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- Sat 18 May 10:52 PMCitizens First: A Call to Create "Charter" Police and Fire Stations, brought to you by Democrats for Public Safety Reform (DFPSR)
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by columwhyte - Thu 16 May 11:00 PMBruins Open Thread
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by jconway - Thu 16 May 10:58 PMPPP: Markey Up by 7
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by johnk - Thu 16 May 7:37 PMHenry David T vs. Energy (Goliath) Enterprise
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by mobeach42 - Thu 16 May 3:18 PMBernstein: Gomez using "Victory Fund" fundraising approach against which Mass. GOP railed
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by fenway49 - Thu 16 May 3:15 PMSenate Ways & Means Budget for FY 2014
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by massbudget - Thu 16 May 8:15 AMGomez Shopped Around and Rejected Lower Appraisals for his Shady Tax Deduction
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by johnk - Wed 15 May 3:34 PMCool image from Minneapolis, MN
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by mike_cote - Wed 15 May 7:58 AMA Call for Change in Boston Election Signature Collection and Qualification Rules
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by martywalsh - Wed 15 May 6:19 AMYoung Democrats to honor Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Ellen Story, and activist Harmony Wu at Roosevelt After Dark fundraiser to support Emerge Massach
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by jkleschinsky
- Sat 18 May 10:52 PMCitizens First: A Call to Create "Charter" Police and Fire Stations, brought to you by Democrats for Public Safety Reform (DFPSR)
dhammer
Person #4497: 0 Posts
Recommended: 11 times
Your reasoning is sound, still I disagree. (1 Reply)
What you’re refusing to talk about is the underlying rationale for age of consent laws. If we assume any decision regarding sex and children has to be made or approved by an adult, then what your saying follows.
Adolescents makes these decisions all the time without input from their parents, however. Maybe they shouldn’t, but they do. I want public policy that supports those children, and recognizes the reality that lots of parents are awful and stupid. In my mind, that’s lots and lots of sex ed, pretty much unfettered access to birth control and age of consent laws that try to treat children as close to adults as they can. I’m comfortable with the inconsistency because I think it produces the best result.
she's an anti union scumbag (1 Reply)
That doesn’t mean she’s not smart, accomplished, and has the qualifications to be commerce secretary. It does mean, however, that the President of the United States chooses anti union scumbags to help manage the economy – just like he did when he chose Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and countless others in the administration. This says more about Obama and the Democratic Party than Pritzker. Don’t trust them, they don’t care about you and your future, they only care about your vote and their short term accumulation of power and money.
Actually, you're not being robbed of anything. (2 Replies)
I don’t mean to be rude, but if you’re interested in making sure girls aren’t being coerced, denying them the ability to make their own choices about reproductive choice seems an awful strange way to show it.
Let’s say you discuss, educate and engage your daughter about Plan B. You tell her you’re concerned she might get cancer, or be harmed in some other way. You discuss the risks, the challenges and let her know you don’t want her to take the drug. If she says she doesn’t care, she wants to take it anyway, what right do you have to deny her? The fact that your her parent? Sorry, I don’t buy it.
People, not women and men, have a right to self determination – that doesn’t start when they’re 18 or when they’re mature enough to make a good decision. It starts when they have the ability to make decisions. Your only right as a parent is help them make those decisions. Good for you if your kid engages with you about these decisions, but to deny medical services to a person whose parent doesn’t, well to me that’s coercion.
(1 Reply)
Seems like part of the strategy is to conflate quantitative with objective.
What would strike you as statistically proportionate? (0 Replies)
By my count, black teachers make up 25% of the total teacher population, yet 50% of the teachers being set up for review. You’d expect that if race has nothing to do with performance, around 34 black teachers would be targeted, but 68 actually were. You’d expect that 86 white teachers would be up for review, but only 53 were.
That is a giant leap of logic (1 Reply)
Electronic benefit cards have been in use since before Grossman was elected, the idea that only the ‘waste’ and not the ‘fraud and abuse’ in his ‘waste fraud and abuse’ comment apply to this issue is just plain silly.
+1 (0 Replies)
because voting just once for this sentiment isn’t enough.
right, talking to the chamber of commerce (1 Reply)
about fraud and abuse among recipients of public assistance couldn’t possibly be construed as pandering to a conservative group about how “those people” are the real problem. It could be the Herald’s bias, but the article mentioned patronage and ebt cards as the two areas of corruption Grossman mentioned.
Curtailing fraud is fine, but to do it loudly and in front of the business lobby (read nearly 100% Republicans in any other state) plays to the racial prejudices and biases conservatives are more likely to hold. Plus, according to the article Grossman said:
That’s root out, not be watchful…
given that it's a line from Star Wars (1 Reply)
I think it was probably meant as a joke… But I didn’t read the thread, so who knows.
Well, I won't be supporting Lynch (1 Reply)
My view is that climate change is as an important issue (if not the most important issue) for the working class. Markey is a leader on this.
Lynch is a good foot soldier when it comes to the big union issues, but he’s not a leader. He’s not criticizing Obama for not supporting card check and he’s not leading the fight for changing labor law in this country. The Senators from Massachusetts should be leading the left on important issues. I’ll take Warren supporting the leadership on foreign policy, even though she’ll likely vote in ways I disagree, because the benefit we get from someone standing up for the middle class is enormous. In the same way, I’ll take Markey not putting everything on the line to oppose a trade deal that the leadership in his party supports so that we can get someone who will be willing to fight to ensure we take the necessary, expensive, and potentially painful steps required to protect the planet.
