|
Help save yourself
— join CLT
today! |
CLT introduction and membership application |
What CLT saves you from the auto excise tax alone |
Make a contribution to support
CLT's work by clicking the button above
Ask your friends to join too |
Visit CLT on Facebook |
Barbara Anderson's Great Moments |
Follow CLT on Twitter |
CLT UPDATE
Friday, February 17, 2017
Happy Birthday Barbara!
DeLeo reverses
— tax hikes again "off the table"
|
These hacks on Beacon Hill are utterly out
of control. And now the last fig leaf is gone — the payroll
patriots have finally started talking about tax increases to
support their cash jones.
Have they no shame? (That’s a rhetorical
question.)
This tax talk is a trial balloon, except
that trial balloons are usually sent up when the payroll
Charlies suspect that their scheme could be shot down. Who’s
going to stop these tax hikes? The RINO governor, Charlie
“Tall Deval” Baker? Get serious.
Tall Deval is part of the cabal. This is
like the old Winter Hill Gang. Zip Connolly was the FBI
agent who was supposed to keep tabs on serial killers Whitey
Bulger and Stevie Flemmi, but they owned him. They made Zip
come crawling to them when he needed cash....
This was proposed by state Sen. Mark
Montigny of New Bedford, who under the new rules just scored
$50,000 in pay increases — as “assistant majority leader” he
went from an extra $15,000 to $35,000, plus his stipends for
being chairman of two phony-baloney committees, Senate Rules
and Senate Joint Rules, each doubled from $7,500 to
$15,000....
So now to add up the votes, the Senate has a
president, a president pro tem, a majority leader, three
assistant majority leaders, a majority whip and two
assistant majority whips.
What exactly are all these hacks counting,
other than their own ill-gotten gains? Everybody’s going to
vote the way they’re told to, if they don’t want to lose
their own extra $20,000-$50,000.
All power in the Legislature is centralized
now. The committee chairmen have no clout whatsoever. So
each committee must now have a “vice chairman” to help the
“chairman” with his arduous non-duties. That way, they’ve
created another “leadership” position that they can use as a
payoff.
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
First pay hike, then a tax hike – surprised?
By Howie Carr
Speaker of the House Robert A. DeLeo
yesterday said he would not push any “broad-based” tax
hikes, just days after his refusal to rule them out drew
heavy flak in the wake of the controversial
multimillion-dollar pay raise package lawmakers awarded
themselves.
“Those aren’t going to be part of the House
budget,” DeLeo told reporters yesterday, clarifying that any
“broad-based” proposals to raise the sales tax or income tax
“will not be included.”
DeLeo, who has repeatedly pledged no new
taxes in past budget cycles, has for months left them on the
table for the next fiscal year, including on Monday when he
said he was “not ruling out the possibility of any increase
in taxes.”
Those words drew fire after he and Senate
President Stanley C. Rosenberg rapidly passed the bill that
hiked their pay by nearly 50 percent to $142,500, as well as
the pay of dozens of other legislative leaders, the state’s
constitutional officers and judges.
The Boston Herald
Thursday, February 16, 2017
DeLeo walks back talk of new taxes
One additional state senator will be able to
take home an extra $35,000 in pay after the Senate on Monday
voted during a lightly attended informal session to expand
its already saturated leadership ranks.
The move came less than two weeks after
lawmakers overrode Gov. Charlie Baker's veto of an $18
million pay raise package that included significant stipend
increases for legislative leaders, along with sizeable
raises for judges and the state's six constitutional
officers.
After holding its session open for hours,
the Senate late Monday afternoon adopted an order allowing
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg to name an additional
assistant majority whip. The Senate's rules now charge the
president with nominating committee chairs, a majority
leader, up to three assistant majority leaders, a majority
whip, two assistant majority whips and a president pro
tempore.
There are 34 Democrats in the 40-seat Senate
and they all are expected to hold one or more leadership or
committee chair assignments.
