Big Business

I wish companies would write interesting headlines for their quarterly financial reports to spice up the dry business details that usually follow. Here's one I would slap on top of this week's update from Clean Harbors Inc.: It's more profitable than ever to make dirty problems disappear. The Norwell company reported business grew more than 30 percent during the final quarter of 2011. Revenue should exceed $2 billion this year, and the company is nudging business forecasts for 2012 slightly higher.

During 2010, the Tea Party got the attention, but the election revolt against bailouts, subsidies, and spending came from all sides. Voter sentiment hasn't changed much — but you wouldn't know that from the action last week on the US House floor, where renewing Export-Import Bank subsidies for big business was the order of the day. Compared with big-spending Democrats, Republicans still have a long way to go before losing the mantle of...

WASHINGTON - Former senator Howard Metzenbaum, an Ohio Democrat who was a feisty self-made millionaire before he began a long career fighting big business in the Senate, died Wednesday night. He was 90. Mr. Metzenbaum died at his home near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said Joel Johnson, his former chief of staff. No cause was given. During 18 years on Capitol Hill, until his retirement in 1995, Mr. Metzenbaum came to be known as "Senator No" and "Headline Howard" for his abilities to block legislation and get publicity for himself.

In his April 25 op-ed "Jim McGovern's flawed war," Jeff Jacoby attacks the efforts of McGovern and others to overturn the "corporate personhood" established by the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, warning that its elimination would "empower the political class to a degree never before seen in our history. " I'd like to know what this "political class" is that Jacoby so fears. Is it the businesspeople funneling millions of dollars into super PACs to crush political rivals with attack ads?

Hell hath no fury like a neighborhood dissed, especially if said neighborhood is located in the pugnacious, dukes-up borough of Brooklyn. So when residents of Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights area felt they were being steamrolled by a massive development proposal called Atlantic Yards, which called for the displacement of residents and businesses to make way for more than a dozen high-rise buildings and a basketball arena for the New Jersey Nets,...

Six months after Elizabeth Warren arrived in Washington to work as an adviser to Congress, she experienced another career milestone in the nation's capital, a seat at the US Supreme Court's mahogany counsel table. The 2009 appearance was the only time Warren helped represent a party before the nation's highest court. And it provides a rare window into a less-heralded aspect of the Harvard Law professor's career, her time as a working attorney in the courts. The case - Travelers v. Bailey - was remarkable in many respects.

Six months after Elizabeth Warren arrived in Washington to work as an adviser to Congress, she experienced another career milestone in the nation's capital, a seat at the US Supreme Court's mahogany counsel table. The 2009 appearance was the only time Warren helped represent a party before the nation's highest court. And it provides a rare window into a less-heralded aspect of the Harvard Law professor's career, her time as a working attorney in the courts. The case - Travelers v. Bailey - was remarkable in many respects.

There is big business in making sense of massive amounts of information generated on the Web, from online sales to Facebook posts, and Massachusetts is fast becoming a hub for what is deemed the next big trend in technology: analyzing data. The state is home to more than 100 companies that focus on what is known as "big data" - the ability to quickly dissect and understand the flood of digitized information. The firms range from small Cambridge start-ups like Hadapt Inc. to EMC Corp., one of the area's largest technology employers.

During 2010, the Tea Party got the attention, but the election revolt against bailouts, subsidies, and spending came from all sides. Voter sentiment hasn't changed much — but you wouldn't know that from the action last week on the US House floor, where renewing Export-Import Bank subsidies for big business was the order of the day. Compared with big-spending Democrats, Republicans still have a long way to go before losing the mantle of...

While I recognize that we need protection from big government, we also need some way to curb excess. Congress is an institution governed by whims and vendettas, as Jeff Jacoby reminds us in his April 25 op-ed "Jim McGovern's flawed war"; this is the very RESULT of a system without limits on what can be spent to buy a congressman. Because of unlimited campaign spending, big government and its partner, big business, are flourishing. Corporations are NOT people, and money is NOT speech — at least, not in the world I envision.

