Halloween Fun

This is the evening before All Hallows Day, or All Hallows Evening, now shortened simply to Hallowe'en... although hardly anyone ever puts that apostrophe in there anymore.

Where tomorrow's Catholic holy day is about the purity of saints, also called All Saints Day, All Hallows Day, Hallowmas, or (I think, officially) Solemnity of All Saints... this evening is the final buildup of evil spirits that reaches its crescendo just before midnight when, suddenly, all that ceases.

Anyway, that's the way it's been spun to me over the years. We start with All Saints Day as the most pure and holy, and by the time October 31 of the following year has arrived, the evil spirits have been regrouping and know that tonight at midnight their free reign is over. Consequently, it's an annual festival of horror.

For those who don't believe in that scenario, though, there's the trikkatreeta tradition.

We used to use old pillowcases to amass our trikkatreetin candy, and then spend the next two months riding on a chronic sugar high through Christmas and New Year's. I remember having enough candy to even last halfway through the whole winter... except in the leaner years when it only lasted until somewhere shortly after Thanksgiving.

At any rate, I had just finished writing all of the above when the doorbell rang, and we got our first spooky visitors...

Can anyone seriously believe that the most exciting part of this day isn't just plain old fun?

Halloween Obeisance

This is interesting... Local Police Department recommended hours for trick or treating tonight, from all around the county. An accompanying blurb for that finely crafted graphic has already garnered some spooky comments, too.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

When Tom Barnett first got his book (The Pentagon's New Map) published, he was teaching at the Naval War College and living in Rhode Island. I read his book nearly four decades after having been drafted into civilian service as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, so my interest in that book was hardly for the self-reinforcement of a hawk.

The fact is that I had seen his presentation on the subject on C-Span. I immediately went out, bought the book, and read it. I devoured it, actually, because here for the first time was a perspective that I had never seen before, and one presented with such insight and, clearly, from such an insider's perspective in the military-industrial complex.

I've linked to Tom's blog posts from time to time, and I continue to have that blog on my list of regularly checked sources every week. It's the only reason I would have even known about a post made today, with a link to online videos of all of Tom's appearances on C-Span.

The one to watch, and the place to start if you've never been exposed to this unique perspective on the possible future of America's military-industrial complex, is the original December 6, 2004 C-Span presentation of Tom's lecture based on The Pentagon's New Map.

The essence of this unique viewpoint is that there is a realistic path that CAN be taken, much more realistic in its detail than any of my purely idealistic desires as someone who cannot support war. And it's Tom's unbounded optimism in that mission that impressed the hell out of me, and continues to impress me as the past half decade has passed.

T&G: Promoting Voter Apathy

Clive McFarlane's Friday column, was the quintessential example of how our dinosaur local news monopoly promotes voter apathy.

He started off by saying that he went to the District 4 debate at Chandler Elementary on Monday evening and how he was "struck by the general lack of interest in the debate from members of that community".

It's not surprising, though. The T&G's complete coverage of this particular debate was only to be found there in Clive's column on Friday, days after the event took place. I did a search on the T&G website for "debate", and the only mention of this event was in Clive's lament, four days later. I could find nothing that announced the fact that the debate was going to be taking place before it was held, and I could find no coverage of the debate after it was held... until yesterday, when Clive decided to spin up the low turnout to inform urban core readers about how apathetic they are.

How different the turnout would have been if the T&G had chosen to heavily promote it, or even mention it at all before it was to be held... But this particular debate is one that they didn't even list beforehand at all. I mean, you can pretty much guarantee that a campaign event like this in Worcester won't get anyone showing up at all if it isn't even mentioned in the only daily newspaper in town.

I've only seen two pieces in the T&G during this entire campaign season that even came close to the true meaning of low voter turnout here in Worcester... Robert Z. Nemeth's column on October 18th, and a piece by Nick Kotsopoulos on October 11th. Both op-eds brushed up against the problem by pointing out how pathetic the voter turnout has been in the past. But the sad fact is that neither apparently believes that anything can or should be done by the only newspaper in town to promote a higher turnout in this election. If either of them didn't personally believe that it really doesn't matter if turnout is low, they would've made much more effective arguments against the prevailing abyss of voter apathy.

Let's face it, even the best writers in the world can't make an effective argument in favor of something that they don't really believe in, themselves.

The arguments I've gotten from people who say they won't bother voting range from "my vote won't count" to "it doesn't matter, anyway." What's that? Is it the result of a rational analysis about how one participates in a democracy? Is it a rationale born of careful thought, weighing of data and coming to a well-reasoned conclusion?

Not really. It's the result of living in a town where the importance of voting in a local election is not only not promoted by the only daily newspaper in town, it's the result of the only daily newspaper in town promoting what everybody already knows: voter turnout has typically been low. So the paper "reports" that it'll probably be low again this time around? They "report" that nothing can be done about it?

Nothing can be done about it?

Sheesh! When you're the ONLY newspaper in town, EVERYTHING can be "done about it" to change it! It would hardly take the merest of efforts on their part to actually DO something about it.

They have some pretty talented journalists working at 20 Franklin Street. When it suits them, the T&G will use that talent to wage smear campaigns that pander to emotional hot button issues and get the public so fired up that you can't hear anything else being talked about for days and weeks on end! When it suits them, they'll promote the hell out of local events and projects, and get everybody enthused about them. They have tremendous power and influence over public opinion in this town.

On the day that the T&G responsibly wields that power over public opinion to convincingly promote such a basic, core issue that's been affecting this town for so many years, this fundamental and blatantly obvious lack of understanding about the importance of voting in local elections, I might begin to change my tune here.

But within the true meaning of low voter turnout, they stand to gain nothing by convincing their readers that voting in a local election is the most important thing a person can do as a participant in a democracy. They stand to gain nothing from higher voter turnout, and have everything to gain by keeping it low. Their influence over the OUTCOME of local elections is all that really matters to them. That undue influence is entirely dependent upon low voter turnout, but that influence would be proportionately reduced, the higher the turnout.

I believe that it's endemic to the culture and purpose of the only newspaper in town to NOT wage an intense, ceaseless campaign against voter apathy, using their resident talent to spin up the importance of voting, making the arguments against "nothing can be done about it" and "my vote doesn't count" rationales. Instead, they cleverly promote what lends them the most influence, and they use that influence to keep it that way. And I believe that those who work there are in complete denial about this conflict of purpose between "responsible journalism" and the editorial directions taken to heavily influence and mold public opinion in this town.

Those who get elected by tiny minorities of the voting age public will be convinced to pay much more attention to the influence peddlers after they are elected, and increasingly discount the voice of the public at large (the overwhelming majority of whom didn't bother voting for anyone). Those who get elected can see that only the influence peddlers "matter" when voter turnout is low, and thus engage only them for re-election the next time around.

It is a self-feeding mechanism.

When you don't vote, it is in fact a vote FOR the power of special interests, a vote FOR "business as usual", and a vote FOR just about anything and everything that might've pissed you off about your government since the last election.

I have no interest in trying to persuade you HOW you vote, but it does matter THAT you vote.

