The Great Gadfly

Minerals Management Service fiasco

How many minerals can you manage for $10,800,000,000.00?
The only federal agency which collects more than the IRS

$10.8 billion is a lot of money. That is what the United States Department (DOI) of the Interior Minerals Management Service (MMS) reported as its total revenue for 2007. The only federal agency with higher revenues was the IRS. Now we know that at least the Inspector General of DOI believes there was improper and perhaps illegal conduct by MMS staff responsible for oil leases. Here we go again. Is this Julie McDonald and J. Steven Griles all over again? And who were they...for that matter, who is the inspector general for DOI?

A Boston Bulldog to the rescue

Let's start with the inspector general. He is an Irishman from Massachusetts who rose from municipal police officer to a career in the United States Secret Service and after retirement from the Secret Service to the post of Inspector General at DOI. His name is Earl Devaney (on right) and he is large, tough and smart. He detests public officials who betray the public trust.

Devaney forced former Underscretary of the Interior Julie McDonald to resign in 2007, citing her for mutliple violations of federal rules. McDonald apparently had used her position to bully and browbeat staff of the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) which is also a part of DOI when they attempted to do proper study of issues arising from the Endangered Species Act concerning a development in California.

McDoanld ordered staff to back off, rewrote their technical comments and moved staff who would not yield to her bullying. It became known that McDonald's husband's family owned a farm which she had succeeded in excluding from the original area under review. Her financial records showed that she had earned as much a million dollars a year from this family farm.

Prior to the McDonald case Devaney built a case against the second highest ranking official at DOI, Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles. Griles was convicted of lying to a Senate committee about activities involving him and well known lobbyist and felon Jack Abramoff.

Don't ask me "How", tell me Who

The Griles case cast a shadow, and still does, over the Bureau of Indian Affairs, another division within DOI. In the fall of 2007 Griles lost his appeal and was ordered to begin serving a ten month federal prison term. Score another point for Devaney. Convicting a federal official of the offense of lying to congress or to a federal official is always an uphill battle. To succeed, such a case must be driven by substantial stamina. Devaney can go the course.

Now Earl Devaney has set his sights on MMS staff who are responsible for oil and other leases on federal land. Once again there is seedy personal behavior, extra marital sex and material enticement by private interests. Chevron is named in the most recent Devaney report to congress as one of the big oil companies involved in a pattern of abuse. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice once served on the board of directors of Chevron.

Gadfly has reason to believe that Devaney and his investigators are close to issuing  more devastating reports about DOI. MMS in particular is under a very powerful microscope. If what appears to be business as usual at MMS continues, consider: MMS has responsibility for mineral leasing rights covering 1.7 BILLION square acres of our nation's coastal waters. How many oil rigs can fit on 1.7 billion square acres? How much profit can be pumped from 1.7 billion square acres and what would big oil and gas interests pay to help 'convince' MMS officals to grant favorable leases?

One thing is for certain, Earl Devaney does not take it lightly when someone lies to federal officials or when those officials cross the line into unethical territory. If we listen closely we can hear the knees knocking in Herndon, Virginia ...headquarters of MMS. No one is safe when Devaney is on the job.

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Score one for the Good Guys

This a short story but oh, so gratifying

I know a fellow who has built a very successful family business over the last thirty years. One sign of his character is the number of employees who have been with him for a long time... many. Unfortunately he is about to lose one of them.

A while ago someone who had worked closely with this man in his office for a decade and a half was diagnosed with untreatable lung cancer. Unable to continue working this person went home to die. The end will come in six months to a year. The application was made to social security since income is still needed for this person to die at home... to own a home still when the end comes. But, social security said it would take five months or more to respond to the claim.

"I am going to pay her until the day she dies. I cannot do anything else and I will not watch her go down the tubes."So, our cold hearted capitalist kept his valued former employee on the payroll so that bills are paid, the home remains and life goes on as well as it can. Then, social security responded that since the applicant was still being paid...there would be no government money. The fact that this person has paid into the social secutity system for thirty years, has never worked 'under the table' and has always played by the rules seems to make no difference.

What can you say about a man who does this: even though he is now paying one his highest earning employees while that person can no longer work and even though he has no way of knowing exactly how long this will continue... his words to me yesterday were, "I am going to pay her until the day she dies. I cannot do anything else and I will not watch her go down the tubes."

