INTRO TEXT Even crime has its growth sector, and in the Bay State, it’s burglary. The only violent or property crime category to increase between 2002 and 2003, burglary rose […]
DNA test cause headaches for the states crime lab
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service, Transportation
CommonWealth Forum weighs mass transit
INTRO TEXT The state’s plan to extend the MBTA’s Green Line to West Medford does not promise enough environmental benefits to justify its cost, according to one panelist at the […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Under Control
Consultant Carroll Buracker (left at microphone) gives the Springfield Finance Control Board his grade of the police department: “Dysfunctional with a capital ‘D.'” It was nearly a year after the […]
Posted inEconomy
Lone Rangers
At first glance, Rick Hill and Lauren Dragon seem to have little in common. Hill, 60, has worked for the past decade as a high-paid software engineer, much of the […]
Posted inEconomy
Flying solo
Additional research by Eric Wagner The self-employment sector is often depicted as a haven for nonconformists, so maybe it’s appropriate that there seems to be an infinite number of ways […]
Posted inEconomy
Lawrence CommunityWorks expands the definition of a CDC
On most evenings, the offices of Lawrence CommunityWorks bustle with activity. The sprawling former mill building that houses the nonprofit community development corporation is divided into many small spaces, which […]
Posted inEconomy
Growing pains
A long about June, the “housing bubble” became big news nationally. In the same week, a cover story in Time (HOME $WEET HOME) focused attention on the “blistering” US real […]
Posted inUncategorized
Florida dreaming
Illustrations by Elizabeth RockIn The Rise of the Creative Class, economist Richard Florida wrote that gays are good for a region’s economy. In his new book, The Flight of the […]
Posted inUncategorized
Ted Kennedy takes up immigration reform
It isn’t a typical day in Washington when that liberal lion Sen. Edward Kennedy joins forces with a conservative Republican from Idaho, especially to take up a cause of prime […]
Posted inPolitics
Walpole tackles football bleachers and the Patriot Act
WALPOLE – “I know some people don’t want to hear this, but I just don’t see the greater benefit to the entire population of the town,” says Lee Ann Bruno, […]
Posted inPolitics
Lynnfield tries to add town meeting attendees by reducing its quorum
LYNNFIELD – It’s Monday, May 2, the second night of town meeting, and residents are gathered in the auditorium of Lynnfield Middle School to consider two articles left over from […]
Posted inUncategorized
Statistically Significant
Illustrations by Travis Foster GREEN CARS MAY HIT GLASS CEILINGHybrid cars, which are partly powered by electric batteries and thus burn less gasoline, are surging in popularity, according to automotive […]
Posted inPolitics
The Red Sox have transcended if not reversed the racial curse
Now that donkeys can fly, hell has frozen over, and the Red Sox have been champions for an entire year, there exists here a palpable desire to peer even more […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Opinion
Improving the re-entry of ex-inmates is essential to reducing crime
In “Approaching Reentry” (CW, Summer ’05), crime expert Jeremy Travis spoke at length about the problem of inmates returning to society. As former district attorney of Middlesex County, state attorney […]
Posted inEducation, Opinion
A push to expand MCAS may dumb down science education
It was hardly a surprise when the state Board of Education voted in June to require high school students to pass one of several new MCAS tests in science in […]
Posted inEconomy
Immersion journalist Barbara Ehrenreich finds that landing a middleclass job is more of a challenge than surviving on lowwage work
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 […]
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 […]