Republican policy wonk

No, not Newt Gingrich. Newt's strength is marketing the same old right-wing nostrums as if they might be something new. He's not going to move off of tax cuts as the be-all and end-all of the conservative movement. He's just going to dress that particular limp dick in edible underwear.

Charlie Baker (R-Swampscott) is the policy wonk of the hour, and he's going to get a lot less anonymous now that he has announced for governor of Massachusetts. There are a lot of idiots in the Republican Party (and in politics in general). He's not one of them.

I haven't talked to Charlie in a full thirty years - and if memory serves, we were probably talking about intramural volleyball. I didn't agree with his politics then and I don't now, but it's not stupid.

So, who loses from Baker jumping into the governor's race? Not Deval Patrick. He was already in trouble, and this doesn't make it worse.

The big loser is Tim Cahill. His political career is over. He split from the Democratic Party, aiming for a coalition of conservative Dems, independents, and centrist Republicans that are Baker's natural constituency. Cahill's best option now is to offer Baker his statewide network in exchange for ... what? I don't know. In any case, Cahill's network of conservative Democrats (by Massachusetts standards) might go independent, but GOP is an ideological bridge too far.

Christy Mihos loses, too. He still has money, so he can still run, but the GOP apparatus, such as it is, will rally behind Baker, since his pedigree is unassailable. If Mihos really has a jones to run again, he may be back in the independent column.

Bumper crop

Because I don't have time or energy to comment (today) on the Charlie Baker announcement, a cartoon...

Click image for full Bruce Beattie/Daytona Beach News-Journal cartoon.

Worried about a gas tax?

Deval Patrick is right that a gas tax would be a good way to raise additional revenue against budget shortfalls. Demand is pretty strong, but even so, a reduction in demand for gasoline has other positive public policy outcomes. A reduction in pollution is the biggest.

But, not to worry all you frothing anti-tax teabaggers: He doesn't have the votes, not even close, at least not in the House. It takes 81. Fifty would be a miracle.

Good government, bad politics

On the legislature's consensus budget:

“Until I can comment thoughtfully and with some study, I’m going to withhold comment,’’ [Gov. Deval] Patrick told reporters yesterday.

But let's call it what it is: an austerity budget with some but probably not enough good reforms.

Pressing on

There was at least one guy at the Massachusetts Democratic Party with a press credential, and there were TV cameras on the floor, though I didn't pick up who was filming. Today, though, hardly any coverage at all - a feature on the youth convention in the Globe, an unrelated story on Democratic scandals on Beacon Hill that would have tied in naturally to Deval Patrick's speech, a filler story on a moving violation and fender bender by the mayor of Fall River, and an AP file in the Herald limited to slot machines, not even anything sandbagging Robert Haynes's fiery and rambling speech. Maybe there are sound bites on local TV, maybe not.

Moral of the story: If you want coverage in this era of shrinking journalism, you have to cover yourself. Even change agents have to adjust to change.

So far, though, there's nothing on Youtube, nothing on massdems.org, and nothing on devalpatrick.com.

The four Rs

Reform, revenue, regressivity, and recessions.

Taxation is always difficult. No one loves it. Those of us who believe in active government recognize its necessity, even if the yahoos on the right continue to scream for starting with cuts long after the budget has already been seriously slashed. Their thinking is a Markov chain - they can't remember any cut as long as there's something, anything left that might conceivably be cut.

Massachusetts is considering three ways to raise transportation and other revenues:

• Toll increases on the Turnpike, which the MTA board passed because it was the only act in their power to avoid default and then rescinded while the branches government dickered
  
• Increased gas taxes on everyone, most notably Gov. Deval Patrick's 19c per gallon increase
• Increased sales taxes on everyone, Speaker Robert DeLeo's proposal (now passed by the House)
  

All these revenue sources are regressive and unfair in some way. Even though the impact of each instance is small, in total they're substantial, and they disproportionately affect those who are least able to pay them. Toll increases would extract further unfair revenue from a minority subset of beneficiaries of the Big Dig.

