1. You’ve made a bit of an unusual choice regarding anonymity. While your screen name doesn’t indicate who you are, it’s still not that hard to figure it out. Why not drop anonymity altogether?
First – hardened political junkies MAY deduce who they think I am, but that is far from most. Not even all BMG denizens can do so. And I stand by my original decision – I wanted words and ideas to be put forward, not personality, or position, or predjudices (for and against). I PREFER not knowing who a person is, as to me, it’s a more pure form of debate. Especially with Ernie.
2. Has the reputation of William Cobbett (the Englishman who adopted the pen name Peter Porcupine) for anti-Semitic and racist tendencies ever given you pause to write under his name?
I would direct you to my post, “Making Amends“, which I wrote when the movie Amazing Grace came out. I actually own some of Cobbett’s original pamphlets and even an edition of Porcupine’s Gazette, and have read some of his books. Much of the anti-Semitism and racism is in the context of the disregard of the Abolitionists for the poor – some even felt it was God’s will that these “yeomen” be poor, and kept unable to read, as God had set them in their place! As a poor boy who made good, this infuriated Cobbett, and much of his racist writings can be traced to that context. I’m not big on taking people out of their times and judging them by the standards of another era. And truly, Cobbett’s talent for invective, sneering and sarcasm makes him an uber-blogger – it’s easy to write in his voice.
3. I’ve seen not a few times where you’ve been labeled something akin to a “reasonable conservative” or a “Republican one can actually talk to”. How do you react to such a description?
I am constantly asked how I can talk to people on BMG on the same basis! Talking to Republicans is easier than you think. It’s like talking to anyone who wants the same ultimate goals as you do, but disagrees on the best method of reaching them. We need to stop “branding” people, and listen to them.
4. Is your writing ever influenced by the idea that yours may be one of the rare Republican voices read by many of this site’s visitors? Really, my writing is what it is. I write as I speak, and I paint what I see. Ages ago, when I came to BMG, I sent an email to Charley and said – you want to be reality-based. Some of your underlying assumptions, some of your “everybody knows” ideas, are highly questionable. I’d like to chime in to keep you honest. Charley agreed, and the “Differently Winged” blogroll came soon after. You almost NEVER learn anything by talking to people who agree with you wholeheartedly!
5. What would be three key steps in an effort to foster the Republican Party in Massachusetts?
We need to end debate about who can be considered a “true” Republican – I want to win elections, not find a Grail. We need to stop letting others define us – in a “blind taste test” poll, when asked about issues, most Mass. voters identify with GOP positions – but won’t consider voting Republican. And, we need to overhaul and reinvent the ideas and basis of the party. In MassGOP, there is a new initiative to identify and promote new issues and ideas, with the social, economic and libertarian conservatives working together on issues which they can mutually support, instead of allowing themselves to fight over divisions which sideline us. These three things will allow us to rebuild our grass roots support, and win back offices.
6. Who do you see as “all-star prospects” within the Mass. GOP?
There are obvious choices like Charlie Baker. Among the Reps, Vinny DeMacedo, Jeff Perry and Karen Polito [Could not find campaign site] stand out. But the best are still among the YR’s and CR’s, serving on Boards of Selectmen – Nathan Bech is a good example of the people who are coming along.
7. What is the case for Mitt Romney as McCain’s VP?
Mitt Romney is easily the most intelligent candidate in the race, on either side. Right now, gubmint could use a HUGE transfusion of ‘smart’. He’s a hugely quick study, which enabled him to avoid some of the pitfalls that Patrick has fallen into under the Golden Dome, and which will serve him well as he analyzes another system – the Federal one. He is decent, principled, and hard working. He has the knowledge and understanding of the private sector and trade which will be crucial to sustaining our economy, which complements McCain in his weakest area. He has as much, if not more, money than God, which is always handy in a campaign as well!
