The Insight: Setti Warren and the Brown-out facing the Unemployed...

 **UPDATE** Editor's Note: In response to a comment, we wanted to add a clarification on the post itself.  The comparison between Scott Brown's and Setti Warren's service is NOT intended to cast aspersions on National Guard service.  There is a difference between touting one's own service retrospectively as opposed to prospectively securing that service so as to retrospectively tout it.  The comparison below is intended to suggest the Mass GOP perceives Warren as a threat, not speak to an individual's service or how that service qualifies a candidate.

Mayor Warren with Rexene Picard (WMassP&I)

Yesterday in Springfield Newton Mayor and candidate for the Democratic nomination in next year's Senate race toured Futureworks, the jobs training and labor exchange based at the STCC Technology Park opposite the college  Rexene Picard, the organization's executive director showed the mayor around the facility and explained the importance of funds form the Workforce Enhancement Act, especially at a time when so many are looking for jobs.

Warren met with both job seekers and the people whose job it is to take the less out of the jobless.  Futureworks programs cater to a wide range of people from all skill levels, education and age group.  Picard noted that the organization often helps people, who are looking for work for the first time in twenty years, navigate the more complex and often electronic aspects of modern recruiting.

WMassP&I spoke with Mayor Warren at the conclusion of his tour about a range of subjects affecting both the Springfield area and the commonwealth at large.  On a local level, Warren was asked about the Environmental Protection Agency and how it relates to the controversial biomass plant proposed for Page Boulevard in Springfield.  Specifically, the question related to Sen. Scott Brown's vote to gut the EPA's rule-making ability, just as the agency began a 3 year evaluation on the impact of biomass plants and Springfield was locked in a high-stakes fight with a developer over the same issue.

The Newton mayor said he was "deeply concerned" about Brown's positions on the environment, particularly his vote on the EPA and the senator's questioning of the science of global climate change.  Warren encouraged a movement toward renewable energy, but remained cautious about biomass.  Energy produced by burning dead plant matter needs "deeper study," he said.  Fundamentally for Warren, the concern is that the health and environmental effects of these plants were unknown.  When asked, Warren did say he had met many residents of Western Massachusetts who also expressed concerns about the unknowns of biomass plants' health and ecological impact.

The Old Seal of FEMA (wikipedia)

Under President Bill Clinton, Setti Warren was the New England Director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.  As a result Warren was asked about the fiscal impact that reckless budget cutting could do to imperil federal disaster relief from which Springfield and its neighbors have recently benefited.  Warren, who has visited with tornado victims at the MassMutual Center, took a moment to point out that FEMA, under Pres. Barack Obama's leadership, has vastly improved itself since Hurricane Katrina.  The president "values this agency," Warren said adding that the Bush administration had "dismantled" the work of James Lee Witt, the Agency Director under whom Warren served.  As a result, the current talk in Washington over the debt and deficit has thus far been "irresponsible." It is neither focused on investing  in our workforce nor maintaining adequate preparedness for disasters to the benefit, Warren suggests, of tax cuts for the wealthy.  Warren was unequivocal, "We need to invest in recovery."

WMassP&I mentioned that Senator Brown was in Springfield recently.  At Brown's appearance, this blog posed a question to Brown as to whether he was telling his colleagues, namely the anti-government ones, about the good work being done in Springfield by government.  Brown deflected and did not answer.  So a similar question was posed to Warren.  As Senator, would Warren go to Washington and inform his colleagues there about the good work public service and servants are doing in Massachusetts in order to counter the anti-government sentiment prevailing there?  Warren spoke more broadly.  Yes, he would bring those positive observations back to Washington, but he would also be telling his colleagues about what his constituents are most concerned about.  Having held 24 town hall meetings across his own city of Newton, Warren says that his constituents are more interested in jobs and how budget cuts will affect them, not vapid demagoguery about government.

Take My Breath Away...

(WMassP&I)

In many ways, we have abdicated our responsibility on the Biomass issue.  When the permit was rammed through the city council on a 7-2 vote in 2008, it was hailed as a jobs creator period. Since then there has been a growing movement to stop the plant, slated for development off of Page Boulevard near I-291.  Palmer Renewable Energy, owned by the Callahan family that owns a paving company by the same name sought to use renewable energy grants to build the facility.

The plan calls for a power plant fueled by wood chip.  At first biomass was seen as being a great alternative energy source because it was renewable and ostensibly admitted less pollution.  However, it may be helpful to think biomass in the same way as LASIK laser eye surgery.  It is so new we do not have any idea what the long term effects are. As what data we do have began to come to light, the power plant began to look more and more like a liability for public health in the Greater Springfield area.

(WMassP&I)

The council faced a room filled with supporters and opponents of the biomass plant, but the supporters clearly had an advantage in homemade signs and possibly numbers as well.  Both sides were fairly civil throughout the process, but the opponents of the plant held their colorful signs highest on their experts' best points and throughout much of their opponents' comments.

From a legal standpoint, the Council's options are limited to revocation of the 2008 permit.  According to some legal sources, they can vote to revoke it, but as with granting a special permit they need 9 votes.  If last night's vote to close the meeting is any indication, they probably are close if not past that threshold.  However, the council can only revoke it for "just cause." 


