budget cuts

0

From the Green-Rainbow Party

4/29/2011

Dear GRP supporters and activists,

Please join us at the hearing Thursday, May 5, anytime between 10:00 AM & 3:00 PM, State House Gardner Auditorium, Boston. Come tell the Governor and legislature to stop slashing critical health, education, social and environmental services in order to protect billions in useless corporate tax give-aways and subsidies for the massive, needless health insurance bureaucracy!

Raise the bar for a better budget and real tax reform. As a first step, we’re also supporting “An Act to Invest In Our Communities” (SB1416 / HB2553) at the hearing. Supporting this revenue bill is one part of our commitment to stop the cruel, & unnecessary cuts that the governor and legislature are proposing.

In addition to asking the rich to pay their fair share, the GRP is also calling for single-payer Medicare-for-all health care and the elimination of unjustified and ineffective corporate subsidies – saving at least $2.5 billion a year. The Green-Rainbow Party alone brings it all together into a “Better Budget,” which will not only prevent new budget cuts, but will allow us to restore essential public services that have been severely compromised over the past decade.  

Continue reading Join us May 5th – Stop the needless cruel cuts!
Categories , Tags , ,

1

From the Boston Globe:

A key lawmaker warned yesterday that the House budget released next month “may go deeper” in cutting local aid than the 7 percent reduction that Governor Deval Patrick proposed in January. In a speech on the House floor, Brian Dempsey, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, urged local officials to begin planning for more than the $65 million cut that Patrick had proposed in his spending plan. House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo cautioned, however, that the House’s spending plan is still being written. Local aid pays for trash collectors, police officers, firefighters, and other basic services.

Best to keep in mind Nat Fortune’s quote from his campaign for State Auditor:

When they say there’s no money, what they really mean is there’s no money for you!

Continue reading No money for you!
Tags ,

1

great op-ed by Max Page and Michael Ash, UMass Amherst:

AMHERST – “Shared sacrifice.” You will hear the governor say it every time he talks about the budget. It is the phrase used by Charles Murphy, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, when he unveiled a budget that cuts local aid – schools, police and fire, libraries, parks – by $234 million, and public higher education by $132 million.

It was echoed by Michael Widmer of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Association when he endorsed the House’s budget; “They (cities and towns) need to share in the pain given our fiscal realities.”

“Shared sacrifice” must poll well in focus groups. But it is a lie and a fraud.

Continued at

http://www.gazettenet.com/2010…

Continue reading The myth of shared sacrifice
Tags , , , , , ,

0

The MA legislature’s conference committee just made another $300 million in cuts to state health care, education grants, elder home-care services, child care for working parents, human services, and other areas of the state budget for FY2011, conveniently putting the blame on our newest senator, Scott Brown.

Not mentioned in the press releases is the fact  that our legislature  gave away $300 million they would otherwise have this FY2010 in “single sales factor (SSF)” tax expenditures to Fidelity/Raytheon/related manufacturing corporations for “job creation,”  even though many of those corporations  are actually cutting jobs. According to the Boston Globe, “Fidelity’s Massachusetts workforce now stands at  a more than 9,000 workers, down from 13,000 four years ago.”

As Jill Stein often puts it, these tax expenditures are literally  “payoffs for layoffs.”  In my opinion, they are also the legalized theft of public funds.

Why not use the tax dollars we’re throwing away on tax expenditures like these  to really create jobs by rehiring laid-off teachers, firefighters, librarians, and health care workers? Why not collect the taxes we would otherwise be due instead of raising the sales tax?

Want to know  how the “single sales formula” or “tax apportionment” scam works? Read on.  

Continue reading Payoffs for Layoffs Continue As Massachusetts Legislature Cries Crocodile Tears
Categories Tags , , , , , , , ,