This week Pioneer Institute introduced a two tier structure of democracy for Massachusetts that we’ll call the Beamer vs. Beater Theory of Democracy. If you’re driving a Beamer you get all the voting rights of full citizenship. If you’re driving a Beater, you get some voting rights but don’t get to vote for school committee…
GreenWorks Shows Climate Politics is Local
On Friday Massachusetts House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo unveiled a plan that, if adopted, will allocate more than $1 billion to help municipalities fund renewable energy, energy efficiency, and climate resilience projects. The aptly named GreenWorks program will invite cities and towns to apply for competitive grants administered by the state’s Executive Office of Energy…
Dinner with Cupid: Matching the Boston Globe with Teachers the Editors Can Romance
The Boston Globe yearns for a more submissive teachers union. Its Sunday editorial Time for a Reset on Education Funding included a call for the Massachusetts Teachers Association to acquiesce and “If not, perhaps a group of teachers who don’t share MTA’s combative mentality could contribute some constructive ideas.” Who could the Globe have in…
Misinfo-tainment: The Sarno “Snub” that Wasn’t
I have known Mayor Sarno for more than 30 years. I voted for him when he ran for City Council and were I a Springfield resident at the time I would have voted for him for Mayor. I don’t always agree with him, but I do think he is a good politician and a good…
Adaptation Finds its Way into the Green New Deal. Now What?
Less than 48-hours after President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) released non-binding resolutions in the House and Senate calling for “zero-net greenhouse-gas emissions” in the United States by 2030. The resolutions represent the latest iteration of the Green New Deal, an ambitious policy framework…
A Must Read Piece on MassFiscal from Andy Metzger at CommonwealthMagazine
Compliments to Andy Metzger of CommonwealthMagazine on Fact Checking New Poll on Voter Tax Attitudes, his story today on Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance’s “poll.” The story includes information that a professional political analyst would see and serves the lay reader very well. Let’s get into the good stuff. A group that generally sees eye-to-eye with Republican…
Proposing a New Pollster for Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance: Me!
The Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance is out with a new poll and as usual it’s gazing up helplessly at worthless but I have a great idea – Mass Fiscal should hire me as its pollster! I’m definitely qualified. At the end of every semester at UMass Boston the students get a chance to fill out forms…
Picking Winners and Losers in Boston’s “Public” Schools: the Un-Virtuous Cycle
This week’s two Boston Globe stories on “public” schools in Boston prompted yesterday’s post Boston: Two Different “Public” School Systems? An article by Tom Edsall on The “Rotten Equilibrium” of the Republican Party illuminates some further aspects of how the city’s Oligarchs pick winners and losers in the schools. A brief summary of the post…
Boston: Two Different “Public” School Systems?
Two recent Boston Globe stories raise serious questions about how public schools in the city of Boston are funded – and by “public” I mean the traditional public school system versus charter “public” schools. The premise is that we have one public school system but do we really? The first story, by James Vaznis, was…
Why the Longmeadow Superintendent’s Supporters should OPPOSE the Recall Petition at Tonight’s STM
While I have focused in my previous analysis on the systemic downsides of creating recall elections in Longmeadow, including the unpredictable downsides of making long term changes for short term political advantage, the case against the recall can also be made in purely political strategic terms that should be compelling to the present supporters of…