Related: Rigged Primaries
Turns out the polls are not much better given the recent developments in this state.
Let's count the true votes in$tead:
"Primary rivals primed to spend in governor’s race; Advertising pushes by Democrats likely; effort could extend past governor’s race" by Jim O’Sullivan | Globe Staff August 05, 2014
Gubernatorial candidates who have been husbanding their finances for months are now positioned to launch a costly advertising blitz, running a wave of political spots in a compressed period of time just before the Sept. 9 primary.
The three Democratic campaigns on Monday disclosed, in state documents or to the Globe, that collectively they had more than $1.8 million in their war chests at the end of July.
Attorney General Martha Coakley led the party with more than $712,000, followed by former federal health care administrator Don Berwick, with more than $586,000, and Treasurer Steve Grossman with more than $520,000.
Related: Berwick's Bullsh**
Leading Republican Charlie Baker’s campaign questioned whether Coakley, the Democratic front-runner, would have the resources after a contentious primary to compete in a final match-up that would almost assuredly garner national attention.
“Martha Coakley’s subpar fund-raising is evidence of a fractured Democratic Party and raises questions about how she’ll be able to compete with us on the airwaves in September and October,” said Baker’s campaign manager Jim Conroy.
Coakley’s campaign was weighing a number of media strategies, including one that could see Coakley launch an advertising campaign as early as next week, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
“For us, we believe it’s more about the power of the ideas than the size of the wallet, and that’s what’s going to make Martha Coakley successful in November,” said Coakley strategist Doug Rubin.
Related: AG sues former Westfield State leader over use of funds
How poetic.
Although the candidates are loath to reveal their precise plans, history suggests that campaigns with available funds typically invest in television ads in the days leading up to the primary election.
Coakley and Berwick benefited last month from nearly $309,000 through their respective agreements to participate in the state’s limited public financing system, while Grossman has drawn support from an outside super PAC that has spent more than $474,000 on his behalf.
Related: "A new state campaign finance law forced the release of the top five donors to a political action committee supporting state Treasurer Steve Grossman’s gubernatorial bid. Among them: his mother."
With Coakley far ahead in the polls but hoping for a strong primary showing to propel her into the general election, all three Democrats have strong incentives to spend heavily in the next five weeks.
Baker, the GOP’s 2010 nominee, sits on more than $1.25 million, supplemented by the roughly $578,000 his running mate, former state representative Karyn Polito, has on hand, according to their campaign. Polito is running for lieutenant governor.
Also see: Super PAC to air Charlie Baker television ad
Baker’s primary opponent, Tea Party-affiliated Mark Fisher, reported more than $39,000 on hand as of July 15. His campaign did not respond to requests for updated figures.
Also running are two largely self-funded, unenrolled candidates. Evan Falchuk’s campaign said he had more than $115,000 in his account. Jeffrey S. McCormick had more than $49,000 in his, an aide said.
Coakley’s July haul of $172,303, on top of the public financing, was her most robust of the campaign except for last December, when candidates typically make year-end cash grabs that inflate their numbers, and she banked the public funds last month. At the same time, she spent nearly $234,000, much of it on polling and staff expenses.
For Coakley’s campaign, the calculus revolves around how much to invest in the primary, and how much to steward with a hopeful eye on the general election. Already, her campaign has been forced to spend more energy engaging with Grossman, whose campaign has aired its own spots promoting the treasurer. In addition, the pro-Grossman super PAC ad campaign has knocked Coakley. Grossman on his own spent nearly $550,000 last month, the vast majority of it on advertising.
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“Everyone’s holding their money right now,” said Chris Keohan, a strategist for Democrat Deb Goldberg’s campaign for state treasurer, which launched a cable and online advertising campaign on Monday....
Goldberg is vying for the Democratic nomination against state Senator Barry Finegold and state Representative Tom Conroy; all three Democrats intend to air TV spots, advisers said. Republican Mike Heffernan is also running....
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Related: Martha Coakley releases 3 years of tax returns
She is the personally the poorest candidate out there, and that always counts for something.
Related: Mass. Politicians Misuse Campaign Money
Grossman Fires First Salvo in Governor's Race
Grossman Gets Golden Ticket
From his mom!
"Many ready to help lottery winners avoid taxes; Online advertisers sell losing tickets to offset profits, offer to cash in on others’ behalf" by Todd Wallack | Globe Staff August 06, 2014
With few rules or law enforcement to stop it, a cottage industry has popped up to help lottery winners avoid taxes, child support, and other debts, potentially costing the state and federal governments millions in lost revenue.
