James P. Freeman: Baker's budget and the culture wars
“I’m running outta change
There’s a lot of things if I could
I’d rearrange”
-- U2, “The Fly”
In his recent collection of columns, Mark Steyn offers what should be a new political maxim: “You can’t have conservative government in a liberal culture, and that’s the position the Republican Party is in.”
Rather acutely, that idea resonates in the commonwealth. Here and across the liberal hinterland “culture trumps politics,” observes Steyn. Surely Gov. Charlie Baker, no conservative but a pragmatic Republican, is discovering this with his first budget for fiscal 2016, given the howls of disapproval upon its release.
It helps explain why undue attention and undeserved amplification of cultural hubris distort and diminish attendant serious fiscal – hence, political – matters in government, particularly on Beacon Hill. It is a morally superior but overly sensitive culture that detects minutiae in certain behaviors deemed offensive that, in its sole judgement, retards greater progress, all in the name of gauzy tolerance and acceptance. It not only demands greater access to progress, but expects the costs to attain that progress be borne by others (known as “the law of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs”).
Consider what goes viral and reaches “trending” status today just in Massachusetts.
A study conducted by Northeastern University of just 27 pairs of undergraduates playing Trivial Pursuit discerned “benevolent sexism” by male participants acting chivalrous. A Massachusetts inmate continues to demand “gender reassignment” surgery be paid by taxpayers. A Lexington high school has to think twice before hosting a dance with the exclusionary theme “American Pride.” A careless – ultimately harmless – social media posting by state Rep. Timothy Whelan was immediately found to be “racist.”
Former Gov. Deval Patrick was a master technician at blurring the lines between culture and politics when he said in 2013 that national healthcare reform was a “values statement.” What exactly are the values in Patrick’s progressive legacy? Chronic, uncontrollable fiscal dipsomania in the form of high debt, deficits, unfunded pension liabilities and taxes. Not to mention a bizarre philosophical underpinning whereby government’s role is to merely expand rather than simply fix. Like transportation infrastructure. As surely commuters and Boston 2024 organizers are understanding.
Against this feverish backdrop is the chilly backdraft greeting Baker’s new budget. Today he is confronting a $768 million shortfall in the current fiscal year that ends June 30 and a projected $1.8 billion shortage in 2016, legacy gifts from Patrick. In spite of these developments, Baker calls for $1 billion in new expenditures or 3 percent in overall spending next year, including a 20 percent hike in transportation funding. Thus far, taxes and fees will not rise nor is it expected that he will draw down on the stabilization fund. He is relying upon tax amnesty, capital gains tax revenue and targeted surgical cuts in appropriations to balance the budget.
“We’re going to have a big debate with the legislature about our priorities,” Baker says.
But as an act of enduring fiscal stability, nevertheless, he must realize this budget is still dressed up like a car crash. However, it is the start of restoring discipline to the process. Everyone must realize, with his experience in financial management, that he will employ a strategic view of budgeting, relieving the commonwealth of perennial stop-gap measures.
The Health and Human Services Department budget is fast approaching one half of all state spending, which is unsustainable. Romneycare, its largest line item, was hailed in 2006 by caring classes. But it is neither universal nor cost-effective.
Which brings us to the professed faux-outrage masqueraded as constructive criticism by self-important interest groups, ironically eager for greater community, understanding and accustomed to excess; but not used to meager constraints. Today’s culture knows no bounds. And budgets limit and arrest impulses of supposed limitless possibilities, among the hallmarks and drivers of progressivism and pan-culturalism.
State aid to public school districts would actually increase by 2.4 percent (or $105 million) and to state public colleges and universities by 3.6 percent. Tell that to Massachusetts Teachers Association President Barbara Madeloni. The budget is, she claims, “troubling for its lack of vision and absence of meaningful investments in education and other vital community services.”
As regards Hollywood – the ultimate arbiter and distributor of culture – the elimination of the state film tax credit is entirely defensible. According to the state Department of Revenue, since 2006, it has cost the state about $118,000 per industry job created. There are 5,700 workers involved in the film and television industry.
If travel and tourism comprise the third largest industry in the commonwealth, why should the state subsidize it at all? Baker rightly reduces by $8 million its funding and cuts assistance to regional tourism councils by 90 percent. Predictably, Wendy Northcross, CEO of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce and chair of the state Regional Tourism Council, expressed “shock” at the reductions. “Marketing works. Advertising works. To go backwards at this time doesn’t seem logical given the needs of the state.” And state Rep. Sarah Peake – whose business is an indirect beneficiary of such marketing – found the cuts “disturbing, short-sighted and misguided.”
Baker also proposes saving $4.7 million by replacing state-employed mental health crisis teams with contractors. Despite $727 million (a 1.7 percent increase) allocated for the state Department of Mental Health, the savings, in the words of a board member of a local mental health advocacy group, is “bad fiscal policy.”
Remember the federal sequester requiring 1-2 percent reductions in spending across certain bureaucracies? That was described as devastating and draconian. Today’s new austerity – barely anchored in fiscal realism – is not even as severe by comparison.
The new governor seems willing and able to address the most rudimentary structural and operational fiscal dilemmas now and, more importantly, for the future. For the precious few realists left in the commonwealth, take comfort. Baker’s budget is the beginning of a predictable miracle against untethered progressivism and unbridled cultural extravagance.
James P. Freeman is a Cape Cod-based writer
James P. Freeman: The style of George F. Will
“The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the
most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.”
