Local bloggers who are kicking butt

For your consideration:

• Massachusetts Liberal: We don’t always agree, but read his (?) stuff every day. Every day.

  The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center (you know, the “liberal” one) has a report out that places Massachusetts business taxes in context. And that report  concludes that Massachusetts has a significantly lower level of business taxation that most states. But the “liberal” citations include Ernst and Young, which places Massachusetts 46th in state taxes paid by businesses and 41st in percentage of private sector Gross State Product paid in business taxes.

  And in other areas, the state ranks 46th or 48th in the nation in corporate tax burden.

  Maybe the Drape Gate was designed to cover more than crummy walls? After all it’s easier for the media to wrap itself around something with a “gate” attached” than it is to do serious reporting on policy.

  Well heck yes it is! You don’t have to open a .pdf from some egghead shop to get into the food fight! Yeeeeehah! (PS: MBPC — please put all your stuff on normal web pages. Pdfs give us hives.)

• Do I need to tell you that Adam Gaffin’s style is unstoppable? Adam, taking down Adrian Walker, who clearly lacks fighting spices:

  But nothing, nothing was more important than how Patrick handled himself at a sessions with a bunch of whiny reporters who have themselves a story that no longer requires any real work to follow?

• Ryan asks for more Joe Friday from the Globe, pointing out that they bury the lede on Patrick’s tax plan in favor of the food fight … again:

  The Globe could have analyzed relevant information, but didn’t. For example, are Massachusetts corporate taxes high? If they’re not high, they’re not going to be “job-killing tax increases.” Furthermore, you won’t find out what are other states are doing – because the Globe ignored that question too.

  The funny thing is it’s not as if this information isn’t available. Just the other day I received an email/press release from the nonpartisan Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center (MBPC) discussing the topic, informing citizens about the facts. I’m sure the Boston Globe received the same email. What did the report have to say? According to the MBPC, Massachusetts has paltry corporate taxation. In fact, we have one of the 8 lowest in the country. Closing a few of Patrick’s loopholes isn’t going to kill jobs.

  You know, maybe this is just for us voracious consumers of news, but is it too much to ask to get that context?  (In fairness to the Globe, the front page report is more even-handed.)

Anyway, nice little blogstorm, bringing some facts to the table. Keep it hailing, y’all.

Update: Emily Rooney. Emily Rooney!! (Yeah, it’s been mentioned, but I hadn’t seen the blog post.)

The media is smugly snickering to itself. While publicly championing the interests of poor “Joe taxpayer” over governor Deval Patrick’s car lease, drapery costs, and $72,000 scheduler for his wife, the frayed-collar crowd knows for the most part that Governor Patrick is right. This story is media driven.

And she goes on to cite chapter and verse.

Please share widely!

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