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From the Executive Director
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from NewsLink, Vol. 6, No. 1, Fall 2001
While there are few laws that are more nobly entitled than the Community Preservation Act of 2000, the implementation of this piece of legislation is threatening to jeopardize the economies of municipalities all over Massachusetts. Thirty Massachusetts communities have already adopted the property tax surcharges mandated by this Act and another 13 were asked to do so on the November ballot. We weighed into this debate by calling attention to data showing how approval of this measure by Boston voters would destroy jobs.
The CPA is nothing more than a “smart-growth” plan that uses the lure of matching state funds to get communities to bypass Proposition 2 1/2. What its proponents won't say is that raising the already-high tax on commercial property will reduce the competitiveness of their communities for business and jobs. Massachusetts has already lost some 51,000 jobs as a result of property tax increases that have taken place since 1990. Widespread adoption of the CPA will simply worsen this trend.
I Want My “Publicly Provided” MTV
Some Massachusetts communities have either entered or are giving consideration to entering the cable TV/Internet business. The town of Braintree has been providing cable TV to its citizens since the beginning of the year, and in November, Norwood gave its electric department the go-ahead to build a cable system. Often the leaders of these towns portray the cable TV/Internet business as a profit making slam-dunk to its citizens, when in reality it is more along the lines of a shot from half-court with time running out.
Our recent study of publicly managed cable TV/Internet businesses across the country, and in Massachusetts, shows that a town is more likely to lose than to make money on these projects. Taxpayers should be aware of this risk because it is they who ultimately must bear the cost of failure. Taxpayers deserve to know that there are more prudent uses of public funds than adding three more pay-per-view stations to their cable line-up.
Bogged Down with Regulations
There is nothing as American as apple pie nor as symbolic of Massachusetts as cod or cranberry sauce. Sadly, the Massachusetts cranberry is joining the cod as an endangered species. Why? The reason is a marketing order imposed last year that was intended to benefit cranberry growers everywhere but is having the effect of accelerating the decline of the Massachusetts cranberry industry. This month's lead article tells how and why this debacle came to pass.
The Agonies of Academe
Since humor is always a good thing – even in the face of the worst tragedy – we can enjoy poking fun at the many absurdities that the events of September 11 have produced on college campuses. A recent New York Times piece, for example, describes a UCLA course in which the instructor promises to bring “attention to America's own record of imperialistic adventurism and the relation of the W.T.C. bombings to American excesses in Iraq, Sudan and the Middle East.”
The Times article mentions this course to illustrate the “sentimental psychobabble” and the “politically correct pseudo-courses” that are proliferating throughout academe in the wake of the attack. And, indeed, there is a certain comic relief in watching academics, ordinarily fervent in their defense of women's rights and cultural diversity, trying to put a favorable spin on the slaughter of 5,000 innocent Americans by one of the most unenlightened, repressive regimes in the history of civilization.
The tendency, when we hear of academics acting this way, is to shrug off the fact as something that we have to let academics do because, well, that's what they do. Perhaps, though, we should not let them off the hook so easily. Perhaps we should demand of the sociologists, political scientists, philosophers and – yes – economists among us that they explain how our culture has evolved to the point that the very cream of our society could become victims of a group of fanatics armed with crude weapons. How did we become so open, so “diverse,” so vulnerable, so unsuspecting that it was easy for a few terrorists to kill so many of us, to destroy billions of dollars in infrastructure and to threaten our national economy?
I wonder, then, if we need a new kind of academic curriculum, one that focuses on historical threats to secularism, to rationality, to democracy and to economic freedom. Perhaps we need to revise our curriculum to emphasize how the value we call “diversity” is a Western value that is under threat from forces that would impose, in its place, a harsh fundamentalism, under which critical thinking of any kind would not be tolerated. Perhaps we need refresher courses for our students on how American democracy – not “adventurism” – is the crucible of freedom and economic progress and how we need to be ever vigilant against the envy and hatred that those values inspire among the practitioners of intolerance and statism.
Who knows? Perhaps a new breed of academics will eventually take the place of those baby boomers, now tenured and deeply into their careers, who have made a career of demonizing America. Parents, students, alumni and university contributors and trustees everywhere should welcome a change that would put more people on university faculties who see it as their job to preserve, and not to condemn, American values.
NewsLink is the quarterly newsletter of the Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy Research at Suffolk University. © 1996-2002. All rights reserved.
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