CLT
UPDATE
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Catching up in the dog days
Hey voters, did you know you are too stupid and
unsophisticated to understand the complexities of public policy or to
weigh the consequences of changing the laws or the Constitution?
And if someone asks you to sign a petition on your way into the
supermarket, you can't be bothered to read the official summary provided
by the attorney general's office, never mind the wording of the question
itself, also officially drafted by the state's chief law enforcement
officer. You're busy and naively trusting to a fault, so the state must,
must protect you from yourselves....
[Senate chairman of the Election Laws Committee, Edward Augustus] still
staunchly defends his bill -- temporarily derailed when the Senate
concluded formal session for the summer -- which would have iced the
initiative petition process under the guise of fighting fraud. Augustus
had his ears pinned back by the triple whammy of being lobbied on the
right by Citizens for Limited Taxation and on the left by MassPIRG and
Common Cause.
"And we were just getting started," said CLT's Barbara Anderson....
"It's hard enough getting signatures," Anderson argues. Once voters
start getting harassing calls, they'll never sign another petition....
"Just leave it alone," she told him, knowing that inviting lawmakers to
tinker was asking for trouble.
"CLT hates all of it," Augustus said in an interview before comparing
Anderson to a modern-day Cassandra prophesying the destruction of the
ballot question process....
The trouble with Augustus' Iliad reference is that Cassandra was right.
Troy was destroyed.
And were it not for the ever-watchful Anderson, and her unlikely liberal
allies, the initiative petition process would be too.
The Boston Herald
Thursday, August 4, 2005
Let referendums be unrestrained
By Virginia Buckingham
With a recent Supreme Court decision giving public officials
wide eminent domain powers to seize private property, some state lawmakers are
pushing legislation they hope will avoid another West End.
State Rep. Bradley Jones, R-North Reading, is spearheading the effort. The House
Republican leader has filed a petition, a bill, and a proposed state
constitutional amendment all aimed at limiting the use of eminent domain.
The bill would bar cities and towns from seizing private property solely for
economic development.
Allowing governments to seize private property and transfer it to another
private developer simply because they can generate higher taxes is wrong, he
said.
"It's quickly devolving into a mathematical calculation," he said. "The logical
extension of this is scary."
The Associated Press
Saturday, August 13, 2005
With eye on the past,
lawmakers hope to restrict eminent domain
A 5 percent discount is hardly a bargain by retailing
standards (try 50 percent off), but call it a tax holiday and the promotion
becomes a door buster. Why else? Here in the Commonwealth, where the nation's
first tax protests were waged in 1773 with the Boston Tea Party, residents just
want to stick it to Taxachusetts.
Antitax fervor can be a unifying force that makes skirting 5 percent in taxes
seem like an act of civil disobedience. Massachusetts citizens pay about $4,608
annually in state and local taxes, the fourth highest in the nation, for
everything from alcohol to property to stock profits. The average American pays
about $1,000 less, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan group in
Washington, D.C....
Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation,
a Marblehead tax reform group, doesn't think that the tax holiday is a
significant reprieve but has a shopping list ready: toothpaste, paper towels,
and a dust buster. "You grab what you can when you can," Anderson said.
The Boston Globe
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Shoppers pant when tax takes a breather
Inundated with shoppers on a sultry, summer weekend, giddy
retailers said yesterday that the state's first-ever Saturday and Sunday without
a sales tax could end up being the most profitable weekend of the year, beating
the $500 million in sales that shops usually reap during the final weekend rush
in late December....
Hillman said he thinks people want to buy because they are saving money at the
expense of the government. "It's unbelievable," he said.
Customers said they had many reasons to shop yesterday, beating the government
not least among them.
Many acknowledged a certain frisson at the idea of saving 5 percent from the
state -- shopping as civil disobedience.
"Getting any break from the government is a good thing," said Laura Majed, 49, a
typesetter from Providence.
The Boston Globe
Monday, August 15, 2005
Tax-free weekend a gift to retailers
Sales totals may top rush before Christmas
This is wonderful, this sales-tax-free weekend. But why stop here?
