The radioactive core in a reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor, experts say, raising fears of a major release of radiation at the site.

The containment vessel is the best and primary system to contain melting nuclear fuel. The partial melt-down at Three Mile Island did not breach the containment there.

Although this development was not unforeseen, it is a terrible turn of events. It shows that efforts to cool the core have been unsuccessful.]]> It may still be possible to cool the melted fuel, but the radioactive byproducts of this accident just got harder to contain.

The drywell is surrounded by a secondary steel-and-concrete structure designed to keep radioactive material from escaping into the environment. But an earlier hydrogen explosion at the reactor may have damaged this.

We are well into uncharted territory, and I refuse to speculate about worst-case scenarios, which are basically only models or ideas.

I think the best we can hope for is that the Japanese are able to cool the fuel mass enough to slow the release of radionuclides, then eventually entomb the whole thing.

In this best-case scenario, there have been and will continue to be significant release of truly hellish radioisotopes into the food chain.

It is possible that these will bioconcentrate in milk and food that we consume here in New England.

In short, we have passed TMI and are closing on Chernobyl. And this horrible, preventable catastrophe is very far from over.

Second question to which you already know the answer: Where do you think former BCBS CEO Cleve Killingsworth falls on this graph of growing income inequality?

 ]]> My town has been trying to negotiate the GIC for the past two years. At one time every union but one had signed on to the idea, but that was not good enough under the law.

The result of this stalemate is that we have sent about $4 million each of those years to healthcare companies instead of pay increases and jobs for employees.

Instead there have been no raises, and a bunch of teachers and DPU workers have lost their jobs.

The Town Manager just took the unusual step of laying off more employees midyear, and the town faces more of the same in the fiscal year that begins in July.

Note, please, that the GIC provides excellent care. In many cases it is the same care town employees already get. Note also that $4 million is just the savings from the GIC, which the Town proposed to divvy up pretty equitably with employees.

Okay, I won’t hide the fact that I think the unions in my town screwed up this one. Purely from the point of view of doing good for their members. I’d say that they encouraged their members to vastly overvalue the risks inherent in the change, while undervaluing the benefits.

But it’s complicated, and I’m not writing this post to point fingers or come to a particular conclusions about the GIC in your town.

Rather, here’s my point. You know of the growing inequality of income, and how wealth and earning power has been gradually extracted from most Americans even as the economy booms for the elite.

Well, this is how it is done. My town sends $4 million per year to health-care companies that it could have spent on jobs and wags and benefits. The money and the jobs are gone, and this year (probably) we will be asked to raise our taxes to fund the shortfall.

However the override vote goes, we will be poorer. We will chose between understaffed schools and fire departments and generally poorer services that will affect the quality of our lives in hundreds of ways–or a tax increase.

Meanwhile the health-care industry is $4 million richer per year, just from our town. Multiply that across the state.

The boards of quasi-nonprofits like Blue Cross can obscenely compensate themselves and their leadership; for-profits give the surplus to shareholders.

From our pockets to theirs.

They're always late on their mortgage, their house is falling apart, and they can't seem to stop spending money they don't have.

I think of him as an Archie Bunker type. You like the characters despite their flaws, but boy, do they screw up!

The Bergs are of course our very own cities and towns, who, the Globe told us yesterday, have run up a $20 BILLION unfunded health-care obligation. Yikes, what WERE those dumb Bergs THINKING?]]>

“It’s the equivalent of a gigantic credit card debt which grows and grows the longer it is ignored,” said Michael J. Widmer.

This is par for the course from the Globe and the Masters of Beacon Hill, who can only roll their eyes at this stupid incompetence and invite us to do the same.

We hear this sort of thing all the time, even before the current War On Public Employees.

Here’s what’s missing from the story. The cities and towns are not sovereign states. They don’t set the terms under which they bargain for contracts that, once signed, become legally binding.

They don’t have the power to streamline health-care costs by adopting a single-payer plan. They don’t print their own money, and they are in crisis right now.

The city or town where you live educates your kids, plows your roads, puts out your fires, etc. but it does all of these things within a context that is entirely controlled by the state.

Think of your town as a hand puppet. While those Masters of Beacon Hill wag the finger of their collective right hand (“Goodness, ! We’d never underfund OUR health care!”) the left hand is inside the puppet, limiting funding, limiting options, and creating a perpetual local fiscal crisis.

