It’s less than what the state would have had to pay without a last-minute deal with the outgoing Biden administration, so we should be thankful for that. But it still leaves the state owing $2.1 billion to the feds for a rather spectacular unemployment bookkeeping mistake – and it will still hurt businesses. And, of course, the Baker administration still owns this accounting blunder. … Via SHNS at WBUR.
Month: January 2025
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It’s still a $2.1B unemployment-insurance blunder
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And then there’s Trump’s disgraceful pardons
These are far worse (NYT) than Biden’s disgraceful pre-emptive pardons. … Listen: I understand why so many people are frustrated with Democrats and voted for Trump. I really do. But this? This isn’t about inflation or immigration or DEI/woke-ism or other issues that fueled Trump’s narrow victory over Kamala Harris. He just pardoned political violence. … See my ‘mos maiorum’ Biden post below.
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Two men who survived assassination attempts, two men who saw it as a sign from God
“I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.” – Donald Trump, on surviving the Butler PA assassination attempt in July, via NYT.
“I take it as a confirmation of the mission of Providence to continue to pursue my life purpose, as I have done so far.” – A certain ex-corporal, on surviving an assassination attempt many years ago.
P.S. – There’s also this from the latter: “Must I not recognize therein the governance of a higher power which protects me, so that I can lead the German people to victory? Providence has frustrated all attempts against me. That can have only one historical meaning, that it has elected me to lead the German people.”
Sorry for the you-know-what comparison. I usually hate it when others do it. But Trump’s inaugural remarks just begged for a comparison.
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Biden’s unprecedented pardons: Mos maiorum, no more
In his excellent book “The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic,” Mike Duncan writes that one of the key things that ultimately brought an end to the Roman Republic, and ushered in the era of emperors, was a breakdown in what the Romans called “mos maiorum,” or the unwritten rules, traditions and time-honored principles that helped govern Roman political life. … I thought of “mos maiorum” today after reading this NYT piece about President Biden’s pre-emptive pardons issued just prior to Donald Trump’s inauguration. From the Times: “Mr. Biden effectively turned the president’s constitutional power of forgiveness into a protective shield against what he maintains would be politically motivated vengeance. No other president has employed executive clemency in such a broad and overt way to thwart a successor he believes would abuse his power.”
And thus yet another wise unwritten political tradition is shattered in America. What a disgrace. … I distinctly recall many expressing concern that Trump might take the unprecedented step of issuing himself a pardon (NYT) after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Hey, what’s now stopping Trump from issuing himself a future pardon, a form of personal immunity not covered by the presidential immunity magically found and granted last year by SCOTUS? … Every time these ever-warring political classes violate our contemporary version of “mos maiorum,” they weaken our Republic. And that’s what Biden just did with his pardons (which include members of his family, as the Times reports). … Stay tuned for more outrageous, norm-busting pardons under Trump II.
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One of many issues to follow under Trump II: Cryptocurrency
It starts today at noon. Donald Trump’s second term as president. There’s going to be so many issues and controversies to follow over the next four years, from immigration to Ukraine to the state of American democracy. Here’s a business issue to put on your watch list: cryptocurrency. … The president-elect is now hawking his very own cryptocurrency token, as the AP reports, and it’s disturbing even some of the most enthusiastic cryptocurrency enthusiasts, as Politco reports. … But I’m going to try to keep an open mind about Trump. I don’t want to be one of those who finds outrage (or feigns outrage) to everything he says and does. I’m tired of that first-term, semi-hysterical approach. But I gotta say: he sure has started his second term in a weird way! … Aha! That’s not outrage. It’s calm and cool cynicism.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin on robber barons, past and present
Edward Luce, US national editor for the Financial Times, had a local lunch and talk (sub. required) with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. I liked this from the piece:
“Trump’s return does not fit easily into Goodwin’s America. I suggest that an era that does echo today is when the Carnegies, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts – the Elon Musks, Mark Zuckerbergs and Jeff Bezoses of their age – were redefining what it meant to be wealthy. Goodwin likes that comparison. ‘The robber barons probably looked in the mirror and thought they were God too.’”
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Is Plymouth’s Independent too big-time for small-market Plymouth?
Reading this Globe story about the controversy over the Plymouth Independent’s aggressive coverage of town government and issues, I thought to myself that maybe part of the problem is that the news startup might be too good and big-time for Plymouth. … Let me explain by first telling you about a hilarious novel I read years ago, Dwarf Rapes Nun; Flees in UFO, about a Rupert Murdoch-like media mogul who buys a sleepy Midwestern newspaper and turns it into a screaming tabloid. In the novel, the small city was turned upside down and never the same. … Except the exact opposite type of journalism has hit Plymouth: high-quality, aggressive, thorough reporting by a small team of veteran journalists who include ex-Globe editor Mark Pothier (now editor of the Independent) and ex-Globe investigative reporter Andrea Estes. According to Dan Kennedy, none other than Walter Robinson, a Plymouth resident known for overseeing the Globe Spotlight Team’s historic coverage of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, is a director of the nonprofit Independent. After the digital site’s launch in 2023, Plymouth has been turned upside down and never the same since. …
I have no doubt Dan Kennedy is right when he suggests that government officials have probably grown too “accustomed to operating without much scrutiny” since the digital-era demise of local journalism. So the Independent’s arrival must indeed come as a shock to town leaders in Plymouth. But I’m not sure Plymouth has ever seen, even during the heyday of the Old Colony Memorial, anything like the high-powered journalism they’re getting today. … And I hope they keep getting it. The Independent is doing its job. Plymouth taxpayers should feel fortunate to have an independent institution so closely covering their town issues and government.
