Kudos to Boston Globe reporter Sean Murphy, who has produced a stomach-churning two-part series (part one; part two) on the phenomenally expensive health-insurance plans that are routinely given to public employees in Massachusetts.
Appalled as I am that state and local employees are having as much as 90 percent of the health-care costs covered by taxpayers, that really pales in comparison to those receiving free health care for serving a few years in part-time, mostly voluntary elected positions.
I’d like to see newspapers and bloggers in every city and town in the follow up by reporting exactly what the situation is in their community.
I hope I’m not just channeling my own dysfunction, but it seems to me that interest in the Chilean earthquake is pretty limited. There’s plenty of coverage out there. But this is not a story people are talking about, especially in comparison to the Haitian earthquake. The reasons are pretty obvious:
Haiti is close to the United States, and Chile is on the other side of the world. Related to that is the fact that Haitian-Americans are a large minority group. Chilean-Americans are not.
Media consumers are suffering from earthquake fatigue.
Even though the Chilean earthquake was much more powerful, it appears that the death toll and the suffering will be far less than was the case in Haiti.
With that, a few ever-so-slightly non-mainstream sources for you to look at: If you’re not accustomed to heading for the Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog after something like this, well you should be. The New York Times is gathering user-submitted photos. Global Voices Online — which is holding its annual conference in Santiago, Chile, in May — has posted two blog round-ups, here and here. And Boston-based GlobalPost has uploaded a number of stories and photos from the scene and the surrounding area.
And let’s not leave out Boston’s Christian Science Monitor, a leading non-profit source of international news. A story on why Chile seemed so well-prepared, for instance, yields this gem:
Chileans are well versed in what to do during earthquakes, with drills part of every child’s schooling. “Just in case” attitudes, which might seem obsessive in other parts of the world, are the norm here. One woman says she turns off the gas valve every time she leaves the house, just in case a quake strikes when she is out.
The strange case of Amy Bishop is rapidly morphing into the biggest Boston news story in many years — the biggest, perhaps, since 20 years ago, when Charles Stuart murdered his pregnant wife, Carol, and jumped to his death as authorities were closing in.
At first, the story appeared neither to be local nor all that atypical as such things go. Bishop reportedly shot three colleagues to death at a faculty meeting at the University of Alabama, supposedly in response to not having received tenure.
But soon the Boston Globe broke two mind-boggling stories — that she had killed her brother with a shotgun when she was just 18 21 years old, and that she had come under suspicion in the attempted mail-bombing of one of her professors at Harvard University.
(Today we even learn there’s a Northeastern University angle. Bishop and her husband, James Anderson, are said to have met when they were undergraduates at Northeastern. From what we know so far, she apparently was not weaponized during her time as an undergrad.)
I’ve been thinking hard about whether there has been a bigger local story in the post-Stuart years. Yes, the 9/11 attacks began at Logan Airport, but that angle was quickly subsumed into the larger national story. Louise Woodward? A big one, yes, but not nearly as big as this may become.
At moments like this, it always makes sense to think about what we’ve learned from the past and how that might apply in the present situation. The Stuart case, you may recall, was a media fiasco. Nearly everyone went along for the ride when Stuart blamed the shooting on a black man who set up on him and his wife as they were driving home from a childbirth class at Brigham & Women’s Hospital.
In fact, Stuart had shot his wife for insurance money so he could open a restaurant, then shot himself. That neither law-enforcement officials nor the media questioned his initial story set back race relations in a significant way, and stained the legacy of then-mayor Ray Flynn, who’d made racial harmony his top priority.
In the Bishop case, no one is questioning that she shot fellow faculty members on Friday. Still, the fact that she was never charged — never mind convicted — in the earlier incidents ought to give us pause. (The killing of her brother was ruled an accident, though the reasons are unclear. A Boston Herald story about a man who says Bishop threatened him with a gun right after the shooting certainly raises questions.)
The Globe showed a lot of enterprise in digging out those stories about Bishop’s background. But it may be a while before we know how they fit into the larger picture.
*Update:Andy Smith asks, “wasn’t that priest thing kind of a big deal?” Indeed it was, and I’m glad I threw this out there before writing a more-considered version for the Guardian tonight.
I’m a huge admirer of Paul Levy, president and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess, but I can’t pretend I’m in a position to judge the merits of his objections to Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposal to cap medical costs. (Although I do think Levy makes some good points.)
