The plan must be working.
Charlie Baker jumps 9 points in new Globe poll
The election is less than two weeks away, and it really looks like I care a whole lot, huh?
Globe just not making the grade with me anymore. Must be the hand-to-hand combat of the campaign (here's a gesture for you).
Both are a couple of bad apples as far as I am concerned.
Enjoy!
"Gubernatorial candidates debate immigration, without Baker" by Maria Sacchetti | Globe Staff October 15, 2014
The candidates for governor — minus GOP nominee Charlie Baker and independent candidate Scott Lively — struck a welcoming note Tuesday night on immigration, saying they favor broader access to public colleges, adult English classes, and business opportunities for immigrants statewide.
But Democratic nominee Martha Coakley could not resist taking a jab at the empty seat — set up for Baker — beside her on stage.
“I think it’s telling who came tonight and who did not come,” she said.
Baker, Coakley’s main rival in a tight race, was listed on the program and organizers said they were expecting him.
“The campaign communicated to the organizers of tonight’s event some time ago that Charlie was unable to participate because of a prior commitment,” said Baker campaign spokesman Tim Buckley.
Instead, Baker showed up at a “Women for Charlie” event in West Roxbury with his wife, Lauren. He grabbed a beer and addressed the group of about 30 women. His appearance was not promoted ahead of time.
Eva Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, one of the debate hosts, said after the hour-long debate in an auditorium at Bunker Hill Community College [that] Baker’s absence surprised them.
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With one of the main contenders absent, the debate offered few fireworks in the waning days of the election. Wednesday is the last day to register to vote in the Nov. 4 elections. Coakley shared the stage with independent candidates Evan Falchuk and Jeff McCormick.
The tenor of the debate differed from this past summer, when the state erupted in controversy over the unexpected arrival of now more than 1,000 child immigrants. Some complained about the cost of educating the children, who arrived as part of a surge of immigrants fleeing violence in Central America.
So they were dumped here anyway even after we were told they were not coming here, and the dutiful agenda-pushing ma$$ media kept it all quiet until now.
Instead, the debate focused on immigrants’ contributions to Massachusetts. The candidates praised immigrants for creating jobs and said they deserved the state’s protection and investment.
The three candidates also said they favored greater access to English classes for adults and college for students, whether they had arrived legally or not.
!!!!!!
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The candidates said they also favored drivers’ licenses for immigrants here illegally — Coakley, the attorney general, had earlier balked at granting such licenses — as well as checks on racial profiling and any government surveillance programs that might unfairly target specific groups, such as Muslims.
Each candidate called for better integration of the 1 million immigrants in Massachusetts, 15 percent of the state’s population.
“It’s cheap and easy to go after immigrants as political fodder,” said Falchuk, whose father emigrated from Venezuela, as he urged greater investments in adult English classes. “We’ve seen too much of that. It’s time to end it.”
McCormick expressed concern about Secure Communities, a federal program that taps into state and local police data to find illegal immigrants, saying the program was well intentioned but “misfired.” Advocates for immigrants said the program made immigrants afraid to call police for help.
Just got an extension.
“We have to get rid of this divisive language where it’s us versus them,” he said. “It has to be a ‘we’ going forward.”
Coakley said she favored making college more affordable for all, including immigrants now ineligible for financial aid because they aren’t citizens or are here illegally.
“We need to make sure it’s prosperous and fair for everybody,” she said, adding, “It’s good for every kid and every family. It’s frankly very good for Massachusetts.”
Coakley said she also favored raising the annual federal cap on H1B visas to attract more immigrant workers, such as those educated at elite colleges in the United States.
This is why Marty started dropping.
Massachusetts is home to large groups from China, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Central America, along with small but growing groups from nations in Africa. About half are naturalized US citizens, and the rest are a mix of immigrants here legally and illegally.
So how many illegals are going to be allowed to vote?
More than 80 percent speak a language other than English, according to the US census, and a significant minority, 43 percent, aren’t fluent in English, but they can wait as long as two years for a class.
And state officials are more concerned about them and their rights than taxpaying citizens and theirs. Unbelievable.
