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Post Office Box 1147
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Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945
▪ (781) 639-9709
“Every Tax is a Pay Cut ... A Tax Cut is a Pay Raise”
46 years as “The Voice of Massachusetts Taxpayers”
— and
their Institutional Memory — |
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CLT UPDATE
Monday, September 7, 2020
The Chaos Is Just
Warming Up
Jump directly
to CLT's Commentary on the News
|
Most Relevant News Excerpts
(Full news reports follow
Commentary)
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The founder of
Citizens for Limited Taxation, Barbara Anderson,
passed away in 2016. We lost Chip Faulkner, the
public face of the organization and decades-long ringmaster
of the conservative Friday Morning Group, last year. Some
assumed that the organization would end as well.
But their work
isn’t finished.
Chip Ford,
Executive Director of Citizens for Limited Taxation, sent
out an alert on S-2813, the Senate Transportation Bond Bill,
regarding its Section 5 – “Local and Regional Transportation
Initiatives.” Like most legislation, it is composed of
technical language to discourage any close reading.
“Notwithstanding
Ch. 59, 60A, 62, or 64H or any other general or special law
to the contrary, the governing body of a city or town may
vote to accept this chapter authorizing a surcharge on a
single subject of taxation. A governing body that intends to
accept the chapter 23 of 61 shall determine a single subject
of taxation to be levied and the amount and rate of the
surcharge on the single subject of taxation prior to
approval by the voters. If the identified single subject of
taxation is a real or personal property excise, the amount
of the surcharge shall not be included in a calculation of
total taxes assessed for the purposes of section 21c of
chapter 59.”
I ask you, what
could be clearer than that?
But here is what
it means, despite the oddity of a tax law change being
buried in a bond bill....
As Chip Ford
writes, this Section 5 is a solution in search of a problem.
For 40-odd years, municipal budgets have been held to a 2½%
increase annually. If there is an expenditure beyond that
which the voters in the town think worth pursuing, they can
vote to increase beyond the limit, either temporarily with a
debt exclusion where feasible or through a permanent
override. If the voters approve the project, it will get the
votes and the funding. But how much easier it might be to
increase without having the voters so directly involved, as
they might say no....
Nobody will
remember two years from now, especially if you’ve already
been reelected a dozen times, until the business taxes go up
with no clear explanation of why. Visit
cltg.org and
see what other interesting nets are being cast toward our
pocketbooks, and support them if you can.
We have too few
watchdogs in government and too many yipping Pomeranians.
Citizens for Limited Taxation is still growling for us all.
The Cape Cod
Times
Thursday, August 27, 2020
Work isn’t done for citizens watchdog group
By Cynthia Stead
All but one of the
18 House incumbents on the primary ballot Tuesday
successfully fended off challenges, including 11 who are
either committee chairs or serve in Speaker Robert DeLeo's
leadership team....
The only House
lawmaker to lose their seat in a primary was Lowell Democrat
David Nangle, who was defeated by Vanna Howard. Nangle
started this session with a leadership post as division
chair, and stepped down from that position and his seats on
the House Ethics and Rules committees in the wake of his
February arrest on federal charges connected to bank fraud
and misuse of campaign funds, to which he has pleaded not
guilty....
In the Senate,
where every Democrat holds a chairmanship or leadership
post, Financial Services Committee Co-Chair James Welch of
West Springfield was the only incumbent to lose Tuesday.
State House News
Service
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Except Nangle, Leadership So Far Remains Intact
This is supposed
to be the big change election?
Up and down the
ballot on Tuesday, nearly all incumbent lawmakers swept to
victory in their primary contests as Massachusetts voters
rejected fresh-faced challengers like U.S. Rep. Joseph P.
Kennedy III.
At the State
House, just two Democratic incumbents lost their seats, and
one of those, Rep. David Nangle, is facing federal bank
fraud charges.
House Speaker
Robert DeLeo’s leadership team won all their contested races
except for Nangle, so there will be no change in how the
Legislature is run.
And for those
looking for change in the Massachusetts congressional
delegation, forget it.
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Voters stick with same, tired old pols in non-change
election
By Joe Battenfeld
Boston had the
second-highest month-over-month growth in job openings in
the nation in August, part of a slight uptick in openings
nationally, according to a new report.
Boston had 120,519
job openings, a 7.6% increase over July, but down 22.8% over
the same period last year, according to Glassdoor, one of
the world’s largest job and recruiting websites.
The growth last
month was second only to that of Chicago, which had 168,575
job openings, up 9.4% from July, but 18% lower than last
August, the report said....
“The most recent
data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said that
Massachusetts had the highest unemployment rate in the
nation, so the fact that there are employers seeking to fill
positions is a very good sign,” said Greg Sullivan, research
director at the Pioneer Institute, a public-policy think
tank in Boston. “This shows Massachusetts is starting to
climb out of the economic collapse.” ...
“It’s a reflection
of both how deep the economic hole is that we’re in and also
the improvement that comes from states and businesses
reopening,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor.
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Report: August job growth puts Boston among top cities in
nation
Openings signal start to recovery, economists say
Some Massachusetts
residents this week will start to receive the extra $300 in
weekly unemployment benefits, according to officials in the
Bay State, home to the country’s highest unemployment rate
amid the coronavirus crisis.
The Massachusetts
Department of Unemployment Assistance has begun disbursing
the additional benefits to Pandemic Unemployment Assistance
claimants, who received benefits starting Wednesday.
Payments are
expected to land in claimant accounts by Saturday, according
to the state’s Executive Office of Labor and Workforce
Development.
Claimants through
the standard unemployment assistance program are expected to
receive the extra money by Sept. 15.
The boosted
unemployment will total $900. The grant will fund an extra
$300 weekly payment for those eligible for the three weeks
ending Aug. 1, 8 and 15....
The Bay State has
applied for a fourth week of extra benefits. The state —
through the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, in
coordination with the Department of Unemployment Assistance
— has applied to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for
the week of Aug. 22.
Massachusetts had
the nation’s highest unemployment rate in July at 16.1%,
according to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report.
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
State starts to disburse extra $300 weekly unemployment
payments
The retroactive boosted unemployment benefits will total
$900
Nearly one-fifth
of Bay State restaurants have permanently closed due to the
coronavirus pandemic, according to the Massachusetts
Restaurant Association, and others wonder whether they will
survive the fall and winter.
Out of
approximately 16,000 statewide, 3,400 have closed their
doors for good, said Bob Luz, the association’s president
and CEO. The rest now offer customers curbside delivery,
indoor dining or dining alfresco.
“Not surprisingly,
outdoor seating has become very popular” among customers
concerned with contracting the virus, Luz said.
But even
restaurants that have the space to offer outdoor dining
worry about what the future holds for them once the weather
grows cold.
Owners are
preparing for the fall by buying outdoor heaters and tents,
he said. But the state is allowing outdoor dining only until
the end of November....
Tony Maws said
Craigie Burger, the Fenway restaurant he was a partner in,
closed in March, and his other restaurant, Craigie on Main
in Cambridge, has been selling food to go. Two weeks ago, he
opened Craigie Next Door, an outdoor eatery in a former
parking lot.
“We’re operating
at 30 percent of our normal volume,” said Maws, co-founder
of Massachusetts Restaurants United. “Fall’s around the
corner, outdoor dining will disappear, our PPP (Paycheck
Protection Program loan) will run out, and independent
restaurants will die.”
Ultimately, he
said, that will be a loss not only for owners like him and
the employees they will have to lay off, but for everyone.
“Independent
restaurants are the flavor and personality of your main
streets,” Maws said. “We support many other businesses,
including farmers and purveyors. It’s in everybody’s
interest to have independent restaurants survive.”
The Boston Herald
Saturday, September 5, 2020
Nearly one in five Massachusetts restaurants have
permanently closed
Having taken in
$1.992 billion in tax revenue in August, state tax
collections are running $124 million or more than 3 percent
ahead of their pace one year ago, the Department of Revenue
reported Friday, a potentially promising sign given
predictions that receipts could collapse this fiscal year.
Of the $1.992
billion collected last month, all but $13 million will go
towards fiscal year 2021. Counting the $1.979 billion that
will be recorded in FY 2021, August collections were $7
million less than the August 2019 collections, DOR said. But
through two months of FY 2021, DOR said it has collected
roughly $4.135 billion, which is $124 million or 3.1 percent
more than it had collected during the same period of fiscal
2020....
In late July,
revenue officials said incomplete revenue collections for
the fiscal year that ended June 30 totaled $27.276 billion,
which was $3.014 billion or 9.9 percent below what budget
managers were expecting when they crafted the $43.3 billion
state budget in early 2019. DOR collected $2.293 billion of
fiscal year 2020 revenue in July, plugging some of that gap
and potentially reducing the shortfall to roughly $721
million for FY 20. With another $13 million coming from
August collections, the shortfall could be reduced to around
$708 million.
The state has $3.5
billion stashed away in its rainy day fund that could be
used to address budget shortfalls in fiscal year 2020 and
beyond, and Beacon Hill has borrowing options at its
disposal to address the unusual circumstances. State
Treasury officials told the News Service that they have
already repaid the $500 million they drew from a $1.75
billion line of credit they established with banks to help
with cash flow.
State House News
Service
Friday, September 4, 2020
State Tax Collections Continue to Rebound
Running Ahead of FY 2020 After Steep Decline in Spring
Friday, Sept. 11,
2020
BAKER EXECUTIVE ORDER LAWSUIT: The state's highest court
hears oral arguments in a lawsuit over whether Gov. Charlie
Baker's executive orders during the pandemic have
overstepped his legal authority. Lawyers with the New Civil
Liberties Alliance filed the case on behalf of local
plaintiffs arguing that the Civil Defense Act cited by the
administration does not cover pandemics and that local
authorities should have driven response to the public health
crisis.
