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Despite my better judgment, curiosity and my 14-year-old son compelled me to answer the phone last night even though it was a private caller. Sure enough, the caller was doing a political survey about the fifth congressional campaign. First off, was I planning to vote? Next, if I had to vote today, who would I vote for? Then came the interesting part—the caller said he would read me the candidates’ stated positions on key issues and ask me which statement most represented my view. He then went on to read statements for four candidates, in this order: Niki Tsongas (NT), Jamie Eldridge (JE), Barry Finegold (BF) and Eileen Donoghue (ED). If you took this survey, I’d love to know your thoughts about its bias since the caller would not reveal the sponsor. He also assured me he did not favor a candidate and was reading a prepared script, but his tone while reading JE’s statements was admiring. On a final note, he wanted me to know that NT was a leader of the Concord Coalition, a group advocating for privatization of social security and medicare, and that many see her as someone who “does not understand the values of democratic voters and will not vote for progressive policy.” I’m no expert on the candidates, but I do pay attention. (I have attended two debates and will be at the NPA-sponsored forum tomorrow morning.) And, as I told the caller last night, from what I’ve seen of NT, his last comments did not seem accurate. At this point, he admitted that she said she was only loosely affiliated with that group. The survey clearly targeted NT and favored JE. A summary of the statements read to me for each candidate follows: Regarding healthcare—NT supports more »

I’ve been thinking of this for weeks, ever since we squeaked through the last budget session and had to be grateful that we “only” had to cut $800,000 instead of $1.6 million from the school department budget.  Listening to UML Sunrise this morning, I heard Bill Taupier, local businessman and political guru as well as a former school committee member and city manager, sounding critical of the school committee for accepting this compromise.  Taupier stated that basically the city has “short-changed the schools for the last 12 years” by not meeting its funding obligations.  He believes that if we lose our schools, we lose our city.  I agree with his emphasis on the importance of our public schools and the ongoing lack of local funding, but as a taxpayer and resident of the city who watched the Manager’s budget presentation, I felt that the city did the best it could this year.  After all, they need to clean up what seems to be years of irresponsible and inaccurate budgeting.  Still, I wonder; was I taken in by what seemed to be a fair and honest approach on the part of city hall?  Was I so grateful for the transparency that I was willing to cave in on what the schools needed? A fter the devasting cuts of 2003, when we got nothing for our pains, it felt good to at least achieve a compromise.  I guess time will tell; but for now, the question remains, can we afford to fund our schools, or even more importantly, can we afford not to?