Free Republic

... Times are hard in the state’s poorest city. The mayor is under federal and state investigation for campaign-finance improprieties and other questionable behavior, while a state-appointed overseer is managing the city’s municipal budget. Lawrence’s public school system is in receivership — the former superintendent, Wilfredo Laboy, is under criminal indictment for fraud and embezzlement, and the high school dropout rate is more than 50 percent. Public-safety cuts have been drastic, and felony crimes have skyrocketed from 1,777 in 2009 to 2,597 during the first 11 months of 2011. Unemployment is as high as 18 percent, compared with the state...

TENARES, Dominican Republic — The night that William Lantigua was elected the first Latino mayor in Massachusetts history, people in this remote city surrounded by cocoa farms and coffee plantations felt as if they had won, too. For months in 2009, Tenares residents had called and e-mailed friends and relatives in the city of Lawrence, almost 2,000 miles away, urging them to vote for Lantigua. “He wouldn’t have won without the support from Tenares,’’ said Fermin Tejada, a councilor in this city which has sent hundreds, if not thousands, of residents to live in Lawrence since the 1960s. Tejada said...