Category Archives: Arsenal Local

Patriots’ Day 240

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Today, in Massachusetts it’s Patriots’ Day, a holiday on which this year we mark 240 years since the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775 — depicted with some artistic license in the Capitol frieze currently featured at the top of this website.

For those of you not fortunate enough to be from Massachusetts, that was the day that the great and democratic people of this state decided to liberate the rest of the dithering colonies from Great Britain, over a year before everyone else could be bothered to sign the Declaration of Independence.

You’re all welcome.

Now here’s a photo I took last 4th-of-July Weekend of a cow next to Battle Road in Lexington. This cow is wholly unimpressed by your lack of Massachusetts-centric patriotism today.

Credit: Bill Humphrey for Arsenal For Democracy

Photo Credit: Bill Humphrey for Arsenal For Democracy

Conservatives can hate Massachusetts all they want, but that doesn’t change the fact that we shot first at the monarchy.

As a native, I can assure the rest of the country that we definitely haven’t forgotten about any of the early events leading to the Revolution. Massachusetts took a lot of the brunt of the British response before and during the American Revolution. Things like the Third Amendment are mostly about how we really don’t want British troops living for free in our houses in Boston. The American Revolution is a big part of Massachusetts history classes from grade school through high school, and the historical sites are literally all around us.

Contrary to the snide remarks of conservatives in many other states, I think we Bay Staters have a pretty solid handle on what the American Revolution was about and what unreasonable government oppression looks like. Nevertheless, Massachusetts folks by and large seem pretty happy with the progressive agenda they’ve been voting their representation into office to enact. If it were tyranny — or even mildly inconvenient, as in the case of tea taxes passed without legislative representation — we would have noticed by now.

A subjective case for humanities education

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I’ve often heard advocates for the preservation of humanities education programs make their case in quantitative terms. Usually, this case is made by pointing to various studies on how art or music classes translate into X percentage points of increased intelligence, or college admissions chances, or other individual and social benefits.

I have nothing against those studies, and I can’t say for sure whether or not such an approach is effective in persuading anyone to change their mind and make humanities education a priority. Perhaps this strategy makes sense: Provide numbers and data from the scientific community to communicate with the people interested in science and math in their own language, so to speak.

But I’m not entirely sure it’s the best way to make the case. After all, humanities subjects by their nature are fairly abstract and not easily boiled down into calculations and percentages, even with the advent of “big data” and the entrance of sabermetrics into every possible field.

Reframe the debate

I suspect that trying to compete with sciences in purely STEM-oriented terms is not the most effective approach after all. It’s hard to compete with STEM for budgetary prioritization by shoehorning the arts, literature, and history into STEM’s turf, where STEM defines the terms of the debate.

There is a prevailing assumption that everything can be converted into numerical values, and that we can forge our country into a Blue-ribbon technocracy of “best practices” with no subjective judgment calls (or perhaps eventually even directional disagreements altogether). This assumption cannot be accepted at face value if the humanities are ever to regain their rightful place as an integral feature of American public education alongside STEM.

I’m certainly a proponent of ensuring that all our children receive strong sciences educations – I want everyone in a society to know at least the fundamentals of how things work in fields other than their own, so that they are informed, not ignorant – but the advocates of STEM have already made their cases persuasively, while the humanities advocates are struggling (or often failing) to win support in budget battles each year.

For that reason, I think it’s time to make a more subjective and abstract case for humanities education. The terms of the debate itself have shifted too much toward the sciences, a development which undercuts the ability to promote the broader values of strong humanities educations.

As I noted in my rationale above for supporting STEM as well, for me, a big purpose of public education up through high school is to ensure every child graduates with at least a minimum and functional knowledge of how the world works, across all disciplines. Not only does this allow everyone to make a fully informed decision on what profession to pursue, but also it prevents society from Balkanizing into disparate occupations with no systemic knowledge or understanding. The business world buzzword battalion might call this “big picture thinking.”

Reframe the world

One of the key benefits of history and social studies classes, for example, is the ability to formulate a narrative understanding of the world: How we got here, where we are, and where we can (or even should) go next.

Literature classes compel us to ask these questions in hypothetical scenarios, fictional scenes, and timeless situations. English reading courses can teach us critical thinking and assessment of evidence quality in the non-fiction realm.

