Massachusetts Politics

I’m trying to decide what I like most about Cambridge rep David Rogers’s maiden speech.   It’s a toss-up among three things: One, Rogers waited three-and-a-half years to give his maiden speech; two, Rogers spoke lovingly of his recently deceased mother; three, Rogers was advocating for a good bill he’s sponsoring that would increase penalties on anyone convicted of trying to get someone else to commit a felony. An attorney, Rogers is obviously no show-off or camera hog.   On the contrary, he seems remarkably secure and low-key for someone of his ilk.   Rogers was first elected in the fall of 2012 and re-elected two years later.   Yet he waited til the second year of his second term was almost half over before formally addressing his colleagues from the House rostrum on June 22.   Most politicians get this over with in their rookie years. Lyndon Johnson famously divided legislators into two categories: show horses and workhorses.   This Rogers has to be a wo...

This past Sunday night, June 12, before all of the dead had been identified on the premises of Pulse, the gay nightclub in Orlando, Donald Trump sent out a Tweet that said: “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism.” Ignore for a minute what that says about Trump’s selfishness and narcissism, which impel him to seek immediate political gain from a mass murder, and consider what it says about his impulse toward snap decisions on incomplete evidence.   Might this be a warning sign regarding the character of a potential commander-in-chief? While the slaughter was unfolding, the gunman had proclaimed his allegiance to the Islamic State. Within 36 hours, it was revealed that he had patronized the club on at least several occasions, suggesting that inner conflicts and turmoil contributed as much to the rampage as distorted religious convictions may have. Now consider the former junior United States senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, an early endors...

I don’t think Trump is qualified to be president. I don’t think it is possible for Trump to win the general election, his impressive string of Republican primary victories notwithstanding.   I’ve felt that way for a long time. I began reconsidering that assumption this morning when I read a Washington Post article on how former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney had convened his annual “ideas festival” last night in that one-percenters heaven, Park City, Utah.   The official name of the Mitt-fest is “Experts and Enthusiasts Summit,” or E2 for short.   (Please tell me you’re surprised I was not invited.) The E2 Summit is “not intended to be a political forum,” according to the Post, “but rather is a Romney-designed version of the Aspen Ideas Festival.”   (Aspen, why don’t you ever call me?) The Post article said: “The E2 summit is the first of what will be many events in which Republican elites begin to talk and think about a post-Trump era, in the event he loses to ...

From what I can tell about the Mercatus Center, it won’t be going out of its way soon to hire anyone who worked for Ted Kennedy, or Tom Birmingham for that matter.   That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t consider, if only for a moment, what the center has to say about the financial health of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts – although there’s been no outward sign   anyone in a position of power in the legislature has given it even that much thought. Last Wednesday, June 1, the center released the results of its 2016 study on the financial health of all 50 states, in which it ranked Massachusetts 49 th . Massachusetts deserves to be categorized among the worst five states, the center said, largely because it has low amounts of on-hand cash and large debt obligations.   “Each of the bottom five states exhibits serious signs of fiscal distress, making these states’ debt levels look more like Puerto Rico,” the report asserts.   “Though the states’ economies may be strong...