Green Line expansion plans may involve building seizures, demolitions in Medford

the other shoe drops...


Leslie Ogden

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Massachusetts Executive Office of Transportation (EOT) last month identified buildings that could come down to make way for extension of the T’s Green Line through Medford.

The U-Haul building at 600 Mystic Valley Parkway; the 196-200 Boston Ave. office buildings, which include some research facilities of the Cummings Foundation; and the Elizabeth Grady Headquarters at 222 Boston Avenue could potentially be affected by construction on the subway addition.

But the proposal to extend the Green Line to Route 16 relies on federal funding that is itself contingent on the cost-effectiveness of the project.

The location of the U-Haul building makes it the prime candidate for seizure, according to Ken Krause, a member of the Medford Green Line Neighborhood Alliance (MGNA), a local citizens’ group.

“The U-Haul building is the last building before Mystic Valley Parkway [Route 16], and that’s where they envision the actual station going,” he told the Daily.

The upcoming planning processes will deal in more detail with the status of the other two buildings.

“We are still in the very early planning stages and have identified the structures that we believe, given the current level of engineering we have, … are in the envelope of space,” Kate Fichter, the deputy director of the project at the EOT, told the Daily. “But we are far, far away from knowing anything for sure.”

The EOT has only identified a small part of the 200 Boston Ave. building for possible demolition, but it is possible that the entire building may need to be relocated due to its proximity to the rails.

“[The EOT] has indicated they need at least part of it, because the tracks run really close to the back of it,” Krause said.

Commuter rail tracks can generally be shifted to make room for the Green Line tracks. In this case, though, the tracks cannot move because they are near a bridge over Route 16, according to Krause.

“Basically, there is less room to work with,” he said. Planners are attempting to figure out if the route can pass through that section “without taking the entire building and the entire property,” he added.

Demolishing the entire building at 200 Boston Avenue would have a negative effect on Medford, according to Krause.

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Medford, Malden Tea Party protesters angry at Obama spending

Medford - With thousands across the country holding Tax Day Tea Party protests last Wednesday, Arlington was not left out. The tea, however, was.

Like many Republicans — and a few Democrats — Bernard Green, chairman of the Medford Republican City Committee, is fed up with the increase in taxes that affect the everyday consumer. Green joined a few dozen sign-toting at the corner of Salem Street and Fellsway West to protest.

Some protestors came from as near as Malden and Arlington and as far as Andover. Cars honked in support as they drove by during the April 15 rally.

Not a fan of the recent wave of federally backed bailouts, Green said it seems like Washington is trying to micro-manage all aspects of the economy.

“If you look at the history of socialist nations, isn’t that the trademark?” said Green. “What does the average politician even know about finance and banking?”

But this tealess party was not a partisan affair. Dave Funnell, a Medford Democrat, had his own issues.

“I believe that the stimulus bill, starting under the Bush administration, is basically a lie,” said Funnell. “In such times of economic difficulty, that the government thinks it can spend its way out is ridiculous.”

Funnell said while he thinks President Barack Obama means well, he isn’t making things much better with the excessive spending.

“Obama is very altruistic,” said Funnell. “He’s giving the country away to the rest of the world.”

The protest was one of many coordinated in a grassroots effort to speak out against Obama’s spending policy. Thousands turned out across the country. One group of protestors even caused a brief lockdown at the White House after throwing a box of tea bags at the nation’s capital.

Obama has stuck to his stance that the massive spending has eased the burden on middle class families.

“All of these actions — the Recovery Act, the bank capitalization program, the housing plan, the strengthening of the non-bank credit market, the auto plan, and our work at the G20 — have been necessary pieces of the recovery puzzle,” Obama said in a speech at Georgetown University last Tuesday. “They have been designed to increase aggregate demand, get credit flowing again to families and businesses and help them ride out the storm.”

Barry Greenspan, chairman of Malden’s Republican Committee, said he organized the Tea Party at the Medford/Malden border after he heard about the nationwide protesting sensation.

“These have been going on all over the nation but at city halls any major locations,” said Greenspan. “I figured why not have one of these in the suburbs?”

Greenspan said he believes Massachusetts is losing population because of tax increases like the recent increase of the federal cigarette excise tax to $1.01. Combined with the state’s existing cigarette tax of $2.51 per pack, this has made Massachusetts the third most expensive state to light up in, next to New Jersey and New York.

