Salemweb may experience an outage.

I just received the following from the Salemweb administrator. Wanted to share.

Hi there,

Here we go again with Salemweb's domain renewal.  The site will likely go down tomorrow - perhaps for a day or two, unfortunately.

There was another glitch with renewal through this Registrar and so we are transferring the domain to another one.  I renewed at the existing registrar Monday and also had to pay for a year at the new one - this should have given us two years.

I thought I had it covered, but it looks like the renewal at the existing registrar didn't work.  I'm complaining loudly although it probably won't do any good. :(

I'll post the bad news on the Salemweb FB page, and if you don't mind mentioning it on your blog I would sure appreciate it.

Thanks,
Barbara

Tomorrow's election (How I'm voting, and why)

This is a crazy election season. I was quite confident a month ago that Obama would cruise to re-election. This despite an economy that, under normal circumstances, would absolutely sink an incumbent. Maybe it's just propaganda, but I've sensed a lot more confidence from the Romney camp, than the Obama camp, in the last week. It makes me a little nervous. My gut tells me that Obama pulls it out.

For president, I'll vote, tepidly, for Barack Obama. I was a somewhat enthusiastic Obama voter last go around. I loved the "new level of cooperation and openness" he promoted. I'm still waiting for it. On cooperation, it's clear he didn't get any help from Republicans, but my sense was that he didn't try very hard, either. On openness, he's failed all on his own. He also promised to allow 5 days of public comment before signing a bill. Another failure. He wouldn't hire lobbyists. Oops. He promised that I wouldn't see any increased taxes. That one went away when he shrunk my healthcare FSA. So why vote for him? As near as I can tell, Mitt doesn't have any core beliefs. At least none that aren't easily changeable. I have to ask which Mitt we will get. It's too scary a question for me. I think I'd like Mitt better on the economy, but I KNOW I'd like Obama better on most (not all) social issues. I'm taking the devil I know. ( I should add, I'd have voted for Gary Johnson  above Mitt, and probably really line up better with him than Obama.) One final reason I'm voting for Obama, and it's a theme you'll see continue throughout, is that I'm a big believer in split government. The only thing scary than the Democrats in complete control in DC, is the Republicans in complete control. There is no question that the Republicans will maintain control of the house. It's highly likely that the Democrats will continue to control the senate. On the off chance (and really, it's very, very small, regardless of Warren vs. Brown) that the Republicans take the senate, I NEED a Democrat in the White House.

For senate, I'll again vote for Scott Brown. I was an enthusiastic supporter of Brown's last time around, but that had a lot more to do with Martha Coakley than it did with Scott Brown. I attended Fells Acre Nursery School as a child. I knew and loved the Amirault family. To see why the only time I wouldn't literally urinate on Coakley is if she was actually on fire and I might put it out, read this, and the linked pieces. Elizabeth Warren is a much better human being than Martha Coakley. At the same time, I can't imagine her breaking with her party on anything. She also describes herself as a rock-thrower. Washington has enough hyper-partisan lockstep politicians of both stripes already. Scott Brown promised to vote his conscience, and break with his party when it made sense. He's largely delivered on that promise, to my surprise. Ask hardcore Republicans about Brown, and they deride "that RINO" (Republican In Name Only). We'd all be better off with more RINOs and DINOs. That's the cure for our Washington dysfunction.

For US house, I'll vote for Richard Tisei. See above. Tisei is a heck of a lot more likely to work on good ideas when the source is "the other side," than John Tierney. One only needs to look at Tierney's record to see that. Plus, a pro-choice, openly gay, pro-gay-marriage republican? MA should send that person to the Republican congress. What fun. Again, the way to fix the dysfunction in Washington is to get rid of the partisan idealogues. Tierney, like Warren, is one of them. Consider this: every major paper in the district except the Gloucester paper has endorsed the Republican, and even the liberal Boston Globe has picked Tisei as their token. Let's hope it works out better than the Globe's last token, Mary Connaughton, who lost the auditor race to a woman exposed before the election as a tax cheat. But that's Massachusetts for you. When you throw in John Tierney openly lying to us over and over again about his "wife's family problems" it becomes a no-brainer.

On that subject, let me say that in any other state I'd be a hard core democrat. I don't know how anyone can do that in Massachusetts, where absolutely everything is dominated, and poorly, not to mention corruptly, run by the democrats. I normally refuse to vote for democrats for statewide office, because we absolutely need a little more balance. I'm making exceptions for Joan Lovely, and John Keenan. I like Joan, I've covered the reasons before. I usually don't vote for Keenan. I either blank or write-in a neighbor. Mostly I do this because Keenan is all too happy to play the corrupt game. (See his support of since indicted Sal Dimasi for example.) When the speaker is under investigation, and it's clear that an indictment is coming, and it's actually becoming a tradition, I lose respect for you when you go along with that. So why am I voting for Keenan? Simply, I think he's done really good work protecting Salem in the wake of the Dominion announcement that the power plant was going to close. I gained some respect for him there. For the first time, I'll fill in his oval. I will lose some respect for both he and Lovely when I learn how much they collect in per diems next year, for making a commute that thousands of Salemites make on their own dime every day. So anyway, in MA, I'm one of the great unenrolled, who has always leaned to the left, but who is having a harder and harder time doing that because of MA democrats.

