"From change agent to 'comforter in chief'; It's a new deal for the governor, as the slump into recession makes budget cuts, not campaign dreams, his focus" by Matt Viser and Frank Phillips, Globe Staff | January 11, 2009
.... Governor Deval Patrick is recasting himself, halfway through his term, from inspirational visionary to crisis manager, what he described in an interview last week as "comforter in chief."
He finds himself mired in a national financial crisis that is forcing him to cut deeply into the state budget, including social programs for the mentally retarded and the blind. As the state continues to lose revenue by the billions, Patrick is contemplating cuts in state aid to cash-strapped, hard-luck cities such as Worcester, New Bedford, and Springfield.
This is not what Patrick signed up for when he campaigned on a progressive agenda in 2006, and promised, in consistently soaring rhetoric, to give the state's residents better educations, make their neighborhoods safer, and reduce their property taxes.
Translation: He's just as big a liar as the rest of them.
See: Mass. Property Taxes Rising
In 2009, rescuing a Turnpike Authority on the brink of insolvency - not enriching education for kindergarteners - promises to dominate the agenda. He is pushing for higher tolls and is reluctantly contemplating a higher gasoline tax. Meanwhile, he has been shuttling to Washington to seek a desperately needed infusion of federal funds, a piece of President-elect Barack Obama's economic stimulus proposal, that could help keep the state's rising unemployment rates from spiking even further.
Yeah, because paying off banks and handing over taxpayer dollars to corporations and Hollywood is more important than the people whom he serves and whom allegedly elected him.
During the fall's budget cuts, he often sat alone in his State House office, sometimes late into Saturday night, going through the budget, line by line. "This stuff is personal," he said last week....
Oh, yeah, sure it is.
"I am finding myself in the role of sort of comforter in chief or reassurer in chief. There is so much anxiety out there. People are really worried," Patrick said as he prepared for his annual State of the State speech, which he will deliver before the Legislature and a live statewide TV audience on Thursday.
He's making me want to puke, okay?
"There's not going to be enough money. All right? Just to be clear," he said. But he remains committed, he said, to using the levers of government to help people through rough times.
Now he is just being a bald-faced, disingenuous liar!
Or does HELPING US include "flushing . . . millions of dollars away supporting a highly profitable industry" when it comes to $300 million in taxpayer dollars for Hollywood is o.k., even as the price of a school lunch rises; paying $13 million for a computer software system that could have cost less than $3 million is all right because the winner was a close friend of the House speaker, even as my poorer-than-dirt district "has been struggling to close a $2 million budget gap."; the lottery shelling out "millions of dollars" for sports tickets for "lottery officials, their family members, and friends" is fine, even as schools are closing; making interest payments to banks to the tune of "a staggering $22 billion" for the Big Pit, as we call it around here, is required, even as bridges are neglected across the state; and again, paying off banks like UBS, who can "demand repayment of an additional $2 million a month beginning in January" while also receiving a "$179 million payment," while the state pension fund loses $1 billion dollars -- which still didn't stop the executive director from carving himself a nice "$64,000 bonus on top of his $322,000 annual salary."
Yup, the BILLION DOLLAR GIVEAWAY to the pharmaceutical corporations was a GOOD THING, even though "it's never been easy to turn a profit in biotech?" Flush that money away, too, taxpayer.
And look whose backs they are balancing the budget with: the blind, mentally ill, kids, and cripples!!
Of course, "one of the governor's pet projects, the $3 million Commonwealth Corporation, is only taking a 5 percent trim."
And that is not counting the troubles at the Turnpike!
"The authority was attempting to renegotiate terms of a complex financial deal with the banking giant UBS. Known as a swaption, the arrangement could force the authority to pay out a $450 million lump sum"
Of course, the war looters were next in line for a handout. And should the state be appropriating money for a "multimillion-dollar reconstruction" of golf courses?
Nor is it RECKLESS to BORROW the STATE INTO OBLIVION so they can PAY INTEREST to BANKS while SITTING ON $2 BILLION DOLLARS!
Need one final insult, Mass. taxpayers?
"Town officials... are trying to decide how much of a property tax break to offer and how they can secure state funding for infrastructure improvements.... although it could take several years for the studio to realize its potential"
Also see: Hollywood, Massachusetts
Hollywood (East) Disses Veterans
More Mass. $$$ to Movie Makers
Sorry, that wasn't it:
"$5m in tax breaks going to IBM for Littleton project
The Massachusetts Economic Assistance Coordinating Council approved $5 million in state and local tax breaks for IBM Corp., which recently began a $63 million expansion in Littleton. IBM vice president Bob McDonald said the company plans to create 42 jobs at the site over the next decade. McDonald said the computer giant, based in Armonk, N.Y., has already begun renovating a building and hopes to move into it next month. McDonald said the tax incentives were important, but the company would have gone forward with the expansion without them. IBM has 4,000 employees in Massachusetts, including about 2,000 in Littleton (Boston Globe October 30 2008)."
Yup, but the PUT-UPON, AGONIZING GOVERNOR is going to decide how to fuck you next! What he is worried about is the public turning on him and losing his position. That's what he's worried about.
"And at a time like this, frankly, more people than usual are looking to government at all levels," he said. "We have to do everything we can - I'm trying to do everything I can - to step up."
Doesn't he just make you ill? What a crap canal this guy has for a mouth.
Voters have so far responded positively to Patrick's approach to crisis management. A Globe poll last month found that he has a 64 percent favorable rating among Massachusetts adults, an unusually high mark for a governor in the midst of financial crunch. But that will be tough for him to keep....
Well, seeing as it's a GLOBE POLL and since the Globe LUVS the GUV (they constantly making excuses for the guy, and why not? He is an agenda-pusher), I'll take that salt shaker, yeah.
