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Patrick comes out for school choice!
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Education, Blog: School Choice, Jim Stergios, News, Related Education Blogs /byYour Excellency, We at Pioneer were feeling as double-crossed as perhaps Bobby Haynes. We were feeling it on school choice, knowing that you benefited from the school choice opportunity provided by the “A Better Chance” foundation to attend Milton Academy. Bobby felt it on being double-crossed by the Doubleday deal, when you double-booked on the day of the casino vote. He stayed on the Hill and earned himself the Speaker’s ire. As someone who respects the free-market, I hope you got a good deal. Now, I know that it is difficult to come right out and say you are for school choice, so I think the sophisticated way you did it is just great. According to today’s Globe, “an unspecified portion of […]
One Last Word on the Film Tax Incentives
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, Housing, News /byYesterday’s Globe had an article critical of the film tax credit offered by the Commonwealth. I will say that it has significantly improved the celebrity level of the gossip columns, minimizing the Globe’s Names & Faces section’s embarassing fascination with C-list celebrities eating chinese food at the Kowloon. Wow! John Waite? Pro wrestlers? Wasn’t exactly Page 6 material. However, the Department of Revenue’s report makes one fact clear — these are temporary jobs: …the 20 film productions for which tax credits were claimed in calendar year 2006 employed approximately 2,267 individuals, with an average employment duration of 3.2 months, with the employment duration ranging from one week to 12 months. Weighted for the number employed and the duration of employment […]
What’s Going on at Higher Education
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News, Related Education Blogs /byThe Commonwealth released a mundane piece of annual debt disclosure a few days ago. One interesting section, on page 11, is the number of budgeted workers in the state’s workforce, which has grown by almost 6,000 employees (from a base of 62,000) since June 2004. Leading the charge? The Department of Higher Education, which has added almost 2,700 employees during that span, an increase of 22.5%. Yet, their enrollment levels have only increased by 6% at best during the span. What gives?
Benefit blowout
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Healthcare, News /byYou are constantly berated for not saving money, folks. You overspend. You should put the money in bank accounts and let the government do all the borrowing to pay for the promises it makes to you. From John Goodman (and health blog HERE) is a neat packaging of Social Security and Medicare liabilities we are racking up… As John suggested in his email, read and weep. On Good Friday (when most people were off, including most reporters) the Administration announced that the following Tuesday during Spring Break (when Congress was in recess and everyone’s attention was focused elsewhere) the Social Security/Medicare Trustees annual report would be released. Apparently someone isn’t anxious for you to pay close attention to this year’s […]
Lottery Questions
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byInterested in how your town fares under the Lottery — take a look here: Lottery Workbook This spreadsheet tells you how much your town gets from the lottery relative to the sales of lottery tickets in the community. It also calculates how much people win from those tickets and adds it into the amount of aid to give another angle to the notion of return on investment. Feel free to comment on tweaks, mistakes, or observations from the data.
Hope is not a strategy
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, News /byThe Great Beacon Hill Foodfight has now reached the Big Apple’s fishwrap paper of record. Big news in the New York Times is that Governor Patrick has lost steam, and that this may portend what an Obama presidency would be like. Discussing his loss on resort casinos, the Governor noted in an interview: “I don’t accept that we can’t get anything done because we lose one issue. Come on. People around here act like the only thing that happened last year was picking these drapes and buying a car. There’s a whole lot more.” Mr. Patrick noted the incresae in state spending on education (ho-hum), housing (did I miss something?) and 300,000 residents with health insurance under the health care […]
Teacher shortages
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /byI love the Education Intelligence Agency. Click HERE to enter the dimly lit cavernous corridors of the Agency and read the full version of what follows. The topic is teacher shortages, and it is a great concern; but Mike Antonucci (the Education Spymaster) scopes out a brief history of the teacher labor market to ensure that we are thinking about the current shortage without hysteria: One would think that with all the technological and statistical tools at their disposal, school districts and state agencies would be able to make reasonably accurate predictions of enrollment and, therefore, hiring needs. However, in state after state we are seeing layoffs and marked competition for the job openings that do exist. In Florida, for […]
Floor falls out in California housing
