Massachusetts official faces charges for painting crosswalks
Jul 21, 2015
BY JACQUELINE TEMPERA
A Massachusetts town selectman who painted over fading crosswalks in his town in response to complaints from constituents was criminally charged on Tuesday for his efforts.
George Simolaris, a selectman in Billerica, about 25 miles from Boston, said he was tired of constituents asking when the white paint would be freshened up, so he fixed the problem himself. He said he bought cans of green paint, the town’s official color, and spent the weekend painting over six faded crosswalks.
“All I’ve heard for months is: ‘When is this going to get done?'” Simolaris said. “I got sick of it.”
Police and town officials said painting the street without authorization was illegal and charged him with two counts of destruction of property, according to Billerica police spokesman Roy Frost.
Town Manager John Curran said the town was in the midst of a $400,000 pedestrian safety project that requires digging up the street including some of the crosswalks in question, which are slated to be repainted once construction is complete.
He added that Simolaris would be required to repay the $4,000 cost of cleaning up the paint, which he said chipped and smeared.
“His job is to uphold laws not break them,” Curran said. “He has no respect for the governmental process.”
Simolaris defended his actions.
“I’m just trying to do right by the people in my town,” he said. “I didn’t think I was intervening in other people’s day-to-day activities or doing anything wrong.”
Poor excuse for taxes
Under gov, have-nots must hand it all over
By Michael Graham | Thursday, July 3, 2008
To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the rich are different from you and me. They can afford to live in Massachusetts.
In the past 24 hours, Gov. Deval Patrick, also known as “Friend Of The Little Man,” has signed two pieces of legislation that will make it even harder for low-income locals to remain in the Bay State.
One is the new energy law, which will add at least $100 million to the cost of electricity in Massachusetts – one more bit of “good news” for low-income families struggling with $4 a gallon gasoline and $5 heating oil.
Not to mention the 174 blue-collar employees of the Haverhill Paperboard Corp., who found out yesterday their factory’s shutting down due to high energy costs here.
The other low blow to low-income residents is the cigarette tax increase that, in an “only in Massachusetts” moment, took effect 24 hours before it become law, so as not to miss a single cent of sin tax.
And make no mistake about it, the cigarette tax is a tax on sin: the sin of being poor in Massachusetts.
Who’s going to pay Patrick his projected $700,000 a day in new cigarette taxes? The people with the least money.
Only 12 percent of Americans live in poverty. But 40 percent of all smokers are poor, according to the Centers for Disease Control. And according to the American Heart Association, people with fewer than 12 years of schooling are three times more likely to smoke than college graduates. And black men are more likely to smoke than their white counterparts.
Poor people. High school dropouts. Minorities. If a mortgage company marketed subprime loans the way Deval Patrick targets for taxes, Attorney General Martha Coakley would bust them for predatory lending practices.
These are also the same people who play the Lottery, and how interesting that Patrick’s first grand initiative was to expand gambling in the commonwealth. If you want to move money from low-income, black neighborhoods to affluent white ones, state-sanctioned gambling is just the ticket.
I thought Patrick promised a “different kind of politics.” What happened to empowering the powerless and giving voice to the voiceless?
Now it’s what? “Taking cash from the cashless?”
Six months after raising tolls on the Mass Pike, the Patrick administration is already talking about another $100 million hike. This means nothing to Deville Deval rolling back home in that gas guzzler from the Berkshires. But it’s real money to working moms and dads skipping lunch to pay for a tank of gas.
The same effect is at play on the issue of illegal immigration. Wealthy Bay Staters don’t worry about it, because they don’t care who’s mowing their grass as long as they can save a few bucks. But as George Borjas of Harvard (among others) has shown, illegal immigration drives down wages for low-income legal residents. The illegals take jobs from legitimate workers, and the jobs they don’t take still pay less.
And yet, Patrick continues to push for additional tax-funded benefits for lawbreakers.
Imagine a GOP governor enacting Patrick policies: taxing the poor, jacking up costs on the “Lexus Lane” roadways and flooding the labor market with low-wage workers. That Republican would be denounced by The Boston Globe-Democrat as heartless, cruel or – horrors – “Reaganesque!”
But Patrick milks every dime from our most desperate citizens, and nobody bats an eye.
I am a self-confessed, small government, “pay your own way” heartless conservative bastard. Shaking down suckers without regard for race, creed or income is part of my fundamental political philosophy.
Gov. Patrick, what’s your excuse?
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1104710&format=text
Cigarette tax is nothing but smoke and mirrors
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, July 2, 2008
The $1-per-pack increase in the state cigarette tax is retroactive.
