With just under a week to go until election day, it's time to hand out some endorsements. As in the past, we're only dealing with what's on the ballot here in MA (and in my district specifically). Let's start with...

Ballot Questions

Question 1: The first question is about the "right to repair," and would require automakers to share proprietary information with independent repair shops, thus allowing them to fix things that currently require a trip to a dealership. The question's a moot point now, as the legislature passed a bill at the end of the last session that was basically a negotiated settlement between both sides. There's a fear that approving this question will screw up the new law, but as the legislature sees free to not act on ballot questions (we're still owed that lower tax rate we voted for back in the day), I'm not so concerned. But I do figure that it doesn't make sense to vote in favor of a question whose issue has apparently been addressed. Blogalicious endorses a NO vote on Question 1.


Question 2: This question seeks approval for legalized physician assisted suicide. I'm not a fan of some of the particulars of how this would be carried out - heirs can witness both the decision and death, the doctor does not need to be present when the death occurs, and the determination of terminal illness/six months to live is inherently problematic - so I'm going to pass.  Blogalicious endorses a NO vote on Question 2.

Question 3: This question would legalize medical marijuana. Outside of all the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth about drugs being bad, the thing that gives me pause about this question is the involvement of the state Department of Public Health. Given the recent DPH chemist scandal, I'm not sure I trust them right now to administer a statewide program of pot dispensation and individual cultivation. We decriminalized possession in 2010, and while it still makes getting pot difficult, I don't know if this law is the best next step. I'd rather have the Department of Revenue be in charge, if only to smooth things over for the legalize-and-tax system that'd be on the ballot in, say, 2018.
Blogalicious endorses a NO vote on Question 3.


Public Offices

State Representative: the incumbent is running unopposed, so Blogalicious endorses writing someone in. Preferably me.

State Senator: Fred Berry retired, leaving Democrat Joan Lovely to square off against Republican Richard Jolitz. Both seem to hold positions typical of their party - Jolitz seems more conservative than the average Massachusetts Republican - but there's been sufficiently little coverage of the race to really get a lot of background. Jolitz doesn't seem to have a campaign website, opting to use social media as his main conduit for communications. The top hit for the Google search "jolitz state senate" is an article from when he ran in 2010. Based on the ability to at least learn what each candidate stands for, Blogalicious endorses Joan Lovely.

Governor's Council: I'm not even going to bother, because (a) no one knows who's running without looking it up, and (b) the Governor's Council is archaic and should be disbanded. Blogalicious endorses writing someone in here, too. Preferably Mickey Mouse.


US House MA-6: The only "issue" in this race is whether or not the incumbent, Democrat John Tierney, knew that his wife was involved in a gambling ring involving her brothers. He claims he didn't, and is quick to quote a judge in the case who says so. The challenger, Republican Richard Tisei, is equally quick to say that's nonsense. He doesn't have any proof of this, other than statements by his (now incarcerated) brothers in law.  But there's enough traction there to make this a close race. Just not an interesting one, if you're concerned about what approach either candidate will take towards the economy, or education, or pretty much any substantive issue.

(Tierney, for his part, has worked hard to link Tisei with the Tea Party folks, which isn't the most natural fit given that Tisei is pro-choice and openly gay.)

The only candidate actually talking about issues is a first-time candidate for a third party, so he's gotten almost no coverage. Which is a shame, as he's regularly shown himself to be a thoughtful candidate unafraid to address serious issues and, in the big picture, the very role of government. For going where the muckrakers fear to tread, Blogalicious endorses Libertarian Daniel Fishman. Tell your friends.

US Senate: Hope sprang eternal in this race between incumbent Republican Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren. They agreed that if any third party ran an ad for them in this campaign, the candidate would have to make a donation equal to the amount of the ad buy to a charity of the opponent's choice (it happened once, and the donation was made). With that, it seemed like we could actually have a civil, issues-driven campaign.

Whoops.

What we've gotten is occasionally more dignified than the average mud-slinging. Brown has spent most of his campaign burnishing his bipartisan regular guy persona, getting plenty of barn coat time and making ads and debate references to various blue collar industries (fishing, for example) and "union guys." He's studiously avoided mentioning he's a Republican, and in at least one debate engaged in some pretty significant verbal gymnastics to avoid backing Mitt Romney and confirming that he would vote for Mitch McConnell as his party's leader in the Senate.

His other focus in the campaign has been to say that Elizabeth Warren isn't who she says she is (referring to her staking out a claim as the protector of the middle-class). This has mostly covered talk-radio friendly subjects, like her claim of Native American ancestry and her work for insurance companies in cases involving asbestos and steel workers. Hard to say how much of this has worked - you don't hear much of anything about these issues in these last days of the campaign.

Warren, for her part, has stuck to her main campaign theme - the political and financial systems are working together to stack the deck against average Americans - though at times she's stuck too closely to it (most notably in the debates, where references to "millionaires and billionaires" made a good drinking game counterpoint to Brown's effusive use of the title "Professor" when referring to Warren). She's mostly attacked Brown on his votes on women's issues and the potential for his re-election leading to a Republican-controlled Senate.

Over all of this, though, the thing that's surprised me the most about this race has been Brown's tendency towards dickishness.It was evident in the debates, and was especially evident in his (since recanted) suggestion that some of the people appearing in Warren's ads were paid actors. Combine this with his vague grasp of issues, and it's not much of a choice. Blogalicious endorses Elizabeth Warren.

