Forget silly season or the dog days of August. With just over a month before our primary election and a few months before the general election, campaigns and candidates are in the midst of Endorsement Season. Every election year in Massachusetts, I re-up my piece on political endorsements in the Commonwealth. Note that the categories…
With all the talk about late budgets, overtime scandals, and, of course, contested primaries, the Massachusetts environmental bond bill (H.4613/S.249) has garnered little attention. At first glance, the bond bill, technically entitled An Act Promoting Climate Change Adaptation, Environmental and Natural Resource Protection, and Investment in Recreational Assets and Opportunity, looks rather innocuous. The most…
President Trump loves tariffs. “They are the greatest!” he tweeted recently. The sentiment would be familiar to most Latin American leaders from the middle of the 20th century. At the time, Latin America was engaged in a massive attempt to develop local industries, so following the ideas of the Argentinian economist Raúl Prebisch, the region…
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…
There hasn’t been a better time in memory to be an oligarch. In America, it’s Springtime for Oligarchs.
This week, Commonwealth Magazine ran a story with the headline: “South Coast Rail Optimism Grows.” The article details the recent approval of $28 million to complete the design for the $1 billion first phase of the SouthCoast Rail project that will bring commuter rail from South Station to New Bedford and Fall River via Middleborough. …
You know what’s perfect in the summer? Cape Cod. For all the obvious reasons: sun and sand, gin and tonics on a warm evening, seafood, shark sightings, fireworks, fishing, and sailing. But for this political scientist, a summer on the Cape brings another joy: the prospect of competitive elections this fall.
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…
Were it a normal political summer in the Bay State, we would currently be treated to awkward photos of politicos eating ice cream at their favorite in-district shoppe. These are not normal times. Rather, much of the MA political eye has been on Washington and the Trump Administration’s policy of stripping undocumented children from their…
For those interested in climate change adaptation policy, 2018 will no doubt be remembered as a banner year for Massachusetts. Spurred by the historic flooding caused by this winter’s bomb cyclone, policymakers redoubled their efforts to promote climate resiliency. In June, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a sweeping $2.2 billion climate adaptation bond bill,…