Worcester County Freedom Trail

Nicolas Sanchez, Professor of Economics at Holy Cross, spoke to a standing room only crowd of more than 100 people on June 30, 2009, at the Worcester Public Library. His talk, “Why President Obama’s Economic Policy Will Not Solve Our Economic Problems,” provided startling information about the economic crisis — how we got here, what’s being done that won’t work, and what should be done to turn things around.

Below is an excerpt from the talk with horrifying numbers about what the current administration has done to the money supply and what that means over the long run.

How, then, is the current Administration dealing with the crisis?

I will begin this third part of my presentation with something that I discussed at the Tea Party in Worcester on June 20th. This is the statistic that you should memorize; and that you can easily obtain if you forget it, for it is available at the web site of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, one of the branches of our central bank. Five years after the Fed’s creation, in 1918, the monetary base—which is what allows the money supply to expand in multiple proportions—grew from $4.8 billion to $870 billion, as of August of last year. This growth of the monetary base occurred at a steady pace for over 90 years. Yet, between August of last year and May of this year the monetary base has risen by almost $1,000 billion—in other words, it has more than doubled in the past eight months! This is the type of behavior that you find in Argentina or the approach that communist regimes have used to attach the problem of unemployment: print enough money so that firms can hire the people who want to be employed.

Let me make clear that I do not believe that this Administration is simply imitating communist regimes—for some other, non-communist countries have also followed this type of reckless monetary behavior in the past. I gave the example of Argentina, which has never been a communist country, but I do believe that a more appropriate example is the Weimar Republic—in other words, Germany in the 1920s. Germany was an advanced country that was in deep trouble because of its military commitments and the debt that it had acquired as a result of the First World War. Unions were also quite powerful and big business tolerated the power of those unions. Big government, big labor and big business finally decided that the country could only get out of debt by inflating the currency—big time.

The one surprise that you will hear in this lecture is that the policy was in fact successful, at least initially and with regard to unemployment and the financial markets. (The stock market boomed.) The big German inflation began slowly but peaked in 1923; then the German government finally stabilized the mark (which was the German currency) by forcing an exchange of 1 trillion old marks for 1 single new mark. (The stock market collapsed.) The consequence of this approach was that the structural problems of the nation were not addressed and that there was massive redistribution of income within the country that ultimately led to massive social unrest, and ultimately to the rise of Adolf Hitler. People on fixed incomes, like the elderly, were financially devastated by the inflation. This, I believe, is a possible scenario for our own economy.

From the planning committee at the Worcester Tea Party…the next big rally. Call all your friends and neighbors. We can’t sit idly by while Beacon Hill grabs every penny they can.

Dear Tea Party Patriots:

Next week we’ll publicly announce our speakers for the Worcester Tea Party-Rally for Responsible Government, but we’re giving you the information today!  The rally will be held at Elm Park on Saturday, June 20 from noon to 3 p.m. 

Here are some of the speakers that will be featured:

- Chip Faulkner, Associate Director of Citizens for Limited Taxation

- Todd Feinburg, WRKO Radio

- David G. Tuerck, Executive Director of The Beacon Hill Institute and Chairman, Department of Economics Suffolk University

- Nicholas Sanchez, Professor of Economics, College of the Holy Cross

- Carla Howell, President of the Center for Small Government.

Professor Sanchez will also be the featured speaker at our first Worcester Tea Party Forum, to be held in the Saxe Room at the Worcester Public Library.  The forum will be held on Tuesday, June 30 at 7 p.m.  More details about this forum will follow in a couple of weeks.

What can you do to help our movement to bring fiscal responsibility to all levels of government?  Get the word out about our Rally for Responsible Government! 

We need to build our organization so that when elections come around we have the ability to provide meaningful support to fiscally responsible candidates.

Over the weekend I will be emailing you a PDF file with a full color poster for the Rally for Responsible Government.  Please print out several copies and put them up in your neighborhood and at work.  Also, please forward it to everyone you know.  Ask your friends, family, and co-workers to come to the rally and ask them to promote it. 