Perhaps you've noticed that the price of gasoline is up a bit. Of course, the
21-cents-a-gallon state gas tax isn't covered under this generous 48-hour tax
rollback by the sticky-fingered grandees of Beacon Hill....
Another possibility, which Mitt has been pushing for, futiley, is to actually
reduce the state income tax back to 5 percent, where it was when it was
"temporarily" increased back in 1989. You know, like they "temporarily" put in
the state sales tax in 1965.
In 2000, the voters passed a referendum reducing it back to the promised 5
percent level, but the House speaker denied any such promise had been made. He's
since been indicted on multiple counts of perjury, none of which, oddly enough,
involves his pathetic fibs about the income tax....
The technical phrase for all of this is "nickel and diming." Now they say, for
two days out of 365, we'll give you back the nickel. That still leaves them with
the dime.
The Boston Herald
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Add to shopping list: Pols that don't rob us
By Howie Carr
Chip Ford's CLT Commentary
Ah, back from this year's
sailing
adventure/vacation and back on the job, catching up. Much has
happened over the past month since just before I departed to explore
Downeast Maine. I left on a good note, after we again halted the attack
on the initiative and referendum process -- at least for now -- thanks
to CLT's counterattack and rallying of the opposition troops. The
Massachusetts response to the U.S. Supreme Court's scary decision which
expanded the government's power of eminent domain is moving ahead
steadily. Our state Legislature has gone home for the summer -- er, is
"working in the district" for a few months, as they say. And my
goodness, we even had a weekend sales tax holiday and the state didn't
collapse or even so much as tremble!
What Barbara called the Legislature's "'slow boat to
China' income tax rollback" is on standby in the wings for now, but the
hearing on September 27 to implement a quicker rollback to 5 percent is
coming up, and that's what we're looking for.
There will be more coming tomorrow and in the days
ahead: breaking news today that there's a potential new threat
looming over Proposition 2½ in the form of another
"panel" headed by former Sovereign Bank president John Hamill, who in
1989 proposed increasing the local property tax levy limit for
inflation; the proposed state law and a constitutional amendment to
further protect property owners from the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling
have been filed -- I'll have
them on the CLT website later today then
bring you more up to speed.
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Chip Ford |
The Boston Herald
Thursday, August 4, 2005
Let referendums be unrestrained
By Virginia Buckingham
Hey voters, did you know you are too stupid and unsophisticated to
understand the complexities of public policy or to weigh the
consequences of changing the laws or the Constitution?
And if someone asks you to sign a petition on your way into the
supermarket, you can't be bothered to read the official summary provided
by the attorney general's office, never mind the wording of the question
itself, also officially drafted by the state's chief law enforcement
officer. You're busy and naively trusting to a fault, so the state must,
must protect you from yourselves.
That description sums up the real opposition to the initiative petition
process and if there was a way to require Attorney General Tom Reilly to
apply that kind of subjective analysis to determine which of the ballot
questions submitted by yesterday's 5 p.m. deadline would be presented to
said citizen-dolts on the 2006 or 2008 ballot, the Legislature would put
it on the fast track.
Alas, Reilly will look at boring issues of constitutionality and other
process mundanities to determine whether backers of a redistricting
commission and a same-sex marriage ban, among other proposals, can move
on to the signature gathering phase.
"This round will happen under current laws" said the Senate chairman of
the Election Laws Committee, Edward Augustus (D-Worcester).
He still staunchly defends his bill -- temporarily derailed when the
Senate concluded formal session for the summer -- which would have iced
the initiative petition process under the guise of fighting fraud.
Augustus had his ears pinned back by the triple whammy of being lobbied
on the right by Citizens for Limited Taxation and on the left by MassPIRG and Common Cause.
"And we were just getting started," said CLT's Barbara Anderson.
Augustus' bill prohibits paying workers per signature gathered, mandates
signature gatherers sign a jurat attesting under penalties of perjury
that they personally witnessed each and every signer putting his John
Hancock on a petition, and requires Secretary of State Bill Galvin to
post the names of those signing.
