MORE ARTICLES
Outmigration and the Labor ForceApril 25, 2024 - 11:44 am
Study Finds Obstacles to Search for Opioid SubstituteApril 25, 2024 - 9:11 am
Annual Massachusetts Outmigration Hits 39,000, Up 1,100% Over The Last Decade: BU StudyApril 24, 2024 - 1:00 pm
Hoover at Stanford’s Stephen Kotkin on Stalin’s Tyranny, WWII, & the Cold WarApril 24, 2024 - 12:33 pm
Superior Court Judge Invalidates “Equity Theft” Law as UnconstitutionalApril 23, 2024 - 1:04 pm
Tax Man Confounded: Why High Rates Haven’t Yielded Higher RevenueApril 23, 2024 - 12:58 pm
Massachusetts’ Workforce Growing Older and More Diverse, Remains Highly EducatedApril 18, 2024 - 9:26 am
Johns Hopkins’ Ashley Berner on Educational Pluralism & DemocracyApril 17, 2024 - 2:53 pm
Why the secrecy? Pioneer Calls for Open Meetings Dealing with Steward’s Impact on Patient Care.April 16, 2024 - 1:59 pm
Industrial Policy Reimaged: Can Government Improve Free MarketsApril 16, 2024 - 12:34 pm
Justice, Massachusetts-style
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government /byBe careful what you do here in the Commonwealth, you might be forced to spend the weekend indoors with your kids!! A longshoreman from Boston plead (pled?, pleaded? pleadarum?) guilty to putting his 4 year old on the Massport payroll and was sentenced to probation, restitution, and….gasp….4 weeks of home confinement on the weekends. Given that he’s got five kids under 10 year of age, that might be a tougher sentence than you would expect.
Maxing out the State Credit Card
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government, Economic Opportunity /byAs noted in yesterday’s post, the Commonwealth signaled its intention to utilize the full $1b in short-term borrowing capability in advance of April’s tax receipts. April is typical the toughest month as personal income tax receipts aren’t due until the 15th and over $1b in local aid has to go out at the beginning of the month. But the Treasurer just announced that the state will be maxing out its credit card in December, not April.
Interesting Reading
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byThe latest version of the Commonwealth’s Information Statement Supplement , the best source of concrete financial data on our state, is out. A few nuggets: The Surplus: pg. A-1 — The State ended up with a fiscal 2007 surplus of $190.9 million. Of course, there was a supplemental budget passed in October (for FY2007) that spent $212.1m and rolled over $60m in unexpended funds. Thus, without that supp, there would have been a surplus of $462m. Lottery Deficit: pg. A-2 — The lottery was short by $119m and will be short by $124m next year, unless sales pick up significantly. That’s $243m that the state needs to make up somewhere. Taxes: pg. A-3 — FY2007 tax revenues exceeded projections by […]
Full Coverage of Saliva-Related Issues
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government /byThe Legislature may not have had time to take up gambling or biotech investments this session, but rest assured that the issue of band-instrument spittle is moving apace — just today the Senate approved a House bill establishing a task force to examine hygienic procedures pertaining to band instruments.
American Exceptionalism
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Economic Opportunity, News /byJoseph Stiglitz was spot on about the costs of the Iraq War. But, like many Nobel Prize economists, he’s gained a tendency to believe he has a pulpit from which to preach. Sort of like being an economist and a New York Times columnist, except that Stiglitz still is an economist. I enjoy Stiglitz less and less, I admit, but being cooped up in an airplane for 20 hours does something to you. You read what you brought or you watch the Transformers. (On that score, god, please let the Screenwriters strike stretch on –at least this year we will have fewer lousy movies.) In one of the articles, Stiglitz, taking a page out of the John Edwards-Mike Huckabee-Barack Obama […]