Tom Keane

The Shutdown Was Painful — But Not Nearly Painful Enough To Stop The Next One

The longest government shutdown in history has ended. But come February 15, another one looms.

No question, the shutdown was painful. The problem is: It wasn’t painful enough.

The Constitution was ratified in 1788 and went into effect in 1789. For 192 years, the government managed to stay up and running. Occassionally, it probably shouldn’t have. A law on the books — the Antideficiency Act – made it a crime to spend money unappropriated by Congress. But it was pretty much ignored until 1980 when there was a fight over the powers of the Federal Trade Commission. Congress balked on its budget, the persnickety Carter administration invoked the law, and 1,600 workers were sent home.

It lasted one day.

Since then, there have been nine more instances where workers were sent home. The next three were also one day each, the fifth was three days and the sixth, in Nov. 1995, lasted five days.

And then the wheels came off. Twenty-one days in 1995, 16 days in 2013, three days in January 2018 and, of course, the longest of them all: The 35-day marathon that just concluded.

With the first few shutdowns, lawmakers were shocked, embarrassed and appalled. But these days, it seems as if shutdowns are becoming simply another tool of politicking, a way to force your foe to bend to your will. It’s bad governance. Shutdowns are kind of a nuclear option: Give me what I want, or I’ll blow up the world. They make impossible the normal give and take — the normal compromises — that are at the core of a democracy.

There’s a way to change this: Actually, really and truly, shut the government down.

Right now, the folks truly hurt when the government closes are federal employees themselves. Yes, monuments are shuttered and national parks get trashed, but for the most part, the rest of us go about our business, barely noticing. The reason, of course, is that many of those furloughed employees are actually compelled to go to work — pay or no pay.

Why did the most recent shutdown end? It wasn’t because of the Trump administration’s deep sympathy for the plight of unpaid workers. Rather, it was slowdowns at major airports and the threat of air traffic stoppages — which only occurred, by the way, because some of those furloughed-but-compelled-to-work employees started to call in sick.

But suppose we took shutdowns seriously? Suppose furloughed employees really did have to stay at home, meaning, for example, that every airport in the country would have to suspend operations.

The shutdown wouldn’t have lasted a day.

There’s a good argument to be made, by the way, that compelling federal employees to come into work is itself a violation of the Antideficiency Act. The law says that the feds can’t use free labor: “An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the District of Columbia government may not accept voluntary services for either government or employ personal services” during a shutdown. There is an exception for “emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property” but this is a narrow written. “Emergencies,” the law makes clear, do “not include ongoing, regular functions of government the suspension of which would not imminently threaten the safety of human life or the protection of property.”

But that exception isn’t being read narrowly. Of the 800,000 employees furloughed in the most recent shutdown, more than half — 420,000 — were compelled to work because they were supposedly providing “emergency” services.

That’s not credible.

What would have happened if the shutdown had meant Air Traffic Control shut down as well? Airplanes would simply stop flying. Inconvenient. Absolutely. But an imminent threat to life or property?

No.

Maybe it’s time for a court challenge. Or perhaps Congress should clarify what technically constitutes an “emergency.”

Or better yet, maybe next time furloughed federal workers should just stay at home. All of them — call in sick, go on vacation, whatever. If that happens, shutdowns will finally become a thing of the past.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on January 29, 2019.

The Boston Police Commissioner Seems To Misunderstand The Role Of The ACLU

Boston Police Commissioner William Gross needs to dial it back. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is not his enemy. Criticism is not disloyalty. He’s not just a cop anymore. Rather than acting defensively, he needs to step up and become the leader he’s supposed to be.

In mid-November, the Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU filed suit against the department, seeking information about a supposed secretive database that labeled some kids as gang members. That database, in turn, was allegedly being shared with U.S. immigration officials, leading to deportations. The whole thing, the ACLU argued, was at odds with Boston’s self-declaration as a “sanctuary city.”

The ACLU wasn’t alone in filing suit; it was joined by 13 other civil rights organizations such as the Children’s Law Center and Greater Boston Legal Services. But it was the ACLU that earned the commissioner’s wrath. Writing on his Facebook page, Gross derided the  organization’s members as “paper warriors.”

He then went on a rant:

NO ACLU when Officers are shot, No ACLU when we help citizens, no ACLU present when we have to explain to a mother that her son or daughter was horribly murdered by gang violence.

Hmm. Inappropriate capitalization. Demonize those who question. Avoid the underlying issue. Where have we seen this before?

Oh, yeah. Donald Trump.

Not exactly a role model to emulate, commissioner.

In Trump’s case, it’s the media that get him going. The media never talk about the good news. They never tell the country how he’s energized the economy. They never tell the world how he’s making America great again.

But you know what? That’s not the media’s job. Newspapers and TV aren’t supposed to be cheerleaders for the president. They’re supposed to hold him accountable.

