Thanks to CNN and Fox, Thursday's SCOTUS announcement was an emotional roller coaster. Like the Dewey-beats-Truman headlines, they both were so eager to be first that they were wrong. Shame on them. This time, print media at least made a stab at reading the Supreme Court decision before pronouncing the individual mandate dead. And, of course, it wasn't. …
Continue reading Health care – the end of the beginning and the beginning of hard work
That whoosh you hear is the sound of money, gobs of it, flying from wellheeled donors to political candidates and "independent" committees on behalf of candidates. The roar is increasingly deafening especially when the money is coming from corporations and superPAC's (and, to a lesser extent, labor unions. Corporations, Mitt Romney explains to us, are …
Mitt Romney says that President Obama's recent move not to deport illegal immigrants brought here as children was motivated by politics. Now there's a surprise! That's a little bit like Captain Renault in Casablanca saying "I'm shocked, shocked to find that there is gambling is going on in here." Of course it was political, shrewdly political. And it …
Continue reading Obama’s executive order: the Dream Act lives on
I first met Bea Barron when I was a political reporter and she was selling ads for The Newton Times in the 1970's. She was a longtime community activist who had worked for Newton Fair Housing, marched with Dr. King when he was in Boston, volunteered at the local NAACP headquarters and raised money for the …
It's the next phase of silly season. U.S. Senate candidates Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren are to-ing and fro-ing about how often they'll debate one another and in what settings. So far, she has agreed to four televised debates and he, to two televised debates and two radio debates. Included among those she has agreed is one …
Forget Romney and Obama for now. The greatest immediate impact on the U.S. economy, beyond the control of either nominee, could be what happens Sunday in the Greek run-off election. On that day, millions of Greek voters will choose from among a group of flawed and untrustworthy leaders a party (or coalition of parties) to lead …
Three-term 5th district Congresswoman Niki Tsongas marches to a slightly different drummer than her colleague Mike Capuano, the subject of yesterday's blog posting. Her rhythm is not a march exactly, more a step-by-step piecing together of small scale bipartisan initiatives in an environment in which bipartisanship is an unnatural act. Tsongas knows that, as one individual, she …
Continue reading Niki Tsongas builds bipartisanship, one small step at a time
Mike Capuano is not apologetic about his belief in government. He doesn't try to cast himself as a progressive or any other adjective that cloaks his unabashed liberalism as anything other than what it is- an admiration for what government, however flawed, can do to help people. He deplores the mire in which Congressional lawmaking …
Continue reading Cong. Mike Capuano, a liberal and proud of it
"Democracy is a new thing in my country," Naheed Farid, the youngest member of the Afghanistan parliament, said to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday morning at Wellesley College. "Don't you think that after 2014 there will be disaster for democracy in the region?" she asserted. Clinton, along with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, made the answer very clear …
Continue reading Hillary Clinton challenges global women leaders
Shortly after my blog criticizing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed ban on sugary drinks in containers of more than 16 oz, I read the Boston Globe's Yvonne Abraham piece offering an alternative solution, and it's worth passing along. Massachusetts exempts most food products from the state sales tax, now at 6.25 percent. Given how …
Continue reading A more sensible approach to sugary beverages
Marjorie Arons-Barron 