Word: public
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Last year, Massachusetts voters initiated and passed a "Clean Elections" law intended to reduce the influence of large campaign donors. Passed by 67 percent of the voters, the law would reward candidates who abided by voluntary spending limits with public financing. The public funds would encourage citizens to challenge more well-connected incumbents...
...Finneran (D-Mattapan) and Senate President Thomas F. Birmingham '72 (D-Boston) inserted language that would have gutted this proposal, according to proponents of the law. The changes would have allowed incumbents to raise huge amounts of money while in office and still be able to qualify for public funds in the last six months before an election...
...both Birmingham and Finneran harbor gubernatorial ambitions. One of their possible competitors for the Democratic nomination in 2002 is wealthy entrepreneur Steve Grossman, former chair of the Democratic National Committee. Grossman could clearly outspend either Birmingham or Finneran in a campaign, but if one of the candidates could gain public funding in addition to private contributions, it would improve his chances. The Boston Globe reported that Birmingham was pressuring the administration to quietly accept the changes, no doubt looking forward two years to the upcoming race...
...There needs to be a longer term solution to this problem," Corlette said. "But somebody has to pay for the public good. No one has offered a solution to that. That is our challenge for the future," she added...
...bees. It's just that these birds wear chastity belts and the bees pretend they have no desire whatsoever to pollinate the local flowers. According to new studies by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Alan Guttmacher Institute, that's pretty much the script in one third of American public schools. Such abstinence-only programs, which are particularly widespread in the South, keep the lesson simple: Sex before marriage is wrong, and contraception does very little to keep pregnancies or STDs at bay. Critics charge that abstinence programs ignore the realities of teenage sex and, by keeping kids...