Left In Lowell

There were three major discussions during this past Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting. Of course, the first one being the motion to extend City Manager Bernie Lynch’s contract; the second issue was the unveiling of the selected developer’s Hamilton Canal plan and the third was the discussion on the City’s tax rate and property valuation.

We will address the first two in later posts but for now I want to focus on the tax rate/valuation issue. There were two motions on the topic that address those issues:

“Req. Mgr. if possible to set tax rate by 9/30 and Req. statNus of city’s property re-evaluation and new assessments.”

A lively discussion took place between the City Manager and Lowell resident and business owner Peter Markham, who had signed up to speak on these two topics. Mr. Markham has championed the cause of discussing property valuation and setting of the tax rate. Those who listen regularly to WCAP’s morning show, have heard him present these arguments before. I think Mr. Markham had the same discussion the last time the CM served as a co-host with George Anthes. I know that Mr. Markham did aggressively question Tom Moses, City CFO, on that topic when he was on that radio show.

During his appearance on Tuesday, Mr. Markham did ask the Manager why can Cambridge, who is similar to us in size and form of government, sets their tax rate much earlier than Lowell does? (more…)

New polls conducted exclusively for Boston’s WBZ-TV are showing that Eileen Donoghue has made a major gain in the Democratic primary race for the Massachusetts 5th District race.

According to the SurveyUSA Election Poll, “Nikki Tsongas remains ahead with a 40% lead but Donoghue is up 13 points, to 29% today, compared an identical SurveyUSA tracking poll released two weeks ago, on 8/14.”

According to WBZ political analyst, John Keller “the new numbers show Tsongas’ lead over Donoghue among seniors has shrunk to just six points. Her once 38-point bulge among liberals is down to a mere four points, within our survey’s margin of error.”

And the analysis of the SurveyUSA poll points out that “Given the unpredictability of a never-before Day-After-Labor-Day primary, with momentum for Donoghue and comparatively flat support for Tsongas, the outcome could be closer than anticipated and an upset cannot be ruled out.”

REMEMBER: Get out the Vote for Eileen and get everyone you know to vote for her on September 4th!

Left Ahead this week is today, 2:30 pm (in 5 minutes) and we’re talking today with Mr. Richard Howe, Jr., where the topic will likely focus on the special election primary scheduled for next Tuesday!

I’m ‘podding and packing, should be interesting.

In my superheroes game (I run a role playing game every couple of weeks with friends) I wrote up a future history, trying to recreate the feel of the post-WWII era of “silver age” comics - where heroes are heroes and villains are, well, villains (this is also called “four-color”), set in the hopeful, booming era that came after the Great Depression and terrible war, which gave the “silver age” comics a playful, innocent sense.

To do this, I needed a future historic “past” that was dark, cruel, and gritty. In my future history, there’s a second great depression, global warming beings to wreak havoc, and we withdraw from Iraq…after getting our hats handed to us in Iran.

For a while now, people have talked about the Bush administration’s intention to start a war with Iran. Lots of people dismiss it - how could he possibly do so, being so unpopular and failing so completely in Iraq? But there’s still glimmers of the administration’s intentions leaking out - now saying that we should expect a media blitz in September, a beating of the war drums against Iran.

My future history was grim, and it was fiction. Fiction! I took a lot of it from real world possibilities, of course, but even I had begun to hope we could contain this president until his time is up, at least on any further aggression.

The question is, can we?

I think I’d rather be painting walls than stuffing boxes. Oh, wait, I get to paint a hallway tomorrow. Eh.

So here’s an open thread…be good everyone.

A couple of musings before I go back to packing, though. Regarding the comments that surmise (not for the first time) that if I think CM Lynch doesn’t do politics, I’m crazy, I say, you are partly correct. Many of the decisions Lynch makes and has made have political consequences. As the saying goes, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and you can’t satisfy everyone 100% of the time. Decisions like who to appoint to a city board (or not reappoint), what departments to consolidate, and so forth, yes, they become political. They can cause political uproar.

There are key difference between a decision that has political consequences, however, and one that starts out as a political calculation.

Think about it. What would have been the politically smart thing for Lynch to do when he first came into the job? Making friends with the politically powerful in both the private and public sectors of Lowell would surely have made things in his first year much smoother and certainly far more pleasant. Playing their game by their rules would mean less conflict by far. The fact that Lynch chose to forgo the expedient easy way for a harder, nastier slug uphill isn’t because Lynch likes to make things more difficult for himself.

