“He was warned that Mike McLaughlin was dangerous.”
–Anonymous Official
The motor vehicle accident was the mustard and onions for this Coney Island Dog. I know a lot of people here testify to Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray’s good character. I even believe their testimony, but unless Murray was working undercover for the FBI, this is the story that killed his career. He may be innocent of any wrong-doing (though that is questionable), but just the guilt-by-association is deadly.
Former Chelsea housing chief, future felon Michael E. McLaughlin is a poster child for what voters are sick of: corruption on Beacon Hill, bloated salaries and pensions, felons whose name used to be followed by (D). McLaughlin will throw Murray and his 193 calls under the bus when they start talking about serving time. Add in the Probation Department scandal set to break tomorrow, and it’s a perfect storm for Murray. When the Mass Dems support him for Governor?
The <strike>Massachusetts Attorney General</strike> Sean P. Murphy and Andrea Estes have the unfortunate news.
a Globe investigation shows that the former Chelsea housing chief ran an extensive political operation for the lieutenant governor right up until McLaughlin resigned in November amid an uproar over his $360,000 salary. The FBI is investigating whether McLaughlin broke federal laws, questioning housing authority employees about McLaughlin’s political activities and management of the agency.
More than two dozen politicians, housing authority employees, and Murray campaign workers say that McLaughlin was a key fund-raiser and organizer for the lieutenant governor even though, as a federally funded employee, McLaughlin was barred from most political activity, especially at work.
Housing authority employees portray a workplace that McLaughlin had turned into a political machine, inappropriately pressuring workers to give time or money to Murray’s campaign and others.
“Mike made it clear we had to go to this rally [for Murray and running mate Deval Patrick] and that we had to bring our families,said one employee, who asked to remain anonymous because of fear of retaliation. “He wouldn’t let up on it. He kept asking, Who are you bringing? McLaughlin also provided buses to take elderly public housing residents to a 2006 rally for Murray and Patrick, and records suggest that the housing authority footed the bill, which would violate state and federal law. The only record of payment for buses around the time of the rally is an expenditure of $850 in housing authority funds.
And several employees told the Globe that McLaughlin’s aides sometimes asked for significant cash donations to Murray and other politicians, donations that do not appear in campaign reports. “He always wanted it in cash. No checks, said one employee. If cash gifts of $50 or more were collected, it would be a serious breach of campaign law.
“. . . the release of more information leads to more questions and more insinuations if/before it ever leads to truth. Calls for Murray to release his cell phone data would be damaging. Even though he’s innocent, he would fall victim to insinuating questions from opponents.”
Your attack on the media’s use of the FOIA didn’t take long to fall apart, did it? I’ve been using FOIA requests since I took a class at the Community Church of Boston more than 30 years ago. Anyone who attacks FOIA– or asserts that it should only be used “responsibly”– and still claims to be a progressive is deeply ignorant of that issue.
you don’t know what you’re talking about. I wasn’t attacking the use of FOIA. I support FOIA! I’m sorry I touched your sacred cow. I’m not against the media doing its job. I wish they did it more amd more effectively.
Here’s what I wrote: “There wouldn’t have been much of a story if the Boston Herald hadn’t filed a FOIA request for the black box in Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray’s car.”
You construed that as an attack on FOIA, which was the intention of neither my sentence or my post. Call it my failure to communicate. My point was that Murray didn’t release his cell phone records–which he doesn’t have to do–because it would just provide more fodder for accusations, baseless or not. That’s why people in politics restrict the information they have control over.
Personally, I’m not about that. If you want to see me providing information in a hostile situation, go here or to provide information about my board’s decision making here.
I’d be glad to talk with you about FOIA or the media, but please stop hijacking my posts. Try writing one of your own. You’ve only done 3 in the last year or so.
I read the entire Globe article that you excerpted. Appears to me that this Michael McLaughlin is the certifiable slug in this matter. We have all met his type in politics. He claims to be close to people in high places, bragging about his power and encouraging people to contribute so he can show how powerful he is to the candidates. McLaughlin has been turning his tricks for several decades through many powerful political figures and campaigns…no one seems to have caught on until now? (hard to believe) When Murray was in elementary school, Mclaughlin was already playing the system. If he was going around collecting cash for any political fundraiser and pocketing it for himself he should go to jail. [I went to a Murray $20 per ticket fundraiser several years back. I did not have a check with me and paid cash at the door, but the Murray campaign still made me fill out the card with name/address/ occupation/ etc. for the records. The Murray Committee was adamant about it, as they should have been.]
The notion that the Murray Committee would have requested McLaughlin’s help as a fundraiser is not believable. The idea that McLaughlin would foist himself on a political official and use their name for his own gain is very believable.
Aside to Globe reporters Murphy and Estes: the attempt to link an unrelated car accident to the Mclaughlin story was the ultimate stretch…reporting that Murray must have been thinking about McLaughlin which made it hard for him to sleep so he went to drive and got in an accident…PAH-LEEEEEZE!!! Now reporters have ESP and can read the minds of politicians in the middle of the night in retrospect…not buying it.
that gives Massachusetts Democrats a big name. I remember reading about Barack Obama’s early career and how he was warned to stay away from Rod Blagovich. These guys are spiders. They spin sticky, dirty webs. It’s hard hard not getting part of it on you.
I don’t know Murray personally, but based on you and Live and Live vouching for him, I wish him well. If he turns out to be a casualty, our party deserves some of the blame. Corruption isn’t just bad for taxpayers, it hurts good Democrats too.
Tomorrow is supposed to be D-day for the probation scandal, according to a well-placed media source I spoke with this week. The Massachusetts Democratic Party needs to clean house on corruption. It’s killing us.
