Fare Too Rich for Breakfast

Page 1 of today’s Boston Globe has a long story about the rebuilding effort of the Massachusetts Democratic party. You read that right. They enjoy a 7-1 majority in the legislature, control every state-wide office except the Governor’s office, yet “Its activist base is withering and its membership is in decline”. Thanks for that news. I might not have noticed otherwise.

Seriously, this is an excellent story about “the party”, and it rivals Joan Vennochi’s work in its in-house truth-telling. It is fare too rich for breakfast, but don’t miss it. Read the whole thing.

The coverage today of Monday’s filibuster fiasco is relegated to page 2 of the Globe. The story, by reporter Charlie Savage, must have seemed too embarrassing to run on the front page, given that both our US Senators were leaders in the embarrassment. Excerpts:

Senators John F. Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy begged, cajoled, and thundered in their attempt to persuade colleagues to join them in blocking a vote on the Supreme Court confirmation of Samuel A. Alito Jr., but in the end yesterday they succeeded only in splitting the Democratic caucus…But by splitting Senate Democrats on the eve of what had been expected to be a resounding vote against Alito, the filibuster prompted frustration among colleagues, said a Democratic aide, speaking on background. 'Some people are asking: 'Did Kerry do this in the best interests of the Democratic Party, or in the best interests of John Kerry?' the aide said.

There is no conflict here, Mr. Savage. With apologies to Charles W. Wilson, “What’s good for John Kerry is good for the Democratic party.” And once again it seems W has been misunderestimated by those who hate him. A Miers confirmation vote would have split his own party, so he changed course. His preference was to let the other party split, and the Democratic presidential candidates, who needed the money and backing of liberal extremists, were quite obliging.

On page 3, Peter Canellos dissects Bush’s victory in the Senate in a column headlined 'In a values debate, Bush again paints his critics into corner’.

The injection of such values into the debate also ratcheted up emotions -- because Bush was implicitly suggesting that his opponents didn't share those values, and what good can be said about people who aren't willing to fight for their way of life (or, in the case of spying, people who aren't willing to try to intercept terrorist plots)?

Good question. I understand that Senators Kerry and Kennedy have been blogging lately over at the fever swamps of the Daily Kos, where it seems to me there are quite a few people whose views fit the above description quite well. Peter should become more familiar with it.

Sunday Funny Papers

An Enticing Book Review
Sunday’s Boston Globe features a book review by former Globe Washington bureau chief David Shribman of “Churchill and America” by Martin Gilbert, who is Churchill’s official biographer. Shribman startles me with this comparison:

The relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill was the centerpiece of ''No Ordinary Time," Doris Kearns Goodwin's remarkable portrait of the Roosevelt household during the war. But the Goodwin book is only one leg of the stool of understanding this relationship. The six volumes of Churchill's World War II history (the matched set that sits on your parents' bookshelf but that you, missing one of the great reading experiences of our time, sadly have never examined) constitute the second leg. Gilbert's new work is the third.

This is very high praise for Gilbert and amazingly high praise for Goodwin. I am not familiar with either the first or third works he mentions, but my experience of the second exactly matches Shribman’s description, save that I did steal the books from my parents and read the entire work. It was an education in itself, and changed my perspective of 20^th century history permanently. Hmmm. Shribman certainly knows how to raise expectations for these two books. I’m very curious.

An Empty Gesture
Joan Vennochi, the “honest Democrat” looses her wrath at both Massachusetts Senators for their futile engagement in the pending filibuster of the Alito nomination.

Alito is conservative. But radical? The Democrats failed to make the case during hearings which proved only one thing beyond a reasonable doubt: their own boorishness.

I did not watch the Judiciary hearings (Deo Gratias for my day job!), but I’ll take Joan’s word that the Senators attacking Alito behaved like boors. The descriptions of their behavior in the Globe news reports were much more nuanced, shall we say. Perhaps this is another case of the OpEds being more faithful to the truth than the news sections. Again Joan:

Calling for a filibuster is a late, blatant bow to the left. It seemed more theatrical than realistic. Still, any such bowing from Massachusetts helps the Bush administration. ''Bring it on," chortled the Wall Street Journal after Kerry announced his effort to rally fellow Democrats from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. There, the Journal snidely observed, he was ''communing with his political base."