Nor is it the ACLU’s job to be cheerleaders for the cops. Their brief is individual liberties, and especially individual liberties against the power of government. And the power of government is, most obviously and at its greatest, vested in the hands of those with the ability to arrest and imprison.

I have no idea if the ACLU is correct in its concerns (and FYI, over a decade ago I was on its board; I’m not involved with the organization now). But surely it’s more than reasonable to ask questions — especially in light of the spate of cases nationwide involving racial profiling and police abuse. Nor does asking questions mean one is challenging all of the good the department does — and for the record, Boston’s ability to bring down crime rates while building community trust has been a national marvel.

But that hardly means the department is perfect. And that hardly exempts it from scrutiny.

Right now, a number of folks are trying to give Gross a pass on this one. He’s just defending the force. He’s standing up for his officers. Every cop knows the ACLU is a pain in the butt.

But the problem is, Gross is no longer just a supervisor trying to bolster morale of those in his charge. He’s a leader, accountable not only to the police department, but also to a host of constituencies: rich and poor neighborhoods spread across the city. His thoughtless post — and his continued defense of that post — suggest he just doesn’t understand that his new role is far different from his old.

In the wake of publicity about his Facebook post, Gross went on another capitalization-laden tear: “I hope I have the CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to comment on my private FB page where you have to be invited into as friends only.”

To be sure commissioner, you do have the CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT. No one’s jailing you for trashing the ACLU. But what you say has consequences. And when it comes to social media, there’s no such thing as “private.” Moreover, your “friends” on Facebook are not really and truly your friends.

So perhaps, commissioner, in your new, far more political role, you might want to heed the wisdom of innumerable pols from the past:

Never write if you can speak;

never speak if you can nod;

never nod if you can wink.

And for heaven’s sake, never, never, never post.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on November 29, 2018.

The Bluest State? More Like The Most Practical

Leave the confines of the Bay State and get ready for the mockery and gibes. We’re Taxachusetts, the hyper-liberal, Kennedy-loving, tax-and-spend home of left-wing crazies. But the results from the 2018 midterm elections paint a far more nuanced picture.

In truth, we’re a pragmatic bunch: fans of personal liberty, suspicious of overreaching economic regulation, averse to extreme partisanship and inclined towards solutions.

Two of the November ballot questions drive home the point. Question 1 asked voters to mandate nurse staffing ratios at hospitals. It was a naked piece of pro-union feather-bedding, interfering not only with health care administrators’ judgments but also elevating nurses at the expense of other health care professionals, such as social workers. It was overwhelmingly defeated — 70 percent to 30 percent — a sign that voters would prefer markets rather than politics dictate how businesses run.

On the other hand, Question 3 had to do with individual rights and specifically with the rights of transgender folks. The “yes” position also passed by strong margins (in this case, “yes” was a vote to uphold a two-year-old state law that protects transgender people in public accommodations).

The message from the two questions seems clear: The electorate is socially liberal but economically more conservative.

And that, of course, is what they got in the governor’s race. Charlie “Don’t call me a Republican” Baker spent his first four years in office making friends with Democrats in the state House and Senate, supporting same-sex marriage and abortion rights, and reveling in opportunities to play Mr. Fix-It so that government would work efficiently and effectively. He easily bested Democratic challenger Jay Gonzalez, whose efforts to paint the race in partisan terms never caught fire.

Meanwhile, the most partisan politician in the commonwealth — Elizabeth Warren — also won re-election, yet her margin was not what it should have been. Running against weak and underfunded Trump-enthusiast Geoff Diehl, she should have won resoundingly, yet only managed a 61 percent — well less than Baker’s own results. I read that as a message from the ballot box. Warren is an anti-Trump lightning rod. But perhaps voters would like to see her start spending a bit more time at home working on issues of concern to Massachusetts.

The socially liberal-economically conservative politics of the midterms is not new. Stereotypes aside, the Bay State has been pragmatic at least since the days of Gov. Bill Weld. And that pragmatism has remained in place for one simple reason: It works.

Just consider the political climate here: No state is more anti-Trump than Massachusetts, but when it comes to local politics, the degree of comity is striking. Politicians collaborate together on common ends. And when they disagree, they don’t demonize and hate on one another. Instead, they just…disagree.

How refreshing.

But there’s more than just being pleasant to one another. By almost any measure of public good, Massachusetts is doing well. It consistently ranks in the top fifth of all states. Our economy is third best in the nation (and tops for “innovation potential” — meaning we’re on the cutting edge), unemployment is low and incomes are high. The state’s educational system is the best in the country and we’re tops in terms of health. Even some of our failures (long commute times, for instance) are a reflection of success (people have jobs). Moreover, the state has managed this without excessive taxation; the “Taxachusetts” moniker notwithstanding, compared to other states our tax burden is about average.

Yep, it’s easy to make fun of Massachusetts. Yet our politics get results. Jokes aside, other states may want to pay heed.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on November 8, 2018.

