Blue Mass Group

The Quincy Patriot Ledger today quoted long time Milton Town Clerk James Mullen, a staunch local Republican.  The clerk’s office in Patrick’s hometown of Milton has regularly received public records requests involving Patrick – including a recent request for the death certificate of Patrick’s mother, Emily. ‘‘Even though it’s public record, that’s going too far,’’ said Milton town clerk Jim Mullen, a registered Republican. Who do you think was looking for that?  Maybe her crime, in the eyes of Healey’s right wing storm troopers, is that she gave birth to Deval Patrick. This is a sad example of how low these people will stoop to get their empty suit elected Governor.

If the title of this post got your attention then that’s the point. I think that we are in a great position here but we need to start to put the pedal to the metal to close the door on 16 years of Republican rule/neglect. The Patrick/Murray ticket is so close that we need everybody to do what they can. I admit that up until I Friday I was kind of coasting along and perhaps not doing all that I could have – Patrick’s strong response combined with Rep. Peterson’s (R-Grafton), who I hope just earned himself an opponent next time around, attack on Mayor Murray got me fired up. I woke up Sunday morning and donated $150 to the Patrick campaign and then did a visibility with Senator Augustus and his crew in Grafton. We got a great repsonse  – one of the most enthusiastic beepers/wavers who gave us a thumbs-up was from a guy who had a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker on his car. We then had a great response from the canvassing we did – the tide is turning our way and it is up to each and every single one of us to do what we can [...]

Today the Hudson Dem. Town Committee met and had an “open house” of sorts. A number of residents stopped in and picked up Deval bumper stickers, we supplied food, chatted and learned a bit about Question 2 From another Blue Mass Group participant ReformerBen.

  Question  2 would allow multiple parties to nominate a single candidate. For example, Deval Patrick’s name could appear next to both the Democratic Party nomination and the Green Party Nomination – assuming both the greens and Deval approved of it.

Was doing visibility for Deval today for a couple of hours with 8 or 9 friends on a busy street corner. Response very very positive with lots of thumbs up from all ages. No women gave thumbs down. The few thumbs down (5 or 6 over 2 hours) seem to come from guys age 40 or younger. Hmmm. They didn’t look like the voting type and some seemed to be angry guys who couldn’t handle people holding signs and waving.

Really, really terrible news for Kerry Healey — and Mitt Romney, for that matter — in the papers the last couple of days, all stemming from Inspector General Gregory Sullivan’s new “interim report” on the CA/Tastrophe (thanks to Benny and tudor586 for noting the stories earlier today).  Here’s the Globe’s summary: The US Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether state officials illegally misled bondholders over the past 18 months by repeatedly stating in financial disclosures to investors that Governor Mitt Romney had ordered an ongoing examination of safety in Big Dig tunnels. In fact, the state Highway Department had conducted just one safety inspection in one tunnel, the Interstate 93 tunnel. Similarly, the Herald explains: The Securities and Exchange Commission is zeroing in on state financial documents from 2005 – cited in a new report by state Inspector General Gregory Sullivan – indicating that Gov. Mitt Romney was reviewing the safety of the Big Dig, when in fact the administration was only checking leaks in the Interstate 93 tunnel.  “Despite repeated assurances to bondholders, (MassHighway and Romney’s Executive Office of Transportation) … did not inspect the I-90 connector tunnel section where the July 10, 2006, collapse occurred,” Sullivan’s report [...]

While the Globe article today went kind of soft on the Administration, tonight’s CBS-4 News video segment tightens the screws, this is BAD news for Kerry Healey: http://cbs4boston.co…

Wow.  Really, I’m speechless.  (But I’ll blog on anyway.)  When I put up my modest challenge to try to raise some money as a response to yesterday’s … um … unpleasantness, I figured we’d probably get to $500.  But I wasn’t sure, and I certainly didn’t think we’d get much beyond that. You have really, truly outdone yourselves.  In the last 24 hours, the BMG donations page has recorded over $3,000 — that’s three thousand dollars — in donations to the Patrick/Murray Victory Fund.  $3,010.01, to be precise.  (What’s that penny about?  Is that an old Howard Dean thing?)  We received over two dozen donations from literally every corner of this state. So first of all, thank you so much for your response.  I will happily kick in a $500 donation today to make good on my match.  I wish I had the bucks to match everything that came into our page yesterday. But secondly, and more importantly, thank you for sending a powerful message to the campaigns — both campaigns.  We will not stand for gutter politics.  We are sick of the politics of personal destruction.  We want someone with a positive vision for our state to be our [...]

The legal development which is in the Herald and Globe today is potentially major. The Romney Administration is implicated in securities fraud, because as Mihos said, they made representations to bondholders that the Big Dig was being properly inspected. That sort of due diligence gets you a better interest rate on state bond issues. If A & F said inspections were taking place when they weren’t, that’s a material misreprentation by any definition. A reasonable investor, whose interest the SEC looks after, would want to know that the sky could fall on the major new tunnel in Boston, before lending money to Massachusetts. One thing’s for sure, you don’t mess with the SEC. You think the IRS, DOR, and ATF are bad?: the SEC is the top dog of bad. (Finger snap here.) The state could face a serious fine, civil liability, and the humiliation of being put in stocks on the trading floor of the bond market for punishment. That is, the amount in  interest payments the state owes on its debt is going to go up. Thank you Mitt Romney, don’t let the door hit you on the way out . This new liaibility for the next Administration [...]

So let’s get back to business here.  If Deval Patrick were really “soft on crime,” would he be lining up endorsements from police and corrections officers?  Including unions that historically back Republicans?  Not likely. As we noted the other day, the Mass. Corrections Officers Federated Union (MCOFU) is running anti-Healey radio ads, saying that she and Romney are “soft on crime.”  MCOFU says they’re likely to back Patrick, though they haven’t formally endorsed yet. Also in recent news, the Springfield patrolmen’s union endorsed Patrick.  That was by no means a gimme: U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield, a former mayor of Springfield, said he was very surprised when the Springfield patrolmen’s union came out with an enthusiastic endorsement of Mr. Patrick last Tuesday. He called the endorsement historic in that the union had not endorsed a Democrat in decades. “They backed Bush over Dukakis,” he said of the 1988 election that marked the start of a long string of Republican police endorsements in Massachusetts. And today, the Patrick campaign announced a new slew of endorsements from public safety officers. Citing their strong commitment to ensuring safer cities and towns across Massachusetts, several leading police organizations announced they are endorsing Deval [...]

Someone just emailed me this link. Apparently, the Healey campaign does not take dog lovers seriously.  Well since then I’ve emailed that Kerry Healey twice more asking about dogs, that campaign office has never replied. Or maybe Healey just does not like dogs.  Do we really want someone as governor who does not like dogs?