Illustration by Peter and Maria Hoey.the pivot was abrupt, but it hardly sounded unfamiliar. For two straight hours, Joe Curtatone, the mayor of Somerville, had led an auditorium packed […]
A bank for infrastructure
Posted inPolitics
Kaleidoscope
Photo credit: Tannen Maury/EPA/Landov Photo credit: Don Treeger/The Republican/Landov Story telling Spinning a good yarn is how we have recorded history, shared experiences, and tapped human emotion going back […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
‘No money’ Mike Connolly
BY HIS OWN admission, “No Money” Mike Connolly has made hundreds of people laugh by telling them he is running for state representative but not accepting any campaign donations. But Connolly, […]
Posted inEconomy
Half full or half empty?
from the sound bites blanketing the airwaves, it’s clear that politicians everywhere are concerned about the impact of the recession and slow recovery on the middle class. Elected leaders intuitively […]
Posted inPolitics
High-stakes test
Photographs by Michael Manning JEFF RILEY RECEIVED a fairly consistent piece of advice when he was considering the offer to become receiver for the Lawrence public schools, the person in […]
Posted inPolitics
Here comes StateStat
FOLLOWING THE LEAD of many cities and towns across the country, the state of Massachusetts is launching a program to harness more data that can be used to sharpen government […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Menino, Davis warn of surge in crime
The Suffolk County District Attorney says he and his staff will do everything they can in court to keep a scandal at a state drug lab from returning hundreds […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Putting a face on the opposition
You’d never know by the civil face-to-face encounters across the state yesterday that underlying many of these contests is a nastiness – in some cases, outright disdain – for election […]
Posted inPolitics
Talk is good
the country is hurtling toward the edge of a fiscal cliff, and nobody in Washington seems inclined to pull back. Indeed, no one in Washington seems inclined to do much […]
Posted inHealth Care, Politics
State seeks bids for health care
The state’s Group Insurance Commission issued a request for proposals on Wednesday that is expected to change the way its 400,000 members are insured and to cut expenses by nearly […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service, The Download
Brown and Warren head way out west
All things Western Massachusetts get a rare opportunity to shine when Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren take their campaign cage match to Springfield tonight. The candidates’ early vows to keep […]
Posted inPolitics
Boehner hosts fundraiser for Tisei
Seeking to bolster the Republican majority in the US House, Speaker John Boehner hosted a fundraiser for Congressional candidate Richard Tisei Tuesday morning at the Harvard Club in downtown Boston. […]
Posted inThe Download, Uncategorized
Hard times at the New York Times
New York Times union employees staged the world’s most polite union walkout yesterday, filing out of the newspaper’s headquarters for a brief period to protest the slow pace of contract […]
Posted inEducation, The Download
Student loan debt affecting more parents
As the nation’s economy inches toward recovery, economic growth is being challenged by an ever worsening student loan problem. And as a new ProPublica/Chronicle of Higher Education investigation finds, the […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, The Back Story
Crime lab costs may be significant
Massachusetts officials disclosed to potential bond investors late last month that misconduct at a state drug testing lab may give rise to significant costs to address the problem, to defend […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Mitt hearts Mass.?
It was abundantly clear who the winner of last night’s presidential debate was: Massachusetts. After years of pursuing his White House dream while trying to keep an arms-length distance from […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Debating the moderators
In one of the most fiercely partisan eras in American politics, David Gregory managed to do the impossible. Republicans and Democrats will never agree on who won Monday night’s debate […]
Posted inEconomy, State House News Service
State pension fund braces for fiscal cliff
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE As disruptive federal tax hikes and spending cuts loom on the calendar, managers of the state pension fund say they are continuing with the strategy of […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Edge to Brown, but bipartisan image suffers
Both candidates for US Senate scored points in Monday night’s debate, with many analysts giving the edge to Scott Brown. But Brown may have undercut his image as an independent, […]
Posted inEducation, The Download
Boston assignment plan: Let the hand-wringing begin!
Consider it as shocking a development as night following day.With the ink barely dry on a set of proposals to revamp the Byzantine student assignment system in the Boston public […]
Posted inPolitics, The Back Story
What are the odds?
(A correction has been appended to this story) Tuesday morning, the Boston Globe and Boston Herald both wrote in-depth stories about Elizabeth Warren’s work for a steel company in Pennsylvania in 1995 that appeared […]
Posted inOpinion, Politics
Remembering Silber’s race for governor
John Silber’s death this week at age 86 is another one of those markers of local history, a moment to reflect on the past and consider how certain events have […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Lynn, Lynn the city of substance
Everybody went to a fight in Lynn yesterday and a debate broke out. Partisans, voters and media packed the gym at the Lynn campus of North Shore Community College yesterday […]