Today’s Boston Globe editorial was about how the use of creative ways to hold public meetings during the pandemic expanded opportunities for the public to participate in local governance in the Bay State. The Globe editors, who want these methods to become permanent, write: “In New England’s civic mythology, public meetings are allegedly the building…
Category: coronavirus
Shirley Leung’s Massachusetts Miracle Depends on Immigrants
Shirley Leung has a fascinating piece in the Boston Globe today, The Massachusetts Miracle is alive and well. ‘There are a lot of potential Modernas’. Those potential Modernas depend upon the brain power of immigrants. Ms. Leung’s piece is about how area firms built on Boston brains are leading the way in the fight against…
Right Wing Reopeners Move on Schools. And, Is Charlie Baker More Like a Commie or a Fascist?
A new prong of the Reopen movement has launched in Massachusetts with a splashy website and professional media push debut but preesenting the same old question: who is funding it? And then there is the burning question the Foley Hoag partner David R. Geiger poses in CommonwealthMagazine: is Governor Charlie Baker more like a Chinese…
Attorney General Maura Healey Strips the Bark off WalMart. It’s Ugly.
Attorney General Maura Healey has joined the attorneys general of several states in demanding accountability of WalMart over its failure to protect workers from coronavirus. The AGs sent a letter to WalMart CEO Douglas McMillon on June 2 and its allegations are scorching. But first some context. You may be asking, how are the WalMart…
Governor Baker’s Reopening Panel Follies
When Governor Charlie Baker made his appointments to the statewide reopening advisory panel it was laden with CEOs and C-suite types, with no workers. We may be tossing around terms like “heroes” for front line workers like nurses, grocery workers, and housekeeping staff but the governor’s reopening panel was No Place for Heroes. Workers are…
America the Spoiled
Spoiled children stink at birthday parties. Tantrums follow such egregious offenses as having to wait in line (as opposed to waiting one’s turn) or not getting the red popsicle (be happy you got one at all). Spoiled children cannot handle that the world does not bend to their desires. And while they are not the…
Joe Biden, Tara Reade, & Morality “Rightly” Understood
Sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden will undoubtedly be exploited by the Republicans as a way to reduce progressive voter turnout. Interestingly, their own candidate’s far worse sins will not dampen right wing exploitation of this allegation against Biden, which will succeed in helping convince some progressives to stay home or to cast a “protest…
Why Lt. Gov. Polito Should Add Workers to the Reopen Mass. Advisory Panel: It’s in Her Own Best Interest
In Baker’s Reopen Advisory Panel: No Place for Heroes I called for workers to be added to the advisory panel on reopening the state, headed by Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito. That call went nowhere. Let me try again. Lt. Gov. Polito, putting workers on the panel is in your own best interest. Apparently the absence…
Running in Massachusetts During COVID-19: Public Health vs. Appearing on the Ballot
Citizens of Wisconsin risked their lives to vote last week. Because of actions by their state legislature, upheld by a 5-4 a Supreme Court decision, Wisconsin residents were forced to choose between exercising their right to cast a ballot and protecting their health – as well as the health of all with whom they come…
The Masks Roll In, The Masks Roll Out . . .
Two big stories greet us this morning in coronavirus politics and government. Let’s take a look at images of these stories and see what we can make of it: The masks roll in, the masks roll out. In this tradeoff, America only comes out 279 million masks down. As Heather Cox Richardson points out in…