Left In Lowell

Or as good as - the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been forwarded past the filibuster threat in the Senate by a 63-33 vote, pretty much assuring its passage.

This is a long time coming - the nation, and the military, has been ready for this for a long time. Now, we can finally allow gays to openly serve as they do in many other countries. Gays and lesbians have been on the front lines in war, risking their lives for their country. And now they will not be thrown out for being who they are.

Congrats to the activists who fought so hard for this. It is a victory that took too long, but it is a victory.

Though he’s wrong on almost every other issue, kudos on this to Senator Scott Brown for voting for our gay servicemen and women. (Note: I can’t find the role call but at 63 votes to pass, mathematically he has to be one of the yes votes.) Also kudos to Sen. John Kerry, who fought for this for a long time.

The Boston Globe web site, boston.com has an interesting series of articles, analysis and graphics on the recently released American Community Survey. Here is the link to the information on Lowell.

And thanks to Jack who brought to all of his fb friends that the New York Times, the Globe’s parent company, had a great series of maps, down to the street level, on some of the American Community Survey.

The Globe writes that this information on U.S. demographics is “ the largest single-day release of data in US Census Bureau history. The five-year survey…. provides the fullest portrait of the nation since the 2000 Census and sheds light on myriad aspects of who we are and how we live.”

The note accompanying the web sites’ graphics remind us that “The US Census’s American Community Survey numbers are estimates based on sample data collected from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2009. The data are estimates, not counts.” The 2010 U.S. Census will provide the actual population count. Well sort of…if you did not raise your hand, you were not counted.

Nevertheless, the presented data should be of major interest to all of us. The graphics focus on the Massachusetts cities with a population of +65,000. There are fourteen such cities, including Lowell. Here is some of the information available:
Population: If the estimates are correct, Lowell will no longer be Massachusetts’ fourth largest City. We will be the 5th; Cambridge has surpassed us. According to American Community Survey, in 2009 Lowell’s population was 104,385 while Cambridge’s was 108,776.

Median Age: We are one of the youngest cities with a median age of 32.3 but we have gotten older since 2006 when the median age was 30.5. I think there might be something wrong with this figure. According to the data in 2008, the median age was 29.5, which begs the question, where did all the young people go in 2009?

High School Graduates: We are fourth from the bottom, coming in at 76.5% in 2009. And we have not made any progress in four years. The problem could be that we have a larger drop out rate than most other Mass cities and/or population shifts.

College Graduates: That figure has not moved in four years either. I am not sure what that means. I would expect it to move up a bit but with increased costs in higher education, the four year plan may have turned into the seven year one.

Foreign Born: Twenty-seven and half percent (27.5%) of our population is foreign born. That is about 29,000, including me. Lowell ranks third in percentage but I believe second to Boston in numbers of foreign born residents. The population who speaks another language outside of English at home is 38.1%.

Median Income: There is a discrepancy in the Globe’s data on that piece of information. Their map says Median Family Income at $56,494 and the their graph says Median Household Income at $46,774. I was able to verify the first piece of information on the ACS web site but I am not sure about the second one. And more important what is the difference between “household” and “family”’?

And speaking of households, from the ACS’ s web site: In 2005-2009 there were 38,000 households in Lowell city. The average household size was 2.6 people. Families made up 62 percent of the households in Lowell city.”
And speaking of income, again from the ACS’s web site: “In 2005-2009, 18 percent of people were in poverty. Twenty-five percent of related children under 18 were below the poverty level, compared with 15 percent of people 65 years old and over. Fifteen percent of all families and 36 percent of families with a female householder and no husband present had incomes below the poverty level.” Those numbers have gone up since 2000.

The population in Lowell that identifies itself as white is down from 67.4% in 2006 to 61.5% in 2009. Those who identify themselves as Asia make up 19.4%, that is a drop of 3% from 2008. Those who identify themselves as Hispanic or Latino are 15.7% of our population and those who identify themselves as black are 7.2%.

