Left In Lowell

The Lowell Sun’s breaking news section has announced that DiMasi is resigning Tuesday. As Lynne posted on Friday, the Sun scooped all of the other media outlets by reporting on the activities and discussions which confirmed that the Speaker was indeed resigning. Again, kudos to Matt Murphy and anyone else that was invovled in getting the story first and getting it right.

It is too bad because DiMasi did so much to push the progressive agenda. Would it be too much to ask for a fresh slate without both John Rogers and Robert DeLeo?

It’s always great when a candidate you gave your time to lives up to expectations. I just got a press release from the office of freshmen and newly-sworn in Representative Jen Benson, with two bills she has just filed.

The first is a special education bill, and is based on her campaign proposal.

Benson has introduced a special education reform bill that works towards identifying administrative efficiencies and cost savings for schools districts, while providing more consistency for special education students with high needs. The bill proposes tying funding to students rather than school districts. “Our current special education funding system is overly complicated and is problematic to both school districts and children,” said Benson. “I proposed a system for tying funding to students rather than school districts during my campaign and this legislation is the first step toward achieving that goal.”

This makes so much sense, it hurts my head. This would solve that constant problem for districts who happen to have a lot of special needs children proportional to their student population - funding for those sources winds up being carried by the local revenues because that funding is set per district. This adversely affects special education - often, a good public school special ed program will entice parents of a special needs child to move to the district, increasing the budgetary burden, but with no additional help from the state. That means the program will likely degrade in response. We shouldn’t punish districts with better programs.

The second one is near and dear to my heart, an environmental no-brainer.

Benson’s environmental protection bill will require customers to pay a surcharge of five cents for each plastic bag used at grocery stores. Customers would pay no surcharge for paper bags, reusable bags, or plastic bags brought from home. The surcharge would go to the Clean Environment Fund to be used for environmental projects. “Plastic bag surcharges have been shown to produce real benefits to the environment, reducing plastic waste and greenhouse gas emissions,” said Benson.

Boo ya! Ireland did this and it’s virtually a no-plastic-bag zone now.

Two great no brainer practical solutions to two big problems. Thanks, Representative Benson! High marks.

Marie’s quick! Though now the Sun says they’ve confirmed, he will step down.

Even if DiMasi didn’t himself do anything wrong, one can’t have a Speaker beset by so many ethics clouds. But I worry about succession - word on the street the frontrunners are anything but progressive, and despite some of my issues with DiMasi, by and large he’s been the most liberal of Speakers in modern times.

Edit: I think the Sun scooped the crap out of Boston.com…

Dick posted a very comprehensive report from Joe on the latest public Hamilton Canal District Vision Meeting. Check it out. Some highlights:

Hank Keating, the project manager from Trinity, updated the audience on the more significant changes since the last Vision Session in May of 2008. The function of Middlesex Street through the Lord Overpass has been retained with traffic improvements, whereas initial plans, not well-received by most abutters, called for elimination of the Middlesex link through the Lord Overpass.

[…]

An interesting aspect of the work to be done is a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreed between CWC, Trinity, CMAA and the Building Trades to engage local workers in a Apprentice Program that would serve to grow the workforce while providing good-paying jobs. This redevelopment is not just an end in itself, but its process should help in the creation of an educated, productive workforce in the area.

For more great info, go read it!

Marie has it. So I recommend going to check it out. She also points to the Mass Dems website which has the full schedule for all towns.

I’ll reprint the Lowell info here though:
Saturday February 7, 2009
Lowell (All Wards) at 10am at East End Club
West 4th Street

You need to have been a registered Democrat as of, I believe, the new year. (I can’t seem to find that info to confirm.)

For several days now, I’ve seen people with signs at the Gallagher depot when dropping off my husband at the train. The first day I couldn’t really see what the signs said (it’s not a good idea to mill around if you want drivers, in the split second they have when turning into the Gallagher, to see what you’re standing in support of, even if it’s cold…) but the second day, it was clear they were bus drivers voicing support for a new contract.

