Some of the current transportation ideas out there — creating, for example, the Urban Ring as a bus line — are very weak. We should be talking about the Urban Ring as rail, accelerating the Green Line extension to finish it by 2011, not slowing it to 2016, replacing the diesel commuter rails with electric and powering them with renewables, replacing the Silver sham with real trains, and extending the Red Line out Mass Ave through Arlington and beyond, just for starters.
3). Develop big ideas for progressive taxation. Our country and our state are facing a yawning gap between rich and poor (and corps and individuals). We need FDR-style big solutions. Governor Patrick is now formulating House 1, his budget for next year,
and unless he adopts some progressive taxation ideas, there will be insufficient money for schools, public transportation infrastructure, health care. Like the Senate President and the Speaker, the Governor will be reluctant to call for any new taxation, and certainly reluctant to call for any sort of a new tax, and the more progressive a tax is, the more wealthy republican and corporate types will howl. We need to make sure that our leaders in the State House know there are people supporting them and providing them cover to take the bold actions we need — and who will be unhappy if they don’t.
4) Reform CORI. Some people in Massachusetts can’t get jobs and end up back in
jail or stuck in poverty because criminal records, even for misdemeanors, stay public for decades after the time is served. While police and some potential employers — for
example, schools — should have access to this data at any point, we need to have reasonable sunsets to allow people to go on with their lives and prevent people who are not police or school personnel from rooting around in these records.
5). Update the jury system. Massachusetts is currently the only state to require individuals to sign up for jury duty by filling out a an annual census form or registering to vote. This creates a huge cost for city and town governments (perhaps as much as5 million a year). All other states simply combine databases they already have from their registries of motor vehicles, departments of revenue, departments of transitional assistance, etc., which in Mass would cost about 1 million per year. Worse, working people, low-income people, and people who move frequently are often left off the census, creating a crisis in parts of the state where there are not enough jurors, delaying cases, making it hard to get juries that match the diversity of our state, and forcing citizens are on the list to do more jury duty than they really should have to do.
What elses?
-Speaking of transportation, I’d like to see our deficient bridges checked out and fixed.
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-I’d like to see free wireless throughout the city of Boston, but in particular at hot spots around the city (state house, city hall, downtown crossing, etc.) I know setting up broadband is a big issue in the western part of the state as well, which will help out businesses.
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-Making Cape Wind actually happen would be a good thing to push for this fall.
I was going to add health care, then I saw Charley’s note.
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Re: Cape Wind, it will never get past Ted Kennedy if he’s determined, and he seems to be, but maybe we can get a wind farm in one or two other places.
Somewhat related to your first point:
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1) Make our communities more bike-friendly. Bicycling is a great way to get around, especially in cities where housing, employment, and shopping are relatively close together. State and local governments should do more to make roads bike-friendly, build more rail-trails, add bike parking to commercial districts, and ensure that new development including bike parking.
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The City of Boston needs to dramatically step up their accommodation of bicyclists as a serious mode of transportation. The state needs to make sure the Somerville Community Path actually gets built. This will be a huge commuter corridor into downtown Boston for pedestrians and bicyclists.
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2) Encourage more “smart growth”. The state needs to step up its efforts to promote transit-oriented development and mixed-use development around developed areas such as town centers. We need more housing, and we need to build it so that it doesn’t cause further sprawl.
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We need more housing, but we want to minimize the amount of open space lost and automobile miles driven. The only way we can drive housing prices down is to build more of it, in places where people want to live, and in places that don’t require additional infrastructure to be built.
Needs to be repealed. No more discrimination in the law books, right?
and the tourism dollars. other states have to deal with Massachusetts couples moving there whether they lived there before or not, it’s hard to see what difference it makes.
do you have any idea how much $$$$$ people spend on weddings? should we be sending that to $$$$ Canada (where most non-MA gays go to get married)?
While we are opposed to opulent weddings and tourism, it would bring money to the state.
Who is this we you speak of?
ever since we were referred to here. We thought we were the ones that controlled everything and made all the decisions, but then we hear about things attributed to us that we have no recollection of doing, so maybe we are wrong about who we are, exactly. It’s an existential crisis for us, but nothing we aren’t prepared to handle. So don’t worry about it, everything is under control.
Sales tax exemption/waiver on the purchase of hybrid vehicles.
