Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

HELLO, Big Dig Culture!

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Here’s your legislature’s idea of the “public interest”: Taking special interest cash to finance an awesome party!

State House lobbyists, their well-heeled clients, and corporations with financial interests on Beacon Hill donated more than $400,000 to help finance a national legislators’ conference that the Senate and House leadership hosted in Boston this month.

The special-interest contributions went to the National Conference of State Legislatures for its annual conference, at which House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi and Senate President Therese Murray played prominent roles.

To gain cover for the corporate donations, which are banned under the state’s campaign finance law, the Legislature passed a special resolution that declared it in “the public interest” to allow lawmakers to solicit funds for the conference.

It’s the usual suspects: Tom O’Neill’s group; Arbella Insurance, Verizon, yadda yadda. You know, a bunch of outsiders who have to struggle to get what they need from the legislature. Now, I hope everyone understands that naturally, no one in the legislature is going to be affected by such contributions. No one — I mean, it would be irresponsible to suggest such a thing. (/snark)

Anyway, I hope you donated some money yourself, in order to counter-balance the influence of the moneymen. I mean, the only thing you can do is just try to bribe them back to neutrality on important issues, right?

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Comments

  1. Ouch. The $400,000 was ?nearly half of the $840,000 in donations that the NCSL received to fund its four-day conference.?

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    $50,000 here, $20,000 there, pretty soon you?re talking real money. And real access.

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    And on Page 1: “Water is still leaking steadily into the Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. Tunnel with no signs of abating and continued uncertainty about where it is all coming from,

    according to a new state analysis, which flatly contradicts Massachusetts Turnpike Authority officials’ claim that they have the problem under control.”

  2. “States Forging Ahead on Health Reform? by Salvatore DiMasi
    Posted by CommonHealth, Friday, August 10th, 2007

    Postings to this blog over the past several weeks have addressed many aspects of our health reform law, including the challenges and successes that we share. This past week, I continued my work to educate and analyze these issues with fellow legislators and counterparts in states across the country. The Annual Meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures was an opportunity to do just that. Over 9,000 legislators, legislative staff, advocates, and other policymakers?domestic and international?came to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center to share best practices, new developments, and evidence to inform policy development in many areas.

    As health reform continues to dominate state agendas across the country, one session in particular consisted of perspectives from a few states in varying stages of reform, and demonstrated the need for flexibility in state approaches to expanding access to health care, and the tensions between access, cost, and quality. I was joined on a panel by officials from California, Indiana, and Vermont to discuss the substance of pending and enacted health reform proposals in our respective states, and the policy and political challenges we face.

    California has several proposals on the table?from both Democrats and Republicans, from both the Executive and Legislative branches, and from both the Assembly and Senate. The proposals include elements that are familiar to us in Massachusetts?individual mandate, employer contributions, increased Medicaid reimbursement rates for providers, expanded Medicaid eligibility, and a focus on prevention and public health. Political divides persist, however, and it remains unclear what the resolution will be….

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    We can all be certain that one thing continues to be a given: regular people here in MA will continue to get shafted as we continue to pay, and pay, and pay the bills…for the Big Dig blunders (putting it mildly), for the insurance industry-centric fake health reform law, and on and on…

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    FYI a HUMONGOUS omission that screams out at people (like me) who follow health reform work across the country is that our esteemed speaker (snark) neglected to mention that the California Assembly has majority support for a CA state single payer universal healthcare bill, SB 840 whose lead sponsor in the Assembly is Sheila Kuehl.

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    Another FYI that is obvious from the above SB 840 single payer bill link is that the California Health Care For All non-profit chooses to side with regular people instead of the insurance industry. This is in contrast to the Massachusetts so-called Health Care For All MA group. What a pity. You’ll not find any mention of the SB 703 Massachusetts single payer universal healthcare bill on the HCFA MA website.  But go to the state AG’s office and you’ll find record of eye-popping funding to HCFA MA from the insurance industry… Pitiful.

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