Anderson pointed out to Augustus that the jurat was impractical given
that many petitioners simply leave a sheet in a coffee shop or at a
table in a mall manned by multiple volunteers. And if a petitioner tries
a bait and switch tactic (like one taking on urban myth proportions
about voters who signed an anti-gay marriage petition thinking they were
banning horse meat) Anderson says caveat emptor -- let the voters
beware.
She has a point and really, should the rest of us pay the price of
making ballot questions harder to come by because a few numbskulls don't
bother reading the not-so-fine print before signing?
But the real danger Augustus posed to the petition process was giving
opponents easy access to the names and addresses of signers.
"It's hard enough getting signatures," Anderson argues. Once voters
start getting harassing calls, they'll never sign another petition.
Anderson had grown used to battling Sen. Stan Rosenberg's (D-Amherst)
annual efforts to kill ballot questions by increasing the number of
signatures required and other tampering.
Historically, the Election Laws Committee kept such mischief bottled up.
But Augustus is a more slippery fish, shading his proposals as simply
providing more disclosure.
Augustus even asked Anderson what changes she would want to make the
process better for citizen activists.
"Just leave it alone," she told him, knowing that inviting lawmakers to
tinker was asking for trouble.
"CLT hates all of it," Augustus said in an interview before comparing
Anderson to a modern-day Cassandra prophesying the destruction of the
ballot question process.
"This is about the integrity of the process" and "preserving access to
the ballot," he insists.
Sure it is.
The trouble with Augustus' Iliad reference is that Cassandra was right.
Troy was destroyed.
And were it not for the ever-watchful Anderson, and her unlikely liberal
allies, the initiative petition process would be too.
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The Associated Press
Saturday, August 13, 2005
With eye on the past,
lawmakers hope to restrict eminent domain
By Steve LeBlanc
Early in 1958, in what was heralded as a revitalizing "slum clearance"
initiative, bulldozers began tearing through one of Boston's oldest
tenement districts.
In short order, the West End — a bustling urban neighborhood of tall
brick apartment buildings peopled by generations of immigrants — was
reduced to rubble, making way for bland new housing developments with
the taunting sales pitch: "If you lived here, you'd be home now."
Boston's demolition of the West End under the banner of urban renewal
has come to be seen as a textbook example of city planning run amok.
With a recent Supreme Court decision giving public officials wide
eminent domain powers to seize private property, some state lawmakers
are pushing legislation they hope will avoid another West End.
State Rep. Bradley Jones, R-North Reading, is spearheading the effort.
The House Republican leader has filed a petition, a bill, and a proposed
state constitutional amendment all aimed at limiting the use of eminent
domain.
The bill would bar cities and towns from seizing private property solely
for economic development.
Allowing governments to seize private property and transfer it to
another private developer simply because they can generate higher taxes
is wrong, he said.
"It's quickly devolving into a mathematical calculation," he said. "The
logical extension of this is scary."
Defenders of the state's eminent domain law say it is already
restrictive enough. They say the use of eminent domain to seize blighted
properties has helped improve neighborhoods and spur the creation of
affordable housing.
"We are wary of any further restrictions on the Massachusetts law," said
Susan Elsbree, spokeswoman for the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
"Eminent domain is a very important tool for cities and towns across the
commonwealth."
Governments have traditionally used their eminent domain authority to
build roads, schools and other public projects. But for decades, the
court has been expanding the definition of public use, allowing cities
to employ eminent domain to eliminate blight.
In June, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that New London, Conn., had the
authority to take homes for a private development project. But in its
ruling, the court noted that states are free to ban that practice.
For Bostonians with long memories, the ruling inspired painful memories
about the loss of the West End.
In the years after the World War II many cities fell on hard times as
middle class residents fled to burgeoning suburbs. Boston, like many
cities, responded by launching an aggressive urban renewal program. For
those in power, the West End was a perfect example of "blight."
Those who called the West End home saw something very different — a
neighborhood with the invisible web of family and friends that knitted
together the sturdy, if sometimes shabby brick buildings and corner
stores.
