“Why would Grabauskas want the public to spend the next six weeks ranting against the fare increase?” Asks DAVID S. BERNSTEIN in this week’s PHOENIX. “It may have something to do with the upcoming June 30 expiration of the union contract, which covers almost all of the authority’s 6100 full- and part-time workers.”

From PR Newswire:

BOSTON, May 11 /PRNewswire/ — The former Superintendent of Revenue Collection for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (”MBTA”) was sentenced today on tax evasion charges.

United States Attorney Michael J. Sullivan; Douglas A. Bricker, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Boston Division; Theodore L. Doherty III, Special Agent in Charge of the New England Regional Office of the United States Department of Transportation, Office of Inspector General and Joseph Carter, Chief of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (”MBTA”) Police, announced today that MARY LEMPITSKI, age 48, of 58 Carolina Avenue, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, has been sentenced to a term of one year and one day in federal prison for tax evasion.

In addition, LEMPITSKI must pay a fine of $10,000 and serve a term of three years supervised release, during which she must make restitution with the Internal Revenue Service.

At the sentencing hearing before United States District Court Judge William G. Young, the prosecutor outlined some of the evidence: From 2000 through 2003 LEMPITSKI spent at least $314,000, all in cash — above and beyond any cash withdrawals coming from bank accounts or otherwise traceable to any legitimate source. LEMPITSKI spent much of that cash at high-end department stores and boutiques. At times, sales clerks would have to call for security assistance when LEMPITSKI came shopping; there was not enough room in the cash register for the stacks of bills she used to pay for her purchases. As noted in the Indictment, the bulk of the cash went for designer jewelry, clothing, shoes and cosmetics for LEMPITSKI’s personal use. None of this cash was declared on LEMPITSKI’s tax returns.

As noted in the Indictment, LEMPITSKI was the Superintendent of Revenue Collection for the MBTA. In that capacity, LEMPITSKI oversaw the operations of a facility known as the MBTA “Money Room,” which is the central cash repository for revenues collected by the MBTA daily. The Indictment alleges that, during the years 2000 through 2002, the MBTA Money Room routinely contained hundreds of thousands of dollars in uncounted and unregistered cash.

At sentencing, the prosecutor noted that the government believed — but could not prove — that the unaccounted for cash was stolen from the MBTA Money Room.

In sentencing LEMPITSKI, Judge Young noted that, although the government had not proven any theft charge, it appeared that LEMPITSKI’s extra cash must have come from some form of misconduct. Judge Young further commented that he thought LEMPITSKI was stealing from a public authority as a public official.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General, Office of Investigations, and the MBTA Police. It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul G. Levenson in Sullivan’s Public Corruption and Special Prosecutions Unit.

SOURCE: U.S. Attorney

From the Daily News Tribune:

The MBTA will hold a public workshop and hearing to ensure public participation and seek feedback on the proposed fare increase Monday, May 16, 6 to 8 p.m., at Newton City Hall, War Memorial Auditorium, 1000 Commonwealth Ave. A Russian interpreter will be available.

For more information, call Lydia Rivera, MBTA public affairs, at 617-222-1510. Additionally written comments will be accepted through Friday, July 28, and should be mailed to the MBTA, Attn: Fare Policy Committee, 10 Park Plaza, Boston, MA 02116, or via e-mail to fareproposal@mbta.com.

I do want to mention that I have heard from Shugars, who is working diligently on a T-boycott, but is hitting all the usual roadblocks.

She has contacted organizations that claim to represent T-riders or their interests, and has gotten no reply. She says she did get a response from the Sierra Club, “who thought it was a bad idea.”

As for my suggestion that a boycott without a rally is like a hotdog without a bun, Shoogs is not so surre: “Doesn’t it seem a little weird to ask people not to take public transit and ask them to go somewhere at the same time?”

My answer: well, yeah, sorta. But we’re living in weird times.

Example: I’m sure the Sierra Club thinks a boycott’s a bad idea because people should be encouraged to use mass transit, not discouraged from it, even for a day.

Example: liberals are supposed to be for organized labor, but unions end up as often as not as corrupt, intransigent, and bullying as the companies they’re up against. (Unfortunately, that seems to be what happens when people get too organized.)

Note that both of these examples pit people generally sympathetic to each other’s causes against each other, paralyzing them when it comes to effective action against a common foe. That’s politics, baby. Weird.

But when you think about it, this could be a very “teachable moment.” A public transit boycott doesn’t mean that people are gonna sit at home all day. Do you honestly expect people who boycott the T on a workday to stay home from work and lose a day of income, too? It’s not gonna happen. The whole point is to show the T that we can get to work without them. That we’re doing them as much a favor by using their service as they are doing us by providing it.

The reason the T has leverage here is that people feel trapped. How can I get around without the T? So the teachable moment comes when they try it and see that it can be done. It can be done through car-pooling. It can be done through cycling. It can be done in some cases by walking. I plan to skydive in, myself. I have a colleague who will be hang-gliding, and a friend who’s just dying to debut his Leonardo Da Vinci-inspired flying machine. Vee have vays, as zey say.