Questions 1-3: Yes to all. Boring. That's all I have to say about them other than this: what happens when the first person takes advantage of question 2, and the relatives go to file a life insurance claim? Suicide is excluded from just about every life insurance policy ever written. Will they pay? Should they? It will be vaguely interesting to watch that play out. On question 3, why aren't we just legalizing and taxing?

Question 4, the dreaded CPA:

It's important to consider who is for and against an initiative. In this case, the single biggest supporter of the initiative is Mickey Northcutt. So who is Mickey? He's the Executive Director of the North Shore Community Development Coalition. The first point in the mission of NSCDC? "We are committed to creating housing that serves low- and very low-income residents." One key provision of the CPA, which Northcutt neglected to dwell on when he addressed the Derby Street Neighborhood Association, is that annually, at least 10% of the CPA funds collected need to be set aside for affordable housing. Don't we have an awful lot of that in Salem already? Aren't we one of a handful of communities statewide that has already reached (and exceeded) our mandated 10%? Yes, we are. Northcutt's involvement gives me great pause.

Who opposes CPA? Well, the really vocal ones frequently seem like tea party animal "UN Agenda 21" wing nuts. I hope I'm wrong about that. The outlandish claims of the opposition also give me pause.

Here's the problem for me. The CPA law is near-perfectly-written extortion. "Pass it, and we'll give you free money," said the state. I'm good at math. I like free money. I even like parks, open space, recreation, and historic preservation. Because I'm good at math, I also know how expensive affordable housing can really be to those footing the bill. See? A dilemma.

Should I put faith in our leaders that they'll keep the affordable housing component to the minimum the law mandates, and will use it for upkeep and capital improvements on existing properties, rather than development of new units? I think several of them would like to limit it that way, and they'll all face immense pressure to do so. Of course, poster child Northcutt may not appreciate that.

Will I notice the $11 a year or so that this will cost me? No. Do I notice the larger tax burden that this adds to? Absolutely. Does that total burden impact my lifestyle? Yup. Do I see this as prop 2.5 end around? Yup. Do I loathe the idea of voting myself a tax increase? Yup. Am I going to? I've really written this entire blog post to decide what to do on Question 4. I think the answer is that really begrudgingly, probably while spitting, yes, I think I'll vote yes on 4. If our elected officials misinterpret 4 passing (I still think it won't) as voters endorsing widespread tax hikes, know that I'm coming for you. If you take that as an endorsement of increasing affordable housing stocks, I'm coming for you. I also reserve the right to change my mind on question 4 when I hit the voting booth tomorrow. If I do change my mind, I'll let you know.

Most importantly, go vote.

State Senate Primary This Week

Thursday is primary day in Massachusetts. I know! Thursday, of a holiday week? Insane. But it is, so let's talk about it.

Let me get the easy candidates out of the way. Edward Carroll has a fantasyland proposal to put a gigantic resort casino less than a football field from my house. He has no plan to get people into or out of it, though clearly Derby Street can't handle the traffic something like that would bring. Neither can Webb Street, Bridge Street, North Street, or any other local street. Carroll estimates 5,000 new jobs at that location. The roads won't get the employees there, nevermind the customers. Beyond that fact, he talks about the Chapter 91 and DPA designations like they are nothing. They aren't easily waived, as he asserts. Sorry Ed, just no. You're off my list. Even if elected, his one and only plan will never see the light of day. Basically, he offers nothing.

Next, we have John Slattery. He's the endorsed candidate of the Boston Globe, for what that's worth. I think Mary-Ellen Manning said it best. "I thought I was reading The Onion... The Boston Globe just endorsed my opponent because he wants to raise taxes!" If you haven't been paying attention, Slattery has been endorsed by just about every public employee union under the sun, and a large portion of his campaign has been underwritten by out-of-district union money. (Why is the Boston Teachers Union endorsing someone for our district?) Check his recent campaign finance filing yourself. PAC this, and PAC that, all over the place. I pay for those union contracts, and as retiring incumbent Fred Berry recently said, "One candidate is totally sold to the unions..." I don't need to tell you that he was referring to Slattery, even though he never mentioned his name. He seems to owe a lot of people at this point, and they are people who benefit from me paying more taxes. What's in it for me with Slattery? Just a world of hurt. No thanks. Luckily for him, there is an absurdly large portion of the state on the public payroll. Not supporting Slattery is another easy choice for me.

