Globe Retweets From Its Patrick-Third-Term Gaffe

March 21, 2013

So Gov. Deval Patrick made a joke yesterday about running for a third term and wouldn’t you know some people took him seriously and faster than you can say tweet tweet it was out there on the social media wire.

From today’s Boston Globe:

Patrick trips online firestorm with reelection joke

For a few minutes early Wednesday afternoon, the Massa chusetts political world was in flames.

Governor Deval Patrick’s attempt at humor during an appear ance at the University of Massachusetts Boston went viral, leading many to believe that he would seek a third term. That would have been news, indeed, since Patrick has long professed to be satisfied with two terms.

And, while there is no law prohibiting a third consecutive term, there is no modern precedent.

“#Breaking: @MassGovernor announces he’s running for a third term” New England Cable News network tweeted at 1:10 p.m. to its more than 19,000 followers.

That ignited a firestorm of retweets, online exclamations of disbelief, and panicked phone calls by news organizations looking to catch up on a story that would dramatically remake the state’s political landscape.

 

It turned out to be a false alarm, but what the Globe piece fails to mention is that one of its own was among the retweeters. It was left to our feisty local tabloid to reveal the full story.

From today’s Boston Herald:

NECN tweets from the hip

A red-faced NECN chalked its social media gaffe up to “human error” yesterday after firing off a mistaken tweet declaring Gov. Deval Patrick was running for a third term — a blunder experts say newspeople can avoid by thinking before they tweet.

The cyber slip spread like wildfire to Washington, D.C., where it was retweeted by a Boston Globe reporter, and the governor’s press office was forced to field a barrage of calls. Social media experts say the blame lies with shoddy journalism.

“Twitter’s not dangerous — the people who use it can be,” said Al Tompkins of the journalism think tank the Poynter Institute.

Added “Twitter for Dummies” lead author Laura Fitton: “It doesn’t matter where that person published it. People tend to blame the tool. People will blame Twitter, but that’s just bad journalism.”

 

Ouch.

Here’s the twitstream:

Picture 7

 

A spokeswoman for our stately local broadsheet told the Herald’s Jessica Heslam that reporter Matt Viser followed the newspaper’s social media policy. “He retweeted a trusted source, NECN,” she said,”and the second NECN said it made a mistake, Matt retweeted that. All of this took place within a minute.”

Hey – maybe that’s why the Globe didn’t report it today. It happened too fast.

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Herald Columnists Double-Team Gomez

March 15, 2013

GOP Senate wannabe Gabriel Gomez gets tuned up real good in the Boston Herald today. Two columnists – Howie Carr and Michael Graham –  give Gomez a working-over (the kind of pigpile that’s a specialty at our feisty local tabloid) for the letter he sent to Deval Patrick asking to be appointed to the interim U.S. Senate seat.

Start with Carr’s drive-by:

GomezGabriel Gomez is one of Dem guys

Gabriel Gomez is the Eddie Haskell of the Mass. Republican Party.

Only instead of sucking up to Mrs. Cleaver, in January the Republican candidate for the Senate was currying favor with Gov. Deval Patrick, begging for the interim appointment to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by John F. Kerry.

Actually, given Gomez’s obsession with ethnicity, as shown in his obsequious missive, perhaps he should be referred to as the Eduardo Haskell of the state GOP.

In case you haven’t yet read his letter to Gov. Mini-Me, Gomez makes it clear that he is a “Latino.” A Latino of “Latino background,” he elaborates . . .

 

You get the idea.

On the op-ed page, Graham also gets his licks in:

GomezGOP can do better than Gomez

I supported John McCain in 2008.” — Gabriel Gomez, Feb. 28, to Fox 25.

“I supported President Obama in 2008.” – Gomez, in a Jan. 17 letter to Gov. Deval Patrick

Is it asking too much for a Republican candidate in Massachusetts to be, you know … a Republican?

 

And etc., winding up with this: “Do the GOP party bosses really think that what Massachusetts swing voters want is a candidate they can’t trust? A guy who says right up front — ‘hey, I’ll take any position — just give me the job!'”

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, meanwhile, it was GOP women abandoning Gomez.

Republican US Senate candidate Gabriel E. Gomez lost the support of two of the three leaders of his women’s coalition Thursday, a day after releasing a letter that showed him praising Governor Deval Patrick, a Democrat, and attest ing to his support for President Obama in the 2008 election.

