and therefore endorses Tom Reilly for Governor.
While Deval Patrick’s knowledge of the key issues facing the state is impressive, it is nonetheless superficial.
For instance, in his position paper on environmental protection, Patrick wrote: “From the dunes of Cape Cod to the hills and valleys of the Berkshires, Massachusetts has remarkable landscapes…. For a better future, state government holds the public trust to protect our land, water and air.”
Yet Patrick is willing to sacrifice Nantucket Sound, a national treasure, to an industrial-size power plant. Is that protecting the public trust?
Reilly understands that the state and federal governments must first develop a regulatory framework for managing our ocean resources before any such plants are built.
Ah. This one’s all about Cape Wind. Some of the other stuff in the editorial – for example, Reilly’s pledge to “weed out duplicative and obsolete state regulations” – pretty much applies to all the candidates. (Doesn’t every candidate for office promise to make government more efficient and eliminate waste?) And some of it makes little sense. For instance, the paper lauds Reilly’s plan to “invest $500 million over five years to boost the UMass system,” without even mentioning Reilly’s plan to deplete revenues by more than that amount by cutting the income tax to 5%. Do they not see the connection?
Even in its effort to “acknowledge the mistakes Reilly has made,” the editorial gives Reilly a dubious pass. It says that “he chose a running mate without fully conducting a background check.” But we now know that’s not right, unless you define not “fully conducting a background check” as having the complete background check in your office but deciding not to read it.
In any event, add the CC Times to Reilly’s column.
If there was no way the paper would endorse Deval, then, since Reilly’s toast, it’s a good thing they endorsed him and not Gabrieli. After R’s meltdown in the debate, I’d actually like to see a few things thing keeping him from total collapse.
I’m curious if there’s another poll being taken out there, because so much of the “Reilly meltdown” storyline is echoing around Deval’s legions, and I’m curious how much it extends to the primary electorate.
<
p>
I’d also like to see some more data, because if Reilly is well and truly done, I would be quite happy to cast my vote with Chris Gabrieli.
The talk from Deval’s fans now is no different than when they were talking about a ‘Deval shutout’ at the convention.
What are the Editors talking about? It doesn’t look to me as though the Sound is going to be sacrificed at all.
they’d much rather sacrifice the whole planet rather than the sound…
<
p>
Sheesh. SUVs 4000 square foot homes, street lights for safety, plenty of powerlines and a bunch of windmills is ugly?
<
p>
People’s priorities are really confusing.
Some elites can’t just seem to listen to facts in this debate – mainly, the fact that Cape Wind will impose little, if any, noticable change to the horizon. Any other change to the sound would be trifle, in my opinion, because it’s not as if people can run on water like they can grass. The Nantucket Sound isn’t a park that’s about to be destroyed.
I actually wrote an article about cape wind a few months ago, and as is pointed out in other comments, Cape Wind will not destroy the view. My dad actually lives on Cape Cod, and he’s all for it as well. Walter Cronkite is also on board. Cape Wind is a good idea. It’s good for the environment and it is barely visible from any land mass.
Not in my back national treasure
I’m not so sure you guys are focusing on the arguments that the article actually brought up.
<
p>
“Reilly understands that the state and federal governments must first develop a regulatory framework for managing our ocean resources before any such plants are built.”
<
p>
I don’t think, and I hope none of you do, that the issue is primarily about ‘a change of the horizon.’
Yeah Cape Wind opponents usually mask their aesthetic opposition with such statements as “the state and federal governments must first develop a regulatory framework for managing our ocean resources before any such plants are built”
<
p>
– sounds good, but really it just amounts to “no”.
<
p>
Did we develop a regulatory framework for our land before conventional power plants were built? No. Is there an ocean regulatory framework we can all agree to around the corner that would not take ten or more years to get, assuming we started now? Hardly.
<
p>
At least Congress last year authorized offshore wind development, prior to that there were some legal ambiguities in the permitting process, but they have been resolved.
<
p>
I live on the Cape and have heard all the NIMBY arguements so many times now, the reality is these people just don’t want to see them, as a distant view from the shore or a closer view when boating the Sound – I’m OK with people having that objection but most of them don’t own up to it and use this or any number of about 50 other red-herring arguements as to why they say they are opposed, and that’s what gets real old.
<
p>
But there are a LOT of people down here who do support Cape Wind.
“Is there an ocean regulatory framework we can all agree to around the corner that would not take ten or more years to get, assuming we started now? Hardly.”
<
p>
If there are no major issues, then why not? We should be able to agree on a framework pretty quickly if we’re all in accordance.
<
p>
If not, then we shouldn’t just bypass these issues and start building- we should figure this all out. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to reject democratic options simply because democracy might take time.
<
p>
Nantucket Sound is a state sanctuary- the last place we should bypass the process of democratic decision making.
The only major problem that we would encounter if we all decided to use a normal democratic process is that politicians couldn’t use Cape Wind to pick up zealots in their primaries.
The proposed wind farm location is NOT in the ocean sanctuary area. There is an area, commonly known as ‘the doughnut’ because of its shape, that the Feds. did not bother to protect, as it is such a trecherous and shallow shoal that there was no commercial navigation there, just some recreational fishing and sailing. It’s only a few feet deep in some spots.
<
p>
Which is WHY it is the perfect place to build the wind farm!
“The Horseshoe Shoal site is geographically unique, a doughnut-hole of federal property bounded on all sides by state-protected waters. But the ecological health and value of the Nantucket Sound doesn’t begin or end at these boundaries.”
<
p>
Sounds perfect to me.
<
p>
If it is, in fact, a ‘perfect’ location, then the democratic road should take little time.
Good one Peter.
<
p>
As for MRomanov, rather than just spout off what the SAve Our Sound people say, why don’t you do your own research? You would discover, for example, that not only is more than half of Nantucket Sound federal water (and not in the State Sanctuary) but also it is NOT totally surrounded by state waters, there is unbroken federal water leading due east out of Horseshoe Shoal.