Finally, if you want to be involved in planning events, please join our committee.   We’ll be having our next meeting this Sunday, May 31 at 7 p.m. in Oxford.  You will need to contact me via the Worcester Tea Party web site if you wish to come.  I will respond with directions.

Thank you for supporting the Worcester Tea Party.

Ken Mandile
Worcester Tea Party Organizer
www.worcesterteaparty.com

Great letter I just received from the Center for Small Government.

An Open Letter to the Massachusetts State Legislature

From Carla Howell and Michael Cloud, Sponsors of the 2008 Massachusetts End the Income Tax Ballot Initiative

Dear Honorable Legislators,
 
“What’s 2 plus 2?” a first grade teacher asked her students.
 
“4,” said one child.
 
“3,” said another.
 
“Peaches,” answered the third.
 
The first answer was right, the second was wrong, and the third answer wasn’t even wrong.
 
Basic Economics teaches: “If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less, tax it.”
 
Yet you RAISED the Massachusetts sales tax from 5% to 6.25% – at a time when Massachusetts sales are down – and fragile.
 
You RAISED the sales tax – at a time of rising layoffs and falling pay of private sector employees.
 
You RAISED the sales tax – when retail businesses are struggling to survive.
 
We need to increase sales in Massachusetts, NOT reduce them.
 
When faced with Massachusetts’ current economic recession, you had 3 ways to vote on the sales tax:
 
“Cut or End the sales tax” – the right answer.
 
“Keep the sales tax at 5% – the wrong answer.
 
“Raise the sales tax to 6.25% – the Not Even Wrong answer.
 
Your sales tax increase will make things worse for those who sell and those who buy in Massachusetts.
 
Your sales tax hike will cause more retail employee layoffs, less sales assistance for shoppers, reduced inventory purchases by businesses, and more business closures in Massachusetts.
 
Honorable Legislators, it is not enough to merely undo what you have done.
 
You must undo the sales tax.
 
On behalf of the 3,200,000+ workers of Massachusetts,
 
On behalf of those 100,000 to 300,000 employees in danger of being laid off because of your job-killing tax hike,
 
We request that you immediately repeal the Massachusetts state sales tax.
 
We request that this $4 billion tax reduction be matched by an equal $4 billion government spending reduction.
Total state and local government spending in Massachusetts – on budget and off budget – is slightly over $70 billion.
 
$4 billion tax reduction divided by $70 billion total Massachusetts government spending is a 5.7% spending cut. This will leave $66 billion.
 
We request that you instruct each government department to streamline, eliminate inefficiencies and waste, and remove the unneeded – to easily trim off 5.7%.
 
If any government department has trouble identifying at least 5.7% in non-essential spending, we will be delighted to come down and help.
 
We’ve been warned that it’s not possible to END the sales tax because you are using the tax as collateral for billions of dollars in state government bonds.
 
No problem. Simply substitute collateral for the bonds. Businesses do it all the time. You can, too.
 
ENDing the Massachusetts sales tax now will put $4 billion each year back in the cash registers of struggling retail businesses. And the pockets of hundreds of thousands of employees who work for them.
 
ENDing the Massachusetts sales tax now will make our state a fertile ground for new start-ups and small businesses.
 
ENDing the Massachusetts sales tax now will attract investors and jobs to our state.
 
ENDing the sales tax now could guarantee that Massachusetts will break out of the Recession first – that we will get a head start toward America’s next economic boom.
 
On behalf of the 3,200,000+ million workers who are aching and longing for a way out of this Economic Recession,
 
We ask you to re-think, re-vote, and remove the Massachusetts state sales tax now.

Sincerely,
Carla Howell and Michael Cloud
The Center For Small Government

How sad is this? Beacon Hill can be very creative when it comes to raising our taxes. But they have no clue how to cut spending.

From the Worcester Telegram:

The state Senate today will have no shortage of choices on which taxes to raise as it seeks to beef up revenues for the fiscal year beginning in July.

