobby will hit a grand slam if he saves the track and makes sure there isn’t a legal slot machine within 50 miles of Suffolk County.
I would prefer an improved track without casinos in the state. Easier said then done.
The racing industry uses the slogan “Go Baby, Go”. I say “Go Bobby Go”.
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I heard Howie Carr again say on the radio that the legal battle he had with with Entercom Radio and WTKK was “corrupt”. The only meaning we can take from this is that Howie is accusing Suffolk Superior Court Judge Allan van Gestel of corruption. Judge van Gestel ruled against Howie. Is Howie saying he took money or some other gratuity for ruling the way he did?
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Speaking of Howie, shouldn’t his friend Scott Brown be dubbed the new “Live Shot”. He’s worse then Kerry ever was.
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Speaking of Howie II, Deval should go on his show every chance he gets. Live in studio. And don’t let Howie get rid of you by saying “we are up against the break”. Deval, when he does that just tell him you have plenty of time and can stay past the news.
Kill Howie with facts and rationality. Deval came across as the sane one last week and Howie played the part of the intellect lacking yet populist demagogue.
Keep going back Deval. Howie doesn’t like it. You easily show his weak defenses. Sure he’s good with the one liners.
Anyone can be by themselves and shoot free throws. But let’s see Howie play in a game. Guard the lane, set a pick, or just make an inbounds pass.
Keep going back Deval. He has no game.
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The Inside Track gurls have another Naked City expose today. You know the one I mean. Where they don’t mention names but giver the details. I wonder, what makes a story go to the Naked City and not regular gossip. I read each item and didn’t understand why these local celebrities get the courtesy of not having their names printed. Is this one of those Half Man George Regan things? The gurls find the dirt, tell the celebrity, the celebrity calls Half Man and gives him a retainer. The gurls print the story but thanks to Half Man they don’t name him. Job well done George.
I’m just wondering, that’s all.
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How about the Globe editorial page being good soldiers and writing yesterday that a Red Sox Yankee game is what is needed after the long winter? The propaganda continues. The World Series ring wearers in New York sent down the edict and the Globies did what they had to do.
From yesterday’s Globe
Springtime: A rivalry blooms anew
The start of the annual battle with the New York Yankees for baseball supremacy is the real rite of spring — the blooming of a rivalry that helps define the region. (Boston Globe, 4/3/10)
(they removed this line from the editorial – probably because it insults every single New Englander – but it still appears on-line in the headline portion.)
Hey Globies, sometimes it ‘s best is you don’t say anything at all. You hands are far from clean on anything Red Sox.
After all, I will always be a “stranger in a strange land” and what you had to say here hangs together.
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p>do you think the Lowell Court House will EVER be build with Panagiotakos walking away?
Don’t underestimate Eileen Donaghue, who will bring energy and skill to the state senate. She’s the kind of dedicated public official who will get a trowel and build it herself if she needs to.
Seriously
supporting hackish special interests inside one’s district “should be” the job of the Speaker?
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p>No sir. The Speaker is the Speaker of the House for the entire state of Massachusetts, not Revere and Winthrop.
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p>This is why the state distrusts Beacon Hill. The power of the Speaker needs to be severely watered down.
…back when dinosaurs walked the Earth.
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p>When George Keverian was Speaker he kept his promise to “democratize” the House. The results were chaos, special pleading run amok, and a power shift to the Senate where William Bulger (never encumbered by sentimental reformism) became de facto Governor.
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p>This so traumatized the House that its institutional culture will never again permit a weak Speaker.
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p>Nor should it.
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p>The issue is not and never has been the “power of the Speaker”. The problem is a decades long vacuum in Statewide politics that accrues power to whomever in Legislative leadership has the intelligence, strength and ruthlessness to grab and maintain it.
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p>The only solution is the reestablishment of a grassroots politics (again absent in the Commonwealth these past thirty-plus years), based upon the tangible interests of its citizens.
And I don’t care if this would make the House more/less powerful in comparison with the Senate. It’s what the people want. This is a democracy. Legislators would be wise to listen to their constituents. As I think we’ll see on April 13th, people who blindly support the Speaker are going to feel the consequences.
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p>And should the State Senate try to power grab, they should know the exact same reforms could happen to them, too. They’re better off than the House ethically, but I’m sure there’s room for improvement.
…at least those on their likely-voter lists.
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p>The problem is that the relative power of legislative leadership does not rank high on the concerns of those constituents in most State Representative elections.
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p>The Keverian example is just as valid today, because effective legislating requires institutional stability, and power still abhors a vacuum. The political vacuum today, as in the Eighties, is at the grassroots, and absent addressing this, no reform will prevent unaccountable concentrations of power.
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p>This is Local Politics 1a, and the reason why in many ways the old ward-and-precinct operations were more accountable than the professional activism that replaced them, at least in Boston.
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p>Any competent politician knows that the breadth of concern per issue is eclipsed by intensity of concern, which is why satisfaction with a given rep trumps abstract concern for good government.
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p>All politics is still local…including the institutional politics of the Great and General Court. Which is why the parochial needs of DeLeo’s District are prioritized by the Speaker – as they should be.
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p>I doubt that “the People” – outside of the traditional goo-goo Districts – give a damn about the Speaker’s legislative games. Gambling in isolation is not a Commonwealth-wide hot-button issue, much as I would personally prefer the contrary.
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p>
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p>This is just absolutely false. I know too many very active, frequent voters who have this as there #1 issue. Not one, but two, people just resigned from my town’s democratic committee because they’re angry with leadership. It’s a big issue to a great many people more on the committee. I’ve heard it on the phones talking to random people phone banking. This is actually a major concern to people in Massachusetts right now — and it’s a problem precisely with the kinds of people likely to vote in a state legislative race.
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p>Which doesn’t mean all that power has to be filled by one or two people at the top. There are different recipes, in different states, that work better. Even the Senate way of doing business is better, fairer and more representative. Please remember that just because the Keverian way of doing things didn’t work, doesn’t mean that there’s not a better way of doing things today.
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p>You said that what we really needed was an active, progressive movement that can wield power outside of Beacon Hill. I agree with that, and I’d go so far as to say that already exists is is growing stronger every day. But one of the major problems any group will have is that, unless we replace a majority of legislators in a single year, leadership in the House has too much time to target the individuals we elect and cap our movement off at the knees, no matter how good and effective we’ve become in electing progressives. Simply put, so long as leadership in the House controls the insane amount of power that it does, it doesn’t matter how strong the progressive movement is or becomes, we won’t be able to exert the pressure necessary to get the legislature to do the right thing o issues that matter most.
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p>
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p>Quite frankly, that you think the Speaker of the entire state “should” prioritize his “parochial” special interest needs in his own district over the needs of everyone across the state offends me as a human being. I have some language I’d like to use to describe what I think about your offensive opinion, but it would absolutely violate the Rules of the Road.