A Score From Boston: Old Politics 3, Hope and Change 0

In a cautionary tale the NY Times tells us that Deval Patrick, the smooth-talking "Hope and Change" Governor of Massachusetts, is floundering.

“I came here to change politics as usual,” Mr. Patrick said at the state Democratic convention in 2006. “Because what’s missing from politics as usual is hope. We have been governed for too long by fear and low aim and salesmanship.”

Even some of Mr. Patrick’s strongest supporters have lost a little faith, including liberal Democrats who oppose casinos. (“Has Patrick become a lesson in the limitation of words?” a local radio host, David Boeri, asked at the start of a show on the subject last month.)

Cory Booker, now Mayor of Newark, looks like the real thing and he is building his resume with jobs for which he is qualified.

WHEN IRISH EYES ARE SMILING:

Governor Deval Patrick and his political nemesis, House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, did their best today to put a good public face on their fractured and increasingly acrimonious relationship.

Patrick referred to the speaker as "my friend and partner" this morning at a press conference about a transportation reform that marked the first time the two men had appeared together publicly since DiMasi orchestrated a crushing defeat of the governor’s casino proposal. They stood together in the Senate Reading Room on a day that Patrick called the speaker undemocratic and blamed him for his political losses in a front page story in the New York Times.

Patrick deflected a question from a reporter about the Times story and listed a series of projects that he said he and DiMasi has accomplished together, which included a $1 billion life sciences initiative and tax credits for filmmakers. As Patrick spoke, DiMasi avoided eye contact with the governor, nodded, and licked his lips.

Comments

[rhodeymark]

Cautionary tale, indeed. I know it isn't lost on your readers that BO has modeled his run on Coupe Deval. Hopey/Changey only lasts as long as the rhetoric not having to be translated into reality-based action. In Deval's defense however, the Commonwealth Care that Romney supporters love to point to is an emerging black hole that smart retirees would be wise to run from.

[Jane]

One will never know how big a bust Romney care would be since Patrick decided to add so many bells and whistles. Of course we can't leave out those illegals!

I'm not sure the state will survive 2.5 more years of him. And for the record of us, at least 25% of us were never dazzled.

[clarice]

I know nothing of Booker--but if one is looking for a successful Black leader, Adrian Fenty of the District of Columbia is doing a breathtakingly good job and is being absolutely transcendent on race. You could have seen the old shuck and jive crowd here collectively suck eggs when he named a young Korean woman to run out schools. And THEN he backed her to the hilt on school closings, educational standards, mass firings at HQ...He really walks the walk.

[clarice]

**to run ouR schools**

[Foo Bar]

I'm sure Booker factored his understanding of the importance of experience and qualifications into his decision at the start of Obama's candidacy to lend Obama his vigorous support.

[DebinNC]

What made Obama think he didn't have to pay his dues - getting executive experience and a record of accomplishment like Booker - before his presidential run? That kind of hubris is scary. It's hard to believe white voters, especially men, won't see him as an affirmative action candidate elevated over others, black and white, vastly more qualified

[Ranger]

I have a funny feeling that MA will actually be in play this year for the Rs. All they need to do is keep running spots that say:

"You fell for "Hope and Change" once... are you really going to fall for it again?"

People vote in funny ways, and the fact that Hill won so easily in MA when the entire Kennedy clan was behind Obama tells you how much Patrick being vice-chair of Obama's campaign hurts him in the state.

[DebinNC]

"I have a funny feeling that MA will actually be in play this year for the Rs.."

Whatever MA problems are, surely the Rs can offer a better solution than casinos.

[M. Simon]

clarice,

I just love it when you make a typo in a typo correction. Have you had lessons? :-)

[clarice]

M Simon--No. It's just a talent one is born with..(When I was growing up all the women professionals I knew warned me off ever learning any clerical skills at all--and that warning took.)

[Jane]

You know Clarice I did the same thing. I never learned to type lest I be forced to be a secretary. I've been paying for it ever since.

[GMax]

I doubt if Massachusetts has any regrets for their progressiveness. When the pain gets bad enough like Michigan, high unemployment, budget problems reducing basic govt. services and net out migration you might get a change. Every single congressional district in Mass is represented by a Democrat. Almost that bad in the State Houses.

The Massachusetts miracle was a sham that crashed and burned but it still has not resulted in much change. I suppose the pain has to get a lot higher.

[Jane]

Oh there has been change. You should see my bills, everyone of them has a new fee tacked on since January 1st. Next on the list are hikes of tolls and taxes.

[bgates]

In other scores, 89 to 82, 3 to 1, 3 to 6, and in a real nail-biter, 100 to 99.

[Sue]

100 to 99.

I saw that. I sure wanted the heave from the other end to go in.

[Independent George]

Booker vs. Jindal in 2016 might be an election I actually look forward to.

