Tag Archives: HILLARY CLINTON FOR PRESIDENT!

I’m back!

August 26, 2016 admin

Watch out, Worcester, Hillary and Trump – Hoffman’s in town, with plenty of commentary in the back seat!

Yes!!! pics:R.T.

By Jack Hoffman

First, I want to thank those who cheered me up on just about every new medical problem I incurred. Secondly, I want to thank Rose, who got me off my lazy ass. I wish her all the best on her paper’s fifteenth anniversary.

Has it been that long, Rose?

[Yes, Jack!]

I wanted to come up with a column about something you haven’t read or seen during the past couple of weeks: A discussion or promise to do something about the high cost of a college education.

Yes, Bernie did, and later on Hillary got the Bern. It seems the pundits don’t see anything exciting about college costs, so they flashed more of Trump’s meandering slop.

And yet we belabored through drug commercials you can barely follow. Except watching cute ladies and circe type girls selling another batch of Cialis erection highs.

Followed by the legal ads for having a problem with the drugs that were just being sold.

As many of you know, I spend my summers on the Cape trying to score some loose change and a having a puff or two learning what the summer flock of the young folks have to say about America. One of my pleasures … or shall I say experiencing my loquacious mouth running wild, call it just another manic episode…

Our conversations usually run the gamut – from politics, up to and including college costs. When we get into the latter all the European kids are not just shocked but find U.S. college costs incomprehensible. Especially, when you throw out costs like $50,000 to $65,000.

So here are the facts – you can take them to study hall! One only out of four students from four different countries said he had pay $1,000 for this year for college. The other costs ranged from $00!! to $500. If you get excellent grades in Europe, the cost is 0.

According to the Pell Institute Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, TICAS The non-profit Institute on Higher Education, there is today 42 million Americans bearing a $1.3 trillion indebtness from college loans!!!!!

The real story is that student debt is a $140 billion year industry that got the go get ’em permission from Congress.

Along with the collection orders equal to the IRS.

In other words, they can attach your pay, repo your car and put a lean on your home.

Just a footnote – ask your primary care doctor, if he/she is young, Just what his/her debt is. Mine owes $400,000!!! Is it any wonder very few kids are not going into medicine? As many of you already know, these debts are the subject of family arguments and even more.

So you want to read more and get sick? Read this month’s Consumer Reports. The piece is titled “I kind of Ruined My Life By Going to College.”

One last thought: the interest rate today is 8% – 9% on these loans. Just think of this: the government and the debt collectors are making loads of $!

I’m here and got lots more to say if I can stay out of hospitals…

Comments, questions, compaints? Email Jack at JackH5225@verizon.net

InCity Yum Yums

Of motes and beams

August 18, 2016 admin

Americans are dancing close to the edge this political season! pic:R.T.

By Edith Morgan

There are NOT two equal sides to every story – THERE ARE NOT TWO EQUAL SIDES TO EVERY STORY!!!

I do not, for example, need to hear the reasoning(?) or excuse proffered by the Nazis for the extermination of my grandmother, my aunt and countless millions of others. Fairness does not involve giving equal time to the perpretrators and the victims. If truth is on one side, that does not mean that there is an equal side to be presented.

With that in mind, I ask the press: Why is every remark, stupidity and tastelessness (at the least!) coming out of Donald Trump’s mouth headline news, no matter how incorrect, abusive or just plain untrue?

Whatever happened to fact-checking?

Whatever happened to actually reporting real happenings, rather than the ramblings of a clearly mad egomaniac and narcissist?

Is it because the public will buy more papers or tune in to programs that carry that tripe?

We have two presidential candidates vying for the Presidency: One – Hillary Clinton – is a lifelong public servant, with whom I have sometimes disagreed, but who generally has been on the same side of many issues as I have; the other – Donald Trump – has devoted a lifetime to self-aggrandizement, shafting those who work for him, profiting from the bankrupting of numerous businesses, hobnobbing with leaders of crime syndicates and using no-holds-barred techniques for spending money in the most ostentatious way possible.

Clinton is accused of private communications done by at least four of her predecessors – which have not been demonstrated to deliberately harm any Americans. Trump, on the other hand, has stiffed numerous, vulnerable people all his life, dishonored most of what Americans hold dear, spoken out of both sides of his mouth on the same day, and worst of all, appropriated the most heinous techniques of Sen. Joe McCarthy and his henchmen. Having learned the technique from his now-deceased buddy Roy Cohn.

