Our country might not exist if British soldiers had succeeded in confiscating the firearms of patriots in Lexington and Concord in 1775. But today, guns threaten our freedom and our future. Of course, I am thinking about the killings at Newtown, CT. My son is in first grade. None of us can get the image of [...]
From the category archives:
Politics
What happens if “Obamacare” gets shot down by the Supreme Court? The most troubling part of the law, even from a Liberal’s perspective, is the individual mandate–the deal “we” cut with the insurance industry to buy their support for a system of increased regulation. It has always seemed wrong that the government could require individuals [...]
A few days ago I wrote about an idea for a web-based debate between candidates. When I met with other bloggers in our community, we had plenty of good ideas…but we kept looking at that calendar and realizing we had very little time and no guarantee the candidates would even respond. So we came up [...]
Significant changes to Massachusetts Open Meeting law take effect on July 1, 2010. The new rules do not directly promote collaborative technologies–e.g. how a town might use a wiki to improve governance, for example, but some common sense clarifications do open the door to removing some anti-technology sentiment. And I think the documentation requirements will [...]
This week marked the 1-year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act–the stimulus bill that pumped $787 billion into the U.S. Economy to avert financial catastrophe and a 2nd Great Depression. We can debate all day about could have, should have, would haves with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, but I do believe, on [...]
Update: The MBTA is constructing a temporary ramp to be completed this week. Simple problems don’t have simple solutions…in fact, the more obvious the solution, the less likely it is to be solved. I’m not talking about technical problems, but community problems–problems that are systemic in nature. Efforts to address one part of the issue [...]