Tag Archives: Deval Patrick

PATRICK, MURRAY AND GROSSMAN RECEIVED BAIN DONATIONS

First this:

http://articles.boston.com/2012-06-15/news/32257240_1_grand-jury-investigators-authority-employees

Now this:

By Steven R. Maher

Massachusetts Governor Deval L. Patrick, Lieutenant Governor Timothy P. Murray, and Treasurer Steven Grossman are among the Massachusetts Democratic leaders who received campaign donations from employees of Bain Capital, the investment company Republican nominee Mitt Romney presided over.

Patrick, a long time political ally of President Barack H. Obama, shocked many in the political world when he told CNN Bain was not a “bad company”. Patrick’s comments have reportedly appeared in Romney campaign advertisements in battleground states.
Obama and most of the Republican candidates had portrayed Romney’s Bain as a corporate predator, taking over and selling off other companies’ assets, or leveraging them to the hilt for profit. In the process, Bain was alleged to have devastated entire communities with massive layoffs.
State law requires campaign donations over a certain amount to include the name of the donor’s employer. So we went to the website of the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) which allows a search of campaign donations by a donor’s employer, and then sub-search by candidate. We searched Contributor Employers containing the name “Bain,” sorted by candidate.

Like start up

Deval Patrick received 31 donations from Bain employees totaling $11,500. The fascinating thing about this support is that 65% of it came at the time Patrick needed it most: prior to his first election as Governor in 2006. Patrick received 14 donations totaling $4,900 prior to the September 26, 2006 Democratic primary and another 7 donations totaling $2,500 before the November 2006 general election. It may not sound like much, but for a struggling gubernatorial candidate without spectacular personal wealth of his own, such amounts go a long way in the early stages of a campaign.

Romney received only two Bain donations worth $700 in 2007, the same amount in 2008, one Bain donation of $200 in 2009, $1,200.00 in five donations in 2010, and none at all in 2011 and 2012.
Bain looked at Patrick the way an investment company looks at a start up company with an attractive new product: a good investment, providing seed money for a struggling political entrepreneur. For Mitt Romney, the payback he received from the Bain donations was enormous: staggering under the blows from Obama’s attacks on Bain, he got a rebuttal from an African American supporter of Obama. It was a return on investment, in political terms, that was priceless, a working man’s equivalent of having a winning Power Ball ticket.

Other notables

Patrick was not the only high level Massachusetts Democrat to benefit from Bain employees’ largesse:

• Lieutenant Governor Timothy P. Murray received ten donations worth $4,350 from Bain employees, all but one of which were made in 2006.

• Treasurer Steven Grossman received six donations totaling $2,350.• Boston May Thomas Menino received $500 in 2005 from a Bain employee.

• In 2008 Massachusetts Speaker of the House Sal DiMasi, now in jail, received a $250 donation from a Bain employee.

• The Massachusetts Democratic State Committee received $35,000 in donations from Bain employees.

• Former Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly received $1,000 in contributions from Bain employees.

• Former State Senate President Robert E. Travaglini received $700 from Bain employees.

Let’s go Dems! Let’s find a strong candidate who can whup Scott Brown’s butt!

By Rosalie Tirella

The big wig national Dems are getting nervous – they want MA dems to get serious and find someone – and seriously back someone – who can actually BEAT Scott Brown. They feel (and I do, too) that the mayor of Newton just ain’t gonna cut it.

They (and I) want a serious contender – someone like Governor Deval Patrick, let’s say. Someone who can match Brown’s campaign war chest of $8 million. Someone who can show voters that Brown has no real core values – Brown will say and vote whichever way he needs to in order to keep his Senate seat. Massachusetts and the country need a US Senator with more moral and intellectual heft than the guy who is presently parking his arse in cushy chairs all over washington D.C.

I still see “Senator” Brown as an opportunistic guy who posed nude for Cosmo and got on the national TV news show 60 Minutes simply because his new book contained salacious stuff (he had been sexually molested at a Cape Cod summer camp as a kid). He thinks 60 minutes and a flip flop on his Medicare stance are gonna keep him in office.

We don’t think so. We certainly hope not.

I wish Ted Kennedy’s widow, Vickie, would run for her late husband’s seat. Or even Joe Kennedy. We need someone with the moral courage of the late great Teddy. He was such a beacon of compassion when it came to this country’s poor or kids or seniors or immigrants or working class/middle class. He was always right about the environment, too. I miss that feeling: that feeling of knowing my senator would always vote his conscience – do the right thing every time.

Even though Teddy served for deades, Scott Brown is the real “politician,” in the word’s most cynical sense.

A progressive’s view of the federal and MA state budgets

By Grace Ross

Doing the same thing and expecting a different result is that fabulous definition of crazy. Yet economically as a state and nationally as a country, we continue the same economic policies somehow expecting that the ones that got us into this economic crisis are going to get us out.

One of my pet peeves is elected officials who seem to think that their responsibility as our representatives is to balance the budget of the level of the government to which they were elected. In fact, every single one of us elected these folks expecting them to have an eye on their district’s economy as a whole and balance their level of government’s budget so as to improve our economic lives and realities not just their “isolated” bottom line.

We all knew that the federal government should not give money to the very banks that got us into this mess. Instead, Congress lent not just hundreds of billions publicly but the Federal Reserve Bank lent them tens of trillions guaranteed by us taxpayers. Yet, we knew the big banks still would not rewrite all the bad mortgages or lend so our small businesses survive.

Obviously, our elected leaders need a complete rethink of the purpose and focus of government budgets: what makes our economy thrive and what doesn’t, not satisfying the economic desires of a few.

