This will probably mostly interest those of you who live in Brookline, Massachusetts, and those of you interested in local politics in general.

Tomorrow is the annual Brookline Town Election, and it's a vital one. We have an actual race for the two contested positions on the Board of Selectmen, and two Proposition 2½ override questions that, if they fail, would require some significant cuts from the budgets of the police and fire departments and the libraries and schools.

If you need to learn more about tomorrow's election, the ballot is currently available from the Town Clerk as a PDF file here. If you don't know who is running in your precinct for Town Meeting, it's a good place to look.

A list of polling places (again, provided by the Town Clerk) can be found here.

And for more nonpartisan information, the League of Women Voters Guide to the election can be found here. (That's a link to a page that includes the guide as a PDF.) Every year, the LWV sends a few questions to all the candidates and prints their responses in the Guide; it can be instructive to see who responds and who doesn't, and how they answer the questions.

As for my own recommendations, I've made the following endorsements.

First of all, in the Selectmen race, I've endorsed incumbents Gil Hoy and Nancy Daly. In my opinion, both have been very good as Selectmen. Gil, in particular, has been a fierce advocate for the town's libraries. As a member of the Board of Library Trustees, I have seen first-hand how Gil's advocacy has aided our library system. (My letter supporting Gil can be found, along with many other letters supporting Gil, here.)

Secondly, when it comes to the override vote, I have endorsed Question 1A, the $5.4 million override, which would fund everything except the World Language program in the elementary schools. Please note that although I have not endorsed Question 1B, I am not advocating against it either. I still think the World Language program is an excellent idea; I'm still not sure if the town can afford it. I'll probably make my final decision tomorrow morning in the voting booth. Yes for Brookline is advocating voting in favor of both override questions, and I should note that both the Boston Globe and the Brookline TAB have endorsed both questions as well.

If you're looking for any other guidance, I urge you to check out the Brookline PAX May 2008 Town Election Endorsements. In my own case, whenever I'm in doubt or uninformed about a candidate or an issue, I can usually rely on the PAX endorsements to guide my vote. (If you want to know what PAX stands for, read Brookline PAX Supports.)

Wherever you stand on the issues, if you live in Brookline, please vote tomorrow. Democracy is a fragile thing, and must be encouraged to thrive.

Tags: boston, brookline, politics

1. Letter in The Brookline TAB supporting the re-election of Gil Hoy to the Board of Selectmen

2. A comic strip by Seanan (LJ: cadhla)

Guess which one is more amusing. Go ahead, guess.

Tags: brookline, conventions, personal, politics

The Boston Globe reported this morning that four towns in Massachusetts had property tax override votes yesterday, but that three of them rejected the increases. (See 3 of 4 towns say no to override for details.)

As I mentioned back on March 14 in the post Override Vote in Brookline, my town is having an override vote next month, and now I'm getting a little worried about its prospects. It's true that things are tough for individual citizens as well as for towns, but I worry that voters are going to reject the override without having a clear understanding of what such a rejection would mean. As an elected Library Trustee, I'm particularly interested in making sure that our townspeople are fully aware of what steps the library is considering taking should the override fail.

So if you're a local citizen, please don't go into the override voted uninformed. Tomorrow (Thursday) evening the Public Library of Brookline is holding a meeting on Library Budget Cuts and the Override. The meeting starts at 7 pm and will take place at the Coolidge Corner Branch. We want to make sure the citizens of the town know what our options will be in the event the override fails. As I noted last month, the list of possibilities includes cutting back on evening hours, closing the Coolidge Corner branch on Sundays, scaling back on children's programs, and eliminating the book discussion groups. Many other options will be presented at the meeting.

So please consider attending. And let me apologize in advance for my own absence from that meeting; I'm attending a training session for my job and so can't be there myself. Don't take my lack of presence as a lack of support; I'd rather not spend the monthly Trustees meeting in May figuring out what goes on the chopping block.

Tags: boston, brookline, politics

While I wait to see if anyone else weighs in on the table of contents for "I Remember the Future," I know that what people really want to hear about is the Brookline override vote. So here goes.

