The time a City Councilor mansplained economics to a US Senator
by Greg Reibman | Aug 19, 2020 | Newton | 43 comments
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I thought Harris was an economics major at Howard University.
By mansplaining do you mean Jake‘s assessment of the situation was correct?
If the situation is debatable wouldn’t Jake‘s response be seem as disagreeing with the Senator?
Overall the heading seems to imply people should not question their betters, especially if their betters are women.
I‘d also say, one of the Senators best attributes is she is not a delicate flower who wilts in heat.
Oh come on. It is clear here that Jake was disagreeing with Senator Harris on policy. This is getting ridiculous. Cover some other MA-04 candidates for a change.
Greg you are insanely biased. Why don’t you talk about Jesse’s egregious past on the Brookline Fire Department for a change??
This.
Greg- this is very biased. The big event in last nights debate was not this tweet- it was Jesse Mermell’s egregious past with the Brookline Fire Department. I would like to cover that instead.
I didn’t watch the debate. As someone who is considering voting for Jesse Mermell, I’d like someone to explain to me (or provide a link) about her “egregious past with the Brookline Fire Department.”
Thanks
Greg, this is pretty gross. Men are no longer allowed to disagree with women?
He was actually rather nice considering how dumb her plan was.
Senators, like presidents, are not immune from dissent.
@Dave Brigham, if you can get past the paywall, see:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/10/06/progressive-brookline-can-walk-from-ugly-racist-battle-won/r5VPpV2D3YZeuZ0dQu21gI/story.html
Ms. Mermell was a Brookline councillor who voted for an insufficient penalty for a fireman in response to a racist incident. She has apologized profusely and IMO convincingly. The argument by @E Miller that she is not progressive enough is undercut by her endorsements from Ayanna Pressley and Maura Healey.
The vote in question by the Brookline Select Board was unanimous. The Board accepted the recommendation of Brookline Town Counsel.
So here we have Thanksdad Auchincloss trying to ensure the continued, unfair penalization of renters by federal tax policy. Now that’s classic Jake – socking it to anyone who tried to stand up for the little guy!
But first of all, he’s wrong – there are already renters’ tax credits and deductions in more than a dozen states, including Massachusetts, and there’s no proof that they’ve caused rental inflation.
Second, If he’s so worried about tax policy distorting the housing market, then he should redirect his ire toward much costlier IRS subsidies to the wealthy (and by his economic logic, to banks and builders) in the form of tax deductions for mortgage interest and SALT.
Third, what kind of person could still support this arrogant, pompous, self-satisfied little blowhard, after all that we’ve learned about how he views the world and expresses himself?
Michael, good grief. Isn’t there socialist board you could troll? Maybe the Somerville equivalent of Village 14?
Jake’s common sense rebuke of Sen. Harris was entirely correct and if you would care to educate yourself Curbed does a good job of pulling in the available data:
https://www.curbed.com/2019/6/24/18693281/renters-tax-credit-cory-booker-kamala-harris-julian-castro-election-2020
I will say I’m surprised to hear that you are in favor of the Trump tax plan’s caps of SALT deductions though!
Are we going to have a complete focus on just the one candidate? Because even someone like me who is not focused on this race is finding this tiresome. Between Greg and Bryan and Michael (especially Michael) we get the point already.
At some point, bringing up a tweet from 2 years ago is just purposely stirring the pot, especially with the headline prejudging it as “mansplaining”. This isn’t the debate issue, this is just reaching back to serve your own personal political view. I’m sure if I examined the twitter feeds of each of the candidate I could set up an equally gotcha post that will generate some outraged comments.
For the record, here is some analysis:
I actually think they both are partially right. For the Country as a whole, there is value in Harris proposal. But I don’t think it will work as she wants in New York, Boston, San Fran, the places with the highest rents. Supply is constrained, and the upper limit on rents are the more expensive units which rent for far more. So landlords on the lower end would likely raise rental rates at least in part, as the supply has not increased. It creates a higher floor for rates, and the market quickly adjusts to the new subsidy. (hence Jake’s post about economics)
Also, on the flip side, you push folks who qualify for this towards the cities, where this has the highest impact (rental costs are higher in the cities). It makes it easier to live in an urban environment. If the housing is there, terrific. If not, you’ve got the problem above. But it would certainly make some units more affordable for some folks.
If you want to deal with poverty reduction, perhaps this can be part of the solution. But I’d say for Boston, this isn’t a game changer, unless you are a landlord, which I think was Jake’s point. Harris is proposing a nationwide policy, and I’d assume there would be tweaks to it to adjust for some of the unknowns. But I’d prefer better child care options, better health care options, a higher earned income tax credit, and greater subsidies for building low income housing as ways to deal with the poverty and affordable housing issues. The Democratic Party has these debates all the time.
