Image by Kent Buckley January 18, 2016 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS The saga of GE’s flight from Connecticut began with the June 2015 passage of a very much needed package of state tax increases aimed at raising an extra $1.1 billion over the next two years. By extending a temporary 20 percent surcharge on its […]
THE BARBARISM OF CHARTERISM
New year, new theater in the war over corporate ed reform Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson was smiling. Not the ordinary cheery ear-to-ear look his constituents have come to expect from the ebullient official, but rather a modest show of relief dashed with giddiness because the side of Boston’s education battle he has come to […]
GROUNDED MONKEYS: MILLIONAIRES UNLIKELY TO FLEE COMMONWEALTH IF RAISE UP MASS WINS TAX ON 1 PERCENT
Image by Kent Buckley December 8, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS Boston Business Journal’s Craig Douglas made an interesting criticism of Raise Up Massachusetts last week (“Excited about the proposed millionaires tax? Cut off your nose while you’re at it,” Dec. 4). For those who missed it, RUM is a progressive labor-community coalition that just […]
BARGAINING AGAINST OURSELVES: MEANS TESTING MBTA FARES WILL DECREASE PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR MASS TRANSIT
Image by Kent Buckley November 30, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS As the latest round of the ongoing neoliberal campaign to shift the cost of mass transit in Massachusetts from state government to individual riders gets in gear—a necessary step along the road to privatizing the MBTA—regular readers will be unsurprised to find that I […]
MASS BAIL REFORM NOW
November 9, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS Lots of innocent people are spending time in jail in Massachusetts. And unsurprisingly many of those people are poor and a disproportionate number are people of color. But they are not convicted criminals. They are people who are charged with a crime—often a minor infraction—and can’t afford to […]