I didn’t see any posts, for example, about the story on his laundering of campaign contributions through the Democratic party, which although not illegal is not strictly kosher (sort of a corporate loophole of his own), and is a jarring mis-fit with his rhetoric about politics as usual, special interests, etc. To me, his biggest slide has been in ethics, and if we can’t trust him, all the rest is tenuous. Above all, we hungered foran honorable government.
Now, we’re off on another campaign, the national one, leaving Patrick largely to himself. It’s so hard to keep track of the details of proposals, sometimes hard even to know if a plan is good or bad without a lot of research and background. But the ethics problems are pretty clear.
Voters often put people in office based on the promotional brochure, and then keep them there out of inertia or familiarity or memories of the campaign, and in the end, there’s no real accountability. In “The Activist’s Handbook,” Randy Shaw talks about the need to keep a relationship of “fear and loathing” with electeds — especially the good guys — so that they are afraid of us, rather than being able to take our continued support for granted while they stray off into political expediency. I think Deval Patrick is counting on imprinted loyalty for forgiveness, and responding to the corporate interests he disdained when he ran. He probably figures when the time comes, his grassroots organization will spring to life, with HOPE and BELIEVE and TOGETHER banners, and he’ll pull it off again.
So let’s make it easy to hold him accountable when the time comes, for good and for bad, and keep a running record.
…awkward format. This is a lot of good work, but needs a wiki or something.
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p>I’ve set up a version of this on Google Spreadsheet that is open for anyone to edit at:
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p>http://spreadsheets.google.com…
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p>If there’s any vandalism, it’s easy enough to revert to older versions.
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p>One major issue is that there is likely to be disagreement about the GOOD/BAD judgment of any given issue, say casinos. So it’d be interesting to try adding a column for each participant to weigh in. It would get unwieldy after ~20 editors, but that’s not a problem we have yet….
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p>Also, a general comment- sometimes single sentences are broken into into multiple rows. You can format cells to wrap text automatically, which is a lot more flexible- it’s a real pain to edit this way!
First of all, I have to reject the GOOD/BAD label. Good for who?
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p>Second, as syphax notes, there’s bound to be a lot of disagreement of what you label as good or bad…
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p>I don’t have a lot of time right now, but I’m scanning down the list…
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p>Environment:
– Signing the RGGI is undeniably good, and I personally think the cap is fine.
– You’re forgetting his support for Cape Wind, encouraging Evergreen Solar Inc., a manufacturer of solar power products, to build a major plant in Westboro in large part because of the Governor’s solar incentive program, and other such projects he has encouraged including MassEfficiency, a $2 million revolving loan fund to help Boston and four other Massachusetts cities start up large-scale energy conservation programs. Undeniably good for the environment and good for business.
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p>Budget/Taxes:
-Proposed Municipal Partnership Act.
-I would say the local options meals tax is a great idea, not a bad one. It allows individual cities and towns decide whether they want to tax. Your “scorecard” simply says, “BAD just more taxes on the taxed.” It’s about creating local revenue that we need for the services you clearly value.
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p>Ethics:
You’re including the Cadillac? Really? In what way was that an ethics violation? All of these “BAD”s down the list make it look really bad — but of course there’s no measure of “how bad,” the Cadillac is.
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p>I could go on and on, but I don’t really have the time.
See comment to Syphax below
Have you ever noticed how hard it is to find out Boston’s actual financial situation, what with the BRA, EDIC, “business-related activities”, city-owned assets being transfered to other entities, and so forth? How come Boston taxpayers don’t get a refund when there’s a surplus? Is it legal to keep money in excess of what is needed for providing public services? Here’s a link you might be able to make sense of, even though I can’t.
Yes, I’ve noticed that! These are very good questions. We (that is, my more number-savvy colleagues at Alliance of Boston Neighborhoods) have spent many months figuring out the tax game. Now we will turn our attention to the revenue and budget side. We’re starting a little newsletter, a monthly money message, that can be forwarded to City officials as a petition. The first one is exactly about this (drop in students, no added services, yet huge increase in budget) and includes a request that the City to keep the annual rate increase to inflation.
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p>We have to delve into the black hole of the budget and get some insiders to help us. For example, there are personnel budgeted for that are never hired; where does that money go?
On the spreadsheet, what do “consensus” and “BCC” refer to?
“Consensus” would presumably be the consensus view on a topic, decided by however one wants (simple majority, etc.). ‘BCC’ are my initials. The idea is one way to score any given issue is to record individuals’ judgments, and then summarize with a ‘consensus’ view. Better ideas are welcome.
Syphax, thank you very much, the Google spreadsheet is a far, far better way to do this.
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p>I’m thinking, from the other posts, that we should eliminate “CONSENSUS” and the GOOD/BAD columns, and just let people enter their topics and their comments, because the important thing is to share information and perspectives, rather than to come up with a rating (scorecard is the wrong title, maybe “performance perspectives”).
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p>So, there would simply be a COMMITMENT column, an ACTION column, and a COMMENT column for each person. People can comment in their column on Deval’s actions and/or on other people’s comments. People can keep adding to their column, or could start a new column when they need to.
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p>No one is right or wrong (assuming facts are correct). It’s like a collective diary. Over time, people will discern the patterns that make sense to them, and weight what’s important to them. The purpose is just to provide a forum for the continuing scrutiny of the governor from whom we expect so much, so we collectively learn more than we each can alone. This is helpful for encouraging feedback to him, organizing support for efforts various of us deem worthy, and laying the groundwork for an informed, fact-based campaign in a few years.
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p>Syphax, One more thing: Is it possible in the Google spreadsheet for click-links, like in regular posts? Sources would be helpful. Otherwise, perhaps people could just type in URLs.
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p>Thanks again for all that work.