Category: Uncategorized

Wilkerson leaps in

Why would Gov. Deval Patrick need more time to decide on casino gambling when he’s already taken months? The Cape Cod Times’ David Kibbe does not provide an answer today, and maybe the real reason is known only to Patrick.

But Cape Cod Today’s Peter Kenney offers an interesting anecdote that may explain why Patrick wants a few more weeks. According to his latest report, Amelia and Steven Bingham met last week with state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, D-Roxbury, at Wilkerson’s request, and were unexpectedly joined by Michael Morris, an aide to the governor.

The Binghams, members of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, are leading an effort to recall the tribal leadership following the resignation of Glenn Marshall, who had ordered them “shunned.” The meeting in Wilkerson’s office described by Kenney is all very cloak-and-dagger, so it’s hard to know what precisely is going on. But clearly something is happening.

As David Bernstein recently observed in the Phoenix, Morris, Patrick’s director of governmental affairs, previously worked for State Treasurer Tim Cahill, a supporter of casino gambling. For that matter, Patrick’s chief of staff, Doug Rubin, is also a Cahill alumnus. But according to Bernstein’s sources, Cahill has been unable to influence Patrick on the casino-gambling issue.

The Binghams have never said they oppose casino gambling. But Steven Bingham has said the deal negotiated by Marshall with investors contains too little money for both the tribe and the town of Middleborough, and that it will be null and void if the recall effort succeeds.

With three of Middleborough’s five selectmen currently facing recall as well, the latest developments raise the possibility that if the Mashpee Wampanoags ever build a casino, it might be in a different location.

My standard disclosure.

Chump change

The Weekly Dig shows that the money the government could collect from the proposed Middleborough casino — possibly as much as $100 million a year — is much ado about nothing.

No surprise there. But did you know that state taxes on alcohol already bring in nearly as much? Or that $100 million would not quite cover the annual interest charges on the Central Artery debt?

One more reason for Gov. Deval Patrick not to travel down this road.

My standard disclosure.

Glenn Marshall’s bizarre threat

Is the Boston Globe finally ready to engage on the matter of the proposed Middleborough casino? Sally Jacobs today weighs in with a 2,600-word overview that focuses on the dispute between disgraced former tribal chairman Glenn Marshall and a dissident group led by Amelia Bingham and her son, Steven Bingham.

Jacobs misses a few key points. Marshall’s handpicked successor, Shawn Hendricks, appears nowhere in the story. And she reports Marshall’s age as being 59. That’s not a small error, since his true age, 57, was a key to reports by Cape Cod Today and the Cape Cod Times that Marshall was in high school in the spring of 1968, not fighting in Vietnam, as he had claimed.

But all is forgiven, because Jacobs reports one of the most startling developments to date — that when a Globe reporter (presumably Jacobs) pressed Marshall about his background recently, he responded that people could die if she continued her line of questioning:

Marshall also angrily fended off questions about his job history, telling a reporter to “back off.” He was, at that point, still offering up a false account of his employment history including his claim to have once worked as an undercover officer. And his manner spoke to how he had succeeded in his deception for so long: He raised his voice and sought to intimidate.

“I have people that worked with me that are dead,” Marshall declared, “that died because of people like you asking questions like that.”

Very, very strange. (Note: At first blush, I read it to mean that Marshall was making Jacobs an offer she couldn’t refuse, as the Corleone family memorably put it. But after reading Steve’s comment, I’m not so sure, and I’ve rewritten this post.)

Anyway, surely Globe editors are beginning to realize that the casino story is a playground for journalists. Jacobs’ contribution should be just the beginning.

In other developments:

  • At Cape Cod Today, Peter Kenney continues to follow the money. It’s complicated, but it appears that tribal funds may have been used to buy a $675,000 horse farm, and that ownership of the farm was never transferred to the tribe.
  • My latest commentary for The Guardian offers an overview of what has unfolded to date, and of how Marshall’s downfall may save Middleborough officials from their own greed and naïveté.

