Save Fitchburg is no more!

Well damn, this is sort of sad.

It seems that Jason at Save Fitchburg, the biggest and oldest local political blog, has called it quits. There will be no more posts at Save Fitchburg.

That's unfortunate, but understandable. While Jason & I certainly haven't always agreed on everything, he's always come across as a decent, intelligent guy who really cared about what he was doing. Unfortunately for him, he also ended up as the guy at the center of a commenting community that could be deeply infuriating.

Sadly, it sounds like the stresses of dealing with the commenters is what did him in, and that sucks. It's totally understandable, though. Most of my commenters here are awesome, but the occasional troll or flaming jackass can quickly sap the fun out of an otherwise good time. Once things become un-fun, there's no reason to continue.

He says he's getting out of blogging and politics and all this nonsense, and doing something else. I'm not quite certain, but reading between the lines of his post, I gather that he's going to start racing Nitro-burning funny cars. And who can blame him?

Pictured: Jason Lefferts and friend

Anyway, it's a little sad to see him go. But such is life.

Good luck with your funny cars, Jason!

Now, somebody please step up to fill his former role of serious local political blog guy. I'm going to stick with making dick jokes.

More mayoral madness!

Sadly, it's time for another post about mayoral candidate Rachel Rosenfeld (aka "Really Rachel", aka "Patricia A. Collins", aka "Patty Anne Collins", aka "Angry Anteater").

Personally, I'm already sick of talking about her. But I will soldier on. For the people!

Or, more accurately, Jason at Save Fitchburg soldiers on and I'll just direct you to this post of his, which is quite good.

Or, more accurately, the second half of it is good. The first half is an interview with Rachel, and is a bit tedious. Read it if you're feeling masochistic, or if you're unfamiliar with Rachel's unique brand of condescending inanity.

The second (good) half is Jason's assessment of the situation, and is actually interesting. I'll quote a bit of it here and throw in my own take.

[L]et's try to probe the thoughts of Rachel here. Does she really want to be mayor, or does she want a larger soapbox to hammer Wong, her archenemy? While the S&E pointed to her blog today as her launching pad, I'm arrogant enough to guess old SF does much better business, and that this is really where she made her bones. While I love old SF, let's be honest here, it's a limited audience. What's really her goal? Is she in it to win it, or hammer at Wong for the next eight to 10 months?

Yeah, this occurred to me as well.

This doesn't strike me as a serious campaign to become mayor, but rather as an exercise in self-promotion. A rather bizarre one at that.

Jason's quite right that it's not Rachel's blog that is the launching pad for her campaign. She hasn't even mentioned the campaign there at the time of writing. Even though both the S&E and the Telegram have made a big deal of her being a "blogger," she's mostly a commenter.

Which means that the launching pad for her "campaign" is actually the comments section of Save Fitchburg. I'm not sure if that's really sad or really funny. Both?

I'm sure people who actually read all the comments at SF (which is what, maybe a couple dozen people? I rarely venture into SF-comment-land.) have an opinion of Rachel, but most of the city doesn't know her and couldn't care less about some "blogger" with no money, no political experience, and no platform except "Lisa sucks."

In other words, there are very few people who give a shit about local political blogs. There are even fewer who give a shit about the comments sections. Rachel would be better off basing her campaign around comments on popular YouTube videos.

Anyway, moving on.

Jason writes:

Similarly, is she a stalking horse for someone? She clearly makes the rounds, talking to councilors and other city movers-and-shakers. Is she going to throw bombs and clear the path for another candidate? If I didn't know any better, I'd bet on Tran considering his remarks in the paper today. But that's too cynical, I think. But weirder things have happened in politics.

Well, I am that cynical. Here's what Tran said in the S&E story yesterday:

Tran, however, called Rosenfeld "more than qualified to sit in the corner office."

"I've never met anyone with more knowledge of politics and government than she has," Tran said Wednesday.

Once upon a time I thought Dean Tran was actually fairly intelligent. That time is over.

Dean, if Rachel Rosenfeld is the most knowledgeable person you know when it comes to politics, you really need to meet some new people. Maybe you should see if you can audit a couple of Civics classes at the high school? Or better yet, I'm sure FSC has some very smart poli-sci students.

One more quote from Jason:

Rachel at some point is going to have answer to a lot of things she has said on her blog and in other spaces in the last two or three years. Some of it would cause people to take pause. I'd love to say I'm going to do it, but the thought of rolling through thousands of comments makes me want to cry. It's a long campaign, I guess I have time.

Don't cry, Jason! Use Google!

For instance, here are 176 results showing comments she made on SF. Put a space in her name and you get 84 more.