My main reason for posting this is to call attention to the ongoing media revolution made possible by the Internet. Old story though it may be, I think this is an unusually relevant example, and we shouldn’t take for granted the power to talk back:
Levy writes what is essentially an op-ed piece in almost-real time, without having to wait for days and be subject to the Globe’s editing process.
Levy also links to another account that he believes got it right: an editorial in the Boston Herald.
As for influence, Levy’s blog, Running a Hospital, gets about 10,000 unique visitors a month, according to Compete.com. Obviously the Globe’s circulation is much larger. But how often do you read guest op-eds? Yeah, me too. Levy may well attract as many if not more readers by posting on his blog than if his piece had run in the Globe.
One thing I’ll point out, and, frankly, Levy should have: he is supporting Patrick’s main rival in the gubernatorial contest, Republican Charlie Baker, former head of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Levy no doubt thinks that fact is well-known, especially among the specialized audience that reads his blog. But disclosure never hurts, and it often helps.
Alert Media Nation reader S.G. sends along this story from the Armenian Mirror-Spectator about barely retired retiree Steve Kurkjian of the Boston Globe. Given how often his byline still appears, you might be puzzled to learn that Kurkjian took an early-retirement buyout a couple of years ago. He explains:
People need this stuff, and I know how to do it. People out there return my phone calls when I say “I’m Steve Kurkjian from the Globe.” In both cases [stories about former Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi and Partners HealthCare], the source said “I will only deal with you. I’m not going to give it to anybody else.”
This heart-stopping video/slideshow by the Boston Globe’s Bill Greene and Maria Sacchetti is a vivid illustration of the situation on the ground in Haiti right now.
The Globe has gathered together all of its Haiti coverage here. It includes stories, photos, audio and resources.
Former Boston Newspaper Guild president Dan Totten signed another union official’s name on his paycheck in order to circumvent a dispute involving unauthorized expenses Totten had rung up on his union credit card, according to an audit conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor.
The results of the audit were laid out in a Nov. 17 letter from the Employment Standards Administration of the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) in the Department of Labor’s Boston office. The letter was sent to Patrice Sneyd, Guild treasurer. The Guild is the largest union at the Boston Globe, and was involved in a months-long dispute last year with the Globe’s corporate owner, the New York Times Co., over a management demand for $10 million in union givebacks.
The Guild removed Totten on Dec. 2 after allegations of improprieties arose. (See previous posts.) Totten has appealed his removal and maintained he did nothing wrong. The Department of Labor letter is a public document, but it was missing from the agency’s Web site until recently. (Read the entire letter.)
Although the letter lays out numerous deficiencies in Totten’s administration of union business, one of the more intriguing unanswered questions has involved allegations that Totten signed someone else’s name on his paycheck — an issue in the Guild’s decision to remove him. The letter offers an explanation.
According to the audit, Totten had charged $1,441 in expenses to his credit card without permission. After making some restitution, the letter says, Totten still owed $254. Here’s what happened next, according to the letter, in a section titled “Falsification of Union Records”:
It was further disclosed that BNG President Daniel Totten forged another officer’s name to Totten’s paycheck that was being withheld until receipts (or reimbursements) were turned into the union office for charges made to the union’s credit card.
The union should be aware that these activities constitute fiduciary violations…. While this matter will not be pursued further at this time, OLMS recommends that President Totten reimburse the union for the remaining outstanding unauthorized expenditures and that stricter internal checks and balances are put into place to avoid this occuring in the future.
The letter also details more than $5,000 in meals for union officers at places like The Fours, Siros Restaurant, Legal Seafood, and Joe’s American Bar and Grill, with no explanation given as to what if any union business was conducted. The letter further states that willful failure to maintain records properly can result in a fine of $100,000, a one-year prison term or both.
When the Guild removed Totten, some (including me) speculated that it might be retribution for the manner in which Totten botched negotiations with the New York Times Co.
The Department of Labor letter, though, demonstrates that irregularities under Totten’s leadership may have been significant.
I invite responses, especially from Totten, who, again, maintains he did nothing wrong.
The Boston Globe today reports that Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown last week played up his conservative bona fides in an interview with “Sean Hannity, cohost of Fox News Network’s ‘Hannity and Colmes.'”
