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Infographic: Boston's addiction to property taxes
More than 50 percent of property in the city of Boston — state buildings, church grounds, college campuses, etc. — is tax exempt. These charts, stats, and graphs illustrate Boston’s property tax addiction: rising costs, a declining real estate market, and state restrictions on how much cash the city can collect.

From Beacon Hill to Post Office Square | August 4, 2011
Members of the Boston Media Reform Network (BMRN) protest Fox News at Beacon Hill on August 4, 2011; Verizon field workers and their allies protested Verizon at Post Office Square also on August 4, 2011.

Verizon field workers and their allies protested Verizon at Post Office Square on August 4, 2011.

READ: "Do the Fight Thing" by Chris Faraone

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This campaign season, you’re not really committed to defending the GOP agenda unless you sign on the dotted line
Whether it's to flags, fraternities, or charities, privileged douchebags love pledging allegiance.

Whether it's to flags, fraternities, or charities, privileged douchebags love pledging allegiance. That goes double for this season's presidential candidates; more than ever before, Republicans are being asked to sign promises ensuring that, if elected, they will protect the rights of white Christian heterosexuals. The rush is understandable; according to right-wing political consultant Grant Hewitt, "If there wasn't such a distrust in elected officials, you wouldn't have a need for pledges."

Of course, the conservative luna-sphere can't take all the credit for this endless pledge drive. Media outlets of all stripes have fed the frenzy, forsaking meaningful reporting and analysis for constant updates on who signed what, and who got pissed off as a result. With that said, the current conservative pledge matrix, when considered as a whole, actually serves an important purpose: it shows how childish and bigoted these candidates — and their kingmakers — truly are.

THE MARRIAGE VOW

HASHTAG #takethevow

DESCRIPTION Candidates must oppose same-sex marriage in order to save women from prostitution, porn, and abortion. Basic stuff, really, but this has been the most controversial pledge yet, as an early version stated that "a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American president."

MESSIAH The guy getting all the flak (and publicity) here is BOB VANDER PLAATS of the Family Leader, an Iowa-based Christian organization that stands for "God's truths," humility, and limiting the rights of gays and lesbians. Vander Plaats, an Iowa activist and operative who headed Mike Huckabee's state campaign in 2008, won 41 percent of the vote in last year's GOP gubernatorial primary — in case you needed more evidence of why Iowa should not guide the nation electorally.

WHO SIGNED Michele Bachmann (Rick Santorum has committed, but didn't sign)

ELECTORAL REPERCUSSIONS Nothing good for suspiciously lisp-y first-husband hopeful Marcus Bachmann.  

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Death’s confluence: Amy Winehouse and the Norwegian terror victims
Of all the details to emerge from the Norway atrocities last Friday, one of the most harrowing was the thought of those frightened, bewildered youngsters leaping from the shores of Utøya, dragging their limbs through the gloppy water as if in some kind of terrible dream, gunfire crackling at their backs.

Of all the details to emerge from the Norway atrocities last Friday, one of the most harrowing was the thought of those frightened, bewildered youngsters leaping from the shores of Utøya, dragging their limbs through the gloppy water as if in some kind of terrible dream, gunfire crackling at their backs.

It's a bad thought, but there is worse. The mind recoils at the way things played out elsewhere on that tiny island, the final moments of those who didn't make it to the lake, those who confronted a blue-eyed monster, and with him an impossible truth: The absolute certainty of death.

The following day, Saturday, the 27-year-old singer Amy Winehouse was found dead in her London flat, most likely as a result of too much drink or too many drugs or a combination of these things. You wondered if her final moments would have felt like laboring through thick water, if that impossible certainty had occurred to her, too.

Reports of the singer's death and the monster's rampage danced around each other in the media. There was, as always, an incessant drive to accrete relevant facts: the murky political affiliations, the calamitous final performance. Swirling above it all was a kaleidoscopic representation of death—the urge to inflict it, the impulse to avoid it, the apparent desire to bring it on.

There's an old story, about a guy who interviewed people who had attempted suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. Many of these survivors, the story goes, told the interviewer that they'd changed their minds mid-air. Faced with the reality of their decision, they finally understood that they didn't want to die.

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Dope smackdown
Boston Mayor Tom Menino doesn't like anyone sending bad messages to the impressionable children of his city — you may recall his outrage over the sale of STOP SNITCHING T-shirts a couple of years ago. Last week, he discovered another sordid example: T-shirts on display at Niketown on Newbury Street, with skate-culture lingo that could be interpreted as pro-drug use.  