That invisible but vital society was the subject of a classic study by
famed sociologist Herbert Gans, who moved into the neighborhood in its
twilight years. His 1962 book, "The Urban Villagers," painted a picture
of a community in sharp contrast to the official designation as a
"slum."
In the decades since the demolition, the West End has become one of the
nation's most infamous examples of urban folly. Former residents who
still feel the sting of loss have their own spin on the sales pitch for
the new West End: "If you lived here, you'd be homeless now."
The writer Jane Holtz Kay's father grew up in the West End and she
remembers selling flowers near the area that was ultimately bulldozed.
"It was the classic melting pot," said Kay, author of "Lost Boston."
Kay said that the danger of eminent domain is that its misuse, even in
the hands of those with good intentions, can have a disastrous outcome.
In the hands of those driven by less noble motivations, the effect can
be even worse.
"Eminent domain is a really deadly weapon when it's in the wrong hands,"
she said. "They haven't learned from the past about the richness of the
past."
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The Boston Globe
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Shoppers pant when tax takes a breather
5% break seems like a prize in state
that dates its frugality to the fury of Boston Tea Party
By Jenn Abelson and Robert Gavin, Globe Staff
Amy Ricketson has already picked out the $600 worth of mattress,
bedspread, and sheets she plans to buy during this weekend's sales tax
holiday. Her savings: $30.
"OK, it's not much," said Ricketson of Plymouth. "But I'd rather keep it
than give it as taxes, thanks!"
A 5 percent discount is hardly a bargain by retailing standards (try 50
percent off), but call it a tax holiday and the promotion becomes a door
buster. Why else? Here in the Commonwealth, where the nation's first tax
protests were waged in 1773 with the Boston Tea Party, residents just
want to stick it to Taxachusetts.
Antitax fervor can be a unifying force that makes skirting 5 percent in
taxes seem like an act of civil disobedience. Massachusetts citizens pay
about $4,608 annually in state and local taxes, the fourth highest in
the nation, for everything from alcohol to property to stock profits.
The average American pays about $1,000 less, according to the Tax
Foundation, a nonpartisan group in Washington, D.C.
Tack on federal taxes found on phone bills, gasoline, and airline
tickets, and it's easy to see why people are rebelling with their
MasterCards and Visas.
"Massachusetts residents in particular seem to jump at a chance to throw
more tea in the water," said Kate MacKinnon, a spokeswoman for Tweeter
Home Entertainment Group Inc., a high-end electronics chain. "If we ran
a 5 percent-off sale, we would not get even close to the response that
we anticipate the state's sales tax holiday to draw."
Sales tax holidays have proved a catalyst to shopping, generating
customer traffic in the dog days of summer that has been compared to the
Christmas season. Merchants are making a big push today and tomorrow
with major chains and retailers, including Apple, keeping stores open
from 6 a.m. to midnight, and small business owners, such as Yolanda
Enterprises in Waltham, marking down all wedding attire to below $2,500
so that they qualify for the sales tax exemption.
Ten other states, as well as Washington, D.C., and Montgomery, Ala.,
have sales tax holidays, but they tend to target specific products, such
as school supplies and clothes, according to Taxware, L.P., a Salem
sales tax software firm. Massachusetts is the most generous, applying to
almost anything under $2,500, except for motor vehicles, motor boats,
meals, tobacco products, and utilities.
Last year Massachusetts consumers spent just over $200 million during a
one-day tax holiday while saving some $10.1 million in sales taxes,
according to the state Department of Revenue. The agency estimates that
consumers this year will save an estimated $14.5 million in sales taxes
over two days of tax-free shopping.
Some shoppers have put off purchases for weeks of everything from
refrigerators to TVs. Others have less firm plans except to buy
something, anything just for the thrill of avoiding another tax.
Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited
Taxation, a Marblehead tax reform group, doesn't think that the tax
holiday is a significant reprieve but has a shopping list ready:
toothpaste, paper towels, and a dust buster. "You grab what you can when
you can," Anderson said.
Economists say tax holidays tend to have little if any long-term
economic effects, since consumers shift their purchases to coincide with
the tax holidays rather than buy more. A study of New York's 1997 tax
holiday on clothing, for example, showed that sales surged more than 70
percent during the seven tax-free days, but over three months they were
only slightly higher than the same period the year before.
