Providing adequate resources for public education is not just a public policy goal, it is also the law. The Education Reform Act of 1993 made an unambiguous promise to public […]
Schools need more funds
Posted inEconomy
Economists give their prognoses for recovery
Left to right: Adrienne Ortyl, Paul Harrington, and Alan Clayton-Matthews. Back in March, when economists and other observers were trying to figure out what kept consumers spending even as indicators […]
Posted inUncategorized
Bill Bratton on the new crime paradigm
In Boston and New York, Bill Bratton brought modern management to police work. We asked Bratton what he learned from combating urban crime, and the fear associated with it, that […]
Posted inUncategorized
Ten years after hospital deregulation the honeymoon is over
On December 31, 1991, then-Gov. William Weld signed into law Chapter 495 of the Acts of 1991, An Act to Improve Health Care Access and Financing. This law–which was supported […]
Posted inUncategorized
Terrorism boosts business for Lau
INTRO TEXT Six months ago, Joanna Lau was fending off skeptics who regarded her company’s face-recognition software as another iffy high-tech toy, an intriguing technology with an uncertain market and […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
Government reform in a time of crisis
INTRO TEXT Following the events of September 11, the need to reinvent government “is only more stark,” former Al Gore advisor Elaine Kamarck told the Commonwealth Forum October 18, in […]
Posted inUncategorized
Cape Verdeans struggle with crime
INTRO TEXT In the recent incidents of violent youth crime in Boston, no community has been turned inside out more than that of immigrants from Cape Verde. To judge from […]
Posted inPolitics
A busy season for recount lawyers
FROM A 15-VOTE margin in the Quincy mayor’s race to a dead heat in the contest for mayor of Melrose, November’s municipal elections produced a surfeit of electoral cliffhangers. The razor-thin […]
Posted inState Government
The Speaker Who Believed in Democracy
ASK SOMEONE today, “Who is George Keverian?” and the typical response is a blank stare. Those who recall him at all might say he was the portly Speaker who presided […]
Posted inUncategorized
Life After Lucent
The tale has all the hallmarks of a modern-day mill closing. A large manufacturing company tries to cut costs by selling off one of its biggest plants. Longtime employees–some of […]
Posted inUncategorized
Massachusetts exceptionalism
We in Massachusetts like to think of ourselves as something special. We see ourselves setting a civic example for the nation, if not the world; how else could we justify […]
Posted inUncategorized
The political gender gap
The Private Roots of Public Action: Gender, Equality, and Political ParticipationBy Nancy Burns, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Sidney VerbaHarvard University Press, Cambridge, 453 pages What does political science have to […]
Posted inUncategorized
Father and son in Revere
Revere Beach Elegy: A Memoir of Home and BeyondBy Roland MerulloBeacon Press, Boston, 216 pages We seem to be obsessed with the idea of generations, now as much as ever. […]
Posted inUncategorized
Whats missing from the bioterror plan
By late December it was still hauntingly unclear who had dropped several anthrax letters into the US mail shortly after September 11. Terrorist followers of Osama bin Laden were, of […]
Posted inUncategorized
An officials flipflop makes charter reform devilish
SWAMPSCOTT- Jack Paster has worked at town hall for 22 years, and he had no reason to believe that would change any time soon. In fact, in early 2000 he […]
Posted inEconomy
New Economy Potential
The good news is that Massachusetts has retained its number-one ranking in the California-based Milken Institute’s annual New Economy Index, which measures states by their potential for high-tech growth. The […]
Posted inUncategorized
Has the EagleTribune turned into a mother hen
When the Eagle-Tribune rolled out a 10-part series two years ago chronicling 10 untapped advantages of life in Lawrence that could give the fallen mill city a boost, people weren’t […]
Posted inEconomy
Shooting for self-sufficiency
It took Mary Lou Rockwell, a job counselor and social worker at the Metro South/West Regional Employment Board’s Framingham office, three days to get through what is usually a one-hour […]
Posted inUncategorized
Farmland returns to the wild
Without farmers, farmland returns to the wild To live in a town that still counts thousands of undeveloped acres among its assets is to live with a lot of talk […]
Posted inOpinion, Uncategorized
Reforming School Funding
What is the best way to divide a pie equitably? It’s simple enough when there are only two people involved–one slices, the other chooses. But this is child’s play compared […]
Posted inPolitics
Lani Guinier on merit opportunity and redistricting
As much as she might wish otherwise, Lani Guinier will probably always be best known as roadkill on the Washington, DC, Beltway. Nominated in 1993 to be assistant attorney general […]
Posted inUncategorized
Gerrymandering is alive and well
All summer and into the fall, politics junkies have been treated to an unexpected sideshow: a battle of insiders over congressional redistricting. That the redrawing of district lines gives rise […]
Posted inUncategorized
Counterpoints
Changes in technology have opened up amazing new frontiers in business and commerce over the past several years. Advances in biotechnology and science are changing the course of our daily […]
Posted inUncategorized
Argument
The Internet revolution is touching all of our lives, giving us exciting new choices, services, and knowledge. Whether it is information, products, or services, chances are you can find it […]