Re: Use of Email Tip #1: Don’t use it to try and engineer the installation of a lightly-qualified supporter into a plum job. Tip #2: Don’t repeat #1 a few months later with an even higher press profile. Tip #3: Don’t dispose of an authority head and blame them for something that your and their emails clearly contradict. Bonus Sub-Tip: Go easy on the WWII references. Tip #4: Don’t use email to lay out the political calculus for highly controversial decisions that are supposed to be made based on objective criteria. Thus ends today’s session at the Lomasney Center for Political Communications at Pioneer Institute.

The print version of the Globe (corrected here online) quoted MassTrans Executive Director-designee Jeff Mullan as commenting on the recent rash of fires at MBTA stations. Turns out they actually were quoting the current Sec’y of Transportation Jim Aloisi (who resigned but is still in office until the end of October). PS- You’ll note another oddity in the same corrections column. They run a movie review-related correction for an error in the same day’s paper. Turns out that, as a cost-savings measure, the “G” section is printed several days in advance.

I’m a big fan of the planned expansion of the MBTA’s Fairmount Line. Its a little used commuter rail line that runs from South Station to Readville. In between are some of the densest areas of the city that don’t have ready access to subway service. The MBTA has (slowly) been adapting the Fairmount Line by adding stations, in an effort to provide more service to these communities. Some supporters of the expanded Fairmount Line have been pushing for DMUs, which are self-powered vehicles that could operate on commuter rail lines but might be able to provide more subway-like service. When the MBTA looked into this option, they found that DMUs had significant benefits — quicker acceleration, lower operating costs […]

Ok, a bunch of folks — Globe, Newsweek, USA Today, Cato, Heartland Institute — have picked up a Merritt Hawkins survey of physician waittimes. And more specifically, that wait times in Massachusetts have increased over the past five years — which at least some observers ascribe to the impact of healthcare reform here. That’s all well and good, until it shows up on one of my favorite sites — Adam Gaffin’s Universal Hub. Then I need to step in. There are a couple of problems with the report — 1) Sample size — To get data from Boston, they called between 9 and 18 doctors in each specialty in both 2004 and 2009. (And not the same doctor’s each time.) […]

I will not be a candidate for US Senate. First, I’d like to thank the many (ok, several) citizens who urged me to enter the race. I know that many of you saw the fine website — www.draftpoftak09.com – produced by my dear friends at Liberty Dewey O’Neil Rasky Regan Denterlein Communications. Thanks again for your entirely unsolicited grass roots support. (And my apologies to the elderly residents of Kansas City who thought they were signing up for an effort to draft former Royals infielder Freddie Patek. Helpful hint: I’m taller.) Second, I’d like to thank my adoring and supportive family who helped me through the many hours of anguished deliberation (with the notable exception of my unfunny brother-in-law, who […]