Puritanism - still alive and well in Massachusetts

I was reading an article this morning in the Boston Globe magazine from Tom Keane regarding Massachusetts' efforts to control alcohol.  Among the interesting snippets:

Alcoholic beverages sold for off-premise consumption can only be sold in licensed package stores. No one is allowed to own more than three stores that sell alcohol. State law puts sharp quotas on the number of liquor stores, bars, and restaurants permitted in every town, a formula carefully based on population. Holiday and Sunday sales are limited. In fact, we’re not even permitted to have happy hours. Free drinks and discounted prices are flatly illegal.

This is because of the former Blue Laws that the Puritans put down in the 1620's because most of the Puritans were supposed to have their eyes and ears with God at all times, and not engage in frivolity such as liquor consumption.  Many of the Blue Laws have been struck down, but only since the mid 1980s.  Liquor stores have only been allowed to open on Sundays since 2005 or so.

This brings me to the debate of the soon-to-be-dead gambling bill.  I've been wavering between being for it and being against it, but now I'm solidly against it.  Governor Deval Patrick should not only veto the bill, he should be commended for it at the risk of losing his support from unions and others.

This is because Puritanism is still alive and well in Massachusetts.

We have way too many finger waggers, nags, wrist wringers and such who feel that any kind of fun should be eliminated or strictly controlled in the wake of some kind of fake moral enlightenment.  Liquor and alcohol is a great example: keeping such a "vice" away through high price and scarcity makes the ones who are disturbed by its effects (even when people drink responsibly) soothes whatever guilt and bias they might have towards this vice.  The same is true with cigarettes, food, and gasoline - self-styled moralists figure that the unwashed masses are not "enlightened" enough and must have these items made difficult to procure for "the greater good."

(In my honest opinion, the greater good would love to give these self-styled moralists a nice hard slap in the face, followed by a nice hard boot to where God split ya.)

If the Legislature were a more honest, less self-interested group, they would have expanded the bill to include as many resort casinos and slot parlors as they would allow without the worry of some group screaming that Massachusetts' moral fiber would decay at a ridiculous rate.  There would be no scare tactics of prostitution or people wasting their entire paychecks on slots or children being abandoned in their cars.  The Legislators would have no problem with the money coming in and distribute it evenly, rather than try to corner the money for their own town, city or ward.

Even if the casino bill passed, I can imagine the kind of "gambling" we'd get if it went through - it would be regulated just as tightly and stiffly as alcohol is today, along with a mix of gimmicks such as environmental standards, limits on play, money and alcohol consumption, no ATM machines or ATM machines with very high access fees, and bans on any kind of comps, credit and the like.

When Puritanism dances with Curley-style parochialism, what you get are political hacks, self-styled moral activists, and others killing something that may or may not have had promise, but no one dared to try because they were afraid they'd offend the wrong people.   The writer of the article sums everything up nicely, and you can easily substitute "gambling" for "alcohol":

What we really need is a culture that celebrates the wise use of alcohol rather than a body of laws whose aim is to make us feel guilty.

It would certainly prove that we cut all the laws of Puritanism but six, who were forced into service as pallbearers.

No President is above reproach

Criticizing the President of the United States, no matter how unwarranted or wildly bizarre it may seem, is not sedition, even if the President is your close friend.

No President is above reproach.  In fact, we're fortunate enough to criticize, mock, cajole, protest and needle the President of the United States without getting thrown into jail, tortured, murdered, disappeared, or fined into poverty because their leader is seen as a God who must not be challenged.  (Viz: North Korea, the former East Germany, Cuba, etc.)

If the Governor feels that the opposing party is being too harsh on the President, perhaps it's because there's a legitimate reason for the agita that resides beyond the Beltway, i.e. the President is not the Emperor, the United States isn't the Roman empire, and people don't like to be ruled.

Just Plain Marriage, or Do You? Do You? Good, You're Married

We're going to take the Spaceballs (warning: some language naughty) approach to what happened on the same-sex marriage front:

Quote #1 refers to the group of people meeting Yogurt (Mel Brooks), the Yoda knockoff:

Princess Vespa: Yogurt, the wise.
Dot Matrix: Yogurt, the all-powerful.
Barf: Yogurt, the magnificent
Yogurt: Please, please, don't make a fuss. I'm just plain Yogurt.

We've watched what's been going on in this front, and we just shrug our shoulders. We don't care about who gets married, and that the genders in front of the altar don't matter. What we do care about is that marriage isn't an exercise to show how far it can be stretched and bent to fit the wills and whims of certain groups.