On Tuesday night, the Board of Selectmen of Brookline, Massachusetts approved two Proposition 2 1/2 tax override ballot questions that will go to the town voters in May. For those of you who don't live in Massachusetts, Proposition 2 1/2 was a ballot question passed years ago by the citizens of the commonwealth. It states that towns cannot raise property taxes by more than 2.5% in any given fiscal year unless the voters of the town approve the larger increase in a referendum. So this year, when the town of Brookline finds itself in financial straits, we have no choice but to go to the voters if we want to fund the annual budget to the levels we'd like.

After months of discussion and debate, including an excellent report from an override study committee, the Selectmen approved two override questions. Voting yes on the first question would cover budget deficits, infrastructure repairs, and a longer school day. The second question, if passed, would also fund a world language program at the elementary schools.

(For more information, see the article "Brookline voters gets choice of $5.4M, $6.2M or no override" by Jessica Scarpati on the website of the Brookline TAB.)

Since I am a Town Meeting Member and elected Library Trustee in the town, people want to know where I stand on the override. Very simply, I have already endorsed the $5.4M override package, but I have not yet decided where I stand on the $6.2M override package.

And the main reason I support at least the lower level override vote is that I know how the budget deficit would hit the library. And the answer is that it would hit it hard.

On the evening of April 3, the Board of Library Trustees will hold a public hearing to present to the citizens of the town some of the options on the table for dealing with a budget deficit. And it doesn't look good. The list of possibilities includes cutting back on materials, but also cutting back on services. Right now the main library is open until 9 pm Monday to Thursday; cutting back its hours to close at 6 pm those nights would save a lot of money. So would closing my own branch library in Coolidge Corner early; right now, it's open late on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Closing the Coolidge Corner branch on Sundays is also on the list, even though many people (myself included) rely on its Sunday hours. And let's not get started on the possibility of cutting back on children's programs, Brookline Readers, the book discussion groups...

In short, if the citizens of the town want the library to continue to provide the levels of service they've come to expect, an override vote is going to be necessary. I'm going to do what I can to convince my fellow Brookline residents to pass the override.

Tags: boston, brookline, politics

You know what interests me about today's news? It's that should Eliot Spitzer resign, the next governor of New York would simultaneously be both the first African-American and first blind governor the state has had.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Paterson

(Also see http://patersonfornewyork.com/ and http://www.ny.gov/governor/index-ltgov.html)

Tags: history, nyc, politics, world-news

Nomi and I voted first thing this morning.

We enjoy voting before work for a few reasons. The obvious reason, of course, is that it's nice to know that we've gotten the task out of the way and don't have to rush back home in the evening to vote. But we also enjoy voting early because we just like to exercise our franchise.

As we waited on an actual line before seven o'clock this morning, I had a few thoughts. One thought was that we're very lucky to be living in a country where the government doesn't send people with cameras to photograph you and make sure you're voting the way they want you to. The other thought was that come May, Brookline will have a very important town election due to a Proposition 2 1/2 override vote being placed on the ballot. And it always saddens me to think about how few people will come out for that election compared to this one, especially given how much more impact the town election is going to have on people's taxes and quality of life.

People reading here last week know that I, as a former John Edwards supporter, was torn between voting for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the primary. For the past few days, I've been asking everyone I can for advice and suggestions. Last night, Nomi and I ran into Nancy Daly, the chair of the Brookline Board of Selectmen, at the supermarket (imagine running into your mayor at the supermarket, and having her greet you first), and I asked her who she was voting for.

And then it occurred to me. The one constituency I hadn't been polling have been other local former Edwards supporters.

So I called up a friend and fellow Town Meeting Member I've worked with who also happens to be a former Selectman. Like me, he had been an Edwards supporter, and I discussed my dilemma with him. He felt that a vote for Edwards now would be a waste, and he was amused by my idea of voting for either myself or Stephen Colbert. I asked him which candidate he was voting for now and why. He told me his choice, went into details on how he had come to that choice, and in the end, although he wasn't trying to urge me to vote his way, in the end that's what I decided to do.

So this morning, for better or for worse, I voted for Barack Obama.

Tags: boston, brookline, personal, politics

...that I am thinking of writing in either myself or Stephen Colbert.

Tags: politics

As readers here know, despite my being very involved in local politics I don't often post about politics on my blog. The main reason I don't is that it can be far too easy for political discussion to cross the line from informative respectful disagreement to personal attacks.