Yes. Senator Kerry can’t pass up an opportunity to receive some stroking from foreign leaders, can he? The why of Kerry’s move is explained not in Joan’s column, but in another news story on the filibuster attempt, which reports reasons that the Junior Senator from New York is also signing up as a filibusterer:

Analysts said Clinton had little choice but to back the filibuster, given Kerry's announcement that he was reviving the effort to block Alito.

While Clinton has been shifting her rhetoric to the center on abortion, she cannot afford to let a possible campaign adversary outflank her on the left among liberals who favor abortion rights, Jennifer Duffy, who monitors the Senate for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, told Newsday.

''It's an empty gesture," Duffy said of Clinton's announcement. ''What Democratic primary voter is going to vote for her if she didn't do everything to oppose Alito? . . . She had to join John Kerry."

With over 2 years before the first presidential caucuses and primaries, to see such jostling with so long left in Bush’s term is encouraging for Republicans, as it may indicate much more of this public foolishness to follow. Besides coveting Bush’s office, both Senators have in common a surplus of personal vanity, even by the lofty standards of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.

Vanity of Vanities
Speaking of vanity, should one of our Senators retire (or more likely be retired involuntarily by the Almighty) a bumper crop of equally unappealing and very ambitious Massachusetts congressmen is will engage in a struggle to claim the vacancy. One such is Representative Marty Meehan, whose staff is quite willing to airbrush history in favor of their employer. This week it was revealed (and later admitted) that a staffer for Meehan had been removing unflattering yet factual material from Wikipedia’s article about the Congressman, including references to his 1993 pledge to serve in Congress for no more 10 years. The Globe article mentioning this is merely an AP story, while the real work reporting this unflattering incident was done by the Lowell Sun. The Congressman’s Wikipedia entry is now repaired, and now includes mention of the staffer’s folly.

Fitting.

Thanks for reading, and have a good week.

Told You So

The Wonkette is right when she opines:

One other thing the Dems could have done earlier that would have kept Alito off the court, if they were in any way strategically minded: signed on with Miers en masse at just the right moment to rescue her nomination.

Certainly, and excuse me for saying it first, but they had not the wisdom. At the time Miers was being challenged this blog said:

I cannot believe that any Red State Senator will take a risk in order to confirm Harriet Miers. Will the Democrats step up? Yes, if they know what is good for them (that's a "no"). We could see the reverse of the votes on NAFTA and welfare reform during the Clinton Administration, where the party out of power pushed the cause through Congress (causes which later were cited by the President as his proudest achievements). But I doubt it.

It's Bush's and Israel's Fault!

Today’s Globe editorial blames Israel and Bush for the success of Hamas:

THE STUNNING victory of Hamas in Palestinian legislative elections may be attributed to several causes, among them the corruption of the Fatah movement, the failure of Israel to help validate the peaceful, pragmatic policies of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and the Bush administration's slowness to help Abbas prove to his people that his temperate ways could improve daily life and lead to an end of Israeli occupation.

In the Globe’s view Fatah (a thugocracy built by Arafat who for years which ran the PA as his own UN-financed personal fiefdom) although corrupt, now practices corruption by temperate, peaceful and pragmatic means.

And for today’s comic relief:

Breaking ranks with Democratic leaders, Senators John F. Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy yesterday vowed to lead a filibuster against the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr., forcing their colleagues to decide whether to join a high-stakes -- but likely fruitless -- attempt to use Senate rules to block the judge's confirmation.

But wait! There’s more! Senator Kerry gave his statement from Davos (where he was meeting with, you know, European leaders). NZ Bear is on target when he says that Kerry and Gore have become the Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie of American politics.

