Random Life Update

  • Peter’s posterior tongue-tie got corrected yesterday. He went through the procedure well (it’s really a rather simple procedure), and has more tongue movement now. It still remains to be seen if it’ll help him breastfeed.
  • I’ll be judging the Magic Worldwake prerelease in Hartford on January 30, and I’ll be judging a variety of Magic events at PAX Boston in March.
  • Hannah’s learning new words and skills every day. It’s really quite amazing to watch.
  • I’m very excited that Scott Brown has a shot at winning the Senate seat. I don’t agree with him on everything, but he’ll be much better than the alternative.

Senate Race

The more I look into it, the less happy I am with really any of the candidates. I’m questioning my support of Brown over Robinson. But either of them would be better than the others. It’d be nice to have someone who I agreed with everything on, but then again, the only way I’d get that would be if I ran myself (which I won’t do). So, I need to figure out which principles I’m willing to compromise to try to get someone in office who I at least agree with somewhat.

*sigh*

U.S. Senate Race

My wife and I last night finally looked into the candidates for the upcoming special U.S. Senate election. Our choice is Scott Brown. While we wish he were even more conservative, perhaps that means that he’s actually electable in this state. Perhaps thinking that someone even somewhat conservative is electable in this state is too much to hope for. My dad says that he was impressed when meeting him while working with the Chernisky campaign, which is an endorsement that means a lot to me.

Our previous three Speakers of the Massachusetts House of Representatives

  • Charles Flaherty: Resigned in 1996 after pleading guilty in federal court to tax evasion and admitted to the State Ethics Commission that he received free vacation lodging from lobbyists and business interests.
  • Thomas Finneran: Resigned in 2004 and three years later pled guilty to criminal obstruction of justice charges.
  • Salvatore DiMasi: Resigned in January 2009 due to allegations, and was just indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

Somehow, my level of confidence in our state government is not increasing.

The morning after; Quote of the Day

Well, out of all the positions on the ballot and all 5 questions on my ballot, with the exception of one unopposed candidate that I voted for, no race went the way I voted for it.

“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” — Romans 13:1 (NIV)

Voting Complete

I voted this morning. I’ve never seen a line that long in Charlton before, but it moved quickly.

The most interesting thing I saw there was a large campaign from the Highway Dept. trying to get people to pass Question #4. I guess it must not be as irrelevant as I thought. They probably figure that if they get it to pass, they have a good shot at calling a Special Town Meeting and getting the borrowing for it to pass.

Vote NO on Question #4/#5 (6th Worcester District for Mass. State Rep.)

Question #4 or #5, depending on where in the district you are, is a non-binding public policy question to give a suggestion to the state representative for our district, as follows:

“Shall the state representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of legislation distributing $450 million from the state’s ‘rainy day’ stabilization fund to the cities and towns of the Commonwealth for residential property tax relief?”

There’s a lot more involved in this question than meets the eye at first. Part of Ron Chernisky‘s campaign against Rep. Geraldo Alicea is that Alicea voted against some amendments that would have taken money from the “rainy day” stabilization fund and distributed it to towns as unrestricted local aid. In fact, part of Chernisky’s campaign staff worked at getting this question on the ballot in this district. (It’s on the ballot in a few other districts as well, unrelated to the Chernisky campaign as far as I can tell.)

If I’m to understand what Chernisky said at the debate correctly, there was a bill to spend $450 million from the stabilization fund on various state projects. Rep. Frost from Auburn submitted an amendment to spend that money on direct local aid instead, and that’s what Alicea voted against. Alicea seemed to think that Chernisky was talking about a different vote at a different time.

However, the question on the ballot isn’t about when we spend from stabilization, do we do so on state programs or local programs. I think the question here is really about whether we should spend out of the stabilization fund at all. And I think that the state right now needs as much in there as they can get, to get through the economic downturn with as high a bond rating as possible. Last I heard, the state already isn’t getting as good a rate on their bonds as they’d like. Draining the state’s savings account for a one-time boost to cities and towns just doesn’t seem responsible to me. As Alicea says (maybe the only thing I agree with him on), it’s like raiding your 401(k) to pay for groceries.

