Author: Jim Dowd

No Snark Sunday: Boston Stronger

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I’m seeing a lot of crap on my social media feeds about particular cruelties that should be applied to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the recently convicted Boston Marathon Bomber.

Can we just not?

I’ll be honest here, I don’t want to stand next to you at the playground if you seem to spend your off hours thinking up highly-detailed Medieval-style cruelties that can be applied to another human being, no matter how loathsome. And the willingness for people to try and support about the most anti-American thing you can say, “We shouldn’t even have bothered to have a trial” followed by some kind of town-square-type justice proposal that sounds like it’s out of the KKK lynching manual makes my skin crawl.

I understand the passions of the moment during the attack. I was there myself. But it’s been two years. We need to fall back on that thing we call “having a civilization worth defending.” The anger we felt in the moment needs to give way to what makes us better than the Tsarnaev brothers and what they could ever try to pass off as some kind of “philosophy.” That thing is called The Rule of Law. You should check it out, the Babylonians dreamed it up then those crazy Jews turned it into a groove successful cultures have rocked for over eight thousand years.

The bombers’ plan to scare us and make us cow backfired so spectacularly because Boston is and always has been the place where, for all our (many) faults, in the end our belief in that rule of law, along with our general sense of ethics and morals, actually mean something. Not bullshit posturing like the Indiana idiots who want to let people refuse to make pizza for gay weddings (because Jesus never would have made some kind of concoction for a party full of “undesirables”), but here we actually have a history of giving a shit about real matters of human dignity and decency.

From the original patriots desiring freedom from actual tyranny to the abolitionists fighting against slavery to things like healthcare and (again) gay marriage, good education for all and the support of the rational disciplines of science, technology and the environment, we’re undisputed leaders. The 24th city by size in our country leads in a huge number of categories from our average public school students (who challenge countries like Finland and Japan) to our social outcomes where we have the lowest divorce rates, low crime rates, low teen pregnancy rates, all that stuff that would make a social conservative get warm in sinful places. We punch so high above our weight class not because we move our mouths around, but because we actually do the hard work of understanding root causes and then taking the actions which will make the outcomes we want real.

I know it’s more emotionally satisfying to just talk tough and then never actually do anything meaningful to solve the problems at hand, but that crap doesn’t fly here. Move to fucking Florida if you want that shit. Living here takes work. You need a snow shovel and a brain and a tough skin. And you have to use all three in equal measures.

And sorry, but that means not going all Atilla on pressure-cooker boy who’s name I hope to never have to try and spell again and who I plan on beginning to forget about starting the day after his sentencing. That’s my plan and I hope you’ll join me in it.

Oh, and for all you death penalty fans out there, read what the parents of Martin Richard, the 8 year old (my son’s age at the time of the attack) killed in the attack have to say about seeking the death penalty in this case.

“As long as the defendant is in the spotlight, we have no choice but to live a story told on his terms, not ours,” they said. “The minute the defendant fades from our newspapers and TV screens is the minute we begin the process of rebuilding our lives and our family.”

They’ve had to think about this a lot. Maybe we should listen to them.

The Gloucester Clam’s Block Party Ideas

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[Today’s post is from Clamtributor Brooke Welty]

We all know that Gloucester loves a block party. But the Mayor is now soliciting opinions (via a Surveymonkey poll rather than through official civic channels, so don’t worry if you missed it) on a new approach. Rather than the city organizing the block parties, we would simply close down Main St. every Saturday evening in July and August, and leave it up to the businesses to plan anything.

According to the poll question:
” There would be no organized entertainment, but entrepreneurial merchants, restaurants and street performers would be encouraged to put provided their own entertainment.”

So we here at The Clam started thinking about planning some entertainment for one of these do-it-yourself block parties. What could be more fun? So below are some ideas for themes and events that we came up with.

  • Theme: Burning Man At The Wheel. Fire eaters, Fire Breathers, topless dreadlocked people of any and all gender options promoting art via controlled chaos. What could go wrong?
  • Have people dressed like zombies shamble down the street at random intervals
  • Hire a troupe of obscene mimes
  • Hire a White Guy Blues Band
  • Theme: Cirque du Soleil. Muscled, lithe acrobats to entertain the crowds with their feats of physical prowess, bending and twisting all over…I’m sorry, where was I?
  • Theme: Downton Abbey, Gloucester Style. Alcohol will be served in delicate tea cups by well mannered wait staff to people trying for their best moneyed British accent. Sexual repression and social strata will be strictly enforced.
  • Pony rides
  • Erect a Thunderdome to work out greivances between neighbors for the amusement of all

School Consolidation Fetishism- Weirder than Furries

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To have a realistic fantasy seem believable to readers an author needs to counterbalance their made-up world with as much reality as possible. J.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series  therefore relies on an elaborate backstory including fully-formed invented languages, J.K. Rowling brings in details from contemporary Britain and typical teenage drama to make the magical Hogwarts familiar to anyone who’s been to middle school.

