Maureen Feeney (Dorchester) has been elected . She gained more support from other councilors than incumbent and longtime president Michael Flaherty (at large) and John Tobin (JP, West Roxbury).
Aside from the great news that a woman is in charge after way too long, the other news is the fallout from Flaherty's defeat.
The Globe repeats that he's still aiming for the mayor's office. Joe Heisler has some on how Feeney was voted in and Flaherty was voted out, asking, "Was [Flaherty] blinded by his own ambition, or merely blindsided by the ambitions of his colleagues?"
Why is this even a big deal in the first place?
Well, whoever is City Council president will be acting mayor if anything happens to Tom Menino, and, as Flaherty has amply proven based on his ambition, the position is a nice jumping point for anyone who wants to be mayor.
So, will there be any big changes as a result? For starters, she could start thinking about how to stop the shooting in her district.
Her press release declared that her focus would be on public safety and education, and she's a member of the .
A , which covered Feeney as she ran for re-election against many opponents, noted, "Thanks in part to her work, there are now more than 30 neighborhood associations and crime-watch groups in the district." Of course, it's her job to worry about the whole city, but her particular expertise might come in handy when tackling one of the city's biggest problems.
Image of new Boston City Council president Maureen Feeney from maureenfeeney.com.
Our new governor is, in the words of Bob Dylan, really taking his potatoes down to be mashed. His staff announced that he landed Yo Yo Ma for his inaugural bash on January 4. Hear that?
Yo Yo freaking Ma!
, but the highlights are Patti Austin, the "Mambo King" Orchestra, and the Platters.
The riff raff who happen to have a spare $50 on hand can attend if they want to hear some Yo Yo Ma as well.
That's a lot of money, but compared to must high-powered fundraising political meals, that ticket price isn't half bad. Patrick also has a large Brightcove video in which he invites everyone to "celebrate together." The event is also "black tie optional.
" Bostonist totally dares you to show up in a tuxedo T-shirt.
The inaugural celebration will be at the Boston Convention Exhibition Center at 8:00 pm. All tickets are will call, and you can get more information at the The official inaugural will be at noon at the State House.
Screengrab of Deval in a "Uncle Sam Wants You" pose taken from jan4th.org.
was filled up with people trying to fill their gift obligations at any cost.
This morning's post had the following jarring change in tone: "Merry Christmas / Bank Window Smashed." (The police didn't get the perp.) Then, two guys took last-minute Christmas shopping way too seriously and tried to liberate $1,000 in DVDs.
But the last robbery on the list was the most fascinating - four masked women robbed a food delivery guy at gunpoint. Is a new running through town or something?
Another tough woman on the right side of the law thwarted an attempted robbery on Saturday night.
And she was 70 years old! At the New England Medical Center, a purse-snatcher thought he found an easy target in the elderly woman, but she snatched back, and she helped the police catch him.
Image of Scrooged DVD cover from Amazon.
The reopening seems awfully sneaky since it's happened over the holidays. Perhaps the Highway Department thought riders would be more likely to see a faster path from Logan Airport as a gift instead of being reminded of the sheer incompetence that led to the death of Milena Del Valle.
No such luck.
The Boston Herald reported the news with the headline " ."
No one at the bothered to update the web page to mention the reopening. You'd think it would be home page material.
Then again, their home page is such a sloppy hodgepodge of links that it's nearly impossible to find anything, and they bumped all I-90 information to the bottom so you have to scroll for it. If they do decide to highlight the reopening, they could always use the words "The I-90 Connector - This Time, We Got It Right!"
Image of the connector from WHDH-TV.
The New England Patriots can't seem to get enough of the courtroom. , and the Patriots also used an obscure Massachusetts anti-scalping law to file suit against Bay Area company , which allows Patriots ticket holders to resell their tickets at a profit.
Only StubHub hit the ball back across the court - for committing the very crime of which they're accusing StubHub.
The way the Patriots organization describes it, you'd think no one ever resold a ticket online. However, according to StubHub, the Patriots are suing just to ensure that ticket owners resell their tickets through the Patriots, who partner with , and not through any other dealers.
The anti-scalping law says tickets can't be resold for more than $2 above face value. State senator Michael Morrissey would like to fix the clearly antiquated laws. (In case that name sounds familiar, he's the same guy who,
But changing a law that no one follows anyway isn't going to solve the problem.
The real problem is that , but that's fraud, and it doesn't make sense for the Pats to go after StubHub instead of the people who sold tickets they knew wouldn't work.
However, the Pats organization seems more concerned about where people sell their tickets instead of what they sell. It just seems to be yet another way for an NFL team to make money, but, with this countersuit, StubHub is bringing back a little healthy competition in the marketplace.
Image of a ticket scalper doing his thing from Flickr user Pete4ducks.
In its end-of-year retrospective, The Boston Phoenix has produced one of the most scathing cultural critiques that strikes on a local and national level.
about the public's fascination with brutalized, abused, missing, and murdered women.
