On a sidewalk poster in Copley Square:
Safer Streets™
Helping to bring the city’s crime rate to its lowest point in decades.
That’s a trademark of Mayor Thomas Menino.
Thomas Menino – TM – get it?
Too cute by half, Mayor Pothole. Too cute by half.
The Boston Globe’s estimable Alex Beam picked up on the Next Big Thing For Us To Demonize earlier this week, chronicling federal efforts to levy sin taxes on fast food and soda pop.
It’s not just big government that is anxious to levy economic sanctions on the overweight (into whose ranks I fall, according to the Centers for Disease Control, with a societally disapproved “body mass index’’ of 29). With Robespierrian ardor, school districts are removing Coke and Pepsi dispensers from their corridors, replacing them with machines that dole out orange and grape juice. Those have twice the sugar of the hated colas, but never mind that.
But taxing sugared soft drinks to pay for federal health care reform, a New York Times piece reports, won’t go down smooth with the beverage industry.
The chief executive of Coca-Cola calls the idea outrageous, while skeptics point to political obstacles and question how much of an impact it would really have on consumers.
According to the Times story, it would have a big impact:
[A New England Journal of Medicine] study cited research on price elasticity for soft drinks that has shown that for every 10 percent rise in price, consumption declines 8 to 10 percent.
Enter Americans Against Food Taxes, a front group for the beverage industry. I might be wrong, but my guess is that corporate gunsel Rick Berman – or Dr. Evil as he prefers to be called – is behind the astroturf movement to kill sugar taxes.
Berman has also attacked Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, bans on transfats, and labor unions as a concept. (In his defense, Berman says he’s just giving corporations a voice in in the hurly-burly of democracy.)
You can argue Berman round, you can argue Berman flat. But he’s gonna be a player in the burgeoning sugar tax rumpus.
To review:
Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Ted Kennedy) launches an ad campaign one day before he announces his run for the Senate seat left vacant by Kennedy’s death.
Boston Celtics co-owner, former Bainiac, and Mitt Romney ATM Steve Pagliuca (D-GOP) launches an ad campaign one day after he announces his run for the Senate seat left vacant by Kennedy’s death.
(Memo to Steve: Better you should set fire to $10 million and go on vacation. There’s no financial benefit to it, but at least you’ll be on vacation sooner.)
Meanwhile: Paging Martha Coakley. Paging caboose candidate Martha Coakley.
Just 81 shopping days until the primary to elect Ted Kennedy’s replacement – make that, successor.
Chop chop, Martha.
Item: Mike Capuano Grabs the Mike
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley may have jumped the gun in the race to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, but Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Ted Kennedy) has fired the first shot.
Capuano simultaneously launched his campaign and his first campaign ad on Thursday, asserting that he “stood with Ted Kennedy against the Iraq war and mirrors his progressive record.”
Still open for debate: Is Capuano a mirror of Ted Kennedy or a necro-stalker?
Item: Slapping Down High Five Nation
In an age of mecroblogging and The Daily Me on countless custom Yahoo home pages, humility is hard to come by.
Except in David Brooks’s New York Times op-ed column on Wednesday.
On Sunday evenings, my local NPR station airs old radio programs. A few weeks ago it broadcast the episode of the show “Command Performance” that aired the day World War II ended. “Command Performance” was a variety show that went out to the troops around the world.
On V-J Day, Frank Sinatra appeared, along with Marlene Dietrich, Jimmy Durante, Dinah Shore, Bette Davis, Lionel Barrymore, Cary Grant and many others. But the most striking feature of the show was its tone of self-effacement and humility. The allies had, on that very day, completed one of the noblest military victories in the history of humanity. And yet there was no chest-beating. Nobody was erecting triumphal arches.
By contrast, the 21st century triumphalism of the Republican party, the G.I. George “Mission Accomplished” aircraft-carrier mission, the whole “Wanted: Dead or Alive” ethos of the GOP in matters both foreign and domestic – all of it seems ludicrous in the face of the greatest accomplishment of the Greatest Generation.
Then again, as Brooks notes:
This isn’t the death of civilization. It’s just the culture in which we live. And from this vantage point, a display of mass modesty, like the kind represented on the V-J Day “Command Performance,” comes as something of a refreshing shock, a glimpse into another world. It’s funny how the nation’s mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.
Kind of makes High Five Nation look . . . kind of low-class.
In monetary terms, this year’s Boston mayoral race is a lot like the American League East.
Incumbent Tom Menino is the big-spending Yankees, City Councilor Michael Flaherty is the almost-as-big-spending Red Sox, and everyone else – represented by City Councilor Sam Yoon and real-estate developer Kevin McCrea – is, well, everyone else.
Menino, predictably, leads in both the standings and the betting line. On the advertising front, he’s been running what’s come to be called “the empty-desk ad,” largely because it features Menino’s empty desk and chair plunked down in various Boston locations – from a South Boston school and a West Roxbury park, to the Boston waterfront and a Roslindale affordable housing project.
“These are just a few of the ways,” an announcer intones, “Mayor Menino is moving Boston forward.”