Scattered among more than 600 budget amendments filed Friday are a variety of tax-increase proposals, including options to raise the sales tax from 5 percent to either 6.25 percent or 6.5 percent starting July 1; a 23-cent hike in the gasoline tax; new taxes on alcohol and tobacco; and adoption of a national system that would allow the state to track and tax Internet sales.

Other local option taxes aimed at boosting the bottom line for cities and towns include proposals for an additional 2 percent local tax on meals, new local lodging taxes and eliminating the property tax exemption on telecom and telephone equipment.

While one senator filed an amendment to hike the state income tax from 5.3 to 5.9 percent, that option has been all but ruled out by Senate leaders, including Senate President Therese Murray, D-Plymouth. She has said she favors a sales tax increase over an income tax hike.

Either increase would be a historic tax hike, raising the sales tax for the first time in 34 years.

Critics, including the state’s retailers’ association, oppose the sales tax increase, arguing it will push more consumers to shop in tax-free New Hampshire and cause job losses, especially in border areas.

But state workers unions and groups trying to avoid deep cuts in health and social service programs are pushing for new revenues from taxes.

On that note…the next Worcester Tea Party protest is on June 20, 2009, 12 noon to 3 pm at Elm Park in Worcester. Bring your frustration, bring your signs (and bring a picnic lunch)!

Today we taped the newest Central Mass Chronicles TV show (Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Thursday @ 7pm on Charter TV3). The topics were: the City Council retreat, taxing dorm rooms, and waiving the age limit for Jose Rivera. Here’s my take.

Worcester City Council Retreat
Mayor Konnie Lukes has set up an off-site retreat for the Worcester City Council to work on the big issues facing the city. It will be a facilitated encounter at Tower Hill Botanic Gardens in Boylston. So far, so good. But Councilor Rick Rushton was quick to object, showing more than a little hypocrisy. He complained that the meeting is too far for Worcester residents to attend, and why are we holding it in Boylston instead of Worcester. Just in case he forgot, Rushton has been pushing hard for regionalization, aka we’re all in this together so let’s work side by side. So Boylston is just as good a place as any to hold the retreat. Personally, I think Rushton is just doing his usual antics in front of the press so he can say, “look how important I am.”

I like Boyston. And I especially like the idea of a moderated retreat for our City Councilors (but one that’s longer than the couple of hours that President Obama tried in DC this week). I’m in high tech; we do off-sites all the time and they’re great for brainstorming. Which is exactly what we need now. We need our elected officials to stop and think seriously about the challenges we face. The public City Hall meetings are the time when all citizens should be encouraged to attend. A brainstorming session should be off-limits to the press and to voters so the politicians can stop politicking and start thinking.

College Dorm Tax
Councilor Michael Germain has proposed a tax on the dorm rooms of Worcester’s colleges. Desperate for ideas that will help the city budget, he’s thinking about how to increase revenues. I’m all for that, but this is exactly the wrong way to go about it.

Looking from the outside in, what is Worcester known for? A few freak snowstorms that make the national news and our many institutions of higher learning. Why would we want to penalize these organizations or their customers (the students and their families) when they are the backbone of the city? Their faculty and staff are local residents. Many of the students are local residents. Why would we want to create the nation’s ONLY tax on dorm rooms and push people away with higher prices at exactly the time they can least afford it?

Let’s do something that will raise revenues by attracting new business, not taxing the few businesses still left in Worcester. Let’s get that corporate tax rate back in line with the region. Worcester’s business tax rate is over 20%, about 2X what you find around the region. What business in their right mind would subject themselves to that kind of onerous tax when they can get everything they need in Shrewsbury or Westborough or Marlborough? If it wasn’t for WPI and Gateway Park, and the Mass School of Pharmacy, there’d be no new business in the city at all.