For those who follow closely or casually the commentator and columnist George Will, most are probably left with the impression of his erudite conservative views on the written page and his be-spectacled, bow-tied, urbane appearances on cable television. For some, however, it is Will’s unique style and sensibility that elevates him above his peers. That combination arguably makes him the most influential writer in America.
“A columnist for only a year,” noted James J. Kilpatrick in his 1984 book, The Writer’s Art, when Will wrote in 1975 “a splendid piece” on Patty Hearst. “Her arrest, he informed us, ‘provided a coda to a decade of political infantilism, the exegesis of which could be comprehended as a manifestation of bourgeois Weltanschauung.’ With that out of his system, George went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for commentary and to become a polished and literate essayist…”
That year he also described the rock band Led Zeppelin, as it descended into the nation’s capital, as “one of society’s vigorously vibrating ganglions.” His early work was cast in original, descriptively smoldering tones, a kind of literary Stradivari -- pitch perfect with rich resonance.
He began writing regularly in the early 1970s as Washington Editor for National Review, under the watchful eye of its founder, William F. Buckley Jr.; under the storm clouds of Watergate Will became an early outspoken critic of the Nixon administration. On Jan. 1, 1974 he became a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post; 40 years later the column appears in more than 450 newspapers. In 1976 he started a bi-weekly essay on the back page of Newsweek magazine which ran for over 30 years.
After 25 years, and a rich sediment of source material from which to study, in 1999, writing for the Ashbrook Center. at Ashland University, Steven Hayward noted Will’s “prose style combine three elements.” One, “there is the sheer clarity and aphoristic quality of his prose.” His “one sentence distillations of a larger body of thought can be found in reading every column.” Two, “Will is a superb narrative story-teller, a rarity among opinion journalists.” Three, he writes with a “dry understated, wit, also rare among opinion journalists whose prose seldom deviates from the monotone seriousness of the overly earnest.”
Conceivably, then, Hayward read this 1977 gem:
Unfortunately, my favorite delight (chocolate-coated vanilla ice cream flecked with nuts) bears the unutterable name “Hot Fudge Nutty Buddy,” an example of the plague of cuteness in commerce. There are some things a gentleman simply will not do, and one is announce in public a desire for a ‘Nutty buddy.’ So I usually settle for a plain vanilla cone.
That year he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. The Commentary Writing Jury Report concluded that, “Will combines a scholarly approach to commentary with wry humor. His writing style is clear and to the point. His arguments and analysis are forceful and easy to understand…”
Fortune Magazine described his collection of columns in 1982’s The Pursuit of Virtue and Other Tory Notions, as “a marvel of style, personality, character, learning and intelligence.” And Commentary Magazine noted “a stylistic signature so immediately recognizeable.”
A genome sequencing of Will’s compositions reveals certain attributes: two word alliterations; one sentence words puncture and punctuate longer sentences; and, despite the ice cream quotation above, rarely will he employ the use of the first-person pronoun “I.” A droll deprecation acts as an effective counter balances to weighty matters and may in fact enhance arguments presented in his work. It is also lyrical -- a certain poetry to the prose within the boundaries a standard 750 word column.
Recall a recent column about Cuba as it offers a simple example. “The permanent embargo was imposed in 1962 in the hope of achieving, among other things, regime change. Well.”
Last spring, Will was interviewed by radio personality Steve Richards for his program Speaking of Writers. He was asked something he rarely is asked about: his writing process and routine. Will explained, “I absolutely love to write” and described the activity as a “physical, tactile pleasure;” the feeling of thoughts becoming words. “A lot of reading and research goes into” writing 100 columns a year, he allows.
Will used to write “the old–fashioned way,” in long hand with a fountain pen. That all changed in February 1994, when, after a taping of the Sunday TV Program The Week, he broke his right arm. Ever since, he has written on a computer but he has not brought himself – yet – to twitter and tweeting. The focus always remains on content over transmission.
The best advice ever given to him was uttered by Mark Twain, who advised to do three things: “Write, write, write.” As for dispensing advice for writers, Will instructs: “Find models to emulate,” and it is important one “gets a sense to have a style.” It confirms what William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well, said: “Writing is learned by imitation; we all need models.”
And Will’s models? “This columnist has had two, columnist Murray Kempton and novelist P.G. Wodehouse.”
For me, such an honor belongs to two writers as well: George Will and U2’s Bono. A strange alloy, perhaps, unique and, at times, seemingly incompatible. But as Will reminds us, “style reflects sensibility.”
James P. Freeman is a Cape Cod-based writer
James P. Freeman: 1965: A very consequential year
“But yes I think it can be very easily done”
Given the Baby Boomers’ irrational reverence for everything 1960s — incense, peppermints and the like -- give them their due for recalling the golden anniversary of a truly momentous year: 1965.
Camelot faded and from innocence bled armaments when the first combat troops (3,500 Marines) were dispatched in March; by November the Pentagon informed President Lyndon Johnson that it needed 400,000 personnel to vanquish the Viet Cong. Thus the stain of Vietnam became the defining event for a generation of Americans.