However, as of yesterday I find myself in something of a bind. Next Tuesday I'm voting in the Massachusetts Democratic Primary, and the candidate I was planning to vote for, John Edwards, has dropped out of the race.

When people asked me why I was voting for Edwards, I usually responded with the following joke: it's about time a Christian white male had a chance at the presidency. The fact that a major party's presidential candidate is going to be either a woman or an African-American, and that most of the country casually accepts this achievement, is a wonderful thing. I haven't been this excited since the election of 1872. (What happened in 1872, you ask? Go look it up. I'll wait. If you can't find anything on your first search, try the name "Victoria Woodhull.")

Despite the obvious excitement and intensity Clinton's and Obama's supporters have for their chosen candidates, however, I was most interested in Edwards's populist, anti-poverty message. Yes, I know he's rich and has his flaws; so do all the candidates. But I was impressed with his stand on certain issues and the way he presented himself. In particular, I was pleased to hear about how he addressed the Writer's Guild of America in person during not just one, but two of their rallies. Union support runs deep in me ever since my father died while he was on strike and the union took care of us; it's an emotional connection that I will never shake.

So Edwards was the candidate I had chosen to support, and now he's gone. And I find myself with the dilemma of deciding who to vote for next week, Clinton or Obama. On most of the issues that I've been following, there's nothing to help me differentiate between the two of them. So I decided to do what any self-respecting science-fiction writer would do, and judge them based on their proposed plans for space exploration.

There doesn't seem to be much out there, but I have found two relevant documents so far. First, there is Barack Obama's Plan for American Leadership in Space, released three weeks ago. According to the document, Obama supports the development of the Orion CEV and completion of the International Space Station. He also supports more robotic missions and enhanced science and mathematics education here on Earth. But nowhere in this statement does he speak to the question of manned missions. I want to see humans return to the moon in my lifetime, and I want to see the beginnings of a mission to Mars. On both of those, Obama's statement is disturbingly silent.

Sadly, though, Hillary Clinton doesn't seem to be that interested in my core issues either. In her October press release, Ending the War on Science, Clinton does say that she'll take what I consider a better approach towards supporting science and scientific research than the current administration. But while she says she is committed to the same things Obama mentions (she just uses different language), and she refers to "future human exploration," again there is no specific mention of manned missions to either the moon or Mars.

So in the end, I'm still a newly-minted undecided voter. If anyone out there can give me good reasons to support either candidate over the other, based upon the core issues of manned space exploration, I'd like to know.

Per aspera ad astra.

Tags: history, personal, politics, science, space

There's an old saying: once is heresy, twice is tradition, three times is sacred tradition. With that thought in mind, welcome to my list of the top ten movies of 2007!

As you can remind yourself by clicking on the above links, Nomi and I don't usually manage to see a lot of new movies in the theatre in any given calendar year. In 2005, we saw only thirteen films, and in 2006, we only caught ten. And yet, I revel in the absurdity of making a top ten list based on such a small sample. So the magic number for 2007 was again thirteen, and out of those thirteen, here are what I consider the top ten films of the year.

[Warning: There might be minor spoilers in the discussion. If you want to be safe, just read the titles, which are in boldface.]

( Michael A. Burstein's Top Ten Movies of 2007 )

And the three that didn't make the list? Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Hm. The three movies that didn't make the list are all the second sequels to a previous film. Hollywood, I bet there's a lesson in there for you.

(ETA: I completely forgot that I went to see Transformers this year, sans Nomi. I frequently joked that it was the greatest movie ever made, but if I even forgot to mention it when I first posted this... well, I guess that tells us something about the impact that movie made.)

Tags: books, comics, movies, personal, politics, science-fiction, television

I love quotes like this.

The set-up, for those of you who don't have the time or inclination to read "Clinton Gets an Instant Chance to Wield a New Weapon" by Jim Rutenberg: The Clinton campaign has set up a web site devoted to instantaneous rebuttal of incorrect news reports. Yesterday, the site was used to refute a claim that Clinton had failed to tip her waitress at a Maid-Rite diner in Iowa.

The Times contacted the waitress, Anita Esterday, who seems to have shown a lot more sense than the rest of the world on this issue:

“You people are really nuts,” she told a reporter during a phone interview. “There’s kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there’s better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn’t get a tip.”

Amen.

Tags: politics