Yes, The State Needs More Money — But Jay Gonzalez's Plan Is All Wrong

Sometimes politics is so confusing.

I was outraged when a year ago the Republicans, backed by the henchman in the White House, pushed through a “reform” which included new taxes on the endowments of colleges and universities.

We all understood this for what it was: a thinly veiled attack on the blue states that seem to house a preponderance of elitist higher ed institutions. Democrats rose together in their opposition. They denounced the new levy as a bullying, anti-intellectual move, one orchestrated by a White House that showed nothing but disdain for science and progress.

And now along comes Jay Gonzalez to completely upend the narrative.

Gonzalez, the Democratic nominee for governor of Massachusetts, has proposed a breathtaking new tax on Bay State colleges and universities, an elephantine proposal that makes last year’s tax look like a gnat in comparison.

The Trump tax, as loudly as it was decried, levied a simple 1.4 percent tax on the earnings of college endowments. Gonzalez, by contrast, would levy a 1.6 percent tax on the entire endowment itself. And the plan would raise a lot — perhaps as much as a billion dollars a year. Harvard — everyone’s favorite target — would itself be coughing up $563 million.

So as a dutiful Democrat, do I now need to support Gonzalez’ plan?

No, no, no! Bad ideas are bad ideas, no matter which side of the aisle they hail from.

Give Gonzalez credit for fitting right into the caricature of a free-spending Democrat. All this new money would go for lots of transportation and education goodies. But give Gonzalez demerits for not being willing to ask ordinary citizens to fund all these goodies. Instead, he looks around some convenient target.

At first, it was the wealthy, who were going to get their pockets picked under the so-called Fair Share Amendment -- aka, the millionaires’ tax. If put to a vote, that idea would easily have become law — those of us who aren’t millionaires clearly outnumber those who are — until it was quashed by the state’s Supreme Judicial Court in June.

You can just imagine Gonzalez and his policy guys sitting around, mulling how to get the money they so desperately want to spend. It’s like the scene in "Lord of the Rings" when some famished orcs contemplate the hobbits as food: “What about their legs? They don't need those. Ooh! They look tasty!”

So too with college endowment funds. The money’s just lying around, doing nothing. And boy, it looks tasty.

The thing is, tasty as it may look, it’s not just lying around.

Gonzalez rips into colleges as “those institutions that have accumulated so much wealth,” as if they were just an ivy-covered version of some tech company plutocrat. He seems to misunderstand what that “wealth” really is.

The idea behind endowments — be they for higher education or any other nonprofit — is to create a pool of capital that generates interest. That interest in turn funds operations. Ideally the amount of interest generated (plus other recurring revenue, such as tuition) is all the nonprofit spends, so the bigger the endowment, the more interest is generated — meaning the nonprofit can in turn do more of what it was organized to do.

In the case of Harvard and other colleges, the gigantic endowments (Harvard’s is tops at over $36 billion) allow schools to fund a variety of programs such as research, campus improvements and financial aid. That’s what allows Harvard to provide scholarships to almost all of but the most wealthy of its students — including free tuition for families making $65,000 or less. The result is a more diverse student body drawn from all walks of life — something, one would think, Democrats would applaud.

And Gonzalez’ proposed tax? It simply eats into the school’s endowment, shrinking it in size, meaning there is less available for programs such as tuition assistance. It also discourages donors from giving more — since a portion of any donation they make is now just going to the state, they’ll likely wonder: Why not give to a nonprofit that isn’t taxed at all? Moreover, given that the Massachusetts economy is dependent on higher ed (and on the smart and educated workforce it creates), it feels foolish to be disadvantaging ourselves via a vis the other 49 states.

Yeah, it’s easy to see the big schools as piggybanks. But some piggybanks shouldn’t be broken.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on September 20, 2018.

 

5 Takeaways From The Mass. Primary Election

Politics in the Bay State matter. Maybe it’s because our politicians like to run for president (Ted Kennedy, Mike Dukakis, Paul Tsongas, John Kerry and Mitt Romney to name but a few — with perhaps as many as five in 2020). Maybe we’re seen as a bellwether. Or perhaps we’re just so full of ourselves we think everyone else cares when in truth they don’t. In any event, herewith a few observations in the aftermath of the Massachusetts primaries.

Not all incumbents lost. Tuesday’s primaries — at least on the Democratic side — are being read as something epic, a dramatic break from the past. “Massachusetts politics is changing,” opined the Boston Globe’s editorial board. “Candidates aren’t willing to wait their turn anymore. The power of incumbency is weakening.” Aside from the fact that these words sound curiously like the opening monologue of "The Lord of the Rings" (“The world is changed…”), there’s reason to be skeptical. The hyperbole notwithstanding, incumbents did very well. Longtime Secretary of State William Galvin handily defeated upstart Josh Zakim. U.S. Rep. Steve Lynch readily fended off two foes. State Rep. Liz Malia easily bested her challenger. Indeed, the vast majority of pols — at all levels — faced no meaningful competition at all, including the attorney general, treasurer, auditor, most members of Congress and most state legislators. The three felled incumbents — Michael Capuano, and state Reps. Byron Rushing and Jeffrey Sanchez — were the exceptions, not the rule.

