This week, Attorney General Martha Coakley is responding to the disappearance of 5-year-old Jeremiah Oliver of Fitchburg while supposedly under state supervision by presenting a proposal to form a child protective division within the Department of Children and Families. Jeremiah's disappearance went on for months and was eventually made public, not by DCF but by his sister telling school …
Continue reading What will it take to protect kids from abuse?
New is good. New is exciting. New is full of promise. That seemed the mood at Boston College today when Martin Joseph Walsh was sworn in as the 54th mayor of Boston, the first new Boston mayor inaugurated in the 21st century. Public ceremonies like inaugurations are supposed to bind together in shared values all …
Each year, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial page editor Tom Waseleski prepares for the New Year an aspirational list of headlines. For several years, I have shamelessly borrowed the idea and herewith present my own suggestions, with precious little expectation that we will see them atop newspapers, magazines or teasing newscasts in 2014. Please send your own in the …
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 …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 