This is a giant step forward for the Commonwealth towards tax fairness for everyone. Many corporate executives and their lobbyists told us there are no corporate tax loopholes in Massachusetts. They want you to think that the Governor proposed new taxes that will burden businesses and stunt our economic recovery. John Regan of AIM says, “…references to loophole closings are an insult to business taxpayers and betray a lack of understanding…”

Like Grover Norquist, the head of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, who says, “The so-called “loopholes” the governor seeks to close look more like a noose around the neck of the Bay State’s economy.” Grover is the same guy who said, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” Corporate executives don’t want you to know the facts.

For example, according to Massachusetts Department of Revenue, in 2006 there were about eleven hundred (1,100) corporations in the Commonwealth that grossed more than one hundred million dollars annually and paid the minimum corporate tax of $456.00. That’s less tax than a family earning $50,000 a year will pay in state taxes. How do they do it? How is that possible? Maybe some of them don’t earn a profit on revenues of one hundred million but how is it possible that 1,100 corporations don’t earn any money? There are another 113 corporations with over a billion dollars in sales that pay no taxes. How do they do it? The corporations create subsidiaries in other states that charge no corporate taxes and assign all their profits to those places.

Seems like I raised the hackles of a real live right wing blogger. For the record, I disagreed with what he wrote about our Democratic candidate for President. I have no dislike for southerners, only the people who have ruled their state houses for quite a long time if not thirty years and I think the facts speak for themselves. Where would you rather live?

This is what the right winger said,"Last week Barack Obama once again stepped out of the shadow of his own selfless rhetoric and into the spotlight of his own personal sunshine revealing himself to be exactly what many of us believed him to be long ago; an arrogant, naïve, snob, with Marxist leanings who attempts to hide his sense of personal entitlement and suppresses his militant views behind his flowery speeches." We are going to see more and more of this right wing propaganda and if you are a Democrat you should respond to let them and everyone else on the list know that it is foolishness.

I've listed some of the statistics where the Red States lead in human misery catagories and yes I did check on the statistics to make sure they are real and all can be found in U.S. Census Data or are derived from U.S. Census Data.

James Wolcott had an excellent article in the November 2006 issue of Vanity Fair entitled, “Red State Babylon” in which he discusses the findings of several books and studies that compare the red states to the blue states in quality of life statistics and morality issues. Of the top ten states with the highest divorce rates and the highest rates of illegitimacy all but one are red states. None are northeastern states. You remember when the former Senator from Pennsylvania made derogatory comments about the liberals in Massachusetts leading to the moral decay of the nation and pedophile priests in the Catholic Church. Well guess what, Massachusetts leads in the other direction having one of the lowest divorce rates in the nation and lowest rates of unwed mothers including teenage mothers.

Boston: State Representative Matthew C. Patrick (D-Falmouth) and Senator Robert A. O’Leary (D-Barnstable) have filed as interveners to a complaint filed with FERC by the Massachusetts Public Systems (MPS)* against ISO New England. The complaint was filed on March 28, 2008, alleging that ISO-NE has overcharged MPS for the cost of running two generating units, located in Sandwich Massachusetts.

At issue is ISO New England’s practice of operating the oil-fired Canal Electric Generating Units on Cape Cod to ensure that service to Cape Cod can be maintained in the event that both major power lines feeding Cape Cod were to fail. In short these Units are left idling just in case. This has resulted in a surcharge of more than $200 million for consumers in Southeastern Massachusetts in 2006 and 2007.

Because the price of oil has risen even more recently, the monthly cost to ratepayers has hit $18 million per month or $190 million each year. This adds 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour to the current price or about 7.5% to the average electric bill.

Twenty one members of the legislature from southeastern Massachusetts are sending a letter to the Department of Public Utilities expressing their extreme opposition to the extra $9 million a month area ratepayers are paying for electricity to keep the Canal Power Plant open when it is uneconomic to do so. This is on top of electric rates that are some of the highest in the nation.

The Canal Power Plant is being kept open because of a federal regulation that requires redundancy in transmission wires. Because the transmission system to southeastern Massachusetts from the north does not have this redundancy, the Canal Power Plan is run even though it could not compete economically with today’s oil prices.

Representative Matt Patrick who has been monitoring the situation for a year said, “Clearly there is a less expensive alternative that is good for the environment and our health. The ratepayers of southeastern Massachusetts are not responsible for keeping inefficient power plants in operation. We insist that the DPU and ISO New England reverse this failed policy as quickly as possible.”