It’s staggering to hear our present governor, Deval Patrick, express such outrage that Fidelity now plans to take 1,000 jobs out of state. Surprised? We’ve just been through the whole debacle of the $56 Million Evergreen Solar infrastructure and tax sweetheart deal. They are a local grown business that could have played a central role in rebuilding manufacturing in one of the few growing sectors: green energy. But like most corporate money deals, Evergreen was not actually bound to anything for our state residents; that same money could have subsidized regular people being able to afford solar panels and thus create a burgeoning market to incentivize Evergreen to manufacture and create jobs here! (Of course, the Governor himself is planning to cut more jobs.)

In the 1990s, our legislature passed whole sector tax cuts: the military industrial sector break (known as the “Raytheon tax” break) and the financial sector break known as, you guessed it, the “Fidelity tax” break. These tax breaks were sold as keeping (maybe creating) jobs in Massachusetts. History, however, shows that these jobs have dwindled in our state since those tax breaks. Studies also show that companies don’t move somewhere primarily for tax incentives. Continue reading A progressive’s view of the federal and MA state budgets

ICT endorsement: Deval Patrick for Governor! AND: We love Jill Stein, but …

By Rosalie Tirella

… Stein should drop out of the Mass governor’s race. Incumbent Deval Patrck and his main opponent, businessness whiz kid Charlie Baker, are running pretty much neck and neck (as of Oct. 24 – pre-last night’s debate). It was reported in the Boston Globe that Patrick is beginning to break away from Baker (43% to Baker’s 39% of likely voters surveyed), but his lead is so slight that is within the margin of error. So Patrick could still lose to Baker! Even though the Globe poll showed Patrick was considered way more likeable than Baker (I agree), the two candidates were TIED re: leadership ability. Which is killer important here, which is what the people are craving.

For the first time in months, the poll shows, voters really like our Deval! Easy to see during these debates, visits to towns/cities. Patrick shows a lot of compassion and goodness. He reminds us that during this global economic shitstorm, he and his team have been steady as she blows. Massachusetts still has an AA bond rating, and as Patrick told viewers of the debate yesterday: he’s delivered a state budget that was balanced, responsible and in on time. AND: During this shitstorm, Patrick (calmly, it seems) has invested in jobs/job growth (green jobs, stem cell banks at UMass/Worcester, etc) and burnished our ed creds (which on some level means more charter schools but still … .)

Our teachers, cops, fire fighters still have their jobs. Mass cities and towns did not go belly up during this tsunami because Patrick wisely used Mass rainy day funds and fed stimulus money to fill the budget gap. Things will be just as brutal next year! I would prefer to have Patrick sailing the Mass ship (with compassion and intelligence) than Baker who seems wicked smart but too hard and cool for my tastes. I don’t want to see people who care for the mentally disabled lose their jobs! I don’t want poor mothers Continue reading ICT endorsement: Deval Patrick for Governor! AND: We love Jill Stein, but …

“No” to Deval – “Yes” to Grace

By Chris Horton

[Governor] Deval Patrick is no longer a suitable leader for the common people of Massachusetts, no matter where he came from. The people are done with waiting for change and listening to excuses why the promises that were made can’t be kept. They won’t vote for him, and we will only destroy our own credibility with them by working for him. Appeals to all Democrats to stick together around Patrick are utterly misplaced in the context of the Convention and the Primary election because what is at issue is whether he is appropriate as leader of the Commonwealth’s Democrats. Which he is not.

The heavy-handed tactics of his supporters to intimidate anyone who might go against him at the convention even before there was any opposition inside the Democratic Party – which I saw first hand – are an indication that he’s running scared. Continue reading “No” to Deval – “Yes” to Grace

Hush! Hush!

By Rosalie Tirella

Got an e-mail from a person a few days ago – he/she saw the news on TV because the Boston stations covered it. In Worcester, of course, there was a news blackout because it was about our very own former mayor – now Lieutenant Governor – Tim Murray.

Seems as though Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray has given his top assistant (and West Side buddy/confidant) Mr. Leary a cushy $100,000+ job at UMass Medical School. We guess being Timmy’s top gopher at the State House was a tad too much work for Leary. So he asked his buddy Tim to get him a great job – MAKING THE SAME SALARY!!!! – closer to home. Timmy obliges, makes some calls to UMass Medical School. UMass folks, of course, are happy to kiss Murray’s ass and give him what he wants (so they can get what they want from him down the line) – and PRESTO! Leary gets the UMass Medical School job. The Boston media were all over this story. Politicking at its crassest was the theme. Murray denied it had anying to do with political favors/favoritism. (Of course, when his boss, Governor Deval Patrick, gave a $170,000+ job to the wife of a donor, Worcester’s news radio stations and newspapers covered the issue. An example of spending the taxpayer’s dime foolishly; lack of respect for voters/residents, etc.)

Not so for Timmy. They stayed mum, which is why Worcester is such a joke to most folks in metro Boston. Worcester is famous (or infamous, if you prefer) for its parochialism. Why can’t we police are own – whether they be our cops or a former mayor who got lucky? Why can’t the media in this town do the right thing and call Murray for pulling something? (Just like Frank Phillips of the Boston Globe did a while back after Murray took thousands and thousands of dollars from a Republican businessman/fundraiser and then in turn gave him a seat on some board.)  After the Globe hammered away at him, Murray severed ties with the guy and – get this – kept all the thousands of dollars he raised for him but returned his personal check to the Murray campaign war chest. Not a bit of this made the Worcester papers, TV shows or radio shows.

You know, if we write about the crap in our own backyards, it doesn’t make us crappy. It keeps politicians like Murray honest. It keeps cops on their toes. And in the end, our local newspapers and other news organizations will win the respect of Worcester County readers, listeners and viewers of all political stripes.