Waiving Age Requirements
Less than 10 years ago, the Worcester City Council created a local law that forced an age requirement on police and firefighters. If you’re not between 19 and 32, don’t bother applying. Unless you’re a famous boxer and all-round nice guy like Jose Rivera, that is. The City Council has now passed an exception to that law for Rivera, who is currently 36 years old. I have nothing against Rivera and he is in great shape. I’m sure he can chase down criminals. But so can many others around town who are beyond the age of 32.

The problem I have is when politicians don’t think through laws before they put them on the books. In this case, the Worcester City Council passed the age requirements law when their real concern was physical fitness (as in the case of Jose Rivera). If that’s the case, then require all applicants to pass a physical test. But don’t restrict their age as that’s a non-issue.

Our politicians have got to spend more time thinking and less time politicking. Otherwise we end up with situations like this. We want to be nice to a nice guy like Rivera, but that requires exceptions to laws that probably shouldn’t be laws anyway. So now we have to spend taxpayer dollars by handling the exceptions when we should be spending time thinking about how to bring more jobs to the city so we can put that new graduation class from the Police Academy to work.

There’s a great discussion going on among the Twittersphere about a different approach to new year’s resolutions. Instead of making the usual noises about losing 10 pounds or cleaning your office, think more broadly about your goals, what you’ve learned so far, and what you can do to make a difference. Then come up with 3 words that describe your goals for 2009.

Here’s the discussion at Chris Brogan’s site.

Here are my 3 words for 2009:

- Patience: flow and adapt; time is a friend, not an enemy

- Serve: (a) God, (b) family, (c) clients, (d) community

- Inspire: through knowledge and actions — at work, at home, at volunteer activities

My teen loved the idea and came up with her own 3:

- Live: she’s been home bound with Lyme Disease for over a year. She’s on IV antibiotics and finally starting to get better. She’s ready to start embracing life again.

- Love: she’s an unusually perceptive teenager who is dismayed at the narcissistic and partisan attitudes that pervade our world. She wants to reach out and make a difference.

- Help: she sees a lot of her friends in need of stability, a rock, a relationship that they can count on. She wants to help them see the joy and beauty in life.

What a great kid!! Happy New Year, everyone!

Continuing a prior post on the best and worst of 2008, let’s move on to a few more topics.

Most Under-Reported Story
The problems in the Worcester Public School system. According to the Worcester Regional Research Bureau’s report, Benchmarking Public Education in Worcester 2008, student enrollment dropped 8.2% from 2003 to 2007 while the budget grew 11.41%. In what world does that make any kind of sense? The city has to get control of spiraling retirement costs (up 29.13% from 03 to 07) and health insurance costs (up 72.57% over the same time period). For instance, why in the world aren’t our teachers provided with a health insurance option like the much more affordable Group Insurance Commission, which is available to state employees? From what I’m told, the teacher’s union is dead set against this as they use health insurance as a way of hiding pay raises and other teacher benefits.

Best Political Drama
Without a doubt, the corruption on Beacon Hill. House Speaker Sal DiMasi’s accountant indicted, former State Senator Dianne Wilkerson arrested for taking bribes, Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner arrested for taking bribes...need I say more?!? Oh, I almost forgot State Senator Jim Marzilli and his arrest on multiple counts of assault, disorderly conduct, and something in the lewd behavior category!

Worst News for Worcester
The supposed development of CitySquare. Developer Young Park is dragging his feet, the City Council looks like a bunch of boobs in their negotiations with his firm, and the dual tax structure is killing downtown.

Btw, extra boos to City Councilor Michael Germain who had the gall to chide the business community for “not engaging the council on the tax-rate issue until the night of the tax classification hearing.” (Telegram, Nov 26, 2008). I’ve been a Worcester resident for over 20 years and ever since I moved to town, businesses have been complaining about the dual tax structure that was put in place in 1984. In what sand dune has Mr. Germain been sticking his head?

Best Use of Local Taxpayer Money
Give it back to the taxpayers! Speaking of which, what happened to the property tax relief Governor Patrick promised throughout his campaign? That’s all he talked about for months on end. Even when the budget looked good, he cried “poor man” and turned his backs on the taxpayers. Is anyone surprised?

