Three if you include Medford native Mike Bloomberg, but in any case, the New Hampshire results persuaded Deval Patrick he has no chance of getting the Democratic nomination, so he announced today he's not running for president anymore.
Coupled with Elizabeth Warren's poor showing yesterday, can we assume the Liar in Chief was, again, lying, about the hundreds of buses of Massachusetts residents rolling into New Hampshire to flip elections? Yes, of course we can.
Deval Patrick might stage a Bloombergian late entry into the presidential race, which would bring the number of Massachusetts candidates back up to three - four if you include El Bloombito, who spent his formative years in Medford. Patrick is, of course, upset that none of the roughly 5,000 moderates in the race (remember Seth Moulton?) seem to have put wooden stakes in the Warren and Sanders campaigns yet.
Politico reports Deval Patrick has decided not to run for president in 2020.
This just in from Hizzonah:
The success of Boston's bid for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games relies on transparency. I urge Boston 2024 to release the salaries for all staff and consultants as a testament to the transparency and openness of this process
UPDATE: Boston 2024 releases salaries. Davey is making $300,000 a year, Patrick will get $7,500 a day to travel overseas and shmooze IOC members. The Herald has the complete list.
It seemed a bit odd at the time: There, in the back of a community meeting about the Olympics and Franklin Park sat Deval Patrick, smiling, but not saying anything.
The Globe reports this morning that Patrick's former minion and current Boston 2024 CEO Richard Davey has hired the newly retired governor to go on a lot of foreign trips, in a job as "global ambassador" to the International Olympics Committee. In the role, Patrick will journey overseas to shmooze the panjandrums of the IOC on why they should deign to grant Boston their munificence in 2024.
Gov. Deval Patrick left office this evening in the traditional manner: All by himself, through the normally locked center doors of the State House, down the steps and onto Beacon Street, where he officially became another citizen again - which he celebrated with his wife Diane.
Photo by the governor's office. Posted under this Creative Commons license.
Props to Jim Braude for asking Obama about those Somerville parking tickets.
WBUR reports on Gov. Patrick's comments. Compare to the treatment a nurse just back from Sierra Leone got in Newark.
For short-term housing, WBUR reports:
"My faith teaches that 'if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him,' but rather 'love him as yourself,' "he said, quoting Scripture, his eyes teary.
And not just in Boston, but everywhere, the State House News Service reports.
The State House News Service reports Gov. Patrick has heard software types about how bad Massachusetts looks with a tax on such basic services as setting up Web sites. Now to see if he can get the legislature to repeal the tax - and make up the $161 million he says it would raise.
Ed. conflict of interest note: I recently submitted my first invoice to a client for building a Web site that included the 6.25% tax, so obviously I'm not completely unbiased in the matter.
A lot of people have speculated that Lt. Governor Tim Murray's gubernatorial ambitions crashed and burned. However, with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder embroiled with scandal, the rumor about Governor Patrick being tapped to replace Holder is heating up again. If this happens, Murray becomes Acting Governor. Today, President Obama's hometown paper, the Chicago Sun, focuses on this.
To read click here.
Gov. Patrick and Mayor Menino announced today that Kenneth Feinberg will serve as administrator of One Fund Boston, which is collecting donations to help the victims of Monday's bombings.
As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, more than $7 million had been committed to the fund by corporate partners and 5,000 individual donors, they added.
The Outraged Liberal ponders the governor's plan to increase the income tax but cut the sales tax:
As a practical matter, the proposal was dead on arrival. But it will no doubt launch a loud and raucous debate about the quality of life and services in Massachusetts and our neighbors. That alone would be debate worth having -- and may have been an underlying goal of Deval's Dream Speech.
The Globe reports Gov. Patrick will propose an increase in the income-tax rate to pay for improvements to our transportation and education systems, in his state-of-the-state address tonight.
The Globe reports on a proposal by state officials to spend an extra $10 billion over the next decade to keep our roads and public-transit systems from collapsing. Naturally, we're talking new taxes to pay for it all.
Maybe Adam blew away. Anyways, here's highlights from the press conference Governor Patrick just gave at MEMA headquarters.
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