Odd, isn’t it, how a tax cut is never retroactive, only an increase is. But then, we don’t have tax cuts around here anymore, do we? This is how it works now in the bluest state: The Legislature needed an extra day to decide which corporate loopholes to close, mainly because so many lobbyists were buzzing around, shouting, “Another round over here!”
But there was one thing that all the solons could agree on:
Smokers must pay more. After all, smokers don’t have any amen chorus at the State House.
And by the way, you know that extra buck per pack all you smokers are going to have to pay? It’s really $1.05, because on top of the state excise tax on cigarettes, you’re going to have to add the 5 percent state sales tax.
A sales tax on an excise tax – how Massachusetts is that?
The tax increase applies to, as Sen. Cynthia Creem of (where else?) Newton put it, “the existing stock of cigarettes in inventory at the time (the increase) takes place.”
Wait a second. Isn’t this the same Legislature that held a meaningless hearing a couple of weeks ago to determine whether Big Oil was doing exactly the same thing with its stock of gasoline when the price of crude oil on the futures market goes up?
When Big Oil does it – if they do it – they call it price-gouging or windfall profits. When Big Government does the same thing – and there’s absolutely no question they are, because they admit it – they rationalize by saying it’s for the children.
The story they’re all sticking to is that this cigarette tax increase will go to pay for the state’s new health program. You know, the one that was supposed to be so wonderful because everyone would at last have to pay for their own health care (wink wink, nudge nudge). So now it turns out the hacks need the extra smokers’ dough – $680,000 a day – because the usual layabouts have no intention of paying for their own health care, or anything else for that matter.
But you can feel good because that extra buck a pack is earmarked for Commonwealth Care. That means the hacks can’t use it for anything else, and if you believe that one, I’ll tell you the one about the Social Security trust fund. And did you hear the one about how the tolls on the Mass Pike are sunsetted, and the all the booths will be torn down once the bonds are paid off in 1985?
Coming soon to a wallet near you: an increase in the sales tax, to pay for education. And a hike in the gas tax, to pay for roads and bridges.
So now the tax-crazed hyenas are stealing another $174 million. Think of all the in-state tuition for illegal aliens that’ll buy. Or even more six-figure pensions for state hacks. Or new $200 million high schools in the tony suburbs. Or Deval’s next junket to China. Or another billion in handouts for biotech bandidos.
The other problem is that it’s going to hurt businesses along the New Hampshire border. This raises Massachusetts cigarette taxes from 17th in the nation to fifth. Altogether now: Yes, we can! New Hampshire raised its cigarette taxes a quarter per pack yesterday, and they still look like good guys.
The more we raise taxes on anything, the more money New Hampshire makes. Once again, Massachusetts shoppers will vote with their feet.
“It’s like Prohibition,” Rep. Bob Hargreaves said Monday. “They’re going to go over the border. It’s not going to stop cancer.
“Now that I’ve said my piece, thank you. No one is going to listen.”
Well, at least a few did. The 19 dispirited Republicans in the House were joined by 33 Democrats. The vote was 93-52. If there was still a Republican in the Corner Office, they could have sustained a veto and stopped this in its tracks.
But guess what? The good news this week is that Carla Howell et al. have about 18,000 signatures and should be able to put the income-tax repeal on the November ballot even if the teachers unions try to challenge their petitions.
Any smoker who votes not to abolish the state income tax in November would have to be a masochist. Is it too late to make the income-tax abolition retroactive?
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1104514
Tobacco, plastic bags latest targets for tax-and-spenders
March 13, 2008
Barbara Anderson
I’m not going to dwell on Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced governor of New York, who was described on public radio today as “very smart.”
Most of us would consider climbing the political ladder only to jump off headfirst by getting caught in a prostitution scandal, to be “very dumb.” But dumb things are happening in politics all the time.
For instance, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court just ruled that it can’t uphold the state Constitution, whose Article 48 clearly states that initiative petitions for a constitutional amendment must be taken up by the Legislature and decided with a roll-call vote. Thousands of Massachusetts voters signed a petition for universal health insurance, but the Legislature refused to take a vote on it.
Though I disagree with the petition, I signed on to the lawsuit in an effort to save the initiative petition process. Health-care activists proposed that if the Legislature wouldn’t act, the SJC simply order the petition onto the ballot. The SJC instead chose to announce its impotence in the face of legislative intransigence. Good to know.
