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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gamesmistress who wrote (56798)	7/28/2004 5:52:14 PM
From: gamesmistress	Respond to of 793955

Let's deflate the balloons By Steve Bailey, Globe Columnist boston.com The story of the Democratic convention that matters most for Boston is playing out not inside the FleetCenter, but outside. Forgive me for leaving my pompoms home this morning, all you party animals. But while we wait to realize the long-term bonanza from this grand pep rally, let's recap the immediate costs. Boston as ghost town. The mayor who brought us this convention avoided gridlock only by successfully turning Boston into a vacant back lot perfect to show off the New Boston, devoid of all those cranky Old Bostonians who actually live and work here. Faced with disaster, Tom Menino and others intentionally scared the pants off everyone, and it worked -- all too well, in fact. The result, an economic neutron bomb: empty highways, empty subways, empty offices, empty stores and restaurants. This, however, passes as a success. No people means no business. Like our president's little war with its ever-changing rationale, so too has the spin for the convention evolved. Convention boosters talk less about the $154 million in alleged spending the convention was supposed to generate, and more about the long-term impact of having the whole world watching. We took an estimated 300,000 cars off the roads every day and replaced them with 35,000 conventioneers. That is not good math for the local economy. We canceled the Tall Ships, among other things. Before the convention the Beacon Hill Institute put the economic loss for the big event at $8.2 million. You don't have to be an economist to know that that estimate will turn out far too modest. The near-empty rooftop parking deck at Teradyne, the vacant parking spots on Newbury Street, and that you can walk into Davio's and get any table you want tells you where this is headed. The cops and firefighters will be weeping all the way to the bank. Menino won the spin in the papers, but the cops and firefighters won the kind of raises the rest of us would love. But then the rest of us don't have the leverage of a convention. City residents will be paying this convention tax for years, including the little-noticed $4-an-hour increase in that odious detail pay for cops and firefighters. "It was more generous than I thought was reasonable coming out of two years of recession," says Samuel Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau. Opportunity lost. The Democratic convention was the biggest corporate shakedown this city has ever seen. Menino and Ted Kennedy got million-dollar donations from a who's who of Corporate Boston and everything they could out of everyone else. But this is not extra money, only money being moved around. The FleetCenter looks swell on TV, the delegates and other assorted hangers-on get their goody bags and parties, but money will be scarce for hundreds of other good causes. When the Boston Foundation gives $1 million to the convention, that is $1 million not going to dozens of other groups. Guantanamo, Mass. It cannot be measured neatly in financial terms, but no accounting of the costs of the convention could be complete without noting Boston's disgraceful holding pen for protesters. The most frightening prospect is that this, too, will be judged a court-approved success in curbing threats of violence and become standard operating procedure elsewhere. That would be an ironic legacy for the home of the Boston Tea Party. If the convention helps elect a new president, that will be a very good thing. And I like a good party as well as anyone. But don't pretend this was about a better Boston. More than anything it was about two people--a mayor and a senator, both nearer the end than the beginning, both thinking "legacy"--who consider bringing a political convention to their town the equivalent of winning the World Series. It is all about what happens inside the FleetCenter, not outside. It is all about them, not about us.

To: gamesmistress who wrote (56798)	7/28/2004 5:52:18 PM
From: Andrew N. Cothran	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793955

Did Kerry Stage War Footage? Matt Drudge is breaking what, if true, would be perhaps the most bizarre general election campaign story in my memory: A bombshell new book written by the man who took over John Kerry's Swift Boat charges: Kerry reenacted combat scenes for film while in Vietnam! The footage is at the center of a growing controversy in Boston. The official convention video introducing Kerry is directed by Steven Spielberg protégé James Smoll. Smoll was given hours of Kerry's homemade 8 millimeter film to incorporate into the convention short, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. "Kerry carried a home movie camera to record his exploits for later viewing," charges a naval officer in the upcoming book UNFIT FOR COMMAND. "Kerry would revisit ambush locations for reenacting combat scenes where he would portray the hero, catching it all on film. Kerry would take movies of himself walking around in combat gear, sometimes dressed as an infantryman walking resolutely through the terrain. He even filmed mock interviews of himself narrating his exploits. A joke circulated among Swiftees was that Kerry left Vietnam early not because he received three Purple Hearts, but because he had recorded enough film of himself to take home for his planned political campaigns." *** The BOSTON GLOBE reported in 1996 that the Kerry home movies "reveal something indelible about the man who shot them - the tall, thin, handsome Naval officer seen striding through the reeds in flak jacket and helmet, holding aloft the captured B-40 rocket. The young man so unconscious of risk in the heat of battle, yet so focused on his future ambitions that he would reenact the moment for film. It is as if he had cast himself in the sequel to the experience of his hero, John F. Kennedy, on the PT-109." Several possibilities here: The author has an axe to grind and is simply lying. There is an "innocent" rationale for the films (orders from on high for training purposes, perhaps?). This is actually true as reported. If it's #1, it will be a major distraction until it gets cleared up, likely dampening any convention bounce, with a probable equal and opposite bounce once it is. Possibility #2 is a stretch, but weirder things have happened. If it's #3, this would be simply devastating for the Kerry campaign, removing the lynchpin of his backstory.

To: gamesmistress who wrote (56798)	7/28/2004 6:48:08 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793955

assert foreign oil, This is another boondoggle proposal, of course, It will be rolled as "Kerry wants your SUV off the road!"

To: gamesmistress who wrote (56798)	7/28/2004 9:58:34 PM
From: quehubo	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793955

This is some of the most ignorant and misleading comments I have ever seen. <<John F. Kerry is expected to call on the nation to support a multibillion-dollar project aimed at ending America's dependence on Middle Eastern oil as a way to reduce its entanglement with authoritarian regimes and the Islamic terrorists who are trying to topple them.>> 2/3 of all oil sits in the Persian Gulf, we use 25% of all oil produced daily. Can you say fungible commodity? What an idiot.