But the ‘60s were more than the turbulence of war. In fact, 1965 would have been memorable for casting a postmodern panorama: The Social Security Amendments (Medicare and Medicaid); The Voting Rights Act; The Immigration and Nationality Act; the first flights of Project Gemini space program; the closing of the Second Vatican Council (from which emerged three future popes); Casey Stengel’s retirement from baseball after 56 years; and television’s debut of jazz-tinged A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Hurricane Betsy, with winds of 145 mph, roared by New Orleans, killing 76, and became the first hurricane to cause a billion dollars in damage. The Gateway Arch was completed in St. Louis. Bob Dylan went electric at Newport and the Beatles went to Shea Stadium in New York. Rebellion occurred in Watts and demonstrations in Selma.
However, three unrelated, but monumental, developments — all within six weeks of each other — meant that 1965 would be the most consequential year of 20th Century American history as a predictor of the cultural, political and technological condition of early 21st Century America: the The Moynihan Report, passage of The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and publication of Moore’s Law.
Known formally as “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” it was authored by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then assistant secretary of labor, and, later, one of the Senate’s greatest thinkers. Originally labeled “For Office Use Only,” but released in March, it focused on the roots of black poverty in America.
Describing a “tangle of pathology,” he wrote that “expansion of welfare programs... can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation.” Absence of a “nuclear family” would hinder progress towards economic and political equality.
With pedagogic prescience, Moynihan illuminated the idea that such disintegration would beget social and cultural regression. In 1965, it was estimated that 23.6 percent of black children and just 3.07 percent of white children were born to single mothers. Today, those rates have been far exceeded (72 percent of black children; 29 percent of white children).
In 2012, ominously, 1,609,619 children were born to unmarried women, ushering a massive new generation reliant on civic altruism and government support. The long term ramifications are unknown but such instability is unprecedented and may help explain polarizing gaps in the normalcy of upward mobility.
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was signed into law by President Johnson on Palm Sunday, April 11, a mere three months after being proposed, and is today in its ninth iteration (No Child Left Behind). At the time, it was the most expansive federal education bill -- an arena once the exclusive province of state and local educators.
Some have suggested that it marked the last time the federal government would consider any matter exempt from federal intrusion. Anything could be a constitutional imperative. It spawned the Department of Education and, more recently, Common Core State Standards Initiative. Fundamentally, it legitimized, if not anticipated, the largesse of Obamacare.
Today, the federal government allocates about $141 billion for education and, since 1965, over $267 billion has been spent to assist states in educating disadvantaged children. Despite requiring a “culture of accountability,” achievement is stagnant. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, reading proficiency of 17-year-olds has remained flat since the early 1970s.
On April 19, in the trade journal “Electronics” appeared a seminal essay, “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits.” Dr. Gordon Moore, schooled in physical sciences rather than electronics, unwittingly changed the course of computing. He noticed processing speeds for clusters of transistors — the electronic engines of computers -- were effectively doubling every two years. He reasoned that such trends would continue through 1975. Remarkably, in 2015, his “lucky extrapolation” -- what became known as “Moore’s Law” -- is still relatively intact and nearly a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Americans today can trace the seemingly urgent, relentlessly constant, pace of technological change to Moore. Silicon Valley considers it a social contract, a driver of improvement. Before Moore’s observations, it was challenging to fabricate a single silicon transistor. Now, state-of-the-art advancements produce 1.5 billion transistors on a single wafer. Engineering scientists are conducting research in “self-assembly polymer molecules” and extreme ultraviolet lithography in order to extend the law.
Michael S. Malone, without a hint of hyperbole, concluded in his book, The Intel Trinity: “It has been said that if in 1965 you had looked into the future using any traditional predictive tool — per capita income, life expectancy, demographics, geopolitical forces, et cetera — none would have been as effective a prognosticator, none a more accurate lens into the future than Moore’s Law.”
In his State of the Union address on Jan. 4 of that year, Johnson envisioned a “Great Society” whereby “society will not flower spontaneously from swelling riches and surging power.” Fifty years later, with 1965 as a catalyst, that society is largely realized.
James P. Freeman is a Cape Cod-based writer
James P. Freeman: Obama, Patrick: Unrepentant progressives
“It’s one for all and all for one
We work together, common sons”
Like progressive rock of the 1970s, progressive politics of the 2010s, also overwrought and overvalued, may be fading into the collective memory. As evident from the recent election, sensible candidates fled from proximity to its platitudes.
President Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, individually heralded as the new voices of progressivism, may come to collectively symbolize its very impotence and likely temporary revival. Kindred spirits, youthful and dynamic, for 10 years they have occupied a unique space in the temple of the American body politic. Their brand of progressivism, carelessly applied yet tethered to the original philosophical tenants from last century, has proven to be long on compassion and short on competence.
From savvy prodigies to seasoned professionals, their lives bear remarkable parallels with recurring intersections. Both were raised by a single mother and experienced strained relationships with a distant father. Both are married to attorneys and have two daughters. Both attended Harvard Law School and were civil-rights lawyers. Both are well-versed in Chicago-style politics. Both have had a family member ordered deported then granted legal status. Both supported Roland Arnall’s (founder of scandal-plagued mortgage lender Ameriquest) 2005 appointment as ambassador to the Netherlands.
Both have enigmatic relationships with the Clintons (as counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Patrick sued then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton in a voting case; in 1994 President Clinton appointed him as an assistant attorney general. Obama selected Hillary Clinton as secretary of state after defeating her in 2008). And both will be remembered for electoral firsts: Obama as the first African-American president; Patrick as the first African-American governor to be re-elected.
Obama-Patrick today are the political equivalent of Lennon-McCartney, authors and architects of liberalism’s lyrical chorus and progressive arpeggios.