On the matter of the bailouts, Greenspan said he was against them from the start.

“I think incompetence should not be rewarded,” said Greenspan. “What about the guy with the corner store? Does he get a bailout?”

Over in Providence, R.I., Republicans from near and far attended a local rally. One participant was Donnarose Russian, former chair of the Arlington Republican Town Committee.

Russian said more than 3,000 people showed up to speak out against the Obama administration’s approach to bailouts. In Rhode Island, Russian said the tea bags were not forgotten.

“They festooned my car with tea bags,” said Russian. “They tied them on my windshield wipers. When I got back to my car, it had tea bags all over it. It must have been all the John McCain stickers.”

As in Medford, Russian said there was no real counter-protesting presence at the Providence party. A few people made comments, she said, but the only ones who had organized were the tea partiers.

Russian said people might have been surprised that the conservatives had organized a protest.

“Finally conservatives come out and say something,” said Russian. “We never protest. We never have shindigs. Now we do something and we’re called all kinds of names.”

In February, Russian moved from Arlington to Wrentham, where she now chairs another Republican committee.

“I no longer live in Arlington,” said Russian. “There were too many liberals and the endless tax overrides.”

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Green Line extension update

The mother and daughter have lived in their gray wood-shingle house on North Street since 1958, resettling here, like many Italian families, after decades in neighborhoods of Boston or Cambridge.

Down the block on Mystic Valley Parkway, Medford's newcomers - many of them fleeing expensive housing markets in Cambridge and Somerville - flood into the new Whole Foods, loading groceries and babies into Subarus and Honda Civics adorned with Obama stickers.

The two camps coexist peacefully in this close-in suburb of 56,000, but ask them about the planned extension of the MBTA's Green Line into their neighborhood and a big rift emerges.

"It's sort of divided among the newcomers and the old-timers who don't want to see it changed," said Gwen Blackburn, a retired school district administrator long active in the community.

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REMINDER:TAX DAY TEA PARTY PROTEST RALLY IN MEDFORD! APRIL 15th!

TAX DAY TEA PARTY PROTEST RALLY IN MEDFORD!

http://taxdayteaparty.com/

Why fight the traffic to go to the rally at The State House - you can protest closer to home!

Date: Wednesday April 15, 2009
Time: Starts @ 4:00 PM until...
Place: Corner of The Fellsway @ Salem Street Medford

PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN PROTEST SIGNS!

(Please contact medfordgop@gmail.com in advance if you need a sign.)

Medford Democrat sponsors bill to allow transvestites to use woman's public bathrooms

Mass. advocates debate transgender bathrooms

By KELSEY ABBRUZZESE
Associated Press Writer

Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, said women and children in Colorado, where a similar measure has passed, have begun to fear for their safety in bathrooms.

"Are we going to have to have the bathroom police to check everybody of a different gender that goes into the women's room?" Mineau said. "We certainly are against discrimination of any members of society, but that's not the issue here."

Massachusetts is the latest state to consider banning discrimination because of transgender status. New Hampshire recently killed legislation because of the fear that transgender individuals could use any bathroom, but is reconsidering its bill Wednesday.

Thirteen other states prohibit discrimination against people who identify themselves as a different gender. Laws also exist in the District of Columbia and 93 cities and counties, according to the Transgender Law Policy Institute.

State Rep. Carl Sciortino, D-Medford, filed the Massachusetts legislation and said it is long overdue because of high discrimination rates in the transgender community and a lack of legal protection.

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Medford City Council agenda: April 7, 2009.

Massachusetts Democrat suggest granting voting rights to illegal aliens

From Michael Graham's Natural Truth blog;



Take three minutes to watch this must-see video of a recent Democratic Party Platform meeting in Framingham. State Rep. Pam Richardson, with the support of at least one other legislator, calls upon her party to add the following to their platform:

Taxpayer-subsidized college tuition for illegal immigrants.
Drivers licenses for illegals.
The right for crimmigrants to vote in city and town elections.

Be sure to listen to Rep. Richardson's complaint that "there are those among us who don't have the same rights or opportunities as the rest of us." You know, Pam, when I was in Ireland last week, I didn't have the same rights of the Irishmen I was drinking with, either. And it didn't occur to me to expect them, either.

