CHB fact checking

I normally don't bother with Dan Shaughnessy. In fact it took me years to figure out what CHB stands for. I saw his contrarian streak a long time ago.

But as a native Clevelander (and a loyal, non-band wagon Celtics fan) I was drawn to his stuff recently -- especially Sunday's non-slap at the erstwhile Mistake on the Lake.

So I started out on today's column, and made it no farther the fifth paragraph:

The Celtics will be transported to the arena on a Duck Boat. The tour guide will tell them that Lake Erie is the Charles River. They'll be told Cleveland's historic Key Tower is actually the Custom House Tower. Jacobs Field? That's Fenway Park. Janet Marie Smith has really made the place over, no?

Historic Key Tower? Now I've been away a long time, so if it was built after I left, it ain't historic. Does that look historic to you? Does it look like the Custom House? Competed in 1991? He no doubt was thinking about historic Terminal Tower, built in the 1930s. That looks like the Custom House Tower.

OK, so he's not a history buff. But Jacobs Field? That's so 2007. Granted the home of the Indians was named after former owner Richard Jacobs when CHB last set foot in Cleveland last fall.

But now it's Progressive Field, named after the city's big insurance company. Personally I liked The Jake better, but money talks and well, Shaughnessy provides the rest.

The Prog (ugh!) is right next door to the Quicken Loans Arena. You know the place where Game Three was played. You might have seen it when you walked in the door on Saturday?

As for the rest of the piece -- well I do like the idea of the Celtics trying to create the comforts of home on the road. It's hard to understand why the best road team in the regular season has turned into this group of stumblebums. Anything to restore a sense of normalcy.

Go Celts!

Not your grandfather's tax cut

I don't know about Barbara Anderson, but repealing the Massachusetts income tax would mean real money in my pocket. A lot more than the 18 bucks she envisions getting. And a lot more than the 30 bucks that most folks would see from Hillary's gas tax holiday.

And when you look at the people circulating and signing the petitions, you can't help but notice they are normal moms and dads -- no extra heads or limbs -- who are struggling to make ends as the economy goes south.

Anderson's comments about the impact of the proposed initiative to eliminate the Massachusetts income tax seem oddly out of sync for our state's most famous tax fighter. Because the proposal put forward by Carla Howell, the Libertarian candidate for governor in 2002, dwarfs anything she has done, cutting state revenues by something in the $12 billion range -- from a total state budget in the $28 billion range.

How would the state cut $12 billion? That's three times the sum the state sends cities and towns for public schools. Laying off every state employee would only save about $5 billion, said Cam Huff, a private policy consultant who studies the state budget.

Hardly chump change.

What do you realistically think will happen? Are schools going to close? Will police and firefighting services end? Will trash no longer be picked up or streets no longer plowed in winter?

Of course not. People have become far too accustomed to the no tax and spend snake oil offered by "supply side" advocates for the last 30 years. I always come back to what may be an apocryphal story where someone got up on a TV talk show and lamented "why do the taxpayers have to pay for it. Why can't government pay for it?"

So how does "government" pay for it?

The property tax is not the answer -- it's capped at 2.5 percent annual increases.

Sales tax? Not unless you are looking at double digits, a sure way to end the business we get from Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York, where sales taxes are higher.

Hike the corporate tax rate? Not a chance. They are already lamenting they are overtaxed and do you seriously think corporations would stick around in a state without quality schools or services? What do you think this is -- Mississippi?

Higher taxes on beer, booze and butts and tolls? What do you think this is -- New Hampshire?

Nope we would be looking at a serious new way of life. The assessments you pay in some communities for trash collection would be expanded to includes police, fire and schools. User fees, if you will. Add the plowing fee in winter. The leaf cleanup assessment in the fall.

Parks -- a luxury. Plow 'em under and build houses and stores that will add to the meager property tax and sales tax base.

Public transportation? You must be kidding. More cars means more gas tax collections. And we can add a pollution control assessment to the cost of the driver's license and tags. Not that it would control pollution. But look at the bright side -- traffic would ease off as people move out.

Petition backers will scream that this is all fearmongering, that the world did not end when Proposition 2 1/2 passed despite similar dire threats.

But the cuts then were quieter -- people laid off. We are talking about either wholesale elimination of services or the imposition of "user fees" that would make the current assessments for things from trash pickup to school sports seem like vending machine coinage.

And this is serious. The proposal received support from 45 percent of the voters the last time it was on the ballot. People are worried about their jobs and their homes in an economy where foreclosures are growing as fast as war spending. You can't do anything about the ineptitude and inaction at the federal level, so you lash out where you can.

Plus many voters like Anderson are annoyed because they haven't received the money they were due from the income tax rollback pushed by Canadian Ambassador A. Paul Cellucci in 2000.

