Landmark Decisions

The Massachusetts Historic Commission has weighed in on the aesthetics of the Nantucket Sound Wind Farm, as the Army Corps of Engineers report bears witness. The sight of the windmills, six miles off shore, will impact historic landmarks along the south coast of the peninsula. There are six lighthouses and one compound that will be affected.

The compound refers to the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, hamlet of once and once-future presidents.

But it's a curious argument that the detractors of the wind farm are making; that the compound is a tourist attraction. Ever tried to see it? I've lived here for 35 years and the closest I got was sailing my dinghy over to their jetty.

In fact you cannot see it if you're a visitor. You can take the Hyline tour boat over to the vicinity, but even they keep their distance. The tour busses that head down to Hy-port, turn by and drive by, never really seeing anything of the compound.

Ted still lives there. And for a time even Ted didn't live there, opting to hide out on Squaw Island, before of course, he let Joan have the place. But now that he's back ensconced in the compound, sans matron, he's started to reshuffle the ownership of the properties among the next generation, allowing a nephew to buy a house, thereby perpetuating the Kennedy abode familia for years to come.

It's a disingenuous argument to make in the least that the Kennedy compound is a tourist attraction. A historic place maybe, but with no visitors allowed, not really a landmark. The windmills will definitely get more visits, to use the industry jargon.

The lighthouses, were always public, now they're open to the public. And so the Kennedy compound should be. Instead of passing the houses on to clan members, how about passing them on to the public's trust. Or even allowing private trusts to buy them, with tourism promotion dollars from the state, for instance.

Give tourism a real chance on Cape Cod; Presidential Tours of Hyannisport. That might actually boost the local economy. But until then, the days of visiting for the aura (the past) of the place are long gone. People want to see the real thing now. Even if it's just the windmills.

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I was just thinking. Suppose the Cape Cod Times' new publication as christened, The View, is coincidental?

As the folks at Clean Power Now like to say, "It's not the view, it's the vision."

Give Thanks and Pass the Checkbook

Conversation at my Thankgiving Day table evetually turned to the Red Sox. Like all multi-generational New England families, we were thankful for the bounty of joy the hometown team had brought us this season.

And we were especially thankful that we were able to share it with every member of the family that had come to this country since 1955, (since they are all still with us), and have suffered alongside the native faithful. And like every year before, we said a prayer for the boys of summer, Why not us ... again?

Conversation turned to next year, and what the "bunch of idiots" would have to do to repeat. There was talk of dynasty from the younger crowd. But the elders, tempered by years of drought, and a heritage that dares not temp the gods, warned about the hubris 0f success.

So back and forth we went alternating between the entitlement of winning and and fatalism of losing, when I asked, so who's going to be the team leader next year. Everyone (else) was stumped for minute, then the argument started anew, with the youngers advocating for no team leader, just a team, like the bunch of idiots who got us here this year. They'll get us there again.

The olders heralded back to Ted Williams '46, Carl Yastremski '67, and Carlton Fisk '75, Roger Clemens '86. All were necessary ingredients for a winning team. But not necessarily a World Series Champion, the youngsters responded.

Come to think of it, look at today's roster and who jumps out as the team's leader? Only one in my book, Jason Veritek.

The Red Sox need a leader. Sure they have great players, Ramirez, Martinez, Shilling and Ortiz. They lead, but by example. The Red Sox now need a take charge guy on the field every game. Veritek is a man of quite strength. Except of course when he's bashing Alex Rodriquez's face in, which not coincidently, was the turning point of this season.

The Red Sox management should recognize this and bestow the mantle on Veritiek as the team leader, for their own sake. For in years past, these self professed bunch of idiots have disintergrated into, well ... a bunch of idiots.

The man wants $50m for 5 years. Give it to him. Infact, if the head office is so hung up on length of contracts, (no five year deals, no no-trade clauses) then give him $50m over 4 years. Make him the most valuable, if not the highest paid, catcher in baseball.

Now that our crusaders have brought home the holy grail, it's time to re-create the mystique forged over the last 86 years. Start by giving the next generation of Red Sox nation a leader.

The New Scarlet Letter: U

Governor Mitt Romney said yesterday that he envisions a range of penalties for businesses that fail to provide health insurance, such as forcing them to pay a higher minimum wage, banning them from doing business with state agencies, or slapping a decal on their window to publicize their refusal. - Boston Globe.

