Martha Coakely-Jim McKenna Attorney General Debate tonight at 8pm EST
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Martha “Marsha” Coakley is going to debate Jim McKenna LIVE! tonight in Massachusetts for the Attorney General’s race.
Anyone know if it’s being live-streamed so we can watch online?
We’d love to catch this and would live-blog it if we could see it.
We’re curious to see if Ms. Martha has learned any manners since her run against Scott Brown and if she’s still having her goons push people to the ground while making fun of her opponent for shaking hands outside Fenway Park (when she thought it was beneath her to press the palms like that).
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UPDATE: Here’s a link to the debate. It was actually pre-taped for a show called “Broadstreet”, which is filmed in some guy’s basement in Dorchester. His mom works the camera and then makes sandwiches for everyone afterwards, before the dance party.
Moderator: Marsha Coakley and Jim McKenna you are meeting for the first time. Why don’t you shake hands and pretend you are happy to meet each other.
Martha: Sure! In fact we are happy to meet each other.
Jim: We met in the parking lot and it is a pleasure.
(Martha seems to be thinking about having someone push Jim down in the parking lot after the show, or maybe that’s what she tried to do when they “met” but then he spotted her, so she was all “Foiled again!” about it)
Moderator: Hey, some people were killed up there in Manapaw and you didn’t say anything about that. Why is that?
Martha: Nobody asked me about that. I talked to the District Attorney somewhere near there about cyber crimes. Does that count? I think in general we need to solve things, track where guns come from, figure out how they are used in homicides, and then we need to provide resources to community policing at the ends of it.
Moderator: Is that enough?
Jim: This begs the question of who would execute a two year old, a toddler?
(audience looks at Martha Coakley)
Jim: This may bring back the question of the death penalty again. Obviously we don’t know all the facts yet and we shouldn’t speak authoritatively at this time yet at this point but this case may put the death penalty back on the table.
Moderator: We’ll talk about that in a minute. You are for the death penalty but are there any cases when you are against it?
Jim: At a minimum death penalty should be when you murder a police officer.
Martha: I am against the death penalty.
Moderator: Let me ask you about a couple other crime fighting measures proposed by some people. What are surveillance cameras and are you against them, because in the JP and the UP and UK there are surveillance cameras and I wonder if we should have them too.
Martha: I think that surveillance cameras are tools and are on the street when crimes occur.
Moderator: How ’bout you?
Jim: That needs a study. We need to be careful of what we are doing in putting more cameras out there and having the government watch people.
Moderator: Deval Patrick has announced he only wants one gun a month to be purchased by people in Massachusetts. Do you support that?
Jim: Nope.
Martha: No, and I’m on the record as not supporting that.
Moderator: Let’s talk about something everyone is talking about, Issue Three that will cut the sales tax from 6 to 3.25% and cost billions of dollars. Let me ask you some questions ’bout that. One, how many people are in the Attorney General’s office. B, how many people will be fired if the tax decrease passes. Three, do you think that’s an acceptable level of service to comfort the people of Massachusetts?
Jim: The Attorney General’s office has about 500 people or more (but we imagine most of them are currently being used by Martha Coakley for pushing and shoving, so only about 50 or so of those people are needed for actual Attorney Generaling). I don’t think we need to fire people or imperil people and if it imperiled people I would not support firing them.
Moderator: Can you manage this office with a $2.5 billion cut without laying anyone off?
Jim: We would make our budget work and would look for redundancies and eliminate them. It’s better that people got to keep their own tax money.
Martha: For every dollar we get, we bring in five, in protection money. I vote no on your questions. We need police and fires to keep people safe and in terms of our office we do a great job of bringing back money from consumers and I am a terrific Attorney General, Bob. I’m going to ask for a big budget because we earn our money’s worth and I think the legislature should follow my determinations. I think they need to honor it, they need to honor it, they need to honor it…
Moderator (whose name is Jim, not Bob…there are two Jims today, and one Martha, who the Kennedys call “Marsha”): Let’s talk about illegal immigration.