I’d love expansion of the MBTA, and other regional mass transit agencies. Improve QoS [quality of service] by infrastructure improvements in current track and signals, lengthen the subway lines, build mo’ better parking garages at terminal stations like Alewife, give buses dedicated lanes, even if that means removing some parallel parking spaces, give buses and streetcars priority on traffic signals, and so forth. I’d love to see the Green A Line come back in the form of a route that follows the B Line to BU West, then banks North and heads to Harvard’s new expansion area, connecting to Harvard Square on the other side of the river. For bonus points, get Harvard and BU to pay for it, and bury the Green Line to BU Central, thereby giving some more campus to BU, speeding up the B [and A] lines trip to downtown by reducing traffic lights and opportunistic riders, and give those Alston folks more transportation options to connect them to the rest of the city, as well as Cambridge. Lengthen commuter rail, speed commuter rail, and improve the Amtrak line that heads toward NYC so it shaves some minutes [and variance] off of that trip too. Fast trips between Boston and Providence, Worcester, Springfield, and Hartford would help our economy and reduce emissions etc.
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How to do it? The MBTA needs more money, likely in the form of paying off some of their current debts. Even if the Lege would just take some of the T’s debt, it would free lots of annual revenue to be spent on the T, not on the banks.
But, that’s not all. In addition to mass transit improvement, there needs to be more funding and support for people powered transportation. Rail to trail initiatives like the Minuteman are hugely successful in providing non-fuel transit options. We need more of them, and we need them to connect to each other and to commercial centers. Every person who rides a bicycle to work on a trail is one fewer person on the roads — freeing up that resource for the remaining drivers. It’s a double win. We need more enforcement of bicycle lanes, and we need to hold drivers and cyclists accountable when transportation laws are broken. More bike racks would be nice too, as would programs to help encourage [and ensure sufficient safety] of children riding bicycles to school.
But that’s not all. We need more functional and more attractive sidewalks and crossings. More money needs to be spent maintaining the sidewalk, the street trees, the curb cuts, the walk/don’t walk lights and buttons, and the crosswalk lines. More neighborhoods need to be required to add sidewalks when they do road work. Making walking safer and more pleasant will reduce the number of cars on the road making short trips, and it’s even more important for those who can’t drive due to age, disability, or other constraint. More funding for walk to school programs is good too.
But that’s not all. Broadband is part of this scheme too, raj‘s opinions notwithstanding. Making sure that more people have access to broadband [through regulation, public investment in infrastructure, whatever] will help provide more people the opportunity to work from home, if only one day a week. Again, you reduce the cars on the road, and all the goodness that comes with that.
Massachusetts could do a tremendous amount to reduce the amount of petroleum used per person in this state through infrastructure improvements and regulation/legislation. It will take a constant commitment over a period of years, and it won’t be free, that’s for sure. The flip side is that it will help save expenditures on roads, will promote a society that is welcoming to those who can’t drive for physical or financial reasons, will help clean the air and the water, and will help improve the quality of the metro areas for all people, thereby helping encourage businesses and people to stay in Massachusetts, or even move to Massachusetts.
..benifits of rail-trails and bike lanes. The more often people bike to work, the healthier they will be.
And the same goes for people who use the sidewalks!
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I did point out that the more people who bike/walk/mass-trans to work, the healthier everyone will be thanks to cleaner air…
there are so many unnecessary jobs that people drive to, and even if they walked, there is an unnecessary air-conditioned office whirring away all day. We need more generous welfare and medical care, and more support and respect for single earner families and stay at home moms, and less moralizing for what amounts to a required opulence, so that people didn’t just mindlessly go to school and get a job like lawyering or marketing.
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Thoreau noted the efforts of a man pushing a giant rock down the road past his cabin, only to find out later that it was just turned into a useless sculpture in his yard. It’s not just that man’s effort that was wasted, Thoreau made the case that it was a tragic mis-use of our total collective human manpower. Now we can add that it contributed to global warming, too.
-Strict fuel efficiency standards for government vehicles bought from here on out, with preference for hybrids, flex-fuel or other alternatives
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-Converting all of Boston’s cab fleet to hybrids, as Bloomberg is doing in NYC
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-Getting moving on that Buzzard’s Bay wind farm, in addition to cape wind
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-Setting a binding timeline for phasing out fossil fuel burning power plants in favor of nuclear and renewables.
