Month: October 2008

An intriguing loose thread

According to the FBI, state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson once celebrated receiving a $1,000 bribe by hightailing it to Foxwoods. A pretty amusing detail — and one that jogged my memory.

Last year, not long after Glenn Marshall stepped down in disgrace as head of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribal council, there was a meeting involving Wilkerson, D-Roxbury, that has never been explained. But it clearly had something to do with the tribe’s fading hopes of building a mega-casino in Middleborough.

In a story broken by Peter Kenney at Cape Cod Today in September 2007, we learned that Amelia Bingham and her son, Steven Bingham, tribal members whom Marshall had ordered “shunned” for asking too many questions, met with Wilkerson in her office. Also present was Michael Morris, a top aide to Gov. Deval Patrick, and several advisers to the Binghams.

Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi later reported that Morris had not expected the Binghams to be present. That differed from Kenney’s account, which claimed that Morris merely hadn’t expected the Binghams to bring advisers with them.

Although the Binghams were fierce opponents of Marshall, they do not oppose the idea of building a tribal casino. Rather, they have criticized Marshall and his successor, Shawn Hendricks, for not cutting a lucrative enough deal for tribal members.

What is or was Wilkerson’s involvement in all this? Who knows? Kenney believed it might have something to do with the Binghams’ lawsuit against the town of Mashpee over property rights. That could lead to a casino’s being built in Mashpee rather than Middleborough. The suit is still very much alive, and K.C. Myers of the Cape Cod Times has an update today.

And check this out: Less than a week ago, the Globe’s Sean Murphy wrote an intriguing profile of an obscure Boston political figure named William McDermott, whose dealings with the tribe, and with Marshall, have been so extensive that Murphy called him “a founding father of the modern Mashpee Wampanoag tribe.” One of McDermott’s “old friends,” as it turns out, is Daniel Pokaski, chairman of the Boston Licensing Board, now at the center of the Wilkerson scandal.

Let’s not forget, too, that the FBI is still investigating Marshall.

It is time to find out what was discussed in Wilkerson’s office that day.

Good jobs at good wages

Sometimes what’s legal is at least as disgusting than what’s illegal. Toward the end of Donovan Slack’s story in today’s Boston Globe on the Boston Licensing Board, which is at the center of the Dianne Wilkerson saga, we learn:

  • That the board members receive $85,000 for working part-time, their only requirement being to show up for public hearings three mornings a week.
  • That the chairman, who’s paid $100,000, “sets his own hours.”
  • That they were making $60,000 before Gov. Deval Patrick signed a pay raise into law last year.

Sickening.

Obama’s Kenyan-Boston connection

The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald are scrambling to catch up with a story that Barack Obama’s Kenyan aunt Zeituni Onyango may be living in Boston. Who broke it? The Times of London, believe it or not.

I’m already hearing that the local media fell down on the job by not having this story first. No doubt Globe editor Marty Baron and Herald editor Kevin Convey are wishing they’d found it. But this strikes me as the ultimate example of Donald Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns. You can picture the typical news meeting:

Editor: Marie, you check in with the cops. There were three similar robberies last night in three different parts of the city.

Marie: OK.

Editor: Ed, see if City Hall has acted on our FOIA request yet for those payroll records.

Ed: Sure.

Editor: And all of you — if Obama’s got any Kenyan relatives living in Boston, make sure we have that first.

All: Right! Let’s go!

Obviously the Times was acting on a tip. The connection may be British rather than American. I’m eager to find out how the Times got this story, but I’m virtually certain it wasn’t because local journalists were asleep at the switch.

Covering up for both candidates

Why would the Los Angeles Times accept a videotape of Barack Obama praising Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi under the condition that the paper not actually show it to anyone? Are the editors in the business of reporting news, or do they like collecting stuff for their own personal amusement?

And why would the Times then turn around and report on John McCain’s criticisms without noting that McCain helped funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to Khalidi?

I understand that everyone at the LA Times is spending most of their waking hours faxing out their résumés, but this is ridiculous. I guess this is the new definition of even-handed journalism: covering up for both candidates.

The other shoe

Dianne Wilkerson follow-ups in the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald today focus on the possibility that more public officials will be sucked into the mess created by her alleged bribe-taking and spectacular arrest. Given the number of officials with whom Wilkerson interacted, there’s no doubt the feds are going to be talking with many, many people.

In the Herald, Laurel Sweet and Hillary Chabot are pretty explicit about the possibility that investigators will try to flip Wilkerson. In the Globe, Matt Viser reports on the blizzard of subpoenas demanding records from officials such as Boston Mayor Tom Menino, Boston City Council president Maureen Feeney, City Councilor Chuck Turner, Massachusetts Senate president Therese Murray and state Sen. Michael Morrissey, D-Quincy, among others.

