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. How long does it take you to figure out how much federal tax you owe on your income? If your answer is…
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If you are cynical about politicians and politicking, you may want to skip this movie. Not one of the main characters in this story fares well. You definitely do not want to be these people on screen. The story reinforces citizens’ worst assumptions about politics. But politics is only the…
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In Debate Hall Fifteen minutes before start time; hall is full. Stage set up with six semi-easy chairs for candidates to the right. Each chair separated by a small wooden end table. There’s a podium for the moderator slightly to the left of center stage and two long banquet tables…
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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Driving down to Cohasset for a party celebrating Polly Logan, the 85 year old progressive-minded grande dame and happy warrior of Massachusetts Republican politics, on the same day as the Iowa Straw Poll, my husband and I talked…
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Frequent contributor Jim Peter sent along the following in the aftermath of the debt ceiling crisis resolution: I watched with a great deal of interest the situation as it regards raising the debt “ceiling” which was just avoided with a compromise that could hardly be dignified by that term. It…
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With the celebration of the city’s 175th anniversary coming up next week, I was asked to share on this blog the poem I was commissioned to write by the city’s Sesquicentennial Committee in 1986. I read the poem at the opening ceremony on the plaza at the JFK Civic Center.…
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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. President Obama this week laid out a plan to cut dependence on foreign oil by 2025. Forty years ago, Richard Nixon also promised to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. At the time about 34 percent of our…
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