Barbara Anderson battles health woes. Excellent story in today's Salem News on anti-tax crusader Barbara Anderson's battle with cancer. [Whoops! Link gone as of Tuesday a.m.] Anderson's health woes are no secret, but she opens up more with reporter Alan Burke than I've seen elsewhere, disclosing that she came close to dying twice in the past year. She talks about waking up in the hospital and finding her two ex-husbands, an ex-boyfriend, and her current boyfriend in her room. "And they all got along," she says. Anderson's fierce tax-slashing crusades made her the activist that liberals love to hate, but her two-decades-long defense of Proposition 2 1/2 has been immense in preserving Massachusetts's quality of life. She was one of the two most significant unelected political figures here in the 1980s, the other being now-retired radio talk-show host Jerry Williams, a frequent Anderson ally. Her relevance waned in the '90s only because Republican governors Bill Weld, Paul Cellucci, and Jane Swift made her no-new-taxes mantra their own. If you can afford to live here, thank Barbara Anderson.