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Post-debate mortem
By adamg on Tue, 10/20/2009 - 8:05am
John Carrol found the whole thing muddled:
... So a debate that should have provided some answers for Boston voters mostly left them with questions.
For example, which of these makes for a better bumper sticker – ”Tom Menino: We haven't been charged with anything" or "Under a Flaherty administration, we'll have FiOS"? ...
Mike Ball says he's seen enough; declares a Menino win in November:
... Selfishly, I wanted a new, improved Flaherty to take the stage. Instead of bright, reasoned and pleasant, he'd be charismatic and insightful. Instead of just better arguments and more detailed plans, he'd offer indisputably brilliant guides to Boston's future.
He didn't appear. ...
Globe: Flaherty jabs, but mayor unfazed.
Herald: Michael Flaherty zeroes in on mayor (along with a slideshow titled "Flaherty hits Menino in debate" that disappoints because it only shows people shaking hands, not Flaherty throwing a haymaker at Menino's solar plexus).
The Globe asks some Republican hack who doesn't live in Boston to rate the debate. Joan Vennochi cements her position as the Mikey of local punditry: She hates everything. Scot Lehigh calls a Flaherty win.
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Comments
Highlights
Flaherty's strongest moment came when he asked Menino to grade himself on the Boston public schools. Menino's weakest and least credible moment came when he gave himself a B. But Carrol's got a point - "We haven't been charged with anything" was certainly up there.
Weaker than Menino giving
Weaker than Menino giving himself a fair grade is the fact that Flaherty graded the BPS at an A- PUBLICLY in 2005.....I've attended and worked in BPS between 2005 and today -- and we're actually in a much better place today than we were in 2005!
The discrepancy just doesn't make sense -- Flaherty seems to flop on everything. Just another lie -- I'm gonna say whatever I want to get elected. Luckily we have a current Mayor who works with facts and takes action!
Boston doesn't need a mayor named Flaherty who supported the death penalty, opposed affirmative action, opposes the de facto segregation of BPS, broke the open meeting law, and opposed legislation to extend health benefits to gay couples.
And why would the Mayor try and defend his administration against charges that have never been made? that just doesn't make sense.
GO MAYOR MENINO! You're the only one who has a vision for the future of our city which is rooted in experience and understanding of the people who live here!
I hope you meant this with sarcasm intended
Menino only takes action when he and his cronies see dollar signs.
Not so great with the facts, either
Drop out rates, how many street workers we have, how long the waiting list is for charter schools, just off the top of my head....
A few more examples from my prior post
He keeps saying stuff - and the Globe reports it like gospel. A few more examples:
Our high bond rating is evidence the city is well managed (only means we have a high probability of paying our bonds back - considering 60% of our revenue is backed by property tax revenue, highest in the country of any big city, which means payback is guaranteed - if they raise the taxes to pay the bills it's pay up or they take your property)
Property taxes are lowest in the area (actually very average for the area - and probably going to skyrocket in 2010)
City is in a budget crisis (inflation has run about 25% and the budget is up 50% in the past 10 years - if there's a crisis it's because the mayor spends every penny he can get his hands on-I think the real crisis is when the BTU called his bluff and told him to sit and spin - and lay off all the fluff in the budget).
Not that I'm voting for Flaherty - I'm still undecided - neither of these guys is a walk in the Arboretum! (please no more Arburrito/national pirate day jokes!)
Speech therapy, Mayor Tom Menino.
Boston is a center for training in speech therapy. The Mayor could set an example for the rest of us with speech impediments by participating in speech therapy.
Hey Zak, see your thumb... I
Hey Zak, see your thumb... I think you know where to stick it buddy.
so you'll take the elitist
so you'll take the elitist route and discriminate against someone because they talk different than you do? Talk is cheap -- Menino knows that and has proved himself by actually ACTING and making our city a better place to live -- for the working class people --not just the people who were lucky enough to study speech patterns at Ivy League Schools.
Menino Lying about dropout rate
Menino still lies about the dropout rate in Boston. He says it has decreased by a third under his administration. That's not true. It has gone from 7.0% to 7.2%
Hi Frank, nice to see you
Hi Frank, nice to see you with yet another screen name!
