It was 2001 and I had just moved to Massachusetts from Western New York. I was puzzled at how many people wanted to know if I was a Yankees fan. The fact is that I don’t follow baseball at all and had no idea that it was so important to the locals. I guess they were afraid of having a traitor or spy in their midst. The reality was that I did feel like a spy, but not because of baseball.
At that time, I was a Rush Limbaugh listening, Fox News watching, National Review subscribing Republican who saw moving to Massachusetts as just a few degrees shy of moving to Moscow. In my thirst for conservative news and entertainment while I was on the road during the long hours of my sales job in the Bay State, I discovered a talk radio station where I could identify with the “best and brightest” audience of Jay Severin. My car radio was glued to WTKK which, coincidently, meant that I sometimes stumbled on the radio program of Margery Egan and Jim Braude.
It was during one of those moments listening to the Eagan and Braude program that I heard Jim Braude say, “Hey, I like paying my taxes!” As a right winger, I thought, okay, where’s the punch line to this obvious joke? Instead, I heard Jim Braude list a long line of services and people in his town, state and country that he was proud to support and grateful to have at his disposal. It made me pause and think for a while. As evidenced by this post, I never forgot it. Still, I dismissed it as liberal nonsense at the time as I awaited Severin’s indoctrination of ignorance that is the stuff of right wing radio.
In 2002, in the space of a few weeks, I lost my job and my wife got get sick. We had spent much of our savings on moving to Massachusetts. We had two children in grade school. . We were not broke, but close to it. In 2002 we paid nothing in federal taxes because both my wife and I were out of work. At one time, both of us were in the hospital. Yes, we were “takers”.
To quote Mitt Romney, “ There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax…”My job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
I started to work when I was 16. I worked through college and kept working after college, never once asking for a handout. I was a truck driver, janitor, waiter, dairy farm worker, car salesman, dishwasher, apple picker, assembly line worker, tennis court installer, pet shop cleaner, and more. My resume looked like the first season of Dirty Jobs.
Then, at 46, after working my ass off for 30 years, I was in a very bad spot.
I was a Republican and I believed that anyone can make it in America if they just try hard enough. Since I was not making it, my Republican paradigm dictated that I was a moral failure. We were on Mass Health, our children got free lunch from the town. I remember walking out of the unemployment office in Framingham and hearing a car drive by as someone shouted, “get a job, loser”. I felt guilty each time I went for medical treatment, or to get glasses for my son and hear the receptionist say, “May I please have your Mass Health card?” When the local food pantry came by with a delivery I asked them to leave. I did not want the neighbors to know. Depression set in. I was hospitalized.
According to Mitt and the Republicans I felt “entitled” and I was not “taking responsibility for my life” This coming from man who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who paid off his college debt by selling off his stock portfolio as I paid off mine by cleaning public toilets.
Once out of the hospital, I began the slow process of building my life back together. Yes, I did feel “entitled” to help. I had worked and paid in for thirty years and I needed help for a few months to get back on my feet for another thirty years where I could continue to pay in and help others.
After a few months, my wife and I both got well, both went back to work, and things got better. I continued to listen to guys like Severin but I had these nagging thoughts from time to time, the sort of thing that cognitive dissonance brings about. I eventually left the Republicans around the time of the Iraq War and when the National Review essentially fired Christopher Buckley for his frank comments about Sarah Palin, I cancelled my subscription. I voted for Barak Obama as an independent and when Elizabeth Warren announced her candidacy, I went straight to my town hall and became a registered Democrat.
2002, Yes, that was the year that, we did not have to pay taxes.
On April 15th and every day I hear someone complain about having to do the right thing and pay their taxes, I do what Jim Braude did and tell them to be responsible and thankful for what they have, what they are receiving, and those they are able to help.
It wouldn’t be honest to say that I “like” paying taxes the way I like eating molten chocolate lava cake.
Better words for me are “honored”, “grateful”, perhaps even “blessed”. Honored that my wife and I have benefited enough from our careers to have a significant tax obligation. Grateful that we have benefited enough from all the things that society and those who came before us did to contribute to our prosperity to have a tax obligation. Even blessed that, amongst all my failings and shortcomings, I am still among the the fortunate few in today’s society.
My wife and I can afford to pay higher taxes. If paying higher taxes will improve the condition of our government, and improve the condition of our community, than we will do so happily.
