Didn't get a chance to post on this when it was first announced last week, but it's still excellent news. Press release (no link):
Governor Deval Patrick today announced that the Commonwealth's bond ratings have been affirmed by the three major rating agencies, all of whom cited the Governor's responsible and proactive stewardship of the Commonwealth's finances during the current economic downturn as a leading credit strength.
Fitch Ratings, Moody's Investor Services and Standard & Poor's all affirmed the Commonwealth's credit ratings at AA, Aa2, and AA, respectively, with a stable outlook.
And what, exactly, do they like so much?
Moody's cites as the first credit strength of the Commonwealth, "Effective management during economic downturns, with a willingness and ability to promptly identify and close gaps through use of both new revenues and spending reductions." ...
In affirming the Commonwealth's bond rating, Fitch acknowledges the Governor's "record of prudent financial management" and says its "key rating driver" is the Governor's "continued timely action to ensure budget balance and maintenance of an adequate budgeted reserve position to protect against further downside risk."
Standard & Poor's explains that its stable outlook for the Commonwealth reflects the Administration's "proactive approach to managing budget volatility throughout this recession. Revenue adjustments have been frequent and gap-closing actions have been swift, successfully restoring balance. While diminished, the budget stabilization fund retains a balance that will continue to provide flexibility to manage the current fluid revenue environment."
Well, big deal. The other states must be doing just as well -- after all, surely any state government would do whatever was necessary to keep up its bond rating, right? Er, not so much.
Following on akloftus's post about Charlie Baker's ignorance of what's actually been happening on Beacon Hill recently, the Patrick administration announced today that it has reached agreements with a number of public employee unions that will save the Commonwealth tens of millions of dollars and will allow the administration to protect key services.
The Patrick-Murray Administration has reached agreement with nearly 14,000 union workers on two new contracts that will save the Commonwealth more than $40 million and help mitigate employee layoffs.
About 11,000 members of Units 1, 3, and 6 represented by the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE) ratified by an 85% margin contract revisions that will save taxpayers an estimated $36.4 million over the next three years, including roughly $4.5 million this fiscal year.
Similarly, about 3,000 members of Unit 9, represented by the Massachusetts Organization of State Engineers and Scientists (MOSES), ratified by a 75% margin contract revisions that will save taxpayers an estimated $6 million over the next three years, including roughly $760,000 this fiscal year.
But, hey, I'm sure Charlie Baker could say the same about the Welducci administration, right? Ummm...
These contracts, along with others the Governor announced earlier this year (here and here), mark the first time since collective bargaining was established in the Commonwealth that a Governor has successfully negotiated such compromises.
(Charles Baker served hot and bothered on BMG. - promoted by Bob Neer)
Lt. Gov. Tim Murray has called out Charlie Baker for his perpetual dishonesty on the campaign trail, while responding to a story that first appeared here on BMG about a state employee named Erica.
For those who haven't heard it, here's the original audio of the call from Erica, who talked to a very condescending Charlie Baker on WBZ radio March 4.
Read the LG's response below from State House News Service. I can’t post the entire story yet due to SHNS copyright rules, but excerpts follow:
L.G. HITS BAKER ON HARVARD PILGRIM SALARY, QUESTIONS FACTS
By Michael Norton STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, MARCH 9, 2010 -- Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray attacked Republican gubernatorial contender Charles Baker Monday night, likening him to Pinocchio and questioning his claims regarding his role in Harvard Pilgrim Health Care’s turnaround, the financing of the Big Dig and the payroll sacrifices made by state employees.
“He’s had a problem during the course of this campaign, I think, with the truth,” Murray said of Baker, the former CEO of Harvard Pilgrim and a high-ranking member of the Weld and Cellucci administrations, during a radio interview. “For a guy who some people describe as the smartest guy in government, he just consistently doesn’t seem to have his facts right.”
Murray took issue with Baker’s assertion during a radio interview last week that state government hasn’t made payroll sacrifices similar to those made in the private sector. Murray said he and Gov. Deval Patrick, as well as “thousands” of government managers, had taken unpaid furloughs, that public employee unions had made contract “concessions” and that state managers were paying more towards the costs of their health insurance.