It is a privilege to know such a man.

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Equal and Opposite Reaction

A well known rule of physics is that for every action their is an opposite and equal reaction. Is there ever. Let's take a walk down technology Lane and see how we are doing as a nation environmentally. We could start with ethanol, that gift of the gods to the farmer, the oil companies and the politicians who sing its praises. Ethanol allows farmers to sell for a market rate  corn that they used to discard as unsaleable...or feed to their livestock. Now the dumpster and the herd go hungry as this formerly unusable grain is shipped off to refineries where it is converted into an alcohol that is mixed with standard gasoline to produce a supposedly cleaner burning fuel.

 

So far this sounds great, doesn't it? Sure it does. Excpet that it is raising hell with the price of feed and that in turn is raising the price of meat. And, now many farmers are raising inferior grains for ethanol instead of the grains they used to raise for food so our bread prices are rising. Pizza is no longer a cheap date. Even better is the fact that to produce one gallon of ethanol requires one gallon or more of petroleum. So, how are we saving oil and easing the energy crunch? We are not. But, everyone seems happy to be burying their snouts in the ethanol trough; farmers, refiners, oil companies and politicians...now there's a marriage for you.

 

Then there are  hybrid cars...part internal combustion and part electric. They use batteries, lots of batteries in all those environmentally sensitive little cars, big batteries. Forget about how we will dispose of them after their useful lives are expended...and batteries are among the really difficult and nasty things we have to dispose of. Just think about all the nickel that goes into them...torn from the earth in mining operations that make Armageddon look like a walk in the park. In Canada, for example, one of the two largest nickel smelters in the world killed off the vegetation for a hundred or more square miles around the plant with the acid rain it caused and the result was soil erosion so that now over a hundred  square miles of land are bare blackened rock.

 

This is the Inco mine in Sudbury, Ontario, 307 miles from Detroit and 267 miles from Buffalo, as the wind blows. The Inco mine at Sudbury has the tallest smokestack in this hemisphere...the second tallest in the world and it belches sulfur dioxide at the rate of dozens of tons per day into the atmosphere where the westerly winds carry it down over the United States. The next time some snotty Canadian criticizes U.S. environmental policy ask him about Sudbury, Ontario. And the next time Toyota tells you how clean they are as a company ask them if they but nickel from Inco.

 

We just are not too bright, we humans. If the congress had the guts to do it, they could save up to fifteen percent of our residential electric use by banning incandescant light bulbs in favor of the readily available energy saving fluorescents. But Congress loves tradition and stupidity is among their oldest and proudest. They could mandate vehicle size by fleet

average, mandate higher fuel economy standards and do all sorts of things to make our energy future more secure. But then they might have to turn down the air conditioning in the Capitol in the summer...or take the summer off and do no harm for three months. Having spoken with various people at the U.S. Department of Energy Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, I can say that it is a widely held opinion among energy experts that the fastest way to save energy and lower energy prices and create thousands of new energy related jobs is to institute serious energy conservation programs now, today. We have the technology; do we have the will?

 

All for now.

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VOTE YES ON QUESTION 5 IN YARMOUTH

Town would have saved $207,000 this year WITHOUT the Commission
And they have spent $3 million of Yarmouth's money so far

The people of Yarmouth will go to the polls tomorrow to vote on millions of dollars in overrides, one selectman's seat and the Cape Cod Commission. The Cape Cod Commission question is #5 on the ballot.

Commission has been in business for eighteen years and has spent over $55 million in Cape Cod  taxpayer money.A YES vote will require the town to file a petition with the Massachusetts legislature allowing Yarmouth to withdraw from the Commission. This year alone that would have saved Yarmouth tax payers $207,000.

Let the voters be heard
Yarmouth citizens voted at the town meeting of 2007 to post this question on the ballot and since then the board of selctmen have tried, sometimes in underhanded ways, to oppose allowing the the voters to be heard. Now the selectmen actually support the notion that the Commission deserves to be given more time to present us with changes in how they do their job. Another eighteen years, maybe? A few million dollars more, maybe?

