Massachusetts Democrant

Brewster is Green... as long as you're a golf course

Golfer HVAC YES, School solar panels NO.

No more dramatic example of how little importance people are placing on alternative energy reared its head at Brewster Town Meeting last night. Presented to the town was a citizen initiated petition to install solar panels on the roof of the Stony Brook Elementary School at a cost of $56,000.

Immediately preceding discussion of that article, the Town Meeting easily approved, with backing of the Selectmen and Finance Committees, $40,000 for the installation of an HVAC system for the function area at Captain's Golf Course. According to the information provided, it is "estimated" the town will gain $18,000 on revenue over 5 years by installing this system.

One of the arguments made against installation of the solar panels was that this would just be a drop in the bucket and may take 11-14 years to realize payback on this. I offered the thought that we had just approved $40,000 to spend on the gold course, with a payback $3,600/yr, also an 11 year payback.

Actually, I was way off in that calculation, because I only took into account the $40,000. In 2006, Town Meeting had already appropriated $80,000 for the HVAC system. So now we are talking about a payback of over 30 years for this system.

Yet it was the very same economic argument that was made as the centerpiece in opposing the solar panel petition. The illogical moved swiftly to the absurd when suggestions were made from the Selectmen and Finance Committee that we could save energy by doing wonderful things like turning lights off when they aren't being used, etc., as if this was either a dramatic idea or exclusive of other steps.

The vote to install solar was defeated by about a 2-1 margin. In Brewster, though shalt not look askance at anything related to the beloved golf course. When it comes time to step up to the plate to use alternative energy in the town, Brewster continues to putter along.

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Miscellaneous Rumblings

There is no worse name for a roadway than "The Expressway" in Beantown. And don't even get me started as to how 2 occupants in a vehicle constitute high occupancy for the HOV lane.

Have any of you dated Roger Clemens? Takes the concept of playing on the same team as Wade Boggs to a new definition. Roger may want to call Wade, and discuss Mr. Boggs' ability to will himself invisible.

Speaking of Wade Boggs, wouldn't that be a great name for a Cape Codder?

Just out of curiousity, do any of you use YouTube to look for political videos?

If you are a tech geek like me, you have to check out Yahoo Pipes,a form of what is called a Mashup- ability to aggregate web info from a variety of sources. I made a simple one (simple in that I clones and modified another Pipe) to display restaurants in the Brewster area- http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=e10c2b7a642e1e705086b997552ed8c4 and play a bit.

How come the speed limit on Rt6 from Sagamore to Exit 9 is 55? Can you think of any other 2 lane highway in the state that is still 55?

Of course, we are heading into the tourist season, so subtract 10 mph off the max allowed on any non highway. Towns should invest on some signage that says- "Yes, you just passed....."

Though I know if I ever pass a turn I meant to take, the Blogfather's driveway is listed on maps as allowing turn arounds. Only one on the entire Cape.

And you can bet, the toll isn't a quarter....

How to shoot yourself in the foot- I was thinking the new CapeX bus from Harwich to TF Green was a great idea. Well, ok, it's still a great idea, but I'm not sure about the price level. Round trip from Barnstable to the airport is $55.  P&B does the Logan run for $41 round trip.

I see Don Howell is going to run again for state rep, hoping to unseat Sarah Peake. Come on Aaron, it would be so much fun for you to run again!

Can't leave without another shot at Hillary and her support of suspending the federal gas tax. Who needs an energy policy when you can make a gimmick a central idea? Few people find it to be a serious idea, see this Washington Post article- http://tinyurl.com/6er8g9 .

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The ride is almost over, Hillary

It should take one more week, just one week before the inevitability of Obama's victory sinks in among the rank and file of the Democrats. Short of the type of victories that have by and large eluded the Clinton campaign, the math simply does not work. It really hasn't for a while, but politics being what it is, you hope some sort of disaster will blow up your opposition.

In the case of the Clinton campaign, you hope, pray, then do and say anything to avoid defeat, no matter the cost to the party. Once the bubble was burst over the inevitability of Hillary, the Clinton campaign did not have a Plan B. It never crossed anyone's mind that once Super Tuesday came and went, that they would do anything other than cruise control.

The longer the Clinton campaign carries the fight, it will not only damage the Democrats, but seal the end of the Clinton dominance of the Democratic Party. Well, let me amend that slightly- I cannot envision her to be thought of again as a viable national presence. As for the Big Dog himself, the worst thing any so called pundit could do would be to write off Bill Clinton.

In the long run, the damage done by Hillary will be short term. By October, the battle will be engaged between Obama and McCain; the battles of April and May will belong forgotten. The electorate is angry and getting angrier. John McCain will be hard pressed to disassociate himself from the failures of the Bush Administration. He would have a far easier time running against a Hillary Clinton, a polarizing figure with a huge built in negative factor. The Democrats need to move past the Clinton era.