“It’s shocking,” said Widmer. “We can’t pay for these kinds of benefits and at the same time provide basic service.”

Stay tuned!

Everyone knows this song, and loves it. As the Globe notes,

When they unveiled the Charlie Card, officials invited the latest incarnation of the Kingston Trio to Government Center, where Governor Mitt Romney sang along, by heart. "I've always wanted to do that, since about the fifth grade," he said.

Awww.]]> Charlie, of course, was written as a campaign song for Walter O’Brien, Progressive candidate for Mayor of Boston in 1949. The song protests a fare hike to transfer money from T riders to shareholders of private companies who had been bailed out by the agency.

But by 1959, the candidate had been blacklisted and run out of town, and the song’s most political lyrics were simply edited out.

The blacklist was no joke. O’Brien

and his wife were placed on the state’s highly publicized blacklist in 1955. Even as he retreated from politics, he found himself ostracized and unable to hold down a job. Within the year, he uprooted his family and settled in Gray, Maine.

Even his name was erased from the song recorded by the Kingston Trio, who substituted a fictitious “George O’Brien” in his place.

It’s a delightful piece to read, all the more since it includes the fact that the T today is honoring the whole story in its entirety.

It just made me reflect on all the American history and traditions that began with the left and have been scrubbed and sanitized so that rich clods like Romney can safely enjoy them.

But all the “secret” verses to Charlie and to This Land Is your Land and all the rest–those verses were made for you and me.

Today, Glen Beck’s tea people enjoy wearing tricorn hats, but does anyone doubt that they would have been Tories during the American Revolution? Or which side they’d have favored during the Civil War?

Do you think they’d be with Roosevelt on helping Churchill and the Allies fight Hitler early on in the war, or with the isolationists? Is there any part of America these people would defend?

The Charlie story just made me think. From California to the New York Island, there’s another side to things–an American side.

That side was made for you and me.

I am moved to make this point by a story in today's Globe about the Senate race in Connecticut. It really responds, however, to an ongoing red-blue fault line (and favorite teabagger meme) about the role of government.

The Globe story includes this little gem, a quote from World Wrestling executive and Republican nominee Linda McMahon:

"Government. Government. Government," McMahon declared, nearly spitting out the words. "Government does not create jobs."

Here's what "government, government, government" does about jobs, when it is doing its job.]]> Government creates markets.

What, you thought they emerged spontaneously from the moral fabric of the universe? Markets are based on property rights.

Who defines those rights? The government.

If someone robs you, who do you call? The government.

Who decides what theft is? The same. Who provides a remedy (or at least, who should do so)? Asked and answered.

The current long depression recession economic-recovery-that-only-lifts-a-few-yachts is a product of government’s failure in this respect, as market fundamentalism prevailed and robbed “government, government, government” of its power to regulate and guarantee markets.

Predictably, individuals took advantage of that failure to enrich themselves while crashing the world economy and destroying hundreds of millions of jobs.

Okay, lets put this into a soundbite.

Never again should looters and thieves strip government of the power to protect your jobs, your homes, and your savings from looters and thieves.

Government, government, government.

Guy Glodis Will Reign In Wasteful Political Spending.

]]> Copy editors of the world, you are vindicated.

Update: Photo added.

Alan carried Alford.

Steve and his money were soon parted.]]> Lessons learned, anybody?

More important Bay State revolution stuff below the fold!]]> They have a blog!–which says:

Todd Feinburg of WRKO will be the Master of Ceremonies for the Tea Party.  Our speaker line-up:

   * Jim Stergios – Pioneer Institute

   * Carla Howell – Libertarian

   * Bob Hedlund – Senator, R-MA

   * Michael Johns – Heritage Foundation

   * David Tuerck – Beacon Hill Institute

   * Chip Faulkner – Citizens for Limited Taxation

   * Brad Marston – Conservative Solutions

   * Barry Hinkley – Fair Tax

   * Kris Mineau – Massachusetts Family Institute

   * Paul Jehle – The Plymouth Rock Foundation

   * Dale Graessle – Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

Note usual suspects.

He had me at his first words:

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,

During the course of the Big Dig, New England's leading environmental organization, the Conservation Law Foundation, sued repeatedly to force environmental remediation for the Big Dig. They won, and for good reason.