Marty Walsh should be very afraid. Ayanna Pressley won her unexpected congressional victory despite Boston Mayor Marty Walsh endorsing incumbent Michael Capuano and despite Walsh’s machine pulling out the stops to re-elect the congressman. He looks weak and Pressley owes him nothing. Maybe Pressley will love being a member of Congress, but my guess is the experience will wear thin: Power in D.C. is connected to seniority and that requires exceptional patience. So why not run for mayor? The position is up in 2021. It is, as late Mayor Tom Menino once told me, “The best job in politics.” Judging by the primary’s exceptionally high turnout, Pressley may well be the most popular politician in the city. The majority-minority demographics that drove Pressley’s success equally apply to a mayor’s race. She’s well-versed in bread and butter local issues (e.g. liquor license reform) that are better addressed at the city level than the federal level. And best of all, Pressley can take a shot at the job without giving up her congressional seat — Boston elections are held in odd years while congressional elections are in even.

Capuano did better in 2018 than when he first won the seat — but he still lost. Capuano first won his seat in 1998, in a crowded field of 10. (It’s a race I remember well; I was one of those 10.) Back then, he won just 23 percent of the vote, but that was enough to give him a plurality — and since the district is overwhelmingly Democratic, the general election was just an afterthought. Until Pressley came along two decades later, Capuano had never faced a serious one-on-one primary challenger. It’s a lesson for the 3rd Congressional District, the seat being vacated by Niki Tsongas. That race, too, had a 10-person field of challengers. The winner (and right now, it’s either Lori Trahan or Daniel Koh) will get the job with less than 22 percent of the vote. How would either fare in a one-on-one race with a credible primary challenger? Capuano was able to wait 20 years before finding out the unhappy answer to that question. Memo to aspiring pols in the 3rd district: There’s no reason to wait so long.

Elizabeth Warren is now free to focus on 2020. Republicans had a field of three candidates vying to take on Warren. In Geoff Diehl, they chose the weakest of the three. Diehl is a state rep and hardcore Donald Trump supporter in a state that intensely dislikes the president. For Warren, this is a godsend; she’s now a certainty to win re-election. She can safely ignore Diehl, spending the rest of the campaign season raising her national profile as she eyes the presidency. Meanwhile, Diehl’s win (and the surprisingly strong showing of Scott Lively against Gov. Charlie Baker) also speaks to the continuing and growing irrelevance of the GOP in the Bay State. Yeah, Baker’s governor — but largely because he presents as a moderate Democrat. Only 10.4 percent of all voters are registered Republicans (Democrats are three times as many), meaning the party increasingly looks like an asterisk.

Charlie Baker is a lock for re-election. Unless he isn’t. Baker is the most popular governor the world has ever known. (OK, slight exaggeration. But he’s still the nation’s most popular governor right now.) And as of its most recent filing, the Baker Committee has $6.3 million while Jay Gonzalez — winner of a lackluster Democratic primary — has only $188,000. Obvious conclusion: Baker should coast. But. But. But. Donald Trump is president and the leader of Baker’s party. One could see the deep and passionate anti-Trump animus in Massachusetts easily spilling over to a more local race. And Gonzalez is actually a credible, serious and qualified candidate. He served as the secretary of administration & finance during the Patrick administration — the same job on which Baker cut his political teeth in the Weld and Cellucci administrations. Sure, the smart money is on Baker. But then again, that’s what many said about Capuano.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on September 6, 2018.

The Midterms Are 98 Days Away. Could Democrats Be Thwarted — Again?

As Donald Trump careens through America and the world, upending convention, destroying alliances and committing offense after offense, there has been one saving prospect on the horizon: the midterm elections.

Just over three months from now, runs the thinking, the jig will be up. The Democrats will take the House; they may even take the Senate. Trump’s hold on power will be broken. The Republicans who have covered for him will be cover no more. Investigations will proceed apace and the new majority will be able to stymie the Trumpian dismantling of everything from environmental protection to consumer protection. If the president wants to accomplish anything in his next two years in office, he’ll have to bend to the wishes of the Democrats. As Gerald Ford once said of Richard Nixon, “our long national nightmare” may soon be over.

Or perhaps not. Democrats are confident victory will be theirs. Pollsters too. But there are good reasons to think they’re all wrong. Not only the Senate but also the House may very well remain safely Republican.

