It seems the Massachusetts Fifth Congressional District special election is a mere formality for Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader of the US House of Representatives. “You can see how excited I am that we are going to have Congresswoman Katherine Clark in the Congress before too long,” Pelosi said at a recent Cambridge College campaign […]
National Politics
Posted inOpinion, Politics
Warren: US faces retirement crisis
The following is a transcript of Sen. Warren’s speech on the Senate floor on Monday. I rise today to talk about the retirement crisis in this country – a crisis that has received far too little attention, and far too little response, from Washington. I spent most of my career studying the economic pressures on […]
Posted inHealth Care, Politics, The Download
The first breach of the Obamacare fortress?
There have been other changes already made in the Affordable Care Act , a.k.a. Obamacare, such as delaying the employer mandate for a year and freeing religious organizations from providing birth control coverage to employees. Obamacare opponents, however, got little traction on those retrenchments. But President Obama’s declaration yesterday that those who have substandard insurance […]
Posted inPolitics
What Markey needs to do
It seems like yesterday—in fact it was in June—when longtime US Rep. Ed Markey of Malden won his race to succeed John Kerry in the Senate. Markey’s win only entitled him to fill out the remainder of Kerry’s term, which ends in January 2015. And so Massachusetts’ new junior senator has just a year in […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service, The Download
Elizabeth Warren’s 2016 nightmare
There are a few speed bumps on the way to Hillary Clinton’s long march to a possible 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, and one of them is the senior senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren. So concludes the New Republic’s Noam Scheiber in the magazine’s November issue. In Scheiber’s telling, Warren is “Hillary’s nightmare,” a threat from […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service, The Download
Katherine Clark takes the fifth
State Sen. Katherine Clark’s victory in the crowded Democratic primary field almost assuredly fast tracks her to Washington, DC, just in time to cope with the fallout from the creep of the planet’s most powerful economy toward economic Armageddon. Early on it was clear that Clark was the one to beat. The Melrose politician was […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
David Koch: Pariah and patron
Billionaire New Yorker David H. Koch landed in both Boston newspapers on Friday for very different reasons. The Herald ran a story on an environmental group that is calling on WGBH to oust Koch from its board because of his views on climate change. The Globe, meanwhile, reports that the nation’s fourth richest person ponied […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
Patrick embarrassed by government shutdown
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE A sharp-tongued Gov. Deval Patrick on Wednesday said he was “embarrassed” by having to explain the government shutdown to a group of visiting students from London this week, and hopes voters punish Republicans at the polls next year. “I think Tea Party Republicans are playing a big game with little people […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Scott Brown is taken aback by politics
The sitting senator sent out a fundraising appeal, citing the specter of a potential challenge from a partisan television personality and commentator. The TV type immediately fired back, dismissing the appeal as a stunt to whip up the base. If it sounds like Fox News pundit Scott Brown and his dalliance with a possible run […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
Patrick indirect on ruling out presidential run
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE Gov. Deval Patrick was insistent Wednesday that he would stay involved in public discussions after leaving office, and less direct on whether he would “rule out” a presidential run. “Look, I’m not going to – maybe. But listen, I’m not making any news. I’m saying the same thing I’ve ever always […]