The Second Face of Janus - 2008

Below are Porcupine's Predictions for the year 2008.

As the Roman God looks into the future, here are some predictions for 2007. First, like last year, these are predictions from last year that Porcupine still believes will come to pass.

Justice John Paul Stevens will die this year, giving Bush his third choice for the Court.

Fidel Casto will die, and Congress will seize the opportunity to normalize relations with Cuba.

While for 2007, they netted Porcupine a score of Zero, Porcupine believes it it a matter of - not yet....

Here are the others in no particular order:

Gov. Deval Patrick will file his second budget as Governor with a heavy reliance on gambling revenues to justify expansions in local aid, making it clear that without a casino bill, local aid will be cut. Speaker Sal DiMasi will retaliate with a House budget that guts all of the Governor's pricey new initiatives like biotech and the housing funding, and will make it clear that the Legislature will not spend money that it does not and may never have. It will fall to Senate President Therese Murray to make peace, telling the Governor that you can't write a budget with pie-in-the-sky revenue forecasts, and telling DiMasi that money can be found in a reasonable way. Her brokering of the situation catapults her into power, setting her up to become the Billy Bulger of the 21st century.

The House will lose its leader as Speaker Sal DiMasi will not finish out the Session in his current position. The battle ro replace him will be between John Rogers and Gene O'flaherty at first, but it is Ron Mariano who will emerge as the next Speaker.

Governor Mitt Romney will win the Republican nomination for President, and Sen. Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination. Gov. Romney will be elected the 44th President of the United States.

Casino gambling will not be legalized in Massachusetts by the Legislature, but the Wampanoags will push ahead with their Middleboro casino plan after the Federal Government places their land in trust; it will be profitable enough to begin with poker and roulette, as they will not have to pay the state and the tribe will begin to lobby for the legalization of slots in 2009, supported by Suffolk Downs and other racetracks, who also want slot machine gambling.

Yarmouth will become the first town to vote to leave the Cape Cod Commission, with at least one other town joining the quest for special legislation. The charm offensive of the new director, Paul Niedzwicki, will not be enough to convince the towns that the Commission is worth the trouble or taxes any longer.

Barnstable's Charter Commission will recomment that Barnstable become the first city on Cape Cod, with a Plan E 'strong manager-weak mayor' government. This charter will be narrowly defeated, due mainly to disapproval of seeking city status, and the Charter Commission will continue its work into 2009.

Long time County Commissioner Mary LeClair will be replaced with a Democrat, the first crack in the long time Republican domination of county government. Controversial District Attorney Michael O'Keefe will be re-elected handily.

The Cape Wind wind farm project will receive the go-ahead from the Minerals Management Services, and Sen. O'Leary's ocean zoning bill will not pass in this Session, and its obstructionism will become moot. The Cashman project in Buzards Bay in the marine sanctuary will not be approved, however.

Porcupine had an average score of 48% for 2007 predictions - not bad, considering two out of ten were zero. But he can do better!

See you New Year's Eve, 2008, to see how accurate these are!

Gadfly Triumphant!

“Mr. Ferson asked if I were a Journalist. I told him that depended on your point of view, and explained who I was, and what I was doing. Ferson told me that he would be happy to speak with a REAL Journalist, but I didn’t fit that description. I told him I would be happy to speak with a real war hero, but Glenn Marshall didn’t fit that description.”

Peter Kenney, Show #550, The Great Gadfly



Porcupine has long thought that it’s a shame that Peter Kenney’s controversial television show, The Great Gadfly, doesn’t receive greater scope and distribution. To be sure, Mr. Kenney opines almost exclusively upon local matters, but his sardonic stylings and imaginative camera work place him at the very top of local affairs programming – now on the verge of extinction, if the telecommunications industry has anything to say about it. His work is so good that he was temporarily banned from the production studio, for reasons unrelated to obscenity. Think how muckraking he must be to have THAT occur in the feel-good world of public access programming!

