I have every reason to believe that Deval grew up the way I and many of us did. Pay your bills. Admit your errors. Take personal responsibility. Don’t leave your mess for someone else to clean up when you’re gone.
Only now do many of us seem to realize the problems of treating government like we were little kids hiding from our troubles. There’s no more room under the bed and things need resolution.
When Deval came in as governor, there was a collective nod about his promises and vision. Together he and Lt. Gov. Tim Murray plan fundamental and widespread changes, plus playing catch-up for the B.D. fantasies.
Tim Murray’s campaign contained some key progressive visions of his own. Specifically, he sees mass transit and vastly upgraded trains for people and freight. We can use these to enliven our economy in numerous ways. Linking our second-tier cities, such as Worcester and Lowell, and the other few manufacturing area, is an essential – but slow and costly – step.
Obvious benefits include increasing the wealth and employment in these areas outside of the Boston Standard Metropolitan Area. It also can put people where they want to and can afford to live. In the mid and long term, it would reduce their commutes and their reliance on cars, better for them and their families as well as the environment.
The Hard Road
This is not the place to make the arguments and lists of benefits. The concept would be that we would return to being a leader in modern transit and industrialization. Our economy certainly needs that.
To return to the Deval/Tim vision, such things look hard, as is the nature of most things progressive. They require underlying changes on many levels. Whether it is integrating our public schools (still in the works) or making mass transit so great people stop driving to work, such fundamental changes are complex and demanding.
That is a central reason why the Republican Party did so well nationally in Ronald Reagan’s time and that of the Bushes, elder and younger. They didn’t ask for long-term commitments, for personal sacrifices, for visions that required thought and courage. They did repeat that they would not raise taxes, although the god-awful deficit and national debt are absolutely taxes that we and the next generation must pay.
Source Note: I confess to seldom citing the Boston Herald because of its often short and sparse articles. However on funding, its writers, particularly, Casey Ross, can be spot on.
Consider two ramifications recently:
- A key commonwealth funding source, the lottery, is down again, this time $120 under budget projections. As Ross notes, “Legislative leaders are still searching for ways to close that gap.”
- Senate President Therese Murray is examining leasing or selling bridges and roads to private firms to move maintenance costs. Here Ross cites the scramble to finance the $19 billion or more needed to make up for the delayed maintenance from the no-taxes strategy of the past two decades.
Reckoning Now
Of course, in our heart of hearts, we know that it is puerile to delay the necessary. It can be dangerous too; think pretending that skin cancer will just go away. Likewise, trimming pork for folks at home or the small tax hike 18 years ago could have meant that we wouldn’t be looking at those billions in overdue, constantly increasing costs now.
The legislature finds itself in an icy lake of duty. There’s much to do and none of it is simple, but they can’t stand still any longer. By laying out the essential problems, Deval is not letting us hide any longer.
We can understand by the legislature initially hid from the various funding options and proposals. They represent a level of responsibility that they haven’t faced in a long time. They’ll have to explain and sell the realities to constituents who are used to hearing that we can delay and that and that.
Well, we had our no-taxes, no hard-choices meal. The bill is here. As my mother was so fond of saying, “We’re all adults here.”
Progressive goals can be much harder to reach, but we end up in a much, much better place.
This is a great comment!
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In pessimistic moments I fear that we don’t have the capacity to meet the challenges you mention. I fear this may be so for three reasons:
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1. Education. Everyone knows our education system has real problems. But reform efforts, it seems to me, usually focus on what we need to do to churn out “workers who can compete in the global economy” (that is, workers with basic scientific and mathematical literacy and the ability to master technical skills) instead of focusing on what we need to do the turn out “citizens who can govern themselves wisely.”
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2. Consumer culture. This is related to education. We are encouraged to think of ourselves as producers and consumers instead of political actors.
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3. Media culture and pressure groups. Our media culture makes it almost impossible to have a conversation about raising taxes, say, or investing in education or infrastructure, because pressure groups with an interest in such issues one way or the other use the media as a megaphone, and given points (1) and (2), the average person isn’t really able to make up his or her own mind.
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Sorry to be so gloomy.
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TedF
I’m sanguine about it (today). You give clear reasons for doubt though.
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On the other hand, I am very encouraged that Deval ripped back the curtain to show the monster. I think that’s a key beginning step and, I hope, a catalyst.
The only problem is I don’t know if there’s any grown ups in the State Legislature left.
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We need to do something to them in order to teach them about maturity, but save the panic of facing real competition, I don’t have any solutions. It would be nice if we could organize progressives across this great state and challenge the worst offenders in primaries, but that would take a lot of time and effort (and money) that we don’t have, not to mention actual campaign experience, ability to reach the media and real political savvy.
We sure could use more progressives making laws and allocating money, at the commonwealth as well as the national level.
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So many of those poor DINOs only know how bring home little porky projects as a way to stay in office. The executive branch and leaders of both houses will have to get with the program and give these lawmakers talking points. Again, progressive movements have short terms to accomplish worthwhile goals. Then the legislators and public alike seem to need to sit down and fan themselves.
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It seem like the conditions and demands right here and now are right for a breakthrough. It spread through the nation at the beginning of the last century, starting in Wisconsin. I say that it’s our turn.
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Mike
You have no political savvy!
Wow – I never realized that the people I elected all these dark years without Deval & Tim were so unresponsive to my needs and the needs of my neigbors.
