Here’s what you all missed: Almost bought a house, until we didn’t.

Also, brewed a big hoppy American Red Ale, dubbed Dirty Water Red after that MWRA filth that was happening the day it was brewed. It’s brewed with Crystal 90L and Carafa Special II, hopped with Amarillo and Cascade, and then dry-hopped with more Cascade. Sort of an homage to a ton of great beers I had in Portland last year, as well as Ithaca Cascazilla, which exists because we can’t get any of those beers out east.

Some news happened as well. Brian McGrory went back to the well, to great effect. Eddie Kelly found a new way to infuriate Hizzoner – by actually bending a little. And Dianne Wilkerson admitted the evil racist feds actually had something on her after all.

One last kick at that last one. Adrian Walker’s Wilkerson career obit today lays some good groundwork, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. The point isn’t just that she was a filthy crook (feels good to finally drop the allegedly! there), because we’ve got more than our fill of filthy crooks here. Nor is it good enough that she was a tragic figure, Roxbury’s answer to one of Aristotle’s schmucks. Wilkerson’s downfall is important because it should put to rest a uniquely nasty and poisonous vein running through Boston politics.

Yes, as Walker points out, Wilkerson was skilled in taking care of her constituents when she wasn’t shaking them down. That wasn’t the only reason for her unusual staying power, though. She owes that to her particular skill at manipulating the politics of race – in a town where old racial wounds can reopen easily – for her own personal advancement. She did it when the AG had her over a barrel, and again when she was getting it taken to her by a better, less cynical candidate. She got paid for it when pressuring the city for that liquor license she wanted.

She had herself redistricted into wealthy white neighborhoods to up her access to money and development action, but every time she was cornered, she didn’t just point the finger away from herself; she surrounded herself by a phalanxes of people who looked like her, and asked them to believe that her own problems were also their own. After pleading guilty, that game is finally over.

I have an Op-Ed column in today’s Globe tracing a commercial real estate foreclosure in Roxbury back to the Dianne Wilkerson scandal. Not the bra-stuffing part, but the (alleged!) $15,000 crooked land deal pay-for-play part.

Read it here. Pony up $1 for the real paper and marvel at that incredible illustration. And check back next Monday for a new column on something else.

One looks over at the Fill-A-Buster, laughs, and points. “Be careful what you say around here,” he says. “They’re listening!”

(Cross-posted, for the last time, from Boston Daily)

It’s been a hell of a year for scandal on Beacon Hill. Jim Marzilli went on a sexy rampage, there’s a grand jury investigating the Speaker’s former campaign treasurer, and the House Majority Leader might not be far behind.

The man who’s opposing him for control of the House probably used his committee to buy support. When one Rep didn’t fall in line, she was told she might get “really hurt.” Another couldn’t get hurt—he wasn’t anywhere near the State House when he was voting on stuff. And to top it all off, Rep from Worcester has a crooked mortgage and a young girlfriend who works for some insurance lobbyists. (Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly.)

None of that matters anymore. Because now, we’ve got Dianne Wilkerson to kick around.

As scandals go, this one’s a cake-topper. Wilkerson shook down some dude who was looking for a liquor license, so he went to the FBI. The FBI and the dude then let Wilkerson pocket a ton of their money. Then they arrested her.

The feds have flung subpoenas far and wide. They’ve opened a grand jury, and are seeking the documents to make their undercover investigation stand up. They’ll surely get around to asking the perpetual victim two questions: Who else paid her? And was anyone else was on the take?

The volume of recon (150-odd secret recordings) and cash pocketed ($23,500) in this case is impressive. As is the ubiquitous photo of the senator cramming filthy hundreds up her shirt. As is Wilkerson’s hilariously Aristotelian one-liner, accepting a bribe from an undercover Fed by saying, “I am a firm believer in the notion that you can do good and do well at the same time.”

And even better, there’s no complex money laundering scheme to try to follow. (Allegedly!) There’s no Gordian knot of lawyers and un-lobbyists to navigate.

There’s no guilt over mercilessly beating up the mentally ill, or the invariable question: “Do I actually care about this?” that arises whenever one reads sordid news from Worcester. There’s just… filth. A fetid, stank-ass, bottomless pile of filth. It’s glorious.

Unless you work on Beacon Hill and run for office every two years. Then it’s the worst crisis to rock the public sector in three decades.

The Beacon Hill press corps certainly appreciates the moment. They’re killing Wilkerson at every turn. The other electeds named in the Wilkerson affidavit—Therese Murray, Maureen Feeney, Michael Morrissey, and Chuck Turner—all vehemently deny being in on the scheme, but they’re being dragged along for the ride nonetheless, thanks to a flurry of FBI subpoenas.

As is Byron Rushing, who is widely believed to be the “House Representative Z,” the House member whom the affidavit alleged would be responsible for filing sketchy development legislation in the House, and receiving a $5,000 kickback for his troubles. The thing is, Wilkerson filed her bill on October 20. Rep Z never followed suit.

