Left In Lowell

[UPDATE: and here it is! Have at it, oh ye wonks!]

Well, for all the state budgetary wonks out there, this will be a banner year. Patrick’s administration has promised transparency in the budget process, and David says that includes comparisons with past spending, searchability, and the ability to download the spreadsheet. Very nice.

David also posts summary information from the Patrick administration, both on resolving the deficit, and why the deficit happened in the first place.

There’s one thing that seriously bugs the crap out of me. As David says, this budget is hardly a spending spree. He cites:

Interesting true fact: the Governor’s proposed budget is only 4% higher than last year’s General Appropriations Act (GAA) as enacted, and less than 1% above last year’s total spending (including supplementals). Not exactly a spending spree.

But according to the idiots on Channel 7 it is. That’s the phrase - “Spending Spree” they used to start their broadcast early this morning on the budget news item, completely with Patrick photo. Because we all know, pandering to stereotypes is easier than actually doing the thinking work and explaining the facts. Here’s my letter to Channel 7:

I was watching your channel news this morning (early AM, around 6:15) when I spotted a misleading and biased headline. It was on a story talking about the Patrick budget announcement.

A picture of Patrick, and underneath, the phrase “Spending Spree” accompanied the story.

You leave the impression that you wish to further the false impression that Democrats are just “tax and spend.” If it were a Romney budget proposal I doubt you would have used this pithy, untruthful, and rather damaging phrase. You should be more concerned with accuracy than cute headlines that appeal to stereotypes, for once. Maybe you’d stop losing viewers.

First, how misleading was the use of “spending spree”? Well, Patrick’s budget is just 4% of an increase in spending, barely more than inflation. After the severe cuts to local aid, universities, education, public parks, and numerous other services of the Commonwealth under 4 years of the absent Mitt Romney, it’s like we’ve taken three steps backward, and finally one step forward. And because of [those previous cuts], we’ve had increases in property taxes across the Commonwealth, we now rank nearly dead-last (behind Mississippi!) in spending on higher education, when so much of our economy depends on it.

You call that a “spending spree”? And you news people wonder why the decline in news viewer and readership, when you pass off frivolity as news on serious issues like the discussion we should be having on our budgetary priorities?

You can send them their own email if you like.

Tonight’s City Council meeting has only one City Council Motion but it is an extremely important one. CC Jim Milinazzo is requesting that the proposed State Senate legislation on “Cable Competition and Choice for Consumers” be discussed in a meeting of the Cable/Comcast Sub-Committee.

The legislation “would enable companies seeking to offer cable television to get approval from the state rather than cities and towns.” (more…)

This is my governor (video). There is no win-lose scenario here. Just economic opportunity, a better environment, mitigating global climate crisis, jobs, and the preservation of our way of life. Just and only that.

[Via Mass Revolution Now!.]

Did you every want to know what happened to all of those motions made by the City Councilors during Tuesday night meetings? Did you ever want to know what the responses from the City Manager were to those motions?

Guess what? You are now in the know. As we had previously discussed, the City web site is providing more and more information; such as agendas of the various regulatory boards and names and term expiration of members of these various commissions, committees and Boards.

But the best additions are on the relatively new City Manager’s page. The two links are Outstanding Motions and City Manager’s Responses.

Now, the citizens of Lowell have direct access to this information which in the past had extremely limited distribution; and when we heard or read about the details, they were often filtered through a slanted lens.

Thank-you to the City Councilors, CM Bernie Lynch and CIO Miran Fernandez.

Lots of people have already hashed over what’s been “leaked” on Governor Patrick’s budget, to be proposed in final form tonight at a public meeting in Melrose (also broadcast live at 7pm on NECN). (Question: is this normal form for proposing the budget for Mass governors, or a new thing? Either way, nifty keen!)

The general consensus is this: it’s a responsible budget, keeping level funding for many agencies for now but bringing local aid back up (an increase of more than 5%), spending on educational programs (targeted and aimed at bettering failing schools), and some increases in health care spending. And like my fellow liberal brethren, I think things are going in the right direction too.

Already, many (mostly non-Patrick-voters, but some who are) are criticizing Patrick for not coming through on his promises of a 1000 new police on the streets and any number of other campaign pledges. “See?” they say. “Typical politician!”

How typically short-minded of them.

One of the reasons we worked for Patrick was that we trusted that he would implement a thoughtful, fiscally sane budget policy. In all the chase on fake drapery outrage and perfectly justified helicopter rides, there has been a quiet revolution afoot that most of the media have missed. Many of Patrick’s proposals these last two months are nothing short of controversial and interesting, to say the least. A few have flopped, and have been quietly withdrawn. But some, like the local options tax or consolidating the unaccountable “independent” state agencies, Patrick is obviously willing to throw his political muster into making a reality.