My standard disclosure.

Google ads and “the long tail”

Does Lou Ureneck really think the little guys whose ads have popped up on his Web site about fishing in Greece would otherwise be taking out ads in newspapers? The Boston University journalism department chair writes about this in an op-ed piece for the Boston Globe:

[T]hose little Google ads that are popping on my website are chipping — more like hacking — away at newspapers by cutting into their revenue streams. A newspaper spends an enormous amount of money on its newsroom and production plants to bring me my morning paper. It needs that revenue to operate.

Google, on the other hand, spends not a dime on the collection of news. Its business, in part, is based on aggregating the work of others — or getting a cut from the advertising that appears on the websites of others. It’s a brilliant business model. No wonder it has a market capitalization of $160 billion.

In a sense, I am contributing to problems of newspapers by jumping into Web publishing and accepting advertising. Is this fair? Well, fair or not, it clearly is inevitable.

In fact, Ureneck’s site, and the advertising that appears on it, are examples of “the long tail,” an economics concept popularized in an article and book by Wired editor Chris Anderson. The long tail refers to tiny transactions that are too inefficient for anyone to bother with in a mass-market environment, but that become worthwhile as the cost of making those transactions goes down. The idea is that the Internet has reduced that cost nearly to zero.

An example of this is the limited number of books and CDs even a large retailer like Borders or Barnes & Noble can carry, versus the much larger selection offered by a virtual retailer like Amazon.com. But even Amazon is a mass marketer compared to hundreds and thousands of smaller sites. As the long tail lengthens, the size of the mass market might shrink (which is Ureneck’s concern.) But it’s not going to go away by any means.

As for Google and the news business, well, that’s been the subject of uneasy conversations for some time now. Late this past spring, Washington Post journalist-turned-UC Berkeley professor Neil Henry got his cookies toasted for seeming not to understand that Google News actually drives users to news organizations’ Web sites (and their advertising) — thus making, not costing, them money.

Ureneck asserts that Google “spends not a dime on the collection of news.” True, but as of last week, the company now intends to spend many dimes so that others can collect news: It’s subscribing to the Associated Press and other news services, and is featuring their full content on its Google News site. (Yahoo! News has been doing that since the beginning.)

If you think Google has been getting something of a free ride, then maybe you’ll see that as good news. But Poynter’s Amy Gahran cites a Forbes article that notes this “could diminish Internet traffic to newspaper and broadcast companies’ Web sites where those stories and photos are also found — a development that could reduce those companies’ revenue from online advertising.”

It’s all very complicated.

Shaughnessy’s odd premise

No doubt plenty of jerks get in Terry Francona’s face. But the central premise of Boston Globe reporter/columnist Dan Shaughnessy’s profile of the Red Sox manager today strikes me as odd. Shaughnessy writes:

Despite getting swept in New York last week, the Sox have the best record in the major leagues and a six-game lead in the American League East. They are likely going to the playoffs for the fourth time in five seasons. They even won a World Series three years ago, and yet Francona — the fourth-year manager who delivered Boston’s first baseball championship in 86 years in 2004 — has an ever-expanding legion of critics. He enjoys none of the public reverence and worship that washes over Bill Belichick in Foxborough.

Really? Maybe my circle is too small, but among people I talk baseball with, Francona is seen as the Sox’ best manager in our lifetime. The only worry I hear is that Tito’s health problems may force him to retire early.

Joe Morgan, also a good manager, was more entertaining, and Dick Williams will be forever revered because of 1967. But Francona’s the man.

BostonHerald.com’s new look

BostonHerald.com unveils a slick-looking redesign. Smart — not too many people will be looking at it over Labor Day weekend, giving them a couple of days to work out the bugs.

Pluses: It’s attractive, and you can post comments on stories, which gives the Herald a leg up on the Globe’s Boston.com site. A minus: There’s still no view where you can see a list of every story in the paper from top to bottom, as you can with the Globe.

