Summer 2007

Summer 2007

Cost unconscious

Cost unconscious

On a Wednesday afternoon in late April, I went to the John W. McCormack state office building, a pillar of bureaucracy a half-block east of the State House, and found my way into a basement-level meeting room. There, 11 members of the Health Care Quality and Cost Council sat in a U-formation in the windowless(...)

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Full disclosure

Full disclosure

less than a year after its launch, the New England News Forum is a work in progress. At a time when the mainstream media are under assault from bloggers, political partisans, and an unprecedented financial squeeze, the Forum has the potential to educate the public about the importance of journalism in a dem-ocratic society, while(...)

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Statistically Significant

Statistically Significant

Illustrations by Travis Foster Maybe it’s a subliminal reminder to do well in school, but girls’ names ending in “a” are all the rage in Massachusetts. According to the Social Security Administration, the top five names for newborn girls in the Bay State last year were Ava, Isabella, Emma, Sophia, and Olivia. Nationally, the top(...)

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On second thought

On second thought

Smart-growth forces enjoy a reversal of fortune in Kingston

UPDATE: Kingston’s Place turned out to be far from a done deal. The developer pulled the plug on the project in 2010. kingston — Residential growth, smart or otherwise, is rarely an easy sell in the outer Boston suburbs. Townsfolk fear that too many new homes and residents will erode the quality of life that(...)

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Tax and mend

Tax and mend

asked why he’s taken a lead role in the bid by House Democrats this year to enact an overhaul of the little-known alternative minimum tax, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal of Springfield points to Maggie Rauh, a Chicopee accountant and mother of three in his western Massachusetts district. Rauh and her husband are among the many(...)

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Simple pleasures

Simple pleasures

buildings matter. They temper our mood, refract our ambitions and sensibilities. At their best, they might inspire us to behave better. “We want [buildings] to shelter us,” says essayist Alain de Botton in The Architecture of Happiness (Pantheon, 2006). “And we want them to speak to us—to speak to us of whatever we find important(...)

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Squeaky wheels

Squeaky wheels

the specter of little toothpicks twirling on the horizon of Nantucket Sound is causing fits among the political elites who make summer a verb on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. On overcast days, they wouldn’t see anything but the soft line separating water from sky. But on sunny days . . . Those toothpicks(...)

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Dispatches

Dispatches

Pay up—and shut up? Under one school of thought, second-homeowners are a major asset to the Massachusetts economy. They pay property taxes, constantly renovate those second homes, and buy up all the heirloom tomatoes and artisanal goat cheese the natives can crank out, without requiring much in return in the way of services. But there’s(...)

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Letter of introduction

Letter of introduction

Photograph by Russ Campbell on behalf of the MassINC board of directors, we are delighted to introduce readers to Gregory Torres, the new president of MassINC and publisher of CommonWealth magazine. Greg brings an uncommon set of qualifications that make him the right person to lead MassINC into its second decade. MassINC is now one(...)

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