Tom Reilly: Republican for Governor
Tom Reilly said in the first gubernatorial debate that Bush and Cheney were hardly politicians to emulate. So why is he doing it with such gusto himself?
The modus operendi of the Republicans runs something like this: When you have nothing to say on the issues, attack the person who does. Not on his positions, but on his character. When your positions border on lunacy, attack the other guy with buzzwords, catch phrases and clichés. The Reilly/ Boston Globe team of assassins has taken a chapter directly from Karl Roveâs playbook.
It became clear from listening to Reilly, that whatever he wants for the citizens of the Commonwealth, which seems to be very little, indeed, it is to take a back seat to what he wants for himself. While the other two candidates were talking about education, energy independence, and economic development, Reilly piped in with tax return releases. While the other two candidates wanted to discuss how to move the state forward, Reilly wanted to know how much money Deval Patrick made from Ameriquest. It speaks of conflict, he said.
You gotta hand to him; thatâs a smoke screen Bush would have been proud of. Reilly has served two terms as the stateâs attorney general. In charge of prosecuting, or not prosecuting, anyone from a minor thief to a corporate executive. Yet he has never released his own tax records. He has a house on the Cape â his only real estate â but he opposes Cape Wind. Sounds like a conflict to me. His coffers are full of contributions from rich donors, many of whom have real estate on Nantucket or the Vineyard. Conflict anyone? The elderly on the Cape can pay through their dripping noses to heat their homes, or they can freeze, but who cares so long as Reillyâs buddies have a clear view Nantucket Sound. The state could lead the way in alternative energy technology, but thatâs not as important as Reillyâs property value or clear sailing for his friends. But, according to him, we should be more concerned with Gabrieli and Patrickâs incomes. Shouldnât we be equally concerned about an attorney general who intervenes in a criminal investigation to help out a friend? That shows what a man does when there really is a conflict. We can talk about judgment and Marie St. Fleur, but why bother? Reilly â the man who would be king â has already admitted he is not really good at the political stuff.
Typical of the Bush, Cheney, Rove troika, Reilly wants to cut taxes. Three tenths of one percent. He knows that means nothing in real numbers, but in case you donât:
Income: Net Gain
$500.000 $1500
$100,000 $300
$60,000 $180
$40,000 $120
So the central issue of Reillyâs campaign is to save a person earning 60,000 dollars per year three dollars and forty six cents per week. Of course, if you are reporting a half a million-dollar income, you get 28.85. And, letâs face it, those people really need it.
How does this jive with Reillyâs poor boy line of crap? Cities like the one he grew up in are starving. Springfield and Holyoke are basket cases, and so are many other cities â languishing from cuts in state aid. Reilly knows very well that cites and towns compensated for those cuts by cutting services and or raising taxes. What are those services? Schools, police, trash pick up. Athletics, after school programs, elderly services. The things directly related to the health, protection and future of our people, our poorest people. But Reilly cares far less about them than paying for his rich friendsâ latte every morning. Actually, he doesnât give a tinkerâs dam about any of it, as long as he can latch onto the Bush/Cheney/Romney buzz word of tax cuts – even if itâs only substantive meaning is to dig a deeper hole for people with no ladder.
But not to worry. The Reilly âwho cares about the Commonwealth; I want to be governorâ brand of Republican cynicism probably will change even his position on that. If the other candidates can change the direction of the political wind, Reilly will set his thumb south and go right with it.
I have voted for Republicans in the past, and I might again in the future. But if I do, it will be for one who is honest enough to admit it
You have really nailed it.
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Reilly talks about himself. At one appearance, I heard him assure the audience (of left-wing students) “I do well with independents.” Yeah, great, Tom, but this isn’t a game, this is about the future of our state. What are you going to do for me? Remember, I’m the voter.
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Patrick, on the other hand, connects with voters. He listens. He genuinely cares what happens to people.
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Gabrieli, on the other hand, has warts. He’s a genuinely nice guy who cares and is intelligent. But, Chris, guess what, we’ve already got a candidate like that. And he has the Convention locked up. So, take enough delegates away from the AG to keep him off the ballot, and then resign from the race, okay?
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Yeah, I know. It ain’t gonna happen.
There is some as yet unknown factual information about Tom Reilly’s ability to handle a budget – but first if I could ask for the help of you readers who know more than I ever will about this domain called politics… clearly you are a learned bunch. Ready? OK, a little at a time then. Once I get some of your wisdom I will pass along some of what I have learned… Does anybody know how much money it costs the taxpayers for one day of a Grand Jury? Does anybody know the average amount of time Reilly’s office spends to get indictments handed down? Does anybody know what the success rate is?
