Massachusetts voters who care about climate change will want to return Ed Markey to the U.S. Senate. He has worked on the issue for decades, well before many of the rest of us were taking seriously the impact of fossil fuel-generated CO2 on the earth's atmosphere. If you understand the existential threat that confronts the …
Continue reading Ed Markey’s climate change work needed in US Senate
Neither Jill Stein or Tulsi Gabbard is a classic Manchurian candidate, destined to lead the US while controlled by a foreign power, but they are both at least-- to use the term devised by Vladimir Lenin to describe unwitting allies of nefarious propaganda campaigns – "useful idiots." They’ve been or are being used by Russian …
Continue reading Is Hillary Clinton playing into Trump’s and Putin’s hands?
The Massachusetts Governor was halfway through his second term. While things were going reasonably well, he was still dogged by dramatic shortcomings in the Department of Children and Families, fraud at the state drug lab, and incompetence with the online state health insurance system, and a growing unease among the public that, despite his personal …
Continue reading This week’s poll: Charlie Baker still coated with Teflon
Despite 12 candidates shoe-horned on the stage, last night's debate was important. Health care was a key issue in the 2018 mid-terms, a winning issue for the Democrats. Nothing has changed since then. But drilling down into the details is crucial if the vision of health care for all is to become reality. The debate …
Philosopher George Santayana famously said in 1905 that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Winston Churchill liked the lesson so well that 43 years later he intoned, "Those who cannot learn from history are condemned to repeat it." Either wording, we get the idea. Would that Donald Trump were as …
Since becoming president Donald Trump has given members of Congress ample reasons to deem him unfit for office. Time and again his behavior has clearly met the Constitutional standard of high crimes and misdemeanors worthy of an impeachment trial. Only hard political calculations kept the House from taking action. Now, after revelations that President Trump …
Continue reading Impeachment inquiry: serious subject demands decorum
Photos and videos of about four million people around the world rallying last week to urge action on climate change were inspiring. Thankfully, global warming is no longer a marginal issue. From a quarter of a million demonstrating in New York City to young girls leaving their school in Kabul, Afghanistan despite the danger, to thousands …
Six months ago, I agreed with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's disinclination to impeach President Trump. As she put it, “unless there’s something that’s so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country.” Besides, she added, “He’s just not worth it.” It was, I agreed, …
Continue reading Responsibility to impeach: how to make it count
Most days I am seething and grinding my teeth. Sometimes Donald Trump makes me feel like Jean Giraudoux' Madwoman of Chaillot, about a disillusioned idealist who wants to "rescue humanity from the scheming and corrupt developers." Words fail me. Tearing my hair out will be useless. Work, study and other civic commitments are but a …
Continue reading Dem debate 3: is there a winner in the bunch?
Remember the old days when the term "designated driver" evoked A.J. Foyt or Mario Andretti? By the 1980's, however, we learned that "designated driver" meant the guy (or gal) at the party who wouldn't drink so someone would be around to drive home sober. The idea of designated driver was the result of a …
Continue reading “Project Look Out:” changing driving behavior
Marjorie Arons-Barron 