Your vote "won't count" ONLY when you fail to cast a ballot that could've been counted.

Your un-cast ballot DOES NOTHING ABOUT IT.

Vote on November 3rd in Worcester.
_

Clancy Spotting

Paul Clancy was doing a standout at Rice Square this afternoon at 5 when I drove through.

There were about ten other supporters lined around the intersection, all with the campaign posters.

I gotta tell ya: there was a constant barrage of friendly horn honks as the heavy afternoon traffic made its way through the intersection. Paul has to be one of the most familiar faces in town, and this is right in the heart of his district.

And Paul had really pulled out the support for this standout, because in addition to all the people who were willing to come out and stand there for over an hour in this grey, windy, just a bit too cool weather, he had one supporter that I never expected to see.

I had to find a place to park, get out of the Jeep, and walk over to where they were standing because this was an opportunity that I just couldn't miss.

This is why I got such nice pictures for this standout.

The standout king, himself, was there. The most familiar campaign icon in the city of Worcester...

This is it.

It just doesn't get any better than this.

And this is the last Rosen Spotting shot I'll be able to get.

When I walked up to him, Gary said that this is the ONLY standout he's doing this year.

So this is truly the pièce de résistance for this blog during our current campaign season.

The Big Re-Dig - episode 10

I was sitting at the light at Trumble Square this morning, just before 11, and I saw them working on the sidewalk that runs alongside the YWCA on McGrath Boulevard.

This is right out of the Twilight Zone, as far as I'm concerned...

I mean, why would the city spend any money rebuilding a sidewalk that always gets completely plowed under with snow all winter, every winter, year after year?

When I posted this picture of a pedestrian risking his life all the way down at the other end of McGrath Boulevard back in January, I honestly couldn't tell if there was a sidewalk on that side of the street.

But there is. It's been there ever since they built that street, and it goes the full length, AND it never gets cleared of snow and ice in the winter.

Meanwhile, back at the beginning of McGrath Boulevard again...

I took this picture on March 3 of this year.

But I could've taken it at any point during the whole winter, because the sidewalk at the end of Foster, the one that connects to the Green Street sidewalk under the bridge and goes all the way over to the train station, that never got cleared of snow, either.

Of course, they're replacing that sidewalk, too.

Well, the sidewalk surfin' season is almost upon us, folks. (And remember, the only City Councilor who consistently and fully removed snow and ice from the sidewalk abutting their property last winter was Konnie Lukes.)

T&G Numbers - the Fudge Ingredients

I got an e-mail from City Hall last night, explaining that there were "active" (as opposed to "inactive") sub-totals of registered voters involved in the material the T&G was sent for their Tuesday story.

Apparently, the 73,001 figure is a sub-total of "active" voters for the November 2007 reporting period. The missing 23,457 voters includes the 14,955 "inactive" that qualified for removal in March of this year. Citing only "active" voters for November 2007 and comparing those numbers to "active" PLUS "inactive" numbers from the October 14th report, the T&G's story on Tuesday completely misrepresented the entire basis of their spin about how voter registration is "up" and implying that there are vastly more registered voters today than there were in 2007.

But a couple years of having trouble with numbers from the T&G should come as no big surprise to anyone in this town.

It remains to be seen if they'll admit how ridiculously they messed this one up and publish a correction, especially how long that might take for them to do so (if ever). I mean, even a lowly taxi driver can fact check the officially reported overall totals of registered voters from the City of Worcester website.

Earlier posts here and here.

T&G Numbers - cont'd

After posting here on Tuesday about an apparent mistake in an article in the T&G, there were some comments and a couple of e-mails that have brought me around to this point...

The November 1, 2007 total of 73,001 registered voters reported in Tuesday's story, referenced in the article's graphic, and also in the next to last paragraph of the article, can only be arrived at by subtracting 23,457 from the City of Worcester official November 7, 2007 election summary (pdf) which shows a total of 96,458 registered voters for that point in time.

The author of Tuesday's article says that she got all of her info for the Tuesday article from "the office", but it's not clear whether "the office" is the T&G or City Hall. She also says that 15,000 voters were pared from the registered voter list at City Hall this year, and that this was reported by Nick Kotsopoulos in an article on March 5th.

Heh. Well, actually, according to Nick's March 5th article it was 14,955 voters that were taken off the list. But what's 45 registered voters when that 2007 number is so far out of whack here?

After a couple of days with no further explanations, I still find it impossible to reconcile the 73,001 number reported in that article for November 2007 with the city's election summary for November 2007.

According to Tuesday's article, there are 90,730 registered voters in the City of Worcester as of October 14th. That number can be reconciled. It's a credible number. According to the March 5th article, the number stood at 88,156 in March. The difference between the March 5th and the October 14th totals is 2,574.

Yet, using simple subtraction... The graphic in Tuesday's article reported the following increases since 2007: District One - 3,391 newly registered voters; District Two - 3,647 newly registered voters; District Three - 3,373 newly registered voters; District Four - 3,941 newly registered voters; and District Five - 3,377 newly registered voters... Add them all up and I get an alleged total of 17,729 newly registered voters.

I just can't reconcile those numbers to anything.

If I go back to the March 5th article's total of 88,156, that many newly registered voters would bring the total to 105,885. Yet, the Tuesday article reports 15,155 fewer than that.

Well, I suppose if somebody subtracts ABOUT 15,000 voters from various official totals TWICE, then you can come up with this 73,001 number for two years ago. How that can be reported in the paper, though, absolutely mystifies me.

I mean, no matter how I slice this, the official report from the City of Worcester for the November 2007 election lists 96,458 registered voters. In March of this year, 14,955 were removed from the total, which would bring the November 2007 total down to 81503. Subtracting that total from the new total for October 14th (90,730), I get an increase of newly registered voters totalling 9,227, for the period covering the past two years.

Unfortunately, that's still a net loss of 5,728 registered voters since 2007. Even more interesting, though, it's a net loss of 12,381 since last November, the Presidential election... and I'll just bet you thought I had nothing new to add in all of this, but here comes the magic number: 14,955.

That's the number purged from the voter lists this past March. And there's another number that pops up in relation to that one, too. Remember the difference between the totals for March and the totals for October 14th? The difference was 2,574. If you add 2,574 to the net loss of 12,381 since last November, you get EXACTLY 14,955.

Isn't arithmetic fun? All the figures reported by the city add up and agree with Nick's figures in his March 5th article, along with the October 14th figure cited in this past Tuesday's article.

It's that 73,001 number that's utterly bogus. And it's that graphic detailing a total of 17,729 newly registered voters in the city, which lacks any slightest credibility at all. The WHOLE ARTICLE is based on the alleged INCREASE of voters since 2007. But there was neither an increase over the city's reported total for 2007, nor an increase over 2008's reported totals from the city. Both comparisons yield a net DECREASE in registered voters, as of October 14th's totals.

Some may call Tuesday's article "news".

I call it "fudge".
_

Happy 40th: The Internet

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the birth of the internet.

The Importance of Voting

When societal or community majorities do not elect our representatives, special interests do. And it's the special interests that get those elected officials' attention between elections.