The very wealthy should pay MUCH more than they do. There is simply no excuse for this wealthy and prosperous state to be facing the economic and governmental crises that we face. There is no excuse for us to be plundering the most desperate among us with Lottery and, soon, casino gambling revenues so that wealthy communities can provide art lessons for their children while the parents of those children sit in multi-million dollar mansions while tracking the status of their seven-figure portfolios.
There is no excuse for us to have trains that don’t work in the winter when it’s too cold or too snowy and don’t work in the summer when it’s too hot or too rainy while we spend millions of dollars a year watching professional sports.
I feel honored, grateful, and blessed to have and to pay my tax obligations to Massachusetts and America. I wish more of us felt that way.
On route one in Norwood, there is a thrift store across the street from a Ferrari dealership. I agree. There is simply no excuse for this wealthy and prosperous state to be facing the economic and governmental crises that we face.
I don’t want to live in Rwanda, or in Kansas, for that matter. People who object to taxes on principle should examine what happens when eliminating them becomes the main goal of government. We should make sure that our tax money is spent on things that actually benefit the people of our state and country, and eliminate or reduce spending on things that don’t. That’s a very different proposition from trying to starve government of funding.
Personal history trumps ideology for a thinking person.
I feel that an important opportunity was missed when Obama flubbed his “You didn’t build that” line (ironic for me to criticize him for being inarticulate). With the addition of three words, “… all by yourself”, it would not have been spun into an attack on individual initiative. But it was, and the larger message, of how we all rely on each others efforts (and, yes, taxes) was lost.
with several different people several times over the past few days, but without the moving story. It’s so important people share their stories. Your story is really humbling to hear and has an impact. Thank you.
I don’t mind paying taxes to help other honest citizens who happen to be having a harder time than I have had. I just want oversight and systems in place to be sure they really need it and those administering it don’t become enablers. The idea that we had to pass a law that EBT cards couldn’t be used to buy lottery tickets shows the system needs work. If someone wins the lottery they should have to pay back any money they received through public assistance. If a person who is receiving welfare is able to turn in a “cheat” and it is substantiated, they get a tax free cash bounty. If there are no cheats there will never be bounties paid out, so who can object. Same for other programs, I knew someone collecting disability who was faking. What did Reagan say “trust but verify”.
…to corporate welfare and beneficiaries of other tax breaks, maybe we can talk.
Am I to understand that public assistance is supposed to provide the drabbest of existences where the recipient is proscribed from having a hint of enjoyment until no longer on public assistance?
I could imagine going a step farther. I only want people on public assistance listening to music that conforms to my taste, forgoing television for educational self-improvement, and not eating oysters because I don’t like oysters.
The taxes you pay are owed to our government. Once paid, that cash becomes property of our government. Our government then distributes its cash as we see fit. When I buy a pizza from the local pizzeria, I get a pizza and the pizzeria owner gets $10. If he takes $5 of that and gives it to the NRA, I am not sharing my earned income with the NRA.
Yes, there is a degree of fraud and of course that needs to be addressed but to use that small degree of fraud to paint the entire process as a fraud is disingenuous.
This reminds me of the countless messages on social media that have the same message, “If I have to take a drug test for my job, welfare recipients should have to take a drug test to get their welfare”. Of course most of us never have to take a drug test for a job and in states that have gone this route, The statistics show that applicants actually test positive at a lower rate than the drug use of the general population.
Still, the right continues to spread this canard and others. Why do you think they do this?
Yes it becomes property of THE (you said our) government, but guess what unfortunately for you I am also part of that. So it will be distributed as “we” see fit and if conservatives feel that constraints can be put on it’s distribution so be it. Documented use of EBT cards at casinos and tattoo parlors show the system has flaws. Yes, rice and beans without cilantro. They can listen to what they want as long as I’m not paying for it.
I agree we should not have corporate welfare. It is often used to level the playing field in international commerce since we have little ability to control other countries playing by the rules. If we were more isolationist we wouldn’t have to worry.
…but that’s why we have elections, a contest of ideas revolving around among other things exactly how we distribute our shared resources.
It’s our government. We can all have our say, vote for what we prefer. In the end, it’s a compromise. I don’t mind conservatives wanting constraints to deal with fraud, but I do mind when those conservatives use propaganda and innuendo to seemingly have one goal (prevent fraud) when their actual goal is something quite different (punish the poor). It’s what they do with voter ID laws. They say they want to limit voter fraud where voter fraud does not even exist. Their actual goal is to prevent certain people from voting, but they can’t come out and say that.
