"The Biosphere Does Not Belong to Us; We Belong to It."

SECOND OF 2 PARTS

Almost exactly two years ago, environmentalists were making a push for the Massachusetts legislature to advance a bill that was the predecessor of today's House Bill 912, An Act Relative to Forest Protection, now before the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture.  The bill they were advocating for had the same title, An Act Relative to Forest Protection, but a different number, House Bill 897; ultimately it did not move beyond the House Ways and Means Committee.

The contents of today's bill, H.912, are similar to the previous bill, H.897, but not identical. Read the texts side by side and you easily see where parts of the original have been dropped, parts have been altered, and new parts have been inserted.  

There's nothing unusual about that. Texts of proposed laws are changed all the time as bills wend their way through the legislative process.  The process exposes flaws and weaknesses.  And it is responsive to the voices of influential experts of all kinds and of powerful opponents who cannot be ignored if bill sponsors and bill supporters are serious about getting something into law.

Late in 2019 and early in 2020, proponents of An Act Relative to Forest Protection brought out some big names to lift their cause, including the noted journalist and author Bill McKibben ("The End of Nature") and E.O. Wilson, a retired Harvard University biology professor who won a slew of awards for his academic work and his writing for general audiences.  His book "On Human Nature" won the Pulitzer for general non-fiction in 1979.

After Wilson's recent death, The New York Times published a detail-rich obituary, "E.O. Wilson, a Pioneer of Evolutionary Biology, Dies at 92," 12-27-21.  It contained this assessment by Paula J. Ehrlich, chief executive and president of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation: "His courageous scientific focus and poetic voice transformed our way of understanding ourselves and our planet."

Back in 2019, Wilson wrote a letter of support for An Act Relative to Forest Protection, asserting, "This is the single most important action the people of the state can take to preserve our natural heritage.  As it has many times in the past, Massachusetts can provide leadership on this issue, inspiring other states across the country to take similar bold actions." 

Wilson's letter on the bill also (notably) said: 

"Many decades of research have convinced me and many other conservation biologists that we must save at least half of the Earth from industrial exploitation if we hope to avoid catastrophic plant and animal extinctions.  A bill introduced into this Massachusetts legislative session would make us the first state to give this protection to all of its public lands.  I strongly support this bill, which will permanently protect (11%) of the Massachusetts land area, reaching from the Berkshires to the Atlantic Coast."

I don't have as great an understanding of An Act Relative to Forest Protection, in either its former or current iteration, as I would like.  I do not know enough about the nuances of the strictures the bill would impose, or about the bigger questions on conservation of our state's natural resources, to say it ought to pass now.  But I do know the obvious: winters were a lot colder and snowier when I was a kid in Revere than they are now, and Wilson's case for preserving half the natural world deserves to be considered on an urgent basis.

In an article he wrote, "A Biologist's Manifesto for Preserving Life on Earth," published in December, 2016, in "Sierra," the magazine of the Sierra Club, Wilson made the  argument for "Half Earth" thusly:

"We are playing a global endgame.  Humanity's grasp on the planet is not strong; it is growing weaker.  Freshwater is growing short; the atmosphere and the seas are increasingly polluted as a result of what has transpired on land.  The climate is changing in ways unfavorable to life, except for microbes, jellyfish, and fungi.  For many species, these changes are already fatal.

"...A biographic scan of Earth's principal habitats shows that a full representation of its ecosystems and the vast majority of its species can be saved within half the planet's surface.  At one-half and above, life on Earth enters the safe zone.  Within that half, more than 80 percent of the species would be stabilized.

"There is a second, psychological argument for protecting half of Earth.  Half-Earth is a goal -- and people understand and appreciate goals.  They need a victory, not just news that progress is being made...It is our nature to choose large goals that, while difficult, are potentially game changing and universal in benefit.  To strive against odds on behalf of all of life would be humanity at its most noble.

"...The biosphere does not belong to us; we belong to it."

I am a collector, a hoarder, I regret to say, of newspaper and magazine articles and books that make an impression upon me.  Often I have no particular reason for cutting out an article or a quote or an excerpt from an article, other than I think it might come in handy one day when I have to write something or might be the key to a door beyond which I will gain an understanding of a problem that has occupied me a long time or where I will perceive a puzzling situation in a new, clear light.

Out of that hoard recently tumbled a copy of a letter to the editor of The New York Times, dated Sept. 14, 2013, from Allen Hershkowitz, who was identified in a post-script as "a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council."  The letter was a response to a column by Eric C. Ellis that had recently appeared on the Times's Op-Ed page under the headline, "Overpopulation Is Not the Problem."  Mr. Hershkowitz's letter said, in part: 

"Contrary to the impression left by Mr. Ellis's article, nature is the ultimate source of all economic value.  (Bold facing added)  No commerce is possible without clean air, clean water, fertile topsoil, a chemically stable atmosphere, raw materials for food, energy and medicine, and the natural processing of wastes by the millions of species inhabiting our soil, water and air.

"It is the availability of these at-risk ecological services that makes possible the technical innovations that Mr. Ellis is banking on." 

Every now and then, it is good for us in Massachusetts to remember that high technology, higher education, advanced medical research and care, biotechnology, biomedicine, pharmaceuticals, etc. -- treasures though they undoubtedly be -- are not our Commonwealth's ultimate source of all economic value.

 

Preserve MA Forests to Fight Global Warming, Bill Advocates Urge

FIRST OF 2 PARTS

We should find out fairly soon if there's a chance the legislature will enact some major-impact environmental bills in the new year.

Feb. 2, 2022, is Joint Rule 10 day, the deadline for most of the legislature's joint committees to issue reports on all bills assigned to them.

Watch the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture (JENRA).  If it issues favorable reports that day on House Bill 912, An Act Relative to Forest Protection, and House Bill 1002, An Act Relative to Increased Forest Protection, it could be a sign something significant is happening on this front. 

H.912 would, among other things, prohibit the harvesting of timber in any of the state's public forests and prevent businesses and industries from siting needed infrastructure there.  You would not be able to put up a cell phone tower, for example, in a publicly owned forest if H.912 became law.

H.1002 would require the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife to set aside as nature reserves 30% of the land within already established Wildlife Management Areas and would impose new restrictions on the use of such land, such as permanently banning timber removal.

The idea behind both bills is to preserve and improve the condition of our forests because trees absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide, the cause of global warming and climate disruption.  Healthy forests also mitigate the effects of heavy rains, which have become more frequent in many parts of the world because of warming. 

When JENRA held a virtual public hearing on these and a number of other bills on Dec. 7, more than 20 witnesses offered testimony on each bill, most (but not all) in favor. 

Rep. Michael J. Finn, D-West Springfield, the main sponsor of H.912, told the committee that the bill was needed to update public land policies "written decades ago, before global warming and climate change were recognized as real and imminent threats."  

"This bill will protect over 400,000 acres of forests and watershed lands controlled by the Department of Conservation and Recreation by designating them as parks and reserves," Finn pointed out. (H.912 has 19 co-sponsors in the House and 2 co-sponsors in the Senate.)

Michael Kellett, of RESTORE: The North Woods, testified that H.912 and H.1002 "were conceived to bring the management of Massachusetts public lands in line with the most urgent environmental issues of the 21st Century: climate change and loss of biodiversity."  

The bills, Kellett said, "would increase carbon storage to fight climate change and sea level rise...They would protect maturing forests that can become future old growth."

One of those who spoke in opposition to the bills was Chris Eagan, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Forest Alliance, a trade association for forest landowners, foresters, timber harvesters and forest products companies.  

"H.912 was first filed last session (2019-20) and it was opposed by many of the major environmental organizations and land trusts in Massachusetts," Eagan said. "...It's being pushed on environmental and climate grounds, but the major environmental groups, the ones you've heard of, oppose it.  They oppose it because it's bad policy."

Also testifying in opposition was Evan Dell'Olio, General Manager and Director of Roberts Energy Renewables.  "A concerning point in regards to H.1002 is that Mass. Fish and Wildlife depends on an ability to use multiple types of wildlife management techniques, including commercial timber harvesting, to retain and create new habitats for declining endangered species," he said. "Often, these are the types of projects that private landowners may not have the resources to pursue, especially when large volumes of low-grade wood have to be removed to create this (desired) wildlife habitat."

On Feb. 2, joint legislative committees subject to Joint Rule 10, will have four options on each bill in their charge.  They can report it out favorably, report it out unfavorably, send it to study, or ask for a continuance, i.e., a new, future deadline for reporting it out.

If JENRA reports H.912 and H.1002 out favorably, the bills would get legs and be sent to another committee for possible, further favorable action.  Both would still have a long way to go to enactment.  

If JENRA gives them unfavorable reports, the bills would pretty much be dead for this session.  And if it sends them to study, the same would be the case.  In the Massachusetts legislature, "study" is a synonym for wastebasket.

[During the 2019-20 legislative session, JENRA gave a favorable report to a bill very similar to H.912 and having the same title.  It was then sent to the House Rules Committee, which also gave it a favorable report.  It wound up in House Ways and Means, but no further action was taken on it.]

NEXT:  A look at a recently deceased Harvard professor, a world-renowned biologist and champion of biodiversity, who favored the forest management approach set forth in An Act Relative to Forest Protection. 

NOTE: For the witness testimony quoted in this post, credit is due to MASSTRAC/InstaTrac, an independent, long-established, subscriber-only legislative monitoring service.  

Different Kind of Candidate, in a Familiar Lane, Could Shake Up Guv Race

The next election for governor is almost a year away.

Announced candidates include three Democrats, Harvard professor Danielle Allen, state senator Sonia Chang-Diaz and former state senator Ben Downing, and one Republican, former state representative Geoff Diehl, who's been endorsed by Donald Trump.

Rampant is the expectation that Maura Healey, our attorney general, will be in the race as well. Healey would be considered the frontrunner, both in the primary and general elections, the moment she announced.

