GOP values pass test

Scott Brown’s Senate victory may help revive interest in the Republican Party in the Bay State.

By Kerry J. Byrne / As You Were Saying . . .
Saturday, January 30, 2010

The modern Democratic Party has rejected these bedrock American values. Maybe it’s time for the Bay State’s lifelong Democrats to finally reject the party that no longer represents them.

So you’re a Bay State voter weaned on the mother’s milk of Democratic Party orthodoxy of the past half century. You’ve faithfully pulled levers for Democrats in one election after the other to the point that before Scott Brown, Massachusetts had sent no GOP senator to Washington since 1972.

So now you’re torn. You know that Democrats abandoned you and your values long ago with their crushing taxes on families, their over-regulation of small business and their reckless race toward Big Brother-style socialism. And you agreed with Brown’s common sense bedrock-American platform: small government, low taxes, strong military.

But you were trained from childhood to think of “Republican” as a dirty word (shocking, considering that Republicans liberated the slaves, gave women the right to vote and pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress - but I digress). This Bay State mindset is why Brown ran as an “independent voice” instead of a Republican, despite peddling a fiscally conservative platform.

So you’re not ready to make the leap. You’re not ready to admit that (gasp!) you might be a Republican. Well, I’m here to help. Consider my “You Might Be a Republican” quiz. Here goes:

If you’re sick of being overwhelmed by an endless wave of local, state and federal taxes, you might be a Republican.

If you want your children’s schools run by local parents and local administrators instead of distant bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., you might be a Republican.

If you prefer a strong American military to a weak American military, you might be a Republican.

If you believe strong, stable families are the building blocks of a strong, stable society, you might be a Republican.

If you want your tax dollars to pay for our military to kill terrorists and not pay for lawyers to defend terrorists, you might be a Republican.

If you favor individual charity and volunteerism over corrupt government handouts, you might be a Republican.

If you want the government to live within its financial means, much like your family must do, you might be a Republican.

If you think it’s OK to say “Merry Christmas” to people around, you know, Christmastime, you might be a Republican.

If you believe you have the right to defend your home and your family from criminal intruders, you might be a Republican.

If you resent bureaucratic do-gooders in D.C. telling you how to raise your family, you might be a Republican.

If you admire the entrepreneurial spirit of the American people, and reject the belief that growth comes from Washington’s largesse, you might be a Republican.

Full column

The latest steamrolling of taxpayers by public unions

Anyone else remember the successful Massachusetts Teachers Association-led, nationally funded campaign to keep our taxes high last year?

Public unions are like a tax-funded avalanche, they keep rolling down the slope of the national economy, destroying everything in their path and absorbing the remnants to make an even stronger avalanche. It's disgusting, we need to ban public unions, they are a threat to democracy.
-NM

From the Wall Street Journal;

It's not often that citizens vote for higher taxes, but 54% of Oregonians have done precisely that. In a rolling month-long referendum by mail that ended Tuesday, they approved some $700 million in tax hikes on business and wealthy residents.

The highest income tax rate in the state moves to 11% from 9%, which will give Oregon close to the highest rate in the nation. (New York City residents pay 12.6%.) This ballot outcome runs contrary to the current public mood about spending and taxes, so it's worth exploring how it happened.

First, a deluge of money. Local and national public employee unions bankrolled the "yes" campaign, with a $6.5 million blitz in TV and radio ads. That was $2 million more than the business community and taxpayer advocates raised. The cash helped the tax increase roll up a 71% margin in the liberal precincts in and around Portland, even as it lost in most of the rest of the state.

The union message was also as clever as it was disingenuous: All of these taxes will be paid by someone else, such as Wall Street bankers, out-of-state credit card companies, CEOs. Only the richest 2.5% will pay a little more in taxes, the unions also claimed.

The reality is that these taxes will be absorbed by employers who sign worker paychecks—from Nike Inc. to the corner grocer. Two-thirds of those hit with the new 11% tax rate are small and medium-sized business owners. Phil Knight of Nike dubbed the tax initiatives Oregon's "assisted suicide" for business. The real victims of these taxes won't be wealthy business owners, who can always move away or shelter income, but less mobile Oregonians who will find it harder to get or keep a job.

One national consequence of the Oregon vote is that we are likely to see unions finance more of these tax-the-rich campaigns in other states with big deficits. Public employee unions have a lucrative racket: They essentially leverage the tax dollars they receive in dues from the salaries and benefits of their members to lobby for more tax dollars to secure even fatter pensions and pay.

The teachers unions exulted yesterday that Oregonians voted to "protect our schools and vital public services." What was really protected was the $83,402 a year average in pay and benefits to Oregon state workers, 30% higher than what private workers receive. This is bankrupting states like Oregon, California, New York and New Jersey. On the other hand, Oregon's folly will be some other state's gain.

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) Responds to State of the Union

MGNA:MassDOT responds to Green Line annual report comments

From the MGNA Website;

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation has released its response to public comments on its 2009 Annual Status Report for the Green Line extension and the other transit commitment projects in its State Implementation Plan.