/0 Comments/in Blog, Economic Opportunity, Housing, News /byOn the LA Times blog today there is a distressing bit of news about the distressed California housing market. Home prices in the state, the blog notes, fell 26 percent (three times the national average) between February 07 and February 08! –Statewide, median sales prices fell by a stunning 26% in February, with home prices dropping at a rate of nearly $3,000 a week, the California Association of Realtors reports. Further, the CAR says the Fed’s interest rate-cutting campaign “will have little near-term direct effect on the housing market.” –In the San Fernando Valley, losing a home to foreclosure is now almost as common for families as buying a home. The L.A. Daily News: “During January and February, there were […]
Boston Cops and the Civil Service Commission
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byMichelle McPhee, late of the Herald and currently on WTKK, has a gripping piece on the efforts to root out corruption in the Boston Police Department. McPhee was on the crime beat before and her dramatic writing gives an important story even more life. Halfway through the piece, McPhee fingers one of the key suspects: BPD leaders say one of the biggest hurdles to cleaning up the force is the state’s Civil Service Commission, an independent body established in 1884 to prevent politicians from interfering in the hiring practices of public agencies, or managers from canning people unfairly…Any police officer—or civil servant—who has been disciplined or fired can appeal to the commission and have a full hearing. If it decides […]
Reaching
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /bySlate’s Tim Noah attempts to draw a parallel between Obama’s membership in Reverend Wright’s church and Hillary Clinton’s interview with reporters and editors at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, owned by Richard Mellon Scaife. The clear implication is that Clinton should be held accountable for some statements of the paper’s owner, as recounted by Noah. He’s reaching. Her appearance at the 3rd most widely circulated newspaper in a hotly contested primary state should hardly be newsworthy. Particularly if Noah’s chosen candidate has (gasp!) spoken with reporters at the very same paper.
School choice programs increase 84 percent in 5 years
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Education, Blog: School Choice, Jim Stergios, News, Related Education Blogs /byNo, not here, silly. In the rest of the United States! Do I have to explain everything to you?! Passing on bits of the press release from the Alliance for School Choice: Student enrollment in private school choice programs, which include school voucher programs and scholarship tax credit programs, has increased by 84 percent over five years, according to the School Choice Yearbook 2007… According to the book, there are 16 private school choice programs in nine states and the District of Columbia serving 150,000 children. Last year, legislators in 40 states introduced legislation to advance private school choice programs. The five states with the largest school choice programs are Florida (39,000 students), Pennsylvania (38,000 students), Arizona (28,000 students), Wisconsin […]
Seeking better bylaws: Zoning for new housing and historic preservation.
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byChris Skelly at the Massachusetts Historical Commission asked me for examples of projects permitted under an accessory apartment bylaw, adaptive re-use bylaw, downtown revitalization zoning, flexible dimensions bylaw or up-zoning where “new housing was produced while at the same time a historic property was rehabilitated”. He wants to include case studies of bylaws that work in a guidebook to “Preservation through Bylaws and Ordinances”. Pioneer’s policy recommendations have focused more on state level reform of land use laws. We are also happy to promote local reform to zoning that allows for growth and works for the environment. If you have examples of projects that involved housing development and historic preservation, please list them here, and I will forward the ideas […]
Open Markets and Open Skies
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government /byThe thicket of regulations which used to govern air travel between the US and Europe, which severely limited which airlines could fly to and from various destinations, will be gone on March 30. Here’s hoping the innovators in low cost travel in Europe (Ryanair, Wizzair, et al; take a look at their sites and the unbelievable prices) will make transatlantic travel more affordable. Of course, as an investor, you might be interested in Warren Buffett’s take on the industry: “if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.”
I went to a fight
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /by…and a birthday party broke out. Sheesh, two police reports from kids’ birthday parties — one at a Chuck E. Cheese and the other from the Good Time Emporium in Somerville. At least the second one was on Easter.
WaPo on Michelle Rhee and quality teachers
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Education, Blog: School Choice, Jim Stergios, News, Related Education Blogs /byThe keynote for this year’s Better Government Competition, which is focused solely on improving our educational system, is Michelle Rhee. In addition to a recent shakeup in the bureaucracy, she has been closing some schools. All very focused on improvement. Probably more important, as the WaPo notes, are hiring and retention rules for teachers. As noted in the Friday WaPo: Rules that put the interests of teachers ahead of the educational needs of children must be changed if Ms. Rhee is to succeed in transforming the system. The contract with the Washington Teachers’ Union, which represents some 4,400 employees, expired last fall. Neither side would discuss what’s on the table or comment on the progress of the talks. It’s apparent, […]