You can’t exactly call Barbara Ehrenreich the left’s answer to David Brooks. But if the conservative New York Times columnist’s book-length observations on the lives of the comfortable (Bobos in […]
Immersion journalist Barbara Ehrenreich finds that landing a middleclass job is more of a challenge than surviving on lowwage work
Posted inArts and Culture
Rooting for the home team
There have been many minor-league baseball teams in Massachusetts over the years, but right now the Bay State has a bumper crop. And it seems fair to say that the enthusiasm of their host communities—all of them some distance from the Boston metropolis, as measured by size and prosperity as well as by geography—has never been greater.
Posted inEducation
In Need of a Renaissance
A year of tumult at the state’s largest charter school leaves a besieged leader in place, but the future uncertain Fall 2005 Photograph by Frank Curran On June 30, Roger […]
Posted inPolitics
A Toast to the General Court
Illustration By Nick Galifianakis We don’t know for certain that the Massachusetts Legislature was the state’s most exclusive speakeasy during Prohibition. True, contraband liquor was stored in the basement of […]
Posted inArts and Culture, Health Care
The Rise and Fall of HMOs shows how a worthy idea went wrong
The Rise and Fall of HMOs: An American Health Care RevolutionBy Jan Gregoire CoombsMadison,Wisc., University of Wisconsin Press, 430 pages. This well-written and thoroughly researched book by an unusually knowledgeable […]
Posted inPolitics
Bipartisan back scratching could kill an LNG plant in New Bedford
When the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved plans to construct a liquefied natural gas facility in Fall River in June, no one was more outraged than the city’s mayor, Edward […]
Posted inEconomy
Telecom companies are wary as towns built their own wireless networks
PEPPERELL—This small, hilly town along the New Hampshire border is rural enough to boast that it doesn’t have a single traffic light (town officials don’t count the ones that constantly […]
Posted inPolitics
Setting an Agenda
“We’ve always styled ourselves as the voice of the region,” says Rick Holmes, the opinion editor for The MetroWest Daily News. “Heck, we invented the term MetroWest.” Indeed, the newspaper […]
Posted inState House News Service, Uncategorized
Sense of Loss
Population drop may have been a fluke, but slow growth has its costs By Robert David Sullivan Coming at the end of a year when Massachusetts had more than its […]
Posted inEconomy, Education, Opinion
For the good of our economy the next phase of education reform must aim higher
The recent news that Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble was buying the Gillette Co. set off the predictable round of hand wringing about Boston’s future. Yet the vibrancy of the Massachusetts […]
Posted inEconomy
Corporate Citizens
There is no question that the announcement in January that Procter & Gamble, the Cincinnati–based consumer-products conglomerate, would acquire the Gillette Co., a Boston stalwart, struck a nerve. Partly, it […]
Posted inUncategorized
Letters
Your article about Proposition 21/2 overrides (Head Count, CW, Winter ’05) fails to mention two important community income-generating sources. These two sources are reinventing the local tax system and increasing […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Counterpoints
Mayor Menino’s call for greater revenue diversity, which he delivered at the Boston Municipal Research Bureau’s annual meeting, stems from the fact that the city of Boston is more dependent […]
Posted inPolitics
State House plagued by leaks of the most literal kind
INTRO TEXT Plaster damage in the House chamber (left) and a makeshift water collection system. Water leaking, material falling from the ceiling. The Big Dig? No, the Massachusetts State House. […]
Posted inEconomy, Health Care
Soaring costs threaten effort to insure lowwage workers
INTRO TEXT For workers at Kids Korner Childcare, a Mansfield day care center, the state’s Insurance Partnership program has been a godsend. “It’s been more than helpful,” says Keith Hayes, […]
Posted inPolitics
A campaign to take redistricting away from lawmakers
A SYSTEM THAT has “turned democracy on its head”—that’s what Pam Wilmot, leader of the Massachusetts chapter of Common Cause, calls the redistricting process: politicians huddling behind closed doors, drawing district […]
Posted inEducation
Preschool Promise
Everybody has them, but (it’s just a theory) women of a certain age may have them more than men do—those moments in life when you stop and ask yourself: “How […]
Posted inPolitics
Hitting the Jackpot
IT’S A SAFE BET that Al Rezendes isn’t giving a lot of thought to the Belchertown fire truck he helped buy, or to the new police cruiser protecting the residents […]
Posted inEducation
Is it higher ed’s turn
Bearing the title Investing in Our Future, the report of the Senate Task Force on Public Higher Education, chaired by Sen. Steven Panagiotakos of Lowell and Sen. Stanley Rosenberg of […]
Posted inArts and Culture, Uncategorized
Growing Pains
The Road to Whatever: Middle-Class Culture and the Crisis of Adolescence By Elliott Currie New York, Metropolitan Books, 320 pages. Criminologists have been so engaged in trying to explain and […]
Posted inUncategorized
Statistically Significant
Illustrations By Travis Foster CREEPING UP TO HUB HOME PRICESAccording to the National Association of Realtors, the Boston housing market stood out for not registering double-digit percentage increases in home […]