The Commission stifles any and all tax base growth
Yarmouth's commercial tax base is not growing primarily because the Commission stifles any and all growth. The recent passage of the Growth Incentive Zone for the motels on Route 28 has already triggered millions of dollars in sales of older motels and three major motel renovation/construction projects. The net increase on revenues to the town will exceed $100,000 every year. This Growth Incentive Zone was made possible by a zoning bylaw that was written by the town and approved by Yarmouth voters. The Cape Cod Commission had nothing to do with it. Then, once the town meeting had approved the plan it took another six months for the Assembly of Delegates to hold pointless hearings and finally approve the plan. Now motels on route 28 can renovate, replace and even combine various types of housing and commercial growth without having to spend a year or more and hundreds of thousands of dollars going through review by the Cape Cod Commission process.

Yarmouth can do its own zoning and planning
There has been no economic development in Yarmouth because the Commission has failed to do any economic development work.Yarmouth can do its own zoning and planning. Yarmouth does not need and cannot afford the Cape Cod Commission. Yarmouth coordinates transportation improvements such as the new Willow Street with the state without help from the Commission. Meanwhile, after eighteen years the Commission still has not produced a Cape wide regional transportation master plan. There has been no economic development in Yarmouth because the Commission has failed to do any economic development work, even though the law that gave us the Commission requires them to do so.

The Cape Cod Commission has been in business for eighteen years and has spent over $55 million in Cape Cod  taxpayer money. Close to $3 million of that came from Yarmouth. If Yarmouth votes YES ON QUESTION 5  tomorrow we will begin a process that could take two years or more to complete and during that time the Commission will still rule and they will have ample opportunity to make the changes we all know are needed. But, Yarmouth must keep the pressure on. Caving in to the selectmen will not help the town grow its commercial tax base. And, not one of them has done anything to help Yarmouth's commercial tax base grow or to create jobs....not one of them has done anything but they want us to wait for improvements at the Commission.

If not now, WHEN? If not here, WHERE?
After eighteen years it is fair to say the Commission has had plenty of time to hear our complaints and change. They have had plenty of time to do their job as spelled out in their authorizing legislation, but they have failed to do so. They have had plenty of time to help grow our economy and foster job growth. How much more time do they deed? How much more money?

The Commission has a new executive director only because Yarmouth spoke at town meeting last year and put fear into their hearts. But, he is only one man. We cannot even get our representative to the Assembly of Delegates to propose changes in the Commission's enabling regulations. And she is the President of the Assembly. Have the three county commissioners shown any concern for the changes Yarmouth has clearly said we need? NO! Do Yarmouth citizens want people from Brewster or Truro telling us how big our buildings should be and what kinds of businesses we should encourage? NO!

One man is not enough to change the Cape Cod Commission, but one town has proven it can. VOTE YES ON QUESTION #5 and keep the pressure on.

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Three Blind Mice or Moe, Larry and Surly

The media have annointed three semi finalists in the presdiential sweepstakes, two Democrats and one Republican. As usual what we are fed by the majority media is both unsatisfying and incomplete. Let's go through these jokers one by one:

Hillary Clinton -

Lately the Clinton's have shoved their daughter Chelsea onto the national stage to flog the former first lady's presidential campaign. They and the media are surprised and shocked when people ask Chelsea rude questions.

While I agree that it is totally inappropriate to ask Chelsea Clinton about her father's trysts with a brainless White House intern, what annoys me more are the questions not asked. For instance, "Chelsea, you are clearly seen in video footage of you and your mother landing in Kosavo when she claims she was the target of sniper fire; what is your recollection of this fantasy?" Or, how about, "Does it bother you that your father comitted perjury while president and that your mother defended him in the international press only to have his perjury proven?" Maybe, "How do feel about the fact that while your mother was co-governor of Arkansas a major national child advocacy group filed a successful class action lawsuit against Arkansas for its barbaric neglect of children in state care and that your mother now claims to be a staunch advocate for decent child care?"

"Gee, Chelsea, your mother says she will maintain a strong military but as co-president she said nothing when your father offered military career personnel a choice: take a pay cut or a reduction in rank by one step. How do you respond to that?"

 

Moving on to Barack Obama

He tells us he wants to lead the most powerful nation on earth and that he wants to be a unifying leader but for twenty years he respected as his pastor a man so hate-filled he stands out even in Chicago. Even Jesse Jackson has had the sense not to defend the Reverend Wright. He is a grerat orator but Reverend Wright is an effective speaker also.