It is a self-perpetuating, iterative progression away from democracy when fewer and fewer people actually vote in elections. The fewer who vote, the fewer who control. The fewer who control, the less anyone who can lead opinion will want to change it.

How your tax dollars get spent, ultimately, will be to enable further control and keep business moving further and further down this road... as usual.

Wake up, Worcester voters! Election day is less than a week away! And everything begins right here at the local level.

It doesn't get any more important than this.

Haller Spotting

I spotted Barbara Haller this morning at the intersection of Pleasant and Park.

Barbara's the second candidate I've spotted this week doing a campaign stand-out, and the third so far for the whole campaign season.

Counting today and election day, there's only four more weekdays left (when people commute regularly) for this type of campaining.

Obfuscating the Issue

The software for the voting machines has already been abundantly proven to be easily hacked, whether the source code is publicly available or not.

The only real issue with voting machines is whether individual voters' ballot selections are recorded on a permanent hard copy... whether this is a paper ballot, a plastic ballot, or a ballot made out of some as yet uninvented material, the ability to recount them by hand is the basic issue.

Hosting the Bad News

The Deval of Patrick will be in town today for a scheduled appearance at Business Expo, at the DCU... then hang around our fair city to announce his bad news.

How nice of him to excrete his bad news here...

Of course, they're not letting us know when and where this going to happen, far enough ahead of time, so that after I've gone to work today I can know where to AVOID THE TRAFFIC.

The Big Re-Dig - episode 9

Now they're on McGrath Boulevard.

This project started sometime around mid-July on Foster Street, beginning at the intersection of Commercial. Now I have to guess that maybe it will be continuing to at least the Myrtle Street intersection of McGrath?...

Last month, a commenter quoted an e-mail that someone got, which said, "The plan is to make foster street a narrower street, prettier and more garden-y and ultimately less of a cut through for traffic."

The narrowing of Foster Street to make it "less of a cut through" is truly baffling to me. The idea must come from someone who never has to drive in this city. They must have their own personal chauffeur...

A "cut through" for what? Foster Street is a main street. It's not somebody's parking lot that can be used to cut through anything.

Oh well... dropping a lane and cutting the heavy traffic queue space in half sure doesn't seem like such a great idea to me, especially for DCU events.

We'll see...

Links to episodes 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1.

What About Afghanistan? - part 13

The basic scenario with prohibition is that it makes the prohibited commodities so much more expensive.

If you look at the world-wide illicit drug trade, all you're really looking at is a commodities market. Take the propaganda out of the "drug war" and all you've got left is a commodities market. That these particular agricultural commodities are traded on a black market really makes no difference. They're still just commodities. And as long a demand for those commodities exists, they will continue to be cultivated, processed, and distributed.

Like all the other traditional, over the counter commodities, these under the counter commodities have their financial analyses published in the biggest media outlets on a regular basis. The UN, for instance, regularly reports on world-wide estimates of crop yields for coca leaves, marijuana, and poppies, along with their subsequenly processed (or packaged) products: cocaine, pot, and opium or heroin, respectively. These reports are just as valuable to the commodities traders on the black market as are the myriad government reports on other agricultural commodities.

And, just like the wheelings and dealings that go on with commodities like pork bellies and corn, the wheelings and dealings that go on in the black market of illicit commodities often get reported, too. For instance, yesterday the NY Times reported on Hamid Karzai's brother.

It's impossible for me to even guess why this alleged CIA asset would be thrown under the bus at this point, but... well, there it is. Who can possibly judge the efficacy of ongoing clandestine programs?

I certainly can't.

But when it comes to "strategy" in Afghanistan, the biggest 500 pound gorilla on the planet is always going to be right there in the room, because the simple fact is that this country is the world's largest exporter of opium. The US invaded Afghanistan after somebody shut that production almost completely off. And then right after the US invaded, that production got turned right back on again.

I've been continuing this meme, on and off, since January of 2006. My musings have focused on different aspects of this thing, and my view of it has certainly evolved somewhat over the years. At this point, though, no synopsis is possible. The players in this "war" in Afghanistan comprise a very large onion with too many layers to understand from the outside.

All I can do is observe and wonder, "Will it ever make sense?"

Link to part 12

Life in the Breakdown Lane

Here's what I spent the best part* of my morning looking at today.

It's the electrical sub-station at the beginning of Webster Street, next to the Barrows Hardware store.

I had landed across the street in an empty parking lot, after the cab's engine started dying on me. In a "glass half-full" kind of way, it's nice to not end up broken down in the middle of a busy street or intersection, I suppose.

It didn't take long for the tow truck to come, but it did seem like forever. I think it was probably only about 20 minutes to a half hour. But like a traffic jam that clears in three minutes, it just seems like forever.

The immediate diagnosis at the garage was that the cab may need a new motor, but whatever the problem is, it won't be fixed quickly enough for me to get a decent day in with it. So, now I'm going to spend the rest of the day being a lazy slut...

I mean, let's face it... A day off is a day off, even if it didn't start out that way.

* The "best part" of the morning for a taxi driver in the City of Worcester is rush hour.

News Free Wednesday

I like to take at least one whole day each week wherein I don't watch the news on TV, I don't listen to news on the radio, I don't read the paper, and I only focus on what's actually going on all around me that I can see and hear first-hand.

The idea of "news" being important gets overblown. It's all second-hand information. It's spun up to make it seem more interesting. And it's mostly stuff that will never have any slightest direct effect on you or anyone you know.

And then there's stress. A constant diet of "news" raises your stress level significantly. But you'll never know that unless you try to withdraw from your news addiction...

The addictive power of "news" is only evident if you make an attempt to not pay attention to any of it. Taking a vacation from the constant daily stream of "news" is not only an exercise in withdrawal, but it's also nearly impossible unless you also take a vacation from any social interaction with other people. Try it yourself, if you don't believe me. Don't take in any news from any media, then see how much of the "news" comes your way, anyway... simply in casual contact with others.

There's nothing special about mainstream "news". Anything that's of any real import at all will get spread around by word of mouth within hours, anyway.

I found out about the attack on the twin towers on the morning of 9/11/01 because a fellow employee told me what was happening when I came out of a production planning meeting. I found out that JFK had been shot from my girlfriend at the time, who I was talking to on the telephone. I found out about the Watergate scandal when a friend mentioned it at a party.

If I could enumerate all the news I found out about because somebody began a sentence with "Did you hear about...?" then I'd be typing here all day, and probably well into the the next few days, too.

The point is that you don't really need to feed your head with a constant stream of "news" from the mainstream media. It's only driven by the preconceived notion that "you might miss something important" if you turn away from that chronic blast of "news" for even a minute... never mind a whole day.

Take my word for it, being "the last one to know" about anything the mainstream media is blaring in their headlines this morning will hardly be a detriment to your mood.

Takedown Hall of Shame

I wonder how long it'll take some big corporation to take this site down?

Heh

Martha Coakley gets the Sarah Palin treatment.

Cooties

The folks at Worcester State College have a campus TV station called Lancer Vision. I've embedded a couple of their pieces in the past.

