I met and spoke to Martha Coakley only once. That’s what she says. I don’t remember the incident.
My son went to work for her in the Attorney General’s office (no help from me, he’s a skilled attorney who felt his talents put to better use in the public sector after many years with big law firms). His last interview before a job offer would be extended was with her. She told him that I interviewed her when she applied for a job in the Norfolk DAs office. She told him she didn’t get a job offer. My son figured she was going to return tit for tat and not give him an offer. Fortunately for him she overlooked my actions.
My son worked for her for five years before moving on.
I never met Maura Healey. My son has known her for many years. He met her when they worked together at the major Boston law firm Hale & Dorr. When he went to the AG’s office he found she also was there.
If the sign to the left is of any significance, it seems Maura traces her roots back to Galway as do we Connollys. Tribalism alone is reason to vote for her but unfortunately the Irish are the least tribal of people often preferring strangers to their own country folk.
My son sent an email to me, our family and his friends. He didn’t ask me to post it here nor does he know I’m doing it but I feel he wouldn’t mind if I did. As you know I stay out of politics unless they relate to the law, but this time I make an exception, for as my son said in his email:
“It makes a difference. Please vote on Tuesday.
That much I can say easily. I am a little embarrassed to add: please vote for Maura and Martha. Embarrassed because I don’t usually suggest to people who to vote for, but actually very proud of both of these women. I know them well; I worked with them for years; you couldn’t do better in terms of quality representation for Massachusetts. I want to be sure not to waste your time so I need to be very concise about these candidates’ qualities, so in brief: for the same reasons I find each to be a good friend, each will be a great champion for Massachusetts.
Maura and I were friends when we worked at Hale and Dorr before we worked together at the Mass Attorney a General’s Office. She is neck in neck with Warren Tolman and she can beat this guy on Tuesday. She’s about as clear-sighted a person I know about the issues that matter for an Attorney General: making sure blind people can get money from an ATM, making sure that fat cats and the connected don’t get their way simply because they grease the system, making sure gays don’t face discrimination, coming down hard on those who abuse the public trust, and living humbly and reciprocally with the natural environment. She believes in these issues and has actually devoted her life to working on them. Check out her campaign ad here:
https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/mauratvad
Martha is amazing. When she hired me to work for her, she told me how much she respected my dad’s work and judgment at the Norfolk DA’s office. For those of you who know my dad, that’s enough proof of her good judgment right there! 🙂 I have sat with her in meetings about issues that no one was talking about, that weren’t making headlines, that seemed almost trivial for the state’s highest attorney to be spending her limited time on, but were very important to the individuals involved. That’s Martha in a nutshell. You are guaranteed that when she thinks about the economy, about education, about investing in Massachusetts and everything else that matters for a governor to think about, she’s thinking about people first. How it impacts individual people. Like you or me.
I’m writing to you because you are a friend or family member of mine with connections to Massachusetts. Please vote if you’re here. Please spread the word. It will be a tight race with very low turn out. It makes a difference.
Martha Coakley leads polling for primary, general election
http://www.whdh.com/story/26432264/martha-coakley-leads-polling-for-primary-general-election
Maura Healey leads in AG race, according to new Boston Globe poll
http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/09/maura_healey_leads_in_ag_race.html
‘30 in 30’: Women Candidates to Watch in 2014 – Maura Healey
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/women-candidates-watch-2014-maura-healey
Glad to talk (at length!) if you have any questions for me about Martha and Maura!”
Matt, include this woman’s testimony (Cathy Englebrecht (sp?)) in your book. She says the FBI investigated her FIVE TIMES and found nothing wrong with her educational non-profit. The IRS asked for all her tweets, facebook pages, and all future appearances she was going to make. In five years she was hammered by the FEDs all because she registered her small educational non-profit. The Tyranny is upon us.http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4483648/mrs-engelbrecht
Please alert all you readers to this video!!!!
Wiliam
I’ll see what I can do to include it but I’m not lacking for material. The “l” key on my typewriter is giving me trouble so if there are any L’s missing you’ll understand why.
* ” In truth , the Irish did not throw Parnell to the wolves, they chose to eat him themselves ” W.B. Yeats … or words to such effect 🙂
Tolman is a fool and a liar (See his ads distorting Supreme Court decisions). I’ll vote for Maura Hennigan. I won’t for Martha the AG who is addicted to taxes and is a Big Government Liberal like the Fake Indian Senator from Harvard and who maliciously tried to prosecute innocent state workers who happened to be probation officers. By the way, Fred the Fed Wyshak piggy backed on Martha’s prosecution and invented the wholly fallacious crime of hiring someone who was a recovering drug addict or who was young and just out of college. Fred the Fed is liked by Martha: they think alike; words are infinitely malleable and so is the constitution they think. Birds of a feather.
