A prominent ANA-MA member who thought she was anonymously trolling the comments section of my post about her organization (“Who exactly does the American Nurses Association represent?”) ended up providing compelling evidence to support the charge that her organization represents the interests of hospitals, nurse managers, and nurse educators, NOT working bedside nurses, and bolstering…
Author: Jerold Duquette
Professor of Political Science
Director, Public Policy and Management Program
Central Connecticut State University
Who exactly does the American Nurses Association represent?
“Nurses unions are split on the initiative. The Massachusetts Nurses Association has endorsed it. The larger American Nurses Association opposes it.” This line in a recent news story about Senator Warren’s support of nurse staffing ratios and Question One caught my eye. To me, this was an incredibly counter-intuitive claim. Are nurse’s unions really “split”…
Democratic Primaries Showed the Route to Beating Baker
Charlie Baker is likely to win re-election this November, just like every elected Massachusetts governor who has sought re-election has in the last 34 years. Re-electing governors, regardless of party, is what Massachusetts voters do. However, Baker’s re-election isn’t a sure thing. There is a scenario wherein his chances could plummet. It’s a scenario that came…
In MA, progressive generational change (not ideological insurgency) is underway.
Massachusetts Democratic primary voters signaled on Tuesday that it’s time to start updating their office holders with younger (but not inexperienced) professional politicians. The Democratic establishment isn’t under attack in Massachusetts. It is being fortified for changing times as the next generation of skilled political practitioners begins to take its place in high office. The upset…
Ranked Choice Voting: If Maine can do it, why can’t Massachusetts?
Interest in election reform seems to have spiked recently around here in the wake of two significant developments, Maine’s first election cycle with ranked choice voting and the enactment of automatic voter registration in Massachusetts. The ability of our northern neighbors to enact ranked choice voting, (a more ambitious electoral reform than automatic voter registration…
Jeff Jacoby’s Latest: Embarrassingly Wrong and Dangerously Irresponsible
Jeff Jacoby’s latest column, published at the right wing website Townhall as well as in the Boston Globe, is a bitter conservative twofer. In a column about the widely reported incident at Smith College wherein a student of color was mistaken for a suspicious and/or unauthorized visitor and subjected to police questioning, Jacoby managed to…
A Tale of Two Challengers
Much has been made of the similarities between the two women running in Democratic primaries this year against the Bay State’s two longest-serving U.S. House members, but the differences between the challengers are actually more significant. Both are benefiting from the surge of progressivism in the Democratic Party nationally as well as the anti-establishment fervor…
Springfield Republican Editors Choose Pandering over Persuasion
The editors of the Springfield Republican newspaper believe that Bay Staters should be embarrassed by the fact that the state legislature is the only one in the country that did not pass an annual budget by June 30th, the last day of the fiscal year. So you might wonder, why should this be embarrassing? What…