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Also see: Baker, Coakley square off in gubernatorial debate in Chicopee
"Baker knocked by Coakley for winning outsourcing award; GOP hopeful was honored for 1999 deal that sent some Harvard Pilgrim jobs to India" by Michael Levenson | Globe Staff October 15, 2014
It’s a photo Democrats might have only dreamed of laying their hands on. Republican Charlie Baker, the avowed jobs creator, receiving an “Outsourcing Excellence Award.” In a tuxedo.
But on Tuesday, Martha Coakley’s campaign circulated just such a photo, documenting the politically awkward award that Baker received in 2008 from the Outsourcing Center, an industry group, when he was chief executive of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.
The Coakley campaign also pointed to an article posted on the Outsourcing Center’s website that describes Harvard Pilgrim hiring an outside vendor, Perot Systems, to take over its information technology and claims operations in 1999, when the insurer was on the brink of financial ruin.
The article describes how Perot Systems then moved some of the work overseas, to India.
She has some gall considering her stand on work visas for foreigners and licenses for illegals.
Baker, during a campaign stop Tuesday, did not directly address the transfer to India but defended Harvard Pilgrim’s decision to move its IT and claims work to Perot Systems — founded by H. Ross Perot, the billionaire and maverick presidential candidate in 1992 and 1996 — [which] specialized in helping companies streamline operations....
I hear a giant $ucking $ound. What a hypocrite he turned out to be, huh?
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Related: Former AG Tom Reilly, a Coakley supporter, defends Baker on ‘outsourcing’
Also see:
Baker to propose initiatives aimed at alleviating urban woes
Mental health record may be predictor for Charlie Baker
Charlie Baker takes the Proust Questionnaire
Maybe these will answer them:
"Two takes on Charlie Baker’s welfare focus" by Akilah Johnson | Globe Staff October 17, 2014
Of the five candidates running for governor of Massachusetts, Republican Charlie Baker is the only one who explicitly mentions welfare reform as a campaign issue.
He is the only one to issue specific “welfare reform priorities.” He is the only candidate to mention welfare in his campaign ads. A recent pro-Baker super PAC spot even points out that his Democratic opponent, Martha Coakley “still has no plan to fix welfare.”
Many of the reforms Baker says he wants — including mandatory job training for adults on public aid, reducing benefit extensions, and raising the work requirement exemption age to 66 — were approved this summer by the Legislature. And work requirements for welfare recipients, which Baker also touts, have been in place since the 1990s.
“Look, when you’re a candidate, you make proposals on lots of things,” Baker said in an interview. “It’s important to make clear to people that I’m going to be enthusiastic proponent of implementing the reforms.”
But critics say Baker’s focus on welfare is aimed at solidifying support from his conservative base — and an effort to appeal directly to disaffected voters resentful of those receiving public assistance.
“I’ve been doing this 42 years, which means I’ve seen every iteration of political people and operator thinking if they can slam poor people on welfare it seems to help their votes,” said John Drew, president of the Boston antipoverty organization ABCD. “I’m seeing that now, and I’m not happy with it.”
Welfare reform is an issue that voters who identify themselves as Baker supporters care deeply about — even if the general public does not rank it as a top issue, according to recent polls.
“People who are focused on the welfare system are people who are more likely to vote for Baker,” said Steve Koczela, president of MassINC Polling Group which conducts polls for WBUR.
A recent MassINC/WBUR poll asked voters how they would respond to a candidate who made welfare reform a major priority. Seventy percent of those supporting Baker said they would be “much more likely” to vote for the candidate. By comparison, 41 percent of voters supporting Coakley answered the same way.
Of the seven campaign issues voters were asked to rank in a recent poll by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and WBZ, welfare reform came in at No. 7 with 4 percent.
Still, one in eight families in Massachusetts is touched by a variety of public aid programs, according to the state. The Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children program —commonly called welfare — provided aid to 42,888 families in August, the lowest number in the past five years.
Kevin Peterson, director of the voter initiative New Democracy Coalition and a Baker supporter, said Baker’s approach to welfare reform is “a very earnest and sympathetic approach to addressing the needs of poor people.”