(Reached for comment by State House News on Tuesday, Rushing said, “I’m shocked and very sad for Dianne, and distressed for the Senate, for the institution, for all of us.” He was then asked whether Wilkerson had ever talked to him about Parcel 8, and he ended the interview, saying, “That’s it.”)

More on people not named Dianne Wilkerson later. The high theater yesterday was the Senate’s unprecedented call for Wilkerson’s resignation.

Hordes of reporters staked out Murray’s offices, where legislators met behind closed doors, debating Wilkerson’s fate. Court officers stood guard outside. There was a lot of waiting. A lot.

At one point, Jack Hart stuck his head into the hall, scouting whether the coast was clear. It most certainly was not. So he retreated inside, and the waiting continued. Brian Wallace cruised by a couple times to rubberneck at the surreal scene.

Just outside the room where Senators wrestled with the fallout from Wilkerson’s crimes, and below the phalanx of cameras and reporters, a group of elementary school kids scarfed down some lunch and ran laps around Nurses Hall. This is what democracy looks like, children.

The lawmakers eventually emerged from Murray’s office, and had to perform a hurried perp walk on their way to the Senate chambers. The president tersely declined to comment; Michael Morrissey (the famous Senator Y), flanked by Robert O’Leary and Robert Creedon, hurried through a brief statement, the gist of which was, “I’m not on the take, and didn’t know that my colleague was, either.” He wouldn’t speak with the press afterward.

Then there was a mad rush to the Senate gallery. The court officer on duty was kind enough to not enforce the chamber’s rigid dress code, though she did firmly remind a Globe columnist to remain seated. And then it was on.

The Senate stripped Wilkerson of all her committee posts. They referred her case to the Committee on Rules and Ethics, a move that could lead to her prompt expulsion. And, in the loudest voice vote we’ve heard in quite some time, they passed a unanimous resolution urging Wilkerson to resign.

Morrissey had wanted her expelled immediately, though the body’s rules don’t permit that. Wilkerson had sent Murray a letter pledging to “respect whatever decision you make” at the caucus. Thursday’s resolution was Murray’s way of calling her bluff.

Of course, the embattled senator quickly backed away. Even as the Black Ministerial Alliance and the Ten Point Coalition prepared to toss her out into the street.

Still, democracy stops for no woman, no matter how many cameras wait outside. So, after dispatching with Wilkerson, the Senate voted to congratulate a church in Haverhill, the Coolidge Corner Theatre, and some lady who had recently turned 80. They also advanced a number of public works bills. There were long faces all around. Several lawmakers cast nervous glances up at the press gallery. An aide chomped at her nails. The body finally recessed. On with the circus.

Murray was mobbed when she finally engaged the press. She read a statement about cooperating with law enforcement and blah, blah, blah and then, thankfully, went off script. She indulged the softball question “Are you angry?” with, “Do I look angry? Yes, I am. I’m very angry.”

And, for good measure, she threw in, “I think if she values the integrity of the Senate, if she values her colleagues’ work, then she will go.” And that’s tame. The Senate President is said to be livid. Apoplectic. Pissed the F off.

It’s not an uncommon emotion. Creedon, standing on a stairway and watching several of his colleagues take turns teeing off on Wilkerson for the cameras, told us, “The last couple days, the mood in the whole place has been somber. People are shaking their heads. For me, it’s bookends to my 12 years here.”

He’d chaired the Ethics Committee investigation into Wilkerson’s tax evasion and subsequent house arrest. Now, here he was, one foot out the door, and Wilkerson before the Ethics Committee again. “What luck!” he cried as he walked away. “I thought the Irish were supposed to be lucky!”

Asked what the caucus was like, Stephen Brewer replied, “The mood was outrage. Not sadness. Outrage.” He added that the idea of a resolution seeking Wilkerson’s expulsion wasn’t the result of hours-long haggling. It was introduced “immediately.”

The anger is felt deepest among the lawmakers named in the FBI document. Some are shocked—shocked!—that government works this way. Sorry. Minus the bras full of crisp hundreds, this is how government works. Politicians beat up on other politicians to get what they want. Especially when it comes to their own neighborhoods.

“It’s nothing we haven’t seen a million times before,” says a Beacon Hill insider. “It’s her job to advocate for her constituency. But Morrissey, Murray and Feeney don’t know she’s getting paid.”

Murray and Morrissey and Feeney are caught up in this thing because Wilkerson played hardball on something she should’ve been expected to play hardball on, and they went along with it. And now they find out that Wilkerson didn’t just get paid for stringing along the Senate President and the city council. She hit them with cries of discrimination. Racism. And got paid for it.

That’s why everybody involved in this thing is so enraged. Wilkerson didn’t just sell out herself, her office, her colleagues and her constituents. She also used racial demagoguery to get the job done.

And now they’re all in danger. People who say they’ve done nothing wrong will have to swear to that fact before a federal grand jury. They’re in danger of unintentionally perjuring themselves. How easy is that?

