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Urban education on the move… elsewhere
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /byPassed on by Whitney Tilson of Democrats for Education Reform: Some great news from Washington DC — and by a 10-3 vote! (courtesy of the Center for Education Reform): The Council of the District of Columbia approved the Public Education Personnel Reform Act late this afternoon, 10-3, after several hours of deliberations. The act would give D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee the authority to turn around the district, including cutting ineffective or unproductive personnel in central administration. A majority of the Council embraced this historical landmark reform, recognizing the need for drastic change within the D.C. Public School System. This act shall take effect after final approval by Mayor Adrian Fenty and a 30-day period of Congressional review. In DC they […]
Councilor Feeney, invite some firefighters to your forum.
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, News /byThe Globe’s Juxtaposition Desk is really on the ball this morning. Right below an investigative piece on alleged abuses of the firefighters’ pension system, there’s a bit about Councilor Maureen Feeney’s wish for a “New England-style town meeting” in Boston. Great idea. Once the Convention Center is packed with ordinary Bostonians – all, presumably, asking for better services or lower taxes – please get some representative of the firefighters or the city up on the dais. And please, someone wave a Pioneer White Paper on pension abuse and mismanagement at that public servant. Ask if the city can distinguish citizens’ interests from those of its employees. I promise that Research Director Steve Poftak will autograph that White Paper, if not […]
The Knock-on Effect of the Subprime Mess
/2 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government, Economic Opportunity /byI attended the Finance Advisory Board meeting last week and one of the new appointees to the Board, Robert McConnaughey, (who replaced the previous incompetent), raised an interesting and insightful point — how will downgrades to bond insurers impact public sector debt? To unpack his question a bit — much public sector (i.e. municipalities, authorities, states, etc.) debt is enhanced with bond insurance, which provides a higher bond rating and reduces borrowing costs. If these bond insurers themselves get downgraded (largely as a result of exposure to bad subprime debt that they insured), it flows through the market and affects the bonds that they insured. Mr. McConnaughey’s question is already looking even more timely. S&P just downgraded a major bond […]
Stack em high
/0 Comments/in Blog, Economic Opportunity, Housing, Related Education Blogs /byWhat level of concentration of poverty is the right amount? Is it right for the state to create destination cities for the poor? As it stands, the state will, whenever possible, place the poor it is “helping” in areas of cities where housing values are extremely low in order to maximize their own ability to give people shelter. Seems to be right from the immediate bean-counting standpoint, but if you think about it, it can create a death spiral for cities, which are already deep in the trough fiscally. Let’s start with the numbers. In Massachusetts, the following Middle Cities have easily met their “state target for affordable housing”: Holyoke – 21% Springfield – 17% Lawrence – 15% Worcester – […]
There are no other issues. This is the issue.
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /by Liam DayAt a critical moment in The Verdict perhaps the best Boston movie ever made (considerably better, anyway, than the wildly overrated The Departed), Paul Newman’s character, a Boston defense attorney, is advised by his mentor (played by the incomparable Jack Warden, who, as you movie buffs out there may know, played the grandfather in one of the all time great cheesy movies, Problem Child) that there will be other cases. In response, Newman repeats over and over, more to himself than to Jack Warden, that “There are no other cases. This is the case. There are no other cases. This is the case.” I was reminded of this scene this morning reading Ed Moscovitch’s op-ed in the Boston Herald, Soaring […]
46 years ago and still true
/0 Comments/in Blog, Economic Opportunity, Housing /byJane Jacobs was the maven of public input, but she is also in many respects a common sense proponent of organic, private market growth in our cities. Try this on for size, from The Death and life of Great American Cities, published in 1961 when Robert Moses still held the marionette of New York in his hands: There is a wistful myth that if only we had enough money to spend — the figure is usually put at a hundred billion dollars — we could wipe out all our slums in ten years, reverse the decay in the great, dull, gray belts that were yesterday’s and day-before yester-day’s suburbs, anchor the wandering middle class and its wandering tax money, and […]
Who said this?
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government, Economic Opportunity, News /byCould, for instance, more services be privatized? Could state and local workers’ benefits be more closely aligned with those in the private sector? Give up? The lead editorial in today’s Boston Globe!!! Be still my beatin’ heart.