They gained national exposure for soaring speeches at Democrat National Conventions (Obama in Boston, 2004; Patrick in Charlotte, N.C., 2012). During the 2008 primary, Obama--denying accusations (raised by Clinton’s campaign) of plagiarizing a 2006 Patrick speech--confirmed, “Deval and I do trade ideas all of the time.”
Consider, then, the undeniable similarity, if not synchronicity, in their style and substance. Throughout elective office, their oratory and orthodoxy seem meticulously orchestrated. Patrick’s 2006 slogan: “Together we can.” Obama’s 2008 slogan: “Yes we can.”
Rarely stepping inside the soul of scripture, except when politically expedient, they both paraphrased Exodus 23 in remarks seemingly choreographed regarding immigration policy. This past July, Patrick: “My faith teaches that, if a stranger dwells…” This November, Obama: “Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger….”
Their beliefs illustrate perfectly the prurience of progressivism: omnipresent government as monopolizer of wisdom, allocator of capital, liquidator of competition, juror of diversity, dispenser of fairness, enforcer of selective laws and, now, a counselor in competence. Little in heaven or on earth is exempt from intervention.
Regarding global warming—despite a seventeen year pause and now known, with a sort of ambiguous panache, as “climate disruption”—Patrick said, “The overwhelming judgment of science… has put that question to rest.” Days later, in his 2014 State of the Union address, Obama said, “…the debate is settled… [disruption] is a fact.”
Nothing exemplifies unrepentant progressivism, however, better than the Affordable Care Act, whereby government, as social scientist, is reliant upon “experts” to engineer and deliver progress. MIT economist and paid health reform adviser Jonathan Gruber, cited by Obama (having “stolen” Gruber’s “ideas liberally”) for his role in ACA’s creation, recently affirmed what reasonable skeptics already knew: the law was based upon manipulation and deception, shadowing a flawed state model (slowly bankrupting Massachusetts). Few realize that Gruber, who last decade also advised Massachusetts, still sits on the board of its Health Connector, implementer and administrator of “model” healthcare.
After ACA’s disruptive roll-out in October 2013 (see CGI Federal, ultimately fired by Massachusetts and the federal government), Obama returned to Boston, extolling the virtues of the ACA.
At Faneuil Hall, after being introduced by Patrick (saying the law was not a Web site but a “values statement”), Obama defended a so-called “progressive vision of healthcare for all.” With indifference to reality, he bizarrely claimed it connected “some ideas about markets and competition that had been championed by conservatives.” Shortly thereafter, the Mass. Connector site crashed, unable to conform to ACA’s myriad rules and regulations.
With Patrick leaving office in January, Obama said last March that the governor would make “a great president” and his friend “could be very successful at the federal level.” It remains to be seen, however, if a kind and merciful God will allow a nebbish state manager, harboring national ambitions, to once again quote from The Good News in a new public capacity.
James P. Freeman is a former Cape Cod Times columnist
James P. Freeman: Miracle on Cape Cod?
Congressional candidate John Chapman bristles at the suggestion that the most exciting electoral race in Massachusetts is somehow unexplainable, unexpected, surprising and not “exactly clear.” Rather, to him, it is fundamentally explainable, expected, unsurprising and crystal clear. After all, Chapman, from often foggy Chatham, is only attempting to be the first Republican elected to Congress in the commonwealth since Peter Torkildsen and Peter Blute both won seats in 1994. That campaign—also a mid-term, like 2014—was a national referendum on presidential imperialism and unpopularity.
A Chapman triumph would be redundant evidence in refuting Tip O’Neill’s long held axiom: All politics is local. Except every breaking wave election, which 2014 may just prove to be (interestingly, a second Republican, Richard Tisei, is also competitive in a Massachusetts congressional race). Chapman hopes history will repeat itself and that this year will mirror 1994.
A lawyer, moderate and mollifying, Chapman is aiming to synthesize his executive experience in fields as diverse as labor, healthcare and finance.
Sitting down with him after an event on a brisk autumn Sunday on Cape Cod recently, he explained quite simply why he is seriously challenging a two-term incumbent Democrat, William Keating. “The people here are starved for representation,” he said. His opponent is “invisible and ineffective.” Chapman—who cannot remember the last time he had a day off since announcing his candidacy last January—recalled meeting a number of residents in the 9th District who did not know who their Congressman was or that they had a choice in this election.
Chapman is a political start-up in a district that perennially is a permutable start-over. The 9th is a creation (in 2012) of the redistricting of the 10th, which was a creation of the redistricting of the 12th, which had roots from the former 4th and 14th districts… as population fled the state.
In Massachusetts, the political hip bone is tightly connected to the thigh bone in the Democrat skeleton. Registered Democrats still outnumber Republicans 3-1; the entire Congressional delegation is of a single party. The last Republican to occupy a seat in this district, and its legacy districts, was Margaret Heckler, who left office in January 1983. Chapman seems unfazed by any perceived structural disadvantage. As do voters.
An unknown and novice to electoral politics, his campaign—which began principally in direct reaction to the Affordable Care Act—received attention, and ultimately national recognition, earlier this month when an Emerson College/WGBH New Poll showed Chapman with a five-point (45 percent to 40 percent) lead over Keating. A seat once considered nearly uncontestable, suddenly seems in jeopardy.