The Republican Governor actually floated the idea that small businesses should suffer the social scruge of having a decal in the windows at their place of business if they don't comply with the government's request. There's something wrong here.

I guess this is what passes as a market-based solution for the Governor. Since when did it become the employers' sole responsibility to provide everyone with health insurance? This is what the Democrats have been trying to do for over a decade, when they first tried and failed to get the government to do it. (Remember Hillary?)

I think Romney's Mormon roots are showing. It's that 10% tything thing. Either that or once again the Governor is showing his political deafness.

What ever happened to small business is the backbone of the economy; what ever happened to entrepreneurship?

We should raise the minimun wage, especially when we import so much of our cheap labor. We should absolutely change the law and allow everyone to buy catastrophic health insurance again. Take it from an economist, just these two measures could solve the problem of too many uninsured. Too many vested interests, to do the right thing, I guess.

But just to show you that "all politics is local," one of those small businesses would be Christy's, owned by Romney political benefactor, and the Cape's own Christy Mihos. In fact, most businesses on Cape Cod would have to sport he decals in their windows.

Better yet, let's put them on our SUVs: U for Uninsured. These will no doubt be followed by the bumper stickers of Romney's opponent in 2006.

Moving Day Comes Early

There's a job opening on the Lower Cape, but you have to live there. The Cape Cod Times got it just about right this morning, when they suggested that Gail Lese could now move to Chatham and run for State Representative.

With the ill-timed (and ill-advised) announcement of retirement by State Representative Shirley Gomes, (R) of Harwich, comes the obligatory jockeying for position to succeed her. Breaking from the pack early are, Sarah Peake and Ray Gottwald both Democrats.

Sarah Peake, you'll remember just ran against Gomes and lost. She's running for re-election to the Selectman's job in her hometown of Provincetown, and does not want to seem too anxious running for State Rep. again before getting re-elected to Town Rep. But she cleary thinks she's entitled at another shot since she was game to take on Shirley this year.

Ray Gottwald, of Harwich, would be borrowing from the same constituency if he runs. Gay marriage will still be THE issue in the district next time around. But he can also lay claim to the local Democratic party machinery, such as it is, for having spent many years serving it.

Not really interested in running again now that Peake has the inside track is Len Stewart (D), also from P-Town. He got everyone excited in challenging Gomes this time around, eventually abandoning the race to concenetrate on his job. Also mentioned is Ron Bergstrom (D), Selectman from Chatham, and not yet mentioned, Tom Bernardo (D), Speaker of the Assembly of Delegates, also from the fishing village. Discretion is the better part of valor here, boys.

The Republicans will have a job on their hands, first finding someone to run, then getting them elected, given the way Gomes is leaving. The obvious choice is Mark Boardman of Orleans, who ran a couple of years ago for State Senate against Rob O'Leary. Although somewhat quixotic, he ran a credible campaign against O'Leary, stuck to the issues, lost with dignity, and went back to work. He preserved his options for a future run. That's how it's done on Cape Cod.

The chastised, but not chastined, lame-duck Gomes, will now have to figure out how she gets anything done on Beacon Hill, or even gets her phone calls returned from state bureaucrats. Shirley, if you were going to retire, you should have told us before the election. Then the election would have been a true reflection of the voters sentiments on gay marriage. You still would have won.

Gomes probably didn't think she could survive another tortured vote on gay marriage at the Constitutional Convention, let alone run again in 2006 when gay marriage will be on the ballot as a Constitutional Amendment question. She still could have won.

Wedding Announcements

Is there a gender gap when it comes to gay marriage? Sounds funny to ask the question that way, but looking at the statistics of gay marriages that have taken place on Cape Cod, since the beginning of time, or one year ago actually, an interesting trend has emerged.

Except for Provincetown, it seems that most gay marriages performed here are between women. Significantly so, like 2 to 1. Much to our surprise, it would appear that the gay couples living among us are predominately women, or at least, the gay couples willing to get married are mostly women. And they tend to get married in their own community.

It would also appear then that gay men, even though their numbers may be greater, are not as eager to get married. They may not be as monogamous, or they may not need the safety net of a marriage certificate. Gay or straight, sounds very familiar, if you're a guy.

Except for P-Town. There are obviously a disporportionate number of gay marriages in P-Town, even for P-Town. This suggests that gay couples, mostly men, from around the state, are traveling to P-Town to marry, bypassing alot of other lovely communities along he way, like their own.

