Blue Mass Group

  The Baker campaign has outdone itself. On Wednesday it attacked a lottery employee who works two jobs because he supports Tim Cahill for governor.  Thursday’s gem was an attack ad whose “truthiness” is questionable:  He blames Deval Patrick for the 2006 market meltdown, claims Massachusetts is the 8th worst place to do business in the United States, then finishes with a comparison of Massachusetts to New Hampshire. In a democracy we get the government that we deserve.  Voters in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts deserve better then the sewage being put out by the Baker campaign.           This campaign has made a very clear choice about what path they are traveling — raise a lot of money and sling mud at the other candidates.  Then, two weeks before the election, they will light up the airwaves with attack ads and jam the phone lines with robo calls.           Here are three things you can do to stop Baker:         Join the Had enough of negative ads and robocalls? movement     2. When Baker supporters post the following link http://bit.ly/aWU802 on Twitter, respond by typing in“Fake Fact Video”   [...]

In this age of constitutional lawlessness, it’s good to see a victory for the 10th Amendment.  

Following up on earlier posting…GREAT NEWS!  H4560 which will finally give Salem State College the UNIVERSITY status it deserves WAS REPORTED OUT TODAY and PASSED THE HOUSE BY A VERY WIDE MARGIN!! NOW ON TO THE SENATE!!! Hats off to the legislators who stood with families looking for quality public higher ed. options! CALL YOUR SENATOR NOW…Time is running out on the Session..We can make this happen! Spread the word. A decade waiting, working, planning…the possibilities are endless..but, we are still just one more vote away! Please spread the word to all SSC alumni you know across the state…call your Senator and ask your friends to call theirs and secure the vote!  And reward them at the polls in November for their support! This bill also gives university status to our Worcester State and Bridgewater State friends among several others. Please pass this info on to them as well. If we want to compete in a world marketplace, we must raise the bar and expand possibilities for our public higher ed institutions. Salem State is READY!

In a huge victory for marriage equality, today a federal judge in Boston found that Section 3 of DOMA violates both the 5th and 10th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.   Below is a link to the decision in the Gill case that was brought by GLAD (challenging Section 3 on equal protection grounds).  I haven’t been able to find the other decision yet (brought by AG Coakley challenging Section 3 on 10th Amendment grounds).   For all you legal geeks, an interesting opinion from Judge Tauro.  He does not address whether strict scrutiny should be applied (and, relatedly, whether gays and lesbians are a suspect class) because he finds that Section 3 fails a rationale basis test. From what I have read and seen, it appears that in the Commonwealth’s case, Judge Tauro found that it is within a state’s rights to determine whether to afford same-sex couples marital rights and that by enacting DOMA, the federal government encroached on that right, thereby violating the 10th Amendment.   http://www.glad.org/uploads/do…

A federal judged ruled parts of the federal Defense of Marriage (sic) Act unconstitutional.

From the Globe:

“The federal government, by enacting and enforcing DOMA, plainly encroaches upon the firmly entrenched province of the state, and in doing so, offends the Tenth Amendment. For that reason, the statute is invalid,” Tauro wrote in a ruling in a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Ruling in a separate case filed by Gays & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, Tauro found that DOMA violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Boston Herald Immigration Throwdown link tomorrow, Friday 7/9/10.  This will be a live, online, semi-moderated discussion which will create a recorded transcript.  Let’s have a group effort, more of a tag team if you can do a Throwdown for lunch. In addition to the political background cites from the Herald, I strongly recommend the thoroughly researched, cite laden white papers on Immigration from the National League of Women Voters at: http://www.lwv.org/AM/Template… C’mon – it will be FUN.

My conservative friends have been been emailing me this WSJ editorial about the MA Health Care reform.

http://online.wsj.com/article/…

It claims that MA health premiums are the nation’s highest and that this portends the disaster of HCR nation-wide.

Here is another quote:

In a new paper, Stanford economists John Cogan and Dan Kessler and Glenn Hubbard of Columbia find that the Massachusetts plan increased private employer-sponsored premiums by about 6%.

On the federal level, the Congressional Budget Office costs out all legislation. In Massachusetts, Beacon Hill does not cost out anything before passing it – neither the Republicans nor the Democrats can put a pricetag on anything they propose to add or to cut; no nonpartisan priceout at all. All proposed fiscal reform is only braggadoccio without an unbiased, nonpartisan cost analysis. To Rep. Kaufman’s credit he has filed legislation to establish a nonpartisan, professional Legislative Budget Office session after session. The same Beacon Hill culture that voted itself out from under the Open Meeting Law and the Freedom of Information Act lets that Legislative Budget Office proposal die – every year. Legislators would rather pontificate – and blame indigent defense for the costs when new crimes are added and so the number of cases go up – or blame the prisons for their costs when more folks have to be put in prisons.  THIS is the real insanity and NO reform is actually “real” without valid cost analysis. The Casino boondoggle is a prime example.  NONE of the figures being thrown around by the Casino proponents are, in fact real.  The numbers of jobs are inflated, and basically “pulled [...]