There are many other pieces of data available but I am sure those of you who have read up to here are on information overload. I do not think there is any major surprises but sometimes it is better to deal with real numbers than mere assumptions.

That phrase (usually used to jokingly invoke the concept of fraud) has a whole new meaning if 17 year olds are able to vote in municipal elections.

A young person getting excited about voting in a local election is a young voter who will turn into an older voter. Apathy young means apathy later (ask me about my generation and its lack in the voter rolls). I’m all for this Home Rule petition, which has to pass the City Council tonight in order to go before the state legislature. I don’t know its chances once there, but I do know that a mass of young people are expected to show up at tonight’s Council meeting.

Young people. En mass. Showing up for local politics. How could you possibly say no to those shining young faces?

Good luck UTEC and the youth activists of this city, and I encourage our city councilors to vote yes tonight.

It’s a good thing Bud Caulfield and the Lowell Sun is on the case protecting us from the merely decent response times of the DPW during ice storms. I mean, don’t they employ a clairvoyant at DPW? I thought everyone did!

Caulfield is of course on the forefront of (actually, the only person making) biting remarks against the new DPW head. Here’s a choice quote from the “crack reporting” piece in the Sun (I think this is the piece from Sunday - the Sun fails to put the original post date on their articles):

He said the city’s new Department of Public Works commissioner, Ralph Snow, wasn’t prepared to respond to the nasty conditions.

“It’s early in the season, and we haven’t had snow yet, but I certainly view this as a yardstick for future (performance) by the DPW,” Caulfield said. “You can’t wait to respond to the weather until after you’ve had 46 accidents. You have to respond immediately.”

Immediately, apparently, to Mr. Caulfield, is before you even hear about them.

I also find it interesting that in the Sun’s piece, the accidents in Lowell were mentioned way up top…and buried far down, they mention that quite a number happened in surrounding towns - probably a proportional number of accidents given the relative smaller sizes of (and road maneuvering room in) the towns. But no comparison is given, a reader has to work that out by comparing the numbers given for Lowell at the top, and the (not specific) numbers, a “half-dozen in each” (vague language - nice) for the other towns.

Of course, Caulfield has a history of jumping to conclusions in any situation - note that he’s stating that Ralph Snow (ironic name?) “wasn’t prepared to respond to the nasty conditions” according to the paraphrase by the Sun. Even though he hasn’t really heard the entire story, and doesn’t know what was or was not done. And raise your hand if you think that within 10 minutes of hearing about ice hitting the road, you can have a fleet of sand trucks out, and they can cover an entire city, in the middle of a bad budget year no less? OK now.

Raise your other hand if you think it’s a good idea to sand a road before an ice storm so that the ice covers the sand and is useless? All right.

And, did the Sun bother to call any other city councilors for quotes, other than a man known for irascible - and irrational - dislike for all things Bernie-Lynch-related? Just wonderin’. You know, cuz that seems suspicious to me. Bud is all over that article like white on rice. He gets plenty of ink with which to express outrage that doesn’t exist on behalf of city voters, and the Sun’s compromised and agenda-driven editor gets a manufactured controversy with which to whack Bernie over the head. A win-win for (what’s left of) the GOB, generally.

Here’s a guy (Snow), with some serious pedigree and background, who’s five weeks into his new job, which by the way McCarthy vacated voluntarily (to go work for Marty, big shocker there - so I little understand the outrage), getting his first taste of the Old Lowell politics. I hope to god this doesn’t drive the poor guy away. (Ralph, seriously, we’re not all off the deep end, some of us are sane!)

By the way, Bud, are you happy with yourself attacking a former member of the Armed Forces? Just askin’. You know. You’d be all up in arms over anyone attacking a someone who has a military history, normally.

And are we New Englanders, or what?? We all know that the first storm of the year that produces bad roads causes an explosion of accidents. Apparently drivers aren’t the only ones who get yearly amnesia - conveniently, so do editors of Small Local Papers.