Dewey Defeats Truman

The front page of today's printed Boston Globe tells of a Fatah victory based on exit polls.


While the present online version of Globe has the latest (and corrected) story.

The corrected Globe story is online here, while the earlier and incorrect story has been consigned to perdition.

Update: Here is the old story. It's difficult to cover all your tracks on the Internet.

Hillary Anxiety Attacks

The NY Sun quotes a former Clinton White House Chief of Staff on Hillary's 2008 candidacy:

...Leon Panetta, conceded a 'nervousness' exists in the party about Mrs. Clinton's general election prospects. He said the perception stems from concerns that her candidacy could cause a return to the bitter political fighting of the Clinton era. 'What people raise is the nervousness about, to some extent, what they went through with the Clintons, particularly in those last few years,' said Mr. Panetta...

So were the first few Clinton years just ducky, Leon? As I recall Mr. Clinton's party lost ~44 seats and control of the House after Clinton's first 2 years. Not much of an endorsement.

Let Congress Vote on 'Domestic Spying'!

After 2 months of tedious and completely ineffective articles attacking the temperament of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, today the Globe turns its front page focus to what it twice calls the president’s “domestic spying program”. The Globe editors apparently feel no higher calling than to act as enablers for the DNC. Like many Democratic Party activists, they are willing to suspend thought and simply repeat DNC talking points like “domestic spying program” without giving any ink to what the actual content of this program is.

Nowhere in today’s story does the Globe explain exactly what types of communication were allowed to be intercepted by the government as part of this “domestic spying program”. Why not? Because (I believe) the actual actions taken enjoy widespread public support, especially when the details are explained rather than just labeled with the bogeyman title of a “domestic spying program”.

Two months of moaning about Alitio was a waste of breath and ink that ended up doing the Democrats harm by making them look like fools or tools of special interests. This dog will not hunt either. By escalating the issue to this degree, the Democrats will again give evidence that they remain out of touch with the mainstream voters they lost in the last election.

A former Reagan administration DOJ official suggests a tactic:

Fein, a conservative who backs the president's judicial nominations, said Bush should ask Congress to pass a law authorizing the spying program.

Exactly! The congressional leadership put Rep. Murtha’s exact proposal for withdrawal from Iraq up to a quick vote (it received 1 vote). They should do exactly the same in this case. Let the cockroaches stand and vote on the issue rather than posture and weave on the Sunday vanity-talk TV shows. Any Dem who wants to be President will surely vote for it. I doubt that we will see Hillary bashing Bush for “domestic spying”.

Karl Rove should listen to this guy.

This appallingly biased Globe story prompted me to write to the Globe Ombudsman (below). I’ll post any response I get or see printed.

Sir,

Nowhere in today’s story does the Globe explain what types of communication were allowed to be intercepted by the government as part of this alleged “domestic spying program”. Why not?

How can you so confidently label the program as "domestic spying" in both your headline and lede, yet explain nothing to your readers about the criteria used by the government to select communication for interception?

People who were uncertain of your commitment to objective reporting might find this symptomatic of what is popularly called "liberal bias". Please explain.

Harry Forbes

UPDATE: Harry Reid seems to have fallen into this impending Rovian trap as well. Reuters quotes him as saying "If the president wanted to expand the authority he already has to wiretap anyone who might be communicating with terrorists then he should have come to the Congress to get that authority," [Reid said in a statement].

Be careful what you wish for, Senator.

Three Tidbits

Three tidbits today:

First, from an article about the troubled MBTA Commuter Rail in this week’s Globe magazine:

Even Fred Salvucci, a former state transportation secretary, concedes the point. "It would take a very large number of people getting out of their cars to result in free flow," he says. "And if you had free flow, other people would jump into their cars and get into it. It's like shoveling the ocean."

Yes it is indeed like shoveling the ocean. Free is the key word here. If you want to reduce highway congestion, then you must charge people a premium if they choose to use highways during rush hour. Can’t do that? Yes you can. Existing Fast-Lane tags note the time you enter a freeway down to the second. Mandate the tags and bill people. But we won’t do that because we have not the political will to do so. Singapore has done this exactly for years. You pay “peak” or “off-peak” rates every time you drive your car through downtown Singapore.

