For some observers, Don Chiofaro is a character out of Ayn Rand, the larger-than-life developer who muscles aside naysayers to create huge and exciting structures that fulfill his vision. For others, he is simply a bulldog, who insists on doing things his way, a person who, as WBUR radio put it yesterday, sees “development as …
Continue reading Don Chiofaro going at it again: building on the Greenway?
The case of Eric Balderas would make a great movie. The child brought to the United States by his Mexican mother, fleeing an abusive father, when he was just four years old. She struggles as a factory worker to care for him. He studies hard, becomes valedictorian of his high school class, and miraculously gets …
Continue reading Harvard illegal puts face on immigration problem
President Obama said many of the right things last night in his speech on the Gulf oil spill, but there was no sense of satisfaction, much less elation. There was nothing soaring, not even reassuring. It had the feel of an after-school conference with your guidance counsellor. As Joan Walsh points out in Salon, the …
At 64 years old, an affluent and successful businessman and philanthropist, Steve Grossman could hardly be faulted if he wanted to play golf and winter in Palm Beach rather than subject himself to media scrutiny and today’s increasingly acerbic political environment. Instead, he is running for MA Treasurer. He says he takes his inspiration from …
Continue reading Steve Grossman a Solid Stand-out for Treasurer
Twenty-five thousand gallons a day of thick oil leaking into formerly pristine and productive waters. Thousands of goopy patches encroaching on four Gulf Coast states, threatening more. Birds black with oil. Local fishermen out of work. Cleanup workers struggling with toxic fumes and endangered long-term by exposure to chemical dispersants—which themselves have unknown environmental consequences …
Tough economic times can translate into mean-spiritedness and make things difficult for those who are different. If you’re a Muslim-American, for example, you can be assumed to be a terrorist. If you’re Latino, you can be assumed to be an illegal immigrant. And, when an increase in bias against such groups plays out in the …
Continue reading Immigation: Massachusetts an Arizona Wannabe?
Marjorie Arons-Barron 