Jon Keller's explanation is very true: marriage means social stability, regardless of gender, and none of the horrors predicted by the pundits ever happened. Governor Patrick can take pride in defusing a political hot potato - even if he had to do a little "horse trading" to do so. The legislators, instead of indulging in antics befit for spoiled children, practiced real democracy and voted, rather than delaying it, canceling it, or adjourning it. The pols who promised their voters one thing and did another will get their comeuppance at the ballot box. Liberal newspapers will put the results in the editorial pages; talk radio will get their callers complaining or praising the decision. Life goes on, and it's truly

There was one glaring item: the most obnoxious and unnecessary aspect of this debate was the argument between the two opposing camps: the cacophony of shrill slogans, sound bites, blaringly colorful signs, and colorful versions of what might happen if one side wins and the other loses. More rational voices, such as the ones who might not like the hefty weight of marriage but feel more comfortable with a less binding but similarly official civil union, or men and women who are in common-law marriages, were left out in the debate. Giving ground from "the people have spoken" to "let all the people speak, and if necessary, vote" and "marriage is strictly between a man and a woman" "marriage is usually between a man and a woman, but in the interest of true civil rights, marriage between two men and two women are also acceptable."

Why MCAS matters, and why it won't be going away any time soon

If you work in any industry that's all metrics, all the time (and by that we don't mean kilograms, hectares and millimeters), you understand that in certain times of the week, month, or year, you must be reaching some kind of benchmark, line of reference, or company standard. Numbers are the lifeblood of your business, and the entire business is to sustain or exceed the standards and expectations of your business - and to keep a steady eye on the competition.

A great example of this are those who work on commission. Your company sets targets on what you must sell. If you sell a lot of things, you make much more commission on top of your base salary, take home a huge paycheck, and have opportunities for promotion. If you sell very little or nothing, your bosses will demand to know why, offer you help to get more commission, and if you're still not making their targets, you no longer have a job. Nothing spells humiliation like security guards escorting you out the door, final paltry paycheck and unemployment information in one hand and your box of belongings in another.

It's no different in the school system. If students learn and succeed, getting straight A's (and some with B's) and actually going beyond what they learn in school, they will get praise and four year scholarships. If the students don't care, getting F's and getting held back in certain classes, or getting held back entire grades, they will find themselves without skills, relegating them to permanent entry-level job status or intermittent unemployment...and by then, they'll have regretted not getting even C's in their classes.

Hence, the MCAS: a test for students to measure what they're learning, how their learning, and what teachers and administrators can do to maintain their good status, and how to improve the bad status. We're not endorsing or damning the MCAS here - but we have some notions and understanding why (a) certain classes of people resent it, (b) why certain cities want it abolished, and (c) why MCAS won't be abolished any time soon.

First, Jon Keller gives an overview of the MCAS and its genesis: without accountability (which is the mother of benchmarks and standards), the quality of students' educations were as flimsy as tissue paper. Students got their diplomas, and when they began in their college work, even the straight "A" students struggled mightily to get a "D" or even a gentleman's "C". Those who didn't go to college went into the workforce, found jobs without a college degree lacking, and end up in menial, low-paying, dead-end jobs - or went unemployed for a long spell. The teachers who weren't wowing their students with self-indulgent, happy-pill pep-talks were regaling students with tall tales and guilt trips about American history and culture, and how to foment a neat little armed revolution. The remaining teachers were so deep into tenure they couldn't be fired, no matter how corrupt or incompetent they were, because the teacher's unions
had the administration by nose. The MCAS, in this instance, was the great leveler: take away all the cute little quirks that damaged the students education, and make them strive for excellence.

The richer school districts have students who are already striving for excellence: they're succeeding like crazy, and have excellent teachers who encourage their students to aim high but reach higher. The dark side - the richer districts are quite the snobs, as they would rather not compete or be lumped with students in poorer school districts, and the MCAS forces these students - who will do outstanding even outside the MCAS test - to be brought down from their lofty perches that none of the poorer school districts can ever hope to reach, crashing to Earth. This time, all 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts must now prove that their students are competent and knowledgeable, and the richer school districts can't charm, protest, or buy their way out of it.

This leads us to why certain cities and towns want the MCAS abolished, and why these towns don't want anything to do with standardized testing. The teachers in the richer cities and towns must set aside their pet curricula to help students pass the MCAS test. This means for several weeks, students must learn the three Rs - boring subjects that don't involve indoctrination, conspiracy theories, Paul Bunyan-like retellings of American history, bashing politicians, soldiers and others like overeager gossip columnists, praising stifling ideologies and brutal leaders, or silenced people or discussions on how cowardice and submission to your enemy is more noble than fighting back. One anti-testing person from Brookline wrote several letters to the editor of the Boston Herald, demanding that Governor-elect Deval Patrick get rid of that pesky MCAS test once and for all. Governor Patrick liked the idea, and said, "hey, why be part of my Cabinet and we can get rid of it together?"

We hate to break her bubble, or dry the ink out of her pen, but eliminating testing or standards, either in the schools or in the workplace, is a sign of weakness and fear - and no flotilla of weasel words ("onerous, demoralizing, racist, damaging to students' self-esteem", as Jon Keller puts it) will hide that fact. Not making students and teachers accountable, letting them absorb whatever fairy tales the teachers can stitch together, and letting the administrators pocket the cash for junkets instead of textbooks and computers, has already proven to be a disaster. We recommend the movies Lean on Me and Stand and Deliver as examples - the former for what happens when standards are eliminated, and how a principal must bring order out of chaos, and the latter for what happens when a dedicated teacher discards traditional methods and makes students from the barrios of Los Angeles succeed in a kind of high stakes examination.