And for some who've done the math on actual savings, the tax holiday
isn't worth the hassle.
"People think they're getting away with something this weekend," said
Linda Morris, of Quincy, who plans to wait for bigger, better sales.
"But they're really not."
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The Boston Globe
Monday, August 15, 2005
Tax-free weekend a gift to retailers
Sales totals may top rush before Christmas
By Michael Levenson, Globe Correspondent
They're calling it Christmas in August.
Inundated with shoppers on a sultry, summer weekend, giddy retailers
said yesterday that the state's first-ever Saturday and Sunday without a
sales tax could end up being the most profitable weekend of the year,
beating the $500 million in sales that shops usually reap during the
final weekend rush in late December.
From Braintree to Peabody, Springfield to Cambridge, malls that are
normally quiet this time of year teemed with buyers snapping up iPods,
language instruction tapes, refrigerators, sheets, tools, and clothing.
Shoppers came from out of state to make long-delayed purchases and to
hunt for a deal with no particular item in mind. Some retailers said
they could hardly keep up with the foot traffic, though most said they
were ecstatic with the brisk sales.
"There is no question that overall sales amounts are going to rival the
weekend before Christmas and a lot of stores are going to do better than
that," said Jon B. Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of
Massachusetts. "You're getting people into the stores at a time when
they don't normally shop, they don't normally spend money."
A normal weekend in the middle of August might generate about $150
million in sales, Hurst said. Last year, when the state for the first
time suspended the 5 percent sales tax for a single day, a Saturday,
sales jumped to about $400 million, he said.
This year, the numbers could top $500 million, once they are tallied in
a few weeks. That would make it the busiest weekend of the year, Hurst
said.
"They're buying pretty much anything that's on their shopping lists,"
said Jose Lopez, manager of Cambridge SoundWorks at the CambridgeSide
Galleria. He said business was up 50 to 60 percent over a normal August
weekend at his shop, driven by sales of televisions and high-end stereo
systems.
"It is kind of like Christmas in August," Lopez said.
At South Shore Plaza in Braintree yesterday, stores had hung promotional
banners advertising "tax-free days." A retiree carried a bag of tools he
had bought, happy to save $2.50 in taxes. Iverline White, 19, hunted for
an inflatable chair for her dorm room. Her father, Paul White, 63, a
shipwright from Wareham, had spent $1,600 on a washer and dryer the
night before.
"The state might not be happy, but the stores sure are," Iverline White
said.
At KB Toys, assistant manager Mark Peterson happily presided over a
store full of toddlers and parents inspecting action figures, trucks,
and dolls.
"We've got sales stuff up at the front of the store that's just kind of
flying," Peterson said. "We've got sales stuff in the middle of the
store that's just going. We got a whole bunch of new Star Wars stuff,
all kinds of new games, and it's just flying off the shelves."
While most rejoiced, some retailers smirked at how many consumers were
lured by savings that are modest compared with the discounts most stores
offer on occasion.
"I can't believe that if I offer a 5 percent or 15 percent discount on
this stuff, I have a hard time selling, and that people are eating up
this discount," said Gary Hillman, manager of Rosetta Stone, a kiosk
that sells language tapes in the mall. He said sales of his tapes were
up 75 percent.
Hillman said he thinks people want to buy because they are saving money
at the expense of the government. "It's unbelievable," he said.
Customers said they had many reasons to shop yesterday, beating the
government not least among them.
Many acknowledged a certain frisson at the idea of saving 5 percent from
the state -- shopping as civil disobedience.
"Getting any break from the government is a good thing," said Laura
Majed, 49, a typesetter from Providence. She bought speakers for her
iPod yesterday at the Apple store at the mall. She had made the trip
from Rhode Island in part to reap the savings, she said.
Massachusetts is one of 11 states plus the District of Columbia that
have tried to spur business by suspending their sales taxes. Some
stretch their tax breaks for 10 to 14 days, or limit them to clothing
and back-to-school items. In Massachusetts, the deal extends to taxable
items under $2,500, excluding new and used cars.