And while Peterson thinks his candidate is serious, he also said, “I think voters across the Commonwealth must hold him entirely accountable around creating jobs for low-income people because absent of jobs, welfare reform makes absolutely no sense.”
For Baker, welfare reform is not a new issue, though the tone of his pitch has softened. During his 2010 campaign against Governor Deval Patrick, Baker created fake electronic benefit cards that said: “Deval Patrick’s Massachusetts EBT Welfare Card. Swipe me for booze, cash, cigarettes, and/or lottery tickets at taxpayers’ expense” — an effort seen as belittling to those who rely on public assistance.
“I regret a lot of things I did last time,” Baker has said, the faux EBT card among them.
Instead, this year’s campaign includes one television advertisement in which Baker, talking with his 17-year-old daughter, says: “We can make Massachusetts great and create jobs by controlling spending, lowering taxes, and requiring work for welfare.”
A second Baker ad, also airing in Spanish, shows Baker laughing with patrons in a barbershop, fist-bumping a little girl, and walking with former governor William F. Weld, as a narrator says he “got people off welfare and made Massachusetts first in jobs.”
And the pro-Baker super PAC ad touted his “plan” to clamp down on “widespread welfare abuse.”
Baker’s opponents describe this as political posturing. Asked about their own welfare reform priorities, they talk mainly about reducing poverty, with measured mentions of stopping fraud and abuse.
Coakley’s campaign, for instance, notes her plans for reform include punishing stores found to have committed EBT fraud by removing their ability to sell alcohol, tobacco, and lottery tickets. Her campaign said, “She believes we need to go further; we need to ensure that every person is able to get on the ladder and lift themselves up.”
Baker talks about this too, pushing for an increase to the earned income tax credit, which economists say is an effective way to help low-income families. But he also talks about welfare rules.
Last month, he traveled to Worcester to promote a controversial program that limits how long residents can remain in public housing if they’re not working or in school. And in May, when he released his “welfare reform priorities,” Baker declared that “for too long, transitional assistance has created a culture of dependence.”
Politicians, political analysts, and advocates who are critical of Baker’s focus say it is little more than a plan to get elected on the backs of poor women and children.
“What he’s trying to do, as you well know, is say ‘I’m a manager, and the Commonwealth has been mismanaged over the last couple of years, and I’m going to come and clean up,’ ” said state Representative Thomas Conroy, chairman of the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development.
“The point is, with welfare there’s nothing to clean up. We have reformed this thing to death. What’s missing is money. What’s left to do is fund the programs — workforce training, GED, ESOL training, childcare.”
Amid political campaigns, debates about welfare can become highly partisan and inextricably linked to issues of race and class. Researchers say much of that tension pivots on perceptions of poverty and who is deserving of assistance.
They note that since the days of Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign speech vilifying a welfare abuser in Chicago, a narrative has emerged that associates African-Americans with public aid.
“It’s a way to divide the electorate by racial and ethnic lines,” said James Jennings, a noted specialist in race, politics, and urban policy at Tufts University who wrote a book on welfare reform. “In some people’s mind, when you say ‘welfare reform’ it’s people, families of color, black and Latino women. So . . . it’s a message. It’s a way to blame the other.”
Tim Buckley, a Baker campaign spokesman, objected to the assertion that the push for welfare reform contained racial overtones. The campaign is trying to appeal to a wide swath of voters, Democrats in urban corridors, suburban independents, and conservative, party faithful.
“I’ve been chasing 100 percent of the vote since I got in this race,” Baker said. “And I’ve built my campaign around policies and proposals that I think can make Massachusetts better — better for everybody.”
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Speaking of state welfare:
"Coakley lawsuit has ties to key backer’s interests" by Andrea Estes | Globe Staff October 16, 2014
Attorney General Martha Coakley made national headlines in June by suing two federal agencies for refusing to sell homes in foreclosure to nonprofit groups that want to return them to the original owners. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, she said, cannot “stand in the way of this work to help struggling families stay in their homes.”
What Coakley did not say is that the only nonprofit in the country that buys and sells distressed properties like that is run by the cochair of her campaign finance committee, Elyse Cherry, who hosted a Coakley fund-raiser days before the lawsuit. Cherry acknowledges that she and her staff even wrote the legislative language that Coakley sued over.