I grew up believing that “Birds of a feather flock together” and that if you “tell me who your friends are, I will tell you who you are.”

I have always believed that while we Americans sometimes swing way over to one side or the other, just before we run like lemmings over the cliff, we will stop and realize that something is very wrong, and we rear back from the precipice and regain our sanity.

We are once again close to the edge, and in November we will have a chance to right the ship of state. And no matter who wins the presidency, we still have a system of checks and balances in place. So by making sure that the Senate changes hands, we can still prevent the worst from happening.

Meanwhile, let us watch closely what is going on here locally, in Worcester, under our noses. Remember, “all politics is local” is not just a phrase!

InCity Voices

TRUMP POLITICAL OBITUARIES PREMATURE?

August 8, 2016 admin

Let’s all pray to the Virgin Mary: “PLEASE, Blessed Mother! NO DONALD TRUMP FOR AMERICA! pic:R.T.

By Steven R. Maher

Donald Trump is beginning to remind one of Christopher Lee’s “Dracula.” In the 1950s and 1960s Lee portrayed Dracula as the villain who couldn’t quite be kept down. No matter how many stakes were driven through his heart, Dracula kept coming back to life. Donald Trump’s ability to extricate himself from gaffes which would have destroyed any other candidate is, as Trump himself would put it, amazing. Just in the past week:

• Trump attacked the parents of a Muslim-American war hero after the hero’s father criticized Trump at the Democratic convention. The result was a huge backlash against Trump by other “Gold Star” families, and members of the military.

• In a first in American history, President Back H. Obama denounced Trump as “unfit” to be President.

• At a time when the Democrats are coalescing behind Clinton, Trump declined at first to endorse the primary re-election efforts of House Speaker Paul Ryan, Arizona Senator John McClain, and New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte.

• Some Trump campaign personnel reportedly claimed to the mainstream media that some campaign staff members were suicidal, and that former House Speak Newt Gingrich wanted an ‘intervention” to get Trump to act in a more disciplined manner.

Most disastrous of all, Trump’s poll numbers plummeted. He is now supported by 1% of Afro-Americans, is probably plunging to that level among Hispanics, and Clinton is seeing gains among white women, and educated white men.
Been here before

We’ve been here before. Beginning with his June 2015 denunciation of Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and rapists, Trump’s political obituaries have appeared with some regularity in the media, only to see Trump afterwards rise from the politically dead like Lee’s Dracula and go on to successive electoral victories.

A big part of the problem is the 24/7 news cycle where, what might have been a minor embarrassment in the past, is blasted through Cable television and the Internet repeatedly all day long. The political pundits seem not to looking beyond the twenty four hour news cycle. The winner of a news cycle will not necessarily be the winner of the election.

Hidden vote?

The state department has a phrase for what could happen next: “overtaken by events”. Any day now there could be an event which will divert America’s attention and restore Trump’s campaign. There could be another terrorist attack at home, a massive economic problem, or what Donald Rumsfeld called an “unknown unknown” – a problem we didn’t conceive of could happen.

There are also the Presidential debates starting in September. If Trump resoundingly defeats Clinton, and comes across to the electorate as someone not likely to drop nukes in response to a negative tweet, it is entirely possible Trump could win. There was deep anxiety among many Americans about Ronald Reagan’s use of nuclear weapons, which Reagan turned into a non-issue during his debate with Carter.

There is also the hidden vote factor. There was a hidden vote for Brexit in Britain, and there may be one here for Trump. The Donald has tapped into an extremely angry voting bloc of Americans who have been devastated by the Republican Party’s wars and economic disasters. Trump’s negatives are so high that Trump voters may be too embarrassed to reveal to pollsters whom they are voting for. There may be large numbers of Trump voters out there, not making their positions known, waiting for the election and the privacy of the ballot box to make their choice known.

Mark Twain once famously said that reports of Twain’s death were greatly exaggerated. Americans should keep this in mind as they read the political obituaries of Republican Presidential nominee Donald F. Trump.

Fashion

Jack! Always in style!

August 3, 2016 admin

“God Bless America”

By Jack Hoffman

pic:R.T.

