1. No platform adopted last night Romney Platform adopted last night.
The State Committee did not adopt the RNC platform last night. Rather they adopted the "Romney" platform, whatever that is.
2. Will it soon be Convict Cahill?
Tim for Prisoner 5551234 didn't fare so well at his trial yesterday. The prosecution granted his former Lottery Executive Director Mark Cavanaugh immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. According to the State House News Service, that testimony wasn't too good for Cahill.
On Labor Day Weekend 2010, Campbell emailed Cavanagh, urging him to speed up the process of getting the new advertisements on the airwaves, according to an email introduced as evidence in court Tuesday.
"As you know, the boss' expectation is mid-Sept [sic] and want to make sure we're handling this and there's no delay," Campbell emailed Cavanagh on the Saturday of the holiday weekend.
Cavanagh testified that he had concerns over the "excessive" amount planned to be spent on the ads as well as how they would be perceived, hitting the air in the final weeks of a three-way race between Cahill, Gov. Deval Patrick and Republican Charlie Baker. Cavanagh had spoken to Lottery attorney William Egan about his concerns, he said.
"There are serious concerns regarding this issue," Cavanagh wrote back to Campbell the following day, according to another email introduced Tuesday. Concerned that a line had been crossed, with a member of the campaign reaching out to him on Lottery business, Cavanagh forwarded the exchange to former Deputy Treasurer Grace Lee.
3. You evil people who worked to get rid of the Alcohol tax, the Governor says dead drug addicts are your fault.
The Administration is looking for higher taxes, and they are starting with an information campaign designed to make you feel bad that you are causing drug addicts to die, all because you wanted lower taxes. Deval and company sure know how to tell a story. The State House News Service reports:
The voter repeal of the state's sales tax on alcohol has factored into efforts to fight drug abuse, some lawmakers and Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray said Tuesday in the wake of a report detailing an epidemic of emergency rooms visits involving drug overdoses and heroin use in eastern Massachusetts.
Drug overdoses on the South Shore and the problems associated with lifetime heroin use in Worcester have reached "critical numbers," according to Susan Servais, executive director of the Massachusetts Health Council, which released a report Tuesday detailing health trends around the state.
"The drugs are here. They are impacting our families and our friends, and it is an issue that we really need to realize that we are worse in some areas than the whole country," Servais said after the report was released Tuesday. "So we cannot just sit back and say 'Well, there is a drug problem everywhere.' "
The report's authors hope it will serve as a reference for policy makers and health professionals as they look at the state's progress on public health issues. "We can resolve this problem, and we are committed to doing that," Servais said.
Fattman provides a model for other aspiring Republican politicians, not just because of his age, but because he achieved his electoral success the old fashioned way. He worked his way up the ladder. At the age of 21, Fattman became the youngest member of the Board of Selectmen in Sutton's history. He won his seat by beating an 18-year Democratic incumbent, who took office when Ryan was just three years old. Three years later, at 24, the voters of Sutton sent him back for another term.
Two years after that, as he tells it, he sat his long-time girlfriend down and told her he had an important question to ask her. Rather than the question she was expecting, he asked if she was OK with him running for State Representative. Luckily for the Commonwealth, she was. He embarked on an underfunded campaign, where the 8-year popular Democratic incumbent outspent him 3 to 1. What Ryan didn't have in dollars, he more than made up for in work ethic. Ryan knocked on 7,000 doors, spreading his message of fiscal responsibility and government reform across the district. He won that campaign. And some months after the campaign, asked his now fiancée the question she though he was going to ask those months earlier
5. It must be after the election... Patrick Adminstration is telling the truth about Barack Obama's economy.
How can you tell it was one week after the election? The Patrick administration finally started telling the truth about the Barack Obama economy, and its effect on Massachusetts. SHNS reports:
Already facing the "strong likelihood" of midyear budget cuts due to slow economic growth, Gov. Deval Patrick's budget chief told local leaders Wednesday that a failure by Congress to avert the "fiscal cliff" would cost the state up to $300 million this fiscal year and $1 billion over the next full fiscal year.
Secretary of Administration and Finance Jay Gonzalez provided the projection to town and city officials Wednesday at a meeting of the Local Government Advisory Commission, advising them that hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that flow through the state to municipalities could be at risk, as well as almost $1.5 billion in defense and health spending.
"The consequences of this are pretty dire. I think we've seen some positive statements coming out of Washington about a commitment to try to address this in a responsible way before January," Gonzalez said.
Following a dismal month for tax collections in October that saw the state fall to $256 million below revenue projections for the year, Gonzalez said no final decisions have been made but reported a "strong likelihood" that the administration would revise downward its revenue projections and announce mid-year budget cuts soon.
