We Need Leaders Who Will Fight, Not Use Empty Rhetoric

Opinion PieceThe Townie is an opinion website. The views expressed in this piece belong solely to the author, and do not represent those held by The Townie.

Now that Phase One of the election season is over, some thoughts. My mailbox, and yours, was absolutely stuffed with campaign literature. I decided early on not to vote for John Beccia, running for our Congressional seat, out of pure spite. I think I received at least six brochures from him, and the primary was still two weeks away.

What did they all have in common? The word FIGHT! Ed Markey was going to “Fight for Us!” Beccia was going to “Fight Corruption.” Tram Nguyen was “Fighting for Massachusetts families” (“Fight” appeared three times in her last brochure). Dan Koh did Tram one better, using “Fight” four times (he’s a “proven fighter,” implying others were not). Seth Moulton was a bit more restrained, but still: “Our Fight Can’t Wait.” Honest to God, everyone, give it a rest in future.

One conclusion from all these mailings, plus television ads and a barrage of text messages (mainly from Koh), was that money rules. Beccia spent something like $3 million dollars of his own money, and Koh’s war chest was embarrassingly disproportionate. Poor Tram ran a pauper’s campaign. If she had had any money, and the race had been head-to-head with Koh, I think she may have pulled it out, which would have been a huge upset.

The Boston Globe did not come out of this primary looking all powerful. In the five highest profile races, four candidates they endorsed came up losers, the most embarrassing of which was the senate primary, where Seth Moulton was absolutely crushed by Markey, the aging incumbent.

Anyway, back to Fight! The joke of it all is that no one really fights for us, otherwise our political situation around here would be a thousand times better. Take Maura Healy, for instance.

What exactly does she spend her time doing? Aside from skipping the Yankee Homecoming Parade (are you kidding? Ted Kennedy came every year), I’d like to see some results from all her blather about “fighting.”

The Boston Globe just ran an article about how Massachusetts ratepayers are getting absolutely “hosed” on our utility bills. We pay roughly twice as much for electricity than the national average, according to the US Chamber of Commerce, and only three other states are more expensive. On top of that, as the Globe headline charged, “Electricity suppliers overcharged New England consumers billions of dollars over past decade, report says.” Did I read that correctly? Over the past decade?

Media reports, whether print or electronic, are stressing that the single most pressing concern on the part of the average voter these days is the cost of living, whether it be gas prices, food shopping, utility rates, or credit card debt. Even the current war … oh, pardon me, Trump calls it an “excursion” … can’t shake people from their pocketbook worries. So here we have an instance of price gouging going on for ten years, and no one in state government … legislators, regulatory boards, the governors in charge … have done a thing about it. I call that a god forsaken mess and a travesty.

Here we are in an election year. Wouldn’t you have thought that a sitting governor, knowing all this is going on, would clear her desk, roll up her sleeves, get on the phone, and start banging heads to get some results on a utility situation that is out of control and hurting people? Many low-income families, who can least afford these bills, are paying for essentials with their credit cards (if they still have one), thereby burdening themselves with crushing interest payments and debt. Instead, we see no urgency from our state leaders, just the usual blah blah that help is coming via bills that are, according to the Globe, stalled in the legislature and going nowhere.

Meanwhile, as of August 1, rates went up again. Though the average layman needs a PhD in Obscuration to understand the mechanics of utility pricing, it appears that about 25% of Massachusetts ratepayers will face increases of from $10 to $18 a month. That’s something to wonder about.

Where’s the “fight” in all of this, I ask? And the answer is pretty simple: our language has become debased. It has become elastic, it rarely means what it says, and it slides off people’s tongues like butter over pancakes on a hot summer morning. Fighting doesn’t really mean anything these days, at least as defined in a dictionary. What we need are results, not hyper inflated and essentially meaningless rhetoric.