They were elected once. They were installed once.
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Let’s not forget that what happened in 2000 was one of the greatest perversions of democracy that our country has ever seen.
Bush and Cheney were elected twice . Rather than learning from your mistakes you dems languish in denial.
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Yes ,I would vote for Bush and Cheney again if if the only Dem choices were Kerry or Dean. No, I would not vote for them if the choice was Joe Biden or John McCain on the Republican side.
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My original point in complimenting our President is that he clearly understand that the voters do not want taxes raised under any circumstances . If you wish to argue the point in the context of electability please provide an example of a candidate who was elected on the platform of not reducing taxes.
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Massachusetts voters have already expressed their opinion on the tax rollback at the ballot box. I believe any candidate that even flinches on the issue is dead on delivery in the general election. A tax and spend democrat is the dream opponent for Kerry Healy.
since you don’t believe in taxing and spending as a way of paying for unilateral, preemptive, regionally destabilizing wars.
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By the way, how much has Saudi Arabia spent spreading political Islam around the world?
…I thought you were a sensible moderate RML…but I’m speechless that you would vote for Bush/Cheney for a third time. It does speak volumes.
Yes, I am somewhat opposed to his overreaching in matters of privacy but I believe he is probably justified because its a matter of security. At the end of the day, he has done an excellent job in protecting this country. We are at war, the type of which has never been seen in the history of the world. Without the facts which our leaders possess, I defer to their leadership. Remember Bush inherited the dysfunctional CIA from Clinton.,
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As such,I am one of the 32% who strongly believe we must be in Iraq in the face of an asymmetrical terrorist threat to our way of life and the future of our society as we know it. We are in the type of war which at both a strategic and tactical level we have no experience. We cannot take any chances with our country’s security unless we have a more reliable intelligence apparatus . In the future, as years go by, and we establish covert operations and actually learn to speak Arabic we have no choice now but to act as “the bulls in the china shop.” The china shop is Iraq.
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Those Muslim fanatics who are probably reading this post want to cut your head off and watch our children burn to death . They are just waiting for us to drop our guard. I don’t think I want Kerry or Dean watching my backside. Give me McCain or even Biden anyday. Hillary from NYC who is now on the armed service committee is even starting to get it. As crazy as it may sound , I would look at her seriously in the face of Kerry or Dean .
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Finally, also to Bush’s credit, the economy exploded since he was elected.? We have %30 less Americans off the welfare rolls . He has not made any major cuts in social welfare programs, without compensation in other areas.?
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Frank,am I sill a sensible moderate?
On the invasions of privacy? In this case, “invasion of privacy” means gross violation of the 4th amendment. We’ve sacrificeds hundreds of thousands of good american lives over 200 and some-odd years for the sake of freedom, and we stared down the barrel of nuclear annihilation for 50 years of cold war with Russia without sacrificing our civil rights.
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After all of that, after 230 years of americans dying for the sake of freedom, 19 punks hijack 4 airliners and now you’re trembling in fear and begging to give away our rights? Which party is the tough guy party again? Didn’t you ever see that movie “The Siege”?
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As far as that “dysfunctional CIA”, I believe they provided Bush with some warnings about a 9/11 around august of 01 or so? So their CYA on the matter is pretty well done. With the WMDs, well if you keep telling a department “find me evidence of WMDs” at the expense of other work, well you’ll have a pile of dubious evidence for WMDs and not much work done to contradict that evidence.
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Senior CIA officers are resigning en masse amid Porter Goss’s ham-handed attempts at politicizing the department. The DHS is a god-forsaken mess. The Director of National Intelligence, created last year, is a god-forsaken mess. Maybe if we had a president who was actually interested in the details of governing instead of delivering 8-word slogans and taking long vacations these turf wars could be resolved. Maybe if he put an empowered policy wonk instead of a used-car salesman in charge of the treasury, we could get to work on our deficit problems. As it is, the problems are not being fixed. Tough talk doesn’t fix our problems, hands-on governing does.
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We haven’t had an attack on our soil since 9/11? We didn’t have one from 93 until 2001 either.
We have no clue about the number of attacks that were stopped as a result of our surveillance and wiretapping. We will probably never know the real story because to reveal our success is to expose are hand to the enemy. For you to assume we have not been attacked because the enemy has not tried is a naive conclusion .Because you are anti Bush you obviously will not give him any credit for his successes in the war on terrorism.
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your characterizations of the actors as wonks gives you no credibility in this debate. sorry.