The Hill and the Hall made a series of calls this week about an old liquor license fight between the city and Morrissey. We could’ve sworn it happened in 2006-2007. It was 2005-2006. That misunderstanding never made it to print, but at least Times v. Sullivan is more lenient that federal perjury law. Others aren’t so lucky. And the legal paper has just started flying.

“I’d be shocked if this was the only shoe that fell,” says former AG Scott Harshbarger. “Once you’ve subpoenaed, you don’t know what you’ll find. The FBI is going to be holding lots of documents that normally wouldn’t end up in the hands of the FBI.”

Harshbarger, for one, believes that Beacon Hill might not be hit as hard as City Hall. “Where there’s money and power, you investigate. Most of those intersections occur at the city level. They all got tainted, whether they were in on it or not.”

One last point: Wilkerson has tried to make hay out of Mike Sullivan’s timing here. She’s not incorrect that Sullivan, a Republican, is eying his future. But that doesn’t make him the villain here.

“Sullivan knows he’s out of a job in a couple months,” the Beacon Hill insider says. “He’s setting himself up for Senate. It’s nothing new. Weld did it, Rudy did it. Sullivan wants a Senate seat and she’s guilty as sin. The two are not mutually exclusive.”

And here’s why: Wilkerson finds fault in the fact that the Feds cuffed her the week before her election. But they had to arrest her now. They had her on tape (allegedly) talking about her thirst for cash. Talking about how she couldn’t get reelected with $250 donations. They thought she was taking fistfuls of cash, off the books, to illegally fund her reelection run. They couldn’t wait until next week.

By next week, it might’ve been too late.

Man. That’s a king-hell bummer to end this thing on. So let’s try wrapping it up with this.

Overheard in the halls of the State House this week: Paul McMurtry greeting a gaggle of little kids touring the state capitol. He asks them what sights they’ve seen so far. Then he asks, “Did you see the Speaker of the House? No? Well, if you see him, tell him I say hi!”

Dictionary.com Word of the Day – hubris: overbearing pride or presumption.

Huh. Hell of a coincidence, that.

Ted Stevens: Guilty.

Dianne Wilkerson: Not close behind.

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

Governor Deval Patrick put on his most seriousest face Thursday morning and warned everybody that his ambitious agenda, which was a bit beyond everybody’s reach to begin with, will remain even more so for the time being. That’s because of all the hot Dust Bowl action happening out there. “It’s not that we’ll be off-track,” he said, “but it’ll be a slower train, there’s no doubt about it.”

Patrick announced a plan to make “hundreds of millions” in emergency cuts to the budget. They’ll begin two weeks from now, after his budget writers figure out just how much has to actually be cut. But it’s his longer-term proposals that show definite growth, and political savvy, in his administration.

Patrick said Thursday that he wanted to eliminate the Turnpike, have the state restructure crushing Big Dig debt, reform state and MBTA pensions, consolidate agencies, and accelerate health care reform maneuvers. There are no new proposals there. And none of it would ease the state’s budget crunch in the short term. But the oncoming fiscal crisis gives the governor the political opening he needs, and has long sought, to blow up the Pike and bring the T’s unions to their knees. And it makes legislators much less likely to stand in his way, because if they do, they won’t just be obstructing reform, as Mitt Romney liked to charge. They’ll be Nero. Only with cod involved somehow.

Thursday’s presser was held in a cramped and smelly (thanks, TV cameramen!) third floor room, not the State House’s first floor press tank. The room was more than overflowing, and some reporters were left wondering whether Patrick harbors a strange preference for one room over the other, or whether forcing the press corps to stand in place and trip over wires and elbow each other in the face might be a tactic to shorten the encounter.

Asked about how the cuts would effect his pledge to lower property taxes, Patrick briefly indulged the urge to bash the legislature. “That depends on a lot, including cooperation from the legislature,” he said, noting, “I put four ideas forward.” Of course, none of them passed.

He was pressed twice on whether fiscal doom might tempt him to resurrect his doomed casino bill; he responded to the second one by nodding towards the Globe’s Frank Phillips and asking, “Didn’t you just see me ignore his question?”

Thursday also saw a rally for Obama by a group of the state’s top female politicians. Senate President Therese Murray, who had generated a good deal of gossip in January when she laid into Senators Kennedy and Kerry for supporting Obama (saying their endorsement was “dead wrong” and “disappointed” her), announced her support for the Democratic nominee “as a woman, as the first female president of the Senate, and as an American.” She also raised eyebrows by cryptically introducing Attorney General Martha Coakley thusly: “We’ll be following her career in the very near future”

The day’s best line belonged to House Majority Whip Lida Harkins. She’d been a strong Clinton supporter, and had wanted to see the election of the country’s first female president. It won’t be Sarah Palin, she said. “I cannot vote for that kind of woman,” Harkins said, characterizing “her attitude” as, “Let them eat moose.” Afterward, a television reporter was overheard asking a bystander, “What was her name?”

