There is some hubub about this story out of Philadelphia in which a 21-year-old named Neftaly Cruz said he was arrested for using his cell phone to take pictures of the police.
“Cruz said police told him that he broke a new law that prohibits people from taking picures of police with cell phones,” NBC10, the greater Philadelphia NBC station.
The catch is, there is no such law in Pennsylvania, the state attorney general’s office tells me. There was no such bill in the last two legislative sessions, either.
So, why was Cruz, identified as a Penn State senior, arrested?
Is the story similar to the Nashua Police’s arrest of a man for recording the conversations of two officers who came to his home to question his son? We’ll have to see. We know what the law in New Hampshire is. But the law under which Cruz allegedly was arrested remains a mystery.
So, I passed my first “Stop the Coburn Gas Tax!” sign on my way to work this morning. The Democrats even have a Web site dedicated to saving us all from the dreaded “Coburn gas tax,” which, of course, does not exist.
Here is the deal. Back in April Coburn proposed temporarily suspending the state’s 18-cents-a-gallon gas tax. He made this a central part of his early campaign. Lynch steadfastly refused even to consider a suspension of the gas tax. Then, in May, Coburn put his foot in his mouth.
In an interview with The Concord Monitor, Coburn explained how he wanted to spur economic growth, which he hoped would allow the state to cut the gas tax without losing any revenue. He said he would, as a last resort, consider raising the gas tax for the dumbest of all possible reasons — “to discourage people from burning so much gas.”
Bam! The Democrats had their issue. Jim Coburn “proposed” a tax increase! On the Dems’ “Stopthecoburngastax” Web site, they quote Coburn from the Monitor story: “We need to raise the (gas) tax to discourage people from burning so much gas.”
No elipses at the beginning of the sentence, so it looks like Coburn has morphed into Al Gore. But here is what Coburn actually said, as reported by the Monitor’s Eric Moskowitz (I’m quoting the relevant graphs from the story, which was really about a John McCain campaign event. “Wollmar” in the first sentence was a woman sitting next to Coburn in the audience. She asked McCain a gas tax question):
“Coburn said afterward that he didn’t know Wollmar. He also said that while he supports lowering the gas tax now, he would favor raising it in the future: ‘Raising gas taxes should be a last recourse, but I think a better recourse is sort of a burst of energy and economic development, and then transfer money into the highway fund. But if we can’t do it, we should raise the tax to discourage people from burning so much gas. That’s not a good solid Republican position, but it’s a pragmatic position.’
“Elaborating, Coburn said he wanted to lower the gas tax now to ease the pain at the pump this summer. In the long run, he hopes to develop a ‘comprehensive energy plan’ that might lower the wholesale price of gas. If that happened, a higher gas tax could be imposed without making gas more expensive at the pump, he said.”
I’m not about to defend Coburn’s gas tax position, which I think is foolish. But is it too much to ask for a little intellectual honesty from the Democrats here? Coburn clearly is not plotting to raise the gas tax. Moreover, their guy already raised the cigarette tax, so he’s a proven tax increaser. Unfortunately, you won’t see Republicans putting up “Stop the Lynch cigarette tax!” signs. They’re the ones who approved the cigarette tax hike in the Legislature.
People ask why we can’t get better candidates for high office. When deliberate dishonesty is a standard campaign tactic, is it any wonder?
Full disclosure: My boss’ son works for Coburn, which in no way has affected my opinion that Lynch is going to do to Coburn what the red fellow is doing to the yellow fellow here.
The New York Times reported today that on a Congressional trip to Estonia two years ago, Sen. Hillary Clinton got the senators to have a vodka-drinking contest. One of the senators on the trip was John Sununu. Wonder how he did vs. Clinton, John McCain, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham.
The Times used the drinking contest anecdote to highlight the chumminess of Clinton and McCain. The story was that the pair have become somewhat like pals over the past few years. Why this is a story I’m not quite sure. The Times seems to think it’s significant because the pair are considered front-runners for their party’s 2008 Presidential nominations and because Washington seems so bitterly divided these days.
Is it really so unusual that senators of different parties get along? Sens. Judd Gregg and Ted Kennedy are friendly, as are Sunnunu and Russ Feingold. The Senate is supposed to be a more collegial place than the House, and it has a rich tradition of cross-aisle buddying up.
The Times thinks McCain’s and Clinton’s relative closeness could be an issue in 2008. Maybe. But would it be an issue if McCain were more conservative or Hillary more honestly liberal? Few people would hold it against McCain that he likes Hillary, everything else being equal. But everything else is not equal. McCain leans to the left of the GOP on many issues. If a more conservative candidate wants to illustrate McCain’s softness on core platform issues, video of McCain laughing it up with Hillary would be good background for a primary campaign ad.
But to suggest, as I think the whole tone of the Times story does, that the alleged warmth between McCain and Hillary could be a political negative for each simply because America is so divided and members of each party might consider it treason for one of their senators to be friends with someone from the other side is grossly simplistic and underestimates the reasonableness of the American electorate.