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Super Crack Reporting

So a day or two after their initial skeezy reporting, the Sun follows up, contacting Lynch and Snow again, to get the “time line” a little clearer:

Snow left his home about 6:50 a.m., to drive his son to a hockey game in Nashua. Snow said he noticed after 10 minutes of driving that the roads were slippery, so he decided to call the city’s 24-hour DPW line to see if the police had called to notify the DPW of icy roads.

He was told the police had called at 6:50 a.m. — five minutes after the first reported car accident — and that a DPW foreman was already calling staffers to come in to help salt and sand the city’s roads.

By 7:10, the city had two sanding trucks on the road.

So where exactly was the controversy? Oh, right, there wasn’t one. Seems to me the city was on it pretty well like usual.

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The SOOFT

Now, comes the big Shoe On the Other Foot Test (aka the SOOFT)…the real crux of my problem with SandGate.

Imagine for a moment that Snow or Lynch or the people under them who make these decisions mobilized every sand truck driver we had at 3am before the storm started, at a cost of, say, $8,000-$10,000 (conservatively), for them to sit in their trucks and wait in case the storm produced ice on the roads.

Then the storm winds up being a bust, passing us by or maybe being too warm for ice/snow.

Can you hear the howling from Bud about wasting taxpayer money? I can, too.

‘Nuff said.

If there’s anything I wish we could get through the thick skulls of American voters, it’s this information.

The “red” states up in arms about government spending receive the largest share of it. This is not a new finding, but research by economist Gary Richardson at the University of California-Irvine backs it up.
[…]
It isn’t surprising that the more Republican a state leans, the more likely it is to be furious about government spending. But what is surprising is that states with the highest anti-spending sentiment appear to be the largest beneficiaries of government spending. Not only do red states swallow the lion’s share of government spending, but Richardson found a linear relationship between the extent of GOP support in a state—and, by implication, the fervor of its anti-government sentiment—and the amount of federal largesse the state receives.
[…]
The 28 states where George W. Bush won more than 50 percent of the vote in 2004 received an average of $1.32 for every dollar contributed. The 19 states where Bush received less than 50 percent of the vote collected 93 cents on the dollar.

“Voting Republican paid large dividends,” Richardson wrote in a piece published in the Economist’s Voice. “For each 1 percent of the population voting in favor of the Republican presidential candidate, the state received an additional 1.7 cents in benefits for each dollar in taxes.”

Vedantam also gives us the polar opposite examples…Alaska, an über conservative state, gets back $1.64 for every $1 they send to the federal government, while Massachusetts receives 82 cents for every dollar it send to the feds.

My first comment is, if those conservative hypocrites hate government spending so much, than give us our money back. Massachusetts could do so much with an extra 20% boost in the federal dollars we receive. Maybe, single payer universal health care? Or super cheap or free higher public education? Then we’d really be positioned to kick global economic butt.

But Vedantam doesn’t end there. He goes back to before there was this red-state-blue-state spending disparity, to tell us something even more insidious.

During the 1970s and 1980s—throughout the Carter, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush administrations—there was no correlation between anti-spending sentiment and getting lots of federal money. The net return to states that voted for Republicans was relatively flat, meaning that “red” states didn’t get most of the pie.

But that changed around 1994—after the last Republican takeover of Congress. […]

Buried in the fine print of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America,” Richardson found an income redistribution scheme. The proportion of government spending on groups that traditionally supported Democrats fell. The proportion of government income from groups that traditionally supported Democrats rose.

“Tax rates declined more for groups that tended to vote Republican. These groups include people with incomes in the upper tail of the distribution, such as small business owners, property owners, and investors accruing capital gains. … At the same time, expenditures fell more for programs directed toward people that tended to vote Democratic. These groups included welfare recipients, inner-city residents, and individuals in the lower tail of the income distribution.”

In other words, this appears to be a deliberate plan to under-fund the blue states. It’s like the starve-the-beast scenario, only starving blue beasts only. But the explanation for this disparity in which states get more or less funds than they put into the kitty has largely been explained as a progressive income redistribution - richer states subsidizing poorer states who can’t afford adequate funding levels for education, retirement, or social net programs.

