Ed Lyons, Why is Mass. always in a state of emergency?:
The migrant shelter crisis has brought our state’s problematic emergency law back into public view. Our Legislature somehow shrugged in response to an unprecedented flow of migrants and asked Gov. Maura Healey to change — all by herself — a marvelous law it once passed with pride.
Healey cannot change our first-in-the-nation “Right to Shelter” legal guarantee all by herself, without invoking a formal emergency under the 1950 Civil Defense Act. House Speaker Ron Mariano advised her to do just that in October…
The primary reason we will see more unnecessary use of these emergency powers is that Massachusetts politics has problems that will increase demands for executive actions. We have a Legislature that is popular, unproductive, and invincible. [Ed. note: I believe that their popularity is due in part to the fact that they are unproductive. See also former-Gov. Baker.]
We have chronic policy problems, such as housing, climate, transit, and childcare— that we are not making much progress on.
We have a Commonwealth of cities and towns that often undermines solutions to those chronic problems at the local level, and they send legislators to Beacon Hill who do not want to contradict officials back home…
Dan Drezner, Useless Partisanship Weakens Necessary Partisanship:
In the 21st century there’s nothing to get a rollicking argument going than debating favorite Montequieu quotes. Mine, however, has always been “useless laws weaken the necessary laws.” I have paraphrased that sucker countless times in my scholarly and public writings. The idea behind the phrase is a powerful one: there are are certain policies or structures that may be necessary but, done to excess, can make things worse.
Today seems like a good day to apply that phrase to the concept of partisanship…
The United States needs not one but two competent political parties to ensure proper governance. That is because no single group has the monopoly of political or policy wisdom… The country would be better if it had an opposition party that knew how to properly oversee and investigate the functioning of the federal government. Instead we have a party that may well vote to impeach Joe Biden with zero evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor. The GOP has so cheapened the very concept of oversight that it can’t raise political hell even when that might be the right thing to do.
That is not just self-defeating for Republicans. It’s bad for the country.
Election 2024: Chris Gittins Announces Re-Election Candidacy for Planning Board