Massachusetts Politics

Not Nice to Bamboozle Landfill Operators.  Stephen P. Aguiar, Jr., age 47, the owner of a trash company, pleaded guilty on April 11 in federal court in Boston in connection with defrauding the operator of the Fall River Landfill out of approximately $473,000 in disposal fees.  According to the Office of Acting U.S. Attorney William D. Weinreb of the District of Massachusetts, "Aguiar was one of the owners and operators of Cleanway Disposal & Recycling, Inc., a trash removal and recycling company, and JS Aguiar Enterprises, Inc., a construction and equipment rental company, which were both located in Westport.  Aguiar contracted with the company operating the Fall River Landfill to dispose of trash collected from his private clients outside of Fall River for one rate, and to dispose of trash collected from his private clients outside of Fall River for a higher rate...Between 2009 and 2014, Aguiar misrepresented the origin of a significant porti...

ONE WAY IN WHICH KRAFT’S ARE LIKE BELICHICK’S: The Kraft-Trump bromance is a jarring reality of political life today in Massachusetts.   Why does Bob love Donald is right up there with why does Massachusetts still have a Governor’s Council?   Yes, I know, we all have friends and relationships that are improbable, if not a little weird.   There is, for example, the guy I met 51 years ago in Revere while walking home in a thunderstorm late one summer afternoon.   Shirtless, he was using the torrent from a broken downspout on a three-family house to take a shower, shampoo and all.   I just had to strike up a conversation. Trying hard lately not to be so hard on Kraft, I seized upon the transcript of the proceedings on the south lawn of the White House on Wednesday, April 19, the day the President greeted the Super Bowl champions. It caused me to admire Kraft for having the stones to speak glowingly, and obviously genuinely, about a con...

Joe Shortsleeve, who achieved New England fame as a TV newsman, is seriously considering running for the Massachusetts Senate. As a former newsman of the (glamor-challenged) print variety, I hope Joe runs for the Bristol-Norfolk District seat to be vacated soon (May 2) by Jim Timilty.   My advice is he should adopt a campaign slogan once used by another newsman, Jimmy Breslin, when he ran in 1968 for city council president in New York City on a ticket headed by novelist/journalist Norman Mailer:   “Throw the rascals in!” Counter-intuitive is working today in U.S. politics.   Just ask Donald “I-like-guys-who-don’t-get captured” Trump.   And people always like a guy who can poke fun at himself and have a little fun on the campaign trail. Shortsleeve, 59, had a long career at WBZ-TV News in Boston before linking up in 2014 with the Liberty Square group, a communications/political consulting firm headed by Scott Ferson, who made his bones as a javelin-catching press...

Michael Ricciuti’s is an American success story. He clearly merits the superior court judgeship he’s been nominated for by the governor. But do not be surprised if one or even two members of the Governor’s Council vote against confirming him.   A relic of Colonial Era government, the Council provides a haven for some of the most unpredictable and inexplicable politicians in Massachusetts. The hearing on Ricciuti’s nomination was held before the eight-member Council this past Thursday.   Former Middlesex District Attorney Gerard Leone testified that he’d seen "no better lawyer" in his decades of practice than Ricciuti. If confirmed, Ricciuti will fill a vacancy left by the recent elevation of Judge Kimberly Budd to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Ricciuti grew up in Quincy, attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point for two years, transferred to Harvard College, and went straight to Harvard Law School.   After law school, he clerked for the late A. David Ma...