was a significant win of 17 GOP MA House seats. Not bad at all and a great start to getting some balance. But another stark result was the GOP now holding 37 Governor seats around the country up from 24. Significant for the redistricting but also for budget/spending cuts at state levels. Another remarkable number was the GOP now controls both houses in 26 states with an increase of 628 state legislative (including 14 states with both houses and the Governorship). MA was certainly not part of this wave but I think we lost the battle in MA but won the war in the US. It will be interesting to see how states balance their budgets from these Republican run states vs states like MA. How does Governor Patrick intend to balance the $2.5B shortfall coming up?
Menino bans company from working in Boston
Today, Mayor Menino banned the company that accidently hit the gas line which caused a house to explode in Hyde Park from working in Boston. Under what authority can he do this? Wouldn’t it take at least a resolution by the Boston City Council? Anyone? P.S. I would like to know how the two year old in Indonesia was smoking four packs of cigarettes a day? It is too damned expensive for an adult here in Massachusetts to smoke half that much.
Howie Carr Kicks Wounded Dog in Temper Tantum Over GOP Loss
Howie Carr, the man who tried his hardest to protect Jeff Perry by downplaying the creeps role as the chief enabler of a child molester. Remember how Perry accompanied the molestor to the home of the 14 year old victim immediately after the assault. For what reason? I don’t know. I can’t think of any reason why a police officer and his sergeant would do such a thing. Other than to intimidate and/or attempt to cover-up the perverted acts. Yukky Yukky Yukky. Howie had no problem with that. After all Ted Kennedy accidentally drove a woman off a bridge. According to Howie that makes Teddy a worse person than a child molester’s enabler. But Howie being Howie dug out the same tired old jokes and one-liners and took great joy in kicking the crap out of Rep. Paul Kujowski who lost his seat the other day. As Howie mentioned in his column, Kujo is not the smartest guy on Beacon Hill. And he’s been known to have a drink. And he had a drunk driving arrest years ago. So Howie got to cut and paste from the scores of Kujo columns he’s written over the years and was able to [...]
Keith Olbermann suspended indefinitely!
Story Keith Olbermann, the pre-eminent liberal voice on American television, was suspended Friday after his employer, MSNBC, discovered that he made campaign contributions to three Democrats last month. The indefinite suspension was a stark display of the clash between objective journalism and opinion journalism on television. Wow.
“Watch this: Delete! Heh heh.”
“Just because we’re on an airplane doesn’t mean we change the way we do business! Just send me an email.” “OK” “Oh, another email from that suckup Brian about the shareholder’s meeting. Watch this – delete!” “uh..” The legislature and Gov Patrick should show some adult authority and: 1) Restore the sales tax on alcohol. They could remove the excise tax to avoid the complaint of it being a “double tax”. People paying 100 bucks for a bottle of wine obviously can afford a $5 tax. An alcohol sales tax is one of the fairest ways to raise revenue since it is entirely avoidable and raises the most from people who can afford to pay the most. 2) Repeal 40B, which leads to terrible car-centric suburban developments. We need a new plan for affordable housing based on local and sustainable and walkable communities. 3) Lower the sales tax to 5% and make some deep cuts to the budget, and push for a higher national gas tax (to return to each state’s general fund) and a uniform national sales tax that also covers internet sales and would also be returned to the buyer’s state.
Where do we go from here? A Post-Election Forum
Making sense of these crazy elections… Where do our social movements in Boston go from here? What role might “One Nation Working Together” play in this dangerous time? The “One Nation Working Together” rally brought together an unprecedented progressive coalition in Washington on October 2. Nationally, One Nation plans to continue its ambitious collaboration effort after the November election – when such collaboration between labor, civil rights, environmental, socal justice, housing, peace, and youth groups will be more important than ever. The speakers represent Massachusetts groups that collaborated on One Nation. The forum will assess the election results and their impact on our movements’ political environment, suggest ways that our movements can response together in 2011 to the many challenges we face, and examine whether One Nation might play a role in our efforts to unite social movements here in Massachusetts. Speakers: Juan Cofield, New England Area Conference NAACP Maria Elena Letona, Immigrants Rights Activist Russ Davis, Jobs with Justice Grace Ross, Mass. Alliance Against Predatory Lending Steve Meacham, City Life/Vida Urbana Lew Finfer, Mass. Communities Action Network Enid Eckstein (invited), SEIU 1199 Peter Brooks, Watertown Citizens for Environmental Safety Mike Prokosch, Fund our Communities/Cut Military Spending 25% Mark Solomon, [...]