The actual goal of the voter ID laws is NOT to “punish the poor”.
It is instead to stop minorities from voting. The GOP knows that minorities (especially blacks) already favor the Democratic party. The GOP knows that its sellout to the extremist right comes at the direct expense of minorities. The GOP knows that demographics show “minorities” as the fastest growing segment of the population — the white Anglo male voter may already have reached its zenith as a share of urban voters.
The actual GOP goal has nothing to do with punishing the poor (after all, poor WHITE people are their base!) and everything to do with suppressing black, Hispanic, and Latino votes.
It is good old-fashioned Jim Crow racism. Nothing more, nothing less.
A different form of gerrymandering.
I don’t doubt that it’s about power. Racism in action usually is.
It is, nevertheless, racism. Good old-fashioned Jim Crow racism.
I’m only 55 and always lived in the north so I only know “Jim Crow” from TV documentaries. I can’t speak with any authority that something is or isn’t Jim Crow.
I do know (from TV) that it was created by Democrats. That is correct, right?
Yes, Jim Crow laws were created by racist southern Democrats. The racist southern Democrats that were expelled from the Democratic Party nearly FIFTY years ago (in 1968) and were welcomed with open arms by the GOP. That’s an important factor in why so much of the south is red today. I would think as a stalwart GOP supporter you’d know that.
Perhaps you might consider allowing rather more history into your commentary.
no other point.
I’ve stipulated above that the Jim Crow laws were created by Democrats.
You started with an assertion, that I disagree with, that the VoterID laws are “less about racism than about power”. I don’t see how blaming the Jim Crow laws on long-ago Democrats and asserting your own unfamiliarity with them supports your argument about power.
The Jim Crow laws were flagrantly racist when they were enacted and defended (by Democrats) and the VoterID laws are flagrantly racist now.
I think you’ve made it clear you are the Jim Crow expert.
I was only trying to see if you would agree on that one point.
This is where the chip on your shoulder becomes ridiculous. You’re not “just trying to get [Tom] to admit [you’re] right about something.” You’re trying to score some kind of cheap points by ignoring history. It’s reminiscent of the Tea Party people who squawk on Facebook, “Jackie Robinson was a Republican,” but don’t want to mention that he dedicated an entire chapter of his autobiography to why he left the Republican Party when it nominated Goldwater in 1964 and then pursued the Southern Strategy in 1968.
As Tom says, the Republican Party was more than happy to scoop up racists disillusioned with Democratic action on civil rights. That backlash was the bedrock of the 1968 campaign. It was why Reagan opened his 1980 bid in Philadelphia, Miss., speaking of “states’ rights.” It was what Lee Atwater made his career on. It was why Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond became Republicans. It’s why the only House Democrats from the South today represent heavily minority districts or districts with tons of Northern transplants.
Saying “Democrats” created Jim Crow laws is factually correct, but about as meaningful today as saying the Democrats are the “party of Jefferson Davis” and the Republicans the “party of Lincoln.” And you know it.
If I said the sky is blue then he says debates that.
I know all this stuff. I was only trying to say one thing he would agree on.
BTW the only reason you’re responding to this is because I’m on the other side. Almost everyone here can say almost anything without comment, but everyone thinks I need schooling. I probably know 10x what you do about 1948, Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and Lee Atwater as well as the evolution of the two parties.
you know 10 times what I do, since I know a lot. But I’m pretty sure you know as much as I do. Maybe even twice or three times as much. That’s why your game is so tedious. It doesn’t seem like you’re just trying to find one point of common ground. It seems like you’re trying to find one point of common ground that makes Democrats, writ large, look hypocritical, racist, what have you. You do have a history of that kind of thing here.
Who says anything “without comment?” You’re not the only one Tom debates. Tom and I have agreed on plenty of things and debated plenty of things hotly. That’s the case for me and virtually everyone on this site. It’s a political blog. People are supposed to debate. The only reason you take it so personally is that you’re on the other side, and you get more of it for the simple reason that people here are more likely not to agree with you.
Didn’t tom already make the same point?
Don’t people here have private disagreements here, carried out in public?
Think of all the ernie back and forths with people that don’t like him.
I only take it personally because there is absolutely nothing I can say which does not get bombarded with opinion, stereotypes, redirects, and just misinformation. Yet, all those somehow become facts because the majority of the people here agree with them. Does that make them true?