Gov. Patrick is right to emphasize reform at the same time as revenue. It's not only good politics; it's good government. I know for a fact that the legislature is aware of this. My State Rep told me so in no uncertain terms yesterday as she dreaded the trade-offs of today's vote.

I told her I supported the gas tax. Why if it's so regressive? It's better targeted than a general sales tax, and it has other positive effects on the environment. But it's far from ideal, a confirmation as if we needed another that politics is always the art of the possible.

What no one has proposed is a progressive income tax. One reason is that Article XLIV of the Massachusetts Constitution forbids a typical progressive income tax on ordinary income.

Of course, raising taxes of almost any kind in the kind of economic downturn we're facing has very adverse effects. We don't want people to tighten their spending even more and add to the depth of the recession. But, again, the Massachusetts Constitution requires a balanced budget every year.

The best proposal would take a leaf from Obama's book. It would reduce the 5.3% tax rate to 5% for the poor and middle class, but it would raise the rate on the affluent.

Not only is this a more progressive tax, a revenue-neutral change to a progressive tax would actually be stimulative, too, since poor and middle class taxpayers are more likely to spend their cuts and thus contribute to aggregate demand in a time when the fall of demand risks a feedback cycle of further economic shrinkage. Even a revenue-increasing proposal actually has a chance to be net stimulative, though that aggregate effect would depend on actual numbers.

No air of urgency on Morrissey Blvd.

Despite rising reporter unemployment and tides of red ink in journalism, a confidential source nicknamed Deep Tongue-Piercing wandered the Boston Globe newsroom yesterday for hours before finding a hungover editor to wake up off the sagging sofa around the corner from the Coke machine.

"Nothing seems to be happening," she said. "It's so quiet. The people I expect to see, I'm not seeing them."

Instead, the Globe remains at a standstill, unable to stand near the level of its corporate parent, the New York Times. Instead, say Globe insiders, management has embarked on a race for the two remaining readers of the Boston Herald, code-named Beavis and Butt-head. Accordingly, editors have instructed Matt Viser to write stupid, superficial stories such as this in order to attract the bilious talk radio audience to make stupid, superficial, and ungrammatical comments on the web site.

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Laws don't get made in open session. Representation of constituents involves much more than speaking to the chamber.

Measuring the engagement of the legislature by the time it spends assembled is a mug's game that's unbecoming of the paper, the reporter, and his editors. They all know better, but they're pretending they don't to inflame the rubes.

Not only is this bad journalism, it's bad for journalism. The mass audience they're now pimping to is a Fox News audience, and print can't compete with TV even on the web, but it especially can't compete with low-IQ TV in the well-aligned Beavis and Butt-head low-IQ (and proud of it) audience.

Taxes bring out the loonies

Don't raise taxes, just raise the subject of taxes, and total tax-free lunatics crawl out of the talk radio woodwork and explode their know-nothing bile all over everyone. The degree of their ignorance would be stunning but for long experience.

Gov. Deval Patrick is now open to raising the gas tax to fund the Turnpike Authority in servicing the debt incurred in building the Big Dig. Here's some of the reaction:

• will00407 assesses the condition of the economy by talking to one (one!) sales clerk of no known expertise. This suggests the level of will's expertise. Update (1/14): Real numbers from CNBC to show what a total dipshit will00407 is as he fantasizes about that one cute sales clerk.
  
