Meanwhile, there are 50% of the number of inpatient drug treatment beds…there once were. Often the only “treatment bed” for a female opium addict is Framingham Women’s Prison. Oh – and 70% of the prison population is mentally ill…but Speaker DeLeo and the folks who look like democrats in name only, at least to me, do not care.
This state dismantled its community mental health system long ago…so a few poor folks committed suicide. No donors complained. And 700 treatment beds were lost on Long Island when the bridge was declared unsafe. NO those beds have not been replaced and guess what – most of those folks are still displaced and I am told a few of them died too. Que lastima, Speaker Deleo and the no new taxes crew do NOT look to me like they care. At all.
Shame to say, the poor, the powerless, the mentally ill, the homeless don’t show up at fundraisers, write letters to the Boston Globe and if a few of them die, well, they barely make a ripple in the placidity of the “no new taxes” crew and the culture of meanness and “I’ve got mine, who cares” goes rolling right along.
Substituting pills for community mental health care has a role in the opiod epidemic deaths, folks. I cannot tell you how many clients are willing to work with counselors – but who are terrified of inpatient locked bed treatment – and who cannot get a bed anyway once they are terrified enough to agree to accept help in finding one.
Speaker Deleo looks svelte post bariatric surgery – kudos to him.
But svelte no new taxes government will not address the opium epidemic, will not address the dual diagnosis, untreated mentally ill, will not give us safe roads and bridges, educational opportunity that is relatively equalized, or access to justice. Great picture of Speaker DeLeo grinning and saying “No New Taxes” and buttering up the “I’ve got mine affluenza crowd” – but I am NOT SMILING BACK!!!
In my parent’s day DeLeo would not have passed as a Democrat. I cannot stomach a “no new taxes” so-called democratic party that fails to replace the Long Island treatment beds, the community mental health system, or to support access to justice for those with nothing. Maybe it is hopelessness that kills before the opium. And the no new taxes pledge fuels hopelessness.
Donald Green says
has not been a progressive for some time. If anyone on BMG lives in his district it is time to organize and build support to oust him. It was not Charlie Baker that put together a disastrous budget, but the House under the tutelage of Mr. DeLeo.
So what gets cut from the budget?
Donald Green says
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/Massachusetts_state_spending.html
jconway says
No matter how ‘progressive’ they are on paper or in name. In the near term, there are two special elections in East Boston and Peabody where allies of Mr. DeLeo are on the ballot that can be defeated.
stomv says
do you mean Democrats, do you mean members of his leadership team, do you mean something else entirely?
jconway says
Start with his direct allies. The folks that might be indicted alongside him in the near term, the ones he directly endorses or moves money to.
We got a few choices in the upcoming specials. For the Suffolk Special I wouldn’t vote for Adrian Maduro who is a direct DeLeo acolyte, and maybe cross off Tom Walsh in the Peabody rep special who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar back when Flaherty was Speaker. Look at different choices in those primaries.
Dennis Benzan is a family friend, a Beacon Hill outsider, he was a solid Cambridge city councilor and is an Afro-Caribbean who would be a good fit for the changing demographics of the district. Fred and Judy touted attorney Lydia Edwards who works for Greater Boston Legal Services. I trust there judgment and she is also an outsider unconnected to the power brokers. Both strike me as solid choices.
Jay Livingstone has a good voting record and has been far more visible on the Cambridge side of the district than his predecessor, but he also seems close to leadership. All would be better than Maduro who is endorsed by the outgoing incumbent cum lobbyist and was backed by DeLeo in his House race.
There’s a great Latin American young professional running a credible campaign against Speaker Madigan in Illinois, the demographics of DeLeo’s district have changed and a similar person could be viable in that area. I just have no idea who that is yet.
I am open to alternatives.
dunwichdem says
That 1st Suffolk special election was in March of 2015. Madaro won.
The current special elections on the calendar are for Brady’s house seat (9th Plymouth), DiNatale’s seat in Fitchburg (3rd Worcester), and the Peabody seat (12th Essex).
jconway says
Not the state rep vacancy. That election is happening in the near future and the candidates I mentioned are in the mix. No need to reward ‘no new taxes’ DeLeo’s lackey with a seat in Rosenberg’s chamber, the only one that seems to recognize the reality that we need new revenue.
dunwichdem says
Got it, apologies.