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Does Anyone Still Care About Local Government?

I was more than a little disturbed to see that in Brewster, with an open Selectman's seat, only one person has bothered to turn in papers. No surprise that Greg Lavasseur is running; I think he's wanted back in since he first left the board. It's a shame no one else is running for that spot, or that the School Committee incumbents are also uncontested. I say that, even though I very much like both incumbents. Would that people want to be involved enough to mix up the waters. I realize it's not just a Brewster problem, you see the same dearth of candidates in towns everywhere.

Interestingly, Marie Enochty, Brewster's rep to the Nauset Regional School District does have a challenger, Dion Dugan. I know Marie and there is no more tireless advocate for children anywhere. If you are a parent of a child under 18 on the Outer Cape, it would be difficult not to know her.

I don't know Mr. Dugan, so what else do I do but Google.... ok, involved in real estate and ummmm rides a Harley. That's the funny thing about Google, you never know what you'll find out. Never a bad thing to Google yourself, college students in particular are told to do that, because potential employers will do it.

I'm guessing this will not be a campaign poster

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Following Rauschenbach's Money

As was noted in yesterday's entry, former Republican state senator Henri Rauschenbach is noted for having dropped a $1,000 into the coffers of Hillary Clinton. That in and of itself is pretty curious; I'm not sure what kind of buy-in that gets a lobbyist. If you go another level deeper, into looking at political contributions made by Rauschenbach at the state level, you see that the needs of a lobbyist easily trump any personal beliefs. For example:

• Five contributions to controversial Democratic state senator, Diane Wilkerson, totaling $925
• 2 contributions of $200 each to Speaker DiMasi's Committee for a Democratic House PAC and 2 more of the same to the Speaker himself
• Deval Patrick, Therese Murray and Tim Cahill each received 2, $200 contributins also
• Even our current state senator, Rob O'Leary got $200

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Shaking the political money tree

Former GOP Senator Henri Rauschenbach among Hillary's contributors

If you want a sense of how hard the money tree is being shaken for the '08 presidential election, here's some interesting tidbits from opensecrets.org.

• As of the last set of records, there are 718 contributionsfrom Massachusetts to the Clinton campaign
• One of those $1,000 contributions came from former Republican state senator who represented Cape Cod and the isalnds, Henri Rauschenbach of Brewster.
  
• Obama has 851 $1,000 or greater contributors
• When you get down to Edwards, that figure drops to 118
• As for money raised overall in what is considered the Barnstable-Yarmouth metro area, Romney has raised $60K, McCain almost $48K. Clinton slightly leads Obama on the Dem side, $26K to $22K.

While money itself cannot buy you love (see Reilly,Tom),  it will determine the ability to run the credible campaign you want to run.  Part of the grassroots stategy of the successful Patrick campaign was to attract even the smallest contributors. Even a $5 donation is seen by the contributor as an investment and you want that investment to pan out. When you see 28% of Obama's  contributors are under $200 donors, compared to 9% of Clinton's, you can see a similarity with the Patrick strategy.

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Government and the Creation of Social Ills

Much of the clamor by those against having casino gambling in Massachusetts centers on the creation of many, many new gambling addicts and the relation social cost this incurs. It is no small point; the devastating affects of a gambling addiction cannot be trivialized. Even if the promise of earmarking money for treatment would be a reality, the question remains- how do you get people to treatment, how do you make those families whole again?

If you are going to open that can of worms regarding casinos, you also need to address several other similar issues. If the issue is one of creating addicts, where that behavior has deleterious affects on society, why then would any liquor license be granted? Why would any store be allowed to sell cigarettes? I've only picked two of the more nasty habits that we endure, shrug off and decide it's someone else's problem if they can't handle it. And like casinos, there is money involved by way of taxes, though not to the level of a casino.

Playing the morality card on this, simply does not hold up when you look around at what people can do to themselves. For me, the most compelling argument is that this is seen as a bandaid to a serious revenue problem. Actually, to be accurate, it's revenue versus needed expenditures. There is little glamor and no love for being the administration that acknowledges the huge issue in restoring a poorly maintained infrastructure. Revenue is needed for that, revenue is needed to provide promised property tax relief. Add health care, longer school days, full day kindergarten for all and you (and you and you) have to decide how you want to pay for these things, if you feel they are good.

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Poor Mitt

Summer's over but you can still get an endless supply of flip flops courtesy of W. Mitt Romney

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It was a glorious day but....

Riding the P&B home yesterday from Boston, I gazed out the window as we crossed the bridge. A crystal blue sky, dotted with a few puffy clouds and the sun setting over the Canal made for a wonderful sight. I was thinking I wished I had played hooky today. It was a day to walk on a beach, eat ice cream, a walk in a park, holding hands with someone you love. It was outdoor recess for kids! Just a day to take in the air and breathe.

And it was one day after the 6th anniversary of September 11th.