I don’t know whether this measure will pass or not, or if it will really mean anything either way. The public policy questions never get a whole lot of media attention, although there was a front-page article in Friday’s Southbridge Evening News (PDF) about it. I’m interested to see what the result is, though.

Vote NO on Question #4 (Charlton), just in case it matters

“4. Shall the Town of Charlton be allowed to exempt from the provisions of proposition two and one-half, so-called, the amounts required to pay for the bond issued in order to design, construct, and equip a new highway operations facility?”

As a little background for those unfamiliar with Prop. 2½, it was a measure passed by ballot initiative in 1980. Each municipality in Massachusetts has a “levy limit”, which is the maximum that they can levy in property taxes each year. This limit gets increased each year by 2½% plus an adjustment for any new growth in the town. However, a town can pass a ballot question to increase their levy limit permanently (a “Prop 2½ Override”) or temporarily to pay for something (a “Prop 2½ Debt Exclusion” or “Prop 2½ Capital Outlay Exclusion”). (Although often colloquially the temporary form will be called an “override” as well.)

In order to borrow the money to pay for a new highway barn ($3,500,000), it needed to pass with a 2/3 majority at the Special Town Meeting on October 28. It was defeated, 78 in favor to 52 against. If that had passed, this debt exclusion ballot question would have allowed for the property taxes to be increased for the 20 year life of the bond to pay for it.

I had actually voted for the borrowing at town meeting, somewhat to my surprise. It seemed like a wise investment to protect the millions of dollars in highway equipment we have, and would have increased public safety and the lifetime of these very expensive vehicles. Also, the price wasn’t likely to get cheaper in the future. (Contractors are cheaper now than they used to be, but that won’t last.) But, the price was too high for some people (which I can understand).

So now, this ballot question is rather pointless. In fact, since it needed to be sent to the state to be put on the ballot before there was a dollar amount for the project, passing it now could be a blank check to have a debt exclusion for any highway operations facility of any cost in the future.

So, I’m voting against it just to be sure we don’t end up in an odd situation like that. It’s not clear that this question would have passed even if the vote at the town meeting had passed, but now I’m pretty sure that this question won’t pass, and I’m going to be a part of helping make that the case. (It wouldn’t surprise me if the newspapers didn’t report on the result of the question at all on Wednesday morning.)

Question #3 (Massachusetts)

Question #3 would prohibit dog races on which betting or wagering occurs.

This seems like a question that targets people’s emotions. “Oh, think of the pretty dogs and how they’re abused.” While I’m sure that some abuses occur, I would tend to think (not really knowing anything of the industry) that if you own a champion racing dog, you’d try to take good care of it so that it would win you races for as long as posible.

I’m a little undecided on this one. Both the Telegram & Gazette and Southbridge Evening News, (PDF, p. 4) editorials state that there’s a big decline in people betting at the track anyway, but the Telegram uses this as a means to say that we shouldn’t let government interfere in private business, whereas the News uses this to say that we might as well ban it to finally get rid of it. I tend to find the Telegram‘s argument the more compelling one out of those two.

On the other hand, the industry does get financial help from the state. (That’s some of the pork that I hope Question 1 would get rid of.) The Telegram‘s editorial states that “Make no mistake: A ‘no’ vote on Question 3 should also be read as a ‘no’ vote to special tax breaks to track operators and legalization of racetrack slot parlors to keep the moribund operations afloat.” I tend to doubt it would be interpreted that way, though. State Rep. Candidate Ron Chernisky (whom I’m supporting) says that he’s voting for the measure, primarily to stop the government subsidies for the industry.

I’m leaning toward voting No, mainly on the argument that government shouldn’t be getting involved at all. But it’s not an easy decision.

Then again, I tend to think that this question will pass with well over a majority of the vote. I’ve seen several yard signs in favor of it, and I’ve seen no organized campaign against it. When you tell people that they can protect animals, sometimes it seems like they get more excited about that then if you told them that they can protect people.