You're looking at state numbers for a city issue? The dropout rate has decreased -- and as someone who has attended and worked in BPS that 33% decrease is the true number! But if you'd like to follow the Flaherty's campaign example of "how to lie with statistics" there's no point in even debating this.
State or City?
The BPS seems to brand the 7.0 to 7.2 change in its own framework: http://www.bostonpublicschools.org/files/Dropout%2...
It does say systemwide, but I would expect that just means the entire BPS, not the entire state. There have been many fluctuations in the dropout rates over Menino's administration, making it hard to tell whether any changes are directly due to his efforts. Where is the 33% coming from?
thanks for the link...what
thanks for the link...what it reports is that in 1994 ( Menino was first elected on Nov 3rd , 1993) The systemwide BPS dropout rate was.....8.9%
The annual systemwide dropout rate from the 2007-2008 school year.....was 7.2%
That decrease would be about 24%...I would believe that the 2008-2009 dropout rate, not published in this survey was the 7.0% you just quoted, bringing the decrease in the dropout rate to 27%
Working with that data, it looks like closer to the 1/3 decrease than just a drop from 7.2 to 7.0%
And decreasing the dropout rate by even 27% is a dramatic decrease, especially given there is no context in which to look at dropout numbers -- I would love to see how many students left school because their parents moved out of state, or just out of the city for work, or divorced and could no longer claim a Boston address. People lie about their addresses to get into BPS these days.
Another link
From McCrea's blog (these numbers are from the state website)
http://electkevin.blogspot.com/2009/09/drop-out-ra...
Bottom line - you can't really take a beginning and end - you need to take a mean and do some statistical analysis to see if this falls outside of a confidence interval and make a determination with various degrees of confidence as to whether this statistically deviates from random fluctuation - from the looks of things - dropout rate for the past 16 years has been about flat - but would need to review my stats book to actually do the numbers!
plot those numbers on a graph and develop a trend line.
is there a steep downward slope? I dont think so. He has not reduced the dropout rate from what I can tell. All I see is that it naturally fluctuates from year to year. It certainly has not decreased in any statistically significant way.
Yes
That's *exactly* how statistics work...
Sigh.
Disregard Zak
He doesn't even live in Boston.
Cambridge
And still hasn't told us if the Cambridge city council provides stenographic notes to the public or if the city stenographer stores those notes in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnall's front porch. Maybe we should inquire of Karnak.
At 66 years of age, the time
At 66 years of age, the time for speech therapy has passed, although wouldn't it be nice if he tried. Actually, the speech impediment may actually work to his benefit by making opponents underestimate his intelligence. One doesn't equate with the other. I remember traveling through the South years ago and learning that the Sheriff Taylor, Dukes of Hazzard accent didn't necessarily mean that the speaker stupid.
Ah, so this is the most recent Roach Motel
I mean, seriously, you talking heads are like moths to a flame. Adam posts anything about the candidates and we can almost be certain Menino's cronies and Flaherty's cheerleaders are turning the comments section into a Virtual Spin Room.
Unfortunately, unlike a real Roach Motel, we can't trap you in here and just toss this thread in the trash can to get rid of these meaningless talking point wars.
If any of you gave a non-political substantive damn about any other post on this website, you might even be acceptable as the "just don't talk politics around him" crazy uncle of the site...but it's just bald-faced crony spittle and it honestly doesn't reflect well on EITHER of your candidates.
just wondering why you would
just wondering why you would post this on a political thread? did you want us to comment about the weather? I think its healthy that both sides of this election are engaged and wanting further debate.
If ONLY it were debate
Menino shill: "Talking Point #1. Snide mischaracterization of Flaherty. Go Menino!"
Flaherty shill: "Talking Point #2. Flippant dismissal of Menino shill and disregard for Talking Point #1's underlying facts. Go Flaherty!"
Rinse. Repeat.
That's not "further debate".
What are you suggesting, exactly?
What is the exact, minimum standard for diversity of topics in posts that you would suggest for one to attain "acceptability"? And would that standard apply across the board for all posters, or just for posters interested in politics? Ban posters who openly support or argue for a particular candidate? Have an "I give a damn" button that must be clicked on in all topics that someone doesn't want to post in in order to establish the topic-diversity minimum acceptability standard? What?
