Scott MacKay commentary

After the mourning comes the reckoning. RIPR political analyst Scott MacKay on why Boston will not only survive, but thrive.

The year was 1976 and Boston, the nation’s birthplace, was celebrating the American bicentennial with paeans to liberty, equality and justice. But the city that spawned the abolition movement and women’s rights was riven by racial division.

The image of Boston that flashed around the world that year was a photograph of a black man being assaulted by an angry white man using as a spear a staff with an American flag.

In politics, as in pensions, assets can turn into liabilities. RIPR political analyst Scott MacKay wonders if an advocacy group for pension overhaul that doesn’t need to disclose its members has become state Treasurer Gina Raimondo’s Achilles heel.

After a long winter, spring officially returns to these parts this afternoon.

In New England, everything old really is new again on the Opening Day of the baseball season. Shortly after one this afternoon, the oldest and most spirited rivalry in all of  American sports begins anew as our Boston Red Sox travel to the Bronx to play the New York Yankees, a club also known in our sliver of New England as The Evil Empire.

RI lawmakers are considering changing the Voter ID law.  RI artists can get some help managing their money.  These stories and more on the RIPR Morning News Podcast.   
Plus Political Commentator Scott MacKay analyzes what the current sequestration means to RI.

Do you have insight or expertise on this topic? Please email us, we'd like to hear from you.  news@ripr.org

(PROVIDENCE, RI) Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee delivers his annual State of the State Speech this week. The governor’s words are crucial.

Lincoln Chafee has been governor for two years, but can any of  his constituents honestly point to an accomplishment or speech that addresses our state’s crying need: a better economy that generates needed jobs.

(PROVIDENCE, RI) RIPR Political Commentator Scott MacKay analyzes why the state does not have a functioning Board of Education.

In  no particular order, here are my favorite reads of 2012. If you are seeking a gift for the reader on yer list, consider one of these books. And maybe even buy it at a local bookstore, a business that hires local workers and pays taxes in Rhode Island, unlike the on-line booksellers.

Fiction:

THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER. By Junot Diaz. A funny excursion to the 21st Century world of Latino immigration amid the power and pratfalls of obsessive coupling.