politics Archives

REMEMBRANCE AND PROTEST: THANKSGIVING THEN & NOW

November 23, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS The following passage is excerpted from a piece I wrote in 2005. It recounts the story of King Philip’s War—which was fought across southern New England 340 years ago, and started not far from where I attended a Thanksgiving dinner that year at

JASON PRAMAS November 23, 2015

LEFT BEHIND: THE PARIS ATTACKS AND THE NEED TO FUND A MASS INDEPENDENT AMERICAN NEWS MEDIA

Image by Kent Buckley November 17, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS Shortly after the Paris attacks on Friday, I flipped on the TV and saw that Fox 25 was feeding Fox News live during its normal evening entertainment slot. I was not surprised to find that News Corp HQ was

JASON PRAMAS November 17, 2015

MASS BAIL REFORM NOW

November 9, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS Lots of innocent people are spending time in jail in Massachusetts. And unsurprisingly many of those people are poor and a disproportionate number are people of color. But they are not convicted criminals. They are people who are charged with a crime—often a

JASON PRAMAS November 9, 2015

BOSTON ARTISTS UNITE

Kenmore image by Henry Han via Wikimedia Commons November 2, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS If you work in one of the creative professions, then you know how tough it has become to make a living in the Boston area in recent years. But there are a couple of upcoming

JASON PRAMAS November 2, 2015

SHUT PILGRIM NOW … AND SAVE MASS FROM NUCLEAR DISASTER

Image by Kent Buckley October 26, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS About 50 people—most from the South Shore and Cape Cod—held a protest rally last Thursday at the Grand Staircase in the Massachusetts State House to demand the immediate closure of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station on a long list

JASON PRAMAS October 26, 2015

SANDERS SHRUGGED

Image by Kent Buckley October 20, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS One of the marks of what scholars call hegemonic discourse is the assumption that a society’s ruling ideology is considered so “normal” that it does not even need to be named, let alone explained. So it is with the

JASON PRAMAS October 20, 2015

INTRODUCING #BINJBADBOSS

October 14, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS Do you have a bad boss? I don’t just mean a boss that you don’t want to hang out with after work. I mean a boss that’s ripping you off or otherwise harming you systematically over time. And doing the same to

JASON PRAMAS October 14, 2015

UMASS BOSTON WILL ALSO BE USELESS UNDERWATER

Image by Kent Buckley October 5, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS This week’s column is a codicil to last week’s column on the need for local policy wonks and politicians to stop proposing major public infrastructure projects in parts of Boston that are going to flood during the increasingly frequent

JASON PRAMAS October 5, 2015

A NORTH-SOUTH RAIL LINK WON’T DO ANY GOOD UNDERWATER

Image via ELM Action Fund October 2, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS When I heard that two former Massachusetts governors — Michael Dukakis and Bill Weld — are both pushing for a North-South Rail Link between North Station and South Station in downtown Boston, my first reaction was, “I guess they didn’t get my

JASON PRAMAS October 2, 2015

Why “Apparent Horizon”: This column explained

September 19, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS APPARENT HORIZON: Your Gateway to a Better Universe is the full title of my new column and it was inspired by a somewhat rarefied area of scientific inquiry. Current hypotheses in theoretical physics — notably one recently propounded by Stephen Hawking — discuss the region surrounding a black hole as

JASON PRAMAS September 19, 2015