So the boys who want to marry, go to P-Town and the girls who marry, go to their town hall.

As the local town clerks struggle to make the relevent information fit into new marriage certificates, a new issue has cropped up. What to do with the birth certificates of children born to a legally married gay couple?

They told us that this was going to get complicated. And just wait until the first gay marriage couples end up in divorce court. Be careful what you wish for, you may not like what you get.

The Midas Touch

Will someone please explain to me what the upside is for Romney in opposing the Nantucket Sound Wind Farm? What's the Governor doing running down to Washington to oppose the project? Or better yet, on who's behalf is he opposing the wind mills? Don't believe that's why he went to DC. That was just the cover story.

The last time Romney took such a tough stand on an issue was to insist that the taxpayers were not going to bear the brunt of the cost overruns from the Big Dig. (Weren't we suppose to get $50 million back from Bechtel in overpayments?) And just this week he stood firm for the resignation of the Turnpike Authority head for papering over the agency's dereliction in the management of the project.

So exactly what was he doing in Washington last week? He was there to get his marching orders from Andy Card, Chief of Staff to the President of the United States. Let's connect the dots.

Andy Card, gatekeeper for the President, was not only a Massachusetts legislator, around when the Big Dig was first approved, but years later he was Secretary of Transportation when the state got its first Big Dig bail-out from the federal government.

First, Mitt gets the disappointing news that he's not in line for a Cabinet position. Go home and run for re-election, raise some money for the party and wait your turn. Mitt plays it like it was his idea. He promised the voters of this state that he would serve out his term. What a trooper.

Second, he's told to lay off Bechtel. They're the largest construction company in the world. Their Board reads like a who's who of former Republican Administration officials. Talk about firing the manager, instead, even though you can't actually fire him. That's the ticket.

Last, keep up the bluster on Cape Wind. This project was made in dog heaven for the Bush Adminstration. It's renewable energy; it gives the President cover from the environmentalists. It's big business; GE manufactures wind turbines here with union labor. It's politics at its best; sticking it to both John Kerry and Ted Kennedy. With the propect of windmills in their backyard, let's see how long they hold out before they agree to drill for oil in the Artic.

But most of all, Mitt, your job is to keep Richard (do you know who I am) Egan off the President's back. Pay lip service to the Ambassador and the opposition. Cover the President's back from those ungrateful Pioneers on this one Mitt, and we'll talk about that Cabinet post in a couple of years.

Appearances can be deceiving. In opposing the wind farm that's going to get approved anyway, he will mollify local Republicans that oppose the project. But be careful to lose this one smart. Don't go down with the ship. And hedge your position. Buy some GE stock.

Coming off the party building disaster this election season, Romney needs a win. But you have to wonder, can he do for the wind farm what he did for Republican legislative candidates this year?

When it comes to the state's highway adminstration and the state's party politics, the Governor seems to have lost the Midas touch. Let's hope he has the same feel for the state's energy future.

NewsFlash: Left Still Blaming Right

The recriminations from last week's Presedential election are continuing, which always make for interesting diatribes, but this one was particularly fun. It seems some Kerry insiders are putting the nexus of his defeat squarely at the feet of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

For putting the gay marriage issue on the ballot, of course. Not the Massachusetts ballot, that remains to be seen, but on the ballot of 11 other states, some crucial to Bush's election last week, like Ohio.

To show you what a truly curious lot the Kerry people are, they were not happy blaming the Chief Justice, Margaret Marshall, for being the architect of the Court's decision to allow gay marriage in Massachsetts, (apparently she was prepared to write a minority opinion).

But instead they blame the otherwise usually can be counted on to vote conservative on the bench, Judith Cowan. She turned out to be the swing vote. Justice Cowan was supposed to vote against gay marriage, but she saw through all that moral values claptrap and voted her conscience, and with the majority.

Now far be it for the Kerryites to criticize the liberal Chief Justice, after all she is married to that scion of the left, New York Times writer, Anthony Lewis, and she, like Teresa Heinz, is also a product of colonial Africa, yet another reason not to canibalize her.

But it's quite another matter to victimize a supposed conservative, and a Cellucci appointee. You'd think she did it on purpose to sabotage the Kerry campaign, or to help the Republican Bush. You'd think that the Ambassador lobbied her on behalf all the way from Ottawa.