President: Speaking of Republicans trying to grab the bipartisan mantle, we have Mitt Romney, who is looking to complete his Etch-a-Sketch/pivot campaign by tacking back to the middle after running to the right in the primaries. Which is all well and good as an electoral strategy, but leaves me with one lingering problem. I do not believe that Romney has any core principles outside of getting elected.  As Gertrude Stein would say, there is no there there, though that doesn't seem to bother a significant portion of the electorate.

Which you think would lead me to endorse President Obama, But it doesn't. I tend to think that his focus on health care prevented a more substantive approach to improving the economy, and his willingness to bail out financial institutions while not holding anyone accountable for putting the economy into the tank in the first place doesn't smack of hope or change. It smacks of business as usual. There are any number of things that have happened during his administration that I can get behind (repeal of DADT and dispatching bin Laden, most notably), but I can't get worked up for four more years of this.

Which leads me to do pretty much the same thing I did in 2004 and 2008. If you're someone who tends to vote Republican, you have as an option another former governor, one who made his vetoes stick and who got balanced budgets passed. And for all of you who drift towards the fiscally conservative, socially liberal stance, he's (sort of) pro-choice, supports same-sex marriage, and wants to end the drug war. For those of you who tend to vote Democratic, there's a candidate who is consistently left of center on pretty much everything and supports a New Deal-style program for creating jobs though investing in clean energy and putting greater oversight on the financial services sector. Depending on how you swing, Blogalicious endorses either Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson or Green candidate Jill Stein.

The Boston University men's hockey team opens its 2012-13 season tomorrow night at home against Providence. I will not be there. It will be the first home opener I've missed going back to the team's tenure at Walter Brown Arena. More notable, however, is that this will likely be the first season in which I will not attend a single game since I first started at BU as a student - in 1987.

The reasons for this can be found in this document and in details uncovered in its preparation. The two arrests for sexual assault last year were troubling enough, but the fuller picture compounds things.

I'm not going to say I'm shocked by what's been revealed - it's hard to be truly shocked when you grow up on the Georgia academic scandal to the Oklahoma drug scandal and everything at Miami, not to mention SMU's death penalty and whatever basketball point shaving scandal you want to bring up - but I'm hugely disappointed that this occured at my alma mater. I certainly can't support it, and as a long-time season ticket holder I have no interest in subsidizing it.

Am I going to ignore the team entirely this season? I would like to say yes, but I know at some point I'll tune in to one of the many games that will be televised. Twenty-five years of fandom does not go away easily.

I will say that the university didn't play hard ball too much when we cancelled the tickets - there was a little harrumphing about being in the second year of a three year agreement - so I think someone realized it's in their long-term interest to forego a year or two of revenue for the potential of fans coming back as long-term season ticket holders in the future.

So what will it take for us to start up as season ticket holders again? Speaking only for myself, I can think of three fairly obvious requirements:

1. No arrests. For anything, for at least a couple of seasons.I would like to say no arrests ever again, but I know the reality is that some idiot is going to get picked up for urinating in public at some point, and for whatever reason I think I'd be better with that in 2015 than in, say, December.

2. Player turnover. Getting through the current crop of juniors and seniors will help, and while it's unfair to think that all of the players in these classes are potential felons, they are also veterans of a team where inappropriate behavior was not seen as such. My hope here is that the newer players are more of a reflection of what's expected from high profile athletes.

3. A new coach. This is the hardest condition to write, as Jack Parker is synonymous with BU men's hockey. It's easy to see him as the college hockey equivalent of Bear Bryant, a coach who would stay at the helm until the very last. I have no idea if he has any benchmarks he wants to hit before he retires - most wins, another Beanpot-Hockey East-NCAA treble - but he may want to amend his goals and get someone (Mike Bavis?) prepped to take over sooner rather than later.

As for this year, I may take in some of the BU women's hockey team games - they're also nationally prominent, and tickets will not be hard to come by. I'm also thinking I may get to a couple of men's basketball games this year, the last in which they'll play in the America East conference. Who knows, 25 years from now I may still be going to see these teams.

Book Log 2012 #18: The Columbus Affair by Steve Berry

While this takes place in the same universe as the Cotton Malone series, this stand-alone book follows a disgraced newspaper reporter who is recruited by a shadowy billionaire to help solve a mystery involving Columbus and some of the most sacred artifacts in all of Judaism. Along the way the reporter has to come to terms with the two most painful broken relationships in his life (his father and his daughter) and the potential to restore his good name. There's also the involvement of a Jamaican crime lord, whose ambitions and cultural pride cause their own issues.

The background needed for the main character would not have allowed this book to be another Malone adventure, and I think that's a good thing. The Malone series could use a break; this year is the first year since 2006 that we won't have a new book in the series, and I hope writing a stand-alone work will help refresh the series.

This is a better outing than the last two or three Malone books, which I think comes from having new dynamics to explore between characters and, more importantly, having a good historical mystery to work with. For someone as well-known as Columbus there is a great deal of uncertainty about his background, and when you throw in some of the quirky facts about his first voyage there's ample room to create an interesting story. I kind of hope we get more stand-alone novels in the future.