And here’s a fun roundup of Worcester Online 2008 by Jeff at Wormtown Taxi.

If you’ve never met Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, you should. He is an amazing man. Devoted, intellectual, driven by his faith in God and the Lord Jesus Christ, and his love for his congregants.

So when Planned Parenthood decides to strike out at our Cardinal, it’s because his point has hit home, uncomfortably so for PP. This from Catholic Culture:

The Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts has unleashed a broadside of criticism against Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, in response to the cardinal’s charge that Planned Parenthood has its historic roots as “a very racist organization to eliminate the blacks.” Sidestepping questions about their organization’s ties to racist ideology and eugenicism, the Planned Parenthood statement complained that Cardinal O’Malley and other American prelates “are eager to jump into politics.” Claiming that most Catholics ignore Church teachings on birth control and legal access to abortion, Planned Parenthood said that the bishops “have a lot of work to d in order to reconnect with their members.” The group said: “Perhaps Cardinal O’Malley should spend less time sharing political opinions and more time listening to the reality of life for his own constituency.”

The stinging public statement indicates that Planned Parenthood feels confident enough to make a direct personal attack on the leader of Boston’s Catholic community. The group is obviously less comfortable defending its own history and its plans to promote contraception and abortion especially among members of racial minority groups.

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was widely known to be anti-black and anti-poor. Here’s a sad summary from La Shawn Barber on Townhall.com:

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America makes a futile effort to deny that its founder Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist. Eugenics is a pseudo-science that claims some races are genetically superior and more fit to survive than others. As a eugenicist, Sanger’s goals were to discourage the “unfit” and “inferior” from reproducing. In her 1922 book Pivot of Civilization, she called for segregation of “morons, misfits, and the maladjusted” and sterilization of “genetically inferior races.”

Can you guess which race in particular she considered genetically inferior?

Sanger even suggested that the federal government pay “obviously unfit parents” not to have children and advocated limiting and discouraging “overfertility of the mentally and physically defective.”

In 1916, Sanger founded the Birth Control League, the forerunner of Planned Parenthood. She appointed a man named Lothrop Stoddard, a Nazi sympathizer, fellow eugenicist and author of The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy to the Board of Directors. At some point, after Adolph Hitler’s atrocities against the Jews became known, Sanger changed the league’s name to Planned Parenthood, because “birth control” was too closely associated with eugenics.

More controversial is Sanger’s “Negro Project,” devised in 1939. The eugenicist set out to implicate black ministers and doctors in her efforts to spread her message of contraception, sterilization, and abortion in the black community. “The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want the word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it occurs to any of their more rebellious members,” she wrote.

Sanger’s work has done serious damage. In the latest abortion surveillance report from the CDC that tracks racial demographics:

The abortion ratio for black women (491 per 1,000 live births) was 3.0 times the ratio for white women (165 per 1,000), and the ratio for women of the nonhomogeneous “other” race category (347 per 1,000) was 2.1 times the ratio for white women. The abortion rate for black women (29 per 1,000 women) was 2.9 times the rate for white women (10 per 1,000), and the abortion rate for women of other races (19 per 1,000 women) was 2.0 times the rate for white women.

I haven’t seen the ads, but I agree with the Bishops…seriously horrific judgment on the part of the ad agency. I’m appalled to see that “adulterous adults” is considered a good demographic.

The following statement was released today by the Roman Catholic Bishops in Massachusetts:
 
We, the Roman Catholic Bishops in Massachusetts, as pastors and teachers, are compelled to speak in support of marriage in light of a recent advertising campaign promoting adultery in the Commonwealth. 
                  
The ads encourage the use of an online dating service for married persons contemplating adulterous relationships.  This wrongful enterprise threatens not only the oldest and most foundational of human institutions but also the common good of all.
           
Marriage requires honesty, loyalty, trust, self-sacrifice, personal responsibility, respect, and commitment.  Marriage is a vocation that benefits all of society by building and strengthening human relationships within the family home and beyond with relatives, neighbors and one’s community.  Marriage is the basis for the family, the fundamental human society.  A healthy committed marriage helps to insure the well-being of children, create social stability and improve the quality of life for all citizens.
 
