The last time Boston Mayor Marty Walsh ran up against a deadline for striking a peace deal with the two casino developers sitting just across the city’s borders, Walsh made a call to the governor and bought himself a delay. Now Walsh’s negotiating window is almost up, again, and it doesn’t appear that the mayor […]
CommonWealth Staff
Posted inHealth Care, The Download
Hospitals play Game of Thrones
Partners HealthCare tried to acquire South Shore Hospital and state regulators cried foul. Lahey Health, meanwhile, is trying to gobble up Winchester Hospital and state regulators are practically cheering it on. Not all takeovers are the same. Partners is what Attorney General Martha Coakley calls a health care Goliath, a system so big and so […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Martha Coakley and “the inevitability thing”
The ghosts of 2010 are rattling their chains. There are so many problems plaguing Attorney General Martha Coakley’s run for governor that it is difficult to know where to begin. Coakley’s most recent campaign finance misstep was eminently avoidable. However, the failure of the state’s chief law enforcement official to provide timely reimbursement of campaign […]
Posted inThe Download
Drug scourge reemerges
With the passing of the 60s and 70s, it seemed the attention paid to narcotic use, if not the actual use itself, died off, giving way to stories of recreational use of drugs such as cocaine and club drugs such as Ecstasy. But in recent months, the number of opiate overdoses has risen dramatically, forcing […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
State House on trial
Every weekday, for the next month or two, former state Probation Department boss John O’Brien will walk into the federal courthouse in South Boston and listen as prosecutors try to send him to prison. There was a time not too long ago when it looked as if O’Brien would have the company of several Beacon […]
Posted inEducation, The Download
Commencement (non)-speakers
College commencement season is upon us, the time for freewheeling and provocative pronouncements from graduation speakers, fitting capstones to an unique period of time in life when we’re afforded the luxury of delving deeply and fearlessly into the world of ideas. Or so one might think. The reality is that graduations have become ground zero […]
Posted inGambling, The Download
Casino bidders credo: by any means necessary
True, Jean-Paul Sartre, who is credited with coining the phrase in his 1948 play Dirty Hands, had loftier ideas in mind — the abolition of class distinctions. So, too, did Malcolm X, who launched the line into popular culture when he delivered it in a speech on blacks’ determination to win fully equal standing, less […]
Posted inState House News Service, The Download, Transportation
MBTA fare hike: too bad, so sad
When it comes to the MBTA, squeaky wheels don’t get the grease. The Boston Globe reports that the MassDOT board of directors plans to increase fares Wednesday despite reams of complaints collected from commuters about the hike. Though the MBTA is obligated to hold public meetings to hear T riders out, the system’s mammoth debt […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
State GOP puts its money where its mouth is
The Massachusetts Republican Party is on the verge of throwing its financial weight behind Charlie Baker‘s gubernatorial effort, even as Baker fends off a primary challenge from Mark Fisher. The move is the latest in a line of slaps and slights directed at Fisher, a tea party longshot who has been embroiled in a legal […]
Posted inGambling, The Download
Sausage-making and casino licenses: Butchery at work
You’d be hard-pressed to find another state law and initiative that has been botched the way the rollout of the casino gambling law has been. From voters negating lawmakers’ intent by rejecting casinos in their midst to a headless Gaming Commission making decisions on the most important license in the state, the process may loosely […]