Granted, I’m in a distinct minority here. The Economist’s midterm forecasting model projects the Democrats have a 71 percent chance of taking the House — by flipping at least 24 Republican seats — in November. Political analyst Larry Sabato reckons the House goes Democratic. The president remains deeply unpopular: FiveThirtyEight’s poll of polls shows that only 42 percent approve of Trump; 53 percent disapprove. The champagne corks are already being popped.

Uh oh. Haven’t we seen this show before? In the days before the 2016 presidential election, nearly all pollsters predicted Hilary Clinton would win. FiveThirtyEight, for example, gave her a 71 percent chance of becoming the next president. Natalie Jackson and Adam Hooper, in the Huffington Post, gave Clinton a 98 percent chance of winning.

So maybe, at least when it comes to anything Trump, we should treat polls skeptically.

Two other factors provoke the most worry, however. First, Trump is actually delivering on what he promised.  And second, the Democrats are alienating precisely the folks they need to attract if they are to win.

The conventional wisdom is that politicians promise one thing but actually do something else. Not Trump. He promised to keep out illegal immigrants and cut taxes. He promised to get the US out of the Paris climate change treaty and pick truly conservative judges. He promised to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and get rid of Obamacare. On all fronts, he has delivered — or a least tried to deliver. No backpedaling for him. And if you’re a voter who cast your vote for Trump because of those promises, it’s hard to imagine why you would be having second thoughts. Yes, he’s crude and impolitic (which to many is part of the allure). But more importantly, he’s keeping his word.

And while he’s been keeping his word, the economy has been humming. Unemployment is low, wages are increasing, the GDP is expanding, and stocks are through the roof. A May survey by CBS found two-thirds of Americans rating the economy as “very good” or “somewhat good,” with 68 percent giving Trump the credit. And since then things have only gotten better: GDP in the second quarter grew by a sizzling annual rate of 4.1 percent.

Voters don’t get rid of the folks who they think are doing a good job.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party seems to be running away from the voters it needs to win. Elections aren’t won at the extremes. Twenty-seven percent of voters identify as Republicans; it’s probably safe to assume they are in Trump’s camp. Twenty-nine percent identify as Democrats; they doubtless will vote Democratic. But the vast plurality — 43 percent — call themselves independent. Politically agnostic, mostly moderate and willing to vote for either party, they are ones each party needs to woo.

Yet instead of reaching towards the center, Democrats are veering ever more left. Almost with glee, they are dumping those — such as New York’s Joe Crowley — of a more moderate stripe. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have energized those on the left, but Mitch McConnell is right to be overjoyed at her win: Democratic socialism doesn’t appeal to independents and calls for the abolition of ICE only drive them into Republican hands.

Younger, energized voters may well flock to the polls in November, making for Democratic wins across the country. If not though — and historically, turnout among the young has been low — regular older voters, happy with the results of Trump’s presidency (although admittedly, often unhappy with the man himself) and turned off by the Democrat’s leftward tilt, could easily vote GOP.

Two more years of an unrestrained Donald Trump? Unimaginable? Impossible? Sadly, yes, very possible indeed.

Gov. Baker Just Signed A Tax Increase. But He Doesn't Want You To Call It That

When is a tax increase not a tax increase? When it’s signed into law by Gov. Charlie Baker.

Or so runs the governor’s thinking.

Baker just signed into law a 0.63 percent payroll tax that funds a brand-new entitlement: 12 weeks of paid family leave and 20 weeks of medical leave.

I can hear some of you grumbling. Maybe you’re one of the roughly one-third of Americans who won’t have kids and you’re thinking, “Why should I have to pay for someone else’s decision to have a child?” Well, if you’re thinking that way, you’re just mean-spirited. Plus, it’s important to encourage people to have children in ever-greater numbers because otherwise Disney World’s park attendance will drop and we can’t have that. In addition, the tax is really small: If you make $50,000 a year, it works out to around $6 a week, about the cost of one of those highfaluting craft beers. A beer for a baby — is it really too much to ask?

In any event, this isn’t about you. It’s about our governor. Four years ago, we had a spirited contest between Republican Charlie Baker and Democrat Martha Coakley. As is typical in these races, the Democrat promised us a lot more taxes and a lot more government goodies, while the Republican promised us no new taxes and governmental restraint. The Republican won and so we got … a lot more taxes and a lot more government goodies.

To be fair, Baker was not a tax hardliner in that 2014 race. Four years earlier, however, he had been. In his 2010 attempt — a losing race against incumbent Deval Patrick — Baker took the infamous Taxpayer Protection Pledge. Pushed by activist Grover Norquist, the pledge is a firm and unequivocal promise not to increase taxes. Baker even said at the time, “Read my lips: No new taxes” -- a repeat of George H.W. Bush’s promise in his 1988 campaign. An interesting repeat, by the way, because Bush ended up breaking his word. “Read my lips” has since become synonymous with deceit. So at the altar, for example, if the groom says, “Read my lips: Forsaking all others,” you can be pretty sure he’s going to cheat.