The tone of the Times story is interesting because the subject is treated like a news story. The relationship between McCain and Clinton would make a fun light feature, but that’s not how the Times treats it. The reporter and editors present it as news worthy of analysis. I think that makes too much of it. And I wonder why the Times did not explore a bit more whether these bipartisan friendships are all that uncommon in the Senate. I suspect that would undermine the whole novelty of the narrative presented. Ann Coulter aside, I don’t think most people really demonize the other side as frequently as some in the media like to think.
This is not a rebel song.
On Wednesday National Review Online blogger Jim Geraghty reported that Portsmouth-based public relations executive Patrick Hynes was posting favorable John McCain comments on his blog without disclosing that McCain’s Straight Talk America was one of his clients.
Hynes admitted the non-disclosure, which, it turns out, is similar to an incident involving a Hynes op-ed in the Union Leader last November.
On Nov. 18 of last year the Union Leader ran a column by Hynes touting a mercury emissions bill that was supported by Public Service of New Hampshire. Hynes had been working for Calypso Communications for only a few months at the time. PSNH was a Calypso client. And Hynes did not put his Calypso affiliation on the op-ed.
We had run Hynes’ op-eds before, and although I had never met him (still haven’t), when he sent the op-ed I knew he was a Calypso employee. I did not know that PSNH was a Calypso client.
On the op-ed, Hynes identified himself as “executive director of Responsible Environmental Policy for New Hampshire.” Normally I would check out an author’s stated credentials, but as I had dealt with Hynes before and knew him to be a fairly well-known consultant with many irons in the fire, I trusted that this was his latest venture. Turns out the group did not exist.
When he submitted the op-ed, Hynes knew that I knew where he worked. So omitting his Calypso job title was no attempt to deceive the editor in charge of the op-ed page into thinking he was really an environmental activist. But was it an attempt to deceive the public?
Some environmental activists have charged Hynes with setting up a front group to promote PSNH’s agenda. Three days after the op-ed ran, an environmentalist registered the name “Responsible Environmental Policy for New Hampshire” with the secretary of state’s office. That was Roger Stephenson, a former political appointee in the Clinton administration. He worked under Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit from 1995 to 1999. He now is deputy director of external affairs for Clean Air/Cool Planet in Portsmouth and is on the board of the Granite State Conservation Voters Alliance.
“I registered the name to prove that the organization did not exist,” he told me today. “I called someone else who said he (Hynes) works for Calypso, who is on retainer for PSNH. So I went to prove the point.”
“He’s a communications professional. He flaunted the code of ethics of the Public Relations Society of America. I agreed with the op-ed. But if it had been written by (PSNH President) Gary Long it wouldn’t have had the same impact, obviously. It was written by this fake association, and that’s a disservice to honest, Democratic debate.”
The Public Relations Society of America’s code of ethics forbids the creation of front groups.
Stephenson said he’s been asked to create front groups, but always refused.
“I’m an accredited member of the Public Relations Society of America. At the time, I was a public relations advisor. I’ve been asked a couple of times by law firms in Concord to create front groups. I’m not going to do it. ”
Interestingly, Stephenson agreed with the op-ed. “There was nothing wrong with that editorial, content-wise, philosophically. It was right on target.” Stephenson said Hynes also “accurately depicted” the positions of environmental organizations referenced in the op-ed.
I have not run across anyone, even environmentalists, who questioned the contents of the op-ed or said it was inaccurate or unfair. The only question was Hynes’ listed affiliation.
Here’s how Hynes explains the mysterious Responsible Environmental Policy for New Hampshire.
“The organization hadn’t been set up at the time I wrote that op-ed. I wrote the op-ed and it turned out to be a big mistake.”
“It never took off, and what happened was I wrote the op-ed too early, which I never should have written.”
He said he had hired an attorney to set up the organization and was in the process of putting together a board of directors when he submitted the op-ed. Why didn’t he finish putting it together afterwards?
“When I ran it, two things happened. Some environmental groups went out and registered the name before I did, which I have to say is clever. And the second thing is Paul Young (his boss) came into my office and reamed me out pretty good because his client is PSNH and the appearance of a conflict is troubling. He said you can either have this group or work for Calypso, but not do both.”
I tracked down the lawyer Hynes had hired, and though he would not talk about the specifics he did confirm that Hynes had hired him to help create the group. I also asked Paul Young, founder of Calypso Communications, for his recollection, and it jibes with Hynes’.
“What happened was, Patrick was a relatively new employee,” Young said. “When he came on I told him he needed to be active in stuff. He’s kind of off doing a gazillion things everywhere. When that came out it was kind of a firestorm. I kind of beat him up a little bit and said you can’t do that kind of stuff. . . . I beat him up on that pretty bad. It just didn’t look good. It created something that didn’t need to happen.”
Both Young and a spokesman for PSNH said Hynes never did any work for the company.
