Politicus

Saving weekend trains [Politicus]

Saving Weekend Trains

[Politicus #1,107]

By David A. Mittell, Jr

On March 28, the MBTA announced that "based on rider feedback" it is proposing a combination of cost savings, one-time revenues, service reductions and a 23 percent fare increase to reduce its projected fiscal 2013 of as much as $185 million. This affects the South Shore, since weekend train service on the Greenbush and Kinston/Plymouth lines would be eliminated.

There was indeed a lot of rider feedback, but it was induced: The MBTA is trying to build a political consensus for a $51-million state bailout of a vital but chronically inefficient system directly serving only Greater Boston. The plan at least recognizes the principle that there are limits to what the MBTA can spend. It exacts some concessions from employees and makes necessary reductions in frequency of service on a handful of bus routes. But essentially, it perpetuates the status quo. It protects the agency and its employees, while angering the public with service cuts and a large fare increase. It is a political document.

Opinion polls show that the public relations may work, which would be unfortunate. Deficits beyond the five percent of the statewide sales tax to which the MBTA is legally entitled are built into the way it is run. The March 28 announcement boasted that 99.7 percent of current trips will be protected. That means that nearly all of those empty, money-losing off-peak buses will continue to run. Yet 32 daily weekend departures on the Greenbush and Plymouth/Kingston lines will be cut to zero.

These are lines that only reopened five and 15 years ago after being abandoned in 1959. Weekend service was interrupted when it turned out the MBTA had been sold defective concrete ties that had to be replaced when they were practically new. This halted building ridership.

The plan to eliminate weekend service illustrates the MBTA's underlying problems, but also what could be a better way. If we concede that 32 daily weekend departures on the two lines are more than even a subsidized market will bear, the question is: Why not 16 or eight or four? (Four would represent a minimum of one daily round trip on each of the two lines on Saturdays and Sundays, and would save some service for those who depend on it.)

The problem with it is the MBTA's management practices and labor agreements make eliminating service easier than reducing it. The rational idea that on weekends one crew and one train-set might run from Worcester to Boston to Kingston and back could take years to implement! So we raise the fares and completely cut off those who depend on the service. A one-time $51-million cash infusion would probably just postpone the difficult work of rationalizing the MBTA's core mission of serving those who use it to get to work -- including on weekends.

That is not a call for profitability or widespread privatization-- only to take a critical look the empty buses that benefit the MBTA's corporate laxity more than they do the public. I have a pre-1964 system-wide Metropolitan Transit Authority map. Many 2012 MBTA routes have not been modified in the last 50 years, and, amazingly, some still follow streetcar lines laid out in the time of the Titanic.

In an earlier MBTA bailout, the votes of outlying legislators were bought by the establishment of 16 regional transit authorities around the state -- including the Greater Attleboro-Taunton Regional Transit Authority (GATRA). Some GATRA buses also run empty, which needs to be looked at. But the regional authorities have brought us the mini-bus, which most of the Third World runs on, and their operating costs per passenger are a fraction of the MBTA's. They are a model of what public transportation needs to be.

David A. Mittell, Jr. is Senior Editor of The Duxbury Clipper

Anatomy of an indictment [Politicus]

Anatomy of An Indictment

[Politicus #1,106]

by David A. Mittell, Jr.

When Gov. William Weld gave over his office to his faithful lieutenant Paul Cellucci in May, 1997, the new governor had overnight road crews out changing signs from the likes of "Gov. William F. Weld ditch work" to "Gov. Paul E. Cellucci ditch work." Mr. Cellucci would soon be running for a full term that he, too, wouldn't serve the whole of. But taxpayers paid for the overtime entailed in putting his name on the state's roadsigns with such alacrity.

It is, of course, against the law for public officials to use public funds to advertise their political campaigns, but most of them are guilty of it.The notable exception in recent memory was Gov. Mitt Romney, who was content to leave all those "Gov. Jane Swift ditch work" signs as they were for four years until Deval Patrick came along. This is important because it is one real sign of the personal character Mr. Romney's friends would like to believe lies beneath his asinine political posturing.

The past masters of free political advertising have been our state treasurers, beginning in 1964 when the legislature put Robert Crane in a sinecure he would hold for nearly 28 years. He invented "Treasurer Crane's ([ater Malone's, O'Brien's, Cahill's, Grossman's] Unclaimed Property List," which is still published in newspapers around the state at taxpayers' expense. When the State Lottery came along in 1972, the treasurer's deserts of free political publicity soared. Although modern treasurers seeking higher office have consistently stumbled, no treasurer has been defeated for re-election since Laurence Curtis was beaten by John E. Hurley in 1948.

