Left In Lowell

A must-read from Susan H over at Below Boston why Patrick’s proposed elimination of a tax loophole is not only fair, it’d be stupid to not to do it. The best argument? We’re behind the times:

Just remember that our nearest neighbors use this accounting method of combined reporting and that additionally just this year New York, Pennslyvannia, and Iowa, are considering the exact same thing Gov Patrick is proposing.

Making taxes fair is not a tax increase, I don’t care how libertarian you are. Smaller businesses and corporations can’t do what the big guys do - slough off their tax liability by locating their “HQ” elsewhere - and therefore, it makes it hard to compete fairly with those large corporations for these smaller businesses. I’d think this issue of fairness would resonate with everyone, especially libertarians. If you’re gonna tax business X, then why does business Y get to loophole out of it?

In fact, if this “combined reporting” tax system were implemented everywhere, we’d see business relocate out of places like Delaware and consider settling their corporate HQ’s elsewhere. Even, maybe, here. Wouldn’t it be nice to have those jobs?

I’ll repeat myself one more time: it’s about fairness. A fair marketplace is one where no one company is taxed more than another - leaving them to compete on the merits of their goods or services. If you like unfairness, you should be against this proposal for closing a tax loophole.

Update (which was supposed to go to this post, not the one above): Ryan takes the Globe to the mat and easily pins them in 10 seconds flat. Why do we bother having a paper of record any more? Ug.

On tomorrow’s Thinking Out Loud, state Representative Jamie Eldridge will join us for the local portion of the show. You can listen on WUML at 10am on 91.5 FM, stream it live, and we will also try to get the archive up afterwards as well.

UPDATE: You can hear the archives at Community Connections here! Thanks as always to Jim.

The Deval Patrick “spending spree.” It may sell newspapers and it may grab your attention with those screaming headlines. We know perception and symbolism are extremely significant when it comes to politics. The Governor and his staff are learning those lessons the hard way.

Yes, the Governor made a mistake. But now he has not only publicly admitted, apologized, but has paid for those expenses.

But does he need to learn to pray at the altar of the Globe columnists? Joan; Jeff; Adrian; Brian.

Is this piling on a remnant of what occurred after the election when “Patrick’s chided” members of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association for missing the message of his campaign and victory?

Enough of the office furniture/decoration analysis. Yes, floor-to-ceiling drapes are expensive. Quality furniture made in North Carolina or Michigan cost is expensive? Enough of the Devillegate. It would have cost us $7,000 more a year than the previous governor’s selection. But then that guy was never here to use it, was he? (more…)

(This is a guest post by Acton’s state Representative Jamie Eldridge, who is exploring a run for the 5th US Congressional District should Rep. Marty Meehan decide to leave. –Lynne)

Update on my Exploratory Committee:

I really appreciate the kind words and positive energy from the 5th Congressional District major blogs – Beyond 495 and Left in Lowell, as well as on Blue Mass Group. I haven’t posted before, but I’ve been tuned into the blogs for information, advice and an occasional good laugh for a long time now. I thought, given all the recent news, this would be a good time for an update on how the exploratory effort is going, and of course be available to answer your questions.

I have served as a state Representative for the 37th Middlesex District for the past five years. My district is economically and ethnically diverse, including six towns, two geographic regions, one former military base, and four daily newspapers that cover the district (The Lowell Sun, Fitchburg Sentinel, Worcester Telegram & Gazette, and Metrowest Daily News).

What’s important about this ideologically diverse district is that I’ve had serious Republican opposition and won with a strong progressive message. I’ve had a Republican opponent in each of my races for State Rep., and credit my victories to firm positions on issues, serious outreach to constituents in all communities, and a strong legislative record – whether its minimum state education aid for all communities, protecting gay marriage, protecting the environment, reforming Chapter 40B while increasing spending on affordable housing, supporting immigrants, or fighting to raise the minimum wage. (more…)

Via Beyond495 (and also heard on WUML’s Sunrise this morning), the Lowell Sun is reporting that Meehan is now one of three finalists for the Chancellorship of UMass Lowell, bringing us that much closer to a possible 5th Congressional District run.

We could have a very busy political spring and summer…

I caught part of the Lowell City Council Comcast/Cable TV Issues Sub-Committee meeting, Chaired by CC Bud Caufield and CC R. Mercier and G. Ramirez as members.

Robert Haigh, Executive Director of the LTC was once again in front of the Sub-Committee to continue the discussion on programming on our local access television. City Attorney David Fenton’s report and proposal on program review prior to broadcasting will be presented to the LTC full board at their quarterly meeting tomorrow morning. Mr. Haigh did state that he and LTC’s lawyer did work together with Mr. Fenton and they were all in agreement. So, I think we have a plan to go forward. (more…)

I’m getting closer to building LiL 2.0 the way I want it. Right now I am working with a WordPress plugin author (plugins extend the functionality of WordPress) on a very important aspect of the new site, and I may have to write a plugin or two myself. It might take another 2-3 weeks, but I am making good progress.

However, I thought I would tell you something about how the new site will change and get some feedback before I finalize everything. In LiL 2.0, users will be able to make their own user posts. User Posts will act like they do on other sites like Blue Mass Group or DailyKos. They will not appear in the front page, but a section of the sidebar will have a “most recent user posts” box with 3-6 of the latest user posts’ titles, the author’s name, the date, and perhaps how many comments. Creating a user post will only be available to those who register, but once you do (a relatively painless operation, as long as you put in a valid email address), you can write a new post instantly. There will also be a link to a page to see all user posts (in reverse chronological order like the front page).

Moderators like myself, Mimi, and KRS, will be able to “promote” a user post we think is important “to the front page.”

