Massachusetts Politics

Not that it’s the job of the press to toss bouquets, but I still found the headline on a recent [9-26-16] Boston Magazine story on a new web initiative by the Retailers Association of Massachusetts (RAM) to be a little stingy.   “Massachusetts Retailers Group Debuts a Spooky Archive of Vacant Storefronts,” it said. MASSterlist, a news aggregation site operated by the State House News Service, struck a similar tone today when it summarized the project, which consists mainly of a web site featuring photos of closed stores that have gone out of business: http:// www.DarkStoreFrontsMA.com/ The MASSterlist headline used the word “ominous” to describe the site, and the MASSterlist summary opined that the site “looks so gray and gloomy, as intended, something designed by Darth Vader himself.” If I were writing those heads, I think I would have emphasized the boldness of DarkStoreFronts, which has as its tagline, "Once Main Street Leaves, It's Not Coming Back."   I woul...

To measure last night’s presidential debate, let’s grab the John Sasso Gauge from the political toolbox. Sasso, a chief of staff to former Governor Michael Dukakis and a high-ranking field officer in two Democrat presidential campaigns, wrote a piece in The Boston Globe this past spring on how and why voters make a choice in the final election of a president.   It was headlined, “The values battle in the general election.” “…deep and emotional judgments about candidates ultimately drive Americans’ choice of a president,” Sasso declared. “The most salient variables,” he wrote, “are voter perceptions of three characteristics”: One, “a candidate’s personal political strength,” Two, “voters’ trust in the depth and sincerity of the candidate’s convictions,” and Three, “most importantly, whether the voters think that the candidate ‘cares’ about people like them.” There were several points in the debate where I thought Hillary Clinton was clearly better than Donald Trump in showing caring...

For the chance to chew the fat with Ron Kaufman, I would have gladly volunteered to drive one of the golf carts shuttling guests from a party at Kaufman’s Beacon Hill condo on the night of July 3 to the Boston Pops rehearsal concert at the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade.   The man’s been a political operative and lobbyist for like 40 years.   There are stories I’d love to hear from his perspective. You know the party I’m talking about, the one that put a couple of higher-ups in the Department of Conservation and Recreation in hot water after it was revealed they had expended DCR resources on the private celebration.   The golf carts in question, for example, were rented by the DCR. There’s been a fair amount of publicity about the party at Kaufman's place and the resulting disciplinary action against the top twosome at DCR.   Nowhere has it been reported, however, if Kaufman was actually at the party, which seems a glaring instance of lazy journalism, although it’...

A week ago yesterday, Tom McGee announced he would not be a candidate this November for a second four-year term as chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party.   The election of the chairman and other party officers will take place the week after the presidential election in November. A longtime member of the state Senate from Lynn and son of a late House Speaker renowned for helping anyone down on his luck, McGee announced that decision in an email to members of the party’s state committee and others. Befitting the man, who is the embodiment of decency, the message from McGee was warm, optimistic and personally engaging.   “Over the past three years,” he wrote, “I know our work electing Democrats has helped countless people across the state.   I’ve often talked about my grandmother and the values I learned from her.   After helping organize shoe workers in Lynn, and during the darkest days of the Depression, she went to work for the Roosevelt administration to co...

I’m wondering how the persons and organizations who tried to block the opening of a medical marijuana dispensary in downtown Boston are feeling now, one month after the dispensary opened.   Are they relieved that it has caused not a single problem in the neighborhood. Are they disappointed that their strongly expressed concerns have proved to be unfounded and that their credibility may have suffered as a result. Or have they moved so far past the issue they don’t give a thought to their old dispensary antagonism, and figure the rest of us don’t either. A company known as Patriot Care opened the dispensary at 21 Milk St. on the morning Wednesday, Aug. 3, with a lack of fanfare thoroughly intentional.   There’s no sign on the outside of the building that even says Patriot Care, never mind anything about the products sold there. Last August, the Boston Zoning Board of Appeals voted unanimously to grant Patriot Care the conditional use permit needed to operate a dispensary at that...