{"id":569,"date":"2009-06-02T22:23:57","date_gmt":"2009-06-03T02:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/?p=569"},"modified":"2009-06-02T22:23:57","modified_gmt":"2009-06-03T02:23:57","slug":"new-chapter-in-the-dimasi-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/2009\/06\/new-chapter-in-the-dimasi-story\/","title":{"rendered":"New Chapter in the DiMasi Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today former Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi was indicted<\/a> for “conspiracy, honest services mail fraud, aiding and abetting, and honest services wire fraud” related to the awarding of a multi-million dollar contract to Cognos software. For most of us, this isn’t a shock. \u00c2\u00a0The Globe has been writing investigative stories about this for a year and the story lines all lead to the speaker. \u00c2\u00a0Still, it’s a milestone in that it moves the issue from a story to a courtroom. \u00c2\u00a0Whether the story ends in a jail cell is up to a jury at this point.<\/p>\n

This is not water under the bridge. The people who put DiMasi in power are all still in power themselves, and they need to be called to account. \u00c2\u00a0DiMasi was re-elected to his speakership just five months ago, and resigned<\/a> three weeks after that. \u00c2\u00a0Each of us needs to call up our representative and ask them why they voted to make DiMasi their leader. \u00c2\u00a0Read my post from January, when I asked what our legislators are made of<\/a>: We all knew he was ethically compromised, but they elected him anyway. \u00c2\u00a0Why?<\/p>\n

I’m particularly unhappy with my legislator, Jay Kaufman. \u00c2\u00a0Kaufman didn’t just vote for DiMasi. \u00c2\u00a0He nominated him, complete with glowing speech. \u00c2\u00a0He even went on a publicity tour to shore up DiMasi’s reputation. \u00c2\u00a0Check this quote<\/a>, given after one of DiMasi’s claims of innocence:<\/p>\n

“This should put an end to the questions about the speaker’s integrity and about his seriousness of purpose, ” said Representative Jay Kaufman, Democrat of Lexington and chairman of the Joint Committee on Public Service. “But cynics and skeptics abound in this business, and all of us in it know that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

End of questions about his integrity, Jay? \u00c2\u00a0Really? \u00c2\u00a0A grand jury still has some questions. \u00c2\u00a0So do I. \u00c2\u00a0And they’re questions about you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today former Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi was indicted for “conspiracy, honest services mail fraud, aiding and abetting, and honest services wire fraud” related to the awarding of a multi-million dollar contract to Cognos software. For most of us, this isn’t a shock. \u00c2\u00a0The Globe has been writing investigative stories about this for a year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arlington","category-massachusetts","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":571,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions\/571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}