Coakley said that her lawsuit, now in federal court, is part of her longtime push to get mortgage lenders to modify the terms of loans before foreclosing on homeowners who have fallen behind on payments.
She said she wasn’t trying to give a personal benefit to Cherry, who made $590,000 last year running Boston Community Capital in Roxbury’s Dudley Square. Cherry said the lawsuit wouldn’t increase her pay or her organization’s income.
“This has been a big push since the time I became attorney general and we started to see predatory lending,” said Coakley, who took office in 2007. “One of the big roadblocks to helping everybody were Fannie and Freddie,” which hold or guarantee more than 60 percent of all US home mortgages.
Though Cherry’s work has drawn high-profile supporters, Coakley’s lawsuit is drawing criticism from a prominent affordable housing advocate who opposes Cherry’s approach and a government ethics champion who says Coakley should have disclosed her ties to Cherry to avoid the appearance she’s doing favors for insiders.
“It’s important that the public knows about private dealings that could potentially affect government action,” said Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause, a nonprofit group that promotes transparency in government.
Coakley said there was no need to file a public disclosure with the State Ethics Commission since Cherry’s $3,250 in state donations to Coakley since 2005, the $1,500 she gave to Coakley’s failed US Senate bid in 2010, and the $5,000 she donated to the Democratic State Committee in September are already matters of public record.
Cherry is more than just a contributor: She’s one of three cochairs of Coakley’s finance committee, hosting at least five fund-raisers this year and writing a glowing endorsement of Coakley in “The Rainbow Times,” a newspaper of the gay, bisexual, and transgender community, two days after Coakley filed her lawsuit.
Bruce Marks, a longtime housing advocate and chief executive of the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation for America in Jamaica Plain, said Coakley is damaging her credibility on the foreclosure issue by fighting for Cherry’s program, which he believes benefits Boston Community Capital more than homeowners.
Marks said that Cherry’s buyback program is flawed because Boston Community Capital buys foreclosed-upon homes at a discount from lenders, but doesn’t pass along all the savings to families that were foreclosed upon. Instead, her group typically boosts the resale price by at least 25 percent, Boston-area property records show.
Cherry “paints herself as this advocate for the consumer, and it’s the opposite,” said Marks, noting that he makes about one-quarter as much money — $150,000 a year — and considers himself well compensated.
But Cherry said the program has no effect on her salary, which she said is based on comparisons to leaders of similar nonprofits such as the Combined Jewish Philanthropies and the Boston Foundation.
Coakley, whose office oversees nonprofit agencies and charities and who has railed against high nonprofit compensation, said she was unaware of Cherry’s salary, but would “reach out to her board to get the documents and protocol” they used to justify her pay.
Cherry said that she was trying to develop a new tool to help distressed homeowners keep their houses, and that her group does not make a profit on the program, dubbed SUN for Stabilizing Urban Neighborhoods. She said that Boston Community Capital has helped keep 500 homeowners in their homes through the program, and that it could help many more across the country if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were willing to work with the group.
All the revenue collected from the resale goes into paying expenses and creating a reserve fund for losses, since a small percentage of the homeowners end up in foreclosure again.
“This is not a profit-making undertaking,” asserted Cherry. “What is the benefit to us?”
Coakley said the decision to sue was not her idea — it came from her staff after a Globe column on the subject this year. And Coakley officials stress that there is at least one other nonprofit group that would benefit if Coakley prevails, a small group called the Coalition for Occupied Homes in Foreclosure. This group buys distressed homes and rents them to the original owners.
Cherry, a national leader in the antiforeclosure movement, has high-profile advocates who publicly support her efforts. Former Federal Reserve Bank chairman Ben Bernanke has cited Boston Community Capital’s SUN program as a creative approach to a difficult problem.
And former mayor Thomas M. Menino has said the program “is not only bringing hope to its clients, but also making a difference in the quality of life of our city neighborhoods.”
Both Coakley and Cherry have been sparring with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae for years, pressuring both agencies to be more receptive to renegotiating mortgages with distressed homeowners so that they can remain in their homes.
