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Relearning the Lesson

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Its been painful to watch the situation with Transportation Secretary Mullan play out over the past two weeks. As an observer of transportation in this state, I have had the opportunity to interact with him and he’s been gracious enough to appear at one of our events. I’ve found him to be smart, knowledgeable, and dedicated. Further, given two false starts at the position and the importance of managing major structural reforms, the administration could ill-afford another transition at the Secretary level. So its been painful to watch as we review the same painful lesson once again: its not the ‘crime’, its the coverup. The inability to get a story straight on a hot button issue related to the Big […]

Obamacare superstar sales team goes missing

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Here’s yet more evidence that, in the year since Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid presided over the ramming of Obamacare through Congress, the dust has yet to settle – the Democratic superstars who were supposed to be trumpeting its virtues are in hiding. Jennifer Haberkorn has a piece on Politico noting that the Health Information Campaign, launched with great fanfare last June, is all but defunct. Wal-Mart Watch founder Andrew Grossman unveiled the Health Information Campaign with great fanfare last June. Tom Daschle and Ted Kennedy’s widow, Vicki, were expected to lead the effort. They’d have help from former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn. They’d have an office in Washington with 10 or 15 operatives backing the Affordable Care Act […]

No answers from the Know Nothings

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Boston and Massachusetts as a whole have made some strides toward racial harmony in the past few decades. But we still face what some politicians like to refer to as the “civil rights issue of the 21st century”: education. Fact is from the time of Brown v. the Board of Education, education has always been the civil rights issue. Our history with tolerance has, as we know too well, high points and some really low points. At the same time that we nested some of the early abolitionists, we became a stronghold of vituperative anti-Catholicism. The picture above shows one of the brutal emanations of that intolerance: the Plug Uglies. The Plug Uglies’name was fitting, indeed; commissioned by the Know […]

What’s a retiring teacher’s pension worth?

/5 Comments/in , /by Jim Stergios

TRAIN CRASH – Watch more Funny Videos Well, that’s an easy one to answer. It depends on how much a retiring teacher earns at the end of his or her career. So let’s start there. According to the state’s department of education, in 2009 the average teacher in the Commonwealth earned $67,577 in 2009. That’s the last year for which we have complete data. If you apply a reasonable algorithm, based on the lowest assumption for salary increases (just over 4.5% annually) made by the pension system itself, you get an average teacher salary in 2011 of about $74,000. Retiring teachers, of course, reach salaries that are far beyond the average salaries. You put 30, even 35 years into a […]

The New Monopoly and the Ballot Initiative

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Here is testimony I submitted today to the Election Laws Committee on the attempt by big public labor to undermine the ballot initiative process. James Stergios, Pioneer Institute Testimony ~ Wednesday, March 23, 2011 ~ 10:30 AM ~ Room B-1 HEARING BEFORE ELECTION LAWS COMMITTEE Senate Chair Barry R. Finegold, Senate Vice Chair Sal N. DiDomenico, Senator Kenneth J. Donnelly, Senator James T. Welch, Senator Thomas P. Kennedy, Senator Michael R. Knapik, House Chair Michael J. Moran, House Vice Chair Sean Garballey, Representative Cory Atkins, Representative Stephen Stat Smith, Representative Brian M. Ashe, Representative Dennis A. Rosa, Representative Denise Andrews, Representative Jerald A. Parisella, Representative Daniel K. Webster, Representative Marc T. Lombardo Thank you for the opportunity to testify here […]