(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.) From a political perspective, there was a lot going on last week in Massachusetts and in Washington - and all of it will affect Somerville. |
In my January 13th column, I asked Somerville voters to turn out for Attorney General Martha Coakley in the U.S. Senate final, and you did. The numbers were impressive for an out-of-season special election: 57 percent of the city's registered voters cast ballots in the race, and gave Martha a massive 3-1 majority. Of course, as we now know, our local results were not typical: Scott Brown carried the state as a whole by a very solid five-point margin, and will take the seat left vacant by the death of Ted Kennedy.
Those who know him well (like my friend, City Hall colleague and fellow Somerville News columnist Jimmy Del Ponte) assure me that Scott Brown is a great guy. I've worked closely with Republicans before and I will again, and I don't think Brown will hold the election against us when it comes to federal stimulus and transit dollars. There can be no doubt however, that Somerville is going to miss Ted Kennedy's commitment to urban communities and the people who live in them. And there can also be no doubt that killing national health care reform - as Senator-elect Brown assures us he will do - will leave us with a system in which insurance rates continue to rise far faster than incomes or public revenues.
Everyone, including Senator-elect Brown, needs to remember that the current system is leading many private employers to drop coverage altogether, or to trim benefits while shifting costs to their employees. On the public sector side, the current system is soaking up taxpayer dollars that should be going into schools, parks, libraries and basic infrastructure. And the worst thing of all is that the current system - despite being 50 percent more expensive per person than the health insurance systems in most other developed nations - just isn't as effective. Americans are less healthy, are less happy about their health care, don't live as long and die at a higher rate than people in France, Britain, Canada, Germany, Spain, Italy and most other advanced nations. Something has got to be done - simply standing still won't cut it.
And of course, that's where things get interesting. You could argue - and I will - that the Democratic leadership in Congress has taken so long to move on this issue, and has allowed the basic ideas to be so obscured by various add-ons, deals and concessions, that the progressive base of the Democratic Party has ended up feeling like it has given away the store while getting very little in return.
So my hope is that President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid figure how to get their base as enthusiastic and fired up as they were in 2008. And I hope Governor Deval Patrick and Senate President Therese Murray and House Speaker Bob DeLeo do the same thing here in Massachusetts.
It's not enough to say that Scott Brown won because Martha Coakley and her team ran the wrong kind of campaign until it was almost too late and then couldn't figure out how to run the right one. It's not enough to say that if Mike Capuano had been the nominee, he would have gone toe-to-toe with Brown from Day One and the outcome would have been different (although I think that's probably true).
There's something else going on here, and we all have to work to fix it. A "business as usual" approach will make voters even more upset and angry. Scott Brown's victory could turn out to be a preview of a bleak future for Democrats if we don't move ahead with an ambitious agenda of reform and reinvestment.
Yet, despite the seismic shock of the Scott Brown victory, it wasn't the biggest political news of last week. In the long run, last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens v. Federal Election Commission is even bigger, because it opens the door to unlimited spending by corporations and unions in federal elections and, by implication, state and local elections, too. If a corporation or an industry cartel (like Big Oil or the Wall Street bankers) decide they don't like a regulation or a tax, they can now spend whatever they want, whenever they want, to buy TV and radio ads designed to change the rules back in their favor by getting rid of elected officials that stand in their way.
The Supreme Court said it has be this way because, under our constitution, corporations have the same civil rights as individuals. The high court's ruling actually runs counter to nearly a century of settled law but, far worse, it flies in the face of common sense. Can a corporation fight and die for our country? Can it sit on a jury? Does it have a conscience or a soul? Can it get married and raise a family? Does it have any sense of, or interest in, the common good?
Of course, there's not a lot any of us in Somerville can do about all this, except turn out in high numbers and vote our values, our hopes and our vision for the future. Somerville did just that on January 19th, and even though we didn't win, it was an inspiring moment.
Those who know him well (like my friend, City Hall colleague and fellow Somerville News columnist Jimmy Del Ponte) assure me that Scott Brown is a great guy. I've worked closely with Republicans before and I will again, and I don't think Brown will hold the election against us when it comes to federal stimulus and transit dollars. There can be no doubt however, that Somerville is going to miss Ted Kennedy's commitment to urban communities and the people who live in them. And there can also be no doubt that killing national health care reform - as Senator-elect Brown assures us he will do - will leave us with a system in which insurance rates continue to rise far faster than incomes or public revenues.
Everyone, including Senator-elect Brown, needs to remember that the current system is leading many private employers to drop coverage altogether, or to trim benefits while shifting costs to their employees. On the public sector side, the current system is soaking up taxpayer dollars that should be going into schools, parks, libraries and basic infrastructure. And the worst thing of all is that the current system - despite being 50 percent more expensive per person than the health insurance systems in most other developed nations - just isn't as effective. Americans are less healthy, are less happy about their health care, don't live as long and die at a higher rate than people in France, Britain, Canada, Germany, Spain, Italy and most other advanced nations. Something has got to be done - simply standing still won't cut it.
And of course, that's where things get interesting. You could argue - and I will - that the Democratic leadership in Congress has taken so long to move on this issue, and has allowed the basic ideas to be so obscured by various add-ons, deals and concessions, that the progressive base of the Democratic Party has ended up feeling like it has given away the store while getting very little in return.
So my hope is that President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid figure how to get their base as enthusiastic and fired up as they were in 2008. And I hope Governor Deval Patrick and Senate President Therese Murray and House Speaker Bob DeLeo do the same thing here in Massachusetts.
It's not enough to say that Scott Brown won because Martha Coakley and her team ran the wrong kind of campaign until it was almost too late and then couldn't figure out how to run the right one. It's not enough to say that if Mike Capuano had been the nominee, he would have gone toe-to-toe with Brown from Day One and the outcome would have been different (although I think that's probably true).
There's something else going on here, and we all have to work to fix it. A "business as usual" approach will make voters even more upset and angry. Scott Brown's victory could turn out to be a preview of a bleak future for Democrats if we don't move ahead with an ambitious agenda of reform and reinvestment.
Yet, despite the seismic shock of the Scott Brown victory, it wasn't the biggest political news of last week. In the long run, last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens v. Federal Election Commission is even bigger, because it opens the door to unlimited spending by corporations and unions in federal elections and, by implication, state and local elections, too. If a corporation or an industry cartel (like Big Oil or the Wall Street bankers) decide they don't like a regulation or a tax, they can now spend whatever they want, whenever they want, to buy TV and radio ads designed to change the rules back in their favor by getting rid of elected officials that stand in their way.
The Supreme Court said it has be this way because, under our constitution, corporations have the same civil rights as individuals. The high court's ruling actually runs counter to nearly a century of settled law but, far worse, it flies in the face of common sense. Can a corporation fight and die for our country? Can it sit on a jury? Does it have a conscience or a soul? Can it get married and raise a family? Does it have any sense of, or interest in, the common good?
Of course, there's not a lot any of us in Somerville can do about all this, except turn out in high numbers and vote our values, our hopes and our vision for the future. Somerville did just that on January 19th, and even though we didn't win, it was an inspiring moment.
Comments