But--and it pains me to say this--they won so badly that, maybe, they lost.]]> Environmental remediation is called for because the Big Dig, by increasing traffic, has many adverse environmental effects. So CLF went to court and got legally binding commitments for the Silver Line, the Green Line extension, and the Greenbush Line.

These are perhaps not perfect, and are still mostly unrealized, but they are overall positive steps to building a really good mass-transit infrastructure. I can’t imagine that there would have been any progress at all on that front without CLF’s willingness to sue.

The point I want to emphasize, though, is that these projects are not just givaways to the strap-hanging classes. They and their costs are part of the Big Dig package, as much so as the rebar and concrete that the cars and trucks drive over and under every day.

Alas, there is a fatal flaw. The Commonwealth and CLF agreed not only to build these projects, but to pay for them largely with MBTA debt. Which the T cannot afford. It’s sinking under its own debt right now; add the Green Line extension and kiss the whole mess goodbye.

Need I explain how unfair this is? Saddling MBTA commuters with Big Dig environmental costs is like billing victims for rape kits. But mostly it’s flat out unsustainable.

I understand why this has happened. There is some merit to the plan that says, Just build it, by hook or crook, and we’ll sort out who pays for it later.

But, sooner or later, it’s later. And if there is going to be some big reordering of priorities, some gathering of the squeaky wheels from Western Mass. to Metro West, then the strap hangers, and everyone who cares about the environment, ought to be in that number too.

More after the break.]]> Recoup–Build in the mechanisms whereby taxpayers are made whole. Sen. Reed’s proposal to buy equity as well as junk is the simplest way to do this but other means to this end are possible.

While we’re at it, restore Clinton-era tax rates to those making more than a quarter million a year to offset the huge deficits entailed in the rescue and in the whole drunken binge of the last 8 years of Republican spending.

Stimulate–Cut taxes–with lower marginal rates and targeted credits–for those making less than a quarter million a year. The targeted credits can be for improvements that strengthen the economy by making it energy efficient.

Further stimulate by spending on infrastructure improvements–everything from mass transit to insulating homes–employing millions of Americans.

A plan lacking these elements should be unacceptable (and is unlikely to work). The debate should be about how, not whether to include these features.

What have I left out?

I just don't get it. In some ways his opponent's positions are more progressive than Ken's. But, I'm not hostile--just a skeptic.

So I hope his many supporters on this list will take this as another opportunity to offer some thoughtful explanation. I have a few questions below the fold.]]> I was, and in a very different way still am, a supporter of Jim Marzilli (though I do think he should resign his seat.) No question that he was a progressive legislator. What has happened is terribly sad on many levels.

Why did Ken run against Jim?

Thanks to Massachusetts’s astounding ballot-access laws, by the time Jim’s current problems had come to light last spring it was too late for any of his supporters to file papers. But Ken had already filed. Is there a progressive rationale for that, or is it just about Ken?

Is here a progressive rational for Ken versus Jack Hurd, his opponent, or is that primarily about tribal loyalty?

Progressives don’t have to only support progressives, of course. The buzz with Ken, though, is that he’s one of us.

Only, what does that mean?

How do you pay for a boost in pensions that is well deserved?

Apparently, with someone else's money. Matt Viser in the Globe reports

Massachusetts lawmakers are proposing bigger pensions for state and municipal employees that could cost $6 billion or more, according to some estimates, triggering a chorus of complaints from fiscal watchdogs and local leaders who say the money is not there to pay for it.

In Massachusetts we might, for instance, finance or create a market for energy-efficiency of all kinds, from insulation companies to smart-growth developments with small energy footprints, to keep inside the Commonwealth dollars that would otherwise enter the pipeline of multinational energy companies and leave the state for good.

How do casinos fare through this lense?]]> Govern Patrick’s class-III casinos are sometimes pitched as a greenhouse–redirecting into Massachusetts a flow of gambling dollars that is otherwise spent in Connecticut. Horrors!

But casinos are a pipeline, not a greenhouse, designed to hose up every possible dollar and whisk them into the pockets of distant shareholders, local hopes and hype notwithstanding. All the Governor’s plan does is to move the business end closer.

Nothing new here, but sometimes an analogy is useful.

For instance, gambling proponents often cite  the Mass. lottery as a justification for casinos. However, if gambling is your cup of tea, the lottery is at least a greenhouse–100% of the proceeds stay and are spent in state, where they fund public works, public services, and other programs.

What kind of economic development do we deserve?

