Category — Thomas Menino

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino:

Mayor Thomas M. Menino said that Hillary Clinton should not run for vice president on a ticket with Barack Obama because her husband, former president Bill Clinton, could cause problems for the new administration.

“If she got back into the White House, she’d bring along Big Daddy, and he would overshadow the president,” Menino said in an interview.

That must be the first time I have ever agreed with Menino.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has found excuse #823 to blame for the city’s violent crime spree. It’s Mitt Romney’s fault along with hunters in general.

An infuriated Mayor Thomas M. Menino yesterday slammed former GOP governor Mitt Romney for boasting about his National Rifle Association membership and “bragging” about shooting varmints with a semiautomatic, even as his former capital city is besieged by gun violence.

“How could you be hoping to talk about public safety in this country when the proliferation of illegal guns is at an epidemic stage and you are proud to say I am a gun proponent,” Menino said.

“It’s nothing to brag about for votes. That’s what he is doing. He wants to use this as a way trying to get votes, bragging about guns.”

Last week, Romney caused a national stir after he seemed to flip-flop on whether he was a lifelong hunter. He made the claim during a presidential campaign appearance last week in New Hampshire to a man wearing an NRA cap.

“I’ve been a hunter pretty much all my life. I’ve never really shot anything terribly big. I used to hunt rabbits,” Romney said, admitting later that he’d hunted only twice. “Shooting a rabbit with a single-shot .22 is pretty hard, and after watching me try for a couple of weeks, (my cousins) said, ‘We’ll slip you the semiautomatic. You’ll do better with that.’ And I did.”

Menino, a Democrat, pounced on the comment, saying semiautomatic weapons should be banned.

Leaving aside the fact that Romney’s boast about hunting rings hollow; is it too much to ask for the reporter to ask Mumbles some follow up questions? Of course it is, considering the fact that the same reporter basically used the same excuse as the Mayor in her own column on Monday.

Since the reporter can’t see fit to ask some logical follow up questions, I’ll do her job for her:

• Aren’t the guns being used in Boston already unlicensed and therefore illegal?
• Do you really think that thugs that are willing to murder people in cold blood give a damn whether the weapon they use is “banned”?
• If you were able to ban these semi-automatic weapons, would you initiate another gun buyback program to get these newly banned weapons off the street? (since the last one worked so well)
• Why should law abiding citizens pay the price of losing their gun ownership rights because a bunch of thugs in Boston don’t follow the existing gun laws?

I don’t expect any answers any time soon but wouldn’t it be nice if mainstream reporters took the time to ask questions like these rather than waste our time with the meaningless quotes used in the story above?

HT: No Looking Backwards & Hub Politics

Boston Globe columnist Scot Lehigh asked the mayor why he opposed having the State Police help patrol Boston’s high-crime neighborhoods and this was his response:

And I find it hard to imagine why the mayor or the governor would show any hesitation about having the State Police help in Boston’s high-crime neighborhoods. But they both have. Yesterday I asked Mayor Menino why he opposed it.

“First of all, you have different unions here,” he replied.

Our city is suffering a killing spree, and police union resistance really suffices as a reason? Good Lord.

Maybe the mayor should go to Chiara Levin’s funeral and tell her family that.

HT: No Looking Backwards

Mayor Thomas M. Menino and other civic leaders negotiated a secret gang truce that is jeopardized by the killing of Jamhol Norfleet, a member of the H-Block gang. But should the mayor be negotiating with gangs like they are the Israelis and Palestinians? Gangs aren’t nation states or peoples, they are criminal organizations. Instead of legitimizing them by negotiating with them maybe he and the police should be working to put them out of business.

Here is the latest idiocy to stumble out of Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s mouth:

Pointing to the rising number of shootings in Boston, Mayor Thomas M. Menino is calling for a “handgun summit” in New England and raised the possibility of random police searches of cars crossing into the state to intercept illegal weapons.

That should do wonders for rush hour traffic!

Earth to Mayor Menino, the City of Boston does not border any other state. In case you forgot, you have no control over the State Police and have no power to implement such a ridiculous plan.