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll write a post on what constitutes true here on BMG. A couple months ago consensus was that Beverly Scott was doing a great job and none of it was her fault. Anyone still think that is true?
I do not understand what you’re trying to say. Nothing written here is private. If you’re bothered by Fenway making a comment on your exchange with Tom, I suggest you get over it.
Also, if there really is absolutely nothing you can say which does not get bombarded with opinion, stereotypes, redirects, and just misinformation, it sounds like a lot of people here think you’re wrong about everything you say. If that situation is intolerable for you, I see these options:
1) Somehow learn to be more persuasive.
2) Spend your time on a different forum, where fewer people tell you things you don’t want to hear.
3) Reconsider your outlook by considering the possibility that you are wrong about all those things.
I don’t actually believe that every single thing you write here gets the reactions you describe, but I’m not going to dig into your comment history to find the exceptions. All in all, this comment of yours seems pretty thin-skinned. Sorry if I jumped into your private conversation.
True Jim Crow requires laws being written or enforced explicitly in a way that favors one race over the other.
The reason VoterID laws are discriminatory is that in their enforcement, they favor middle-class whites over inner-city and poor blacks. In many portions of the south, birth certificates simply don’t exist for elderly black people — southern towns often didn’t bother to record the births of black people in the 1920s and 1930s.
This is almost identical to the way poll taxes and literacy tests were so effective at stopping blacks from voting in the 1950s and early 1960s. It’s the reason why the voter rights act was passed, and it’s also the reason why the GOP stripped that act.
As in, have there been instances of a white person showing up without ID and being allowed to vote anyway, but then if a black person does it’s all of a sudden by the book? Have there been instances of a certain form of ID being accepted when a white person presents it and the very same form being rejected when a black person presents it?
The law, as enforced, discriminates. Black people couldn’t pay poll taxes. Black people couldn’t pass the literacy tests. Black people don’t have id.
We’ve been over this ground before.
Whites were given much easier passages to read and interpret than blacks AND if you Google Louisiana literacy tests you will see an example which is more of a brain teaser than an actual test of literacy – actually kind of fun to try in a context with no actual consequences. What I am referring to though are laws that really were written with racial language, such as the post-Reconstruction “Black Codes” which really did only apply to blacks, or enforced segregation in public accommodations and services. “Black people don’t have ID” sounds like a much more general statement than I am comfortable with, however.
I hope that you do understand that the same arguments you make were raised by supporters of Jim Crow laws. For example — “But surely someone who is about to vote for President should be able to read!”, “Surely someone who is about to vote for a congressman should know what the office does!”, etc). Pretty much the same argument as “Surely someone who is about to vote should have id”. With exactly the same amount of actual substance for motivation (none) — there is no evidence that illiteracy causes voting issues, no evidence that unfamiliarity with the office causes voting issues, no evidence that voter fraud causes voting issues.
Regarding selective enforcement, it was denied then just as it is denied now. The motivation was to suppress minority voting then, just as it is now. I am quite confident that just as history as uncovered evidence of past selective enforcement of literacy tests, so too will history uncover evidence of selective enforcement of voterID requirements.
The most important point that I fear you miss is your apparent assumption that supporters of the Jim Crow laws were bulging-eyed raving racists who shouted epithets at every turn. They were not. The south was filled with quite “normal”, quite genial, VERY “Christian” (Protestant, of course, not Catholic) men and women who sincerely believed that they were doing the right thing. They truly believed that civil rights activists were misguided, that black men and women “might someday be able to join society”, that slavery was awful but was in the distant past, and so on. They sat in all-white churches on Sunday mornings and prayed for “the poor” in their communities. Many of those churches conducted “missions” to the poor (meaning “black”) neighborhoods near them. They believed that they “loved” them (in a Christian sense) — they simply also believed that “they” shouldn’t vote.
I fear you may not realize that with regard to racism, the character you present here on BMG is literally indistinguishable from the men and women I debated on the issue during the civil rights era. You make the same arguments and raise the same objections — most fundamentally: “I don’t hate black people, so how can I be racist?”
