As a follow-up to my earlier post about Chuck Turner’s conviction, I thought folks might be interested to know that Turner has sued the City of Boston and the City Councilors for violations of his rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and more interestingly, that several voters in his district have sued, claiming that the Council unconstitutionally disenfranchised them by expelling Turner and calling for a special election. The case is Turner v. City of Boston, No. 10-12276, for those of you with PACER access (if you don’t have access, you can get a hold of the complaint at the courthouse, of course). I am not going to give my thoughts in detail about the supposed merits of these claims. I wanted instead to point out that Turner chose for his lawyer Chester Darling, who is best-known for successfully arguing that the First Amendment permitted the organizers of the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day parade to exclude gay and lesbian groups, and who has also prosecuted a claim of reverse racial discrimination against the Boston schools on behalf of several white students and who represented the president of the Catholic Action League in a rear-guard attempt to stop gay [...]
Worcester County Outrage
https://www.telegram.com/artic… I would be banned if I expressed my feelings. I’ll probably be banned for posting this, but it needs to be known.
Hoarding cash
The Boston Business Journal is hardly a liberal publication, but the front page of their December 24, 2010 issue has an article beginning:
As the state’s unemployment rate grows [sic], $19.2 billion in cash is sitting in the cofffers of 30 of the largest publicly traded Massachusetts-based companies…
The level of cash hoarding has reached 7.4%, the highest rate since 1959. In Massachusetts, the rate for the 30 largest non-financial companies is higher: 9.7%.
Cash generally has a very low return and corporations typically do not try to sit on a lot of it. The BBJ tells us it is lack of demand that is making companies reluctant to invest.
Rebuilding our revenue base.
Right now somebody is thinking of something worse You know a lot of folk are pessimistic about our chances of winning public support for a balanced solution to our current budget crisis and are facing the new year like this delightful Dave Grandlund Larry King/Father Time cartoon: Still when it come to economic health, we're doing better than most states according to the new report bhy the Mass Budget and Policy Center. The years ahead will pose enormous fiscal and economic challenges for Massachusetts and for the nation. Policymakers and citizens engaged in policy debates will face very difficult choices. But as hard as the choices we face are, we in Massachusetts also have very significant advantages that can serve as the foundation of a strong and vibrant state economy as our national economy recovers. In the face of a 1.5 Billion dollar structural deficit, how do we leverage our strenghs to make sure we don't undermine the public infrastuctures that educate our children, keep our water and air clean, our homes and families safe,our bridges and roads repaired, and help our business community to thrive. We have an adult discussion of taxes that's what we do. We all work [...]