Anyhow, by the time the 2014 race rolled around, Baker had gotten wobbly on taxes. He refused to sign the pledge — although he still said he wouldn’t support any new taxes. After he won, Norquist expressed misgivings. “There's only one reason not to take the pledge and that's because you want to raise taxes, and if you're not going to do it, you put it in writing,” he said about Baker. And you can see why. Baker has over the years flirted with extending the hotel tax to cover Airbnb rentals. And he refused to stake out a position of the proposed (but now dead) 2018 ballot question for a so-called “millionaire’s tax."

So really, no one should be surprised that the no-new-tax vow would eventually be broken. Although wait! It hasn’t been! In what amounts to a piece of breathtakingly ridiculous rhetorical legerdemain, Baker says a tax isn’t a tax if it relates to some “new service” offered by the government. It’s only a tax, he says, if you’re using the money to “balance the budget.”

But of course, pretty much the entire budget is about services: building highways, paying for health care, enforcing regulations, and so on. And how you pay it — through income taxes, sales taxes or payroll taxes — is irrelevant. It’s still a forced extraction of money from a citizen’s pocket.

Granted, a veto by Baker wouldn’t have derailed the new tax. Both the House and Senate passed the measure by veto-proof majorities. Nevertheless, Baker could have taken a stand. And the fact that he didn’t basically scotches his future within the national Republican party. New taxes are a heresy that the party simply won’t countenance.

All of which leads to this question: Maybe it’s time for Baker to switch parties — or at least dump the Republican label. He’s been uncomfortable — indeed, appalled — from the get-go with the man now in the White House. Baker likes government, he likes new government programs, and he has no problem finding the money to pay for those programs. So, governor, why not hitch your star to a different wagon?

And while you’re at it, please just admit the truth: It is a tax.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on July 3, 2018.

Why do we fear plane crashes when the ride to the airport is more dangerous?

Our sense of danger needs a reality check.

The day after a Southwest jet engine exploded, killing one, I’m in a Lyft heading toward Logan Airport, bound for my own trip on the same airline.

“Have a safe flight,” the driver tells me as he drops me at Terminal A. His well-meaning words shake me. I feel a hard knot of panic in my chest.

On board, I initially choose an aisle seat. On that ill-fated plane, it was a woman sitting by the window who was nearly sucked out and later died. But then, in some small show of courage, I move over to the window. I soon regret the decision. In the air, my knuckles are white as I grip my chair, looking out nervously at the jet engine just behind me. As we roll to a stop on the runway, I send a relieved text to friends: “Landed!”

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In truth, my drive from my home to the airport was more dangerous than my flight. In 2016, more than 40,000 people died on American roads. Meanwhile, the Southwest death was the first in nine years in American skies. The chance of being killed in the air is almost infinitesimally small. But the odds of dying in a car: Much higher.

The same analysis holds true for school shootings. The February high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, left 17 dead and caused a nationwide furor as panicked parents everywhere worried for their own children’s safety. Frightened teens organized walkouts and protests and sparked a new political movement while adults argued about solutions like hardening entrances and arming teachers at school districts around the country. 

Yet the reality is that school shootings are extraordinarily rare — and, our perceptions notwithstanding, have actually been declining since the 1990s, according to James Alan Fox, professor of criminology, law, and public policy at Northeastern University, who has analyzed school shootings nationwide. This “is not an epidemic,” Fox told the university’s news service. Though parents may worry about a shooter in the classroom, the greater danger likely lies in the bus ride to and from school.

Why are we so scared of dangers that are rare — and not sufficiently worried about the ones that are commonplace? It turns out we human beings are pretty poor at judging risks and rewards. We extrapolate from anecdotes: One burglary is a crime, two a crime wave. We see something in the news and assume there’s an epidemic. We believe in luck, streaks, and baseball players being “due” for a hit. We let emotion rather than data drive our thinking.

Thus we fear a nuclear power plant far more than one that is coal-fired (even though air pollution generated by coal poses the greater hazard). We bar refugees from our shores, frightened of terrorism, even though the risk of being killed by a refugee terrorist is hundreds of times less likely than getting killed by lightning. We think children walking alone are sure to be abducted by strangers when that’s rarely the case. Unintentional falls kill almost 35,000 annually, but how many of us actually hold a railing as we go down stairs?

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There is, arguably, a benefit to these cognitive lapses. Plane crashes receive so much attention that the industry has learned to deal with them swiftly. If people started to dread flying, then the business would collapse. And so, every crash is dealt with quickly, its causes probed by federal regulators and — once determined — fixes put in place. It’s that process that has made air travel ever more safe. Years ago, for example, downburst wind shear was the leading cause of plane crashes. So engineers came up with wind shear detection systems and, quickly, the problem went away. One can be sure that, whatever the cause of Southwest’s engine failure, it too will be addressed.