Our job is to make it so the political climate is such that there’s no down side to Markey supporting a vibrant labor movement and opposing trade deals that destroy communities.
look at the jobs we gained (1 Reply)
I spent the late 90′s fighting to keep unionized manufacturing plants in Mississippi, Iowa, Texas and Alabama open. Guess what, they all closed. So in Natchez Mississippi we lost 200 jobs that paid a good wage, provided health insurance, a defined benefit pension and retiree health care. During that same time, due to the Clinton policy of privileging finance and defense at the expense of everyone else Natchez gained more than 200 jobs at the Walmart, by the calculation of the modern democratic party, Natchez is better off having lost its tire plant and gained its big box retailer, but the way I see it, is that the community had its heart ripped out.
If you’re a working class person, expect to live in poverty. You, yourself have complained about the impact of being a temp, who do you have to thank for that? Clinton and Obama. The Democratic Party has killed the American labor movement. Kbush’s comment above is technically correct – trade does have benefits, but if you take away the power of working people, the rents are that much easier to seek. NAFTA and its ilk hurt manufacturing, which had a disproportionate impact on unionized workers – if the workers in finance, or retail or (residential) construction were union, the general conditions might hold, but in the 90′s hundreds of communities were killed, and many have yet to recover.
When they cast that vote... (0 Replies)
Yes, absolutely. Ignoring the right wing economic policies of the modern Democratic Party might be a good way to keep Lynch out of the Senate. We shouldn’t fall into that trap, however. People like Kerry and Biden (and Kennedy to a degree) look like they’re standing up for the middle class because the opposition is so damn evil. But, compared to leftist leaders in the rest of the industrialized world, they’re right of center.
Sorry, that's just not true (1 Reply)
When folks from the Council on Foreign Relations, hardly a leftwing group agree:
Trade is a complicated issue, but to suggest that NAFTA and other trade deals don’t weaken the labor movement, which in turn hurt the ability of all workers to improve wages, is just foolish. The argument for Lynch is weak, but the Democratic party has abandoned actually fighting for the working class to organize itself in opposition to capital.
I'm not so sure about Trader Joe's and employees (1 Reply)
TJ’s is a notoriously secret company. They pay slightly above union rate in California (which means they pay pretty well). But a few years ago a pretty thinly researched article made the claim that the starting salary was in the 40′s or even up to the 50′s without any basis in reality. TJ’s and academics who love them have let a very specific southern california fact be misconstrued to reflect the reality across the country.
TJ’s may have an effective and engaging human resource policy, but like Whole Foods, most of Shaw’s and Wegman’s, their workers have to negotiate as individuals and will be summarily fired if they try to act in concert. Furthermore, by keeping wages in the supermarket sector low, they reduce wages in the retail sector overall.
Best comment on the thread (0 Replies)
Folks should feel free to not shop at Whole Foods, but unless there part of a coordinated program to effect change, you’re not boycotting.
Agree that we need to raise revenue (0 Replies)
How we do that, however, is up for debate. I for one, would be much happier if we raised the income tax to pay for transit rather than raise the gas tax.
As L&LL says, the gas tax is pretty regressive – even if the average driver is wealthier than the average transit user (which I’d doubt holds true for both average and median) – the folks who are going to be hit hardest by the gas tax are folks who work retail, who clean houses, who do odd jobs, who live in rural areas. However, raising the income tax and increasing exemption (or pushing for a progressive income tax) can hold these folks essentially harmless without harming folks who don’t have any income but do drive.
If we want to reduce the number of cars on the road, there are more direct ways of doing that, raising parking rates in Boston and congestion based tolls.
It varies widely (0 Replies)
In Natick, a few years ago board members were paid about $1,000 a year. A reform slate came in (led by my wife) and eliminated the payments. The payments came from the Housing Authority, not the town. My understanding is that other towns and cities pay significantly more, some as high at $10,000. Plus, sitting on a Housing Authority Board could extend years of service for town employees for pension purposes (although this may have been resolved during pension reform – and should be if it wasn’t).
(1 Reply)
see the ‘sport’ comment above Tom… it was an insult to me.
(1 Reply)
I didn’t put racist first, I put insulting and pedantic. If Stomv was being sarcastic, rather than a ass, he’d have acknowledged that.
just a heads up... (2 Replies)
calling people ‘chief’ is pretty insulting, it’s pedantic, it’s racist, it’s derogatory, and for me, it’s quick way to shut down conversation…
In the interest of moving past that, however. Nowhere did I say or imply that you didn’t think we should have buses. I said that your argument that buses aren’t permanent enough for you, dodged the real question of how to build a winning coalition to support mass transit. Which, by the way, your argument continues to do.
I wrote that buses are THE answer to building a winning coalition. Because without a public transit option that works for the millions of people for whom subways, trolley cars, and commuter rails are not a viable option and who aren’t likely to move, you’re not going to get the legislature or the Governor to put the necessary money into the system.
There’s a good argument that we should greatly expand our commuter rail lines, and add rapid transit out to the Arlingtons, Watertowns, and Dehams of the world. But that’s not going to happen – it’s too expensive, right of ways are complicated, and it will take too long. It will cost billions (hundreds of billions?) of dollars. Taking cars off the road and adding busses costs million (hundreds of millions?) of dollars, however, and can be done in a year or two. We need to offer something that promises to cut the average suburban drivers commute by 20% or 40%, something that promises to make mass transit meet the needs of the citizens. Adding a bunch of luxury condos near T stops isn’t going to add enough people to build that coalition – it’s a losing proposition for the state – a winning proposition for those lucky enough to afford Brookline and Cambridge, but a loser for everyone else.