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The Thin Blue Line Freezes Out Menino
/2 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byUPDATE — As the Herald reports today (and two commenters from the BPPA note below), the inclusion of the EMS Division is a mistake on the part of Yoon campaign. The EMS Division of the BPPA has not endorsed any mayoral candidate or agreed to serve on any host committee. If I understand correctly, an overzealous Yoon campaign took the EMS Division’s campaign donation to Yoon in his role as a city councillor to be an endorsement of his mayoral candidacy. In addition, it sounds like the campaign was initially fuzzy on the nature of the event. I invite the commenters below to add additional information if it is relevant. ORIGINAL POST: Mayor Menino has asked all city unions to […]
Nationalization is Coming
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byIts clear that the occasional side conversations are entering the mainstream. Heck, even Lindsay Graham, John McCain, and Alan Greenspan seem to be on-board. There are four assumptions you need to buy into to think this is the ‘least bad’ option: 1) Speed trumps ideology — Part of the nationalization argument says that in order for recovery to begin, we need to flush out the bad loans as soon as possible. The Japanese experience is the lesson here — you can let zombie banks hang around and they will, for a long time, but they won’t provide the capital the economy needs to grow again. 2) Counterparty Risk is primary — This crisis was initially termed a ‘liquidity crisis’, so […]
Is global warming due to sulfur and not carbon
/7 Comments/in Blog, News /byA great post by DA Mittell on his new blog (welcome to the blogosphere, Mr. Mittell!), where he delves into the work by Dr. Peter Langdon Ward on volcanic activity, sulfur and global warming. I quote at length, because there is no snipping where Mittell is concerned: A year ago, I had the privilege as a mere editorialist of reading, along with scientists of several disciplines, the draft of a paper on the causes of global warming written by Massachusetts native Dr. Peter Langdon Ward. Dr. Ward studied earthquakes, plate tectonics and volcanoes for 27 years at the U.S Geological Survey. Viewing climate change over the whole history of the Earth, Dr. Ward noticed that warming patterns have appeared consistently […]
Lincoln 200 and the US History MCAS requirement
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byAnne Neal of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has a beautiful letter she sent out today. It begins: Anniversaries and birthdays—humble and not so humble—give all of us occasion to celebrate and to give thanks. Today, we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, who so eloquently understood that America’s founding documents embody not just abstract propositions but living, breathing principles that unite us as a people. In his speech at Peoria on October 16, 1854, Lincoln called for Americans, to “re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it.” It was time, he said, that “all Americans—…all lovers of liberty everywhere—join in the […]
Breaking News in Boston is Yesterday's News in Worcester
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byThe Globe has been cranking out articles touting the virtues of the new Virgin America service from Logan, particularly the spiffy upscale planes (including a servicey graphic). I can assure you that all the hype about the planes is true, because I flew on one of them last year, out of Worcester Airport. Turns out that the Virgin America planes have been flying in and out of that airport for several months, chartered by Direct Air.
Somehow, Some Ideas Just Never Die
/2 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, News /by Liam DayAn editorial this morning in the Herald revealed that Congressman Lynch is pushing for funding to develop a plan to dig a rail link between North and South Stations in the forthcoming federal stimulus bill. Yet another billion(s)-dollar tunnel beneath the City of Boston that will drown out any discussion of transportation reform and Hoover up the funding required to achieve it, dish out millions in mitigation to affected communities and utilities, and serve exactly what demand? Do we really want to go through all of this again?
Boston School Choice Surprise
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byI’ve written previously on the Boston school lottery and last week was an eventful one. In 2004, a blue ribbon panel looked at the Boston School Assignment system, floated a few proposals (like six zones), but ultimately decided not to make wholesale changes. (The chair of that panel, incidentally, called for a complete end to busing, and thus the assignment zones by my reading, a few weeks ago in the Globe. In last year’s State of the City address, Mayor Menino called on the school department to reexamine the zone assignment systems for savings. And then, with no lead up or hearings, the School Department released its FY10 budget cutting plan with a five zone school assignment proposal. It’s interesting […]
Government apples and private apples
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byI’ve always thought state policy is more interesting than federal policy. It takes so much to move big things in Washington. It is so much easier to get a waiver, to test and correct at the state level. And then all those 000000s make me think there is less to what they are doing in DC. And in the zeroes, you can include all the lobbyists. But let me wander a bit into the thicket of the “stimulus package,” which we once knew as the “bailout” before Obama became president. Question: We hear everyone bemoan the lack of savings by Americans. We need to save more, they say, because we are living beyond our ability to sustain the spending rate […]
Ban the Lobbyists and…
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /bySomeone finally read the outside sections of the Governor’s budget and found his attempt to ban public entities from hiring lobbyists. This is a good idea and the Governor deserves credit; seems foolish and a bit circular to have public entities spend taxpayer funds to pay someone to go up to Beacon Hill to ask for… more taxpayer funds. So, we’ll tip our hat to the Governor and raise him one — how about banning these same entities from making donations to charitable organizations? Shamie Center Board Member Tom Keane raised the issue several years ago and its still relevant.