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Gov. Fix It 2 | Shelters audit | Needed: H-1B reforms | Big Pink Inflatable Men
Some random thoughts on recent news:
Gov. Fix It 2: Healey’s speech shows she learned lessons from November’s election debacle
Gov. Maura Healey delivered a true nuts-and-bolts speech last evening at the State House, promising to “fix transportation, make homes more affordable, invest in education, and grow our economy.” … She sounded a little like her Gov. Fix It predecessor. She also sounded like someone who understands Dems paid a price in November for losing touch with the economic (mostly inflation) concerns of average Americans. …. Teamster boss Sean O’Brien, who famously refused to endorse Kamala Harris for president last year, praised Healey’s emphasis on cost-of-living issues. … GBH’s Adam Reilly thinks Healey was “speaking as someone who’s very much in the mix as the Democratic Party searches for its next standard bearer in the post-Biden era.” Perhaps. But she struck me more as someone gearing up for re-election. …. Republicans seem to be gearing up themselves.
‘The H-1B visa program is broken’ (and it has to do with outsourcing local jobs)
Speaking of fixing things, the Globe’s Hiawatha Bray has some ideas on how to fix an obviously flawed H-1B visa program that’s currently the center of a heated debate between Trump supporters Steve Bannon and Elon Musk. … The Atlantic also has a piece that looks at how Bernie Sanders and Musk, true political opposites, might actually agree on reforms of the H-1B program, specifically eliminating use of the visas to outsource U.S. tech jobs. … And such visas have indeed been used locally to replace native tech workers. I have an old tech friend who lost his financial-services job in Marlborough after his Boston-based employer hired an outsourcing firm that simply replaced local workers with lower-paid H-1B visa holders from India.
‘America Just Kinda, Sorta Banned Cigarettes’
Have we learned nothing from the war on drugs? Apparently not. … This new FDA rule is a form of prohibition – and it will merely lead to a huge increase in the criminal black market for cigarettes. And regulators know it. But they still did it. … Even before the FDA action Reason magazine had a piece last month on the growing tobacco black market here and elsewhere.
Not quite NIMBYism: Critics slam Downtown Crossing tower-height proposals
The opposition to Downtown Crossing zoning changes, which would allow higher residential towers to be built in the district, has elements of classic NIMBYism but isn’t quite true NIMBYism. There are legitimate historic preservation concerns involved. … Is city planner Kairos Shen going to do to Downtown Crossing what he did to Seaport, i.e. allow walls and walls of gleaming glass towers to be built? … I know the architectural community has been down for years on old-fashioned “red brick” buildings in Boston. But when are they going to finally tire of these banal glass-covered behemoths? … And that, dear readers, is my pet-peeve rant of the day.
To the rescue: ‘Big Pink Inflatable Men’
OK, it’s silly. But it’s a fun silly. … The BBJ and B&T report on the latest public art exhibition designed to enliven a not-so-enlivened downtown Boston. Think: Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. … Hey, it’s better than banal glass-covered tower buildings.
DiZoglio says her office is auditing shelter program
Hmmm. I have no doubt Gov. Healey is concerned about the ridiculous costs and policy associated with the state’s right-to-shelter program. But I’m going to have to re-calibrate how much of her recent reform proposals were the result of growing political pressure to act – or else. Responding to GOP requests for an audit of the program, State Auditor Diana DiZoglio says she’s already on it. … Assuming that’s true, Healey must have known auditors (and Republicans) were circling the program before she released her reform package.
‘Hawk rescued after being hit by car, stuck in car’s grill, in Chelmsford’
How it survived, I don’t know. But survive it did, thanks to a Honda dealership worker and veterinarians at Tufts. …
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Healey’s common-sense shelter reform proposals
If you were paying attention, this shouldn’t come as a big surprise i.e. Healey’s new proposals to bring some fiscal and policy sanity to the state’s right-to-shelter law, via new residency requirements and other reforms that could limit, if not end, temporary housing for just-arrived migrants. … I wish the recommended residency requirement was more than three months. But at least it’s a step in the right direction. … Healey has been hinting at fundamental changes for months now, so I’m not so sure Republicans can claim they were the first to call for new residency rules, etc. … My mind hippity-hops to the old only-Nixon-could-go-to-China adage. In this case, it’s only-a-progressive-could-reform-the-shelter-law. And give Healey credit for trying to do so. … Note: This is an odd one, via WBUR: “Questions swirl around departure of Healey’s shelter chief.”
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‘Are We Sleepwalking Into Autocracy?’
I admire President Biden for warning in his farewell address that an ‘oligarchy’ of ultrarich threatens the future of democracy in the U.S. But there’s something off about his assertion. Are only the ultrarich (i.e., tech titans, financiers, etc.) the threat? … The last time I checked, Steve Bannon was a grifter, not a billionaire, and ditto for many others of his illiberal ilk. … Anyway, here’s a much scarier and more accurate description of the right-wing tactics and types who threaten democracy across the world, one of whom, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, is a frequent guest at Mar-a-Lago. The illiberal Orbán has bragged he’s trading tips with Trump’s team on ‘policy’ and ‘governance’ issues.
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