Charlie Baker Will Not Seek Reelection in 2022 (Boston: transplants, sales)

[BostonBornMassMade]

Originally Posted by OutdoorLover

That's not a great way to assess things.

Yes, it is because it is the only thing were trying to prevent. That's the bottom line anything else is some level of an excuse.

Janey took all the heat for no vaccine passport because she dare mention she thought about black people. Baker takes no heat for still- 4 months later no vaccine passport. For several reasons. Or should we ignore the DCF, Holyoke Soldier home, Broken down MBTA, his son, skyrocketing COL, State Police Scandals, **** poor rollout of legal marijuana, him recently nixing the climate portion of a very important bill, and various other areas that suffered due to his inaction? Baker did diddly squat about Mass Cass for 7 years until like a month ago! Why isn't the whole state under a mask mandate?
Baker would take a forever and a day to make good common sense decisions and his inaction is packaged and sold as 'moderation".
He's a hack who thankfully didn't want to be a lifetime hack.

Charlie got ornery if anyone dared question him because he hates public criticism and pressure despite being governor. Get his grumpy *ss out of here and don't let the door hit ya on the way out. Now that the job isn't all sunshine and flowers he wants out.

[WestieWhitie]

Homie, what about those FBI violent crime stats by race since you're all about raw numbers?

Originally Posted by BostonBornMassMade

Densely populated area
Excuse

Theres was plenty more that could've been done all along the way. Washington state was hit earlier and didn't go down the way we did. He watched WA and didn't do much in that time frame. Luckily Robert Kraaft was around so that Baker could get unwarranted hero praise. Pshhh whatever...

he's a do-nothing who coasted for 8 years because he's tall white male old and upper-middle class. So people did and will make any excuse for him because he just has to be competent, right? Death toll be damned?

[BostonBornMassMade]

Anyways- Joe Curtatone, and JKIII say they're not going to run.

Herald is reporting Marty Walsh is unlikely to run.

Annissa probably wont run IMO.

So it's probably Healey- I'm 80% sure she runs. I don't know why she's so well-known or popular though. She seems less effective in her post than Andrew Lelling was in his post. She's always chasing amorphous national issues and ignoring ones in MA.

[WestieWhitie]

Homie, you still haven't answered my question - gotta come up with some sort of excuse if you want to be taken seriously! What about them crime stats?

Originally Posted by BostonBornMassMade

Anyways- Joe Curtatone, and JKIII say they're not going to run.

Herald is reporting Marty Walsh is unlikely to run.

Annissa probably wont run IMO.

So it's probably Healey- I'm 80% sure she runs. I don't know why she's so well-known or popular though. She seems less effective in her post than Andrew Lelling was in his post. She's always chasing amorphous national issues and ignoring ones in MA.

[htfdcolt]

Originally Posted by BruinsGirl

Densely populated area - many parents with kids went on vacations to Europe. Various international conferences. We, NYC, California took the first hit. There was no masks. He cooperated with Kraft to sent Patriots plane to China to bring 1+ mil masks for our and NYC hospitals. He introduced pretty strict measures. One step from full lockdowns. I think vaccination was organized pretty well too.

I just cannot think what he could’ve done better with no clear directions from government.

I would agree on all of this. MA was hit disproportionately at the very beginning (Feb/Mar 2020), when there were no restrictions in place or even knowledge of how the virus is transmitted. How soon we forget the Biogen superspreader event?

Yes the vaccine rollout was a bit of a cluster at the beginning, but got fixed very quickly.

[OutdoorLover]

We've got people on the forum that are losing their s--- over the pandemic and at the other extreme we have people that don't really acknowledge the problem and think any actions are a conspiracy. Naturally, people on either extreme won't be happy with a sensible approach.

The pandemic is real and has real dangers and real consequences. But that doesn't mean you should do everything conceivable against it, the instant the idea pops into your head. You have to appraise the benefits so as to use resources judiciously, and you need to keep in mind there are consequences - in terms of the reactionary response of some citizens to what may otherwise be good public health measures, and the negative impact on businesses of some restrictions. The right thing to do is to appraise the costs and benefits and to walk a middle line.

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by BostonBornMassMade

Westie, understand that Geoff Diehl has a snowballs chance in hell of winning gubernatorial office.

Well... Theoretically, Martha Coakley could win the primary. LOL

[lrfox]

Originally Posted by OutdoorLover

We've got people on the forum that are losing their s--- over the pandemic and at the other extreme we have people that don't really acknowledge the problem and think any actions are a conspiracy. Naturally, people on either extreme won't be happy with a sensible approach.

The pandemic is real and has real dangers and real consequences. But that doesn't mean you should do everything conceivable against it, the instant the idea pops into your head. You have to appraise the benefits so as to use resources judiciously, and you need to keep in mind there are consequences - in terms of the reactionary response of some citizens to what may otherwise be good public health measures, and the negative impact on businesses of some restrictions. The right thing to do is to appraise the costs and benefits and to walk a middle line.