Attorney General
Maura Healey defended the governor's actions as within the
authority of that act. The proceedings will be livestreamed
online.
State. Republican
state Rep. Shawn Dooley on Wednesday filed an amicus brief
in support of the lawsuit, joining with the plaintiffs
against the governor from his party. (Friday, 9 a.m., John
Adams Courthouse, Courtroom One, Pemberton Square, Boston)
State House News
Service
Friday, September 4, 2020
Advances - Week of Sept. 6, 2020
With votes still
being counted in the Fourth Congressional District,
Secretary of State William Galvin has asked Suffolk Superior
Court to explicitly authorize local clerks to continue
counting mail-in and other ballots received before the polls
closed on Tuesday, but which still have not been tallied.
Galvin said that
due to the volume of mail-in ballots and, in some case,
their last-minute arrival, not all ballots received by the 8
p.m. deadline on Tuesday have been counted. The secretary,
however, said that state law lacks procedures for counting
ballots after the day of the election.
Widespread mail-in
voting is new to Massachusetts this year, put in place as a
result of the COVID-19 pandemic to encourage safe
participation in the elections.
State House News
Service
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Galvin Seeks Judicial Clearance to Count Ballots After
Primary Day
Last October,
state Sen. Eric Lesser said the decision to schedule this
year's primary elections before Labor Day was like "crossing
a Rubicon," and not in a good way.
The Longmeadow
Democrat worried that the election would coincide with
vacations, parents prepping for back-to-school and moving
day. It would be, he said, the most "chaotic" day of the
year....
The COVID-19
pandemic was not on the radar that day when Lesser was
pushing for a Sept. 8 primary, but it irrevocably changed
the 2020 elections, and maybe all elections moving forward.
And it wasn't all bad. Sure, candidates were locked up in
their homes for months, and even when they did emerge, they
couldn't engage with voters in ways they normally might.
But participation
wound up being high, with over 30 percent of registered
voters taking part and setting a record for raw votes with
over 1.5 million ballots cast either early, in person or on
election day, or by mail through a reform that may be here
to stay....
The Fourth
Congressional District was the other big race to watch on
Tuesday night ... and Wednesday night, and Thursday night.
The voting
counting to determine the Democratic nominee for Kennedy's
House seat dragged on for more than two days after the polls
closed with Newton City Councilor Jake Auchincloss and Jesse
Mermell, a former Deval Patrick advisor and progressive
business group leader, locked in a too-close-to-call contest
atop a nine-candidate field.
The delays stemmed
from the new mail-in voting system that saw thousands of
ballots arrive at some town halls on the day of the
election, including some after 5 p.m. While those ballots
were supposed to be transported to local precincts for
counting, not all of the late-arriving ones made it. Note to
all: this is a development that bears monitoring for the
general election, when even more balloting is expected to be
done via mail.
Secretary of State
William Galvin would end up in court obtaining an order
authorizing the count to continue, and on Thursday Newton,
Wellesley and, lastly, Franklin wrapped up their ballot
processing.
The count in
Franklin lasted until after midnight early Friday morning,
with Auchincloss eventually declared the winner. Mermell
conceded without seeking a recount, but said the experience
left her with concerns about the process that must be ironed
out before November.
State House News
Service
Friday, September 4, 2020
Weekly Roundup - Endgame
Come mid-November,
don’t say we didn’t warn you. Democrats are confident that
they’ll find the votes necessary to win this year’s
presidential election — it’s just that they aren’t planning
to find them on Election Day.
As Tim Pearce
reports, “A Democratic analytics firm is warning that
the results of the presidential election may swing wildly
days after election night as an unprecedented number of
mail-in and absentee ballots are counted.” ...
Pearce continues,
quoting Hawkfish CEO Josh Mendelsohn, who explained his
firm’s projections in terms of a “red mirage” on election
night “showing an overwhelming victory for President Trump
before Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins the election days
later.”
“The reason we
talk about a red mirage,” says Mendelsohn, “is in fact
because we believe that on election night, we’re going to
see Donald Trump in a stronger position than the reality
actually is. We are sounding an alarm and saying that this
is a very real possibility, that the data is going to show
on election night an incredible victory for Donald Trump.”
This prediction
shouldn’t surprise anyone, though. After all, it’s what
Democrats do: They lose elections, then conjure up just
enough votes in tightly contested races to overturn the
unfavorable outcomes. (Ask former Minnesota Republican
Senator Norm Coleman about his disastrous “Felons
for Franken” experience in 2008.)
What’s surprising,
though, is that the Democrats don’t usually don’t tip their
fraudulent hand this far in advance....
The Patriot Post
September 2, 2020
Democrats Unveil Their Voter Fraud Plans
Joe Biden's party fully expects to win — just maybe not on
election night.
A top Democratic
operative says voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots,
is no myth. And he knows this because he’s been doing it, on
a grand scale, for decades.
Mail-in ballots
have become the latest flashpoint in the 2020 elections.
While President Trump and the GOP warn of widespread
manipulation of the absentee vote that will swell with COVID
polling restrictions, many Democrats and their media allies
have dismissed such concerns as unfounded.
But the political
insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he
fears prosecution, said fraud is more the rule than the
exception. His dirty work has taken him through the weeds of
municipal and federal elections in Paterson, Atlantic City,
Camden, Newark, Hoboken and Hudson County and his
fingerprints can be found in local legislative, mayoral and
congressional races across the Garden State. Some of the
biggest names and highest office holders in New Jersey have
benefited from his tricks, according to campaign records The
Post reviewed.
“An election that
is swayed by 500 votes, 1,000 votes — it can make a
difference,” the tipster said. “It could be enough to flip
states.”
The whisteblower —
whose identity, rap sheet and long history working as a
consultant to various campaigns were confirmed by The Post —
says he not only changed ballots himself over the years, but
led teams of fraudsters and mentored at least 20 operatives
in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania — a critical 2020
swing state....
A Bernie Sanders
die-hard with no horse in the presidential race, he said he
felt compelled to come forward in the hope that states would
act now to fix the glaring security problems present in
mail-in ballots.
“This is a real
thing,” he said. “And there is going to be a f–king war
coming November 3rd over this stuff … If they knew how the
sausage was made, they could fix it.”
Mail-in voting can
be complicated — tough enough that 84,000 New Yorkers had
their mailed votes thrown out in the June 23 Democratic
presidential primary for incorrectly filling them out.
But for political
pros, they’re a piece of cake. . . . That’s when the
election-rigger springs into action.
The New York Post
Saturday, August 29, 2020
Confessions of a voter fraud: I was a master at fixing
mail-in ballots
Gov. Charlie Baker
activated the National Guard over the weekend at the request
of municipal officials who sought backup resources if
planned demonstrations grew larger than what local police
could handle, he told reporters Tuesday.
Baker, who did not
offer a detailed explanation when he activated 1,000
Guardsmen on Friday, said during his first public appearance
since last week that city and town leaders flagged event
pages on social media and inquired about assistance from the
state.
An Executive
Office of Public Safety and Security spokesperson referenced
"potential large scale demonstrations" late Monday night
when Baker deactivated the guard.
The governor did
not explicitly describe any of the reported weekend events.
Local news reports covered demonstrations against police
violence and against the state's new mandate for all K-12
students to receive flu shots.
State House News
Service
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Baker Says Local Officials Requested Guard as Backup
|
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
On August 27 columnist
Cynthia Stead wrote in The Cape Cod Times ("Work isn’t
done for citizens watchdog group"):
The founder of Citizens for
Limited Taxation, Barbara Anderson,
passed away in 2016. We lost Chip Faulkner,
the public face of the organization and decades-long
ringmaster of the conservative Friday Morning Group,
last year. Some assumed that the organization
would end as well.
But their work isn’t finished.
Chip Ford, Executive
Director of Citizens for Limited Taxation, sent out
an alert on S-2813, the Senate Transportation Bond
Bill, regarding its Section 5 – “Local and Regional
Transportation Initiatives.” Like most
legislation, it is composed of technical language to
discourage any close reading. . . .
As Chip Ford writes, this
Section 5 is a solution in search of a problem. For
40-odd years, municipal budgets have been held to a
2½% increase annually. If there is an
expenditure beyond that which the voters in the town
think worth pursuing, they can vote to increase
beyond the limit, either temporarily with a debt
exclusion where feasible or through a permanent
override. If the voters approve the project,
it will get the votes and the funding. But how
much easier it might be to increase without having
the voters so directly involved, as they might say
no. . . .
Nobody will remember two years
from now, especially if you’ve already been
reelected a dozen times, until the business taxes go
up with no clear explanation of why. Visit
cltg.org
and see what other interesting nets are being cast
toward our pocketbooks, and support them if you can.
We have too few watchdogs in
government and too many yipping Pomeranians.
Citizens for Limited Taxation is still growling for
us all.
The stealth
assault on Proposition 2½ remains
hung-up in the Transportation Bond Bill conference
committee. You can still contact the committee
members and encourage each to strip Section 5 from the
bill before returning it to the full Legislature.
A serious tax policy change does not belong in a bond
bill, and a sneak attack on our and the voters' Prop
2½ is both unnecessary and
ill-advised.
The
Transportation Climate Initiative (TCI) — which would empower the
governor to unilaterally increase the tax on gas and diesel fuel by
decree, without legislative oversight — is still sitting in the Climate
Change Conference Committee. You can read more about it at "Critics
warn of cost of climate change bills".