“The last person who should be lecturing anybody about taking pay cuts is a health insurance executive,” Murray added, noting that Baker had made $1.7 million at Harvard Pilgrim in 2008 and $1.3 million for seven months of work at the health insurance company last year. “That’s over $6,000 a day,” Murray said.
(Excellent work GGW. We'll winnow this down each week based on scores reported in the comments with the final, of course, in April. Tweet! Jump ball! - promoted by Bob Neer)
March Madness is again upon us. Let's name the BMG Sweet 16!
Apologies in advance for misclassifications, errors, and omissions. Off top of my head.
Criteria: Quality 70%, Quantity 30% (else we wouldn't have much to read).
Eb3 Top Seed - Bye to Finals
ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT FOREIGN POLICY BRACKET
(only 2 competing)
Sabutai
vs
KBusch
BROOKLINE BRACKET
BrooklineTom
vs.
StomV
BIG HEART CONFERENCE CHAMPS
Judy Meredith
v
AmberPaw
COUCH FIGHT
Lynne
v
Mr. Lynne
K-12 SHOWDOWN
(*Among people who don't seem to work for schools, and nonetheless like this stuff)
RyePower12
vs.
Petr
RED REGIONAL "MATURE" BRACKET
Peter Porcupine
vs.
JohnD
Why do I ask, you might wonder? Well, here's the first line of Michael Graham's Herald column on Mitt Romney and his health care problem:
How do you say "chutzpah" in Mormon?
Hmm. I didn't realize "Mormon" was a language. But apparently it's OK to ask how you would translate certain Yiddish words into different faiths. And I think it's certainly fair to call "wingnut" a faith to which Michael Graham subscribes. Hence the title of my post. The hilarity just never stops around here.
Anyway, gratuitous Mormon-baiting aside, Graham's column supplies an interesting rundown-from-the-right of the disastrous position Romney has put himself in by trying the thread the needle between opposing President Obama's health care plan and not completely repudiating the one he had a role in here.
Mitt Romney is out on a book tour insisting that Romneycare and Obamacare have very little in common. "It's the difference between a racehorse and a donkey," is Romney's line. And besides, the former Bay State governor writes in his new book, "the plan is working." ...
But for Romney to say "there's a big difference between what we did and what President Obama is doing" is . . . well, my Mormon friends would call it a violation of the 9th Commandment. [Oy. There he goes again.] ...
But the basic elements of Obamacare are all there: an individual mandate that nearly everyone buy insurance; subsidized insurance based on income; a non-insurance "tax" and employer mandates. The Cato Institute calls it a mirror-image of Obamacare.
Romney, on the other hand, calls the individual mandate "the ultimate conservative plan." So Barack Obama is a conservative?
Mitt, you gotta lay off the unpasteurized milk . . .
In related news, yet another aspect of the health care issue is a threat to Romney:
Romney's landmark 2006 universal health-care law allows low-income residents covered under Commonwealth Care to get taxpayer-funded abortions. Abortion has become a lightning rod in the highly charged battle over President Obama's health-care push.... The plan's abortion funding came under renewed attack this weekend, with political blogger and former Atlantic Monthly writer Matthew Yglasias speculating on Twitter that it was "enough to sink (his) 2012 bid." ...
Though Romney has virtually disavowed his health-care plan - the first of its kind in the nation - White House aides have acknowledged it was a "template" for Obama's proposal, which could only mean for grief for Romney, according to Boston University political professor Thomas Whalen.
Said Whalen: "He's been running away from the single accomplishment of his administration now that the Obama health-care bill is using the Massachusetts model of health-care reform."
While we unfortunately have to wait several years to replace Senator Brown as a US Senator, thankfully there's already an ongoing special election to replace his seat in the State Senate. Today, LeftAhead spoke with Dr. Peter Smulowitz, a progressive running as a Democrat in the primary.
His resume is impressive -- a physician in the ER and deeply involved in forming health care policy across the state, with degrees from Cornell, the University of California and Harvard. His opponents are State Reps Lida Harkins (D) in the primary and Richard Ross (R) in the general, should he make it that far.
The front page of today's Herald blares, in its usual 143-point type, "Buyback Bonanza - Cash me if you can: Even Deval's staffers took advantage of vacay perk." The article goes on to report that the Gov's
top strategist and 21 other exiting staffers cashed in more than $90,500 in unused vacation days last year. Three of Patrick's ex-staffers, including former chief of staff Doug Rubin, got $11,000-plus in vacation pay upon leaving. Rubin, who made $128,000 as his top dog, now acts as the governor's re-election campaign guru, refused to comment.