The perp here is Michael McLaughlin, not Tim Murray.
I am disgusted by the way Sean Murphy and Andrea Estes conflated the essentially unchallenged and utterly wrong accident “story” into this unrelated piece. For example:
Bzzt. The speedometer read “in excess of 90 miles per hour” — while the wheels were spinning on ice. An incompetent media, unable to do simple analysis of the black-box data, instead repeated the reports of an incompetent State Police “analysis”. The Globe joins the Herald in digging for salacious gossip rather than looking at the truth and the facts. In doing so, the Globe even its own reporting (link to follow, I have to go right now).
There was nothing unseemly about his decision to go for a ride that morning. There is nothing unseemly about Tim Murray losing sleep over the betrayal of Michael McLaughlin.
There is no story here, except that the journalists involved appear to be far more interested in manufacturing scandal that doesn’t exist rather than reporting the far more boring facts of what actually happened.
If this episode does, in fact, bring down Tim Murray, it will be a loss for all of us. The corruption that Michael McLaughlin epitomizes is widespread, pervasive, and nauseating. The threat that honest politicians like Tim Murray present to the established culture of corruption that is so deeply rooted in Massachusetts government — and the extent to which that government will go to suppress it — is far more newsworthy than the cheap innuendo offered in pieces like we see this morning.
The corruption of our state government is a metastasizing cancer. Responsible journalists should spend much more time focusing on the many sites where that cancer is taking root, and far less time on non-stories like this.
A case in point? Where was Martha Coakley during the extended tenure of Michael McLaughlin?
On 16-Jan-2012, the Boston Globe reported its own belated analysis that shows that “Independent analysis of ‘black box’ backs original explanation”.
Even that piece buried the lead. The most important paragraph of the piece is near the end (emphasis mine):
We can only speculate about why the Globe joins the Herald in pursuing this trumped up “scandal” in face of the Globe’s own reporting.
Was that really to discuss “volunteers” ?
I do think the Globe went a little overboard tying this to the crash. It seemed like the story was damning enough on its own.
Here’s the paragraph from the original story:
Here’s the same information, without the editorial innuendo:
There no story here. A professional fund-raiser talks to people on the phone, that’s what she’s paid to do. Mr. McLaughlin was the head of a government agency and fancied himself a mover and shaker in the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
This story is about Michael McLaughlin. Everything else is smoke-screen.
Reading this post, and the accompanying articles, my first thoughts were:
-Somebody really doesn’t</b like Tim Murray and is actively trying to scuttle his career (not you, mark-bail, but whomever is feeding the Globe and Herald this relentless drip about stories that broke in November of last year… ) Just when the story appears about to simmer into irrelevance ‘new questions’ or “new connections” appear.
-The Globe doesn’t even bother to disguise the hatchet any further. I’m long accustomed to the Herald happily, often haply, bludgeoning those with whom it may disagree but the Globe has long held at least the pretense of serious journalsim. No longer.
Harry Truman got his Senate seat from the patronage of Tom Pendergast, the Kansas City Mo political boss of the prohibition era… and Pendergast so blatantly paraded his felonious habits that Truman was quite openly referred to as “The Senator From Pendergast”. Truman survived Pendergasts’ downfall, on income tax evasion, and went on to win the seat on his own in 1940…. but prior to that, he had to do a great deal of ‘looking the other way’ in order, he rationalized, to be able to do some good for his constituents. Ultimately, he was able to continue those good efforts, and to get out from underneath the thumb of Pendergast. It’s not a particular methodology I would normally endorse, but I think Truman’s character and personal fortitude were sufficient to leave him free of the stain of Pendergast corruption. I’d like to think similar things about Tim Murray. To be sure, McLaughlin looks like a tin-horn second-rate version of a Pendergast wannabe, who certainly looks, from this distance, to be flagrantly corrupt. But I’m not sure that shadow, yet, falls on Tim Murray… and I’m left wondering why these inferences and insinuations are coming in serendipitously timed increments…
The fervent, and apparently continuing, efforts of some nameless, skulking anti-Murray forces, fighting their battles behind the the ever-thinning veneer of once-respected journals in Mass, indicates a core weakness to the argument that Tim Murray is corrupt: come out and say it, publicly and openly, and stop the sub-rosa insinuations and inferences. Or don’t…. but don’t expect me to believe that the Globe is, of its own accord, continually rehashing November news because they’ve got little better to do.
Petr: Funny, when I read the Globe story (particularly the nonsense about linking the car accident to McLaughlin’s activity) I was also reminded of Harry Truman and his enemies’ efforts to smear him with the Pendergast gang. The more times change, the more they stay the same! Like Truman, Murray’s character and fortitude will also win out in the end. In the meantime, it’s sad that the scum (people like McLaughlin, gubernatorial wannabees and their consultants, pols looking for get-backs, and reporters looking for shock value) can do so much damage to the good ones out there.
In a more perfect world, the Globe would be pursuing the question of who wants Tim Murray out of the way and why. I don’t expect this from Sean Murphy and Andrea Estes, I’m truly curious about the back-story.
It looks to me as though perhaps some minor tremors are shaking the Beacon Hill establishment. Between Mr. McLaughlin and the on-going probation department mess, perhaps folks are getting nervous.
I’d like to know just how many employees of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts owe their positions and perks to Michael McLaughlin, and what those employees are doing now. Just how much loyalty has Mr. McLaughlin bought?
I agree with petr that this whole non-story reeks of vendetta. I’m particularly curious about the Globe’s participation. I expect such garbage from the Herald. I’m surprised, almost daily, by how vigorously the Globe seems to be chasing the Herald to grovel in the slime at the bottom.
I’d like to know who wants Tim Murray gone, and why.
Clearly.