You should contact them as
well, tell them to drop TCI from the bill. It
there is to be a gas tax hike it should be done by our
elected representatives
—
state representatives and senators
—
in the Legislature. Not by an arrogant edict of
The Royal Governor. Here are the six members of
the Climate Change Conference Committee who are deciding
its fate and your future:
Following Tuesday's statewide
primary election the State House News Service reported on Wednesday,
"All but one of the 18 House incumbents on the primary ballot Tuesday
successfully fended off challenges, including 11 who are either
committee chairs or serve in Speaker Robert DeLeo's leadership team."
In the state Senate only Sen. James Welch, the Senate chair of the
Financial Services Committee from West Springfield, was defeated by
another Democrat, Springfield City Councilor Adam Gomez.
The Boston Herald's Joe
Battenfeld noted: "At the State House, just two Democratic
incumbents lost their seats, and one of those, Rep. David Nangle, is
facing federal bank fraud charges." That's a pretty common way for
Bay State legislators to leave their lifetime sinecures while still
vertical — one of the very few.
The Democrat ticket for
legislative and U.S. congressional seats on the November ballot changed
virtually nothing — all the same players
intend to retake their seats in January. If you are fortunate enough to have
a Republican candidate and an actual choice on your ballot you might want to
give them your vote, just to make the Legislature and congressional
delegation even just a little bit "diverse." Otherwise you will be
encouraging state legislators, U.S. congressmen and women, and a U.S.
Senator to continue business-as-usual with your stamp of approval.
I expect you already know that but thought I'd point it out.
On Tuesday The Boston Herald
reported ("Report: August job growth puts Boston among top cities in
nation"):
Boston had the second-highest
month-over-month growth in job openings in the
nation in August, part of a slight uptick in
openings nationally, according to a new report.
Boston had 120,519 job
openings, a 7.6% increase over July, but down 22.8%
over the same period last year, according to
Glassdoor, one of the world’s largest job and
recruiting websites.
The growth last month was
second only to that of Chicago, which had 168,575
job openings, up 9.4% from July, but 18% lower than
last August, the report said....
“The most recent data from the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said that
Massachusetts had the highest unemployment rate in
the nation, so the fact that there are employers
seeking to fill positions is a very good sign,” said
Greg Sullivan, research director at the Pioneer
Institute, a public-policy think tank in Boston.
“This shows Massachusetts is starting to climb out
of the economic collapse.” ...
“It’s a reflection of both how
deep the economic hole is that we’re in and also the
improvement that comes from states and businesses
reopening,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at
Glassdoor.
The Boston
Herald reported on Wednesday ("State starts to disburse
extra $300 weekly unemployment payments"):
Some Massachusetts residents
this week will start to receive the extra $300 in
weekly unemployment benefits, according to officials
in the Bay State, home to the country’s highest
unemployment rate amid the coronavirus crisis.
The Massachusetts Department of
Unemployment Assistance has begun disbursing the
additional benefits to Pandemic Unemployment
Assistance claimants, who received benefits starting
Wednesday.
Payments are expected to land
in claimant accounts by Saturday, according to the
state’s Executive Office of Labor and Workforce
Development.
Claimants through the standard
unemployment assistance program are expected to
receive the extra money by Sept. 15.
The boosted unemployment will
total $900. The grant will fund an extra $300 weekly
payment for those eligible for the three weeks
ending Aug. 1, 8 and 15....
The Bay State has applied for a
fourth week of extra benefits. The state — through
the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, in
coordination with the Department of Unemployment
Assistance — has applied to the Federal Emergency
Management Agency for the week of Aug. 22.
Massachusetts had the nation’s
highest unemployment rate in July at 16.1%,
according to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
report.
Then on
Saturday The Herald reported: ("Nearly one in five
Massachusetts restaurants have permanently closed"):
Nearly one-fifth of Bay State
restaurants have permanently closed due to the
coronavirus pandemic, according to the Massachusetts
Restaurant Association, and others wonder whether
they will survive the fall and winter.
Out of approximately 16,000
statewide, 3,400 have closed their doors for good,
said Bob Luz, the association’s president and CEO.
The rest now offer customers curbside delivery,
indoor dining or dining alfresco.
“Not surprisingly, outdoor
seating has become very popular” among customers
concerned with contracting the virus, Luz said.
But even restaurants that have
the space to offer outdoor dining worry about what
the future holds for them once the weather grows
cold.
Despite all
that miserable economic news, under Baker's now six-month-old lockdown somehow the state is still raking in
revenue. On Friday, September 4 the State House
News Service reported ("State Tax Collections Continue
to Rebound"):
Having taken in $1.992 billion
in tax revenue in August, state tax collections are
running $124 million or more than 3 percent ahead of
their pace one year ago, the Department of Revenue
reported Friday, a potentially promising sign given
predictions that receipts could collapse this fiscal
year.
Of the $1.992 billion collected
last month, all but $13 million will go towards
fiscal year 2021. Counting the $1.979 billion that
will be recorded in FY 2021, August collections were
$7 million less than the August 2019 collections,
DOR said. But through two months of FY 2021, DOR
said it has collected roughly $4.135 billion, which
is $124 million or 3.1 percent more than it had
collected during the same period of fiscal 2020....
The state has $3.5 billion
stashed away in its rainy day fund that could be
used to address budget shortfalls in fiscal year
2020 and beyond, and Beacon Hill has borrowing
options at its disposal to address the unusual
circumstances. State Treasury officials told the
News Service that they have already repaid the $500
million they drew from a $1.75 billion line of
credit they established with banks to help with cash
flow.
The lawsuit before the state
Supreme Judicial Court challenging His Royal Majesty Charles Baker's
decrees from the throne will go forward, though the state (through state
Attorney General Maura Healey's office) attempted to get the court to
cavalierly dismiss it out-of-hand. In its Advances for the coming
week the State House News Service reported:
BAKER EXECUTIVE ORDER
LAWSUIT: The state's highest court hears oral arguments in a lawsuit
over whether Gov. Charlie Baker's executive orders during the
pandemic have overstepped his legal authority. Lawyers with the New
Civil Liberties Alliance filed the case on behalf of local
plaintiffs arguing that the Civil Defense Act cited by the
administration does not cover pandemics and that local authorities
should have driven response to the public health crisis.
Attorney General Maura
Healey defended the governor's actions as within the authority of
that act. The proceedings will be livestreamed online.
State. Republican state
Rep. Shawn Dooley on Wednesday filed an amicus brief in support of
the lawsuit, joining with the plaintiffs against the governor from
his party. (Friday, 9 a.m., John Adams Courthouse, Courtroom One,
Pemberton Square, Boston)
On
his Facebook page state Rep. Shawn Dooley explained why he filed his
amicus brief with the court against the governor of his own party:
Maybe not the most exciting
read - but here is my amicus brief that I filed
today with the Supreme Judicial Court on the subject
of Executive Branch overreach.
This is the first time I’ve
taken on something like this, and while I might not
win, I still think it is important to speak up and
take a stand before it is too late. Maybe this
time the overreach is ok, and maybe the next time,
but sooner or later we are going to wake up and
realize our voices have been silenced and the checks
and balances are only found in the history books.
Maybe it isn’t the most popular
position, but I took an oath to defend the
Constitution and I’m not going to ignore the
public’s trust for political expediency.
One of those life lessons where
it was way more work and substantially more complex
than I anticipated when the SJC asked for an amicus
brief. I’m married to a lawyer and I’ve spent
a life time watching lawyers on tv - I’ve got
this... wrong!
I must thank one of my best
friends who happens to be one of the smartest people
I know (right after CiCi) - John Sten - who took all
of my thoughts, ideas, and random musings and
crafted it into a coherent legal argument and filed
it on my behalf. If it wasn’t for him this
would have never happened and I can’t thank him and
his firm (Armstrong Teasdale - one of the largest
law firms in the United States) for taking this on
and going above and beyond.
Well, if you are having trouble
falling asleep - here you go,,, sorry - couldn’t get
Facebook to attach it and formatting doesn’t work
that well on a post - but hopefully you can muddle
through. If you want a clean copy, let me know and I
will email it over.
Have a great night and thank
you for all of your support.
COMMONWEALTH OF
MASSACHUSETTS
SJC-12983
Supreme Judicial Court
DAWN DESROSIERS, and DAWN DESROSIERS D/B/A HAIR
4 YOU, et al., Plaintiff-Petitioners,
v.
CHARLES D. BAKER, JR., in his official capacity
as the Governor of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, Defendant-Respondent.
ON RESERVATION AND REPORT FROM THE SUPREME
JUDICIAL COURT FOR SUFFOLK COUNTY . . .
That's pretty amazing, and
awe-inspiring — considering the state of
politics and level of self-dealing and corruption these days
— that even one elected official remembers
he took an honest-to-God oath of office to preserve and protect
the state and federal constitutions and laws. "Maybe it isn’t the
most popular position," he wrote, "but I took an oath to defend the
Constitution and I’m not going to ignore the public’s trust for
political expediency." Shawn Dooley is a rare man on Beacon Hill,
one among a dying if not outright extinct breed.
The day after Tuesday's
primary election the winner of the Democrat primary in the 4th
Congressional District to replace Joe-Joe-Joe Kennedy had still not been
determined. The winner wasn't finally declared until early Friday
morning. According to the State House News Service, "Mermell
conceded without seeking a recount, but said the experience left her
with concerns about the process that must be ironed out before
November."
