Need to reenergize the idealistic batteries amid today’s complete lunacy in D.C.? Need to feel good about our country again? I suggest watching Steven Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln,’ which I did yesterday when I accidently stumbled upon the flick playing on FXM. It was just what the doctor ordered: a truly inspiring story of a great man trying to hold together a democracy, end slavery and bring to a close a horrible civil war – all at the same time. … I’ve seen the movie before. It’s great. But it rang truer yesterday. It was quite effective, for a few hours, in getting small people like Kristi Noem, Jacob Frey, Stephen Miller etc. out of mind. It was pure escapism from the smallness of today’s ideological-driven news cycles. It was a brief idealistic antidote to today’s soul-crushing cynicism coming out of Washington. … And I should add: Daniel Day Lewis definitely deserved the Oscar for his performance in ‘Lincoln.’ … Now back to the real world. Sigh.
Month: January 2026
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‘Lincoln’: true escapism from today’s lunacy in D.C.
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Are regulators actually going to allow the MGB and Fallon Health merger?
I’m no anti-trust expert, but c’mon. The largest health care provider in the state, Mass General Brigham (formerly Partners), is now proposing, as the BBJ and Globe report, to take over Fallon Health, its second acquisition of a health insurer in 13 years? … Let’s get this straight: an entity that provides both health services and health insurance gets to set fees on both ends of the payment equation. Brilliant! This will truly bring down health-care prices! … Or maybe not. … Anyway, don’t hold your breath waiting for state regulators to do the right thing. They approved the MGB/Partners takeover of Neighborhood Health Plan (now MGB Health) in 2012 – and they’ll probably OK this deal too after the two parties provide sob stories about how all health plans are suffering these days, blah, blah, blah. … What a crazy health-care system we have. Just amazing.
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Covering the Venezuela and Greenland controversies from Boston: Not bad
I’ve steered away from posting on the U.S. raid that nabbed Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and the subsequent saber-rattling over Greenland, Columbia, Cuba etc., figuring there’d be more than enough worldwide coverage of the topics. And there has been. But I do want to point out some impressive local coverage of recent international events, starting with James Pindell’s analysis piece in the Globe that basically lays out why the ultimate U.S. target in all of this may be Cuba. Think: Marco Rubio, our Cuban-American secretary of state. The Cuba angle doesn’t explain everything about the Venezuelan strike. But it’s one of the many threads that led to the raid, I’m now convinced. … Getting local reactions to an international event is standard operating procedure in journalism. But this GBH piece by Sarah Betancourt and Tori Bedford stood out for covering a lot of nuanced ground in a relatively short-by-design story (a story that includes the reaction of probably the only Venezuelan exile in Massachusetts who’s going to miss the thuggish Chávez-Maduro brand of socialism). …And last but not least is Scott Van Voorhis’s Contrarian Boston, where 72 percent of 250 mostly local survey respondents expressed “strong support for requiring Trump to win congressional approval before undertaking further military moves.” Keep in mind that much of CB’s readership probably skews moderate-right – and that, to me, suggests support for the Venezuelan attack and other future international ventures by the administration are on much shakier political ground than the cheerleaders at Fox News are conveying. …
Btw: Here’s Dan Kennedy’s own review of localized coverage of the Venezuelan raid.
Btw II: the Greenland map above is via the obnoxious post by Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie, who thinks it’s funny/cute/whatever to lay playful imperialist claim to a territory every post-war U.S. president until now has considered the domain of our democratic ally Denmark. … Reading these NYT and Atlantic stories about Stephen Miller’s Darwinian might-makes-right world view actually depressed me a bit. His views are about as far from JFK/Reagan-like idealism as you can get. And it’s sad.
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Is Massachusetts inching towards a Vehicle Miles Traveled tax?
State Sen. Cynthia Stone Creem says no, no, no. Her S2246 bill (“An Act Aligning the Commonwealth’s Transportation Plan with its Mandates and Goals for Reducing Emissions and Vehicle Miles Traveled”) is not about taxes or fees, she says. But it sure looks like the state is inching toward a “Vehicle Miles Traveled Tax” that they’re starting to experiment with in other parts of the U.S. and in Europe, etc. Some have even discussed a new national tax on miles driven by individual motorists. This recent Herald piece on Creem’s legislation doesn’t dive into the tax implications of her bill, focusing instead on legitimate privacy concerns tied to the collection of VMT data by the state and concerns about how reducing the miles driven by motorists would unfairly impact rural drivers. CBS Boston was focusing on the same policy concerns last year.