The Tea Party and the G.O.P.: The First Fissures?
I recently wrote that I believe a number of unavoidable “train wrecks” will occur between the Tea Party and the Republican Party. When it comes to these “train wrecks” it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. The first of these are taking shape before anyone even arrives on Capitol Hill to take a seat in the new Congress. The first two issues of contention will be who gets the committee chairs and the attempt to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. Tea Party-endorsed candidates accounted for almost half of the House seats picked up by the G.O.P. and members of the movement are expecting to play more than second fiddle to Republican veterans in the 112th Congress. A recent article on these newcomers and their expectations revealed: “The large number of incoming Tea Party-backed candidates has empowered Republicans aligned with the grass-roots activists to try to expand their power in Congress. Representative Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican and a favorite of the movement that seeks limited government, announced yesterday on Facebook that she will seek a leadership post in the party’s House caucus.” While committee chairmanships may be the expectation of the newly elected Tea Party backed members, [...]
MA Republican whining begins in earnest
It’s predictable, I suppose, that the MA GOP, having suffered a truly epic humiliation by being pretty much wiped out on the same night that their comrades around the country were making historic gains, would feel sorry for themselves and whine. But it’s still unbecoming. (Let me say up front that there are several very interesting and non-whiny posts and comments over at RMG.)
Exhibit A, of course, is the hilarious letter from MA GOP chairman Jenn Nassour, which Bob has already appropriately added to the Weekly Joke Revue.
Exhibit B is vanquished candidate Charlie Baker. I do give him props for a gracious, non-whiny concession speech on election night. But this kind of thing really makes you wonder.
“The ‘energy gap’ favoring Republicans didn’t materialize,” Baker wrote.
Amazing – as if an “energy gap” (more commonly known as an “enthusiasm gap”) is supposed to “materialize” out of thin air. Did it not occur to Baker that the “energy gap” clearly visible here in January had something to do with the relative strengths of the candidates and the efficacy of their campaigns? Did it not also occur to him that this might be generally true, and might have had some specific application to the November election as well?
Social Security: The War Begins Tuesday, And You Better Say Oh, No!
It is my job to bring to you not just the news that took place, but the news that has yet to happen.
Today, that’s exactly what we have.
There is a war coming to try to change Social Security from a social safety net to a “revenue stream” for certain corporate interests, and that war is set to begin Tuesday morning, according to information that was provided to me yesterday afternoon.
Follow along, and you’ll be both forewarned and forearmed.
Matt Viser and Globe let Scott Brown run wild
Someone has to hold politicians accountable to some reality-based standard. If the press won’t do it, even by quoting their own reporting, at least there is the BMG Twitter feed: @ScottBrownMA says Dems “voted with him” 0% of the time. http://bmg.ma/bHofr9 FALSE: http://bmg.ma/9PCVyL Come on, Scott. #masen #mapoli Which, expanded from 140 characters into the English language, means that estimable Globe reporter Matt Viser, long may he flourish, quoted Brown today as follows: Brown also criticized Democrats for not being more willing to work with him. “Since I’ve been down there, I’ve been reaching across the aisle,” he said, when asked about President Obama’s call for bipartisanship. “I’ve had many meetings with the president and the majority party, trying to work across party lines to get things done. I’ve voted with them probably about 29, 30 percent of the time. They’ve voted with me zero. So it’s a two-way street.” Ha ha ha Senator 41, he of the 96 percent partisan MA voting record. On 8 March, the very same Matt Viser reported: “Kerry, Brown on same page on jobs amendment:” The amendment failed, but the precedent should not go unnoticed: US Senator John Kerry joined onto a proposal that [...]
