Maureen Feeney of Dorchester was elected as the first Boston City Council President in 30 years. This is a historical event because last woman who led the Boston City Council was in 1976 when Louise Day Hicks was President. It is also historical because she actually gained more support from other councilors than incumbent and longtime president Michael Flaherty. It is uncertain how such a blindsiding could have happened. Either it was due to Michael Flaherty’s own ambition or the ambitions of his colleagues getting in the way. Regardless as to how it happened, a lot of people think that it has been way too long since the last woman was in charge.

Of course, it is also known that Maureen Feeney was able to lock up the support of at least 8 of the 13 members currently serving on the Boston City Council. This was enough votes to help her capture the post. This is something that has thrilled Maureen Feeney who is eager to begin formulating an agenda as president.

While this brings Maureen Feeney great happiness, she also knows that she is privileged to work with a lot of wonderful people. What has really encouraged her though is that Michael Flaherty was actually gracious enough to offer to step aside and support her. He even went so far as to encourage Michael P. Ross, Jerry P. McDermott, Robert Consalvo and James M. Kelly to support her instead of him. This meant a great deal to her since his support came only days before the election when a major battle could have occurred instead.

Why This Is An Important Event

Some people may be wondering why this is even a big deal in the first place. Well, it is because of the way in which the political system has been set up in Boston. The system is formed in such a way that if anything should happen to Mayor Tom Menino, then the Boston City Council President Maureen Feeney will then be in charge. Otherwise, the position of Boston City Council President makes a nice jumping point for anyone who wants to become mayor.

The Woman Behind The Name

Maureen Feeney grew up in the Franklin Field projects in Dorchester. She is the daughter of a father who worked as a pipe-fitter and a mother who was a full-time homemaker. Her family consisted of 5 brothers and 1 sister, of whom she is the eldest.

For several years, Maureen Feeney worked in the insurance industry. Then in the 1980s she took a job at City Hall handling constituent services for Councilor James E. Byrne. When Councilor James E. Byrne decided not to run for re-election in 1993, she won his seat. This was her first term on the Boston City Council. Since then she has gone on to win the 4 following elections by an overwhelming majority of voters. For all of the great service that she has provided, she was selected as Woman of the Year in 2000 by Friends for Children. This is a charity that provides mothers and children with social services and directs them to other social service agencies as well. Now this 58-year-old Democrat from Dorchester is the first woman in 30 years to serve as a President on the Boston City Council. This will position her to be able to wield considerable influence over diverse matters such as policing, elections and education.

Previous Achievements

Success is nothing new to Maureen Feeney. She has a proven track record, which includes:
1.In the past Maureen Feeney has chaired the committee on Government Operations, Boston 2004, and University- Community Relations.
2.Maureen Feeney has served as Vice President of the City Council.
3.She has chaired the committee for Housing, the committee for Census & Redistricting in 2002.
4.She was the Vice-Chair for the committee on Ways and Means.
5.Maureen Feeney was a Trustee of the Boston Medical Center.
6.She sits on the board of directors of several organizations including the Daniel Marr Boys and Girls Club and the Bay Cove Human Services.
7.For about 20 years Maureen Feeney served on the Ward 16 Democratic Committee. Through a previous election she came to serve on the executive committee here.
8.She has also created a meals program at the Long Island Shelter.
9.Maureen Feeney is known for organizing annual blood drives throughout the city.

As you can clearly see, Maureen is an experienced leader with a proven track record. She is known for serving her constituents and is acknowledged as an expert when it comes to delivering health care services. Maureen Feeney has also taken a strong stand in protecting the non-profit health care facilities, which serve her constituents.

Major Changes On The Horizon

Also, check out Puritan City’s review of Haru

Given the suddenness of my move and demands of the new job (I’m teaching now at Temple University, and really enjoying it), I had to drop off the blogging scene for a while. Even now, I won’t have the time for current events blogging for the foreseeable future. But I didn’t want this blog to just linger without closure. So expect a few more posts before I hang up the hat.

Again, congratulations to Patrick and his campaign for an impressive victory. Let’s hope it’s a fresh page for Massachusetts politics.

The great irony of this all is that if there’s one thing the Republican Party does understand really well it’s the psychology and politics of nationalism. They understand it, that is, in terms of U.S. domestic politics. It doesn’t seem to occur to them, however, that these insights might want to be extended to how foreigners — who are, after all, human beings just like Americans — react to things.

To generalize into a principle, one should expect nationalism to define foreigners’ stance on the world stage as much as it’s defined ours in the most nationalist of moments.

So it’s in the most loving way that I say that local TV newscasts are dreadful.

Some are worse than others… Channel 7’s the worst offender; Channel 5 the most hidebound and traditional; and Channel 4 rapidly remaking itself in WHDH image. But they all suffer from a bloated generic form that offers viewers little substantive knowledge (what used to come first in news) about the place where they live.

Everyone has their own solutions and recriminations. For mine, I thought I’d offer these eight rules that I think would make for better, even stellar, local news:

No “off the satellites” feed stories: I honestly don’t see why I need to follow car crashes, building collapses, crazy animal stories and the like in California, Montana, Ohio or Georgia.