HT: mASS BACKWARDS.

Howie Carr tells us how John Kerry was AWOL when push came to shove to get disputes resolved before this weeks convention started in his own backyard. Republican Governor Mitt Romney showed real leadership skills and took the steps necessary to resolve these disputes.

So far, John Kerry has been an onlooker at his own convention.

Every day last week, the already- dark mood of his hometown grew surlier, as the extent of the convention’s massive disruptions of daily life became ever more apparent. But the man who would lead the Free World essentially went MIA.

He spent several days in serene splendor at the $10-million oceanfront mansion on Nantucket that his second wife inherited from her first husband. The senator windsurfed by day and hobnobbed with the Beautiful People by night, pedaling his $8,000 Serotta bicycle into the village for dinner at one or another of the island’s fancy restaurants.

Meanwhile, in the sweltering city, the heavy lifting of actually averting total chaos was left to two local pols — Boston’s Democratic Mayor Thomas Menino and GOP Gov. Mitt Romney.

It was the mayor who had to go toe-to-toe with an obdurate police union that was threatening to hamstring the entire convention with picket lines, to protest their lack of a contract. It was the governor who finally forced the union to the bargaining table when he replaced the foot-dragging chairman of a state labor board with a retired judge who immediately ordered the arbitration that resulted in a settlement.

Kerry’s contribution to the contentious process? He refused to cross a police picket line to deliver a speech planned months in advance at a conference of mayors that Menino was hosting. On short notice, Romney stepped in for No-Show John as the featured speaker.

Menino did not appreciate being hung out to dry by his ostensible ally. “If they ever name a street after Kerry,” said one of the mayor’s allies at City Hall, “it’ll have to be one-way.”

Kerry, meanwhile, sailed off Nantucket. In his spare moments, he worked on his Thursday-night acceptance speech — not on a laptop, but in longhand.

While the mayor and the governor toiled on the security arrangements for Kerry’s coronation, the senator did a little hang-gliding, and skipped a largely symbolic vote in the U.S. Senate on gay marriage.

“He thinks he’s acting presidential,” said one Democrat at the State House. “But the reality is, he’s been ducking and everybody knows it. This is just reinforcing the impression that he’s not an executive, he’s a legislator. The only decision he ever has to make is what wine to order with dinner.”

So if the convention turns out not to be a quagmire, Democrats will have a Republican governor to thank.

Just weeks before the Democratic National Convention, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino lashed out at Senator Kerry yesterday. You may remember that Kerry embarrassed Menino a few days ago when he canceled an appearance before the Conference of Mayors.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino unloaded a searing attack on fellow Democrat John F. Kerry yesterday, calling his presidential campaign “small-minded” and “incompetent” - laying bare a years-old rift weeks before the city plays host to Kerry’s FleetCenter coronation.

Menino, in an exclusive Herald interview, let loose on the hometown senator two days after Kerry snubbed him by siding with union picketers outside a U.S. Conference of Mayors event.

“Maybe they should use some of their energies to get their message across to the American people instead of trying to destroy the integrity of someone who is on their team, to try to discredit someone on their team,” Menino said. “They have better things to do.”

But, in a move that might only intensify the public war of words, the Kerry campaign responded by suggesting Menino made the comments because of the “pressure” he’s under as convention host.

Kerry and Menino ended up on opposite sides this weekend as Kerry debated skipping a scheduled speech to the mayors.

Kerry decided late Sunday night not to give the speech in deference to picketing cops, angering Menino - who quickly replaced him with Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, in a reciprocal snub.

Menino said he was enraged to see a local newspaper item saying he hung up on Kerry Sunday. The mayor yesterday said Kerry’s campaign floated the story, which he called untrue.

“I wasn’t angry with him, that’s a rumor they’re spreading,” Menino said. “They are trying to balance out their decision by saying the mayor’s angry. I had no harsh words with them.”

Menino called the alleged leak “the failure of the campaign to communicate with the public,” adding, “They are trying to find scapegoats for their incompetency.”

