Massachusetts Politics

When the spirit of George Will, that great god of conservatism, is upon me, I cannot resist the urge to begin a post with a quotation from some intellectual giant, past or present.   The urge is accompanied by the hope I’ll be thought a scholar if I am able to call forth so effortlessly the words of this or that Great Mind.      In that spirit, I entreat you: ponder the words of George Santayana (1863-1952), the once celebrated Boston Latin- and Harvard-educated philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist, who said (or maybe wrote; I’m not sure): “Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon.” They don’t make men of letters like George Santayana any more.   Or maybe they do.   I wouldn’t know.   I’ve never read a book by him and probably never will.   Philosophy, essays, poems and novels -- they’re so much work, you know. I glommed onto the “skepticism” quote the other day when reading an article in a ...

On the sidewalks of Everett, I have heard it said that Steve Wynn is quietly planning to lure planeloads of nouveau riche from the People’s Republic of China to his new “Wynn Everett” casino on the banks of the Mystic River. According to this theory, there are millionaires galore in China who’ve experienced the Wynn treatment at his fabulous casino in Macau and who’d be eager to combine a stay at the Everett pleasure dome, the long-planned resort casino for eastern Massachusetts, with an extended weekend of shopping, sight-seeing and culture mavening in Boston.   “You watch!” a friend of mine says. “Wynn will be doing charter flights from China every other weekend.   He’ll have yachts picking up his most loyal Chinese customers at the Logan Airport dock and whisking them to the casino.   These high rollers will be dropping Franklins at the tables as soon as they recover from the flight.   And when they’re not betting in the casino or eating at Wynn’s restaurants and ...

The Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General is investigating the failure of the Governor Patrick administration and its chosen information technology contractor to adapt the state’s health exchange to the complex requirements “Obamacare” back in 2013. The U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts may also be conducting a full-blown investigation of the massive and costly failure of The Connector, as the exchange is commonly known, during the latter part of Patrick’s second term. We should wait for those investigations to be completed before grappling with the specifics of how to prevent another public technology disaster like the one that engulfed The Connector. But we don’t have to wait to acknowledge that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, like most public entities in the U.S., is not really set up to be a high-functioning, equal-to-the-private-sector procurer of cutting edge technology.   This is not to disparage anyone on the public payroll now doing tech procurement.   I’m sur...