Language classes allow us not merely to compete in the global economy but to understand how vocabulary and linguistics shape national psychology and individual worldviews.

Music classes unite or bridge us across time and place and culture. Art courses can show us other ways of thinking about the world we live in and the world our forebears lived in.

All of these elements add a dimension of creativity to the future workforce that used to set the U.S. economy apart from its peers for so many years. We need that back.

The new Renaissance human

To me, it is worth noting that many of the early scientific pioneers and thinkers had extensive multi-disciplinary backgrounds. It helped foster their curiosity into making certain discoveries, and it helped them communicate those findings to the wider world. Those days are long over – sciences, mathematics, and more have all branched out deeply enough to require total specialization – but STEM professionals should still have a strong foundation in the full range of humanities, so that they can contextualize their own work within wider policy and political debates.
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Governor Charlie Baker’s MBTA problem

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Anti-tax Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker says tax-revenue-starved MBTA’s service during these massive storms — wherein ancient equipment has been breaking down at the mechanical level from all the record-breaking snow and ice — has been “not acceptable.”

He’s just proposed $40 million in cuts to state transportation (not to mention his legacy role in under-funding transportation since the 1990s) but also has the audacity to complain about the functionality of the state’s transportation …. It’s amazing how refusing to properly fund government services keeps them from performing effectively.

Pictured: MBTA Orange Line platform at Green station, early afternoon on Monday February 9, 2015.

Pictured: MBTA Orange Line platform at Green station, early afternoon on Monday February 9, 2015.

New Jersey still no clearer on Charlie Baker’s role in scandal

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Weird that the Boston Globe Editorial Board endorsed Charlie Baker for Governor of Massachusetts after the paper’s own coverage back in June about the connections between Baker and the pay-to-play scandals of the Chris Christie Administration in New Jersey:

Baker’s new-found notoriety in the Garden State came to a head when the New Jersey State Investment Council agreed to seek a legal review of the $10,000 donation he made to the New Jersey GOP in May 2011 — just seven months before General Catalyst, the investment firm where he is listed as an “executive in residence” principal, received $15 million from the state’s pension fund.

The council’s decision sparked a series of headlines across the state that has put Baker in the middle of the ongoing media feeding frenzy that is swirling around Christie and his administration.

Just last week, a Washington-based campaign finance watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called on the Securities and Exchange Commission, the New Jersey attorney general, and the state’s Election Law Enforcement Commission to investigate a possible connection between the donation and the investment.

Here’s a sampling of some of the headlines over the past month: “N.J. pension fund’s investment draws pay-to-play inquiry” is the way the Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, philly.com, headlined its story. “Christie administration to investigate pension investment tied to Massachusetts Republican” topped the story in the Newark Star Ledger. The Asbury Park Press and the Bergen Record covered the meeting with stories detailing the controversy.

The Inquirer website salted the wounds with a huge photo of Christie on a stage with Baker, then the 2010 GOP gubernatorial nominee, when the New Jersey governor came to Massachusetts to campaign for him. It also carried a head-shot of Baker farther on in the story, with the phrase “pay-to-play” in the caption. The controversy is also drawing national media. Businessweek ran a piece about the council’s decision, Fortune magazine has weighed in, and CNN’s website has also followed the story.

 
According to David Sirota, writing in the International Business Times last week, Chris Christie is now actively suppressing information related to the inquiry into Baker’s involvement in the situation in New Jersey.

As chairman of the Republican Governors Association, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has helped Charlie Baker with millions of dollars worth of ads supporting his Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign. But that’s not the only way he may be boosting the GOP candidate in the final weeks of a close election: Christie officials are blocking the release of the findings of New Jersey’s pay-to-play investigation into Baker.

The documents being withheld pertain to an investigation of Baker’s $10,000 contribution to the New Jersey Republican State Committee. The contributions came just months before Christie officials gave Baker’s company, General Catalyst, a contract to manage New Jersey pension money. New Jersey’s pay-to-play rules prohibit contributions to state parties from “any investment management professional associated” with a firm managing state pension money.

When the campaign donations and subsequent pension contract came to light in May, Democrats criticized Baker, who was then launching his 2014 campaign for governor of Massachusetts. In response, New Jersey launched a formal investigation into Baker’s contributions. The Newark Star-Ledger reported at the time that Christie officials “said the review would take several weeks.”