(Sidenote: Madaro running in a 2016 Senate special after winning a 2015 House special? Is that like a record turnaround?)
jconway says
It was my mistake in the nomenclature, and you also reminded me of the Brockton and Fitchburg races that had fallen off my radar. I am unfamiliar with the candidates, but these are the kinds of opportunities the progressive movement has to start having a gameplan for before they arise. And thinking of them in terms of D v R isn’t a constructive binary.
Christopher says
…his anti-tax philosophy or is he just paranoid about Democrats being painted as the pro-tax party?
theloquaciousliberal says
n/t
johntmay says
The “bus fees” to send their kids to school will rise. The “sports fees” to allow their kids to attend after school sports will rise. Roads will be in even greater disrepair so the cost of car maintenance will rise. A few hundred here and few hundred there, twenty dollars more now, a fifty dollar bill extra tomorrow but NO new taxes, just the continued hammering of the middle class (to quote a real Democrat).
AmberPaw says
Because so called “local aide” which is actually a return of some tax money for local use – keeps getting cut as does school funding.
sabutai says
Thing is, when you raise fees, parents get angry. So sometimes the idea is floated, and then shot down. Bleeding cuts to education follow, and because “STEAM” is so easy to spell that even town politicians are convinced it’s good, the humanities get the axe. That way, we can produce good little consumers.
rcmauro says
The people of Massachusetts seem so happy to be divided-and-conquered into 351 local governments. I think many, many bucks have been passed by local officials and they have been thoroughly convinced that increases in their property taxes are solely due to “unfunded mandates” from “Beacon Hill” rather than any local services they might themselves demand.
The people that might benefit the most from revisions to the tax code — retired homeowners — seem to be digging in their heels the most, fearing that “their” money will go to “those” people.
Sometimes I feel like I need to read a whole bookshelf of texts on social psychology to begin to understand voters!
Al says
holding the line on tuition at state colleges and universities. Sure, the nominal tuition remained the same, but local, mandatory fees skyrocketed.
Pablo says
This “no new taxes” stance, before the budget is written, will just push the problem to the local level. The Foundation Budget Review Commission has documented how, through formulaic trickery, the state has underfunded its responsibilities to fund local school districts.
“No new taxes” just condemns us to more of the same from Beacon Hill, while local officials must make painful cuts or campaign for property tax increases to make ends meet.
Let’s run some primaries out there.
necturus says
In Massachusetts, the labels “Democrat” and “Republican” used to have more to do with ethnicity than political philosophy. If you were a Yankee, you were a Republican, whereas if you were Italian or Irish, you were a Democrat. While the lines have blurred int he last half century or so, it is no coincidence, I think, that as the proportion of Yankees in the population has diminished over the decades, the Comonwealth has become as solidly Democratic.
However, we must never imagine that Massachusetts is a progressive state. There is as much injustice here as in Texas, I think. We need only compare the public schools in, say, Needham, with those in, say, Randolph. There are plenty of Democrats here who would be perfectly happy if the poor, the homeless, and the mentally ill all dropped dead. No progressive Party would tolerate the likes of a Robert DeLeo, nor any of a string of Democratic crooks in office going back to James Michael Curley.
No new taxes, say you? Then move your sorry ass to New Hampshire and rot there.
jcohn88 says
As we can see today with the talk of an MBTA fare hike, fare hikes are never treated as “tax increases” even though they are effectively the same, just (and this is why pols like them) more regressive.
Whenever I see stuff like this from DeLeo, I am reminded how almost every single Dem in the House voted to make him speaker-for-life.
hesterprynne says
Totally agree with the point that, given his multiple recitations of the “no taxes” pledge over the years, Rep. DeLeo would not pass as a Democrat in most other times and places.
But this revenue battle has been going on for more than a decade. During that time we have had two Governors completely opposed to new taxes and one Governor who threw away the opportunity through the condescending insistence that his very complicated plan (unveiled very late and unsullied by any give-and-take with potential allies) was superior to the simpler and more modest groundwork that had already been prepared for him by many legislators and advocates.
