Boston Herald - Boston Herald

Iran: New face, old agenda

herald.staff — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

OK, so the newly elected president of Iran isn’t a hate-spewing, Holocaust denying whack-job like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

And sure, that’s a good thing. It speaks to the good sense of the people of Iran who, no doubt, would like their leader not to be a source of international embarrassment. It also is encouraging that Hasan Rowhani, the only cleric in the presidential race, spent much of his first news conference saying things designed to reach out to the West.

Editorial: Welfare reform redux

Boston Herald editorial staff — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

We’ve urged the state Senate to pick up the pace on welfare reforms and happily they’ve obliged. A bill released by Senate leaders at midday yesterday is set for a full debate Thursday. As promised, the Senate is taking a broad approach; call it “Welfare Reform II,” after the 1995 crackdown that introduced a stronger work requirement for recipients of public assistance.

Act faster on EBT fraud

herald.staff — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

House Speaker Robert DeLeo and his team are sending a powerful message to their counterparts in the Senate. They won’t wait to reform the state’s electronic benefits system for welfare recipients — not when taxpayer dollars and their own reputations as protectors of the public treasury and the public trust are at stake.

Stand up for victims

herald.staff — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Just imagine how Democrats would react if a Republican committee chairman — a man — moved to water down an amendment sponsored by female senators aimed at cracking down on sexual assault in the military. Advocates for victims of sexual assault and Democrats in Congress would be spitting fire.

Loose lips on hacking

herald.staff — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

U.S. intelligence agencies hacked al-Qaeda’s online magazine last month, knocking it off line for 16 days, The Washington Post reports.

Frankly that renews our faith in our own spooks — for a change. But again this is one of those leaks that pose real national security issues.

Forget alleged whistle-blowers for the moment. It is highly dangerous to brag about successes in secret wars, whether online or otherwise. The enemy might learn something useful, even if only confirmation about who is actually responsible.

A battle over ‘label’

herald.staff — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Europe’s anti-Semitism is rising again. To see Germany join it is nothing short of disgusting.

In April, 13 of the 27 members of the European Union wrote Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, in support of her efforts to label products manufactured in Jewish-owned factories in the West Bank as having been made there. Those goods already cannot enter EU countries free of tariffs as goods made in Israel itself may, and Israel provides to importing authorities the postal codes and names of the places where goods originate.

Elizabeth Warren borrows trouble

Boston Herald editorial staff — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is selling her first piece of legislation, but there is less to her campaign for lower rates on student loans than meets the eye.

The new 0.75 percent rate that Warren is proposing for federally subsidized student loans is based on what large banks are charged when they borrow at the Federal Reserve’s “discount window.” But that rate would remain in place for just one year under Warren’s bill, while the folks down in Washington figure out a better system. Sure, because we can always count on them.

A push to the finish

Boston Herald editorial staff — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

We Bostonians love to think of ourselves as unique — and our support for the fund established to benefit the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing tells us that, in fact, we really are. Kenneth Feinberg, the volunteer administrator of the fund who has performed this grim task so many times before, says he has never seen a response like the outpouring of support for the One Fund Boston.

Snowden no ‘hero’

Boston Herald editorial staff — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Ah, yes, the deification of Edward J. Snowden has begun.

Former presidential contender and ex-Texas U.S. Rep. Ron Paul said Tuesday, “We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and [Guardian writer] Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk.”

Apparently Snowden was a fan of Paul’s as well, donating $250 to his quixotic 2012 campaign.

That same day a Boston Globe columnist called him “an American hero.” Strange bedfellows indeed.

Wrong leader at DTA

Boston Herald editorial staff — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

With the Legislature looking to bring some kind of order to the way welfare is handled in this state, the Patrick administration has opted to make permanent the political operative who has been heading the office.

After the proverbial nationwide search, Stacey Monahan was named commissioner of the troubled Department of Transitional Assistance. That would be the same Stacey Monahan who once served as executive director of the state Democratic Party — something Health and Human Services Secretary John Polanowicz left off her resume when he announced the appointment.

Old McDonald has it good

herald.staff — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Deficit-worriers had hoped that the farm bill moving through Congress would reform a flow of subsidies that has been running at gusher strength. It won’t, alas.

The history of reform is dismal. The 1996 bill supposedly ended particular crop subsidies and replaced them with flat payments based on past harvests. Payments were to decline to zero in 2003. But farm income was declining in 2002; farmers squealed. Congress reinstituted direct payments, which now cost taxpayers about $5 billion a year.

Editorial endorsement: Gomez for Senate

herald.staff — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The American public has endured a dizzying array of scandals in recent weeks — you know the list — IRS targeting, leak investigations that put press freedoms at risk, NSA data mining. The bottom line is that the trust citizens should have in their government is eroding by the day. That is not healthy — not for the long-term future of this republic.

And so we find it difficult to imagine that the voters of this state would not take the rare opportunity to make a change — a small change perhaps, just one voice among 100, but a change nonetheless.

Herald endorses Gabriel Gomez for U.S. Senate

Boston Herald editorial staff — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:53:00 -0400

Cue the Duck Boats

herald.staff — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The home town team scored several huge victories Sunday night — the kind that were they in the sports arena would merit a Duck Boat parade or at the very least a rally on City Hall Plaza.

The wage war, redux

herald.staff — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Because this is Massachusetts, where too much government regulation of private industry is never enough, the usual suspects on Beacon Hill are back with a push to increase the mandatory minimum wage.

Yes, the state’s economy is improving (though imperceptibly) but it remains exceedingly tough to make ends meet on a minimum wage job. That has inspired 47 reps and senators to co-sponsor a bill that would increase the minimum wage to $11 an hour.

Editorial: The time has come

Boston Herald editorial staff — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The U.S. Senate will begin debate on a comprehensive immigration reform bill this week and despite bipartisan cooperation its fate in that branch remains uncertain. Meanwhile the House can’t seem to get out of its own way. All of that bodes ill for the prospect of game-changing reforms on an issue of critical economic importance to this country.

Editorial: Petty on public records

Boston Herald editorial staff — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

We know how Gov. Deval Patrick feels about Rep. Shaunna O’Connell (R-Taunton) and her crusade against fraud in the state welfare system. Patrick has accused O’Connell of making “a lot of things up,” so it is no surprise that his team would throw up an expensive roadblock to her request for certain EBT records.

But O’Connell has called the administration’s bluff, writing a check for the $800 that the Department of Transitional Assistance said it would cost to compile records on high EBT account balances.

Power wrong for U.N.

herald.staff — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

At the United Nations, the United States needs a defender who can expose the smelly slanders that the world’s thieving, oppressive and sometimes murderous countries throw at our country. In Samantha Power we are getting someone likely to line up with those people.

Ms. Power, the White House staffer who is President Obama’s nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations, seems to have studied diligently at the Blame America First Academy.

Paul Cellucci 1948-2013

herald.staff — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

There aren’t many politicians who at the end of their days remain quite simply beloved. But Paul Cellucci was one of them.

And as a fiscally conservative Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic state that’s no small feat. But Cellucci, who died yesterday, was a politician in the best sense of that word — a man who never forgot where he came from, who understood that to get things done you had to work with the opposing party and respect those with whom you might not agree.

This is ‘transparency’?

herald.staff — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The most “transparent” administration in history — as the Obama crew likes to think of itself — has come up with yet another way to hide what it’s doing. The Associated Press revealed this week that dozens of Obama’s political appointees are using secret government email accounts. The question is why?

Those caught in the act insist they need the fake addresses to keep from being inundated with unwanted messages.