MORE ARTICLES
NYT’s Anupreeta Das on Bill Gates, Microsoft, & Tech BillionairesAugust 28, 2024 - 12:03 pm
Harris’ Tax Vision: Policy & PoliticsAugust 27, 2024 - 3:23 pm
Poll: State Voters Overwhelmingly Support Ending Public Records Exemption, Auditing the LegislatureAugust 26, 2024 - 10:45 am
National Alliance’s Starlee Coleman on Public Charter SchoolsAugust 21, 2024 - 1:14 pm
How Has Employment Changed In Massachusetts?August 20, 2024 - 4:03 pm
How Has Transportation Been Changing In Massachusetts?August 20, 2024 - 2:31 pm
Digital Privacy Divide: Can Law Enforcement Google Where You’ve Been?August 20, 2024 - 11:40 am
American Bar Association Elects President of the Pioneer Law Center as Vice Chair of Judicial DivisionAugust 20, 2024 - 9:30 am
Pioneer Institute: 340B Hospitals Does Not Necessarily Translate to Charity CareAugust 19, 2024 - 12:49 pm
Wrap Up of the Massachusetts Legislative Session – Or Is It??August 14, 2024 - 1:53 pm
Ummm, ahhh, the number is 617-723-2277
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government /byHeh, heh, still waiting for the Patrick Administration to call. Did you feel a palpable shift in the oversight of state government last month? Sure you did. October 18th marked the expiration of my term on the Commonwealth’s Finance Advisory Board. Still waiting for that reappointment phone call from my friends in the Administration.
Or you could just give the money back to ratepayers
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government /byTuesday’s Globe had a story on the tug of war going on regarding the Renewable Energy Trust with some legislators seeking to move it out of the quasi-autonomous Mass Technology Collaborative (with its… ahem… own loyalties) and into the Environmental Affairs Secretariat. The Trust, like many well-meaning programs, suffers from the Ginsu Knife effect (remember – it slices, it dices, but wait, there’s more….). It offers grants, rebates, technical assistance, equity investments, debt financing, and marriage counseling. (OK, I made that last one up.) The net effect being that its almost impossible to figure out if the program is doing any good. I’m all for clean energy, but taxing our utility bills then shuffling the money off to a quasi-state […]
Some ugly numbers on deficient bridges
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Economic Opportunity, News /by Scott W. Graves and Micaela DawsonThe Reason Foundation has posted up some data on the number of deficient bridges across the nation. The feds track this stuff for obvious reasons (mobility across states, an understanding as to how states are doing and what they are doing with fed money, and also because bridges that are rated ‘deficient’ become eligible for federal funding for repair. Overall, Reason notes that The condition of the nation’s highway bridges continued to improve from 2004 to 2005. Of the 596,980 highway bridges in the current National Bridge Inventory, 147,913—about 24.52 percent—were reported deficient for 2005 (see table), a slight improvement from 2004. In 1998 about 29.0 percent were rated deficient. However, progress is slow; at the current rate of improvement, […]
Thoreau, he most certainly is not
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /by Liam DayThis is priceless. David Wasserman, a Madison, Wisconsin middle-school teacher, recently refused to administer the state assessment to his students. It appears he was protesting No Child Left Behind’s mandatory testing requirements. As the controversial law’s first “conscientious objector” he received a fair amount of press coverage. In fact, he recently gave Newsweek Web an interview in which, when asked why he took his stand, he responded: I feel that the tests assess academic achievement in biased ways, with a challenging and confusing format of questions and answers. Shoot. I just hate that confusing question and answer format.
People v Place
/0 Comments/in Blog, Economic Opportunity, News /by Scott W. Graves and Micaela DawsonIn the High Court of Common Sense, the people will always win. Consider Youngstown or Buffalo. Both have seen a complete collapse in their populations. Youngstown is half the city it once was in terms of population. As Ed Glaeser points out in the Autumn 2007 City Journal, Buffalo hit a ceiling of 580,000 in the 1920s and has gone to 300,000. Noting the “billions upon billions” spent by the feds since the 50s on Buffalo and other failed “middle cities”, Ed lists out the usual suspects–Urban Renewal funds, HUD money, and lots of dough for the metropolitan rail system, even as ridership went down, down, down, as people left, left, left. Ed’s money quotes: All this spending aimed at […]