End of a beautiful day

UPDATE: 10:30 pm It’s been an interesting if not L-O-N-G day. My forever business partner (as opposed to forever wife) is in L.A. cornering for an Ultimate Fighting women’s World Champ he trains, so I had to do a tad more work at the athletic Club than usual. And I’m still in a bad mood over yesterday’s election results.

So, he whispered soflty, just between us, this is what transpired over the past four or five hours:

Discussion on the Town Meeting Listserve (mistakenly called a blog by one poster):
On Mar 31, 2008, at 10:27 PM, mlwentworth@comcast.net wrote:

The editor of the editorial page of the Bulletin made a commitment to an op-ed writer several weeks ago that his column would appear in the March 27th edition. It did not. The editor also established in writing the process by which letters would be printed. He did not fulfill that promise either. One can only surmise that he was overruled by his superiors in Northampton who decided to arrange the page — letters and column — to support their endorsement.

Furthermore, it is generally considered to be an unfair practice
for a news paper to print attacks on candidates in the last edition
leading to the election. The Bulletin chose not to do this either.
Some editors in the interest of fairness would have shown the
letters/columns to the candidate and given him/her an opportunity to reply

And finally, we were told that letters in support of Greeney that
were supposed to be printed and that addressed a misconception of
her stand in regard to the budget and the schools were Online. But
it developed that the only way these letters could be accessed was
by doing a search using the name of the letter writer. Very cute. Freedom of the press has limitations in the same way that freedom of speech does.

From: Richard Bentley
To: amhersttownmeeting@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 3:37 pm

Can we get their side of the story on this blog? It would appear they
owe the town a HUGE explanation, and it might allay future mistrust.

From: amherstac@aol.com
To: amhersttownmeeting@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 5:33 pm

Bricks and mortar editors NEVER apologize and NEVER explain.

Larry


My comment on Tommy Devine's stellar blog this evening:

Yeah, let's hope the Big Shots that own the Springfield Republican can find a way to keep Local Buzz buzzing along. With only a cyber footprint it most certainly has a cheaper overhead than all that messy printing and distributing of heavy material that comes from trees Amherst folks so love to hug.

The Net was born out of Doomsday and has grown into the communication revolution that has ushered us into the 21'st Century. As the Dinosaurs discovered a few million years ago, adapt or die (or try to avoid those damn meteors)

Speaking of Doomsday, my very first notification on THAT awful morning came via an AOL Instant Message, something I usually declined.

I had just posted a flaming message to the Gazettenet forum (that at the time was way more popular than the Masslive Amherst forum) about the 'Only in Amherst' anti-flag events from the Select Board meeting the night before.

I accepted the call (AOL used to open a pop up in your top left corner of the screen saying "Do you wish to accept this I.M. from so and so) because I knew he lived in Boston and thought--since the Select board meeting had made the AP wire in the pre dawn hours of 9/11--that it had to do with little old Amherst.

He sent the text message "Are you near a TV?" I responded, "Flags in Amherst?" No he came back instantly "A plane impaled the North Tower of the World Trade Center".

I responded "Holy shit!" Again he came back: "Make that two--another one just hit the South Tower." I said, "I gotta go". Only then did I speed home to turn on the TV and see those searing images. My God!

Fast forward and look at Gazettenet now. They have been in cyberspace forever in Internet time (over ten years) but this new major revision is a disaster. They launched on February 20 and claimed the beta version would be fully in place within a week and here we are almost six weeks later and they still rely on the previous build.

The blogs are a joke. Chief editor Foudy posted once on Feb 20 and has not updated since.

Newspapers of New England recently purchased The Gazette and Valley Advocate and the new publisher Aaron Julien (who married the President's daughter) has no journalism experience whatsoever. Unfortunately for me he moved to Amherst (like a lot of carpetbaggers) and his wife has been politically active in ACE the pro-education group that can't spell.

The Gazette spent millions installing a new color printer and constructing a giganormous (ugly as Hell) building to keep it out of the rain in their headquarters in Hamp and they recently acquired a subsidy from the taxpayers in the form of a $630,000 state tax credit.

And not so surprisingly the Amherst Bulletin (also under the control of Pretty-Boy Julien) at the 11'th hour endorsed Stein and O'Keeffe just when their campaigns were starting to panic.

So yeah, in light of that last second meddling by the Bricks-and-Mortar, Powers That Be, it's not so surprising that Hwei-Ling Greeney lost (although that pose with Kerry probably didn't help...Yikes)


Posted by LarryK4 to Tommy Devine's Online Journal at Wednesday, April 2, 2008 7:08:00 PM EST

It's a beautiful day

Since I did not make the victory parties last night let me say congratulations to Select Board winners Diana Stein and Stephanie O’Keeffe. You will now join a board with very little diversity of thought or ethnicity or--interestingly enough--gender.

The ball is now in your court, run with it. But keep in mind the parameters of the playing field. If you want to be everything to everybody you will need way more money; thus requiring a Proposition 2.5 Override, failsafe legislation that requires voter approval.

Last May 2,650 Amherst residents voted down just such an Override. Yesterday, first place winner Diana Stein garnered only 2,200 votes. Do the math.

Remember?

