Thursday, July 23, 2015
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By George Donnelly (@geodonnelly) with Keith Regan
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Tonight: The big Olympics debate
Boston 2024 chairman Steve Pagliuca and U.S. Olympic Committee board member Daniel Doctoroff debate the co-chair of No Boston Olympics Chris Dempsey and Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist on the merits of hosting the 2024 summer Olympics in Boston. The one-hour debate is co-sponsored by WFXT FOX25 and The Boston Globe, and moderated by FOX25 anchor Maria Stephanos and Globe reporter Sacha Pfeiffer. It's live on WFXT-TV Ch. 25, streaming on bostonglobe.com, myfoxboston.com and the FOX25 app, 8 pm.
Debate preview: Olympic effort has more to gain -- and lose
Careful Olympic bid watcher and president of MassINC polling Steve Koczela serves up an insightful pre-debate analysis on the CommonWealth site. The stakes are high for Boston 2024, Koczela notes, because the group has to change minds, not just convince the undecided. http://bit.ly/1MpDhqR
The Herald outlines a host of Olympic issues
The Boston's Herald has timed a package of stories just before the big debate, including a page 1 splash on the thorny issue of traffic. "The proposed 2024 Summer Games could bring gridlock and bottlenecks to the Bay State's already jammed highways, as motorists are excluded from miles of special VIP lanes and congestion worsens from an increase of freight trucks on the road," the Herald reports. Boston 2024's Rich Davey responded that traffic traditionally has declined during Olympic events.http://bit.ly/1gPUbBX
Is the Massachusetts flat tax sacrosanct? A new political litmus test has arrived
Millionaires should pay a higher percentage of their income in state taxes, so says Raise Up Massachusetts, which will put the matter on the ballot in 2018. The question is whether this effort to create a graduated income tax will gain traction or suffer a miserable defeat, as earlier efforts to de-flatten the Massachusetts income tax have.
Raise Up has officially announced its intentions, saying it wants to tax millionaires a 9 percent income tax for every dollar they earn over $1 million. Thus, if you're unfortunate enough to only earn $990,000, you'll pay the same rate, right now at 5.15 percent, as other plebeians. But if you're among the 14,000 or so Massachusetts households with an income over $1 million, you would pay a premium for earning, say, $2 million, of roughly $40,000. The Globe story by David Scharfenberg says it would raise over $1 billion a year.
This will prove to be a fascinating litmus test for Republicans and Democrats alike. Will Bob DeLeo object to new taxes on millionaires? What about Charlie Baker? Does he really want to be on the side of the rich in this debate? It doesn't sound like a fun place to be.
Readers of MASSterList learned about the Raise Up efforts months ago, when I wrote this story about their strategizing in taking up the thorny issue of changing the flat tax, which is embedded in the state constitution. Unlike other efforts to create a graduated income tax, this one has real legs because it asks only the very wealthiest to pay more.
Rosenberg, the fundraising underachiever
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg raised a measly $264,000 in the first six months of 2015. Measly here is a relative term: Bob DeLeo raised $414,000 in the same time period, and Charlie Baker $940,000. But Rosenberg's donor list wasn't exactly paltry. Legislative agents aplenty. A lot of union money. The closest person to a celebrity we spotted was Jim Koch, the Boston Beer magnate. A surprise was the number of people with titles of "producer" -- for apparently the film industry felt a need to make its presence known. But the biggest surprise was in the expenditure column: Rosenberg paid over $30,000 to fundraising consultants in the first six months of the year. Expect more checks to come, and check out the range of checks here:
Candidates take aim at Yancey
City councillor Charles Yancey has been in the job since 1984 and is waging his 17th reelection campaign, facts that aren't deterring three candidates from running against him. With the preliminary election just around the corner, the Dorchester Reporter's Lauren Dezenski delves into the race, including the buzz around challenger Andrea Campbell, a 33-year-old former deputy counsel in Deval Patrick's office. http://bit.ly/1KmkrO5
App happy
Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam is riffing again, this time marveling at the proliferating number of apps that have people doing everything for us, including one called "Eaze" -- dubbed the Uber for pot.http://bit.ly/1TTdkRK
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