And the debate we should be having is the one from the last two paragraphs. You know, the one that will directly impact the lives of millions of people. Or we can talk about twitter posts and who mansplained.
For the record, Jake is my city councilor. I don’t always agree with him. My political leanings do not match with his. I believe I’m more liberal on some of the issues. But I’ve found him thoughtful and very open. And I think he’s been an excellent city councilor. The image of him as a “arrogant, pompous, self-satisfied little blowhard” as Michael states just doesn’t match reality in Newtonville. Perfectly fine with folks not supporting him for this congressional seat, we should all vote as we want to, and personal politics vary. But I refuse to demonize him or his positions when he has served my local community well, when I’ve found him personally to be none of those things.
Just my 2 cents. Enjoy the day.
Well said, Fig.
Meh. Not a Jake voter, but with all of the times Greg (and Chuck and Sean) have mansplained on this blog this strikes me as a pot kettle situation.
Fig- I’m buying you a drink if we can ever have another Blogger’s night out (and you actually show up).
Greg, you’re reaching too far and losing cred.
Thanks Fig
BTW, MMQC and others, in case you are wondering about that idiom, here’s a fascinating article: https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/12/the-pot-calling-the-kettle-black-is-the-idiom-offensive-racist-or-fair-game.html
@John White – thanks for the link.
@Craig, way to go “educating” us ignoramuses with thousand-word Curbed articles that you believe “pull in the available data,” when they actually don’t.
@Fig, “So landlords on the lower end would likely raise rental rates at least in part, as the supply has not increased” is economic theory 101 that can be debated to infinity, but in the real world there’s been no demonstrated causation between existing rental tax credits/deductions and rental inflation, any more than there’s been a proven correlation between increasing the EITC (which you support) and an increase in market rents.
The point of renters’ tax credits or deductions is to introduce a modicum of fairness in the tax code by countering the subsidies that the highest-tax-bracket homeowners receive through deductions on mortgage interest (easily $25k or more) as well as state and local tax deductions of up to $10k. Admittedly the 2017 reforms of these two specific items went a long way, but both deductions should be eliminated entirely. Until then, providing relief to low-income renters is only fair.
@Jake, if you’re going to run for Congress (and make know-it-all tweets), someday you’ll need to actually fill out your own tax forms so you can better understand the codification of inequity.
I won’t attempt to explain to a bunch of dudes why this feels like mansplaining to me. I’ll leave that to any women who want to tell me why I’m wrong or right.
But I am surprised at why so many comments are directed at me. It’s not my tweet! I’m not running for the United States Congress. Why aren’t we discussing the substance of the candidate’s comments and whether you agree or disagree, think it was appropriate, or not appropriate?
As for those wondering why I’m not posting old embarrassing tweets or statements by other candidates, it’s because I’m not aware of them. If they exist, share them and we can discuss their merits too
Greg are you going to continue Nortonizing Jake until the election? It would be nice to give him a break for a couple days.
Why is this mansplaining?
Here’s the dictionary definition: the explanation of something by a man, typically to a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing.
It’s a tweet by a man, Jake, to a woman, Senator Kamala Harris.
The manner appears to be condescending. I’m not sure how, “If you’re going to run for president, you should study economics” isn’t? As someone who’s been accused (sometimes fairly) of being condescending on occasion, I feel confident that I know it when I see it.
Not in the definition, but kinda common in the genre is the man making a suggestion or setting out a requirement that the woman has already got covered. There is the presumption that the woman doesn’t have the qualifications necessary to have an point-of-view.
In this regard, Jake’s tweet is a classic. Go study economics, to a woman who has an economics degree.
So, it’s mansplaining.
But, should it matter?
I like Jake. Jake’s clearly a smart guy. Jake is right on a lot of issues that I care about. On the whole, Jake is a much better than average City Councilor.
But, this particular tweet highlights some blind spots that make him not my choice for Congress.
He might have been as casually dismissive of a white man, but the fact that he was so casually dismissive of a woman of color highlights a blind spot he has on identity issues. Remember, this is a reply to a tweet. Out of all the tweets he read that day, he chose that one, by a woman of color, to snark.
It’s a technocrat’s answer. It doesn’t show much empathy for the folks that Senator Harris is trying to help.
He just deleted the tweet. He didn’t own it. The best practice for revisiting a bad tweet is to tweet a mea culpa with either a link to the undeleted tweet or a screenshot of the tweet (before you delete it) if you want to delete it.
While you are all free to make any (civil) comment you choose to, the this-is-a-stupid-post comments strike me as a little silly. Obviously, when we post, we think that the content is noteworthy or otherwise worth posting.
