State Auditor Diana DiZoglio, wants to make herself – and all of her successors – into taxpayer-financed political activists with the authority to ignore the state constitution’s most fundamental principles and to replace the will of the voters and their elected representatives at the state house with her own. Question 1 WILL NOT ratify or…
Category: The Politics of Massachusetts Exceptionalism: Perception Meets Reality
Massachusetts Exceptionalism is getting its due at CommonWealth Beacon
The newly rebranded CommonWealth Beacon has put the concept of Massachusetts exceptionalism front and center lately with several thoughtful pieces about the quality of life in the Bay State based on the results of a brand new CWB/MassInc poll of Massachusetts residents. Michael Jonas’s Putting Massachusetts Exceptionalism to the Test asks whether Bay Staters can…
Attorney General Campbell got the legislative audit question exactly right.
Click HERE for the CommonWealth Beacon story about Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s rejection of Auditor DiZoglio’s claim that her office has the legal authority to audit the legislature, with or without the legislature’s consent. Campbell’s analysis is entirely consistent with my earlier conclusion that DiZoglio’s push for legislative audit authority is a “well-intentioned bad idea.”…
GOP Effort to Stop Permanent Mail-In Voting Highlights Unique Aspects of Mass Politics
The MassGOP lawsuit to stop permanent mail-in voting is more interesting than you might think. The state’s Republican Party Chairman, Jim Lyons, has taken a very weak outfit and turned it into an exceptionally incompetent one that is now engaged full-time in garden variety “lib trolling,” an activity that hasn’t been as useful for party…
Legislative Opacity Makes Voice Votes a Safe Bet on Beacon Hill
The state senate recently passed a bill legalizing sports betting in the Commonwealth. It passed the chamber by a voice vote, which means that senators’ individual preferences on the bill’s passage were not formally recorded. The Boston Globe editors were shocked…shocked to see voice votes on gambling in the state senate. “A lawmaker’s first duty…
My Pre-Review of Guv Baker’s Book about “Getting Beyond Politics” to Achieve “Results”
Charlie Baker has written a book. The purpose of the book (according to the publisher’s description) is to demonstrate “that government can work,” a task that is “vital to ensuring the future of our democracy” and apparently requires “getting beyond politics.” Sadly, Baker’s publisher, Harvard Business Review Press, didn’t see fit to send review copies…
MA Lieutenant Governors: Reputation v. Reality
It seems that Matt Stout’s recent Globe article about the 2022 Lieutenant Governor’s race has revived some perennial critiques the Office of the Lieutenant Governor. For example, Globe columnist Adrian Walker and Northeastern Journalism prof Dan Kennedy, two keen analysts of Massachusetts politics, were both moved by Stout’s piece to announce their low opinions of…
Possible Criminality in Ballot Question Signature Gathering? I Am Shocked, Shocked.
Jon Chesto of the Boston Globe just posted a remarkable piece on the ballot question process in Massachusetts, Norfolk DA probing signature fraud on business-backed Uber/Lyft referendum. It helps illustrate how the ballot measure process, trumpeted as a means for the citizens to pass policy over the objections of the legislature, has become a plaything…