A few hours earlier, the mayor stood with Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe at a press conference cheering Kerry as “the next president of the United States.”

“We are all on the same team, I thought. Evidently, we’re not,” he said. “This is typical of small-minded individuals who have to create controversy.”

Kerry’s campaign refused to make the senator available for comment last night, but suggested Menino might be stressed out.

“The mayor is in the middle of running the city and helping prepare Boston for the national and international spotlight as the Democratic National Convention comes to John Kerry’s hometown, where Kerry will accept his party’s nomination for president,” spokesman Michael Meehan wrote in an e-mail response. “These are two very pressure packed jobs and the mayor understandably is working hard to be successful at both.”

Sources close to the Kerry campaign and the mayor say they worry about the rift continuing through the convention - already plagued with bad headlines - and into the general election.

Aides to Menino say the famously fickle mayor has never felt particularly close to Kerry and could well hold back some of his ground troops, which helped put Kerry over the top in critical primaries.

Senator Kerry snubbed Boston mayor Thomas Menino by canceling his appearance before the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Sen. John F. Kerry sided with unions in their labor standoff with Mayor Thomas M. Menino last night, refusing to cross a picket line to a long-scheduled speech today in a direct snub to the powerful Hub mayor.

Kerry aides announced his decision last night after a weekend of hemming and hawing over which influential group to disappoint.

Officials from the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association and the firefighters’ union Local 718 took Kerry backing down from the speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors as a huge victory, particularly after U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy did the same.

“It was a very difficult decision. He’s running for president of the United States and he needs all the help he can get but I’m glad he came down on the side of labor,” said Local 718 President Nick DiMarino.

Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan said the decision came down to Kerry’s respect for any union picket line.

“He has not crossed a picket line and will not be crossing one (today),” Meehan said.

Meehan wouldn’t say whether Kerry will honor picket lines if a contract isn’t reached by next month’s Democratic National Convention.

Governor Mitt Romney has now agreed to speak at the conference and is taking full political advantage of the situation. You just gotta love this comment by Romney’s spokesman:

“Executive leadership requires tough decision-making, and that’s true whether you’re a mayor, a governor or the president of the United States,”

Update: Captain Ed has a different take on this story.

Guess what! We don’t need to worry about traffic problems during the convention anymore. Why, you ask? Because Terry McAuliffe says so:

Convention Traffic Won’t Be Bad, DNC Chief Says

Traffic may not be as bad as predicted in Boston during the Democratic National Convention next month after all.

That’s the word Monday from the man in charge of the nominating convention scheduled for the FleetCenter.

NewsCenter 5’s Jim Morelli reported that Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said traffic woes may be exaggerated. He told the Boston Herald there will likely be few problems during the convention because many of the 35,000 delegates, media and other attendees, will be traveling by foot and bus in an area close to the convention site.

Seven miles of Interstate 93, and miles of roads within a 15-mile radius of downtown Boston, will be closed every afternoon during the convention, which will run from July 26 to July 29. Commuter rail lines will also be closed down. Even so, McAuliffe told the Herald, “contrary to what people think, it is not going to be a traffic gridlock.” He said similar problems confronted organizers in Los Angeles before the last Democratic convention, but everything worked out well.

“Everybody’s going to be able to move around easily and freely. They’re going to have a great time,” said McAuliffe.

As for reports that the convention is $5 million over budget, he said it’s a problem that comes up every four years with conventions and it always gets resolved. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said he will ask Congress for help in paying for the convention’s steep security costs.

“The Secret Service is demanding so much of us that the costs we thought originally are escalating. So, we have a bill for the Congress. I’ve got some assurances from Congress that they will go through in the very near future,” said Menino, adding that he expects to get $25 million from Congress to help pay for convention expenses.

In the meantime, two of the area’s larger tourist attractions, the Museum of Science and the New England Aquarium, are planning to close at 3 p.m. to avoid expected convention traffic problems.

Whoo, now I feel better! It must be true if Terry McAuliffe said it. Apparently you can close 7 miles of an interstate during the afternoon rush hour and everything will be just fine as long as we all think happy thoughts!