In a reply to International Business Times’ request for the findings of the audit under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act, Christie’s Treasury Department said the request is being denied on the grounds that the documents in question are “consultative and deliberative material.” Despite officials’ assurances in May that the probe would take only weeks, the New Jersey Treasury said in September that the investigation is still “ongoing” — a designation the department says lets it stop the records from being released.

 
As a reminder: If the governor of Massachusetts has to resign for some reason — which, between scandals and promotions to Federal offices, is pretty common for U.S. governors in general these days — the lieutenant governor becomes Acting Governor of Massachusetts. From New York to Arizona, in the last six years, we’ve seen some pretty terrible lieutenant governors fail to rise to the challenge when suddenly promoted. If Charlie Baker becomes governor, and his term ends unexpectedly early for any reason, his current running mate, anti-gay Karyn Polito, would be the acting governor of Massachusetts.

5 reasons I’m supporting Martha Coakley after the primary

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She wasn’t my first choice for Governor of Massachusetts, but here are 5 big reasons to make sure Martha Coakley wins in November, instead of Republican Charlie Baker.

Above: Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley. (Credit: Fogster - Wikimedia)

Above: Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley. (Credit: Fogster – Wikimedia)

  1. Veto Wielder: No matter who you supported in the Democratic primary, nothing genuinely progressive you wanted to see happen is going to get done to advance Massachusetts if Charlie Baker becomes governor and wields the veto pen. No matter how liberal he claims to be, he still identifies as a Republican, rather than a conservative Democrat, and that tells you where his priorities will lie. It definitely won’t be in pushing progressive laws and expanded investments in our state’s future, and it will likely mean vetoing them on so-called “fiscally conservative” grounds or for the benefit of Big Business.

    Even with strong Democratic majorities in the legislature, there is enough of a conservative wing in the Massachusetts Democratic Party to sustain Baker vetoes or derail and water down legislation toward elusive “compromises.” We saw what happened when we let Mitt Romney hold the veto pen: health insurance reform cost-controls were ripped out and the state’s health costs ballooned. We wouldn’t even be looking seriously at a “healthcare executive” to run the state if it weren’t for the last Republican’s horrible job of trying to make health care policy in the first place. We need a Democratic Governor to prevent that from happening all over again. Time and again, Democratic governors across the country have proven more fiscally responsible than their “fiscal conservative” counterparts in the Republican Party.

    In contrast, Martha Coakley has been running on a progressive platform this year with a long list of ambitious agenda items. She’ll work with the legislature — not against them — to make some of those ideas happen.
  2. Lieutenant Governorship and the Republican Platform: You might think the lieutenant governor (elected on a ticket with the governor in the general election) is unimportant, but if the governor has to resign for some reason — which, between scandals and promotions to Federal offices, is pretty common for U.S. governors in general these days — the lieutenant governor becomes Acting Governor of Massachusetts. We had two Republican Lieutenant Governors become Acting Governors in Massachusetts from 1997-2001. One even had to deal with 9/11’s impact on the state, after two flights from Boston were hijacked and ended in disaster. Fortunately, she was reasonably up to the job, but this is not something to leave to chance. From New York to Arizona, in the last six years, we’ve seen some pretty terrible lieutenant governors fail to rise to the challenge when suddenly promoted. So who did Baker select for that job?

    Supposedly inconsistent with his own views, Charlie Baker chose an anti-marriage equality “stalwart” (as the Boston Globe put it) as his running mate, to please the fringe base of the rapidly dwindling Massachusetts Republican Party. Last time around, Baker actually had the guts to run with an openly gay state senator, who this year was forced to boycott the state convention because it was set to adopt an anti-gay, anti-choice platform in the year 2014 in Massachusetts. Baker isn’t even in office yet and he’s already catering to the lunatic right-wing, while trying to convince us he’s more liberal than ever.

    If Charlie Baker becomes governor, and his term ends unexpectedly early for any reason, anti-gay Karyn Polito would be the acting governor of Massachusetts. That’s unacceptable. If Martha Coakley becomes governor, in the number two spot we’ll get Steve Kerrigan, a competent and progressive former Ted Kennedy staffer. The contrast in backup governors could not be clearer.
  3. Nominations: This is pretty straightforward. I would rather have any Democratic governor nominating people to the state’s courts and cabinet positions than Charlie Baker nominating them. His first nomination so far — his running mate, see #2 — has already given us a strong hint that he would use nominations as a way to appease conservatives who think he’s too moderate.