A tanking economy prompted legislators to suspend the rollback in 2002, although there are signs revenues has returned to healthy enough levels that another reduction -- from 5.3 percent to 5.25 percent -- could kick in this year.

A word of advice to Deval Patrick and legislative leaders: let this reduction go through, no matter how tight the fiscal 2009 budget may look.

That is of course if the House can focus on anything other than speaker succession planning. Or the governor can take a few evenings off from writing his book.

Fighting the last war

While we can argue endlessly about liberal versus conservative journalists and media bias, I am willing to give one point in that debate: journalists (pundits in particular) and Democrats tend to fight the last war.

Case in point: Joan Vennochi's lament that Barack Obama is a politician (horrors!) who, now having been exposed by his former pastor will dissolve into a Dukakis-Kerry-like puddle of Jello when faced with the McCain Machine.

Vennochi takes umbrage with Obama's shift in positions in an number of areas, starting with Wright, and reacts with dismay that he actually worked to pass legislation that could benefits all parties in the debate.

But the "Washington Problem" is not that the players are politicians. It is that they have put party above country and refused to seek common ground. The pointy-headed Washington bureaucrat argument is so 1968.

The Globe's Mother Ship offers three very good examples that they have started to recognize there is a new war that needs to be confronted -- while also demonstrating that this time around it's the GOP that may opt to fight the last one, simple because they have no weapons left in their arsenal except for fear and smear.

For starters, yes Obama is a politician! But he is a pragmatic one, someone who will try to get to yes and not a George "Hold My Breath Until I Turn Blue" Bush type who thinks principles (he truly believes in torture) are more important than accomplishments.

As a result of The Theocracy Wars of the last 20-plus years this country facing $126 a barrel oil, a faltering economy and overwhelmingly unpopular war that is squandering our human and financial resources.

That's why people are registering in record numbers to vote in Democratic primaries (the small number of Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" bloviating bitter-enders notwithstanding.) There's far more at stake here than Jeremiah Wright's Rants.

The Punditocracy has gotten it wrong at virtually every step along the way, so it should come as no surprise that it could be heading down that road again -- as Mark Leibovich crisply spells out. The at-times infuriating tactics of Hillary Clinton have served as a dress rehearsal for the "Swift Boat Times Five" campaign being planned by McCain.

As GOP lobbyist Ed Rogers said to Leibovich about the Clinton effort:

“Yeh, like we couldn’t have thought of that.”

Last but not least is the basic observation, as spelled out by Frank Rich, that it simply is not 2004 or 1988 any more. Mike Dukakis and John Kerry are not walking through that door. A politician trained in the rough and tumble of Chicago is, a man who has tasted defeat sown from too-early ambition.

So sorry Joan, the change Obama is speaking about is coming, led by Americans tired of the fiascoes of the last 20 years of hyper-partisan battles involving Clintons and Bushes. He's been smart enough to tap into it.

Don't be bitter.

Friday news dump

There's a theory in public relations that the best way to minimize coverage of bad news is to dump it late on a Friday afternoon. Fewer reporters may be paying attention and smaller, less well-read Saturday papers make it less likely that people will notice.

The most glaring example I was involved with came in 1986, when Republican gubernatorial candidate Royall Switzler decided to take a sleepy Friday afternoon in June to call a news conference and tell the world he had kited his resume, claiming he was a captain in the Green Berets. Memory fails on some of the details, except that I was pretty close to alone in that large Parker House room.

Nevertheless, with a couple of weeks, Switzler was out of the race. The Friday afternoon news dump couldn't have his fatally flawed candidacy.

Which brings us to yesterday's double-barreled news dump: the announcement that Richard Vitale has registered as a lobbyist at about the same time as his financial planning client Sal DiMasi paid off a $250,000 third mortgage line of credit tendered by Vitale.

The timing of course was crucial: politicians can't accept anything of value from lobbyists. Even close personal friends who offer "strategic advice" to groups with business before the Legislature.

While the facts speak for themselves, there are a couple of points worth noting:

• Vitale now employs the services of both George Regan and Richard Egbert, Regan handles clients such as former Providence Mayor and convicted felon Buddy Cianci. Egbert also represented Cianci and DiMasi's predecessor, Tom Finneran;

• Secretary of State Bill Galvin, whose job includes overseeing lobbying activities, doesn't seem terribly impressed by the defense mounted to date by Messrs. Regan and Egbert;

• Vitale's connection to some of the other DiMasi troubles -- notably as the brother of the slain police officer in whose memory a golf tournament is held and which has as a prime sponsor a company promoted by Vitale and which received a questionable state contract -- are not easily explained (as this sentence proves!)

I have a running debate with a colleague about the effectiveness of the Friday news dump. She thinks people do notice. She wins this round hands down.