Or moving Boston furniture forward. Too bad for Menino the visual always trumps the verbal, so the empty-desk ad in the end makes him look like an absentee mayor.
In a refreshing change from the last two Boston mayoral races, Menino is actually getting a run for his money, in this case from City Councilor Michael Flaherty. One of his campaign officials said Flaherty is spending about $200,000 on advertising, mostly to air his TV spot “Courage to Change.”
The commercial starts out with an announcer intoning, “Boston has always been about the courage to change. When things don’t work, we work together to make it better. Michael Flaherty is carrying on that tradition.”
Yes, well, Boston voters will be the judge of that.
Sam Yoon’s ad campaign includes five – count ’em, five – TV spots, although he’s spending the political equivalent of lunch money to air them.
In one spot, Yoon himself intones,”I’m Sam Yoon. There’s too much power concentrated into the mayor’s office. We need more checks and balances in city government.”
Actually, Sam Yoon needs more checks and higher balances in his campaign war chest.
As for Kevin McCrea, he’s running one lonely radio spot that, lamentably, the hardworking staff at Campaign Outsider was unable to obtain by post time.
So back to the AL East analogy:
One of these guys is going to get the Boston mayoral Wild Card slot when Tuesday’s preliminary election narrows the field to two.
But since the general election is a home game, Tom Menino will get last licks.
I’ve been a hockey fan all my life, which, admittedly, is odd for a guy who never learned to ice skate. (Full disclosure: I also never learned to ride a bike. I grew up in Manhattan. I learned to ride the subway.)
All through the ’60s, my best friend Jimmy Schnell and I (who knew every player in the six-team National Hockey League) frequented the second balcony of the old Madison Square Garden, from which – for two bucks – you could see exactly 2/3 of the ice surface.
But you could easily see legendary New York Rangers goaltender Gump Worsley stop 50 shots and lose 3-2.
So I was un/pleasantly surprised when I arrived in Boston in September, 1974 to discover both school busing (a total what’s this about?) and Fred Cusick’s calls of Boston Bruins games
Cusick was smoother than single malt, a consummate pro at capturing the rhythm and crescendo of a hockey game (see Bryan Marquand’s fine obituary in Wednesday’s Boston Globe).
Fred Cusick, 90. Let his tombstone say he called a great game.
What you need to know about the current state of the Boston mayoral race:
1) Here’s what Mayor Thomas M. Menino told the Boston Globe about the runaway Emaul-gate at City Hall, in which public records were treated like Kleenex, thereby occasioning an official state investigation:
Menino said in an interview [Monday] night, “I’ll cooperate with anybody, because this was an honest mistake made by the administration.’’
Made by the administration? What happened to my admnistration, Mr. Four-Term Mayor?
2) The website response of Boston mayoral challenger and City Council member Sam Yoon? A written statement.
3) The website response of Boston mayoral challenger and City Council member Michael Flaherty? Links to Globe pieces and a boilerplate Featured Video of his TV spot, The Courage to Change.
4) The website response of bombthrowing Boston mayoral challenger Kevin McCrea? Absolutely nothing. (UPDATE: On the home page, that is. McCrea addresses the issue on his blog. Hat tip: Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub.)
The current state of the Boston mayoral race?
Tom Menino: Mayor For Life by default.
How great was this year’s U.S. Open?
First, prohibitive favorite Serena Williams melted down like Chernobyl in the women’s semifinal, which ushered in Komeback Kid Kim Clijsters’ women’s final win over crafty Caroline Wozniacki.
Then prohibitive favorite Roger Federer melted down much more meekly in the men’s final, falling to the Big Argentine Juan Martin del Potro, who in the end out-manned Federer.
Sweet . . . and sweet.
Boston mayor Tom Menino is in double trouble: His administration’s e-mails are AWOL, and the Boston Globe editorial board thinks City Hall is FUBAR.
Start with the elusive e-mails. As Sunday’s Globe reported:
Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s administration, prompted by public records requests from the Globe, has acknowledged that city employees were routinely deleting e-mails, a potential violation of the state public records law.
In Monday’s Globe, Boston city attorney Bill Sinnott tested out this defense:
Sinnott said he saw “no evidence of any willful or intentional attempt to delete e-mails of substantive or evidentiary value.’’
Puh-leeze – how can he know that they have no “substantive or evidentiary value” when he hasn’t even seen them?
But worse for Menino, the Globe editorial board seems to be waging jihad against him.
First there was the Globe editorial panning of Menino’s first mayoral debate performance. Now comes Monday’s Globe editorial absolutely eviscerating the four-term Boston mayor. Favorite passage:
But even as he has come to tower over the city, his lamentable pettiness has persisted. Indeed, those who deal regularly with City Hall, be they developers or activists or other government officials, know they must treat this mayor with kid gloves.
Lamentable pettiness – that’s Menino all over.
As if that weren’t enough, here’s the Globe editors’ boffo finish:
After 16 years, there’s little reason to believe that Menino will change. A fifth term would mean more of the hardworking mayor who never tires of meeting with constituents and discussing their concerns. But it would also mean a perpetuation of his temperamental, vindictive governing style.
That’s what we call an e (for editorial)-mauling.
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