The behavior of a bankrupt and cash-grabbing government that doles out billions to the wealthy elite, wars, etc, etc. The scratch tickets get old after a while.
Enterprising merchants — risking charges of aiding tax evasion — are openly hawking losing lottery tickets on Craigslist and eBay to help winners offset the profits with phony gambling losses.
There was a day when that got me angry. Newspaper did a good job of pitting me against my fellow citizens. They didn't pay their taxes on lottery or race track loot!
Never mind the corporations not paying taxes but getting refund checks.
“If you need the losers to write off for taxes,” read one ad, since removed, from Medford. “I have 2 boxes full of Mass. losing scratch tickets.”
Other Craigslist advertisers will gladly buy your winning tickets at a discount and claim the prizes themselves — allowing real winners to potentially avoid paying taxes on the prizes as well as any court orders to garnish the payments for other debts. One poster, who listed his first name and phone number, offered to buy a $1,000 ticket for $750 and “pay the taxes” himself.
Such efforts all support a lottery-driven underground economy of sorts, one in which professional ticket cashers known as “Ten Percenters” will, for a fee, cash in winning tickets presumably so that the original owner can dodge taxes, child support payments, or other obligations. Since a Boston Globe investigation on suspected Ten Percenters was published last month, the extent of the practice has become more evident.
Critics say neither lawmakers nor agencies are doing nearly enough to discourage potential tax evasion, even though it directly reduces revenue to the state and federal governments.
And that is why it is a concern in my paper.
I know, I know, they are cracking down on the rich, too. Uh-huh.
“It’s outrageous,” said former inspector general Gregory Sullivan, who noted that state auditors first raised concerns about people cashing in large volumes of lottery tickets 15 years ago.
“Everyone knows what is going on, but nobody is doing anything about it,” Sullivan added.
That is the way I feel about so many things, or what is being done is the exact opposite of what is needed.
Now, that could be changing. The Massachusetts attorney general’s office began looking into whether it could potentially prosecute Ten Percenters.
How come she always waits until a Globe report comes out before doing things?
The Globe found that Clarance Jones, 76, of Lynn, has cashed in more than 1,700 winning tickets worth $600 or more since January 2013 alone. And Chelsea insurance broker Robert Brudnick and two of his children have cashed in 340 tickets in the past two years.
Lottery officials suspect Jones and the Brudnicks are cashing in other people’s tickets because it is improbable they won that many tickets just by chance.
The attorney general’s office is also looking at whether tougher laws are needed because it’s generally legal to buy and sell lottery tickets unless prosecutors can prove that fraud or tax evasion is involved, something that can be difficult.
“The behavior of a few individuals cashing an unusually high number of lottery tickets raises many concerns,” said Brad Puffer, a spokesman for Attorney General Martha Coakley. “It is also clear that we must look at whether additional legislative tools are needed to effectively combat this behavior and hold people accountable.”
However, legislators have shown little interest in beefing up the statutes.
Lottery officials proposed a bill that would give them the ability to halt payments to people the Department of Revenue suspects may be Ten Percenters.
But the legislation appears unlikely to be approved this year, lottery spokesman Christian Teja said. The formal legislative session ended last month.
See: Business is Your Buddy in Massachusetts
“It’s just frankly a matter of indifference,” state Auditor Suzanne Bump said, referring to legislators. “This issue has been kicking around for years.”
Related: Bump says campaign allegations are ‘without merit’
Colleen McGonagle, a spokeswoman for the House Ways and Means Committee, said the committee is still reviewing the proposal.
The state could also try other tactics.
Sullivan, the former inspector general who is now research director at the Pioneer Institute think tank, said the state could pass laws or regulations limiting the number of tickets a single person could cash.
A lottery spokesman, however, said officials don’t believe they have the authority to pass such a rule without legislation.
In addition, Bump said the state could launch more stings to try to catch suspected ticket cashers.
Again, is that the wisest use of resources when banks are bilking us, corporations being handed tax loot, and corruption at all levels of government.
Lottery officials said they already do some checks. After a complaint from a customer, the lottery found that a clerk at the Richdale Food Shops in Randolph was telling customers their winning lottery tickets were worthless and then cashing them in herself.
In April, the lottery suspended the convenience store’s license for a week and barred the worker from any further involvement with lottery sales. The store later fired the worker.
“Lottery sales agents are checked consistently,” said Teja, the lottery spokesman.
The lottery also requires winners to go to lottery offices to claim any tickets worth $600 or more.
I'm not greedy.