Clinton misstates Obama's stance on healthcare

There is a kind of carefully researched "fact-check" news story that has evolved to cover whoppers on the campaign trail. The tone is measured and the writer is generally careful to let the facts speak for themselves.

Despite the oddly editorial tone of the headline, that's the kind of story I thought this one was.

Silly me.]]> The headline was matched by the lede, another finger-pointing gotcha:

HANGING ROCK, Ohio – Senator Hillary Clinton, who has accused rival Barack Obama of sending misleading mailers to voters about her healthcare plan, misstated his healthcare views before an audience yesterday in rural Ohio.

You need to really substantiate a lede like that in the guts of the story. Something that really nails it, like,

Senator Clinton said Obama’s plan “would not cover a single veteran.” However, Senator Obama’s health care proposal, available on his web site, has a section called “Covering Veterans” that proposes making universal health-care for veterans “our nation’s top priority.”

(Of course I made that up–it’s an example.)

So what’s the smoking gun?

Clinton argues that Obama would leave 15 million people uncovered by not extending his mandate to adults.

Obama, though, has made healthcare a centerpiece of his domestic agenda, and he, too, has proposed a detailed plan to cover the uninsured, pledging to have affordable coverage available for all Americans by the end of his first term as president.

That’s it. That’s the sole basis for “Clinton misstates” in the headline and the lede.

She’s done. This is an especially gross example, but it’s how she is being covered by a spoiled press corps that really, really hates her. (Note to Scott Helman, the reporter who penned the story: Hatchet jobs are more effective if they maintain the veneer of objectivity.)

Depending on your point of view I guess you might think this is a good thing. But who says Obama won’t be next? Seems like there’s no loyalty on the campaign trail, and the press gets bored awfully easy.

Seniors on fixed incomes are often especially hard-hit by the property-tax increases that both parties in the legislature increasingly agree are the way to fund basic local services like police, fire, schools, and roads.

The proposal in the legislature to allow means-tested property-tax breaks for seniors would make the tax fairer and less regressive.

Who's against it?]]> The tax cutters!

“Seniors are our first line of defense against overrides,” said Barbara Anderson of Citizens for Limited Taxation. “Senior citizens are defeating these overrides, and they are trying to give them a reason not to vote.”

I’ve worked on three property-tax overrides in my town. It’s not that I like paying taxes, rather because the services the taxes pay for are important. There is not an override proponent who, if handed a windfall or other solution that would fund these services, would say, Oh no! Now we’ll never get to raise taxes!

Am I surprised that Barbara Anderson is against these tax cuts? No, but her honesty–usually concern for the poor seniors is the first crocodile tear shed when schools need cash–is noteworthy.

The conversation about the morality or wisdom of not seating Michigan or Florida's delegates to the Democratic National Convention is interesting (just how do you enforce the rules anyway?).

However, I'd like to shed some light on the significance of Clinton's call to seat them.

Sure, she'd want them to vote because most of those votes would be cast for her. But it will take a majority of the convention to seat them--and if she has that, she doesn't need more.

So here's what's going on.]]> In the unlikely case that neither Clinton nor Obama win an outright majority through the primary process, the party leaders will broker the nomination (though almost certainly before the convention).

I say “unlikely” because, with only two candidates, the split would have to be very close for neither to have an outright majority.

But if the margin of victory is close, seating Michigan and Florida could give Clinton a first-ballot victory. Delegates could vote to seat even if pledged to another candidate, which they might prefer to do.

Indeed they can do this even if bound to vote for Obama on the first ballot. You can imagine for yourself some reasons why some might chose to do so.

The delegates card, though by no means a foregone conclusion, is another arrow in Clinton’s quiver. It will remain an option, though a messier one, even if Floria or Michigan decide to hold nominating caucuses to select delegates under DNC rules.

I’m guessing that Obama, whose organization does well in caucuses, might be revving up to convince the Michigan and Florida state committees to do exactly that.

This could put the Clinton camps in those states as being against a process that would seat delegates under the existing rules, even as Clinton herself calls for seating the delegates from the primary to avoid the injustice of disenfranchising those voters.

Finally, since having legal, caucus-based delegations would complicate any effort to seat the excluded ones, the fate of the nomination (if not the election) may hang on what the Florida and

Michigan state committees decide to do.

If we find ourselves treated to high-blown rhetoric about following the rules and/or enfranchising voters, this will be why.