 

And then we have John McCain

McCain said recently that the government should not bail out irrsponsible borrowers or banks. This is quite a change for McCain who was one of the "Keating Five." In 1989 -1991. Along with senators Dennis DiConcini, John Glenn, Donald Riegle and Alan Cranston McCain was investigated by the Senate Banking Committee for official corruption (influence peddling) and in 1991, after a lengthy and very public cycle of hearings was found by the Senate Ethics Committee to have engaged in improper activities. Cranston was recommended for sanction. At issue was the influence of the Keating Five as they attempted to call off the dogs when a rogue banker, Charles H. Keating, Jr. who controlled the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association in Irvine California was under federal investigation.

Keating had bankrupted the bank and eventually cost  American taxpayers an estimated $3.4 billion. McCain family memmbers had invested in a shopping center owned by Keating and he had received six-figure campaign contributions from Keating. Time has certainly changed John McCain.

 

All three of the presidential candidates are currently serving as members of the United States Senate. They are drawing full salary and benefits to serve in the senate while they travel the country promoting their candidacies. If recent history tell us anything it might be that none of these three has a clue what this country needs.

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Everyone Should Be Angry

Perhaps no disclaimer is required because I am a well known opponent of Cape Wind's plans for a wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal. Balancing my opposition is the long standing and well known support enjoyed by Cape Wind at Cape Cod Today. It is a credit to Walter Brooks that he allows and does not interfere with non-inflammatory comments opposing this project. And it is unfortunate that some, on both sides of the issue, have sunk to incredible lows in their comments.

 

So, here we ego: From the very beginning of the federal review process, now in the neighborhood of six years, the only thing more stunning that the vitriolic persnal comments about Kennedy and others or the similar comments made by anti Cape Wind agents against Cape Wind supporters has been the utter and seemingly  not-to- be-overcome incompetence of two major federal agancies. First there was the Army of Engineers in our hall of shame and now the Minerals Management Service. In my opinion the outrage caused by their incompetence should be shared equally by both sides of this debate. Jim Gordon should be purple with rage that he has been forced to spend probably $10 million more than he should have because the USACE review was shoddy enough to allow Cape Wind opponents to argue successfully for review by another agency. Gordon's opposition should be boiling mad that the USACE review was so sloppily done that it could not be used to kill the Horseshoe Shoal siting. Now, we have an even more amateurish effort by the Minerals Management Service, which flagrantly violated federal law in several key regards.

 

We here on Cape Cod and we the citizens of the entire country should be camped on our congressman's and senators' doorsteps demanding to know why the Cape Wind matter was not settled three years ago or more. People on both sides of this issue have been done a disservice by lawless an incompetent federal officials.

 

Here are some of the failures and breaches by MMS:

 1.     The Envirinmental Policy Act 0f 2005, signed into law on August 18 of 2005, commanded that MMS promulgate and put into effect a full rule making no later than 270 months thence. That meant that in May of 2006 MMS was to have all the rules and policies in place for such things as the erview of the Cape Wind application. As of today those rules and policies have not been written, much less published and put into play.

 

2.     Section 338 of this same law commands MMS to work with all other relevant federal agencies when doing such things as reviewing a Cape Wind application.  Really? Well, here are some of MMS omssions:

        A. The Coast Guard was supposed to have full terms and procedures published sixty days before the MMS could issue  a Draft Environmental Impact 

              Statement. These terms and conditions do not extist, even in draft form,  and the Coast Guard has said it does not have the funds needed to perform.

        B.  The FAA issued a letter of presumed hazard months ago but MMS went ahead with release of it DEIS and based its findings of no hazard to aviation on

              information from 2002 which is now being reviewed and possibly contested by the FAA.

        C. The Army Corps was given a failing grade for its review of the Cape Wind proposal under the Endangered Species Act by EPA but MMS used the USACE

             report as the basis for its own DEIS.

        D. MMS admits that its own financial analysis, if published in full in the DEIS might *"tend to mislead" so they simply stated their conclusions, which even Jim 

             Gordon are incorrect, without supporting documentation. We are left not knowing how much Cape Wind's power will cost or if the project is economically  

             viable at all. 

             *This remark is actually made in the DEIS by the MMS staff member who did the economic analysis. See Appendix F, response to peer review.