By this time I’m sure you’ve all heard the stories about The Donald and the Gold Star family, the Khans, and the loss of their son. And candidate Donald Trump’s foray into foreign policy via ex-KGB operative, Vladimir Putin. Well, here is another example of Trump’s smearing of America you can tape to your refrigerator door:

At a small hoot in Florida, with Trump’s choice for VP, Mike Pence. Pence was giving the same old canned speech when a woman came up to the mic, introducing herself as a gold star mother who lost her son in Afghanistan. She barely got her question out – she was asking Pence about his response to Trump’s vile response to the Khans – when most of the audience began yelling out boos and some unspeakable words.

So what else is new?

Remember Trump saying he could stand out on 5th Ave and shoot someone – and his poll numbers would stay the same??

Well, there you have it: the Trump forces. The ones who have their flags waving and Make America Great bumper stickers.

I recall one thing most of us talked about a few years back: What Fox News was doing to the American public’s collective intelligence. People called it the “dumbing down of America.” And like some contagious disease, it still flourishes out there, in America.

Animal Issues

Congressman Jim McGovern Speaks with Blue Mass Group at DNC

July 29, 2016 admin

Q. and A. FULL TEXT:

Q: As a progressive who’s strongly supported Hillary Clinton, how would you bring more Bernie supporters into the fold?

A: What I tried to say today is that our work is not done and certainly the people who support Bernie Sanders know the work is not done. We have this incredibly progressive platform, thanks in large part to Bernie Sanders supporters.

In the past, platforms at Democratic conventions haven’t mattered much. We need to make sure that this means something. And that means getting your representatives to sign on the dotted line and say that when these issues come up before Congress, you’re going to vote for them.

I think if it wasn’t for Bernie’s campaign, I don’t think that Hillary Clinton’s positions on some issues would be as progressive as they are. She’s publicly against the TPP. You know what, we need to make sure that in the lame duck session of Congress there’s not an attempt to bring it up.

We need to work together to make sure that all these values that we talked about here today, that we actually abide by them.

I talked about my first political experience with George McGovern. How he’s my gold standard. I think for a lot of people, Bernie Sanders is their gold standard. I think there are a number of Bernie Sanders supporters we’ll still need to persuade. We can’t just assume that everybody’s going to come on board.

I think that in the end we’re going to be successful because I think the choice in this election is so clear. I think we have to focus on issues that matter to people and we can’t ignore these voices.

Just because Hillary is the nominee doesn’t mean that we don’t have to deal with Bernie or Bernie supporters. If we talk about being united, that means it’s a two-way street. I need you and you need me and we’re going to have to work together.

I’m optimistic. As I said this morning, there are days when I wake up with a cold sweat and think about the possibility that a bigot like Donald Trump might be president. But I believe in the goodness of this country. That people won’t embrace that kind of bigotry. I really do believe that love trumps hate. I’m not going to take that for granted and I’m going to work like hell in the next few months.

Q: What did you see in Hillary early on that others may have missed?

A: I’ve known Hillary for 20 years and I’ve always thought of her as a trailblazer.

When I first got elected to Congress 20 years ago, I thought of her not only as the first First Lady I’ve worked with, but she was also one of the first major figures in Washington recognize the importance of early childcare.

She held the first White House conference on early childhood development. We’re so far behind so many other places in the world in terms of understanding that education begins at birth, not when you’re in kindergarten.

She was the first person to come out for universal healthcare. Before Obamacare there was Hillarycare. I think she laid the groundwork and I think she’s committed to universal healthcare. In the platform is this embrace of a public option and we gotta make sure we fight for that.

I also do a lot of work on hunger and food insecurity in the United States and around the world. When she was Secretary of State, right before she was sworn in, I met with her. What I thought was going to be a 10-minute meeting ended up being an hour-plus meeting in which I felt that she really cared and wanted to do something and she did.

She initiated this program called Feed the Future which is now feeding millions of people around the world and empowering small farmers and particularly women farmers in some of the poorest countries in the world, really making a difference. And to me, that’s America at it’s greatest.

We all talk about national security and I believe that championing issues like ending hunger and extreme poverty will do more to enhance national security than all the drones and all the bombs and military hardware that we send all over the world.

I like her. I respect her. I think she’s a good person. In elections, you gotta make choices. I’ve never been against Bernie, I’m just for Hillary. But I’m glad Bernie ran and I think that it not only moved our party in the direction it needs to go, I also think he energized a lot of young voters and made her a better candidate. I think she has a better chance of winning having gone through this primary.

Q: Is there any hope for the House?

