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MassMoments reminds us that on this day – July 23, 1846 – Henry David Thoreau after walking from his Walden Pond cabin to do an errand – found himself in the Concord town jail for refusing to pay his back taxes. His was just an over-night stay – as…
Read More »“(We hope) that our transportation crisis will be solved by a bigger plane or a wider road, mental illness with a pill, poverty with a law, slums with a bulldozer, urban conflict with a gas, racism with a goodwill gesture.” – Philip E. Slater “Wisdom demands a new orientation of…
Read More »I was disappointed to miss the state Democratic Convention in Lowell last Saturday (although faced with the choice of vacationing in Berlin with my wife or spending a Saturday at the Tsongas Center with a thousand political activists, Berlin wins every time). Thankfully, frequent contributor Jim Peters attended the convention…
Read More »The 54th Regiment was the first military unit consisting of black soldiers to be raised in the North during the Civil War. On this day – July 18, 1863 – the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment launched an attack against Fort Wagner, South Carolina – a highly fortified outpost on…
Read More »As a member of the Democratic State Committee, I just received notice from Party Chair John Walsh that he will be stepping down from that position in September. Walsh will be “assuming leadership of Governor Patrick’s political operation as Executive Director of the Deval Patrick Committee and Together PAC.” Stay tuned…
Read More »With all the activity around home and the Democratic convention, I have been a laggard about my blogging. The recent “out of the blue” proposal for a slots parlor in the town of Tewksbury – in fact for a site just down the road from my North Tewksbury home – has gotten…
Read More »As soon as the Lowell tally in the US Senate special election was announced back on June 25, 2013, most political observers were struck first by the scale of Ed Markey’s victory over Gabriel Gomez in the city (58% to 42%). Then came the intriguing observation that almost the exact…
Read More »John Edward, a resident of Chelmsford who earned his master’s degree at UMass Lowell and who teaches economics at Bentley University and UMass Lowell, contributes the following column. We cannot afford to blindly accept all government expenditures as worthwhile. We need to examine government spending with “mid-level scrutiny.” In a…
Read More »Prospects of the 2014 Massachusetts gubernatorial primary that would include the incumbent and party-entrenched State Treasurer Steve Grossman and two prominent doctors – one Joe Avellone – with corporate administrative experience – the other – Donald Berwick with Obama administration experience, hasn’t kept many Dems from looking for other candidates. The names…
Read More »John F Kennedy’s daughter Caroline makes a speech at the former home of the Kennedy family in Dunganstown, Co Wexford, Ireland, Saturday June 22, 2013. Members of the Kennedy family are gathered in Ireland as part of a celebration to mark the 50th anniversary of John F Kennedy’s visit to…
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