Deval Patrick – Page 11

Breach of privacy at DevalPatrick.com

After reading about Secretary of State Bill Galvin’s concern (Globe story here; Herald story here) that DevalPatrick.com was not sufficiently protecting users’ privacy, I decided to experiment by starting the process of becoming a registered user.

First I was asked to enter my name or phone number. I entered “Dan Kennedy,” along with my town. No go. So then I entered just “Kennedy,” again along with my town.

Whoa! I got 78 names along with the streets they live on. The list consisted of everyone in my town named “Kennedy,” “Kenneth” or, oddly enough, “Kent,” “Kondo” or “Kimby.” Yes, Mrs. Media Nation and I were among the 78.

What’s weird about this is that the names are listed apparently for the sole purpose of your being able to verify that one of them is you. But you get the complete list without actually having to complete the registration process. So I can enter “Chen” and “Wellesley” and get another nice long list of names and streets, or, say, “Purcell” and “Weston.” Oh, look! There’s Pat Purcell, publisher of the Boston Herald.

I have no idea why this is necessary. Certainly I can’t think of another Web site for which I’ve registered that requires me to choose from a list of names. I enter my name, and away I go. I suppose the DevalPatrick.com scheme makes it easier to avoid the problem of someone posting nutty comments under a pseudonym. But can’t an intern at this campaign-contribution-funded site intercept those comments? Surely that would be better than violating everyone’s privacy.

The site carries with it this disclaimer: “www.devalpatrick.com believes strongly in protecting people’s privacy. Data on this site is limited to ONLY data that is now publicly available at any number of locations, including city and town halls, and websites. The site further limited data today by eliminating specific street address numbers.”

Is that right? Can any of Media Nation’s readers find a single Web site that displays entire lists of people along with the streets that they live on? (If you can, I’ll post it.) Yes, you can always get stuff like this by going to your town or city clerk’s office. But the hassle of having to do that is in itself a guarantee of a certain degree of privacy.

I’m with John Reinstein of the ACLU of Massachusetts, who tells the Globe’s Andrea Estes, “I’m puzzled by the whole thing.” And, unfortunately, I have to agree with the Herald’s Casey Ross, who calls this “yet another embarrassing misstep” for the governor.

And no, I didn’t complete the registration process.

Even worse: I just tried registering by entering my phone number, and up popped the Media Nation family. Unlike the registration-by-name feature, you don’t have to enter a city or town when you enter a phone number. So DevalPatrick.com also works as a very nice reverse phonebook, using data you were required to provide to the state and paid for by a partisan political-campaign committee.

A night in New Haven

I can’t be sure, but I might have seen Gov. Deval Patrick’s late father perform. In Sally Jacobs’ riveting story (link now fixed) in today’s Boston Globe about the governor’s complicated relationship with his father, Pat Patrick, we learn that the elder Patrick played for a while with the band NRBQ.

I once saw NRBQ at a bar in New Haven in the late 1970s. Pat Patrick supposedly played with the band for a time in the early ’80s. So it doesn’t quite match up. But given the haziness of memory over events that took place a quarter-century ago, it’s possible that he was up on stage playing sax that night.

What I really would have liked to see was the Sun Ra Arkestra, Pat Patrick’s main musical outlet. Unfortunately for me, it never happened.

The permanent online campaign

If Gov. Deval Patrick wants to use the Web as a governing tool, as his supporters say, then shouldn’t he be doing it here? Why should we look at the soon-to-be-unveiled DevalPatrick.com site as anything other than part of his permanent campaign?

By the way, if you go to DevalPatrick.com right now, you’ll find that you can only do two things: (1) get onto his campaign’s e-mail list and (2) give money. Of course.

Update: The Outraged Liberal has a characteristically smart take about DevalPatrick.com, which does, indeed, look promising. But O.L. and I will have to continue to differ on one thing: the appropriateness of Patrick’s using his privately funded campaign site as his primary outlet for online governance.

I still think this ought to be taking place on his gubernatorial site, and that there’s something vaguely wrong about making it an extension of his campaign. But, of course, he wouldn’t be able to solicit campaign donations on his official site — something that makes even O.L. a little queasy.

Update II: Media Nation’s views get some play in the Herald, in Casey Ross’ “Monday morning briefing.”

Conflicting accounts

Wouldn’t you think that before Gov. Deval Patrick put forth his latest account of his interactions with federal officials prior to the New Bedford immigration raid, he’d make sure he wouldn’t be immediately contradicted by two members of his own administration? The Globe’s Yvonne Abraham has the details. And the Massachusetts Liberal has a smart, deep take on all this.

The truth about the New Bedford raid

Two Globe columnists today come up aces today in the ongoing controversy over last week’s immigration raid in New Bedford.