Sympathy for the devil

Want to know why the Massachusetts Republican Party is starting to resemble a dinosaur? How about legislation aimed at helping to sell more cigarettes?

A Republican-sponsored amendment stuck inside the Massachusetts Senate's corporate tax reform law would eliminate a minimum pricing law tacked on in 1945. Opponents say it would negate the cost of the $1 per pack planned cigarette tax increase and keep prices on a par with butts sold in New Hampshire.

Helping the convenience stores along the border? That's their story and they're sticking to it.

The Herald explains:

The pricing law now dictates that a pack of Marlboros, for example, cannot be sold in the Bay State for less than $4.97 - or a store owner faces a $500 fine. If minimum pricing is flicked away, prices could mirror New Hampshire, where the same pack sells for about $3.75, and no rules or fines apply.

Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei says his idea is simply to "end corporate welfare" by repealing an archaic rule that helped tobacco companies. He doesn't think it will do much of anything because said federal anti-trust and predatory pricing laws prevent retailers from selling cigarettes below cost.

Not so, says Kevin O’Flaherty, director of advocacy for the Northeast Region’s Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, who says young potential smokers are the ones most sensitive to pricing.

“(The) amendment actually benefits the tobacco companies - not public health.”

So, does the GOP strategy to attract new voters include luring young voters by making smoking more attractive? It would certainly compensate for the loss the party has seen from supporters dying from lung cancer.

We know where this idea should go during conference. But if you stuff paper down those skinny smoking troughs will it fit -- and will it catch fire when the ashes hit?

Strange day in Packard's Corner

Everything seemed pretty normal on Comm. Ave. tonight as a strolled up to a sub shop to grab a sandwich while Mrs. OL was working late. The only thing that seemed unusual was the street cleaner making endless passes on a street that is usually neglected.

That and the six TV satellite trucks parked on the median to the service road and across the way in front of Comm. Ave Associates. At least there wasn't an SUV still in the window.

It appears Timothy Newton is about to become a three-time loser. The 38-year-old trick driver is a good bet to lose his job -- and his license -- for playing bumper cars in Packard's Corner this morning. Fortunately, I missed most of it -- even if I was getting on a Green Line train in Packard's Corner around 7:15.

We made it all the way to Babcock Street, one stop, when, in typical T fashion, the operator says simply, "this train will be standing by. Take the 57 bus across the street." He mumbled something about an accident.

With the kind of focus you get when you are trying to make a tight deadline and the T breaks down, I didn't notice a thing as I started walking down Comm. Ave. Imagine my surprise when I came home tonight and saw a piece of the fence missing. I know I couldn't miss a pickup truck on the tracks.

Anyway, I kept walking while turning to look for a bus. I saw a lot of black smoke -- must be at Harvard and Brighton Ave. or Union Square, I thought. Besides, I now saw a trio of buses approaching. All of them full to the gills. None of them stopping.

Head down, marching ahead, trying to get to work on time. What was the noise? Oh well, keep on movin'.

A quick call to Mrs. OL informs me about the havoc Mr. Newton is alleged to have caused. I'm in a state of disbelief. I'm a former reporter, trained to be observant. I sure as heck noticed the fire engines and ambulances screaming up the street -- even noting two fire vehicles cam from as far away as Ruggles and Huntington.

About the only thing I can assume is I wasn't telling time too well -- annoyed at being tossed off the Green Line without an adequate explanation, seeing full buses pass by and certain I would need to dodge raindrops all the way to the office.

Catching up on the coverage at work, a few other thoughts hit. Covering news is a lot like making laws and sausages. It ain't pretty. Traffic helicopters where the pilot/reporters don't know the street names, saying the mess was at Comm. Ave. and Harvard Ave. Obviously that guy never went to BU.

Those kinds of running mistakes -- natural on breaking news -- used to be hidden from the public. Now all your mistakes are there for everyone to see and judge. Most won't care, but it still doesn't look good.

By tonight, there was nothing to see -- except for the satellite trucks. I always knew that intersection was a disaster waiting to happen, a dangerous mix of cars and trolleys and drivers who pay no attention to lights and traffic laws.

I always thought a car would drive up onto the trolley right of way and smash into a train or into people. The traffic light at the stop is long gone. Traffic Department must have gotten tired constantly replacing it after it got regularly knocked over. Let's try again, shall we?

A few key questions too: how in the heck could Newton play bumper cars for two blocks? How in the heck could he get a job driving a truck with hazardous materials? How could I have been so lucky to miss it, by a whisker.

Strange day indeed. Happy to be inside and away from the insanity.

Give it up!

Just when you think Deval Patrick may have turned a corner and figured out how not to run his administration into the ground, he comes up with a doozy.

Patrick told the Brookline Chamber of Commerce that ideas killed in one legislative session can often resurface in another -- pointing to casino gambling as an example.