That brings us to Tim Cahill, the two-term treasurer first elected in 2002, who has been indicted by Attorney General Martha Coakley for personally directing $1.5 million in State Lottery advertising to beef up his then stumbling 2010 campaign for governor. Mr. Cahill is entitled to the presumption of innocence. By everyone -- period. At the outset there are two problems with Ms. Coakley's handling of the matter, and several with the commentariat's handling of it.

Mr. Cahill is entitled to Ms. Coakley's presumption of innocence, and did not get it. Instead, she called a press conference with a small cadre of publicly-paid sidekicks standing next to her. She then produced an idiot card the size of the Wheel of Fortune board to display Mr. Cahill's personal e-mails she alleges are the heart of the case against him. Sure enough, much of the commentariat regurgitated them as if to proclaim, "Guilty!"

Secondly, The Boston Globe's Brian McGrory identified a necktie-wearing photographer at the press conference doing P.R. for Ms. Coakley herself. If this guy is on the public payroll, the attorney general is guilty of the same crime she's charging Mr. Cahill with.

The commentariat seems split between those rushing to exonerate Mr. Cahill and those rushing to convict him. Among the latter there is a stench of class prejudice. "This guy is from Quincy." "This guy ran a sandwich shop." "This guy only got to be treasurer on a quirky 2002 ad featuring his adorable daughter."    

In point of fact, Tim Cahill is very bright and had every reason to aspire to be treasurer and governor. But he deserted both the Democratic Party and the plantation of liberalism -- and by his 2010 rhetoric seems to have joined the plantation of conservatism. Reason enough by some lights to presume him guilty and grind up the remains of his reputation.

We, the People, can do better by waiting for a trial before coming to judgment.

David A. Mittell, Jr. is Senior Editor of The Duxbury Clipper.

Message to Ukrainian Womanhood [Politicus]

Message to Ukrainian Womanhood

[Politicus #1,105]

by D. A. Mittell, Jr.

I sat with three teenage Ukrainian girls at the newly-expanded Frederic Chopin Airport in Warsaw, Poland, waiting for a flight to Lviv, Ukraine. One had russet-golden hair crowned with braids above each ear. When we had been sitting together long enough, I reckoned, for the instant intimacy of travelers to set in, I complimented her braids and said they reminded me of Yulia Tymoshenko's.

One of her mates rejoined: "I hope she has a better fate than Tymoshenko."

That day, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych had rejected an independent German doctor's opinion that the imprisoned, mysteriously sick former Prime Minister needed to be transferred to a hospital. Let her die! the president of Ukraine was really saying; for his Party of Regions is a gang holding the Sovieto-medieval view that political opponents are to be eliminated. That Ms. Tymoshenko might become a bigger problem for them in death than she is in life is beyond them.

A few days later, a furor erupted in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolayiv, more commonly known by its Russian name, Nikolayev. On March 9, 18-year-old Oksana Makar had been gang-raped, set on fire and left for dead. Three men were arrested. Two of them, who are from families of the contemporary *nomenklatura* under the Party of Regions, were released without bail.

Ms. Makar had burns over 50% of her body and was expected to die of her injuries. But when I left the country she was holding on and speaking out from her hospital bed. In Ukraine, victims of sexual assault are not protected by a custom of privacy, as in the United States. Our ways have their reasons, but I was struck that her voice, her face, her wounds, her
burns bespoke her humanity in a way that our reticence about naming the victims of crimes involving private parts does not. Mykolayiv/Nikolayev, near Odessa, has supported the Party of Regions. This crime, with its ritual protection of the regime's* mazhory *(brats) produced a national outcry and an unprecedented local one.

There is a theme here. The 29-member Yanukovych cabinet contains no women. Yet the Russian writer Tatiana Tolstaya, who has lived in America, calls the Slavic lands matriarchies in which the *baboosa, *the grandmother, is the family's CEO – as opposed to our own Anglo/German/American traditional patriarchies. We don't have to answer that to understand that Ukraine survived 1,000 years of foreign oppression through the strength of her women; and that women will play an essential role if the country is to be freed from the morally enervating, economically-hindering corruption of today's domestic oppressors.

The government's message to the girl with the russet-golden braids through Yulia Tymoshenko, Oksana Makar and its cabinet of men is the wrong one. To Ukrainian womanhood it is, I believe, intentional.