However, a lack of believable detail is why the “We should consolidate the Gloucester elementary schools into one big mega-school” fantasy has failed to really catch hold the public’s imagination. Its proponents have consistently failed to ever provide any clues as to how this idea would work, even in the rogue alternative universe where citizens actually want that.

And where this lady could be principal.

And where this lady could be principal.

To backfill for a second: There is the occasional call by the Gloucester Daily Times saying the neighborhood elementary schools should all be consolidated into one big school. They claim this will save money and improve educational outcomes.

Proposed design (zeppelin transport ships not shown)

Proposed design (zeppelin transport ships not shown)

But this claim is a lot like saying vampires sparkle or that Unicorn pee tastes like cotton candy. There is no evidence its’ true. Quite the contrary, in fact (read below). And none of the proponents ever provides credible numbers or a simple spreadsheet or any case studies to show how this would work or be beneficial.

Let’s Clamsplore, shall we?

First, to do this you would need a really big-ass building. Fuller School will never be the place, it’s now essentially condemned and even when it was possible to use as as school the process of converting it was deemed far too expensive by these experts here. They determined it would have cost twice per square foot what Manchester/Essex and Ipswich paid for their new schools. So that would be a bad idea, paying twice as much. Fuller is out then, so give it up. It’s done. Move on from Fuller, we beg you. There is not one credible evaluation that shows the existing Fuller building being rehabbed into a consolidated school at a price point that would seem reasonable even to your most peyote-addled numerologist. Yes, they may do something else with the building, but not a school unless you bulldoze it flat first at which point you start again from near zero, costwise (some savings on grounds and site prep. But still, not a lot.)

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Who pays for this big-ass building? This is a key question because the Commonwealth covers half the cost of rehabbing our existing schools on their educational facilities list. They will NOT cover the cost of making a new consolidated school out of whole cloth. So Gloucester is going to bear the total cost of a new school to achieve this amazing consolidation cost benefit? What’s that going to run us, 60 million bucks? More? We have to pay for the whole thing? Is someone planning to pass an override for that? A bond issue? Hello? How is there a fiscal benefit here if we just lost a minimum of 30 million bucks having to build the thing?

And what do we save? There are five elementary schools. You can’t hire any fewer teachers because of the mandated student-to-teacher ratio. Same with aides, specialists and all that. You can reliably cut out four principals, a couple of custodians and maybe a few kitchen folks along with a few other support staff. There’s your big economy of scale. And what do you get for it?

  1. You have to pay full price for a new building rather than going halfsises with the Commonwealth.
  2. Kids of all ages from all over the district now have to be bussed (at great cost) to this imaginary central school. Kindergarteners will be spending 40 min on a bus each way.
  3. Crappier educational outcomes. Hey! Actual data from the National Education Policy Center tracking the outcomes of districts who had tried consolidation! What do you know? (they also note the “cost savings” are largely fictitious)

“…Moreover, contemporary research does not support claims about the widespread benefits of consolidation. The assumptions behind such claims are most often dangerous oversimplifications… Research also suggests that impoverished regions in particular often benefit from smaller schools and districts, and they can suffer irreversible damage if consolidation occurs.”

Oh, wow. Weird. Actual experts in education at Ohio University tracked outcomes and found something completely opposite of what the education experts at the Gloucester Daily Times propose in their data-free editorial (paywall because sad). How strange. It’s almost as if those calling for consolidation in Gloucester did no research whatsoever and are simply making noises out of the wrong ends of their digestive tracts.

And what else do we, as a city, get in this amazing deal? Well, imagine you’re now a realtor trying to sell a house to a young couple in Magnolia, Lanesville or one of the neighborhoods off of Grapevine in East Gloucester. You have to tell them that their future five-year-olds will spend 80 minutes a day on a bus to to get to and from the consolidated elementary school. Sounds awesome huh?

just five more stops!

just three more stops lil’ Timmy!

 It seems like this particular plan would actually dramatically increase the number of families “choicing out” of the district. I thought we were trying to decrease that number. Can someone explain how this would help?

 But maybe someone has numbers somewhere that show what an awesome idea this would be? A case study? Some projections, a spreadsheet, a table graph or chart? I don’t know about you, Clampadres, but we here are getting pretty frigging sick of a bunch of half-baked “ideas” about how to run the town that come in completely fact-free packaging. Everyone talks about running the town more “like a business.” Sure, OK, I work in business. I deal with business innovations all the time.