The Boston Herald (which, with Howie Carr on board, and their right slant, should be fertile Manning Country) had the following to say about this race.

In the Second Essex district now held by the retiring Sen. Fred Berry, which contains Beverly, Peabody, Salem, Danvers and Topsfield, the sensible choice in the Democratic primary is Salem City Councilor Joan B. Lovely. Her opponents include John Slattery of Peabody, who famously staked out both sides of the death penalty issue when he previously served in the House (and cast the fatal vote that killed a death penalty bill); and current Governor’s Councilor Mary-Ellen Manning, who needn’t bring her brand of insular politics from the Council Chamber to the Senate chamber.

The criticism of Manning is one that seems to be repeated frequently, and gives me pause. While I enjoy that (really a lot) from her as a Governor's Councilor, I'm not sure it would serve the district well as a state senator, where compromise and cooperation will be necessary to make sure the district gets its share of economic support from the state. A contrarian is really easy to ignore when it's time to dole out the goodies. I'd probably vote for her for governor, or mayor, but I don't know that she can (or wants to) play nicely with others, which the district needs from its Senator (I have the same concerns about self-described "rock thrower" Elizabeth Warren). Berry's comment directed at her (though thinly veiled) was, "... and the other candidate has a history of caring more about finding fault with others than working with others to find solutions to serious problems.” Enough smoke, and there is probably a fire.

So that brings me to Joan Lovely, who I've criticized plenty over the years, but who I'll vote for on Thursday. In her many years on the city council, I've disagreed with her on plenty. Between her and Manning, I'm much closer to Manning's position on taxes. (Are we sure she's not a Republican?) That said, Manning has never had to pass a budget, so it's easy to say no tax increases. I disagreed with Joan on the St. Joe's senior center proposal. It was the first issue I ever discussed with her. We ended up agreeing to disagree, but I came away with confidence that she had put plenty of thought and reason into her position, and she was very respectful of my position, and had clearly already considered the points I raised with her. My overwhelming impression of Joan is that she does her homework, considers all options, looks for common ground and compromise, and is an excellent consensus builder. Those are all things we need in a State Senator. She's the only candidate who fits that bill. Sometimes I wish she'd state her opinions a little more forcefully, and differentiate herself from her opponents a little more. She should borrow from Manning there.

I think the Berry endorsement really helps Lovely, especially in Peabody. I think the gaggle of pro-Manning sock puppets with numerous made-up real-sounding names and one message clearly demonstrate that the other candidates think so, too. On that topic, the gaggle as a whole really turns me off to Manning. It concerns me that her people don't know that the type of people reading that stuff aren't changing their minds because of made-up internet people. My favorite, posted while I'm writing this, was this line. "How can you trust a woman [Lovely] who wears a scarf in a facebook photo on a 95 degree day." Just wow. That's desperate. The newest line of thinking supported by the puppets is that Berry didn't actually endorse Joan, and Lovely made it up, with help from two Boston Globe staffers, a Salem News reporter, and Patch reporters. By the way, Senator Berry must be in on it. Clearly if someone claimed he endorsed them, and he hadn't, he'd stay quiet about it, right? The Salem News quoted him thusly, “To be effective in the state Senate requires a combination of experience, intelligence and the ability to work with others to solve problems for the people you represent,” he said. “I believe City Councilor Joan Lovely has the attributes needed to most effectively serve the people of the 2nd Essex District.” These people believe that the snooze made it up? I bag on the snooze a lot, but that's insane. Beyond that, the whole sock puppet thing is a terrible (and desperate) strategy.

Seriously? Let me have one of my own. How can you trust a woman whose campaign supporters are pretty obviously behind about 15-20 fake IDs (none of the supposedly-real names are registered voters in the district) throwing what amounts to libel around on a regular basis, accusing people not involved in the campaign with crimes (people the candidate would have to work with if elected, btw), complete with witty phrases like "Phoney Baloney Joanie" that sound like they were written by a twelve-year-old? That said, I generally like her chutzpah a lot. If Lovely were out she'd have my vote, even though I question the sanity of the people she has supporting her campaign.

One last good (ok, maybe just fun) reason to root for Joan, the race to take her seat on the Salem City Council will be really fun. Two people involved with her campaign think they have the inside track to replace her. Good motivation for them, and great entertainment for us, down the road, when it eventually explodes. Someone will find out that someone they think has their back actually doesn't.

Who will win? I don't have the foggiest idea. I think it will probably be one of the two women. I hope so anyway. I think a lot of Slattery's support is puffed up union leadership, where the rank and file may not follow. Lovely has to get Salem to the polls, and I still have major doubts there. I must not be alone, as this letter from Salem Democratic Committee member (and Lovely supporter) Darek Barcikowski shows.  I'd vote for either woman in the general. If not, it's Jolitz for me in the general election.