Press conferences used to be the ultimate showdown—newsmaker vs. reporter, mano-a-mano, cage-match style. But in recent years, they’ve become a paltry wisp of their former selves. Nowadays, you’re more likely to get political candidates scrambling off a bus with their pre-fabricated legions of sign-holding interns, hitting the steps of City Hall for a nice photo
MassINC hosts first gubernatorial issues debate
MassINC hosted the first Gubernatorial Issues Debate of the 2010 election season August 16th at the C. Walsh Theater at Suffolk University. Click here to watch the debate in full.
A Frontline View of Healthcare in the Commonwealth
Friday, August 13, 2010 Daisy Gómez is a licensed Social Worker at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and MassINC Associate Board Member. Every day, I see the direct impact health care polices have on the public. In my work, I support parents of children diagnosed with cancer as they wrestle with a multitude of concrete needs
Ranking exports
1 Thursday, July 29, 2010 Our colleagues at the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings have released a new report about how the top 100 metro areas are doing in boosting U.S. exports across the globe. Why does it matter? Because, according to Brookings, increasing the nation’s export capacity is a sure path to stronger job
State of Service initiative announces policy platform
The MassINC Associate Board and AmeriCorps Alums Boston Chapter today released a White Paper outlining the background and policy goals for their joint State of Service initiative. The initiative builds off the hugely successful Cities of Service program, a bipartisan coalition of 101 mayors around the country who are working to develop comprehensive city-wide service plans and engage their citizens
Shouting into the void
There’s a line from an episode of SuperNews, the satire cartoon on the cable network Current, which comes to mind whenever I talk about Twitter. The main character, frustrated with having to listen to people’s messages about minute and boring details, eventually cracks. “Twitter is nothing more than shouts into the darkness hoping someone is
Fresh thoughts from the Greenway
What to do with Boston’s Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway? The question gets a fresh airing Tuesday night when the Boston Redevelopment Authority board considers the adoption of new development guidelines for the mile-long swath of open space. Meanwhile, the Boston Society of Architects asked eight architecture or design students and recent grads what they would
Media to FTC: Drop dead
It comes as no surprise that the national media is painted as having a liberal slant: a Google search for the terms “liberal media” nets 990,000 results, and critics have long blasted the media for supporting liberal causes. One would expect, then, that an industry facing financial turmoil would look to a traditionally liberal solution:
Some Like It Hot
1 Tuesday, June 29, 2010 It’s been 26 days since my central air conditioning conked out. What started out as a case of home repair procrastination has become a personal energy challenge: can I slash my electricity use with an A/C-free summer? The agonizing oil leak in the Gulf and the Sago mine disaster in
Gateway City workshop spotlights asset-building as key growth strategy
Leaders from Gateway Cities, state agencies, and financial institutions assembled in Worcester on June 22nd to learn about innovative new opportunities to connect low-income families with wealth-building financial services. The forum was a byproduct of a MassINC policy brief released last April. The paper described the toll reliance on high-cost financial services exacts on Gateway