The News Service reported on
Wednesday ("Galvin Seeks Judicial Clearance to Count Ballots After
Primary Day"):
With votes still being counted
in the Fourth Congressional District, Secretary of
State William Galvin has asked Suffolk Superior
Court to explicitly authorize local clerks to
continue counting mail-in and other ballots received
before the polls closed on Tuesday, but which still
have not been tallied.
Galvin said that due to the
volume of mail-in ballots and, in some case, their
last-minute arrival, not all ballots received by the
8 p.m. deadline on Tuesday have been counted. The
secretary, however, said that state law lacks
procedures for counting ballots after the day of the
election.
Widespread mail-in voting is
new to Massachusetts this year, put in place as a
result of the COVID-19 pandemic to encourage safe
participation in the elections.
That was one
election in one congressional district
— and mail-in ballots
created considerable chaos. In just one
congressional district —
of 435 congressional districts nationwide.
What is going to happen come
November 3 with a national mail-in ballot election? Do you even really
want to know? It's very concerning to me and should be to everyone, with
the potential to became even a scary disaster.
A September 2 column in The
Patriot Post ("Democrats
Unveil Their Voter Fraud Plans; Joe Biden's party fully expects to win —
just maybe not on election night") presents the mapped-out game
plan:
Come mid-November, don’t say we
didn’t warn you. Democrats are confident that
they’ll find the votes necessary to win this year’s
presidential election — it’s just that they aren’t
planning to find them on Election Day.
As Tim Pearce
reports, “A Democratic analytics firm is warning
that the results of the presidential election may
swing wildly days after election night as an
unprecedented number of mail-in and absentee ballots
are counted.” ...
Pearce continues, quoting
Hawkfish CEO Josh Mendelsohn, who explained his
firm’s projections in terms of a “red mirage” on
election night “showing an overwhelming victory for
President Trump before Democratic nominee Joe Biden
wins the election days later.”
“The reason we talk about a red
mirage,” says Mendelsohn, “is in fact because we
believe that on election night, we’re going to see
Donald Trump in a stronger position than the reality
actually is. We are sounding an alarm and saying
that this is a very real possibility, that the data
is going to show on election night an incredible
victory for Donald Trump.”
This prediction shouldn’t
surprise anyone, though. After all, it’s what
Democrats do: They lose elections, then conjure up
just enough votes in tightly contested races to
overturn the unfavorable outcomes. (Ask former
Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman about his
disastrous “Felons
for Franken” experience in 2008.)
What’s surprising, though, is
that the Democrats don’t usually don’t tip their
fraudulent hand this far in advance.
Just a few
days before (August 29), The New York Post ran an
extensive exposé, "Confessions
of a voter fraud: I was a master at fixing mail-in
ballots," which reported (excerpts):
A top Democratic operative says
voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots, is no
myth. And he knows this because he’s been doing it,
on a grand scale, for decades.
Mail-in ballots have become the
latest flashpoint in the 2020 elections. While
President Trump and the GOP warn of widespread
manipulation of the absentee vote that will swell
with COVID polling restrictions, many Democrats and
their media allies have dismissed such concerns as
unfounded.
But the political insider, who
spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears
prosecution, said fraud is more the rule than the
exception. His dirty work has taken him through the
weeds of municipal and federal elections in
Paterson, Atlantic City, Camden, Newark, Hoboken and
Hudson County and his fingerprints can be found in
local legislative, mayoral and congressional races
across the Garden State. Some of the biggest names
and highest office holders in New Jersey have
benefited from his tricks, according to campaign
records The Post reviewed.
“An election that is swayed by
500 votes, 1,000 votes — it can make a difference,”
the tipster said. “It could be enough to flip
states.”
The whisteblower — whose
identity, rap sheet and long history working as a
consultant to various campaigns were confirmed by
The Post — says he not only changed ballots himself
over the years, but led teams of fraudsters and
mentored at least 20 operatives in New Jersey, New
York and Pennsylvania — a critical 2020 swing
state....
A Bernie Sanders die-hard with
no horse in the presidential race, he said he felt
compelled to come forward in the hope that states
would act now to fix the glaring security problems
present in mail-in ballots.
“This is a real thing,” he
said. “And there is going to be a f–king war coming
November 3rd over this stuff … If they knew how the
sausage was made, they could fix it.”
Mail-in voting can be
complicated — tough enough that 84,000 New Yorkers
had their mailed votes thrown out in the June 23
Democratic presidential primary for incorrectly
filling them out.
But for political pros, they’re
a piece of cake. . . . That’s when the
election-rigger springs into action.
We've getting a preview of
the direction this upcoming election will likely take —
and it will be "unprecedented," to use the
tired and worn-out
cliché, like so much else we've been living through.
It's not going to be pretty — in fact I expect it to get
ugly. Very ugly.
Adding to the concern and
chaos, the News Service reported on Tuesday ("Baker Says Local Officials
Requested Guard as Backup"):
Gov. Charlie Baker activated
the National Guard over the weekend at the request
of municipal officials who sought backup resources
if planned demonstrations grew larger than what
local police could handle, he told reporters
Tuesday.
Baker, who did not offer a
detailed explanation when he activated 1,000
Guardsmen on Friday, said during his first public
appearance since last week that city and town
leaders flagged event pages on social media and
inquired about assistance from the state.
An Executive Office of Public
Safety and Security spokesperson referenced
"potential large scale demonstrations" late Monday
night when Baker deactivated the guard.
The governor did not explicitly
describe any of the reported weekend events. Local
news reports covered demonstrations against police
violence and against the state's new mandate for all
K-12 students to receive flu shots.
I hope Gov. Baker keeps those
National Guard troops on standby alert and ready for
rapid response
through the November election and beyond. I expect
they will be needed as tensions escalate and especially when neither side accepts the result
of the presidential election — if there ever is a
credible result.
|
 |
 |
|
Chip Ford
Executive Director |
|
|
|
Full News Reports Follow
(excerpted above) |
|
The
Cape Cod
Times
Thursday, August 27, 2020
Work isn’t done for citizens watchdog group
By Cynthia Stead
The founder of Citizens for Limited Taxation,
Barbara Anderson, passed away in 2016. We lost Chip
Faulkner, the public face of the organization and
decades-long ringmaster of the conservative Friday Morning
Group, last year. Some assumed that the organization would
end as well.
But their work isn’t finished.
Chip Ford, Executive Director of Citizens for Limited
Taxation, sent out an alert on S-2813, the Senate
Transportation Bond Bill, regarding its Section 5 – “Local
and Regional Transportation Initiatives.” Like most
legislation, it is composed of technical language to
discourage any close reading.
“Notwithstanding Ch. 59, 60A, 62, or 64H or any other
general or special law to the contrary, the governing body
of a city or town may vote to accept this chapter
authorizing a surcharge on a single subject of taxation. A
governing body that intends to accept the chapter 23 of 61
shall determine a single subject of taxation to be levied
and the amount and rate of the surcharge on the single
subject of taxation prior to approval by the voters. If the
identified single subject of taxation is a real or personal
property excise, the amount of the surcharge shall not be
included in a calculation of total taxes assessed for the
purposes of section 21c of chapter 59.”
I ask you, what could be clearer than that?
But here is what it means, despite the oddity of a tax law
change being buried in a bond bill.
Section 5 would allow additional municipal taxation outside
the limits of Proposition 2½ provided the funds are for
“transportation projects,” which could be roads, bridges,
bike or pedestrian paths, design or construction of mass
transit projects or “other transportation related projects,”
like the pretty street lights near the rotary at the Hyannis
Community Center that the Massachusetts Department of
Transportation Highway Division refused to fully reimburse.
Right now, such projects are funded in the annual town
budget. Capital expenses – meaning construction, not repair
– also receive annual Chapter 90 road funds from the state
to be spent at the town’s discretion. We often see Prop. 2½
overrides for large road projects, or debt exclusions, which
are different in that once the extra funds are paid down the
increase doesn’t stay on the tax rate.
It is where these extra taxes can be raised that has extra
relevance for the Cape. The taxes municipalities will be
permitted to raise outside and beyond 2½% include ”(local)
sales, real or personal property, room occupancy, or vehicle
taxes.” Those taxes are so indirect. It’s not like it is on
the property tax bill that goes to every homeowner. Real and
personal property is paid by businesses on the value of
their equipment or renters on the value of their furniture.
Room occupancy is paid by tourists. Ironically, motor
vehicle excise is probably the least regressive of taxes.
You may struggle to keep up and pay taxes on a million
dollar family house you inherited, but you aren’t likely to
purchase a Rolls Royce SUV unless you really can afford it.
It’s tempting to allow larger automatic tax hikes on taxes
you may not have to pay yourself. As the saying goes, “Don’t
tax you, Don’t tax me, Tax that man behind the tree!”
As Chip Ford writes, this Section 5 is a solution in search
of a problem. For 40-odd years, municipal budgets have been
held to a 2½% increase annually. If there is an expenditure
beyond that which the voters in the town think worth
pursuing, they can vote to increase beyond the limit, either
temporarily with a debt exclusion where feasible or through
a permanent override. If the voters approve the project, it
will get the votes and the funding. But how much easier it
might be to increase without having the voters so directly
involved, as they might say no.
A bond bill of hundreds of pages is released on a Friday,
with amendments due on Monday. An amendment to remove the
section failed 32-8, which is significant as it means four
Democrats joined four Republican senators in opposition, but
it remained in the bill. It is in the hands of a conference
committee, which usually would have had a limited amount of
time to report the bill out. But instead of ending sessions
in June, they will now end in December, so there need not be
a vote taken until everybody is safely reelected.
Nobody will remember two years from now, especially if
you’ve already been reelected a dozen times, until the
business taxes go up with no clear explanation of why. Visit
cltg.org and
see what other interesting nets are being cast toward our
pocketbooks, and support them if you can.