Emerging from the poll’s results are indicators that should alarm Keating. President Obama has only a 37 percent favorable rating and 58 percent unfavorable rating in the 9th District. Chapman is tied with Keating (39 percent) among females. He is less well known but more well liked than Keating. And of supreme consequence, Chapman holds a solid lead (54 percent to Keating’s 28 percent) among unaffiliated voters.
He may also be the beneficiary of a rare phenomenon in Massachusetts politics: A strong top-of-the-ballot Republican (Charlie Baker) may draw votes for down-ballot Republicans. With no Deval Patrick, Elizabeth Warren or Barack Obama on the ticket, disgruntled Democrats are left with Martha Coakley, proving to be uninspiring to unenthusiastic supporters.
This election is also notable for what is conspicuously absent: the potency of progressivism (and, for that matter, the Tea Party). Everywhere in Massachusetts progressives believe in—expect, even--diversity of everything, except political thought and political party. But this election seems more about issues than identity. And issues appear to be propelling Chapman and retarding Keating as Election Day approaches.
The Emerson/WBGH poll showed that those who believe that taxes and jobs are the critical issues prefer Baker while those who prioritize education and healthcare prefer Coakley. Chapman lists jobs and spending (related to taxes) as those issues most in need of addressing but also senses that the Ebola and ISIS concerns tie into immigration. The latter, immigration, is a new third-rail for Democrats in the Commonwealth; it speaks directly to competency of government in general and the unpopularity of Obama (and Patrick) in particular. Which, in turn, feed into national moodiness and uneasiness.
According to the poll, Chapman shows his greatest support to be, unsurprisingly, in Barnstable County. The region’s largest paper, The Cape Cod Times—which recently endorsed two moderate Republicans for the state legislature—actually endorsed Keating, citing the role of small businesses and healthcare. Those issues, however, favor the Republican.
Chapman retold a story that will undoubtedly resonate with the 1,200 National Federation of Independent Business members in the district: Owners of a bakery on the Cape could not hire an additional employee precisely because their healthcare costs rose threefold.
For Chapman, judicious journeyman, that very clear revelation may be looking into the crystal ball of victory.
James P. Freeman is a former Cape Cod Times columnist
James P. Freeman: Baker, Beacon Hill and Banacek
During the introductory credits of “The Three Million Dollar Piracy,” from a 1973 episode of television’s Boston-based series Banacek, there is a forgotten moment of morbid foreshadowing: Under a blue sky, as the camera pans across the golden dome of the Federalist-style statehouse, at 24 Beacon St., there looms a dark, steel skeletal structure, One Ashburton Place. More than metaphorically, it marked the time when state government as a bastion of ideas would start to be overshadowed by a bureaucracy of idols.
The 2014 Massachusetts gubernatorial election is about the very role of Beacon Hill.
Sitting down with Charlie Baker, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, at the Pilot House, after remarks he gave to the Sandwich Chamber of Commerce recently, you suddenly realize his candidacy is about balancing and restoring the role of limited government from today’s oppressive one. It is a change of approach, rethinking what government does and how it does it. Or, as one political scientist describes it, “affirming certain values and discouraging certain vices.”
One is struck with what Baker is not: a purveyor of identity politics--so carefully crafted by Democrats — where feeling is substituted for function. Instead, Baker is properly defined by action: “This is what I will do” as opposed to “This is who I am.” It is a marked contrast after eight years of Deval Patrick’s form of leadership; governor as emoticon not manager.
A theme of restoration and repair seems to be supported by residents. In polling results released earlier this month by wbur.org, primary voters overwhelmingly (89 percent of Republicans and 81 percent Democrats) indicated that managing state government effectively is a top priority. Perhaps tellingly, this “ranked higher than likability or progressive/conservative attitudes.”
Democrats display unintentional humor, therefore, when speaking of “change.” Surely, upon hearing this, sensible residents echo the sentiments of Guildenstern: “I have lost all capacity for disbelief.” Beyond, as he said, a “gentle scepticism.”
Martha Coakley, Baker’s principal challenger, has been state attorney general for nearly eight years and running for the fourth time for state-wide office. She would spend $500 million for economic recovery -- a plan modeled after Patrick’s 10-year, $1 billion life-sciences initiative, reports the AP. That's ironic, if anything, as she and fellow party members have run on a platform of change from eight years of Patrick’s grisly governance. Baker is relying upon public skepticism about Coakley’s ability to inspire and effect change.
He rightly believes his election would create a “constructive friction” between him and a de facto Democrat legislature (82 percent in the House and 90 percent in Senate) that would revive public accountability. He says that the one-party government is “more pronounced” now and hears even dissatisfied Democrats whispering about the definitive lack of leadership. Is that when the ghost of John Adams would reappear to haunt the hallowed ground on The Hill with “checks and balances” and instill discipline?
For most voters, such issues as runaway taxes, uncontrolled spending, unfunded pension obligations, massive debt burdens and assorted scandals — exacerbated by single-party politics--are accumulated barnacles below the surface of the ship of state; a seaworthy vessel, nevertheless, but slowly submerging. Baker would bring an immediacy to those issues.
Some will immediately greet the new governor.
Just 11 days after the election, on Nov. 4, 400,000 residents will begin —a gain!--enrolling for healthcare on the new Connector Web site. Its predecessor, unable to conform to myriad rules and regulations of Obamacare, was, Baker says, “an astonishing breakdown.” When, and if, fully implemented, costs may exceed $500 million. A Pioneer Institute healthcare expert called it “irresponsible to taxpayers” and described it a “‘Big Dig’ IT project.” Like its national step-cousin, it will likely not be free from trouble and require comprehensive executive engagement of the next governor.
