Acting Governors

“This next case is my worst nightmare,” says Hampden County Superior Court probation officer Lorna Burt as she steers her Nissan Pathfinder off the main drag onto a side road […]

Earlier this year, I paid a visit to state Senator Richard Tisei in his wood-paneled office on the third floor of the State House. Tisei is one of the newer […]

I. A woman is shot in Springfield Shortly after midnight near the end of 1994, Juan Rosado left a Springfield house party carrying a loaded gun. The tatooed teenager belonged […]

The 32-year-old Roslindale woman, a former addict who had been arrested a year ago for heroin possession, stepped to the front of the crowded Mattapan courtroom for her weekly hearing […]

What is the point in having state legislators? What, if anything, do people expect from them? The author Alan Rosenthal tells of a Massachusetts state senator (unnamed!) who said he […]

The Decline of Representative Democracy: Process, Participation, and Power in State Legislatures By Alan Rosenthal CQ Press, Washington, D.C., 1998, 369 pages. There can’t be more than a cloakroomful of […]

How much does character matter in a president? Bill Clinton’s many ethical entanglements have made his presidency a running debate on the link between private character and public leadership. While […]

BELCHERTOWN — It wasn’t hard to see that Bernie Kubiak was ready to take a vacation from local politics. He had yet to announce that he would not run for […]

Massachusetts is above the national average in turnover among state Senators, but is lower than average in the House. A term limits law was approved by the voters in 1994 […]

Little noticed in President Clinton’s 1998 budget is the provision for Urban Ultra Empowerment Zones (UUEZ) — a master plan of tax credits, subsidies, grants, and loan guarantees targeted to […]

Massachusetts is a place full of professors, but it’s hard to think of one who has had more influence on state government in recent years than Harvard Business School Professor […]

A Giant Step Toward Competition The new Massachusetts Electric Utility Restructuring Act is a national pace-setter in creating a competitive energy market and providing choice to all consumers, while guaranteeing […]

Bailing out the utilities is no way to bring competition to the electric industry Picture this: a forum in downtown Boston on the major economic development issue of the decade. […]

Every few years, debates about the need for regional government kick up in Massachusetts like a sudden gust of wind, and then quietly die down again. Boston saw a push […]

When the federal government decided to close Fort Devens in 1991, it opened a $350 million hole in the Massachusetts economy. The Army base was the state’s second largest employer, […]

The shark in “Jaws” terrorizes tourists at an Edgartown beach… Jack Nicholson resides at an Ipswich mansion in “The Witches of Eastwick”… Richard Dreyfuss frequents an Arlington rotary in “Once […]

The first time John Janeczek was laid off — from a marketing job at Pittsfield giant General Electric — he scoured the want ads, fired off resumes and landed a […]

For someone who calls himself an “evangelist,” Ken Granderson looks little like the local preacher. Wearing a pressed white shirt, paisley tie and round tortoise-shell glasses, he clicks away at […]

The mystique starts with her name. Orit Gadiesh. How do you pronounce it anyway? Is she Arab? Israeli, then. Almost six feet tall in four-inch heels. Rumored to have been […]

Pat Cusick, a longtime fighter for the low-income residents of Boston’s South End, ought to know better than to get his hopes up. As executive director of the South End […]

The sign has been gone for a while. Route 128: AMERICA’S HIGH-TECH HIGHWAY, it boasted — the waymark of a boom that went bust almost a decade ago. Today, if […]

In the eyes of the political partisan, the world is made up of (1) the enemy, (2) crusaders against the enemy, and (3) compromisers, middle-of-the-roaders, and weak-kneed trimmers who defer […]

The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management GurusBy John Micklethwait & Adrian WooldridgeTimes Books, New York, 1996, 369 pages. Dangerous Company: The Consulting Powerhouses and the Businesses They Save […]