Private Sector

Barney Frank is in love. This is not exactly news — he's getting married in July — but it's still striking, the way a congressman who has cultivated a reputation for prickliness can be so publicly, sweetly sentimental. "It's funny," Frank said last week, musing about his relationship with his fiance, Jim Ready. "I used to listen to these songs about love and . . . they didn't mean anything to me. I would almost be kind of annoyed by them, you know — it's like I was left out. The whole thing takes on a meaning it didn't have.

As the recent economic recession and subsequent budget woes continue to decimate public grant funding for nonprofit social organizations, the state has turned to a largely unproven financing method designed to shift the burden of funding nonprofits to the private sector. Last year, Massachusetts became the first state to take formal steps to launch a program known as social innovation financing, which would allow the state to enter into contracts with service providers or third-party intermediaries, who would reach out to the private sector themselves for up-front capital...

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has paid more than $100 million in bonuses to veteran Green Berets and Navy SEALs, reversing the flow of top commandos to the corporate world where security companies such as Blackwater USA are offering big salaries. The retention effort, started nearly three years ago and overseen by US Special Operations Command in Tampa, has helped preserve a small but elite group of enlisted troops with extensive experience fighting the unconventional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Defense Department statistics.

Jeff Jacoby's May 16 op-ed column is headlined " On health care, state doesn't know best . " The private sector doesn't know best either. Jacoby cites ancient Roman history to buttress his objections to recent proposals from the Legislature to cut health care costs. He would have done better to have reviewed what we in the health sector have tried for decades, and what has created a fragmented, wasteful, mediocre, and, at times, harmful health care non-system. There has been a lot of earnest, hard work done over these years, and we didn't get it done.

WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary John Snow has signaled to the White House he is ready to resign once President Bush has picked a successor, administration officials and people close to Snow said yesterday. They said Snow has made clear he eventually intends to return to the private sector. They spoke on condition of anonymity because Snow is not ready to discuss his plans publicly. It's unclear when Snow will offer his resignation, and the president said he has heard nothing about it. "He has not talked to me about resignation," Bush said at a news conference last night.

HAVANA — Cuba announced yesterday that it will lay off at least half a million state workers by early next year and reduce restrictions on private enterprise to help them find new jobs, the most dramatic step yet in President Raul Castro’s push to radically remake employment on the communist-run island. Castro suggested during a nationally televised address on Easter Sunday that as many as 1 million Cuban workers — about one in five — may be redundant. But the government had not previously laid out specific plans to slash its workforce, and the...

LOS ANGELES - Crime was rising, officer morale slumping, and fallout from a corruption scandal was still smoldering when William Bratton arrived in 2002 to head a police department with a tattered reputation. Even the police buildings were crumbling. Seven years later, the Los Angeles Police Department is an agency transformed and few would downplay Bratton’s role in the turnaround. Crime has dropped to historic lows, the police force is bigger and more diverse than ever, and several gleaming new facilities, including a $437 million headquarters...

CONCORD, N.H. — The chief justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court announced yesterday that he plans to resign and return to the private sector after serving 15 years on the state’s highest court. Chief Justice John Broderick was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1995 and has been chief justice since 2004. During his tenure, he expanded the family court system and created a special docket for complex business litigation. He also opened the judicial branch’s Office of Mediation and Arbitration.

The White House has selected the head of the intelligence branch in its budget office to be President Barack Obama's top adviser on cybersecurity issues, a move that comes as Congress and the Obama administration are at odds over how best to protect critical U.S. industries from crippling electronic attacks by cybercriminals, foreign governments and terrorists. Michael Daniel, a 17-year veteran of the Office of Management and Budget's national security division, will replace Howard Schmidt as Obama's cybersecurity coordinator, the White House announced...

Uzbekistan's government plans to sell off almost 500 state assets over the next two years in an ongoing drive to expand the private sector in this former Soviet nation. Media in Uzbekistan cited Uzbek state property committee deputy chairman Saifitdlin Gafarov as saying Tuesday that assets in the oil, gas, energy, metals, agriculture, electronics and pharmaceuticals industries sectors will be made available for purchase. Privately owned news portal UzReport.com cited government officials as saying one aim was to attract foreign investors to help...

