The Speaker Going Away

In today's Boston Globe is an opinion piece by Yvonne Abraham, titled "How low can we go?" Her subject was the Speaker of the Massachusetts House and the collection of recent and future speakers.

Ms Abraham has an early paragraph on the status of the House:

There's a lot at stake here. DiMasi is the third speaker in a row to resign under an ethical cloud. As a result, the public standing of legislators has sunk to spectacularly low levels.

My problem with this paragraph is that it suggests that there isn't much left to go in terms of the sinking. I think that is "spectacularly" wrong. Twenty-two and a bit months from now the voters will again go to the polls. But, it won't be some 95% of those eligible to vote, all raging for reform. It will be more like 50 or 55 percent. Of those who do go to the polls, the vast majority will vote to put back into office the 200 members of the current Great and General Court who elect to run for re-election.

I know that Ms Abraham is outraged by what is happening in the House, and rightfully so. She is properly outraged by the passing of the corruption torch to Representative Robert DeLeo, a Democrat from Winthrop. I am with her in her outrage.

However, how outraged is she?

She is all over the new Speaker, Mr DeLeo, but I think we are going to need a bit more house cleaning than getting a clean Speaker. Lets look at the State Senate and former State Senator Diane Wilkerson, who was captured on TV a couple of years ago, after a contentious vote, saying that "the ends justify the means." And, apparently, her financial well being justified taking bribes. Yes, she was bullied into resigning. However, we didn't hear calls for a "house cleaning." No, we got someone new to replace her, Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz.

I expect that Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz is a straight shooter. But, it is going to be hard to do this "house cleaning" one seat at a time.

So, how outraged is Columnist Yvonne Abraham?

• Is she prepared to write me a check for $500.00 so I can run against Democratic Party State Rep David Nangle? (And why does my Rep get a stub in Wikipedia and Diane Wilkerson and Sonia Chang-Diaz get actual entries? I am leaving this to Marie or Lynne or Mimi or Dick for now.)
• Is she prepared to write a letter to my wife (or a column) saying why she (my wife) should fully support me running for office?
• Is she prepared to put her reporter's eyes on such a campaign, or a like campaign, giving support to the idea that a lot of people should be running, giving voters an option?

Is it going to take a perp-walk of a dozen members of the Great and General Court before people:

1. Decide to put a new slate of people into office.
2. Decide as a group that we are better off when the minority party has enough votes in one or the other house to sustain a Governor's veto

I await the day.

In the mean time, remember the bumper sticker--Beacon Hill is Broken.

Regards  --  Cliff

PS:  I used the term "perp-walk," but I don't like the process. Some day I will blog about why I think perp-walks are a sign of prosecutorial corruption.