I’m running around like a nut the last two days getting ready to move my home office into its new space in the new year. I have stuff I want to write about but I will have to fit it in between buying paint, role-playing games, and cleaning the space from the two inches of dust it’s under so I can apply aforementioned paint on walls.
It’s going to be exciting, even if it’s going to be a lot of work next week! Wish me luck.
This is your open thread for the day (or night, too, if’n ya got nothing better to do!)
(Oh yeah! And go register as a Democrat by today if you want to be part of the caucuses for Deval Patrick!)
I meant to point this out earlier, but the holidays interfered. The Lowell Democratic City Committee website has been transformed into blog format (disclosure: I did have a hand in the development of it) with a new look and purpose. It will be kept up-to-date with political events and blog posts about what’s happening in the state and local party. I’d like to welcome the LTCC to the Lowell blogosphere!
I’ve added them to my right hand sidebar, so check them out!
Fellow blog Blue Mass Group gets a mention in a Globe article rather lacking in substance. But hey, any coverage is good coverage!
sco also has a nice critique:
They spent a little too much time, I think, talking about a couple of out-of-state Romney for President blogs. That’s not my real problem with the article, though. The article was headlined “Politicians search for the Web advantage” but very little of it actually focused on what the politicians were doing — there were a couple of paragraphs on the Mass Dems and their Ani-Mitt animations, and the efforts that the state GOP went to earlier this year to snatch up a couple of domain names out from under Attorney General Tom Reilly. The rest of the article focused not on the pols, but on regular people, like the Romney bloggers and the others, who support a particular candidate or political philosophy and want to talk about it. The interesting part of the story was not that politicians are trying to take advantage of the Internet but that concerned citizens are using the web as a way to get involved in the process, completely apart from the political establishments.
Oh yeah. Those little average people out there with something to say. I think the Globe calls those people “uninteresting.”
[Update: Apparently, Beyond 495 and Marry in Massachusetts are also mentioned in another article in the Sentinel & Enterprise. Congrats to them. And thanks to MassMarrier for the flattering picture of my blog…personally, I prefer to stay out of the Lowell Sun…generally speaking.
)
Today is Christmas day, and I’m guessing if you looked at American rates of charitable giving throughout the year, you’d see us as most generous in the month of December.
So puzzle me this: why is it we have warm, fuzzy feelings for giving donations to charity but not when our tax dollars are used to help the less fortunate?
With the former, people believe they have done their part in alleviating poverty or helping feed a child and they are lauded. With the latter, I hear the same tired litany about why should their hard-earned money be taken from them and given to some lazy single mother who can’t pull herself up by her own bootstraps?
I spent part of my (secular) celebration of Christmas with my loving but conservative family. With the exception of one uncle, my generally working-class relatives look at taxes in the same way that you might regard a pile of vomit on the floor: something to be avoided at all costs; or if approached, with one’s nose pinched. And one would prefer it to be removed altogether. But ask them how they feel about giving to Catholic Charities or the Salvation Army or any other charity, and they would sing a different tune.
Some may claim that the difference between taxes and charity is that you volunteer to give to charity. Taxes are mandatory, and as such, a burden, with no option not to pay them. This would be a good argument, except for this: depending on charities to deliver services to the poor is only punishing the good guy. Good behavior should be rewarded, not penalized. The selfish guy can get away with benefiting from the positive effects of helping the less fortunate without having donated to its upkeep. What positive effects, you ask? Well, money spent on the poor generally causes ever-increasing upward mobility, so there are more people to buy Mr. Scrooge’s widgets and he makes more money; a lowered rate of crimes of desperation keep his person and his estate safe; and in a million other ways, everyone’s lives are improved.
If we decide that investing in our society is a worthy goal (and you decide that every time you give to a charity) then we must make that investment across the spectrum of people who profit. Only that will yield the sort of stable civilization that fosters a strong economy. It’s no accident that the stock market does better under Democratic presidents - sure, they tax a little more and spend a little more and regulate a little more: but remember, it was a less regulated market in 1929 that crashed. And everyone who benefits - meaning everyone! - ought to participate in donating especially if they are very fortunate. And the more fortunate, the more they should be expected to contribute; because the rich gain the most from a stable, safe economy.
And the next argument you’ll hear against taxes is the waste. $100,000 hammers and all that anecdotal evidence. Well, a good for-instance in the other direction is Medicare (with the exception of the draconian new drug benefit); it is the tightest-run health insurance ship in America right now, with its administrative overhead taking up far less of its expenditure than private insurance. In fact, in dollars spent per person, our private system is the least efficient in the developed world, despite the lies told by conservatives about the universal health care systems in other countries.
Government, just like private enterprise or non-profit charities, is only as efficient as it is administered to be.
I’m sure if we all think about it, we can detect in our lives the imprint of being on the receiving end of taxation. I was able to go to college because the government redistributed someone else’s income my way. With that B.A. under my belt (never mind the economic uselessness of writing poetry) I could improve my lot in life. And every year, the government makes sure thousand of kids get fed and sheltered, families are kept out of the cold despite a low income (an income that’s stagnated over the last few years) and seniors get a check every month so they can pay their heating bill. How is this different from a charity “hand-out”?
What we need is an attitude shift. Obviously, you do want to know what’s being done with your dollars (and this attitude, by the way, should translate to responsible buying in retail, market investments, and even in choosing your charities). But we need to acknowledge that when we send our tax money to Washington or Beacon Hill, it’s not going to waste. In large part, the government is a charity we all participate in to secure the sort of society we want - for all of us, from the most destitute family, to the very richest Wall Street mogul.
[Crossposted at BOPnews.com]
The ballot initiative signatures from this last fall are public information and get published. Both MassEquality and KnowThyNeighbor have searchable signature lists for the anti-gay-marriage ballot initiative. I looked through the Lowell signatures and found only one sitting City Councilor who signed this anti-equality petition:
Bud Caulfield, 589 Princeton Blvd.
I also found a sitting school committee member (and failed candidate for Council):
Joseph Mendonca, 321 W Meadow Rd
And one failed candidate for City Council was listed:
Sambath Chey Fennell, 258 Butman Rd
Shame on them for being anti-equality! Like two men (or two women) getting married hurts them in any way. Feh. This obviously makes them ineligible for any future endorsements from me. It’s homophobia, plain and simple. I know they would probably dress it up in that lame “marriage is an institution for one man and one woman” and “think of the children!” garbage, but it boils down to homophobia. Fear of homos.
By the way, there was a lot of fraud reported with this signature drive. I recommend you go and look to see if your name is in there, especially if you signed any ballot initiatives; particularly if you thought it was the alcohol-in-groceries initiative you were signing. The (paid-by-signature, from out of state) petitioners reportedly used a couple of fraudulent tactics - one, they made people think they were signing the innocuous “let them have booze in grocery stores!” ballot initiative, but they were actually signing the anti-gay ballot. The second was having people really sign the grocery store initiative then forging that person’s signature on the anti-gay petition without their consent.
Imagine a country with a democracy. It has gone through a war, and after it, a major depression. The people are desperate. No one will help them. A leader emerges, but the checks and balances on his power are strong. Then the country is attacked - internally - with a major government building burnt to the ground. The enemies of the leader are declared responsible, the leader’s party is swept into unchecked power as the people react in fear. The leader then uses ostensibly legal means to enact some of the most horrible crimes on humanity ever yet known in the modern world. He passes law after law in the name of “emergency” that today chill our souls to read aloud.
If you know your history, you know I’m talking about Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Now, before you get all huffy or excited (