And mostly, why won't they leave us alone?

This shtick has played unchanged for nearly two decades. But is it fair? What is going on anyway?]]> In his “municipal meltdown” diary last week, Charlie quotes a Commonwealth piece extensively about the fiscal crisis facing cities and towns. One line from Commonwealth really pushed my stupid button:

When the leader of the Massachusetts Municipal Association (a group whose initials are mocked by critics to mean “more money always”)….

The only “critics” who crack that joke are on Beacon Hill. It’s not a standing joke at the VFW. The soccer moms don’t roll their eyes and complain that those greedy cities and towns need more money again. It’s legislators, staffers, and hangers-on.

Yuk it up, guys.

In the Beacon Hill – o – centric view of the universe, cities and towns are Not Invented Here and always have their hands out. (And they can’t even offer high-paying jobs to bored legislative leaders.)

Let’s be clear. Cities and towns are subdivisions of the commonwealth, not illegal aliens from outer space. Every power that they have, from assessment to zoning, is based on a chapter of the General Laws.

State law sets the terms of how they function. They must pay special-education costs that are inherently outside their control; in a small town a single special-ed student can lead to deep cuts in the non-SPED school budget. Many must reward law enforcement personnel with automatic pay (and pension) increases for taking night classes. Communities can’t even charge motor vehicles a tax that covers the damage they do to streets, and on and on and on.

It is state law that sets the terms of labor-management contract negotiations, state law that allows and prohibits practices to pay for and control health-care costs, and state law that says cities and towns must rely to the degree they do on the property tax. And, of course, that tax is capped at less than the rate of inflation for government services.

Those are not all bad things. But to set up this framework and then dump on the cities and towns for the consequences is cynical and rude. Only the legislature has the power to change the fiscal dynamic, and it has chosen not to do so.

In his diary, Charlie asks, rhetorically, “can’t you just smell the entitlement?” Well, it doesn’t smell. It stinks.

What is the Boston Bikes Summit? A team of experts from around the country and the local area will descend on Boston City Hall for an intensive three day program. In addition to events open to the public, the team will hold a variety of focused technical workshops and planning sessions with Boston City Hall officials and staff on all aspects of bicycle-friendly communities. The input and feedback gathered from the public meetings and technical sessions will be distilled into a set of short-term recommendations for improving bicycling in Boston.

Property tax bills soar as services fall

Levies increase despite decline in home values

Residential property taxes rose an average of $161 in cities and towns across the state in the past fiscal year, as home assessments hit historic highs despite declining market values.

The first headline, "Property tax bills soar as services fall," is about a troubling trend that deserves attention. The second headline, "Levies increase despite decline in home values," is stupid irrelevant fluff. (Hey, why not compare local taxes to sunspot activity?)

The lead paragraph shows how the latter obscures the former. Subtract the irrelevant nonsense and (more after the split)]]> Subtract the irrelevant nonsense and get a starker story:

(No words added or moved, only subtracted.)

Property tax bills soar as services fall

Residential property taxes rose an average of $161 in cities and towns across the state in the past fiscal year.

The average property tax bill for a single-family home hit $3,962, up 4.2 percent from the previous year. Taxes climbed 7 percent or higher in more than 65 communities, according to data from the state Department of Revenue.

Since 2000, property taxes have shot up nearly 50 percent, from $2,679, far outpacing gains in wages, which climbed 30 percent statewide over the same period, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over the past seven years, the average annual property tax hikes for homeowners have ranged from about $150 to nearly $215.

Taxpayers are being asked to pay more at a time when they are seeing local services decline, as cities and towns struggle to cover rising healthcare, utility, and pension costs.

The average increase in taxes was relatively modest, but the overall financial news is still tough to digest, said observers.

“There’s a double whammy going on for homeowners,” said Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. “There are increasing residential property taxes on the one hand and cuts in local services on the other.”

“Each year, more cities and towns are facing a tighter squeeze. The implication of holding town tax rates is to broaden cuts in programs and services,” resulting in layoffs of teachers and other municipal employees, said Widmer.

The assessment and tax averages included about 340 of the state’s 351 communities. A number of the largest communities, including Boston, were not included because the single-family home taxes are computed differently.

More than three-quarters of the state’s cities and towns raised their property taxes in fiscal year 2007 to just under the limit allowed by law, according to data from the Department of Revenue.

