Author: Dan Kennedy

Students document the vote

My Reinventing the News students are hitting the polls today. Some early returns:

I’ll try to link to more student posts as I find them.

Election Day in Danvers

For a Flickr slideshow, click here or on photo

Mrs. Media Nation and I timed our voting perfectly. I’m working at home today, so we walked to Danvers High School a little after 10 a.m. With the morning rush over and the evening a long way off, we figured we wouldn’t have to wait too long.

Although there were longish lines of cars heading up and down Cabot Road, and though the parking lot was nearly full, we were right — once we were inside the gym, we breezed right through.

A poll worker told me that more than 500 people had voted in our precinct, way more than the typical number. I would imagine the explosion will come after work.

I also posted a few photos to the Polling Place Photo Project. Please have a look.

McCain’s misleading 401(k) accusation

I nearly choked on my cereal when I read in the Boston Globe this morning that John McCain had accused Barack Obama [Note: McCain may not have been specifically referring to Obama; see update below] of proposing to tax individual retirement accounts. Scott Helman and Sasha Issenberg write:

“Watch out, they’re even talking about taxing your 401(k) contributions,” McCain said at Pittsburgh International Airport. “I’m going to protect people’s retirement, not tax it. I’m going to protect Social Security. I’m going to protect Medicare.”

I’ve done some quick research, and, as best as I can tell, McCain’s charge is not true. The slightly longer version is that he’s building assumptions upon assumptions, based in part on a mistake, and accepting the rhetoric of an anti-tax think tank as to what theoretical effect Obama’s tax proposals might have on 401(k)s.

According to the nonpartisan watchdog site FactCheck.org, McCain has been making this accusation off and on since last spring. I have to confess that I hadn’t been aware of it until now. FactCheck says McCain is staking his claim on a “giant blunder,” latching on to Obama’s proposal to raise the capital-gains tax. But 401(k) accounts allow you to invest your money tax-free, and are taxed as ordinary income when you reach retirement age and begin to withdraw money. The capital-gains tax has nothing to do with 401(k)s.

Some on the right argue that raising taxes the capital-gains tax and corporate income taxes will hurt 401(k)s because low taxes are always good for business and high taxes are always bad. That’s the case made by Deroy Murdock at Human Events, who points to a calculator on the Web site of Americans for Tax Reform that shows the value of your 401(k) rising under McCain and shrinking under Obama. I haven’t tried it, but it is transparently based on the assumption that the economy will do better with McCain as president than Obama.

Americans for Tax Reform, by the way, is a vehicle for anti-tax radical Grover Norquist, famous for once having said, “My goal is to cut government in half in 25 years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Bottom line: McCain’s accusation is false through and through misleading. We’re all familiar with the trickle-down arguments on which it is based. But if you’re McCain, it sounds so much better to say that Obama wants to tax the 401(k)s of “policemen, firefighters, nurses,” as he did last April, than it does to say ordinary people might suffer some theoretical harm if Obama raises taxes on ExxonMobil.

Update: Mike from Norwell reports that there are some congressional Democrats who are proposing a tax on 401(k) accounts. Not Obama’s proposal, and, needless to say, he would be insane to go along with it. He is not insane. But I’ve toned down the headline.

What starts with the letter “M”?

From CNN:

POLK CITY, Florida (CNN) — At a boisterous Sarah Palin rally in Polk City, Florida on Saturday afternoon, one name was surprisingly absent from the campaign décor — John McCain’s…. [T]he GOP nominee’s name was literally nowhere to be found on any of the official campaign signage distributed to supporters at the event.

Literally! Oh, wait — never mind. (Via Jay Rosen’s Twitter feed.)

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.