Unlimited Help

Please do what you can for an organization that has helped so many in the Bay State.

CLT’s annual brunch will be held on Sunday, November 15th. Its success is essential to our continuing as the voice of the Massachusetts taxpayer.

Over the thirty-five years of its existence, CLT has been financially on the brink many times. (Barbara remembers it considered laying her off in 1979 until she pointed out that her boss at the time couldn’t type. She also recalls working without pay during part of the 1980 Prop 2½ campaign.) Somehow, with the help of its loyal activists, and some generous assistance from a very few “John Hancock” contributors, we’ve muddled through.

But right now we are hurting financially more than ever before, partly because most of those few “larger” contributors have passed on or have moved to a better state. Because of the generous response to our September mailing from some members, we figure we can stay afloat until after the annual brunch (more details below) on November 15. The next day — November 16th — CLT will shut down.

Your check — made out to CLT — MUST be received by us no later than November 8th to ensure your reservation. All per-person reservations arriving after November 8th: $75.00

OR CALL (781) 344-2797

You can make your reservation(s) by mailing your check made out to CLT, with your notation of how many in your party, to:

CLT
PO Box 1147
Marblehead, MA 01945-5147

There’s also credit card payments available through PayPal — with your notation during the transaction that it’s for the brunch and how many are in your party. Without a notation, we won’t know to have your reservation at the door. You will not be seated, as we won’t be able to arrange for your meal(s).

This is not a major fundraising event — at $60 per person, CLT barely breaks even. (In the past, “John Hancock” supporters and those who could not attend but sent a contribution RSVP, made it financially worthwhile.) It is generally a celebration where members get together once a year to socialize and strategize. This year it may become a memoriam of CLT’s accomplishments over the past 35 years, and a farewell.

Best of luck to Barbara Anderson in her effort to keep her organization alive.

UPDATE: More from the Boston Herald, WBUR, Red Mass Group, Holly Robichaud, Michael Graham and the Boston Globe.

SECOND UPDATE: Please be sure to join us Wednesday night for The Notes on Blog Talk Radio at 8:00pm EST. Plus, more from Holly Robichaud, the Herald and the Globe.

THIRD UPDATE: From the Harvard Crimson, Joan Vennochi, the Globe and Herald.

Patrick Files Anti-Gun Bill

From our friends at the NRA:

Yesterday, Governor Deval Patrick filed legislation that would severely curtail the rights of gun owners in the Commonwealth. The bill entitled, “An Act to Reduce Firearm Violence,” is in essence a repeat performance of Chapter 180 of the Acts of 1998.

Among other things, this bill would:

* Limit firearm purchases to one per 30-day period;
* Require the private transfer of all firearms to be conducted through a federally licensed firearms dealer, and;
* Allow the Colonel of the Department of State Police to destroy surrendered firearms instead of auctioning them for sale.

If you don’t remember, Chapter 180 of the Acts of 1998 created some of the most confusing and ill-advised set of gun laws in the country. The vast majority of those new laws attacked lawful gun owners and did little, if anything, to address violent crime. Since enactment, the only result has been an 85% decrease in the number of lawfully licensed gun owners in Massachusetts and a dramatic increase in crime.

Please contact your State Legislators TODAY and respectfully urge them to oppose this ill-conceived attack on our Second Amendment freedoms. Governor Patrick can be reached by phone at (617) 725-4005 or (888) 870-7770 (in-state), by fax at (617) 727-9725, or visit http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=gov3utilities&sid=Agov3&U=Agov3_contact_us to send email. To identify your State Representative and State Senator and to find contact information, please click here.

Senator Kerry Cancels Campaign Appearances

If it’s all just a “misunderstanding” and a “botched joke,” why is Senator John Kerry canceling campaign appearances?

Senator John Kerry, reeling from the fall out over a remark that he calls a “botched joke,” has canceled campaign appearances with Democratic congressional candidates, Bloomberg news reports.

Democrats are distancing themselves from the 2004 presidential nominee.

According to Bloomberg:

Kerry won’t appear today in Mankato, Minnesota on behalf of Tim Walz, a Democrat challenging Republican Representative Gil Gutknecht. The decision to cancel “ultimately” was Kerry’s, said Walz spokeswoman Meredith Salsbery.