Second, from Cathy Young’s column today, where Ken Bode the PBS Ombudsman is quoted concerning an upcoming PBS documentary:

''After close review including discussions and e-mail exchanges with those involved with the program or closely affected by it, I found the program to be so totally unbalanced as to fall outside the boundaries of PBS editorial standards on fairness and balance."

The program alleges that male wife-beaters and child abusers frequently are given custody of their children by the courts. Ken Bode is the classic John Kerry voter, not any kind of conservative. But guess what? PBS is running the program anyway. Heh. What liberal bias?

Finally, James Carroll writes of the young journalist kidnapped in Iraq:

“If it were not for the disastrous policies of George W. Bush, Jill Carroll would be fine today, but it would be wrong to turn her kidnapping into yet another cudgel with which to bang against the war.”

For Carroll, this is a sign of significant progress!

The Vice That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Friday’s Globe has a highly non-judgmental story about the Massachusetts state lottery and its future “growth potential”. The lottery now takes in $4.5 BILLION per year, which is about $700 per citizen per year. That’s about $13 per week per citizen.

Nice little quotes from the article:

It's also unclear how much more Massachusetts residents can spend on the Lottery. On average, each Massachusetts resident spent $681 on the Lottery in fiscal 2004, way above the next-closest state, Delaware, at $435.

And:

Representative Daniel E. Bosley, a Democrat from North Adams, said he supports efforts to refresh and update Lottery games because cities and towns have become dependent on the money. But he said he opposes expansion into slot machines and other forms of gambling because they will only suck revenue out of other areas of the economy. He said cities and towns need to realize that the Lottery is maxed out.

Ironically, the same page in the Globe has an excellent column by Steve Bailey about local lottery company GTech expanding into “underserved” lottery markets in the developing economies of the world.

One statistic I have NEVER seen published is an analysis of Massachusetts lottery revenues as a percentage of the income of participants. Why not? I suspect because the results would be unconscionable. They would show the lottery is an extremely regressive revenue source that is derived mainly from the poor and from lower income workers. Our governments and political classes which as Rep. Bosley correctly states “have become dependent on the money” would rather not know where the money came from or what social problems its extraction may have spawned.

Nobody in government, academia, or media will sponsor the research to determine who pays the $4.5B and what the social costs are. And nobody calls it a “vice” (or even “gambling”! The politically correct term is “gaming”, thank you.). Using the term “vice” sounds too harsh and judgmental for our sophisticated multicultural times.

States Rights (when it suits us)

Maybe I should start paying more attention to Globe editorials instead of always skipping them.

N.E Republican has a superb post about today's Globe editorial which defends the US Supreme Court decision to let stand Oregon's assisted suicide law on the grounds of states rights. In a fine example of left-wing legal thought, these rights apparently apply directly to state laws permitting physician-assisted suicide, but are apparently irrelevant to state laws restricting physician-assisted abortion. Liberal agenda über alles, I guess.

Please read the whole thing.

...and a dollar short

Wednesday's Boston Globe carries an AP account of Senator Kennedy's exit from the Owl Club, but the story has none of the direct quotes from the Senator that so spiced yesterday's stories in other papers.

Otherwise, there is little meat in today's Globe, except for a great story in the Globe sports section today that is not on the web (page D4 in print, "Monday's NBA games"). It concerns a public reconcilliation between Shaq O'Neil and Kobe Bryant that occurred before their game Monday night, initiated by Shaq.

What do you give to the man who has everything? Forgiveness. The man who has nothing can receive the same gift and can treasure it just as much.

