Blue Mass Group

Zipcar is a local business. It is green and fun.Every large employer in Cambridge as well as the State should support it.  Company memberships, deals etc Governor Patrick just formed an innovation committee- the first move should be to support a high profile new company like Zipcar.  

It was a lousy process for fans of transparency who long for the time we had 10 full days (and nights) of televised debate one line item at a time. Never mind there were huddles of legislators in the corners of the Chamber or (gasp) behind closed doors developing arguments and and counting votes in relative privacy while the press and the advocates snoozed waiting for “something to happen”. And then waited for days to see the final text, because NOBODY, not even the reliable State House News reported every word and every vote.  . This year the huddles – called Caucuses – were better organized and held in a room off the chamber that was not open to the public or advocates.

[Cross-posted from the ProgressMass blog.  Like ProgressMass on Facebook and follow on Twitter.] Our Republican junior Senator, Scott Brown, has been awfully busy lately shaking that Etch-A-Sketch, hoping Massachusetts voters won’t notice when he contradicts himself or fudges the truth a little (or a lot).  Perhaps all that time spent with Eric Fehrnstrom has caused Scott Brown to “catch a case of the Romneys.” A couple of recent examples have circulated around the media.  We all know that Scott Brown has been wrapping himself in the Green Monster, suggesting that his being a Red Sox fan is, according to him apparently, his top qualification for being a U.S. Senator – until we were reminded that he advocated for moving the Red Sox out of Fenway Park and that he took a campaign contribution from the President of the New York Yankees.  Brown is just hoping to Etch-A-Sketch away those two strikes against his pro-Red Sox record, but he is behind in the count. We also know that Scott Brown recently told WTKK 96.9 FM that he “had not touched alcohol since Jan. 1.”  This, of course, would require some serious Etch-A-Sketching, since we were all talking about him throwing back [...]

Really, you can’t make this stuff up.  As previously noted, the Mass. GOP is very, very upset about the fact that Harvard offers what is in fact a less generous compensation benefit to its faculty than many other educational institutions.  You see, in order to attract high quality faculty, many private colleges and universities offer their faculty free or hugely-discounted tuition if their kids choose to attend the home institution, or partial tuition if the kids go elsewhere.  As just a couple of examples, UPenn offers faculty kids a 75% discount if the kids attend UPenn, or up to 40% of UPenn’s tuition if they go elsewhere.  Columbia pays full tuition if the kids go to Columbia, or half tuition if they go elsewhere.  And University of Chicago pays up to 75% of Chicago’s own tuition rate, regardless of where the kids go to school.  That’s a lot of cash on the barrelhead. Harvard, apparently, does not do this, to the consternation of some of its faculty.  Instead, it offers a no-interest loan for certain educational expenses, and Elizabeth Warren appears to have taken advantage of that benefit.  Here’s a 2006 Harvard Crimson story on the subject (Harvard’s actual info [...]

A big and hearty congratulations to John Henry, Tom Werner, and Larry Lucchino for making a very courageous move on the civil rights front. A watershed moment perhaps towards leveling the playing the field for black Americans. Like Globe columnist Derrick Jackson tracking the graduation rates of student athletes on scholarship  I have been tracking the Red Sox and their minority employment policies. Harkin back to John Henry’s 2002 NPR interview when the new owner took the issue head-on, “I think we have to make a statement not just in baseball but in our community that diversity is an issue that hasn’t been fully addressed in the past and certainly has to be fully addressed,” he says. “I think it’s important what your actions are. That will really define the franchise going forward.” I have knocked  the Sox over the years for not following through on this. Each year I have pointed out that as the number of employees grow within the organization the only black non-baseball full time personnel are a lawyer and an assistant equipment manager hired ten years or more before the team was bought. Yup, I did the counts via employee photographs in the Sox media guide here and [...]

You know how Republicans are always all “let the market work,” and stuff? How they think government should stop regulating and just let the free market work its magic? Well, it turns out that that rule doesn’t apply when a Republican thinks he can score some cheap political points. Consider two recent examples from the Scott Brown operation. The first comes from Scott Brown himself, who took it upon himself to chastise Whole Foods Market for choosing not to buy certain seafood. Now, if one were a Republican, surely one would think that a private business like Whole Foods should be free from government interference or pressure to buy pretty much whatever fish it damn well pleases, and that its decisions about what fish to buy should be driven by the demands of its customers and its own decisions about how it chooses to operate its business. But Scott Brown thinks he knows better. Indeed, Scott Brown thinks he knows what’s in the heads of the management at Whole Foods: “I’m concerned that your decision has more to do with political correctness than with sound reasoning,” wrote Brown. “Aside from being based on uncertain science, this decision will hurt Massachusetts [...]

On Monday, Senator Scott Brown confused actual science with children’s books. New England has one of the most studied fisheries in the world. For decades we have studied the types and quantity of fish present in our waters, their growth habits, what affects their decline, and how best to maintain fishing stocks at levels in a way that keep not only current fishermen employed, but future generations of fishermen as well. Not to be outdone, Senator Brown decided that rather than base decisions on math and science, he would instead rely upon Dr. Seuss’ classic One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish which states, in part, “Say, what a lot of fish there are!” Clearly, Dr. Seuss (note the title “doctor” – so he must be an expert) understands the fish stocks better than authors of the many reports on the fisheries. It is in this light, replacing science with Seuss, that we can finally begin to understand some of Senator Brown’s positions.