UPDATE — As the Herald reports today (and two commenters from the BPPA note below), the inclusion of the EMS Division is a mistake on the part of Yoon campaign. The EMS Division of the BPPA has not endorsed any mayoral candidate or agreed to serve on any host committee. If I understand correctly, an overzealous Yoon campaign took the EMS Division’s campaign donation to Yoon in his role as a city councillor to be an endorsement of his mayoral candidacy. In addition, it sounds like the campaign was initially fuzzy on the nature of the event. I invite the commenters below to add additional information if it is relevant. ORIGINAL POST: Mayor Menino has asked all city unions to […]

The Globe has been cranking out articles touting the virtues of the new Virgin America service from Logan, particularly the spiffy upscale planes (including a servicey graphic). I can assure you that all the hype about the planes is true, because I flew on one of them last year, out of Worcester Airport. Turns out that the Virgin America planes have been flying in and out of that airport for several months, chartered by Direct Air.

I’ve written previously on the Boston school lottery and last week was an eventful one. In 2004, a blue ribbon panel looked at the Boston School Assignment system, floated a few proposals (like six zones), but ultimately decided not to make wholesale changes. (The chair of that panel, incidentally, called for a complete end to busing, and thus the assignment zones by my reading, a few weeks ago in the Globe. In last year’s State of the City address, Mayor Menino called on the school department to reexamine the zone assignment systems for savings. And then, with no lead up or hearings, the School Department released its FY10 budget cutting plan with a five zone school assignment proposal. It’s interesting […]

Someone finally read the outside sections of the Governor’s budget and found his attempt to ban public entities from hiring lobbyists. This is a good idea and the Governor deserves credit; seems foolish and a bit circular to have public entities spend taxpayer funds to pay someone to go up to Beacon Hill to ask for… more taxpayer funds. So, we’ll tip our hat to the Governor and raise him one — how about banning these same entities from making donations to charitable organizations? Shamie Center Board Member Tom Keane raised the issue several years ago and its still relevant.

City Councillor Michael Flaherty announced his candidacy for mayor last weekend on youtube. One peculiar part of the video is the (unintentional) prominence of the KitchenAid standmixer on the counter behind him. I know I was not the only one fixated on this. Howie Carr jumped on this detail to accuse Flaherty of being uppity and looking to move to the ritzy South Shore at the first opportunity: I couldn’t take my eyes off that high-end Yuppie KitchenAid mixer on the granite counter behind him – close to $500, would be my guess. Then you realize: a year from now, that pricey mixer is going to be on an even fancier granite counter – in Duxbury. I must refute this […]