Flashbacks: The Romney diet, Censorship on the MBTA, and the Pacification of Cambridge

THE ROMNEY DIET
5 years ago
March 7, 2003 | Kristen Lombardi delved into Governor Romney’s fiscal budget to see who would be hurt most by his balancing act.
“Even before advocates can sort through Romney’s plan and decipher where, exactly, human-services spending has been cut, they’ve noted that, for all the talk of his ‘commitment’ to core services, the governor still manages to balance his FY ’04 budget on the backs of the state’s neediest citizens. For one thing, the governor’s proposal, known as ‘House 1,’ continues what advocates call the ‘reprehensible’ assault on small state agencies providing social services. It hammers away at the Disabled Persons Protection Commission, which investigates abuse in group homes...It slashes away $800,000 from vocational and home-care programs for residents grappling with brain injuries and other chronic disabilities...As MHLAC senior attorney Susan Fendell points out, ‘This is a terribly vulnerable population with great need for someone to go to bat for them and enforce their legal rights to mental-health care.’ ” Read Full Article

END OF AN ERA
10 years ago
March 6, 1998 | Jason Gay discussed the pacification of Cambridge, once Boston’s “Moscow-on-the-Charles.”
“...Cambridge’s progressive fireworks — it’s ‘People’s Republic’ rebelliousness — seem to be going the way of all those mom-and-pop stores on Mass Ave. The new Cambridge is rich and getting richer, less diverse, and (egad) more conservative. Likewise, the new Cantabrigian isn’t the activist type, and is less likely to pay attention to street-level city politics. Sure, people still care about issues like good schools, safe streets, and clean water, but when it comes to political life, Cambridge today has more in common with sleepier, more suburban-style cities like Brookline or Newton than with the Cambridge of old. There are different faces, different attitudes, and shifting priorities.” Read Full Article

FACING RACE
20 years ago
March 4, 1988 | Scott Lehigh observed how presidential candidate Jesse Jackson handled the race issue during a campaign stopover in Hazard, Kentucky.
“There is, of course, the asterisk that clings to Jackson like a shadow, an asterisk that says, in barely discernible subtext beneath the polite print, ‘Of course, though this man is one of the leaders in the polls right now, he can’t win because he is black.’ When a TV reporter asks him if he can win, Jackson is brusque. ‘Let’s concentrate on real substance, which is not race, but economic violence,’ he says. And in yet another Democratic debate in Williamstown, Virginia, he gets the biggest hand of the day with his dignified objection to the question of whether the other candidates let him off easy because he is black. But Jackson is too cagey a politician not to realize this is an issue he must address, and in Hazard he makes a not so subtle point: ‘When GE clears out, when they take away your job, when they take away your farm, they turn the lights out.’ A dramatic pause. ‘And all of us look just alike in the dark.’ ” Read Full Article

SHAME ON THE TRAIN 
25  years ago
March 8, 1983 | The Phoenix reported on a local pro-choice organization that battled the MBTA for the right to advertise on subway trains.
“Hemorrhoids, maybe. Dentures, no problem. But when ad requests for the MBTA trains and buses get ‘patently offensive,’ to quote T spokesman Paul DiNatale, they get rejected...

“The proposed advertising campaign, similar to the one run recently in Philadelphia, points out that, though women from every walk of life have had abortions, the right to abortion could be in jeopardy. According to Marjorie Heins, staff counsel for CLUM, the MBTA management was unhappy with the proposed ads because they didn’t want any advertising featuring the word ‘abortion.’...CLUM pointedly reminded T officials that the two had covered this ground in 1974, when the T refused an advertisement for Preterm, a clinic offering vasectomies, gynecological services, birth-control counseling, and abortions. Preterm promptly went to court...After Preterm won a preliminary injunction, the T backed down and posted the ads. When CLUM recalled that precedent, T officials reconsidered and accepted the latest abortion ads.”