MORE ARTICLES
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
Massachusetts’ Workforce Growing Older and More Diverse, Remains Highly EducatedApril 18, 2024 - 9:26 am
Johns Hopkins’ Ashley Berner on Educational Pluralism & DemocracyApril 17, 2024 - 2:53 pm
Why the secrecy? Pioneer Calls for Open Meetings Dealing with Steward’s Impact on Patient Care.April 16, 2024 - 1:59 pm
Industrial Policy Reimaged: Can Government Improve Free MarketsApril 16, 2024 - 12:34 pm
39th U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky for National Poetry MonthApril 10, 2024 - 12:16 pm
A Practically 100% Guaranteed Free RideApril 9, 2024 - 1:21 pm
Some Good Bridge News
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byYou may recall our recent report — Our Legacy of Neglect — that examined the condition of the Longfellow Bridge and the condition of our state’s assets. MSNBC has done an enterprising bit of reporting on national bridge inspection standards and come up with some shocking results — massive numbers of bridges go uninspected for more than two years at a time (the absolute maximum recommended time between inspections). The good news is that Massachusetts has none of these bridges, although some other states (Illinois, Arizona) look pretty shabby. Sadly, we are still in the top 3 for structurally deficient and functionally obsolete bridges (at more than 50%) but we have improved by .6% in a year! Finally, if you […]
More Commuter Rail Chatter
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byTo make my bias plain, I’m a regular commuter rail user and a big fan. That said, Tuesday’s Globe had some dispiriting news about the newest commuter line — Greenbush. Its getting roughly 2700 riders per day (or around 1350 round-trip passengers) but a quarter of those are from another form of public transit — the commuter boat out of Hingham. So, we paid $500m+ to get about a thousand people a ride into the city (that’s a cool $500,000 per person). To be fair, the line may become more popular as time goes on, but this is not an encouraging sign. Looking back at the planning documents (see pg. 19 of this document), the seeds of this problem were […]
A bit like asking if we should build the South Coast rail link
/0 Comments/in Blog, Economic Opportunity, News /byA friend on Friday mentioned her visit to infamous Gravina Island. Ah, Gravina Island, you ask. Pray tell, where is that? You may recall a certain Bridge To Nowhere. You may also remember that at the end of the summer Governor Palin from her perch in the fair capital city, Juneau (yes, that is the capital), decided not to push for the construction of the BTN, thereby putting the $200+ million to use on other highways and bridges in the Last Frontier State. You may also recall that the BTN was to have run from the balmy (for Alaska) city of Ketchikan (pop. 8,000) to Gravina Island (home to 50 permanent residents). What I did not know was that the […]
Green Dots in LA and now in NYC
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /bySteve Barr has become a lightning rod for many in LA and now also in NYC (and here infecting UFT chief Randi Weingarten) as he works with the State University of New York to open up a Green Dot school in the South Bronx. What union opponents (and it is not everyone) don’t seem to get about Green Dot schools is that the formula is very attractive to many teachers. Especially younger teachers, many of whom would otherwise leave the teaching profession. Attractive? Why? Site-based management means teachers and principals have authority over 80-90 cents of each budget dollar, over curricula, and over work rules. As a result, decisions are made closer to the student and are more relevant to […]
Noble rhetoric, base motives
/0 Comments/in Blog, Related Education Blogs /byWrap Gov. Patrick’s proposal to overhaul public education governance in whatever rhetoric you want, at its core, his plan is about taking control of the Board of Education. His plan, simply put, is to give the Urban Superintendents, Mass Association of Superintendents, the Mass Association of School Committees and the Mass Teachers Association what they have been clamoring for the past decade. Reminder to all: These are all a really nice bunch of well-meaning people who never forget to mention the children when they talk about their own interests, which are control, control, control and, hmm, control… in that order. They’ve had enough of the pressure to change business as usual. That pressure comes from the state’s accountability system, competition […]