The article goes on to dispute that idea, and you can read it yourself, but the point here is, it’s severely hypocritical for conservatives to disparage government spending, since their beloved red states, their base, are the ones who are costing us the most money - being subsidized heavily by those alleged “big liberal spenders.”

Again, if you don’t want our money, please - give it back. Or for heaven’s sake, at least admit the fact that you are a filthy, dirty hypocrite conservative.

Obama just lost us Social Security.

That’s what they could say ten years from now when the Republicans have dismantled the program like they have been trying to do for over 70 years. What the wingers couldn’t do for all that time, Obama has done for them. He has truly begun the undermining of this popular “third rail” of American politics. Republicans are salivating over the battle. Via FireDogLake, HuffPo’s Ryan Grim got Republican leaders on the record saying exactly what you’d expect them to say (bold mine):

Republicans acknowledged that the expiration of the tax holiday will be treated as a tax increase. “Once something like this goes into place, a year from now, when it expires, it’ll be portrayed as a tax increase,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). So in a body like Congress, precedents matter and this is setting a precedent. I think that certainly is going to create some problems down the road if it passes.”

Given that Congress, under Democratic control, can’t gather itself to let tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire, members of both parties are convinced that letting the payroll tax rate revert back to its current spot will be near impossible.

“Once you bring a rate down, if it goes back up, people will feel that. They’ll feel their paycheck being less and that argument” — that letting it expire amounts to a tax hike — “eventually is bound to be made,” said Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.).

“There’s always a tendency to continue those things… Once something comes in, it’s very difficult to change it,” said Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio.) He then volunteered, without prompting, that “It would be detrimental to the Social Security system, especially when it’s in bad shape.”

We all know this is going to be the way it goes down. There will be a one year extension next year, since the political season’ll be heating up, and then another, and another, maybe longer one. One way or the other, the FICA tax cut will be permanent. Then comes the SS and Medicare “crisis” that this will create. Republicans will say that since neither is solvent any longer, benefits will have to be cut, the age of SS will have to go up, less will have to be paid out. This is, of course, right as the Baby Boomers are retiring, making it even more dire.

There’s an easy answer to this of course. Make the FICA tax cut permanent, but raise the ceiling of wages that FICA affects to $200K, or $250K. But this will not happen, because it should have happened several times already, and Democrats are effing wusses and can’t get it done, even with big majorities in Congress and the White House.

So, kiss your retirement plans goodbye, my friends. Forget about having quality health care in your later years and certainly, don’t rely on Democrats to save your ass, either.

Apparently he has passed away after a short illness. There was a lot of friction between Pat and I, but he was a hard worker and passionate about politics, and about Lowell, and my condolences to his family for their loss.

It seems to be a bad month for losing political and public figures. I hope that this is the last condolence thread I have to make for a long while.

A self-identified strong political centrist friend on facebook recently expressed his disgust at Obama’s “compromise” on the tax cut extensions for the rich. I commented that if Obama has lost him, he really has lost the squishy middle. Polls show that the vast majority of Americans didn’t want a tax cut extension for the wealthy. And in the context of all the (somewhat misplaced) concern over deficits, this so-called compromise from Obama is even weirder - after all, neither the tax cuts, nor the unemployment benefit extension that we “got” from Republinans, are “paid for.” Which makes both the Republicans, who “ran” on the deficit, and Obama, with his Catfood (er, “Deficit”) Commission, incredibly hypocritical.

Of course, Obama didn’t lose, and the Republicans didn’t win, on the election being about deficits. It was about an economy that people felt hadn’t gotten enough attention by our leaders of either party. Many stayed home, and the result was that the fired up Republicans took control of the House. But you can’t convince a Republican about that by giving in to him.

But it gets worse. Obama called the Republicans “hostage takers” - and he’s right. They held a gun to Americans suffering with long term unemployment, and to tax cuts for the middle class, and demanded a ransom for the rich, despite the 60%+ of Americans who don’t want that. Obama wants us to believe that this was about preventing harm to the hostages.