Angela Davis of Foxborough and Rachel Kemp of Boston both left the campaign less than a week after they were named cochairwomen of the Women for Gomez group.

Kemp confirmed her departure but would not comment on her reasoning. Davis also declined to detail her reasoning, but in a message obtained by the Globe, Davis told Gomez campaign aides she was quitting, saying, “The last 24 hours have been a turning point.”

 

Yeah – as in turning against point.

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Herald Schools Globe on Ed Chief Exit

March 12, 2013

From our Hark! The Herald! desk

This is one story our feisty local tabloid has owned.

Picture 2

 

From Chris Cassidy’s Boston Herald report (the online version):

block1312_1New setback for Deval Patrick: Early ed boss quits

Embattled Sherri Killins resigns after Herald reports

The Patrick administration’s embattled early education chief abruptly stepped down from her $200,000-a-year post last night after a series of Herald reports that raised questions about her moonlighting in a post-doctoral program that trains school superintendents, as well as her residency in New Haven, Conn.

“The questions being raised started to distract from the work she was doing,” Matt Wilder, spokesman for the Executive Office of Education, said of departing Early Education and Care Commissioner Sherri Killins. “So it made sense to offer her resignation and move on.”

 

Here’s when the Boston Globe reported it (note the 4:20 AM):

Picture 1

 

And here’s what our stately local broadsheet reported. Give credit to the Globe – they gave credit to the Herald. Twice:

A top state education official has stepped down from her position amid questions over her enrollment in a program that trains school superintendents.

Sherri Killins, commissioner of the state Department of Early Education and Care, resigned Monday, said Matthew Wilder, a spokesman for the state agency that oversees the department, in an e-mail early Tuesday.

Killins’s abrupt resignation was first reported by the Boston Herald. The newspaper previously reported that Secretary of Education Matthew Malone was investigating her enrollment in the superintendent training program in Ware, which has taken her away from her official duties in her nearly $200,000-per-year state job.

 

Another turnabout in newspaper business as usual: the Globe as lively index to the Herald.

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Gov. Patrick’s Driving Ban Didn’t Keep This Carr Off the Road

February 11, 2013

First, a personal note:

V-I-C-T-O-R-Y, victory victory that’s our cry!

The hardlyreading staff went out earlier today to find some actual newspapers – and we actually did. As we carried them triumphantly back to the Two-Daily Town Global Worldwide Headquarters, we discovered inside the front door – newspapers!

The Sunday papers. And Saturday’s papers. Big shoutout to our delivery guy.

Result: An embarrassment of dailies.

As we plowed through the weekend’s storm coverage, one topic stood out: Gov. Deval Patrick’s “extraordinary step,” as Saturday’s Boston Globe dubbed it, that banned driving during the storm.

From the stately local broadsheet:

Travel ban surprises many, pleases some

Governor Deval Patrick’s strict travel ban Friday stunned pizza deliverers and police chiefs alike, shuttering shops, befuddling taxi drivers, and leaving police officers wondering if they had to ticket drivers dashing to the store for a gallon of milk.

Some criticized the governor for his last-minute edict and the stiff penalties it carried — up to a year in jail and a $500 fine to any nonemergency personnel on the road after 4 p.m. — while others doubted that storm-swamped police would have time to enforce the ban.

But those who recalled the nightmare highway strandings in the Blizzard of ’78 praised Patrick’s order — including the former governor who wished he’d taken similar action sooner 35 years ago.

“There’s no question that the governor’s doing exactly the right thing — have people home, get them off the streets, and just cool it,” said former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, speaking from Southern California, where he now teaches at UCLA. [Where it rarely snows, not to get technical about it.]

 

Others, however, called the ban “tyrannical.” Crosstown at the Boston Herald, it was “absolutely draconian,” according to one local cabbie. But Herald columnist Joe Battenfeld disagreed:

Finding NemoPatrick does it right

Learning from Dukakis’ error, gov still takes heat

You can’t blame Gov. Deval Patrick for not wanting to pull a Michael Dukakis.

In the blizzard of 1978, the state was woefully unprepared for the massive storm. Gov. Dukakis did issue a travel ban but it came too late — after dozens died and thousands were stranded on the roads.