 

3.     MMS was required to evaluate alternative sites. they pretended to do so but easily elimianted seven out of nine and assumed the same power output from

         each site in spite of a report by Walt musial, chief of engineering for the National renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado that shows clearly the 

         more constistent winds at greater water depths and the higher yield of power at deeper sites.

 

And on, and on, and on. We should have had a decision by a federal permitting agency three or four years ago. But we have instead nonsense. Those who support this project should blame, not the opposition, but the very federal agencies whose charge it is to make renewable energy happen. None of us in the opposition told MMS to be stupid and sloppy and incomplete. They did this all on their own. In fact, someone arranged for a midnight change in the Environmantal Policy Act of 2005. Without publication of the change, without hearings on the change, without the chance for public comment or floor debate a small provision was slipped in (how do you spell Pete Domenici?) that exempted two offshore wind projects, specifically two, from certain rules and procedures, such as competitive bidding for sites. The two projects exempted, ignoring two others also in the pipeline, were Horshoe Shoal and LIPA's project in Long Island Sound...both Jim Gordon's projects. (Gordon eventually dropped out of the LIPA project and it is now dead.) So, we cannot say that some advantage was gained for Gordon in the same way as that rediculous and bizarre mess given to us by Alaska's Ted Stevens. As long as the United States Congress continues vipers will never be an endangered species.

 

The point is that our federal review and regulatory agencies are woefully inadequate at doing their jobs. Because of this inadequacy we are left with moribund projects, enormous expense for aspplicants and no clear direction for our energy future. While I would argue that a proper review would have rejected Cape Wind's proposal Jim Gordon and his supporters would argue the opposite. But the fact is that we share a common enemy...our own government agencies who produce not results but uncertainty and inertia. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory lost over one hundred staff last year alone and the Coast Guard cannot perform the work needed to develope the terms and procedures the Cape Wind project requires. One critically important study needed by MMS would cost $4 million but the country cannot afford it while we spend $12 billion every month in Iraq.

 

These are my observations and I oppose Cape Wind on Horseshoe Shoal. Where are its supporters in the face of such dereliction of duty?...poking fun at a fat senator or a man who once worked for a coal company. If we don't all smarten up and pull together we will all find ourselves shivering in the dark, but probably still bickering. 

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Public Disservice

 Now you see it... now you don't

Well, here we go again, the local daily rage-of-record is once again excavating deeper to find its new standards in community service. They have so far failed to hit oil but China cannot be far off. They have been digging continuously for years. While I tend to admire honest effort and the kind of grit it takes to continue an unpopular fight just because it is the right thing to do I have to say to the rag-of-record ....enough already!

No matter which side one takes in the debate over Cape Wind the idea that our local puppy pad told us that their weekend edition would dish new dirt on the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound only to leave us wondering on Sunday where this momentous story had gone, without so much as a whisper of explaining is rediculous. Did someone jump the gun? Did someone fib to an editor? Did someone simply screw up? Be still my heart. This followed what I thought was a simply stupid piece telling us how many times candidates for local public office had voted over the past few years. With  a war raging @ $12 billion per month, towns facing shrinking revenues, national recession, local crime on the rise and all the other goodies available for reporters to chew on...what the hell was that story about?

This country finds one half of one percent of its people serving in the military and another one percent serving time in jail. When there are twice as many people locked up as locked and loaded would you think the local newspaper could find something meaningful to write about? Well, I can and here it is: the local daily newspaper does an absolutely lousy job of covering local politics and government, absolutely awful. In particular our local daily rag-of-record is an embarassment and a public disservice. The Barnstable Patriot is a marvelopus little weekly newspaper that picks clean the shell of town of Barnstable doings every week. The Community Newspapers do a fair job and freely admit that they are limited by time and budget. CAPECODTODAY daily beats the CC Times to traffic accidents, local affairs, county scandals  and assorted doings. But the Times, with its billionaire owner and its pompous executives consitently fails to deliver the goods.

Here is a question for the Times publisher; since we are talking about the past record of individual voters, implying some connection between the number of times they have voted and their worthiness to run for or hold public office...how many weekly meetings of the Board of Selectmen in Yarmouth does the Times cover, start to finish? For that matter, how many meetings of any and all public bodies Cape-wide are blessed with live coverage by Times staff on a regular basis? Where does the Times get the notion that it is competent to comment on local affairs?