Back at Chopin Airport, sorrow at leaving Ukraine was lifted when I was seated next to a young Polish woman for the flight to America. In the 1940's, her parents had suffered the privations of fascism's Soviet continuation. She works for a Swiss company, and was on her way to an American holiday, including Disney World. She knows the history of Poland's extinctions as a nation, and is patriotically proud that Sovieto-fascism met its match in a Polish Pope.

All in all, Poland may be the healthiest country in contemporary Europe. For Ukrainians, who have a shared history of faith and culture, war and oppression, Poland thriving is an alternative to the retrograde methods of the current rulers of both Ukraine and Russia.

Footnote: Oksana Makar died on March 29 as this went to press. The two released suspects had been re-arrested under public pressure. All three suspects have now been charged with murder.

Journalist David A. Mittell, Jr. is Senior Editor of The Duxbury [Mass.] Clipper. He has been to Ukraine 20 times.

The long ride to common sense [D.A. Mittell]

The truth about the MBTA

[Politicus #1,100]

by D. A. Mittell

The biggest change in government in the last 15 years may be its discovery of corporate public relations. Mostly gone are the press secretaries who wouldn't lie on the record, and to trusted reporters would tell the truth unvarnished. Nowadays, spokes-persons tend to be low-level employees who don't know the truth themselves. Their job is to relate scripted messages.

The MBTA still has a spokesman, Joe Pesaturo, who tells the truth or nothing. But it also has an office devoted to the propagation of feel-good stories. Customers collar a groper! Conductor rescues a wedding ring! My favorite was the then MBTA General Manager Richard A. Davey's confronting a fare evader, on-camera, on Dec. 8, 2010. Though amply photographed, the miscreant wasn't caught. He got away with the evidence that the whole thing wasn't staged.

The truth is the MBTA isn't feeling-good at all. It is up against a 40-year history of reckless purchasing-practices and personnel-policies, and 20 years of irresponsible external mandates connected with the Big Dig. The system now has unsustainable annual deficits and long-term debt. Its first answer seems to have been more public relations. Draconian service cuts and fare increases were floated. On cue, the public vigorously protested in well-attended fora. Now, lesser cuts and smaller fare-increases may be accepted with a sigh of relief.

Forgive the cynicism; this has happened before. The MBTA is being manipulative at a time when, it seems to me, the public is ready to be told the truth. If any good has come of the ritual public-relations dance, it is the correct assertion by Mr. Davey – now the state's Secretary of Transportation -- that from Duxbury to Roxbury to Tewksbury, public transportation is an economic issue affecting all of Greater Boston.

To begin to understand where we need to go we need some understanding of where we have been. Until 2000, the MBTA spent as it liked one year, then was reimbursed by the legislature the next year. Beginning with the new century, “forward funding was deemed a great reform. Like every family, every business and every other government agency, the MBTA would have a budget it would have to live within. In return, a penny of the then five-percent sales tax – a growth tax – would come its way.

The first problem was that with a short recession (2001-'02), followed by a deep and prolonged one (2008-present), sales-tax revenue hasn't grown as projected. Secondly, what will come to $4 billion in Big Dig “environmental remediation” was agreed to by the state. The cost of some projects, such as the relocation of the Green Line at North Station, had to be paid for by the MBTA . Others such as the restoration of the Greenbush Line, were paid for by the state and federal governments (though never accounted for in the Big Dig's official cost). But future maintenance and operating subsidies fell to the MBTA.

The deepest problem is purchasing. In 1980, Gov. Edward King sign a “management rights” law, proposed by State Rep. Barney Frank, for the MBTA. This helped curb some of the traditional personnel- and purchasing-abuses. But in 1998 when he was running against Scott Harshbarger, Gov. Paul Cellucci negotiated a contract surrendering many of Governor King's gains. The subsequent abuses have been well-documented. But the idea that “reform” is popular is false. MBTA unions representing the status quo fairly don't want to give anything up, and they are tenacious. As the Tammany Hall politician George Washington Plunkett said a century ago. “Reformers are only morning glories!”

What is to be done? Where to begin? First, it seems to me, is to give service some semblance of alignment with ridership. Typically, buses serving poor neighborhoods during rush hours run too fitfully, causing them to be overloaded, and often forcing riders to wait for the next bus. Yet at off-hours, buses run all but empty throughout the system. We have all seen them.

At one time the MBTA estimated its ridership by weighing the money. Today, its feel-good public relations brags that ridership is higher then ever before. If one takes the former entities that make up today's MBTA, the claim is undoubtedly false. The better point is, they can't know – ridership is mostly still only estimated.