I have and would NEVER defend some of those laws that truly were racist and I am greatly offended that you find me indistinguishable from supporters of those laws. I have sometimes thought that those of us who are native-born should pass the same citizenship test as candidates for naturalization do before they can vote. Not having this knowledge doesn’t cause problems with the mechanics of voting, but it would be nice if voters were educated. Honestly, these days it’s our “Tea Party” friends that I sometimes think would struggle the most with that requirement!:) Unlike the people you describe I WANT everyone ultimately to be able to vote and we should be doing everything we can to make any documentation that is required accessible.
I not only do not hate black people, I affirmatively and conscientiously believe that they are my absolute equals in all things and ought to be treated as such. The only difference between them and me is the superficial one of skin color, which is no more consequential than a difference in eye or hair color in my mind (and I fervently wish everyone else’s). Have you really missed the comments I have made from time to time absolutely slamming people who think differently all these generations after slavery and the civil rights movement? I think those comments have been among my most emotional. It should go without saying (though apparently it doesn’t) that I oppose school segregation, public accommodation segregation, housing and employment discrimination, etc. Racism is a blight on our society that needs to be eliminated yesterday, but when you apply it to me it has lost all of its sting. If there is a Jim Crow version of Godwin’s Law, you have certainly triggered it.
I said, and meant, that the arguments you advance in support of VoterID regulations are indistinguishable for the arguments that were advanced in support of poll taxes and literacy tests (not the entire canon of Jim Crow laws). I did not say that you were racist. I did not say that you hate black people.
I get that you do not hate black people. Neither did the supporters of poll taxes and literacy tests that I debated decades ago. Most of the people who opposed the civil rights legislation also said that they did not hate black people and denied that they were discriminating against them.
The basis of most, if not all, of the laws against school segregation, public accommodation segregation, housing and employment discrimination, and so on is de facto segregation — you have argued time and again that you reject that concept.
It’s all well and good to say “I don’t hate …” and “I oppose discrimination”. Yet, when it comes time to reflect that in law, you oppose the premises on which the law is based.
When the EFFECT of a law is to discriminate, the law is discriminatory. The effect of VoterID laws is to disproportionally disenfranchise minority voters. That’s WHY the GOP is so enamored of them. The same is true for employment discrimination — an employer whose workforce is 2% minority and whose applicant pool is 20% minority is practicing a discriminatory employment policy. That’s the law.
I reject the premise of something like your last sentence. We shouldn’t ask one’s race if we truly want to guard against bias. If I’m looking at 100 applications, 20 of which are from minorities (but I don’t know that) and I need to hire 50. If at the end of the day based on objective criteria I happened to hire only 1 minority rather than the proportional 10 my conscience is clear. If the law presumes otherwise then yes, I am emphatically saying I think the law is wrong. The law should only prevent me from deliberately weeding out the minority applications. If we are truly equal and mean what we say about content of character vs. color of skin we ignore color and let the chips fall where they may. Just because others still have prejudicial views does not obligate me to adjust my own in order to balance things out or something like that. If my applicant pool were 20% redheads and my staff was only 2% would you say I’m discriminating there too? If so I would also disagree, but if not you have a major consistency problem.
Regarding the specifics of your objection, if your “objective criteria” is truly in place, then it limits the applicant pool and solves the problem — if minorities comprise only one percent of the qualified applicant pool, and the company has one percent minority representation, then the company has no problem.
At the same time, it is worth being clear about the standard by which that “objective criteria” is itself measured. If the “objective criteria” cites a requirement for an advanced degree in a relevant field, then the employer needs to demonstrate that each employee in fact has an advanced degree. An employee with no advanced degree and close personal ties to an owner or director will significantly damage the employer’s standing in an anti-discrimination action whether or not company policy allows nepotism.
The entire point such laws is to EXCLUDE “deliberate” and similar motivations (other anti-discrimination laws may include them). A fundamental purpose of science is to exclude “belief” or “faith” from the process of determining the validity of a particular scientific outcome. A good scientist accepts the validity of what his or her data tells them, whether not it supports or violates their personal belief system. Similarly, these laws exist to stop racial discrimination whether deliberate or not.
If redheads were a “protected class” (explicitly called out in anti-discrimination laws), yes indeed you would be discriminating if their representation were 20% in your (qualified) applicant pool and 2% in your workforce.
I am struck by the temporal juxtaposition of your comments here.
Wednesday afternoon, you write that my criticism of your argument is “out of line”. Even in that complaint, you come perilously close to defending literacy tests (by the way, the comparison to citizenship tests was a staple of the pro-literacy test crowd).
Late that night, after my clarification that it is your argument that I attack, you repeat that argument and in so doing strengthen my point.