Peter Kenney has long been a semi-professional gadfly. He is an easy person to meet and talk to, but a hard one to keep talking to, as almost invariably you will disagree with him about something, and are then cast into his mental oubliette of worthless persons. Still, there is no doubt that his mind, however opinionated, is a first class one, and his controversial program is always a treat – agree or disagree with him. Porcupine admits to sometimes feeling a little queasy when Mr. Kenney describes his thoughts so accurately that he could be doing a live remote from inside his prickly head, but Gadfly is a dead-on observer with a long memory.

It is his long memory which has started a major scandal, and has once again called into question the relationship between blogging and traditional mainstream media (MSM), for a blogger is what Mr. Kenney has become in addition to his television show. He writes for a virtual paper called Cape Cod Today, run by Walter Brooks, which also gave Porcupine his start in blogging. In some circles, Walter has a lot to answer for.

When the casino vote in Middleboro endorsed a contract with the newly recognized Wampanoag tribe, one of Gadfly’s leg hairs trembled. What WAS it about Glen Marshall that he remembered? Marshall referred to himself as having served as 'a Hero of Khe Sahn' during his VietNam service. Gadfly, with a little persistence, discovered that Marshall had reported a variety of dates of birth in different places (Gadfly strongly insinuates on his show that it is an attempt by Marshall to evade an accurate CORI check), but one date could not be disguised. Khe Sahn occurred only three months after Marshall graduated from Falmouth High – while he did serve in VietNam, he could not have taken part in that battle. Likewise, his claim to five Purple Hearts and a Silver Star is also fictitious. As Kenney said in this Friday's television show, the service he did provide in Viet Nam was distinguished enough; it is a shame that he sought to needlessly enhance it. It was during Gadfly’s attempts to verify the military service record that he had the above-quoted exchange with tribal spokesman Ferson of the Liberty Square Group. Mr. Ferson is doubtless wishing he had been less condescending, although it appears to be a habit. The Cape Cod Times reports that Mr. Ferson offered them an exclusive interview with Glenn Marshall if they would just hold back on their story about Marshall’s criminal conviction. The Times was unmoved by Mr. Ferson’s veiled threat that he would be talking with the Globe instead, and went ahead with the story.

But one again, Gadfly scooped the Times and the Globe. Part of the buzz surrounding the faux military background is that those stories were part of a biography, erroneously supplied by a Council member, and that Glenn never said those things himself. Except that he did – in his testimony before Congress, at the Tribal Recognition hearings. Gadfly was brandishing a transcript on Friday, more than the Times and Globe had by Friday night.

This brings us to Gadfly’s ultimate scoop – that Glenn Marshall is a rapist, convicted in 1981. What is awkward for the Cape Cod Times is that the entire story was in their own archives, but during their enhanced six part series on casino gambling, none of the ace cub reporters they employ had stumbled across it. It took a curmudgeon with a long memory to do that. As Gadfly pointed out on Friday, with his felony conviction, Marshall couldn’t get a liquor license in Gadfly’s home town of Yarmouth, but here was the state considering giving him oversight of a multi-million dollar business.

So the credibility two major newspapers and a multi-million dollar deal have been jeopardized because of the efforts of an ostensibly insignificant Blogger, making use of public records and intelligence. Why the MSM continues its disparagement of citizen journalists like Peter Kenney is incomprehensible, unless it is some blind trades-union loyalty to journalism school graduates. To Porcupine, this is the Dan Rather National Guard memo story all over again, writ smaller for a local stage. The only difference is that nobody’s head will roll at the newspapers – and the news will continue is obdurate stance of not mentioning where their information is actually coming from – the Triumphant Gadfly, Peter Kenney.

Middleboro Rolls the Dice!

There are two great pleasures in gambling: that of winning and that of losing.
ATTRIBUTION: French proverb.

It has occurred to Porcupine that he has been doing some of his most spirited writing on the sites of others. That is certainly true as Porcupine participates in the fray over the Wampanoag casino which may be in Middleboro. Porcupine has followed this story since Federal recognition was finally granted, as Porcupine blogged HERE in March of 2006.