What a great conspiracy theory that it is. But yet it remains, the only Cellucci appointee (out of 4, a majority by the way) votes to create gay marriage in an election year, resulting, according to Kerry partisans at least, in a election issue to lose for.

But just to show you that all politics is local, Judith Cowan had help framing her opinion from a member of my clan. Her law clerk at the time was none other than, Nicholas Mitrokostas, yes, a cousin. He is the son of the famous Kreme n' Kone patriarch, an outspoken conservative. Upon learning of his son's accomplice, the father was reported to have asked for his law school tuition payments back!

Where's the Party?

Ideas from the left on how to save the Democratic Party. And so the Boston Globe asked 5 "astute" observers to offer their views on where the party goes in the wake of President Bush's election victory decided largely on voters affirmation of moral values.

Although they varied in their scripts, they all chanted substantially the same mantra, Back to the Past. Particularly lame in her post game analysis was Elaine Kamarck, of the Kennedy School of Government, former member of the Clinton Adminstration, and policy advisor the Gore presidential campaign. Her writing contribution to the Globe caught our eye because of her $2000 cash contribution to John Kerry which listed her address as Brewster.

So what was our fellow Cape Codder's take on the election debacle? Blame it on Clinton, Bill that is. "For red America," she writes, "he is emblematic of a culture and value systerm that they abhor".

Clinton never paid a price for his indiscretions inside the Democartic party, which led many Americans to view the party as out of the mainstream of traditional moral values. Kamarck recommends that supporters, such as herself, stop adoring Clinton, as the first step to regaining the moral high ground. That part she got right.

But here's where she gets lost. She further suggests in order to take the moral high ground, that Democrats talk about families, talk about security, talk about helping fathers and mothers be good parents, talk about the importance of stable marriages, and among other things she suggests going back to Humbert Humprey's America.

She wants to talk about moral values. She wants to speak the language of the moral majority, she wants the Democrats to show the evangelical nation that they too can identify with their moral values.

But this is not the same as being moral, it's not the same as living a moral life. It's not the same as incorporating faith into one's daily work.

The Democrats want to talk about how an abortion can be reconciled with moral values, how gay marriage can be explained in moral terms. They are willing to acknowledge the ten commandments, but not live by them.

Democrats can not take back the moral high ground. They shouldn't even try. They should stick to riding the cultural divide, and hope that they eventually outnumber the moralists. They do not need to find common ground, they need to find their way back to Ground Zero.

It's about the moral values, Stupid!

Moral values made an appearance in the election, big time. Nationally, it was the issue in the campaign. 20 % of those who voted, cited it as their #1 issue. And 80% of them voted for George Bush. That's a 17+ million vote differential between the two candidates.

The press didn't see the issue during the campaign coming. They seem to have missed it completely, one of the most imporatant issues in the presidential campaign. Many critics will say they buried it. I think they really missed it. In fact, they wouldn't recognize it if it kissed them on the mounth. Mea culpas by the press ensued in the days following.

The press is supposedly unbiased. But apparently they're just oblivious to their own bias. They are incapable of seeing what was before them because they don't know what to look for.

I, like the media, am a product of the liberal education establishment in this country. They do a good job of rescrambling the brain to make you see the world in certain ways. I remember getting the United Nation indoctrination, about the same time Bill Clinton was getting inducted into the Trilateral Commission.

But the Republicans do know what to look for. They exceeded turning out their base target by 30%. But this alone doesn't make up for 17+ million more votes. It appears therefore that moral values mean something to democratic voters as well.

We forget most American's didn't go to elite northeast liberal colleges. And some of those who did, were content with just drinking while there. Thank God!

Lose One for The Gipper

Time for a post mortum. The Romney Reform train derailed last Tuesday somewhere between Boston and Washington. Far from having its intended effect, the party building excercise Romney undertook actually resulted in some self-inflicted wounds.

The campaign was built on a shaky foundation, Romney's own election, and a faulty premise, that the Legislature needs reforming.

The Massachusetts voter, astute as he is, has grown weary of the Democratic Party controlled Legislature. But it would take a Herculean effort to rectify the inbalance in the institution. So for the last 14 year, and 4 elections, we have opted for the easier quick fix; hiring someone to keep an eye on them.