8. Christine Todd Whitman has spoken about the “biggest fight” within the Republican Party as “between the moderates and those whom I describe as the social fundamentalists on the right”. Right now, who’s winning? Who will win?
Right now, there is an uneasy tension. Neither side is winning, because there is recognition that until peace is made, neither “side” will win. I honestly see the entente cordiale in the Mass GOP between the economic and social conservatives as pointing the way to the future of the Party as a whole. That said, this should be an interesting platform debate in Minnesota this year.
9. Among the interests listed on your Blogger profile are “film” and “literature”. Can you name any books that you feel were satisfactorily translated onto celluloid?
These aren’t necessarily my favorite films (that would be Brazil by Terry Gilliam), but the ones I think are the best films of books I’ve read: Rebecca – the superb casting caught the creepiness of DuMaurier’s book. The Maltese Falcon – great script, mostly verbatim from the Hammett book, and another great cast. The Last Hurrah – best movie ever made about politics, from the best book ever written. Goldfinger – every detail perfect from Fleming’s spy novel. In Cold Blood – remarkable rendering of what would seem an un-filmable book. Gangs of New York – a movie that’s BETTER than its book. This could go on….
10. How do you decide what to put on your own blog, and what to put on BlueMassGroup?
Primarily, by where I happen to be at the time. Most of what I write on BMG are comments; the diaries I’ve written are mainly because the issue
directly involved BMG – like my one about Civic Engagement. On my blog, my best posts die aborning as I’m not near a computer when I compose them – otherwise, there’d be twice as many. I have some other writing that I do as well, and some ideas get sent there, too.
10.5 Lightning Road: In your opinion, what is … the most underappreciated spot on Cape Cod? The best animal to watch at the zoo? The most intriguing Olympic event? The best speech you’ve heard in person? Spot on Cape Cod – the Cape Cinema. People who LIVE here don’t know about it! Animal – I’ve never liked zoos; but tigers are interesting. Olympic event? LUGE!!! Hands down! Best speech? Elie Weisel in the House Chamber as part of the former Speaker’s Lyceum series. I have a video of it, and it’s really extraordinary.
If you too want to get the old interview-by-inbox treatment, make sure to keep an email address in your profile!
Brilliant work sabutai and porcupine. A few beers to drink while watching the Red Sox this weekend:
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p>Credit: TripAdvisor.
As I cope with losing Lori, I see the community that we have built. When we did the blogger sessions at the convention, I spoke of blogs in general and BMG specifically as “Community.” The title of my original post, “We have lost a valued member of our community” came directly from the subject line Michael used in the group e-mail to Western Mass activists. I was struck by how it applied so well to both to our geographic community and the on-line community. Thanks to all who are part of this community, at whatever level you participate. You make the state a better place.
The Godfather 1 & 2 – much better, in fact.
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p>Best speech I’ve seen in person: By far, Deval’s speech at the Commons in his General election – ‘just words.’ (Even if Obama later ripped it off.)
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p>Olympic event? Obviously swimming. Men’s. Preferably when Michael Phelps or this guy. (That said, there isn’t an Olympic event that could bore me, especially when an American is in it.)
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p>My question: Why is Mitt Romney “easily” the smartest guy, on either side? Top editor of the Harvard Law Review typically isn’t awarded to dummies… For all I know, Romney could be smarter than Obama, but certainly not easily.
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p>Lastly, I think posting by a pen name that tries to catch the spirit of a historical figure is an amazing idea. If I were to go back all over again, I’d have been less anonymous and probably have done the same thing. Or at least tried to create an interesting alter ego (actually, my online presence is typically very unlike how I am away from the ‘net.)
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p>Lots of fun! Thanks PP. Sab, keep up the good work.
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It’s winter, so it’s arguably off topic. But my God, speed skating is unbelievably exciting to watch.
Every four years I realize how much I love watching the sport…then it disappears again.
It’s summer, but it’s exciting to watch Ono anytime!