A: I think we have a lot of seats in play in the House. Winning the House back is gone from an impossibility to a possibility. It’s still an uphill climb, but it’s possible and you’re hearing a lot of pundits say that. And I think we can win the Senate back. If we win the House and Senate back and we get Hillary as president, we’re going to be able to actually do some things. Not just in small, incremental ways, but in bigger ways.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

********

To learn more about Hillary Clinton, CLICK HERE!

HILLARY CLINTON FOR PRESIDENT!!!!!!

-R.T!!!!!!!!!!

InCity Yum Yums

Something more than pretty trees and sidewalks …

July 28, 2016 admin

By Rosalie Tirella

… needs to happen in Worcester’s inner-city neighborhoods…

Here, in Union Hill, we have the newly planted trees, newly poured sidewalks …

photos:R.T.

A few days ago I saw all the pretty new trees all in a row, straight as an arrow, planted down Providence Street …

Paid for by the federal government. Also: a new municipal parking lot. And new programs for neighborhood families stressing healthy choices. And … a stronger community police presence.

I am not too hopeful.

A few folks may get it. Most won’t.

The INTRACTABLE problem?

The poverty is still here!!! The kids undernourished, their parents outside of society. Hence our trash dumping problem, our heroin problem, gun violence, hopelessness … even in creating more attractive Worcester inner-city neighborhoods.

Some folks, like poopy diapers Paul Collyer and Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney (Collyer’s political mentee) clamor for the Trump solution: KEEP ‘EM OUT! We can’t build a physical wall like Trump is promising, they say, but we can build others – invisible ones! – just as impervious! No more section 8! No more low income housing!

They turn away from the people who come to cities to start life in America!

But Worcester, like New York, Boston, Lawrence or Lowell, will always be a Gateway City!

LOCKING PEOPLE OUT IS NOT THE ANSWER!

GOOD PAYING JOBS for the undereducated is the answer – just like our factories provided our people decades ago.

They’re mostly gone now …

… and with them the leg up the poor and uneducated needed to achieve the American Dream: homeownership, security, safe neighborhoods. BELONGING. HAPPINESS.

All you needed was to work hard, like my Polish grandpa did in Dudley’s textile mills. The day he joined his Union was an IMPORTANT and CELEBRATORY day for his family!

His daughters thought they were the bees knees! They had hope!

My mother (on the left, hugging my fave auntie) was whip smart; she was offered the opportunity to attend a junior college on scholarship! A terrific, impressive achievement for the daughter of a poor Polish immigrant mill worker in the 1940s! Most women did not attend college back then – especially poor ones like Ma. But she had to work to help support her family.

She worked so hard, she deferred her dreams!!! … later to dream them through her daughters, through me: The fact that I am a pretty ok writer was never ever lost on my late Mom, who before her illness at 80, read every one of my stories and had something wise to say about each and every one of them. From the time I was 10!!! A life time of nurturing her daughter! Her American dream!

My mom had two doctor nephews (the sons of the above auntie!), one engineer neice (a trail blazer!) besides a daughter with a community paper! I’ll never forget: My old Ma in that wretched nursing home, in her wheelchair, with copies of InCity Times on her bony legs. Ma rolling around the east wing of the nursing home with ICT bouncing in her lap, giving out copies of InCity Times to the distracted nurses – actually pressing them on the LPNs and nurses aides! So pushy for my little rag, just days before her death! So proud of her favorite daughter!

It used to take a few generations to make it the way you wanted to make it in America, be it financially, artistically, whatever you chose to be. Now we Americans feel stagnant, stuck and anxious about our futures. Hence, Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left.

Candidate Hillary Clinton needs to make US BELIEVE!

Clinton needs to make good on her promises:

PAID FAMILY LEAVE

UNIVERSAL PRE-K

FREE TUITION AT OUR COMMUNITY COLLEGES

A HIGHER MINIMUM WAGE

A REVISED NAFTA and other global trade pacts

PAY EQUITY …

Hubby Bill says HILLARY CARES FOR US! Loves us strivers! The daughters and sons, grandsons and granddaughters of immigrants! The strugglers in poor inner city neighborhoods, working poor Americans! OF WHICH THERE ARE A LOT!!

WE HOPE THIS IS TRUE!!! BILL CLINTON SO INSPIRED US at the DNC! He gave a speech all right! MADE US WANT TO BELIEVE IN HIS WIFE!

We will need to believe – and have all of the above opportunities – like all of Western Europe has had for decades! – to make up for our lost factories, an America that worked for so many people.

America cannot be tweaked!