Still, the rally demonstrated the perils of discussing matters of national importance on a busy city sidewalk. Spare Change Guy warmed up the crowd by giving out free hugs. “I love you sooooo much,” he cooed to one lucky female, a cigarette dangling perilously from his lips. A gust of wind sent Murray’s speech flying towards Beacon Street – and an aide hurtling after it. A crazed gentleman shambled down the street, repeatedly screaming “OBAMAOBAMAOBAMA.” It was not immediately apparent whether he was a fan or opponent of the junior senator from Illinois. And two separate passing motorists exclaimed their support for the Republican ticket by hollering partisan gibberish at the assemblage. “SARAH PALIN WOOOOO!” was one such remark – enough to get Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea Cabral to halt her prepared remarks.

“I didn’t hear that,” Cabral admitted. “Was it positive?” It was not, she was told. She shrugged. “Another country heard from.”

Boston’s ugly race about race generated headlines for the second straight week. On Tuesday night, Chuck Turner told Politicker that Sonia Chang-Diaz has “no roots politically or socially or anything else in the Hispanic communities” of the Second Suffolk. (The board of MassVOTE no longer counts, apparently.)

He added, “To have Ms. Chang-Diaz in the seat really takes away a treasured resource,” as the district “needs someone in the Senate that really understands what our needs are.” Politicker wrote that “Turner questioned Chang-Diaz’s Latina heritage, saying that he heard that she added ‘Diaz’ to her last name when she first considered running for public office,” and “said the candidate’s base of support comes from liberal white women.” Turner singled out Barbara Lee, a Cambridge philanthropist, for criticism, and painted Chang-Diaz’s base as “part of the national group that thought Barack Obama getting the nomination was depriving white women everywhere of something they deserved to have.” (The Roxbury city councilor is one of the few elected officials still publicly standing with the embattled senator; everybody else is totally staying out of this thing.)

Never mind the irony of the councilor noting the historical roots of the Dorchester- and Roxbury-based district in one breath, and condemning activists for chasing an office “they deserved to have” in the other. It’s the Barbara Lee line of inquiry – one other Wilkerson allies have also pursued – that’s the puzzling one.

Yeah, Lee is a rich white lady from Cambridge. She pulled hard for Hillary Clinton because that’s what she does – she gets women elected. Lee sent $4600 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign last year; and this past August, she did the same for Barack Obama. Then she chipped in another $28,500 for the Obama Victory Fund.

Lee has also worked to advance the fortunes of Sheriff Cabral – a pol both Dianne Wilkerson and Turner have strongly backed. In 2004, during Cabral’s contentious race against Steve Murphy, Lee was hosting a DNC women’s leadership rally at the Southie convention center. She got Cabral onto the bill, sharing a stage with Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Carol Moseley Braun, Donna Brazile, and Madeline Albright. (No other candidate for county sheriff received a speaking slot that afternoon.) Lee also sent Cabral maximum $500 contributions in 2005 and 2007.

But if you’re not always with us, you’re always, always against us, right? It’s much better to be bought by Winn Development than by some Cambridge lady.

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

This city is dying for a great political race. What we’re getting instead is a race about race. And it’s going to be filthy.

Dianne Wilkerson is scrambling to retain her Senate seat. She lost last week’s Democratic primary to Sonia Chang-Diaz, and responded in familiar fashion: Surrounded by adoring supporters, she spoke defiantly, blamed her misfortunes on outside forces, and vowed to fight on.

Three years ago, the AG was suing her for campaign finance violations; she countered with a farcically exploitative rally in a Mattapan church. The setting was different this time around – a Grove Hall lodge – but the message no less subtle. When Dianne Wilkerson is in a corner, her troubles cease being her own. They’re shared by anybody whose skin looks like hers.

If Tuesday’s rally was any indication, here’s Wilkerson’s strategy for November: Divide an already divided district, cast Chang-Diaz as a white (white enough) interloper, and hope that Barack Obama pulls more votes in Roxbury than he does in JP.

Tuesday’s rhetoric had aggressive racial overtones. Wilkerson’s staff cried fraud and disenfranchisement and Florida. Bob Marshall put Chang-Diaz among “the wine-and-brie crowd.” Chuck Turner said Wilkerson’s seat was “rooted in the politics of the black community.” Asked to clarify her contention that “This is the first time in a long time we will not have a senator who is a person of color,” METCO executive director Jean McGuire told the Dorchester Reporter, “There are white Hispanics and black Hispanics,” adding, “She is not a person of color.”

The politics of hope it ain’t. Small wonder the mayor wants nothing to do with this thing.

Mayor Menino, of course, has troubles of his own to worry about. Michael Flaherty, he can handle on his own. But next year’s mayoral race might’ve just gotten a lot messier.

On Thursday, the Globe reported that invitations to a California fundraiser cast at-large city councilor Sam Yoon as being on a “quest to become the first Asian-American mayor of Boston.”

The Hill and the Hall got on the phone and practically begged Yoon spokesman Curtis Ellis to rule his guy out of the mayor’s race. What we got was firm noncommittal.

