Remember when the Boston marathon was attacked a couple of years ago? Remember how we all panicked and acted like screechy wussbabies and targeted a bunch of innocent people who had nothing to do with the bombings and hid in our basements, getting on social media to tell everyone we have to carpet-bomb and then invade Muslim countries because we are military geniuses on par with Sun fucking Tzu?

No?

That’s right, you instead remember a city responding with strength and resolve. You remember Bostonians, who are total assholes 90% of the time, suddenly displaying a dignity and courage you never would have expected from the same group of people who, on the loss of a center fielder, whined endlessly on sports shows as if the reanimated corpse of George Steinbrenner had just removed one of their testicles and eaten it on live television.

You remember Bostonians going to work, crowding the T and Commuter Rail. You remember us dodging armored vehicle convoys in the street, finding ways around Copley to get to offices and appointments. We did it all week while those jackholes were still at large. Because “fuck those guys,” was the attitude. The only day we didn’t show up for work was on Friday when they told us to get off a packed train into town because the cops were pinning down Dzhokhar. But we were all going in. “Fuck those guys,” to reiterate.

Tuesday I heard a newscaster saying how the marathon bombing had “paralyzed the city for a week.” The fuck it did. I had to stand in line behind a fully-jacked SWAT team to get a goddamed tuna sub, but we were all there. Everyone. We had a vendor coming in from Manhattan to have a meeting we probably could have delayed or done remotely but we kept the engagement. And the Manhattan people didn’t ask to reschedule. They came up on the Acela and even though I’d never met them they emailed to say, “we’ll still be there on the 17th if you guys will.” Damn straight. I’m not a solider. My job is not particularly important to the day-to-day functioning of society, I don’t save lives and I don’t keep the lights on. But maintaining our cool and doing the right thing was all of our duty and we did it.

I’m wondering this week what happened to that city.

We didn’t say “no refugees” back then, even though the guys who attacked us had come here seeking asylum in 2002. We’re supposed to be the “smart state” and we seemed to know after the actual bombing here that there’s no more or less risk among screened refugees than there are from people born here. We asked thoughtful questions about radicalization, the shifting dynamics of warfare and America’s leadership role in the world which Boston, a city smaller than fucking Memphis, or El Paso or freaking Jacksonville Florida, gets to help define. Because we are tough and smart and punch above our weight. Or we used to, anyway.

Spoiler Alert: This is the 21st century and people are going to get killed by terrorists.

Yep, that’s the reality. No politician will say it, but that’s the truth. Sorry. The same global open communication and travel networks that allow us to lead 21st century lives are the same tools these human-shaped bags of rat feces can use to hurt and kill us. There is no way to completely stop them without hurting ourselves in the process. It’s like cancer- it’s too much like us to kill easily. The best we can do is try and prevent it and cut it out when we find it.

The not dying of smallpox or getting polio part of being in the 21st century makes it a pretty good deal though, on balance. Today you’re more likely to be killed in a car crash or fireworks or setting your own house ablaze on account of being a dumbass or by effing cows (who kill 108 people a year in the United States), than from terrorists. But the sad reality is people are going to get killed. We can take actions to prevent and minimize it, but nothing can fully prevent it. Like car crashes, shark attacks and people being hit by trains; some small number of our fellow citizens, maybe people we know and love, maybe even us, are going to be killed by terrorists. Fact.

So what do we do then?

Don’t be idiots and do what the terrorists want. Don’t listen to people trying to use fear to increase their own power, whether that’s fucking ISIS or our own presidential candidates, both of whom are desperate for attention. Don’t give it to them.  Don’t advocate cruelty against large groups of people who aren’t responsible. I’m the first to say the Islamic supporters of these radical movements have to be harshly dealt with- especially elements inside places like Saudi Arabia and Qatar- who are the funding head of the ISIS snake. But anyone who’s ever traveled overseas knows our government can do some shitty stuff, but most people in the rest of the world can separate citizenry from leadership. They don’t treat Americans badly because they know I personally didn’t make the call to invade Iraq or back Noriega. We need to be like this as well. We need to show some backbone and not be scared even when there is risk, which is almost always slight. Don’t be stupid, but don’t be a coward either.

I want strong, smart Boston back. I’m ashamed at the difference between how brave we were in the face of a real threat and how pants-shitty we get around nominal threats like Ebola and the Paris attacks. Pull it together, Boston.

We’re better than this.

UPDATE: We are getting a report of a broken voting machine in 3-2 which could slow things down. This is not good news for Sefatia who really needs to drive turnout in the downtown strongholds.

