EagleTribune.com : Blogs : The Soapbox

Question: When is a tax break for the wealthy not a tax break for the wealthy?
Answer: When a Democrat calls it an “economic stimulus plan.”
Of course, it’s still a tax break for the wealthy - calling it by another name doesn’t change the reality - but most Democrats are loathe to give even the slightest impression that they are anything but champions for the little guy, or girl. It might undermine Barack Obama’s “End-the-Bush-tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy!” mantra.
So, here we are in Massachusetts, where Barack-backer Gov. Deval Patrick will be giving away $1 billion of the taxpayers’ “hard-earned” money during the next 10 years to “life sciences” firms. The spin is that this will create all kinds of good jobs at good wages. But one wonders why, if biotech is such a good business bet, it will take $1 billion to prop it up enough to create some new jobs. When entrepreneurs see a good business opportunity, they generally go for it without looking for a government handout first.
One should also note that a chunk of this money - which breaks down to $500 million for capital improvements, $250 million in tax credits and $250 million in grants - will likely be going to some pretty big firms, headed by some very rich CEOs. Why else would some of them have been smiling so broadly at the passage of the governor’s bill?
A few of the little guys and girls aren’t applauding. A mini-version of the big $1 billion life sciences initiative played out in Gloucester this past week, with the announcement that Boston developer Sam Park would receive a $2 million state grant to help him with the infrastructure costs for his impending Gloucester Crossing mall. Critics complained that a wealthy guy like Park shouldn’t be getting a grant or a tax break - the money should have gone to education.
Obviously, you folks need another sip of the Kool-Aid. Take a drink and repeat after me: “economic stimulus … economic stimulus … economic stimulus …”

Haven’t we hear this song before? Bills get passed, or killed, at the Statehouse that directly benefit good friends of those in power, and it’s all a complete coincidence. Nobody influenced anybody.
So it’s a familiar melody coming from the lips of the surrogate subordinates of House Speaker Sal DiMasi. Among the scandals currently distracting the speaker from his speakerly duties is a happy coincidence from 2006 - at least very happy for DiMasi’s longtime friend Jay Cashman, who owned a piece of property next to a proposed Liquified Natural Gas terminal in Fall River. There was a bill pending in the House that would have blocked construction of the LNG plant, but it was killed in committee. Cashman went on to sell the property for a $14.2 million profit. Oh, what a happy coincidence. Almost Clintonesque.
But according to Rep. Brian Dempsey, D-Haverhill, who owes his position as chairman of the Telecommunications and Energy Committee to DiMasi, the speaker had no influence on the death of the bill. It was all about the energy agenda. Read about it here.
In fact, Dempsey said he didn’t even know that DiMasi and Cashman were friends.
Oh, my. Dempsey must wear blinders and earplugs on Beacon Hill. He may be the only elected official in the Statehouse and beyond who doesn’t know about Cashman and DiMasi’s long friendship.
But surely he has to understand why the rest of us might be a bit skeptical. At the Statehouse, nothing passes, or doesn’t pass, makes it out of committee or dies in committee, without the OK of the speaker.
So many coincidences. It’s a bit too coincidental.

Interesting - now that Mark Penn, the pollster and senior strategist for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, has been forced to resign, at least from the strategist gig, we’re finally hearing from the mainstream press what we should have been hearing long ago.
Penn was pushed out for one specific conflict of interest - he met with representatives of the Columbian government to help promote a free trade agreement that Mrs. Clinton, opposes.
But that doesn’t begin to tell the conflict story. Even left-leaning National Public Radio described Penn this morning as a “walking, talking conflict of interest.” Gee, you think if he’d been advising John McCain for months and months, we’d just be hearing the details of all this now?
Turns out Penn, as CEO of Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, an international communications and lobbying firm, is associated with various causes and corporations that would cause most true-believer Democrats to turn as purple as Bill Clinton regularly does now on the campaign trail. They range from Blackwater to Phillip Morris to Union Carbide and various anti-union efforts.
The explanation for all this is that Penn didn’t work “directly” for those clients. Ah, yes. Democrats were happy to accept that line of reasoning when President Bush said he had nothing directly to do with the firing of various U.S. Attorneys, weren’t they.
Also interesting - when Karl Rove went to work for George W. Bush, he was required to give up his other clients. Yet it is Rove, not Penn, who still gets tarred as the prince of political darkness.
Meanwhile, Hillary still thinks she’s the victim of lousy press coverage. Sounds like the only thing good enough for her is a free pass on everything.

I don’t blame cops for wanting to make more money. Heck, I want to make more money.
But I do blame them for constantly cloaking their desire for more money by pretending to be altruistic. Their frenzied efforts to protect their monopoly on road details, as the Legislature considers transportation reforms that would take some of that away, isn’t about money, they say. No, no, it’s all about protecting you and me - the public. Read about it here.
Oh please, guys (and girls). If this was all about public safety, you’d be out there doing it for free, or for the same amount that we’d have to pay a civilian flagperson. If this was really about public safety, you wouldn’t be pushing for it at all, because you have yet to produce statistics that show any bloodbath on the streets of other states that haven’t provided the gravy train motherlode you’ve got here in Massachusetts. Your actions, and the level of lobbying going on make it almost comically obvious that your concern about the public is about the public wallet, and your access to it. You have no intent of giving up your spots (along with your firefighter compatriots) as the inhabitants of most of the top-50 earning slots on every municipalities payroll.
So, just be honest. It would be so refreshing. You can do it. Just admit it’s all about the money.