August 2009

  • Green Jobs For Real?

    Folks in Massachusetts searching for all those green jobs Obama’s promised, including jobs for the working and middle classes, recently got a little better grip on how many such jobs are likely to materialize in the next few years. A…

  • {caption}

    Lion of the Senate

    We mourn the passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy today not only for his definitive role in a significant slice of Americana, but also for his role a true progressive leader. He was flawed, for sure, but his conviction for causes…

  • {caption}

    It Takes a Village to Age In Place

    A major challenge that has come with sprawl over the last half-century has been that growing up, maturing, and growing older has required, more often than not, moving to a new community at each new stage. This is largely because…

  • {caption}

    Don’t Like 40B? Plan for Affordable Housing

    It seems that opponents of Massachusetts’s “40B” affordable housing law, which lets developers build higher density housing in unaffordable communities if they set aside affordable units, are gearing up for another petition drive to repeal it. They say this time…

  • Karl Rove v. ACORN

    Now we know that Karl Rove spearheaded the firing of David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico who refused to follow the Bush White House’s orders to intimidate low-income voters by making false charges of “voter fraud.” What The…

  • …At Your Own Risk

    Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey’s piece in The Wall Street Journal, “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare,” touted his own company’s health insurance policy, offered half-baked, pie-in-the-sky solutions (“make it easier for individuals to make voluntary, tax-deductible donation[s] to…

  • Locavores, Beware

    Think all planning and community development should be local? Think again, said a judge on Monday when she told a New York State county to force dozens of towns and villages within its borders to get serious about fair housing.…

  • {caption}

    The Smarter Cities Project Wants Your Input on Sustainability Criteria

    As some of you may know, Smarter Cities is an initiative that ranks US cities on a number of key sustainability criteria as well as on overall sustainability. The system has been developed, managed and staffed independently of NRDC, but…

  • Right Wing Taking Cues From Saul Alinsky?

    On his Comm-Org listserv, Randy Stoecker, a professor in the Community and Environmental Sociology department at the University of Wisconsin, talks about an emerging meme comparing the right wing activists’ recent disruptions of health care forums to “Alinsky’s tactics.” “I…

  • Subprime and the Myth of Increasing Homeownership

    Alyssa Katz notes that a couple analyses show that the increase in foreclosures caused by subprime mortgages more than outweighed the new first-time homeowners it generated. “So please, no more of this ‘dont forget that subprime helped more people become…

  • California Off a Cliff

    Hey everybody, have you heard? The California legislature finally passed a budget plan on July 21 (the constitutional deadline is June 15). The state famously began paying bills with IOUs on July 2. These get paid back with interest, so…

  • Housing as Economic Growth? Strange Idea, But Not in Massachusetts

    Given the pain so many states such as California and Florida are suffering because they have a glut of new, empty houses, and given that Massachusetts has weathered the recession better than a lot of those states, I was somewhat…

  • {caption}

    Prove You Own My Loan

    When I first heard of the case of Mamie Ruth Palmer, which hit the news about a year ago, it sounded like quintessential poetic justice: A homeowner who had filed for bankruptcy protection and was still making mortgage payments is…