Archive for August 30th, 2010

August 30th, 2010

Monday political observations

by DickH

With the primary election just two weeks away, I’m more attuned to efforts by the candidates in the final stretch. Nothing arrived in today’s mail but late last week I received pieces from each candidate in the First Middlesex Senate race. Chris Doherty’s was a postcard thanking me for signing his nomination papers and asking for my vote. On the reverse side he repeats his “A Prosecutor, Not a Politician” theme. Eileen Donoghue sent a larger piece that promotes her experience in local government: In times like these, we can’t afford to waste any time. We need a Senator who knows how to get results – and that’s just what Eileen Donoghue did as Mayor of Lowell.

Last night I wrote about my experience at yesterday’s Billerica Democratic Town Committee cookout but I neglected to mention lawn sign sitings that I made. The race to fill the state representative seat being vacated by Bill Greene has the most attention in town. There are two candidates on the Democratic side: Kevin Conway and Jarrett Scarpaci; and two on the Republican side: Marc Lombardo and Brion Cangiamila. Former selectman Jim O’Donnell is running as an Independent. Along route 3A coming from Lowell, Lombardo had the most signs by far (and many of his locations also contained “Golnik for Congress” signs alongside). Conway had the second most followed by Scarpaci. Of course, signs don’t vote, etc.

Today I had a work-related meeting in Boston and I chose to driver rather than take the train. (The traffic was very light – my driveway to the Boston Garden parking garage in just 45 minutes). Zipping down Route 3, I caught a “Jon Golnik for Congress” spot on WCAP. Closer to Boston there was a (Republican) Mary Connaughton for State Auditor ad on either WBZ or WRKO. Coming out of the city there was a (Democrat) Guy Glodis for auditor commercial.

Eventually I tuned in to WRKO which I do sparingly because it’s “bash Deval Patrick and Barack Obama 24/7 radio” but today curiosity got the better of me. I was treated to a hour-long infomercial on the Jim McKenna for Attorney General campaign on the Charlie Manning show. Neither McKenna nor anyone else apparently cared enough about running to have obtained the nominations signatures required to get on the ballot so now he’s running for the nomination on stickers. He needs at least as many write-in votes as he did nomination signatures which is 10,000. What struck me wasn’t anything McKenna said or did but Manning’s unabashed advocacy of McKenna’s candidacy was really astounding. Over and over again he urged listeners to “get rid of Martha Coakley” by supporting this guy. I knew radio talk show hosts spare nothing to rip apart Democratic officeholders but I hadn’t realized they had become such overt supporters of Republican Party candidates. The main reason I kept listening was that I found the commercials to be so amusing: everyone of them was for some medical malady that afflicts aging white males or for ways to beat your creditors out of the money you owe them.

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August 30th, 2010

Koch Brothers: From private agenda to mass movement

by DickH

“Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama,” a story by journalist Jane Mayer in the August 30, 2010 edition of The New Yorker, details the political activities of Charles and David Koch, the billionaire owners of Koch Industries, a conglomerate that owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia Pacific and a variety of other companies and interests in the oil and chemical industries.

The title of the article is a bit misleading because the Koch brothers, following in the footsteps of their father, have waged political battle against every phase of liberalism in American politics going back to the New Deal. Their father, Fred Koch, was one of the founders of the John Birch Society in 1958 who claimed that “Communists have infiltrated both the Democratic and Republican Parties.” Besides hundreds of millions of dollars, the father also bequethed his sons a distrust of government that bordered on the paranoid. Son David, in fact, became the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential candidate in 1980. He ran against Ronald Reagen – from the right.

But the Koch political candidacy was stillborn with his ticket receiving only 1% of the vote. From that drubbing the Koch brothers took away the lesson that politicians “are merely actors playing out a script” and so the Koch’s became the script writers. They did this by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into seemingly independent organizations such as the Cato Institute and Americans for Prosperity. [The Kochs are also major funders of the Republican Governors Association, the outfit that’s been running attack ads against Deval Patrick and Tim Cahill here in Massachusetts all summer].

Not surprisingly, many of the causes championed by these Koch-funded think tanks benefit the financial interest of Koch-controlled companies particularly in the areas of pollution control, global warming, cancer research and countless others. Like criminal defense attorneys, the academic experts employed by these think tanks need not convince anyone of the truth of their positions; all they need do is raise doubts, doubts that paralyze our political system. By doing nothing, the polluters win. This is nothing new. It’s a tactic torn directly from the playbook of big tobacco.

The Kochs like anyone else are entitled to spend their fortunes however they see fit. What they should not be able to do is spend hundreds of millions of dollars influencing our political system in complete anonymity. As Mayer points out

The Kochs have long depended on the public’s not knowing all the details about them. They have been content to operate what David Koch has called “the largest company that you’ve never heard of.” But with the growing prominence of the Tea Party [of which Mayer details the Koch’s deep involvement] and with increased awareness of the Kochs’ ties to the movement, the brothers may find it harder to deflect scrutiny.