Boston Mayor Tom Menino doesn't like anyone sending bad messages to the impressionable children of his city — you may recall his outrage over the sale of STOP SNITCHING T-shirts a couple of years ago. Last week, he discovered another sordid example: T-shirts on display at Niketown on Newbury Street, with skate-culture lingo that could be interpreted as pro-drug use.

The mayor demanded removal of the DOPE, GET HIGH, and F**K GRAVITY shirts. Niketown initially balked, but by this week the offending garments had vanished — although store management insisted that the move had nothing to do with mayoral pressure.

It's debatable whether the T-shirt crackdown will lead to young Bostonians eschewing drugs and leading wholesome, positive lives. But surely it will spur Menino to search even more fervently for potentially negative or vaguely offensive material to banish from Boston. Like the Beanpot Tournament? Joint legislative committees? High Street?

But he's only one man — so the Phoenix turned to Twitter and enlisted help. We asked for ban-worthy items to bring to Menino's attention, using the hashtag #MeninoMonitors. Unfortunately, we soon realized that hashtags themselves — you know, hashtags? — are among the offenders. Below are some of the other suggestions — and please add your own to the list!

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Speaking for us
When it was announced late Friday that New York lawmakers approved same-sex marriage, I yelled excitedly across the apartment for my wife.    

When it was announced late Friday that New York lawmakers approved same-sex marriage, I yelled excitedly across the apartment for my wife. We just moved back to New England after years in San Francisco, and were thirlled to hear of yet another East Coast victory for gay-marriage advocates. We are, in fact, newlyweds ourselves — our ceremony last September was a windswept affair on a bluff overlooking the foggy, wild Pacific.

As a man who's married to a woman, you might think my position on same-sex marriage is a good-progressive one — maybe a deeply held belief that denying any group their civil liberties is a slippery slope, an objection a la Martin Niemöller — "First they came for the Communists, but I wasn't a Communist so I did not speak out . . ." Which is true, in a way. Neimöller goes on, famously, to say, "Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."

The thing is, I care about gay marriage because I am a transgender man, and my wife and I are not legally married.

Because my birth certificate currently defines my legal sex as female, my marriage is, technically, a same-sex one — which means we join a long line of loving couples throughout history who've been barred from civil marriage through the brute, ugly force of prejudice.

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City sticklers
Steps inside the entrance of 152 North Street, exposed electrical boxes dangle out of a demolished drop ceiling. Dust fills the light beams bouncing through the hallways. There's a layer of gray soot fused into the tiles of the bathroom.  

Steps inside the entrance of 152 North Street, exposed electrical boxes dangle out of a demolished drop ceiling. Dust fills the light beams bouncing through the hallways. There's a layer of gray soot fused into the tiles of the bathroom.

This dilapidated dump is home to the city's two-person Finance Commission, which oversees — or tries to oversee — virtually every dollar of the $2.4 billion budget flowing through city channels. If a public-works hack is sleeping on the job, executive director Matthew Cahill and financial analyst Michael Levangie are supposed to expose him. When money goes missing, they're supposed to find it. And that's all in addition to inspecting the several thousand contracts the city awards each year.

The Finance Commission, better known as FinComm, has been City Hall's unwanted stepchild for more than a century. As a state-appointed, city-subsidized body charged with scrutinizing municipal finances, the commission is perceived by many within city government as an unwelcome entity — a last vestige of ancient measures to keep Boston within Beacon Hill's clutches. (FinComm's five part-time board members, who do little outside of monthly meetings, are appointed by the governor.)

Throughout its history, the commission has rooted out municipal corruption and waste and saved the city millions of dollars. In 2007, for example, Cahill went undercover in a graveyard to bust an exploitative superintendent of cemeteries. In 2009, the commission highlighted citywide waste on building maintenance and overtime, and exposed former Redevelopment Authority officials for taking quarter-million-dollar pensions and using their positions to steer business.

This month alone, FinComm stopped Boston Public School (BPS) contracts that would have cost our strapped city tens of thousands in frivolous expenditures. In one case they discovered that Dearborn Middle School proposed to pay a consultant a whopping $243 hourly rate for leadership training. The contract was rejected.

"I'm sure that I'm pissing off a lot of people — many of whom won't admit it," says Cahill. "That's what I'm here to do — I come in every day and ask myself what taxpayers would think about all of this."

But FinComm remains understaffed and underfunded — it will receive less operating money from the city next year than it did a decade ago, and Cahill currently has no administrative support.

As a result, the commission is hamstrung. Just keeping up with the torrent of paperwork is a daunting task that has Cahill and Levangie busy into most evenings and even weekends.

"There might be a day when someone tells me that I have to keep my mouth shut if I want to keep my job," says Cahill. "In that case, I would be gone — it's not worth it. Until then, the plan is to keep doing as much as I can with [the resources] I'm given."

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