Hell, I've got 74 results myself, and she swore off reading my "idiotic rants" quite awhile ago!

Sure, those are comment pages with multiple comments on each page, but you can always add more search terms to narrow things down. Considering Rachel's logorrhea, it shouldn't be too difficult to find some examples of crazy. Just add "trash" as a search term and you're halfway there.

Enough of that. Now, here's a prediction for you.

At some point before the primary (assuming there is one) Rachel will drop out. It might be because Tran enters the race, and of course Rachel isn't going to run against her special buddy. Or it could be because she's gotten enough ego-stroking out of her little crusade and doesn't want to suffer the humiliating defeat she's bound for. Or it could be because everyone's treating her campaign as a total joke and she discovers she needs to drop out due to "health problems."

Whatever the case, I don't think I'll be doing much more writing about her unless she actually becomes a more credible candidate than Ron Dionne was in 2007.

And she has a long way to go before she even reaches his level.



PS Oh, I also added a couple of new links over on the right, to Fitchburg Tension and the Rabbit Hole Blog. Check them out, won't you?

Why the mayor matters

Those of you who've read me for awhile may know that I don't really read Save Fitchburg too often. Frankly it's just too dry for me. I can get the facts anywhere, what's interesting is analysis of those facts.

Well, I was feeling masochistic today and checked it out anyway. It was nice to find Jason's Where are we at? post, which attempted to evaluate where the current mayoral candidates stood after Mylott dropped out of the race. A reasonable enough read which I find myself pretty much in agreement with.

That post, however, was followed up with a post by "Rupert Knickerbocker" entitled Where are we at? Nowwhere! [sic] which tried to argue that it really doesn't matter who's mayor because:

For all practical purposes, the office of Mayor of Fitchburg is bordering on the point of irrelevancy. No one who has experienced and observed the changes in politics and government over the past 30 years in Massachusetts can mount an argument to the contrary. Local political power is dead-and has been for at least 20 years.

Okay, let's leave aside for a moment the fact that Mr. Knickerbocker has perhaps the most arrogant and annoying writing style I've ever seen (and I've read Daily Kos!), and focus on his arguments. After all, there may be a good point behind the condescension.

First:

Political and governmental power and influence flows from the purse-and Fitchburg has no real purse to speak of since Fitchburg, as every municipality in the Commonwealth, relies on the generosity of aid and assistance from Beacon Hill-and in the event you have failed to notice-Fitchburg has zero clout or influence on Beacon Hill.

This is the most glaring flaw with his argument. When you view the mayor's relevancy as nothing more than a measure of his/her budget you miss the point entirely.

While fiscal stability is obviously important (and both Donnelly and Wong have addressed it extensively), it's hardly the only thing that the mayor is responsible for. Yes, most of his/her duties will require financing, but not all of them. As an example, the perception of the town by those considering a move here (or even a visit) is something the mayor can influence with little more than his/her public statements.

In other words, you can have someone like Ted "We need to focus on what’s bad" DeSalvatore sabotaging perception of the town with statements like that, or you can have an elected official that knows how to make the town attractive to others.

Of course, public perception is also related to things like crime rates and the economy, both of which are in turn influenced by finances (among many other things). Crime rates have been decreasing, but you'd never know it to listen to some of the candidates. That gets back to public statements. Some people might actually check the numbers, but if they hear the mayor going on about how awful crime is in Fitchburg they could easily think twice about coming here.

As for the economy, getting aid from the state is of course nice. But the mayor's job is to properly manage what s/he has to work with. Some mayors can arguably do that better than others. Wong personally has a Master's degree in economics. Donnelly wants to establish a "Financial Advisory Team" and appoint a CFO for the town. DeSalvatore umm... "will bring an end to irresponsible spending". Nice idea, but the question is who's got the best plan for doing that? Obviously all candidates are not made alike.

Knickerbocker goes on to state how none of the candidates could ever possibly make a connection with Governor Patrick's office, meaning no state aid for us.

He's probably right about DeSalvatore. After all, when your campaign manager gave $500 to Romney's campaign you may not find a lot in common with Patrick.

Donnelly and Wong are much less certain. Knickerbocker wrote them off based on... well... nothing really. Based on the same evidence I say they at least have a chance.

It's a matter of them making the proper moves. It may not be easy, but to write it off as impossible is just defeatist. Wong may even have a slight advantage just by virtue of being a young Asian woman. Like it or not, image matters in politics and an administration that focused so much on "hope" could well find an interest in supporting an idealistic young (female, minority) mayor.

Basically, by Knickerbocker's criteria it wouldn't matter if we elected the finest political mind of the century or someone straight out of a mental institution. Does anybody in their right mind really believe that wouldn't make a difference?