While I recognize that we need protection from big government, we also need some way to curb excess. Congress is an institution governed by whims and vendettas, as Jeff Jacoby reminds us in his April 25 op-ed "Jim McGovern's flawed war"; this is the very RESULT of a system without limits on what can be spent to buy a congressman. Because of unlimited campaign spending, big government and its partner, big business, are flourishing. Corporations are NOT people, and money is NOT speech — at least, not in the world I envision.

Six months after Elizabeth Warren arrived in Washington to work as an adviser to Congress, she experienced another career milestone in the nation's capital, a seat at the US Supreme Court's mahogany counsel table. The 2009 appearance was the only time Warren helped represent a party before the nation's highest court. And it provides a rare window into a less-heralded aspect of the Harvard Law professor's career, her time as a working attorney in the courts. The case - Travelers v. Bailey - was remarkable in many respects.

Six months after Elizabeth Warren arrived in Washington to work as an adviser to Congress, she experienced another career milestone in the nation's capital, a seat at the US Supreme Court's mahogany counsel table. The 2009 appearance was the only time Warren helped represent a party before the nation's highest court. And it provides a rare window into a less-heralded aspect of the Harvard Law professor's career, her time as a working attorney in the courts. The case - Travelers v. Bailey - was remarkable in many respects.

Passersby hurled beer cans and insults at Neil Weygandt during training runs. In the late 1960s, most people thought he was crazy for wanting to race 26.2 miles. But he liked the challenge and the camaraderie of running marathons. On Monday, Weygandt will run the Boston Marathon for the 44th consecutive year, the longest such streak. Since he started, the marathon has evolved in once-unimaginable ways. Streets cluttered with runners have replaced beer cans as obstacles. "I do miss the camaraderie among the small numbers of runners," said Weygandt, who first...

"In the movie films, he said, we only look at what is there already. Life shines on the shadow screen, as from the darkness of one's mind. It is a big business. People want to know what is happening to them. For a few pennies they sit and see their selves in movement, running, racing in motorcars, fighting and, forgive me, embracing one another. This is most important today, in this country, where everybody is so new. There is such a need to understand. " E. L. Doctorow , "Ragtime"

I wish companies would write interesting headlines for their quarterly financial reports to spice up the dry business details that usually follow. Here's one I would slap on top of this week's update from Clean Harbors Inc.: It's more profitable than ever to make dirty problems disappear. The Norwell company reported business grew more than 30 percent during the final quarter of 2011. Revenue should exceed $2 billion this year, and the company is nudging business forecasts for 2012 slightly higher.

"In the movie films, he said, we only look at what is there already. Life shines on the shadow screen, as from the darkness of one's mind. It is a big business. People want to know what is happening to them. For a few pennies they sit and see their selves in movement, running, racing in motorcars, fighting and, forgive me, embracing one another. This is most important today, in this country, where everybody is so new. There is such a need to understand. " E. L. Doctorow , "Ragtime"

Like fellow Los Angeles rappers Black Eyed Peas, who finally crashed the mainstream last year with their massive hit, "Where Is the Love?," Dilated Peoples seems poised for a leap from the underground. It should have happened with the devastating one-two punch of 2000's "The Platform" and "Expansion Team" in 2001, but this LA trio - rappers Evidence and Rakaa and DJ Babu - is still waiting to break the surface of commercial hip-hop, without compromising itself artistically. This CD, the group's third major release, manages to be accessible without going pop. Still, it takes few...

There is big business in making sense of massive amounts of information generated on the Web, from online sales to Facebook posts, and Massachusetts is fast becoming a hub for what is deemed the next big trend in technology: analyzing data. The state is home to more than 100 companies that focus on what is known as "big data" - the ability to quickly dissect and understand the flood of digitized information. The firms range from small Cambridge start-ups like Hadapt Inc. to EMC Corp., one of the area's largest technology employers.

Most tax credits issued by the state to film production companies end up being sold to brokers, which then resell them at a profit to financial firms, other corporations, and wealthy individuals to slash their tax bills. At least 96 percent of the $265 million in tax credits used to attract movie and television productions to Massachusetts were sold by the film companies between 2006 and 2010, according to the state Department of Revenue. The incentives are so generous - rebates of up to 25 percent of production costs in the state - that most film companies do not end...