State House News Service
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Senate adds one more leadership post, with a $35,000 stipend
The state Senate has added a second
assistant majority whip position that’ll let another lucky
Democratic member pull down a $35,000 leadership stipend —
riling Republicans and government watchdogs who called the
new post a “taxpayer-funded gift” to political insiders.
The move to create the new position, which
has yet to be assigned to a senator for this legislative
session, will add $35,000 to a member’s $62,500 base salary
— and comes less than two weeks after an $18 million boost
for leadership stipends following Gov. Charlie Baker’s veto
was overridden by House and Senate majorities.
“It’s hard to believe that Democrats could
top the level of deceit they achieved when they rushed this
pay hike through with barely any public debate,”
Massachusetts GOP spokesman Terry MacCormack said. “But the
Senate president has done just that, with this underhanded
move to retroactively add another Democrat to the insider
crew that will benefit the most from this taxpayer-funded
gift.”
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
New plum Senate position ridiculed as ‘taxpayer-funded gift’
by critics
Fresh from their triumphal override of the
governor’s veto of that $18 million pay raise bill, the
Massachusetts Senate decided to cut in one more of its
members on the gravy train.
The Senate voted Monday to create one
more assistant majority whip, meaning an additional
$35,000 pay boost on top of the base pay of $62,547 and
bringing the total number of Senate Democratic “leaders” to
nine for the 34 Democrats in the upper branch (that doesn’t
count committee chairs who also get a whopping raise).
Of course, the not-so-dirty-little secret is
that no one in the Senate really has to be “whipped” into
voting the leadership’s way. They follow meekly — already
bought and paid for.
The Boston Herald
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Editorial: Send in the ‘leaders’
The Baker administration is abandoning
efforts to change or eliminate a tax credit for films made
in the Bay State after unsuccessfully trying for the past
two years.
The tax credit, available to productions
that set up shop in Massachusetts, had been a target of the
Baker administration in each of the past two years, but ran
into stiff opposition from the film industry and never
passed the Legislature.
The tax credit is a 25-percent rebate
originally established in 2006 if productions spend more
than $50,000 in the state.
A report released at the beginning of the
year commissioned by the Department of Revenue found the
state only received 75 cents back for every dollar it gave
in tax credits in 2014, the most recent data available. The
author of the report called the tax credit “a bum deal” at
the time....
In 2015, Baker proposed scrapping the credit
altogether and using the money to expand the earned income
tax credit, and in 2016 proposed new limitations. Neither
was passed by the Legislature.
The credit has helped attract high-profile
films to the Bay State, including “Manchester by the Sea”
and “Black Mass.” The studio producing “Manchester by the
Sea” received $1.38 million in rebates and the studio that
made “Black Mass” received $12 million.
The Boston Herald
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Gov. Charlie Baker abandons effort to repeal movie tax
credit
|
|
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Today would have been Barbara Anderson's 74th birthday, if she hadn't passed
away last April and handed off the taxpayer advocacy baton to us. I'm sure
she'd have appreciated House Speaker DeLeo's abrupt reversal on "broad-based"
tax hikes.
I'm equally confident that Gov. Baker also appreciates not having to confront
the Speaker-for-Life over any tax increases, or worse, wearing tax hikes around
his neck when he runs for re-election next year.
It would seem that Speaker-for-Life DeLeo quickly came to his senses
— after a wave of opprobrium crested above him
following his callous comment on tax hikes, which followed immediately on the
heels of the Legislature's obscene pay grab. He backstroked fast, at least
for now.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Stanley Rosenberg have handed
out the recently plundered graft to their toadies. This week they named
those "leaders" who will (retroactively) be rewarded for unfailing sycophancy
and unquestioned fealty to their lords. When there wasn't sufficient
positions to further spread the taxpayer plunder, Sen. Rosenberg simply created
a new one out of thin air.