Given how much Massachusetts likes having moderate Republican governors, like Baker and Mitt Romney, I have to wonder if there's a person of that stripe (or almost) who'd make a good candidate this time around.  (It's in that context that the name of Andrew Lelling, U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts under the Trump Justice Dept., has come up.)

Question:  Why can't the moderate Republican lane -- fiscally conservative/socially liberal -- be filled in the 2022 gubernatorial campaign by a moderate Independent...or a moderate Democrat who, realizing he or she would likely lose a Democratic primary to Maura Healey, decides to run as an Independent...or a moderate Republican who, realizing he or she would likely lose the Republican primary to Diehl, decides to run as an Independent?

There are some seriously qualified individuals with a great understanding of the public sector who, in theory, have a realistic path to the governorship if they took one of these routes.  

In that category, I'd put Tom Glynn, former CEO of Partners Healthcare and former MassPort executive director; Putnam Investments CEO Bob Reynolds; and Jay Ash, former Chelsea city manager, former Secretary of Housing and Economic Development in the Baker administration, and current Massachusetts Competitive Partnership CEO.  

Other names no doubt belong in this category.

...Let's consider Baker's decision not to seek a third consecutive four-year term, a prize definitely within his reach.

I believe the obvious reason is the real reason: he was tired of the endless demands of the office and unhappy with the rightward drift of his party, where more members have indicated they favor Diehl over him in next year's primary.

It could also be that Baker, who has remained highly popular with the mass of voters throughout his years in office, didn't want to press his luck.  

Third consecutive terms for governors, as well as for other politicians with executive responsibilities, often turn into minefields.   Third-termers can run into problems, for instance, in attracting, retaining and motivating top-notch staff and appointees.  

Speaking some years ago with "City & State," George Arzt, press secretary for former New York City Mayor Ed Koch during Koch's third term, said: "The danger for any third-term executive is a malaise that settles over the workforce, and you have to keep the workforce energized with new ideas, new projects, creativity, and it's going to take fierce leadership to do that."

Fierce leadership.

That's what it takes to be a truly successful executive in the public realm.  Maybe Charlie Baker just woke up one normal day, looked in the mirror and realized he had no more "fierce" to give as governor.  

  

   

Charlie Baker: Last Republican Governor of Massachusetts

As long as the Jim Lyonses of the world are in the driver's seat at MassGOP, it is hard to see how another Republican gets elected governor of Massachusetts.

Shortly after Governor Charlie Baker and Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito announced today that neither had a desire to run for governor in 2022, the Republican Party of Massachusetts put out a press release with this quote from party chairman Jim Lyons:

"Our party remains committed to the America-First of agenda advocated by President Donald J. Trump, and it's clear to me that Charlie Baker was shaken by President Trump's endorsement of another Republican candidate (for governor in 2022) in Geoff Diehl.

"Our party remains committed to the strong conservative values of freedom, individual liberty, and personal responsibility.  We look forward to working with President Trump as we continue to rebuild the Massachusetts Republican Party."  (For those who are counting, that's three references to Trump as president in the present tense in a span of 69 words -- quite a feat, even by sycophant standards.)

Memo to Lyons: Trump lost to Biden last year in Massachusetts by 33 percentage points.

Here's how Baker and Polito, in an open letter, explained their decision to swear off 2022 gubernatorial campaigns:

"We have all been going through an extraordinarily difficult pandemic, and the next year will be just as important, if not more important, than the past year.  We have a great deal of work to do to put the pandemic behind us, keep our kids in school, and keep our communities and economy moving forward.  That work cannot and should not be about politics and the next election.  If we were to run, it would be a distraction that would potentially get in the way of many of the things we should be working on for everyone in Massachusetts.  We want to focus on recovery, not on the grudge matches political campaigns can devolve into." 

Politico reported in October that a Public Policy Polling survey of likely voters in next year's  Massachusetts Republican Party primary revealed that Diehl was favored over Baker by a 21 percent margin (50 to 29%).

In November, a poll by Northwind Strategies suggested Baker's best chance of getting re-elected would entail quitting the Republican Party and running as an Independent.  

At about the same time, The Boston Globe reported on a UMass poll showing Baker enjoyed an approval rating among Republican voters of only 41 percent.

I doubt Baker was "shaken" by the former president's endorsement of Diehl, but I can see him being angry.  Frustrated too.  

Maybe the endorsement was the straw that broke the camel's back, bringing forth a long dormant urge to go and make some real money in the private sector again. Maybe Baker wanted to give his beloved party a wake-up call: "You like Diehl so much?  Fine.  Good luck next year with your Geoffie boy."

Independents are the largest voting bloc in Massachusetts, making up 55.9 percent of registered voters, followed by Democrats (32.5 percent) and Republicans (10.1 percent).

Baker, I believe, could indeed have run next year as an Independent and won.  Then, if he wished, he could have re-enrolled as a Republican after taking the oath of office for a third time.  

I can see the MassGOP, if it continues indefinitely in its Trump-induced delirium, shrinking to a state of total irrelevance and inspiring the creation of a Massachusetts Centrist Party.

 

Higher Natural Gas Prices Can't Be Separated from Old Battles over Pipeline

Remember that company from Texas, Kinder Morgan, that proposed in 2014 to bring bountiful Marcellus Shale gas from Pennsylvania to New England via a new pipeline across northern Massachusetts?  

Remember how Massachusetts basically told Kinder Morgan to get stuffed? 

(The list of influential politicians willing to support the plan had zero names on it.) 

Remember how so many of our leaders questioned the rationale for the project: that we needed more natural gas and a new pipeline was required to deliver it? 

Focus now on the present.  New Englanders are facing steep price increases for natural gas and other fuels.  On Sept. 20, Bloomberg reported, "Natural gas futures have been soaring, and they're set to get especially high in New England and California in the coming months."

Available inventories of gas, Bloomberg explained, "are tight to the point where a harsh winter could mean a supply crunch.  Any shortages would have an outsized impact on New England, where limited pipeline capacity makes it harder to bring gas from Appalachia."

In its latest Winter Energy Market and Reliability Assessment, ISO New England, which oversees the regional power grid, noted:

"Natural gas availability is more of a concern in New England due to the size of New England's peak winter natural gas demand combined with the limited number of pipelines and available pipeline capacity into the region...New England is served by three major natural gas importing pipelines; however, despite a few expansions, this capacity has remained largely unchanged for decades."

In April 2016, Kinder Morgan suspended efforts to win the necessary approvals for its $3.3 billion Northeast Energy Direct (NED) pipeline project, citing inadequate commitments from prospective gas customers.

In response, the Governor Baker administration said it believed the company's decision "highlights the pressing need to secure cost-effective hydropower and other renewable energy resources to meet the growing demand for affordable energy in Massachusetts and New England."  That was a reference to the plan to connect Massachusetts to hydroelectric power sources in Canada, which would involve new electric transmission lines within a 145-mile-long corridor cut through untouched forests in Maine.  

On Nov. 2, Maine voters approved a ballot question opposing this plan and requiring the Maine legislature to approve projects of this nature.  

Somewhere, Paul LePage must have been smiling.  

LePage was governor of  Maine when Kinder Morgan was pushing for the NED pipeline through Massachusetts and he supported it as heartily as Baker now supports hydropower from Quebec because it would have supplied a lot more gas to Maine and given a much needed boost to his state's economy.

Mainers were, of course, aware in 2016 that Massachusetts did not concern itself with how its actions relative to the pipeline might crush their ambitions, which leads to this question:  Was the Maine ballot question against Quebec hydropower transmission lines karmic payback for the loss of the NED pipeline?

Charlie Baker certainly hopes not.  

Asked on Nov. 4 if he saw the passage of the anti-hydropower referendum as the death knell for that project, Baker said, "No, I don't see it as dead."  There's talk of challenging the referendum in court as "unconstitutional," but details on such a move have yet to emerge.

Best Contact Tracing Tool Was Out of Bounds. What About in Next Pandemic?

The administration of Governor Charlie Baker has decided to shut down the Massachusetts Community Tracing Collaborative the end of this year and turn over all COVID-19 contact tracing to local boards of health.  To facilitate the transition, the administration will award more than $15 million in grants to the local boards.  It was during the second month of the pandemic here, April 2020, that the collaborative was set up to limit the spread of COVID-19 by contacting persons who were likely exposed to infected persons and getting them tested.

From April 2020 through nearly the end of October 2021, the state's Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) reports that the collaborative and local boards of health traced and found contacts for 1.1 million COVID-19 cases.  (The boards traced about 35 percent of all cases.)

The agency points out that, at the beginning of the pandemic, there was "limited (COVID-19) testing capability, minimal therapeutic interventions and no vaccines," whereas today, "...Massachusetts is a national leader in vaccine administration and free testing, and (has) the second lowest COVID-19 hospitalization rate and case positivity rates in the nation."

As of Nov. 4, Massachusetts has had 858,000 cases of COVID-19 and 19,046 deaths from the disease.  Overall, our state coped very well with this unprecedented public health emergency.  

Yes, we can be proud of how Massachusetts has dealt with the pandemic.  But that cannot mean that any errors, oversights and deficiencies in our pandemic performance should be minimized or ignored.  

Instead, we should be examining all of the ways our state and nation could have prepared better for, and responded better to, COVID-19.  Especially, we should pay close attention to the beginning of the pandemic, the period when the chances of containing the disease were the highest.  

Much has already been said and written on this subject -- but not nearly as much as will be said and written on it in the coming years... 

Exercising the blogger's prerogative, I'm going to hold up for renewed consideration a column written several months ago by a friend of mine, Tom Kelly, which appeared in CommonWealth Magazine under the headline, "Safety should trump privacy in next pandemic.  Phone geo-tracking data could save thousands of lives."  