Romney, like Weld and Cellucci, before him was elected to get us back to a kind of equilibrium between the two branches of state governmnet. (With the advent of an activist State Supreme Court, the voters will also be looking for ways to curtail the Court's self-assumed powers, probably through referendums initiated by the other two branches.)

During this election, Romney tried to transfer his political capital to his hand-picked Republican candidates for the legislature, ignoring a very important dictum in politics: you cannot transfer political capital, you can only (make it or) spend it. You can campaign, fundraise, and endorse a candidate. You can't choose them, and they still have to get elected on their own.

The point is that Romney is the solutionto the Democratic Legislature in the voters minds. Further reform is not welcomed. The attempt by the Governor to disguise his efforts as reform failed, utterly. It was too transparent.

Romney was really trying to remedy what is the Achilles heel of every Republican from Massachustts lusting for higher office; coming from a state that he can't carry in a general election. Romney Reform was undertaken instead to prepare the Governor for the next train to leave town, the one carrying him to Washington in 2008.

Software or Soft Pillows

Technology never made an appearance in this election. In the last decade, 3 billion people from India, China, and Eastern Europe, (Russia) joined the world economic system. Many of them are well educated engineers that are going to compete with the us for jobs.

Fat and stupid in no way to go through life, son. (Dean Wormer, Faber College)
The United States is losing its competitve edge over other nations in education, technological infrastructure and R&D. To get back in the game, we need to increase the budget of the National Science Foundation ($5B), and reduce agricultural subsidies ($25B). We are investing 5 times as much in food as we are in basic research.

Investing in science and technology creates jobs. The presidential election focused instead on how we were going to protect a textile worker from South Carolina. The future of the US is not in pillowcases.

Thank You for Running

Every election has it's quintessential moment. It's usually when you know whether you've won or lost the race. Most good pols know that it comes well before the final tally. It sometimes comes with the lastest polling data, and sometimes it's with the first returns.

But sometimes its during the course of election day. It my case, it came about mid-afternoon standing outside a polling station with one of the poll workers of another candidate for another race. You make some of the best aquaintences standing in the fall weather waving aimlessly at cars driving by with voters. I didn't get her name.

After about an hour of conversation about her candidate and other races, we got onto the subject of my candidacy. She said "Thank you for running." I could tell in that moment, that it was not meant to be. She was very complimentary, but she could not tell me that she had not voted for me.

So we carried on throughout the rest of day, waving robotically, going from polling place to polling place, hoping that these last gasps, (after all the lawn signs, advertising, mailings, sign holding, interviews and non-debate debates), wouldn't be necessary to make the difference.

For the record, I lost my race for Assembly of Delegates from the town of Yarmouth, decidedly. My opponent was re-elected with about 8,100 votes, about the same number she got 2 years ago when she ran unopposed. I got 4,400 votes, about 1,300 more than blanked her last time.

Along the way, we campaigned about how we would each approach the job, and what the priorities of the county government should be. In the process, my opponent managed to raise the Assembly to a new level of obscurity.

No matter how smart you are about politics and elections, (refer to previous blog, Romney Reform: NIMBY), it doesn't necessarily translate into election victory.

Shoot the Messenger

"Rob O'Leary is the candidate of the NRA."
O'Leary has acheived what few Massachusetts liberals have ever received, an A grade from the National Rifle Association. Defined as a "solidly pro-gun candidate", that grade earns him an (√ ) endorsement from the NRA.

I don't know what O'Leary did, or didn't do, to deserve it, but what is even more bizarre is the Massachusetts Republican Party, and by extention his opponent in the Senate race, Gail Bronwyn Lese, sending a mailing to every voter in the district, this past weekend, telling voters of the endorsement.

Now anyone who knows O'Leary, knows he's a solid Democrat, with strong liberal leanings. In this race, he already has the registered democrats on his side, he has the liberals in his column, hell, he even has some liberal republicans in his corner, due to the environmental climate on the Cape.

But now he gets to lay claim to the gun enthusiasts, sportmen/hunters and the 2nd Amendment supporters, all constituencies that usually vote Republican. Courtesy of the Republican party and his republican opponent. And they even paid for the postage!

Desperation Makes You Do Funny Things
Any suggestion that Lese is going after O'Leary's base; democrats, liberals, or gun control advocates, is just plain nuts at this stage of the game. But that's exactly what they're doing.
It's the result of youth and inexperience. Both on the part of the candidate and her campaign manager.