    Appointed officials and judges tend to be the people residents end up most affected by, whether they realize it or not. They are the people who make the big decisions on how to implement what the lawmakers approve or how to interpret those laws. If you don’t want your rights and programs in the hands of unqualified, right-wing Republican Party favorites, Martha Coakley needs to become governor instead of Charlie Baker.
  4. Executive Orders: When faced with an opposing party’s control of the legislature, executives start getting creative with executive orders. Sometimes that’s a good thing, but sometimes it’s a way of circumventing the normal legislative process and making or suspending rules and regulations by fiat. Again, there’s a legitimate role for executive orders, but I would trust Coakley over Baker on executive orders. Plus, she won’t need to rely on them as heavily, because she can go to the legislature controlled by her own party.
  5. National Implications…
    – Implementation of Federal laws: From the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansions to any number of other Federal laws that allow flexibility to state governments, we’ve seen in the past several years what the consequences can be of allowing Republicans to become governor. Don’t let Charlie Baker on Beacon Hill help Capitol Hill Republicans block President Obama’s agenda even more.

    – Baker for President? Charlie Baker, much like the last Republican governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, has already flipped-flopped a lot to try to reposition himself for a second attempt to win office. If Baker becomes Governor of Massachusetts, it will immediately position him on the shortlist for the Republican nomination for president in 2020 or 2024. The media and the party opinion-makers love it when somebody doesn’t quite fit the partisan mold and manages to become governor of a state that is traditionally associated with the other party. These narratives are always overblown and oversimplified, but they sure fuel a lot of presidential campaign bids. Let’s not help Republicans find an electable, flip-floppy moderate to run for the White House.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s special friends (i.e. possible domestic terrorists)

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Maine’s Republican Governor Paul LePage is continuing his crusade to dismantle the state’s reputation for moderate, reasonable, centrist politicians.

People often don’t believe it when someone says Maine’s Gov. Paul LePage is a political loon, but he’s almost indescribably far outside the mainstream, especially when one considers that that he occupies a governorship. Even deeply off-color jokes, vindictive mural attacks, and a strange belief that wind turbines are actually turned by motors because wind power couldn’t possibly work … all of those things are just the tip of the iceberg.

In a “revelation” (via in-depth investigative reporting) that surprises essentially no one who has been following his tenure as governor, except perhaps in its depth, Maine journalist and author Mike Tipping uncovered that in 2013 the governor met 8 times (almost monthly for a while) for 16 hours total with members of a super ultra fringe movement associated with small acts of domestic terrorism, various cop-killings, and the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Gov. LePage’s buddies this time are the very dangerous “sovereign citizen” wingnuts (the same people who don’t believe the government — state let alone Federal! — can issue license plates or passports or enforce traffic laws … or exist). They’re the king of unhinged American conspiracy theories but are also on various FBI watchlists for specific plots.

Here is an excerpt from the condensed summary Maine journalist Colin Woodard — whose incredible book, incidentally, I’ll be posting a review of soon — contributed to Politico on the stunning findings by Tipping:

he had met with an obscure circle of particularly nutty conspiracy theorists at least eight times for a total of 16 hours last year, despite the objections of his staff.

Some of the members of the circle have previously identified themselves as “Sovereign Citizens,” [skip to 17:00], a movement the FBI considers a domestic terrorist threat, though at least some of them now deny any such association. Members have espoused the belief that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Sandy Hook school shootings were perpetrated by the U.S. government, which engages in “mind control” and is preparing a “holocaust” against America’s Christians. They think the government is illegitimate and that top state officials are guilty of treason.

And last February, one recounted on his pirate radio broadcast [19:00] a meeting he had just attended with Governor LePage in which he said the execution of the top leaders of the Democrat-controlled state legislature was discussed. “They’re talking about hanging them,’” Jack McCarthy, host of the Aroostook Watchman radio show, recalled LePage saying in the meeting with McCarthy and his colleagues. McCarthy shared his response to LePage with his listeners: “Praise the Lord, let’s hang a few. We’ll be done with this crap.”