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How on earth has my community survived all these years without D&T – how did we build our new schools, or have our children’s test scores go up, or my cousin’s business grow and hire more people, and make my nephew actually afford health care for the first time!!
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Imagine all these wonderful developments were accomplished without the help of any elected official or any policy – they just happened – incredible!!!!
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that you put such weight on stupid test scores, but it goes quite well with the (quite likely) unintentional theme of your post.
Now with fresh Romney scent!
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Yes.
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If you voted for Weld and Celluci and then Romney, you voted for a punt to the legislature. The overwhelming majority of which you had no part in electing and who are fairly rigorously part-time employees…
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Consider well and think about this: How is that two consecutive administrations (Weld and Celucci) can simply evaporate with barely a ripple felt? Just who is it that pines for the leadership (sic) of Weld, Celluci and Swift? How is it that the defining memory of the Romney administration is gay marriage, an issue to which he’s (now) vehemently opposed?
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All them people ‘you elected’… all of them: Weld, Celluci, Swift and then Romney; they spit at you. They spit at me too, but I sorta expected it… so I don’t feel betrayed. Question is: since you are the one betrayed why aren’t you enraged? Weld and Celluci don’t even live in the state any more!! Romney goes around admitting to people that he lied to get the Governorship…. and he badmouths the citizens of the commonwealth, including your nephew. Friend, you’ve been sold a false bill o goods. Time you faced up to that.
I voted for Silber, Roosevelt, Harsharger, O’Brien and Patrick…
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Not everyone who disgarees with your posts are Republicans…
…I wanna be elected…
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That’s nice.
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But you are correct, not everybody who disagrees with me is a Republican. But you’ll do until one comes along.
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With the exception of Patrick, whom you’re now bitching about, none of these:
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Were elected to the governorship. Which is the topic at hand. So maybe you should just keep your mouth closed… umkay? K.
and the snark doesn’t help, but I still think he deserves a straight response. Because the same voters that elected Patrick also elected the House and Senate.
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I don’t give the legislature high marks on this. Unfortunately a one-party state is really a no-party state in which incumbents get a free ride and the normal democratic connection to the people is easily eroded and corrupted.
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Legislators have taken the easy way out on tough issues like this, content to follow the lead (for lack of a better word) of 20 years of Republican absentee governors.
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In the other recent diary on this topic, Charlie quotes a Commonwealth article that says the Massachusetts Municipal Association is
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Nobody calls it that–nobody would even think to all it that–off of Beacon Hill.
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There, you would think that local governments are just needy greedy panhandlers completely separate from the lofty concerns of the Commonwealth, rather than political subdivisions of state government whose responsibilities and powers are strictly defined and limited by state law. And, whose perpetual need for state aid is similarly built in, again by state law.
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I honestly don’t understand why Capital D is such a fan of the Beacon Hill mindset. To me the question is how to change it.
I am not bitching about Patrick, I voted for him…I am bitching about the fact that if you disagree with the Governor on this site you are scorned.
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My point has always been that there are others up at the State House who have done the job and continue to do it.
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I have to continue to disagree by Ryan, et. al., that there are no grown ups left in the Legislature..to me they are the grownups…The Gov’s office is coninually whining about there agenda and it’s progress…well frankly some it it deserves to be stalled…and what he has accomplished is significant, he and should build on that.
So, by not paying for maintenance, we get crumbling university buildings, poor roads, and economic strangulation outside of Boston.
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Clear enough? It is absolutely true that Gov. Patrick and Lt. Gov. Murray got elected pointing out these problems and having plans to fix them.
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The major problem seems to be the victory of the “No New Taxes” crowd, whether these short-sighted folks call themselves Democrats or Republicans.
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That all being said, the bastions of waste do not help [example, toll collectors who are paid more than teachers, Assistant District Attorneys, etc.] and pension plans for public employees that are unfunded defined benefit plans.
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The problem with “no new taxes” and the very large entitlements for the MBTA and certain others is that these ARE the worst kind of taxes.
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They are costs shifted to the next generation without that generation’s consent.
The cost of all the deferred maintenance on infrastructure puts us seriously in the red. The cities and towns are broke (and the subject of derision by legislators (“more money always,” nyuk nyuk) who seem to have neither decency nor irony nor shame).
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Who are the “others” at the statehouse who have done that job? Which is, remember, the subject of this thread.
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As for “disagreeing with the governor on this site,” check it out.
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I am not bitching about Patrick, I voted for him…I am bitching about the fact that if you disagree with the Governor on this site you are scorned.
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My point has always been that there are others up at the State House who have done the job and continue to do it.
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And my point,(not all that different, but crucially so…), is that those ‘others’ in the state house did a job, and one for which their body was not designed… I repeat: Before Deval we haven’t had an honest-to-gosh-n-truly-engaged Governor since two days after Weld was first elected. Now the lege has stepped up and kept things from going completely down the tubes allright, but you can’t say they haven’t deferred some needed things that only a Governor can direct and get done. The lege can’t execute on certain things.
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Many of the people now in the lege, came into it during the period of lax governship and some non-trivial leadership turnover giving their body a greater scope and impact then design or intent would have it. It’s entirely understandable that they would resist relinquishing that power. But relinquish it they must, as they are fighting against not only the governorship but against the mandates of their office(s). With this change (back), unfortunately, will come some sniping, bickering and petty griping.
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My fear is that it may swing to far the other way and we’ll end up with a too-powerful governor… My hope is that Deval is the right man for not letting that happen. Only time will tell us that.