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If you believe I am trembling from the fear of more punks attacking this country , you are correct. But I don’t think that watching movies is going to make me feel much safer.
If they were real men, they would have gotten productive jobs and taken care of their families.
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I don’t have a problem with surveillance as long as it’s constitutional. Right now we have a huge blind spot in our law because the FISA laws were written in the late 70s before such things as voice recognition software and data mining were available. There are -all kinds- of ways we can make this legal and constitutional and create the proper congressional oversight without compromising our methods. Or our freedoms. But Bush wants to run the whole thing in the dark from the oval office without any oversight or legal assurances. No deal in my book.
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I also notice you didn’t approach any of my points about the ‘reforms’ of the last few years, most of which are far more important and harder to solve then the NSA flap.
…all I heard was Bush talking points and not one bit of sensible moderate thought.
National defense and moderate thought are oxymoron’s,,,,,,,,,,,
I believe the vote was 5-4, but David I’ll leave the Supreme Court stuff to you.
And I suppose black helicopters scared away minority voters in Ohio, triggering a Bush electoral victory there.
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“Selected, not elected” has been retired, according to the Washington Post and the NYT, after conducting multiple and exhaustive recounts of the 2000 Florida vote count using a variety of ballot criteria. Bush won them all.
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As far as the SCOTUS decision, why is 5-4 any less legitimate than or 4-5, or 9-0 for that matter? Other legal issues have been settled 5-4. Are you disavowing those? May I disavow any 4-5 decisions where Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion, or is this selectivity a liberal prerogative only?
How’s 7-1 for you?
“Selected, not elected” has been retired, according to the Washington Post and the NYT, after conducting multiple and exhaustive recounts of the 2000 Florida vote count using a variety of ballot criteria.
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That is incorrect. The media consortium that studied the ballots did not actually issue “results”, they just provided raw data, which others could interpret and count. But that raw data clearly shows that, even with the butterfly ballot and the improperly purged voters and all, Gore still got more votes than Bush in Florida by a clear, though small, margin.
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To avoid making waves in the early days of the Bush presidency, most of the press focused on a much narrower conclusion: If only those counties that Gore asked be recounted had been recounted, and only the subset of ballots (undervotes, IIRC) in question had been considered, would Gore have gained enough votes to win Florida? And they found that, even in that narrow circumstance, if you used the “intent of the voter” standard that had been prevalent, codified in law, and used in ever other state, the answer was yes, by a little. But if you used any of the stricter standards that Bush’s lawyers argued for, then the answer was no.
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It’s not clear what would’ve happened if the Supreme Court had stayed out of it like they should have. We might’ve had a narrow recount under narrow standards, with Bush barely holding on to a sub-200 vote margin. Or we might’ve had a full recount of all the undervotes in the state, or all the undervotes overvotes in the state, or the Florida Supreme Court might’ve used the sensible “clear intent of the voter” standard. Under any of those circumstances, Gore’s win would have been official rather than just factual.
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As for disavowing “5-4”, it’s not about how big the court majority was. It’s a sarcastic reference to the fact that 9 “voters” overrode millions. If it had been 6-3, we’d be saying that, and we’d mean the same thing.
I’m sorry. You’re just plain wrong.
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The clear winner was George W. Bush. Here are the results of the vote recount project conducted by the University of Chicago:
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Review of All Ballots Statewide (never undertaken) ⢠Standard as set by each county Canvassing Board during their survey: Gore by 171 ⢠Fully punched chads and limited marks on optical ballots: Gore by 115 ⢠Any dimples or optical mark: Gore by 107 ⢠One corner of chad detached or optical mark: Gore by 60
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Review of Limited Sets of Ballots (initiated but not completed) ⢠Gore request for recounts of all ballots in Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia counties: Bush by 225 ⢠Florida Supreme Court of all undervotes statewide: Bush by 430 ⢠Florida Supreme Court as being implemented by the counties, some of whom refused and some counted overvotes as well as undervotes: Bush by 493
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Certified Result (official final count) ⢠Recounts included from Volusia and Broward only: Bush by 537
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Additionally, the accounting firm BDO Seidman, their work commissioned by The Miami Herald, Knight Ridder and USA Today, conducted an additional review. Their results were as follows:
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⢠Lenient standard. Any alteration in a chad, ranging from a dimple to a full punch, counts as a vote. By this standard, Bush won by 1,665 votes.
⢠Palm Beach standard. A dimple is counted as a vote if other races on the same ballot show dimples as well. By this standard, Bush won by 884 votes.
