With gas prices heading up as the value of the dollar heads down, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority flailing about in vain for neoclassical economic solutions to its growing austerity-induced budget problems, and that same authority's "stem to stern" review of the Ted Williams Tunnel determining that it is not possible to stop it from leaking permanently, it seems like a good moment to call for a progressive transportation plan for the Commonwealth.

While we may not agree with everything that unions do politically - cleaving to the Democratic Party even on the occasions where there are left alternatives, for example - we certainly agree with the growing union-led movement to "Vote No on Question 1" in the November elections. If passed by statewide referendum, Question 1 would eliminate the Massachusetts state income tax. Cutting at least 40% of our state government's funding stream right off the top starting January 1, 2010.

We find it ironic in the extreme that the very week a dying man chooses to spend his last days walking in solidarity with undocumented immigrants that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement once again starts raiding local immigrant communities in the dead of night, arresting and detaining almost 100 people with little in the way of due process, and starts trying to hustle them out of Massachusetts at speed before anyone can start looking real close at what exactly is going on here.

Open Media Boston co-sponsored a 100-person "Ideas and Action: Human Rights in Boston and the United States" conference yesterday at the Boston Public Library and the Old South Church that joined a number of progressive sociologists in town for the annual conference of the American Sociological Association together with local community activists to discuss the possibility of Boston joining the growing ranks of "Human Rights Cities" around the world.

As the word gets out that 9,000 Verizon workers unionized with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers across Southern New England have voted overwhelmingly to go on strike next Friday unless the company meets their contract demands, it seems a propitious moment to say a few words about why it's important for working people to support strikes and other labor actions.

Gov. Patrick's recent vetoes to key public services earlier this week are unconscionable given the fact of the worsening economic situation in Massachusetts coupled with recent cuts to state corporate tax rates, and need to be overridden by the legislature immediately.

At a time when a citywide coalition under the aegis of Community Labor United is demanding an $11 million Community Fund from the giant private equity firm and commercial landlord The Blackstone Group, we find it passing strange that Blackstone co-founder and senior chairman Pete Peterson is using his non-profit foundation to flog the release of a new documentary called I.O.U.S.A. this week.

Congratulations to the organizations - Neighbor to Neighbor, Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center and others - that helped successfully close some big loopholes for corporations in the state tax system this week.

A new report released this week by Community Labor United - a coalition of labor and community organizations whose mission is to "protect and promote the interests of working class communities in the

In this week's editorial, we'd like to praise a great new documentary by a group of young community leaders in the Health Careers Ambassadors Program of the Hyde Square Task Force in Jamaica Plain (in