I think we should develop a local affairs test and see how many people on Main Street in Hyannis can pass it. We shall start with Peter Myer, the Times publisher. We shall publish the test questions and his answers...and his pathetic reasons for the failure I feel certain he will achieve.  Over the years we have all watched helplessly as good reporters were shifted from assignment to assignment, beat to beat. We have seen the Times descend from being a pretty fair local paper to being what it is today, wall-to-wall carpeting for bird cages. The staff who can research and write are increasingly not given the resources or the back up to perform as they could and would like to do; the paper's substantial net income never makes it to the local bank but is skimmed by far away ownership so that the rich get richer and we get re-heated syndicated tripe instead of hardhitting local news. And sometimes the pain-in-the butt variety are kicked upstairs called editor and allowed to do real damage, instead of being shown the door. What can we expect from a newspaper that cannot get rid of incompetent management but cannot keep good reporters?

Times are changing for nearly every industry and type of commerce. The newspaper business is not exempt from these changes, but the lack of originality in how newspaper management approach the challenges of these changing times is stunning. Happily, the world of the blog is expanding. It is no longer necessary to have one's mind formed by schools of journalism and one's views dictated by Daddy Warbucks, right or left.  Unhappily, anyone can blog.  Oh well, at least bloggers can claim amateur status while outfits such as the Cape Cod Times are hard pressed to justify their professional journalists' credentials.

I'll let everyone know when we will be administering the local affairs knowldge exam, or AKE. Right about now Peter Myer is probably developing a severe head AKE.

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You Could Be The Next Poker MILLIONAIRE

You Could Be The Next Poker MILLIONAIRE
Who needs a casino when a laptop will do?

By Peter Kenney

Recently released figures show that various interests have combined to exceed in $2 billion in expenditures for lobbying in the year 2007. The cause that earned such support...online gambling. Even the giant credit card company Visa, which had in the past lobbied hard against allowing online gambling, has now joined the chorus. It is amazing to me that people are asking “why, how could this happen?”. It is the age-old motive -- money. There are staggering amounts of money to be made and handled.

Poker – the new spectator sport

Consider, one of the fastest growing spectator events on cable television is gambling, primarily Texas hold'em poker. What was once a game that had just one annual national tournament is now at the center of a yearlong calendar of tournaments played at casinos and resorts all over the United States and in the Caribbean. Winners of these events can take home cash prizes of several-hundred-thousand dollars for each tournament. And there are huge prizes for as many as six or more placing behind the winner.

The World Poker Tour, as this new attraction is called, is truly a world tour and it is growing by leaps and bounds. Some of its perennial top players, professional gamblers, have become so recognizable to the general public that they command high fees to appear in television commercials. Since total strangers do not command high fees, that means a lot of people, tens of millions, must know who they are on sight. That is a large market.

The Web and gambling -- a potent cocktail

An interesting development in the world of high-stakes competition is that now anyone can enter a tournament, make it into the poker tour with a chance to win right along side the hardcore professional gamblers who play at the tour. For some, this means coming up with as much $10,000 to enter. For others, there is the chance to win a place at the table by playing poker and winning online. As with any good sales effort the enticements are huge and loud or subtle and everywhere. And herein lies a partial explanation of the vast amounts of money being poured into lobbying efforts supportive of online gambling.

Consider, advertising interests have recognized the power and value of the Web. So, they want online gambling because it will bring more prospective buyers of their wares to the Web. Also, banks and credit card companies want to lend more money to more people at high fees. After all, when a person sits down at a home computer and logs on there is no cash being taken from a pocket, it’s just a matter of typing in a series of digits. The combined addictive aspects of the Web itself and gambling make for a potent cocktail.

Who needs a casino when a laptop will do?

Best of all is this: there is no need to go through the regulatory hassle and huge expense of getting a state-issued gaming license. Who needs to build a billion-dollar casino when a laptop will do...and the gambler pays for the laptop! There is no need to spend money for the travel required to go to a casino; all that money can go towards a devastating evening trying to beat the pros at Hold'em.