This one was uploaded to YouTube yesterday, just in time for Halloween:

Noise Cum Laude Award

The City Dictator was on the WTAG morning news show this mornng, talking to Jim Polito when I heard him make a pitch for the importance of voting.

That gets my praise. It's the first I've heard any city official speak to this issue without a non-partisan twist during this whole campaign season so far.

But then Jim Polito came back with even more. He pointed out how special interests stand to gain when voter turnout is low.

That also gets my praise, since this is the first I've heard any media outlet in the city make that connection.

So, for about a minute this morning, I heard what I've been ranting about since August on the importance of voting finally coming back out from some other source.

A whole minute! And because of that whole minute, I hereby bequeath my newly minted Noise Cum Laude Award to both the City Dictator and Jim Polito for telling it like it is.

Heh. Keep up the good work, guys!

Planning

The taxi got a new ad pasted onto the skinner the other day.

I'm not all that excited about having an ad on the cab I drive that's connected to any controversy. But I have no choice in that matter.

My basic stand on abortion, quite frankly, is that men should have absolutely no voice in this debate.

So I don't voice my opinion on abortion.

But I do voice my opinion on things that evidence poor planning.

This sign on the cab certainly does provide evidence of poor planning, too...

If you dial that telephone number, you're gonna have a very long wait.

Maybe "planning" works for them, but execution doesn't seem to be working out too well in their advertising department.

O'Brien Spotting

I snagged this picture of Joe O'Brien at Newton Square this morning at quarter of 8.

Joe is only the second candidate that I've had a chance to get a picture of campaigning on a stand-out so far this season. The first one was way back, over a month ago...

But for Gary Rosen's ubiquitous presence on streetcorners during the 2007 campaign season, though, I guess the seeming dearth of photo-ops for me isn't surprising. I mean, Gary did have an advantage... he was retired and had lots of time on his hands.

Joe isn't retired, and I actually just caught him before he had to rush down to the WCRN studio for a spot on the Peter Blute show.

I've had two brief opportunities to meet Joe, now. And he seems like a smart guy. Being well-connected politically may be a boon or a bane for his campaign against Konnie Lukes for the Mayor's spot, though, so I guess the answer to which that is won't be known until the ballots are counted.

Meanwhile, I had already decided to vote for Joe in the Council race. I had been undecided about Mayor, though, until this past few days. But I'll leave all that for the prior posts.

I think having Joe on the City Council would be a good thing. He has a lot to bring to the table, and there's no doubt that he knows a lot of people. And living behind Beacon Pharmacy all this time really does have to count for something, from where I'm standing.

Imagine how different our city would be if all the Mayors and Council members we've had over the years had lived in the heart of the urban core. I think things would most definitely be different.

T&G Numbers

According to the graphic in today's paper, there were 73,001 registered voters in the City of Worcester on November 1, 2007. The article refers to that number again in the next to last paragraph.

Five days later, on November 6, 2007, the City of Worcester produced an election report (pdf) enumerating (last page, bottom line, first column) 96,458 registered voters in the city.

Now, I don't know about anyone else, but when I see this kind of thing, I find it to be very weird. It bothers me, so I post about these things here.

The difference is 23,457 registered voters.

How can the T&G report such a huge difference without any direct links, without any reference to what the City officially claims in reports that have been available online all along? The graphic only says "Source: Worcester Election Commission". I'm sorry, though, I just couldn't find anything on the city website that even comes close such a radically lower number of registered voters in November of 2007.

If you look at the second column, next to the total of registered voters in the City's report, you'll see that even the total number of people who actually voted in the 2007 election was less than that huge difference... 21,532 people voted on November 6, 2007.

I thought, well, maybe I should give the T&G the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they got those numbers from a subsequent report that showed some massive attrition. Maybe they just got the date wrong. So I looked up the City of Worcester's report on last year's national election (pdf).

Well, gosh! The total number of registered voters in Worcester, reported on the last page, bottom line, first column... It went up! Last year it was 103,111.

In 2006, it was 93,053. In 2005, it was 100,602. In 2004, it was 100,048...

I'd go on, but what's the point?

Well, I guess the point is that the T&G now has a possible lead for a much more important story. If the "Worcester Election Commission" supplied this 11-1-07 number of 73,001 registered voters, along with the breakdown by district, then our current "Election Commission" has somehow lost 23,457 registered voters from their records!!!

That would certainly be "newsworthy", now, wouldn't it?

So... really. I have to ask: What's the story, morning glory? Do we have a newspaper that's totally incapable of reporting facts? Or do we have a huge scandal in the city's Election Commission? Or maybe someone else can suggest another explanation because, frankly, the way this story stands... there is something VERY WRONG here.

The Konnie Lukes Embroglio

What a curious and perplexing state of affairs this is.

It began with Clive's October Surprise on Friday.

Something just doesn't smell right about the timing of this whole thing, though, from where I sit. It reminds me of the way that Tom Hoover was suddenly massacred by the "good old boy network", all those years ago. Konnie was the only one making any noise at all about what a piece of work THAT was. That episode in Worcester's political history is what moved me to vote for Konnie Lukes, ever since.

How easily people forget why Konnie got elected Mayor in this town.

I tend to side with the underdog in a public smear campaign, whether I would've supported them otherwise, or not. I sided with Bob Spellane when the T&G initiated a smear campaign against him just a couple of short weeks before last year's election, magically reporting on their favorite also-ran candidates the very next day. Truly amazing, how those candidates were all saddled up and ready to go in just 24 hours, eh? And I sided with Donna C. Byrnes when the T&G successfully smeared her completely out of any possible employment in just one day last March, after her having worked there for fifteen years. And I ended up voting for Mike Germain for City Council two years ago, after some anonymous scumbag sent out a mailing of non-public records, in an attempt to smear him just a short time before that election.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I do not view smear campaigns as a valid form of getting information out into the public forum, especially when it's just a few days before an election. I especially consider it to be the least responsible brand of so-called "journalism" when the ONLY benefit is for the newspaper's favorite candidate(s).

Jim Lukes took advice from his insurance agent, and registered a couple of cars in Yarmouth. I would do the same if I had a place in Yarmouth. If I had a place in New Hampshire, I'd register everything there.

Who the hell WOULDN'T?

But I'm sure that Jim is in the dog-house now!

The point being that although Konnie's been publicly embarrassed by what her husband has done, this is nothing but a well-timed "October surprise" that benefits ONLY the candidate(s) the newspaper would like to see elected. It's the kind of low, dirty, rotten, douchebag "journalism" the T&G has been routinely engaging in for so long, now, that they probably really believe that they're "fair and balanced" and "professionally ethical" in this kind of smearing.

They are not.

Now the Section 19 crowd is going to pile on and do whatever they can to throw Konnie under the bus. That pretty much ends any doubts I might have had about the true meaning of Section 19 for this city. This latest piling on is nothing but a lynch mob, riding on the coat-tails of a smear, championing a cause that the taxpayers in this city would most likely reject if they had enough time to hear all sides.