Today is the day, citizens of Bivalve Nation! Have you voted? If you haven’t stop reading this and go do that now, unless you are reading this on your phone in line to vote, in which case you should just wait your turn. Got it? Good.

A few notes about the upcoming coverage of Clam the Vote 2015, Snarkformation edition:

1. Cape Ann TV will be covering the event from City Hall live on channels  12, 20 and 67 starting at 8:00pm. They are not livestreaming on the Internet because reasons (rolls eyes). Meredith Fine will be hosting and Heidi Dallin will be reporting on results as they come in. We’re told they will be interviewing candidates, covering the action and shooting B-roll for CATV’s upcoming erotic miniseries “Dalliance on Dale Ave” coming out this Spring.
2. Your beloved The Clam will be live-blogging starting at like 7:45 or something. We’re going to snark on the CATV feed while drinking and eating leftover Halloween candy and between the time when the results start to come in and us succumbing to a diabetic/alcohol-induced coma there should be some funny. We will also be posting results and will have a live Google spreadsheet. For the liveblog we’ll screenshot, but we’ll give a link you can jump on if you want real-time results as we get them. We tried to find a plug-in for WordPress that converted goodocs to HTML but everything looked like dogcrap so this is the best work-around. City IT superstar James Pope should be thanked heartily for helping us get the #s as they come in, BTW. Clamplause for James!
3. Turnout: So far as we’ve heard reports, turnout has been better than usual for a local election. At post time East Gloucester Wards 1-1 and 1-2 were about 1,400 combined, last year they totaled about 2,500 out of 4k registered. The big surprise is 5-1 with 854 votes and 5-2 with 755/2367 registered before even the end-of-day push. Likely the Fonveille/Nolan race plus the Verga write-in campaign is pushing turnout there which is good. Post to the Clam Facebook page with turnout numbers if you have them and we’ll try and keep everyone updated.

Everyone should be ready for things to get weird tonight. Not just because someone could have spiked our kid’s Reeces with PCP as we know folks in East Gloucester are fond of doing, but because of the projected large number of write-ins.

See, the way the optical ballot scanners work is they take a picture of the ballot and look for where the marks are supposed to be. If there are write-ins, the ballot is “rejected” for hand counting. Because Clam-endorsed Candidate Greg Verga is running as a write-in, there will be a lot of ballots rejected in every ward because he’s running at-large.

So what? Well, what if the races are close? We’ll know the number of rejected ballots but if, say, one candidate has 3k votes and another has 2k votes and there are 1,200 write-ins to be counted, then who won? We won’t know until those ballots are hand counted and certified just like in the old days when they would tally via bloodmarks from a sacrificial ox on the wall of the temple (Gloucester gave up that system in favor of optical scanners in the mid-90’s). Pro tip to Meridith: wear comfortable shoes and get ready to talk a lot about how great the City Hall restoration turned out, beginning with the history of Second Empire influenced Victorian structures. It could be a long night.

So there goes. We look forward to seeing everyone tonight, thanks for all the nice posts and comments we didn’t have to delete because obvious crazyperson. Let’s make sure this whole thing is handled with a generalized sense of decorum of which in all honesty we as a city are not particularly  known for. But it’s a skill we should cultivate for certain occasions such as this such as funerals or being arraigned.

Could come in handy.

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We really didn’t want to do this, but folks asked. They literally begged us to give our picks for the races in Gloucester. Ok, sure. Be warned that aside from mayor (where we’re not endorsing, you can’t make us) we found we’re not too far off the Gloucester Daily Times which was a shock. We’re still drinking to deal with this revelation. There are some differences and we lay our our reasoning as best we can. If you want to vote like the Clam, do read on.

The top of the ticket:

Mayor: No. Just no. Hell no. We’re not making a call because members of the Clam inner circle are deeply conflicted here. So, if you haven’t been exposed to the two leading candidates strengths and weaknesses up to this point then congratulations for coming out of your coma, we have a black president now. We recommend you flip a coin. The rest of you have already made up your mind based on the available evidence. Go with that.

Councilor At Large: (you pick four)

The Clam recommends:

Paul Lundberg: A sane, level-headed dude with decades of operational experience and has been on the council for years. Sadly, medical science still prevents the rest of our at-large recommendations from reading: Paul Lundberg Clone #1, Paul Lundberg Clone #2, Paul Lundberg Clone #3 so we have to make more. Fuck.