That is a significant increase from 2000, when about half of the communities pushed close to the limit. Under Proposition 2 1/2, communities are constrained by how much they can raise property taxes. They can raise the total amount of property taxes collected by a maximum of 2.5 percent each year, plus any additional taxes stemming from new development.

Many communities had raised less than they were allowed by law. But that is changing because of financial pressure.

“Communities are essentially taxing up to the maximum level possible under Proposition 2 1/2 because they have no choice,” said Geoffrey C. Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, a nonprofit representing cities and towns.

Communities have been hard hit because they have received less state aid, he said. Property taxes make up an increasingly greater proportion of local revenues, climbing from about 50 percent to about 54 percent now, he said.

Robert R. Bliss, a spokesman for the Department of Revenue, said the numbers are a “strong argument” for supporting Governor Deval Patrick’s Municipal Partnership Act, which is an attempt to help communities fiscally by saving money on pensions and healthcare and giving them new tools for raising revenues.

There is actually a third story in the piece, about how some people’s property taxes increase sharply due to revaluation. (Note that someone else’s taxes in that community essentially decline by the same amount.) This is not fluff, but after trying it both ways I took that part out of my above “rewrite.” It is really a different story.

There could be an actual point to the assessment angle–if assessed property values dropped sharply enough some communities could bump against the absolute 2-1/2-percent cap. If that is what is happening, though, the Globe story doesn’t say.

It is really frustrating to find this kind of fiscal illiteracy about a very basic relationship that lies at the heart of state government and the quality of life here in the Bay State. The death spiral continues at the Incredible Shrinking Globe.

I suspect this is a failure in editing rather than reporting but I just don’t know.

The day is recalled in news stories in the Associated Press, the Portsmouth Herald, the Eagle-Tribune, and the Boston Globe (related Globe story here).

The industry sank under hundreds of billions of dollars of nuclear cost overruns nationwide. But it was not faceless economic forces that felled nuclear power.]]> Away from the marshes of Seabrook, a citizens’ movement took aim at the industry’s Achilles’ heal and won. The strategy was to cut the nukes off from the public money supply, and in town meetings and elections and legislatures and utility commissions across the country the industry fell hard. It still has not recovered.

Though the press chose to cover this anniversary as a local story, it marks a truly democratic moment in our history.

Cross-posted at www.energycritic.org

A large majority of the legislature, meanwhile, opposes the anti-marriage amendment, reflecting general public acceptance of universal marriage rights.

This majority is not big enough to defeat or amend the amendment. But it has tremendous power to change the legal and political context that will obtain on election day. This is nothing less than the power to change the meaning of the anti-marriage amendment to the voters.

Friends of marriage rights should exploit this strategic imbalance to the fullest during this legislative session. Some examples of what the majority can do follow the flip.]]> 1. A majority of either chamber can pass resolutions deploring violence and hate rhetoric against gays (and marriage supporters).

2. Either chamber can hold hearings on signature fraud, keeping the spotlight on this seamy aspect of the anti-marriage campaign.

3. A majority of the joint session can refer the amendment to a study commission, to be recalled only if demands for a full debate are met, and at a time of the majority’s choosing–if at all.

4. As part of the above, the majority can determine when the amendment will be put before the voters: 2008 if voted on in time for the 2008 ballot, 2010 if after that.

5. A majority of the joint session could approve its own proposal to amend the constitution to outlaw discriminatory amendments.

6. In fact, this majority could cause such an amendment to be on the ballot in 2010 and, by delaying the anti-marriage amendment until then, cause both proposals to be before the voters at the same time. The majority could word the ban on discriminatory amendments to apply to the anti-marriage amendment if both passed.

7. A majority of the legislature could amend the general laws to recognize marriage for all, putting an end once and for all to the “activist judges” meme.

8. In fact, the majority could rewrite marriage laws so as to make marriage rights for everyone unseverable–so that the effect of the anti-marriage amendment would be to completely invalidate the law that defines marriage itself. A vote for the anti-marriage amendment would then be a vote to outlaw marriage for everybody.

The above are examples, not prescriptions, and some may be impractical or unwise. None are strategies in themselves. But can we get our heads around the fact that (1) the majority is on our side and has considerable power, and (2) this gives us an important strategic advantage over our opponents?

If so, I’m sure the progressive community can creatively think up some better examples and ideas of how to go forward.