Fortunately, your remedy is really very simple. You can avoid reading the comments in the political threads, or disregard comments that you think are "spittle."
No posts on Stenographic notes
All else is fine. Come on Kaz - lighten up - the two candidates are two peas in a pod, the same only different (except I think one of the peas has another one growing out the side - I think the technical name for this legumatic genetic mutation is a Yoonpea).
PS - Is a pea a legume?
Yep
Peas are legumes.
I'm not the politician; I have no foolproof plan.
Diverse posting is like obscenity. "I'll know it when I see it".
Your attempt to quantify my statements into an exact policy of denial of service for lobbyists is exactly my point about ignoring the issue and prattling on about everything else but the heart of the matter.
I was obviously not laying out a 4-corner policy for the website to uphold. I obviously have no control over who posts here or how they go about doing so or where they pick their interests in posting.
However, your questions show a fundamental lack of understanding (or chosen ignorance) of my point: that political shilling in the comments serves no purpose...it advances no ideas other than the hand-chosen, hand-spun factoids of noise that do not engage the voting public and treat them like trained dogs. Furthermore, the fact that there's even a position (paid or otherwise...but paid is even worse) in today's politics for "fake grassroots noisemaker" is obscene (I know it, because I see it).
I don't avoid the political threads, because there's always the *hope* that intelligent debate can thrive. If you notice, there are other threads where discussion of our city school systems and other important topics are discussed, without much shill interference, and I am not complaining in those threads at all.
You obviously know something I don't know
You're suggesting that the posters you're objecting to are posting because the campaigns they support are directing -- or paying -- them to. I don't know that and I don't know how you can know that. Maybe they're showing actual grassroots support. And neither of us knows if anyone reading the posts find them informative or helpful.
My objections were to your seeming to assert yourself as the arbiter of acceptability -- not just of the content of the comments, but of the commenters themselves -- based on some vague idea of diversity of interest as the standard. I don't think it's up to you to say who is acceptable and who should be thrown in the trash bin.
Fact checking the two
Commmonwealth Unbound says both dissembled
It does not seem, however, that the magnitude of inaccuracies...
...was equivalent. The scales of truth tilted more heavily against one candidate's claims than the others.
on the school spending issue
I wish the focus would shift from that per pupil spending figure (the budget total divided by students) because it skews reality. Only about 25% of the BPS budget accounts for regular ed spending, so if you are comparing BPS with the Brookline/Weston grouping, it is an apples to oranges equation. It also really annoyed me that Andrea Cabral was on NECN after the debate going on about BPS struggling because of all the immigrants coming into the system--while this is an issue, we are also failing to educate Boston residents, and I am guessing they represent a higher grouping of students than mid-year immigrant student transfers.
A lost opportunity for Flaherty might have been when the Mayor asked him about the Public Health Commission. Obviously they are both on the same page around homelessness etc, but...what if Flaherty had spoken specifically about addiction issues in the schools, the lack of a cohesive BPS plan around drug use and the fact that there are few resources available for kids. And then there is the abstinence only programs promoted by certain BPS schools. The Mayor could not have claimed to 'already be working' on that.
And I am an anybody but Menino person, and therefore yes I've got a Floon sign (it keeps keeling to the left).
Not even close
Special ed was $166 million of the $832 million in last year's budget - even if you throw in the $35 million on english as a second language - about 25% of the total budget is on special ed - with 75% on all the other stuff -
numbers are here:
http://www.bostonpublicschools.org/files/BPS%20at%...
so i was looking at the pie chart
pie chart here
And I was off--32%,accounts for regular ed. But if you add special ed, vocational/career/ESL and student support, you get about 32% too. I guess my point is the cost of educating students, and I do not think that 20K should be tossed around as the figure. It is inflated based on services provided, many of which come at a higher price tag. To find a comparable number with the suburbs you could use the $11,900 the school dept spends on regular ed.
My point is it is expensive to teach the diverse and challenging group of students that comprise our schools. And I think that we do an ok job (ie, lean) teaching the regular ed cohort.