[Not a Yank]

The NYTs English standard has sunk very low. The verb should have been founder not flounder.

foun·der
1. To sink below the surface of the water: The ship struck a reef and foundered.
2. To cave in; sink: The platform swayed and then foundered.
3. To fail utterly; collapse: a marriage that soon foundered.

flounder
behave awkwardly; have difficulties;

(definitions courtesy of www.thefreedictionary.com)

[ossian]

If Booker is the real thing, why can't he even be bothered to live in the city? [He lives in Brooklyn.] Why has he decimated police coverage? Why is a move to recall this do-nothing huckster gaining ground? He is nothing more than an empty suit with a fancy resume and is no kind of solution to the problems Newark faces. Sharpe James and Ken Gibson were just as corrupt as Addonizio et al, but word from Very High impeded a great deal of the prosecution James and Gibson merited. Booker is no kind of solution and absolutely the last person for any pol, Black or White, to emulate.

[TW Andrews]

To be fair to Patrick, the legislature in MA is sclerotic, and seems to oppose him on principle (though I guess running against "politics as usual" might not help you work with the usual politicians).

That's not meant to be an endorsement, only that he's not the only reason that governance in the Bay State is a joke.

[Jane]

I think they oppose him on tactics more than principle. If someone is gonna hoodwink the public, DiMasi wants his piece.

And yes you are dead on about the Bay State government being a joke.

[Greg Toombs]

Anybody have a partial score?

[Greg Toombs]

OK, I've got one:

NJ taxpayers: -250,000

...have left the state the past 5 years, according to a Rutgers study.

[MJSharon]

TW Andrews,

The Mass legislature certainly has its share of problems but they are at least right in opposing DP's various revenue grabs. Sal and the boys are the only thing standing in the way of abolishing 2 1/2 and having sky high property taxes. Same for corporate taxes.

[Zeke]

http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=flounder

Flounder would work too.

[Denny, Alaska]

I'm sorry: they're people still living in Massachusetts? New England? The east in general?

[MarkJ]

In Deval Patrick's case, I think this "Flounder" is appropriate.

http://www.grannygear.com/Assets/Images/Races/Moab/2006/Kent_Dorfman.jpg

"Failing your way to success."

[gs]

According to the NYT piece, one of Patrick's "economic development proposals" is "to generate more business tax revenue by closing loopholes".

Yeah, that'll do wonders for economic development.

Also from the NYT piece: “He put on the table the presumption that we are going to need new revenue,” said Stephen Crosby, dean of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at the University of Massachusetts, who served on Mr. Patrick’s transition team.

Ditto.
**********
Iirc within the last 10-15 years a ballot initiative to abolish the MA income tax got about 40% of the vote. I don't know if that 40% is increasing or if it's leaving the state.

[MJSharon]

Good take from John Keller, a local TV commentator:

Patrick And The Times
3/26/2008 11:32 PM

Just a couple of quick comments on this once-over-lightly New York Times take on Gov. Deval Patrick's political woes:

* Apparently, Steve Crosby of UMass/Boston has become the go-to guy for out-of-town reporters looking for an "informed" academic take on state politics. Wonder why they never seem to mention his stint as chief-of-staff on the Titanic, a.k.a. the brief, unlamented administration of acting Gov. Jane Swift? Anyway, Crosby says of Patrick, apparently approvingly: "He put on the table the presumption that we are going to need new revenue. In that sense he changed the conversation totally from where it's been for 16 years." Another way of putting it is that Patrick has abandoned any pretense of deleting patronage fat and waste from our unsustainable state budget. Gee, that's the way Crosby himself might have put it back when he was toting water for Swift, a champion of the 2000 income tax rollback referendum. And in any case, the statement is erroneous. Patrick may have tried to "change the conversation," but wouldn't you say Speaker Sal DiMasi has quickly returned it to its prior aversion to corporate or broad-based tax hikes?

* Patrick tells the Times: "I have a better idea this year about who to trust and who not to, and you better believe that's helped." Really? Of whom does he speak? The key cabinet member who's being allowed to run wild with inside power-plays and other clumsy blundering that threatens to make hash of years of progress in a crucial policy area? The aides he's becoming notorious for not listening to? Sal? Maybe Patrick can't trust him, but he should have known that going in. The real question is: can he beat him at his game?

[nevadasestamibi]

I worked in downtown Newark for the first 11 1/2 years of the Sharpe James regime, but was gone by the time "Street Fight" was made.

Whether Cory Booker is indeed the "real thing" is something only time will tell. However, his stock with me rose considerably when I saw the scene in "Street Fight" filmed in his campaign office in which a huge American flag was hung on the wall. Compare this with the Che Guevara flag equally prominently displayed in the Houston, TX campaign office of B. Hussein Obama.