America needs an economic and social overhaul!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Trees and flowers in inner-city neighborhoods are beautiful – and always welcome. But the real work needs to happen … NOW!

InCity Yum Yums

InCity Book Review “Trump and Me” …

July 25, 2016 admin

“DONALD TRUMP” by Rosalie T.

… Top Ten Quotes

By Mark Singer

Reviewed by Steven R. Maher

In 1996 longtime New Yorker magazine writer Mark Singer was assigned to write a profile piece on Donald J. Trump. Singer, who did not take Trump seriously at the time, traveled with Trump over the several months and picked up some rather bizarre statements from Trump, his wife of the time, and made some acerbic observations about the man who could well be our next President.

This book is a red colored small, six inch by five inch shape with only 108 pages. The reviewer saw three copies of the book stuffed into a corner display of a bookshelf at the Worcester Public Library 1st floor. It’s an easy read, enjoyable, and absolutely delightful depiction of the man who would be our commander in chief.

I have extracted my favorite top ten quotes from this tome:

10. My best friend is a strong Trump supporter who is unable to have a conversation about the election without referencing “Crooked Hillary” and her $250,000 speaker fees. Singer writes about Trump’s reaction to an offer by a Canadian lecture agency to pay him $225,000 for three speeches: “My attitude is if somebody’s willing to pay me two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars to make a speech, it seems stupid not to show up.”

9. In the 1980s Trump borrowed $3.75 billion to finance various acquisitions. $1 billion of this was collateralized only by Trump’s personal guarantee; in other words, the banks were willing to lend him an extra billion because he was The Donald. When the real estate market went belly up, his creditors attached liens “to everything but his Brioni suits” and demanded Trump reduce his lavish life style. “Perhaps the ultimate indignity was [Trump] having to agree to a personal spending cap of four hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month.”

8. “If you have me saying these things, even though they’re true, I sound like a schmuck,” Trump complained to Singer about Trump’s rhetorical excesses.

7. “I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if his tongue was notarized.” – New York Deputy Mayor Alair Townsend.

6. “Last fall, after Evander Holyfield upset Mike Tyson in a heavyweight title fight, Trump snookered the [New York Daily] News into reporting that he’d collected twenty million bucks by betting a million on the underdog. This prompted the [New York] Post to make calls to some Las Vegas bookies, who confirmed – shockingly! – that nobody had been handling that kind of action or laying odds close to 20-1. Trump never blinked, just moved onto the next bright idea.”

5. Writes Singer: “Inside the Trump Organization, for instance, there is talk of ‘the Donald factor’, the three to five dollars per share that Wall Street presumably discounts [from] Trump Hotel & Casino Resorts [stock value] by allowing for his [Trump’s] braggadocio and unpredictability.”

4. Singer asked Trump about the education and background of “Dr. Ginger”, the beautiful woman Trump hired as an in house chiropractor at Trump’s Xanadu-like Mars-a-Lago spar in Florida. “Baywatch Medical School. Does that sound right?” responded Trump. “I’ll tell you the truth. Once I saw Dr. Ginger’s photograph, I didn’t really need to look at her resume or anyone else’s.”

3. Trump invested in professional boxers. Singer saw Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples, at one of the fights and asked her what she thought of boxing. “I enjoy it a lot, as long as no one gets hurt,” replied Maples.

2. “In 2005, Timothy O’Brien…published a book ‘TrumpNation, The Art of Being The Donald’, in which he estimated Trump’s net worth at $150 million to $250 million,” wrote Singer. “Not unpredictably, Trump sued for $5 billion, alleging that this lowball calculation constituted libel and defamation. The case was dismissed four years later, after Trump acknowledged during a deposition: ‘My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes, and with feelings, even my feelings..and that can change rapidly from day to day.”

There should be a roll of drums for the top find in this book, written by Singer:

1. “It is deeply unfair to say that Trump lies all the time. I would never have suggested that he lies while he’s asleep.”

InCity Voices

This Tuesday, March 1, Massachusetts voters get to choose the next U.S. President!

February 27, 2016 admin

By Chris Horton

· Your vote in the Massachusetts Presidential Primary has a huge impact.

And the whole country will be watching!

· Democratic contest: If you are registered as “No Party (unenrolled)” or “Democratic Party,” you can go to the polls on Tuesday and draw a Democratic ballot.

· You will be given a choice of a number of candidates for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. The only two that matter are Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

O’Malley has dropped out and the other candidate is only running in Mass.