While forcefully emphasizing that, “Absolutely, in no way were these invitations approved or designed by Sam,” Ellis said, “He has not made a decision about running. He’s thinking about it. What councilor hasn’t thought about it? He has not made a decision, and he’s not going to make a decision.” That’s a lot of words right there, and “No” wasn’t one of them.

The news caught many people inside City Hall off guard. But not all of them. These people, they can see it in Yoon’s eyes, in the way he’s been walking around City Hall lately. He thinks he can pull this thing off. Deval Patrick did it. Obama’s doing it. Why not him, too?

“It’s on,” says one person inside the Hall. “There’s no sense announcing now. You have to wait until you can get some exposure in the papers. But the cat’s out of the bag. I think he’s in.”

Asked if Yoon might be flirting with the mayor’s office one term too soon, another City Hall insider replied, “He views these things differently than conventional political wisdom. That’s appealing to some people. It definitely makes things a lot more interesting than they were the day before yesterday.”

Interesting, because three candidates means a preliminary election in September. It means a much longer campaign calendar. It means a splintered base, and more bruising exposure, for the mayor. And, with two challengers presumably in the race, it’s exponentially more likely that we’ll see other people jump into the race, too.

“The floodgates are gonna open,” the first City Hall insider predicts. “It’s going to be a nightmare” for the mayor’s people. Bruce Wall could jump in and start banging heads. Or somebody from the private sector. Or somebody from inside the State House. As the political sage Kevin Garnett says, now, anything’s possible.

The undercard to this battle might actually be worth watching, too. The council race has been sleepy thus far, but two potential at-large openings on the City Council “creates a highly competitive race, and draws in a ton of candidates,” the second City Hall insider says. The smart money has both those spots going to candidates of color. “I suspect there’ll be some candidates who might not have been considering themselves candidates until yesterday.”

All of which should make for an intrigue-filled year on the fifth floor of City Hall, as the administration squeezes its enemies from the inside. Flaherty’s already “toxic in the building,” the first insider says. “Everybody’s afraid to talk to him.” And forget about getting anything done. Right now, if the Southie councilor called in a pothole, DPW would go out and dig a bigger one right next to it.

There’s another question that needs to be asked: Who wants to be mayor right now, anyways?

New York magazine recently speculated that Wall Street’s implosion, and the government budget crises it will unleash, could resurrect “the bad old days of the seventies” and break Michael Bloomberg. Things in Boston will be even bloodier.

New York can at least fall back on meals and rooms taxes. Boston is handcuffed by home rule. It can’t raise money on its own. So it’s dependent on a shrinking, over-stressed property tax base and local aid from the state. And you can kiss the latter goodbye. Growth in the state budget has been driven by capital gains – by surges on Wall Street – not by any meaningful economic growth. As the stock market goes, so goes the budget. The legislature has been skating by for years, preferring to fund politically popular programs and earmarks and borrow against higher tax collections, rather than close the state’s structural budget deficit. That tactic won’t work this year. And it’s Boston – the largest recipient of state aid – that’ll pay.

And while revenue is dwindling, costs – driven by health care and labor contracts – continue to swell. Menino has thus far managed to plug holes with one-time cash infusions and creative borrowing. But whoever’s mayor for the next four years will, in all likelihood, have the honor of slashing the city’s budget, and presiding over school closings and labor unrest. If basic city services like trash pickup, pothole-filling and parks maintenance don’t crumble altogether, it’ll be a victory.

At least one political observer believes that these concerns will shape Menino’s thinking next year. “The economy weighs heavily on whether he runs again,” this person says. “He gives every appearance of running. But he’s had, for the most part, a good ride on the economy. With this downturn, and shitty contracts he’s given out – is it time to say, Hey, I’ve had enough of this?”

There’s a flipside to that thinking. A race dominated by the economy would force challengers to tilt at the mayor’s strengths. Yes, several people inside City Hall believe his political operation is weak and exhausted and, frankly, sick of jumping for Hizzoner whenever he comes calling. But anyone challenging Menino next year will be fighting him on his own ground: Few pols in the country, let alone in this town, have been as aggressive as Menino has in defending homeowners from the current market’s ills. That’ll be a high hurdle for anybody to clear.

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

Democracy happened on Tuesday, and what a mess it left behind. John Kerry beat back some RFK lookalike. Longtime Senate fixture Dianne Wilkerson was overthrown by an astronaut’s daughter in a low-turnout race that broke largely along racial and neighborhood lines.

A machine boss’s daughter brought gubernatorial hellfire upon her head in a race she already had sewn up. And Carl Sciortino, the kid Rep who lost his nomination papers and couldn’t find anybody in Somerville to give him money, won on stickers over a guy who actually had his name on the ballot. Wicked drama all around.

But the day’s biggest winner might be anybody willing to take on the city’s most powerful man.

Way back in January, this column compared Mayor Menino’s field ops to a rusty Datsun. The results of the New Hampshire primary, where Hizzoner went all-in for Hillary Clinton, certainly belied that analysis. Wilkerson’s loss is another story. It’s the latest in a string of local races (Tom Reilly, Jeff Drago, Boston’s presidential primary) that the mayor has put his shoulder into, and still lost.

