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The cynical 'millionaires tax' didn't fool the SJC

June 20, 2018  •  The Boston Globe

SHED NO TEARS for the "millionaires tax" ballot initiative, which the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck down on Monday. From the outset, the initiative was a cynical ploy to get voters to do something they have repeatedly rejected — replacing the state's flat-rate income tax with a system of graduated tax brackets. But nobody was fooled by the ruse, least of all the SJC.

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Leave Google alone

June 17, 2018  •  The Boston Globe

SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT break up Google, as it broke up Standard Oil and AT&T, for being a monopoly too big to tolerate? Let's consider that question as we take a stroll down memory lane.

•In March 1998, Fortune Magazine chronicled the rise of a mighty tech giant, an online powerhouse it described as "the biggest star in the Internet cosmos." The headline on the piece: "How Yahoo! Won The Search Wars." So popular and wealthy had Yahoo! become, Fortune noted, that "some people say it's the next American Online."

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The real significance of the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision

June 6, 2018  •  The Boston Globe

THE SUPREME COURT'S decision Monday in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission was not a legal landmark. It broke no constitutional ground. It affirmed no important new principle in the interpretation of the First or Fourteenth Amendments. The justices ruled 7-2 in favor of Jack Phillips, the owner of the specialty cake shop who was punished for refusing to design a cake to celebrate a same-sex marriage. But their verdict was widely downplayed as a temporary stopgap, limited to the somewhat unusual facts of Phillips's case, and holding out little reassurance to other vendors with religious objections to gay marriage.

I think that misses the point.

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If politics worked the way the Food Network works

June 3, 2018  •  The Boston Globe

I DISCOVERED the Food Network at the gym.

TV doesn't much interest me and I rarely watch at home, where we have only one television set and no cable subscription. But I got into the habit of watching in the gym once I realized that clicking through the channels on the screen-equipped treadmill helped distract me from the sweaty tedium of exercise. I couldn't watch just anything, though; I needed something other than the news and politics on which I already waste too much time. The reality cooking shows on the Food Network turned out to be just right: more enthralling than the financial speculation on CNBC, less tendentious than the talking heads on CNN, and nowhere near as trashy as the Real Housewives on Bravo.

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Your father's Republican Party has vanished. His Democratic Party has, too

May 30, 2018  •  The Boston Globe

ADDRESSING THE New York State Democratic convention last week, Joe Biden endorsed Governor Andrew Cuomo for reelection and delivered some blistering criticism of the party that controls Congress and the White House.

"This is not your father's Republican Party," declared the former vice president. With its "phony populism" and "fake nationalism," he said, the GOP is "sending a vision of America around the world that is distorted, that's damaging."

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