No national and world news: If we’re going to see the clip of a Bush speech or footage of Iraq war on the nightly network newscast, we don’t need to see it on the local news. It’s not local news. And there are plenty of sources for Mel Gibson news.

No police blotter stuff: Obviously car crashes, late night fires, shootings and vandalism are big deals for those affected. But in a large metropolitan area, stuff is always happening and it’s frankly not that interesting to me to hear that some triple-decker somewhere caught on fire. Now, if the item is treated in genuine news fashion that’s another thing. The rising homicide rate in Boston is a big deal, and serial arsonists may prompt a story pondering insurance scams. But enough with the ambulance and firetruck chasing.

No magazine trend lists: Pulling press releases of this or that magazine’s Top 40 Cities to Go on a Blind Date In or Worst Places to Park Your Car is the height of journalistic laziness. These studies don’t even really measure anything other than some artificial numerical index. If you want a lifestyle feature, go through the trouble to assess air quality, or restaurant scenes, or fitness cultures, etc.

Cut back on the tease: Advertising and self-promotion is a part of life. But respect some limits, by for instance teasers that can only last as long as one quarter of the duration the actual item they’re promoting. When weatherfolks can give the whole forecast in the amount of time they pose rhetorical questions, that’s an insult to the viewer.

Provide political analysis: Give a realistic assessment of why political battles play out the way they do. Is Beacon Hill stalling on that insurance regulation legislation or on that health care bill because of political gamesmanship? Because of closely held beliefs? Because of the beliefs of their constituents? Because of lobbyist money? These are tough questions, sometimes involving subjective judgment calls, but as viewers, and outsiders, we deserve elucidation, not knee-jerk anti-politician rhetoric.

Cover city politics: Too often Boston appears on local news merely as the cultural touchstone of the media market: the center of public events and sports teams. Yet, the news ignores city politics in a way that would be unthinkable in almost any other major city.

Less emotional interpellation: I’ve never understood why local anchors – and local anchors alone – have been told it’s their job to perform sympathy and emotional cues in such an exaggerated way. National news anchors tell you the news and let you react. I don’t need the head-nodding, tut-tutting, and endless patter about Sox losses. It’s embarrassing. Channel 5 is the only station were they manage to be conversational without being smarmy.

This is all a pipedream, I know. But given a crumbling network oligopoly, you think at least one channel would differentiate itself.

Can someone explain what Senator Lieberman could possibly mean when he says the following:

“I’m worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don’t appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security and the evil of the enemy that faces us — more evil, or as evil, as Nazism and probably more dangerous than the Soviet Communists we fought during the long Cold War,” Mr. Lieberman said.

First, there’s no antecedent to the word “threat” or “enemy” so we have no idea what threat he’s referring to. Is it al-Qaeda alone? Al-Qaeda plus Hezbollah and Hamas, plus Syria and Ahmadinejad? Or that thing out there that Little Green Footballs the President now calls “Islamic fascists”?

Who knows. But under any possible definition of “threat” or “enemy” it cannot possibly be as dangerous than the Soviet Union at the peak of the Cold War, with multiple thermonuclear devices pointed at every one of our cities and towns. And, I don’t know exactly how to score “evilness,” but not much matches Hitler. I suppose in some way bin Laden and Zawahiri’s hearts may be as filled with evil as Hitler’s or Stalin’s, but they don’t have the SS and Luftwaffe at their disposal. Maybe they would send us all to concentration camps if they controlled half of Europe, but thankfully, they live in caves and can’t use the phone. Is Ahmadinejad “more evil, or as evil” as Hitler? Maybe the potential is there, with his holocaust denial and all that, but so far it’s mostly talk.

I’m sorry, but this is just a deranged, or at best deeply confused and manic, thing to say. It shows a lack of perspective and reality and responsibility, even in its lack of clarity about what exactly the threat is and how to defeat it. Why does anyone accept that this kind of blather can be considered taking the threat more “seriously”? It’s not. It’s hugely unserious in its trivialization of the great moral challenges of the Twentieth Century and it’s bald politicization of the current challenge.

And here’s Matt Yglesias on the islamofascist label:

the main idea here seems to be that we need a proper noun to describe our foes. The noun ought to be pejorative, and it ought to include “Islam” or some equivalent. There’s not really any precedent for this sort of thing. We called the Nazis “Nazis” because that was the name of the Nazi Party. We didn’t feel the need to call them “Germano-Nazis” to remind ourselves that they were German. What we certainly didn’t do was take a term that already had bad connotations — “Bolsheviks,” say — and then call the Nazis “Germano-Bolsheviks” in order to make clear that we were talking about Germans rather than Russians. That would be nonsense. Al-Qaeda’s doctrine and methods have almost nothing in common with those of the National Socialist German Workers Party. Calling its followers “Islamo-Nazis” clarifies absolutely nothing.

Obfuscation, rather than clarification, was the goal to begin with.