Joe Ciolino: He’s spent years on the council. Without McGeary, Sefatia or Verga (we’ll get to him in a second) on the council we’ll need experience, bad. I know someone once said, “Amateurs built the Ark, experts built the Titanic,” but of course that is crazy bullshit because the Ark is fictional (and impossible). We need folks who know how it works. Joe does. Full stop.

Clamflict: We can’t agree on one of the two following candidates. So choose between:

Amy-Beth Healey: Has been on the School Committee. Sane person. Heavily involved in schools. Knows budgets. Recommended by the GDT.

or

Joe Giacalone: We’ve heard good things. Ann Margaret Ferrante endorsed him, other people we know and respect have talked to him and said they liked him. A downtown resident.

Our last pick (but remember, you only get four)

Greg Verga: Write him in. We admit to being bummed he got so cozy with the hard-rightwing crowd during the mayor’s race, but he’s a solid choice for at-large council. Has been on for years, makes good choices. We’re writing him in.

Ok, so those are are ‘yes’ votes. What about the rest? Here are our thoughts:

OHARA: The man without an apostrophe. His signs just showed up everywhere one day, sometimes one on each end of a lot (the record so far is THREE ON ONE PROPERTY). We’ve heard some folks describe him as a “liberal activist” but when he came to our house and handed out his campaign literature we saw it had a Patriots’ game schedule on the back and not a single mention of education or the schools on the other.  He’s really, really into fire stations and police, and went on to describe in uncomfortably vivid detail the threats he believes we’re under, which in some cases seemed overblown. When we asked where here was going to find all the money he wanted to spend on public safety he said, “consolidate the schools” which is when we threw him out. The ever-touted, never quantified imaginary financial panacea of “consolidating the elementary schools” wold actually require over 100 million in bonds which we’d have to override for, and for all that we would not save much money (It’s the teachers that cost, not the buildings nor really administration at the per-school level). Also, it would take something like a decade to get it done and in the process we’d dramatically change the character of our neighborhoods. Also it goes against all available research on improving educational outcomes, would lower home values across the city and create a transportation nightmare. Did you think about any of that? Sorry dude, no vote for you.

Joe Orlando Jr: Scion of the Orlando family who’ve been pushing so hard to turn Gloucester into a Republican paradise like Kansas or Arkansas. We’ve met him, he’s a nice guy in person but online he’s been burning every bridge he can find which might not be so great a campaign strategy. For instance, he was arguing about something (fluoridation we’re pretty sure) on Facebook and the young Mr. Orlando decided to claim liberals “kill babies.” This may be his view, but the majority of people in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are pro-choice, including our Republican governor who this candidate touts the endorsement of. Wonder if he calls Baker a “babykiller”? This is Massachusetts Joe, you’re not going to be able to govern well if you can’t work with Democrats, there are a lot of them here. 

Bob Whynott Jr: Son of long-time Councilman Bob Whynott Sr. The younger Whynott, who previously lost an Orlando-backed campaign for the Republican nomination to challenge state representative Ann Margaret Ferrante, is deploying the highly efficient strategy of using his father’s campaign collateral. He has the same signs and the same campaign address. How is he different than his father? Hell if we know.

Ken Sarofeen: Um, no.

The Wards (you only get to pick one, duh)

Ward 1 “The Shire” East Gloucester  

Scott Memhard: Owner of Cape Pond Ice, has been on the Sawyer Free Library board for many years. A competent executive at a legacy business dealing directly with the core issue facing our city: What the fuck do we do with our waterfront? He’s got our vote.

Everett Brown: Also a good guy, he was on the council for many years. We hear he’s competent and knows his stuff. You can’t go wrong with either choice in Ward 1, pretty much.

Ward 2 “Glostopolis” The Eastern part of downtown

Congratulations Melissa Cox, for running unopposed in Ward 2!  She’s experienced and dressed as a shark for the outdoor showing of Jaws on I4C2 last year. We need more counselors down to cosplay, is what we’re saying. She helped us Clammers get bike lanes put in, and at least TRIED to deal with the shitshow parking nightmare of lower Prospect Street over the elder Whynott’s insistence that churchgoers having easy parking is more important than emergency vehicles being able to safely pass on one of our busiest thoroughfares.

Ward 3 “The Golden Triangle” (Stagefort up to the hospital and most of downtown biz district)

Steve LeBlanc: Up for re-election. Many years working for and with the city. Again, knows what he’s doing. We need experience and he’s got it.

Sherri Curcuru: She’s into elementary school consolidation, so no.

Ward 4 “The Highlands” (everything from the hospital north and all that stuff around the Middle School, Lanesville).

