The Herald's multiple personalities

The Herald ended an editorial this morning on the Administration’s approach to the growing debate over the proposed gas tax increase as follows:

It’s about this administration’s arrogance, its sense of entitlement to a larger share of your earnings in a time of crisis, and its dismissal of any approach that doesn’t mirror its own.

They’re right. To dismiss opposition to a gas tax increase out of hand is arrogant. And that is exactly what Jim Aloisi is doing.

Yet, yesterday, the Herald had no problem dismissing opposition to an elected Boston School Committee out of hand. Defending an appointed School Committee, which City Councilor and mayoral candidate Sam Yoon has criticized, the Herald noted:

Well maybe Yoon questions it, but most people with a functioning brain in their heads in this city do not.

Well, if that isn’t arrogance, I don’t know what is. I like to think of myself as having a functioning brain, and I believe it’s an abomination that my city’s school committee is appointed rather than elected.

A small group of individuals, who must be members of the Mayor’s inner sanctum if they want any hope of being appointed to the committee, sitting in judgment on the educational futures of the city’s nearly 60,000 school children. Can one imagine anything more undemocratic than that?

Yes, an elected school committee carries with it enormous historical and logistical baggage, but I remember some Brit once commenting that, though democracy may be the worst form of government, it’s still better than all the others.

If it’s wrong for the Governor and his Administration to run roughshod over debate on the state’s transportation future, it’s equally wrong for the Herald and other opponents of an elected school committee to run roughshod over debate on our children’s future.