I'm Not a Member, I Only Pay the Dues

The Boston Herald and the Washington Times today scooped the Globe with a story revealing that Masachusetts’ senior senator remains a dues-paying member of a former Harvard college club that still bans women members. Fresh from last week assailing the 1980s membership of Sam Alito in an organization called “Concerned Alumni of Princeton”, where he said of Alito:

"affiliation with an organization that fought the admission of women into Princeton calls into question his appreciation for the need for full equality in this country,"

Senator Chivas denies being a member (but does not deny paying annual dues) of the "Owl Club”, which was forced off the campus in the 1980s as PC became rule of law there in the form of Title 9 regulations. The Herald quotes our senator Teddy saying:

I’m not a member; I continue to pay about $100.

File that remark right next to the one about SUVs that belonged to Teresa Heinz-Kerry but were “not owned” by her husband. Asked about the appropriateness of being in such company, Ted said:

I shouldn’t be and I’m going to get out of it as fast as I can.

The same phrase might well be the very last words heard by Mary Jo Kopechne.

Mentioning an Unmentionable

Monday’s Boston Globe gives page-1 space to a story about “honor killings” by Muslims extremists in Europe, and specifically to one such killing of a young Turkish woman in Germany. Quote:

“It's been taboo to discuss integration. It offends those who say every expression of cultural difference is somehow wonderful” said Heinz Buschkowsky, mayor of the Berlin borough of Neukoelln, where more than a third of the residents are Arabs and Turks. ''But now, with culture being expressed by covering women's faces or killing a girl who refuses to marry some old man in the home village, perhaps it is time to break the taboo.”

Questions about the role of religion and culture and their relationship to law are difficult, and are not advanced by our smiley-faced brand of multiculturalism. My own German friends agree that such candid discussion is a taboo in their country. Their mainstream media simply will not delve into the topic.

I believe this is a result of their concept of membership in the nation being more a function of ancestry than is ours. Can people who live in Germany, are citizens, and enjoy the rights of German citizens not be accepted as German? The American concept of the _____-American, is something we have been forced to develop given our history. It is a great thing to have.

Kudos to the Globe for again mentioning the unmentionable. There is a vast amount of undiscussed but newsworthy material in this area. It is ripe for honest and thoughtful journalism.

"some of his closest friends..."

Discussing the competition for black votes in the democratic gubernatorial primary, the Globe breathlessly reports concerning Attorney General Thomas Reilly:

From his childhood on, some of his closest friends and colleagues have been black.

The Globe's favoritism may be showing just a tad here. It sounds like Mr. Reilly can count on support from the kingmakers on Morrissey Boulevard, just like Scott Harshbarger and Shannon O'Brien.

And what do you suppose would be the odds of a similar statement appearing in the Globe concerning a candidate on the right side of the political spectrum?

The Moral Obligation of the Commonwealth

Both houses of the Massachusetts legislature are completely and safely controlled by a single party, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Party does not matter much on Beacon Hill, because most everybody is in the same party. What really matters is your standing in the club. Today’s Boston Globe provides a superb example of the results.

Michael Ruane is a former state rep who was a member of the House for 30+ years and retired last January. Now Ruane claims to be destitute and is dying of cancer (my sincere and profound sympathy for his illness). He was declared ineligible for the state pension when he joined the House in the 1970s, because he was already retired on a disability pension from a city job in Salem. That annual pension, which he has been collecting for over 30 years, has grown to $22,000 but will not be paid to his surviving spouse. He has never contributed to social security and is thus ineligible.

Astoundingly, there is now a bill moving through the bowels of the House to make Mr. Ruane eligible for a $52,000 annual House pension that would contain survivor provisions, even though the dying rep never contributed to the House’s pension plan during the 30 years he collected his generous House salary.

A few savory quotes from today's Globe story:

''This isn't his fault," [bill sponsor and House Rep Angelo M. ] Scaccia said yesterday, explaining that Ruane was caught between the unbending rules of two pension systems. ''Somebody screwed up, and he's caught in a Catch 22. This is the moral obligation of the Commonwealth."