⢠Two-corner standard. A chad with two or more corners removed is counted as a vote. This is the most common standard in use. By this standard, Bush won by 363 votes.
⢠Strict standard. Only a fully removed chad counts as a vote. By this standard, Gore won by 3 votes.
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Furthermore, the FL Supreme Court had no state constitutional right to reorder ANYTHING concerning the vote recount as voter disenfranchisement was never proved. The solution to the vote count mess falls clearly under the responsibilities of the Secretary of State and beyond that the FL state legislature.
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This is clear in both the FL constitution and FL precedent. The SCOTUS decision reaffirmed that the mechanics of elections are not within the purview of the courts but part of a political process.
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As it should be. FL has laws governing their election process. The FL Supreme Court disregarded and overrode those laws under an impossible and amorphous “intent of the voter” standard, divinable only by God, improvising all of it on-the-fly.
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When you say “It’s not clear what would’ve happened if the Supreme Court had stayed out of it like they should have,” I know you mean the SCOTUS, but it’s the FLSC that unjustly interferred. The SCOTUS corrected this overreaching. Otherwise, all FL voters would have been disenfranchised.
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What bugs me the most is liberals’ end-justifying-the-means double-standard of accepting as legitimate the FLSC’s fiddling-and-diddling with election laws created and managed by elected political bodies (an executive and a legislature,) and outside the scope of their constitutionally granted powers (limited to correcting blatant disenfranchment.)
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But when the SCOTUS correctly reverses this unjust and extralegal judicial interference, liberals go nuts and accuse the SCOTUS of “selecting” a president.
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Had the FLSC been left alone, I’m sure the recount would have been dragged out and manipulated until which time the FLSC would have “selected” Al Gore.
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Bush won.
First, if you’re going to cite research results, then kindly provide a link to the material.
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NORC Florida Ballot Project
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If you google that research project you find that various groups use it to support their own conclusions.
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From a Bush supporter website Florida2000election.com comes these quotes:
For starters, the study does not conclude these ambiguous ballots were actually votes or would have been counted as such for any candidate in a manual tabulation. It does not make judgments upon them other than placing them in proper categories. The NORC study has made a strong point to say;
“…the project does not identify âwinners.â Its goal is to assess the reliability of the voting systems themselves, using the highest standards of scientific accuracy and reliability.” – From NORC Website
“NORC will not attempt to assess whether any particular ballot contains a “vote” but simply describe the marks.” – From NORC Website
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Fair enough: What do the folks at George Washington University have to say about the study?
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Battle For Florida
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The Florida Ballots Project
A group of eight news organizations–The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post Co., Tribune Publishing, CNN, Associated Press, St. Petersburg Times and The Palm Beach Post–set out to develop a database of the roughly 180,000 Florida ballots that did not register a vote for President, with the aim of producing “the definitive archive of the disputed ballots.”
On Jan. 10, 2001, the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago was brought on to conduct the inventory. In the following months, teams of coders examined and coded undervotes and overvotes from all counties totaling 175,010 ballots. The news organizations reported their findings on Nov. 12, 2001. Their analyses showed that if the recounts underway, but stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court, had been completed, Bush would still have won by a narrow margin, but if disputed ballots statewide had been recounted Gore would have eked out a slim majority. (emphasis mine)
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So there it is. To me the real point is that six years after a highly contested election, our government has done little more than pay lip service to the ideal of election reform. Democrats aren’t doing enough, but at least they’re doing something. Republicans don’t care because they’re trying to preserve their majority. The average American just shrugs and turns on American Idol.
Would you vote for them again? If you would I suppose you are telling us that Reilly is your choice.
The irony of your post is simply staggering. That fact is that your argument represents the Rovian politics of cynicism at its best: Personally attack and destroy those who may disagree with your policies and politics. Brand them “Republicans,” or “assassins,” or part of the “George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove troika.” Question their motives. Why? Simply because Tom Reilly does not share your views on a few (or perhaps many) issues? Or that he had the intelligence to clearly distinguish himself from the field on a handful of issues during Sunday’s debate by (how dare he!) challenging his opponent directly?
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I’m sorry, do I need to submit my Democratic application for your approval?
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There are plenty of Democrats who support returning the income tax to the rate that taxpayer’s were promised in 1989 and mandated in 2000.
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There are plenty of “good government” Democrats who support the transparency and openness that comes when a candidate releases his or her income tax returns, just as every candidate has done since 1990 except Mitt Romney, Kerry Healey, Deval Patrick, and Chris Gabrieli. In fact, I’ve read a few Patrick supporters on BMG who think it would be a good idea for him to do it. (Between you and I, they must be Republicans. . .)