Although on the last one, I’d leave out the “in favor of…” — no sense in splitting the green community amongst pro- and anti-nuclear power factions when by leaving that part out, you align them. That being said, the proposal is partially in effect with the MA RPS standard. While not particularly aggressive, increasing on an open ended time line [goes up 1% per year indefinitely], it’s functional, just starting up, and in conjunction with the RPS standards of other NE+NY states, it will be effective in making green power more attractive.
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P.S. WRT taxis, why stop at Boston? I’d bet there are more non-Boston taxis in Massachusetts than Boston taxis, on account of Cambridge, Somerville, Quincy, Brookline, etc. not to mention any in or around Worcester, New Bedford, Springfield, etc. Furthermore, how about more quasi-gov’t vehicles, like the MBTA’s “the ride” cars and whatnot.
Massachusetts is currently the only state to require individuals to sign up for jury duty by filling out a an annual census form or registering to vote.
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…absolutely hilarious. Most people want to avoid doing jury duty. It’s a waste of time to be called for jury duty, sit in the basement of a delapidated state courthouse for a few hours, and then be told to go home because your services as jurors weren’t needed.
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I’ve sat in the basement of the Dedham courthouse three times in the last 20 years. Fortunately, I had a laptop with me that I could use to get some work done before being told to go home.
although not hilarious. It is often cited [perhaps correctly, perhaps incorrectly] as a reason to not register to vote.
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I like the annual census bit, since it’s a real benefit for local political organizing. But, not trolling all government databases for jury duty eligibility doesn’t seem like good public policy: MA uses the “threat” of jury duty to actively discourage participation in government, and that ain’t cool.
…it’s my understanding that the juror pool comes from a number of sources, not just those who have been registered to vote.
seems to imply that the information is not coming from other sources.
In the other 49 states, database merge-and-purge is used to create a jury list, putting together all the people who do various transactions with the state: registering motor vehicles, paying taxes, receiving transitional assistance, whatever. Here in Mass, it’s the voter list and the annual census. It’s one reason why Suffolk County is having a very hard time finding juries.
I’d agree with all the proposals except this one. I am willing to hear more details but in my view the government should not be radically redistributing wealth through taxation schemes, and certainly in Taxachusetts we already have enough revenue to pay for things. How about cutting waste? How about ending legislative pay raises or giving more than half a million dollars to the state pension manager? There is a great link on the Boston Herald showing how much municipalities and the state government give to some needless positions. My towns part time electrician gets 100k a year, not to mention my towns city manager who gets paid more than my states Governor. Cut waste first then raise taxes.
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But it seems to me you want to use taxes not just to pay for government services but to radically redistribute wealth from those that earned it to those that didnt.
Holy crap. Talk about buying into the right-wing frame, hook line and sinker. Did you miss EVERY discussion we’ve had on this site proving that MA’s tax burden is relatively low?
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Come on, jc, make an effort.
I’ve seen those posts and I agree with their concluscions, but just because our taxes are about average does not mean they cannot be lower. I am convinced that this state could have one of the lowest tax burdens in the country and still provide all the services it currently does if we were just willing to cut down on the waste and largesse of the legislature. I would oppose any tax increase proposal that did not first rule out significant cuts in waste and state spending. I am a little disappointed that our Governor is not using his line item veto power to fight some of the hackocracy, but I do applaud him holding the line on Trav and other overpaid members of the state government.
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Also while state taxes are low across the board property taxes are still incredibly high, and while I understand and applaud Devals efforts to lower them some municipalities (i.e Cambridge) refuse to be fiscally prudent at all and continue to raise taxes while simultaneously increasing perks and benefits for city employees. Governments first priority should be serving its citizens and not serving its employees.
Spotting the rare endangered animal…a five-assed fuzzy math.
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Fuzzy Math
Progressive taxation is unconstitutional in this state. There has been an attempt to amend the constitution every 10-15 years since WWII to change this, but they have all failed. The last one was in the mid 90’s, so I guess its about time for it to be revived.
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Progressive taxation is typically not used to radically redistribute wealth. You would also have a hard time convincing most people that anyone actually earns $10million or more a year.