If you don’t like a post, simply don’t read it.
Jake is clearly the or a front-runner in a closely contested congressional contest. The winner is likely to be a Congress-critter for a decade or more, unless they decide to run against Ed Markey in 2026. Unlike all but one of the other candidates, he’s a Newton city councilor. Unlike the other city councilor, he’s done or said a bunch of problematic things.
Expect to see more about local guy Jake in the next few weeks. (Probably two from me.)
I do know one thing: Jake’s tough. He’ll survive the next two weeks without this powerful and essential blog giving him a breather.
Meanwhile, Sean, still waiting for a response to this from the Markey-Kennedy post (https://village14.com/2020/08/11/open-thread-kennedy-or-markey/). I know you’re not running for anything, but since you’re using this forum to judge others for being insensitive as to how things might be felt by those in a certain category, maybe you could answer:
Paul Levy on August 13, 2020 at 2:59 pm
Whoa, Sean: “It would be nice to have a senator who isn’t going to be 80 at the end of his term.”
Feels like blatant ageism to this observer. Why would it “be nice?”
Sincerely,
A 70-year-old.
And, btw, I agree with this from Sean:
“He just deleted the tweet. He didn’t own it. The best practice for revisiting a bad tweet is to tweet a mea culpa with either a link to the undeleted tweet or a screenshot of the tweet (before you delete it) if you want to delete it.”
To me, that is more troubling than how we might interpret the original tweet. You can’t have it both ways if you’re running for office. You either own what you said, or you explain why you now have a different view or that you might have used better language.
This is from two years ago, when he presumably already had national ambitions. What in the world was he thinking?
Paul,
Thanks for the affirmation on handling a tweet.
Why would I prefer a younger (than 74 on his way to 80) senator? Because, a significant number of folks suffer some cognitive decline in their 70s and, and this is the important part, there’s not an effective way to monitor and respond to that when the person is a US Senator with a six-year term.
I’m in my mid-50s. (I know. I know. I look, write, and play tennis like a man who is at least six weeks younger.) I already know that some of the youthful elasticity of my mind is diminishing. Ideally, I’m compensating with some accrued wisdom. I feel fairly confident that I’ll be less suited to the rigors of the US Senate in twenty years than I will be in, say, six. (If elected in 2026, as a 62-year-old, I pledge to serve no more than two terms.)
Think about Markey, Warren, Biden, Trump, and the Clintons. All septuagenarians. Three of the six are showing noticeable signs of mental deterioration since, say, four years ago. The other three still seem to be firing on all cylinders, but do you expect those three to be in the same shape in three years? six?
Note, while I would prefer, all else being equal, a younger-than-74-year-old senate candidate, not all else is equal and I am an enthusiastic and unequivocal Markey supporter. May he not lose any of his youthful vitality.
I’m with MMQC on this one. I’ve seen and experienced “mansplaining”. I don’t actually need a man to tell me when another man is “mansplaining” because, gentlemen – that in and of itself is mansplaining.
Egregious example; my expert economist Ph.D. witness on the stand for cross examination. Opposing counsel wants her to do economic future value calculations in her head of x dollars invested in stock market for y years for jury and she refuses. He asks “did you take math in college?” Her answer: “Oh course, and I still have my slide rule but I’m not doing calculations off the top of my head.” Mostly female jurors – their faces all said “jerk” to male defense lawyer.
Sean, I am–almost–stunned into silence. Your rationale for age discrimination is even worse than the short version. Perhaps you do not see the slippery slope you are validating. Maybe you will in a few years, if you still remember what you said . . . .
We agree on the choice for Senate, though.
Paul,
I think ageism is more complex than you’re allowing for. And, I think you’re not addressing the unique issues with a 74-year-old senator and another six-year term.
But, I may need to update my thinking on the 70+.
As a woman, I’m with Lisa P and MMQC in this. Greg you wonder why people aren’t discussing the tweet itself. Maybe if you had posted it without framing it with the headline (click bait?) you chose people would have focused on the content and reacted to that.
Also @Jeffrey Pontiff love the term “nortonizing”. I was just thinking that Jake had become the new Emily Norton with all the “attention” he is receiving on V14.
@Fig thanks for once again adding a useful comment with substance.
Ding, ding, ding. Village14 Word of the Week award goes to Jeffrey Pontiff for “nortonizing”.
I agree with Sean and am surprised more people don’t.
It’s not about what he said – it’s about how he said it.
An alternative response to the tweet could have been, “it is a worthy and important goal to increase financial security among renters. It would be important to ensure the benefits of the tax credit actually accrue to renters however – rather than to landlords (if for example they respond by raising rents)”
That way he’d make the same point (at least, I think that was his point) but do so respectfully. Without snark.
