National Grid seems to have joined the ranks of such scam artists as vinyl siding salesmen and certain car mechanics. Judge for yourself, based on this experience of one of our neighbors, without heat and hot water for five days due to the storm. When Alison and Hal got the basement dry enough to attempt …
Bail-Out Issues Strike Home
We are fond of saying we live a block from the Charles River......most of the time. This is the rest of the time. Ten inches of rain in 72 hours! The Charles is over its banks, with water coming up and onto the two-lane road we walk on nearly every day. The ducks and geese …
Governor Patrick: Lead Communities to Health Insurance Savings
Governor Patrick is said to be planning a visit to Newton this Saturday. His campaign will be giving out bumper stickers and signing up supporters. Here’s what I hope he talks about: the cost of health insurance to cover city workers. It’s a case study in what ails local communities these days.Newton faces an $11 …
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The Arts in Boston: One Hit, One Miss
The Hit. For anyone who grew up in Boston, yesterday’s reopening of the Paramount Theatre on Washington Street downtown was both a trip down memory lane and an invitation to an exciting future. The theater opened in 1932 but decrepitude forced its closing in 1976. Emerson College has taken it over, invested a fortune (more …
Casino Gambling for Massachusetts is a Crapshoot!
Two little letters say it all about one’s perspective on Speaker Robert DeLeo’s proposal to site two resort casinos and slot machines at four racetracks in Massachusetts. He and other supporters speak of gaming (a harmless family entertainment akin to bingo night or Radio City Music Hall); opponents preserve the b and the l and …
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The new “Competitive Partnership:” legitimate undertaking or huge public relations gaffe?
Thirteen rich white men want Massachusetts to go back to the old days, or so it seems. And they’re taking along with them one token individual without a Y chromosome. They are all CEO’s or former CEO’s, and apparently they think things were run just fine under the Vault half a century ago. The Vault …
Winners and Losers from Health Reform Summit — (posted late due to 2-day Comcast outage)
Seven hours of discussion at Thursday’s health summit did produce some winners and losers on both sides of the table. The Republicans were winners because they were able to present themselves as having ideas, rather than just being naysayers. They had a wider audience for their versions of tort reform, expanding health savings accounts (nothing …
The Huntington’s Stick Fly – regional theater scores again
“ All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” according to Leo Tolstoy. Stick Fly, the latest Huntington Theatre production (at the Boston Center for the Arts) uses a weekend family gathering to talk about race, class, gender, and complicated family dynamics – all the heavy stuff – …
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War in Afghanistan is a pact with the devil
News today that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has decided to handpick members of the election oversight commission, jettisoning participation by United Nations monitors, signals that, whenever the United States extricates itself from that war, the situation will go right back to the feudal mess it has been.And it’s not just a question of controlling voting …
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Way to go, Scott Brown!
U. S. Senator Scott Brown was one of five Republicans to break ranks and side with Democrats on a $15 billion jobs measure that passed the Senate today 62-30. The goal of the bill is jobs creation. In fact, Brown was the first Republican to join support of the bill, and then he was followed …
