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I’ve seen the lights go down on Dartmouth

/0 Comments/in , , /by Liam Day

It’s been a long summer in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. In a story that hasn’t been getting much play inside 128 (We have a south coast? Who knew?), but has all the elements of good drama (conflict and tragedy anyway), town administrators and residents have struggled for the better part of four months with a projected 2008 fiscal deficit of some $5 million. An irresolute climax was reached a month ago when the town’s residents narrowly voted down a Prop 2 1/2 override. Now, in a move that has about it just a hint of the hairshirt, town administrators have decided to shut off streetlights on secondary roads to save an estimated $114,000. This latest budget cut is merely symbolic, designed, I’d […]

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens. . .

/0 Comments/in , /by Liam Day

We’re always gratified when our work appears on Blue Mass Group. So, of course we read with interest today’s post comparing our report on the Longfellow Bridge with an article on infrastructure maintenance recently published in The New Republic. It was, however, not the post itself, but, rather, the comment string that caught my attention (and, I should say, the attention of my colleauges). The first comment reads, in part: We should demonstrate our commitment to rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure by fixing the Longfellow bridge ourselves. Wouldn’t that be cool of we spent some of the money we raise to fixing the brdge. We could make a picnic out of it and start working like busy little bees to fix […]

Mass Health Care, USA

/1 Comment/in , , /by Scott W. Graves and Micaela Dawson

Mitt Romney is now doubling back to health care after his symbolic take in Iowa.  USA Today reports that Mitt is leaning on the Mass model but that the universal mandate and many features in the Bay State law (read “bureaucracy and mandates”) are not part of his health care platform.  Here is an abridged version: Federal incentives aimed at freeing health insurance markets from regulations The use of “free care” pool money from the feds to subsidize a portion of the price of private insurance for low-income uninsured individuals A more robust version of health savings account Full deductibility of qualified medical expenses which will allow Americans to deduct the cost of their health insurance and out-of-pocket medical expenses. Flexibility for states to test-drive reforms to […]

Some markets are more equal than others.

/1 Comment/in , /by

The subprime crisis may soon lead to a shortage of liquidity, but it’s already produced a surplus of unhelpful commentary. A happy exception is this little rant from MSN Money columnist Bill Fleckenstein, especially this bit: Wall Street, the hedge-fund community and their lap dogs in the news media continually brag about how much they love capitalism and free markets. Yet when the creative-destruction component of capitalism rears its ugly head, they want the central planners to bail them out immediately, before they take any pain. And the ones clamoring the loudest are the very same folks who behaved the most irresponsibly. This isn’t just about central banks. In trying to manage the market, municipalities and states often resort to […]

Good God, professors bow to the Left?

/3 Comments/in , , /by Scott W. Graves and Micaela Dawson

Who wudda thunk it? I mean, I never saw any hint of politicized courses at university! Marcella Bombardieri today reports in the Globe that 75% of the $7 million given to campaigns by academicians went to Democrats. I am shocked–shocked! 81% at MIT, 82% at Harvard, 90% at BU, 99% at Northeastern, and 100% at Tufts. More importantly, Bombardieri notes at the top of her article Professors and others in the education field have given more to federal candidates running in 2008 than those who work in the oil, pharmaceutical, and computer industries — a sign of how academia has become a much bigger player in the political cash sweepstakes. We need laws–yes, laws!–to stem the controlling influence of the […]