INTRO TEXT an at&t call center in Fairhaven will soon close its doors after a contentious nine-year relationship with the town, leaving many people feeling like they’ve been hung up […]
Fairhaven loses both taxes and jobs to ATT
Posted inPolitics
Then and Now
in the lifetime of a magazine, 10 years can be an eternity. In the case of CommonWealth, they represent 44 issues on the shelf and, considering the failure rate of […]
Posted inPolitics
Shifting Ground
Illustrations By Travis Foster Four years ago, Mitt Romney beat Shannon O’Brien to become governor of Massachusetts. Another way to look at it is that the town of Westwood, where […]
Posted inUncategorized
Hazardous Duty
the department of social services was in the dock – again – and that meant Harry Spence was on the hot seat. This time, it was the horrifying tale of […]
Posted inArts and Culture, Uncategorized
Mayflower presents the Plymouth story as tragedy
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and WarBy Nathaniel PhilbrickNew York, Viking Press, 480 pagesWinter 2006 beneath the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House, tucked away safely in the […]
Posted inEducation
Grading the graders
massachusetts is about as good as it gets when it comes to setting standards for public school teachers and holding schools accountable for outcomes, according to Quality Counts 2006, the […]
Posted inPolitics
Paul La Camera takes WBUR local
some 50 staff members of WBUR Radio have crowded into the third-floor cafeteria for a lunchtime event with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick. They settle into chairs or stand around […]
Posted inPolitics
Constituent service
one effect of the ongoing shift in population from city to suburb is that more and more town selectmen in Massachusetts have constituencies that dwarf that of city councilors. The […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
CW comes of age
Spring 2006Winston Churchill said, “History will be kind to me because I intend to write it.” In much the same vein, I intend, on the occasion of CommonWealth’s 10th anniversary […]
Posted inPolitics
Rereading CommonWealth
Spring 2006 ORIGINALLY, I PLANNED to treat the 10th anniversary of the magazine as an excuse to re-read – and, I must confess, when it comes to some older issues […]
Posted inPolitics
Meet Jim McGovern: congressional class of 96 and godfather of Worcester politics
bald and bespectacled, he doesn’t exactly look like power in pinstripes as he moves though the Capitol. Still, after 10 years in Congress, Jim McGovern is increasingly taking on the […]
Posted inPolitics
Upscale Medway teeters on the brink of financial ruin
Medway On a Monday night in late February, several hundred residents of this small town on Interstate 495 gathered in the high school auditorium for what was said to be […]
Posted inPolitics
Statistically Significant
Illustrations By Travis Foster GLOBAL SOUL MATESWe usually compare Massachusetts with other states, but there’s a whole world out there to search for possible doppelgangers. According to the 2006 World […]
Posted inEconomy
Heritage Road Revisited
In a Billerica subdivision, making it in the middle class is still a full-time job JOHN AND LAURA PETERS ended up on Heritage Road in much the same way many […]
Posted inEconomy
The Garden of Peace is no walk in the park
Winter 2006 Dominic Chavez, The Boston Globe It’s unfortunate that the Garden of Peace, a little- known memorial to homicide victims, got its 15 minutes of fame for a nasty […]
Posted inUncategorized
Letters
Loved Mark Murphy’s article (“Rooting for the Home Team,” CW, Fall ’05) about minor-league and indy-league ballclubs in Massachusetts. I’m a fan of the North Shore Spirit, who play at […]
Posted inEconomy
“Strapped” author Tamara Draut explains why young adults arent getting ahead
In her new book, Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead, Tamara Draut crunches numbers and interviews young adults across the country to show how, for the generations […]
Posted inEconomy
As jobs go off the books immigrants edge out some nativeborn workers
The economic recovery from the recession of 2001, both nationally and in Massachusetts, has been not only mixed, but also puzzling in a number of key respects. Nationally, growth has […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Counterpoint
Michael Widmer and Cameron Huff accurately document the damaging cuts that have been inflicted on cities and towns over the past five years. When we reduce spending on education, public […]
Posted inEconomy
The Good News Garage gives a lift to people who need cars in order to get jobs
INTRO TEXT After many years and many miles of steady service, the trusty old station wagon still starts up every morning, but the body is dinged up, repair bills loom […]
Posted inEnvironment
Environmentalists see a bad precedent in the MWRAs plan to absorb wetlands
INTRO TEXT The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority calls its Blue Hills storage tank project crucial to protecting the water supply of thousands of residents in Quincy, Milton, and Brookline, as […]
Posted inEducation, State House News Service
Education officials grow impatient with perenially failing public schools
INTRO TEXT ‘F’ is for failing, and some Massachusetts public schools have the dubious distinction of doing just that. But school turnarounds have not taken place as fast as education […]
Posted inEducation
Sink or Swim
English immersion students in Brockton:Seyla Nou and Elisia HeakEunji Gloria Cho Mantzouranis—Ms. Cho to her students —uses a green marker to put on the whiteboard what should be a simple […]