We have too few watchdogs in government and too many yipping
Pomeranians. Citizens for Limited Taxation is still growling
for us all.
State House
News Service
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Except Nangle, Leadership So Far Remains Intact
By Katie Lannan
All but one of the 18 House incumbents on the primary ballot
Tuesday successfully fended off challenges, including 11 who
are either committee chairs or serve in Speaker Robert
DeLeo's leadership team.
Representatives who won their primaries included Second
Assistant Majority Leader Paul Donato, a Medford Democrat
who frequently presides over House sessions, Housing
Committee Co-Chair Kevin Honan of Boston, Cannabis Policy
Committee Co-Chair David Rogers of Cambridge, Revenue
Committee Co-Chair Mark Cusack of Braintree, Election Laws
Committee Co-Chair John Lawn of Watertown, State
Administration and Regulatory Oversight Committee Co-Chair
Danielle Gregoire of Marlborough, Public Committee Co-Chair
Jerald Parisella of Beverly, Financial Services Committee
Co-Chair James Murphy of Weymouth, House Personnel and
Administration Committee Chair Frank Moran of Lawrence,
House Rules Committee Chair William Galvin of Canton, and
House Post Audit and Oversight Committee Chair David Linsky
of Natick. Of those, Honan, Donato, Rogers, Moran, Lawn and
Galvin were effectively reelected, with no challengers on
the general election ballot.
The only House lawmaker to lose their seat in a primary was
Lowell Democrat David Nangle, who was defeated by Vanna
Howard. Nangle started this session with a leadership post
as division chair, and stepped down from that position and
his seats on the House Ethics and Rules committees in the
wake of his February arrest on federal charges connected to
bank fraud and misuse of campaign funds, to which he has
pleaded not guilty.
Rep. Nicholas Boldyga of Southwick, the only GOP lawmaker in
either branch with a primary contest, also won his race.
He'll square off with Democrat Kerri O'Connor in November.
In the Senate, where every Democrat holds a chairmanship or
leadership post, Financial Services Committee Co-Chair James
Welch of West Springfield was the only incumbent to lose
Tuesday.
The Boston
Herald
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Voters stick with same, tired old pols in non-change
election
By Joe Battenfeld
This is supposed to be the big change election?
Up and down the ballot on Tuesday, nearly all incumbent
lawmakers swept to victory in their primary contests as
Massachusetts voters rejected fresh-faced challengers like
U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III.
At the State House, just two Democratic incumbents lost
their seats, and one of those, Rep. David Nangle, is facing
federal bank fraud charges.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo’s leadership team won all their
contested races except for Nangle, so there will be no
change in how the Legislature is run.
And for those looking for change in the Massachusetts
congressional delegation, forget it.
Incumbents U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal,
U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch and U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton all held
onto their seats, trouncing their challengers.
Thirty-year-old Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, who was the most
formidable challenger in the House races, did not come close
to unseating Neal, the powerful House Ways and Means
chairman. It was not the only disappointing loss for
progressives on Tuesday.
In the 4th Congressional District, JoeK3’s turf, two young
Democrats, Newton City Councilor and war veteran Jake
Auchincloss, and former Deval Patrick aide Jesse Mermell,
were battling in a neck-and-neck race — though Auchincloss
held a more than 1,000 vote lead.
If that lead holds, it would be a bitter disappointment for
progressives, who opposed the war veteran and former
Republican Auchincloss.
The Kennedy race may have been the most puzzling because
voters so resoundingly rejected his message for “fresh” and
“new” leadership — code words for “I’m younger.” And Markey
may also have benefited from a visceral dislike of Kennedy’s
vanity campaign. The Newton Democrat could never really
articulate a reason for why he decided to try and oust
fellow Democrat Markey.
The fact that the 74-year-old Markey has been in Congress
for more than four decades didn’t seem to matter to voters —
a major miscalculation by the Kennedy campaign.
The Malden Democrat, who hired veteran strategist John Walsh
to run his campaign, successfully remade himself as an
outsider and middle class street fighter. His ubiquitous
pair of old, white Nike sneakers — that he never wore until
he got in the campaign — may have been the equivalent of
Scott Brown’s old pickup truck that helped remake his image
in his stunning Senate victory over Democrat Martha Coakley.
Markey assembled an impressive coalition of younger voters
and progressive environmentalists that helped fuel his
victory, and the endorsement from U.S. Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez didn’t hurt, either.
AOC helped Markey connect with a new generation of votes
that probably never heard of the longtime senator until
Kennedy challenged him.
Suffolk University pollster David Paleologos, who correctly
called the Markey race, said he believes it’s very difficult
in Massachusetts for white, male challengers to unseat older
white, male incumbents.
And while some voters do want change, “people are opting for
a steady hand, in many cases someone who has experience, can
pass legislation, write bills and make things happen”,
Paleologos said.
The Boston
Herald
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Report: August job growth puts Boston among top cities in
nation
Openings signal start to recovery, economists say
By Marie Szaniszlo
Boston had the second-highest month-over-month growth in job
openings in the nation in August, part of a slight uptick in
openings nationally, according to a new report.
Boston had 120,519 job openings, a 7.6% increase over July,
but down 22.8% over the same period last year, according to
Glassdoor, one of the world’s largest job and recruiting
websites.
The growth last month was second only to that of Chicago,
which had 168,575 job openings, up 9.4% from July, but 18%
lower than last August, the report said.
“The most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics said that Massachusetts had the highest
unemployment rate in the nation, so the fact that there are
employers seeking to fill positions is a very good sign,”
said Greg Sullivan, research director at the Pioneer
Institute, a public-policy think tank in Boston. “This shows
Massachusetts is starting to climb out of the economic
collapse.”
Jay Zagorsky, an economist at Boston University’s Questrom
School of Business, said part of Boston’s steep rebound is
the reopening of the metro area’s many colleges.
“But while the snap back is doing quite well, I don’t think
it will reach the peaks we were at nine months ago,”
Zagorsky said.
Nationally, job openings improved slowly in August, rising
2% month-over-month to 4.97 million, but they are still 18%
below pre-pandemic levels, showing there is still a long
road ahead for the economic recovery.
“It’s a reflection of both how deep the economic hole is
that we’re in and also the improvement that comes from
states and businesses reopening,” said Daniel Zhao, senior
economist at Glassdoor.
The Boston
Herald
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
State starts to disburse extra $300 weekly unemployment
payments
The retroactive boosted unemployment benefits will total
$900
By Rick Sobey
Some Massachusetts residents this week will start to receive
the extra $300 in weekly unemployment benefits, according to
officials in the Bay State, home to the country’s highest
unemployment rate amid the coronavirus crisis.
The Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance has
begun disbursing the additional benefits to Pandemic
Unemployment Assistance claimants, who received benefits
starting Wednesday.
Payments are expected to land in claimant accounts by
Saturday, according to the state’s Executive Office of Labor
and Workforce Development.
Claimants through the standard unemployment assistance
program are expected to receive the extra money by Sept. 15.
The boosted unemployment will total $900. The grant will
fund an extra $300 weekly payment for those eligible for the
three weeks ending Aug. 1, 8 and 15.
“The Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance
continues to work on the technology and business
requirements necessary for this program and anticipates
being able to quickly deliver retroactive funds to all
eligible claimants in the coming weeks,” the Executive
Office of Labor and Workforce Development said in a
statement. “Most eligible claimants currently receiving
benefits do not need to take any action because the
Commonwealth will automatically add LWA to their weekly
benefit payment retroactive to the dates specified in the
grant.”
The Bay State has applied for a fourth week of extra
benefits. The state — through the Massachusetts Emergency
Management Agency, in coordination with the Department of
Unemployment Assistance — has applied to the Federal
Emergency Management Agency for the week of Aug. 22.
Massachusetts had the nation’s highest unemployment rate in
July at 16.1%, according to a U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics report.
Bay State unemployment was down from 17.4% in June but still
far above July’s national unemployment rate of 10.2%.
The Boston
Herald
Saturday, September 5, 2020
Nearly one in five Massachusetts restaurants have
permanently closed
By Marie Szaniszlo
Nearly one-fifth of Bay State restaurants have permanently
closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the
Massachusetts Restaurant Association, and others wonder
whether they will survive the fall and winter.
Out of approximately 16,000 statewide, 3,400 have closed
their doors for good, said Bob Luz, the association’s
president and CEO. The rest now offer customers curbside
delivery, indoor dining or dining alfresco.
“Not surprisingly, outdoor seating has become very popular”
among customers concerned with contracting the virus, Luz
said.
But even restaurants that have the space to offer outdoor
dining worry about what the future holds for them once the
weather grows cold.
Owners are preparing for the fall by buying outdoor heaters
and tents, he said. But the state is allowing outdoor dining
only until the end of November.
“Some guests will not choose to come inside,” he said.
“Takeout will become even more popular.”
Boston has been particularly hard hit, Luz said, because
many people in the suburbs continue to work from home and
are not coming into the city.
“It’s a very challenging time and a very precarious future
for restaurants across the city, state and country,” Luz
said. “We are in the unusual position of having to beg the
state and federal government for help, whereas restaurants
are usually the most philanthropic industry out there.”
Donato Frattaroli’s North End eatery, Il Molo, has remained
closed indefinitely since earlier this year because the
state has not yet allowed bars to reopen, and Il Molo’s bar
made up about 20% of the restaurant’s capacity. Frattaroli
had to lay off his staff, although he was able to give some
the option of working at his other restaurant, Victory Point
in Quincy.