"Historians of the future," Kelly wrote, "will not excuse the many ways we made the pandemic worse than it had to be; for example, how we failed to foresee the critical role that communications technology could have played in halting the spread of the coronavirus, and how we failed to establish beforehand the necessary legal and logistical structures to exploit that technology when it was needed most."

Those historians, he continued, "...will ask why, when Americans first started falling ill with COVID, we were not able or even willing to use geo-tracking data in those patients' smart phones to trace everyone they may have been in contact with and to get those 'contacts' quickly tested and isolated?"

Kelly has a provocative thesis: We have been acting throughout this crisis as if privacy rights are immutable, but they are not.  "Privacy rights can and should be adjusted -- temporarily -- in a true national health emergency," he wrote.

Here's a key passage from his column:

"...we need to be talking now about adopting new laws and policies that would allow government agencies, in an explicitly defined health emergency, to access personal information that has the potential, in the aggregate, to prevent deaths on a massive scale.

"The laws and policies I'm talking about would need to have strong, built-in privacy protections concerning the collection, transmission, and analysis of digital data.  These things would be difficult to write and enact.  But, with memories fresh in our minds of all the damage COVID has wrought, I believe we could get it done."

Kelly supported his thesis by citing the leadership meeting convened by Biogen in Boston on Feb. 26-27, 2020, which became a COVID-19 super-spreader event.  There were 99 individuals who left that meeting having been exposed to the disease who became responsible, ultimately, for as many as 300,000 COVID-19 cases in 29 states, according to "Science," the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"To those who believe in the immutability of privacy rights," Kelly wrote, "I would pose this question: Knowing now how a new strain of the coronavirus can quickly turn 99 cases of the illness into 300,000, can you really say you'd stick to that position, no matter what, in another pandemic?" 

Please read Kelly's entire piece.  It may be found at: 

https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinion/safety-should-trump-privacy-in-next-pandemic/

Over the Mystic: Baker's All In on This Project

The Baker administration anticipated the grumbling that would follow in the wake of its announcement last week that it was going forward with a $35 million project to build a 785-foot-long pedestrian and bicyclist bridge over the Mystic River linking the Encore casino site in Everett to Assembly Square in Somerville.  

Administration officials came to the Oct. 22 announcement ceremony armed with facts on how the bridge would help both people and the environment, and on how much it would do for communities deemed both Gateway Cities and areas deserving of "environmental justice" improvements.

Gateway Cities serve as foundations and hubs for economic activities that drive the economies of their regions.  In Massachusetts, the legislature has designated 26 Gateway Cities, including Chelsea, Everett, Fall River, Haverhill, Lawrence, Lynn, Malden, Revere and Worcester.

A neighborhood conforms to the Commonwealth's definition of an environmental justice area if it meets one or more of the following criteria: 1. the annual median household income is not more than 65 percent of the statewide annual median household income; 2. minorities comprise 40 percent or more of the population; 3. Twenty-five percent or more of households lack English language proficiency; or 4. minorities comprise 25 percent or more of the population and the annual median household income of the municipality in which the neighborhood is located does not exceed 150 percent of the statewide annual median household income.

Three days after the Baker administration announced it is fully committed to "completing the design, permitting and construction of the Mystic River Bicycle and Pedestrian Bridge," The Boston Globe published an opinion column under the headline, "A bridge to a casino, but not to a recovery center."  

The columnist juxtaposed the all-positive story from the administration on the pedestrian/bicyclist bridge with the long-stalled project to rebuild the bridge from Quincy to Long Island (in Boston Harbor), which would enable the City of Boston to re-open a desperately needed substance abuse treatment facility on the island, writing:

"In this tale of two bridges, is there a more textbook case about what society and government deem important?  As Alex Green, who teaches public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School tweeted over the weekend: 'Bridge to casino.  No bridge to massive Long Island rehab facility.  Massachusetts priorities, one decision at a time.' "

Closed due to safety concerns in October 2014, the Long Island bridge had to be demolished several months later.  Boston has since been attempting to rebuild it but has been blocked at every turn in the process by the City of Quincy.  The matter remains mired in the courts.  

Count me among those who believe the Mystic River Bicycle and Pedestrian Bridge is a great idea and a great investment by the state -- even if it plumps up the bottom line of Encore's owner,  Las Vegas-based Wynn Resorts.  (I say that as a lifelong, committed non-gambler.)

The bridge may help some gamblers get from Somerville to the casino and back, but I can't imagine there'll be lots of gamblers making it their primary route to the Encore.  The walk will be too much like work for most of the folks who get their kicks sitting for hours in front of slot machines.  And why would they walk to the casino when they can take a free shuttle to it from the Wellington T station, just one stop away from Assembly Square on the Orange Line?

The main beneficiaries of the bridge will be: (a) bicyclists who will no longer have to risk their lives on the traffic-clogged Alford Street Bridge (Route 99) from Everett to Somerville, (b) persons of humble circumstances from Somerville who will find it easier to take jobs at the casino, and (c) persons of humble circumstances from Everett who will find it easier to take jobs at the offices, apartment and condo complexes, shops and restaurants in the boomtown created by Somerville at Assembly Square.

The no-vehicle/no-carbon-emissions bridge will also open up new possibilities for people and enterprises beyond Everett and Somerville because it will connect the Northern Strand, one of the most popular pedestrian and bike trails in Greater Boston, to Somerville and adjoining municipalities.  

The Northern Strand is built mainly on old, abandoned freight railroad lines.  It begins in Lynn and courses for eleven-and-a half miles through Saugus, Malden, Revere and Everett before culminating on the banks of the Mystic.  

Once the new bridge is in place, anyone will be able to use the Northern Strand to bike, run or walk uninterrupted all the way to Somerville -- and, if they're especially fit and energetic, from Somerville to points in Boston, Cambridge and beyond. 

Through this bridge, Kathleen Theoharides, Secretary of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, sees the state "delivering a mobility solution that prioritizes equity, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and enhances access to local businesses and services for residents in these environmental justice communities." 

The comparison between the construction of the Mystic River Bicycle and Pedestrian Bridge and the replacement of the Long Island bridge is rather thin.  The two cities involved with the first project, Everett and Somerville, are totally in favor of it, whereas the cities involved with the second project, Boston and Quincy, are on opposite sides.

Two points I'd like to stick in at the end:

The state collects taxes from the Encore casino equal to 25 percent of the casino's gross receipts.  That does not automatically entitle the casino to reap the benefits of a state-funded infrastructure project, but it allows the casino and its supporters to argue the bridge is worthy of public investment.  Developers and businesses argue from weaker vantages all the time.

The Encore casino itself is private property but the grounds around it, and (most attractively) the waterfront portions of it, are open at no fee or obligation to the public.  Wynn Resorts created a new waterfront park when it reclaimed and rehabilitated a shoreline and riverbed dangerously contaminated during the decades a chemical factory operated on the site.  It is a beautiful public amenity. 

This Moment in Corruption: The Case of the Larcenous Postal Supervisor

Federal authorities have made known the story of a longtime U.S. Postal Service employee who developed something on the side in the cocaine trade.

The Office of Acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Nathaniel R. Mendell announced Oct. 22 that Shawn M. Herron, 44, a resident of Whitman, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute and one count of theft of mail by a postal employee.

A press release from Mendell's office states that Herron has been employed with the Postal Service since 2005 and has served as Supervisor of Customer Service at the Canton Post Office and, more recently, as Manager of Customer Services at the Fall River Post Office (FPO).

"Herron tracked packages he suspected of containing narcotics," the release says, "and, rather than dealing with them appropriately, opened them and stole the contents.  Specifically, Herron profiled priority parcels from Puerto Rico and West Coast states, as well as parcels flagged by law enforcement as potentially containing illegal narcotics, and then removed them from the mail stream."

The release continues, "Herron tracked the suspected parcels through Postal Service databases and monitored their arrival at the FPO.  After their arrival, Herron located the parcels and brought them to his personal office space, where he stole the narcotics for distribution."

Herron is looking at some serious punishment.

The distribution charge provides for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, five years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $500,000.

The theft of mail charge carries a prison sentence of up to five years, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine.

COVID Recovery Bill Notable for Its Broad Scope and Slow Motion

SECOND OF TWO PARTS 

On June 28, Governor Charlie Baker submitted to the legislature An Act Relative to Immediate COVID Recovery Needs, saying he wanted to use $2.915 billion of direct federal aid to address "urgent hardships and challenges" facing those hit hard by the pandemic, including "communities of color and low-wage workers."

Line Item 1599-2032 in this bill, now designated House Bill 3922, calls for $400 million in grants for municipal water and sewer infrastructure improvements.  It specifies that grants be used to remediate "combined sewer overflow into waterways, including projects to improve water quality in the Merrimack River."

Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) happen during heavy rainstorms in some communities with old underground pipes handling both rainwater run-off and sewage.  When run-off and sewage reach the pipes' capacity limits, water system operators direct the overflows to natural waterways; otherwise, sewage would  back up into homes, businesses and other structures, to devastating effect.

The problem is particularly acute along the Merrimack River, a drinking water source for communities like Lowell, Methuen, Andover, Tewksbury and Lawrence.  Hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage are diverted every year into the river because of CSOs.  

Baker's bill is a Godsend to those living along the Merrimack or in one of the communities that take their drinking water from it.  If it only cleaned up the Merrimack, it would be a monumental achievement...but there's so much more it would do. 