We supporters all knew that these great changes would take more than two months, but that’s why we believe in Patrick. Because he is not about to forgo long term gain in order to make political hay, covering up the stark truth so he can keep his popularity. We knew the budget this year was going to be tough and disappointing. And Patrick told us that truth as soon as he knew it, asking us to work with him to get through the tough times ahead.

We also know better than to listen to the media on what is important. Looking at the news coverage thus far, they apparently think it’s how much Patrick spends on furniture, not on the very real effect Patrick’s very politics-shifting ideas might have on the Commonwealth. Yes, I know the Conventional Wisdom is that wonkery doesn’t sell papers, political hay does. But perhaps the media should examine why Patrick won by such a large margin last fall; if they really want to capture a new and growing audience, they might try actually appealing to the appetite of the state’s citizens for real and true information on the issues that face us.

Why doesn’t the budget discussion make the front pages six days in a row? I’m sure there will be plenty to discuss after the town hall meeting tonight.

Sy Hersh has gotten it right so many times before. This should be on the front cover of every newspaper in the country:

New Yorker columnist Sy Hersh says the “single most explosive” element of his latest article involves an effort by the Bush administration to stem the growth of Shiite influence in the Middle East (specifically the Iranian government and Hezbollah in Lebanon) by funding violent Sunni groups.

Hersh says the U.S. has been “pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight” for covert operations in the Middle East where it wants to “stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.” Hersh says these funds have ended up in the hands of “three Sunni jihadist groups” who are “connected to al Qaeda” but “want to take on Hezbollah.”

This is chilling. And goes in the face of every moral and ethical reason Bush said he should stay in power, when running for reelection in 2004. If true, there can be no remedy other than impeachment. Will the Democrats investigate?

UPDATE: A reminder…remember, al Quada/bin Laden is primarily Sunni (bin Laden specifically follows a form of Sunni Wahhabism - fundamentalism). Bin Laden’s main goal was never the annihilation of the US on our own soil, but indeed, to throw out the infidels and effect a Sunni Caliphate rule on the entire oil-rich Middle East. The Shi’ia/Sunni battle has been waged for a thousand years, and its modern equivalent is the fight over oil. As the Shi’ia gain prominence in the region (Iran and Hezbollah, for instance), the Sunnis grow more desperate. Even the Saudis spend a lot of their energy to keeping their own small Shi’ia population in line. But it is Sunni terrorists which have hit our interests overseas, and here at home. As such, Bush is directly funding our enemies, strengthening the very ones who are killing and maiming our own soldiers in Iraq. Of course, we’ve funded the Sunnis, including bin Laden, before, haven’t we? In the Iran-Iraq war, in Afghanistan. Our fingerprints were on this civil war long before we ever popped the lid off the boiling pot in Iraq. It has never bode well in the past and it doesn’t now.

At last. Someone who talks like a real populist and progressive. John Edwards has come out and unequivocally rejected neoliberalism (which mostly was a disguised corporatist conservatism).

John Edwards is doing something important. It’s so important that it’s eluded the attention of the political press. While pundits handicap the horserace and assess hairstyles, Edwards is quietly yet thoroughly rejecting the economic philosophy that’s dominated the Democratic Party for the last fifteen years.

More important, he’s rejecting it in favor of a bold progressive populism, the likes of which haven’t been advanced by a serious contender for the White House in a long time. Ezra Klein in Raising the Bar in the latest American Prospect, a publication not prone to hyperbole, says Edwards is “the most populist presidential candidate we’ve seen in many decades.”

So what is neoliberalism? It’s the Democratic Leadership Council’s fevered brainchild of the 90’s, a sort of if-you-build-it-everyone-wins attitude on trade. Its favored phrase? “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Of course, the end result of so-called “free” trade is that without restrictions on overseas corporate conduct, there’s no rising tide. And for our pains, we lose American jobs in waves that has come to include even high-paying white collar jobs like computer programming.

The fact remains that it is in the multinational corporations’ best interest to keep the people in their cheap-labor countries from ever lifting their own boats. This same principle is the reason for the 19th century’s great muckrakers decrying the terrible conditions of the American worker. This is the reason we have US laws against dumping heavy metals into rivers; why we have child labor laws; and safety laws to prevent death and maiming of our workforce. It is the reason for minimum wage. When we export our jobs to other countries, should we not export our hard-fought American work values with it? Why should we be privileged to have protections while allowing these amoral corporations to commit human rights violations elsewhere? If you want to really know why we can’t compete with China or Indonesia, it’s because we let our corporations do terrible things in the name of chasing a dollar.

