The Herald’s Margery Eagan is impressed, and has some good advice:
Every once in a while a politician shows up around here whoâs got it all going. A natural.
Deval Patrickâs one of those.
Smooth, smart, easy, endearing, both charisma and the humble thing going. He shakes your hand, looks you straight in the eye, says itâs good to meet you like he really means it. He talks about the politics of hope, of building up, not tearing down. Your better self gets all puffed up.
âWhenever he speaks I hear people say words like âwow,ââ says somebody who once worked with him. âHe inspires.â …
Kerry Healey. Iâm a big fan. But straight talk here? It pains me to concede, sheâs not in Devalâs league. Ditto Tom Reilly and Chris Gabrieli and gadfly Christy Mihos. Not even close.
Not that any of this means heâll win even the primary…. As one guy put it, âWhat does he offer your semi-employed middle-aged guy in Waltham? Defeat of cynicism?â
If I were Deval, Iâd become Mr. Property Tax Relief Man, something he says heâs working on. Then Iâd hustle up every cent I could for TV ads. Then Iâd run around the state laying on charm.
IMHO, she’s right on all counts. As far as raw, old-fashioned political ability goes – the ability to deliver a great speech; to get a crowd jazzed up; to, well, inspire people – Patrick’s level of talent hasn’t been seen in these parts since JFK, and he seems to me to rival Bill Clinton in that department. And that, of course, does not mean he’ll win.
Eagan offers excellent advice on the property tax mantra. It’s a good issue for him, and the more he talks about it when his rivals talk about the income tax rollback, the better off he’ll be. Every time Tom Reilly says the rollback puts “$200 in every family’s pocket,” Patrick should be countering with this story reporting that every homeowner in Boston may see a $220 property tax hike next year. Or this one, reporting that parents in Westford are now facing a “bus fee” of $225 per student. That $200 from the rollback won’t stay in those families’ pockets for long, as long as property taxes and fees keep rising.
And support the rollback itself. It’s never too late to change a mistaken position.
There is no disrespect to democracy at all. The issue of the rollback is moot at this point. If we are so interested in democracy let’s put the quesiton up again under our current financial circumstances where its merits could be better debated.
The rollback vote was years ago, and it should have been respected then.
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But, times have indeed changed, and so using the rollback vote to argue for reducing the state income tax to 5.0% now is like arguing that George Bush is the greatest president ever since he polled over 80% in late 2001.
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Perhaps a better tack would be to present two plans and let the voters decide… roll back the income tax, or work at the town/city level as DP as suggested. I’m not suggesting that this is realistically possible as a vote for the state, but you catch my drift methinks.
Voter ballot initiatives are dangerous. People don’t understand the issues when they vote (I certainly have skipped scads of questions on ballot inits because I didn’t feel qualified). That’s why we send people to Beacon Hill – presumably so they can become experts and make choices. If they screw up, we fire ’em.
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The rollback ballot vote is dead. May it stay that way forever. Stupid issue for a ballot.
The Right of Free Petition was specifically INCLUDED in the Mass. Cosntitution to ensure that we NEVER had a ‘professional’ governmental caste.
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BTW – did you know that you, me, ANYBODY, can file a bill in the Legislature? And it gets the same hearing and consideration as one filed by a Rep. or Senaor? (Sometimes better!)
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WE NEED TO BE OUR OWN EXPERTS!
you can ask your rep to file a bill on your behalf, and they have to do it. As to whether it gets the “same hearing and consideration,” though, I beg to differ. They’re always designated along the lines of “filed by Mr./Ms. So-and-so of Wherever, at the request of a constituent” (I forget the exact language, but it’s something like that). A definite tipoff to colleagues that it’s a constituent file and not to be taken terribly seriously.
Walk into the House Clerk’s office tomorrow, and YOU TOO can file a bill! You do NOT need a legislator to intercede for you!
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Of course, so close to end of Session, it’ll just wind up in Docket Land – but the First Week in December, 2006, file what ever bill you like, as a private citizen, and it will go through the regular process.
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It’s called the Right of Free Petiton.
It seems that poorer people are more likely to want to roll back the income tax, but rolling back the income tax means that rich people will see a far greater benefit than they will because it is a flat tax on income.
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The average person will get back $200. But there are an awful lot of people — many elderly homeowners — who have household incomes less than $67,000 per year.
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Property taxes are regressive. Wealthy people don’t pay as high a percentage of their income as poor people because the size or value of houses doesn’t increase in a straight line. I pay twice as much in property taxes as I do the average homeowner in my city, yet my household income is four times as much as the average family income.
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Property taxes in Massachusetts represent far more of a town’s budget than across most of the country. The intense focus on them is ultimately behind the restrictive growth laws that are passed in most communties. Towns have reduced citizens to an economic equation, and they are writing laws and designing policy to cherry-pick the “good” residents, and shut out the “bad” residents. Such laws are not only restrictive, but they are in many ways discriminatory — why should any class of people be deliberately zoned out of living in a certain town?
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The voters may have passed this bill nearly a decade ago, but they most assuredly were given a false choice. Instead of given the choice of “would you prefer the income tax be lowered but your local property taxes would be raised”, they were only given the choice of “do you want your taxes lowered”. It was done at a time when the state was flush with cash and we were experiencing an economic boom.
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Times have changed, and in order to change with them this state can’t be hampered capricious restrictions.
of Deval on Eagan and Braude yesterday afternoon and he was great on it. I could tell then that Margery was pretty impressed with him, hell I’m a supporter and I was mightily impressed.
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Deval got a chance to answer a question about the tax cut and he had a great answer about how the tax to cut is the property tax and he went on to explain why. It was a great answer, but it’s not tiny enough to fit into a sound bite like “$200 in every family’s pocket.” Deval needs to boil that answer down enough so people understand that he DOES support a tax rollback, but he wants to roll back the tax that is going to help people the most.
since early last year – “Just hear him talk.” Now more people are hearing him talk, and they’re liking it.
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What is being talked about is equally as important, though, as evidenced by the property tax debate.
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A stab at a camp message on property taxes: “The average homeowner pays $X more in property taxes since the Republicans took control in 1990. Let’s talk about some real tax relief.”
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etc.
At a speech he gave at the Plymouth County Democratic League Breakfast in Halifax a few weeks ago, Rep. Tom O’Brien (represents Kingston and parts of Duxbury and Plymouth) spoke about this income tax v. property tax issue. He said that it was our job as Democrats to ask everyone who supports the income tax rollback, “Why do you want to raise my property taxes?”
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Irony alert: In his ex-officio capacity, O’Brien supported Tom Reilly at the convention.
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Disclaimer: I am a Deval Patrick coordinator for Plymouth.