No, Lynch chose to make decisions with political consequences because they were the right thing to do. Some, like halting the illegal benefits for city board members, Lynch had no other ethical choice, if he wanted to follow the law. (Didn’t stop the wailing and gnashing of teeth, but it makes no difference.) Other decisions are not so much a matter of law but a matter of fairness, and also of what’s best for Lynch’s true employers - the taxpayers. Some even I have and will disagree with, but I will disagree with them not as a matter of personal politics or loyalty, but because of the issue at hand. These decisions, while having political consequences, are not politically motivated. Therein lies the difference.

Interesting interpretation of the recent Pentagon announcements. Are they handing the war to Dubya and stating, subtly, “you fix this”?

As reported by Nancy Youssef this evening for McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — In a sign that top commanders are divided over what course to pursue in Iraq, the Pentagon said Wednesday that it won’t make a single, unified recommendation to President Bush during next month’s strategy assessment, but instead will allow top commanders to make individual presentations.

“Consensus is not the goal of the process,” Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters. “If there are differences, the president will hear them.”

Military analysts called the move unusual for an institution that ordinarily does not air its differences in public, especially while its troops are deployed in combat.

By the way, McClatchy are the guys who bought the Knight Ridder media group. You know, the ones who got most things right on Iraq from the start.

That, on top of this news, and this previous news. So maybe instead of “the surge is working!” the narrative should be that our troops are doing the best they can in the surge, but it’ll never be enough…and their Commanders know it, even if their Commander-in-Chief does not.

Thanks to George Bush, we’ve broken our Armed Forces, and ruined two countries! What will he do for us next? Oh wait…he’s thinking of going after Iran.

It’s always good to take a break from serious matters and have a good laugh. A friend sent this to me, it was so great I had to share.

This video has got to be one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time, not to mention the best Best Man speech at a wedding…ever.

The Ultimate Best Man Speech - Watch more free videos

Because I am somewhat angry, and there is an understanding in the blogsphere that you should never blog when you are mad or have been partying, I have decided to do an open thread tonight. Tomorrow, in the light of day I will post on tonight’s meeting.

A few remarks about last night UML-sponsored debate. First and foremost, with all of the media outlets that covered this live, WCAP radio, WUML radio, WUML web site, WBZ web cast, Lowell Television Corporation, I have not been able to locate an audio or video tape of this debate on any of these outlets. If anyone knows where one is posted, please let me know. Thank-you.

I would have stayed home and watch this on TV but I wanted to go out there and hold a sign for my candidate of choice, Eileen Donoghue. So I did; that part of the evening was fun. Although I went inside Durgin Hall to hear the debate, I left early. As I have said a number of times, I have attended 8 other MA-05 debates/forums and I did not expect anything new; anyway, I listened to the radio on the way home and did not miss anything.

It seems that today the blogsphere and the mainstream media are focused on last night’s exchange between Donoghue/Tsongas, I am more interested in re-hearing that portion of the debate where Iran was discussed. So, if anyone can direct me to a link, I would greatly appreciate it.

By the way, Eileen did not say anything last night she had not said before; you were just not listening.

Some general comments: I wish we would stop having “celebrity” moderators at these debates; Matt Murphy of the Sun outshined his other two panelists; Durgin Hall was packed and it seemed that a lot of who is who in Lowell’s political world was in attendance. I sat next to two young, college-age men from Lowell who were Ogonowski supporters; very opinionated, very committed and pleasant. If they are a reflection of the Ogonowski campaign (and not Barney Keller) then we will have a serious race in our hands.

I know Lynne was there and I am sure if she stops packing, she will post.

Matt Viser reports on his blog All Politics are Local that both the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe are endorsing Niki Tsongas (Democrat) and Jim Ogonowski (Republican) in the Massachusetts 5th District primary race.

Here is the link to the Globe editorial and here is the Herald’s Tsongas link and the Ogonowski link.

I was surprised that both papers would even endorse anyone. They have really not covered this race as extensively as they should have; I was not even sure if they were paying attention. I guess they decided that the race began a few weeks ago, so they have given it some attention recently.

I would not want Will, Grizzled Veteran and all of the other Tsongas supporters who occasionally comment in the blogsphere to label this comment as sour grapes; it is not. I have written before about the failure of the newspapers to provide adequate coverage.