Val Gilman: The obvious pick. Val’s been on the School Committee for years, knows everybody in town and is a dedicated getter done-er of things. Oh, and her opponent’s handler’s attempt to pin the Fuller bullshit on her? Don’t even start. We’ve reported extensively on this- the school committee and council made the best choices they could at the time given the lose-lose- really-fucking-lose situation the math indicated for all courses of action with that property. Val is the obvious choice.

Kathryn Goodick:  No. See here and here and here and a lot of other places we didn’t even bother to report because we just got sick of dumping on her. But really, no.  

Ward 5 “The Frontier” West Gloucester and Magnolia

Bill Fonville: Clam’s choice. Again, has been on the council for years, knows his stuff and is a competent incumbent. He’s a data guy and knows how to make decisions using information from the outside world. He has a huge community presence, and was the only one to vote against the debt shift that made Ms. Goodick from ward 4 so apoplectic.

Sean Nolan: We took some heat for associating him with the Orlando-backed Gloucester GOP whom we are now told he’s not cozy with. Excuse us, we were confused by him being on the front-page of their website for a while. We’re stupid like that. But if he’s within their circle or influence or not, he hasn’t voted in a municipal election for the last three rounds. Sorry, you don’t run for a local election when you don’t participate in local elections. We have heard a lot of positives about his community involvement, and think he would be good on some lower committees and would appreciate him running again when he has more experience with our local government and how it works (example: voting).

School Committee: (you pick six)

Jonathan Pope: Head of the school committee and totally knows his shit. For all the insane misinformation people have about the schools, he’s a solid part of the reason our MCAS scores continue to go up in spite of it all. If performance is your metric, the schools are demonstrably improving and thus he deserves your vote.

Kathy Clancy: The same goes for Kathy. She’s at everything, has incredible passion, a competent executive from the outside world. We’re lucky to have her on the school committee. A vote for her is a solid.

Tony Gross: Another person who’s been part of everything for years. Led the budget sub-committee, negotiated contracts which is hard as balls. Hired a new superintendent. Vote for him. He’s good.

Michelle Sweet: All the right calls: Understood the Fuller fiasco for what it was, believes in neighborhood schools, understands where the real problems are. She’ll get our vote.

Melissa Teixeira: We would say ditto for Melissa- totally gets what the eff is going on. Didn’t buy into the Fuller hype when everyone said it should still be used as a school and the math/data/reports/sane evaluations said otherwise. She’ll also get our vote.

Joel Favazza: Will be getting our vote. Joel is young, has two teens in the system, and is at fucking everything. He built 3D printers alongside us (his team actually kicked our ass). He coached our daughter’s soccer team. We see him at plays, concerts and meetings. Smart guy. He’s clarified some of the positions he’s taken in the paper to our satisfaction, so yes. We’re voting for him.

JD MacEachern: The other guy not currently on the school committee looking for a seat. To be honest, this is the candidate we literally know the least about. Our research shows he has all the correct answers on things Fuller, funding, elementary schools and technology in the schools. But since we choose to keep the existing incumbents who have been effective (see scores, MCAS) we thus have to pick between Mr. MacEachern whom we don’t know and the guy we think will be a good add (Joel, above).

Non Binding Referendum, oh sweet Crom is this not over yet?

Fluoride: Allow us to make one thing clear: We’re going to make a recommendation to vote pro-fluoridation because science. Anti-fluoride activists: do not post/email/text/comment/knock on our doors/stop us on the street about this issue because anti-fluoride activists- you are sorta nutty.  Advice: you should take a look at how you present yourselves because right now you totally give off the chemtrail/9/11 conspiracy/anti-vax vibe. We at The Clam are full-on science dweebs and stronlgy believe in peer-reviewed studies and stuff, we work with scientists and engineers, we make our pay in STEM. Do us both a favor and don’t approach us, you’re not going to change our minds and we’ll just wind up making fun of you on the Internet. The ONLY good argument we’ve heard about anti-fluoride is a friend who has problems with his tropical fishtank attributed to fluoride. On balance, we can’t say this is on par with the family who has a 3K dentist bill they can’t afford because no insurance in the US covers dental anymore. Also: we really should not be deciding this in a referendum, that’s not how science and public health should be done.

There you go. Print this out for handy reference and do your own research so you hahahaha just kidding. You people are just going to pick the names that are most associated with your ethnicity, don’t try and fool us. We’ve seen the stats.

On to tomorrow. This can’t be over soon enough for us.

