Some ideas become such no-brainers that there really isn't a point in further discussion. This kind of folk wisdom certainly explains why the majority of Americans support ending the U.S. war on Iraq. And that's why Open Media Boston encourages all our viewers to turn out on the Boston Common on Saturday, October 11 for a Rally and March to "Stand Up for Peace in the Middle East." Being anti-war has become a matter of simple common sense.

With international events lurching forward day by day in the face of the global financial crisis, the economic and political situation in Massachusetts is swiftly going from bad to worse. One could describe our state as fortunate for having elected an enlightened technocrat in the person of Gov. Deval Patrick. But the disadvantages of having elected a neoliberal in the same person are becoming glaringly apparent.

As this tumultuous political and economic week came to a close there was a short report in the Boston Globe that brings the Wall Street crisis home to our fair city. It seems that the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston just loaned $72.7 billion to a number of major U.S. commercial banks - fully 1/10 of the amount being debated in Congress to be used to bail out many of the same institutions.

It is the general policy of this publication to focus our news coverage and editorials squarely on issues of import to Boston and environs - a mandate we expand to include Massachusetts state politics since Boston is the seat of state government, and much of what's done at the State House has direct bearing on metropolitan politics. However, there are times when national and international politics burst in upon our normal reverie with such force that we'd be fools to ignore them. Such times are upon us, and so Open Media Boston must weigh in on the progress of the growing financial crisis that is tightening its grip on our nation and our world.

This week's decision by MBTA leadership to renege on paying $43 million in back wages to thousands of unionized employees is but one more reason for the Massachusetts legislature to revisit the issue of debt relief for our state's main public transportation system.

Last Saturday, Open Media Boston was honored to receive the 2008 Richard Cloward-Frances Fox Piven Award from the New Political Science Caucus of the American Political Science Association at a ceremony at the Marriott Copley Hotel - site of the APSA annual convention. In his remarks prior to giving out the award, award committee char Prof. Victor Wallis of the Berklee College of Music indicated that the committee decided to grant the award to Open Media Boston after only 5 months of publication because of the promise and importance of the work we are doing towards the resurgence of community-based independent news media in the U.S.

In Boston, as around the nation, poverty is on the rise. This is sadly unsurprising. Aside from a slight increase in gross domestic product in the second quarter of this year - due to improved export sales (courtesy of a weakening dollar) and the scant impact of the $600 "economic stimulus" checks thrown at many (but not all) citizens (but not most immigrants) by the Bush administration in the spring - there's nothing to cheer about in the American economy of late.

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.