Like it or not, the arguments you present are the same arguments that were used to advance poll taxes and literacy tests. They are the same arguments used against each of the major pieces of civil rights legislation.
While I don’t doubt that you have apparently constructed an interior rationalization to support the arguments you make while insulating yourself from the resulting conclusions about your interior (and perhaps unconscious) feelings about race, a relevant quote nevertheless comes to mind:
“By their fruits you shall know them.”
I think your second paragraph is exactly where I am trying to get and I agree that fudging pre-stated criteria presents a problem and opens you up to discrimination accusations. I guess we continue to talk past each other on the definition of discrimination. You are using a legal definition which is open to change if we decide to change it and I am using an ethical definition. In my mind it either does or does not happen and it either is or isn’t wrong regardless of what the law says. Even without being a protected class it is equally and just as obviously wrong in my very strong opinion to discriminate on the basis of hair color as skin color.
I’m not convinced the arguments you refer to that you have had have actually been with the George Wallaces of the world. Poll taxes and literacy tests are wrong because they limit the pool of voters on bases having nothing to do with voting. As for my “fruits”, that would be how I treat people of other races, something I am more than happy to be judged on and known for.
Lot of unneeded debate that is going back further than it needs to.
The GOP supports Voter ID to make it harder for the working poor, recent immigrants, and yes, black people, to vote. Period. They are open about this. There is also no instance of voter fraud significant enough to justify this expensive and intrusive policy.
So let’s recap. Voter fraud doesn’t occur at significant enough levels for there to be a policy response in the first place, and this proposed policy is not designed to solve for that problem in the most efficient way.
In the event voting fraud was a significant problem, which it isn’t, the most efficient and fair policy proposal I can think of would be automatically register every citizen the second they turn 18 and send them their ID card for free in the mail. And update it accordingly when people move, switch parties, age, etc. And let that process be totally and completely free as well. Frankly, this is a great idea on it’s own merit for increasing turnout and expanding the eligible voter pool. It would also completely eliminate voter fraud.
The GOP isn’t proposing that idea, it is openly bragging about the young people, immigrants, minorities, and elderly folks it will be able to turn away from the polls by making the process needlessly expensive and needlessly complicated. And frankly, that is awfully close to what a poll tax was.
If we don’t want the desperately poor to pay The Lottery, then we should not fill the neighborhoods of the desperately poor with Lottery outlets. It has nothing to do with EBT cards and everything to do with who The Lottery is aimed at. I’ll give you a hint — the residents of Carlisle (which has NO lottery outlets, yet benefits handsomely from Lottery proceeds) are not included.
I join Christopher in encouraging you to pay rather more attention to corporate beneficiaries of tax policy. I think you’ll find that corporate welfare, and its abuse, dwarfs the salacious episodes you may read of in the Herald.
I remember reading some years ago (and I’d appreciate it if someone could source it for me) that Massachusetts had the highest increases in gambling addiction of all fifty States, and that the premise of the Lottery’s advertising was to expand that base of addicts.
Similar premises were behind the push for casino gambling, because “people like us” don’t go to casinos or the towns where they’re sited, and most of my contacts at the State House had no problem with that fact (including staffers for “progressive” elected officials).
The Commonwealth “fills the neighborhoods of the desperately poor” with Lottery outlets as a matter of conscious policy, because those neighborhoods constitute the bulk of their market. The classic case is the placement of Lottery windows next to the cash counters at check cashing services.
We have to come to terms with the fact that overt, aggressive, and militant class bigotry is hard-wired into Massachusetts public policy.
Since Republicans (and I am not one) haven’t had control of the legislature for eons Democrats get most of the credit. It is regressive and shows people often have little self control. I play the lottery and go to casinos, but I don’t exceed my budget. As I stand in line at 7-11, or at the penny slots I am saddened that so many obviously poor (and elderly) people are making such bad decisions.
What is the answer? We have spineless elected officials who now have brought casinos to Mass to raise revenue, because they are afraid to go to their constituents and argue their case for higher taxes to help those same poor people. If you want to see the future of Springfield take a ride to Atlantic City, I was there when Resorts opened on the Boardwalk and now I won’t go because the whole area is crime ridden.
But the country is about choices, just don’t expect me to pay to bail out those who consistently choose badly.
