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Globe down 23%! Is it the price hike?

Jon Chesto says it is in a WickedLocal report. I wonder, though. After all, if you look at the numbers in a USA Today report, you’d see that a comparable newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, is suffering the same kind of drubbing. The San Francisco Chronicle’s weekday circulation fell 23% to 241,330 The Washington Post’s average weekday circulation dropped 13.1%, 478,482. USA Today, which has the second largest circulation, declined 13.6% to 1.83 million. The New York Times’ weekday circulation dropped 8.5% to 951,063. Anybody see the Herald numbers?

2 reasons why the Connector can't meet small biz insurance needs

Two thoughts on why the Massachusetts Connector has done such a horrible job meeting the demands of small business for affordable health insurance choices: (1) Some say that it is all Governor Patrick’s doing. Certainly, elections matter, and the Governor has paid no attention to the issue until recently, and in a really ham-handed way (price controls! yup, that’s a great idea…). But it’s more complicated than that. The fact is that the Connector was created in a very topdown manner that is not helping to meet the needs of a dynamic set of customers. A Boston Globe report on August 4, 2006, three months before the 2006 election, noted the following: The four Medicaid plans that will be offered […]

Award-winning film on public schools – Kendall, 4/30 – 5/6

Not to be missed for anyone who cares about public schools is The Cartel is an eye-opening documentary about the disastrous New Jersey public school system that is failing the children, parents, and communities it claims to serve. Director Bob Bowdon exposes the corruption and rampant waste of taxpayer money at the heart of the crisis. New Jersey spends more money per pupil than any state except New York, yet only 37 percent of its fourth-graders are proficient in reading. The Cartel presents all the horrendous facts, and culminates with a persuasive argument for school choice reform. The documentary has won numerous awards, including the Visionary Award and the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 2010 Washington, D.C. Independent […]

Why's the Connector so slow in providing insurance choices to small biz?

It is amazing to watch the Governor take credit for slapping price controls on insurance companies. Didn’t work for Nixon 40 years ago – and it is no smarter than a homeowner, when faced with a giant leak in the roof, who insists that a contractor keep slapping wallpaper up to hide the water damage. The Commonwealth Connector was supposed to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time — that is provide near-free products to the indigent and also to act as a marketplace where small business owners and employees could shop for lots of insurance options. The near-free products were marketed, with great success on the uptake but mixed results on improving access, improving quality […]

A constitutional threat

The Globe’s editorial early in the month welcoming Sarah Palin and tea party activists was fine. But Globe commentators are flailing wildly at this point about who TP activists are. It’s boring, overwrought and hypocritical. Neal Gabler draws a parallel between the tea partiers and, uh, al-Qaeda leaders. Neal, take the chill pill. (No, not the blue one.) As my daughter puts it so eloquently, Neal is talking a pig pile o’ poopie. (Working on her writing for content: I know “a pile o’ pig poopie” is a more sensible articulation.) In Neal’s world, people who marched against the wars from 2001-2008, accusing the previous administration of blood for oil, fascism, racism, and “genocide” against Arabs are fine. They may […]