The White House has selected the head of the intelligence branch in its budget office to be President Barack Obama's top adviser on cybersecurity issues, a move that comes as Congress and the Obama administration are at odds over how best to protect critical U.S. industries from crippling electronic attacks by cybercriminals, foreign governments and terrorists. Michael Daniel, a 17-year veteran of the Office of Management and Budget's national security division, will replace Howard Schmidt as Obama's cybersecurity coordinator, the White House announced Thursday.

Uzbekistan's government plans to sell off almost 500 state assets over the next two years in an ongoing drive to expand the private sector in this former Soviet nation. Media in Uzbekistan cited Uzbek state property committee deputy chairman Saifitdlin Gafarov as saying Tuesday that assets in the oil, gas, energy, metals, agriculture, electronics and pharmaceuticals industries sectors will be made available for purchase. Privately owned news portal UzReport.com cited government officials as saying one aim was to attract foreign investors to help...

Drowning in red ink, the U.S. Postal Service on Thursday reported a quarterly loss of $3.2 billion and blamed Congress for blocking the agency's cost-cutting efforts to offset declining mail volume and mounting costs for future retiree health benefits. From January to March, losses were $1 billion more than during the same period in 2010. The mail agency said that without legislative action, it will be forced to default on more than $11 billion in health prepayments due to the Treasury this fall.

WASHINGTON - The White House is launching a new effort to minimize differences between US and international regulations that force companies to spend more money to abide by different sets of rules. President Obama issued an executive order Tuesday calling on a White House committee to work with the private sector to reduce unnecessary red tape that causes problems for US companies that want to work overseas. That includes everything from different standards for warning labels to separate requirements for container sizes.

The chief of the U.S. Capitol Police says he plans to retire at the end of May. Phillip D. Morse has spent 28 years with the congressional law enforcement agency and has served as chief since 2006. According to The Washington Post (http://tinyurl.com/7lalb5f), Morse pans to take a job in the private sector. Morse said in a statement that his new position will allow him to spend more time with his family. He did not offer details about the job. The Capitol Police is responsible for security at all congressional facilities and employs about 1,775 officers.

Massachusetts' companies in the recycling industry plan to boost their hiring in the next two years and many are already struggling to fill jobs, according to a new report by SkillWorks, a nonprofit that funds workforce initiatives. Private recycling companies, including haulers, salvage, and demolition crews, expect to increase hiring 15 percent in the next two years and add about 1,200 new workers, the report said. Recycling jobs in the public sector are expected to grow 5 percent.

Bain Capital executives have been bracing since last summer for the inevitable downside to their old boss running for president: seeing their firm's name dragged through the mud by Mitt Romney's opponents. But the onslaught has come harder and faster than they or the industry expected, with Romney's emergence as a frontrunner in the primaries. Republican rivals have painted Bain Capital and private equity firms like it as engaged in the wrong kind of capitalism, making money as corporate raiders and by cutting jobs.

(Patrick D. Rosso/Boston.com/2012) Tuskegee Airmen Enoch Woodhouse receiving his commemoration from Boston City Councilor Rob Consalvo. By Patrick Rosso, Town Correspondent History, service, and education were the themes Saturday as the Mattahunt School Scholars met with Enoch Woodhouse, an attorney and veteran of the famed Tuskegee Airmen. "I'm not so concerned about the adults in the room. The big concern is can you spark an interest in a young person that can start a fire later on," said Willie Shellman, the president of Tuskegee Airmen Inc., a group...

It looks like a straight-up swap between Boston venture capital firm Third Rock Ventures and Cambridge start-up Constellation Pharmaceuticals Inc. --- Keith E. Dionne is leaving Third Rock to replace Constellation chief executive Mark A. Goldsmith, who is off to the West Coast to be a venture partner in Third Rock's San Francisco office. Constellation looks to develop disease treatments from epigenetics, the study of molecular changes in cells that can activate or deactivate genes without affecting the underlying DNA code.

(Patrick D. Rosso/Boston.com/2012) Tuskegee Airmen Enoch Woodhouse receiving his commemoration from Boston City Councilor Rob Consalvo. By Patrick Rosso, Town Correspondent History, service, and education were the themes Saturday as the Mattahunt School Scholars met with Enoch Woodhouse, an attorney and veteran of the famed Tuskegee Airmen. "I'm not so concerned about the adults in the room. The big concern is can you spark an interest in a young person that can start a fire later on," said Willie Shellman, the president of Tuskegee Airmen Inc., a group...