Call Charlie Baker What You Like

But please for the Love of Ghod STOP calling him a reformer.
He lost that Boston Globe bequeathed crown when he started raising money off the books to purge State GOP Committee and then got a sweetheart ruling allowing him to collect donations from the RNC sans any transparency.
Reformers DO NOT grub for opaque $$....they are supposed to refuse such ill gotten donations...aren't they?
I don't give a rat's ass about Baker's two hundred percent approval rating when you are adamant about concealing the source of campaign funds from the public, then by definition you are "Up To No Good" to quote my ninety three year old mother.
Trust me sooner of later money is gonna be Charlie Baker's Downfall.

Vladimir Putin, the Politburo of the PRC, Various Terrorist Factions and Jackie Chan

ALL seem to love the Yankee Dollar per the "Panama Papers", thanks to a secret series of trust funds stashed in Panama a nation that thriftily allows the US Dollar to circulate unmolested thru cash registers and bank accounts.
This the same Vladimir Putin, PRC and sundry terrorist factions that are about to Take Over the Universe per Fox News.
Hell there is a capital outflight problem in the PRC the leadership has had to clamp down (on everyone else except themselves) on the desperate desire to convert the local currency into good old American Dollars....
I dunno but stuff like this worrisome from a anti-money-laundering and or terrorist financing perspective...but it also weirdly rebuts the Trumpian Declinist Thesis we are getting in this campaign cycle.
If we are making such bad trade and finance decisions why are all these jobbers so desperate to rack up the US Dollar?

To my point yesterday...

the other pole to Bernie Sanders' current surge is his unrelenting focus on breaking up The Big Banks, that has potent resonance across the board even with nominal republicans.
A bit of background is required here, American psychology is weighed towards a profound animus towards anyone who is perceived as "Getting Away With It". We easily reconcile with Big Business, Private Initiative, the Myths and Realities of Rugged Individualism, but if you abuse power to game the system the citizenry generally turns on you plenty quick.
The abiding exception is anyone perceived as an "UnderDog" then the view of the abuse of power gets more nuanced at least in terms of mass psychology.
The Banks and Investment Houses are pretty much seen as "Having Gotten Away with Murder", the Middle class has been defrauded and personal savings have vanished...and the plain people, clearly blame the Moneylenders.
The constitutionality of what Sanders' proposes can be debated but once again he has skillfully seized a powerful issue that almost everyone else has fearfully ignored.
People don't like it when the powerful skip out on consequences, Bernie gets that.
As democrats going forward I think we ignore the larger issues of student debt and financial malfeasance at our peril. To built a coalition this fall we are gonna need to make some bold and practical proposals and push them hard come the fall.
You can debate Sanders proposals but but they are extracted of issues that have been ignored up until now.

On Wisconsin

Y'Know...I like Bernie Sanders on his best days he does burn with the zeal of an Old Testament Prophet and his lack of religious convictions is weirdly refreshing to me.

But boy howdy listening to his victory speech last night was a real downer, no one it seems wants to have less fun "Immentenizing the Eschaton" than the Senator from Vermont.

That is also a cash costly revolution he wants to bring to Washington as well...but....I view it as "Right Question Wrong Answer" we can all change our answers going forward politics is not the SAT's after all.

No...Bernie's popularity is not hard to trace, he promises one of the most debt ridden cohorts in the US immediate measurable releases, buy that I mean our native class of debtor college graduates.

I don't blame them one bit for voting for Bernie he at least has proposed a simple (if expensive) solution to post collegiate debt, make higher education free.

This is an issue that has festered unresolved for twenty five years in the USA sans resolution, is it any wonder the campuses are on fire for the guy? Say what you like about today's millenials but they can read those emails from the bank displaying how deep they are in the whole on graduation day? If I owed fifty thousand to some damn bank for my sheepskin and had no job on tap I'd be banging the pots for Sanders as well.

Unworkable solution always beats no solution at all....it also nicely fills the silence.

We've turned higher education into a loan driven industry (like the auto industry in some ways), said education is designed to find kids jobs which places the graduates at the acute mercy of the US Economy on Graduation Day....wrongly educated (for work instead of enlightened citizenship) and saddled with debt....its a wonder they aren't voting for Raul Castro quite frankly.

So lets think on this a bit.

Maybe as democrats we've got to confront this problem in the DNC platform this year...and yes we will need to be bold but common sensical as well.

Think on it please.....

I'm not a fan of charter schools

I'd tolerate them though if the funding mechanism didn't amount to robbing the localities and the teacher's unions weren't being bypassed in a sneaky way.
They also skim off the cream and leave the chronic problem pupils firmly mired in the local public schools.
Not that anyone cares about that....
Of course with all the false costless redistributionist consciousness he can muster, Governor Baker just luvs charter schools.
I'm really not sure public money should bankroll an elite educational experience quite frankly. But then, our whole theory of education is catastrophically misguided in my humble opinion, we educate for acquisition of a job and not for citizenship, the concept of excellence is completely rooted in commercial applications.
Why?
Because we've come to believe a "good education" is the best way to costlessly redistribute incomes. Hence the charter school fallacy which promises a leg up on that income gain and thus we arrive at a packed Bernie Sanders for President Rally in which 18,000 college students (who are in dept up to their hats) are screaming for free tuition.
I don't blame them one bit for marking out hard for Sanders, I would too if I was twenty three and in hock....but it's an entirely flawed premise in education that has lead us all to the pretty pass and someone somewhere has to climb up onto a pile of standardized tests and cry HALT!!!

Thought for the Day...

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."

Adlai E. Stevenson

Its sort of Ironic to consider

that Donald Trump might reach his Waterloo in Wisconsin, once held to be The Most Radical State in the Federal Union by the late lamented Sinclair Lewis. Once the proud home of the La Follette Family (a bloodline that for relentless progressivism made the Kennedys look like a bunch of Falangists) and peppery democrats from William Proxmire to Gaylord Nelson, Wisconsin proudly gave more votes to Eugene McCarthy than to Nixon, Humphrey and Bobby Kennedy combined in the 1968 Presidential Primary.
And still it went for Nixon by a plurality that fall.
:)
Nowadays Wisconsin is misgoverned stylishly by union busting libertarian fanatic Scott Walker and this is where the irony inverts because the best hope of "Trumping Trump" in said Primary is none other that that semi demented Texas Squadristi Senator Ted Cruz.
Irony Atop Irony Folks that all I can say.....