There, roughly 40% of business relied on the bar, so
Frattaroli had to get creative, installing high-top tables
around the bar and making use of his outdoor seating. But
with social distancing, he has to use fewer tables.
So within the last three weeks, he’s opened a take-out pizza
shop and an ice cream store at Victory Point to help pay his
bills, and keep his staff of 60 employed and, hopefully, see
him through the fall and winter, he said.
Tony Maws said Craigie Burger, the Fenway restaurant he was
a partner in, closed in March, and his other restaurant,
Craigie on Main in Cambridge, has been selling food to go.
Two weeks ago, he opened Craigie Next Door, an outdoor
eatery in a former parking lot.
“We’re operating at 30 percent of our normal volume,” said
Maws, co-founder of Massachusetts Restaurants United.
“Fall’s around the corner, outdoor dining will disappear,
our PPP (Paycheck Protection Program loan) will run out, and
independent restaurants will die.”
Ultimately, he said, that will be a loss not only for owners
like him and the employees they will have to lay off, but
for everyone.
“Independent restaurants are the flavor and personality of
your main streets,” Maws said. “We support many other
businesses, including farmers and purveyors. It’s in
everybody’s interest to have independent restaurants
survive.”
State House
News Service
Friday, September 4, 2020
State Tax Collections Continue to Rebound
Running Ahead of FY 2020 After Steep Decline in Spring
By Colin A. Young
Having taken in $1.992 billion in tax revenue in August,
state tax collections are running $124 million or more than
3 percent ahead of their pace one year ago, the Department
of Revenue reported Friday, a potentially promising sign
given predictions that receipts could collapse this fiscal
year.
Of the $1.992 billion collected last month, all but $13
million will go towards fiscal year 2021. Counting the
$1.979 billion that will be recorded in FY 2021, August
collections were $7 million less than the August 2019
collections, DOR said. But through two months of FY 2021,
DOR said it has collected roughly $4.135 billion, which is
$124 million or 3.1 percent more than it had collected
during the same period of fiscal 2020.
"Revenues for the month of August were mainly driven by
withholding, part of which is attributed to withholding on
unemployment insurance benefits, as well as the regular
sales tax. These increases were offset by decreases in
non-withheld income tax, meals tax, corporate and business
taxes, and 'All Other' tax," Revenue Commissioner Geoffrey
Snyder said. "August year-to-date total collections were
also impacted by corporate and business tax payments
attributable to returns due in April, following the waiver
of late filing and payment penalties until July 15 for such
returns. DOR will continue to monitor revenue collections
closely."
State officials, citing estimates provided while the
pandemic has unfolded, have estimated that fiscal 2021 tax
collections could fall anywhere fromm $2 billion to $8
billion below fiscal 2020 levels.
It is unclear how August's actual collections compare to the
expectations of state budget managers in the administration
and Legislature. After a December hearing, administration
and legislative officials agreed to a projection of $31.15
billion in fiscal 2021 tax revenue, but that outlook has not
been officially revised and DOR has not shared its
benchmarks for monthly revenue collections.
DOR said that August is "one of the smaller months for
revenue collection" because few individual or business
taxpayers make significant estimated payments during the
month. August has typically provided about 6.7 percent of
the state's annual revenue, though DOR said this August "is
different from previous years because of the impact of
COVID-19 on tax bases and because revenues collected in this
month include deferred payments on personal income tax and
corporate excise payments, but exclude some regular sales,
meals and room occupancy taxes which are postponed to
September."
Friday's revenue report from DOR should provide some clarity
for Baker administration officials and legislative leaders
involved in managing the state's finances. It comes while
Massachusetts has the worst unemployment rate in the nation
(16.1 percent) for a second month running.
In late July, revenue officials said incomplete revenue
collections for the fiscal year that ended June 30 totaled
$27.276 billion, which was $3.014 billion or 9.9 percent
below what budget managers were expecting when they crafted
the $43.3 billion state budget in early 2019. DOR collected
$2.293 billion of fiscal year 2020 revenue in July, plugging
some of that gap and potentially reducing the shortfall to
roughly $721 million for FY 20. With another $13 million
coming from August collections, the shortfall could be
reduced to around $708 million.
The state has $3.5 billion stashed away in its rainy day
fund that could be used to address budget shortfalls in
fiscal year 2020 and beyond, and Beacon Hill has borrowing
options at its disposal to address the unusual
circumstances. State Treasury officials told the News
Service that they have already repaid the $500 million they
drew from a $1.75 billion line of credit they established
with banks to help with cash flow.
Massachusetts is also without a plan for the fiscal year
2021 budget, which typically would be in place by now.
Instead, the state is running on a $16.53 billion interim
budget that will keep state government operating through at
least the end of October. Lawmakers and administration
budget officials have said they need to know what, if any,
relief the federal government is going to provide to states
before they can craft a budget for the rest of fiscal year
2021.
— Michael P. Norton
contributed to this report.
State House
News Service
Friday, September 4, 2020
Advances - Week of Sept. 6, 2020
Lawmakers made clear in August that Massachusetts can wait a
little longer for solutions to social justice and policing,
climate change, health care, transportation, housing, and
the state's highest-in-the-nation jobless rate. The
elections - that's a different story. Since recessing formal
sessions on July 31, most legislators have been on break or
focusing on primary races.
Now, Secretary of State William Galvin is hustling to get
the Nov. 3 general election ballot together and out to
overseas voters to comply with federal deadlines. Many
lawmakers will spend the next eight weeks campaigning for
themselves or their colleagues or engaging in the race for
the White House between President Trump and Joe Biden.
The state on Thursday hits the six-month anniversary of life
under a pandemic state of emergency and Friday marks the
19th anniversary of another event that changed the course of
life here and around the world - the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks on the United States.
As students and families warily prepare to blend a new
academic year into their pandemic life schedules, a major
undertaking complicated by distressing conditions in the
child care industry, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate
President Karen Spilka have given no indication of when they
will call lawmakers back to Beacon Hill to deal with the
major issues before five conference committees or a
months-late fiscal 2021 budget.
The twice-weekly informal session routine is on tap again
next week. The unofficial official line from legislative
leaders is that six-member conference committees are working
hard and making progress, but since meetings or other
communications between the negotiators are not public,
there's no way to know for sure what's happening, or how
hard and often lawmakers are working on the bills....
Both branches resume informal sessions at 11 a.m. [Tuesday].
The branches have tended to local bills and sick leave banks
during brief, twice-weekly sessions since July 31, when they
voted to extend formal sessions to keep alive major bills
dealing with climate change, policing, economic development,
transportation and health care....
Massachusetts workers eligible for at least $100 in weekly
unemployment benefits should soon see an additional $300 per
week deposited in their accounts. The state qualified for a
grant in the federal Lost Wages Supplemental Payment
Assistance program for three weeks -- ending Aug. 1, Aug. 8
and Aug. 15 -- and disbursement of payments began this week.
State labor officials say that the payments are expected in
claimant accounts by Saturday, Sept. 5 for those in the
Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and by Sept. 15 for
those in the standard unemployment insurance program....
Friday, Sept. 11, 2020
BAKER EXECUTIVE ORDER LAWSUIT: The state's highest court
hears oral arguments in a lawsuit over whether Gov. Charlie
Baker's executive orders during the pandemic have
overstepped his legal authority. Lawyers with the New Civil
Liberties Alliance filed the case on behalf of local
plaintiffs arguing that the Civil Defense Act cited by the
administration does not cover pandemics and that local
authorities should have driven response to the public health
crisis.
Attorney General Maura Healey defended the governor's
actions as within the authority of that act. The proceedings
will be livestreamed online.
State. Republican state Rep. Shawn Dooley on Wednesday filed
an amicus brief in support of the lawsuit, joining with the
plaintiffs against the governor from his party. (Friday, 9
a.m., John Adams Courthouse, Courtroom One, Pemberton
Square, Boston)
State House
News Service
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Galvin Seeks Judicial Clearance to Count Ballots After
Primary Day
By Matt Murphy
With votes still being counted in the Fourth Congressional
District, Secretary of State William Galvin has asked
Suffolk Superior Court to explicitly authorize local clerks
to continue counting mail-in and other ballots received
before the polls closed on Tuesday, but which still have not
been tallied.
Galvin said that due to the volume of mail-in ballots and,
in some case, their last-minute arrival, not all ballots
received by the 8 p.m. deadline on Tuesday have been
counted. The secretary, however, said that state law lacks
procedures for counting ballots after the day of the
election.
Widespread mail-in voting is new to Massachusetts this year,
put in place as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic to
encourage safe participation in the elections.
"On Election Day, there are strict procedures in place to
make sure that ballots are counted in public view, where
anyone may observe the process. It is important that we
preserve that same level of transparency for ballots counted
after Election Day," Galvin said in a statement Wednesday
afternoon.
Galvin's office said it had reached out to the leading
Democratic candidates in the Fourth Congressional District
to inform them about what he was doing.
With over 96 percent of the vote record, Newton City
Councilor Jake Auchincloss appeared to be holding on to a
slim 1,506-vote lead over his closest competitor Jesse
Mermell, a progressive one-time Brookline selectwoman and
former head of the Alliance for Business Leadership.
Newton was one of the communities where late-arriving
ballots were still being counted on Wednesday morning.
Unofficial results posted online showed Mermell with a
934-vote lead on Auchincloss in the city west of Boston, but
City Clerk David Olsen told the News Service that overseas
and mail-in ballots that arrived late Tuesday, but before
the 8 p.m. deadline, were still being counted.
Olsen said he didn't know exactly how many ballots had not
been tallied, but was it was "not many."