Urinal elephant? We'll take two.

Urinal elephant? We’ll take two.

The first thing the CEO says when you have an idea is: “Show me the numbers.” So let’s see them. Or is this whole consolidation thing less of an “idea” and more of an “ongoing obsession” for a certain people who will continue to advocate for it with no substantive proof points. Obsessions not based in reality are also called “fetishes,” by the way.

This is numbers-based argument. Let’s see some.

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We Need to Stop Thinking Public Assistance is a Luxury.

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I was on food stamps once, and it wasn’t a fuckin’ luxury.

I’m writing this for the Clam as an anonymous contributor (adding all the swears I possibly can), because of the social stigma that comes with being on food stamps. It should not be there, but it is. Here’s the thing: the recession hit and shit happened. I lost my job, we had young kids, I decided to go back to school after I could find nothing at all in my field for a ridiculous length of time, and we ended up on food stamps for a time. It took awhile to get back on our feet, but now we’re off – kind of like most people. After all, the average family is on food stamps for 8-10 months.  A lot of people had it way worse than we did.

This week, a Missouri lawmaker proposed a bill that would limit the kind of food that could be purchased under the SNAP program. Not content with the reasonable federal food stamp guidelines like “no alcohol, hot prepared food, or cigarettes”, they set out to make their own.

What do they want to cut? Lobster and steak, naturally. Because you know, people below the poverty line are so clearly going hog-wild and blowing taxpayer money on lobsters and filets. In addition, chips cookies and soda would be on the banned list. Potato chips.

Not for you, poor person! Also, no ginger ale. For reasons.

Not for you, poor person! Also, no ginger ale. For reasons.

This kind of thinking irritates me beyond belief. Policing what the poor eat is meant to do absolutely nothing more than shame them. It sends the message that they are too stupid to make their own choices for the sin of not having money. Some of the same people who crow on about the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, and limiting the scope of our government have no problem, apparently, telling other people what to do.

Here’s some truth about food stamps from someone who was on them long enough to know.

The average benefit per family member meal is $1.45, although in MA it’s higher (we got closer to $1.60ish, but there have been cuts to the program since my income came back). That amount leaves little room for error, and most families have to make hard choices about what’s going to feed them or end up spending some of their own cash. I was lucky (loose quotes on that) that we still had one solid income and unemployment, so we could go over that amount and cover the difference with cash and not lose our house. For comparison, the average family’s grocery bill runs from $146-289 per week. At the low end, that’s $1.74 per meal. At the high end, $3.44. Food stamp recipients get a below-average benefit allotment every month.

So why, exactly, are we limiting them from buying steak or lobster? Where does the “steak” line get drawn? What if it’s heavily discounted because it goes bad tomorrow? Still not okay to buy? This seems especially stupid for anyone who lives in this area because let’s face it, Market Basket always has lobsters extremely cheap for a few weeks in the summer, and it can be cheaper or at least comparable to any other meat source. Either food stamp recipients are cutting that money from other parts of their food budget (for instance, cutting out cereal and replacing it with Krusty Brand Imitation Gruel), or at the end of the month they’re going to be spending their own cash anyway. And, more importantly, steak and lobster tastes great, it’s packed full of protein, and it’s a nice treat for people who don’t really have that much else going for them. More than 30% of food stamp recipients are employed, by the way, and that number is rising – with many more on Social Security. If there is no child or elderly person in the household, adults with no income are limited to 3 months of benefits.

And that, really, is the sad part about it. The lawmakers in Missouri want to remove one of the little joys in life – a really good, tasty meal that can make or break your entire week – from poor people. People who lost their jobs. Single moms. Retirees. The kind of folks who need a small thing now and again to grind through an exhausting existence. And soda? Let me explain something to you: you go to school full time, while your spouse works, and you have two small kids without a goddamn caffeine boost in the afternoon and then come back and we’ll talk. Yeah, I bought soda. I didn’t drive into a bridge abutment out of sheer delusional exhaustion on the way home from night class. And yeah, I bought steak once in awhile. Because steak is fucking awesome and this is America and I ate a lot of Krusty Brand Imitation Gruel in my off-time.

I dare anyone supporting this kind of asshole legislation go to their nearest Walmart or McDonalds and tell the worker behind the counter that they don’t deserve to eat steak and lobster ever, not even for their anniversary, not for their birthday, because they don’t work hard enough and don’t deserve it.

Yeah, that’s what I thought.