Massachusetts Politics

I pay attention to Peter Lucas, who writes on politics for the Lowell Sun.  I seldom disagree with what he says and I never dismiss out of hand anything he says about Massachusetts politics. So, when he did a column the week before Christmas on why so many persons leave the legislature in the middle of their terms, I lapped it up.  Lucas has been around forever, and, like I said, he really knows his stuff. "...over the past five years," he wrote, "the upper branch of the legislature has seen at least five senior members, all Democrats, leave, taking with them years of invaluable experience that went out of the Senate chamber with them," ["Climate change spurs Senate's brain drain," 12-22-15].  I recommend you read the entire column by going to: http://www.lowellsun.com/peterlucas/ci_29297759/peter-lucas-climate-change-spurs-senates-brain-drain Lucas cited East Boston Senator Anthony Petrucelli as the latest example of this trend.  Petrucelli's resi...

When I read an account yesterday morning of Boston City Councilor Stephen J. Murphy’s farewell speech it brought back the time in Springfield when Murphy and I went eyeball to eyeball and I blinked. Saturday, June 1, 2001.   I was serving as a volunteer gatekeeper at the Democratic Party Issues Convention at the Springfield Civic Center.   A friend from Melrose, the one who’d asked me to volunteer, said it would provide opportunities to interact with party big shots and become better known.   I was into lobbying a little over three years at that point. Around 8:00 o’clock that morning, I showed up at the appointed place in the civic center.   Along with about 15 other volunteers, I was given a big name badge on a lanyard to hang around my neck, a walkie-talkie and some cursory instructions.   “You have to check the credentials of everyone – everyone -- who wants to come into the hall,” we were told.   “If they don’t have a name badge, they can’t come in. ...

MAY THE FARCE BE WITH YOU.   I never got “Star Wars,” the cultural phenomenon.   It seemed like a good enough movie to bring your six-year-old to on an overcast summer afternoon, but basically a long cartoon with spectacular special effects.   I could not suspend disbelief long enough to accept a large, hairy, speechless,   ape-man as the co-pilot of a space ship or a robot that looks like a vacuum cleaner making unintentionally humorous asides to his human overlords during a stopover at a distant planet that seemed no more distant than the California desert.   So I had to groan when Cambridge City Councilor Leland Cheung announced this week in a press release that he will hold a fundraiser on Dec. 17 tied to a special showing of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”   Said Councilor Cheung, “As a self-proclaimed Star Wars fanatic, I’m counting down the days and hours to the premier of The Force Awakens and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to enjoy the ...

There’s nothing preventing anyone who owns, or is buying, a home from installing a sprinkler system to stop a fire in his castle. Have you ever known anyone who did that? Similarly, anyone hiring a contractor to build a new home can ask for a sprinkler system and the contractor will install one. Have you ever known anyone who asked a builder to do that? I haven’t studied the issue in depth, but it seems fairly obvious why Americans avoid home sprinkler systems: the cost. The National Fire Protection Association says the average cost of putting a sprinkler system in a new house is $1.35 per square foot, while the Home Builders and Remodelers Association of Massachusetts says it’s more like   $4.02 per square foot. According to CNN Money, the average size of a new home in the U.S. in 2013 was 2,598 square feet.   Multiply 2,598 by $1.35 and then by $4.02; you get, respectively, $3,507.30 and $10,443.96.   The average of those sums is $6,975.63 Proponents of home sprinkler s...