But they won't have enough time to hear all sides. That's why this brand of guttersnipe smearing works so well... so close to an election. This isn't "news", it's the wielding of influence over public opinion.

Konnie Lukes will most definitely get my vote on November 3rd. She doesn't deserve this lynch mob, not by a long shot. And if the only "dirt" anyone can dig up on her is that her husband registered a couple of cars in Yarmouth, that ought to pretty much tell the real story.

The Glob

Boston Globe has placed 18th in the ranking of city dailies across the nation, by circulation. Their latest circulation figures, reported here, are down 18.48%.

Vaccine - Autism Link

It goes back to items such as this report on Huffington Post over a year and a half ago.

Eh?

Things that make you go "hmmmm..."

Netflix's Inevitable Problem - Hollywood

I honestly thought this would happen a lot sooner, but now that I think about it... It makes sense that Hollywood wouldn't start pissing and moaning about "lost revenue" if Netflix wasn't booming.

But what has made me think something like this was imminent came in the form of the occasional message on the screen with movies we've gotten from Netflix. Every once in a while, I've seen a disclaimer saying the DVD we're watching is "for sale only"... That's what Tom Wolfe called "screwin' the pooch".

Fall Foliage 11

I took the first picture on Elm Street, near West.

And the second one was at the corner of Pleasant and Richmond.

With the early morning sun hitting them at a low angle, they seem to blaze much more brightly than at any other time of the day.

High End Sales

From the Sucker Born Every Minute department: audio grade power outlets.

Bedbug News

Here's the Wikipedia entry on bedbugs. And here's Clive's column today, about a bedbug infestation in an apartment at Upland Gardens.

Yick!

Years ago, I stayed one night at a cheap hotel. I woke up with bug bites. To make a long, nightmarish story short, I finally ended up destroying all my clothes and all the (fabric covered) furniture in my (at the time) miserably furnished little apartment.

Early in that horrific adventure, I found one of the little rascals and was able to identify the problem: bedbugs. But that wasn't before going through a long list of other possibilities such as maybe having come down with some disease that caused sore spots that seemed like bug bites, and then later on, a list of possible bugs.

The Upland Gardens story seems to me like a bizarre twist, though... Bedbug infestations go to Housing Court???

Does this mean that I was remiss in not trying to sue the cheap hotel I stayed at, all those years ago?

The way I come away from Clive's column today is a reaffirmation of the changes that've taken place in our society, where taking responsibility for the condition you're in requires that you get a lawyer to make somebody else pay. I was truly surprised to learn that bedbug infestations are a matter for the Housing Court...

But if a bedbug infestation is the most important story that Clive can dig up nine days before the local election, I guess I just have to shake my head ...and then doff my hat and bow obsequiously to one of the city's professional journalists who must certainly know what's most important for the public to be "informed" about today.

First Sunday in November

Per the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Daylight Savings Time will end on the first Sunday in November.

That's next weekend.

I always like to ask: Will any of the daylight that we "saved" this season be available for withdrawal to help with the heat this winter?

The "energy saving" rationale for this system of clock shifting is not based in actual science. In fact, the only scientific study of DST's effect on "energy savings" was done last year in a uniquely suited area of the country. The conclusion? "Our main finding is that—contrary to the policy's intent—DST increases residential electricity demand."

DST was not a Benjamin Franklin idea, by the way. He was much too smart to have promoted such a moronic idea. Rather, DST was first conceived of by William Willett, an early 20th century British businessman who simply hated the idea of having to stop playing golf at dusk.

Hardly anyone else could possibly benefit from this supremely annoying tradition...

Although, the way things are now, I wouldn't be surprised to see some out of work software programmers at intersections towards the end of this week, sporting signs that say, "Will re-set your clocks for food."
_

Another Think Coming

An excellent piece by Karen Armstrong over at Foreign Policy, concerning some interesting positions espoused by both religious radicals and dogmatic atheists who, as far as I can see, comprise the entire unreasonable cadre of "true believers" in any so-called holy war that might be going on now.

From Our Sister City in England

From the very brief description that says, "sixways worcester last choir standing", I'm assuming that these guys participated in this event. Whatever the background, however, this choir's rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody just made my day!

Watch the whole thing:

T&G Nail-Biter

After all these long years of the T&G being nothing but an out-of-town corporation's bauble, returning to local ownership of the T&G would be one of the better things that could happen. The current nail-biting wait is, without any slightest wise-ass angle on my part, leaving me on the edge of my seat.

It would be a return to the core of that old industry's roots: local control by influence peddlers with deep enough pockets to actually go the distance and make it work.

I have no major objection to newspapers being in the business of wielding political influence and molding public opinion, because that's what they've always been engaged in. Riding on the financially robust coat-tails of advertising to a captured audience, the only thing that's really changed over the years is the advertising landscape... Newspapers no longer have a corner on that market. And the vast dilution of advertising rates is merely a function of available media having expanded wildly beyond the narrow distribution spheres of hard copy publications.

The change has been a demonstration of how the law of supply and demand affects prices, in this case it's the price of advertising.

Having local control would put local faces on the banner.

For too many years, the T&G has had no real soul, leaving the machinations of the crew at 20 Franklin to run on spiritual empty all that time. Never knowing if you'll have a job tomorrow can hardly add any enthusiasm or life to what has to have become a stressful, agonizing daily grind with no light shining from the end of any tunnel.

Being a mere bauble for some out of town corporation whose only interest is to suck out the revenue, the T&G has ended up looking like some weirdly anarchic and schizoid purveyor of disconnected influence and public opinion molding. No clear direction, no clear agenda, and no clearly defined local interest for this paper has left it trying to go in too many different directions at once... for much too long.

Without local ownership, any agenda(s) have lately been coming from too many hidden, undiscoverable, and in many cases, extremely petty angles.

I don't care WHAT the agenda is. I just want to KNOW where that agenda comes from. Having the buck stop at the local level would make all the difference in the world.

Montvale Historic Mosquito Breeding Project

I took this picture of the tennis court at 1 Montvale Road back in April of 2008.

Can you see the tennis court back there behind the trees in the foreground? All I could see there was overgrowth, a rusted out fence, and standing water that's a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes.

At the time, there was a big fuss in town over the blatant attempt by certain special people in the neighborhood to abuse Hysterical Commission influence and spot zone this tennis court for the sole purpose of preventing a prospective buyer from doing what they wanted with the property. (At the end of this post is a chronological list of links to my posts about it as it happened.)

Honestly, I thought this whole thing was over. But today we find that it is not over.

The first interesting bit of info about this most recent chapter is that 1 Montvale Road had continued to remain empty all that time, and never got sold until this past August. The second interesting bit of info is that, contrary to Phil Palmieri's efforts last year to broker a completely different outcome, the neighbors introduced themselves to the new owners of 1 Montvale Road with a great big surprise: they're going to move forward with their original effort to spot zone the tennis court!

Can you believe this?!?!?

Money quote: "The former owners of One Montvale bought the tennis court lot from a neighbor in 1959, 41 years after the house was built. Last year, a member of the Regional Advisory Council of Preservation Worcester appeared before a City Council subcommittee and said that adding the tennis court to the historic district would “undermine the integrity” of the process because it has no historic significance."