One has to wonder (but the Globe story does not explain) how a fellow can retire from a city job, collect both a disability pension and a House Legislator’s salary for over 30 years, retire from the House in 2005, and exactly 1 year later be destitute???? Has the poor bloke never heard of 401ks? IRAs? His good buddy Angelo is half right, somebody has screwed up here! But I don’t see how his destitution isn’t his own fault. His take-home pay has for 30+ years been far higher than the average working stiff in this state. Do the arithmetic, please, Boston Globe! Inquiring minds want to know.

Few legislators would speak about the bill yesterday, which began to attract attention this week on Beacon Hill.

Why am I not surprised? Legislators behave so much like cockroaches.

Another sponsor of the bill is an old political foe, Senator Frederick E. Berry of Peabody. ''I think it is an issue of fairness," said Berry, the Senate majority leader who also represents Salem. Berry, though he often clashed with Ruane, said that other state workers would get the same consideration from the Legislature, though he conceded that Ruane's ties to his colleagues gave him an advantage on winning the lawmakers' support. ''Others would get the same consideration, but whether they would receive the same amount of votes is another issue," Berry said.

I’ll speak to my own state Rep today and ask him to sponsor a bill to provide me with my own personal and undeserved State pension, but somehow I don’t expect to get Mr. Berry’s support for the bill.

Just when you think there is no way our State House can surprise you with the pervasiveness of its culture of fellowship and patronage (paid for by others, of course), they find a new way.

Music to Whose Ears?

Joan Vennochi on the Alito confirmation hearings:

His interrogators often sound arrogant and sanctimonious. That doesn't mean questions from Democrats about abortion or the limits on executive power are meritless. But, particularly on Tuesday, they were posed so poorly and loquaciously that Alito won, or at least, never lost a round.

The senate Democrats sound arrogant and sanctimonious? Yes, but only when they speak.

Joan is saying (as Mark Twain said of Richard Wagner) that they are not as bad as they sound.

Missing Women

Tuesday’s Boston Globe carries a front page story about gender selection through abortion in India. The story mentions a population study of India published in the British medical journal Lancet. The study estimates a deficit of 10 million females.

The documentation of such hidden killings through population studies has a long tradition. I cannot find a reference myself, but Solzhenitsyn’s “Letter to the Soviet Leaders” speaks of a Russian demographer's population study of the Soviet Union done during the mid-20^th century that indicated 60 million unnatural deaths in the USSR between 1900 and the time of the study. The number was significantly larger than summation of Russian casualties in WWI, the Russian Civil War, and WWII (which alone was over 20 million). The implication of the paper was that something else in addition to these wars had caused many millions of deaths in the USSR. The paper was published in a Soviet journal and later silently expunged. Apparently the author was quite unaware of the scope of murder committed by Lenin, Stalin, and the Soviet Gulag (a fault he shares with many of our contemporaries). The unique work of R.J. Rummel estimates the number at about 62 million for the Soviet period alone, and has a huge list of references.

But I digress. The situation in India is caused by a combination of laws protecting abortion rights and a cultural preference for male offspring. These 10 million killings are to some degree freely chosen. And who is to question that choice? Not the pro-choice lobbies in the West, who are also missing persons on this issue and don’t mention these statistics. But a new Indian law does. The story mentions a new law that forbids dissemination of gender information obtained during ultrasound examinations to expectant mothers. That is a convoluted way to try to correct the deficit of females. The story also contains a poignant quote:

Sabu George, a New Delhi-based public health researcher specializing on gender-selective abortions, said other districts could easily copy Hyderabad's efforts and bring charges against non-compliant operators. But he said the root causes of the problem will take a long time to reverse. ''We live in a very unequal society,” he said. ''Women are not equal on any level. . . . In our society, we also accept violence against women. Violence in America is very open. In India, the violence is often within families. It is socially sanctioned to kill our girls.”

Does he mean socially sanctioned before birth, after, or both? The Globe also apparently published a shorter Reuters story on the same topic in Monday’s edition, which has this quote which is quite unusual for the Globe with respect to abortion.