HB3922 proposes new spending in multiple areas, including the following:

• $300 million to support expanded homeownership opportunities, focusing on first-time homebuyers who reside in municipalities disproportionately impacted by COVID.
• $200 million to support housing production and related efforts that seek to help communities of color "build wealth by promoting homeownership among residents of disproportionately impacted municipalities."
• $200 million to produce rental housing and provide increased housing options to workers and residents of disproportionately impacted municipalities.
• $300 million to finance the statewide production of housing for veterans and senior citizens.
• $250 million to support investments and regional collaboration aimed at invigorating downtowns across the state.
• $100 million for downtown development that will specifically spur economic growth in neighborhoods disproportionately impacted by COVID.
• $100 million for cultural facilities and tourism state-wide.
• $240 million for job training programs addressing workforce skills gaps, thereby helping Massachusetts citizens secure the jobs that most need to be filled at this time.
• $50 million for "fiscally stressed" hospitals in disproportionately impacted municipalities.  (The Governor pointed out, "These hospitals have taken extraordinary measures to support their communities during the pandemic, despite interruptions to their revenue streams.")
• $175 million for addiction treatment and related behavioral health services.
• $100 million "to close the digital divide and increase broadband internet access."
• $100 million for marine port development.

The flood of federal dollars brought to Massachusetts by the pandemic is so large that, even if this $2.9 billion-dollar legislation were enacted and implemented as is, $2 billion in federal COVID relief would remain on the table for the legislature to spend as it sees fit.

Despite having the word "immediate" in its title, House 3922 seems to be inching along in the House.  Officially filed on June 30 and sent to House Ways & Means, a hearing on the bill was not held until September 15. No official steps have been taken on it since.

Great is the temptation to think the legislature may be slow-walking the bill because lawmakers are unhappy with the Baker-authored $2.9-billion/$2-billion split in control of the funds between the administration and legislature, respectively. In the filing letter accompanying the bill, Baker made it clear that he wanted to put "his" $2.9 billion to immediate use.  The Governor's patience is no doubt wearing thin.

COVID Recovery Bill Takes Aim at a Nasty, Old Problem

FIRST OF TWO PARTS

The big problem that Massachusetts has always had with combined sewer overflows got a whole lot worse this year because of the many heavy rainstorms we've had.

Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) occur mainly in older municipalities with antiquated sewage systems.  These communities have some old pipes that must do double-duty: carry both rainwater run-off and sewage.  It's a problem, for example, in Lynn, Gloucester, Lawrence, Lowell, Fitchburg, Holyoke and Springfield.

When there's lots of rain, wastewater system operators in these places have no choice but to mix untreated sewage with rainwater and send that noxious mix into natural bodies of water, such as rivers.  Otherwise, sewage would back up into homes and other buildings.

That means lots of human waste floating here and there after heavy rainstorms, endangering human health, as well as aquatic life and riverine ecosystems.  The dangers become particularly acute in cases like that of the Merrimack River, which has long served as the drinking water supply for several Merrimack Valley communities, such as Lowell, Methuen, Andover, Tewksbury and Lawrence.

From January through August of this year, there were 80 separate CSOs  into waterways within the service zone of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.  The MWRA estimates those discharges put a total of 594 million gallons of water-sewage mix into various waterways.  Compare that to the entirety of  2020, when there were 58 separate CSOs containing 259 million gallons in total, according to the MWRA.

The problem, so far this year, is 129% worse than in all of last year!  

We have one month (September) not yet accounted for and three months (October, November, December) to come when the problem could become extreme.

To gain a sharper perspective on the ugliness of this all, I did some calculations on how many acre-feet of water-sewage mix you can have with a CSO.  (An acre-foot describes an acre of land covered by a liquid to a uniform depth of one foot.)  I figured that the 594 million gallons of CSOs we've had from January through August of this year in the MWRA zone could have covered the entire 33 acres of Boston's gleaming new Seaport District to a depth of nearly two feet.

Fortunately, there are solutions on the horizon.

Governor Charlie Baker recently filed a bill that proposes to spend up to $400 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds for the Commonwealth on upgrades to water and sewer infrastructure, with a special focus on lessening CSOs.

House Bill 3922, An Act Relative to Immediate COVID Recovery Needs, would make those improvements under the auspices of the state's Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.  

On September 9, EOEEA Secretary Kathleen Theoharides provided remote testimony in favor of the bill to members of the House Ways & Means Committee.  At the time, she was sitting at a table set on the banks of the Merrimack River in Lawrence.

Pointing out that 130 million gallons of untreated sewage had flowed into the Merrimack over a span of two days recently during Tropical Storm Ida, Theoharides said, "The time to invest in adaptation is now.  It's not tomorrow or the next day."  She was referring to climate change adaptation.  

Scientists have conclusively determined that climate change caused by global warming is producing more frequent and more intense storms in certain parts of the globe.  Such storms are exacerbating the problem of CSOs in Massachusetts.

Water and sewer system upgrades are only one (relatively modest) part of the HB3922 cornucopia:  overall, the bill would spend $2.9 billion of federal funds on various and multiple projects throughout the state.

NEXT: A look at HB3922's many components.  To say this bill is a major spending plan is a gross understatement.  It is an historic piece of legislation.

Moulton Did the Unpopular but Correct Thing in Going to Afghanistan

For most people in Massachusetts politics, the beating that Seth Moulton has been taking in the press and on the airwaves these last couple of days on account of his unauthorized trip to Afghanistan would be difficult, if not painful.  But for Moulton, I suspect, this is very close to being a cause for laughter.  

When you are a Marine who's been fired at repeatedly in combat, as he has, what's a bunch of insults from pundits and fellow members of the political class?

I don't think, for example, that Moulton went into a tailspin after an unnamed "senior official" in the Biden administration gave the following description of his Afghan adventure to the Washington Post: 

"It's as moronic as it is selfish.  They're taking seats away from Americans and at-risk Afghans -- while putting our diplomats and service members at greater risk -- so they can have a moment in front of the cameras." [Washington Post]

Ditto for the commentary from Jon Keller, who called the trip "an especially clueless publicity stunt."  [Keller@Large, CBS Boston]

Here's a recap for those unfamiliar with the story:  

Moulton, a Democrat representing the Sixth Massachusetts District in Congress, and Peter Meijer, a Republican representing Michigan's 3rd Congressional District, took a commercial flight from Washington to the United Arab Emirates on Monday, paying for the tickets themselves. They then flew to Kabul on a military aircraft, arriving Tuesday morning, Aug. 24.  Moulton and Meijer, both veterans of the Iraq war, said they were on a fact-finding visit, exercising their Congressional oversight rights upon the executive branch of government as President Biden commands a massive, ongoing evacuation of Americans and Afghanis from the capital of a country now in the hands of the Taliban. They remained at the airport in Kabul, the only place in the country still occupied by U.S. troops, for just under 24 hours before leaving on a military flight.  Moulton and Meijer emphasized that they left Kabul "on a plane with empty seats, seated in crew-only seats to ensure that nobody who needed a seat would lose one because of our presence." 

This situation first struck me as a very bad idea.  Two Congressmen interviewing troops amidst the stress and danger of a final, forced retreat from a futile war, I thought, was like a city councilor going to an out-of-control, multiple-alarm fire to ask the firefighters, "Hey, how's it going, guys?"

Then I recalled the words I always got from the boss when I was learning how to be a newspaper reporter a very long time ago.  "You've got to get on the ground," he would say.

That meant there was no substitute, such as a phone call, for actually seeing a situation with your own eyes and asking questions face-to-face of the people directly involved.

So I give credit to Moulton and Meijer for having the guts and the determination to get on the ground in Afghanistan at this big moment in U.S. history.

And I'll take Seth Moulton, an officer and a gentleman, at his word when he says he learned a couple of things he would not have learned had he stayed home.  

One, Moulton said, he believed before his trip that the U.S. should extend its Aug. 31 deadline to leave Afghanistan because it would not be long enough to get everyone out who should be out.  Now, he believes we should stick to the Aug. 31 deadline because "there's no way we can get everyone out, even by Sept. 11 (Biden's initial, pre-fall-of-Afghanistan deadline).  So we need to have a working relationship with the Taliban after our departure.  And the only way to achieve that is to leave by Aug. 31." 

Second, Moulton said, "...one of the critical things we learned from our visit is that the task force prioritizing all special immigrant visa applications (by Afghans now desperate to leave the country) is overwhelmed by requests from members of Congress.  That's never  been communicated to us, but that is something that we are now communicating to our colleagues."  

[Source: Last two comments by Moulton appeared in yesterday's edition of The New York Times.]

ENDNOTE: In its first account of the Moulton-Meijer trip, The Washington Post reported that the two got from the United Arab Emirates to Afghanistan because they "figured out a way onto an empty military flight going into Kabul."  One has to wonder if the officer who OK'd that votes Republican. 

Recommendation: Lend Leader Tarr an Ear. Sit Back. Appreciate.

In the summer of 2017, I was working on a film to be shown during the upcoming celebration of the 20th anniversary of the founding of a client of ours, Fishing Partnership Support Services, a non-profit that provides services to commercial fishermen and their family members.  One of the persons to be featured was the longtime (and still-serving) state senator from Gloucester, Bruce Tarr, Republican minority leader of the Massachusetts Senate for these past 10-plus years.  An interview with him was arranged for a Friday afternoon on the back deck of a restaurant on Gloucester Harbor, before dining hours.  I was off-camera, asking questions from a written list.  Tarr answered, facing the camera set up behind me.  The interview lasted about 40 minutes and yielded more solid content than we'd possibly have room for -- not a bad problem to have.  

Tarr answered all of the 15 or so questions substantively and well.  But that is not what I remember most about that day.  What remains fresh in mind, four years later, was how he answered each question in full sentences and paragraphs that were shaped so well you'd think they were the products of multiple, written revisions.  And he did it all off the cuff, no notes in hand, no aide nearby to cue him, and with not a single pause or stray remark.

For media purposes, I've done numerous formal interviews, both audiotaped and videotaped.  This was the first where a subject never stopped in the middle of an answer and asked to begin again, or, after concluding a response and thinking about it a bit, asked for a complete do-over because he felt he'd missed the mark and would do much better in a second attempt.  Tarr's first take of every answer was the last we'd need. 

I was not totally surprised.  A member of the bar, Tarr has a warranted reputation as an orator at the State House and across his disparate Senate district (the 1st Essex and Middlesex), which sprawls from Cape Ann to North Andover and from West Newbury to Wilmington.  He has the gift of spontaneous eloquence and it never seems to desert him.  