Oooooh - shocking! An $11,000 payout! By calling this a "vacay perk," the Herald is apparently trying to make the case that this is some government boondoggle that is unavailable to Joe and Jane PrivateSectorEmployee. But the fact is that state law requires all employers, private or public sector, to compensate departing employees for vacation days accrued but not used. Employers have some leeway in making rules about whether you have to use vacation days within a certain time of accruing them, and those rules vary from employer to employer. But the basic principle is the same: if you earn a vacation day and haven't used it when you leave your job, you get paid for it.
Furthermore, I have confirmed that the Governor's Office practice is the following: (1) you can roll over a maximum two weeks of vacation time from one year into the next; and (2) rolled-over time expires at the end of the year into which it was rolled. That is to say, if an employee entitled to 4 weeks vacation had rolled over 2 weeks from Year 0 into Year 1, potentially allowing him to take a total of 6 weeks off in Year 1, he could roll a maximum of 2 weeks into Year 2, regardless of how much or how little vacation time he actually took in Year 1. And you can cash out only when you leave your job. That seems to me a reasonable policy. It is no doubt more generous than some in the private sector, but it certainly doesn't strike me as unduly so.
(Thanks for this, Brian and Health Care For All. - promoted by Charley on the MTA)
Health Care For All has released a powerful new video in support of national health care reform. Massachusetts patients, doctors, students, consumer advocates, and representatives of small business and labor come together and talk about why we need national health reform and why it is good for the Commonwealth.
A quick follow up to my post on 2 March about Governor Patrick's laudable effort to ban the sale of baby bottles and spill-proof cups made with the chemical Bisphenol-A, a substance viewed with "some concern" by the FDA for very young children, that has been declared a toxin in Canada and banned from such products -- and the otherwise-excellent-in-many-respects Senator Benjamin Downing's startling opposition to the measure (perhaps because he has a big chemical company in his district, or maybe because he thinks a long-term experiment on the health consequences of this substance using Massachusetts babies as the subjects is a reasonable economic trade-off -- positions on legislation speak louder than carefully parsed statements -- or perhaps for some other reason).
The bottom line is that this is worthy legislation that every Massachusetts Senator should support, and the chemical companies too, for that matter, unless they want to wind up as PR pariahs like the cigarette companies over the long run through opposition to this and other sensible health regulations.
(Great advice for anyone planning to run for State Rep. (and being a BMGer is, of course, an implicit commitment that you will run for State Rep. one of these days -- especially all the commenters on this thread ;-) - promoted by Bob Neer)
Hey Big Mike, you wanted to run for Congress on a zero budget to prove a point. But you have also thought of running for state rep or senate too.
Fist things first Mike. You cannot run on zero dollars. But you can run cheaply. You have to step up to the plate and show you are serious.
Did you attempt to go to law school on a zero budget? When you got the full boat to Duke you earned that but you still had to have spending money etc. (ACC NCAAA football violations don't count)
So why would you expect this to be anything different. It should be an important thing in your life.
You need to spend a few bucks of your own dough before you knock on a door. You need the essentials before you knock on a door or approach people for your vote.
1. Hand card with your name and office you seek printed prominently. Don't worry about what it says, nobody reads it. Keep it simple and short. Don't write a novella on it. "Time for a Change" "Vote Atty. Mike Connolley" But you have to have something to hand them. Put atty. before it. People don't like lawyer legislatures but they want their rep to run circles around others people's reps. Attorneys have better chance to do that.
2. Buttons. You must be wearing a button when knocking on doors and approaching people in street. It disarms them right away and before you start your spiel they know why you are there. VERY IMPORTANT!
3. Computer software to track 'your voters'. Cheap off-the-shelf data program is fine.
4. You have hand card and button. Now you need a clip board and some pens.
(One BMGer urges you to Bump The Vote. - promoted by David)
Since the bygone days of the "Massachusetts Miracle" the Auditor's office has been held by Joe DeNucci, the self-styled "watchdog for the underdog". Elected in 1987, he's done a good job, without fanfare, of identifying wasteful spending. Of equal importance, he's been a staunch advocate for the interests of the vulnerable, clearly seeing the Auditor's job as more than a bean counting exercise.
