Government, according to a well-worn adage credited to Barney Frank, is the name for the things we decide to do together. Right now, aiding those affected by the devastation of Hurricane Harvey is, of course, the most pressing thing we are doing together. President Trump visited Texas yesterday, and the White House and Republican congressional […]
Current Affairs
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What’s Amazon up to?
Amazon slashed the prices of a handful of items at its just-acquired Whole Foods chain, a move that garnered loads of publicity but shed little light on the online retailing giant’s long-term supermarket plans. Prices for organic butter, milk, bananas, eggs, almond butter, baby kale, apples, and responsibly farmed salmon all fell. The price cuts […]
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City, Boston teachers kick the can
City officials and the Boston Teachers Union eagerly shared the news on Thursday that the two sides reached a tentative contract agreement after 18 months of negotiation. But it turns out it’s a lot easier to get to “yes” when you take one of the toughest issues off the table. The agreement, which still must […]
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The Codcast: Tipping point for Confederate statues
After this month’s white nationalist rally in Virginia, statues of Confederate leaders are falling across the South. Protests by white supremacists against the planned removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville have set in motion a rush to rid town greens and parks of icons to the Confederate cause. Many have decried the […]
Posted inThe Back Story
Rep joins unenrolled in-crowd
Rep. Susannah Whipps joined the political in-crowd this week, switching her party registration from Republican to unenrolled. Statewide, unenrolled voters – those not affiliated with any political party – are taking over. They became the largest political designation in 1990 and an outright majority in 2008. They represent the most voters in 132 of the 160 House districts. In Whipps’s central Massachusetts district, 66 percent of the voters […]
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Grateful for the generals
A hallmark of American democracy has always been that a civilian, the president, is the ultimate commander in chief of the armed forces. It is perhaps the strongest signal we send that ours is a system of laws and representative government, not a military-ruled regime. What, then, to make of the fact that many people […]
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Smart money in Massachusetts
Back in 1990, during his run for governor, John Silber made the somewhat controversial observation that not everyone is college material and those folks would be better off focusing on a vocation like plumbing or construction. Apparently, that Silber Shocker from the well-educated college president didn’t do much to thwart the pursuit of higher education […]
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How many white supremacists at rally?
An estimated 40,000 people turned out on Saturday to say no to hate, racism, and neo-Nazis, but it remains unclear how many of the 50 people at the free speech rally that spawned the massive protest fit that description. Shiva Ayyadurai, a Republican running for the seat of US Sen. Elizabeth Warren, produced a 12-minute […]
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Feds overreach on Teamsters
The feds came up short again on Tuesday in trying to turn obnoxious or even sleazy behavior into federal crimes. It happened when the US Attorney’s office in Boston tried to make bare-knuckled political patronage at the state’s Probation Department a crime of racketeering and it happened again on Tuesday when a jury rejected a […]
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Trump’s disruptive power
Donald Trump signed 42 executive orders in his first 200 days as president. By comparison, Barack Obama, who Trump criticized for signing too many, averaged 35 executive orders a year during his two terms as president. His other two predecessors, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, averaged 24 and 25 executive orders, respectively, during their […]