Today's Globe quotes Rep. Jay Kaufman as follows:

We are very definitely struggling with the court's clear decision that we are obligated to vote in the merits of the petition.... I have spent many hours rereading the constitution and in phone calls with colleagues. Many of us are struggling with the decision and the consequences.

In a political drama that some, including myself, have compared to civil disobedience, Kaufman's statement stands alone as rising to the gravity of the situation.

Civil disobedience need not always entail a public statement of responsiblity, but this particular act stands at the center of a very political conflict and cries out for a public explanation by the elected officials involved.

Some examples of statements that Kaufman's colleagues might make in the same spirit after the flip.]]>

Rep THOREAU The right to equal treatment before the law is fundamental to our system of government and trumps even the language of our constitution in this case. Therefore, I am introducing a proposal that, if adopted by the voters, would prohibit amending the constitution to deny equal rights to any group. After all, if this issue is serious enough to cause us to disobey Article 48, it is too serious to leave to the individual consciences of future legislators.

Sen PARKS Of all the constitutional amendments that have ever been thwarted by the legislature in this way, only the anti-marriage amendment rises–or perhaps I should say sinks–to the standard of seeking to repeal human rights.  It is therefore especially incumbent on us to ensure that a vote is taken on other constitutional amendments, including the health-care amendment, whether or not we agree with those amendments. I appeal to the leadership and my colleagues to let that vote go forward.

Sen KING Finally, I humbly acknowledge that with this act we disobey our constitution and the oath we took to uphold. I take these actions with resolve, but also with a heavy heart, not because I do not respect the constitution but because I respect is spirit even more. Still, I have broken an oath.

Therefore, when the Senate convenes for its new section in two days, I will not be there. I resign from my seat effective with the dissolution of the current session. I expect my conduct to be an issue on the election to fill this vacancy, for which I will stand. Given the things that the circumstances of this amendment and my conscience have compelled me, this is the least that I can do.

I am not holding my breath for any of this, but would just note two things.

The first is that statements like the above would go far in restoring the integrity of the legislature and in framing the anti-marriage issue correctly as a human-rights issue. The silence of elected representative checking their shoeshines, on the other hand, make the wrong statement.

The second is, Thank you Jay Kaufman!

No amendment to this constitution may abridge the rights of individuals to assemble, to petition government, to the free exercise of religion, or to equal treatment under the law.

(Note that this would not create any new rights.)

And:]]>

An amendment proposed by initiative petition, if not decided yea or nay by a vote of the joint session as of its adjournment, may be referred to the next joint session by petition of one forth of all the members elected.

That would be an amendment to the section on “legislative consideration” of proposed amendments. Similarly for the section on “submission” of amendments to the people:

An amendment proposed by initiative petition, if not decided yea or nay by the joint session as of its adjournment, shall be submitted to the people at the next state election by petition of one forth of all the members elected.

The petition process would have to be subject to some mechanical rules–say, the petition must be filed with the clerk or perhaps the Secretary of State within one month of the adjournment of the joint session.

So: Power to the people, but no power to anyone to repeal civil rights.

Does anyone have a better idea?

Healey, Patrick trade spaces

BEVERLY -- The Republican and Democratic candidates for governor ventured into what might seem like enemy territory yesterday, but they received warm welcomes.

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The result is a three-way asymmetrical conflict, with three different strategies. I’m not saying that Reilly or Patrick wouldn’t want or couldn’t use Gabrielli’s money, but first, they don’t have it, and second, their true strengths are elsewhere.]]> Kudos to Patrick and Gabrielli for clean campaigning, but the truth is that neither of them could afford to be tainted with the kind of dark-side machiavellian gambits like the Killer Coke scam.

That doesn’t hurt Reilly so much because it doesn’t contradict who he is or threaten his power base. It would really damage Patrick.

(On the other hand I think that Reilly has gotten very little lift from being “the only millionaire in the race” because this claim, while true, is at cross purposes to his political-insider strengths. Imagine how it would resonate with Patrick’s message were he (Patrick) able to make that claim!)

Each candidate’s theory of power prefigures the kind of Governer he would be if elected–one reason, by the way, that I am for Patrick. I want to believe that his close-to-the-ground outsider campaign can trump connections and big money. (And I think that theme is the strongest of the three versus Healey.)

On that score, it looks as though we have an appealing candidate and a good shot. But, we’ll see, right? That’s politics.