Yep. On one end of the spectrum, anything short of forcing people to stay indoors for 2 years and mandatory vaccinations is "not enough;" and on the other end, asking people to wear a mask in a store is akin North Korea-like oppression.

Baker had missteps as did every leader during the pandemic. But his administration assessed and reassessed the information available at each step along the way and generally made better decisions than most of his gubernatorial counterparts. Many of whom caved to political pressure and chose to bleat the same rhetoric again and again rather than take the analytical approach. That's why places like Florida have surpassed MA in death rates in spite of the fact that they had the advantage of not being among the first to be hit hard. In looking at this as objectively as possible, it's hard to say that Baker didn't do a good job.

Originally Posted by GeoffD

Well... Theoretically, Martha Coakley could win the primary. LOL

Even Coakley would beat Diehl. He's a nut, and he's hitched his wagon to Trump and then doubled and tripled down on it. This is not Scott Brown or Charlie Baker - both of whom have been described as "liberal" Republicans. He'll lose handily against pretty much anyone. This is the never ending problem for the MA Republican party. Do you nominate a guy like Baker who "isn't Republican enough" but can win a statewide election, or do you go with the Diehls of the world who check more of the Republican boxes but don't stand a chance in a statewide election.

[massnative71]

Originally Posted by lrfox

Even Coakley would beat Diehl. He's a nut, and he's hitched his wagon to Trump and then doubled and tripled down on it. This is not Scott Brown or Charlie Baker - both of whom have been described as "liberal" Republicans. He'll lose handily against pretty much anyone. This is the never ending problem for the MA Republican party. Do you nominate a guy like Baker who "isn't Republican enough" but can win a statewide election, or do you go with the Diehls of the world who check more of the Republican boxes but don't stand a chance in a statewide election.

I see a center-right(ish) non whack job standing a chance against a Coakley/Healy/Chang-Diaz, etc.. A Sununu or DeWine type. Locally, maybe a Ryan Fattman or Dean Tran??? Problem is, locally the gene pool is just so shallow.

[BruinsGirl]

Originally Posted by mdovell

With respect to far left and right groups let me say some basic things. If you examine actual violence that is against people. It's the far right by far. Yeah you might be able to site the Weather Underground but you can't really say it is anywhere near the KKK (which should have been labeled a terrorist organization generations ago).

One thing to kinda look at is how many groups reference God or some higher power. Once you cross that line it can get really crazy really fast. The left had that weird guy Lyndon Larrouse (since dead). Of course the right had Father Coughlin back in the day (who ironically coined the term "Social justice". At the same point "Support your local police" was a saying started by the John Birch Society as a reaction to the Civil Rights Act (segregation was mostly local and state regulated, not federal)

A long time ago there was a website called religious movements. It was by Jeffrey Hadden
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_K._Hadden

Antifa is hardly a thing really. It's the same with ALF (Animal liberation front) and ELF (Earth Liberation Front) and maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zerzan

My girlfriend actually went to Seattle about a year and a half ago. People know what areas have violence and the media focuses on that. If you've ever taken a AV class or photography you know how to make something look dramatic. Explosions, fire, zooming in etc. You turn up the volume of what was said to make it sound like yelling etc. I remember seeing critiques on cities showing abandoned buildings (detroit usually) but then you take a look across the street and there's a new building that replaced it, but they don't show it.

This idea that every single city in the USA was on fire doesn't make any sense. I lived in downtown springfield for five years and outside of the fireworks there wasn't really that much of a difference. Heck remember the Occupy stuff a decade ago? You had parlementary procedure downtown but it hardly did anything. Anyways leftwing terrorism and groups aren't nearly as a violent. It's hard to argue about class warfare and then attack your own stakeholders. On the right if it gets racist you openly saying you want to go after a third of the country.

There's really no legit way to make communism work because it didn't. Lenin didn't even really overthrow the Czar he overthrew the provincial government they supported *after* the czar. Communism doesn't address actual wants. "State sanctioned fun!". You still had a class divide in the USSR just as you did in China. In 1978 China went to more of a market economy and in late 1991 the USSR died. If you want socialism that can be debated as to what policies and programs. We can always also debate if we want a direct service or a voucher (public school vs charter, pubic housing vs section 8). On a local level (where most services are). It depends on the population. I live in a town of I think 14,000 but in one neighborhood we have half the town. As a result I have access to trash/recycling (it just went by), public water, public sewer and annual tree removal. If I lived a few miles down the street I wouldn't have this. Is that inequality? I guess but the budgets only go so far. Leftists cannot ignore the economy of scale and budgets and those on the right can't afford to be racist. This shouldn't be that hard folks. I'll take a boring moderate like Baker over someone on the left or the right the promises everything and delivers nothing.

Thank you for a very interesting insight.