If you're one of Boston's 18,000 municipal employees, you just lost some important First Amendment rights. If your paycheck says your employer is the City of Boston, your boss, Mayor Marty Walsh, has contractually barred you from saying anything negative about the prospect of hosting the Olympics in 2024. Section 2.05 of the Joinder …
Author: aronsbarron
Rise up, ye garden party skunks
Driving down the Mass Pike the day after Boston was tapped for the 2024 U.S. summer Olympics bid, there on the WGBH electronic billboard, the five Olympic rings logo against our beautiful skyline. A frisson of excitement. Wow; it's coming here! Congratulations to the bidding group. And in a split second, I wondered what (and who) …
People protests in Paris diluted by political hypocrisy
In Paris on Sunday more than 1.3 million people solemnly marched a cold and windy 3.2 kilometers from La Place de la Republique to La Place de la Nation The crowd moved along the symbolically significant Boulevard Voltaire, the Enlightenment philosopher known for his biting satires and defense of free speech. This largest demonstration in …
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Governor Baker: can he be a compassionate fiscal manager?
The late Governor Mario Cuomo, a stirring orator, told the once significant The New Republic in 1985, "You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose" In a clear break from his predecessor Deval Patrick, Governor Charlie Baker may never deliver soaring rhetoric. He didn't even do that during the poetry part of the campaign. But Baker was …
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Mourning Paris journalists and attack on press freedom
If I were technologically proficient, I'd edge this blog in black. How profoundly sad is the grievous slaughter of 12 yesterday in Paris, journalists and their police protectors at the satire magazine Charlie Hebdo. What an unspeakable attack on press freedom and the underpinnings of democracy. What a barbaric assault on humanity! Say what you want …
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Ed Brooke won and lost with grace
When two-term Massachusetts Senator Ed Brooke woke at 3:30 in the morning on November 7, 1978 the election was already over. And just after 8 p.m. that evening, as the first votes trickled in, his long-time aide Roger Woodworth knew that the sad outcome was confirmed. "I'm afraid it's not going to work tonight, kids," he …
Glass more than half full on New Year’s Day
If a clean slate is a time for optimism, then Day One of the New Year should be a time to anticipate the coming year with a sense of the glass more than half full. On the political scene, Governor-elect Charlie Baker seems to be making all the right moves. His cabinet appointees are a …
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‘T’is the season to see movies
I'm not Gene Siskel, Roger Ebert, or Joyce Kulhawik, and I don't pretend to be. But this is a heavy season for movie going, with the industry trying to distribute its best in anticipation of the next round of Oscars. My husband, sister and I have joined the legions of those willing to suspend video renting, plunk …
Sizing up Deval Patrick’s legacy
I confess to being seduced by Governor Deval Patrick. Not literally, of course, but almost always being won over by his charm. It happened the very first time I met him at a house party, nine years ago, when he promised to use the power of the state to reduce property taxes. That didn't quite work …
NYPD officer assassination fuels furor
I have never been a fan of Al Sharpton. I look at him and see Tawana Brawley, the late eighties phoney rape case that Sharpton embraced in such an inflammatory way. I have always seen him as someone who has been eager to exploit racial issues to advance his own career. And that's usually true. But, in …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 