I thought to myself, what, are they striking already? But no news of that, so I assume these are off-duty drivers hoping to put pressure on the negotiations.

I sympathize with both the LRTA drivers, and the management, at this point. Yes, the workers deserve a fair contract. And yes, the state funding for LRTA is already seeing a dip, which means previously balanced budgets are no longer. And in between are the riders, and I hope no one really wants to see the rates rise too dramatically, since the people who really rely on local public transit are often the most economically vulnerable.

The two sides, besides being in negotiations, are battling it out in the Lowell Sun, which gives the management an advantage, since the leadership at the Sun is obviously and consistently anti-union. But the point of a negotiation is for both sides to come together, and both sides will hopefully give a little. Let’s try to avoid a messy strike.

(cross posted at BlueMassGroup)
One sure sign that the village is about to ignore reality is when it asserts anything about the desires of Americans. As Greenwald pointed out today:

One of the most common and most corrosive aspects of our political discourse is the endless assertions — based on nothing — about what “Americans believe. It is exceedingly conventional wisdom that Americans generally view the world through the prism of Jack Bauer and therefore want our government to torture, want Guantanamo kept opened, and do not want suspected Terrorists to be tried in civilian courts inside the U.S. It is even more commonly asserted that Americans do not want, and even further, would never tolerate, criminal investigations into the various crimes of Bush officials.”

Turns out that there is polling on these questions, and the American people seem to have missed the memo from the village about what they are supposed to believe. Of course the polling is phrased to try and push them toward village conformity, but alas the village is doomed to be disapointed (that is if they really cared if their claims about American opinion had any basis in truth).

Greenwald has the details but here are some hits:

By a wide margin — 58-40% — Americans say that torture should never be used, no matter the circumstances.

Moreover, a majority of Americans (53-42%) favor the closing of Guantanamo,…

…a majority of Americans (50-47%) believe that the Obama administration should investigate whether the Bush administration’s treatment of detainees was illegal.

Americans would have opposed (52-42%) the issuance of pardons by Bush to those “who carried out his administration’s policy on the treatment of terrorism suspects.”

I guess it turns out that Americans get, unlike Fox, that Jack Bauer is as advertised… entertaining fiction. Of course the village will no doubt go on misunderestimating American opinion. They will claim insight into ‘conventional wisdom’ and assert that these majority views are actually only the opinion of the far left.

One can hope now that those who dismissed anyone that was ‘reality based’ are out of office, real reality might begin permeate the consciousness (and conscience) of the village.

This was a really cool find. (Link thanks to Mr. Lynne.) And yes, it’s Obama related.

One area of art in Lowell that I am less aware of but know is out there is the local music scene. The variety and quality of local bands and musicians of all genres is pretty astounding. In the midst of this we have Lowell and Behold, a project that comes out of UMass Lowell.

I’ve been browsing their Myspace page and the pages of some of the artists they work with, and there’s some fabulous music on there, something for everyone (maybe even the local James Taylorites who dislike Goth and punk.)

This is a press release talking about their recent CD release party, and their events at the upcoming Winterfest. (It was sent to the Lowell Sun but not published, so I gladly publish it here. There are some minor edits, primarily in paragraph breaks.) I recommend taking a listen via Myspace at the end, you might just find a new local band to love.

Local Music’s All the Buzz in Downtown:
How UML music students are taking over the city of Lowell

One early Friday evening in chilly November, downtown Lowell seemed more alive than usual. The fading sunlight cast shadows off of the half-cobblestoned streets and old brick mill buildings. People walking up and down the sidewalks seemed enchanted with smiling laughter, whispering plans about the coming night. The sky was a backdrop of warm yellow-green, a canvas in which Lowell was politely and historically painted onto. The Revolving Museum stood tall and welcoming on the corner of Shattuck and Middle Streets, with warmly lit windows and tiny previews of the odd, inspiring art homed inside.

