USA Today has charts on the slump in housing sales and prices. We think we have it bad in Massachusetts, but the number of home sales fell by a relatively modest 10.3 percent here from the last quarter of 2006 to the last quarter of 2007. At least 32 states had sharper drops, with Nevada […]
Environment
Posted inEnvironment, Politics, The Download
Mitt Romney spoils all the fun (the view from 20,000 feet)
Below is our first national map based on results of this year’s presidential primaries. It simply shows the candidate who got the most votes in each county, regardless of party. Unfortunately, Mitt Romney’s withdrawal from the Republican race may mean that this map won’t be filled in with any more states, since it’s not really […]
Posted inEnvironment, Politics, The Download
Brendan Nyhan spoils all the fun
Brendan Nyhan brushes aside a good chunk of the post-Super Tuesday analysis by claiming that primary data mean next to nothing when it comes to predicting what will happen in November. So ignore all that stuff about high turnouts in the Democratic primaries being a good sign for the party, and all the exit polls […]
Posted inEnvironment, Politics
Dispatches
HISTORIC HANGAR AS THE NEW WALDEN POND? Ah, the civilized village of Concord. Home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and historic landmarks like the Old North Bridge, Walden Pond, and… Hangar 24? Yes, Concord town meeting voters recently won a skirmish with Massport without firing a shot. They added the decrepit (but, they […]
Posted inEnvironment
The bottom line
you could say Maine’s lobster industry has been on a roll. By throwing back breeding lobsters, Maine’s lobstermen have preserved their fishery and actually increased its size, even as other seafood species have been badly depleted by overfishing. But research by marine biologists, many of them from Massachusetts, shows that lobstering gear is killing endangered […]
Posted inEnvironment, Politics, State House News Service
Medford embraces wind power
INTRO TEXT As controversy continues to swirl around the Cape Wind proposal in Nantucket Sound, the city of Medford is leaping to the head of the class by shoring up its renewable energy bona fides. The Massachusetts Technology Collabora-tive has awarded the city a $250,000 Renewable Energy Trust grant to design and build a 100-kilowatt […]
Posted inArts and Culture, Environment
Squeaky wheels
the specter of little toothpicks twirling on the horizon of Nantucket Sound is causing fits among the political elites who make summer a verb on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. On overcast days, they wouldn’t see anything but the soft line separating water from sky. But on sunny days . . . Those toothpicks […]
Posted inEnvironment, State House News Service
Saline solution
Illustration by Greg Morgan a small group of Hull residents have roused themselves early on a Saturday morning for a presentation at the local senior center on the feasibility of getting drinking water from the sea. In a sunlit meeting room where a portrait of President John F. Kennedy sits on top of an upright […]
Posted inEnvironment, Opinion, Transportation
Meeting transportation needs may require more tolls and a higher gas tax
gov. patrick faces a transportation challenge that could make the Big Dig look like a piece of cake. Massachusetts could have a shortfall in highway and transit funding of $13 billion to $17 billion over the next 20 years—potentially exceeding the $15 billion price tag of the Central Artery/Tunnel Project. Closing the gap will require […]
Posted inEnvironment, Politics
Performance pacts offer energy upgrades for (almost) nothing
INTRO TEXT it sounded almost too good to be true, the way the young man speaking before Newton’s board of aldermen described how improvements to crumbling firehouses and neglected school buildings could basically pay for themselves. The source of the fiscal magic? Performance contracting. Under a performance contract, clients use savings on utility bills to […]