Is this Patrick’s idea of “innovation” and “infrastructure?” It is a supreme example, certainly one of many, of the legacy migraines left over from his administration.
A considerable amount of Baker’s time was spent on the economy. Because of the saturation of codes, rules and regulations, “this is a complicated place to do business,” he asserts. Adding, the state “needs to think differently about economic development.”
Baker may be a beneficiary of a development not yet largely discernible. With Patrick and his party so aggressively progressive, the Democratic base may actually be more moderate, as evident from a Boston Globe poll conducted last July on immigration. Only 36 percent of respondents supported state spending on unaccompanied immigrant children compared to 57 percent who opposed it. The poll’s numbers overall were consistent with national poll results.
Conceivably, then, those children are not on commonwealth soil because residents questioned the veracity and competency of government supervision, not its compassion. If voters look at such factors surrounding other issues — immediate and intermediate -- it would further affirm the results of the wbur.org poll and would ensure a Baker victory.
Forty one years after George Peppard’s leisurely Beacon Hill drive inBanacek, Charlie Baker would reimagine the scenery.
James P. Freeman is a former Cape Cod Times columnist.
James P. Freeman: What is a 'living wage'?
Like the mysterious appearance of black swans and blue moons, it was bound to happen sooner or later. The Cape Cod Times recently endorsed a position held by conservative Massachusetts state rep. Randy Hunt, who agreed to an increase in the state minimum wage that became law last month. Supporters of a mandated increase in wages (which will rise to $11 an hour in the commonwealth by 2017) might reconsider their positions given today’s fragile economy and future projections of the deleterious effects of such action locally and nationally.
Hunt (R.-Sandwich) shall be forgiven for choosing, in his words, “the lesser of two evils:” one, a pesky ballot initiative—always a wildcard for passage--in this November’s elections, that called for a swift increase of $10.50 an hour and automatic increases indexed to inflation (think of the recent gasoline tax, pegged similarly in perpetuity); or two, a higher per-hour figure with a definitive cap not tied to a gyrating Consumer Price Index, to be implemented in stages. He chose the latter.
His compromise may make sense given the coercive supreme Democrat majorities in the legislature that would have thwarted more reasonable Republican proposals but it is still bad public policy. It also does little to counter assertions that Republicans are insensitive about the working poor. More so, it is just as bad as President Obama’s $10.10 federal minimum-wage proposal.
In 1938, at the end of progressivism’s first wave and during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s second term, Congress enacted a federal minimum wage. Every president since, except Ford, Reagan and Obama, has signed into law increases, the most recent being George W. Bush in 2007; the last increase set in 2009. Last autumn, The Huffington Post reported that “progressive economists” believe that if today’s wage kept with the rate of inflation it would now be above $10 an hour.
Today’s debate centers on what Roosevelt indeed described as a “living wage.” Arguments abound on the role of government creating arbitrary and artificial adjustments. What should or should not be a floor? Given today’s prettifying pulse of progressivism, why not a ceiling? In the interests of fairness and compassion, why let market conditions dictate such figures?
So public-policy experts now speak of a living wage that would remove workers from poverty. Therefore, the $10.10 figure supposedly will not only lift the working poor out of poverty, but will presumably allow for continued receipt and reliance on benefits so generously distributed in today’s welfare state.
There is a fundamental flaw in this line of reasoning.
To be elevated to a lower-middle-class income bracket, a $10.10 minimum wage presupposes an hourly worker working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year. According to federal statistics, however, full-time hourly laborers work an average of 34.5 hours a week; 70 percent of all minimum-wage employees work fewer than 35 hours a week. Even government statisticians must concede that working every single week is wildly ambitious for purposes of actuarial calculations.
Despite having over $2 trillion in cash reserves, corporate America is unwilling to pay wages for what was once universally defined as a 40-hour week, let alone overtime. Government’s role should be to create conditions—incentives--favorable for increasing salaries. But the government continues to create uncertainty with its tax policy, regulatory overreach and, more recently, disrupting coverage and costs for healthcare (watch Massachusetts mandate paid sick-leave for small and medium-sized businesses).
What’s next, establishing a law forcing businesses to comply with a 40-hour work week?
In 2007, David Neumark and William Wascher cleared the din above the noise with a study published for National Bureau of Economic Research. Their research determined: “A sizable majority of the studies surveyed… give a relatively consistent indication of negative employment effects of minimum wages.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that raising the federal minimum wage from its current $7.25 per hour rate to the president’s preferred wage will remove only 900,000 people (or 2 percent) out of poverty from the 45 million believed in poverty. Middle-income jobs from the last recession were replaced largely with low-wage jobs.
Of greater concern should be this potentially unintended consequence of government meddling: increased income of the poorest of workers will likely make them ineligible for the full amount of benefits, such as food and energy assistance. Not to mention higher payroll taxes. Such a twist may in fact negate extra hourly pay to the point of making the very increase negligibly beneficial, all to the detriment of domestic and state economies.
A new paradox exists today: jobless rates are generally declining -- as have labor- participation rates--while benefits to Americans are increasing. James P. Freeman, formerly in the financial-services industry, is a Cape Cod-based writer.
