The Federal Reserve may not be the center of the solar system, but it is a key inflection point in American politics and, through its interest rate policies, can have a profound impact on the nation's economy. The Fed chairman's pronouncements, for better or worse, affect the stock market and, quickly thereafter, the value of our …
Category: Politics
“This Town” captures a place and time
Tom Wolfe's 1987 masterpiece Bonfire of the Vanities captured the greed, class, ambition, and politics of Reagan era New York City. So, too, does Mark Leibovich's This Town capture early 21st century Washington, D.C. Bonfire, however, is fiction and This Town is for real. Leibovich, who is the New York Times magazine national political reporter, …
Anthony Weiner more than a sick joke
Yesterday may have been National Hot Dog Day, but Anthony Weiner has nothing to celebrate. Anthony Weiner is a .....Good taste prevents me from playing with the punning headlines of the New York Post and Daily News. I'm sure there is a clinical explanation, some personality disorder classification having to do with reckless, self-destructive behavior, …
Zimmerman verdict gnaws at us
Arrests were made overnight in Los Angeles and Oakland as crowds protesting the "not guilty" outcome in the Trayvon Martin murder case turned violent. Had the verdict gone the other way, others would have protested. Even though, according to juror B37, the jury doesn't seem to have viewed the case through the prism of race, it's hard …
Charlotte Golar Richie: the next mayor of Boston?
I have crossed paths with Boston mayoral candidate Charlotte Golar Richie at various times over the last few decades, but without getting a real sense of her as an individual. Certainly, I knew her from her bio: Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya; two master's degrees; two-term member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where she chaired the Housing …
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Warren unfairly under fire on affordable housing
Newton Mayor Setti Warren is catching flak from some Garden City liberals for withholding $1.4 million in city-controlled federal money for a ten-unit building in a former fire station in the Waban section of Newton. The so-called Engine 6 project would house nine chronically homeless and an attendant, bringing to the residential neighborhood individuals with a history of …
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Court ruling hints at evolutionary process
Not much has changed with the Supreme Court ruling that the challenge to Texas' affirmative action policy should go back to the lower court for "strict scrutiny" to be applied. Strict scrutiny means that universities will have to show that non-race conscious strategies were tried to achieve diversity before having to utilize race-conscious policies. So where …
Final Debate – six days left to election
Last night's Senate debate between Democrat Ed Markey and Republican Gabriel Gomez was a schoolyard scramble to see who could make the "old and stale" label stick. Gomez says it's Markey who's old and stale because he's been in Congress for 37 years. Markey says it's Gomez, because he's touting old and stale Republican ideas, like opposition to assault …
Barney hasn’t lost his touch
There was a time when former Congressman Barney Frank said you couldn't pay him enough for sitting on a panel with Karl Rove. As it turns out, he mused, "you can." Frank is doing well on the speaking circuit but returned to his roots on Friday, speaking to the New England Council. The long-time Congressman …
Gomez v. Markey a study in contrasts
It's easy to think of ourselves as thoughtful deliberative voters with no single litmus issue for judging a candidate, but that theoretical criterion came up short last night in the final moments of the Senate debate between Gabriel Gomez and Ed Markey. The defining (litmus, if you will) issue for many became preserving or overturning Roe …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 