So now Patrick tries to prevent deaths by banning cars on the road and he gets trashed by critics who say it’s an example of government gone too far.

Can you imagine the outrage if Patrick had done nothing and the blizzard ends up claiming lives?

 

That, of course, is nothing compared to the outrage of fellow columnist Howie Carr for the inconvenience Patrick cost him.

801O7669.JPGDriving ban? Take a hike, gov

Hey Gov. Patrick, didn’t your mother ever teach you about the magic word “please”?

You know, you’d ask her for something, and she’d say, “What’s the magic word, Deval?”

I guess she didn’t because I didn’t hear it Friday, when you ordered everyone in the state off the roads at 4 p.m. Like everyone else, I did hear about the $500 fine and/or one year in jail for violating your order, which you had said the previous day you probably weren’t going to issue.

 

Carr proceeds to take a predictable swipe at “the bow-tied bumkissers . . .  already falling all over themselves lauding you for your ‘wise’ decision to shut down business statewide and arrest anybody who had the audacity to try to get home from work.” (So Joe Battenfeld is a “bow-tied bumkisser,” Howie?)

But then Carr gets at the real pathos of the travel ban:

Myself, I’d hired a guy to drive me home Friday night. I was going to leave my car warm and safe in a garage in Brighton. But then he heard about the year in jail, and he chickened out.

So I called Veterans Taxi. At 5 p.m., Veterans called back and said the cops had just ordered them off the road. In other towns, the police were doing robo-calls, a chance to throw their weight around, too.

I wasn’t that worried driving home. I had press credentials, and if any cops had stopped me, I figured I would just tell them I was Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis’ son.

 

There’s your man of the people, Herald readers, whining that “now my car is in the driveway, totally buried in snow.”

Boo hoo, Howie. Welcome to the real world.

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Two Guys Named Mo

January 31, 2013

Remarkably, the local dailies pull a crisscross in their editorials today about Gov. Deval Patrick’s appointment of his former chief of staff William “Mo” Cowan to fill the U.S. Senate seat just vacated by John Kerry (D-I Am Secretary of State Now) until the special election this summer.

The Boston Herald’s surprisingly upbeat editorial:

Diversifying the Senate

Yes, Gov. Deval Patrick is inordinately fond of “firsts.” And by appointing his former chief of staff and chief legal counsel Mo Cowan to the U.S. Senate he will double the number of African-Americans currently in that branch, making it the first time since Reconstruction two black men will be serving in that body at the same time — although neither was elected. (South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley earlier named Republican Rep. Tim Scott to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Jim DeMint.)

There is something to be said for bringing a little diversity to a body badly in need of same. But Cowan is also smart, energetic, a consummate professional and at age 43 really just at the start of a promising career that come summer will take him back to the private sector. He is also unflaggingly loyal to the governor he has served since 2009. Patrick won’t have to lose any sleep wondering what Cowan will do or say next.

Which brings us to the best part — he’s not Barney Frank.

 

From the Boston Globe’s surprisingly downbeat editorial:

12132010_13cowanpic-7799105In naming Mo Cowan to Senate, Patrick lessens state’s clout

IN CHOOSING an interim senator to serve for almost five months, a governor should have one overriding priority: Providing the best possible representation for the people of Massachusetts. The quality of that representation can be measured not only by the character of the person chosen, but by the amount of clout the appointee brings to a short tenure in the Senate.

William “Mo” Cowan, Governor Patrick’s choice to fill the next four months of John Kerry’s term, has the requisite character, a solid knowledge of statewide issues, and has sounded the right notes of confidence and humility. But at 43, with only his stints as Patrick’s legal counsel and chief of staff as top-level credentials, Cowan counts as a surprising — and disappointing — choice. Simply put, Massachusetts is brimming over with political talent, including many potential picks of greater stature than Cowan, and many with vastly greater national experience.

 

Namely, former Massachusetts governor and failed presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, Ted Kennedy widow Victoria Reggie Kennedy, and – wait for it – unemployed and unlamented former Congressman Barney Frank.

The hardchoosing staff? We would have picked the Duke, who earned a Final Act with his block precinct work to get Deval elected  in the first place.

But, apparently, Cowan’s Mo-mentum trumped all that.