Each July 1, MassDOT is required to file an Annual Status Report on these projects, hold a public hearing (held Sept. 9, 2009), and accept written public comments. It then has 120 days to formally submit responses to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.

In its document, MassDOT responds to public comments regarding its proposed two-phase construction schedule, Route 16 station property impacts, elimination of the proposed Winthrop Street station, MassDOT’s definition of “Medford Hillside,” impacts on minority and other populations, tunneling analysis, mitigation, diesel particulate pollution, as well as the project’s funding and timetable.

MassDOT also reiterates that the siting of the maintenance and storage facility for the project remains a “formidable” challenge, but that it continues to work on the issue with municipal and public stakeholders and hopes to have a resolution soon.

MGNA: Medford Green Line Neighborhood Alliance

Information about our green line extension.

A GOP Road Map for America's Future

By PAUL D. RYAN

Special to the Wall Street Journal

In tonight's State of the Union address, President Obama will declare a new found commitment to "fiscal responsibility" to cover the huge spending and debt he and congressional Democrats have run up in his first year in office. But next Monday, when he submits his actual budget, I fear it will rely on gimmickry, commissions, luke-warm spending "freezes," and paper-tiger controls to create the illusion of budget discipline. Meanwhile, he and the Democratic congressional leadership will continue pursuing a relentless expansion of government and a new culture of dependency.

America needs an alternative. For that reason, I have reintroduced my plan to tackle our nation's most pressing domestic challenges—updated to reflect the dramatic decline in our economic and fiscal condition. The plan, called A Road Map for America's Future and first introduced in 2008, is a comprehensive proposal to ensure health and retirement security for all Americans, to lift the debt burdens that are mounting every day because of Washington's reckless spending, and to promote jobs and competitiveness in the 21st century global economy.

The difference between the Road Map and the Democrats' approach could not be more clear. From the enactment of a $1 trillion "stimulus" last February to the current pass-at-all costs government takeover of health care, the Democratic leadership has followed a "progressive" strategy that will take us closer to a tipping point past which most Americans receive more in government benefits than they pay in taxes—a European-style welfare state where double-digit unemployment becomes a way of life.

Full column

The lastest infringement upon State's rights by the Fed

In an extension of the stealth expansionist tactics employed in disbursing federal highway money for years, we now see the federal government using our education funding as a means to exert control over the states of the Republic. The Medford Transcript cheerfully reports;

Let the race begin!

Massachusetts is one of 40 states (along with Washington D.C.) to submit an application to the federal government for “Race to the Top” funding, as part of a new program meant to bolster school finances and improve the quality of education across the country.

Getting past the fact that central control and federal funding of our school systems - along with the emergence of the bane to merit-based selection of teachers, organized progressive teachers' unions - has deteriorated the quality of our schools, not "improved the quality of education across the country", why are we even racing for our own tax dollars back in the first place?

Washington continues to take more and more money from us in the individual states each year in the form of higher taxes and fees*, and then they make us comply with their conditions and standards to beg for the money back, either in the form of "stimulus" money for infrastructure, or "Race to the Top", or "No Child Left Behind" for education funding?

Are these federal programs even constitutional? Has the 10th Amendment been removed from the Constitution, do these words ring a bell with any of our local or state lawmakers; "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a Supreme Court that could still make that distinction for us? No, these are not helpful programs listed above, each and every one of them is an incremental usurpation of state's rights in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution and 10th Amendment. Instead of sitting up and begging like a bunch of docile puppies, the states should be growling at the hand of the fed stealing from us every day to fund these federal supremacy ponzi schemes.

Nick McNulty

*Do not believe the farcical claims of the Obama Administration and Nancy Pelosi that taxes on the middle classes have not gone up, and will not climb further. Federal taxes - or state taxes driven higher by costs pushed on the states by the Fed - on gas, alcohol, and tobacco have all gone up since January 2009, which all hit the middle class. Additionally, while the federal government raises taxes on citizens, they are cutting what comes back to the states, leading to state and local tax and fee hikes as we here in Massachusetts(6.25% state sales tax) and Medford (.75% municipal meals tax) are all too well aware.

Blame Bush for Massachusetts

By Ed Gillespie 01/21/10 at 7:16 pm

Sen.-elect Scott Brown’s stunning upset of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has provoked a fascinating round of election-year self-examination for Democrats.

Shortly after the Associated Press called the race, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen revealed the fruits of his introspection: Blame George W. Bush. “This year’s Midterms will be a choice between continuing the economic progress and independent leadership that House Democrats are delivering for their districts versus Republicans who are eager to turn back the clock to the same failed Bush-Cheney policies,” Van Hollen said.

President Obama echoed Van Hollen’s comments yesterday, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry, and they’re frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

Phew! Good to know. Glad it wasn’t the overreaching liberal agenda of the Democrats in Congress or the Obama White House.

Full column