Now it’s possible that we are only a couple years away from a ballot question to raise more revenue by increasing taxes on millionaires. I can see the political wisdom, if not the policy wisdom, of staying out of the way and seeing how the ballot question plays out. We’ve survived growing inequality and decaying infrastructure for a decade — what’s a couple years more?
jconway says
I feel like any tax raise gets Grover’s panties in a bunch and far too many local Democrats who still fear the ghost of Mike Dukakis. How about we blame DeLeo and Baker first when their cuts to the T, health services, mental health, etc. start biting us in the ass? How about we blame them for when property taxes inevitably go up to compensate for the drop in the bucket the state has been allocating to local aid?
I see DeLeo’s pledge as another example of the Democrats rolling over rather than fighting and reframing the narrative. There is no assurance the ballot initiative will pass in 2018, and these kinds of actions feed into the narrative that taxes are bad and the ‘propah bipartisan’ thing to do is to oppose them. How do we beat back Baker in 2018 by rolling over and adopting his platform for him?
When Deval was for casinos the legislature had no problem working with him. I respect you, Paul, Judy, and even TBD as insiders with more knowledge of Beacon Hill arcana than the rest of us, and I get that DP’s proposal was unveiled poorly and he had a lousy touch with that. But come on. If they can come together easily to get casinos and tax breaks for movies they can figure this out.
centralmassdad says
.
hesterprynne says
because we react to government’s failure by demanding less of it. Reform before revenue.
centralmassdad says
that the Patrick plan was DOA less because there was insufficient consultation with allies, than that those allies are a marginal group in the state legislature, and that MA Democratic leadership– and thus the party as a whole– is forthrightly aligned with Gov. Baker and virtually all other Republicans and opposed to those allies. As long as the party in power is implacably opposed to new revenues, then nothing will change.
hesterprynne says
Your description sounds really plausible to me.
I guess we will learn a lot more if and when the Constitutional Convention (Senate President Rosenberg presiding) takes a vote on the millionaires’ tax proposal and who votes which way. Only 50 of the 200 legislators are needed to vote yes to advance the proposal to a Constitutional Convention the next year, when another 50 yes votes will be needed to advance it to the ballot.
merrimackguy says
that your average person thinks that DeLeo is a Democrat. Also they think that most of the House is Democrat, and some know that “votes with the Speaker 90% of the time” can be applied to close to 100% of the majority.
Moreover, most people think the former governor was a Democrat, and believe he was in office for eight years.
I think it’s very handy that Baker won so that there’s someone to blame (including going back 18 years to when he was in the Weld administration). Of course, every single one of his 95 vetoes this year was overridden, so not sure how powerful he really is when it comes to legislation.
centralmassdad says
and so he would have been worse. At least De Leo is more likely to listen.
/barf
williamstowndem says
The MDP has not been seen alive for a year, and suspicions are growing that it has been taken captive by Le Grand Charles. While no ransom notes have been received, the “no new taxes” pledge emanating from the House side of the legislature is evidence that the formerly robust and progressive MDP is now on life support. Please notify the authorities if you have any information that could lead to its renewal.
Pablo says
It’s kind of easy to vote with the Speaker when the Speaker has absolute control over what hits the house floor.
historian says
And why are so many state legislators afraid to do or say anything that could lead to any risk?
Christopher says
…I believe by preponderance of the evidence makes him a Democrat. As for the others the Speaker is very powerful. He can make your political life very difficult which in turn penalizes your constituents.
merrimackguy says
the voters of his district would not help themselves by voting DeLeo out. I know a fair number of people in Haverhill, and even Republicans think Having the Ways and Means Chair (Dempsey) is the best thing for the city. He channels millions in Haverhill’s direction. I’m sure it’s the same for all the leadership.
Christopher says
I just don’t like the constituents of the other 159/160 of the state to be so much under the sway of someone they could not directly vote for.
merrimackguy says
that suggest primarying he and his lieutenants. He should have been out of the Speakership by now, but……
centralmassdad says
He hasn’t been beaten out because they support him.
Every time it becomes manifest that they support someone who is, in essence, a 1990s US House Republican, we get one of these silly hand-wringing threads (usually in January), but when push comes to shove, they support him unconditionally, because the preservation of a conservative, right-wing majority takes priority over any so-called “progressive” agenda, so long as the conservative, right-wing legislators go to the same convention they do.
centralmassdad says