The Boston Herald reported: "The studio producing 'Manchester
by the Sea' received $1.38 million in rebates and the studio that made
'Black Mass' received $12 million." Just those two
productions alone "cost" the state over $13 million in "foregone
revenue." That's the very reason the traditional "sales tax-free
weekend" was rejected last year: the alleged "cost" to the state
of "foregone revenue" it wouldn't receive. Tax cuts for Hollywood
moguls, good; tax cuts for state taxpayers, no can do.
Repealing the unproductive film tax credit could pay for the
Legislature's unproductive, obscene pay grab, instead of it being
extracted from taxpayers. But they'd prefer rewarding the likes of
Casey Affleck and Johnny Depp more than mere taxpayers like us, "the
forgotten men and women."
|
 |
 |
|
Chip Ford
Executive Director |
|
|
|
|
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
First pay hike, then a tax hike – surprised?
By Howie Carr
House Speaker Bob DeLeo had the operation on his
stomach to take away his appetite — for food,
that is.
His craving for taxpayer dollars, on the other
hand, has gone totally out of control. He keeps
gorging and gorging and gorging himself. He’s a
greedy glutton for gelt.
He burps and he belches and then he grabs
another wad of our cash with his hands and
stuffs it into his bulging cheeks. Mistah
Speakah can’t help himself, nor can his
counterpart in the Senate, President Stanley
Rosenberg.
It’s not so much an eating disorder as a
stealing disorder. What’s going on right now at
the State House is a full-blown epidemic of
kleptomania.
These hacks on Beacon Hill are utterly out of
control. And now the last fig leaf is gone — the
payroll patriots have finally started talking
about tax increases to support their cash jones.
Have they no shame? (That’s a rhetorical
question.)
This tax talk is a trial balloon, except that
trial balloons are usually sent up when the
payroll Charlies suspect that their scheme could
be shot down. Who’s going to stop these tax
hikes? The RINO governor, Charlie “Tall Deval”
Baker? Get serious.
Tall Deval is part of the cabal. This is like
the old Winter Hill Gang. Zip Connolly was the
FBI agent who was supposed to keep tabs on
serial killers Whitey Bulger and Stevie Flemmi,
but they owned him. They made Zip come crawling
to them when he needed cash.
At the State House, DeLeo and Rosenberg are
Whitey and Stevie, and Tall Deval is Zip, the
crooked cop who does what he’s told. Tall Deval
is keeping tabs on them all right, wink-wink
nudge-nudge.
This was proposed by state Sen. Mark Montigny of
New Bedford, who under the new rules just scored
$50,000 in pay increases — as “assistant
majority leader” he went from an extra $15,000
to $35,000, plus his stipends for being chairman
of two phony-baloney committees, Senate Rules
and Senate Joint Rules, each doubled from $7,500
to $15,000.
This, by the way, is the same Montigny whose
name figured prominently in the 2014 federal
corruption trial involving the Probation
department. He got his girlfriend, who was 22
years younger than him, a hack job as a
probation officer. Her prior job: part-time
drawbridge operator.
So now to add up the votes, the Senate has a
president, a president pro tem, a majority
leader, three assistant majority leaders, a
majority whip and two assistant majority whips.
What exactly are all these hacks counting, other
than their own ill-gotten gains? Everybody’s
going to vote the way they’re told to, if they
don’t want to lose their own extra
$20,000-$50,000.
All power in the Legislature is centralized now.
The committee chairmen have no clout whatsoever.
So each committee must now have a “vice
chairman” to help the “chairman” with his
arduous non-duties. That way, they’ve created
another “leadership” position that they can use
as a payoff.
As for DeLeo, the former fatty who recently had
the bariatric procedure — I’m not sure if he had
what’s called the sleeve, or whether it was a
gastric bypass.
Gastric bypass, huh? Whatever it was, it worked.
Too bad DeLeo didn’t also get the greed bypass.
The gastric bypass is good for your blood
pressure, the greed bypass for your soul.
Assuming, of course, that any of them up there
actually have souls.
You can now pre-order Howie’s new book,
“Kennedy Babylon,” at his website,
howiecarrshow.com.