Bingo. That crap has to stop and it’s the reason for my post. We’ve got a job to do, and it starts with us. We’ve got to stop whining about taxes and be vocal about the positive results we get in Massachusetts with our taxes.
I say it loud and I say it proud. I pay my taxes. I am a responsible citizen of the Commonwealth and I not afraid to challenge my Tea Party adversaries on the subject. You want low taxes? Move to Kansas or Mississippi.
Tea Party types like to say “I never got a job from a poor man” in their defense of tax policy that coddles the wealthy. We’ve got to find a way to say something similar in support of taxes. “It’s the price of living in civilization” is a good direction, but I’d like something even more basic.
Maybe the Blue Mass Hive Mind will come up with something?
As you observe, the Democrats created the Lottery, just like we Democrats gave us casino gambling. Each is regressive, and each is awful governance. That is irrelevant to solving the problem.
The Democrats have had control of the legislature for as long as they have in part because the GOP has offered no alternative. Instead of whining about how bad the Democrats are (you’ll get no argument from me, especially regarding the lottery), figure out how to get some reasonable Republicans in these races. This state is DESPERATE to find alternatives to the corrupt leadership that now dominates the legislature. So find a way to offer that alternative. When there’s no GOP candidate on the ballot, it’s not the fault of the Democrats that Democrat wins the race.
The way to end the regressive lottery is to raise taxes on the wealthy. When you talk about applying restrictions to EBT cards, you distract attention from that. Further, you reinforce the “no new taxes” canard.
If you want your elected officials so show some spine and “argue their case for higher taxes to help those same poor people” — which I enthusiastically agree ought to be done — then I suggest you tell them so yourself. Instead of talking about what you won’t do (such bailing out those who consistently choose badly), talk about what you WILL do (such as paying more in taxes so that programs you support can be funded).
…I’ve thought it a good idea to distribute Lottery revenue from a given ticket to the community in which said ticket was purchased.
if Turbo Tax allowed me to file electronically for free. They charge me $20 ($30?) to do state, but federal is free. You can do electronic for free with the state, but you’ve got to enter the whole thing in again by hand, and my state taxes are dozens of pages long.
So, I printed it, put a stamp on it, and mailed it in for my $200 refund. It costs me $2, costs the state more, and wastes resources — but I’m not going to pay $20 or $30 as an alternative.
Am I missing something?
My wife and I do the same. We do not pay a “convenience fee” to ANY entity that charges us to save them money and time, not to mention trees.
We pay many of our state and town fees by snail-mail for this reason, as well as surprising number of credit cards, banks, and utilities.
Federal for free, charge for state.
I just did both the old-fashioned way this year.
The state is better off if people e-file. The people are better off if they e-file. Let’s figure out a way to let those who pay $80 for tax software to e-file for no additional charge. We’d all be better off for it.
There should be no middle man. I should be able to go to http://www.irs.gov to file my federal taxes and the Mass DOR website to file my state taxes.
But they won’t walk you through it the way TTax does. If I’m not mistaken, somebody was proposing a government system that would, a few years ago. Intuit, H&R Block, et al made a serious effort to prevent that.
There is one federal tax form, shared by every Intuit customer regardless of state. The tax forms for each state are unique. Both the federal and the state forms change each year.
The development cost of updating the federal from is amortized across all customers. The development cost of updating each state is amortized across only the customers in that state.
Since, to a first approximation, the cost of updating any state package is about the same as updating the federal package, the result is that the cost (and therefore price) for each year’s state tax update is significantly higher than the cost and price of each year’s federal tax update.
The federal tax code is far more complex than the state code. 50 times more complex? I dunno — maybe.
I used to use Intuit, and one year I was frustrated because the MA package just wasn’t available. Period.
Being technical, I was able to weasel my way into a conversation with an Intuit developer team. What I heard was something to the effect that the company throws its best developers at each year’s federal tax update, and leaves the state updates up to whomever they can free up. The argument offered (remember these were developers talking) was something to the effect that the whole company’s revenue was at stake if they were late with the federal package, but no one state (or even small number of states) made a business difference.
They were sympathetic (personally) to my frustration, and even made some disparaging comments about “the Massachusetts team”, but basically shrugged their shoulders. 🙁
I inherited a very good professional tax preparer when I got married, so I haven’t looked at Intuit tax stuff for fifteen years.
of making federal tax returns easy and free but it is blocked by a multi-year, multi-million dollar lobbying campaign by Intuit, the makers of Turbo Tax. I do not recall the name of the CA-based tax law professor who has been the leading advocate for it, but the proposal is pretty simple. As described by the good folks at ProPublica:
Imagine filing your income taxes in five minutes — and for free. You’d open up a pre-filled return, see what the government thinks you owe, make any needed changes and be done. The miserable annual IRS shuffle, gone.
