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Columnist and “talking head” Thomas L. Friedman of the NYT has his fans and his detractors; he turned off a lot of people with his support for the Iraq invasion. The current mess in Afghanistan can be traced in large measure to the bad decision to start a second war in…
Read More »The Roll Call of voting in the House and Senate on the Casino bill reported out by the conference committee makes for very interesting reading. My bold for legislators from the Greater Lowell/Merrimack Valley area. This is from the AP and found on the WCVB-TV web-site: “Here’s how members of…
Read More »In the past week, there have been two prominent opinion pieces attacking Republicans for their lack of concern about deficits over the past few decades. Neither talks much about Democrats and I’m not really sure if that’s because the authors think criticism of Democrats on this subject goes without saying…
Read More »Because one of the Caritas Christi hospitals – Holy Family Hospital in Methuen – serves a good portion of the Merrimack Valley population I have posted a number of times about the impending take-over of this non-profit by the equity firm – Cerebus. On the blog Health Care for All –…
Read More »Our blogging colleagues at leftinlowell.com have this link up also, but the Globe story is important enough for broad coverage. Economic analysts at UMass are reporting that the Massachusetts economy is growing at a healthy pace, more than twice as fast as the national economy. This is data from MassBenchmarks,…
Read More »Senator Steven Panagiotakos (D-Lowell) one of the Casino Bill conferees – Photo from BostonHerald.com Just in from the Globe MetroDesk: House and Senate leaders have just announced an agreement on a bill to expand gaming in Massachusetts that would authorize three resort casinos and a pair of slot parlors at…
Read More »The embargo broken, Noah Bombard is reporting on the Eagle Tribune blog that fired former Methuen Police Chief Joseph Solomon has won his case with the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission. Solomon was fired over two years ago. This finding must come as a bombshell to Methuen Mayor Bill Manzi. Staff…
Read More »I’ve already written about the economic and environmental costs of failing to deal with climate change. Both phenomena are well understood and the forecast grows increasingly disheartening. However, there’s a third story, a moral one. I’m not talking about the morality of increased incidence of famine, drought, and disease; those…
Read More »The NYT’s Maureen Dowd nails the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen in today’s column. How come they’re only good at fighting us? she asks about the vaunted warrior types of those nations who seem maddeningly slow to form up into national armies charged with fighting the insurgents in…
Read More »On his blog, which I picked up from truth-out.org, economist Robert Reich dissects the issue of a jobless recovery. He explains why corporate profits are rising in some cases, but still not leading to fresh hiring. Read his blog post here.
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