"We are getting there," Olsen said, just before 11 a.m.
Earlier in the day, Mermell's campaign manager Katie
Prisco-Buxbaum wrote a letter to city and town clerks asking
their offices to publicly share the status of their ballot
count.
"We are pleased to see the actions being taken by clerks and
Secretary of State Galvin to secure and count all the votes
in this race. This is exactly in line with the concerns our
campaign raised earlier today," Prisco-Buxbaum said. "Given
the unprecedented nature of this election process, we
believe it is incumbent on all communities to be clear about
how many ballots are outstanding, including ballots that
arrived as polls closed, so that we can have the utmost
confidence in the end result."
It's unclear how long it might take for a judge to consider
Galvin's request.
State House
News Service
Friday, September 4, 2020
Weekly Roundup - Endgame
Recap and analysis of the week in state government
By Matt Murphy
Last October, state Sen. Eric Lesser said the decision to
schedule this year's primary elections before Labor Day was
like "crossing a Rubicon," and not in a good way.
The Longmeadow Democrat worried that the election would
coincide with vacations, parents prepping for back-to-school
and moving day. It would be, he said, the most "chaotic" day
of the year.
Well, here we are, on the doorstep of the holiday weekend
with the primary elections, finally, in the rearview mirror
and it turned out Lesser was correct, only in ways he
probably never imagined.
The COVID-19 pandemic was not on the radar that day when
Lesser was pushing for a Sept. 8 primary, but it irrevocably
changed the 2020 elections, and maybe all elections moving
forward. And it wasn't all bad. Sure, candidates were locked
up in their homes for months, and even when they did emerge,
they couldn't engage with voters in ways they normally
might.
But participation wound up being high, with over 30 percent
of registered voters taking part and setting a record for
raw votes with over 1.5 million ballots cast either early,
in person or on election day, or by mail through a reform
that may be here to stay.
Also likely here to stay? Ed Markey.
You might have heard already, but Markey, the state's junior
U.S. senator, defeated a Kennedy for the first time in
Massachusetts. Oh, who are we kidding? Of course, you heard.
Thousands of keystrokes were used this week by local and
national journalists to explain how U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy
III, the 39-year-old heir to the Kennedy political dynasty,
lost to a septuagenarian who, by some accounts, spends more
time in Chevy Chase, Maryland than in Malden.
Just how Markey transformed himself from something of an
afterthought in a delegation dotted with stars over the
years to the hip grandfatherly figure with youth street cred
and the sneakers to match could probably be taught in
political science classes.
A race that looked from the outset to be about generational
change wound up being just that. It's just that the
generations did not side with the candidates election
pundits thought they would.
Markey won with the help of New York Congresswoman
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, young voters, and educated
urbanites in Boston and its surrounding progressive cities
and towns, while Kennedy performed strongest on his own turf
- the Fourth Congressional District - and blue collar cities
like Lowell, Lawrence, Springfield and Worcester.
Once a rising star, Kennedy is out of politics, for now. But
things can change quickly.
Markey got his opening to join the Senate in a special
election after President Barack Obama tapped John Kerry for
his Cabinet. Kennedy, or any number of Massachusetts pols,
could find themselves looking at a similar opportunity in
January.
The AOC coalition that propelled Markey past Kennedy did not
have a similar influence in the First Congressional District
where U.S. Rep. Richard Neal rather handily beat back a
challenge from progressive Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse.
Neal described himself on election night as someone who has
delivered jobs and redevelopment for his district and will
keep on delivering as the chair of the influential Ways and
Means Committee. But even in defeat, Morse was still
kicking, suggesting Neal remains someone beholden to special
interests.
The Fourth Congressional District was the other big race to
watch on Tuesday night ... and Wednesday night, and Thursday
night.
The voting counting to determine the Democratic nominee for
Kennedy's House seat dragged on for more than two days after
the polls closed with Newton City Councilor Jake Auchincloss
and Jesse Mermell, a former Deval Patrick advisor and
progressive business group leader, locked in a
too-close-to-call contest atop a nine-candidate field.
The delays stemmed from the new mail-in voting system that
saw thousands of ballots arrive at some town halls on the
day of the election, including some after 5 p.m. While those
ballots were supposed to be transported to local precincts
for counting, not all of the late-arriving ones made it.
Note to all: this is a development that bears monitoring for
the general election, when even more balloting is expected
to be done via mail.
Secretary of State William Galvin would end up in court
obtaining an order authorizing the count to continue, and on
Thursday Newton, Wellesley and, lastly, Franklin wrapped up
their ballot processing.
The count in Franklin lasted until after midnight early
Friday morning, with Auchincloss eventually declared the
winner. Mermell conceded without seeking a recount, but said
the experience left her with concerns about the process that
must be ironed out before November.
Mermell also told backers of a ranked-choice ballot question
this fall that she would gladly become the face of their
campaign after she lost a rare open race for Congress to
someone who earned less than a quarter of the district's
support.
While incumbents fared well on the federal side of the
ledger, two incumbent Democrats in the state Legislature
were swept out.
One of those lawmakers was Lowell Rep. David Nangle, who had
been a member of the Speaker Robert DeLeo's leadership team
until he was indicted in February on federal fraud charges.
Nangle has pleaded not guilty, but lost a three way primary
won by Vanna Howard, a Cambodian refugee from Lowell who
once worked as an aide to former U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas.
Sen. James Welch, the Senate chair of the Financial Services
Committee from West Springfield, was the other incumbent to
fall, losing to Springfield City Councilor Adam Gomez.
Other legislators, including Medford Rep. Paul Donato and
Boston Rep. Kevin Honan, survived challenges from their
left.
So there are the poll results in a nutshell. But it only
felt like election news was the only news this week.
U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling charged nine Boston police
officers in what he described as a years-long overtime fraud
scheme, and parents and teachers on both sides of the debate
continued to go back-and-forth over the safety of returning
to school in the coming weeks.
The Department of Revenue also announced that even after
crediting late income tax payments in August back to fiscal
2020, state collections are shockingly ahead of the first
two months of last year by 3.1 percent, giving hope that
predictions of a $6 billion collapse may have been
overblown.
Gov. Charlie Baker announced that field teams will be
swarming Chelsea, Everett, Lawrence, Lynn and Revere this
weekend as part of an education outreach campaign to help
those hotspots get control of COVID-19 spread.
While key indices continue to show Massachusetts doing well
in its fight against the pandemic, problem areas persist.
The pandemic also continues to claim the lives of people and
institutions, with several well-known Boston bars and
restaurants on Bolyston Street saying this week they would
not be reopening.
"It stinks," Baker said, speaking for just about everyone.
STORY OF THE WEEK: Whether the Kennedy dynasty is over, or
on pause, remains to be seen. But this round went to Ed
Markey.
The
Patriot
Post
September 2, 2020
Democrats Unveil Their Voter Fraud Plans
Joe Biden's party fully expects to win — just maybe not on
election night.
By Douglas Andrews
[Website]
Come mid-November,
don’t say we didn’t warn you. Democrats are confident that
they’ll find the votes necessary to win this year’s
presidential election — it’s just that they aren’t planning
to find them on Election Day.
As Tim Pearce
reports, “A Democratic analytics firm is warning that
the results of the presidential election may swing wildly
days after election night as an unprecedented number of
mail-in and absentee ballots are counted.”
And where might that “unprecedented number of mail-in and
absentee ballots” be found? We’d guess in the Democrat
strongholds of Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee, which
just happen to be the notoriously corrupt urban centers in
the three “Blue Wall” states Donald Trump flipped in 2016.
If Democrats want to drag Joe Biden across the finish line
on November 3, they know that returning these three states
to the Democrat column is essential. (Florida’s voter-rich
Miami-Dade and Broward Counties are two other areas to watch
for electoral malfeasance.)
Pearce continues, quoting Hawkfish CEO Josh Mendelsohn, who
explained his firm’s projections in terms of a “red mirage”
on election night “showing an overwhelming victory for
President Trump before Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins the
election days later.”
“The reason we talk about a red mirage,” says Mendelsohn,
“is in fact because we believe that on election night, we’re
going to see Donald Trump in a stronger position than the
reality actually is. We are sounding an alarm and saying
that this is a very real possibility, that the data is going
to show on election night an incredible victory for Donald
Trump.”
This prediction shouldn’t surprise anyone, though. After
all, it’s what Democrats do: They lose elections, then
conjure up just enough votes in tightly contested races to
overturn the unfavorable outcomes. (Ask former Minnesota
Republican Senator Norm Coleman about his disastrous “Felons
for Franken” experience in 2008.)
What’s surprising, though, is that the Democrats don’t
usually don’t tip their fraudulent hand this far in advance.
In fact, disgraced former MSNBC talkinghead and Philly
native
Chris
Matthews used to brag about his hometown’s uncanny knack
for finding just enough ballots at the last second to put
Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes into the Democrat column.
“How many do you need?” he’d laugh.
Hilarious, right? And as this New York Times chart gleefully
points out, ballots will be mailed directly to 44 million
voters in nine states plus Washington, DC, while absentee
voting will be allowed for 118 million voters in 34 other
states. That’s a lot of ballots that won’t be cast in the
tried-and-true voting booth. (To give that combined number
some perspective, it’s *24 million more votes* than were
cast in all of the 2016 presidential election.) Suffice it
to say: Trump-deranged Democrats will have opportunities for
electoral fraud like never before.
Mendelsohn goes on to warn of an
election-night scenario in which Trump declares victory
only to have it snatched away in the following days. And
Mendelsohn poisons the well by preemptively branding Trump
as a sore loser: “Any change from that result on election
night, [Trump] is signaling they will say means fraud.”