Bus by bus, train by train, trolley by trolley, the first imperative is accurate counts. Then there needs to be a minimum threshold for service. On buses, it might be 25 riders on either leg of a round trip. Such could lead to increased or late-night service on some routes, while cutting back on empty runs elsewhere. Decisions would not be automatic. Some lightly-used runs between city and suburb are the only way people who do not drive can get to work. But using good counts is the first mile in a very long ride to common sense.

'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' goes political [D.A. Mittell]

'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Goes Political [#1,099]

How corporations became people and what it means to America

By D. A. Mittell

The U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in the case generally abbreviated as Citizens United authorized what have been dubbed super-PACs. These are political action committees that may now, constitutionally, raise and spend unlimited political funds, provided they operate completely independently of the candidate they may wish to promote.

This year, Mitt Romney has a super-PAC, Newt Gingrich has one – without it his candidacy would not have gotten out of New Hampshire -- and Rick Santorum has one. Recognizing the real world in which he is trying to get re-elected, President Obama now says he will accept super-PACs' support. His revised position is an admission that the independence of such things is a fiction.

To summarize where another five-to-four Supreme Court decision leaves the nation: Federal law limits individuals to $2,500 per donor, per election to candidates or their political committees. To the Court this is constitutional, as are lower state-level limits, such as the lowest-in-the nation $500-per-annum maximum in Massachusetts. Federally-recognized political parties may take $30,800 from individuals, and may spend unlimited amounts for and against federal candidates. Now, super-PACs may get and spend unlimited amounts. To common sense, very garbled. But all constitutional, says the Court.

Where it leaves the nation is self-evidently too stupid for the real world and for Us, the nominally-sovereign People. It is best likened to “Don't ask, don't tell” – for 17 unhappy years the nation's policy toward gays in the military services -- until the military itself found the hypocrisy embedded in the policy to be beneath its call to honor. What the Court has given politics has every evil of the discarded policy, and already one that it didn't. In the long run Citizens United is bound to be as unstable as Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). But this year it defines the terms of the election.

Don't ask, don't tell, Charlie Baker vs. Tim Cahill

The evil the first “Don't-ask” didn't have was racism. As a Boston voter of a certain age, I seem to have been targeted for political ordure – suburban voters don't report receiving it. It started in 2010, when the Republican Governors' Association, led by then Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, was trying to take out independent gubernatorial candidate, Tim Cahill, in order to clear the way for Republican Charlie Baker. The snail-mailed flier (on right)  told voters like me that Tim Cahill and Deval Patrick did not represent our interests.

To illustrate, a picture showed Messrs. Cahill and Patrick standing at a podium on either side of a man black enough to make Governor Patrick look like Larry Bird. Beyond the fringe, no candidate would put such a thing out in his own name. Certainly not Charlie Baker. But a call to the professionals he had hired to manage his campaign produced a “...duh, no comment.” Don't ask and, above all, don't tell!

Mr. Baker's answer ought to have been: “This material has no place in our state. I repudiate it and I regret that its source was an erstwhile friend.” But his hired guns had faith in the conventional unwisdom of deniability. They led him to a well-earned defeat, and a lesson Mitt Romney may be yet to learn: In politics, a candidate cannot simply hire good people and delegate authority, as in business. He must be directly in charge of his message every single day.

Racist mailings now come directly from super-PACs. “The Mittell Household” recently received something from the American Life Sciences Innovation Council (on right), praising Congressman Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) for “fighting to keep the 'care' in Medicare.” Pictured were ten Caucasian seniors with toothy, white smiles. The identical mailing went to constituents of other congressmen of both parties -- presumably to selected white ones. A call to the sender found its telephone not in service. A call to Mr. Capuano's press office produced another “... duh, no comment.”

Citizens United made the point that corporations and wealthy individuals, who by right may publish books and newspapers, should not have a lesser right of “political speech” than labor unions and issue-advocacy groups. That is arguably valid. But in failing to recognize a single constitutional principle, the Court sealed-in hypocrisy like so many flakes of asbestos. It is the hypocrisy of Don't ask, don't tell; of the illegal daily number published, until betting was socialized, in reputable newspaper chains every morning; of the bootlegger and the speakeasy; and of the ultimate hypocrisy of the rationalizations for slavery itself. It is unsettled law and shall not stand.

David A. Mittell is a Boston-based political columnist and radio host who has been a columnnist and political writer for many newspapers including the Patriot Ledger and the Providence Journal. Toiday he is prtesntly the Senior Editor at the Duxbury Clipper.