Ed Muskie called
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /by…and he’s wondering why he loses the New Hampshire primary while it appears that Mitt Romney is trying to win Iowa and New Hampshire with the same tactic. A tip of the pen to Adam Reilly of the Phoenix for pointing this out, and recalling a previous teary moment from the candidate.
Welcome back, Princess Leia
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byFor the small (but highly vocal) group of readers of this blog interested in Ukrainian affairs, we salute Yulia Tymoshenko’s return to the premiership of the country. We look forward to a stable government free of corruption and backstabbing!! Did you not get the headline reference? The PM’s signature is her braided hair, first popularized by Carrie Fisher.
The real war on Christmas
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government /byNo, not the silly kerfluffle whipped up by Bill O’Reilly and Company. Its the slow decline of the incandescent Christmas light, gone from our State Capitol and the birthplace of the American Revolution. Congress has now gotten into the act. Its new energy bill will make incandescents “extinct by the middle of the next decade”, per the Boston Globe. I know, I know, LEDs and florescents are much more efficient, but c’mon, aren’t real incandescent Christmas lights nicer? 😉
Back to work on zoning reform
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byBreaking news: The fight to repeal 40B via the 2008 ballot is already over. The Secretary of State’s Office reported this morning that it certified 33,849 signatures for the initiative, short of the required 66,593 to get it on the ballot. According to CHAPA’s 2006 count, 40B is responsible for the creation of approximately 43,000 housing units in 736 developments statewide since its inception in 1969. In an ideal world, there would be no need for 40B. Better for the housing to be built in accordance with local and regional plans and zoning – if only that zoning allowed for all kinds of housing to be built. But our communities erect paper walls of regulations to keep out apartment buildings, […]
Radiohead and Pioneer for infrastructure improvements
/1 Comment/in Better Government, Blog, News /byIn Radiohead’s latest, In Rainbows (buy it here!), there is a cut called House of Cards about love gone awry… (Already, stop with the carping! I know it’s a been-there, done-that kind of theme. After all, what else does love do?) But Pioneer demonstrates its impact across the globe when Thom Yorke quotes in House of Cards that “infrastructure will collapse.” And to think that the band wrote the song before the Minneapolis tragedy. Prescient, though I have a sneaky feeling that the line was lifted directly from Pioneer’s A Legacy of Neglect, which was equally prescient. We are looking forward to the new release from Radiohead, perhaps a follow-up to Kid A that will support school choice and some […]
Borne back ceaselessly into the past
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government, News, Related Education Blogs /byFiscal management can mean big front-page items — raising taxes, cutting costs, addressing deficits, etc. But fiscal discipline is all about the small things — cutting off mission creep and keeping a focus on core responsibilities. And so we come to the our state university system, which is universally acknowledged to have huge infrastructure issues, much of which is due to underfunding, but some of it is also due to deferred maintenance. Unfortunately, the mission creep, which was cut off several years ago (by some other administration, if memory serves correctly) , is back with a vengeance. This morning’s Globe brings news of another plan by UMASS-Boston to build dorms on its campus, fundamentally reorienting its mission and inevitably coming […]
Shame on you
/5 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byI’m disappointed in Joe Kennedy (and very irritated with the Globe’s coverage) for accepting free oil from the Venezuelan oil company, and Hugo Chavez indirectly. The Globe softpedals Chavez’s terrible human rights record (see Human Rights Watch, US State Department, Amnesty International, and International Crisis Group), saying: Chávez has become infamous for frequent speeches denouncing the United States and President Bush. This description makes him sound like a wacky uncle, not the despot that he is.
Democrats for Choice
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Education, Blog: School Choice, News, Related Education Blogs /byChoice. For most Democrats it rings as a clarion call… except when it comes to education. When school choice is mentioned, most D’s line up with the usual suspects, as was the case in Arizona this summer, when a Superior Court judge ruled in favor of Arizona’s voucher program for foster children and children with special needs. The usual suspects in this case were the Arizona Education Association, People for the American Way (ugh), and the ACLU Foundation of AZ. In AZ, children placed in foster care can receive a scholarship of $5,000 to cover tuition and fees for a school of their choice. Kids who have received an Individualized Education Program by the state can receive an amount equivalent […]