From Boston.com: “Let me just also say, there’s a conversation we’re going to have to have …that I’ve been trying to have since the first few weeks I’ve been in this job, and it has to do with communication,” the governor said. “I can’t compete if I don’t know something’s at risk.”

“Massachusetts has been kind to Fidelity. I know that’s a two-way street, but if we’re going to build on what we have here, then they need to tell me what they need and I need to be able at least to have an opportunity to respond,” he said.

The governor added: “I feel disappointed and frustrated.”

Governor Patrick,

You are not dating Fidelity, and this is not a question of communication. This is about government officials lying prostrate on the floor before all-powerful corporations. This is about giving away our tax dollars to unscrupulous, very profitable, greedy bastards, when we ABSOLUTELY cannot afford it.

When you ran for re-election, you failed to make an issue about these indefensible giveaways, even while your Green-Rainbow opponent raised the issue. You praised yourself for weak claw-back provisions in future tax giveaways, rather than challenging the idea of giving away tax dollars to corporations trying to hold us hostage to their agendas.  

In recent testimony before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, the executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Robert Greenstein, suggested that cutting tax expenditures (i.e., spending delivered through the tax code), and not program cuts, should be the focus of attempts to bring our federal deficit under control.

Below are excerpts from CBPP’s Off the Charts blog:

The costs of tax expenditures are large.  In 2010, individual tax expenditures totaled nearly $1 trillion, and total tax expenditures – both individual and corporate – amounted to $1.05 trillion.  This greatly exceeded the cost of Medicare and Medicaid combined ($719 billion), Social Security ($701 billion), and non-security discretionary programs, which stood at $589 billion, a little over half of the cost of tax expenditures.