We've been well served by DeNucci but as he leaves office its worth considering what we want from the office, as well as who we want in it. The Auditor has clear statutory responsibilities around financial controls, local mandates and fraud investigation for example. Those are the vital basics of the job. But, is there more to it than that? I think there is and I think Suzanne Bump, one of the three Democrats in the race for the job, thinks so too.
Today is International Women's Day. News to me. Maybe news to you, too. No mention of it, for example, on Boston.com. Perhaps that is because it was started by Socialists in New York in 1909. Whatever. Today it's just a day to respect and honor women, and work for their equal rights, as far as I can tell, which are noble purposes.
Even more surprising was to learn today that the United States, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Nauru, Palau and Tonga are the only countries in the world that have not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW, an "international bill of rights for women" adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979.
Appearances matter, and this, I'd say, looks bad. Iran and Sudan are not countries one generally supposes the U.S. to have much of a commonality of interest with, especially compared to virtually every other country in the world. We should ratify the "international bill of rights for women" as soon as possible.
Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, explains her theory about why the U.S. has had such a hard time joining the global consensus on this issue in a fascinating discussion on Democracy Now! over the flip.
On his daily radio and television shows last week, Fox News personality Glenn Beck set out to convince his audience that "social justice," the term many Christian churches use to describe their efforts to address poverty and human rights, is a "code word" for communism and Nazism. Beck urged Christians to discuss the term with their priests and to leave their churches if leaders would not reconsider their emphasis on social justice.
In Beck's words:
"I'm begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"
And to drive the point home:
Later, Beck held up cards, one with a hammer and sickle and other with a swastika. "Communists are on the left, and the Nazis are on the right. That's what people say. But they both subscribe to one philosophy, and they flew one banner. . . . But on each banner, read the words, here in America: 'social justice.' They talked about economic justice, rights of the workers, redistribution of wealth, and surprisingly, democracy."
(Just missed the Joke Revue by a few days. And a dose of reality from the same article for those who pitch Scott Brown as a male Massachusetts version of Sarah Palin: "A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll suggested that only 37 per cent of Americans had a favourable impression of Ms. Palin; of those who identified themselves as conservatives, fewer than half said she was qualified to serve as president." - promoted by Bob Neer)
(Commenting on this post will cost you $0.00. :-) - promoted by Bob Neer)
There is a great blog post on Time's The Curious Capitalist blog about a bill that Wisconsin Congressman Steve Kagen (D-WI08) has introduced. The bill would effectively put price tags on health care services, such as pills that hospitals and doctors provide. You would know in advance that a Tylenol was going to cost $140. The bill - Transparency in All Health Care Pricing Act of 2010 - already has 45 sponsors. This is the type of common sense approach to cutting health care costs that Congress should be looking at. Kudos to Kagen for filing the bill. Let's hope it becomes law.
(Welcome to our brave new world! :-) - promoted by David)
Walshgate!
BMG's own John E Walsh, fka John From Abington. is at the center of #walshgate. It appears that he sent a tweet to his 500+ followers that was supposed to be a DM. For those new to Twitter (like me), a DM is a Direct Message. The message, intended for an unknown individual, said:
Some are talking about you running vs Scott Brown in '12. I'm Chair of MA Dem Party. My email is johnewalsh@xxxx cell-617-xxx-xxxx.
Now there is a hashtag #walshgate for people guessing the identity of the intended recipient.
Sample tweets about walshgate...
Loving watching this #walshgate drama unfold, if only because accidentally tweeting what is meant to be a DM is a great fear of mine.
#walshgate feels a bit like guessing who was the man behind, You're So Vain. @JohnEWalshDem should auction it to highest bidder.
#walshgate is like clicking "reply to all" in Outlook. But to the whole internet. Cue overwhelming paranoia whenever DMing from now on.
Why is everyone talking about Maddow? The #Walshgate message was meant for me. I got a DM from him shortly after the public one went out.
Over the past week, I've been thinking about learning more about Twitter and how it could be useful for moving the Democratic political agenda forward. I had been thinking about posting on BMG asking readers whether or not they found Twitter to be useful. Before I posted I wisely looked to see if any similar thread had been posted on BMG recently. I found Ryan's thread on Twitter. I did not see anything in the thread that convinced me that Twitter is worth my time. But I think I will give it a try.