And it holds back a portion of the money for taxes — 5 percent for state taxes on tickets worth $600 or more, plus an additional 25 percent for federal taxes on tickets worth $5,000 or more — which could deter some people from cashing in tickets.
But savvy ticket cashers could potentially get back some or all of that money by claiming that their winnings are offset by gambling losses. And losing tickets are easy to find to generate phony losses.
Many lottery players ditch losing scratch tickets at stores, though others sell them online.
“It seems too easy for a taxpayer to collect a bunch of losing tickets,” said Kathleen DeLaney Thomas, an assistant law professor at the University of North Carolina, who specializes in tax law.
“The state/IRS should be auditing the people who are claiming a suspicious number of winning tickets in a year,” she said.
They must have been too busy spying on conservative groups.
Thomas said she thought the state and federal government could make it much harder for Ten Percenters to claim losing scratch tickets on their taxes, however, by requiring gamblers to keep receipts showing their purchases.
Maybe the lottery ticket winners should offer the government kickbacks like the Wall Street banks have to settle all the bad mortgage-backed securities and foreclosure frauds.
Have you noticed the millions (upon billions in profits per quarter) in fines invariably have a portion being kicked into state or federal treasuries?
Is that why they were allowed to get away with their crimes?
Thomas also said she thought the Craigslist ads peddling losing tickets as tax write-offs likely violate several federal statutes against tax evasion but noted “the IRS doesn’t tend to bring criminal charges unless there’s a lot of money at stake.”
Federal prosecutors have also successfully targeted two Ten Percenters in the horse racing industry — including one in Massachusetts — for tax evasion and falsely signing forms claiming that they were the sole recipients of the prize winnings.
But officials couldn’t recall any similar cases against lottery ticket cashers, perhaps because it can be hard to prove that someone is knowingly cashing in someone else’s tickets to help them evade taxes — even though the lottery routinely sends reports of frequent winners to state and federal tax authorities.
In fact, lottery officials said there was nothing they could do to stop people from buying winning lottery tickets on Craigslist because it is legal to buy and sell used tickets — unless they can prove tax evasion or fraud is involved. (The ads have since expired or were removed after the Globe contacted the authors.)
One man offering to buy winning tickets on Craigslist said he has cashed in three or four winning lottery tickets in the last few months to earn extra cash.
But he said he had no idea why people are selling him the tickets at a discount instead of cashing them in themselves.
“I don’t even ask them the reason,” said the man, who would only talk on the condition that he not be named. “It’s not my business.”
The man said he has a full-time job at a diner and wouldn’t jeopardize his family by doing anything illegal.
Nor would be knowingly help someone avoid child support. But he acknowledged he would never know because he doesn’t ask.
“The less I know, the better I feel,” he said.
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Related: Sunday Globe Special: You Can't Win If I Don't Play
Ma$$achu$etts Lottery Loot Formula Favors Wealthy
Like everything else in this state when you really examine it.
"Mass state pension fund rose 17.6% in fiscal ‘14" by Beth Healy | Globe Staff August 06, 2014
The Massachusetts state pension fund reported an investment gain of 17.6 percent for the fiscal year that ended June 30, outpacing its benchmark and pushing total assets to a record $60.7 billion.
The return added $9.4 billion to the portfolio for state workers’ retirement, led by strong results in private equity, global stocks, and real estate.
“It was a fantastic year,’’ Michael Trotsky, the fund’s executive director since 2010, said in an interview Tuesday. He warned that the market’s rally since the financial crisis “cannot last forever,’’ but he said the fund is better positioned to handle a downturn than it was in 2008 and 2009, when it lost nearly a quarter of its value.
I'm just glad stocks are doing so well and the 1% getting healthy off it. Screw all the suffering out here.
The pension fund beat its internal benchmark, a theoretical combination of investments that would have earned 14.9 percent for the year. But the fund but did not outperform the nation’s largest public pension, the $300 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which recently posted a return of 18.4 percent for the year ended in June.
The State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, closer in size to the Massachusetts fund at $74.7 billion, earned a 16.7 percent return for the same period.
Yeah, everybody's investments are doing great!
State Treasurer Steve Grossman, who is chairman of the pension fund, said the fund had lowered its risk at the same time it boosted performance. Managers moved to lower investment risks after the pension fund lost 23.9 percent in the 2009 fiscal year, in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
“In the last calamity, back in 2008, 2009, we captured significantly more than the market on the downside,’’ said Grossman, who is running for governor. “We spent the last five years recovering from that.”
Who is "we?"
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Did you check the bottom of the last statement?
Here is some last-minute political advice for you all.