That is true. But a word to the wise, don't be the source of the legislation.

The depth of opposition to the idea goes beyond the arms that may or may not have been twisted by Speaker Sal DiMasi. Whether DiMasi is around next session or not, there remains a deep reservoir of hostility to the idea on Beacon Hill among people who aren't going anywhere.

And if you do insist on bringing the proposal back next year, it's imperative you do a much better job of public education -- and support-building.

Taxing my patience

I don't get it.

Voters in one town vote a $6.2 million tax increase and the Globe gives it a full story. The Massachusetts Senate follows the House's lead and passes a nearly $500 million plan raising cigarette taxes and closing corporate tax loopholes and it gets buried at the bottom of a briefs package.

One tax increase affecting one town is more significant?

Editors would probably argue that this is something voters did and it's final -- the House and Senate still have to work out their differences. We'll run it when it really over.

Maybe, but that works only if the Boston papers have been providing detailed coverage -- either in print or on the web -- about the nitty-gritty stuff on Beacon Hill. Have I missed that?

I've enjoyed the travails of Sal and Deval as much as the next guy (although I think the Truth Squad has better things to do than check on the veracity of a 12-year-old campaign contribution Deval may or may not have written to Barack Obama).

But the Paper of Record virtually ignored the House's approval of a $28 billion spending plan while focusing on Sal's questionable legislative decisions and the words of his supporters.

Yes, the budget was crafted largely behind closed doors and out of view of reporters -- and the public. All the more reason for a story, maybe even putting it in the context of doing the people's business while focusing more heavily on internal battles.

Once again, the editors would probably respond that they'll cover the budget when Patrick signs it.

By then it will be too late to know the details -- good and bad -- of what's in the budget or the tax package.

There's something seriously wrong when Metro is outreported by the editorial page.

UPDATE: It's even more appalling when the paper of record is outdone by the Statehouse News Service, which discovers a late-night $189 million raid on the rainy day fund (subscription required) approved about the same time as the Jennifer Callahan controversy is heating up.

Deja vu all over again

These Tuesdays are starting to get boring.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are offering up the National Democratic Beat Your Brains Out Tour, careening from state to state, trading charges and jabs and victories. Not a pretty sight.

Obama should have quelled a lot of his recent, new found critics with a resounding 56-42 victory over Clinton in North Carolina, while holding her to 51-49 in Indiana. Time and delegates are getting short and the Obama performances should put to rest concerns about his electability after the Jeremiah Wright debacle.

And simply put, Hillary lost her own spin expectations game -- badly:

Although she managed to squeeze out a victory in Indiana, the night produced a far different outcome than the Clinton campaign had hoped for. In the closing hours of the campaigns in the two states, her advisers expressed confidence that she was gaining ground on Obama in North Carolina rapidly enough to hold his anticipated victory margin to single digits. They also thought she was positioned for a solid victory in Indiana.

It's time for the Democratic Party's grown-ups to step in.

Clinton has ever right to battle on. But it is becoming increasingly clear she can't prevail without tearing down Obama and taking the party with it.

Her focus is on Florida and Michigan -- two states that broke Democratic Party rules and voted earlier than the party requested. Might seem unfair to penalize folks, but the parties make their own rules and the courts have been loath to touch them.

Obama played by the rules. He avoided campaigning in both states. And in Michigan, his name didn't even appear on the ballot.

It's that last point that is the most important. How can it be a fair fight if the contestants didn't play by the same rules? Clinton argues voters in those states were disenfranchised. Maybe. But the real injustice is Obama supporters weren't even given a chance to play the game because their guy agreed to the spirit and letter of the rules.

The party's delegate apportionment system is a wonk's dream and has become a nightmare. But even under these circumstances, it works. Obama has built a slim but solid and seemingly insurmountable lead by playing within the rules.

It's time for the superdelegates to declare victory and go home. Let Obama get started on dealing with the GOP Fear and Smear Machine. More states than ever before have had a chance to weigh in this year. You won't be disenfranchising them any more than the folks in Florida and Michigan -- especially Obama backers.

And you won't be giving John McCain a head start -- and ammunition.

The heat is on

Soaring gasoline prices are giving Smilin' Dan Grabauskas a chance of a lifetime. Let's hope he's up to the task.

It's now official: MBTA ridership is up 6.2 percent since the first of the year. Soaring fuel prices and scarce and expensive parking have combined to push people on buses and subways like never before.

Well, some buses. Yes, the T has an obligation to serve communities that otherwise might be isolated. And they actually appear to be trying to keep better track of where buses actually are.

But here's a quick suggestion: put them where people are. Buses that carry an average of seven passengers or less per ride don't need to run as frequently as the sardine cans that actually handle paying customers.

Fair warning to folks in Medford and Somerville: be careful what you wish for.