First, Eileen McNamara fills in the details of something that’s been out there from the beginning: that Gov. Deval Patrick was informed of the upcoming raid even before his inauguration, and that Department of Social Services Commissioner Harry Spence was involved in planning at various stages — right down to a phone call he received the night before “to coordinate law enforcement and child protection aspects of the raid.” (Spence, as I’ve observed previously, is the grand master of avoiding blame.) McNamara writes:

So, enough with the breast-beating pretense that the Patrick administration was blindsided by the stealth tactics of shadowy federal immigration officials. This is political grandstanding of the most transparent kind.

Read it all — otherwise you’ll miss the priceless comment from Patrick’s communications director, Nancy Fernandez Mills.

Next up is Jeff Jacoby, with the first of a two-parter that examines the real problem with illegal immigration:

[I]f hundreds of thousands of immigrants come here illegally each year, is it realistic to conclude that we have a massive crime problem for which a ferocious crackdown is the only solution? Perhaps it is the case instead that America’s immigration quotas are simply too low for the world’s most dynamic economy. And perhaps the persistent influx of industrious workers is not a plague to be cursed, but a blessing to be better managed.

Buttressing both McNamara’s and Jacoby’s arguments is a profile by the Globe’s Irene Sege of Barthila Solano, an illegal immigrant from Ecuador whose tenuous family situation has been thrown into chaos following the arrest of her husband, Valencio Salas, last week.

“I don’t understand what harm we’re doing,” Solano tells Sege. “We work so hard.”

Budget cuts for the blind

Best wishes to Diane Patrick. Depression is a serious illness, and the fact that Gov. Patrick felt the need to make such a public announcement suggests that he and his family have been struggling with this for some time.

But while the governor helps his wife recover, let’s not ignore the public’s business. Today, Boston Herald columnist Peter Gelzinis reports that Patrick’s proposed budget would cut $118,000 for Braille and audio books for the blind.

If Patrick promised to do that last fall, I missed it.

Update: Here is Jessica Fargen’s news story on the cuts.

The taxman cometh (II)

A few facts about Gov. Deval Patrick’s property-tax relief package, which he unveiled yesterday. (Globe coverage here and here; Herald coverage here.)

1. The plan would reportedly provide property-tax relief for as many as 100,000 Massachusetts homeowners. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are about 2.45 million households in Massachusetts, and 64 percent are owner-occupied. I’ll take that as a rough approximation that there are 1.57 million homeowners in Massachusetts. (I’ll concede that there may be an apples-and-oranges problem in here somewhere. Among other things, the 100,000 figure apparently includes “families and individuals,” so it’s really more than 100,000.)

Anyway — using my admittedly imperfect methodology, fewer than 7 percent of homeowners would benefit under the Patrick plan. In other words, something like 94 percent would not benefit. This from a guy who made property-tax relief a major part of his gubernatorial campaign.

The people who’d benefit are obviously those who need it the most. But Patrick would do nothing to prevent the flight of middle-class families to lower-tax states — at least not with this plan.

2. Patrick would pay for the $75 million annual cost of this proposal with business-tax increases that would eventually total some $500 million a year. Now that doesn’t add up, does it? Indeed. He would use the leftover money to pay down a budget deficit that, as Joan Vennochi has pointed out, he knew about as early as last September — back when he kept insisting he had “no plans” to raise taxes.

3. Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation president Michael Widmer, a pro-business moderate who regularly skewered Patrick’s Republican predecessor, Mitt Romney, is outraged. “This adds significantly to the competitiveness disadvantage facing Massachusetts businesses,” Widmer told the Globe.

4. State Rep. Daniel Bosley, D-North Adams, a liberal who nearly joined Patrick’s cabinet, is dubious, telling the Globe, “I applaud the fact that he wants to standardize our corporate tax policy and have everyone pay their fair share, but you can’t entice businesses here if they don’t know what our tax policy is going to be next year. Every year we’re closing loopholes, and good, bad, or indifferent, those loopholes are part of the business balance sheet.”

5. Article 44 of the Massachusetts Constitution prohibits a graduated income tax. The most recent effort to change that went down to defeat in 1994. Could Patrick’s proposal be construed as a backdoor effort to establish a grad tax? Maybe not. The constitution does allow for exemptions and credits that benefit low- and moderate-income taxpayers. But at what point does such tinkering begin to run afoul of the flat-rate constitutional mandate?

It’s going to be interesting to watch this play out, that’s for sure.

Patrick and the press

I’ve been holding my fire on Gov. Deval Patrick’s personal spending spree (with our money) because I’m not sure exactly what to think. I thought the story about his helicopter rides to official events was genuinely stupid, but my ears perked up over his state-funded Cadillac. Since then, we’ve learned that he spent a fortune redecorating his office, and — most egregious, IMHO — has approved a $72,000-a-year chief of staff for his wife, a downtown lawyer.

And it’s not as though all this is obscuring the great news Patrick is making on other fronts. Indeed, as this was unfolding last week, he was quietly floating two ideas to raise taxes. This from a guy who said during his gubernatorial campaign that he had “no plans” for a tax increase. Well, not then, anyway.

