As the House-Senate conference committee decides to hold closed-door meetings, it is important for the people of Massachusetts to weigh in meaningfully on this fast-tracking of legislation with incredible implications for the Commonwealth of MA.

Before passing the different versions of their casino bills, the House had refused to hold public hearings, while the Senate held one poorly announced hearing on the later versions of the bill (and one last year).

And House Speaker DeLeo, according to the State House News Service, is threatening to hold the rest of the legislative session hostage to his desires for slots at the racetracks (because of the 2 tracks in his district):

In an exclusive News Service interview, DeLeo indicated he would use the waning legislative calendar and his power over the agenda as a cudgel to force approval of slots for tracks, two of which are in or near his Winthrop-based district.

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The increasingly bare-knuckled rhetoric from DeLeo, markedly more militant since hints of a compromise Tuesday, carry risk in that a Patrick racinos veto could come too close to the July 31 close of formal sessions for the Legislature to reverse or be sustained in the Senate. And a DeLeo stick-up of other bills over slots threatens to send lawmakers into the election season without major résumé bullets on a variety of high-visibility policy matters.

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Asked whether he planned to block other legislation as a way of leveraging racinos into the bill, DeLeo replied, “Through the last weeks of session, there’s going to be a whole host of issues and pieces of legislation that sort of become intertwined in conference.”

“It’s inevitable that a lot of the legislation becomes intertwined, especially as you’re getting down to the final days of the session,” DeLeo said. “And, again, I just want to reiterate, as I did yesterday, jobs and local aid are very, very important to me, and I presume they’re important also to the governor and Senate president.”

In the latest Open Media Boston editorial, Jason Pramas weighs in against Deval Patrick’s neo-liberal addictions to corporatist ideology, and wonders if there might be a cure:

How does one treat people under the spell of an ideology that dictates that the private sector can run every sort of program better than the government when long experience with this kind of boondoggle shows that extracting profit from government monies budgeted for service provision equals … surprise, surprise … worse service provision?

How does one remind such people that the “deficit” as flogged by right-wingers is a paper tiger, and that social investment by a government is well-known to produce a stable working-class and a growing middle-class who can then bulk up the tax base and stabilize government budgets in a happy virtuous circle?

How does one explain to such bought-off and/or befuddled corporate shills that we wouldn’t be in the current economic crisis to begin with if we strengthened the regulation of corporations – and most critically, the financial sector – and TAXED them as they were once taxed; so that the public good was served over the private good?

Then he goes on to state the cure (below the jump)…

From The Boston Globe:

Patrick, displaying a front-runner’s confidence, responded with a call for eight debates, including two in western Massachusetts, though he did not specify they be televised. He also specifically urged that the debates include both Cahill and Baker, underscoring the benefit he believes will come through a three-way race in which Cahill draws from Baker’s potential conservative vote.

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“The governor hopes that Tim Cahill and Charlie Baker will join him in one debate a week between Labor Day in September and Election Day in November, for a total of eight debates overall,” said a statement from spokesman Alex Goldstein.

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Meanwhile, Stein complained in her statement that movie producers and biotech companies continue to receive breaks amid the national recession while state aid to cities and towns is cut.

She said voters “are looking for some way to end the giveaways” and redirect spending to town budgets.

“Charlie Baker and Deval Patrick are ducking debates already,” Stein said. “Governor Patrick has refused to appear on stage with other candidates on multiple occasions, allowing only forums without cross-candidate dialogue and real challenge. Often Charlie Baker is not showing up at all. Their fear of real debate is telling.”

It’s official, Deval Patrick and Charlie Baker are afraid of real debate, and afraid of the people’s candidate, Jill Stein!

Is it possible to replace the “money bomb” with a “Democracy Day?” Can we stem the tide of unjust, profit-driven policy, controlled by big-money corporations and their lobbyists? What would it take in Massachusetts to build a viable political alternative that is NOT beholden to special interests, and is instead truly accountable to the people of the Commonwealth, driven by the needs and desires of ordinary citizens across the state?