That morning was similar to the kind of day yesterday was, sunny and clear. Connect the dots over these six years and you see how much has changed in America. The more I thought about it, the further my original thoughts about the beauty of that day faded. In so many ways, time seems to go by so quickly, yet the sense of loss seared into the souls of so many must still be fresh. Children that barely knew a parent are left with a mother of father to show them pictures or a video to try and fill in the gaps- "Here's your father and I when...." and maybe you can finish the story, maybe you have to stop and gather yourself one more time.

America was attacked, not Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, etc. And for a little while, we as a nation understood that, that the common umbrella of what it meant to be an American was much larger than our differences. As a matter of war, this nation was unified when we went to Afghanistan, the one place we could absolutely identify people responsible for attacking us. We would get Bin Laden, dead or alive.

Much of what has frayed us is how much we were told that simply was not true. Those we trusted so much at the time, failed us. The inability to plan, the inability to differentiate military solutions from political solutions, the inability to understand history and the inability to even heed one's own words have created this morass. It is not the failure of a party, but of an administration. Some of the harshest questioning of General Petraeus was from the GOP.

Yet there we are, Democrats and Republicans, sharply critical of how this has gone so wrong. It's gone so wrong, no one can even agree on how to fix it. Does anything demonstrate the disconnect between the military process and political needs than Petraeus' claim (a claim disputed by many) that violence is down, yet so few of the political objectives established by and for the Iraqi government have been met? And you can dispute just what "down" means- down from the horrific figures pre-surge, sure by the General's figures. Not down compared to prior years.

Even the troop withdrawl is an artificially created milestone. Unless you were going to  (yet again) extend the tours of duty for those there already, troops were coming out and there are not any to replace them. Military experts acknowledge how the situation in Iraq has severely stretched our military thin.

So there we are, told any number of reasons why we had to go, which turned out not to be true, given a moving target as to what the outcome would be, and never having any of those materialize either. The truth is, no one can say they KNOW how to get us out of this, there are just too many variables in play. The worst decision so far was the one to go in there in the first place, by the same people that knew in '91 it was a trap.

We're told that our troops and the Sunnis are cooperating to fight "Al Qaeda" in Iraq. Yes, our enemy's enemy is our friend, until we again become the enemy. We'll use each other as long as it serves a purpose and then go back to how it was. We hear "Al Qaeda" and we think, oh yeah they're the ones we've been after. The question of what is Al Qaeda in Iraq versus the reconstituted Al Qaeda in Pakistan is significant.

When asked if being in Iraq has made us safer, General Petraeus replied, "I don't know". We have lost more men and women in Iraq than we did on 9-11. We have spent hundreds of billions to support a war that never should have happened and supporting a government that is incapable and corrupt. Estimates of Iraqis killed are in the hundreds of thousands, number of refugees created in the millions.

The sun set behind me as I made my way down the Mid-Cape. In a strange way, I wanted to appreciate all those things I wrote about at the beginning of this article a little bit more, because I knew of no other way to compensate for how much we have lost.

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Random Thoughts and They Aren't All for Kids

So you've been warned....

Definition of "duh"- driving west on Rt 6 and I have now seen large round signs on the side of the highway indicating that I am on the evacuation route from the Cape. Uh huh.  In Boston, at the corner of Huntington and Mass Ave. are two, much smaller signs indicating at that intersection, you can go straight or right for the evacuation route. If ever needed, that surely will cause a backup.

When wind farm advocates proclaim that some of their opposition are just NIMBY's, one might want to ask the proponent how s/he feels about other NIMBY causes like affordable housing. I bet everyone has some "don't put that near me" things.

Denver Broncos running back, Travis Henry has fathered 9 children with 9 different women. Apparently, Mr. Henry's skill at finding the hole extends beyond football.

Well the Romney campaign jettisoned Larry Craig in a hurry. Here's yet another instance of an individual who has taken numerous anti-gay stances, ummm, uhhhh, getting his hand caught in the cookie jar? Now it comes to light that there have been numerous rumors surrounding Senator Craig.

I read a story recently about how well-liked GOP governor Mike Huckabee might be well, too well-liked to make a move in the GOP primary. Concern was expressed that he just might be too nice for the rough and tumble of a national campaign. I get some of that same feeling about Bill Richardson, Democratic governor from New Mexico. Two good guys, but not likely to catch fire.

I got a nice email back from State Representative Cleon Turner about the gas price issue on Cape versus off Cape. He indicated that he had brought it up before to the AG's office and was told there was little they could do. I have gotten no response from the AG's office. I asked him to follow up again with this. The current difference according to AAA is 25.9 cents per gallon difference between Boston and Barnstable.

Advice to the Wampanoags.... the only way to restore credibility is complete transparency. If no one involved has done anything wrong, then there is nothing to hide, right? Review the finances and all the players involving in supporting the tribe's effort in being recognized and having a casino.

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