Just throwing this question out for the comments. When I voted for him, I thought Marty Walsh was a progressive. But his policies are mostly pro-wealth, anti-regular-people. I heard him speak once. He seemed like a sincere advocate for regular people. But his policies give lie to this impression.
Now I think of him as a sort of affable dunce, easily led in whatever direction people smarter than him might wish to take him. Kind of like Reagan without the charisma.
But I really knew nothing about the guy other than the fact than he appeared to be less of a corporate stooge than Connolly. So I ask you, BMGers. Who is this guy?
Please share widely!
The “affable dunce” description reminds me of how I often think of what I call the “stupid-evil” dilemma when it comes to Marty.
When I moved here in the summer of 2013, I almost immediately started volunteering for Felix Arroyo’s campaign. When Felix endorsed Marty, I volunteered for Marty for the last few weeks. I had never been huge on Marty—education policy was the most important thing to me, and he was too pro-charter. And he also had an unnerving habit of describing the job of mayor as “CEO of the city.” So my vote for him was more of an anti-Connolly vote; I thought that if Marty was questionable on public education, Connolly, the DFER-backed candidate, would be far worse. As it turns out, I don’t know what difference there would have been.
This is a good piece from a friend of mine back in 2013: http://michelle-kweder.squarespace.com/new-blog/2013/11/3/i-wouldnt-vote-for-marty-walsh-but-maybe-you-should.
I think that Marty really does sincerely care for “regular people”. The problem is that he cannot stop thinking of union construction workers as the ideal examplar of a “regular person”. In his mind, anything that is good for construction workers is good for everyone and anything bad for construction workers must also be bad for all the other “regular people”.
While he is politically quite smart, he is not good with logic and details. He appears to like to decide what people to trust, and rely on their judgements rather than his own. The ability to delegate, of course, is useful ability for an executive, but if there isn’t enough interest and understanding in the details then one can lose control. I think this is the case with Marty.
I think his decision to jump on board the Olympics bandwagon quite early demonstrated both of the above attributes. He decided he liked the Olympics organizers and really liked the idea of so many construction jobs and signed up without paying much, if any, attention to important details and unanswered questions.
…but if I did, I would already have a Tito for Mayor bumper sticker on my car.
I wouldn’t have voted for Marty Walsh in the preliminary election, but he was the better choice in the general election. His job is to appoint the school committee (which should be elected) and support the overwhelming majority of children who attend the public schools. He needs to stop flirting with the charter operators and the privatization crowd and do the right thing for the public schools.
My sources tell me he won’t, but Michelle Wu will. She’ll be a formidable fundraiser, but I suspect she will fall short. I think you need a Tito to bring together the young professionals who backed Connolly and the folks that turned out for Felix and Charlotte. Marty could have been transformational and choose to be transactional.
Coincides with the student walkout, doesn’t it?
Sounds like Jamaicaplainiac a member or the Boston Teachers Union. Doesn’t it.
I thought charter schools were public education.
Anyway, we should be joining together to get Mayor Walsh to stop Marky freakin’ Mark from making the Boston Marathon bombing movie. That’s a real cause.
They have turned out to be basically private schools operating with public funds, but without public regulation.
help me understand this, because i honestly do not have me head around it.
…a preferred funding scheme. Charter schools are funded by a generous formula that results in a garnishment of a city or town’s Chapter 70 aid. Publicly governed schools are funded through municipal appropriations and the appropriation of the state legislature. This year, the governor baked a -0.22% DEFLATION rate into the foundation budget formula while advocating for removing the charter school cap.
turns out, they only succeed by limiting the number of people who attend every year.
It’s easy to get higher 4 year graduation rates when screen kids in, so that only kids with active parents are getting in, and you force all the struggling or difficult kids out.
The really, really pathetic thing about all of this, is that despite the institutional advantages of a charter school, they still don’t do any better than public schools on average.
That’s how you know just how shitty charters really are — even though they get kids with the most active parents, and even though they get to dump off their worst or most troubled students back onto public schools, they *still* aren’t statistically any damn better than those public schools.
Ryan, you hit the nail on the head. ALL Charter school parents are actively engaged in their child’s education. That make a big difference. Kids is charters have parents who have spent significant time on applications and process. So we know they are actively engaged.
I really annoys me when charter advocates lie and when they breakdown race and enrolled students. They know they are full of sh**, but they don’t care.
I want to understand why they don’t perform better with the funding they get for engaged students with engaged families. Normally, less funding is needed. In many respects, they are over funded taking away money needed in public schools.
…in elected office advocating phasing out charters? It seems like the debate we hear never goes beyond whether to lift the cap and by how much. I say let’s begin the process of shutting them down (or let them survive as actual private schools on their own) and return the money to real public schools where it belongs.
& thinks he should be loyal to them. The problem is that, while at one point his friends may have been mostly some guys in the bleachers, now his friends are mostly the guys who own a luxury box. And to the extent he still has friends in the bleachers, he can’t see anything wrong with using his power/influence trying to help them get a luxury box too.
It’s actually an admirable quality for a regular person- it’s a giant problem for a government official.