Reducing the risk of a school shooting is far more complicated, but some proposed solutions could help. Administrators and staff could put in place protocols that would identify signs a student might resort to violence. And lawmakers could implement simple new regulations to reduce the number of firearms in potentially dangerous hands, such as raising the age of gun ownership or instituting more stringent requirements to obtain a gun license.

Yet, the problem with our focus on the prominent but rare is that we sometimes ignore the ordinary. How many lives might we save if we devoted as many resources toward thwarting car crashes as we do to airplane accidents? How much violence could be prevented if we paid as much attention to underreported and frequently ignored shooting deaths in poor, often black neighborhoods as we do to mass shootings in suburban schools? Life is full of danger. But sometimes we look for it in the wrong places.

This column was first published in the Boston Globe Magazine's May 20, 2018 edition.

Let’s face it. There will never be room for the middle class in Boston

The city’s soaring real estate costs, plus better schools in the ‘burbs, make it hard for ordinary folk to stay.

The middle class — especially middle-class families with children — is vanishing from Boston. Policymakers and politicians long for a fix. “In my second term,” Mayor Martin J. Walsh proclaimed in his January inaugural address, “I will prioritize the fundamentals of middle-class opportunity in our world-class city.”

Forget it, Mayor. The fundamentals of middle-class opportunity are cheap housing and good schools. That’s not going to happen in Boston. And it’s not your fault.

Boston is demographically complicated, as becomes clear if you look at reports by the city’s Planning and Development Agency. Most of its downtown neighborhoods are young, rich, and predominately white. Others — such as the onetime working-class areas of Charlestown, East Boston, and South Boston — are heading in that direction. At the same time, neighborhoods such as Mattapan and Roxbury and sections of Dorchester are decidedly poorer and mostly of color.

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Boston is also a city of immigrants. New residents arrive, speaking a multitude of languages, using the city (one hopes) as a launching pad to the American Dream. And it’s a growing city. Folks with money used to flee cities — largely because of fears over safety (and also, to be blunt, over race) as well as a desire for more space. That happened to Boston: From 801,444 residents in 1950, it hit a low of 562,994 in 1980. Then, in the 1990s, a miracle occurred — indeed, the “Boston Miracle,” sparked by then-Mayor Tom Menino’s Operation Ceasefire. Violent crime dropped and a new urbanism took hold. From that 1980 low, Boston’s population surged to about 670,000 in 2016. 

But the newcomers aren’t like the folks who left. They’re more educated, relatively well-off, and young. They like the restaurants, bars, and nightlife. They relish the city’s cultural and economic dynamism. They enjoy the proximity to new ideas and others like themselves. And that remains true even as they couple up.

Everything changes, however, when another miracle occurs: kids. That’s when the exodus begins. The reasons go back to those fundamentals: housing and schools.

Depending on household size, a middle class family as defined by the Urban Institute makes somewhere between $35,000 to $100,000 annually (this does not include the upper middle class, the “poor” rich, with household incomes up to $349,000). If you apply the conventional rule that housing should cost about 30 percent of total income, the middle class household has somewhere between $875 to $2,500 a month for a home. Yet the median rental price in Boston is $2,800 — well above what even the highest-paid members of the real middle class can reasonably afford. And it gets worse when you look at square footage: Boston real estate averages $681 per square foot. In the Boston metro area, the price is $263, well less than half. Think about it: more than double the space for the same price. Move to the ’burbs and the kids get their own bedrooms!

Why does Boston cost so much? Demand by those new urbanists, for one. So too, it’s far more expensive to build in the city than outside of it. Land is at a premium and multistory construction is costlier. And the recent tax law will bring more pain. Its sharp limits on mortgage deductions effectively make more expensive the carrying cost of loans that middle-class folks need to purchase a home.

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Education compounds the problem. Forget private schools: Their tuition averages over $20,000 a year. And the public schools? Boston fares poorly. SchoolDigger, for example, ranks the Boston Public Schools 305th out of 334 districts statewide. Granted, some parents hang on, hoping their child gets into one of the city’s three exam schools (Boston Latin, Boston Latin Academy, and the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science). But the exam schools are intensely competitive. And the dismal performance of the regular, non-exam high schools means few middle-class families would accept them as an alternative.

So, what can be done, Mr. Mayor? You trumpet that 5,000 new homes were built in 2017 — 1,000 of which were restricted to those with low and moderate incomes. But that’s hardly a solution. Lower-income housing, by definition, is for those who don’t make enough money to be in the middle class. And the rest of that housing is luxury housing, built for the rich. The middle class is left in the lurch.

So too, you promise to improve schools. But as you know, the crying need is not for more classrooms catering to middle-income white kids — it’s for stepped-up services for the least well-off. It’s hard to imagine a political environment where you or the city would favor the better-off at the expense of those in need.