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There are an overwhelming number of elected Democrats and Republicans who oppose the Cape Wind project. (Apparently, under the your test, Ted Kennedy is not a Democrat. You should probably call and let him know that he’s been very badly mistaken for 45 years in the Senate.) Many Democrats realize that the Cape Wind process was highly flawed and essentially allowed the federal government to usurp decisions that rightfully belong to the Commonwealth. Decisions and powers worth fighting for.
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Tom Reilly has been a Democrat for over four decades. Throughout his public career, he is exhibited an independent streak that has earned him the respect of many Democrats, Republicans, and (most importantly)the Independent voters who will decide this election. He disagrees with Bush-Cheney and Romney-Healey loudly and often. In fact, if you care to read his environmental policy, it includes a laundry list of issues upon which he has battled the Bush Administration and takes Romney-Healey to task for failed leadership.
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I believe that anyone who objectively watches Sunday’s debate and then reads your post would come to a surprisingly (for you) different conclusion as to who was unfairly attacked. I see the attack going on every day, but it’s not coming from Tom Reilly. It seems to be coming from people who may have been surprised by his strong performance on Sunday and the generally positive attention it received in the media.
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Regardless, I’m a Democrat and I support Tom Reilly as my choice for the Governor. In part, because he is a Democrat.
You miss the point, but I suspect you already know that.
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Of course people can disagree on the issues, in fact if you have three Democrats, you are likely to get five opinions on any one of them. Thatâs fine with me.
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My point was that Reilly spends more time on attacking his rivals than their positions, and that, if held to the standards he promotes, be doesnât measure up.
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I am not saying that there is not room for debate on Cape Wind, but that one can point to Reillyâs position and find a conflict of interest. Should that mean that Reilly should be silent? No, but perhaps he should take care when he tries to manufacture a conflict when it comes to Ameriquest. While he finds it convenient to release his tax returns now, he did not when he could have had all kinds of conflicts as Attorney General. Then there is the business of campaign officials on the A.G. payroll â but more on that later.
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Of course it would be nice not to pay a dime in taxes, but the tax roll back â a standard buzzword â does very little good for the individual and considerable harm to cities and towns. Reilly knows that, but does the Republican dance â keep it general, and no one will notice that the vast majority of citizens will get an increase in property taxes, a cut in services, and a free cup of coffee. Once again a 60,000 income yeilds 180.00 per year in relief. In this case even the rich will not get a return that any reasonable person would consider worth the cost.
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Both Patrick and Gabrieli have thus far refused to go negative in this campaign. They both seem to think that the electorate has had enough of this sort of politics from the Republicans. I agree â although I am less likely to let Reilly get away with it than they are â especially when he is open to the same sorts of charges.
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Letâs discuss the issues; most important, letâs find a governor, Reilly, Patrick or Gabrieli based on their positions and their capacity to lead. But if Reilly wants to sling some mud, he better put on his slicker and hood.
You miss the point, but I suspect you already know that.
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Truly, you give yourself too much credit. I know what I mean and I mean what I say.
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I am satisfied to let BMG readers compare our posts and rsolve the issues for themselves. (After all, this is America.) And, if they happen to disagree with me, I won’t tar them as “Republicans,” “Rovians,” or disloyal Democrats, as you have done.
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The marketplace of ideas is a very good thing.
MaverickDem, I agree. I’m troubled by those who attack the middle by lumping them in with the other side. Reilly is a Democrat. Call him a conservative Democrat, call him a lunch pail Democrat, call him whatever. But he’s a Democrat. And I think Deval Patrick is right to call for unity among Democrats and to acknowledge that whoever is the nominee, Democrats should get behind him and make sure we get a Democrat in the corner office.
The main point of JET’s post, which several seem to have missed, is that Reilly is Republican in his TACTICS, not necessarily his politics. This is what democrats need to recognize, and determine if this is the direction we feel our party needs to pursue, or if we can maintain something much better and still be elected.
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By the way, if any of you want to read more of JET’s stuff (it is outstanding), check out http://www.crankyneighbors.com. He’s posted some truely thought-provoking and intelligent articles.
Since the author of this thread focuses on the alleged “motives” of Cape Wind opponents, I thought folks might find Eileen McNamara’s column (“Wind plan needs airing”) in this morning’s Boston Globe helpful in learning about some of the substance that motivates Ted Kennedy, Tom Reilly, Mitt Romney et al.
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