Archive for April, 2009

Massachusetts State Legislature has produced a veto-proof majority to increase the state’s sales tax from 5% to 7% to help meet the projected deficit in the state budget. The pros and cons of tax hikes versus deficit spending versus budget cuts are well established, as are the pros and cons of increasing the sales tax [...]

Patriots Picked Twelve Players In the 2009 Draft The 2009 NFL draft is over. The New England Patriots picked four players in the second round after trading out of the first round entirely, two in the third, one in the fourth, and one in the fifth, two in the sixth and two in the seventh [...]

Interesting nugget from British retail giant Tesco’s take on the global economy,as reported by the Wall Street Journal (subscription may be required): One exception to the trend [of "upswing in consumer sentiment"], Tesco said, was the Western U.S. Tesco’s stores in Southern California, Phoenix and Las Vegas have been hit hard by the collapse of [...]

Patriot Place, the retail center next to the New England Patriots home field Gillette Stadium, is working pretty hard to drum up business. On Patriots Day, April 20 – which has nothing to do with the Patriots – shoppers were allowed to walk across the field at the stadium, the movie theater showed the Boston [...]

Everybody’s favorite Cambridge radio station, WJIB 740-AM, is mentioned and its owner Bob Bittner quoted in an article in today’s Wall Street Journal on commercial radio stations asking listeners for contributions (subscription may be req.). The article points to the dramatic decline in radio advertising revenue (-9% in 2008) as reason, but WJIB launched its [...]

Would it have killed the Boston Globe’s Maria Sachetti to interview an American whose been hurt or had a relative killed by an illegal alien in an auto accident? Does she only interview people who are provided to her by amnesty advocates? Why didn’t she define what constitutes a “hard-core” crime so the rest of [...]

Here’s a screenshot of a Google Maps search I found in the traffic log: As you can see, the search for ‘”Public Garden” in pennsylvaniA’ threw Google for a bit of a loop. It clearly discarded the state of Pennsylvania as an option and presumably went for a Public Garden close to Pennsylvania Avenue (or [...]

The Boston University Terriers national champion men’s ice hockey team spent an hour and change signing autographs for the hundreds of fans who showed up at the GSU today. I stood in line for about 45 minutes before I reached the table where the players were signing merchandise of all kinds. The players’ patience was [...]

The Boston Globe’s Megan Woolhouse has an article today on how that shortage of nurses that had politicians and hospital directors scrambling to bring in as many foreign nurses as possible predictably has turned into a shortage of jobs for nurses. Writes Woolhouse: When Katharine Barron enrolled in Boston College’s school of nursing in 2005, [...]

New England Patriots 2009 Regular Season Record: 10-6.Play-off record: 0-1. Lost 33-14 at home to Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Wild Card round. New England Patriots 2009 Regular Season Schedule 9/14 vs Buffalo Bills 25-24 9/20 @ New York Jets 9-16 9/27 vs Atlanta Falcons 26-10 10/4 vs Baltimore Ravens 27-21 10/11 @ Denver Broncos [...]