It’s an idea that has inevitably failed. It didn’t lift the boats of Mexican workers; instead, we have a worsening situation of poverty and lack of opportunity there evidenced by the increasing stream of illegal immigrants. It has not equalized the poor countries with the rich. It has only impoverished our own citizens. It’s time to move to a sane and fair trade policy. Our middle class - and the future middle class of emerging nations - will thank us for it.

So there’s some redesign on the Lowell Sun online edition. Right off the bat, there’s some good, and there’s some seriously bad, changes.

It’s sleeker. I’ll give corporate that. The buttons, when moused over, still give a secondary menu, but lined up underneath the main menu instead of as a drop down. As usability goes, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other. It’s about as easy to surf. It looks nicer. The home page sometimes appears to load faster, sometimes does not. Currently, the swath of ads down the righthand side is missing, though it looks like they’re keeping that space clear…probably for more ads. Else, it’s wasted space and it looks kinda funny (update: see below explanation of this).

But what is going on with the six inches deep of banner ads/header?? I never design a site that pushes the content so far “below the fold.” Web design 101. Your content is king. If you have to scroll down three pages to find the content, then you shouldn’t have a site.

Design-wise, it still looks a little slapdash. I mean, the items in the lefthand column look spliced in, what with being sucked up to the far left of the page and there being space on the right in the blue background.

And I take it back. In Firefox, the site is just broken. Because I scrolled down to the bottom, and the “right sidebar” we were all used to is sitting underneath the main column. In IE (6), it shows up proper. That’s the biggest amateur mistake there is - not testing your site in all major browsers.

Total grade for site upgrade: D. Sleeker buttons are nice and all, and the ads look a little better spaced such that your brain doesn’t explode looking at it (in the IE 6 version at least, where you can actually see the righthand ad column - in Firefox it’s missing from its appointed space). But not all of the design works aethetically, the header is too tall pushing the content down too far, and fix the damned Firefox problem. (In fact, any designer worth their pay does their design for standards-compliant Firefox and then goes back and adds in the hacks for IE6.) How much did their corporate parent pay for this design upgrade? I guarantee they got stiffed.

Note to the Sun and its parent company: if you want people to stop “bashing” you, then pay a decent web designer for your next upgrade.

Movie and discussion on fair trade in the coffee industry at Brew’d Awakening. From the synopsis:

“Millions of sophisticated coffee drinkers relish a good cup of coffee. But for every $3 cup of coffee, a coffee farmer typically recieves onluy 3 cents. Most of the money goes to the four giant conglomerates which control the coffee market. […]

“After seeing Black Gold, coffee will never taste the same. A sip of cappuccino will remind viewers of the farmers who grew the beans and of their own power to pressure corporations where it hurts most - the bottom line.”

See the movie Sunday, Feb 25 at 4pm at the Brew’d Awakening Coffeehaus (Market St, downtown). Stay after for a Fair Trade discussion!

Ug. Typical hackery from the state legislature:

Surprise surprise. By lopsided margins, the legislature voted to reject two proposed rules that would increase the public’s access to information about what goes on on Beacon Hill, and would make it easier for regular folks to participate in the democratic process. From the Somerville Journal (HT: .08):

POST COMMITTEE ROLL CALLS ON WEBSITE (H 3746) House 20-127, rejected a new rule requiring that committee votes cast by legislators on bills heard by their committees be posted on the Legislature’s website.
…
LEGISLATORS’ TESTIMONY (H 3746) House 19-128, rejected a new rule taking away some of the preferential treatment that legislators receive at committee hearings. The new rule would designate a 30-minute period during which legislators are allowed to testify on legislation. Legislators who want to testify before or after that period would be treated by the committee chair the same way that other people who testify are treated. …

Do we want to take some odds on how our Lowell Reps voted on this one? Maybe the one who gets the right combination will win a prize once I get a hold of the roll call.

Of course, we the people are all losers with this vote. They pull stunts like this, then complain when this blog or other constituents don’t like their tenure as politicians? At some point, I’m going to gather up every post where we’ve mentioned hackery and deliver a printout of every one of them to each of their offices. It’d probably be quite a stack.

Update: Chalk one up for the MA GOP. This is unbelievable. Only one Democract voted for the online posting of committee roll call votes. As sco comments, “The Dem leadership was obviously against this and legislators did not think it was important enough to buck them.”