Tomorrow, Middleboro will hold an extraordinary Town Meeting – and Porcupine adores town meeting as the ultimate expression of participatory democracy. The very thought of a meeting expected to be so large – perhaps 10,000 interested registered voters – that it must be held out of doors on an athletic field to accommodate the throngs is his idea of hog heaven. As Porcupine is not a Middleboro voter, he cannot participate, but has been content to argue the pros and cons, especially on the blog of Dan Kennedy called Media Nation.

Mr. Kennedy is a journalism professor at Northeastern University, public television pundit and fellow Blogger. He is also a former Middleboro resident, and decries the advent of a casino in these terms.

“Think about it. The Lottery is going to take a terrible hit if casino gambling comes to Massachusetts (which is why Cahill wants the state to grab a piece of the action). Traffic will become a nightmare throughout the region, but the Wampanoags propose only to upgrade roads in Middleborough. And, of course, the low-paid casino workers who would move to the area will put a strain on school systems throughout the region, not just in Middleborough.This is a disaster in the making. As Sabutai writes at Blue Mass Group: "I'm not sure if I'm naive to hope that the state government would not greenlight a massive project within a town where the residents offered a resounding 'no', but I'd hope that a 'no' on Saturday will end the debate in this town at least. New Bedford and Boston would looooove a casino. Wouldn't you rather work with people who want you?".

Kennedy is not alone in his lamenting. Treasurer Tim Cahill recently announced that in his august opinion, the $11 per year that Middleboro would get from the tribe as remediation money wasn’t NEARLY enough, and HE should be helping to make sure these rubes aren’t taken in by gambling slicksters. Boston Mayor Menino thinks the casino should be in Boston, as everything else connected with money is – Porcupine is of the opinion that the Mayor merely wants to unload a slightly used Hynes Convention Center on the tribe as a PERFECT casino venue – no, really it is!

And of course, His Excellency Deval Patrick has announced somewhat archly that the Town shouldn’t get ahead of itself, as the ultimate decision will be HIS, and he hasn’t read all his ‘briefing papers’ yet. Of course, he is wrong, as the tribe could operate bingo parlors tomorrow with or without the Governor’s permission. No, Patrick sees his responsibility as ensuring that a maximum cut be taken by the State, nor some mere Podunk town.

As Porcupine replied to Mr. Kennedy on his blog, “I've been listening to the anti-Middleboro casino forces, and I'm underwhelmed. Cape Cod is a virtual Foxwoods adjunct, with bus coaches leaving daily from the various senior ceters to CT. Somehow, this has become an entertainment of choice for the Greatest Generation, and we are exporting funds by the wheelbarrow load to out of state.

In listening to (WRKO "Business" reporter from the Boston Glob) Steve Bailey and Tom Menino wail (to say nothing of former New Bedford Rep. George Rogers!), what is KILLING them is that this is a rural deal that the corridors of power cannot completely control in their back rooms. REAL people! On a FOOTBALL field! In broad DAYLIGHT! HOW declasse!

You said it yourself, Dan - Cahill has no moral objection to gambling (as we might, as fellow former Scout leaders) - no, his concern is that BOSTON doesn't get a big enough share!Why not New Beige or Boston? Because the casino would be established under the Federal Indian Gaming Law, which requires such a facility be within 50 miles of tribal lands. That's WHY Middleboro was chosen for land purchase - conincidently, the purchase of that land by the tribe was what settled all the lawsuits against the Town of Mashpee by the tribe for encroachment, which allowed for the development of New Seabury (wanna give THAT back?).

Which brings me to a final point - the PURPOSE of the Indian Gaming Act is RECOMPENSE for all the broken treaties and money which the US owes the Native Americans. THAT is why, as Bailey puts it, a 'mere 1,400 people' who belong to the tribe get this lucrative benefit. It's to pay them back for stealing Boston from them in the first place. ”

All the hand wringing over timeliness, all the assurances of superior expertise – really, what the Bacon Hill denizens are really worried about is that the tribe and the town may come to a mutually beneficial and amicable agreement without their intercession. And what kind of precedent would THAT be?