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That’s What You Get Living In Mayberry

January 30, 2013

Boston residents got a big helping of more of the same following last night’s State of the City address by Mayor-for-Life Thomas M. Menino.

Boston Globe report:

Optimistic Menino makes return to public stage

In a speech by turns sentimental and unabashedly bullish, Mayor Thomas M. Menino returned to the public stage Tuesday night after a lengthy illness and offered a buoyant vision of Boston, celebrating accom plishments and outlining initiatives for the future.

Menino entered Faneuil Hall to thunderous applause from a crowd of 800 that included Governor Deval Patrick, members of Congress, and scores of other elected officials and dignitaries gathered for the mayor’s State of the City address. Waving to the audience, Menino — serenaded by a Kelly Clarkson pop anthem with the lyric, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” — used a cane to help navigate the 50-foot walk to the stage.

 

Boston Globe editorial:

chin012913menino_met03With a warm speech, Menino shows his rejuvenated spirit

THE HIGHLIGHT of Mayor Menino’s State of the City speech wasn’t its admirable theme of enhancing human potential. It wasn’t in the genuinely impressive progress in city development, with 2,000 units of housing now under construction. And it wasn’t in Menino’s trademark medium-sized initiatives, like his networking plan for women-owned businesses.

Rather, the highlight was Menino himself. In his proud, steady walk to the podium, with only the help of a cane, Menino sent a strong signal that he is back of the job after nearly six weeks in the hospital for a range of ailments, followed by another month of rehab. The mutual affection between Menino and the city was visible in his interaction with the crowd, which whooped and applauded at even corny lines like a joke about Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women.” For his part, Menino offered his sincere thanks to all who helped him and stood by him during his rehabilitation. And he showed his graciousness in other ways, too, such as with a comradely tribute to retiring State Senator Jack Hart.

 

Time to edit Tip O’Neill’s classic “All politics is local.”

Nowadays in Boston, all politics is cozy.

Exhibit Umpteen from Peter Gelzinis’ Boston Herald column:

STU_7922.JPGWalk the walk & talk the talk? Yes, he can!

In the end, it was the irrepressible Rev. Eugene Rivers who captured the most important 50-foot stroll of Thomas Michael Menino’s public life.

“That dude didn’t just walk into this hall tonight, you understand,” Rivers said, of the mayor’s unassisted entrance into Faneuil Hall, “Tommy, man, he gangsta-walked in here, you hear what I’m sayin’?

“The message the man sent out to all those pretenders to the throne was, ‘Any of you wanna piece of this?’ ”

 

Not to get technical about it, but Eugene Rivers is the Hub’s fraud di tutti fraudi. And the ultimate Menino toady.

Any of you wanna piece of that?

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Charlie Baker Heralds His, Well, Existence

January 29, 2013

Monday’s Boston Herald featured this op-ed from former Massachusetts gubernatorial wannabe Gone Time Charlie Baker on actual Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposed tax hikes:

Politics aside, tax hikes just bad

Mass. pays economic price for its high rates

Two weeks ago, Gov. Deval Patrick proposed to raise over $2.5 billion in new taxes, including a 20 percent jump in the income tax — the largest in state history. Since then, most of the discussion has focused on the politics of such massive tax increases, and not on the economic implications of such a significant hike in the cost of government. The over-arching message seems to be that tax rates don’t matter, the size of government doesn’t matter, and the machine that is state government is already doing a perfectly fine job of maximizing the use of state tax dollars. All it needs to ramp up its performance — and the commonwealth’s along with it — is a lot more money.

In short, the debate has already presumed that there is no economic development price — no “growth” price, to use the governor’s words — to be paid for such a huge increase in taxes — just a political one. Recent history would suggest otherwise.

Over the course of the past decade, the nine states with no personal income tax benefited from population growth, Gross State Product growth, job growth, and tax revenue growth that far exceeded the national average. The nine states with the highest personal income tax rates lagged the national average in all three categories, and it wasn’t close. (See chart.)

 

Unfortunately, there’s no link to the helpful chart on the Herald website (big surprise), so you might want to dig a print edition out of the recycling bin.

Regardless, Baker’s piece comes hard on the heels of the hardreading staff’s noting his conspicuous absence from any speculation about potential candidates for the U.S. Senate seat John Kerry (D-Seriously, Am I Secretary of State Now?) will soon be vacating.

