Summer 2012

Summer 2012

Not adding up

Not adding up

Two decades after ed reform promised a level playing field among poor and affluent communities, Massachusetts is again a state of haves and have-nots

After CommonWealth went to press, the state budget was finalized. The Senate proposal for a Foundation Budget Review Commission, described in the final paragraphs of the story, was not agreed to by the House.   Illustration by Richard Mia. orange, a small town of 7,800 along the Millers River in Franklin County, is exactly the(...)

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Cerberus's health care play

Cerberus’s health care play

The owner of the for-profit Steward Health Care is taking on Boston's big teaching hospitals

  Illustration by Yuta Onoda. Chris Hopey, the president of Merrimack College, brought an intriguing proposal late last year to his board of trustees: Steward Health Care, the upstart, for-profit hospital chain that is challenging some of the biggest players in the Massachusetts health care industry, wanted to transfer Carney Hospital in Dorchester to the(...)

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Tap vs. bottled

Tap vs. bottled

DC Water is trying to transform cheap, environmentally friendly tap water into a powerful brand

in the battle between tap and bottled water, bottled water usually has all the zest. Perrier, Poland Spring, Fiji, Glacier—these companies reel consumers in with big-budget advertising campaigns promoting crystal clear waters from exotic locales all over the world. It’s not easy to counter those images if you’re running the local public water authority. But(...)

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Rumble in the park

Rumble in the park

The nonprofit group formed to operate and maintain Boston's Greenway is being threatened by a political fight over who should fund it

  Richard Davey, the state secretary of transportation, wants to wean the Greenway off public funds.  state transportation secretary Richard Davey darts across Atlantic Avenue, lays down his umbrella, and settles under the roof of the Boston Harbor Islands Pavilion. It’s a raw, wet day that feels more like March than June, but even with the(...)

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What would Jesus do?

What would Jesus do?

The Catholic Church is using deeds associated with its land sales to spread its word - including blocking charter schools and other churches

The Holy Trinity School in Lawrence, which closed in 2004, was recently sold with the restriction that it not be used as a charter school for the next 90 years. Photo by J. Cappuccio. Boston cardinal Seán O’Malley condemns the Obama administration’s requirement that all employers, even religious ones, offer insurance covering the cost of(...)

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Shifting alliances

Shifting alliances

the american medical Association, the venerable lobby organization for doctors, was for years a reliable Republican-leaning voice on big health care issues. For much of the past decade, however, the organization seemed to be on a drift to the left. First, it endorsed the Patients’ Bill of Rights guaranteeing patient protections against insurance companies. Then(...)

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Was it something we said?

Was it something we said?

massinc is a small nonprofit that does research, hosts civic events, and publishes CommonWealth four times a year. Most people outside of our fairly wonky world have never heard of us. Yet you’d never know that from reading the Boston Herald in June. Over the course of three days, the tabloid ran a series of(...)

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Summer 2012 Correspondence

Democracy is messy, but not a weakness Your Editor’s Note, “Closed-door dem­ocracy” (Spring ’12), was meaningful to me. It’s human nature not to appreciate what we have until we lose it. I’m sure reporters on Beacon Hill don’t have deadline problems now because without debate there aren’t many stories. Democracy’s very design makes it “slow,(...)

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