508 episode one
I sat down with full time excellent guy, Mike Benedetti of Pie and Coffee this morning for episode one (hopefully the first of many) of the 508 Podcast. I apologize for the static, I sound like I’m calling in from the Apollo Mission. Either way, good times, give ‘er a listen.
Cry me a river
There’s something funny about watching politicos squirm as we get down to crunch time. In today’s T&G Shawn Suttner brought to light a conspiracy afoot in the freshly overhauled Worcester election office. Apparently the decision has been made not to identify incumbents as such on next weeks primary ballots, upsetting challengers who were hoping they could simply toss around ‘we need a change in City Hall’ rhetoric in place of actual, well thought out ideas.
Look kids, I can criticize with the best of them. But the idea is to follow up your whining with something of substance; yelling “I support PILOT!” just doesn’t cut it. If we’re to be honest here it’s margins, not the charter and certainly not principal, worrying the candidates. I’m hearing 13,000 for voter turnout from some of the most reliable political bookmakers. With this many contenders and this few actual ideas, a win as a newbie is only possible if you can find enough angry old ladies, angry at being old and hope to redirect some of that wrath at the evil empire. But you can only cut a cake so many ways and some of the new kids don’t have much to work with once you get past the fresh faces and most people know that.
This is only a disservice to the poorly informed sub-cretins who in a perfect world wouldn’t be able to figure how to work a paper ballot and marker in the first place; and of course their rhetoric spewing, savior of the moment. Sorry, but Rushford’s right on this one. We need more voters and we need informed voters; not doing your homework is not my problem and it certainly shouldn’t be the only thing a newcomer has to work with.
