Left Ahead

The Duke, a.k.a. Michael Dukakis, and I have kicked around transit fares at public hearings, the Rail-volution conference and here on Left Ahead. I say subways, trolleys, buses and commuter rail should be free. The employees should attend to safety and cleanliness, not toll collection.

The backstory is that charging high fees for fares, while spending hundreds of billions on yet more roads for polluting, cangerous, congesting, din-producing motor vehicles is asinine. Dukakis agrees in principle but thinks passengers ought to pay a nominal fee, like $1 per trip.

I contend the concept is that mass transit should be so cheap and clean and safe and efficient and reliable that only the most egocentric will drive and inconvenience the rest of us. That would leave the streets and roads to delivery trucks, buses, and bicycles. (cheer here)

This came to mind once again after this cursed winter. The Boston-area transit failed in every conceivable way. The new Gov. Charles D. Baker produced a puppet task force that started with a major fail. It never asked or responded what we expected from mass transit. Instead, Baker fell back into the same manure pile of doing the same old things, just cheaper.

No. No. No.

Let's ask the question of what we do and what we should and what we must expect from our mass transit. Have not fear or doubt. I have answers.

Only the latest much publicized multiple gun murder...this time in Virginia...raises the curtain on guns-don't-kill v. gun-control-laws-save-lives choruses. Let's get real this afternoon.

That doesn't go any place. Shout over the fence.

I'm a progressive sort. Let's go to fundamentals. The U.S. is absurd in number of mass gun killings (more than 4 at a time). worldwide. What is to be done?

I'll kick it around. Call in if you are around at 2:30 on a TH. 718-664-6966.

For those younguns who say, "I wasn't even born yet" as an excuse for ignorance, let's talk Congress and President. The pols may claim they are bipartisan or above it all (that's a good compagin ploy) but the memories of their parties' shames are too powerful to ignore and too painful to forget or to forgive.

Since the election of Barack Obama as POTUS, we've seen this at its worst. For you millennials, let's talk Nixon. The disgraced GOP Prez lives on after his rehabilitation and then his physical death. Even though he skated free form jail and removal from office by the grace of his VP, Republicans know he was the pits and he got caught.

Big deal, you scoff? This is what happened with Presidents Clinton and Obama. It's what has been happening in recent years with obstructionist Congress. It's what continues to divide neighbors and families as well as legislators. We'll see more of it.

I'll rant about turning tides and swinging pendula.

It's earlier than Christmas gear in August. 2016 conventions and elections are far away. Yet, news is oozing memes. It's the Republican clown car. Hillary awaits coronation. Yadda Yadda.

Feel free to call and rant on your own (718-664-6966, then punch 1 to show me you're on. No anonymous calls though.)

In lieu of callers, I'll present my own semi-reasoned analysis. Why did we have a scrum of 17 announced GOP candidates? Why did the Dems wait so long to step up to challenge Hillary Clinton, even though she laid a big egg running against an unknown state senator named Obama?

 I propose there are different brains at work, and that the candidate strategy for eh two parties reflects how they think now and how they'd govern. It's a wonder to behold, awful in all senses of the term.

That was quick. Just days ago after over half a year of boosterism (and the incumbent lies), there were promises that the meeting with the US Olympics Committee would go fine, just fine. Instead, Boston's Mayor Walsh pushed back. The Committee said in effect, "We don't need this crap."

I'll talk about how I see the result and why we got there.

There were hidden cost-overrun commitments, closeted bids, hidden contracts while the proponents feigned transparency, and even City Councilor Tito Jackson whipping out the subpoena. Let's think about who was being naive.

What about Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman? The instant bestseller is quite relevant. Particularly with state, Congressional and SCOTUS efforts to restrict voting, you bet it is.

I review the book with attention to the orations and political arguments in the last third of it. I'm sure to reveal spoilers.

Like many boomers, I grew up with the splendor and self-righteousness of her first published book, To Kill A Mockingbird. That was a world, if you pardon the cliché, of black and white, of moral and amoral.

Coming up on 12 years, my first political blog, Marry in Massachusetts, is going on hiatus. I'd long figured to shut it down when we had legal same-sex marriage nationwide. It's time.

I'll cover politics here, a bit in my personal blog, Harrumph, and at Left Ahead. In this show, I'll declare a victory for equality. This is the right kind of collateral damage from yesterday's SCOTUS decision.

I'll talk about that ruling and touch on the majority and dissenting views. I've already done basic analysis on it at Marry in Massachusetts. It's a relief with a tinge of sadness in saying goodbye to the familiar.

While I've lived 35 years in Boston, plus nearly two in Cambridge in college years, I have deep and wide Southern roots. As a child, I knew segregated schools, stores, pools and water fountains. My first college was in South Carolina. I used to be the editor of the Black weekly newspaper in the SC capital. My wife is an SC native, and on and on. I know a lot about the state.

Let me speak of the people and events I knew in my childhood and youth. Perhaps as I talk, I can come to some terms with the brutal murders of nine in a Charleston AME church yesterday.

BGEA reads like a gay-friendly support group. It's the opposite. The late Rev. Billy Graham;s son Franklin now heads daddy's church-like object. He doesn't care for homosexuals or equal rights and positively hates same-sex marriage. Lately he's calling for a boycott of Wells Fargo and other companies who support equality and gay rights. 

The proximate cause of the boycott call was that Wells Fargo used a TV ad that showed two women learning sign language and signing to a little girl they were adopting that they were going to be her mommies. 

Many wee-brained folk live by such bluster and bombast. I'll speak about a few, such as MA-based MassResistance. They are a small but loud and yet dwindling group. I have heard their only continuous member, their leader, spout anti-gay rhetoric since long before the group started, when we were both members of a computer society here. He could work homophobic lingo into even geek speak.

These anti-equality folk promise much and deliver little to nothing. They pick up on effective left-wing boycott talk and action, only to fail again and again.

An activist from a family of activists, first-term Boston City Councilor Josh Zakim jumped right in. He chairs the Committee on Human Rights and Civil Rights. That alone lets him put fingers in many pies. He's on immigration, housing, policing and much more.

He joins us to talk about his goals large and small, To hit hot buttons like the 2024 Olympics and casinos, and, of course, the pending Council-wide re-election campaign.

Join us at the usual day, but an hour later at 3:30PM Eastern.