Now for some of the sticky issues. First, I am thinking about requiring registration in order to write anything, even comments. I know a lot of people like the idea that anyone can come to this site and post a comment, even non-registered anonymous users (in fact, we don’t allow user registration at all). However, I am having trouble keeping up with the spam, even with some excellent plugins like Akismet installed. Forcing user registration for commenting would help with that problem, and also give me, the administrator, access to valid emails of all commenters. I would like the option to quietly email and warn someone that they could be banned for continuing certain behavior. User reg will also help with banning. I’m leaning heavily towards requiring registration for comments for all those reasons.

Needless to say, the new site will have a usage policy, like many community sites, and reasons for banning will be much clearer.

Authoring new posts will always require registration, but the feedback I would like is how much objection there is to only allowing registered users to post comments. User registration, by the way, is still anonymous. The email address is only for the admins, and would not be published if a user comments or creates a user post.

The next issues are less sticky but I want to rate how important you think these following features might be, because they require some extra work (which we are willing to do):

1. Allowing registered users to be able to rate posts so that the highest rated user posts end up in a “recommended list” near the top of the sidebar.

2. Allowing registered users the ability to rate comments, and whether or not a frequently poorly rated (or “troll-rated”) comment should disappear off the page entirely. (On one hand it’s a little harsh, on the other, it’s a democratic system, so no one can complain about being singled out by the administrator.) This is currently done on many community sites that allow user posts.

3. How User Posts should be organized. I already know I will not be allowing users access to post to all the existing categories, though if a post is “promoted” it will be put into categories by the moderator. However, I was thinking about creating some new categories and allowing posts to them - for instance, by region or town. If you’re writing about Chelmsford, you can select “Chelmsford,” or “Dracut” if the post is about Dracut, and so on. This would then allow me to create links to all posts in each town, and hence making it easier for readers to see what’s going on in respective towns that typically, Mimi, KRS and I don’t cover. It opens up LiL to becoming a regional blog, without changing the focus of the front page.

4. Some sort of community calendar where registered users can post political or cultural events. This is almost a given, if I can find the right plugin that does what I want. Right now, the calendar I use is too annoying and complicated for the average user to easily post to. Even I screw it up half the time, and I installed the dang thing.

So that’s your progress report. Feedback highly appreciated. If you have a suggestion for something not listed here that you’d like to see, let me know and I’ll look into existing plugins and hacks to see if there’s anything that works ootb (out of the box). If it’s a cool enough idea, I might even decide to do the programming myself.

Tomorrow night’s City Council meeting should not take long. It has a light agenda and at least 2 members will be absent; they are away with their families during school vacation week.

However, prior to the CC meeting, the Comcast/Cable Issues Sub-Committee is meeting to continue the discussion about Lowell Telecommunications Corporation, LTC. The meeting should begin around 5:30 p.m. and it will take place in Council Chambers so I am assuming it will be televised live.

If you need to review what the events leading up to this meeting, you can catch the streaming video on LTC’s web site of the sub-committee meeting that took place two weeks ago. Some additional meetings have been posted on the streaming video listing but there is still a lot of catching up to do.

There are only two motions from the City Councilors. The first one is from CC. R. Mercier. She is requesting that the Manager have Parking Director clarify policies/procedures for garage parking during snow emergencies as it relates to special events. I believe CC Mercier’s motion may have been the result of the discussion that took place on WCAP’s morning radio show. Apparently those attending the performance at the Auditorium last Wednesday had to pay $5.00 to park while others could park for free.

But the post on the city web site last Tuesday announcing the emergency snow ban clearly indicates the ground rules when it comes to the free parking in the City garages: (more…)

Big surprise, there’s lots of tax loopholes for big business in Massachusetts. Ryan gives his take, a good rundown of some of Patrick’s proposals to fix this…and what that would mean in terms of revenue and closing the state’s current budget gap.

Ryan’s right, of course - individuals and small businesses carry a proportionally larger share of the tax burden compared to rich - and lobbying - big business. Listen for the howling and whining from some CEO types about how this will bankrupt the poor poor conglomerates and force them out of business.

It’s awful nice to have a governor interested in governing, and actually pushing to fix the inherent unfairness of the system, for once.

Update: I recommend reading Below Boston’s piece on this too. This illuminates (bold mine):

What became apparent as the details emerged was that “closing the corporate loophole” involves corporations so big that they involve multi state reporting - we aren’t talking about the nail salon down the street or the lawn maintence service company that you and your neighbor use, but corporations that many consider multi- national corporations which have consistently used the state of Delaware to be the “home base”of their corporation for tax reporting purposes.

It’s all about fairness. These corporations do business here, use our infrastructure, and then use their size to “skip out” on the responsibility to pay their fair share of the cost of maintaining the infrastructure. The fact that other states such as CA, and ILL and 15 others are catching on to this as well, and have closed this particular loophole should embolden the new Governor in this burgeoning populist age.

As I said in comments in response to waittil, it appears this will become the cost of doing business, and we’re behind several other states with large economies. In a fair market, corporations would all be paying fair state taxes, no matter where they are “HQ’ed.” If it’s imposed equally on all corporations, then competition should keep the prices down. Remember, this is a tax on profit. If a corporation wants to be greedy and “build in” this new fair taxation into its prices, I expect that some competator somewhere might find the advantage in holding the line on prices and gaining the competative edge.

Now, this only works where we don’t have vitual monopolies…you might consider some of these conglomerates to be above fair competition. In which case, we should talk about introducing competition, possibly by breaking them up. I remember in my history books, it was once patriotic to break up a monopoly. It doesn’t, however, mean this method of fair state taxation should be put aside.

You can hear my earlier Thinking Out Loud interview with City Manager Bernie Lynch at Community Connections (thanks Jim!). I got in as many questions as I could!

Listen to other past editions of TOL in this section of the Connections website.