“The urban mechanic needs a tune-up,” a source inside City Hall quips. “City Hall was a ghost town on Tuesday. The lights were on but nobody was home. Michael Kineavy dispatched City Hall staff to work the polls, man the phone banks, and get out the vote, and Wilkerson still lost. The mayor’s machine is rusty, and while he may have high favorability in the polls, it’s certainly not translating into votes.”

Last week we detailed Majority Leader John Rogers’ latest campaign filings ($56,000 spent on cars, food, phones and golf). There’s another sizable withdrawal coming out of that account soon: A $30,000 settlement with state campaign finance regulators.

OCPF announced the settlement—not a fine, mind you—yesterday. OCPF’s investigation into a June, 2007 Globe story about the Majority Leader’s questionable use of campaign funds (he’d funneled nearly $200,000 into a consulting business his former law partner had set up for the apparent sole purpose of consulting for him) revealed that some of that money ultimately paid mortgage bills on a Falmouth vacation home one of the consultants jointly owned with the Norwood Democrat.

The way it works is: Rogers sends money to a friend, who pays another friend a salary, and right after getting paid every month, that other friend makes a payment on the Cape house. A house which Rogers co-owned. Nice system, that.

Some people will doubtlessly react to this news by saying that the settlement effectively kills any chance Rogers has of beating back the DeLeo/Petrolati forces and becoming the House’s next speaker. (After a long, long, long, long, long, long time, obvs.) Others might say that it’s proof that Rogers is ready to lead from Day One.

The Hill and the Hall has different concerns. It’s not so much how Rogers’ vacation home gets paid for, but the fact that he’s apparently funneling campaign cash into the real estate market. Real estate? In this market, Mr. Majority Leader?

There are so many better ways to get rich off sketchy 75 State Street schemes these days. Think inelastic demand. Card games, stolen cigarettes, what about bankrolling dog fighting, maybe?

This is the (alleged) thievery portion of our weekly report, apparently. So let’s point out that (alleged!) thief John Buonomo rolled to victory on Tuesday, despite having quit his post the week before. Let’s also point out that, while Buonomo is widely expected to take his name off November’s ballot, he has yet to do so, and that, when given the chance to rule his client out of the race, Buonomo’s lawyer refused and deferred comment to the Secretary of State’s office.

And this is what Bill Galvin’s office had to say: “We can’t say yes or no until we get something from them.”

(Please, please Lord, let this guy think he has a shot of getting re-elected in November. Please let him run. It would be a truly spectacular spectacle. Truly.)

And besides, Buonomo’s sitting on top of nearly $135,000 in campaign funds. What’s he going to do with that if he skulks off the ballot and out of office? Buy a house?

Final numbers aren’t in yet, but let’s assume that right now, Ed O’Reilly is still on the hook for $400,000 in loans to his campaign. (He was in for upwards of $600,000 of his own money, but at last report, had been able to reimburse himself for something like $200,000.) Now, according to our dreadful math skills, O’Reilly’s 153,636 votes cost him $2.60 apiece. Of his own cash. That’s one hell of a vanity run.

But take heart, Ed. Your own personal financial disaster is nothing compared to Mitt Romney. The former governor spent $1.16 million per delegate for the privilege of failing in front of the whole country. Mitt’s $40 million in personal funds shook out to $147,601 per delegate.

So, Ed, next time somebody comes up to you and tries to say that challenging John Kerry was a fantastically dumb thing to do, remember this: It wasn’t as dumb as it could’ve been.

We neglected to mention one big name missing from last week’s orgy of OCPF data: House Speaker Sal DiMasi. Here’s what the big guy’s money has been up to these past eight months.

DiMasi raised $234,000, spent $209,000 of it, and ended August with $416,491 in hand. He dropped $12,534 on lawyerly stuff with Tom Kiley’s firm, nearly $10,000 on printing and mailings, over $1,000 in “gifts” from a Newton liquor store, and roughly $900 for rounds at the Ipswich Country Club.

And while much has been made about the $30,000 DiMasi spent on feeding himself and others, there are other line items that pop out. Like the two $1,000 expenditures for “professional services” with Vitale, Caturano & Co. in February.

Beyond that, there’s the torrent of money flowing towards Sage Systems, the controversial consulting firm headed by a DiMasi associate, Bill Carito. DiMasi’s own campaign account sent over $58,000 Sage’s way; his Committee for a Democratic House PAC added $42,872 this year. The PAC sent over $48,000 to Sage in 2007.

Sage has long been the subject of grumbling among backbenchers and old Finneran loyalists, who have claimed the Democratic House PAC is being used as a sop for the Speaker’s friends. The PAC funds the maintenance of voter analysis software, and House members have to pay to access the data; Finneran’s PAC, by contrast, made direct payments to Reps facing re-election fights. (This year, the Mass. Republican House PAC made $500 maximum contributions to 12 candidates. When the issue was raised earlier this year, the Speaker’s political aides argued that the firm’s work has a much greater impact on local races than $500 contributions would.)