“This is by no means a suggestion that anyone else is involved in shaking down cash or paying it,” writes the Outraged Liberal. “It is a simple statement that some other big names … could very well get dragged into what is likely an ongoing Wilkerson investigation.”

Wilkerson’s accusation that the timing of her arrest was politically motivated is interesting because (a) it probably was, but (b) what was U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan supposed to do? If he had sat on this until after the election, and Wilkerson had won re-election against Democratic primary winner Sonia Chang-Diaz, that would have been politically motivated, too — and the public would be justifiably outraged if all this had come out once Wilkerson had been safely returned to the Senate.

More interesting still is what effect the Wilkerson affair will have on Question 1, the ballot measure that would repeal the state’s income tax. Wilkerson alone probably wouldn’t make a difference — as the Globe’s Scot Lehigh observes, Wilkerson was a train wreck years ago, and it’s sickening that it took so long to clear her off the tracks.

But if any of her high-profile friends emerges as a player rather than a victim, that would be a mighty powerful argument for Question 1. Never mind that we’re the ones who would suffer from catastrophic cuts in education, police, public works and on and on. This isn’t about logic — it’s about anger.

Photo of Wilkerson at the 2008 Boston Gay Pride Parade (cc) by Paul Keleher and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Another easy payday for Howie Carr

At the Boston Globe, columnist Yvonne Abraham writes of the Dianne Wilkerson affair: “It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.” No. Ten years ago it was sad. Now it’s just funny.

And at the Boston Herald, columnist Howie Carr has been caught stuffing his underwear with Pat Purcell’s cash. If he put more than 10 minutes into typing about Wilkerson, I’d be shocked.

In search of the fat lady

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that liberals would be nuts if they start banking on an Obama victory. There are just too many things that could go wrong: Republican-led voter suppression, the Bradley effect and the possibility that the McCain campaign’s fear-and-smear efforts will finally catch fire.

Christian Science Monitor goes Web-mostly

The only reason to publish an old-fashioned print newspaper in 2008 is because print advertising is more lucrative than Web advertising. Flip through the print edition of the Christian Science Monitor and you will see virtually no advertising. Therefore, the paper’s announcement today that it will switch to a mostly Web model next April makes eminent good sense.

The Monitor’s daily print edition is already little more than rumor. Where would you get one, other than stopping by a Christian Science Reading Room? Yet the Monitor’s Web site is popular enough to attract about 1.5 million visitors a month. (For purposes of comparison, Boston.com, the Globe’s Web site, attracts nearly 4.5 million visitors a month.)

The Monitor’s announcement makes it clear that the paper, founded by Mary Baker Eddy nearly 100 years ago, is in pretty tough financial shape — as is every newspaper operation. What the Monitor has that commercial papers lack is nonprofit ownership that can look at the long term — and pay a subsidy, as new-media consultant Ken Doctor notes, thus providing a vital bridge to the day that online revenues will start to cover the cost of news-gathering.

Those who insist on the printed word will be able to buy a weekly edition, which will allow the Monitor to engage in reverse-publishing — that is, in republishing content that appears online first. That’s what they’re doing in Madison, Wis., where the Capital Times earlier this week dropped its daily print edition and replaced it with two free tabloids filled with material from its Web site.

What’s happening at the Monitor had been long anticipated. If handled properly, it could be a positive development — and another big step in the paper’s (and the industry’s) evolution toward a model of putting the Web first.

Dianne Wilkerson, then and now

Some years back, the Boston Herald’s Joe Sciacca and I were standing on the arena floor at the Democratic State Convention, which was to be held the next day. It was a Friday night, a little after 9 p.m. I think it was in 1994*, and I can’t remember whether it was in Lowell, Worcester or Springfield.

As we were talking, state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, D-Roxbury, sauntered by. Sciacca and I looked at each other. At the time, Wilkerson was under partial home detention for not paying her taxes or some damn thing, and — if I’m recalling the details correctly — she had a 9 p.m. curfew.

Sciacca went tearing off to the press area. As it turned out, there was no news — he found out that Wilkerson’s punishment had just come to an end, and so there was no curfew for her to violate.

No more than a funny little anecdote on a day when Wilkerson’s political career has come to a final, sickening end.

Her arrest comes during a week when the Phoenix’s David Bernstein is reporting still more wrongdoing on her part. And at Universal Hub, Adam Gaffin explains how Wilkerson unwittingly drew the Boston City Council and Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker into her orbit.

Wilkerson’s once-bright promise flamed out many years ago. It’s amazing she lasted as long as she did.

*Update: After reading the Wednesday coverage, I now think it was 1998.