Friday, September 30, 2005

Tell Comcast you're pissed

Trying to get a complaint phone number from Comcast is, to use the cliche, a Kafkaesque experience. But here's an option for anyone miffed that Comcast is yanking this week's mayoral forum from their On-Demand programming after just 48 hours: Randy Waddell, Comcast's regional VP of marketing. 603-695-1580.

NOTE: I previously posted contact info for Shawn Feddeman, Comcast's local spokesperson. Because the Comcast operator had refused to give me either Feddeman's direct line or the main corporate number for Comcast, I'd used Feddeman's work cell phone. Now, at the urging of several people whose opinion I respect, I've deleted it. So, Randy, it's all yours.

9/30/2005 4:55:00 PM by Adam | Comments [0] |

Comcast screws Boston

There's an excellent story in today's Herald on Comcast's sudden change of heart concerning Wednesday's mayoral showdown. Comcast originally committed to making the program available to its On Demand customers through November 2.* Now the program's going to be yanked after 48 hours, the standard window for On Demand programming. (Blue. Mass Group discusses Comcast's move here.)

The most troubling aspect of this whole story? Longtime Menino adviser Ed Jesser is a Comcast consultant.

Here's what Mark Mills, the executive director of Greater Boston (where the forum aired), told the Herald's Kevin Rothstein:"I was definitely under the impression that some people at Comcast had known for some time we were looking to have it on there throughout the month, and I think at Comcast, once this issue reached a higher level, they decided to do something else."

Simply put, this stinks. Boston voters deserve an explanation. And Comcast, if it has any civic conscience at all, should stick with the original arrangement.

I'll be trying to find out more this afternoon. Hopefully plenty of other members of the local media will as well. In the meantime, take a look at these comments that at-large councilor Steve Murphy made to the Globe back in 1999 (emphasis added).

"Councilor at large Steve Murphy, seeking to block Cablevision from reducing the number of public access channels in Boston from three to two, settled comfortably into the role of TV critic last week, bemoaning the lack of community-based programming on the public access channels that exist today.

"It's all mayor, all the time," said Murphy, referring the round-the-clock tapings of various appearances by Mayor Thomas M. Menino. "I must have seen the State of the City address 50 times. I turn on the TV now to go to sleep."

Menino has his own videotaping crew that follows him around, and Cablevision allows the moments in Menino administration history to be played over and over on channels like A-22. Not that Cablevision needs much convincing to give his honor air time. No one wants anything bad to happen with Cablevision's lucrative agreement with City Hall to operate in Boston, and it just so happens that top political strategist Ed Jesser is a hired gun for Cablevision as well."

*CORRECTION: I had mistakenly said that Comcast allegedly planned to make the forum available through November 8.

9/30/2005 1:00:00 PM by Adam | Comments [0] |

Thursday, September 29, 2005

No, no--watch it HERE.

CORRECTION: The webcast of last night's mayoral forum can be found here. There's a podcast available as well. Sorry for the bum link.

9/29/2005 8:21:00 PM by Adam | Comments [0] |

The virtues of silence

Earlier today, Mitt Romney got a hand-delivered letter from seventy-some local religious leaders. Plenty of bigwigs signed, including Episcopalians Thomas Shaw and Gayle Harris, Harvard Divinity School's Howard Cox, Don Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, and Lawrence Lowenthal of the American Jewish Committee. The subject: the governor's recent call, in a September 14 speech at the Heritage Foundation, to ratchet up surveillance of mosques and foreign students.

The signators want a retraction. They accuse Romney of "countenanc[ing] guilt by association and discrimination against whole communties of faith, thus creating a climate in which intolerance and hate crimes can proliferate."

Here's some friendly advice to Shaw, et al: If you really want to stick it to Romney, shut up.

We all know the governor wants to be president. Right now, as he paves the way for an '08 campaign, he needs all the publicity he can muster. And he'll get it for free, if residents of his home state raise a ruckus every time the governor makes a strategic comment or two. By keeping this story in the news for an extra day or two, the aformentioned religious leaders are basically making an in-kind contribution to Romney's presidential campaign.

Also, I'm happy to criticize the governor when it's warranted. But is it really, in this particular case? Take another look at Romney's comments as reported by AP, and note the added emphasis:

"Romney made the remarks Wednesday during a speech in Washington at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. He referred to the state's 120 colleges and universities and speculated about students who are from countries that sponsor terrorism, asking 'Do we know where they are, are we tracking them?'

He also spoke about gathering intelligence at mosques 'that may be teaching doctrines of hate and terror.'

'Are we monitoring that? Are we wiretapping?' he asked. 'Are we following what's going on? Are we seeing who's coming in, who's coming out? Are we eavesdropping, carrying out surveillance on those individuals from places that sponsor domestic terror?'"

Suppose, hypothetically, that an imam at a Boston mosque was inciting anti-western violence. (It happened in England.) Would we want to know everything possible about what he was saying? Of course. Would wiretapping be appropriate? I'd say so. The problem, obviously, is the vagueness of Romney's phrase. Any mosque might be teaching doctrines of hate and terror. That doesn't mean they should all be preemptively wire-tapped. But in cases where there's serious cause for concern, the governor may have a point.

9/29/2005 8:18:00 PM by Adam | Comments [0] |

Score one for Hennigan

There won't be any mayoral debates. Maura Hennigan made sure of that tonight by whipping Tom Menino in a "Boston Mayoral Town Meeting" (questions from the audience, but no direct candidate exchanges) that was televised on WGBH-TV's Greater Boston.

Some of the credit goes to Hennigan, who'd clearly prepped well and had her talking points down. In her opening statement, she hit Menino on two issues--his broken pledge to serve only two terms, and his failure to create a public-school system that satisfies the city's families--and she stayed on the offensive all night.