Let the gloating begin

10:15 pm Okay so what the Hell do I know? Actually my top three picks finished in the top three... only in reverse order. And 4'th and 5'th place I called perfectly. Stein, O'Keeffe and Greeney rather than the other way around. And Rhodes and Mr. Keenan (who got far more votes for Town Meeting in his home precinct as he did votes for Select Board)

But it really doesn't matter. Neither Stein nor O’Keeffe will serve out their three-year term. Because with bigger issues—like the Prop 2.5 Override getting blown out of the effluent last year--my predictions are a tad more accurate. Because it helps when we get a better voter turnout.

Amherst will change from this antiquated form of government that relies on part-time, amateur, do-gooders and come into the 21'th Century with a professional, full-time Mayor/Council.

But God help us until then.

Scenes from Amherst Town Center

UPDATE: 5:45 pm Well I guess if you drove thru town center today (as I did a few times) you would assume Blue Bloods, errr, I mean Blue Signs will capture the two coveted Select Board seats--not to mention the lone School Committee seat.

So if anybody is interested--and the 60% of you from outside Amherst probably are not—here’s my prediction for the election:
Greeney first (behold the power of the Red sign) O’Keeffe second, Stein third, Rhodes fourth and the most entertaining candidate Dave Keenan dead last.

Sanderson over Romero (in spite of the cool animatronic Marinette truck and her red, white and blue signage) for School Committee.
Amherst Redevelopment Authority: Peg Roberts and Aaron Hayden.

12:30 pm: Note the difference between unstaged photos A (above), where they had not yet spotted me; and photo B: obviously these folks get all excited when they think the results could get wider exposure.

Now I know why the Powers That Be, establishment coalition chose BLUE for all their candidates’ signs. You don’t get any more blue state than Massachusetts and out of the 351 municipalities you don’t get any bluer than Amherst.

The Chinese got it right: Red rocks!

Well I love that dirty water

With all the fun I was having in town center yesterday I neglected this smelly story; and appropriate because as of 8:00 pm Rob Kusner will no longer be a Select Man (there go a bunch of great posts over the next year).

Hey Larry,

I am in Germany now (yeah, you already know, since I know you check from where in the world people log into your blog ;-) and just got this in my inbox. I thought you'd get a kick that it is addressed to me of all people!

Best wishes from Berlin (and see you in Town Meeting :-),

Rob

March 31, 2008

Mr. Robert Kusner
Board of Selectmen
Amherst
Town Hall
Amherst, MA. 01002

Dear Mr. Kusner:

I am pleased to advise you that Amherst will receive $22,575 from the Commonwealth Sewer Rate Relief Fund for FY 2008. The fund was established in 1993 to mitigate sewer rate increases due to debt service obligations for qualified sewer construction projects.

The balance in the fund from prior years and the FY 2008 appropriation provides for awards calculated at 6.567% of eligible debt service. The FY 2008 total state distribution from the fund was $23,025,406.

We are pleased to administer this important program to mitigate sewer rate increases in communitites across the Commonwealth.

Sincerely,

Robert G. Nunes
Deputy Commissioner &
Director of Municipal Affairs

Well that $22,000 will somewhat make up for the $38,000 effluent waiver Mr. Kusner gave his employer, Umass; except of course this grant is only a one-shot deal while the sweetheart effluent deal for Umass is a five year gig.

And with no cap on how much they can use for free and with all that new construction coming on line, the amounts are sure to expand exponentially

Note to Greg Saulmon at Local Buzz: Yeah, like ACE, the Deputy Commissioner also has a spelling problem (communities, committees…whatever)

Colorful Campaigning in Amherst Center

UPDATE: 9:25 pm Okay I just found another funny incident (even at this late hour). Having just discovered Baer 'The Turk' Tierkel’s blog via GavinThink and lo and behold there I am on Sunday when yes I did one of my favorite activities: the lone charge of an enemy machine gun nest.
SourVoodoo

So yeah, I have no problem with the nickname 'The Lone Ranger' although I believe all three Amherst Center columnists already used it to disparage Hwei-Ling Greeney.

But you gotta wonder about The Turk describing the standout of a half-dozen O’Keeffe Peepers (although Greeney gets two or three time that) holding signs as “impromptu”.

And so much for the Professor’s complaint/comment today about my giving people nicknames. I actually stole “The Turk” designation from one of Stephanie’s (other) biggest supporters.

UPDATE: 7:25 pm. Okay so I’m trying to think of the funniest incident of the day and boy it’s hard so I’ll just list all three (besides the animatronics Marinette for Romero video I posted)


Greg Saulmon at the Local Buzz has some fun with the overly educated Amherst ACE folks this afternoon (I can only hope he discovered them thru my posted link on Friday)
Local Buzz Bomb

So after leaving town center where I held a sign for Hwei-Ling for an hour so my phone rings and caller ID shows Otto Stein. “Hi this is Diana Stein and I’m running for Select board…do you have a moment” At first I thought it was a recorded message but I said “sure” and she went into a 30 second elevator pitch closing with “So can I have one of your two votes tomorrow?” Of course by now I’m laughing and I reply “Diana do you know who this is?” Ahhh, no she says. “I stood by you in town center two hours ago holding a red sign”. She actually kind of got a kick out it (as did I) saying “Well I guess I can’t count on either of your votes.”

And a not so funny incident where a pimple faced teenager came up to Hwei-Ling in a most direct manner and complained about her placing one of her signs on “town property” without anyone actually holding it (although we were only 20 yards away).

I said to Hwei-Ling not to worry about it as the kid was too young to vote anyway and obviously with his attitude has parents had already brainwashed him.

click to enlarge

What are you looking at?