[Kevin R.C. 'Hognose' O'Brien]

Well, the Deval-uator has added at least half a billion in new spending to the Mass. budget. As a result, the state, like Gaul, is divided en partes tres"

1. People pricing real-estate in NH. Who will then move, and demand the level of touchy-feely services that are turning Mass. into a place only Erich Honecker's commissariat could love, and produce the same defunct failed state that they fled in the first place. Hence his other nick, "U-Haul Patrick."

2. Welfare leeches and other various bums with their hands out -- the Deval-u-ator's natural constituency.

3. People directly (Government patronage workers) and indirectly (college employees) on the government teat. (Although this could be seen as a subset of #2). This constituency splits between Deval and Sal (insert amusing made-guy nickname here) DiMasi.
   

Increasingly, those groups are all that is left in the state, along with the old people who were too improvident to have a nest egg sufficient to move them to Florida (where they would demand silly services and do their best to reproduce their home failed-state... see #1 above).

[rhomp2002]

Kudoes on your number 1, Kevin. I used to live in NH and we had a big bunch of Mass residents who moved up to get away from the Dukakis (at the time gov) tax increases and policies. Went to the Annual Town Meeting and the Mass people all got together and tried to force through the same kind of things they moved away from. Luckily the residents saw through this and voted them all down at the time. Don't know what the current situation is but based on what I read about NH these days there have been enough Mass residents moved in to maybe get away with it now. I loved living there then; now, maybe not so much.

If the dems get their way and NH ever passes an income tax, watch the old time NH residents flee the state for somewhere else.

[wavemaker]

Don't think for one minute that Sal is the taxpayer's friend. He's looking out for one guy -- Sal. He has an "old fashioned" view of public service with which the people of Newark (or better yet, Hudson County) are well familiar. He's already talking about an increase in the cigarette tax of $1.50. I predict that he'll play his caards close and engineer the tsax hikes so that they can be blamed on Patrick and his senate counterpart, Terry Murray. He;ll spout all kinds of protect-the-taxpayer rhetoric and then take out the shiv when the lights go down.

The corporate tax loophole issue was to be essentially revenue-neutral, involving the closing of the offshore-subsidiary loophole (which has been done almost uniformly in all industrial states) in exchange for a lowering of the tax rate.

[DebinNC]

"If the dems get their way and NH ever passes an income tax, watch the old time NH residents flee the state for somewhere else."

Currently, they'd have eight alternatives:

AL FL NV SD TX TN WA WY

[Jane]

During a meeting this afternoon I asked a colleague if she had made up her mind in the election. She said "I was for Obama but I just can't vote for him after what Patrick has done. It's the last time I'll ever vote for someone unvetted".

So I blame her for MA. And a million or two others sucked in by the fantasy.

[clarice]

That's nice to hear, Jane.

[clarice]

P.S. I suspect some of that attitude is reflected in Hill's primary win against the opposition of Patrick and Obama's supporters Kerry and Kennedy.

[R. Ford Mashburn]

Well, speaking as a resident of WA state, I wouldn't count on this state remaining income-tax free. Plus, the state sales tax is 8.9% and we no longer have budget caps.

Maybe if Rossi wins the Governor's seat but I doubt that the Democrats would allow him to win, since they stole the election last time (three recounts, discovered votes, dead voters, absentee ballots from felons, etc.)

This is the "people's republic of Washington" and there's no tax hike we don't like.

[Jane]

Actually I don't think Hill's primary win even registered. She is that detached. It has everything to do with Patrick. I think he is hated by everyone. I just have to hold my tongue from saying: "I told you so".

[rhomp2002]

In Mass you know it is bad when even the Globe is writing stories about how badly the democratic governor is doing. It seems like almost every day there is a story in the online Globe about some other foolishness that Patrick is up to.

I noted that when he lost his casinos vote he was out of state and not available. That is sounding a lot like Gov Mario Cuomo when he was in office. Whenever there was any controversial bill up for the vote, Mario had speeches to give somewhere out of state around the 40th day after the vote. That way the law about the bill going into effect if the governor did not veto or sign the bill within 45 days took over. Then if the initiative worked, Mario could take credit for it because he did not veto it. If it did not work, then it was the fault of the legislature and he was not able to register his veto because he was out of state and the law put it into effect. And he got away with for years.

Just hope for the sake of Mass that Patrick is only there for 1 term. So far he is a disaster. Even my democratic friends from Boston tell me that and they told them they would never vote for a republican. Of course I don't rub it in too much but they know where I stand on the issue for sure.

[Topsecretk9]

I asked a friend who said she'd only heard cursory news about "Wright" but heard all about the Bosnia spiral dive. (news reporters - HAH!- tabloid providers in a neck tie?)

She said flat out that Hillary had told the story 3 different times not only made her think twice but pissed her off

So - the left is getting really nasty.