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Jeffrey Meyers on Edgar Allan Poe, Gothic Horror, & HalloweenOctober 30, 2024 - 11:44 am
Mountain State Modifications: Tiffany Uses ESA Flexibility to Pivot Quickly For Her Son’s EducationOctober 24, 2024 - 12:11 pm
Study Published by Pioneer Institute Shows Massachusetts Learning Loss Among Nation’s WorstOctober 24, 2024 - 10:31 am
U-TX at SA’s Catherine Clinton on Harriet Tubman & the Underground RailroadOctober 23, 2024 - 11:30 am
Award-Winner Tom Segev on Israel’s Founding Father, David Ben-GurionOctober 16, 2024 - 11:59 am
Pioneer Institute Study Finds MCAS, Education Reform Have Significantly Improved Academic AttainmentOctober 16, 2024 - 11:46 am
McAnneny October Monthly Musings – Ballot InitiativesOctober 11, 2024 - 2:17 pm
Homeschooling with Hope: Katie Switzer’s ESA ExperienceOctober 10, 2024 - 11:24 am
Lynch Foundation’s Katie Everett on School Finance Model for Catholic Schools & School ChoiceOctober 9, 2024 - 11:30 am
Pioneer Institute Study Finds Wide Range of Approaches to Compliance with MBTA Communities LawOctober 6, 2024 - 9:12 pm
Public pension tension is warranted
/1 Comment/in Better Government, Blog /byInteresting juxtaposition in the Globe recently on public pensions. First came columnist Renee Loth, carrying water for the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, formerly the Tax Equity Alliance of Massachusetts. The rumor, when they changed their name, was that the group did it because the nickname Barbara Anderson’s group Citizens for Limited Taxation had given them – “Tax Everything And More” – had gained some serious traction. Loth rehashed the favored talking point of the past couple of years from public employee unions. “Independent” studies by groups like MBPC find that public employees actually make less than those in the private sector, when compared with those with similar education. The “penalty” for those with college degrees working in the public […]
It’s not where the gov is, it’s the business climate
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Economic Opportunity, News /byThe timing was lousy. Gov. Deval Patrick was on his big “trade mission” to Israel and England when the giant sucking sound came from Marlborough – Fidelity announced it was essentially shuttering its operation there, moving 1,100 jobs to Merrimack, N.H. and Rhode Island. It tended to take the wind out of the governor’s announcement that this 10-day junket might bring all of 50 jobs to Massachusetts. Patrick didn’t help his cause much, declaring from London that he was “deeply frustrated” that the company had blindsided him, and later demanding that they “tell me to my face” that the decision is final. What does he expect – that CEOs are going to check with him first, or ask his permission […]
Bill Gates doesn’t like liberal arts, Steve Jobs does
/1 Comment/in Blog, News /bySo Bill Gates lets us all know what he really has in mind on standards and the liberal arts. In a speech to the National Governors Association in late February, he suggests that higher education spending be devoted largely to job-producing disciplines. In his view we should drop funding at the higher ed level for the liberal arts, because there is not much economic impact/job creation impact from the liberal arts. Compare that to Steve Jobs, who during his release of the iPad 2 (admittedly not the most successful launch I’ve seen of an Apple product), trumpeted the liberal arts. It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that […]
Hollowing out our cities
/1 Comment/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /bySo today we learn that Massachusetts’ cities continue to “hollow out.” Secretary of State William Galvin may want to sharpen his calculator a bit, and I am sure that Boston is relieved to know that its population has increased. But Boston is an exception. “Hollowing out” was the term used in the 1990s to describe the trend among Japanese investors to transfer manufacturing assets to China and other low-cost centers for doing business. We’ve seen a similar phenomenon in our New England and Rust Belt cities, where manufacturing jobs have flown off to greener pastures in the South and of course to other countries. In the 1950s alone the South’s Gulf coast there was 10 times the industrial growth experienced […]
Finding Money for the Convention Center
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byThe Convention Center Authority convened a panel of the city’s great and the good some months ago to determine if it should go forward with an expansion plan that included a publicly subsidized 1,000 room hotel. It floated a trial balloon over the weekend regarding that hotel and the response has not been great. The BBJ’s Craig Douglas does a back-of-the-envelope calculation and comes up with 1,350 privately-supplied hotel rooms in various states of planning and development. He notes that these projects, all under the leadership of various well-connected developers, are experiencing some sort of delay and questions how an additional 1,000 rooms (all benefiting from a public subsidy) improves the situation. I take a different tack in examining the […]