Christy Mihos, newly announced candidate for governor on the GOP/Independent side, was on Greater Boston last night. I’m not wowed by his candidacy - he strikes me as lacking in charisma, and to boot is tarred a bit by his association with the Big Dig. But he did mention that one of his prime platform […]
Judith Baker and Felix Arroyo have an op-ed today listing ten challenges for the incoming Boston Schools Superintendant. Some of the list strikes me as grandstanding (any candidate will be well aware of these challenges), but I agree with much on the list, and it’s certainly worth reproducing (numbering is mine):
Figure out the true school […]
Politically, the fate of car insurance in the Commonwealth is building up as a political battle between forces for deregulation and forces to preserve regulation. Within the given market realities, that battle is important. However, Steve Bailey pens the piece that needed to be written on the subject. Accident rates, not regulatory schemes, are the […]
Who knew that December was high politics season in Massachusetts? The statewide races are heating up, particularly given Romney’s announcement yesterday that he will not run. Lots of great political coverage, particularly at Blue Mass Group, which is following the races brewing for Lt. Governor and Middlesex DA with particular thoroughness.
Then there’s the governor’s race, […]
The BlogLeft conference/gathering in Worcester on Saturday was quite a success. I think most all of the bloggers attending felt it worth their while, as consensus was in favor of another meeting in six months from now. After a couple of excellent keynote speeches from Stirling Newberry (echoing Habermas at his best) and Frederick Clarkson, […]
Tomorrow is the first ever (annual?) BlogLeft mini-conference, a day event in Worcester gathering Bay State progressive, lefty and liberal bloggers to discuss what we do, and how we can do in the future. I’ll be attending, so can give an update in the future. And if you’re interested in more immediate coverage, there will […]
It probably won’t be news to anyone following the issue already, but I thought the NewsHour’s piece on the proposed Cape Cod wind farm was a good one.
Mass Marrier points me to the Bay State Banner’s city election analysis grappling with the power Bostonian voters of color now exert. They’re cautiously optimistic, emphasis on caution:
While Flaherty walked out of West Roxbury with 53 percent of the vote, Arroyo came out with just 27 percent of the votes from the 9,093 voters who […]
Sometimes I forget that Romney’s governor until he pops his head up again:
WASHINGTON — Governor Mitt Romney leveled an unusually personal attack yesterday at the Supreme Judicial Court for legalizing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, telling a group of conservative lawyers and judges that the justices issued the ruling to promote their values and those of […]
Wow, all this hubbub and the election results turned out pretty much as you’d expect. Here are some thoughts:
Surprisingly little has changed. Yoon is the only new councilor, and given that the musical chair lost was Hennigan, not much is likely to shift in the alliances of city council.
Not only that, I don’t think […]
One thing I like about blogs is that no sooner do you stumble out with a not-fully articulated post than someone comes along and says it better than you. Yesterday, I tried to communicate why I preferred the more practically-minded council candidates over the progressives in the race. Today, Matt Yglesias writes,
There doesn’t seem to […]
I’ve heard most of the imaginable complaints against Maura Hennigan, and I agree with most of them. She’s a complainer, elevating gripe to a high art trumping policy, political sense and vision for the city. Her campaign has sometimes, as with her latching onto the Victoria Snellgrove incident, crossed into tactless absurdity. But I’m voting […]
I’ve fallen behind in reading and writing about the city council race. And responses to my survey were not plentiful. As I wrote before, I’ve been disappointed, not only for the tepid response to the survey, but the fact that both council and mayoral races involve a series of quite important issues for the direction […]
Via Brad DeLong, I see that Hal Varian has a piece in the Times on high housing prices that’s straightforward but one of the best short reads I’ve seen about the problem.
TO paraphrase Yogi Berra, it seems that houses are now so expensive that no one can afford to own one.
Of course, economists know […]
Who gets taken out to lunch at Locke-Ober and doesn’t bother to finish half their meal? They can at least pretend for the sake of those of us for whom a nice meal out is a treat and not an imposition.