Yet, it now looks to me like the underminers of integrity in the oh-so-special neighborhood apparently feel that an immigrant from India has no right to oppose them. Here's a very bright, top of the class couple at the outset of their lives, who want to RESTORE THE TENNIS COURT! And these smug, no class perverters of public process want to go down this same old path of claiming there's some kind of "historic significance" to this overgrown, rusted out mosquito breeding ground???

At this point, I would vote to allow the new owners to immediately sell that property to McDonald's, and fast-track the re-zoning of the whole area for commercial redevelopment. The Tibrewals are obviously not welcome in that oh-so-special neighborhood. And that neighborhood... that ghetto of oh-so-special people... deserves no further undue influence in this town.

[Aside: As a thirteenth generation direct descendant of white English immigrants (on both sides) who came to the Mass Bay Colony in the 1630's, and a ninth generation native son of Worcester, I consider that collection of pasty-white Johnny-Come-Lately's wielding their undue influence out of the Montvale and Mass Ave Historic Districts to be the worst example of self-righteous, no integrity, no account perverters of public process to have ever shown up in this town. They deserve nothing less than utter condemnation from this community, with extreme prejudice.]

[Additional Aside: Heh. And if any of those rascals want to compare bloodlines, then have at it. I don't claim any specialness just because I bought an old house.]

Links to last year's stupidity:
March 24, 2008: The Big Hearing
March 26, 2008: Hysterical Commission
March 31, 2008: Montvale Tennis Court
April 5, 2008: A Noteworthy Summation
April 16, 2008: Absolutely Hysterical
April 18, 2008: The Tennis Court
July 25, 2008: All The News That's Fit To Omit

Campaign Issue of the Day: Wormtown

Almost a third of century ago, back when LB Worm said that this city was so dead and coined the only nickname that has ever stuck, it was all about the music. I'm not the only person to co-opt this nickname for Worcester over the years since, because it's probably the most appropriate and unique moniker we can ever hope for.

And it perfectly describes the voting public in this town: so dead.

Our current Mayor was elected by only 7.8% of registered voters in the last local election. Gary Rosen, the top vote getter in the whole city, got only 11%. Heh. And he isn't even bothering to run for re-election.

Go figure. We can only see this brand of uniqueness in a place as dead as Wormtown.

The pity of it is that low voter turnout is the best scenario for business as usual. Ironically, "business as usual" is what most of the dead residents of this dead town complain about between elections.

In this town, you will find that 4 out of 5 people will insist that your vote doesn't count... and that's why they don't bother. It's a justification of the overwhelming majority's willingness to sacrifice democracy to the tiny minority who call the shots in this town.

The only way your vote "won't count" is when you don't vote.

This campaign season I've been focusing on the importance of voting since August, rather than the candidates or the phony "issues" they talk about. But I'm pretty sure I'm pissing into the wind on this subject because... this is Wormtown. And there is not one single high profile shaker and mover in this town who will EVER lift a finger to make this same argument I've been making about how important it is for people to vote... because they only enjoy that high level of influence over those who are elected when voter turnout is as low as possible.

Local elections are, per the Plan E Charter, supposed to be non-partisan. They could be non-partisan if the overwhelming majority of registered voters in town actually voted in local elections. But they're about as highly partisan as they can get when nearly everybody stays home on Election day.

This is why Wormtown will always be Wormtown. And it's why every politician, special interest group, municipal employee union, and media outlet will not EVER want to see a huge voter turnout in a local election. The very thought of waking up the electorate scares them... it would reduce their influence.

And yet, many of those same stuffed shirts will eschew the Wormtown name... the very idea of it bothers them. It's just too damn close to the truth. Then there are others who will smile condescendingly, because they know that keeping this place full of non-voting voters is infinitely easier than the task I've been advocating here.

So, if you ask your candidates what they think "Wormtown" means, and how they feel about it, you should be able to tell pretty quickly that it really DOESN'T matter who you vote for. It DOESN'T really matter who gets elected, here in Wormtown.

All that really matters is WHO GETS THEM ELECTED.

And if YOU don't vote, it most assuredly won't be YOU.

Today It Rained (Tomorrow It'll be Sunny)

Campaign Issue of the Day - Involuntary Servitude

We already know how the incumbents running for re-election to the City Council feel about forcing only a certain class of Worcester residents into involuntarily providing the service of clearing snow and ice off of city property. During this past year, they voted unanimously to jack up the fines if anyone within that one class of Worcester residents doesn't obey.

That only three of the current City Council members belong to that specific class, themselves, hardly excuses their blatant demand for involuntary servitude at the whim of the weather, and only from one specific class of citizen, under threat of monetary forfeiture. Of the three who live in houses they own that also happen to have public sidewalks abutting, only one bothered to clear snow last year when I did a survey after a storm.

I wonder how the challengers would have voted?

No matter... I spent enough time last winter taking random drive-by pictures of sidewalks abutting city property that were ALWAYS covered with snow and ice ALL WINTER LONG. The worst example of this ordinance being all about revenue from fines, as opposed to the so-called "safety" of the pedestrian public, was at our city schools... y'know?... where children have to walk every day? Here's part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 in a series of posts I made on January 10th of this year, long after the ordinance's 10 hour post-storm window had passed... long after any snow had fallen for a few days, in fact.

If you do a search of this blog using the words "snow sidewalk", you'll find more than enough examples of many other public sidewalks that were not only treacherous and dangerous all winter long, but which abut city property. Then there's the commercial property whose owners, quite frankly, can certainly afford the fines and the billing for the cost of cleaning snow and ice off those sidewalks in a timely manner, which I documented extensively all winter long last year, but never saw any slightest improvement.

The ordinance has done nothing but garner fines from residents who are too old to fight City Hall. I've transported enough elderly people in my cab who tell me how the city treated them on this matter to have ended up more than just outraged.

No change in the level of safety was effected at all, not in the year(s) before the fines were jacked up, nor in this past season afterwards. The illogic of this ordinance (along with it's order contrary to the thirteenth amendment of the US Constitution) would make the demand of residents also clearing snow and ice off any section of the whole street abutting their property no less a part of the rationale. Why only the sidewalk? Why not the whole street?

This issue, all by itself, is enough to make me want to vote against ALL the incumbent candidates.

Worcester's Plan E Charter

Al Southwick wrote a concise retrospective of Worcester's form of government, published in Thursday's paper, that anyone involved either in pushing for charter change, or pushing against it, would probably find interesting.

Heh

Never underestimate the power of a great story.
_

508 Reasons to Vote Against All Incumbents

Concrete

The Roman Pantheon dome is made of concrete.

I had never run across this interesting bit of information before. (I had always thought all those ancient buildings remained standing for so long was because they were made of stone.) But after reading that modern day science is almost at the point of being able to finally figure out how to make concrete that's... well... maybe almost as good, I surfed around and read a little more about this concrete dome that's lasted 180 times longer than any concrete sidewalk in America.