But let me let you in on a little secret about screaming into the void. “Silent protests” don’t work. “Invisible protests” don’t work. Especially when you’ve got a deadline. Invisible people can’t be photographed, for one thing. Crowds get front-page coverage. If there’s no one to scream and shout and ululate, to march with banners with goofy slogans on them, hold up posters and babies swaddled in American flags, there’s no photo-op. If there’s no photo-op, there’s no story in the news. If there’s no story in the news, it never happened. You want an invisible protest? You got one.

Rallies are happenings, celebrations of our collective impotence in the face of powers that don’t give a rat’s ass what we think. One-day boycotts where you sit at home in your PJs all day, eating tubs of Häagen-Dazs Light, scratching your ass and watching back-to-back Judge Judies are non-happenings. Eat as many tubs of Häagen-Dazs Light, watch as many Judge Judies as you want. It will never be a happening.

You could easily turn one of these public meetings with the T into a mass protest, too, though. It would call for a little civil disobedience, of course. A lot of people showing up at meetings with signs and babies (and not just baby arms, you guys) to wave around. But a real rally in addition to a presence at scheduled T-sponsored meetings would seal the deal. But it’s a lot of work getting the word out and making something like that happen.

These are just a few humble thoughts of a very simple man. I have to be honest. This is really the most I can offer, philosophical Taoist that I have decided I now am. In keeping with my deeply-held beliefs about the universe, I have no choice but to skip all the rest of the Kübler-Ross cycle and just go straight to Acceptance. And I will see you all there shortly, I am sure. I’m baking cookies in anticipation, but please, bring your own milk.

Well, when I heard the rain wasn’t gonna let up until NEXT Thursday, I finally broke down and got myself some proper raingear and have been cycling to Back Bay and back every day. Monday I got up and thought, I’m gonna get just as wet walking to the T station from home, and from the T station to “work” and back again, as I am just riding my bike to “work,” so why not just ride? You know, get it over with quicker.

Plus, in the first scenario I’d have to stand, packed into a humid, mobile bird-flu incubator for forty minutes, with scenes of near-Dickensian misery all around me, the train lurching and rocking to the collective gnashing of teeth. You know the drill. No thanks.

And it’s been drizzle for the most part, albeit a steady drizzle. Still, as for rain, it’s no biggie.

On my way home in the afternoon, I even dilly-dallied a bit in the South End. Stop-and-smell-the-roses type stuff. Where on the T can you do that? I don’t dare to take my noseplugs out the whole time I’m underground.

Yesterday I took a different route so that I could stop and admire my hands-down favorite piece of public sculpture in this, or any city, really:

Clearly alluding to the underbelly of the Fontana di Trevi in Rome, this postmodern anti-fountain on the corner of Pembroke and Warren was an early attempt, before extensive gentrification, to increase property values in the then-blighted area, by adding top-notch public sculpture that reflects pride of place. It now stands as an heroic monument to asphalt and scrap granite in the heart–or, actually closer to the liver–of our fair city.

After admiring that for a spell–really recharging my aesthetic batteries–I proceeded along the intestinal tract of Mass Ave. on my way home. I saw this poster advertising the ubiquitous Da Vinci Code on a T lean-to outside of the NStar facility across from South Bay Shopping Center:

I haven’t read the book, and have no intention of doing so, and if I see the movie it will be out of the same dull desperation on a rainy day that drove me to Mission: Masturbation III. But I liked this poster. It’s a little different from some others I have seen. I particularly like the looks on the actors’ faces. Like they’re being confronted by something both awesome and distasteful at once. Like a full-scale Lucien Freud nude. In fact, I imagine the photographer probably flashed a couple Freuds at them to get that shot. There’s more than a hint of “ee-yooo” there, don’t you think?

Tom Hanks, who has finally turned to marshmallow, looks concerned for humankind on the verge of a revelation that obviously horrifies the scrumptious, fiery-eyed, nostril-flaring Audrey Tautou, who nestles in his marshmallowy breast for comfort.

Hmm. Honestly, I don’t understand what’s the big deal about The Da Vinci Code. Many other deities have married mortals, after all, and no one batted an eye. If gods become flesh and then don’t mingle with the fleshly, how can they really be said to have understood what having flesh is all about in the first place? Why not just stick with being a burning bush? I mean, to go to all the trouble to get fitted with a body, and all tricked out with the tackle, and then…? It’s like taking a Carnival Cruise and never leaving your cabin. It’s like going to Vegas and staying holed up in your hotel room. Can you really say you’ve been to Vegas? Sure. But have you really been to Vegas? If you haven’t done anything that needs to stay in Vegas, as the ad says, then you might just as well have stayed home, really, and watched the series on TV.

But having said all that, it should also be said that whatever a god does when he manifests in fleshly form should really be his own business, don’t you think? QOTD.

HERE.