Month: March 2025

• Silence of the Lawyers

  March 27, 2025

  The Globe’s Jon Chesto has a good overview piece on the Trump administration’s multi-pronged offensive against both local and national law firms – and how many of those firms aren’t talking on the record to reporters. “The silence spoke volumes,” Jon writes of his efforts to get firms to publicly speak out. … Meanwhile, here are two local attorneys, David Zimmer and Edwina Clarke, who are not remaining silent and blasting away at those clamming up. … Finally, here’s a Boston legal nonprofit that’s emerged as a ‘legal engine of Trump resistance.’ I’m not a huge fan of the Lawyers for Civil Rights. Too far left too often for my centrist tastes, etc. But any opponent of my opponent is my ally these days, to borrow from the old proverb. … P.S. – The Times had a good piece last week on how Paul Weiss, a Democratic law firm, folded under the Trump pressure.

  Update – 3.28.25 — From the NYT: “Trump Targets WilmerHale, Citing Law Firm’s Connection to Robert Mueller.”

  Update II – 3.38.25 — The BBJ has more, stressing the Boston angle.

• ‘Hey, ‘Daily Show’: Stop calling Boston the most racist city in America’

  March 26, 2025

  Good for Shirley Leung. … Comedy Central’s Ronny Chieng is clearly ignorant about the demographic makeup of today’s Boston. He’s also not that funny.

• ChatLeak: Another Trump gotcha moment that’s going politically nowhere

  March 26, 2025

  Here we go again. Another Trump scandal. Media outlets running around with their hair on fire.  Trump groupies playing down events. Democrats trying to appear shocked and outraged. … I happen to think ChatLeak, like so many other Trump controversies, is a pathetic display of gross incompetence. But if I’ve learned anything over these long Trump-dominated years, this is a gotcha moment that will blow over, similar to other seemingly devastating Trump gotcha moments that turned out to go politically nowhere. …  It’s only Wednesday. Another Trump scandal is due later this week. Get some rest till then.

  Update – From WSJ editorial: “The leak furor will fade but not JD Vance’s contempt for allies.”

  Update II — And from Dan Kennedy: “Why Democrats, lacking power, won’t be able to keep the war-plan texting scandal alive.”

  Update III – 3.28.25 — Peggy Noonan at the WSJ doesn’t think ChatLeak will fade away because it reveals too much about the Trump bros.

• The economic benefits of the new Fall River-New Bedford rail line: Hype or reality?

  March 25, 2025

  

  Fall Review’s Herald News has reported that at least one developer is betting the newly launched South Coast Rail line, also known as the Fall-River-New Bedford Commuter Rail, will be a big economic plus for the region. But I was sort of surprised to read this BBJ story from last month in which Fall River Mayor Paul Coogan says he hasn’t seen a big rush of planned development yet. I kind of assumed a transit-oriented development scramble was already long under way. Maybe developers have been cynically waiting to see, like most everyone else, whether the long-delayed rail service would actually become reality. Even by Massachusetts standards, three decades is a long time to wait for completion of a major infrastructure project. Not even the Big Dig took so long. 

  Still, I think economists and others, as the Globe reports, are right to believe that, in the long-term, the rail-line is going to be a major economic plus for the region, leading to new housing, retail shops and corporate relocations etc. It’s just going to take longer than thought — or at least longer than I originally thought.

  And one other thing: No wi-fi on the new trains? Really? C’mon.

• Wanted: Progressives who actually care about huge building-project cost overruns and delays

  March 25, 2025

  In an editorial, the Globe isn’t quite blaming progressives for all the cost overruns and decades-long delays tied to the new Fall River-New Bedford rail line. But it is putting the onus on progressives to take the lead in reforming the state’s thicket of public-building regulations and laws that often lead to ridiculously high costs and unacceptable delays associated with so many major infrastructure projects in Massachusetts. From the Globe:

  The inability of government to deliver projects on reasonable time frames, and at reasonable costs, ought to be viewed as a serious problem — especially for progressives who espouse faith in the power of government to solve problems.  

  And the Globe ends its editorial with this parting shot:  

  If progressives want voters to place their trust in government to solve big problems, they should be the ones leading the charge to dismantle the obstacles to a more effective government.