The memory of that interview came to me as I was reading the State House News Service account of a July 29 discussion on the Senate floor concerning overrides of items vetoed by Governor Charlie Baker in the new Fiscal Year 2022 state budget.  

Specifically, I was caught by the veto of a proposal to delay for one more year implementation of a state income tax deduction of 5% of all charitable donations.  Endorsed by the voters in a statewide referendum question nearly 21 years ago, the deduction has been put off repeatedly by legislative fiat, including most recently during House/Senate FY2022 budget deliberations.   

On July 29, Minority Leader Tarr was in his normal, required role of pressing the majority party to account for its thinking and decision-making on matters coming up for votes by the full Senate. 

Thanks to the State House News Service, we are able to pick up the Senate discussion at the point where Tarr asks Mike Rodrigues, D-Westport, Senate chair of Ways & Means, to explain why Baker's veto of the latest delay in implementing state income tax deductions for donations to charities is wrong and why the Senate should vote to override it.  

"I'm hoping," Tarr said, "that this is an area where we (the Senate) can agree with the wisdom and the insight of the governor.  I'm hoping we can also benefit from the wisdom and the insight of the chair of the Committee on Ways and Means.  I hope my good friend will be able to provide us with his perspective."

Rodrigues responded, "I rise today in opposition to the governor's veto of the one-year delay of the charitable tax deduction.  If allowed to go into effect this year, the charitable deduction will cost the Commonwealth $64 million in FY22 and over $300 million each year thereafter. 

"While it is true," Rodrigues said, "that our (the state's) fiscal situation has recently improved, we are not out of the woods yet, and the (federal) charitable deduction already provides a very significant incentive (to donate to charities).  A one-year delay will allow us to better assess the Commonwealth's long-term stability and further explore a more effective way to support our non-profits."

Tarr retorted that, "...while I appreciate my good friend's explanation of this and his rationale asking for additional delay, I urge all of us to vote to eliminate this particular delay."

He continued:

"It's very interesting.  The suggestion is that an additional year would provide us with the ability to have more wisdom and insight relative to this matter, but in fact, we've had nearly 20 years of delay relative to this particular item, an item approved by the voters of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with a margin of 72 percent.  Seventy-two percent of the voters of the Commonwealth in 2000 suggested this was a beneficial action to take because it would catalyze the ability to invest in the non-profit organizations of the Commonwealth, which we have repeatedly seen throughout the 20 years during which we have not acted in the way that was mandated by the voters of the Commonwealth are indispensable to the life of our state.

"Madam President (Senate Prez Karen Spilka), what we're talking about here is an item that we should have acted upon a long time ago, and yet, when we were faced with what we thought was going to be a very challenging budget situation not that long ago, it was prudent to say let's postpone this an additional year because we don't want this to be the action that destabilizes the state budget.

"Now, however, it's very clear it would not be the action that destabilizes the budget, given that in Fiscal 2021, we have a projected surplus of $1.5 billion, and in Fiscal 2022, it's projected to grow to $4 billion. 

"We're talking about a $64 million amount of money.  Over the long term, on an ongoing basis, it's likely to be about $300 million (per year).  Madam President, when we think about that, we have to think about it fitting into the context of a budget that is growing, we have to think about growing revenue, and we have to think about why we would postpone this again, after 20 years of delay, and ignore what the voters of the Commonwealth have directed us to do.

"You can't argue it would destabilize the budget, and if you believe that somehow this needs to be revisited, why not give the benefit of the doubt to the non-profit organizations we have heralded repeatedly in this chamber for the work they've been doing?  Why wouldn't we give them the benefit of the doubt and take the year to analyze it after we've helped them?

"We have done so many things during the COVID-19 pandemic to try to support the work of organizations like the ones that would benefit from the proceeds of this charitable tax deduction, and yet we speak often of the urgency of keeping them alive, helping them to continue to operate because of what has happened to them throughout the last several months, perhaps the last year.  When they were surveyed by the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network, 95 percent of those who responded said they were experiencing or anticipated experiencing impacts as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.  Ninety-five percent!

"We have time and again in this chamber, and appropriately so in so many instances, said we need to come to the rescue of agencies and organizations that have helped people through the COVID-19 pandemic.  We have done that primarily through the expenditure of state revenue.  Should we not also consider on an equal footing foregoing some state revenue so that we can also support them (additionally) with tens of millions of dollars and ultimately hundreds of millions of dollars (in new tax-incentivized contributions)?

"Is this just a choice where we're going to suggest when we spend money to help non-profits, that is something that is desirable, but when we forego revenue so they can have a benefit, that is somehow less important or less desirable or should be disqualified?  I don't believe we should.

"There's been some discussion made of who benefits from this particular tax credit, and some have suggested it would benefit high-income taxpayers.  It would benefit them because they stand to be able to provide the most resources to the organizations we're trying to assist.  Second of all, it's been estimated that among middle- and low-income taxpayers who would benefit from this credit, the number would rise and would total over 600,000 middle- and low-income taxpayers.

"When we talk about the severity of the situation we're trying to respond to with regard to the non-profits, 95% of them that responded to the survey indicated they were experiencing (pandemic) impacts or were expecting to experience impacts.  Fifty-two percent of them characterized the severity of the impacts as 'high,' 43% said 'moderate,' and only 5% characterized the impacts as 'low.'  Of those that responded, 63% said they're experiencing or anticipate a decrease in their revenues as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.  Fourteen percent reported no change and 23% reported that they were unsure.  Of the respondents, 31% reported experiencing or anticipating an increase in expenses.

"I can't stress it enough: these are organizations that have been helping people stay warm in their homes, keep food on their tables, have access to health care, and in so many other instances, they have been responding directly to the needs of the people of the Commonwealth.  Is their only problem that they're not directly funded through the state budget?  I would hope that's not the case.

"If there is a problem with what the voters mandated us to do back in 2000, then it should be the subject of the exhaustive work that's been done around here and apparently still is being done relative to the tax code, but over 20 years, we have not seen an attempt to remove this from the law, to confront it directly, and to say, 'We don't think this is good public policy.  We don't think what you (the voters) have directed us to do is appropriate, so let's change it.'

"We saw a set of triggers imposed (relative to a voter-mandated reduction in the state income tax), which we've now reached, when we derailed what voters mandated us to do.  We said, 'We know better.  Let's take a set of metrics, and if we meet those metrics for prosperity, for revenue, we will allow what you directed us to do to happen.'  Those things have happened, which is why, ultimately, after far too long of a delay, the income tax rate was reduced.  It's why this (deduction) should occur, as well, because we met the metric when we substituted our judgment for that of the voters of the Commonwealth.

"We shouldn't delay another year -- not another year when we're projecting billions of dollars in surplus and we have non-profit organizations reporting the distress that they're experiencing after the work that they have done that has been so important to our collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"If we want to study this, the best way to do that is to allow it to move forward.  Give the benefit of the doubt to the taxpayers, the voters, and the non-profit agencies that deserve to have this go into effect. And with it in effect, we can study its further impact.

"I hope the veto is sustained so that we can support the voters, the taxpayers and the organizations that it is beyond dispute have played a critical role responding to the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic."

This was only one of the speeches on veto overrides Tarr made on July 29.  Per usual, he did not write it in advance and read it from a printed text.  He prepares well for the day's business and will look at notes on his desk sometimes.  But, when addressing the chamber, he will never look at a piece of paper unless asked a question and needs to check something.

When Tarr was done speaking on the override of the veto of the proposed one-year delay in allowing Massachusetts taxpayers to deduct 5% of the cost of charitable contributions, the roll was called.  Thirty-four of the 40 senators present (the full complement) voted to override it.  Besides Tarr, those voting to sustain the veto were two Republicans, Ryan Fattman of Sutton and Patrick O'Connor of Weymouth, and three Democrats, Diana DiZoglio of Methuen, Marc Pacheco of Taunton, and Walter Timilty of Milton.  (Tarr lost the vote, but I believe he won the argument for immediate implementation of the deduction.)

Here's something else to appreciate about Leader Tarr and how he approaches his job.  

I am pretty sure he knew before the Senate session on July 29 that he did not have the votes to sustain the governor's veto of the delay in charitable deductions.  Still, he made a full, sincere, credible case for immediate implementation.  The principle at stake was clearly important to him, as was the matter of loyalty to the leader of his state party.  He took his time and said everything he wanted to about the issue in the way he wanted to say it.  Then he accepted the rebuff of his peers and moved on.  

EPILOGUE:  On August 18, Governor Baker filed a bill relative to the allocation of funds from the last fiscal year's budget surplus.  The bill includes a section granting a 5% state income tax break on charitable donations, beginning in calendar year 2022.  According to a State House News Service article, Baker said, "I think this one's worth another look, and I hope the legislature gives it some serious consideration because, as I said, it's affordable, people voted on it, and many of the organizations that would benefit from this did a lot of really heavy lifting for us all over the course of the last 16 months."

Too Much to Expect a Script Change When MassGOP's Lyons Visits Trump

This past Thursday, August 5, former Andover state rep and current chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party Jim Lyons and his wife met with former president Donald Trump at Trump's private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

After the meeting, Lyons sent a message to everyone on the party's email list. "Today," it said, "Bernadette and I had the opportunity to spend some time, one-on-one, with President Donald J. Trump.

"We talked about the pay-to-play cabal's $1 million bribe to 'cancel' my chairmanship of the Massachusetts Republican Party.  (This was a reference to a group of prominent Massachusetts Republicans who have publicly committed to raising a large amount of money for the party if it dumps Lyons.)

"I told him about our efforts to reform the MassGOP so that it works for you, the grassroots, and not for the elites and the connected class on Beacon Hill.