Cherry turned to the Legislature for help in 2012 after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac decided not to allow their foreclosed properties to be sold to Boston Community Capital.
Cherry said she approached then Representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein of Revere, who Cherry had known from growing up in Revere, about adding language to an antiforeclosure bill that would essentially require federal agencies to do business with Boston Community Capital. The measure passed in July 2012.
Cherry said the federal mortgage agencies were concerned that, if homeowners discovered the mortgage buyback program, they would shirk their responsibility to live by the terms of their original mortgages and default.
However, the chief attorney for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae has indicated that the agencies were also concerned that programs like SUN could allow nonprofit groups to become middle men in real estate deals, buying homes at a discount and then boosting the resale price back to the homeowner “at a profit to the entity.”
Six months after the Legislature passed the antiforeclosure bill, in February 2013, an aide to Coakley sent a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency saying that Coakley was “troubled” by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae policies that “appear to violate provisions” of the new Massachusetts law to prevent foreclosures.
A day later, Coakley called for the ouster of Edward J. DeMarco of the Federal Housing Finance Agency for refusing to do business with nonprofits like Boston Community Capital.
Cherry joined Coakley’s campaign for governor right after she announced in September 2013, donating $1,000 of her own while cohosting several fund-raisers over the next nine months.
Finally, in June 2014, Coakley filed suit in Suffolk Superior Court over the federal mortgage agencies’ refusal to comply with the Massachusetts law. The case was transferred to federal court at the request of the agencies.
Cherry said Boston Community Capital pours all the money it collects from the SUN program into the time-consuming process of negotiating with the banks and underwriting the loans. SUN borrowers are poor credit risks, so the process is complex and protracted, she said.
But housing advocate Marks is skeptical that Cherry’s group does not generate surplus revenue since it makes money both from the 25 percent markup on the resale price and about $5,000 in fees the borrowers must bring to closing. It also charges 6⅜ percent interest on the mortgage, two percentage points more than the group pays on the money it borrows to make its loans.
“If a bank was doing that, you’d charge them with predatory lending,” said Marks, who said his group collects a small fee from banks to help homeowners negotiate a reduced mortgage payment with their lenders.
Cherry said the fight is not about her or her agency at all, but about the 17 families who will be forced out of their homes if the federal agencies don’t agree to sell to Boston Community Capital. If Freddie and Fannie cooperate, Cherry added, other agencies around the country could set up similar programs to keep more people in their homes.
Coakley agreed wholeheartedly. “The idea was to benefit homeowners. It wasn’t about benefiting a company or a business or a not-for-profit.”
But Common Cause’s Wilmot said the merits of Cherry’s efforts to stop foreclosures do not excuse Coakley from disclosing her close personal ties to Cherry when she filed the lawsuit. On other occasions, Coakley has been vigilant about filing disclosures with the ethics commission.
“The Massachusetts conflict of interest law requires public officials to file written disclosures when a reasonable person could conclude that they may be biased in their official duties because of personal, professional, or other connections with someone. This seems to be an example of an appearance requiring a written disclosure,” she said.
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First there was the cro$$-mingling of campaign accounts, and now this.
Related: Baker calls into question Coakley’s ‘conduct and judgment’
Also see:
Hit the brakes on Partners HealthCare deal
Martha Coakley takes the Proust Questionnaire
Biden is scheduled to attend two fund-raisers in Boston later this month
It's his second October trip as national Democrats work to shore up Massachusetts in a tight race for governor.
Also see:
Bill Clinton visits Worcester, boosts Martha Coakley
Hillary Clinton to stump for Martha Coakley in Boston
She’s the iron woman of Massachusetts’ political canvassers
Coakley, Baker rally supporters as election looms
Will the Democratic machine work for Martha Coakley?
"Asked about why the Coakley campaign was trailing in the television air wars and how much of a disadvantage it would be, campaign manager Tim Foley said where the candidates stand will make the difference on Nov. 4."
Look who is coming to the re$cue.
Mass. lieutenant governor hopefuls labor in obscurity
And that is where they are going to stay here.
