Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Braying Under the Golden Dome

What an ass! MA House Speaker Robert is acting out like nobody will notice what a donkey he's being.

He should be the head of the lesser chamber of our General Court. Instead with the gambling legislation on stage, he defaulted to the petty pol from the 19th Suffolk District, the state rep from Revere and Winthrop.

The latest word from his little hole is that he's done compromising, a.k.a. the governor won't let me push him around (stomp, stomp, pout), so he's the big loser not me! It's pathetic and puerile.

Readers here know I don't favor gambling, particularly as a remedy for recession. That's like infecting yourself with a chronic disease to get the drugs.

Nevertheless, Gov. Deval Patrick came to accept that casinos and maybe even a slot parlor or two were in the works. He views them as down his lists of economic-development and revenue producing, but was willing to cut a deal.

DeLeo on the other hand put his reputation, his career, his, if you pardon the expression, honor on the table for this. We apparently aren't supposed to notice that his district would the major beneficiary of the gambling halls. We're not to see that he is pandering to his constituents, his few wealthy race-track owners eager to add destination casinos and slots, and not-too-visionary union types ignoring that long-term jobs in the new vice biz will be low paying and maybe attracting out-of-area folk.

No, this Bobby is no lion, rather a jackal. He was dumb enough to claim that it was Patrick who'd cause a loss (pick number of trousers) 15,000 jobs if he didn't acquiesce to DeLeo's version of the bill. He compounded the stupidity by admitting that he had tied his whole self to passing this legislation as the capstone of two years.

Meanwhile, in the legislature, he screwed up Patrick's compromise on a few slots. He overreached with more than the governor said he'd approve without a veto. He made it too plain that it became a zero-sum game, which the governor had to agree to all.

What an ass.

Back to the real world, Patrick appeared on Greater Boston last night (click below). As he should have been, he was calm and happy. He could unroll his scroll of administrative and legislative accomplishments, despite the failure of the casino negotiation.

And braying Bobby? He's left scrambling and muttering that it was someone else's fault.





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3 comments:

Ryan said...

Hrm... the video was Rep. Markey for me.

Enjoyed it nonetheless... while they were talking about the BP stuff. Then they got talking into casinos, and Rooney didn't even give him the choice of whether or not casinos were a bad idea or not, just 'casinos or racinos or a compromise between the two?' Barf.

I've never been able to stomach Rooney. She's not very good at all. Her questions aren't compelling and her preparation's always left something to be desired (I'll never forget when she was complaining about the LOGO glbt presidential debate, bitterly, in part because 'they're all the same,' and that they all had candidates giving the same 30 second answers... when LOGO didn't use the typical debate forum at all, and instead gave each candidate 15 minutes to use as they pleased... that she could complain specifically about the debate without even having watched it was asinine).

I've often thought, Mike, that you should have that kind of a forum. A Mass-Marrier-hosted Greater Boston show would rock!

massmarrier said...

Thanks for the pointer on the vid. That's a peril of linking or embedding; the address seemed to have changed. I re-embedded it.

For interviewers, my favorite remains Chris Lovett.I admire Rooney for her seeming non-stop radio and TV shows, but she's not my favorite either.

For gambling commentary, people could do far worse than .

Ryan said...

Just watching this thing now...

Rooney is so... soooo... SOOOO terrible. Godawful. She has NO objectivity, which would be one thing if she were well informed, but she clearly doesn't even get the dynamics at play here. The fact that she thinks slots at the tracks are inevitable if casinos go in goes to show how ignorant on the issue she is... honestly, once the casinos go in, the racinos do poorly. This is how it's worked all across the country. They race tracks just want them because they know in the 2-3 years they'd have a jump start, they'd be able to swim in a money-bin full of cash.