Correction: An earlier version of this post claimed Joe Orlando Jr. used the term “babykillers” to describe liberals pro-choice position in regard to medical choices (the discussion was about fluoridation). His exact phrase was: “Don’t you liberals call that being ‘pro-choice?’ Or is that only applying to medical decisions that kill babies?”  The sentence was corrected.

Here’s the thing about our taking Ward 4 city council candidate Kathryn Goodick to task on some incorrect math she based her campaign on, doubled down on with conflicting statements, and then insisted was a “personal attack” when we asked her for clarification: there have been no personal attacks. She messed up the math, because she admitted she hadn’t been paying attention to municipal elections and goings-on until it impacted her directly. She used that bad math to knock on doors across her ward and tell a story about skyrocketing taxes that wasn’t truthful. And she doesn’t understand why that’s not okay. 

Pointing out the harmfulness of using faulty, misleading math to prop up your candidacy is not a personal attack, and won’t ever be. Calling a candidate out for something that is proven false is the entirety of politics. Full stop. If Mrs. Goodick had said “I may have misunderstood and I apologize,” we wouldn’t be where we are. But she didn’t, won’t, and has referred to us as liars and worse, despite careful calculations from local municipal tax assessors, accountants, lawyers, and more on our end. We’ve asked their camp to point out where our lies are, with factual documentation and we have received no such documentation. So we’re done there.

But it’s not about just Kathryn Goodick’s candidacy. The tax issue with her is the symptom, not the illness. 

It’s about the pervasiveness of the tea-party right wing, howling for massive change, without understanding exactly the impact of that change, and without a solid plan to deal with any of it.

Here’s the rub that most people, who only have inclination to barely delve into our local politics, don’t necessarily understand off the bat: There’s a select group of very right wing radicals in Gloucester who have decided to run for council at the prodding of their radical friends and the local “Gloucester Citizens for Responsible Government,” some with very, very little knowledge of our city and its budget and how it runs. At least one of these folks running for council didn’t even vote in the last three municipal elections. That’s frightening to me, because no matter what ward it’s about, these things impact our future and the future of kids here.

That’s right: at least one of the folks who didn’t have the time to go to the voting booth to choose the last few rounds of elected officials now wants to be an elected official. They didn’t have time to understand their tax and water bill, but expect us to assume they’ll undoubtedly have the time to help six others run the city in their spare time. They are campaigning heavily on the positives of being outsiders, naive to the system. And while municipal elections aren’t meant to be entirely for seasoned politicians by any means, there’s a certain necessity to practicing for the test you’re going to take so you don’t flunk it when you get there. You have to understand the policies you’re voting on. 

The “idiocracy” we’ve seen on a national level with Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Donald Trump isn’t repeatable on a local level, nor should it be – it matches bluster and intentional, willful ignorance with a dangerous belief that cutting the budget and putting several more dollars back into the pockets of homeowners is the be-all and end-all of their candidacy.

National shenanigans like the attempted defunding Planned Parenthood don’t work in a place like this, on a local level, because we all know too many people negatively impacted by the hamfisted tax-cutting-at-all-costs policies. There is a disconnect between a politician in Washington and the constituents in his or her home state that cannot exist at a local level purely because of how communities work. So when Joe Orlando (the younger), who is running for at-large councilor, states something like: or Amanda Orlando Kesterson, his sister, writes that we should arm all our teachers instead of providing universal breakfast, there isn’t a red state full of people willing to vote against their own interests to clap for it. There’s just Gloucester, a town full of hard workers who haven’t been lucky, economic downturn, and stories about making choices no one really desires to make. Both our mayoral candidates are in favor of universal healthcare, because they’re aware of how unfair life can be even to the hardest of workers.

The few candidates who seem to be propped up entirely by the local GOP (which has ideals that are far to the right of what past Republicans have stood for) have overlooked how the local government process works – showing no real knowledge of how municipal taxation is handled except they are “too high” without any sort of context, how they will handle nuanced issues such as the school budget besides “get rid of bloated administration” without any sort of context – and we could go on. But we’re tired.

The “Gloucester Citizens for Responsible Government” has, perhaps unsurprisingly, failed at providing candidates that have convinced us that they are in any way ready to be responsible in and for our government this election season.

This may come as a real shock, but we don’t like having to write these kinds of posts.  They’re depressing, we can’t swear as much, and it’s about as fun to write as eating a sleeve of saltines with no water. But, this stuff needs to be pointed out, or we risk Gloucester being run by the tea-party candidates who want to cut money out of places where it will negatively impact the services our entire community needs without these people truly understanding the repercussions down the line.

This is why we drink.