Forty years ago, Italian postal workers faced a backlog of 20 million pieces of mail following a series of strikes. Unlike London, which faced a similar problem and simply took a couple of weeks to eliminate the backlog, the Italians burned some of the letters, sold off others for pulp and dumped others into the …
Continue reading Backlog of complaints? Hit the delete button!
The question during the 2014 gubernatorial campaign was often "Will the real Charlie Baker please stand up?" Today, Governor Baker stood before a meeting of the New England Council, the real Charlie Baker, the one I knew from his days in the highest echelons of the Weld and Cellucci administrations. He is smart, comfortable in …
Continue reading Charlie Baker: charm, practicality and reassurance
Will Marty Walsh become the next Michael Bilandic? Bilandic was the first Chicago Mayor to try to fill the large shoes left when Mayor-for-life Richard Daley died in 1976. Walsh, of course, replaced our own Mayor-for-Life, Tom Menino and is working to make the job his own. Bilandic's first challenges were negotiating the shoals of …
Continue reading Will Marty Walsh become another Michael Bilandic?
Bob Simon was the kind of journalist whom Brian Williams could only dream of being. There was no finer writer or story teller, no more courageous correspondent, no better example of the highest achievements of reporting, than Simon, described by so many in the last few days as a giant of broadcast journalism. In today's world of …
In Mumbai, train service was once so slow passengers rioted and burned train stations. In Bangkok, a one-way commute can take four hours. Manila's public transport relies on Jeepneys, modeled on WW II jeeps and hazardous to passenger comfort and safety. But the performance of the MBTA of late shows Greater Boston has the best Third World transit system …
Continue reading T troubles from the can kicked down the road
That shame came to NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams only recently is probably the most surprising news of all. He is the ultimate expression of the celebrity newsperson, overpaid, overdressed, overexposed, over-inclined to be an entertainer all the while asserting a claim to be a top notch reporter. As the NY Times' Maureen Dowd wrote, "THIS was a bomb that had …
California is sometimes thought of as la-la land, so it shouldn't surprise us that it is the epicenter of the irrational parental movement against immunization. The shocking map of the resulting outbreak of measles, a disease virtually eradicated by 2000 thanks to vaccination, dramatizes the horror. Last year there were more than 600 cases in …
Continue reading Chris Christie, Rand Paul support parents with heads in sand
Three Massachusetts Speakers indicted, the most recent, Sal De Masi, sent to the slammer for eight years. With Massachusetts reeling from the scandalous pattern, Representative Bob DeLeo became the man of the hour in 2009 when, on becoming Speaker, he successfully pushed for term limits for the position. DeLeo ascribed the change as reflecting the need for …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 