It matters what the mayor chooses to do with the town's budget. It matters what tone the mayor sets for the town. It matters that the mayor represents the interests of all citizens. It matters that good decisions are made and bad ones avoided. A whole lot of things matter besides how much money we can get from the state.

Not all candidates are created equal. It doesn't matter how often you assert that people need to "realize the obvious" or pretend that people aren't "consider[ing] political reality" (man I fucking hate this guy's writing style!), the fact is that the candidates are vastly different. We're going to be choosing whether we elect a mayor who can understand the problems and work to fix them in a way that benefits the town or whether we elect one who makes things worse.

Yes, it matters. A lot.




ps You may have noticed I didn't mention Dionne at all in this post. Unfortunately, the guy's not done much to make himself relevant so I just don't see much reason to factor him in.

Shocking news! Lisa Wong is Asian!

I don't generally read the Save Fitchburg blog these days. While it does seem to have a lively community of commenters, most of them strike me as being clinically insane.

However, I do read (or at least skim) the Fitchburg Pride and stumbled across its "Save Fitchburg Roundup" (Jason Lefferts of the FP also founded Save Fitchburg). The last time I looked at Save Fitchburg was shortly after Lisa Wong announced her candidacy for mayor, at which point commenting was moderated due to racist dipshits making idiotic remarks because she's Asian.

Good move on the part of the Save Fitchburg guys to go to moderating, but it didn't do much to make me think their commenters have improved any...

However, I was glad to see there was a pretty coherent comment by "Howdy's" which was quoted in part in the Fitchburg Pride:

[G]ender, ethnicity, age, etc SHOULD not be an issue with this election, but I believe it still will.

Yes, this is the 21st century….in Fitchburg.

I am 100% on board with Lisa. I am excited about the opportunity she brings, but…

There are many Fitchburg voters that will have a hard time getting beyond what they see.
I’m glad Lisa will make her “first” appearance in a “safe” environment. It will take a very polished Lisa to make many similar appearances all around the city to overcome the familiarity Mylott and Donnelly already have with the voting base. Change is hard, especially in Fitchburg. Lisa will need to make people comfortable with her while she is touting her credentials and vision

The "safe" environment mentioned is Wong's speech to an "Asian Pacific Islander even at the Statehouse". I don't know any more about that, but it's not really germane to what I'm talking about right now anyway. It does seem weird that it would be called "safe" just because of a shared heritage, but no matter...

Lisa Wong is a woman of Asian heritage. So fucking what?

Are people in Fitchburg that big a bunch of morons that they actually care one bit what ancestry a person has when choosing who to vote for as mayor? Some would apparently say yes, but oddly enough I seem to have a higher opinion of the voters of Fitchburg.

While "Howdy's" up there is well spoken, I actually totally disagree that Wong's racial heritage will matter one bit.

Who would it matter to, after all? Obviously it doesn't matter to me, it probably doesn't matter to you if you're reading this blog, and frankly I don't know a lot of people in general who actually have a problem with Asian people. Sure, the dicks who comment on Save Fitchburg (and get deleted) are racist, but they're hardly the voting majority. One or two morons don't speak for the masses. And while racism is definitely out there, I don't think it generally takes a form that would hurt Wong's mayoral campaign.

If her name was Lisa Al-Masri or something then maybe that would matter, because people actually feel quite comfortable being openly racist against Arabs these days, but who the hell hates Asians? A few crazed WWII veterans who wish we could go back to the days of internment camps for the Japanese, and that's about it. Most of the racism actually manifests in thinking that Asians are smarter than white folks, which I don't see as hurting Wong's chances. (It also manifests in a belief that Asian men have small penises, but again that shouldn't affect Miss Wong one bit.)

Perhaps there are reasons to vote against Wong. But her age, gender, or ethnicity aren't among them.

This post actually comes from a bigger frustration, which is the idiotic "Is America ready for a black/female president?" bullshit you see in polls dealing with Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Now it's represented on the local level as "Is Fitchburg ready for an Asian female mayor?"

The only people who seem to not be ready are the fucktards asking the question in the first place.

The rest of us have been ready for some time.

Happy New Year!

Well, I'm back from an interminable 10-day trip to Texas over the holidays. The highlight is reflected in this adorable picture of two meerkats at the Fort Worth Zoo. About 30 seconds after I took this picture they started having angry sex and making some horrifying noises. Children scattered. It was great!

I returned with a horrific cold, and in this sort of state I have a tendency to wander over to "Save Fitchburg". I made the mistake of looking at their poll today. It's about who you'd vote for for mayor if the election were held today. Horrifyingly, Ted DeSalvatore is way ahead. Not that I expect any less from the nice folks who visit Save Fitchburg, but yikes!

