Today's papers announced the latest entrant in the 2014 race for governor: a Tea Party challenger to Charlie Baker for the Republican nomination. Mark Fisher, a Shrewsbury resident and newbie at electoral politics, runs a metal manufacturing company. His website has a family photo album and an issues list that starts and ends with eliminating Turnpike tolls. …
Continue reading 2014 Mass. gubernatorial primaries up for grabs
The marquee of the Citi Center for the Performing Arts, still known as the Wang, was lit up on Wednesday evening. In bold colors and a dominating photo it read "Hubie80!" For years now, Boston has known that "Hubie" is Hubie Jones, a man who has made an incomparable impact on this city. He came …
Elizabeth Warren insists she is not running for President, most recently this past Sunday on Channel 5's On the Record program. This is a good thing. There's been too much bandwagon buzz about a possible Warren presidential candidacy, with even estimable Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi quick to portray Warren as a contender. Such effusiveness is getting …
MGM Resorts International Chairman and CEO James J. Murren was the house controlling the game in his speech Thursday to the Boston College CEO's Club. As with all CEO's Club luncheons, the event invitation promised remarks plus opportunities for questions and answers, but Murren went on for so long that there was no time for …
Continue reading MGM Resorts chief shows the house is in control
Fifty years ago today, the woman was not yet a journalist. She was barely 24, a Wellesley College graduate, living in a thoroughly domestic life in a garden apartment in Norwood, getting used to days and weeks totally different from what she might have experienced were she born a generation later. She was surrounded by other, …
The talking heads are calling this year's snafus in the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act Obama's Katrina, likening it to the FEMA debacle in responding to the deadly 2005 hurricane that wasted Louisiana. I think the handling of the ACA roll-out is worse. Katrina is a code word for an epic bureaucratic screw-up, a failed response to …
Continue reading If ACA is a turkey, then Obama’s a lame duck
Still-a-state rep Marty Walsh appeared yesterday on Channel Five's On the Record. The candidate who, in debates and interviews, was unprepossessing at best, often awkward with rhetoric trending banal, is looking more and more mayoral. His presentation was comfortable, and he came across as focused and transparent even while skillfully avoiding being pinned down on specifics (as in, what …
He’s affable, charming and seems to be getting things done. Setti Warren is running for second term as mayor of Newton. He is on a mission, he says, of building a sustainable, livable community, a model city for the 21st century. In the preliminary, he beat challenger Ted Hess-Mahan by a more than three-to-one margin, …
Continue reading Setti Warren pursuing vision as Newton mayor
Don’t believe the hype: Ted Cruz and Tea Partiers weren’t big losers. Most other people were. The recent partial shut-down and near default of the US government led by rogue deficit hawks cost American taxpayers at least $24 billion (according to Standard & Poor's), paid furloughed workers not to work, cut economic growth and, as …
Continue reading Washington artful dodgers postpone responsibility
Boston mayoral candidates Marty Walsh and John Connolly met in their first debate Tuesday and discussed issues to a draw. No surprise. There's little that separates them on matters of policy. Rep. Walsh did what he had to in proving himself engaged and comfortable on education. Councillor Connolly, who has claimed ownership of that issue, …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 