Here in Massachusetts, for example, our horse racing business is nearly dead. But, a race track could install computer terminals and charge a fee for using them to gamble online as well as taking a share of the "drop" or "handle” -- the total amount gambled by each player. Churches, social clubs, hotels and resorts, bars and restaurants...any place with a roof and electricity plus an Internet connection is now potentially a casino. Of course there is money being spent on lobbying for online gambling.

Online gambling is increasingly seen as a way to save fading resort and recreation venues such as aging coastal resorts and hotels in cities. Slumping racetracks, out-of style restaurants and probably convenience stores and neighborhood bars will be the Babylon of poker. How about a boozy night at the local strip club with a wallet full of credit cards? Now there is a recipe for disaster.

Pimps, dope dealers, bookies – and Visa

People will still travel to Las Vegas and Reno and Atlantic City and Connecticut, but they will also now be able to lose their shirts at home or at a whole new range of convenient locations nearby. Pimps, dope dealers, bookies and assorted con artists now have high-class company -- Visa and many more respectable American commercial giants. As I heard one celebrity commentator crow recently on cable television at the end of one of the new poker tournaments -- "Visit us online at www...com and YOU could be the next poker MILLIONAIRE!

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Building Commish Keeps File Under Wraps

Building Commish Keeps File Under Wraps
Public records elude citizen’s inspection

By Peter Kenney

“I’ll see if he’s in his office.”

These words, heard over a telephone, are as chilling and bleak as “I'll have to put you on hold for a minute" or, in an electronic drone, "XYZ appreciates your business. Our next customer service representative will be with you shortly. The average wait time today is three-and-a-half hours."

We’ll call back

I knew I was in trouble when I made the first of four calls to Yarmouth Town Hall on a recent Thursday morning. At 9:00 a.m. I got a recorded message asking me to leave my name and telephone number, advising me that my call would be returned. It was not. I was calling the Building Commissioner's office.

The reason for my call was simple. I wanted to know why the Yarmouth Building Commissioner had not wanted to give a copy of public records to a citizen. The reason for my call was simple. I wanted to know why the Yarmouth Building Commissioner had not wanted to give a copy of public records to a citizen. The details and names of the parties involved are not appropriate for publication at this point. But a Yarmouth resident had gone in person to the Building Commissioner's office and asked for a copy of each of several building permits taken out over the past few years by another person for work to be performed in Yarmouth.

The Building Commissioner asked why the requesting party wanted the records. What is the legal basis for him to ask such a thing? I can find none. At a later date he was asked again and he said he would have to charge for the time to "research" and copy the documents.

Are things different in Yarmouth?

My experience with various town halls when it comes to getting copies of documents is that a helpful person goes to the files, finds the document(s) I want, makes the copies and hands them to me. Sometimes there is a fee of a few cents per copy. Apparently, Jim Brandolini, the Yarmouth Building Commissioner, has a different idea about what his responsibilities and rights are.

Back to the telephone calls. I heard nothing from Yarmouth Town Hall so I called again shortly after noon. This time the same pleasant voice I had heard on the earlier recording said, "If you wait just a minute, Mr. Kenney, I'll see if he's in his office." I waited.

The cheery voice returned and asked, "Jim wants to know if he can call you later." I said yes and made sure she had the number. Oddly, I received no call. So, at 3:40 p.m., I called the building commissioner's number again and spoke again with the cheery voice. She asked me to wait just a minute.

She returned shortly to say that Jim wants to know if he could meet with me in his office on the twenty-first or the twenty-second (This was January). I said I just wanted to ask him why he was making it so hard for a citizen to get what should be instantly available -- copies of public records.

Then the cheery voice asked if maybe she could help and I told her what I wanted -- copies of certain building permits. She said she would check the file. This time I waited longer than before and when the voice returned I was told, "They must be in Jim's office. I'll check for you."

Under lock and key

When the voice came back on the line she told me that the permits I was looking for were not to be found, that they must be in the file -- which she could not find -- and that the file must be "locked in Jim's desk."

She offered as a reason that, maybe, Jim was working on the file.

Then she told me something surprising. Jim Brandolini was on vacation for all of that week and the next. "He won't be in the office until the twenty-first."

Why hadn't she told me this at noon?

Why had we gone around and around about searching for the file? Why did he want to see me in person to discuss what I thought was a fairly simple matter?

Why, exactly, does Jim Brandolini, in his official capacity as Yarmouth Building Commissioner, resist providing copies of basic public documents to a citizen?