Although he admits these meetings took place, LePage has denied the conversations turned to eliminating his political opponents. “It never happened,” he said in a spontaneous call to the managing editor of the Bangor Daily News, whose paper he also threatened to sue. “We did not discuss execution, arrest or hanging.”

Hanging the Democratic leadership or no, the governor’s sustained interest in the conspiracy theorists’ ideas has stunned Maine’s political class, especially as LePage had famously refused for months to meet with the very legislative leaders the extremists accused of treason.
[…]
The conspiracy theorists, variously organized as the Maine Constitutional Coalition and We The People of Maine, warned the governor and the small number of other people who would listen that all lawyers are “foreign citizens” and associated with the Communist Party, that Maine’s government was unlawful on account of using paper currency and associating with the United Nations to deprive Mainers of their property rights, and that legislators and other officials were guilty of treason, a crime punishable by death.
[…]
Eventually, LePage’s legal counsel—apparently concerned about the governor’s credulity regarding the extremists’ constitutional theories—took the time to prepare a five-page legal memo for him […] reminding him that “the power of the executive [doesn’t] extend to providing a mechanism for private citizens to declare laws to be unconstitutional.”

 
If you follow through to Tipping’s report, the governor also claimed to them that he feared for his life if he did not accept Federal funding for something. He only stopped the meetings, apparently, after Tipping’s Freedom of Information Act request began ringing enough alarm bells.

Governor LePage faces re-election this November. Our analysis from May remains essentially unchanged up to this scandal:

Maine: Paul LePage (R) is also a terrible and very unpopular governor, who is also (ideologically) a crazy person. He was only elected in a 3-way race in 2010, where the sane people made the mistake of splitting their votes between the other two candidates. Maine isn’t planning to repeat that mistake this year. Haha, just kidding: It’ll be a 3-way race again and probably a nail-biter to the end, between LePage and Congressman Mike Michaud (D). LePage is doing better (somehow) in polls more recently than he was for most of last year.

 
We’ll see how things develop from here.

flag-of-maine

The danger of school autonomy

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A recent report funded by the Boston Foundation and the Center for Collaborative Education, a pro-Pilot School organization, recommends that the Boston Public School system grant more autonomy to individual schools.

Which raises the question: autonomy relative to whom? According to the Globe:

The premise of the recommendation is that schools best know the unique needs of their student populations and what measures might hold the most promise in boosting achievement. That, in turn, means the schools should have maximum latitude to make decisions regarding budgeting, staffing, curriculum, and length of school day, instead of being hemmed in by central offices or union contracts, the report concludes.

 
This might sound nice in theory, but being anti-teachers’-union is anti-student. The less bargaining power the teachers have, the lower the prevailing pay, and that in turn means some of the most promising young people take their talents elsewhere, instead of deciding to teach our children. If we want the best we have to pay more, just like the private sector.

But instead, teachers have been under a lot of pressure lately to teach for peanuts as a labor of love. Indeed, a pro-Pilot article featured on the Boston Foundation webpage quotes one teacher who takes the “love” bait:

“I care about my union,” Mr. Ali said, “but there are contractual complications. The union is advocating for us, but the conversation is too narrowly confined, because it’s all about money. Teachers don’t become teachers for the money.”

 
But teaching is a career. People who don’t do things for the money are called volunteers.

Are teachers’ unions the only way that teachers can receive a good salary? Not necessarily — but they’re certainly the best way for teachers to keep it.

Just take a look at North Carolina. Writes parent and university professor Deborah R. Gerhardt,

As recently as 2008, North Carolina paid teachers better than half the nation. Things can change quickly, especially if you’re not looking. Now, the brand that attracted us — “the education state” — sounds like a grim joke. After six years of no real raises, we have fallen to 46th in teacher pay.

 
She describes how North Carolina teachers have suffered a pay freeze, the loss of tenure, and the loss of higher salaries for those with graduate degrees.

Also in North Carolina? An interdiction on collective bargaining for teachers. These teachers who build their lives around the idea of an okay salary and some paltry benefits can see it all go downhill in a matter of years. No unions means no stability.

So what does this mean for students? Are they thriving in the union-free North Carolina school system? Not so much — teachers in North Carolina aren’t passively accepting these changes. They’re leaving — and who can blame them? But this flight increases the student to teacher ratio, making things more difficult for remaining teachers and resulting in worse education for students.
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