This is especially important when you’re a white man directing your words at a Black woman.
Amen. Councilor Norton.
Emily:
“That way he’d make the same point (at least, I think that was his point) but do so respectfully. Without snark.”
#1. Agree. Common courtesy. If you’re in public life, that should be a general rule. Snarkiness is unlikely to win votes or make you a more effective legislator or executive. If your intent is to denigrate the recipient with your “superior knowledge,” you’re in the wrong line of work.
“This is especially important when you’re a white man directing your words at a Black woman.”
Disagree. See #1. It should be a general standard of behavior. I don’t believe that standard should have any more applicability based on who your audience is. You never know enough about the recipient to fully understand how harmful words will be received.
Ok, a few more thoughts.
First of all, if he said this in 2020 (i.e. the election season), I’d understand the post and the back and forth. But he didn’t, and that matters. I don’t want my candidates acting like congressional candidates from birth. And I don’t want to revisit twitter posts from 2018 and dissect them. The fact that someone has taken the time to do so reveals as much about their partisan interests in the race as it does about Jake. And the invitation to do so for other candidates compounds it. That’s just feeding the outrage beast. You post about candidate A. I post in response about candidate B. The actual issues get lost in the noise.
Second, let me emphasize that this was a TWEET. Look, I’m a firm believer that Facebook and Twitter are the modern day online equivalents of the Mos Eisley Cantina (Motto: “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”) But if you want to play on those platforms, let’s at least recognize that discourse is shortened on Twitter, and while I think Emily’s potential reply is far better than Jake’s reply, it was written both with (a) hindsight, and (b) not really in twitter format. Could Jake have been more polite? Sure. Does anyone on twitter care, unless they are trying to make political hay? C’mon now. My younger relatives would laugh at you and post mocking memes for such old fashionedness.
As for the tone to the audience as Emily points out, Kamala Harris can take care of a little twitter back and forth with ease. Love her or hate her, have you seen her in the congressional hearings? Damn she’s good. Do you folks know any former prosecutors? My lord, they debate the weather, the time of day, what you are having for breakfast, and any other topic that has “words”. They will take your argument, play devil’s advocate, beat you left to right, flip it and beat you right to left. Does anyone who isn’t looking at this from a partisan lens think she’d be actually offended by this? And not have a quick response back to Jake? (and maybe eat him for breakfast?)
Ok, enough by me. I’m giving this too much oxygen by responding again anyway. If you are looking for me, I’ll be at the aforementioned Cantina Bar, nursing a drink, listening to some groovy tunes.
Fig, forgive me for stealing your words, but:
Between your bromantic fanclub and you (but mostly you), we get the point already.
Michael, I’ll do my best to be a little less repetitive in the future, although I do think my second post was addressing others, not you. I do find it a bit ironic that you are the one pointing that out…I can almost quote your posts about Paul from memory at this point… ;-)
As for my bromantic fanclub, how do you know they are all “bros”?
You are correct that this thread has been played out. But I’m sure there will be another similar thread launching any minute to allow us to once again discuss this particular horse race.
Fig, I’m pleased that you find it ironic, because the irony was intended – I was borrowing your “Between Greg and Bryan and Michael (especially Michael) we get the point already,” farther up above.
As for me, to my knowlwdge I never actually repeat myself, but I’m pleased that you find it ironic, because the irony was intended.
LOL. Michael, that made me smile. Which somewhat eased my sadness that no one commented on my star wars references in my original post.
Off to go watch some DNC coverage and eat cheese.
Fig, I forgot to answer your question of how I know that your fan club is bromantic. I know because I am a member. Other members include Terry Malloy and Paul Levy. Paul Levy is the author of How a Blog Held Off the Most Powerful Union in America. I’ll be discussing the Fignewtonvilles and their sister organization the Strawberrynewtonvilles in a chapter of my upcoming book The Highlanders: How a Cheap Blog Was Used to Turn a Wealthy, Liberal, Under-Taxed City Against Its Teachers in Less Than a Year (and How the Same Strategy Can Work for You). In the meantime please do not despair, for we shall be deconstructing and debating the political significance of your cryptic “Mos Eisley Cantina” reference during our next meeting.
I don’t think I’ve paid as much attention lifetime to local politics as in the past 2 years. In that time, I’ve seen and read a lot of Jake.
He comes off as a very smart and ambitious young man. At the same time, his confidence and tone can also come off as arrogant and condescending.
Peel the onion of most recent posts and comments on Jake ultimately it comes down to these two sides. Fair or not, perception is reality.
And higher the office, the more likability becomes primary factor. September 2nd will be interesting indeed! I’m not voting for Jake but wish him well.