And why does he then go on vacation and leave the entire file for a house -- complete with its history of permits and inspections -- locked away for two weeks, denying anyone and everyone access to the contents of that file?

This may not be Denmark but something is surely rotten. I still want those copies, Jim.

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If Glenn Marshall is the Wampanoag Judas, what do we call the governor?

Governor What’s His Name

By Peter Kenney

While Governor Deval Patrick's opposition to the Mashpee Wampanoag federal land trust application may make him the Deval Custer of Mashpee history, what do the rest of us call him for the deals he is making behind our backs to gain legislative support for his gambling bill? “Judas” seems to fit the bill, and I do mean bill.

There is no such thing as a legislator who will change his vote from one opposing the governor to one helping him without some sort of reward, bribe, gratuity, pork-barrel project or favor. A simple kiss on the fanny will not do. The problem is that the cost of these arrangements is never paid out of the governor's personal funds but ours...the citizens of Massachusetts. How much has it cost us to help the governor convince fifteen state legislators to support his gambling bill?

After all, this is Massachusetts

We know that the governor -- Custer or Judas -- whatever his name is -- has already included hundreds of millions of dollars in anticipated gambling proceeds in next year's budget. The fact that these revenues are nowhere in sight at the time the budget is cast seems to trouble no one. After all, this is Massachusetts.

The most likely chain of events is that Judas expects to be able to get the legislature to pass his gambling bill this spring. Then there will be a flood of $400 million or more paid to the state by two or three applicants for casino licenses. BINGO...$400 million or more...just as Judas promised. But, the crapshoot goes on to even higher stakes.

It is good to be king

Once our normally restrained and thrifty legislators saw the budget projections Judas waived under their noses, once he showed them a loading dock crammed with unopened pork barrels and let them smell all that fresh meat, they did the only respectable thing and started caving to their various constituencies.

Local schools and public works projects, jobs programs for out-of-work hacks, guarantees of thousands of new union jobs so that union members could pay millions more in dues to their leaders who could then “re-invest” all that hard-earned money to support the right kinds of candidates. WOW...what's not to like? So, fifteen members of the legislature -- according to whoever counts the pieces of silver on Beacon Hill -- have come around to the governor's way of thinking, again. It is good to be king.

Cue the floodgates!

There is not one casino application yet, because there is no gambling law yet; there is not one dime of taxes from a casino because there are no casinos yet; there is not one union construction job or service job in a casino yet because there is no gambling bill, no gambling applications and no casinos.

But, already there are programs to be funded and hacks to be hired to manage those programs and it will all work out just fine because there will be a gambling bill and its passage will open the floodgates of casino applications and each one will be accompanied by a treasurer's check for at least $100 million. WHEW!

Deval – he’s biting off more than WE can chew

Now, since the approval process will take some time and since it will take much longer than a year to build a casino and start the river of cash flowing to Beacon Hill, how will we support the expenditures Judas has projected for the next three or four years, the period between now and whenever the casinos commence operations? Simple. We will cook the books again next year and the year after that -- maybe lay off some more folks at the Registry or in the courts.

Silly me. That's next year. Why worry? Is it even polite to suggest that, once again, the Governor has bitten off more than we can chew?

Hey, kiss ME first

Hey, Judas...next time kiss me first. What I want to know is how badly did the man with the Harvard Law degree sell us out this time?

Remember, while he was somewhere else doing other things we were all here celebrating the success of the sales tax that cured our fiscal crisis...or was it the state lottery?

The sales tax was passed as a "temporary" 3 percent tax...and it was temporary. It quickly jumped to 5 percent where it has stayed. What a hangover that victory party caused.

A novel solution -- smoke 'em if ya got 'em

My solution for the state is to use $200 million of Judas's anticipated $400 million in casino application fees to advertise the benefits of cigarette smoking. Then, add two bucks to the price of every pack of cigarettes; require smoking by state employees and all police officers standing in the road on a detail; institute a mandatory hiring policy for private employers that requires every third person hired to smoke at least one pack a day; and levy a poverty tax of 5 percent on every thousand dollars a Massachusetts worker earns BELOW $25,000.

Look, Judas, if you are going to screw the people, let's really let 'em have it. You can hang yourself later.

Got a butt...?

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