So, out of nothing more than antihistamines and spite I present my own poll:

---

How big an idiot is Ted "Liberty Walk" DeSalvatore?
	Really super hugely big, like crazy big man!
	Very very large indeed.
	Big, really big...
	So big he eclipses the sun.
	Bigger than Jesus.
	I think he's a very reasonable person, and you're an asshole for making this poll.

---

Only one vote per person please, this isn't the Sentinel & Enterprise.

Also, happy New Year!

Why does "Save Fitchburg" attract crazy people?

Reading the comments section for Save Fitchburg in the past I always thought it seemed like a slightly odd community of fairly humorless people, but I figured they were relatively sane.

However, after creating a blog and finding myself with an account, I figured I might as well post there (anonymous posting is disabled and I was too lazy to make an account before). Apparently I created some sort of shitstorm with an offhanded dig at conservatives and the crazy idea that Deval Patrick is going to win the election easily. (Polls here.)

For whatever reason I've now been repeatedly accused of being either a toady of Dan Mylott, Dan Mylott himself, some sort of Fitchburg insider, a SOSO (I still don't know what that is), a graduate of FSC (I actually know some very intelligent graduates of FSC, but I'm not one of them), and possibly a few other things by now. Apparently the cognoscenti at Save Fitchburg have an unhealthy fixation on Dan Mylott. They also seem to believe I'm running for office, which I'm not sure whether to take as hilarious or insulting. Right now I'm going with insulting.

Apparently these nice folks think that writing about local politics means you want to be a local politician. I shudder to think what they believe now that I've written about sexual predators.

Rest assured, I'm neither running for office nor preying on anyone.

On the plus side, this did effectively reinforce my belief that there needed to be another outlet for political expression in Fitchburg.

How We Came To Be

Might as well get this out of the way from the beginning.

This blog was started partially because of a grudge.

You see, the local Fitchburg paper is the Sentinel & Enterprise. Aside from having marvelously hackable Javascript polls, there's not a lot good you can say about the paper. Your complaints can range from typos to fluff reporting to blatantly biased articles, it's all there. Most people in the area who want printed news worth reading turn either to The Boston Globe or the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

But like it or not, the Sentinel & Enterprise is our local paper, and as such is meant to reflect our local community.

Here comes the grudge part.

The Sentinel has its aforementioned marvelously hackable polls, and these come with a link to their Twin Cities Blog where you can "sound off". All well and good, right?

Not really.

I've submitted numerous comments to the Twin Cities Blog. Being a moderated blog, they obviously must pass through some human being before being posted for the world to see.

Lately I've noticed that none of my posts have been getting through. Let me make it clear first that none of these were abusive postings. They did represent a strong liberal/progressive viewpoint (and in my opinion made a good argument), but were in no way offensive. At the same time, posts representing among the most ignorant conservative viewpoints made their way through with no difficulty. For example, a post I made arguing against making English the national language was rejected while the following posts made it:

Multiculturalism does not work. It will destroy this country. The Left knows this and this is why they support it.

-by "Padre Pio"

or this enlightening shout:

WHEN PEOPLE ARRIVED IN AMERICA MANY YEARS AGO THEY HAD TO LEARN HOW TO SPEAK ENGLISH. THEY NOW LIVE IN AMERICA AND WE SPEAK ENGLISH. IF THEY WANT TO SPEAK THEIR OWN LANGUAGE GO BACK TO WHERE THEY CAME FROM.YES ENGISH SHOULD BE THE MAIN LANGUAGE.

-by "ann"

Don't you feel smarter just reading that?

This alone probably wouldn't have pushed me to create a blog. But apparently I'm not alone. A Google search (while trying to find an ombudsman for the paper) revealed the blog Unbecoming Levity and this post detailing the exact same problem. Apparently it's systemic. Viola! A blog is born!

Now let's discuss what's probably the most prominent Fitchburg blog.

While Save Fitchburg seems to overall be very well meaning, the comments section is a total embarrassment to any sentient being. While I don't agree with everything he says, the primary (only?) blogger Jason is a pretty reasonable guy. However, the comments attract not just city councilors and washed-up local politicians, but any number of local crackpots eager to disseminate hate-fueled rhetoric. I'm not sure which are worse.

I won't say I have a grudge against "Save Fitchburg", but it does have a degree of motivating impact. It's clearly a place where the right wing feels comfortable gathering and demonizing their enemy du jour. If only the left wing had such a place...

And that, my friends, is how Progressive Fitchburg was born.