James P. Freeman: Mass. Democrats in fantasyland
“Without a doubt
When it comes to ideas about everything
King Friday XIII has them”
-- King Friday XIII, from “Making and Creating,” 1986
As Gov. Deval Patrick, the commonwealth’s veritable King Friday, prepares the dissolution of his domain, Democrats, with yeomanly purpose, searching for progressivism of yore, will soon descend upon the hills of Worcester to nominate a gubernatorial candidate. Who will play Queen Sara Saturday or Prince Tuesday to Patrick’s Friday?
In 1867 (the year Republicans held majorities over Democrats of 40-0 in the Senate and 230-10 in the House) Walt Whitman first published “O Me! O Life!.” If life is “a powerful play that goes on,” distressed Democrats may wish to control-alt-delete the last eight years of verse.
Patrick may be the most supercilious (about his abilities and policies) and super-sensitive (about criticism of his abilities and policies) public servant in modern-day Massachusetts. Given the official record, it will be interesting watching his party apply a progressive pumice to the corrosive and incorrigible government he has led.
A sampling of the governor’s ideas, leadership and management efforts: Funding at the embattled Department of Children and Families has been cut by over $100 million from fiscal 2007 to 2015 (12.4 percent). Unfunded pension liabilities have grown substantially to $23.6 billion. Government spending has increased by an average of $1 billion per year. State sales tax has increased by 25 percent. The gas tax, now pegged to inflation, will increase in perpetuity. Property taxes have risen by billions.
The once vaunted health-care exchange is left in ruins — now the worst performing in the country -- with $57 million having been spent on an unworkable Web site, with 160,000 residents being placed indefinitely on Medicaid, costing uncounted millions of dollars. Bankrupt Evergreen Solar, costing residents $50 million, “wasn’t a failure.” Welfare waste and fraud (19,000 “missing” recipients) is described as “leakage” and full of “anecdotes.” The imposition of near-martial law in the wake of last year’s marathon bombings was euphemistically called “shelter in place.”
A number of Democrat candidates have cited the following: Massachusetts has ranked in the bottom 15 states over the past decade in job creation. It has the sixth highest rate in America of drug users under the age of 18 (during an “opiate epidemic”). The commonwealth ranks 8th worst in the country for income inequality. The homeless population has grown by 8.7 percent in the last year, while rates have fallen nationally; taxpayers now spend $50 million annually to place homeless in hotels.
This has all occurred with the complicity of Democrat super-majorities in the legislature.
In polite progressive circles, however, there must be unimaginably little mention of Patrick’s “accomplishments” given the sheer puerility of them. At least former governor Michael Dukakis, the last true progressive, talked about competence. Of the five major Democrat candidates for governor, none speak about progress made because of the sheer preposterousness of the suggestion.
Today’s candidates surely must be living in the Neighborhood of Make Believe given their willful ignorance of serious matters affecting the commonwealth. Each echoes a narcissistic sentimentalism for timeless and timely liberal themes; each exhibits a certain cognitive dissonance about what is important, given the absence of addressing critical issues and proposing sensible ideas in their campaigns.
State Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley, consistently leading in primary- and general-election polling, believes that citizens should have greater “access” to community health centers. She desires expansion of “learning time” for education while lowering the costs of higher education (was Elizabeth Warren’s $347,000 salary at Harvard too high?).
State Treasurer Steven Grossman, who will “combine his progressive values and business experience,” has presided over an increase in the commonwealth’s unfunded pension liabilities while at treasury. He claims to have “revolutionized the way government operates at treasury.” He is also “fully committed” to achieving the goals of the MA Global Warming Solutions Act.
Corporate executive Joseph Avellone, M.D., is convinced “our largest challenge is and will be climate change.” Yet his “highest priority” is education.
Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary for the federal Department of Homeland Security, “will focus on the issues that matter most to Bay Staters.” Among them: “combat[ing] climate change” and “protect[ion] of women’s reproductive rights.”
Finally, Donald Berwick, M.D., former Obamacare administrator, also believes climate change is the “most pressing concern to the health of our planet.” He sees Massachusetts leading the charge to have 3.3 million electric vehicles on our roads by 2025.
Here is a real pressing problem: The last time a Democrat succeeded a two-term Democrat governor was November 1934 when James Michael Curly was elected after Joseph B. Ely (1931-1935), when terms were two years. It has never occurred in the modern era when terms were extended to four years in 1966.
What should be clear in 2014, regardless, is that whomever the nominee, he or she may need a magical Boomerang-Toomerang-Zoomerang to ensure the neighborhood corner office remains in control of a Democrat.
James P. Freeman is a Cape Cod-based columnist.
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James P. Freeman: A just appraisal of the '80s
By JAMES P. FREEMAN
“We’ve got no future, we’ve got no past
Here today, built to last…”
The Pet Shop Boys--“West End Girls”
A wit once said we live in an era of “re’s.” Today we regift, repurpose and reboot. But it is the wise who revisit. As did over 100 on a sweltering afternoon last summer on the campus green of Providence College for the 25th reunion of the Class of 1988.
While it was a celebration of silver tokens and conversation among graying scalps, it also afforded the opportunity to rediscover the Excellent Eighties and reflect upon contemporary culture.
The '80s still command little respect, as evident from the recent Radio Shack commercial mocking the era—its icons and gear—as obsolescent old-school relics. Indeed, Gen Xers (from 1965-1979, 80 million) are still overshadowed by Baby Boomers (1946-1964, 76 million) and their incessant self-indulgent generational ownership or a kind of “cultural hegemony.” The recent 50-year commemorations of the Beatles conquering America and the JFK assassination were given weighty television documentaries. By contrast, the seeming superficiality of the '80s are relegated to kitschy nostalgia programming on music channels.