The Boston Herald
Thursday, February 16, 2017
DeLeo walks back talk of new taxes
By Matt Stout
Speaker of the House Robert A. DeLeo yesterday
said he would not push any “broad-based” tax
hikes, just days after his refusal to rule them
out drew heavy flak in the wake of the
controversial multimillion-dollar pay raise
package lawmakers awarded themselves.
“Those aren’t going to be part of the House
budget,” DeLeo told reporters yesterday,
clarifying that any “broad-based” proposals to
raise the sales tax or income tax “will not be
included.”
DeLeo, who has repeatedly pledged no new taxes
in past budget cycles, has for months left them
on the table for the next fiscal year, including
on Monday when he said he was “not ruling out
the possibility of any increase in taxes.”
Those words drew fire after he and Senate
President Stanley C. Rosenberg rapidly passed
the bill that hiked their pay by nearly 50
percent to $142,500, as well as the pay of
dozens of other legislative leaders, the state’s
constitutional officers and judges.
DeLeo made the comments yesterday after emerging
from a lengthy, two-hour caucus where House
Democrats focused on responding to policies from
President Trump.
Amid several questions about the White House,
DeLeo’s spokesman coaxed the Winthrop Democrat
to address the tax question.
It’s likely the House budget, like the proposal
of Gov. Charlie Baker, will include at least
some new taxes, including those on short-term
rentals, such as Airbnb. DeLeo also pointed to
Baker’s proposed $2,000 per-employee fee on
companies whose healthcare don’t meet certain
criteria, though it’s unclear if separate
proposals could emerge from the House.
“I would say this budget was a little more
complicated,” DeLeo said.
The House is expected to release its full
proposal this spring.
While not offering specifics, DeLeo also said
that pushing back against Trump at the state
level will be a priority for him this session.
“They (Democratic lawmakers) want to see action
and a statement to our constituents that we hear
their concerns, we don’t agree with what’s going
on with the Trump administration and we here in
Massachusetts, to the best of our power, are
going to do something about it,” DeLeo said.
State House News Service
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Senate adds one more leadership post, with a
$35,000 stipend
By Katie Lannan
One additional state senator will be able to
take home an extra $35,000 in pay after the
Senate on Monday voted during a lightly attended
informal session to expand its already saturated
leadership ranks.
The move came less than two weeks after
lawmakers overrode Gov. Charlie Baker's veto of
an $18 million pay raise package that included
significant stipend increases for legislative
leaders, along with sizeable raises for judges
and the state's six constitutional officers.
After holding its session open for hours, the
Senate late Monday afternoon adopted an order
allowing Senate President Stanley Rosenberg to
name an additional assistant majority whip. The
Senate's rules now charge the president with
nominating committee chairs, a majority leader,
up to three assistant majority leaders, a
majority whip, two assistant majority whips and
a president pro tempore.
There are 34 Democrats in the 40-seat Senate and
they all are expected to hold one or more
leadership or committee chair assignments.
Leadership and committee chair assignments could
come after House and Senate lawmakers gather for
private caucuses this week.
The assistant whips will receive a $35,000
stipend on top of their base pay of $62,547, a
Rosenberg spokesman confirmed Tuesday. Assistant
leaders receive the same amount, which was
increased from $15,000 under the pay raise law.
The president pro tempore will receive a $50,000
stipend, with the majority and minority leaders
receiving $60,000.
When he vetoed the raises, Baker called it
"fiscally irresponsible to increase compensation
for elected officials given the current fiscal
outlook for the state."
Representatives can collect one stipend on top
of their base pay, while senators are capped at
three.
Sen. Mark Montigny, who chairs a Temporary Rules
Committee, offered the order amending the rule
that deals with leadership and committee
appointments to allow for two assistant majority
whips.
Sen. Michael Rodrigues of Westport served as
assistant majority whip for most of last year.
Sen. Ken Donnelly had previously held the post
and moved up to become majority whip after
Anthony Petruccelli resigned from the Senate.