Fetal sex determination and medical termination of pregnancy based on the sex of the fetus have been illegal since 1994, but [Professor Shirish] Sheth said there is published evidence of rampant female feticide in India where daughters are regarded as a liability. "Female infanticide of the past is refined and honed to a fine skill in this modern guise," Sheth added.

Such a comparison of infanticide and abortion must have been missed by the Globe's editors.

An Excellent Point

Andrew Sullivan’s blog has a review of a NY play, 'Doubt', which is modeled on the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. The Reviewer (not Andrew, but one of his guest-bloggers) commends the play for being intelligent and giving the characters full complexity. Then says:

It dramatizes, as well, the central paradox of the entire sexual abuse scandal, which is that it partook of the worst of both 'liberal' and 'conservative' Catholicism - the former's sexual permissiveness and contempt for time-tested traditions, rules and safeguards; and the latter's clericalism, its insistence that the hierarchy knew best and the laity should just 'pray, pay and obey,' its willingness to use authority as a screen for irresponsibility. In the name of freedom and progress and experimentation, priests justified their own sins and those of their fellows; in the name of order and tradition and obedience, their superiors protected them.

An excellent point. I would add ‘expedience’ to that list of excuses.

For Once Then, Something

Sunday’s Ideas section of the Boston Globe has a big story on the housing price squeeze entitled “Priced out”. The story really says nothing but repeats the normal housing platitudes. The real word is found in a side-bar story entitled “The school-cost equation” where Ted Carman, a member of the Commonwealth Housing Task Force, speaks with real candor about the issues with new housing from the perspective of local communities:

the school-funding system has created ''extraordinarily perverse’' financial incentives against new modest-priced housing in most Massachusetts communities. ''And guess what?” he says. ''They've all figured it out.”

With local school costs often consuming as much as half of a suburban community's municipal budget, Carman says a $300,000 house that pays $4,500 in taxes-of which about $2,250 goes toward school funding-is a money loser for communities as soon as it has even one public school student living in it. With average per-pupil school costs in many suburban communities in the range of $8,000 to $9,000, only a fraction of which is picked up by the state, such towns would lose about $5,000 per child in the type of modest-priced housing envisioned for more densely built smart-growth districts, he says.

Bingo!

I highlighted the above because here for once the Globe publishes an un-spun and unvarnished truth about "affordable housing". It is not the snobbery of suburban country-club Republicans which is to blame for the shortage of "affordable housing" units. Rather, under the State's financial policies, suburban towns stand to lose both money and local control from each such unit of housing they add. This is a major reason for the preference of many Massachusetts towns for high-priced housing units, which more closely balance the incremental revenues and the costs incurred by a town's new housing units.

Off Topic

My most intriguing reads of the past week have nothing to do with the Boston Globe (shocked!), but I highly recommend each. Mark Steyn's OpinionJournal essay "It's the Demography, Stupid" and Lileks' reaction in "Screedblog".

Steyn's thinking is far outside the narrow bounds of tolerance in print media that ignores him (including all organs of the NY Times Corporation). His voice is, perhaps, thus prophetic. This essay is too long to read on a screen, but print it out and read the whole thing.

Which Story is She Talking About?

Joan Vennochi has a fine column about the disgraceful media exploitation of common people under unbearable stress. I can't help but remark that her description of this cable TV moving vulture-media sounds exactly like my personal impression of the Boston Globe reporting during the Kerry campaign:

Waiting to learn the actual news, and then reporting the ultimate truth, confirmed beyond a doubt, are not options...Neither is objectivity....The...crew is actively and ardently hoping, wishing and praying for the same miracle...They rejoice in every sign of hope and grow melancholy when an unhappy ending seems probable. They are cheerleaders or professional mourners, depending on the latest development.

Missing From NOW's Radar Screen

Here is a story of horror that you won't find on NOW's radar screen, but should:

'Militants behead Afghan principal for educating girls'

Testy folks, these "militants". Note the reticence to use the I-word as an adjective in this headline. From the title of the story, one wouldn't know whether these folks might be outraged Unitarians.

Sharon's Secret Plan?