Sure, it would be wonderful to have genuinely mixed-income neighborhoods. But getting there is like pushing water uphill: The economics and the politics are rushing the other way.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? The virtue of the rich is that they tend to demand less in the way of city services but have the means to pay a lot in taxes. Those taxes in turn power a city budget that allows you to focus on residents who are poor, working class or newly immigrated. It’s not a perfect model — the income stratification of neighborhoods and the threat of increasing gentrification are genuine worries. But you’re not going to solve them by hoping the middle class will return. They’re out along 128 and 495, cutting their grass, driving their kids to practice, and cursing their commute. And there they shall remain.

This column was first published in the Boston Globe Magazine's February 20, 2018 edition.

Trump Gets A Reset. For Now

This may be the week Donald Trump saved his presidency. A good speech — as well as decent atmospherics and some strong data — can do that.

The 80-minute State of the Union was not, it should be stressed, a great speech.

Trump kept cocking his head upward, preening, his fleshy neck too much on display. He had this unnerving habit of clapping at his own applause lines, the smack-smack of his hands far louder than the cheers from the often-boisterous Republicans on the floor.

Nor was the language itself particularly stirring. Trump’s media folks may well try to tell us this was the best speech ever, watched by more folks than ever, destined to be carved into marble and memorized by grade-school children along with the Gettysburg Address. But honestly, I think not. (Although I will grant that his hands-raised ode to the Capitol itself – “And freedom stands tall over one more monument:  this one.  This Capitol.  This living monument to the American people” – did give me the shivers.)

But it was a good speech. For one, it sounded like many that have come before it. Heart-tugging name checks. Glorying in what has been done. Promises of what will come. And lots of mom-and-apple-pie language (“heroes,” “family” and, yes, “moms”).

Most importantly, it was measured, well-paced, clearly spoken and seemingly rational. This was not the crazed man of the early morning tweet. In sounding like his predecessors, Trump was sounding -- dare one say it -- presidential. (Indeed, John Kelly, any way you could persuade your charge to now use a TelePrompTer while on Twitter?)

As we all know, this first year of the Trump presidency has been a soap opera — one documented well in Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” — but one had the sense that, kicking off the second year, there was some sense of stability. Trump, perhaps, may finally be getting his footing, and his Tuesday address was a strong statement to that effect. (This, of course, doesn’t mean the soap opera is over; even now, the Stormy Daniels-Melania Trump plotline continues to play out.)

And then there were the Democrats. Dour, sour and clad in black, they looked more like a morticians’ convention that ended up in the wrong building rather than the exciting, appealing alternative.

Yes, I know black was intended to be a political statement — a reminder of #MeToo, Times Up and (most importantly) Trump’s own alleged incidents of sexual harassment. Maybe some viewers picked up on that. But to most, the Democrats just looked mad. Angry they had lost. Furious at Trump. Unwilling (with some exceptions) to smile or give a small handclap to even the most innocuous of lines. “I wanted it burned into my eyes,” wrote Massachusetts’ own Sen. Elizabeth Warren in an email I received. “America isn’t prouder when Donald Trump embraces bigotry, hatred and fear – and calls that patriotism.” “OK,” I was thinking as I read her words. “What’s your proposal?” There was none; her email ended quite simply: “Donate Now.”

Ahh, politicians. Never miss an opportunity for a buck.

The last two months have not been good for Democrats. Around Thanksgiving, it seemed as if they were riding high. Trump’s approval ratings were low and getting lower. A few key fall elections spoke of voter discontent with the Trump brand, leading to hopes of a Democratic surge in November 2018. But then the tax bill passed — and in the process, the Obamacare mandate was gutted. It was a GOP two-fer. In January Democrats forced a weekend shutdown of the government over immigration policy — and promptly caved on a Monday morning. They looked inept. They were inept.

Most telling though, have been the numbers. Trump’s raison d'etre is economic. The chest-thumping, the hostility towards immigrants, the America First attitude — all of that comes back to the economy and especially to the plight of those at the lower end of the spectrum, the white, blue-collar workers seemingly left behind.

Their man, it seems, is delivering. The economy is at full employment. Wages are finally starting to climb. Companies — perhaps spurred by federal policies, or perhaps because they would have anyway — are announcing openings of new plants and headquarters. Maybe this is just the fruit of Obama’s eight years but in politics, we credit or blame the guy in office and that guy is Trump. (And, by the way, if the economy were tanking right now, Democrats would be loudly crowing about the Doncession or the Trumpression.)

A CBS poll taken after Trump’s State of the Union found 75 percent of viewers approved of the speech. I have little doubt that in the days to come we’ll see the president’s favorabilities begin to climb. With the State of the Union, Trump has managed a reset. He can mess it up, of course – Russia or an errant tweet could undo everything. Yet today, Groundhog Day, I have this image in my mind of millions of Democrats opening their doors, walking out, seeing their shadows and running back inside. Three more years of Donald Trump.

Or perhaps, seven.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on February 2, 2018.