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
New plum Senate position ridiculed as
‘taxpayer-funded gift’ by critics
By Brian Dowling
The state Senate has added a second assistant
majority whip position that’ll let another lucky
Democratic member pull down a $35,000 leadership
stipend — riling Republicans and government
watchdogs who called the new post a
“taxpayer-funded gift” to political insiders.
The move to create the new position, which has
yet to be assigned to a senator for this
legislative session, will add $35,000 to a
member’s $62,500 base salary — and comes less
than two weeks after an $18 million boost for
leadership stipends following Gov. Charlie
Baker’s veto was overridden by House and Senate
majorities.
Paul Craney of the conservative Massachusetts
Fiscal Alliance said, “The only place this
doesn’t sound ridiculous is in the State House.”
“The workload hasn’t changed from last year,”
Craney said. “They tell you they have your
backs, but they really have their hands in your
pockets.”
The Senate voted to let Senate President Stanley
C. Rosenberg name an additional assistant
majority whip on Monday.
The 40-seat Senate is dominated by 34 Democrats,
and all are expected to draw stipends with one
or more leadership or committee chair
assignments.
“It’s hard to believe that Democrats could top
the level of deceit they achieved when they
rushed this pay hike through with barely any
public debate,” Massachusetts GOP spokesman
Terry MacCormack said. “But the Senate president
has done just that, with this underhanded move
to retroactively add another Democrat to the
insider crew that will benefit the most from
this taxpayer-funded gift.”
The Boston Herald
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Gov. Charlie Baker abandons effort to repeal
movie tax credit
By Jordan Graham
The Baker administration is abandoning efforts
to change or eliminate a tax credit for films
made in the Bay State after unsuccessfully
trying for the past two years.
The tax credit, available to productions that
set up shop in Massachusetts, had been a target
of the Baker administration in each of the past
two years, but ran into stiff opposition from
the film industry and never passed the
Legislature.
The tax credit is a 25-percent rebate originally
established in 2006 if productions spend more
than $50,000 in the state.
A report released at the beginning of the year
commissioned by the Department of Revenue found
the state only received 75 cents back for every
dollar it gave in tax credits in 2014, the most
recent data available. The author of the report
called the tax credit “a bum deal” at the time.
It has also been criticized for being
transferable — meaning it can be sold for cash
to other entities — and for primarily benefiting
out-of-state interests.
In a statement, a Baker spokesman said its
fiscal 2018 budget is “fiscally responsible,“
and did not specifically mention the film tax
credit.
“The administration files fiscally responsible
budgets each year that are balanced and invest
in the core priorities of the administration,”
Baker spokesman Brendan Moss said.
Although Baker’s new budget doesn’t touch the
tax credit, it doesn’t signify a change in
opinion on its merits.
In 2015, Baker proposed scrapping the credit
altogether and using the money to expand the
earned income tax credit, and in 2016 proposed
new limitations. Neither was passed by the
Legislature.
The credit has helped attract high-profile films
to the Bay State, including “Manchester by the
Sea” and “Black Mass.” The studio producing
“Manchester by the Sea” received $1.38 million
in rebates and the studio that made “Black Mass”
received $12 million.
The Massachusetts Production Coalition will
create a mock film set today in the Great Hall
of the State House aimed at showing lawmakers
the impact of film productions in Massachusetts.
The fake set will include everything from craft
services to lighting in an attempt to show how
far-reaching the film industry can be.
Although there is no effort to eliminate or
change the tax credit, the MPC is trying to get
ahead of any future attempts, according to
spokesman Andrew Farnitano, who said, “The idea
is to give people at the State House a firsthand
look at all the different jobs and businesses
involved in the film industry in Massachusetts.” |
| |
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes
only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
Citizens for Limited Taxation ▪
PO Box 1147 ▪ Marblehead, MA 01945
▪ 508-915-3665
BACK TO CLT
HOMEPAGE
|