"We talked about putting Republican principles first.  I thanked him for fighting for all of us, for taking on the corrupt DC swamp, and for his absolutely fearless leadership.

"President Trump told me he's with us all the way.  He's seen the work we're putting in to bring a voter ID requirement to Massachusetts, ensure election integrity, and grow the grassroots.

"President Trump knows what it's like to take on the establishment.  He knows we're in the fight of our lives over the future of not just the Massachusetts Republican Party, but our commonwealth in general, and he's willing to extend a helping hand."

The message concluded with an appeal to donate to the party.  

"...every donation," Lyons wrote, "no matter how small, helps us put Republican principles in Massachusetts ahead of the elite special interests class."

It appears to have been a brief meeting.  Main subjects: Lyons's fight to remain as chairman amid continuing, serious internal opposition; the party's (doomed-from-the-start) quest for a Massachusetts voter ID law; and the need to increase membership in the party, with the standard complaints about the "swamp" in Washington and the Democratic lock on the Mass. legislature thrown in for good effect.  In other words, it was a totally predictable Lyons product.

But is anyone really looking to the Lyonses and Trumps of the world, in a summer when the northwest is dry and burning out of control, the southwest is even dryer and withering in unendurable heat, and we in the northeast see smoke from forest fires 2,000 miles away, to break out of their political molds and say something meaningful about the world's biggest issue?

Please check out (but not before trying to go to sleep tonight) the new analysis by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

https://www.unep.org/resources/report/climate-change-2021-physical-science-basis-working-group-i-contribution-sixth

This Moment in Corruption: Public Sector Has Seat at Auto Repair's Trickery Table.

The Office of Acting Massachusetts United States Attorney Nathaniel R. Mendell announced yesterday that Bahram Gharony of Boston has agreed to plead guilty in connection with "a scheme to embezzle hundreds of thousands of dollars" from the Boston Police Department.  

"Defendant allegedly embezzled more than $260,000 from BPD in automotive supplies," said the headline on a press release from Mendell's office.  

Gharony, who is 36 years old and was formerly employed as an automotive repair technician by the department, has reportedly agreed to plead guilty to two counts of wire fraud.  

A plea hearing has not yet been scheduled in federal court, so a judge has not yet sentenced Gharony.  Here's other information on the case from the Mendell press release:

"According to the charging document, Gharony is alleged to have engaged in a scheme to defraud BPD's Fleet Management Division of over $260,000 in automotive parts, tools and supplies between June 2017 and September 2020.

"It is alleged that Gharony used his position to order parts and supplies that he purported were for BPD, but were actually converted and sold to others by Gharony.

"In an effort to conceal the scheme, Gharony allegedly submitted fraudulent and altered invoices to BPD for the parts, tools and supplies he falsely claimed were ordered for the fleet.  Additionally, Gharony purported that he had lawfully purchased the items through a discount available to BPD when selling the items to others."

Each of the charges of wire fraud here carry a potential sentence of up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000, or twice the gross value of the gain or loss involved -- whichever is greater.

The Mendell press release emphasizes that "the details in the charging document are allegations," and that "the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law."

That is a necessary bit of caution on Mendell's part.  New information can emerge.  Defendants can decide to change pleas.  Judges can reduce charges against a defendant or even throw cases out altogether.

UPDATE:  On Dec. 14, 2021, Mr. Gharony was sentenced to two months in prison and three years of supervised release.  He was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $256,432.

 

 

COVID Stifles MBTA. Skeptics Doubt Its Future. Time to Invest Big in T Is Now.

As anyone who's travelled recently into or out of Boston during rush hour can attest, traffic has made a major comeback.

MassDOT numbers confirm the view from the driver's seat of a typical commuter.

In a presentation this past Monday to MassDOT's board of directors, Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver noted that traffic is "back to about 2019 levels."  (For a man whose expertise is travel, could the Administrator's name be more perfect?)

The situation on the T, while improving, is not nearly as robust.

For the period July 12-16, average daily ticket validation in subways was 183,000, while daily bus ridership averaged 215,000.  

Those figures represent 38% and 55%, respectively, of the number of subway and bus riders during the same period in 2019, eight months before the state went into COVID lockdown.

"We continue to see ridership come back," MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak told the MassDOT board on Monday.  [Source: State House News Service]  

"Last week," Poftak said, "was the highest ridership week since March of 2020, so we will continue to closely monitor that.  If you've seen our campaign, we're ready for people who come back, but also mindful we have been serving hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis throughout this pandemic."

The State House News Service pointed out that, before COVID struck, the legislature "appeared poised for action to address the state's overcrowded roadways, aging infrastructure, and often unreliable transit systems," but, since then, improving mass transit "has taken a backseat " to pandemic-related issues and, lately, to many other matters.

The News Service's Chris Lisinski writes that legislative leaders "have not demonstrated the same interest they once had in passing a bill to raise new revenue for transportation needs..."

As a decades-long (i.e., scarred) T rider, my hope is that we will soon see a rekindling of such interest on Beacon Hill.

I understand the concern that subway and bus ridership may never return to pre-pandemic volumes. But that fear is overblown and misconceived.  

Pre-pandemic ridership should not be regarded as an ideal to be replicated in the post-COVID era, but rather as a reflection of a transit system severely out of date and ill-suited to meet the needs and the expectations of Greater Bostonians, now, and even more so in the future.  

Instead of wringing our hands about obstacles that could prevent ridership from returning to former peaks, we should be thinking of how much higher future ridership could be if we significantly upgraded T facilities, equipment and amenities; improved reliability and the overall customer experience; and expanded services.

Because of all it has going for it, Boston is only going to become more vibrant, desirable and wealthy.  

Even if pandemic remote work patterns become permanent and lots of office towers have to be reconfigured at exorbitant cost for other uses, the capital of New England will make a comeback for the ages when the pandemic is behind us for good.

Any politician who takes a strong stand now in favor of big, bold investments in mass transit will be seen one day as a prophet.  (And as a hell of a public servant, to boot.)

 

  

As Neal Emphasizes, Unmet Infrastructure Needs Come with Huge Costs to All

A new report by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) cited yesterday by Springfield's Richie Neal, one of the most powerful figures in Washington, provides yet more compelling reasons why our state needs huge spending on infrastructure, stat. Here are four:

• Twenty-five percent of the roads in Massachusetts are in poor condition.  
• We the driving public incur costs averaging $620 per year due to the wear and tear those roads inflict.
• To ensure the provision of safe, clean drinking water, Massachusetts should spend $12.2 billion over the next 20 years on water systems maintenance and improvements. 
• If all of the maintenance on all of the parks in Massachusetts that has been put off for years were performed at once, it would cost $244 million.  

In a virtual address to the Massachusetts High Technology Council, Neal, who has represented our state's First Congressional District for 32 years and is now chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, said, "The gradual decline in our federal infrastructure investment over the years has resulted in an alarming number of crumbling roads and bridges, inadequate access to broadband, and an under-supply of affordable housing and community-based investments."

The ASCE infrastructure "report card," released last week, shows that deteriorating roads, bridges and highways "affect every aspect of our daily lives," Neal emphasized.

I recommend looking at the full document at: infrastructurereportcard.org

If the U.S. continues to "underinvest" in infrastructure, the ASCE warns, the nation in total will lose $10 trillion in gross domestic product, more than three million jobs, and $2.4 trillion in exports between now and 2039.

The ASCE says:  "When we fail to invest in our infrastructure, we pay the price.  Poor roads and airports mean travel times increase.  An aging electric grid and inadequate water distribution make utilities unreliable.  Problems like these translate into higher costs for businesses to manufacture and distribute goods and provide services.  These higher costs, in turn, get passed along to workers and families.  By 2039, America's overdue infrastructure bill will cost the average American household $3,300 a year, or $63 dollars a week."  

[Note: Bold faced type in this post was added.]

Blogster's Miscellany: Three's the Crowd in Dem Primary, Pandemic Cautions Wear Thin, etc.

ALL FOOT-DRAGGING INSIDERS, PLEASE STEP FORWARD.  In the video accompanying the announcement of her candidacy for governor earlier this week, Boston state senator Sonia Chang-Diaz cited her legislative accomplishments in helping to fund public education and reform the criminal justice system.  She asserted, "Those wins didn't come easy.  Beacon Hill insiders dragged their feet every step of the way, saying 'Think smaller.'  Instead, we fought unapologetically for the things working families actually need.  They said our ideas were impossible, we made them into law.  The trouble is: that kind of urgency in our state government is still the exception rather than the rule.  Too many leaders are more interested in keeping power than in doing something with it."  Chang-Diaz is the Senate chairperson of the Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy and the Joint Committee on Racial Equity, Civil Rights and Inclusion.  She is the Senate vice chairperson of the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, and a member of the Senate committees on Redistricting and on Reimagining Massachusetts Post-Pandemic Resiliency.  Also, she's a member of the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies, the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, and the Special Joint Committee on Redistricting.  Chang-Diaz has been in the thick of "Beacon Hill insiders" since joining the Senate in January, 2009.  Maybe that's why she avoided naming any of them in her announcement?  She missed a good opportunity to liven up her announcement by doing so.

BUT WHAT'S MAURA GOING TO DO?  Senator Chang-Diaz is the third Democrat so far to enter the race for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2022.  The others were Ben Downing, a former long-time state senator from Pittsfield who now resides in East Boston, and Danielle Allen, who once won a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" and now teaches political science and ethics at Harvard University.  The expectation is widespread that two-term Attorney General Maura Healey will also run.  Until Healey makes a decision one way or another, Downing, Allen & Chang-Diaz will have to work extra hard to draw attention to their candidacies.  Though officially off-stage for now, Healey is the proverbial 900-pound gorilla in the Dem governor primary.