Martha: Let’s not. I already talked about this three million times.
Moderator: Well, then this is three million and one. You said, “Technically it’s not illegal to be illegal in Massachusetts” what did you mean?
Martha: I was making a distinction between federal law and state law and of course it is illegally illegal to be here illegally and I think I want to say three things about that: we need to tighten our borders, we need to make sure that we don’t give benefits to people who should not get them here, and I support knowing who we are arresting and getting some of that fingerprint analysis they have out now, like on TV.
Moderator: Jim, you’ve said that Martha Coakley is wrong. Can you tell us why she is wrong?
Jim: Where do I start?
Martha: I don’t support in-state tuition or drivers’ licenses. Well, Jim knows, if he can read, that I talk about the differences between state law and federal state law. We have always cooperated with federal law since at least 1986. If I arrest someone and the federal government wants to put a retainer on them, and I’ve had cases like that, well we always work with the federal government.
Jim: She said it is illegal to be illegal in Massachusetts because of federal law.
Martha: Yes I did say that. We don’t disagree on this. I said it, okay. Everything I say is just taken out of context and you shouldn’t disagree with that.
Moderator: Let’s talk about all those Republicans up in the legislature, the Fancy Toomies, or whatever they are call, I don’t remember their names.
Jim: We need to develop a consensus in the Commonwealth that it is wrong to be here illegally. We should not have sanctuary cities. We should agree as a Commonwealth that you should not be here illegally.
Martha: I don’t disagree with that. It is a serious problem. We need a federal solution. I’ve been cooperating with federal authorities for 25 years on this and believe we should take fingerprints and store them for people who are charged and convicted of crimes here (NOTE: she keeps saying this stuff about fingerprints like she only recently found out about them, or that Massachusetts just started using them for some reason).
Moderator: Do you support a bill that would mandate that if you apply for state-subsidized housing you must demonstrate your immigration status and show that you are here legally?
Martha: I don’t think we need to do that. We have protections now to make sure that people who should not get benefits don’t get benefits.
Moderator: That’s not true. What about the case of Aunt Zatuni (we think he’s talking about Obama’s aunt) where she got subsidized housing illegally when she was here illegally?
Martha: Well, whatever, she has asylum now so she’s entitled to all that and most of the immigrants here are here legally so whatever. I agree though that the illegal immigrant is a huge problem and we don’t disagree on that.
Moderator: Neither of you support importing the Arizona law here to Massachusetts?
Martha: I don’t.
Jim: Not as it stands no. What we have here is a situation where felons who are illegally here serve time and are released and then are not deported. We need to change that.
Martha: No, that needs to be changed at the federal level. Federal authorities are the only ones who can deport people.
Jim: We should have a law that says when they are released they are surrendered to ICE for deportation.
Moderator: Let’s move to when Jim said that Martha wasn’t aggressive enough. Is she deferring to the Feds too much, what’s your beef with her?
Jim: She needs to be more active. Diane Wilkerson was given immunity by Martha Coakley in 2007. At the time she was accepting bribes. Martha needs to make it a point to prosecute public corruption vigorously. We shouldn’t sit back. We should make sure that if there is a breach of the law and the public trust that it is prosecuted swiftly and vigorously.
Martha: First of all, I don’t defer to the Feds, I cooperate with them. They have better tools and agents than me. I knew the Feds were investigating Diane Wilkerson so I just let them go after her and she was already charged and convicted, so there. You work with the federal government to get the best results for public safety.
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8PM was what I heard, but that might be the re-airing. The tendency in Massachusetts seems to be most of the TV and radio debates are in the early morning at about 7AM, but they get aired later. Nonetheless this is what they currenrly have up on NECN:
http://www.necn.com/09/30/10/Broadside-Mass-Attorney-General-debate/landing_newengland.html?blockID=321944&feedID=4212
Who could be up that early to debate?
You’d have to wake up at like 430, get dressed, get down to the station…and that’s like 530-6…then prep and go on the air.