As former City Solicitor and City Councilor Pat Markey put it to the Council, they get to decide what just cause is, but they have plenty to base their conclusion on.  Markey noted (he was one of two councilors in 2008 that voted no, Rosemarie Mazza-Moriarty was the other) that the original permit was for a recycling center.  Markey explained that that made sense at the time because the original project called for burned construction and demolition waste to power the plant.  That idea was later abandoned as skeptical regulators demurred.  As such, the new plan uses so-called green wood chips.  These chips are sometimes from tree debris, but other times from living trees.  Markey argued that the new plan fails to be recycling as that term implies previous used material.  This plan is an incinerator, instead, which requires a separate special permit, Markey said.

Pat Markey with Karen Powell in 2007 (WMassP&I)

Markey said the permit change, the change in truck movements, the lower threshold for regulation, and the EPA's own misgivings about biomass amount to plenty of "just cause" for the council.  Furthermore, he assured the council, the worst Palmer Paving could do is sue, win and get their permit anyway.  Susan Reid, Massachusetts Director of the  Conservation Law Foundation, a New England environmental legal group, argued that the increase in relative pollution by the plant could actually negate any positive effect.  Among her arguments was that the pollution increase could raise local temperatures and thereby increase energy usage for Air Conditioning.


A Northampton doctor that works in Springfield noted that the added pollution could have a particularly deleterious effect on days with air quality alerts.  Others spoke to the additional harmful effects caused by the additional truck trips.  Michaelann Bewsee, an activist in the city, took great pains to note that she and others had done their homework on the situation.  An asthma sufferer noted a connection to asthma rates and school absenteeism.


Representing the Biomass plant were Attorneys Frank Fitzgerald and Thomas Mackie.  Fitzgerald protested the legitimacy of this hearing and claimed that the only "just cause" for the city to revoke the permit was non-compliance with the original permit. At times he and his co-counsel claimed that even the original permit were unnecessary.  Fitzgerald also made several references to the direct economic benefit to the city.

Our 100th: Worse for the Wear...

**UPDATE** This Post has been updated to reflect News about the Cape Cod Times Editorial referenced below and news on Setti Warren's Senate Announcement on 5/13 & 5/18.

(Created from Fair Use image of Brown and other)

Last week should have been a good week for our Senator Scott Brown.  Despite the big news that Osama bin Laden had been taken out by a Navy Seals Special Operations team, Brown's delightfully self-serving tidbit about doing his two-week National Guard stint in Afghanistan was dutifully picked up by a swooning media.  It was largely buried, but anybody who follows the news probably saw it.  Perhaps Brown had probably hoped for more adulation from a media establishment prone to pleasur..err, gratifying him, but the understated delivery of his message was enough.  Even as Brown blamed somebody else for leaking the story, Politico's Ben Smith was quick to note the leaker was none other than Brown himself.  This was planned.

Then, last Wednesday, as President Barack Obama was weighing whether to release photos of bin Laden's bullet-ridden corpse, Scott Brown took to the airways.  He agreed with Obama's decision  not to release the photos and affirmed that he had seen them.  Except the photos that Scott Brown saw were fakes, the very same that had been discredited by numerous news organizations as much as 48 hours before Brown's television appearances.  So Brown got punked.  Big deal, right?  Maybe, except that Brown led the interviewers on NECN and another Boston television station to believe he had seen them in an official briefing.  So, did Brown, as a member of the Armed Services Committee see the pictures, but was otherwise not supposed to blab? 

Bin Laden Graffitt in Romania (wikipedia)

That is unlikely because according to numerous news outlets the classified briefing which all senators were invited included zero photographs.  Borderline Christian Extremist Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire junior senator and Georgia's Sen. Saxby Chambliss (also a Gang of Six gangster) also claimed to have seen the same photos, but their goofs thus far merely reflect being taken in by low-quality hoaxes.  Brown, on the other hand implied he saw what he thought was bin Laden's body, that is the fake, in an official briefing.  Except no briefing available to him included those images., unless Brown got non-official illegal look at the classified pictures.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee claims she could have seen them, but declined.  Feinstein, it is worth noting, probably saw her fill of closeup fatal shots to the head when she found the bodies of George Moscone and Harvey Milk.

When Brown refused to respond to requests for clarification from Boston Phoenix reporter David Bernstein, the latter engaged Twitter in a concerted and hilarious effort to ridicule the commonwealth's junior senator.  Armed with the hashtag #scottosawit, several days of tweets filled with what "Scott saw" flew back and forth ranging from the serious to the silly.  Many including a few tweeted by WMassP&I poked fun at Scott Brown's incongruous political positions.  Neither of Brown's twitter accounts appeared to acknowledge the Twitter assault.

While Twitter guffawed over what Scotto saw, the traditional media did not miss a beat.  Columns and opinions from BOTH the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald took swipes at the senator.  Brian McGrory, a Globe Colunist, mocked Brown's sloppiness and called his response to the League of Women Voters EPA ad "whiny" (it is and we will get to that).  McGrory also derided Brown for attacking the media sales tactic (re: bin Laden photos) while being the ultimate salesman himself. 

"This admonition from a guy who posed with next to nothing on for Cosmopolitan and is pushing his ghost-written memoir so hard that his constituent meetings are held at Barnes & Noble and Borders — in other words, a guy who has never shied from salesmanship."