What does Massachusetts want in a US Senate candidate?
US Sen. Scott Brown seems convinced we want someone who can work with Republicans and Democrats in Washington, who believes specific issues and ideological purity are less important than getting things done. His latest ad, an endorsement from former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn, makes the case forcefully.
Flynn calls the Republican senator “a regular guy” and “an independent voice” in Washington. “I’m a Democrat, but I’m tired of all the polarization, the pettiness, the bickering. Scott Brown is a person that you can work with,” Flynn says.
At campaign stops and in her commercials, Democrat Elizabeth Warren seems more focused on specific issues. Her latest TV ad, for example, asks why we aren’t rebuilding America. “Our competitors are putting people to work, building a future,” she says in the ad. “China invests 9 percent of its GDP in infrastructure. America? We’re at just 2.4 percent. We can do better.”
Warren has taken heat from the right for proposing another stimulus and comparing the United States to China. The Herald editorial page, for example, asks: “How did China — one of the world’s most repressive regimes — get to be your role model?” Brown, meanwhile, takes a hit in a Globe issues piece for abandoning his pro-environment stances when he left Beacon Hill for Capitol Hill.
What kind of a US Senate candidate do you want?
–BRUCE MOHL
BEACON HILL
The jobs bill includes a little-noticed provision preventing commercial landlords from opting out of an approved business improvement district, CommonWealth reports.
The Lowell Sun, in an editorial, applauds the health care cost containment bill as a good first step but laments the loss of the luxury tax. WBUR’s Martha Bebinger has a hard time finding out what an MRI is going to cost her.
A Berkshire Eagle editorial considers the “messy democracy” of the right-to-repair bill: the last- minute compromise renders the ballot question moot, so now the opposing sides plan to work together to get voters to reject the question planned for the fall ballot — which has an earlier implementation date than the compromise legislation.
Gov. Deval Patrick quietly signs the three-strikes crime bill. Worcester Telegram & Gazette columnist Clive McFarlane praises some elements of the new crime law, but in the end says he wishes the governor didn’t sign it. Les Gosule appears on NECN’s Broadside.
Patrick cancels his annual barbeque for lawmakers at his Richmond home, after scores of lawmakers declined his invitation.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell vetoed raises for the City Council, which councilors say reneges on a deal they had with him.
A Fall River city councilor charged by a South Shore business group with conflict of interest violations produced a letter he got from the state Ethics Commission absolving him of any wrongdoing.
Milton selectmen vote — again — to terminate the town administrator.
Joe Battenfeld predicts that Boston Mayor Tom Menino, who has $600,000 sitting in his campaign account, will cruise to a sixth term next year without any serious opposition.
RELIGION
The issue of restrictions placed on unused property sales by the Catholic church was first featured in CommonWealth and it seems to be getting more attention. The Worcester Diocese says it backed out of a sale of a former treatment center for pedophile priests that two men wanted to convert to a banquet hall because the buyers’ finances were questionable. But a Telegram & Gazette columnist finds an email from a monsignor citing the men’s gay marriage and fears that they will perform gay marriages there as the real reason. Meanwhile, the Boston Archdiocese, which has been refusing to rent or sell closed schools in Lawrence to charter school operators, agrees to lease the shuttered Our Lady of Good Counsel in that city to an alternative high school program run by The Phoenix Charter School Foundation in Chelsea.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
The University of Southern California partners with Arnold Schwarzenegger on a think tank dedicated to finding bipartisan solutions to pressing policy issues, Governing reports.
Washington state offers voter registration on Facebook, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
ELECTION 2012
Rich Lowry at the National Review says it’s the media, not Mitt Romney, that had a bad trip overseas.
Romney is promising a whopping 12 million new jobs over four years if he is elected, CNN reports. Impressive-sounding numbers haven’t been kind to Romney lately, though — the Brookings Institution just said his plan to cut everyone’s taxes by 20 percent while also slashing the deficit is mathematically impossible.
The Globe looks at Romney’s attachment to the view that culture is the great driver of the economic fortune of societies.
FISHING
New fishing stock reports could trigger even more drastic cuts in catch limits — some as high as 70 percent — by federal regulators in 2013.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Paul Krugman rips the federal regulator overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
EDUCATION
The head of the Lawrence Teachers Union says the state takeover of the city’s schools has turned into a full-scale assault on the collective bargaining rights of his members. He likens the situation to what happened in Wisconsin, when Gov. Scott Walker pushed through legislation curtailing the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
The city of Highland Park, Michigan outsources its low-performing school system to a private, for-profit charter school company.
HEALTH CARE
A new report by state Inspector General Greg Sullivan says insurers that contracted with the state to cover Medicaid patients have overpaid for their care, saddling the state $328 million in added costs last year.
Leaders of Signature Healthcare, the owner of Brockton Hospital, will enter talks to change their affiliation from Tufts Medical Center to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
TRANSPORTATION
The lopsided defeat of a sales tax for transportation improvements in Greater Atlanta means support at the local level for transit improvements is not a given, Governing reports.
JetBlue’s CEO uses Twitter to stoke support for the airline coming to Worcester, NECN reports.
Some South Shore commuter rail passengers will be part of a pilot program by the MBTA to test an app that allows riders to purchase and use passes on their smart phones.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
The Navy has announced a plan to clean up some toxic areas at the former South Weymouth Naval Air Base, which is being redeveloped into a mixed use project.
The state’s shark expert meets the victim of the presumed great white shark attack in Truro; meanwhile, emergency first responders in Wellfleet, Truro, Provincetown, and Eastham meet to align their procedures when there is an attack.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
A group of Brockton women are trying to drive prostitutes out of their neighborhood because they say johns seeking sex are soliciting some of the area residents, including some girls as young as 16, who are not prostitutes.
An attorney for the Rockport schools is preparing to question middle school counselor Howard Kasper, who has been accused of fondling students at the Landmark School in Beverly years ago, the Gloucester Times reports.
Victims react angrily as a rabbi who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing three students at a Brookline religious school in the 1970s is sentenced to probation and not jail.