Basically, I'm still trying to get my arms around the idea that all the concrete, and even all the reinforced concrete that's been used to build our infrastructure here in America is inferior... all of it, every single cubic yard is inferior to the un-reinforced concrete used nearly 19 centuries ago to build that dome on top of the Roman Pantheon.

Oh yeah, and I'm still trying to digest the fact that development is only being done now so that they might be able to make impregnable bunkers...

...which means that if they succeed in figuring out how the ancient Romans did it, it will have to be state secret.

Meh.

280 Days

Can you believe it? 280 days have passed, and the court has yet to make a judgment in the civil case that the T&G brought against the city in the matter of public records being inordinately redacted.

The best article ever written on RedactionGate is over at Worcester IndyMedia.

Even the comments are interesting.
_

T.G.I.F.

I was sitting in traffic this morning, listening to Jim Polito on WTAG... something that, for want of a better word, I "suffer" through each morning... mostly because they have the best local reports on traffic conditions around Worcester.

[Aside: I mean, if you listen to WCRN, and suffer through the rantings of that pro-torture idiot Peter Blute, the traffic reports come from "Frankie Fox" (they should get her to do the disclaimer lists on TV drug ads)... usually inaccurate for Worcester, completely annoying, an auditory version of pure hell, and utterly useless.]

Anyway, this morning on the WTAG morning news, they got a phone call from City Council candidate Emmanuel Tsitsilianos, objecting to Jim Polito's characterization of him being in agreement with Joe O'Brien and Kate Toomey regarding their support of Section 19.

Jim asked, "Do you support Section 19?"

Tsitsilianos answered, "No."

How, then, to explain the clear assertion of exactly the opposite reported in the paper today?

Heh. I mean, this really can't be any more blatant and clear: the T&G is so full of spin, they can't even get this candidate's position on a major issue right!

What I'd really like to see in the local blogosphere is for someone to start posting regularly about what a great newspaper the T&G is... how accurate and unbiased they are. How they do our community such a great service, and how professional and admirable they are as an asset to our lives and our social order.

But until someone can produce grist for that mill on a regular basis, it's going to be very difficult to change my opinion of what a useless dinosaur that organization is.
_

RMV and AAA

I'm in agreement with the anonymous pontificator(s) on this one.

Every once in a while, I pick someone up in the cab and they say they want to go to the Registry at Main and Myrtle. Lately, these occasional rides are all coming in in the morning. Every time, we pull into the Registry of Motor Vehicles parking lot and see a very long line waiting for the place to open.

Yesterday, I dropped a guy down there at quarter past nine to get a place in the line... for the ten o'clock opening.

The line was already snaking out into the parking lot.

Prior to the most recent spate of RMV office closings, I had NEVER seen this before.

I'm greatly disposed to be pro-union, but there is just no valid reason to disallow the AAA from helping out in this current situation.

Clive's October Surprise

Heh. If I had any reason to suspect that the T&G only reports "news" when and how it suits them, Clive McFarlane's column today pretty much seals the deal. This "story" is, in point of actual fact (a fact that even Clive was unwilling to omit from his piece today), TEN YEARS OLD.

This pathetic excuse for an exposé, slipped into the news cycle a mere 12 days before the election, is the absolute lowest form of so-called "professional journalism" I can imagine.

The T&G pulled this same tactic with their smear campaign against Bob Spellane that began last year on October 19th. Magically, the T&G's favorite also-rans appeared out of nowhere the very next day, fully prepared with their sticker campaigns.

Contrary to what so many commenters to my posts complained about concerning that spate of scumbag "news" last year, it's hardly a matter of fact checking. It's a matter of not reporting "news" for months on end, long after it's actually "new" information, just so that the T&G's maximum "influence" on the public can be exerted for their own purposes. In Spellane's case it was a matter of holding onto the so-called "news" for several months. Spilling it into the news cycle so close to the election was a tactic of influence, not news reporting. It is the lowest form of "journalism". I call it yellow-belly smearing.

The sad fact is that if the T&G was staffed by truly "responsible" journalists who impartially reported this kind of news as it arrived, as it actually occurred, in a timely "fair and balanced" manner, and without the petty agenda timing and spinning, Bob Spellane may well have lost that election. People would've had enough time to see what had been going on and digest it, and other candidates could've been revealed to the public and honestly evaluated.

But the T&G always chooses this underhanded brand of sensationalism, underhanded picking and choosing and spinning... the lowest form of yellow journalism on the planet.

And so, here we go again, with a TEN YEAR OLD "story" about the Mayor's husband keeping cars at their place in Yarmouth, TWELVE DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION!!!

Clive, you've made up my mind. I'm voting for Konnie on November 3rd. I'm voting for Konnie to be on the City Council, and I'm voting for her to be Mayor.

Honestly, I was seriously considering voting for Joe O'Brien, despite Dianne Williamson's gushing endorsement back in the middle of the summer. But now, just a mere dozen days before the election, the T&G chooses to pull this underhanded bullshit again?...

Clive, how you sleep at night is a complete mystery to me.

Bloglog Spelling Errors

Derek Ring made a post to his blog, Fire Bad, on October 11, and it got highlighted in the online bloglog the next day. Although the online link does go to the post that Derek made, the spelling of the link text is wrong. Of course, if they misspelled the printed link in the weekly paper, nobody would be able to use it.

This is a minor mistake. But there's classic irony here, and Derek produced a true LOL out of me when he pointed it out yesterday.
_

Media as Propaganda

This excellent piece by Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism last week has been making the rounds over the last few days... I especially like this part: "The private sector has learned the lesson of the Bush Administration, that the threat of freezing a reporter out is a powerful weapon. I have had some well connected readers tell of story ideas that they served up in some detail that the media would not touch out of fear of alienating their sources. This is the sort of thing that one associates with banana republics, but we have been operating on that level for quite some time."

New England Media Group - Still Crashing

Just when you think it can't possibly get any worse... it does.

Craigslist - Not Liable

I'm sure that all the noosepaper companies are VERY unhappy with this story.

Heh. That's probably why none of them are reporting it, but for a couple papers in Chicago... despite the Judge having made the ruling on Tuesday.

Now They Tell Us

This article from yesterday on Politics Daily didn't surprise me.

I've suspected that the increase in worldwide ambient radiation from nuclear weapons testing following WWII was the cause of a coincident increase in cancer, since long before I wrote this blog post in July of 2006.

When special interests in the military-industrial complex are confronted with facts that show what they're doing can adversely affect us all, why shouldn't I believe that they will lie about it? And that they will continue to lie about it, year after year, until finally... when the facts can no longer be hidden, it's just too late to do anything about it.

Someone please tell me why I shouldn't believe that it's only gotten worse... and that they lie about everything now.

The Other Sarah Palin Book

From the Great Prevaricator's hatchet man.

Heh

It's Fuzzy in Fitchburg

Sunrise

Sunrise this morning over Pleasant Street, at Merrick.

Lego-mation Star Wars

Created by seventh grade students at Worcester East Middle School:

Preserving the Past

It's a respectable endeavor, making developers pause and take a breath before they tear down an old building. Making way for new development isn't always going to boost our local economic engine so much that it warrants the destruction of buildings that, no matter what their condition, represent a significant link to the past.