“…but unfortunately the Irish are the least tribal of people often preferring strangers to their own country folk.”
Perhaps when there are strangers involved, but without that variable, over here they are very tribal. Charitably, family-oriented. The first things you want to learn about someone is the wife’s maiden name and their mother’s maiden name. Then what county, and what school they attended. Ireland is one huge village.
Henry:
Things are always different in the mother land than in the abroad. A lot of Irish people here wanted to disassociate themselves with their fellow Irish and become more like the first families. In Ireland you are stuck with other Irish so there’s no where to hide except in a neighboring pub.
All you need know about about Martha Coakley is the word Amirault.
Henry:
Good point. Big bad mistake on her part. She went through it and is stuck with it. It’s hard to admit you were wrong.
I am planning on voting for Healy, but the memory of Coakley’s performance in the Scott Brown debacle makes me fear she would lose to Charlie Baker in the general.
Not that a Baker win would be terrible. In this state…er, Commonwealth, having a few token GOP’ers in office is a good remedy to the “absolute power corrupts absolutely” situation we usually get.
MA pretty much takes care of itself. The national picture is more problematic as religious nutjobs and huge money interests conspire to take over the Senate and block reasonable SCOTUS appointments. A couple more Antonin Scalia’s on the Court would be more dangerous than Al Quaeda.
Jeff:
I agree with you that it is likely that Baker will win. I’m not sure Grossman would give him more of a fight than Coakley. The people like to throw a Republican in every so often believing that it makes a difference but it really hasn’t over the years. You make a good point that “MA pretty much takes care of itself.” I agree. I read an article today in the Washington Post about black unemployment which is about double that of white. There’s only been one time and in one state where it exceeded whites over the past couple of decades and that was in MA. Our school systems, medical facilities, etc are all doing better than other parts of the nation. You’d never know it listening to some who want to spout off about the corruption in MA especially among the politicians. But if there were that much corruption it is highly unlikely the state would be among the leaders in so many categories.
Antonin Scalia is the most articulate, most brilliant, most fair and most constitutionally accurate justice on today’s court and as good or better than any that have ever occupied that seat including the vaunted Holmes and Brandeis. Only leftist Globophiles with scant knowledge of constitutional law throw stones at Scalia. Sorry, cuz, but you are dead wrong!!!
Cousin William,
I understand the basis of your over-the-top assessment of Justice Scalia’s sterling character and matchless legacy, but I feel we must agree to disagree.
I am just a wee bit more liberal than you, perhaps, so that may explain my wildly diverging opinion.
But “leftist Globophile”? Ouch, cousin!
Cuz, I retract the “leftist globaphile” as applied to you, but you know that leftist globaphiles are out there. One of my best friends, Paul Hutchinson, with whom I constantly converse, describes himself as a Hubert Humphrey democratic liberal and we agree on 99% of things even though my favorites are Ronald Reagan, Pat Buchanan, William F. Buckley and Thomas Sowell for political thinkers. I’ll still stick with Justice Scalia as the most erudite and best writer on the Court, plus he’s got a sense of humor. Although most people who disagree with me are wrong, sometimes some of them are right; I am rarely if ever wrong!!! About four years ago, I once made a mistake, which I had to admit.
Whew! glad your son does not read your column.
Back story
We brought Leonard Gates to speak at our
6th Annual conference investigating
crimes committed by FBI agents
at Bates College during the
mid 1990’s.
Gates was a supervisor at Cincinnati
Bell telephone and was committing voter
fraud for the FBI.Gates told the audience
FBI agents are committing voter fraud
in every state.
see
http://articles.latimes.com/1989-01-14/news/mn-82_1_cincinnati-bell
About this tribe thing.
I had the pleasure of interviewing
Caroline Myss about 15 years ago.
Transcending Tribal Mentality
By Caroline Myss
All of us are born into a “tribal mentality” of various forms. These include our family unit, religious background, country of origin, ethnicity, etc. The tribal mentality effectively indoctrinates an individual into the tribe’s beliefs, ensuring that all believe the same. The structure of reality – what is and is not possible for the members of the group – is thus agreed upon and maintained by the tribe.
While the tribal mentality has definite benefits in terms of establishing common ground and ensuring group survival, it is not a conscious agreement. We are born into it. Yet at a certain stage, both personally and collectively, the tribal mentality must be challenged. People can then begin to recognize the need for a personal honor code independent of the tribe. If humanity is to progress, we need to learn how to treat everyone – regardless of tribal affiliation – with honor and respect.