The activity promoted by this advertising effort will not benefit families and the ads send the wrong message to our young.  The ad campaign will further erode the unique and important role that marriage has in contributing to the common good.  Where marriage is weakened the social cost is enormous.  We commend those media outlets that have refused this advertising and ask that other media outlets do the same.
 
We honor and support those couples who have committed themselves to each other in the vocation of marriage and offer prayers that they remain strong in the face of increasing social pressures to abandon their promise of fidelity.

Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley
Archdiocese of Boston

Most Rev. George W. Coleman
Diocese of Fall River

Most Rev. Timothy A. McDonnell
Diocese of Springfield

Most Rev. Robert J. McManus
Diocese of Worcester

More from the Boston Herald.

And, no, I won’t help the dating service out by posting their link here.

Kevin Kuros and State Rep. Paul Kujawski recently met in a debate for the state rep seat in the 8th Worcester district. Each candidate submitted questions ahead of time for the other to answer.

Here are the questions from Kevin Kuros for Rep. Paul Kujawski:

• Just 5 months ago in May, you voted for a state budget that increased spending by over $1B dollars. How can you, in good conscience, then immediately turn around and propose a tax on non-profit University endowment funds because “we’re facing a $1B deficit” as you were quoted in many places?

• You claim to represent everyone in your district. Can you please explain how voting to eliminate the home heating oil tax credit, and voting not to expand the number of senior citizens eligible for the Circuit Breaker tax deduction, directly helps anyone?

• Little League coaches, soccer coaches, and many municipal, government and private sector positions require a CORI check before the position can be accepted. Will you support Legislation that requires CORI checks for State Senators, State Representatives, and all State Constitutional offices?

• You voted and helped pass a law in 2005 that retroactively taxed capital gains dating back to 2002, essentially changing the rules after the game had already been played. Did you honestly think that was a good, fair taxation policy or were you following the Speaker’s lead?

• You’ve traditionally been a pro-life voice in the State House. Yet you recently voted against an amendment to the Life Sciences Bill that would have eliminated funding for embryonic “clone and kill” research. Has your position on life softened, similar to your position on traditional family values, or were you following the Speaker’s lead?

• The National Federation of Independent Businesses rates you a 60% (a D minus if you were in school) on their business-friendliness criteria. The Associated Industries of MA rates you an even worse 50% on their criteria. You just voted to raise taxes on businesses by nearly half a billion dollars. And you were openly against a mall in your own home town. What do you propose, specifically, to help create jobs?

• 12 years ago in a debate like tonight’s, you said it was important to re-elect you because “an experienced, watchful eye” is required to keep an eye on the “Big Dig” so that we don’t end up paying a disproportionate amount for it. It’s become the biggest public works boondoggle in the country. What, exactly, has your watchful eye bought us?

I must say, I was not impressed with Kujawski’s answers. Besides the fact that he didn’t answer a lot of the questions:

• Kujawski completely ducked the question about whether he’d support legislation that would require CORI checks of state senators, state reps, and state constitutional positions.

• Kujawski got rattled and denied voting against Rep. Karyn Polito’s amendment to H.4811 this year, requiring mandatory 10 year sentences for anyone who rapes a child. He did, in fact, vote against it.

• Kujawski dodged the question on the retroactive capital gains tax — was it fair and equitable? His reply, “The job is about making tough decisions, not all of them are popular.” I know that, but what’s his answer?

• Kujawski said the MassGOP was running Kuros’ campaign. I am involved in the MassGOP State Committee and I know, for a fact, that they are not.

• Kujawski deflected the question about lobbyist support by pointing out that GOP leaders who have also accepted lobbyist money. I love Kuros’ response, “I’m not running against them, I’m running against you [Kujawski] and I’ve accepted $0 from lobbyists while you’ve accepted $5400 from 37 lobbyists.”