Once it's gone, it's gone forever.

But I've long wondered why the preservation crowd never applied this logic to the downtown mall...

The galleria was, inarguably, one of the most stunning and spectacular indoor spaces that has ever been created in this city. We will likely never see anything like it again. Where all the other "preserved" buildings in town are mostly notable for their outward appearance, the mall is just the opposite. When it was thriving, I used to stand on one end of the upper level and "people watch" because there was no other place, anywhere in the area, where such a huge indoor space afforded such a unique opportunity, year 'round.

The reason the galleria probably isn't an object of affection for the preservation crowd, though, is that it's not old enough. And another reason is that the original function for the building, retail sales, was a dismal failure... not just once, but twice. In addition, it replaced a collection of older buildings that, had they been preserved and refurbished, would have given Worcester a decidedly different fate over the past few decades.

Consequently, most of us who live here would be willing to sport bumper stickers that say, "Tear Down The Mall". And I'm no exception.

Politicians, Whores, and Ugly Buildings all gain some measure of respectability if they last long enough. But the empty mall hasn't reached that milestone.

If we were all to just suddenly decide to leave this town, to abandon it and all move out... and then, some 25 or 50 years later, a whole new generation decided to re-populate this place... what do you think they would do with the indoor mall when they discovered it? Would they stand inside it for the first time and wonder? Would they find it something worth preserving from the past? Would they see it as such an iconic representation of a brief period in our history that it must be preserved at all cost? Would they recognize that it is utterly unique, and worth saving?

Probably.

But those of us now living in the time when the ugly abandoned building is still just an ugly abandoned building... we can hardly feel the same way about it.

Hopefully, that mall will be demolished before it gets old enough to qualify for the Hysterical Society to come parading down Front Street screaming, "Don't Tear Down That Building!!!"
_

Holy Cross Candidate Forum

Nick K's article covering the Holy Cross college candidates forum has an interesting headline: "Students ‘discover’ local election".

What voting age college students in Worcester really need to "discover" is which candidates for City Council will try to institute a dorm tax sometime during the next two years.

The Warning

I just watched "The Warning" on PBS. The full one hour Frontline show is available to watch at this link. It's a very incisive look at the derivitives market, and the history of deregulation that allowed our entire economy to come crashing down around it.

Until I watched this documentary, I had no idea what Alan Greenspan really meant when he told congress, "I was wrong..."

Fall Foliage 10

I snapped this picture just before noon today.

It's at Elm and Park.

And the trees are, appropriately enough, in Elm Park.

Big Sky

I took this shot at the beginning of Brooks Street this morning at 7:30, while waiting to take a left onto West Boylston Street.

Hitting the Nail on the Head

Chief Gemme's criticism (pdf) of the T&G's work environment at 20 Franklin Street is apparently as accurate as it can get.

If you read Clive McFarlane's column today, notice that he "takes umbrage" at the Chief's calling attention to the shit-hole that Clive has to go and work in every day... but nowhere in that piece does Clive claim that it ISN'T a shit-hole, that it ISN'T a dingy, dirty, poorly lit cesspool with a decidedly yellowish taint.

Heh. Nobody can say that Clive isn't an accomplished writer... dancing around a simple, completely unanswered fact with an avalanche of peripheral bullshit.

Democracy - Up for a Vote on November 3rd

In 14 days, the City of Worcester will open polling places for registered voters to let our local government know whether you want to have a democratically elected City Council and School Committee for the next two years... or not.

If you don't vote, then you ARE voting to do away with democracy.

Our current Mayor was elected by just under 8% of the registered voters in Worcester in the last election, two years ago. The candidate with the largest number of votes in that whole election had 11%. Yet, over this past two years, scores of irate citizens have come to City Council meetings, over and over again, to protest decisions that were made.

The largest contingent of citizen activists to have done this was the Save Our Poolz coalition, which spent an exhaustive amount of time and effort to draw together scores of people from all around the city and come up with a solution to the closing of city swimming pools. After many meetings, consultations with professionals, and even some decent coverage by a grudging press (ultimately, they couldn't ignore THAT many people coming together over one issue!), our City Council voted to do exactly the opposite of what this group had worked so hard and long to recommend.

In other words, our "elected" officials simply didn't think that what this group of citizens had to say was worth listening to... this group just wasn't made up of "the right people"... The only ones they'll really pay attention to are those who comprise that small minority who got them into office.

Some members of the coalition were quoted in the paper, afterward, complaining that "democracy" had not been served.

On November 3rd, however, democracy has a ONE chance to be served in Worcester.

It's the ONLY chance the citizens of Worcester will have to exercise their right to vote for the next two years, and participate in a democracy.

We are now living with the consequences of giving up our democracy to special interests by not voting in elections. Lobbyists, not voters, control our national congress. Lobbyists, not voters, control our state legislature.

Who do you think has been calling the shots in Worcester?

...well, it certainly hasn't been the overwhelming majority of registered voters.

Chief Gemme on the Jordan Levy Show

I watched the segment of the Jordan Levy show today with Worcester Police Chief Gary Gemme on cable channel 3. (Watching the Jordan Levy show is a chore, but this was one I wanted to see.)

The thing that never came up in this 45 minute segment was exactly what Chief Gemme has managed to do during his five year watch: make a difference.

The T&G can piss and moan about "bad cops" all they want, but the simple fact is this... If the chief hadn't been doing his job, the T&G never would've had anything negative to write about AT ALL.

When police officers cross the line, a bad Chief of Police would just look the other way and do nothing. But under Chief Gemme's watch, officers who have crossed the line no longer work for the department anymore.

This simple fact is what matters.

That the T&G has constantly spun this great work by the Chief into some bizarre anti-cop campaign for the past year is utterly contemptible.

The perception here in Worcester that the T&G has somehow made a difference, that they have somehow "exposed" bad cops is the biggest lie of all. Nothing the T&G has reported was the result of their "investigative journalism" but simply the anti-cop spin of things that happened ONLY as a result of Chief Gemme refusing to let cops cross the line in this town.

Here's the sequence every time: Cop crosses the line, cop gets disciplined, T&G finds out about it and then spins the story to make it look like Chief Gemme isn't doing his job and the department is full of bad cops protecting their own.

And everybody believes this crap in the paper?

Gimme a break! Many of the anti-cop comments I've had to moderate into the trashcan are just parroting the T&G's anti-cop propaganda, and although I certainly sympathize with people who fall prey to such artfully spun yellow journalism, pandering so heavily to emotion and so utterly devoid of "fair and balanced" that it's simply a joke... I certainly don't claim to be some rigid "law and order" type who grouses at anyone challenging the "thin blue line" paradigm.

The community and the police have to work together. We can't be enemies, as the T&G has been working so hard to promote all this time.

This latest development has a long evolution behind it (see previous post), and sad to say, it's hardly coming to a head with this latest development.

It's only gotten worse. And it's beyond my ability to even imagine that tonight's City Council meeting could possibly effect anything to make it better.

...we'll see.
_