Today, for a change, I planned to focus on just one subject — the proposed cigarette tax hike, but I am already distracted by the proposed plastic-bag tax. I guess I can combine the two, since they fall within the general category of government using the tax code to influence personal behavior.
Initially the tax code was meant to raise necessary government revenue for essential services, by the simplest, most effective means necessary. But some politicians like to pretend it’s not about the money, it’s about encouraging people to behave a certain way to make a better world. So they tax tobacco hoping, they say, to discourage tobacco use. Meanwhile they fund government services with a tax that, should their original goal be realized, will disappear as a funding source.
Chip Ford, once the executive director of an organization called “Freedom First,” fought an earlier hike in the cigarette tax. He advised the tobacco companies to call the state’s bluff and pull their produce out of Massachusetts, thereby immediately impacting state revenues. Should they call the state’s bluff this year, it would cut state revenues by roughly half-a-billion dollars.
The only flaw in the plan was that the tobacco companies don’t really care that much, since their consumers apparently will buy their product no matter how much the government taxes it. Some, like Chip himself, will quit smoking just to deny the state its take. Others might cross the border to a lower-tax state, or try to avoid the taxes online; but they will keep inhaling death and the tobacco companies will still get theirs.
Their biggest problem is that their customers die off relatively soon and there are fewer smoking kids coming along to replace them. Politicians argue that it’s valid to tax cigarettes, because smokers cost the health-care system money. But a new study from the Netherlands shows that our common-sense suspicions have been correct: Smokers cost the system less because they often die of a relatively quick-acting disease, rather than living on Medicaid in nursing homes for decades.
So the real reason some state politicians want to raise the excise on cigarettes by $1 a pack is to get more easy money from pathetic addicts who they hope will be dragging those oxygen tanks around for many long years at taxpayer expense. This makes no sense.
Now state Sen. Brian Joyce, D-Milton, insists his proposed tax on plastic bags in grocery stores isn’t meant to raise revenues, but to save the planet. Apparently never having lived downwind or downstream from a paper mill, he will allow us to choose untaxed paper bags instead.
I have lived downwind from a paper mill, and played as a child in tannin-stained creeks; so I always choose plastic at the store. However, I have begun carrying cloth sacks, and Whole Foods is about to require its customers to bring their own bags. My Stop & Shop also prominently displays inexpensive cloth containers for its customers to buy.
The private sector is already responding with a common-sense campaign against waste, so we don’t need the government to get involved, thanks anyhow. Once the state gets dependent on that plastics tax, conscientious consumers will have an agonizing choice: Use cloth bags to save the planet and see services cut, or use plastic to protect state revenues; or, if revenues drop from cigarette and plastic taxes, accept another state income-tax hike to keep revenues stable.
I never smoked, mostly to get points siding with my father against my smoking mother. But though it must be hard to quit, I think I would refuse to let the government take advantage of my addiction with ever higher taxes on it. I’d stop smoking. And eat more untaxed food instead; and carry that food in a canvas bag.
I always resist higher income taxes. I also vote against politicians who violate the constitution. And if I lived in New York, I wouldn’t have voted for Eliot Spitzer in the first place. Hey, public radio: I’m smart, too.
http://www.eagletribune.com/puopinion/local_story_073054155.html?keyword=secondarystory
Time for pols to stand up for smokers’ rights
02/23/2008
With all the discussion lately concerning increased tobacco taxes and smoking bans, there has been one statement, often repeated, which just is not true — that deterring smoking will bring down health-care costs.
A recent study done by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment based in the Netherlands has concluded that over a lifetime, health-care costs are much higher for individuals who are thin and healthy.
Researchers found that, on average, the lifespan of healthy individuals is 84 years, the obese around 80 years, and smokers kick the bucket in about 77 years. Considering these observations, the research team concluded that health care costs for healthy people averaged $417,000 over a lifetime while the costs of caring for the obese is $371,000, and the cost of treating smokers about $326,000.
Since most smokers are from the poor and the working classes, the increases in taxes on tobacco have become a way for the various state governments to create a steady stream of revenue from those individuals who pay less in income taxes.
Every plan to fund or expand a government program, from SCHIP to MassHealth, by increasing taxes on cigarettes, is applauded by the majority.
Since 80 percent of the population do not smoke, they can heartily approve of expenditures that require no financial burden of them. Smokers have no representation in the government. There is not one political official who stands up for the rights of 20 percent of the population. It makes me wonder if the war on cigarettes is really just a gateway for further intrusion into private business, personal lives and individual choices.