  I’m not sure what exactly triggered this outburst, other than the fact that it took more than 30 years and a lot of wasted dough to finish the South Coast Rail project. But it’s a most welcome outburst.

  Update – 3.26.25 – From a reader: “I didn’t read the Globe editorial but it almost certainly draws influence from the Abundance push.  Haven’t read that either yet but there’s a 4 minute video excerpt with Bari Weiss here.  Ruy Texeira did usual great job identifying what is right with the message, and why it is likely to hit the rocks.    

  “‘Abundance’ reminds me of 1988 and 1992 (eventually the Dukakis ‘competence’message got across, with a much more attractive candidate), with the exception that in 1988 and 1992 those pushing for change in how the Democratic Party approached American voters were much younger and less likely to be ‘abundant’ themselves.   It is ironic that as Texeira indicates, many Democrats have become ‘abundant’ in the last four decades while pushing against abundance for all.”

  HB Response – I suspect another influence is the brutal DOGE cuts at the federal level, a sort of cautionary warning to progressives about what might happen here if they don’t get their governmental act together.

• It literally pays to go to Babson

  March 24, 2025

  The BBJ has an interesting list of Massachusetts colleges with the highest earning potential. Not surprisingly, MIT’s potential payoff ranks first in the nation and state, according to PayScale. But the big (pleasant) surprise was Babson, which ranked fifth in the nation and second in the state. … The second biggest surprise: Northeastern’s comparatively low local ranking. … The fourth biggest surprise: two prominent schools are not on the top 20 Mass. list. Can you name them?

• Theater of the absurd: Remaking ‘Snow White,’ Part II

  March 24, 2025

  From a HB reader:

  “Relative to your post – opening weekend of Snow White not promising. But politics are not a factor.  Joining up these 2 articles, conclusion:  Most moviegoers aren’t very political, and fewer of them are interested in Disney remakes.  I also think Streaming Services (like… Disney+) are picking off the movie audience. This is a shame for someone like me who loves watching movies on a big screen.  But  $13.99/month for Disney+ is a fraction of the cost of tickets and concessions for a single show.”

• Bill Maher on CNN: Liking the unlikeable

  March 24, 2025

  

  I don’t like CNN’s move towards non-news programming.  But I gotta say I enjoyed Bill Maher’s debut on CNN on Saturday night. The Dana Carvey segment was hilarious (though he needs to work a bit more on the Musk imitation). The Ezra Klein and Andrew Sullivan segment was informative and fun (though Sullivan proved again he can be righteously insufferable). … Because I don’t get HBO/Max, I haven’t watched Real Time with Bill Maher in years. I knew he had moved to the political center of late. But I didn’t realize how decisively he had moved to the center. As a centrist, I loved it. It was classic confirmation viewing, I guess..

• Kitty Dukakis, the Betty Ford of Massachusetts, RIP

  March 23, 2025

  Other than Kitty Dukakis, the late wife of ex-Gov. Michael Dukakis, can you name another former first lady of Massachusetts?  No offense to previous gubernatorial spouses, but probably not. The fact is Kitty Dukakis, who died on Friday, was the most famous wife of a Massachusetts governor in recent memory largely because of the bravery and dignity she displayed by publicly acknowledging she suffered from depression and alcoholism. She deserves praise for so much more, such as for her various political and charitable work over the course of her life. But it was her honesty about her personal problems that people will long remember and deeply appreciate, similar to Betty Ford’s courageous and candid battles against alcoholism and breast cancer while in the White House in the ‘70s. Both women confronted stigmas and changed social attitudes simply by telling the truth about themselves.

  Kitty Dukakis, thank you and RIP. … More on Kitty Dukakis at WBUR.

• Loving the cuts, hating the cuts

  March 21, 2025

  I think it’s safe to say Peggy Noonan has become one of my favorite columnists of late. From today’s WSJ column, re the DOGE cuts: 

  Here I confess my conservative lizard brain likes seeing unhelpful and destructive parts of any organism, very much including government, cut and sometimes obliterated, and for the usual reasons. But the non-lizard parts—those that are analytical, involve experience, and have observed human nature and seen who’s doing the cutting, and at what size and speed—recoil, and see great danger ahead.