Every so often someone will ask me a question about something happening in downtown Boston, and I won’t know the answer. But it gets me thinking that we’re not the only ones who don’t know the answer. Lots of people may be wondering what’s going on. So here are a few answers to questions you might not have even known you wanted answered:
In its 2008 annual report, published last July, Massachusetts General Hospital reported that operating revenues were $106,649,000 more than its operating expenses. Since it is a non-profit, what does it do with the “profit” it makes?
MGH media relations officer Stacy Neale forwarded me an email from Sally Mason Boemer, MGH’s senior vice president of finance: “As a non-profit, our earnings pay the principle on existing debt and fund capital expenditures like our new building project or equipment. We also set aside a prudent level of cash reserves relative to our size each year (days cash on hand).”
It is also possible that MGH contributed some of its surplus toward the $40 million its corporate parent, Partners Healthcare, promised to hand over to state Senate President Therese Murray’s plan to reduce health insurance costs for small businesses.
The hospital’s “profit” in 2008 was down significantly from the year before, in which it was $354,657,000.
What is the difference between the Charles River Watershed Association, the Charles River Conservancy and the Esplanade Association?
It’s hard to keep some of these organizations straight when their names and missions overlap. But let’s start with age. The CRWA is about 40 years old, while CRC and TEA are both celebrating their tenth anniversaries this year.
CRWA’s main interest is in the environment of the entire watershed—its water quantity and quality, energy consumption, the preservation of its wetlands, problems with sewer overflows and smart growth within the river system. The organization lobbies for appropriate policies and regulation.
The Charles River Conservancy limits its focus to the ten miles of river and parkland between the Watertown Dam and Boston Harbor on both sides of the river. That group is mostly concerned with how the river and parklands are used. It has sponsored swimming activities and major cleanups that have attracted more than 2,700 volunteers, and it has raised funds to install a skate park on the Cambridge side of the river under the ramps connected to I-93.
The Esplanade Association focuses on the park on the Boston side of the river between the BU Bridge and the Science Museum bridge. Its leaders have promoted the preservation and restoration of the historic design. They also raise money for enhancing the Esplanade in almost any way you can imagine from replacing the granite steps to pruning the trees.
These organizations have web sites that are very helpful.
Why do we have so many crazies these days—the tea baggers, the birthers and the angry anti-taxers?
On the same day Sarah Palin and the tea baggers were grinding up the grass on the Boston Common, and several letters to the editor in the Globe were refuting columnists who had accused the tea baggers of bigotry and delusional tendencies, I was listening to NPR. They broadcast an interview with Christen Varley, the president of the Greater Boston Tea Party, who sounded as if she were channeling Sarah Palin. Her voice was similar, and her laugh was like Palin’s. The interviewer pointed out that 95 percent of Americans received a tax rebate last year. He reported that she said she didn’t “believe” that, as if it were a matter of faith, not of fact.
That gives you some idea of what we’re dealing with here.
Now there used to be a place people could go if they were anti-community, anti-government or certifiable nut cakes. It was called the territory, as in Huck Finn, when at the end of the book, he “lights out” for it. They could hide in the dense forests or on the inhospitable and wolf-infested plains, and no one would bother them about paying their share of road upkeep, court matters, children’s education and a free meal for some of life’s unfortunates. But now there’s nowhere to hide, so they stick around to annoy the rest of us.
I have decided to think of them as theater. America was founded on the premise that if you want to be crazy, a bigot, a conspiracy-monger and anti-social, that’s your right. We’ve always had people who think taxes are intrusions on their “freedom.” Unlike Oliver Wendell Holmes, they don’t believe in civilization and they don’t want to pay for it. They’ll eventually become so annoying to the mainstream that they’ll be shut out and go away. Meanwhile, get a good chuckle out of their delusions and their hyper-vocabulary, since I’m sure there will be another group just as annoying that appears once they are gone.