But Daniel J. Boorstein, writing for Life Books in 1989, believed that the 80s saw “accelerating contrary movements home and abroad.” It was a decade of dichotomy that could live with cultural contradictions and synthesize the schizophrenia of silly and serious. The Brat Pack and Warsaw Pact. Tom Cruise and cruise missiles. Cher and Chernobyl.
Totally tubular!
As children, its members were born into the Space Age and Information Age of the '60s, the warp-speed mobility of man and data. By 1988, ET could phone home in analog and digital.
The formative years, however, were the 1970s, where disco and discontentment settled in amidst the thick stagnation. No wonder, then, that from this period emerged a pope, prime minister and president who would set the tone for the upcoming decade and prove to be towering 20th Century figures.
For students, Ronald Reagan was the central figure of the decade. The class of ’88 cast its first votes for president in 1984; it would mark the last time young Americans voted Republican in large numbers (with Reagan getting slightly under 60 percent of the vote.). The president’s stark good-vs.-evil persona paralleled the hot whites, midnight blacks and sharp edges of the Eighties. Gone were the browns, burnt oranges and soft shapes of the prior decade. It was a projection of power. Super powers and power suits.
It was Reagan who anticipated and advanced the shift of power from Washington to Wall Street. Gordon Gekko would become the most quotable financial icon only months after the then-largest point drop in the Dow Jones in 1987. By graduation, Yuppie finance figured conspicuously in literature with The Art of The Deal and Bonfire of the Vanities on non-fiction and fiction bestseller lists.
But as Wall Street was being erected in lower Manhattan a wall was about to be dismantled in the streets of Berlin. Reagan, often ridiculed as a warmonger, famously urged Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” in June 1987 and lived to see the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, without so much a shot being fired. It would mark the end of a decade exquisitely, if not ironically, begun with shots on goal between the USA and USSR during the 1980 Winter Olympics.
The largest conflict proved to be between Iran and Iraq, a war that presaged future regional conflicts. In April of 1987, Iraqi Ambassador to the U.S. Nizar Hamdoon visited a political-science class at the college and warned of the greater effects of the war. One of the 20th Century’s longest conventional wars ended in August of 1988—the year the stealth bomber was unveiled -- with over 1.5 million dead.
For one class member, war would be at the center of a career. Michael P. Sullivan, former director of rule of law for the U.S. State Department, was awarded a personal achievement award by the national alumni association. He had visited many of the world’s hot spots: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Awesome dude!
The '80s, however, were more than money and magniloquence. As the century waned, it weighed the contrasting philosophical musings of Jean Paul Sartre’s amoralism with John Paul II’s absolute morality. As the century’s longest serving pope, no other world figure would better articulate with a severe clarity the dignity and sanctity of life. Coupled with Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and Reagan’s leadership, the advancement of freedom globally was also moving fast.
As the only American college administered by the Dominican Friars, theology played a pivotal role in everyday life as did sports, particularly basketball in the spring of 1987--the Final Four. As juniors, they would seek pardon for the men they admired most: Rick Pitino, Billy Donovan and Ernie DiGregorio as the father, son and holy ghost.
Much is made of 80’s pop culture and Madonna’s Material World. Much had to do with the new technology allowing greater access in the distribution of content, particularly with music and movies--where forwarding the experience, in order to rewind it, became a newfound joy. This would be the first generation to embrace the individualism of Sony Walkman’s and rental VHS tapes, along with the communalism of Live Aid and Midnight Madness theatre showings, with equal enthusiasm.
MTV, the CD and synthesizer rescued a dying music industry. In 1982 there were no commercially released compact discs; by 1989 over 150 million were sold. By the end of the decade with VCRs blinking “12:00,” over “sixty percent of America fast-forward[ed],” according to Life Magazine. Dialogue and lyrics, as a consequence, would become more memorable.
In film, youthful indiscretion and accidental discovery played by effervescent capers and exultant crusaders defined the era. Unlike the '70s, characters wanted to live in the decade, not escape from it. Enter Ferris, Joel, Duckie and Rambo.
It was a time of Michaels… as in Jackson and Jordan.
But Michael J. Fox’s characters best personified the decade. A trilogy of films The Secret of My Success, Bright Lights, Big City, Casualties of War, saw dreamy optimism perish to jaded reality. Sequenced in 1987, 1988 and 1989, together they encapsulate the era from ambition (as a corporate buccaneer) to anxiety (as a writer) to asymmetry (as a warrior).
Then, in 1992, came the election of the first Baby Boomer president. And the '90s gave the world Clinton and Casual Fridays. Aspiration melted into angst. The world seemed safer, if not simpler, in a bi-polar globe, East and West.
The Class of ’88, in spite of it all, is remarkably composed. There were no existential crises, the kind embalmed by The Big Chill—there those Boomers go again... If anything, members reimagined a world before wardrobe malfunctions, Facebook creeping, derivatives and mobile apps. And 9/11.
A just appraisal of this period reveals that with the fun and frivolity there was substance and solicitude. Rubik’s Cubes and rubric conservatism. As Boorstein concludes, the “remembered record” for the' 80s will “also reassure us of the random vitality of Americans and of the human race.”
Wicked cool!
James P. Freeman is a former columnist with The Cape Cod Time.