THE HOUSE OF ULTIMATE CAUTION.  Governor Charlie Baker had one of his typically salient observations this past Wednesday when he was asked during a press conference about re-opening the Massachusetts State House to the public.  It is one of the last major public buildings -- one could argue the only major building -- where the public is still barred due to the pandemic.  As reported by the State House News Service, Baker said, "I think the biggest challenge we have with reopening the State House is it's very hard to have rules in this building around how many people congregate, how they gather, whether they're vaccinated, whether they're not.  It's really like a public space; it's like being outside in Boston Common, except it's not outside.  We talked to the Legislature about this and I'm hoping at some point we'll be able to put some policies together that will satisfy the concern about indoor versus outdoor and at the same time keep people safe."  I'm not a policy guy, but if anybody asked for my two cents on this, I'd say open the building fully to the public on July 1 but require everyone to wear a mask everywhere inside it, and continue to hold hearings on pending bills remotely because even the best State House hearing rooms are too small and social distancing is impossible within them.

WHEN HASHING OUT THE ISSUES, REMOTE DON'T CUT IT.   Interviewed this past Thursday on WGBH public radio, Charlie Baker was borderline poetic on the importance of spending time in person with legislative leaders, which he hasn't been able to do for a long time because of the pandemic.  As reported by the State House News Service, Baker said, "...I know this sounds kind of corny, but the fact that I haven't actually seen Karen Spilka (Senate President) or Ron Mariano (House Speaker) in person, except maybe at one event for a couple of minutes, and that we don't actually sit down and eat stale cookies and drink bad coffee once a week, I think it's a problem.  Human beings see each other as people when they spend time with each other in person."

STRONG WORDS FROM EX-REPUBLICAN.  Stuart Stevens, a Middlebury College (VT) grad, author of highly regarded travel books, and a Republican veteran national political strategist, was former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's top campaign guru when he ran for President in 2012.  That's enough of a local political hook for me to highlight this quote by Stevens, excerpted from an April 21, 2021, article in The New York Times by Thomas Edsall, ("Why Trump Is Still Their Guy"):  "We are in uncharted waters.  For the first time since 1860, a major American political party doesn't believe America is a democracy.  No Republican will win a contested primary in 2022 or 2024 who will assert that Biden is a legal president.  The effect of this is profound and difficult to predict.  But millions of Americans believe the American experience is ending."  Stevens was a lifelong Republican until last year, when he changed his registration to Independent.

Scholars See Real Threat to Democracy. Who's Ready to Believe Them?

If I were to ask Jim Lyons, the former Andover state rep and ardent Trump supporter who chairs of the Massachusetts Republican Party, what he thinks of the "Statement of Concern" issued earlier this month by a large group of "scholars of democracy," including 21 professors from Massachusetts, I'm pretty sure he'd dismiss their concerns as so much partisan twaddle.

In their statement, titled "The Threats to American Democracy and the Need for National Voting and Election Administration Standards," the scholars say they're watching with "deep concern as Republican-led state legislatures across the country have in recent months proposed or implemented what we consider radical changes to core electoral procedures in response to unproven and intentionally destructive allegations of a stolen election."

These are the same changes that Lyons and millions of other Republican regard as much-needed improvements ensuring the security and integrity of our elections.

And where the scholars see states like Florida and Georgia enacting laws that betray "our precious democratic heritage,"  Lyons et al. see far-left Democrats stirring people up with wild exaggerations and leading them astray with falsehoods and phony, inflated rhetoric. 

Me, I'm looking at the scholars as I would a group of highly credentialed and experienced physicians.  If my primary care doctor were to recommend that I consult one or more of them on a medical issue of some import, I might wish to ignore that advice and hope my problem went away on its own; nevertheless, I would make the necessary appointments and follow any directives the specialists might give me.  It's better to be safe than sorry, alive than dead 

These scholars could be right.

And if the U.S. Congress fails to do as they are now urging it to do -- enact federal legislation to establish uniform, nationwide standards for voting access and election procedures -- America could cease to exist as we have known it for 200-plus years and become instead an authoritarian nation masquerading as a democracy, as is now the case in Turkey, Hungary and other countries.

When the stakes are this high, every citizen should at the least read with an open mind and heart what these academics are saying in their unprecedented "Statement of Concern."

The complete text of their statement follows.  After that, I list the names of the Massachusetts signatories, and after that, I cite the views of a particular U.S. Senator on this subject.

We, the undersigned, are scholars of democracy who have watched the recent deterioration of U.S. elections and liberal democracy with growing alarm.  Specifically, we have watched with deep concern as Republican-led state legislatures across the country have in recent months proposed or implemented what we consider radical changes to core electoral procedures in response to unproven and intentionally destructive allegations of a stolen election.  Collectively, these initiatives are transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections.  Hence, our entire democracy is now at risk.

When democracy breaks down, it typically takes many years, often decades, to reverse the downward spiral.  In the process, violence and corruption typically flourish, and talent and wealth flee to more stable countries, undermining national prosperity.  It is not just our venerated institutions and norms that are at risk -- it is our future national standing, strength, and ability to compete globally.

Statutory changes in large key electoral battleground states are dangerously politicizing the process of electoral administration, with Republican-controlled legislatures giving themselves the power to override electoral outcomes on unproven allegations should Democrats win more votes.  They are seeking to restrict access to the ballot, the most basic principle underlying the right of all adult American citizens to participate in our democracy.  They are also putting in place criminal sentences and fines meant to intimidate and scare away poll workers and nonpartisan administrators.  State legislatures have advanced initiatives that curtail voting methods now preferred by Democratic-leaning constituencies, such as early voting and mail voting.  Republican lawmakers have openly talked about ensuring the "purity" and "equality" of the vote, echoing arguments widely used across the Jim Crow South as reasons for restricting the Black vote.

State legislators supporting these changes have cited the urgency of "electoral integrity" and the need to ensure that elections are secure and free of fraud.  But by multiple expert judgments, the 2020 election was extremely secure and free of fraud.  The reason that Republican voters have concerns is because many Republican officials, led by former President Trump, have manufactured false claims of fraud, claims that have been repeatedly rejected by courts of law, and which Trump's own lawyers have acknowledged were mere speculation when they testified about them before judges.

In future elections, these laws politicizing the administration and certification of elections could enable some state legislatures or partisan election officials to do what they failed to do in 2020: reverse the outcome of a free and fair election.  Further, these laws could entrench extended minority rule, violating the basic and longstanding democratic principle that parties that get the most votes should win elections.

Democracy rests on certain elemental institutional and normative conditions.  Elections must be neutrally and fairly administered.  They must be free of manipulation.  Every citizen who is qualified must have an equal right to vote, unhindered by obstruction.  And when they lose elections, political parties and their candidates and supporters must be willing to accept defeat and acknowledge the legitimacy of the outcome.  The refusal of prominent Republicans to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, and the anti-democratic laws adopted (or approaching adoption) in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Montana and Texas -- and under consideration in other Republican-controlled states -- violate these principles.  More profoundly, these actions call into question whether the United States will remain a democracy.  As scholars of democracy, we condemn these actions in the strongest possible terms as a betrayal of our precious democratic heritage.

The most effective remedy for these anti-democratic laws at the state level is federal action to protect equal access of all citizens to the ballot and to guarantee free and fair elections.  Just as it ultimately took federal voting rights law to put an end to state-led voter suppression laws throughout the South, so federal law must once again ensure that American citizens' voting rights do not depend on which party or faction happens to be dominant in their state legislature, and that votes are cast and counted equally, regardless of the state or jurisdiction in which a citizen happens to live.  This is widely recognized as a fundamental principle of electoral integrity in democracies around the world.

A new voting rights law (such as that proposed in the John Lewis Voting Rights Act) is essential but alone is not enough.  True electoral integrity demands a comprehensive set of national standards that ensure the sanctity and independence of election administration, guarantee that all voters can freely exercise their right to vote, prevent partisan gerrymandering from giving dominant parties in the states an unfair advantage in the process of drawing congressional districts, and regulate ethics and money in politics.

It is always far better for major democracy reforms to be bipartisan, to give change the broadest possible legitimacy.  However, in the current hyper-polarized political context such broad bipartisan support is sadly lacking.  Elected Republican leaders have had numerous opportunities to repudiate Trump and his "Stop the Steal" crusade, which led to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6.  Each time, they have sidestepped the truth and enabled the lie to spread.

We urge members of Congress to do whatever is necessary -- including suspending the filibuster -- in order to pass national voting and election administration standards that both guarantee the vote to all Americans equally, and prevent state legislatures from manipulating the rules in order to manufacture the result they want.  Our democracy is fundamentally at stake.  History will judge what we do at this moment.

MASSACHUSETTS SIGNATORIES 

Daniel Carpenter, Professor of Government, Harvard University

Daniel W. Drezner, Professor of International Politics, Tufts University

Archon Fung, Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government, Harvard University

Jill S. Greenlee, Associate Professor of Politics, Brandeis University

Jennifer Hochschild, Professor of Government, Harvard University

Alexander Keyssar, Professor of History and Social Policy, Harvard University

Daniel Kryder, Associate Professor of Politics, Brandeis University

Peter Levine, Professor, Tisch College, Tufts University

Steve Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University

Jane Mansbridge, Professor Emerita of Political Leadership and Democratic Values, Harvard University

Pippa Norris, Professor of Political Science, Harvard University

Robert D. Putnam, Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University

Miles S. Rapoport, Senior Practice Fellow in American Democracy, Harvard University

Nancy L. Rosenblum, Professor Emerita of Ethics in Politics and Government, Harvard University

Virginia Sapiro, Professor of Political Science, Boston University

Kay L. Schlozman, Associate Professor of Political Science, Boston College

Alan D. Solomont, Dean, Tisch College, Tufts University

Alexander George Theodoridis, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Alejandro Trelles, Assistant Professor of Politics, Brandeis University

Lawrence H. Tribe, Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School

Daniel Ziblatt, Professor of Government, Harvard University

"AN INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS MOMENT"

Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine, was interviewed by The New York Times as part of its reporting for an article published June 14 under this headline: "In Congress, Republicans Shrug at Warnings of Democracy in Peril."

