Current Events

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. If a clean slate is a time for optimism, then Day One of the New Year should be a time to anticipate the coming year with a sense of the glass more than half full.  On the political scene,…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Hmm, the country has an authoritarian regime, a Communist credo, a record of human rights violations, no open elections or free press, and we’re liberalizing relations with it? How can we do that? Well, it worked with China,…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Yesterday, the city of Rome included itself among the potential hosts for the 2024 summer Olympics.  Now, where would you rather be that August – Boston or Rome?   Italian Premier Matteo Renzi said, “it’s unacceptable not to try.”  Boston’s self-appointed elite apparently feel…

John Edward teaches economics at Bentley and UMass Lowell. He’s a frequent contributor of columns on economic issues The only thing worse than a bad idea is a good idea ruined by an inflated sense of how good an idea it is. Winston Churchill said democracy is the worst form…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. It’s hard for millennials  to imagine that not so long ago, blacks, who Constitutionally had the right to vote since 1870, were routinely blocked from exercising that right.  But antagonistic county commissioners and viciously contrived regulatory barriers in the South…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Mark Wahlberg, star of box office hits Boogie Nights, The Perfect Storm, The Departed, Lone Surivor and more, and executive producer of Entourage and Boardwalk Empire, was one vicious dude in his teens.    His rap sheet from the 1980’s…