I’m still not sure how big a deal any of this is. Faux-populist stories like these are a dime a dozen, and if Patrick’s tastes are more expensive than those of his predecessors, such is life. But his news conference yesterday is another matter. Patrick demonstrated such a just-doesn’t-get-it streak — and not for the first time — that it makes you wonder whether he has the basic political instincts needed to be an effective governor.

Essentially, Patrick apologized, even going so far to say he’d “screwed up”; announced that he would return some of the money; and then undid all the good he might have done by blaming it on the media. (Globe coverage here; Herald coverage here.) By all means, take a look at Jon Keller’s report on WBZ-TV (Channel 4). I also recommend Adrian Walker’s column in today’s Globe, which includes this:

I’m on record as not giving a hoot what the governor gets driven around in. I still think people place too much emphasis on symbols over substance. At the end of the day, a leased Cadillac is a ridiculous barometer to measure Patrick by.

What is troubling, though, is Patrick’s inability to think any problem of his has anything to do with him. If everyone could just be as high-minded, as substantive as he is, everything would be fine.

Over at Patrick headquarters, a.k.a. Blue Mass Group, Charley Blandy wags his finger at the media:

All of the local media geniuses who have smelled blood on the caddy stuff need to get a clue, and start focusing on things that matter. This is page B3 stuff at best. Media outlets aren’t struggling just because of their business model; they’re struggling because they’ve abdicated their vitality and relevance, and become just as focused on gossipy crap like the DeVille, or whether Scott Brown has a potty-mouth, or whatever. [Blandy’s emphasis.]

Blandy also denounces “the obvious racial subtext to all of this: Deval as Pimp.” Well, you know what? I’m not going to say there’s no racial subtext. There always is when you’re talking about an African-American in a position of power. But let’s not get carried away here.

Patrick needs to understand that, yes, he ran a mistake-free campaign for governor, but he also had plenty of luck, beating two extremely weak candidates in the Democratic primary and running virtually unopposed in the general election. For all his smarts and knowledge, he’s still got a lot to learn about politics.

Are the media pushing all this too hard? Probably. Yesterday, though, Patrick had a chance to put this string of stories behind him. He only partly succeeded — at best.

Elsewhere: The Massachusetts Liberal is more impressed with Patrick’s apology than I am. Jay Fitzgerald: “Individually, the various stories don’t push my outrage buttons. Collectively, well, they add up.” And the Herald’s Inside Track has a hilarious account of a dust-up between two reporters for WHDH-TV (Channel 7), Andy Hiller and Sean Hennessey, as they were jockeying for position at Patrick’s news conference.

More: Emily Rooney comes to Patrick’s defense.

The taxman cometh

Media Nation, Sept. 20:

Is [Deval] Patrick a tax-and-spend liberal? That’s not my impression. But the notion that he and the Democratic-controlled Legislature might go on a spending spree and then have to find a way to pay for it is not unreasonable.

The Boston Phoenix, Sept. 21:

You [Patrick] need to make it clear that you won’t raise taxes. You need to take the pledge.

Media Nation, Nov. 8:

His [Patrick’s] repeated assertion that he has “no plan to raise taxes” is a classic example of keeping your options open.

Joan Vennochi, the Boston Globe, Jan. 11:

Patrick attributes the hedging [on property-tax relief and 1,000 new police officers] to tighter than expected budget considerations. However, the fiscal writing was on the wall, not to mention the front page of this newspaper, long before he won election last November.

“The budget right now is very precariously balanced,” Noah Berger, executive director of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, a liberal think tank, warned in an article published on Sept. 16. “Any proposal to cut taxes or increase spending should acknowledge that they’ll likely require other tradeoffs.”

The Boston Globe, Feb. 16:

Two senior Patrick officials said that the administration is looking seriously at a wide range of corporate tax changes to help close what is now projected to be a $1.3 billion budget gap for the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1. One of the officials said that the tax changes could raise between $350 million and $400 million annually.

The Boston Globe, Feb. 16:

Governor Deval Patrick’s plan to help cities and towns ran into immediate resistance in the Legislature yesterday, with the House speaker characterizing portions of it as “absolutely” tantamount to raising taxes and cautioning that it would not benefit all communities equally.

The Boston Herald, Feb. 16:

It’s difficult to grasp how new local taxes could possibly translate into local tax relief. The most we can say about Gov. Deval Patrick’s package of municipal reforms released yesterday is that we won’t be shocked when property taxes don’t exactly plummet next year.

Kerry Healey must be wishing she’d actually run for governor instead of doing whatever the heck it was she thought she was doing last fall.

Coming clean on what exactly?

Scott Allen Miller demands that Gov. Deval Patrick do the right thing in handling a scandal that he can’t tell us about but that he insists is about to break. I’m not making this up. The headline is “Echoes of Cellucci?” Hmmm … the ponies? Credit-card debt? Bad Robert De Niro impersonations?

Now, don’t get me wrong. It might be true. But sometimes you should just leave the meatloaf in the oven until the dinger goes off.

Update: Scotto confirms my suspicion that he was referring to this. Good grief. Wake me when it’s over.