But Axios Boston’s Mike Deehan was rightly making the connection to taxes (“The long, long road to taxing mileage in Mass”) when he wrote last year that “factoring miles driven into state policy — and possibly taxing them down the road — would be a sea change in the way Bay Staters move around the commonwealth.” The fact is that many environmental and progressive types have long privately discussed and embraced the idea of a VMT tax – but they deny they want it in public.
But now we have S2246, with Creem saying it’s only intended to align Massachusetts with its carbon-reduction goals and allow the state to analyze VMT stats in order to expand walking, biking, or train options accordingly, as she told CBS Boston last year. … Yeah, right. As if new walking and bike paths and train and bus infrastructure improvements can be easily and quickly implemented after VMT stats stream into MassDOT offices, giving technocrats precise data on exactly what and where critical infrastructure improvements are needed, from Pittsfield to Provincetown, in order to hit annual incremental carbon-reduction goals. … As I said: yeah, right.
Bottom line: this is another one of those dubious deep-blue ideas, similar to ill-thought-out congestion pricing plans, that a handful of college-grad elites love and everyone else hates – and a policy idea that flies in the face of current attempts by Dems to portray themselves as the party of affordability.
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Ending political polarization: Gen Z and Gen Alpha to the rescue?
This is a great, historically meandering opinion piece at the NYT by Smithsonian historian Jon Grinspan, who writes that today’s combination of political polarization and Gilded Age excess has occurred before in America, followed by an era of ‘restraint,’ as Grinspan calls it, or ‘moderation,’ as I would call it. The only problem: we may have to wait till Gen Z (born 1997-2012) and Gen Alpha (2013-2055) grow up and take power before we see that more restrained/moderate era. …
It kind of makes sense when you think about it. Basically, Baby Boomers and Generation Xers have already blown it. Meanwhile, Millennials are in the process of blowing it with their own double-down generational versions of extreme lefty and righty leaders. So it’s up to you, Gen Z and Alpha.
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Headline Shorts: To Wu’s credit … The Harvard bull’s-eye … Exhausted Chuck Taylor nostalgia … Brutalist Mall … Worker Commuter Tax … Religious-schools watch list
— Joe doesn’t quite give her credit, but she deserves it: “Michelle Wu ignores Kraft-Trump bromance to broker stadium deal” (Herald)
— Basically, it pinned a bull’s-eye on itself: “How Harvard became Trump’s perfect target” (Globe)
— The ultimate $64,000 development question: “What’s Holding Back New Housing in Boston?” (Banker & Tradesman)
— A possible harbinger of things to come in Massachusetts? “California Cuts Back on Costly Immigrant Healthcare” (WSJ)
— They don’t seem to realize you can take Chuck Taylor nostalgia only so far: “Converse seeks rebound by reaching into its brand heritage” (BBJ)
— Yet another company that’s relied too heavily on nostalgia and heritage” “Why Sears’s Last Great Hope Was a Promise That Never Materialized” (NYT)
— Meanwhile, our president has a bad case of WWII battleship nostalgia: “A ‘Trump Class’ Folly on the High Seas” (The Atlantic)
— One of the challenges facing the new owner of Solomon Pond: how to make its Brutalist-like exterior more inviting to Internet-era shoppers: “29-year-old mall, once among Simon’s jewels, sells for rock-bottom price” (BBJ)
— Mandating a long daily commute is like slapping a tax on workers – and they’re rebelling against it: “For many New Englanders, working in Boston means an exhausting commute” (Globe)
— Small religiously affiliated colleges are becoming an endangered species around here: “Eastern Mass. college on closure watchlist could lose its accreditation” (BBJ)
— What’s happening in Texas and New Mexico falls somewhere in between Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring: “America’s Biggest Oil Field Is Turning Into a Pressure Cooker” (WSJ)
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