Friday nights consistently make downtown Lowell a busy place. With a host of bars and interesting restaurants or cafes to choose from, there is almost always something to do; and if you chance to look hard enough, you can find a corner where the music and culture of Lowell come alive.

It was on this November night that Lowell’s community came together to celebrate the release of Lowell and Behold’s first CD. The Revolving Museum housed the event, a two-night benefit concert showcasing sixteen Lowell bands, aiming to raise scholarship money for Lowell High School students pursuing educations in music.

“Lowell is like a big pond, and the music just keeps splashing it,” said Nicholas Congelosi, co-founder of Lowell and Behold. “A lot of what Lowell has is stagnant. The music is what keeps it flowing.”

Started by two UMass music students, Lowell and Behold began as a community-building project that was designed to celebrate the musical culture of Lowell. More specifically, the project’s goal rested in showcasing some of the city’s youngest and finest musicians. “It was a culmination of desires,” said Congelosi. “I would like to see it expand out. In terms of the CD, we started where the roots were. UML.”

Lowell and Behold as a project defines a community of musicians and fans that are permeating the city of Lowell.

A variety of different kinds of music made by UML students can be seen at bars, coffee shops, galleries, museums, and restaurants throughout the city. “What’s most important,” said Seth Bailin of Nice Bass Productions and of Lowell and Behold, “is that you can find music you can’t define, music that you can’t tell what style it is.” The community is as diverse as it is talented. The CD that Congelosi and Bailin crafted helps to expose people to music they wouldn’t normally listen to.

“Lowell is such a rich source of music and of art. It’s known that it exists, but not so much that there is a place to go for it to be all under one roof,” said Jason Gibbs.

Gibbs is also a music student at the university. He and two friends started Audio Park Productions, the resource that helped to produce the Lowell and Behold CD.

While the smaller project of Lowell and Behold serves to get the city’s music heard for a good cause, the CD and scholarship fund are just a brainchild of a larger goal amassed by these Lowell students. “There is yet to be a centralized resource that everyone can use as a way to be aware of each other, regardless of genre,” said Gibbs.

“School is where the connections happen,” said Bailin. “It’s not so much what you learn, but who you meet.”

UML has been a catalyst of transition for many music students. While its pool of talent is vast, there is an ocean of more substantial connections lying outside campus bounds. It is because of these connections, and because of the large success encountered by the Lowell and Behold movement, that Audio Park Productions is rumored to make its first big moves on the city.

“In the last couple of years there’s been a real need for somebody to be an organizing force in presenting live music. What they’re doing allows that to happen in a way that it hasn’t,” said Peter Lally, professor at UMass Lowell and general manager of the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. With the help of Lally, Nicholas Congelosi, Jason Gibbs, and Brett Fermeglia of Audio Park Productions are in the midst of negotiating and finalizing their role in this year’s Winterfest.

“They’ve really been, more than anybody else, able to tap into making some successful events and promote them downtown in the last year or two. They had the best opportunity to come in and present that at Winterfest.”

The three students will be doing a showcase of original music at the Blue Shamrock on Friday and Saturday evening during the festival.

While Winterfest looks promising, the rest of 2009 feels like an exciting brew of possibilities for a group of students who never stop working for what they believe in. “What’s more important than what’s going on already,” said Gibbs, “is making sure it continues.”

If you haven’t already, you can pick up a copy of the Lowell and Behold CD at a number of locations, including Brew’d Awakening, Ron’s Recycled Records, and University Music. Local shows are constantly popping up everywhere so check in regularly to www.myspace.com/LowellBehold for more information.

I have to admit it, I am kind of smitten with the First Family. I know now how people felt about JFK and his young family back in the day. You do just have to see this slide show of the girls. It’ll melt the heart of even the hardest far-right conservative.

(Via BMG.)