King, a former professor of American politics at Bowdoin College, was quoted as describing our democracy as a "240-year experiment that runs against the tide of human history."  That tide, he noted, usually leads from, and back to, authoritarianism.

"This is an incredibly dangerous moment," King said, "and I don't think it's being sufficiently realized as such."

My Path to Memorial Day Goes Through the 1919 Boston Police Strike

I've heard politics described as the way decisions are made on who gets what.  Its hard to dispute that.  

Nearly 102 years ago, in September of 1919, four out of five members of the Boston police force took a big political gamble: they went on strike to win official recognition of their right to form a union.  They wanted more pay, shorter shifts and better working conditions. 

Not only did the strikers not succeed, they all promptly lost their jobs.  

Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge declared, "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime," a popular stance that made him a national figure and inspired the Republican Party to put him on its national ticket the next year as Warren Harding's running mate.  When Harding died in 1923, Coolidge became president.  

There's nothing like a crisis to boost (or break) a political career.  Were it not for the Boston Police Strike, Coolidge never would have become president.

My family has a link to that milestone event in the history of Boston and of the nation.  My mother's older brother, John F. Doyle, was in a Yankee Division National Guard unit activated by Coolidge during the strike to restore order to a city suddenly lacking most of its police officers.  Rabble- rousers, hooligans and looters had quickly come out of the woodwork.  

Here's how Brian MacQuarrie of The Boston Globe, writing two years ago on the centennial of the strike, memorably described what was happening on the streets of Boston at that time:

"...sword-waving cavalry charged into a jeering, stone-throwing crowd of 15,000 people in downtown Boston.  Roaming mobs robbed bystanders and looted stores.  Part-time infantry from the suburbs and small Massachusetts towns fired into crowds, fixed bayonets against Bostonians, and shot eight people dead over four tumultuous days."

MacQuarrie wrote that the event "was the country's first major police strike, and it caused a national uproar, feeding fears of revolution and communist infiltration at a time of growing labor unrest." The strike, he noted, was the first time Boston "had been placed under military watch" since the Revolutionary War.

Private Doyle was only 19 when called to strike duty.  He had enlisted in the Army after graduating from Revere High School, wanting to serve in World War I, but the war ended before he could be sent overseas.  He then became a reservist.

I never knew my Uncle John.  He died long before I was born.  I heard a lot about him, however, from my mother, who was one of 13 Doyle children.   He was known for his devotion to his mother and father, his kindness to all of his siblings, his smile and naturally good disposition.  He was not a big guy or a tough guy.  I have always had trouble squaring that reality with the image of a young, untested soldier carrying a rifle on the streets of Boston, with orders to shoot looters on sight.  If he ever fired his weapon during the strike, I think it would have become part of family lore.

There is an anecdote about Uncle John's service that has always stuck in my mind.  His father, Joseph Doyle, an immigrant from Ireland, had returned home from work on the second day of the strike to learn that his second child (and the oldest of his six sons) had been activated and was already likely in Boston.  Worried that his son would not be warm enough if he had to sleep on sidewalks or in doorways, my grandfather took his winter overcoat from a closet and headed to Boston on foot. He hiked from his home on Central Avenue in Revere, down Broadway and all the way through Chelsea, where at the shore of Boston Harbor he caught a ferry to the North End.  Having no idea where his son might be, he started asking the soldiers he encountered if they knew where his son's unit was stationed.  In time, he found the unit and his son.  "Pa," as he was called, handed John the overcoat, shook his hand, and turned right around toward home, not getting there until just before midnight.  Whenever I think about his long walk into and out of a city filled with danger, I'm impressed anew by the love he had for his children.

Within months of the Boston Police Strike, Uncle John became ill with respiratory problems.  The eventual diagnosis was one of the grimmest for that era: tuberculosis.  Because of his youth and vigor, he was able to put up a good fight for a long time.  There were times when he felt better and seemed to be on the verge of a cure.  But he never got clear of the TB.  Uncle John died on a summer morning in 1933 as the nation he had served staggered through the Great Depression.  By then, his father had been dead for almost two years, also from TB.

The U.S. Army determined that Private Doyle's fatal illness was service-related and granted a small survivor's pension to his mother.  When it arrived in the mail, my grandmother would always refer to the monthly stipend as "John's check."   It turned out to be a critical support to the family he left behind.

After his death, the City of Revere dedicated a triangular strip of land at the intersection of Suffolk and Prospect Avenues as John F. Doyle Square.  In 2013, the members of my extended family managed to have the square re-dedicated.  John's only sibling alive at that time, my Aunt Arlene, astonishingly quick of mind and step at age 86, was the heart and soul of that event.

Since then, on every Memorial Day, I and a first cousin of mine, Christine, have planted flowers around the stone erected for the rededication of "John's Square," as we all call it. That is what we will be doing later today, hoping the while that there's no more rain to fall this weekend.  

Although neither of us ever knew our Uncle John, the example of his life has always been very alive and real to us -- and to all of the other many Doyle family survivors out there.  We remain grateful to our grandmother, who lived into the late-1960s, and to John's brothers and sisters, for inculcating in us an appreciation of all that he was -- not a hero, but certainly a patriot, a strong-hearted, citizen-boy-soldier willing to put his life on the line for his country and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

MA Congressional Delegation in the Right Place on Filibuster: Kill. Now.

I was talking years ago with another lobbyist at a charity fundraiser at a Boston hotel when a former state representative known to both of us happened to walk into the crowded function hall where the event took place. Everybody I knew who knew this ex-rep liked the guy because he was as charming as can be and the opposite of a fathead.  We both shook his hand enthusiastically and exchanged greetings with him as he squeezed past us.  When the ex-rep was out of earshot, I said to the other guy, "You knew him when he served.  What was he like as a legislator?"  My brother-in-advocacy smiled faintly, then offered a succinct assessment: "He liked everything about the job but the voting."

The memory of that encounter has popped into my head more then once in the time since Joe Biden was elected president, his party took control of the Senate, and widespread speculation began on whether Democrats would attempt to eliminate the filibuster, a procedural mechanism that allows any senator to block action indefinitely on a pending bill.  The obstruction may only be removed if a minimum of 60 senators vote to override the filibuster, meaning nothing significant can win passage in the Senate without the support of at least 60 of the 100 members of the upper branch.  

The filibuster is not ordained by the Constitution.  It is an optional rule the Senate chooses to impose upon itself, even though it runs counter to a basic standard of democracy, i.e., the majority rules, and even though it allows a relatively small number of senators to constantly thwart the will of the majority.

Proponents of the filibuster assert that it serves as a salutary inducement to bi-partisan lawmaking.  The reality is that it motivates the party in the minority in the Senate at any given time to slap away the hand of the majority so as to stymie its agenda and render the majority impotent in the eyes of the electorate, and thus more likely to lose its majority in the next election.

The filibuster is a formula for endless gridlock in our time.  There are many reasons to eliminate it, and I'm at the point where any reason is good enough for me.  My personal favorite is that it has become a gigantic wall for senators to hide behind, a place where they crouch when they should be standing up and making a stand.  

If the former state representative I mentioned at the top of this post were now a senator serving at the Capitol, he'd be both feet in for the filibuster.

Democrats and Republicans have both played the filibuster game shamelessly through the years.  The game requires the party in the minority to cry that, if the majority does away with the filibuster, the spirit of bipartisanship and all inter-party comity will be forever banished from the chamber.  

"And be careful what you wish for," the minority warns.  "The next time you're out of power, you'll rue the day you destroyed the filibuster."  

The minority also warns, "Next time we're in power, we'll overturn everything you did with your majority-only votes.  So what would be the point?"

I think it's a crock that what our nation most needs now is less political divisiveness and more  bi-partisanship in lawmaking.  What we need is the party in the majority, which happens to be Democrat at this time, to enact its legislative priorities so that when November of 2022 rolls around, Americans will have a definite idea -- as opposed to a suspicion or a hope -- of what they are voting for or against.

I'm not saying the Democrat agenda is ideal, or that it is sure to produce marvelous results if enacted, only that we should vote for or against it in November of 2022 based on what it is actually accomplishing, as opposed to what the Rupert Murdochs of the world predict it would do to the country if the filibuster was not there to stop it.

We elect people to go to Washington and make decisions for us.  (In a rational world, the Congress would always make the toughest issues a priority for deciding because those are the ones that would produce the greatest good if resolved correctly and swiftly.)   Deciding means voting.  Not voting means delay, which means the compounding of problems.  Not voting is a bad deal for the people.

It is an ironclad law of politics that elections have consequences.  The filibuster is an unnatural interference in the operation of that law.

I'll wrap up with a shout-out to members of the Congress from Massachusetts who unequivocally want to kill the filibuster...  

Not long after Biden was elected, our two U.S. Senators, Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey, clearly re-stated their desire to see the filibuster eliminated.  

And, on April 22, six of our nine U.S. representatives -- Jake Auchincloss, Katherine Clark, Jim McGovern, Seth Moulton, Ayanna Pressley and Lori Trahan -- joined 93 of their House colleagues in signing a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer urging him to do all he can to strike it from Senate procedures.  

That letter said, in part:

"In today's hyper-partisan climate, there is simply no avenue for bold legislation that meets the needs of everyday Americans without ending the filibuster.  Just last month, we witnessed one of this Congress's and President Biden's core promises, increasing the federal minimum wage to $15, fail to be included in the American Rescue Plan...

"...the path forward in the fight for the $15 (minimum wage), voting rights, climate and environmental justice, gun violence prevention, immigration reform, worker protections, LGBTQ equality, and reforming our criminal-legal system will likely be further obstructed -- unless we end the filibuster.

"...what has become patently clear is that we cannot let a procedural tool that can be abolished stand in the way of justice, prosperity, and equity..."

Amen.