It’s already a reality in Denmark, Sweden and Spain. The government-prepared return would estimate your taxes using information your employer and bank already send it. Advocates say tens of millions of taxpayers could use such a system each year, saving them a collective $2 billion and 225 million hours in prep costs and time, according to one estimate.
The idea, known as “return-free filing,” would be a voluntary alternative to hiring a tax preparer or using commercial tax software. The concept has been around for decades and has been endorsed by both President Ronald Reagan and a campaigning President Obama.
If you don’t like the return suggested by the IRS based on the tax data sent to it by your employer(s) and investment managers, then you would file your own numbers, subject to the same rules that exist today.
The 2014 story by ProPublica and NPR is here
http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax-fought-free-simple-tax-filing
Alas I could not find the update from last week that I read.
I just linked to this on my facebook and the first two likes were from conservative friends of mine. I think its a great example of how private money thwarts the public interest, as Republican Tom Campbell said of the California proposal at the time in the same article:
One of the more pernicious identity-theft rackets is to use stolen PII and websites to file fraudulent tax returns using a victim’s PI, collect refunds, and vamoose. Some time later, the victim attempts to file their return and discovers the fraud. By then, it’s often much too late to catch up with the thief.
One motivation for the intermediate sites is to make it at least a little bit harder to accomplish that.
Still, it costs the government much less to handle the returns electronically. These “convenience charges” are nonsense.
Your life is more interesting than I’d suspected, Tom….
“May you have an interesting tax return.”
If you are able to answer no to the three questions on this page, you are eligible to file your state taxes online for free.
Mass DOR Web File
I wonder why they make it so difficult to use that, then.
I’ve been using the state’s efile system for about 5 years now. You just go through and answer all the questions. There’s nothing difficult about it. They even copy over your marital status, SSN, and employer information from the previous year unless you tell them not to, so you don’t have to retype a bunch of numbers every year. The questions are well organized and it is easy to skip the parts that aren’t relevant to you. I’m not sure how they could make it any easier than it is.
I have just entered all information into a system that prepares tax returns. I am not going to type it all over again into a web page and call that easy and convenient. That is the opposite of easy and convenient. I will send it in by mail.
The Mass DOR efile website is easy to use for filing taxes. Your complaint is not about the website, it is that you entered all your information into a different program and that program will not upload it to the state for free. I don’t believe the state is charging you a fee to file electronically, so there isn’t much the state can do about this problem. Additionally, most tax software prints out a scanable 2-d bar code that has all the data on the form, so the state wouldn’t benefit as much from people e-filing instead of printing out the forms that way. The ones that are actually expensive for them to process are the ones where people print out the forms and fill in the numbers by hand.
The real problem is that the federal government yielded to the tax preparation industry and decided not to set up a website similar to the one that Massachusetts has for e-filing. If they did that, I am sure that they would have been willing to work with the states on how to automatically copy all the information over to the state’s systems. The states would love to have the IRS doing primary enforcement of tax fraud, which they could do if they could guarantee that most of your state tax information is directly copied from what you submit to the IRS.
I’ve already entered all of that applicable info on TurboTax. Given the choice between sitting in front of my computer with two windows open and moving information from one to the other… or just printing and mailing the thing… I choose the second option easily.
The issue isn’t that the state has or doesn’t have e-filing. The issue is that TurboTax (et al?) charge for state filing. That’s the frustrating part.
That’s more or less it. Tom, above, explains the business problem for the software developer neatly. Put another way, they can handle a smaller margin on the federal forms because they sell far more of them; they need larger margins for each of the states. I would prefer that this margin be built into the cost of the state portion of the software. You buy TT, or similar software, for $45 or so, and then spend $35 for the MA package, but then must spend another $25 to e-file the state return.
I suppose that this fee is to cover the margin issue identified by somervilletom, but it is pretty murky in practice who actually gets this money. I suppose if it were paid to the state, the software would make that ABUNDANTLY clear.
Still, it sucks that the DOR can’t put a little more effort into NOT imposing upon taxpayers the cost of things that save the DOR money.