But Sage is also doing quite well for itself. From January, 2007 to August, 2008, it pulled in over $855,000 worth of business. The Speaker’s campaign account, his PAC, and the Democratic State Committee paced that business.

Still, in this election cycle, just 38 House Democrats took advantage of Sage’s services. Tony Verga did, to the tune of $21,500. He lost on Tuesday. Paul Donato, one of the speaker’s close confidants, dropped $13,000 with the firm and easily won his re-election fight. Charlie Murphy spent well over $66,000 with the firm. For that kind of money, Sage should throw in free tickets to St. Croix. Or not.

Wire services contributed to this report.

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

And you thought John Tomase had it bad.

On Wednesday morning, the Herald splashed with a terrifying scoop: The City Council was “mulling a scheme to keep their business secret from the taxpayers who elected them, creating a cone of silence that would make the Hub the only city in the commonwealth exempt from the state’s Open Meeting Law.” The story cited an eighty-page internal report up for discussion that morning.

The report was indeed dealt with. But, as the council’s rules committee gathered to digest the document, they also addressed another issue, at great length: The evils of the Herald.

“This is a dose of reality that no good deed goes unpunished,” council president Maureen Feeney said, as several of the assembled councilors shot icy looks at Herald’s reporter, who was present to follow up on his scoop. “Instead of being recognized for our efforts to be more transparent, to see how we can function better, we’re villainized and accused of hideous things. On a personal note, I was offended. I take my integrity very seriously. My goal for my political career was to leave with the same level of integrity I entered it with, and when people take your sincere efforts and turn them against you, shame.”

And there was more. Much, much more. (The Herald might not get a cooperative quote out of the council for a long time, but to its credit, it reported the various assaults on itself.)

“The press is positioning this body to look like villains,” Steve Murphy added. “They’re trying to stampede the public. I was completely outraged this morning.” The story, he said, “is false, outrageous, and disgraceful. The news media has decided that this is where we’re going. Thank God we don’t elect them.” He added, for clarity, “We won’t be stampeded by an out of control local media.”

Decrying the paper’s “inflammatory headline,” Feeney argued that the report, composed by a council staffer and in the works for well over a year, tried to address what the councilors can and can’t legally say to each other in an era when they’re facing perpetual Open Meeting Law lawsuits. “Our focus has been, how do we continue our efforts to be transparent? It’s been turned on us, to where we’re asking how we sidestep transparency. We try to do the work of they people. Nobody here took an oath to circumvent the process. We are the process. And we’re all looking for reassurance that we’re not putting this body in harm’s way.”

For transparency advocates, the report will read a bit like the Yoo torture memo – a stack of sane-sounding legal arguments that wind up justifying an unjustifiable end. Half of it deals with the Open Meeting Law, which, it concludes, unjustifiably and unconstitutionally bars councilors from huddling behind closed doors to discuss city business. “Speaking with a select group of colleagues or even a lobbyist with business before a legislative body, is what elective officials do and are expected to do,” the report argues. Preventing them from doing so, it says, assaults their rights to speech, assembly, and political association. For added effect, it claims that the Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence would’ve run afoul of the law today.

And for that reason – because the Founding Fathers wanted it so – the council should be allowed to huddle with the BRA behind closed doors. It recommends three possible changes to the law, all of which could very well guarantee the public’s full right to witness the perfunctory approval of legislation that has been settled far away from the public view. It works for House Ways and Means, after all.

On its face, the Open Meeting Law seems clear: Lawmakers can have dinner together, but a majority of them can’t gather (as the Legislature, which exempted itself from the law, does) to hammer out their business behind closed doors. Having been found guilty of doing this a while ago, on Wednesday, the councilors complained that the courts had effectively barred them from talking to each other about constituent issues or asking each other to sign on to legislation.

The committee sent the report to the AG, the city’s lawyers, the Mass. Municipal Association, and the state clerks’ association. There’s at least one great irony there – when the council was sued for illegal meetings with the BRA, the city’s lawyers argued that the violations weren’t violations because, effectively, the city council doesn’t have any power. Any action will get a full public hearing – a guarantee that Sam Yoon insisted be put in writing, and one that ultimately was, after several minutes of debate in which the councilors chased each other’s tails around in circles. Yoon later tied abysmally low turnout in the last council election to “the perception that we take action behind closed doors,” saying, “Ultimately, this is an issue that has to do with the council and the public, not with our interpretation of the law. It’s about that relationship.”

That’s much too even-keeled a note to end on. So, Chuck Turner, take it away: “After years of being kicked around by the mayor and the courts, I don’t give a damn. You can print that. I don’t give a damn what the mayor says. We’re going to stand up and say we have a right to have power in this city. The rights of this council have not been defended by the courts and the mayor. This report lays that out clearly. It’s an affront to democracy. The papers beat us up no matter what we do. I’m incensed by the fact that we’re treated like we’re nothing. Now we finally have the material to fight back. I don’t give a damn what you all think.”