That’s nuts.
You do notice Massachusetts politicians are not known for their dashing good looks and perfectly quaffed hair.
Except Mittens of course.
cool! thanks… I will be watching.
HB — you might be interested in this
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/09/southern-illinois-tea-party-event-this-saturday-at-2-pm/
adam ?, is speaking there as well as others.
As far as a local background checkup:
The Mattapan incident (http://wbztv.com/local/mattapan.shooting.victims.2.1937413.html) is an extremely brutal murder of five people including a two year old child that happened a few days ago. They’re still searching for the suspects.
Martha’s infamous statement is “it’s not illegal to be illegal in Massachusetts.” I’ll need to listen again to see if Jim messed it up, but it’s common fodder around here. Martha’s newfound respect for immigration enforcement is… well, newfound.
Auntie Zetunie is indeed Zetunie Onyango, Obama’s formerly illegal alien aunt (until she was granted Asylum mysteriously by the same judge who rejected her six years ago. Wonder why that could be…) who still resides in government housing in Southie.
Dianne Wilkerson is the infamous Massachusetts state senator found stuffing $23,000 in her bra as bribes for her influence.
http://wbztv.com/local/dianne.wilkerson.diane.2.851128.html
I’m sure there’s a few other things they mentioned I can dig the background up for.
Too bad Jim didn’t say he’d stay in the lower budget by cutting the AG office’s seven press secretaries down to one.
Bkennedy, not in this debate, but at a candidate night, Jim said he would cut those seven press secretaries and that they should have been prosecutors going after public corruption NOT writing press releases. That statement made me wow over him, and I likened it to when Christy Mihos was running for Governor and said we don’t need more laws, we need prosecutors to ENFORCE the laws and take corrupt public officials out in handcuffs.
Are you in Mass?
Yes, I live in Mass. I was referencing specifically using it as a laughline in the debate but I have heard him make statements on Charley Manning’s Show to that effect.
His whole candidacy is almost miraculous when you consider he’s the first person ever to get on a statewide ballot through a sticker campaign in a primary, and he almost tripled the number of write-ins he needed to go on the ballot (got 28,000, needed 10,000.)
As far as being odd, I didn’t notice anything too out of line, and Braude is a fairly bad moderator in that he has this sort of angry pit bull personality in general. As far as I’m aware he’s a lefty but his bullish attitude overrides his politics more often than not.
I thought McKenna did a good job staying on topic and focusing on the issues he wanted to discuss and deflecting things he didn’t as part of his duties as an enforcement official.
Dianne Wilkerson is one of a long list of Beacon Hill Dems with corruption cases whom she either failed to go after or didn’t push for strong sentencing. Wilkerson was investigated by the FBI, and Coakley says the feds took care of the situation–true, BUT… As part of the agreement, her office was responsible for overseeing the terms of the plea bargain. Wilkerson completed only 11 of over 50 terms and Coakley never held her to the rest nor ensured that the money she took was repaid.
Curious to know what the boyz and others think of the debate and McKenna. I think he looks the hollywood part of an AG cracking down on public corruption, and he says the right things, but he’s a little strange? Hopefully in a really good way that will get the job done.
Ever wonder, or does anybody know, what becomes of the millions and millions Marsha collects, (usually in settlements, cause who can afford to litigate against the vast resources of the AG’s office) from all the companies she goes after?
There is something a little odd–when I heard him being interviewed on the radio, I wondered if he had a speech impediment maybe? I think he’s coming from the right perspective and is upset with her job performance for all the right reasons. But I’m not sure he’s thought through a well-developed position on every possible question that can be thrown at him, so I think sometimes he stumbles.
So she’s just gonna keep on until they elect her for something…..just like the boyz have pointed out how the political professionals are just looking for a paycheck (at the staff/consultant level)….that’s what the so-call “public service gig” is about, too, I guess.
Just a paycheck, with lots of power and retirement plan/benefits to die for.