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p>Thanks, Sabutai and PP….hat tip to both of you.
It’s summer, but it’s exciting to watch Ohno anytime!
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p>Thanks, Sabutai and PP….hat tip to both of you.
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p>I appreciate that BMG has provided bloggers of all viewpoints a forum to post their thoughts. Even though these ideas sometimes differ from mine, I consider them and take something away.
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p>Thanks for this analysis. It is a tribute to the community that those before and after us will benefit from!
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Here is the website for Karyn (with a y) Polito
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p>http://www.karynpolito.com/
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p>Under “Philosophy” in her biography page, we read:
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p>Then we move to the news section of the website, where we learn that POLITO SEEKS TO CONTINUE HER PUBLIC SERVICE AS STATE REPRESENTATIVE TO SHREWSBURY AND WESTBOROUGH
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p>Back in “Philosophy” in her biography page, we read:
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p>Oink?
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p>Maybe because I am in Arlington, “millions of state dollars for the beautification of our Shrewsbury Town Center and the Route 9 Lakeway Business District” sounds an awful lot like a pork barrel project to me. I mean, the last two paragraphs looked like bacon, smelled like bacon, and tasted like bacon. Not that I have a philosophical problem with spending tax dollars to improve a community – after all, I am a proud liberal Democrat. However, this raises the obvious question.
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p>How do you increase “local aid, Chapter 70 school aid, Special Education aid, and Special Education transportation aid, as well as for grant funding for enhancement projects for Shrewsbury and Westborough,” including “millions of state dollars for the beautification of our Shrewsbury Town Center and the Route 9 Lakeway Business District” without taxes?
You do it by “cutting the welfare”. You get it by making sure that you get more of your “fair share” than others.
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p>That’s what any lunch-bucket Republican would tell you.
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p>What do you think the income tax proposal is about? The people behind it don’t want zero government services. They just don’t like the concept of a society where some people wind up paying for others. That’s what Propopsition 2.5 was about too — “sorting” residents into groups that would be self-sufficient. The rich would pay for their own services, the poor would pay — or more correctly, not afford — their own services.
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p>No one seems to realize that the rich benefit from the existence of the “rest of us”, ranging from a cheap supply of labor to things like malls, roads and hospitals being possible because of the economy of scale brought on by having everyone using such things.
I was recently doing a calculation on how much money my rich(er) town takes in from State sources vs. what it pays in State income taxes. We pay out way more than we take in (as it should be, in my opinion).
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p>What happens if you cut/lower/whatever the state income tax?
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p>For towns, where would the money come from? Property taxes? That’d be great for me, as our town’s property tax levy would hardly budge (as we don’t get much state money), but my state income tax would be slashed!
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p>Hooray! Tax cuts for the rich! Tax increases and/or service cuts for the poor! Woo hoo!
Springfield receives an enormous amount of aid from the state. Why? Because we have a lot of need (30% people in poverty) and our local resources are low (average tax bill is in the $1,600 range).
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p>I think we get 60-65% of our budget from the state. If we were to have pay that money from local resources, we would have an effective tax rate in the $50 range (this is off the top of my head — I figured this out a few years ago). Who would live or do business in a city with a $50/1000 tax rate?
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p>We have had a Finance Control Board in our city for the past 4 years. They have made things more efficient and virtually non-political. They have even lamented that we do not have enough funds for all our needs. So there isn’t this enormous pool of “waste” — the FCB found some inefficiency, but not a ton, not enough to bring our budget down to the same per-capita level as wealthy towns.
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p>Proposition 2.5 had an insidious effect on this state, one that was not lost on players like Grover Nordquist. It increased economic segregation. Nordquist calls it “sorting” people. Why is that bad? Because people with high-income, low-needs sorted themselves away from people with low-income, high-needs.