Coincidence? We think not.

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Herald Shoots Sharper on New Suffolk Sheriff

January 23, 2013

Three little words signal the difference between the local dailies today in their coverage of the new Suffolk County sheriff.

Boston Globe:

130122sheriff0012Aide named to replace Cabral as sheriff

Tompkins began inmates program

Governor Deval Patrick appointed a former aide to Andrea J. Cabral to succeed her as Suffolk County sheriff on Tuesday, saying he was not concerned that Steven Tompkins could be seen as a political hire.

“By the way, it’s a political job, so the folks that are criticizing it as a political hire, tell them: they’re right,” Patrick told reporters shortly after administering the oath of office to Tompkins, who will serve until the 2014 general election.

 

Boston Herald:

Picture 1Gov: You’re right, sheriff pick’s ‘political’

Gov. Deval Patrick unabashedly admitted the hiring of new Suffolk Sheriff Steve Tompkins — a career public relations man and former campaign adviser to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren with no law enforcement experience — was a “political hire.”

“It’s a political job,” the governor said with a smirk last night. “So the folks that are criticizing it as a political hire, tell them they’re right.”

 

With a smirk. How very Herald.

Also very Herald: Howie Carr’s column on who got screwed in the deal (Boston City Council President Steve Murphy) and why (“Andrea Cabral hates Murphy. He ran against her once” and “Mumbles Menino hates ex-city councilor Michael ‘Flats’ Flaherty,’ who would return to the City Council if Murphy exited).

How very Boston.

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Boston Herald: Death to Taxes!

January 18, 2013

The feisty local tabloid continues its anti-tax jihad today from the very first page (via The Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages):

MA_BH

 

Inside the Herald puts a price tag on the tax hikes proposed by Gov. Deval Patrick (D-One Foot Out the Door) :

 

Picture 1

 

At upper right Howie Carr delivers yet another bulk-mail screed, while Michael Graham, Julie Mehegan, the editors, and cartoonist Jerry Holbert have a whirl on the opinion pages.

Flood the zone? This is more like Katrina.

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, meanwhile, the “moonbat gazette” (Carr) also front-pages the tax hikes (via ditto):

 

MA_BG

 

It may be true, as Carr alleges, that the Globe never met a tax hike it didn’t like, but at least the paper provides the details instead of just moaning.

 

18taxes1

 

Weep your heart out, Howie.

 

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Boston Herald Jumps the Shark (Taxachusetts Edition)

January 16, 2013

The front pages of today’s local dailies almost – but don’t quite – say it all in their coverage of a looming tax hike in Massachusetts.

The Boston Globe’s Page One (via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages) appears measured and slightly left of center, as usual:

MA_BG

 

The report itself is equally straightforward:

patrick-3151Patrick favors income tax hike

Broad-based levy vital to transit, education plans

Governor Deval Patrick is set to propose an increase in the state income tax as part of a multi pronged plan to raise new revenue for transportation and education, said a person with direct knowledge of the governor’s plan.

Patrick is expected to unveil the plan, at least in part, in his annual State of the Commonwealth speech Wednesday night. Many in and around state government said he is targeting the income tax because it is the only tax that would bring in enough money to fund his ambitious transportation and education agendas.

Those proposals, which he began rolling out this week, call for $1.5 billion in additional spending next year and $2 billion in annual spending in future years to shore up the state’s transportation system and expand early education programs.

Boosting the income tax from the current rate of 5.25 percent to 5.66 percent would raise $1 billion annually, according to a menu of revenue options the Patrick administration released Monday. The remainder of Patrick’s proposals could be funded through other fees or taxes.

 

The Boston Herald’s Page One (via ditto) is something else entirely:

MA_BH

 

The coverage itself is equally hyperventilating.

As indicated above, there are three – count ’em, three – columnists on the case, starting with Joe Battenfeld and Howie Carr in this double-barreled spread:

Picture 2

 

Cut to Michael Graham’s piece on the op-ed page to complete the chinstroker trifecta.

But wait – there’s also this editorial and this editorial cartoon:

holberts 01-16 cartoon

 

Before you say anything, that’s exactly how that cartoon appears on the feisty local tabloid’s website.

Just like the Herald, eh? Never the full picture.

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