He might be right, but only for the short term. What do you get when you negotiate with hostage takers? Emboldened hostage takers. They now know they can threaten harm to get what they want with little or no consequences. And the next threat of harm is right around the corner, and is very, very dire - Chris Bowers at dkos explains:

The problem is, this deal does not free the hostages, and escort them to a safe place. This is because, at a minimum, the deal does not raise the debt ceiling.

According to current projections, Congress will have to vote on raising the debt ceiling in late March, or else the whole country goes into default. At that time, Republicans could–and likely will–take the entire country hostage. After their successful hostage taking on the tax cuts, in exchange for raising the debt ceiling preventing default, they could demand spending cuts that will far exceed any of the stimulus in this deal, or exceed any collateral damage caused by not doing this deal.

Keep in mind that many Republican leaders threatened this very thing already. It’s not a matter of maybe, it’s a matter of when and how much.

This time it won’t be your $400-to-700-on-average tax cut extension on the line, or the $2M long term unemployed, but the “Full Faith and Credit of the United States” held hostage. That threat, if carried out (government shutdown, defaulting on loans, the works) could cause another severe dip back down to recession. So, what safety did we gain for the American public with this deal? After all, we just proved to Republicans that holding the American economy and people hostage gets them pretty much everything they want.

Republicans leaders don’t really believe their own hype that tax cuts for the wealthy (or preventing the lapse of such) really helps job growth. The Congressional Budget Office, and many other prestigious institutions, have said over and over again that this “trickle down” theory doesn’t really work - tax cuts for the rich are not stimulative. It is marginally more stimulative to cut taxes for the middle class and below, as they are out there spending their money on goods and services, and so will spend marginally more if given tax cuts. It is more stimulative still is to ensure that the unemployed are buoyed up by benefits, and the best stimulus is direct government spending. Those facts are not in dispute - unless you’re a Republican leader (or their adherents) trying to sell a despicable tax and spending cut policy that will continue to erode the middle class.

In fact, you can easily make the argument that a double dip recession will only benefit Republicans politically, as people will continue the blame the party that is mostly in power, even if in name only. You might even be able to make the argument that they could be cynically aiming to bring us back to recession in order to peddle their snake oil solutions in 2012, and possibly succeed. Certainly, with Democratic leaders reluctant to use their bully pulpit to fight for what will help the middle class and small businesses, there really isn’t any competing storyline out there to gainsay them.

The fact is, not holding a line now will have consequences going forward. Not just political consequences - those are pretty bad alone. But also policy consequences on the “hostages” that Obama thinks he just saved. Enjoy the compromise you have now, because it’s going to get even worse later.

It was just announced that Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards, has passed away due to her cancer. There are so many reasons to love Elizabeth - she was tough, smart as hell, progressive, caring, warm, and just a presence in a room wherever she went.

I had the privilege to meet her during the 2008 campaign, in NH, before her husband dropped out, and before revelations of his extra-marital affair with a campaign staffer which produced a child. She handled her illness, and her marriage, and her life under such public scrutiny, with grace and dignity. There are many many fans of Elizabeth Edwards and I am one of them…she shone, even as the luster tarnished on John Edwards. People stopped believing in him, but they always believed in Elizabeth.

Thank you, Elizabeth, for your example about what a great human being should be. Rest in peace.

*headsmack*

From David S. Bernstein of Talking Politics, who is taking one for the team and reading Palin’s new book “Going Rogue.” He notates a particularly, er, interesting view Palin has on herself:

…And then I came across something written by an American who knew a little something about adversity: Helen Keller. She wrote, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

If I didn’t know before what she meant, I know now.

The adversity that Palin is referring to? Levi Johnston’s 2009 media tour.

Right. Lifetime of deafness and blindness is so easily compared to a self-inflicted wound wherein there is public flogging of one’s personal life.

Next she’ll be comparing her trials to the persecutions suffered under the Spanish Inquisition. Because no one expects the…oh, dammit. Satire is dead anyway. It’s hard to write humor about Palin when she is such a self-parody already.

You know what? The woman totally belongs on reality TV. I see that now.