• Timo-2 wants to revolt over this proposal because he thinks he doesn't use ... something he doesn't identify, but let's be charitable and assume he means the Big Dig. It's curious how he thinks goods get to him. Did someone finally invent a way to beam it down? I know, he gets it from the supermarket, end of story.
• XENOPHON-1 objects to legislator pensions, probably still angry from yesterday. The subtext of that story could have been how lousy legislator pensions actually are.
• sweetlandofliberty thinks the small, automatic legislator pay raises can pay for it all. Sure, if the Big Dig only needed a couple hundred thou. Learn to count? Not the tax haters.
• daviedooski thinks New Hampshire has no taxes at all. Government there is an air fern! He's an idiot.
• kickyoubutt is just mad, mad, mad. He hated Deval from the start and thinks we're all morons for not hating him.
• walpoleHSparent and bostonBBB can't remember two weeks ago or October, not even the cut of 1000 jobs from the payroll. The state never cuts its budget, except when they're conveniently not looking.
• teacher55, casinowriter, and dsilenzi want to start paying tolls on their local roads and highways, I guess, since they don't want to pay for our local roads and highways.
• -Hoss thinks he's smart to cut the tolltakers. Guess what? Already going on. Further, the MTA needs revenue, not because there's an operating shortfall, but because the Big Dig debt was moved onto the MTA for accounting purposes.

Well, that's enough stupidity for one day.

One other think: The American Petroleum Institute, which apparently now calls itself API (without all those other letters), ranks Massachusetts (PDF) below the national average for taxing gasoline.

Taking Duhbya out of New Hampshire

Here's a really hilarious fact that any baseball fan in greater Boston knows (among others): Both John Sununu (R) and Jeanne Shaheen (D) are running against Duhbya. Sununu is even trying to tie Shaheen to Bush.

Really, Republicans will say anything, no matter how much it assumes viewers are microcephalic idiots, if they think it will help them get elected. I mean, this is a Sununu!

Fortunately, New Hampshirites may be recovering conservatives, but they really really hate it if you treat them like they're stupid.

Making sausage

When is $1 billion only $700 million (or less)? When the legislature decides that money ostensibly appropriated to stimulate biotech growth gets parcelled out to projects that are kinda-sorta-almost related to the goal - university buildings, highway interchanges, sewage treatment plants. It's not that these things aren't needed; it's just that they should get their own bill.

Yes, I know that's not how appropriations get passed, but this practice of larding up is one reason it's hard to point to dramatic successes in state government.

In fact, all of these earmarks do have their own bills. Their authors are just getting a second bite at the apple.

Poor non-competitive Republicans

Mitt Romney's campaigned hard in 2004 to put more CEOs into the Massachusetts legislature. He directed an unremittingly (ha) negative campaign, but he failed utterly. I live in one of the Senate districts that he targeted with laughably nasty mailings at the rate of several per week, and it turned people off.

My Senator won 60/40.

Now the Republican Party is having trouble recruiting candidates. Boo-hoo.

They're going to run on the argument that their electoral failure is the best reason to elect more of them. Yeah, right.

Massachusetts has had Democratic government for two years, and the world has not fallen apart. Taxes haven't gone up. There are still checks and balances here, unlike Washington before 2006. Democrats aren't the monolithic blocs that Republicans are.

Roads and bridges

Massachusetts's roads and bridges are always in terrible shape this time of year. Maybe I could even drop "this time of year", but it's worse at the end of winter, when driving without hitting every teeth-rattling pothole is an improvised slalom. Keeps us on our toes.

Bridge repair has some great advantages in politics. Unlike, say, health care, it's tangible to everyone. It's well-distributed, so everyone gets a piece of it. Hardly anyone except for the looniest libertarian wants to go back to privately owned roads, so even if the tightwads grouse about featherbedding at the Turnpike Authority, they still agree that we need roads that aren't pounded back into gravel and sand.

I'd like to see Deval Patrick take his show on the road. Never mind that this will probably pass the General Court (the anachronistic name of our legislature). He needs to recoup some political capital from the casino debacle (and I was on the fence about that). I'd like to see media events all over the Commonwealth, on or near some of the bridges he's proposing to fix.

Then, I'd like to see him start selling us in detail what we're already buying. It's tax time. It's far too easy to complain about the bill if you don't know what you're buying. And most people don't have any idea.

Positions are boring

So much of political media coverage is like this - who's up, who's down, who's attacking. What do the candidates stand for? Boring!

Update: Paul K. beat me to it.