I became a fan of facebook and see why it is useful. I know that people use facebook for a variety of reason. I made an intentional decision at some point to use facebook for three reasons:
- request for an action, like attending an event, getting people to volunteer, etc.
- influence thought, provide information
- ask a question
New York Gov. David Paterson may be stepping down after being involved in a scandal. Something like this hasn't happened in New York for ... months. New Yorkers are desperate. They're trying to get Gov. Paterson to leave early, and I said to myself, 'That sounds like a job for Jay Leno.'" -David Letterman
"You know who is on the program tonight? Mitt Romney is here. Mitt Romney is a good-looking Republican from Massachusetts. You know, he's like that new senator from Massachusetts. He's like Scott Brown, but with pants." -David Letterman
"Talking about presidents who smoked. You remember George W. Bush? Remember him? He's saying while he was president he would enjoy the occasional cigar. On a rare occasion, he would have a cigar because he said it helped him think. I want to tell you, occasions don't get more rare than that, ladies and gentlemen." -David Letterman
"People magazine has confirmed that former President Clinton called Tiger Woods to offer his support during the ordeal. For real. They have things in common, I guess. ... It's a nice thing to do, a nice gesture between two, you know, kindred spirits. It actually reminds me of the time President Bush called Homer Simpson after Homer stapled his face to a doughnut." -Jimmy Kimmel
"Karl Rove's new memoir, 'Courage and Consequence,' is coming out next week. Not sure if 'Courage and Consequence' is how most people would describe the Bush years, but I guess it does sound better than 'Oopsies.'" -Jimmy Fallon
"Representative Charles Rangel, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has temporarily surrendered his post pending an ethics investigation. They've been investigating him for three months now. And so far, they have not found a single trace of ethics." -Jay Leno
"Did you hear that Rush Limbaugh's Manhattan penthouse is on the market for $14 million? It's an amazing property. Over 4,000 square feet. And that's just the medicine cabinet." -Craig Ferguson
(Democracy Now had an extensive interview with Ravitch Friday that you can see here. - promoted by Bob Neer)
I found this article fascinating. Here's a brief snippet.
Diane Ravitch, the education historian who built her intellectual reputation battling progressive educators and served in the first Bush administration's Education Department, is in the final stages of an astonishing, slow-motion about-face on almost every stand she once took on American schooling.
Once outspoken about the power of standardized testing, charter schools and free markets to improve schools, Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She underwent an intellectual crisis, she says, discovering that these strategies, which she now calls faddish trends, were undermining public education. She resigned last year from the boards of two conservative research groups.
"School reform today is like a freight train, and I'm out on the tracks saying, 'You're going the wrong way!' " Dr. Ravitch said in an interview.
One more quote (and a tiny bit of commentary) below the fold.
Talk about an idiotic idea. The U.S. is going to start charging foreign tourists $10 to visit the country. The funds will pay for an advertising campaign to encourage people to ... visit the country. U.K. Guardian:
The US yesterday passed a new law designed to boost dwindling numbers of foreign tourists - it will start charging them for the privilege of entering the country.
The bizarre move has prompted controversy on both sides of the Atlantic and warnings that it could backfire. Under the Travel Promotion Act signed into law by Barack Obama yesterday, a new national marketing body will be set up to promote US holidays abroad, a job that until now has only been done piecemeal by individual states. However the money to pay for the "multi-channel marketing campaign" is to be raised in part from visiting tourists, by charging them $10 for permission to enter. The rest of the funding will be raised in private sector contributions.
What this sounds like to me is a new fee imposed on people who can't vote to fund a new bureaucracy that will produce a product whose effects can't be measured with any precision. In other words, a hack's delight.
Part of George W. Bush's legacy was declining foreign visitors to the U.S. The Guardian continued, "According to the US Travel Association, foreign visitor numbers have dropped every year since 2001, with 2.4 million fewer overseas visitors last year than in 2000." With policies like this, Obama looks set to continue that dispiriting trend, which affects states like Massachusetts, where tourism is an important economic driver, especially hard.
The fee on foreign tourists should be abolished. If businesses want to advertise U.S. holidays, they should pay for it themselves and spare us a new bureaucracy.