Overall, a big step forward.

Glenn Marshall’s “secret promises”

Those who support the proposed Middleborough casino like to say that Glenn Marshall’s downfall doesn’t matter because everything is in writing. Scott Ferson, a spokesman for the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, put it this way recently in The Standard-Times of New Bedford:

The agreement is between the tribe and the town, not one person on either side, and there is a great deal of integrity in the agreement. The commitments that are made by the tribe in the voice of Glenn Marshall stand.

Now comes Alice Elwell, who writes in The Enterprise of Brockton that, in fact, enthusiasm for the casino was very much based on personal assurances made by Marshall — or, as the headline puts it, his “secret promises.” Among them:

  • Marshall promised local business leaders that he would “help” if the casino harmed restaurants in town. Selectman Wayne Perkins says this would have taken the form of “comp points” — scrip given to casino visitors that could be used at Middleborough businesses, which in turn could trade them in for cash.
  • Marshall promised to assist the town with police and firefighting expenses.
  • He told several people to “come see me” over their concerns about how the casino would affect their quality of life.
  • He promised the chairman of the Middleborough Housing Authority that he would “help” with programs for senior citizens.

Elwell writes: “It is unknown if the residents would have supported a casino in their town had they known of Marshall’s criminal background. But in the months leading up to the historic town meeting vote, Marshall made several promises that were not included in the written contract with the town.”

And she quotes tribal council member Cheryl Frye as saying that anyone who’s concerned about whether the tribe will honor promises made by Marshall should come on in and talk it over.

Is there a legal argument to be made that town meeting approved the deal on false pretenses? I don’t know. That would probably be a stretch. But there’s really no end to this, is there?

My standard disclosure.

A second investor accused of bribery

Oh, the hell with it. I’m going to keep posting on the Middleborough casino as long as there’s news to report. And there is: The Cape Cod Times’ Stephanie Vosk tells us that yet another investor has run afoul of the law.

Vosk points to a 1997 story in the Detroit Free Press, which found that, 20 years earlier, casino developer Herb Strather paid a $500 fine and performed community service as punishment for offering a police officer a new pair of shoes in return for special consideration on a drunken-driving arrest. You can’t make this stuff up.

Yesterday, of course, we learned that investor Sol Kerzner was accused of bribing a South African government official in 1986 in connection with a casino deal there. Kerzner was not convicted, and the charge was later dropped.

Meanwhile, Peter Kenney keeps beavering away on Cape Cod Today as he attempts to track $675,000 in Wampanoag money used by disgraced former tribe leader Glenn Marshall to buy a horse stable in Mashpee.

Finally, I’ve got a commentary on all this in today’s Providence Journal.

My standard disclosure.

Frank talk about Larry Craig

I’ve been casting about for a point of entry into the Larry Craig controversy. Today, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank gave me one. In an interview with Robin Young on WBUR’s “Here and Now” — most of which was about the mortgage crisis — Frank explained (fast-forward to 14:25) why he didn’t think Craig should resign:

Well, I condemn his hypocrisy, and I think the hypocrisy is a valid reason for people not to vote for him. I think that when you set yourself up to make rules for people and then don’t follow them yourself, you’re committing a very grave error, and that’s a reason not to vote for you. But when you’ve been elected, it seems to me you serve out the term unless you have been shown to be misusing your office.

Look, we have a senator from Louisiana, Senator [David] Vitter, who has acknowledged that he was patronizing this prostitution ring. People haven’t asked for him to resign. Now, I don’t think people should be soliciting sex in public bathrooms, and I certainly don’t think people should be hypocrites. But we’re not talking now about somebody who shot someone, or bodily injured someone, and the fact is that comparable infractions among heterosexuals haven’t led to demands to resign.

Frank went on to observe that Craig is up for re-election next year, and that he assumed Craig would either not run or would be defeated in a Republican primary.

A lot of good sense there. Not that it matters — it looks like Craig will be gone by the end of the day.