That's because Ireland isn't my country. And America isn't theirs, either. Shouldn't being an American citizen matter--even here in Massachusetts?

Massachusetts stimulus money to go to unions

Chicago politics take over Massachusetts

A few quick questions for Governor Patrick and President Obama. First, with economic data showing that unionizing the punlic sector and auto industry has - paired with the redistribution of wealth through the Barney Frank FHA - led to the financial ruin of Detroit, Sacramento, Albany, and soon Boston, why is the so called Stimulus Plan spending so much time and energy in expanding unionization of the public sector? Second, if this is such a popular idea, why did the Patrick Administration launch this trial balloon over the weekend when political coverage is at it's lowest?

Americans and Bay Staters are starting to realize just what they have wrought bringing Chicago politics to our halls of power.

Mass. weighs labor agreements on stimulus projects

BOSTON — Massachusetts is weighing whether to require contractors bidding on certain federally funded stimulus projects to enter into deals with local unions.

The use of so-called "project labor agreements" would require contractors to negotiate with union officials, honor union wages and rules, and generally abide by collective bargaining agreements for a specific project.

Mean Street: The Coming Obama Jobs Disaster

It is tough to be too gloomy the day after the Dow industrials soared another 3%, but spare a moment’s thought for the unemployed.

It is bad for them and will get worse. Unemployment will easily hit 10% by year end.

Of course, President Obama and his advisers don’t see it that way. They forecast unemployment topping out at around 9%. But why trust them? Of Obama’s 22 Cabinet level bigwigs, including the biggest wig himself, none has had a sustained private-sector career.

They are government lifers. And they are living in a fantasy world of think tanks and policy papers where government spending magically leads to business hiring. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

Soon enough, Obama’s dreams of job creation will turn into an unending nightmare of double-digit unemployment. Look at the numbers. Thursday’s jobless claims hit a 26-year high. This morning’s jobs numbers were predictably awful. The economy lost 663,000 jobs in March, and unemployment jumped to 8.5%.

Ask anybody running a business. They will tell you they expect the job market to get even worse. After all, much of what any CEO does is think about hiring and firing. And lately, CEOs are pretty focused on the firing part of the equation.

In my career, I have fired dozens of people. These are terrible, gut-wrenching decisions that keep you up at night. They also are the most necessary. Unlike governments, businesses have to turn a profit. That is why thousands of American bosses are firing millions of their workers. Not because they want to. They have to. No profit and you are out of business. Then everyone’s out of work.

The reluctance to fire in hard times leads inevitably to a reluctance to hire once the economy picks up. Even when the profits are rolling in, you still need a compelling reason to hire.

Unfortunately, Obama has given CEOs plenty of reasons to fire and none to hire.

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PROMISES, PROMISES: Obama tax pledge up in smoke

WASHINGTON (AP) - One of President Barack Obama's campaign pledges on taxes went up in puffs of smoke Wednesday.

The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama's promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000.

This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.

To be sure, Obama's tax promises in last year's campaign were most often made in the context of income taxes. Not always.

"I can make a firm pledge," he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. "Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

He repeatedly vowed "you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime."

Now in office, Obama, who stopped smoking but has admitted he slips now and then, signed a law raising the tobacco tax nearly 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes, to $1.01. Other tobacco products saw similarly steep increases.

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Paul Ryan: The GOP's Alternative Budget

President Obama offers us the option of European big government
By PAUL D. RYAN

Today, the House of Representatives will consider two budget plans that represent dramatically different visions for our nation's future.

We will first consider President Barack Obama's plan. To be clear, this is no ordinary budget. In a nutshell, the president and Democratic leaders in Congress are attempting to bring about the third and final great wave of progressivism, building on top of the New Deal and the Great Society. So America is placed in a special moment in our history -- brought about by the deep recession, Mr. Obama's ambitious agenda, and the pending fiscal tidal-wave of red ink brought forward by the looming insolvency of our entitlement programs. If this agenda comes to pass, it will mark this period in history as the moment America turned European.