Karl Marx calls for a progressive income tax for the expressed purpose of radically redistributing wealth,
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Most people in this state certainly do not earn that much a year to worry about using most progressive taxation schemes. I was just asking the original poster Mr. Avi Green to define specifically what rates we are talking etc. because some progressive taxation schemes assist the poor and working class at the expense of the middle and progessional classes which would be a bad policy for Massachusetts.
you need to get out of U of Chicago, pronto. 😉
but also raising the standard deduction, so that the first 40,000 is tax free, and everything after that is taxed at 10%, say. Is that a “progressive tax” or a flat tax? Or how about if it is only on interest and capital gains, but not on labor?
I think I like that first idea.
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Our (my hubby’s and my) income would be taxed about the same (the first half exempt, the second half doubled). We are, I think, at the average end of middle income. (Maybe slightly higher because we gots no kids.) That to me is a good sign that it would not affect the middle class, but help the poor and get more revenue (proportionately) from the upper class.
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Or maybe it’s 20K for an individual, 30-35K for a two-income no-kids family, and $5000 additional exemption per kid.
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I like it.
One thing that was cool about those huge 70% rates for the top brackets for federal income tax was that they kept the CEO rates low. It was so expensive for a company to give a meaningful raise to the highest earners that they just didn’t bother to, it cost the company 10 million to give a 3 million dollar raise. When Reagan lowered the top rates, it only cost 5 million to give the CEO a 3 million dollar raise, which apparently wasn’t so daunting, and caused the top salaries to soar.
A number of people have lept on the poster’s Develop big ideas for progressive taxation as suggesting that the state government should institute progressive income tax rates at the state level. It seems to me that that interpretation is a bit too narrow. I have argued here for months that cities and towns should be able to levy income and sales taxes, and that the state’s stranglehold on such local option taxes is a nightmare for their finances. Particularly when the state is cutting back on local aid.
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And, I have argued that currently tax exempt properties–such as colleges, universities, churches, and, yes, even hospitals–should be subject to property tax. That they aren’t skews the tax policy and forces the cities and towns to eschew the revenue opportunity.
…but I will suggest to you that there is not going to be an improvement in the MBTA until and unless Boston and its environs are bombed out. I frankly don’t see Boston or Massachusetts or the USofA providing much of infrastuture unless the currently-existing infrastructure is destroyed.
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WWII was what enabled Munich (sorry people, I report what I know) to build what is probably the best urban and suburban mass transit system. And they’re considering doing mag-lev from the airport to the central city, and they will probably extend it to Stuttgart, Nuernberg and also Frankfurt (Munich airport is Lufthansa’s second hub, after Frankfurt, and the Frankfurt airport doesn’t have anywhere to expand).
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Regarding stomv @ Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 00:14:12 AM EDT
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The problem that you have in the USofA is that towns there are not designed in such a manner that would make bikes and so forth be useful means of transportation for most people. People in the USofA use bikes for recreation. Fine, although most streets don’t accommodate them and most drivers resent them.
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Here in Germany, most towns are small, they may have a rail hub where the train comes and goes every 20 minutes (much better service than “commuter rail” in MA) and people ride their bikes to the local rail hub to catch the train. You would be amazed at the number of bikes that are locked onto the bike stands at the train stations here, even in the middle of winter. People ride bikes to do their grocery shopping, or they walk and use little trolleys to carry their wares if they don’t want to bike. People here walk and bike, but the towns are of such a scale that that is possible. In the USofA, town design makes that virtually impossible.
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Moreover, it is expected here in Germany that people will be biking and walking. In the US, not so much. Is it possible that that may change in the US? Maybe, but I doubt it in the near term.
are you in Germany?
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Until 26 Sept
Several people in this thread have called for progressive taxation in the Commonwealth.
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Could someone please provide some examples of actual tax rates for income levels that they feel are fair? Also, would progressive tax rates be adjusted for inflation and cost of living so as to avoid bracket creep?
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Why no ideas about how to turbocharge the private sector to create new jobs?
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Want to raise more income? Reduce the state cap-gain rate. At the national level, it’s a surefire revenue increaser.
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Where are the progressive ideas for increasing the economic base?
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The MA Progressive Agenda — it’s a laundry of spending programs and tax increases!
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Deval Patrick’s plan to get “green” jobs in the state seems to be working; or, at least, there is green job growth. In fact, it’s set to overtake textiles as the 10th largest sector [see Charleys post elsewhere].
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How is the gov’t involved? RPS requirements. DP’s executive orders that require the state gov’t to buy ethanol, biodiesel, etc. The courting of wind and solar companies to establish offices/laboratories/factories in MA. So, we’re seeing some of it.