As Carl Davidson said at a Majority Agenda Project event, we need to organize our money, our votes, and our ideas. I think one way to do all 3 together is through the Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts.

One mechanism I’ve been working on to help us organize our money is a remix of Ron Paul’s “money bomb.” Hating that term, we’ve been cooking up a more positive spin, called “Democracy Day”:

Originally posted at DemocracyDays.com, cross-posted at Blue Mass Group.

Nobody symbolizes the interests of organized money to corrupt the political process in Massachusetts, to generally subvert the will of the people, and in one notorious instance, to squash the Clean Elections Law, more clearly than disgraced former House Speaker Tom Finneran.

And nobody symbolizes the struggle for clean, corruption-free elections in Massachusetts more clearly than Jill Stein, the Green-Rainbow Party candidate for governor in 2002 and now in 2010.

Now, Finneran is daring you to tip the balance towards democracy.

A picture says a thousand words, and the big smiles across the faces of the insider candidates for governor in their pre-debate photo-op with disgraced Speaker of the House Tom Finneran says it all.

From a Jill Stein press release:

EXCLUSIONARY GUBERNATORIAL DEBATE WAS DISSERVICE TO VOTERS, STEIN CHARGES

BOSTON –  Following today’s gubernatorial debate on WRKO,  gubernatorial candidate Jill Stein  noted that “In this debate, Tim Cahill, Charlie Baker, and Deval Patrick cozied up with the disgraced former House Speaker Tom Finneran to give the voters of the Commonwealth a very narrow vision of the state’s future.  The failing policies of the Beacon Hill machines were endorsed as great ideas and real solutions were kept off the table.  We’re going to work hard to break up this tedious deception and let the voters hear a real alternative to business as usual in Massachusetts.”

The debate was hosted by Finneran and included only three of the four gubernatorial candidates.  The Green-Rainbow Party candidate, Stein, was excluded from the debate, whose producers declined to return numerous phone calls from the campaign requesting that Stein be allowed to participate.

After noting that the three candidates invited by Finneran found themselves agreeing on issue after issue, Stein offered the following critique of the debate (below the fold):

{ Cross-posted at Blue Mass Group }

This great article in the Boston Globe by Frank Phillips exposes the blatant hypocrisy of Governor Patrick’s “self-styled political identity as a reformer”. Kudos to Phillips for summing it up beautifully in that one biting phrase.

Curran, whose client list has included such blue-chip technology companies as IBM and Cisco Systems, has arranged gatherings at Patrick’s Milton home, where Democratic heavy hitters and corporate executives – for $5,000 a piece – get to shmooze with the governor. He has set up events at trendy Boston restaurants, where executives discussed public policy issues affecting their industries. And he is listed as a cosponsor of fund-raisers for Patrick in Atlanta and Washington.

Indeed, those who have worked with him say that Curran, a hard-charging, 39-year-old lobbyist who makes more than $300,000 each year in client fees, has played a pivotal role in putting Patrick’s finance operation into high gear after several years of relative neglect by the governor, who has said he has a strong distaste for asking for money.

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At a Finance Committee meeting in late March, Curran, whose position with the campaign is unpaid, was singled out as Patrick’s top fund-raiser of 2010 – twice as much as the second-best fund-raiser, according to a person present at the meeting, who asked for anonymity to discuss a private event.

Conveniently, they have the perfect distraction from the obvious conclusion that this lobbyist dough has any influence whatsoever on Patrick’s governing… the ethics reforms he championed into state law:

“Governor Patrick proposed and helped pass some of the strictest ethics and lobbying laws in the country, and these laws help to draw a bright line between the necessary raising of money for campaigns and the important work Governor Patrick does every day on behalf of the people of the Commonwealth,” [campaign manager Sydney Asbury] said.