WILLIAM RALSTON
http://www.lowellsuncom/letters/ci_8345179
State legislators consider cigarette tax boost
February 08, 2008
By DAN RING, dring@repub.com
BOSTON – Concerned about the costs of the state’s health care law, legislators are considering raising the cigarette tax.
Leading legislators said on Friday they are considering raising the $1.51-a-pack tax to pay for the state’s near-universal health care initiative.
Tobacco Free Massachusetts, a nonprofit coalition, is proposing to raise the tax by $1 a pack and is planning to launch a campaign this month to back the effort. That increase would raise about $150 million a year.
“I think we have to strongly consider it,” Sen. Stephen J. Buoniconti, D-West Springfield, said on Friday. “The reality is the expansion of health care is becoming a budget buster, even more so than before.”
Gov. Deval L. Patrick is proposing a $400 million increase in spending for health care programs for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
The increase is needed partly because more people than projected are signing up for subsidized coverage in the state’s health care law. Initially, 140,000 were expected to sign up for the state’s Commonwealth Care insurance. As of December, 169,000 had signed up, according to The Boston Globe, and an enrollment of 225,000 is expected by June 2009.
The cigarette tax in Massachusetts is ranked No. 15 in the nation. When the tax was increased by 75 cents in 2002, the state briefly had the highest cigarette tax. If it rises by $1, it will be the second highest in the country, following New Jersey at $2.58 a pack.
Patrick said this week he discussed a possible cigarette tax increase with House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, D-Boston, and Senate President Therese Murray, D-Plymouth.
“I want to wait and see what they propose,” Patrick said during an appearance on WTKK-FM radio in Boston. “They’re working through their thinking on that.”
Russet D. Breslau, executive director of Tobacco Free Massachusetts in Framingham, said the cigarette tax currently raises about $420 million a year for the state.
“There is going to be a shortfall,” in paying for health care, she said. “This is a real easy way to fix it.”
Rep. Todd M. Smola, R-Palmer, said the state should be more creative about paying for programs.
He said it’s a bad idea to raise the cigarette tax.
“It’s gouging the consumer,” Smola said. “It hits people in the pocketbook. I’m not a fan of any tax.”
Rep. Daniel E. Bosley, D-North Adams, said he is concerned that people would drive to other states such as New Hampshire to buy cigarettes if the tobacco tax was increased in Massachusetts. Massachusetts has the lowest cigarette tax in New England, except for New Hampshire.
“You don’t want to raise it so much you end up sending people over the border,” Bosley said. “You’ll hit a breaking point where it’s easier for people to get cigarettes elsewhere.”
Rep. Sean F. Curran, D-Springfield, said a $1-a-pack increase is too steep.
“We have to explore all options,” Curran said. “Should we penalize people for smoking when it’s our job to look for alternative sources of revenues?”
David R. Guarino, spokesman for the House speaker, said analysts in the House are trying to determine the exact amount of money that will be needed for health care.
Guarino said a cigarette tax could increase state revenues and discourage people from smoking.
“It’s something we are looking at,” Guarino said. “It’s on the table in terms of a possibility down the line.”
A report by the World Health Organization on Friday said tobacco is on pace to kill 1 billion people in the 21st century unless governments intervene.
The report urged governments to increase tobacco taxes and prices, ban advertising and help the addicted.
It currently costs about $5.40 for a pack of cigarettes in Massachusetts. A typical pack-a-day smoker would pay an extra $365 a year if the tax went up by $1.
Rep. Rachel Kaprielian, D-Watertown, has a bill to raise the cigarette tax by $1.
Co-sponsors include Reps. John W. Scibak, D-South Hadley; Peter V. Kocot, D-Northampton; Stephen Kulik, D-Worthington; and Denis E. Guyer, D-Dalton.
Rep. Benjamin Swan, D-Springfield, said he could support $1 a pack increase in the cigarette tax.
Swan said a cigarette tax increase is appealing because it could prevent or curb tobacco use, especially among younger people. “It might save lives,” he said.
CIGARETTE TAX
Recent increases in the cigarette tax in Massachusetts:
Voters approve ballot question in 1992 to increase cigarette tax by 25 cents to 51 cents a pack on Jan. 1, 1993.
In 1996, legislators raise the tax by another 25 cents a pack to pay for health care.
In 2002, during a fiscal crisis, legislators increase the tax by 75 cents per pack to $1.51.
The cigarette tax in Massachusetts is now ranked No. 15 in the nation, lowest in New England, except for New Hampshire, which has $1.08 per pack tax.
Source: Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington
http://blog.masslive.com/breakingnews/2008/02/state_legislators_consider_cig.html
