Trump delivers a non-Twitter style State of the Union address

By
South Boston Today Staff
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Sure, the normally combative President Donald Trump last night called for national unity and bipartisan action on overhauling the immigration system and rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, as dutifully reported by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

But the real story, as we all know, is that his address last night was distinctly more presidential than his usual barrage of bombastic presidential tweets – and that’s why we liked Matt Viser’s analysis at the Globe, where Viser notes that the “stylistic image” conveyed by the president last night was “starkly different from the reality of his first year in office.” But it’s not just about style. It’s about his whole approach to the presidency … until last night. The Boston Herald has more on the speech. WGBH has the full video of the address.
 
 
Legislative leaders rip Eversource over solar charges
 
From Bruce Mohl at CommonWealth magazine: “House and Senate energy leaders made clear on Tuesday that they aren’t happy with the way Eversource Energy and state regulators have implemented legislation requiring homeowners with solar installations on their property to be charged for their use of the power grid.”

 

So how did Kennedy do last night?
 
Unless you consider what appeared to be a little drool coming out of the side of his mouth an unmitigated disaster, as Politico reports, U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III’s Democratic response to the president’s speech last night appeared to go OK. Among other things, he attacked President Trump’s first year in office and bemoaned the “fault lines of a fractured country,” as reported by Liz Goodwin at the Globe and O’Ryan Johnson at the Herald. There was one local critic of Kennedy’s speech: The Herald’s Joe Battenfeld, who says Trump looked presidential while Kennedy “looked like he was running for student council.” You decide. WGBH also has the full video of Kennedy’s response.

One thing is clear: They’re bursting with pride in Fall River, where Kennedy delivered his response at the Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School, reports Will Richmond at the Herald News.
 
 
Dems fighting Dems (again): Pressley to challenge Capuano for U.S. House seat
 
Forget about running for Linda Dorcena Forry’s now-open state Senate seat. Ayanna Pressley has her sights set on another prize. From Benjamin Swasey at WBUR: “The first-ever woman of color on the Boston City Council is now seeking higher office — and taking on a fellow progressive in the process. Councilor Ayanna Pressley will run for Congress, challenging longtime U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano in the Democratic primary, she announced Tuesday.”

Besides their age, gender and racial differences, we’re not quite sure what the big political distinction is between the two, nor what this much-quoted battle cry from Pressley means: “This district and these times demand more than an ally, they demand an advocate and a champion.” Spencer Buell at Boston Magazine has more.
 
 
State pension fund saw impressive 17.7 percent gain on investments last year
 
Not bad. From SHNS’s Michael Norton at the BBJ: “A ripe investment environment in 2017 helped the state pension fund put a $11.1 billion dent in the state’s unfunded liability. The Pension Reserves Investment Trust (PRIT) ended the year with a 17.7 percent gain, beating the so-called core benchmark, which rose by 14.9 percent.”

 

Is Partners trying to game the GIC system via Neighborhood Health?
 
As lawmakers today prepare to grill Group Insurance Commission officials about a controversial proposal to change public employees’ health plans, Paul Hattis, an associate professor of at the Tufts University School of Medicine, says he’s glad the new rules will likely be rescinded. But he has some issues he thinks the GIC still needs to address, including whether Partners HealthCare effectively gamed the GIC system via insurance prices quoted by its Neighborhood Health Plan subsidiary.
 
 
Region already feeling impact of big Amazon-JPMorgan-Warren Buffett health-care move
 
Speaking of health-care issues: Shortly after Amazon, JP Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway (aka Warren Buffett) announced yesterday that they were forming a new company aimed at reining in health-care costs for their U.S. employees, the shares of CVS Health, which wants to get into the insurance business, and other health care companies tanked, as Mark Reilly at the BBJ reports.

But let’s look further into the future: What if the cost-cut scheme works and Amazon opens a second headquarters in Boston with 50,000 workers and then starts putting the price squeeze on MGH, Brigham’s & Women’s, Beth Israel, Tufts Medical, etc.? You get the idea. So this could be big. But first the new company’s business plan has to work – and we’re not so sure it will. Even without details, it sounds pretty far-fetched. The New York Times has more.
 
County’s bill to guard inmate at prison hospital approaches $2 million
 
One more post on health-care prices (and it’s a whopper): Essex County Sheriff Kevin Coppinger’s office has spent nearly $2 million to provide around-the-clock guards for an inmate who has been in a state prison hospital since he was shot trying to escape in 2013, Julie Manganis of the Salem News reports. The inmate has not yet been medically cleared to stand trial on charges connected to the escape.

 

The latest turn in state’s bizarre energy politics: Russian LNG
 
The Russians are not only coming, they’ve already arrived, in the form of a giant tanker of liquefied natural gas that’s been unloaded in Everett over the past few days – and some of the gas is coming from a Russian company under US sanctions, the Globe’s Jon Chesto reports. From a Boston Globe editorial this morning: “As an unintended result of restrictive shipping laws on the federal level, combined with efforts by local officials to block gas pipelines, Bay State customers will now instead burn gas extracted from the delicate Arctic ecosystem by a firm linked to one of Vladimir Putin’s cronies.” That pretty much summarizes our energy policies of late: Dumb and getting dumber.
 
 
Meanwhile, Baker talking to other governors about opposing offshore drilling
 
This isn’t dumb, since the state’s energy problems are not tied to whether or not we find new oil reserves off the coast. From SHNS’s Matt Murphy: “Gov. Charlie Baker said Monday he’s working to build a coalition of eastern seaboard governors in opposition to the Trump administration’s plan to open the North Atlantic to offshore oil drilling. …‘I would like to see if we can’t bring some of the other Republican and Democrat governors and maybe, with them, their delegations along, up and down the East Coast, so that’s really been our focus over the last few weeks,” Baker said during an interview on WGBH’s Boston Public Radio on Monday.”
 
 
Senators to push for carbon pricing in omnibus climate-change bill
 
Another non-dumb idea, as long as the final bill doesn’t get swamped by dogma: Senate Democrats are planning to have an omnibus bill ready by next week that will deal with greenhouse gas reductions, including proposals for new carbon pricing and climate change adaption proposals, reports SHNS’s Michael Norton at the BBJ.
 
 
The T’s whack-a-mole policy
 
Every time the T seems to solve a problem, another rears its head. CommonWealth magazine’s Bruce Mohl has a policy name for it: “Whack-a-mole” and he reports that T and Keolis officials seem to be playing the whack-a-mole game almost on a daily basis.

 

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