House Republicans will offer an alternative plan. This too is no ordinary budget. As the opposition party, we believe this moment must be met by offering the American people a different way forward -- one based on our belief that America is an exceptional nation, and we want to keep it that way. Our budget applies our country's enduring first principles to the problems of our day. Rather than attempting to equalize the results of peoples' lives and micromanaging their affairs, we seek to preserve our system of protecting our natural rights and equalizing opportunity for all. The plan works to accomplish four main goals: 1) fulfill the mission of health and retirement security; 2) control our nation's debts; 3) put the economy on a path of growth and leadership in the global economy; and 4) preserve the American legacy of leaving the next generation better off.

Under the president's plan, spending will top $4 trillion this year alone, and consume 28.5% of our nation's economy. His plan would mean a $1 trillion increase to the already unsustainable spending growth of our nation's entitlement programs -- including a "down payment" toward government-controlled health care and education; a $1.5 trillion tax increase to further shackle the small businesses and investors we rely on to create jobs; a massive increase in energy costs for families via cap and trade. Moreover, the Obama plan would result in an exploding deficit, a doubling of the nation's debt in five years, and an increase of that debt to more than 82% of our nation's GDP by the last year of the budget. This approach will ultimately debase our currency and reduce the living standards of the American people. Here's an outline of what we propose:

Here's an outline of what we propose:

- Deficits/Debt. The Republican budget achieves lower deficits than the Democratic plan in every year, and by 2019 yields half the deficit proposed by the president. By doing so, we control government debt: Under our plan, debt held by the public is $3.6 trillion less during the budget period.

- Spending. Our budget gives priority to national defense and veterans' health care. We freeze all other discretionary spending for five years, allowing it to grow modestly after that. We also place all spending under a statutory spending cap backed up by tough budget enforcement.

- Energy. Our budget lays a firm foundation to position the U.S. to meet three important strategic energy goals: reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil, deploying more clean and renewable energy sources free of greenhouse gas, and supporting economic growth. We do these things by rejecting the president's cap-and-trade scheme, by opening exploration on our nation's oil and gas fields, and by investing the proceeds in a new clean energy trust fund, infrastructure and further deficit reduction.

- Entitlements. Our budget also takes steps toward fulfilling the mission of health and retirement security, in part by making these programs fiscally sustainable. The budget moves toward making quality health care affordable and accessible to all Americans by strengthening the relationship between patients and their doctors, not the dictates of government bureaucrats. We preserve the existing Medicare program for all those 55 or older; and then, to make the program sustainable and dependable, those 54 and younger will enter a Medicare program reformed to work like the health plan members of Congress and federal employees now enjoy. Starting in 2021, seniors would receive a premium support payment equal to 100% of the Medicare benefit on average. This would be income related, so low-income seniors receive extra support, and high-income seniors receive support relative to their incomes -- along the same lines as the president's Medicare Part D proposal.

We strengthen the Medicaid safety net by converting the federal share of Medicaid payments into an allotment tailored for each state's low-income population. This will enhance state flexibility and sensitivity to spending growth.

In one of the most valued government programs -- Social Security -- our budget begins to develop a bipartisan solution to the program's pending bankruptcy by incorporating some of the reforms advocated by the president's budget director. Specifically, we provide for a trigger that would make small adjustments in the benefits for higher-income beneficiaries if the Social Security Administration determines the Social Security Trust Fund cannot meet its obligations. This is a modest but serious proposal which would not affect those in or near retirement, but is aimed at helping develop a consensus, across party lines, toward saving this important retirement program. We also assure that benefits for lower-income recipients are large enough to keep them out of poverty.

- Tax Reform. Our budget does not raise taxes, and makes permanent the 2001 and 2003 tax laws. In fact, we cut taxes and reform the tax system. Individuals can choose to pay their federal taxes under the existing code, or move to a highly simplified system that fits on a post card, with few deductions and two rates. Specifically, couples pay 10% on their first $100,000 in income (singles on $50,000) and 25% above that. Capital gains and dividends are taxed at 15%, and the death tax is repealed. The proposal includes generous standard and personal exemptions such that a family of four earning $39,000 would not pay tax on that amount. In an effort to revive peoples' lost savings, and to create an incentive for risk-taking and investment, the budget repeals the capital gains tax through 2010 for all taxpayers.

On the business side, the budget permanently cuts the uncompetitive corporate income tax rate -- currently the second highest in the industrialized world -- to 25%. This puts American companies in a better position to lead in the global economy, promotes jobs here at home, and strengthens worker paychecks.

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