Every one of us is plugged into the tribal mind. We support tribal belief patterns by directing a percentage of our life force into maintaining our affiliation with the tribe. This involves an implicit agreement to think like the tribe thinks, to evaluate situations and people the way the tribe does, and to believe in right and wrong according to tribal values and ambitions. As long as the tribal mentality within us remains unexamined, we unwittingly subject others to our tribal laws.
When we are plugged into tribal thought forms, we can easily believe in nonsensical prejudices held by the tribe. Tribal mentality allows us to hold harsh, judgmental positions or attitudes about an entire group of people: “All fat people are lazy,” or “all Irish are drunks,” or “all Muslims are terrorists” for example.
A rigid tribal thought form may have little truth to it, but individuals hold to such beliefs because that perspective is what the tribe has agreed to believe. Innocent children, born into the hatred and prejudice of their parents and ancestors, grow up inside a tribal mentality that sponsors an endless march toward war against the tribe’s perceived enemies. People grow up hating other people – people they have never seen – based on group affiliation. This is the shadow side of the tribe.
Inevitably, some among us come to a point where we want to break out of the inflexible tribal mentality. At some point, these individuals want to explore, develop, and manage their own consciousness without the judgments and limitations of the tribal mind.
It is easy to spot these mavericks when they start to question and unplug from tribal mentality – they hang out on the periphery looking bored and restless, or whimsical and dreamy. Others may act out the agitated hot-head as they challenge tribal ways.
The unspoken assumption of the tribal mind is that everybody loves being part of the tribe. And in many ways, we do. Knowing where and to whom we “belong” is crucial to our self-concept and sense of safety in the world. Yet when we begin the real deep journey of questioning, “What do I believe?” and start to individuate from the tribe, we often enter a dark night of the soul. It is, by necessity, a passage we take alone.
It’s one thing to reject what we don’t want to believe anymore. It’s quite another to begin to explore what we do believe. All we know as we enter the dark night is that we can’t go back – even when the tribe is the only world we’ve ever known.
At this critical point in our development, the tribe doesn’t feel right anymore. It no longer offers us comfort. Previous feelings of security and familiarity begin to feel like a trap constraining our individuality and hampering our efforts to discover deeper levels of who we really are.
This dark night passage pushes us to look at our false gods – the tribal belief patterns in which we’ve become invested and to which we’ve given our allegiance.
MS:
I assume you were being a bit facetious writing: “Whew! glad your son does not read your column.” You, and I assume others, believe that he does. The truth of the matter is that he doesn’t. He doesn’t like the criminal matters I deal with especially those relating to organized crime so he has never read it. I have another son who does read it all the time. A man of your experience and smarts should recognize that all relationships can be different in families or in tribes.
Your article on the Cincinati wiretapping that was in the LA Times didn’t implicate the FBI but the local police department. Sort of a change from what we are used to. In fact it appears the FBI was a victim. Caroline Myss is correct in her analysis of tribalism – we’re all born into it – some escape. I suppose the hold it has on one depends on the hold it has on the parents something Myss did not get into.
Matt
Greg Flannery drove Leonard Gates to Bates College.
He later wrote a story about the event.
Here is a recent story he wrote about FBI voter fraud and Leonard Gates
http://article25news.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/privacy-died-long-ago/
“…but unfortunately the Irish are the least tribal of people often preferring strangers to their own country folk.”
Thank you for this one, Mr. C. My smug self always thought it was just me (although I suppose I did see a touch of this in my late father.)
Vote early (polls open typically at 7:00 am, I think) and often (once every election, that is)!
GOK:
It’d make an interesting study why that is so. Sometime I think perhaps I’m wrong but I’ve notice when a candidate from one tribe is up for election the voters in his tribe from all striped liberal to conservative rally to him or her. With the Irish it seem more issue oriented with an idea that some other would do a better job. I could be wrong because I am too close to the issue but I like to tell it like I see it.
I always preferred the Irish and Irish Americans to everyone else, as many of them were among my closest friends, relatives and loved ones. My beloved ex-wife was half-Irish, part English, part German and one-sixteenth Cherokee Indian. The present girl of my dreams is almost half Irish. I revel in St, Patrick’s Day parades and Irish music, and my much loved cousins centered the Irish Volunteers. I don’t know what Irish-Americans you are talking about, Matt. Maybe some Harvard-Globe turncoats? Maybe some scurrilous informers and character assassins with big mouths like Howie Carr. You can have those few. I’ll take the great majority of the Irish-Americans. As fine as any ethnic or racial group in the Land.