Was Responsible Environmental Policy for New Hampshire a front group for PSNH? I don’t think so. It would have been incredibly stupid for PSNH to pay for that op-ed or create a fake group to promote the bill since the bill had the backing of a bunch of existing, credible environmental groups anyway.
Was Hynes making up the name of a front group on his own to hide the relationship between his employer and PSNH? Well, he already was publicly known as a Calypso employee before he submitted the op-ed, and he was becoming more high-profile all the time. And if you are going to create a front group to hide the relationship between your employer and a client, you don’t make yourself the executive director. That defeats the whole purpose. And he had hired a lawyer and was trying to form a board of directors. So although the group never came into being, there was a process underway to create it; it was not just a name he made up.
What happened, then? One of two things. Until now Hynes has failed to appreciate the seriousness of complete disclosure, meaning that anything that might appear to be a conflict should be disclosed up front. In other words, he just didn’t think the relationships he failed to disclose were significant enough to disclose. Either that or he’s been really, really clumsy, even stupid, about rather carelessly tossing a light cover on his affiliations.
In the interest of FULL disclosure, Hynes sometimes writes columns for The American Spectator, for which I also freelance. I’ve also written pieces for National Review Online and have twice run op-ed columns by Jim Geraghty in the Union Leader. I also have been to Portsmouth.
This New York Times on Sunday reported that New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner hung up on a reporter when asked about the Democrats’ attempt to shuffle the Presidential primary calendar:
“Under New Hampshire law, that determination is left to the secretary of state, William M. Gardner, who will schedule the state’s primary in the fall of 2007. Reached at home on Saturday to see what he might do, Mr. Gardner responded, ‘do not call me here,’ and hung up the telephone.”
Doesn’t sound like Secretary of State Gardner at all. Turns out, it wasn’t. The Times ran a correction stating that its reporter had called a Bill Gardner in Rochester, not Secretary of State Gardner, who lives in Manchester. Doh!
The Concord Monitor has a good editorial on the NH primary today.
Walter Brooks, editor of the Cape Cod Today, sees the $3.87 a gallon price of gas on Martha’s Vineyard and launches into Ted Kennedy for his opposition to the Cape Wind project for Nantucket Sound. I don’t think the wind farm will affect the price of gasoline, but Brooks’ rant is fun.
Note: I originally called Brooks’ paper the Cape Cod Times. It’s Cape Cod Today.
So, do you think the NH state trooper who shot and killed the man attacking him yesterday used “disproportionate force”?
According to a witness, the trooper went out of his way to fend off the man by using non-lethal force, even after having his nose broken, but the attacks kept coming. Eventually the trooper pulled his gun and fired, killing his assailant.
Sounds like a familiar story.
Back in April, Meridian Communications president Jack Heath was caught promoting Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Coburn on his radio show without disclosing that he was running Coburn’s campaign. Now NH political consultant Patrick Hynes has been busted doing basically the same thing.
Hynes is president of New Media Strategies, a political consulting firm, and runs the blog anklebitingpundits.com. National Review Online blogger Jim Geraghty reported this morning that Hynes has been on the payroll of John McCain’s Straight Talk Express since May and since then has posted several pro-McCain or anti-Mitt Romney commentaries on his blog without disclosing that relationship.
Hynes posted a mea culpa on his blog this morning.
I plan to comment more on this later today, after taking time out for a lovely mid-day root canal.
A couple of quick thoughts about the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee voting to place a Nevada caucus before the New Hampshire primary in 2008.
First, the Harry Reid/trade unions influence. For all the talk about diversity, this unfolded according to Democratic politics as usual. The insiders and the special intersts rule.
Second, the Hispanic population. Nevada is 23 percent Hispanic. It’s Hispanic population is about 9 percent above the national average, which is 14.2 percent. The Democrats are fighting for this quickly growing group. Hispanics have become a significant political force, and Democrats are concerned that Republicans are making inroads with them. This is an attempt to cut the GOP off at the pass.
Third, the black population. Nevada is only 6.8 percent black, compared to the U.S. average of 12.3 percent. Interesting that the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee did not move to put thee District of Columbia ahead of New Hampshire, though that might not have triggered New Hampshire’s law forcing the Secretary of State to move the primary. Also interesting that the committee put South Carolina’s primary a week after New Hampshire’s. That’s exactly where the South Carolina primary was in 2004. South Carolina is 29 percent black. The Democrats have made this issue all about race. That was the whole excuse for pushing NH back. And here they moved Hispanics way ahead, but kept blacks where they were. Once again, Democrats show that they totally take the black vote for granted.
The Weston St. Fire Station, to be razed today, has repeatedly been called the city’s oldest fire station, including in the pages of the Union Leader. According to this article by Joseph Labbe at the Manchester history Web site goffesfalls.org, it is the third or fourth oldest. But the two known older ones have been converted to other uses. The site’s main page features a nice faded pic labeled “first motorized engine” of some firemen in an old fire truck posing before what appears to be the Weston Street firehouse.