With a cover image of a battered woman, it seems that the Phoenix is exploiting the women-in-peril theme just like the Herald does. But the whole article asks why, if there are so many women in peril, why don't we do anything about it through changes in public policy?
Bernstein focuses on the awful incident of a man who murdered five Amish girls to show how the press described the violence as an Amish tragedy. The exhaustive media coverage barely suggested this was a tragedy for women as a whole, and Bernstein asserts that the shootings (and there were many school shootings this year that targeted women) were clearly hate crimes against women.
It's a strange contradiction.
The media obsesses over the welfare of women. Magazines, websites, and talk shows ask, Is Miss USA snorting cocaine? (A certain local newscast that debuted a few days ago blatantly aimed for the lowest common denominator by making that their top story.
) Is Nicole Richie too thin?
When murder becomes part of the storyline, an empty frenzy erupts. Clearly people know something is wrong.
All you have to do is look at the Phoenix's long list of violent episodes against women this year to know that - but we haven't quite made the next step, which is figuring out who to prevent those crimes. Do we as a society love reading about women in peril so much that deep down we don't really want to stop those crimes? Bostonist doesn't think so, and Bernstein's story should help nudge its readers into action for 2007.
Then, maybe his list of violent crimes against women will shrink.
Image of the Entwistle family taken from CBS4Boston. for shooting his wife and baby in January.
The city of Boston unveiled new plans today to hold private developers to a more environmentally friendly standard. The Globe reports that the .
Anyone planning a building over 50,000 square feet must meet 26 of the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, and they must also meet
Usually, projects like these are nothing more than lip service, but it's nice for Boston to get some good publicity when it comes to construction.
You can sense the thrill at City Hall as officials trumpet the fact that Boston is, in the words of one official, "the first city to implement green building requirements."
The New York Times deflated that excitement a little bit with has similar regulations. But who cares who goes green at first as long as the city officials and developers follow through?
Screengrab of Kermit the Frog, the greenest creature of them all, from MTV Overdrive.
It may be the holidays, but it's been a terrible weekend for the entire city.
First was Friday night's while the Holiday Pops merrily carried on.
And then there's of some idiot who held up a priest with a hunting knife - inside the St. Francis Chapel.
On top of that incident is the attempted kidnapping of a 10-year-old in Copley Square.
It doesn't stop with the Holiday Pops stabbings, the assault on the priest, and the shootings. The recent headlines on the BPD News Blog seem particularly rough, as if people are trying to settle scores before the New Year starts.
Here's a sample: "Two Arrested After Assaulting Cab Driver in South Boston," "Suspect With Loaded Firearm in Dorchester," "Firearms Recovered at House Party in Dorchester," "Double Stabbing in East Boston," and so forth.
Image of the horror flick Black Christmas taken from Internet Movie Database. It's not meant to make light of the situation - it's just that we've seen enough crime-scene tape on the news lately.
MBTA employees are getting their surly on, perhaps because . It's fine if they're in a crabby mood, but it's not fine if their negligence causes someone to get hurt.
Via , that could have had a terrible ending were it not for some quick-thinking riders. She describes what happened after the doors closed on a kid who was following his family onto a train:
The doors shut on one of her children, catching him in the door between the train and the platform. AND THE TRAIN TOOK OFF ANYWAY.
...
A group of about five launched at the Emergency Button and Emergency Brake located at the end of each car. After about five pushes of the button it was clear that it was either a) broken or b) being ignored ..
. The train never stopped.
The passengers got the kid out, which probably would have happened no matter what the T employee did, but don't most T employees look back at the car to make sure everyone's in?
And whoever was driving the train didn't bother to answer the emergency button until another incident happened in which the door flew open and someone almost fell out. Here's how a shining example of the T's public service responded to the second potential injury on the same train:
The MBTA employee was neither impressed nor concerned. He fiddled with the door and a set of keys for a whole sixty seconds and then told us just not to stand near it.
So, let's see, in the span of an hour at least four unacceptable incidents happened on that Red Line train: 1. A T employee didn't check the doors. 2.
A T employee didn't bother to answer the emergency intercom (really makes you feel safe in terms of national security, doesn't it?) 3. The doors malfunctioned, and someone could have fallen out and 4.
The T employee assigned to fix the problem obviously didn't know how to fix the problem, nor did he know who to call to fix the problem.
Thing is, it isn't that hard to mind your passengers. Passengers can be stupid, they can wait until the last minute, they can dawdle, whatever, but it's still the T's job to make sure that the doors work and that everyone is on the train.
Oh, and while we're at it, walking past a T employee yesterday and we could swear it looked like he was trying to cough up a hairball on the guy in front of him. Riding the T is full of so many surprises that they may as well make a Sims expansion pack out of it.
Image of AC/DC's Highway to Hell cover taken from Amazon.
They look friendlier than your average T employee, don't you think?
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