By: Dr. Bharani Padmanabhan So, here are the actors in this sordid little drama. Charlie Baker opposes the legalization of marijuana. He supports prohibition. Dr. Candace Sloane is the Chair of the State Medical Board. She absolutely relishes being the Chair and wants to be reappointed by Charlie even though she was appointed by Deval […]
Lawrence resident and United States Navy Veteran Brian Mercer teaches others to save lives through training and education. Five years ago Mercer, an EMT and owner of a wheelchair van service in Lawrence, saw a news story about 17 year old North Andover High School student Alexander Farese, who died of a heart failure on […]
PREVIOUS STORY The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today is calling for the resignation of Eileen Duff (D-Gloucester) from the Executive Council of the Commonwealth following her attempt, at a confirmation hearing last Wednesday, to determine if a Baker Administration judicial nominee was a Roman Catholic. Worcester attorney James Gavin Reardon, Jr. was nominated by Governor James Baker […]
By: State Representative Lenny Mirra – July, 2016 Here’s why you should care, and care A LOT, about health care costs: Massachusetts has the highest healthcare costs in the world. No place else spends what we spend per capita on health care and it affects every part of our lives. We’re in the process of […]
NORTH ANDOVER – Last month The Valley Patriot went along with Gerard Maguire, the Veteran’s Services Coordinator for the towns of North Andover and Boxford as he delivered a custom fitted, electric wheelchair for a WWII hero veteran who lost his arm in battle and now is unable to walk. Richard Lussier fought against the […]
By: Jeff Katz – May, 2016 Hollywood types have seemingly never been big fans of Ronald Reagan. They did not like the fact that he had been one of them before he stopped reading lines and instead set out to make history. There’s a certain antipathy towards the man who once headed up the actors’ […]
PAYING ATTENTION! ON-LINE EXTRA On the day of the Challenger explosion I was teaching at the Henry K. Oliver School in Lawrence. Having lost my first bid for school committee at 18 years old, I had been offered a position as a substitute teacher and oddly enough, made a permanent substitute almost immediately […]
By: Kathy Runge – Jan. 2016 Happy New Year from recall central! Most of us in Lawrence are suffering from recall fatigue, with objections to signatures on the first recall petition due to be heard this month, while the second recall has until the 23rd to collect the required number of signatures. At the December […]
By: Dr. Frank MacMillan – December, 2015 As a college student in the mid 1980s, I studied and received my bachelor degree in economics prior to attending medical school. Also In the mid 1980s, I took note that one component of the new wave in health care was insurance paid prescription drug coverage. As a […]
HEROES – REP. DIANA DIZOGLIO (Methuen) and STATE SENATOR KATY IVES (Newburyport). Both DiZoglio and Ives worked tirelessly to get my public records bill a fair hearing in sub committees, made sure they were voted out of those committees favorably, held strong on penalties for law breakers, and then forced a full vote in the […]
By: Kathy Runge – December, 2015 Merry Christmas and greetings from Apache territory! In a pre-election article published at editorialweek.com, Jose Alfonso Garica’s website, South Lawrence was referred to as Apache territory. I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be offensive to Apaches, Anglos, or both. This man works for the school department. It’s been […]
By: Kathy Runge – November, 2015 The election has come and gone and the good news is, I should have no scarcity of material for the foreseeable future. The bad news is that Brian DePena was top vote getter in the Councilor at-Large race. Mr. DePena, I will be thrilled if you prove me wrong. […]
By: Tom Duggan – November 29, 2015 RELATED STORIES – PHOTOS (videos below) More than 100 people rallied in support of embattled Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera Sunday on the Campagnone Common, in the wake of two recall petitions to throw Rivera out of office. Rivera is in his second year of a four year […]
PERISOCOPE – With the advance of technology, The Valley Patriot is now using a cell phone application called Periscope to do live video interviews online. On Election Day, we were able to get out to Lawrence and Methuen to interview the candidates and some of their supporters. As soon as we got LIVE on the […]
By: Kathy Runge – Oct. 2015 I heard that the real reason for the extreme shortage of poll workers for the Preliminary Election was that the city required the poll workers to be citizens (of the United States). Does that mean that there were non-citizens working the polls for the other elections? There was at […]