CategoryElection 2010, Politics | Comment2 Comments »

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August 30th, 2010

President Obama Responds to Criticism, Makes His Case & the Democrats’ Case

by PaulM

The following link takes you to a pretty useful summary of President Obama’s remarks on Sunday during an interview with Brian Williams of NBC-TV news. The report is by Tom Kavanaugh of AOL. What the President says reverberates in our local and state election campaigns this fall. The agenda put forward by his administration and supported for the most part by the Democrats in Congress affects life in Lowell and the Bay State. Read the summary here. 

CategoryCulture, Current Events, Election 2010, History, Lowell, Politics | CommentNo Comments »

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August 30th, 2010

August 27, 2010 Movies: The Unexpected by Jack Neary

by Tony

The entry below is being cross posted from Jack Neary’s own blog, “Shards”.

This is a Good News/Bad News thing. I saw a couple of movies this week, one in a theatre, one via Netflix Streaming. My expectations were knocked sideways with each film.

First, the Bad News.

I really like Steve Carell (Wait, while I go to the Internet and check, once again, on the l’s and the r’s in his name.) Okay. Carell. I remember his earlier work on THE DAILY SHOW. And I remember how blown away I was with his performance in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. Who knew the guy had acting chops like that? And then there’s THE OFFICE. I am now watching a lot of OFFICE reruns. The show itself is brilliant. Brilliant in a different way from Gervais’ brilliant British version, but brilliant nonetheless. Brilliant in a decidedly American way. So the first time through these shows, it was the show–and the beautifully written and performed arc of the Jim/Pam relationship–that made the show work for me. Now, on my second time through, I’m recognizing how remarkably honest and funny Carell is in the show. Episode by episode he brings everything he’s got to the table, and that’s a lot. He is at once silly and ridiculous and pathetic and charming and…sad. Gervais does all this as well, it is true, but…Carell (and the OFFICE writers) need to be recognized for this wonderful character. Okay. All right. I love Steve Carell. I thought both he and Tina Fey were very good in DATE NIGHT, though I thought the writing let them down. Okay. All right. But the other day, in a theatre, I saw DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS.

Here’s how I think the pitch meeting for DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS went down.

PITCHER: Are you ready? Guy wants a promotion. His boss says okay. But the guy has to bring an idiot to dinner so the boss and his cronies can make fun of the guy. DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS. Whatdya think?

PRODUCER: Are you sure this will…

PITCHER: Schmuck is Steve Carell.

PRODUCER: Make the movie!

And that’s where the creativity stopped. The movie is a long exercise in badly considered and executed “comic” situations and hideously unfunny jokes. I am terrible at remembering specifics about movies, so I am unable to regurgitate the jokes for you here but, trust me, the writers are sophomoric and talent-free when it comes to getting to the heart of the comic matter. And the very talented (I think) and very witty Zach Galifianakis is wasted in a stooge role that is offensively underwritten. It takes a lifetime to get to the dinner, and when we do, we are treated to more of the same lame humor and patented “guy movie” cliches we sat through to get to dinner. My question: Did Carell and Paul Rudd and Galifianakis actually read the script before committing to the movie? Or did they, like the producer, just sign on with the pitch? I’m guessing the latter. Because all of those actors are much, much, much better than the material in DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS.

And then there’s TRANSSIBERIAN.

(No matter how many times I type that title, the spell check always goes into Panic Mode, but as far as I can tell, that’s the way it’s spelled.)

This is a thriller I don’t think anybody saw. Made in 2008 by writer/director Brad Anderson (THE MACHINIST, NEXT STOP WONDERLAND), it’s a story about an American couple (Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer–yeah, playing an American), who are taking the Transsiberian Express from Beijing to Moscow after doing some social work in China. Along the way, they encounter an “interesting” young couple who attracts them in varying ways, and the results are far from pleasant for Woody and Emily. The plot involves the Russian drug trade and the shady way in which the Russian police force goes about its business. Eduardo Noriega and Kate Mara play the mysterious strangers on the train, and Ben Kingsley plays a Russian detective. The Lithuanian shoot stands in for Siberia, and the film is beautifully rendered.

More than all this, though, is the fact that TRANSSIBERIAN is a terrific thriller, and terrific thrillers are hard to come by. Most of the time, the plot line in current thrillers is transparent almost from the first reel. This movie, like Polanski’s THE GHOST WRITER, is a current thriller that involves the viewer carefully, and then, about halfway through the movie, just grabs the viewer and takes him on an unexpected ride full of twists and turns that lasts until the very last frame.

TRANSSIBERIAN had the misfortune of opening the same weekend as THE DARK KNIGHT, the biggest opening in film history, and thus accounts for its relative obscurity.

But it’s still out there, available to see, and I recommend it without reservation.

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