But Menino gave her plenty of help. Broadly speaking, he used two strategies when members of the audience quizzed him about problems in the city: blame someone else, or simply deny their existence. Nathan Spencer, a Brighton resident, asked Menino about skyrocketing housing costs driving out younger residents; Menino said, in essence, that the problem really isn't all that bad. Later, when Jadine Soo Hoo of Chinatown asked the mayor what could be done to create affordable housing in her neighborhood, he pointed the finger at other levels of government: "We don't have the partners we had in the past, when it came to giving us the availability of resources," Menino explained, sort of.

After a while, Hennigan picked up on Menino's approach and started to mock it. At one point late in the debate, a woman named Jody Holden suggested that the city create an independent review board to investigate tenant-rights issues. By way of an answer, Menino told her that the existing city framework is adequate. Hennigan's retort, which was directed at Holden, was spot on: "Obviously, you don't feel city government is responding to you, or you wouldn't have asked the question." After 12 years in office, Menino seems to be suffering from a Bush-esque inability to process criticism. He doesn't listen to it and reject it; instead, he just doesn't hear it.

Fortunately, the mayor had his machine to help him save face. Audience and media members who exited WGBH's studios onto Western Ave. were met by a throng of about 200 sign-toting Menino supporters, packed uncomfortably close to the doors and spilling out onto the street under the disinterested gaze of a Boston police officer. Moving through this crowd was a bit like running a gauntlet, and there was a definite intimidation component at work. It was a fitting end to the evening. After all, Tom Menino doesn't win elections with ideas--he wins them with political muscle.

9/29/2005 12:22:00 AM by Adam | Comments [0] |

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

More baggage for Wilkerson

Dianne Wilkerson's been in trouble before and managed to survive, but this sounds bad. Attorney General Tom Reilly and Michael Sullivan, director of the state's Office of Campaign and Political Finance, are suing Wilkerson for seven separate campaign-finance violations.

Face to face, Wilkerson is charismatic and charming--the kind of person you could imagine becoming Boston's first African-American and first female mayor. But she also seems to have a serious self-destructive streak. (In 1997, Wilkerson copped to not filing federal income taxes between 1991 and 1994; last year, Wilkerson's car was booted and towed when she failed to pay approximately $1300 in outstanding parking tickets.)

Here's the meat of the Attorney General's press release:

"State Senator Dianne Wilkerson (D-Boston) has been sued for numerous campaign finance violations, including more than $26,000 in unreported contributions and more than $18,000 in unexplained personal reimbursements, according to a lawsuit filed today by Attorney General Tom Reilly and Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) Director Michael J. Sullivan.

The complaint, filed today in Suffolk Superior Court, alleges that Wilkerson, her political committee, and her former campaign treasurer Ajibola Osinubi, violated campaign finance laws in seven separate ways between 2000-2001. Among the violations alleged in the complaint are:

$26,935 in contributions that were never reported to OCPF
$13,503 in expenditures that were unreported or under-reported to OCPF
$20,264 in reimbursements, including $18,277 in personal reimbursements, for which Wilkerson has been unable to provide a legitimate campaign-related purpose
$15,550 in "consulting fees" to four individuals, including Wilkerson's sons Cornell and Kendall Mills, for which Wilkerson has been unable to provide a legitimate campaign-related purpose
$3,200 in contributions from six Political Action Committees (PAC) that were not reported to OCPF.

This is not the first time Wilkerson has been sued for campaign finance violations. In 1998, Wilkerson entered into an agreement with OCPF and the Attorney General resolving allegations of unexplained expenditures and undisclosed PAC contributions. She and her committee agreed to pay back all unaccounted for expenditures and to pay civil penalties totaling $11,500."

And here's a just-issued response from Wilkerson's office:

"The Wilkerson Committee through its counsel, Attorney Thomas R. Kiley, was notified this morning by the Attorney General of his intent to file a complaint. It is our understanding that this is a civil complaint regarding record-keeping dating back to 2000 and 2001. We have not had time to review the complaint but will respond within the 20 days allotted to do so. We are confident that the outstanding matters will be fully resolved with complete and sufficient documentation. Most of the requested documentation listed in the complaint has already been submitted to the Attorney General. We look forward to resolving this matter expeditiously."

Stay tuned.

9/28/2005 6:41:00 PM by Adam | Comments [0] |

Good night for the lefties

Interesting results in last night's Boston preliminary election. John Connolly lived up to the hype by finishing third in the at-large field. Felix Arroyo can't play the progressive-of-color-on-the-brink card anymore; instead, after finishing second, he's a legitimate threat to top the ticket in November. Then there's Sam Yoon, who sneaked past Patricia White to finish in fifth place, a better outcome than even Yoon and his supporters seemed to expect.

And the losers? Let's start with White, who many people (myself included) thought would fare much better. It's too soon to say what went wrong, but White's gender--she's the only female at-large candidate--clearly wasn't the advantage it was supposed to be. (White's recent failure to land the local National Organization for Women endorsement can't have helped matters.) Matt O'Malley didn't have a good night, either: despite relentlessly flogging his ties to Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea Cabral (not necessarily a good thing these days), O'Malley only managed to place seventh. Finally, the Humble Pie award has to go to developer Kevin McCrea, who pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars of his personal fortune into his campaign and still finished out of the running, in tenth place, behind Althea Garrison (!). McCrea made some good points over the short course of his campaign, and his willingness to talk smack to Boston's powers that be was refreshing. Unfortunately, he also came across as an arrogant exhibitionist.

Look for more on the preliminary in tomorrow's Phoenix, including election-night coverage from Deirdre Fulton and yours truly. For now, suffice it to say that the at-large stretch drive should be fascinating to watch.

9/28/2005 1:10:00 PM by Adam | Comments [0] |