Ed Morrissey really nails it with respect to the anarchy now in Gaza:

It now looks like Ariel Sharon may have struck the most devastating blow against Palestinian statehood by allowing them to have Gaza all to themselves. Sharon, who may be dying at this very moment, gave the world a fishbowl for the Palestinians to demonstrate the endgame of their nihilism. They have now made a ruin of Gaza, attacked Egypt, kidnapped the parents of one of their own folk heroes, and turned the territory into a gangland instead of a state.

I would only add that they have made Gaza into a gangland modelled on Arafat's West Bank, and likewise financed by the UN, no doubt. Makes a fella proud to be a member.

Great Moments in Online Advertising

…“and if you get a degree from us in finance you will learn about concepts like investment, the time value of money, and ROI, so that you won’t be persuaded by simplistic ads like this one.”

Leaving the Lights On

Like cockroaches scurrying when the lights go on, members of Congress are quickly picking up restaurant checks and fleeing from Washington’s sports luxury boxes for the time being. Not so in Boston where the Mayor’s 5th inaugural bash was financed with voluntary donations of over $500k from a large number of businesses that (surprise!) do business with the city. A former city councilor turned city lobbyist is quoted:

'They do business here," said McCormack, who spoke on the condition that his clients not be identified. ''They want to support the mayor and the city and make sure the inauguration and celebration is a first-class event. There are no ulterior motives. Who else would you ask [for donations] except people who do business here? Would you ask someone from Utah to donate $5,000 to Mayor Menino's inauguration? You solicit people who do business here, who want to make sure the city remains a great city."

Thanks then to the "voluntary" donors. Of course our national inaugurals are similarly financed, but the tab runs into the tens of millions rather than the mere pittance required by Menino’s party.

I don’t mean to criticize Hizzonah the Mayah. It always has been thus, and always will be. Power abhors a vacuum more than nature. I don’t advocate trying to restrict the flow of cash, only that the donors be honestly identified. Transparency is the cardinal virtue here, and the mayor’s donor list meets a test of transparency very well.

Government-certified racial purity

Three stories in Monday’s Boston Globe have some below-the-surface connections.

First, the percentage of minority Boston Public School teachers has not changed an iota in 10 years, while the percentage of minority principals has changed dramatically. The principals are appointed while the teachers are unionized. The Globe story reports that:

While union contractual limitations meant [that Boston Schools Superintendent Thomas] Payzant had to wait for teacher vacancies to change who was in front of the classrooms, he had direct control over the hiring of principals and has replaced 75 percent of school leaders during his tenure, school officials said. Black principals now make up nearly half of the 148 principals, a 58 percent increase since 1995; Hispanics represent 16 percent, a 64 percent jump.

No further word on how union representation specifically may or may not have impeded any such change. The Globe story carries a fairly rich graphic (below) which shows the populations broken down into the government-sanctioned racial classifications of white/black/Hispanic/Asian. More informative are the facts that 1) the Boston Public Schools student population has declined by 8% during the past 10 years, and 2) the student/teacher ratio in the system is 11/1, which is better than the ratio in Weston (12/1) or Wellesley (13/1).


Another Globe story tells of a dispute between two groups both claiming to represent the Schaghticoke native American tribe. Each group is seeking government certification for itself as the sanctioned representative of the tribe, which will allow it to decide how the tribe’s reservation will be developed into a gambling resort.

Finally, Washington super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff has become so radioactive that members of the House and Senate are actually returning his contributions. Abramoff is being investigated, according to the Globe:

…for allegedly swindling American Indian tribes out of millions of dollars in lobbying fees and contributions to Abramoff's associates.

No doubt Mr. Abramoff is the inside-the-beltway fixer who can help assure government certification of a particular group as the official tribal representatives (based on what criteria one might ask? Racial purity perhaps, but more likely the size of the lobbying fees which can be provided to the firm of Mr. Abramoff).

Such are the inevitable consequences when our law treats people primarily as members of particular racial groups rather than as citizens of the United States.