Bruce Braley, a Democrat running for Iowa’s 1st congressional seat, asked Kerry not to campaign with him tomorrow, the Quad-Cities Times reported. Braley thought Kerry’s remarks were inappropriate, the paper said, citing Braley spokesman Jeff Giertz.

Kerry also won’t appear today in Philadelphia with U.S. Senate candidate Bob Casey, ABC News reported. Casey’s race to unseat Republican Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania could be pivotal to Democrats’ hopes to gain control of the Senate.

Tennessee Representative Harold Ford Jr., who is locked in a close race for retiring Majority Leader Bill Frist’s Senate seat, called on Kerry to apologize.

“Whatever the intent, Senator Kerry was wrong to say what he said,” Ford said in a statement.

More Democrats are distancing themselves from the man who failed to unseat President Bush in 2004.

“Sen. Kerry’s remarks were poorly worded and just plain stupid,” said Montana Senate President Jon Tester, a Democrat trying to unseat GOP Sen. Conrad Burns. “He owes our troops and their families an apology.”

“I’m sorry he did what he did. But I think the issue … we want to make sure it doesn’t confuse the subject of the war in Iraq,” Democratic Rep. Ben Cardin, running for Senate in Maryland, said on CNN.

Senator Kerry has become quite the tar baby. Of course, once again, Kerry and his people are blaming everyone else but themselves for the canceled campaign appearances.

“We made a decision not to allow the Republican hate machine to use Democratic candidates as proxies in their distorted spin war,” Wade said.

Keep at it… just keep at it.

UPDATE: Dick Cheney: Kerry was for the joke before he was against it.

Getting Sirius About Deval Patrick and Ben LaGuer

Tonight, at about 10:20pm I’ll be doing an interview on “Cam and Company” with Cam Edwards on NRAnews.com and Sirius Satellite Radio to talk about Deval Patrick and Ben LaGuer.

Hack-A-Rama: Lawmakers Go on Taxpayer-Funded Trip

Would you believe that Senate President Bob Travaglini, Speaker of the House Salvatore DiMasi and nine other legislators left Massachusetts for a 4-day trip Nashville, TN for a “conference,” paid for by us, the taxpayers?

Bay State taxpayers shelled out $158,000 this year to help fund the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures, which is being held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in the heart of Music City. In all, the NCSL received nearly $8 million in taxpayer dollars this year from all 50 states and several U.S. territories.
[...]
The luxurious, $300-a-night Gaylord Opryland Resort is encased in climate-controlled glass atriums and includes 9 acres of lush gardens, winding rivers, a 44-foot waterfall, laser-light shows and tours aboard Delta flatboats.

As enraging as this is, it seems unfathomable that they would leave the state to stay a posh resort after snubbing veterans and leaving such important legislation, like the Welcome Home Bill, still unpassed.

I guess when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars, they’d rather spend it on perks for themselves (like a useless conference, or a few games of golf, Mr. Speaker?) than for our troops fighting for freedom overseas.

UPDATE: DiMasi’s challenger Kenneth Procaccianti, has called for an immediate end to all taxpayer-funded junkets for politicians “until the legislature reconvenes to immediately restore in-state college tuition help for soldiers and passes reforms in auto insurance and tax laws.” Procaccianti calls the $158,000 junket “a slap in the face to every hard-working resident of Massachusetts.”

“If the Speaker and his pals can blow hundreds of thousands of tax dollars at the Grand Ole Opry, then they certainly have the time to return to work for just one day and help our brave soldiers get an affordable college education here in Massachusetts,” said Procaccianti.

If elected, Procaccianti says he would introduce “a more expansive ban on taxpayer-funded junkets for elected and appointed officials, citing a “mile-long laundry list of taxpayer abuse” by the legislature, which he says includes: “refusal to enact sweeping competition-based auto insurance reform; rejection of a voter ballot-approved referendum to reduce the state income tax rate to 5 percent; over $100 million of additional Big Dig debt that could be passed on to the public with new toll hikes; and after record sales results from last weekend’s only annual sales tax holiday, reluctance to directly compete with tax-free New Hampshire and create new jobs.”

“If government can’t look the taxpayers, students and soldiers of our state in the eye and say it has done everything possible to make living here more affordable, then the lavish perks of elective and appointed office must come to an abrupt end.”

For more on Kenneth Procaccianti, visit his campaign website.