“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”
“Our family is needing to make some really big sacrifices because we believe this is important, and so, we’re basically going to do whatever it takes… Sometimes we look at each other and go ‘I don’t know if I can do it again another month…’”
“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”
“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”
In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.
The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.
in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.
Louisiana beat us
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, News /byA follow to Meister Poftak’s post on the Grading the States report card released by Governing magazine and Pew’s Government Performance Project on the quality of governance in the 50 states.
Just think about it: Last year Governing magazine splashed House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi’s face all over America for the work that he, former Senate President Travaglini and former Governor Romeny did in crafting the health care reform act.
So much change, so fast. Governing rates Mass governance a C after a review of fiscal management, the use of technology, the state workforce, and infrastructure. (I understand the rating on the workforce – the grade must have taken a nosedive after I left…)
Where do we stink? Well, we are consistent. It is in all four areas rated; specifically:
A) The Fisc: Bad long-term outlook, large structural imbalance
B) IT: No strategic direction, no budgeting for performance
C) Workforce: Little strategic workforce planning and poor hiring practices
D) Infrastructure: Little capital planning, insufficient maintenance
Folks, I love New Orleans, but, ahem, Louisiana beat us (they got a B). Can we please roll up our sleeves and get to work? And, no, that does not mean another billion dollar bond bill to put us further into debt, but rather undertaking the hard work of reform, seeking to make our government as effective as the people and businesses it serves.
We beat Rhode Island and New Hampshire
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byBut that’s about it. In the latest Governing Magazine assessment of state management, Massachusetts finished 48th out of 50. In particular, our performance on infrastructure was quite poor, meriting just a D+ grade, but you may have already heard about that.
A tip of the pen to the redoubtable Robert David Sullivan of Beyond Red & Blue for the point about infrastructure.
031308-testimony-to-bonding-cmte.doc
h4409-governors-transportation-bond-bill.pdf
h4562-house-transportation-committee-transpo-bond-bill.pdf
masstrans-framework.pdf
driving-questions-powerpoint-edited.ppt
2008-02-19-ian-bowles-on-sect-13-parkways-letter.pdf
Language for Proposed Transportation Reforms
DeLeo Letter on Transportation Bond BillLanguage for Proposed Transportation ReformsLanguage for Proposed Transportation Reforms
Farm Subsidies, Part XXXVI
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government /byThis space takes a dim view of almost all farm subsidies as market-distorting and wasteful.
And as part of the nascent Pioneer Staff Caucus for good food, I find the evidence that the incentives contained in the farm bill to produce a handful of commodity crops — in essence creating a market through government interference — is neither healthy nor good for farmers in the long run.
Yesterday’s NYTimes ran an op-ed from a farmer in Minnesota who pointed out another wrinkle in the farm bill — if you try and plant fruits and vegetables on land that had commodity (corn, soybean, rice, wheat, cotton) crops, you lose your government subsidy and you are penalized the market value of that alternative crop. In essence, do anything outside of the commodity crop framework and face a financial penalty. This makes no sense to me.