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p>That is even worse than it sounds, because a concentration of poverty breeds more problems. It becomes an unsolvable problem. I was weeding my grass yesterday. My lawn is pretty good, not too many weeds. I was able to pull the few weeds by hand. But if I had 30% weeds, what would I do? I have no idea. It would be prohibitively difficult to do by hand. I’d probably have to kill the 70% good grass to get rid of the 30% weeds.
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p>Think about that. If every community had 5-10% poverty, we could all handle it. But when some communities have 0% poverty and others have 30-40% poverty, what should we do?
Peter Porcupine posts insightful comments that don’t automatically take a party-line view of the issues. He clearly prefers to think analytically and dispassionately about them. Great to have him on a site like this.
Peter,
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p>This is why you are a “reasonable conservative.”
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p>I can talk to people whose reasoning is sound, and/or who agree with me. I can understand and respect conservative viewpoints when they are supported by cogent reasoning.
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p>It’s the fraction of people with whom I don’t agree and who use bad or worse logic that I can’t stand!
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p>(You will notice I have a blind spot for those with whom I agree that also employ bad/no logic. That’s life).
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p>And I absolutely agree that having a homogeneous community here would be less interesting and less useful. I often sally forth into less hospitable domains for the same reason, with mixed results.
i’ve been unable to alter my profile for quite some time. it seems locked to changes. anyone figured out what the problem is?
…but I don’t remember how I fixed it. Can you modify it with just text and no links/html? I know my issue had to do with links.
i can’t make any changes of any sort.
I was just able to alter mine and the signature. And I’ve seen others change theirs recently, too. I couldn’t find anything on google, either. I’m disappointed I can’t help.
But you can contact SoapBlox.net that runs our system, maybe they can help. Sorry not be able to help 🙁
Could this be a Cache problem?
… a guess with the limited amount of information I have, I’d say that’s a very good guess.
that I think is common to soapblox. I had the same problem too.
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p>Go to your profile page on BMG.
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p>Don’t do anything on it, accept click “Reset.”
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p>Then make the changes you want.
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p>Then click save.
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p>Then check to see if it worked. If it didn’t, go to a different page then back to the profile and try it in those steps again.
Good subject for an interview piece; who didn’t want to know more about PP? Porcupines are our favorite animal to watch in this BMG zoo, no?
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p>And kudos to Sabutai for the effort and the excellent questions. Even good subjects need good questions to make them so in this format and Sabutai has done another excellent job asking questions that provoke entertaining AND enlightening answers.
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p>Methinks you could make a more regular habit/part-time job out of this skill.
Much better that the trashy interviews we see in the MSM.
…and make sabutai the BMG version of Charlie Rose.
Can you name any Democrats – local, national, any time period – that you wished (perhaps secretly) were Republican because you admired their accomplishments and style? Or is there any Democrats that you think did great things that, if running today, would be impossible to vote against unless the “perfect” GOP candidate was running? (Joe Lieberman doesn’t count! ;p )
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p>For example, I think Schwarzenegger would be better as a Dem. I’m not a huge Ogo fan, but I think he’d be better off as a Dem, even if not a progressive Dem. I admire Chuck Hagel – he’s a little too socially conservative for my taste, but the fact that he’s willing to say Bush and Co. lied and that the NIE was doctored, that Iraq was the worst foreign policy disaster in US history, as well as his “go sell shoes” speech in the Foreign Relations Committee, shows a clear-thinking man who prizes integrity over partisanship. I believe Hagel places high priority on government and service; depending on the issue, I’d often prefer to have people like Hagel in office who are ideologically different from me but genuinely work to do what’s right over someone on “my side” who may vote the way I want but are motivated by the wrong reasons. I think I’d rather see Hagel stay and have one of the dead weight Dem senators go, if I had my choice.
Joe Biden.
he’s one of my least favorites.
… that the whole inspiration behind ‘Brazil’ was that Gilliam wanted a story where the ‘happy ending’ was the protagonist going ‘happy insane’.
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p>Love that movie. An inspiration for renegade heating engineers the world over.