Il Sorpasso
/1 Comment/in Blog, News /byA great Italian movie of the early sixties directed by Dino Risi, usually translated as “The Easy Life.” The actual meaning is “the passing maneuver” — and that is the moment we are about to witness. Our friends at the Education Intelligence Agency, white hats and trench coats at the ready, note that we are very close to the moment when public sector union membership jets past the number of union employees in the private sector. A dangerous maneuver indeed. Last year was one of the best in ages for organized labor, as 428,000 members were added to union rolls. But before you crack open your choice of champagne or cyanide, it’s worth examining what propelled the boost. The unionization […]
In Defense of Michael Flaherty's Kitchen
/1 Comment/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byCity Councillor Michael Flaherty announced his candidacy for mayor last weekend on youtube. One peculiar part of the video is the (unintentional) prominence of the KitchenAid standmixer on the counter behind him. I know I was not the only one fixated on this. Howie Carr jumped on this detail to accuse Flaherty of being uppity and looking to move to the ritzy South Shore at the first opportunity: I couldn’t take my eyes off that high-end Yuppie KitchenAid mixer on the granite counter behind him – close to $500, would be my guess. Then you realize: a year from now, that pricey mixer is going to be on an even fancier granite counter – in Duxbury. I must refute this […]
The Teachers Union Meets the Market
/2 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byThere’s an interesting experiment going on in Boston right now — the Boston Teachers’ Union is starting a pilot school next year and is working, hard, to attract students. (Let’s not talk about the cynical process that lead to the expansion of pilots in Boston, ok?) They are facing the challenges of a start-up school. With just a building and two lead teachers (its version of a principal, I believe) in place, how do you get parents interested and committed? They are taking an interesting approach, attempting to start next year with K1, K2, Grade 1, Grade 2, and two Grade 6 classes. Why two Grade 6 classes? My hunch is that the BTU knows that there is big overhang […]
16 Years Later, Merger Savings Realized!
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byAs we contemplate a major shake-up of our transportation system in order to capture efficiencies, it’s worth pondering some cautionary tales from state government. Today’s Herald brings news that the State Police are considering the consolidation of barracks, particularly in the Boston area (a region with barracks in Government Center, Boston, Brighton, and South Boston, as well as Milton and Framingham a bit further out.). This duplication is due in part to the merger of the MDC police with the State Police in 1992. The state police union is implacably opposed (I’m not shocked), but I’d note that many of these barracks are in absolutely shameful physical condition. But the larger lesson is: realizing even obvious efficiencies in state government […]
The Governor's choice on charter schools
/1 Comment/in Blog, News /byThe Governor’s proposal on charter schools does two things: It increases the cap on commonwealth charter schools for a single year in districts falling in the state’s lowest performing districts, and it changes the funding formula in a way that puts equitable funding for charters at risk. The proposal ostensibly creates 4500 new charter seats, but stipulates a range of sub-groups that must make up 80 percent of the charter student body, including low-income, limited English proficient or special education students, or students determined to be at risk of dropping out. In addition, LEP and SPED enrollments in each new charter must exceed the sending district’s average by 5%. The one-year limit on the time to create any new charter […]
Additional Assistance is Gone?
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byThe Governor’s Budget was released today (well, some of it anyway, it’s four hours after the formal release and none of the companion bills are available yet). One really surprising finding was the elimination of Additional Assistance, a roughly $380 million piece of local aid. To see who gets what currently from this line item, look here. In principle, this is a good idea. Additional Assistance stands out among a variety of local aid programs as having almost no rationale for the distribution of aid (unlike lottery and chapter 70 education aid). But as a practical matter, it’s a pretty big pill for certain municipalities, like Boston ($164 million of a $2.1 billion budget), to swallow, particularly in a single […]