· Your vote will help determine how many delegates for each candidate go to the Democratic Convention in July that will choose the candidate.

· Republican: If you are registered as No Party or Republican you can draw a Republican ballot.

· Green: There is also a Green Party contest.

· Voting Times: Polls open on Tuesday March 1 from 7:00 am to 8:00 pm.

· Absentee ballots: If you can’t get to your polling place to vote on Tuesday, you can still submit an absentee ballot, but you will have to hand deliver it to your Town or City Clerk or Election Commissioner by Noon Monday. You can download an absentee ballot at http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/elepdf/absentee_ballot.pdf.

******

Changing hats now …

Bernie Sanders was a Civil Rights activist, mayor of Burlington Vermont, and for 25 years the independent Congressman and Senator from Vermont. He is challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for President.
Bernie is calling for a “Political Revolution”, bringing working class and middle class people of all races, nationalities together into a great movement to take back our corrupt political system from the “billionaire class”, to rebuild our country and restore economic, racial and social justice.

Bernie is hugely popular with many who know or have paid attention to him. However many others – especially those over 45 and the working poor – know nothing about him, because up until about six weeks ago the networks and newspapers ignored him almost completely.

Plus, practically the entire Democratic Establishment has thrown its weight behind Hillary.

Whether Bernie wins the nomination depends on how many of his supporters actually make it to the polls. If you support and love Bernie, if you want him to be our candidate and our next President, then you should:

· Promise yourself you will get out to the polls on Tuesday

· Plan exactly when you are going to do it.

· Ask someone to “hold your promise” and call to remind you on Tuesday.

Also, consider:

· Make a list of everyone who told you they’re going to vote for Bernie.

· Call or drop in on each of them to remind them the election is this Tuedsay and ask for their promise to get out and vote.

· Check in with them again around noon Tuesday to see if they’ve voted yet!
People talking to people and holding each other accountable – that’s the starting place for our revolution!

All together! Let’s do it!

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog

Go, Edith, go!!

February 11, 2016 admin

Don’t be an “I” – stay registered and VOTE!

By Edith Morgan

So, you are registered, you voted recently, and have not moved. But how do we know you are still there, and still alive?

A few days ago we all received a plain “billet doux” from the City of Worcester Election Commission, asking us to verify that we still live where we are registered, and to correct any errors or omissions on this paper.

I hope you did not toss it out, or misplace it or expect that your spouse or other family member filled it out.

From my many years of experience as Warden on election day, I know there is so little fraud at voting time that it is not worth the paranoia and suspicion that has been fomented in recent years – mostly to make voting more onerous, but not dealing with any REAL problems.

Btu every year, we find many voters who come to their polling places and find that they have an “I” by their name. They still get to vote, but have to complete a “voter certificate” – not a very difficult process, but a delay, and many voters are in a hurry (on their lunch hour, or with family at home,etc).

So , fill in the “Voter Registration Information System Validation” form and send it back in the self-addressed envelope. Surely keeping our election lists up-to-date is worth the 49 cent stamp needed – or take the envelope and deliver it in person to the Election Commission in person, at City Hall.

Then, save Tuesday, March 1 – and VOTE. The polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Since March 1st is a primary, there will be four ballots available: you can only take the ballot of the paqrty you belong to. There are Democratic (D), Republican(R), Grenn/Rainbow (J), and United Independent Party (CC) ballots. If you and Unenrolled (U), that is, have not designated any party, you can choose which ballot you want. Whatever ballot you choose, your party designation will not be changed.

I was surprised to learn that there are 24 additional parties listed, but they are not running candidates. However, if you are a member of any of these other parties, you can still vote, but only using one of the above mentioned four parties. (There will be a complete listing of these
at your poll, or at the election commission.)

It is always a good idea to have a picture “ID” with you, just in case there is problem. Also, if you have moved in the last few months, have “proof of residency” with you (that includes any of the following: current utility bill, bank statement, payroll statement, government check, or any other document that sows your name or address. Of course, your driver’s license or ID is acceptable) YOUR PASSPORT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE, as it does not have an address.

All of us at each poll will do all we can to make your voting experience pleasant and quick. The new voting machines are a pleasure to use. And we in Massachusetts are fortunate to have a paper ballot, so we have a “paper trail” if there ever is any question about an election result.

We have done everything in our power to make our elections foolproof and honest – the rest is up to you, the voters.

The precious privilege of voting is well worth a little effort, is it not?