“You’re then setting up the American presidency for even
more failure,” Mendelsohn continues. “Even if you ultimately
get to the end result, which is that Joe Biden would be
president of the United States … you would find yourself in
this deeply polarized situation where a real portion of the
American electorate feels that injustice was done.”
On this score, Mendelsohn is exactly right. But Democrats
will have no one to blame but themselves. After all, they’re
the ones who are rigging the game.
The New York
Post
Saturday, August 29, 2020
Confessions of a voter fraud: I was a master at fixing
mail-in ballots
By Jon Levine
[Website]
A top Democratic operative says voter fraud, especially with
mail-in ballots, is no myth. And he knows this because he’s
been doing it, on a grand scale, for decades.
Mail-in ballots have become the latest flashpoint in the
2020 elections. While President Trump and the GOP warn of
widespread manipulation of the absentee vote that will swell
with COVID polling restrictions, many Democrats and their
media allies have dismissed such concerns as unfounded.
But the political insider, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because he fears prosecution, said fraud is more
the rule than the exception. His dirty work has taken him
through the weeds of municipal and federal elections in
Paterson, Atlantic City, Camden, Newark, Hoboken and Hudson
County and his fingerprints can be found in local
legislative, mayoral and congressional races across the
Garden State. Some of the biggest names and highest office
holders in New Jersey have benefited from his tricks,
according to campaign records The Post reviewed.
“An election that is swayed by 500 votes, 1,000 votes — it
can make a difference,” the tipster said. “It could be
enough to flip states.”
The whisteblower — whose identity, rap sheet and long
history working as a consultant to various campaigns were
confirmed by The Post — says he not only changed ballots
himself over the years, but led teams of fraudsters and
mentored at least 20 operatives in New Jersey, New York and
Pennsylvania — a critical 2020 swing state.
“There is no race in New Jersey — from city council to
United States Senate — that we haven’t worked on,” the
tipster said. “I worked on a fire commissioner’s race in
Burlington County. The smaller the race, the easier it is to
do.”
A Bernie Sanders die-hard with no horse in the presidential
race, he said he felt compelled to come forward in the hope
that states would act now to fix the glaring security
problems present in mail-in ballots.
“This is a real thing,” he said. “And there is going to be a
f–king war coming November 3rd over this stuff … If they
knew how the sausage was made, they could fix it.”
Mail-in voting can be complicated — tough enough that 84,000
New Yorkers had their mailed votes thrown out in the June 23
Democratic presidential primary for incorrectly filling them
out.
But for political pros, they’re a piece of cake. In New
Jersey, for example, it begins with a blank mail-in ballot
delivered to a registered voter in a large envelope. Inside
the packet is a return envelope, a “certificate of mail in
voter” which the voter must sign, and the ballot itself.
That’s when the election-rigger springs into action.
Phony ballots
The ballot has no specific security features — like a stamp
or a watermark — so the insider said he would just make his
own ballots.
“I just put [the ballot] through the copy machine and it
comes out the same way,” the insider said.
But the return envelopes are “more secure than the ballot.
You could never recreate the envelope,” he said. So they had
to be collected from real voters.
He would have his operatives fan out, going house to house,
convincing voters to let them mail completed ballots on
their behalf as a public service. The fraudster and his
minions would then take the sealed envelopes home and hold
them over boiling water.
“You have to steam it to loosen the glue,” said the insider.
He then would remove the real ballot, place the counterfeit
ballot inside the signed certificate, and reseal the
envelope.
“Five minutes per ballot tops,” said the insider.
The insider said he took care not to stuff the fake ballots
into just a few public mailboxes, but sprinkle them around
town. That way he avoided the attention that foiled a sloppy
voter-fraud operation in a Paterson, NJ, city council race
this year, where 900 ballots were found in just three
mailboxes.
“If they had spread them in all different mailboxes, nothing
would have happened,” the insider said.
Inside jobs
The tipster said sometimes postal employees are in on the
scam.
“You have a postman who is a rabid anti-Trump guy and he’s
working in Bedminster or some Republican stronghold … He can
take those [filled-out] ballots, and knowing 95% are going
to a Republican, he can just throw those in the garbage.”
In some cases, mail carriers were members of his “work
crew,” and would sift ballots from the mail and hand them
over to the operative.
In 2017, more than 500 mail-in ballots in New York City
never arrived to the Board of Elections for races that
November — leaving hundreds disenfranchised. They eventually
were discovered in April 2018. “For some undetermined
reason, some baskets of mail that were bound to the New York
City Board of Elections were put off to the side at the
Brooklyn processing facility,” city elections boss Michael
Ryan said at the time of discovery.
Nursing homes
Hitting up assisted-living facilities and “helping” the
elderly fill out their absentee ballots was a gold mine of
votes, the insider said.
“There are nursing homes where the nurse is actually a paid
operative. And they go room by room by room to these old
people who still want to feel like they’re relevant,” said
the whistleblower. “[They] literally fill it out for them.”
The insider pointed to former Jersey City Mayor Gerald
McCann, who was sued in 2007 after a razor-thin victory for
a local school board seat for allegedly tricking
“incompetent … and ill” residents of nursing homes into
casting ballots for him. McCann denied it, though he did
admit to assisting some nursing home residents with absentee
ballot applications.
Voter impersonation
When all else failed, the insider would send operatives to
vote live in polling stations, particularly in states like
New Jersey and New York that do not require voter ID.
Pennsylvania, also for the most part, does not.
The best targets were registered voters who routinely skip
presidential or municipal elections — information which is
publicly available.
“You fill out these index cards with that person’s name and
district and you go around the city and say, ‘You’re going
to be him, you’re going to be him,'” the insider said of how
he dispatched his teams of dirty-tricksters.
At the polling place, the fake voter would sign in, “get on
line and … vote,” the insider said. The impostors would
simply recreate the signature that already appears in the
voter roll as best they could. In the rare instance that a
real voter had already signed in and cast a ballot, the
impersonator would just chalk it up to an innocent mistake
and bolt.
Bribing voters
The tipster said New Jersey homeless shelters offered a
nearly inexhaustible pool of reliable — buyable — voters.
“They get to register where they live in and they go to the
polls and vote,” he said, laughing at the roughly $174 per
vote Mike Bloomberg spent to win his third mayoral term. He
said he could have delivered the same result at a 70 percent
discount — like when Frank “Pupie” Raia, a real estate
developer and Hoboken nabob, was convicted last year on
federal charges for paying low-income residents 50 bucks a
pop to vote how he wanted during a 2013 municipal election.
Organizationally, the tipster said, his voter-fraud schemes
in the Garden State and elsewhere resembled Mafia
organizations, with a boss (usually the campaign manager)
handing off the day-to-day managing of the mob soldiers to
the underboss (him). The actual candidate was usually kept
in the dark deliberately so they could maintain “plausible
deniability.”
With mail-in ballots, partisans from both parties hash out
and count ballots at the local board of elections — debating
which ballots make the cut and which need to be thrown out
because of irregularities.
The insider said any ballots offered up by him or his
operation would come with a bent corner along the voter
certificate — which contains the voter signature — so
Democratic Board of Election counters would know the fix was
in and not to object.
“It doesn’t stay bent, but you can tell it’s been bent,” the
tipster said. “Until the [certificate] is approved, the
ballot doesn’t matter. They don’t get to see the ballot
unless they approve the [certificate.]”
“I invented bending corners,” the insider boasted, saying
once the fixed ballots were mixed in with the normal ones,
the bed was made. “Once a ballot is opened, it’s an
anonymous ballot.”
While federal law warns of prison sentences of up to five
years, busted voter frauds have seen far less punishment.
While in 2018 a Texas woman was sentenced to five years, an
Arizona man busted for voting twice in the mail was given
just three years’ probation. A study by the conservative
Heritage Foundation found more than 1,000 instances of
documented voter fraud in the United States, almost all of
which occurred over the last 20 years.
“There is nothing new about these techniques,” said Hans von
Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at Heritage who manages
their election law reform initiative. “Everything he’s
talking about is perfectly possible.“
The city Board of Elections declined to answer Post
questions on ballot security.
State House
News Service
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Baker Says Local Officials Requested Guard as Backup
By Chris Lisinski
Gov. Charlie Baker activated the National Guard over the
weekend at the request of municipal officials who sought
backup resources if planned demonstrations grew larger than
what local police could handle, he told reporters Tuesday.
Baker, who did not offer a detailed explanation when he
activated 1,000 Guardsmen on Friday, said during his first
public appearance since last week that city and town leaders
flagged event pages on social media and inquired about
assistance from the state.
An Executive Office of Public Safety and Security
spokesperson referenced "potential large scale
demonstrations" late Monday night when Baker deactivated the
guard.
The governor did not explicitly describe any of the reported
weekend events. Local news reports covered demonstrations
against police violence and against the state's new mandate
for all K-12 students to receive flu shots.
"There were somewhere between 45 and 50 events at one time
or another that were posted on a variety of social media
sites toward the end of last week," Baker said Tuesday at an
event along the Green Line outside the Museum of Fine Arts.
"Some of them had very big numbers in terms of the
anticipated attendance, and we heard from a number of
municipal officials who asked us if we would have people
available to support them if those events turned out to be
bigger than what they would be able to manage on their own,
and we did what we always do, which is we put out a message
that we were activating accordingly."
"(The Guard) then basically stayed in place unless and until
we heard from local officials," he continued. "The great
thing about this is: everybody came out, they did their
thing. Their voices were heard, we didn't hear from any
municipal officials and after we didn't hear from them, we
deactivated (the Guard)." |
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:
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