It is well-known that homeowners dominate local politics. In Brookline, 50% of residents rent and 50% own their homes. We also have a representative Town Meeting form of government, meaning that there is a 240 person municipal legislature called Town Meeting. I matched the addresses of our Town Meeting Members with our Town Assessor’s parcelContinue reading “Homeowners of local politics (Brookline edition)”
Category Archives: Political Stuff
Keep Brookline Dense
This is a copy of a letter to the editor published in the Brookline Tab print ediiton December 5, 2019 and online on December 7. — I appreciated your recent article “Despite traffic, more Brookline commuters choose cars over public transportation” which provided information about the proportion of Brookline’s commuters who drive, bike, walk, andContinue reading “Keep Brookline Dense”
Letter to Harvard Administrators about strike
HGSU-UAW, my campus union, has provided a simple form for emailing administrators about the upcoming strike deadline and urging them to stop a strike. They have even provided templates for different constituencies (undergraduates, family, faculty) to build on in their letters. This is the letter I wrote: Dear administrators, I have no love for goingContinue reading “Letter to Harvard Administrators about strike”
Dispensary density and sales
Please find replication materials (code and data) reproducing all figures and statements made in this blogpost at this link. One perennial theme on Brookline’s Townwide Discussion Facebook page is the NETA cannabis dispensary, with a vocal group of perhaps 10 people (in the Facebook group, the underlying constituency must be larger) raising concerns about nuisanceContinue reading “Dispensary density and sales”
Norfolk 15th Primary Election (MA state House, 9/4/18)
In the weeks leading up to the primary election, I walked around this state house district and counted/geocoded all the lawn signs for the Norfolk 15th State House race in a smartphone application. (These are both Democrats; no Republican is running). Lawn signs are pretty consistent with vote shares and you can see “homefield advantage”Continue reading “Norfolk 15th Primary Election (MA state House, 9/4/18)”
MA-7th Primary All Precincts
Caveats: Chelsea results are citywide; Everett had some precinct 3’s in the (state) shapefile that don’t seem to exist (mean imputed from city for map).
MA-7th Democratic Primary (Pressley beats Capuano)
I was able to get a hold of and digitize the Boston precinct results for this race (maybe 189 of the 270 precincts in this race, though I only get 187 to merge with the Boston precinct shapefile [Edit: One of the oddities may be Long Island; the other is Ward 5, Precinct 2a inContinue reading “MA-7th Democratic Primary (Pressley beats Capuano)”
Fixing MA’s Good Samaritan Law: Calling 911 to report an overdose can still land you in legal trouble.
Before the legislative session concludes, Beacon Hill lawmakers will pass Governor Baker’s CARE Act, an important bill boosting services connecting overdose patients in the ER to recovery services. But the Care Act suffers from a critical omission: it leaves broken the Commonwealth’s limited Good Samaritan Law, which has failed to protect those who seek helpContinue reading “Fixing MA’s Good Samaritan Law: Calling 911 to report an overdose can still land you in legal trouble.”
Unions, Right-to-Work, and Occupational Deaths
Happily, my paper “Does ‘right to work’ imperil the right to health? The effect of labour unions on workplace fatalities” is attracting a lot of attention, which makes me feel good as an academic who cares at least a little about producing things that others find valuable (we will see how the sheriff stuff isContinue reading “Unions, Right-to-Work, and Occupational Deaths”
White Supremacists are the biggest snowflakes in American History
[Cover Image from Jim Crow Songbook, 1847, admonishing Black people not to laugh at “them who happen to be white,” a rather strange play at victimhood in a year when almost all Blacks in America were enslaved.] Of course, white supremacist prohibited Blacks from voting, holding office, serving on juries, having sex with or marryingContinue reading “White Supremacists are the biggest snowflakes in American History”
