MORE ARTICLES
Statement: Pioneer Institute in Support of Accessory Dwelling UnitsMay 2, 2024 - 12:50 pm
Study: Expand Voc-Tech Seats, Don’t Require Lottery- Based AdmissionsMay 2, 2024 - 8:50 am
Colonel Peter Hayden on U.S. Cyber Command & National SecurityMay 1, 2024 - 1:52 pm
Losing Local Labor: Retaining Workers Remains a Massachusetts ChallengeApril 30, 2024 - 10:49 am
Outmigration and the Labor ForceApril 25, 2024 - 11:44 am
Study Finds Obstacles to Search for Opioid SubstituteApril 25, 2024 - 9:11 am
Annual Massachusetts Outmigration Hits 39,000, Up 1,100% Over The Last Decade: BU StudyApril 24, 2024 - 1:00 pm
Hoover at Stanford’s Stephen Kotkin on Stalin’s Tyranny, WWII, & the Cold WarApril 24, 2024 - 12:33 pm
Superior Court Judge Invalidates “Equity Theft” Law as UnconstitutionalApril 23, 2024 - 1:04 pm
Tax Man Confounded: Why High Rates Haven’t Yielded Higher RevenueApril 23, 2024 - 12:58 pm
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 […]