That last bit was punctuated by, you guessed it, a hard stare at the Herald’s scribe.

OCPF pre-primary campaign finance reports for Reps, Senators and assorted wannabes just came online. For reporters, it’s like Christmas and Hanukkah and Christmukkah all rolled into one! So let’s see what everybody’s been up to these past nine months.

First up: Senate President Therese Murray. She hasn’t had a serious challenger since 2004, when she faced down some droplet of Mitt Romney’s sweat that grew up into a real live boy. Nevertheless, she’s raised north of $300,000 in the past year. $250,000 of it went right back out the door in the form of powerfully terrifying communications services (a total of $27,200 to Regan Communications), office furniture ($3,517.80 worth from Jordan’s), consulting ($24,000 to Plymouth-based Creative Strategies), wicked good times ($10,208 for a holiday party), transport ($5283 in vehicle lease payments), and, obviously enough, flags ($2,424.20 worth of them, actually). There was also a $200 “charitable donation” to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council in August, and $1,141.50 in “professional fees” to Cosgrove, Eisenberg and Kiley. One of the firm’s principals, Tom Kiley, is former Senate President Robert Travaglini’s business partner and longtime friend.

Murray now has $243,971.02 in the bank.

Murray’s Senate Colleague, Dianne Wilkerson, could certainly use that type of bankroll. She has just $5,233 in the bank after blowing through $156,647 this year. (After those numbers went public, a “Wilkerson campaign source” told State House News that the senator had just raised an additional $40,000.) Nearly half of Wilkerson’s expenses went to consulting and staffing, and another $11,600 for her awesome new website. For that kind of money, it had better be awesome. And able to vote 1500 times on Tuesday.

By contrast, Wilkerson’s challenger, Sonia Chang-Diaz, ended August with $51,000 in the bank, after raising $132,585 and spending $81,575 in 2008. One wonders how much those numbers – and the polling data Chang-Diaz’s campaign released last month – had to do with Bay Windows jumping ship this week.

For what it’s worth, Chang-Diaz has spent less than half what Wilkerson has on consulting and staffing. And her office furniture? She bought $50 worth, and it came from Craigslist.

The election season’s other great exercise in the politics of bloodsport, the 34th Middlesex State Rep race, also yields some interesting finance data.

Carl Sciortino, who began the year with just $7,620 in his account, has raised an impressive $91,623 this year, and has $40,372 of it left. Among the campaign’s more hilarious expenditures: On June 6, the incumbent himself dropped $10 on a map of Medford. And the source of that hilarity: In this week’s Somerville News, Sciortino’s Speaker-thumping challenger, Bob Trane, suggests that “Carl Sciortino really should invest in a map of the 34th district.” Way ahead of you, Bob!

Trane has $6,215 remaining – slightly less than he began 2008 with. He has burnt through every penny he’s raised this year. And, as he’ll tell anybody who’ll listen – and a few who won’t – it came from inside the district. Unlike some people. Hmpf.

Although signs don’t vote, Trane has a ton of them out there. Word from the left side of the left side of the aisle is that Sciortino’s field ops will impress on Tuesday (who’s bothering to vote in this primary, anyway?), but the Herald’s Wayne Woodlief says this one’s already over.

House Ways and Means chair Bob DeLeo and Majority Leader John Rogers have been sizing each other up for most of the year now. Let’s do the same.

DeLeo took in $229,339 this year, and he has $354,039 in the bank. That amount dwarfs Rogers’s $78,654. The Majority Leader has raised, and then spent, $56,000 this year. These differences could matter, if votes really are for sale.

One item on DeLeo’s tab stands out, and it’s not the $7,300 “office dinner” at Grill 23 during the height of the summer’s leadership battle. It’s the $78 meal he had two days later, at Comella’s in Wellesley, billed as “Lunch W/ Rep Petrollati.” SIC!

John Buonomo is dead (politically). Long live John Buonomo!

Or, alternately, long live whoever’s been pulling a John Buonomo – to the tune of twelve large – over in the Suffolk County register’s office. This stuff just doesn’t end.

How badass is it that Woody Kaplan lists occupation as “provocateur” on his campaign finance records? (Answer: Wicked)

Thanks to vicious deadlines and us being dumb and all, the Hill and the Hall neglected to mention last week that Richard Scirocco, the alleged Somerville domestic batterer who mounted a caustic, possibly death-threat-filled, and astoundingly unsuccessful bid to unseat Mayor Joe Curtatone last fall, was recently arrested. With a bunch of cocaine. And a double-edged knife. Natch.

Troopers busted Scirocco and a 21-year old man in Revere on cocaine distribution charges two weeks ago, after noticing the pol’s truck speeding and committing various marked lanes violations. The kicker? Scirocco, who once complained that media coverage of the various restraining orders the four mothers of his children had taken out against him was “completely the reason I lost” to Curtatone, got busted holding his coke package in a school zone. That’s usually a no-no for former Little League presidents.