The initiative is a political favorite and was heavily promoted by
Governor Mitt Romney and state lawmakers, who held a press conference
outside a Best Buy in Boston last week.
Some customers said they had been holding off on purchases in
anticipation of the tax holiday.
"We figured it would be a good weekend to get it; it's like a little
bonus," said Courtney Perkins, 19. She bought a black iPod as a gift for
a friend, she said, with some help from her mother, Corrine.
Most of the items selling were big-ticket goods such as furniture and
computers and back-to-school staples, Hurst said.
But there were a few surprises.
"We had huge crowds in jewelry stores," said Hurst of the retailers'
association. "Who buys jewelry in August?"
Maureen Murphy, 50, an insurance manager from Avon, came to the mall
seeking nothing in particular. She just wanted to check out the savings,
she said.
"I guess the tax-free weekend is going to pull people like me out," she
said with a shrug. "I don't even like shopping."
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The Boston Herald
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Add to shopping list: Pols that don't rob us
By Howie Carr
This is wonderful, this sales-tax-free weekend. But why stop here?
Perhaps you've noticed that the price of gasoline is up a bit. Of
course, the 21-cents-a-gallon state gas tax isn't covered under this
generous 48-hour tax rollback by the sticky-fingered grandees of Beacon
Hill.
Another possibility: a toll-free weekend. Or week, or month. Under four
Republican governors, the price of a round trip on the Tobin Bridge has
gone from 50 cents in 1997 to $3 today.
Do smokers, the most oppressed minority in America, deserve any sort of
a temporary tax break? The excise tax on a pack of cigarettes went up
(under GOP Gov. Jane Swift) from 76 cents a pack to $1.51.
And of course smokers have to pay a sales tax on the excise tax.
Don't get me wrong, I like saving a few bucks here and there in the
malls. Do you realize you saved 4 cents' tax on that 79-cent pair of
flip-flops at Wal-Mart yesterday? But tossing a few crumbs to the hoi
polloi after relentlessly taxing them back to the Stone Age the other
363 days of the year falls under the category of too-little-too-late.
Remember the old Bob Dylan song "Maggie's Farm": "He hands you a nickel,
he hands you a dime. He asks you with a grin, if you're having a good
time."
And then they're puzzled why this is the only state in the United States
hemorrhaging population.
Next time, why doesn't Massa Mitt give us some relief from those $300
million-plus in fees that he and the Legislature jacked up two years
ago? His aides say there's a difference between taxes and fees. You
know, Mike Dukakis used to say exactly the same thing.
Another possibility, which Mitt has been pushing for, futiley, is to
actually reduce the state income tax back to 5 percent, where it was
when it was "temporarily" increased back in 1989. You know, like they
"temporarily" put in the state sales tax in 1965.
In 2000, the voters passed a referendum reducing it back to the promised
5 percent level, but the House speaker denied any such promise had been
made. He's since been indicted on multiple counts of perjury, none of
which, oddly enough, involves his pathetic fibs about the
income tax.
How about a one-day break on fees for professional licenses? Has Mitt,
in all of his photo-ops over the last 48 hours, mentioned how those
prices have gone up? Master barber and plumber - $45 to $68. Home
inspector - $150 to $225. I could go on and list 297 others.
Sold any property lately? If you have, you know how much the
commonwealth is in need of a few fee-free days. Discharge of mortgage -
up from $30 to $75. The cost of recording a trust has skyrocketed from
$30 to $225.
Got a kid approaching the magic age of 16 who wants his learner's
permit? Well, prepare to have your pocket picked. In 2002, it was $15.
Now it's $30.
The technical phrase for all of this is "nickel and diming." Now they
say, for two days out of 365, we'll give you back the nickel. That still
leaves them with the dime.
What was it Gov. George Wallace used to say about the two major
political parties? That there wasn't a dime's worth of difference
between them. He was right, but hey, we've got one more day without the
5 percent sales tax, so maybe there is at least a nickel's worth of
difference.
Shop till you drop!
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