The Freedom Bulletin

Classy:

Charlie Baker lost the race for governor. He said that his opponent, Deval Patrick, “won fair and square” and went on, “It’s important that all of us get behind the governor and do all that we can to make sure that he succeeds in pulling our economy out of the doldrums and getting us back on the right track.”

Classy:

Sean Bielat lost the race for Congress. All smiles, he said, “This has been a huge success…For the first time in 30 years, people went to the polls tonight and made a choice.” Then he exhorted his supporters, “This is still about a hope for a brighter tomorrow…This is something that we need to work to achieve, whether we had won here tonight or whether we didn’t…It’s important, it’s imperative…and I ask for your help with that endeavor.”

Not classy:

Barney Frank won the race for Congress, defeating Bielat. Looking irritated and annoyed, he pompously condemned “the deteriorated nature of this campaign,” the “unreasoning anger, vituperation, and anonymous smears” that allegedly were directed at him, the “collective campaigns of most Republicans” that were “beneath the dignity of a democracy,” the Tea Party movement, campaign finance laws, Bielat’s claim that the district was gerrymandered, the Boston Herald’s alleged ”bias and vitriol,” the “inaccurate, out of context, made-up, distorted views” that people allegedly attributed to him, the Republicans who now control the House and allegedly make it impossible to “provide any more help for the teachers, the firefighters, or the police officers,” the “far right wing” that allegedly “dominates their party,” the recession that “we inherited and that our Republican opponents obstructed us in trying to recover from,” the “right-wing media,” and the “vicious lies” that were allegedly told about him.

If you lose in an election or a competition, and you feel that you lost unjustly, you have a right to complain. But if you win, you have no right to give a victory speech in which all you do is dump on the person or people you beat.

Bad:

One word: Massachusetts. The other voters of my state actually thought it would be a good idea to re-elect Governor Deval Patrick, Secretary of State Bill Galvin (who ruled that it was an emergency that Massachusetts only had one senator), Attorney General Martha Coakley (who charged Alexander Pring-Wilson with first-degree murder), and all of the incumbents in Congress. They also thought it would be a good idea to elect Steve Grossman as treasurer and Suzanne Bump (a Democrat whom even the Globe didn’t endorse!) as auditor…and, I almost forgot, to defeat Question 3 and keep the sales tax at 6.25%.

Barney Frank’s victory speech. Although I completely disagree with him politically, I had some respect for Frank as a person before he made this speech. No more. Although he won, and although his opponent, Sean Bielat, was nothing but classy during the campaign, Frank said the following delightful words: “I was very much disappointed in the tenor of the campaign…At least in Massachusetts, we have repudiated unreasoning anger, vituperation, anonymous smears, and that has to be said…the collective campaigns that were run by most Republicans were beneath the dignity of a democracy, and I am delighted than they were repudiated.” He then bashed Bielat for criticizing the odd shape of the district and gave a lecture about how the district was originally gerrymandered by a Republican. You need to watch the speech to understand how incredibly obnoxious it was.

Harry Reid is keeping his seat.

Proposition 19, the California ballot initiative to legailze marijuana, failed.

Good:

Republicans took the House of Representatives! They gained 60 seats, the most since 1948. Nancy Pelosi will no longer be the Speaker of the House, and Barney Frank will no longer be the chair of the financial services committee.

Kelly Ayotte won the Senate race in New Hampshire.

Rand Paul won the Senate race in Kentucky. His dad must be so proud! I am so happy that the two of them will be serving on Capitol Hill together.

The races in Massachusetts were closer than ever before. For example, the Governor’s race was 49% to 42%. Bill Hudak, one of my favorites whom liberals call a radical “kook,” got 43% of the vote. And Question 3 to cut the sales tax got 43% of the vote, while the previous two attempts to eliminate the income tax got only in the 30s. At least all of the races were competitive, instead of Democrats being assured victory and Republicans as unlikely to win as third party candidates are in normal elections.

Question 1. Although the alcohol tax would not be my preferred one to cut if it was my choice, at least Massachusetts voters got rid of one tax.

…I am going to list my picks.

For governor: Charlie Baker! Read why here.

For Treasurer: Karyn Polito

For Auditor: Mary Z. Connaughton

For Attorney General: Jim McKenna

For Secretary of State: Bill Campbell or Jim Henderson (tie) – We should definitely get rid of Galvin, because he declared, after Ted Kennedy died, that it was an emergency that Massachusetts only had one senator, allowing Governor Patrick to appoint Paul Kirk, allowing the health non-reform bill to pass the Senate, allowing it to become law. However, I’m not actually a huge fan of Campbell’s plan to require identification to vote.

For Congress:

• 1st District: Bill Gunn
• 2nd District: Tom Wesley
• 3rd District: Marty Lamb
• 4th District: Sean Bielat – He’s great - extremely smart and also a nice person.
• 5th District: Jon Golnik
• 6th District: Bill Hudak – I love him! Most politicians try so hard not to alienate anyone that they end up being too moderate and standing for nothing. Hudak, on the other hand, wants to abolish the Department of Education and had a yard sign comparing President Obama to Osama bin Laden. He has radical, different ideas, and seems comfortable being himself, which is exactly what America needs.
• 7th District: Gerry Dembrowski
• 8th District: blank (Democrat Mike Capuano is unopposed)
• 9th District: Vernon Harrison
• 10th District: Jim Sheets or Maryanne Lewis (tie) - I would love a Republican to beat Democrat Bill Keating, but his Republican challenger, Jeff Perry, was involved with, and failed to stop, an illegal strip search, and I cannot endorse anyone who had anything to do with an illegal strip search.

For State Senate and State Legislature: As many Republicans as possible! Especially Brad Marston, who was instrumental in organizing the Boston Tea Party rallies and is one of the chief supporters of Question 3.

Question 1: YES – If you’re going to tax something, alcohol is one of the better things to tax, but Massachusetts just has too many taxes! A sales tax on alcohol, in addition to the excise tax, is too much.

Question 2: YES – This would repeal the law that lets developers basically ignore zoning laws as long as 25% of the units they build are designated for low/moderate income people. Although it’s good for housing to be more affordable for people, it’s not good for devlopers to pack people in, ignoring the character of each town and the will of the town’s voters.

Question 3: YES – Do I even need to explain why?

Check out Howie Carr’s column that gave me the idea for this, and please vote, vote, vote!

(But only vote once, of course. By writing “vote” three times, I just mean that I am very enthusiastic that you should vote, not that you should vote three times ).

If you live in Massachusetts, and you are sick of our state’s current trend of higher taxes, more spending, and more laws restricting people’s actions and taking away our freedom, please vote for Charlie Baker. Baker is not perfect. I wish, for example, that he supported Question 3 (to roll back the sales tax to 3%), and that he opposed the individual mandate in principle.

But, Baker is a heck of a lot better than our current governor, Deval Patrick. In addition to supporting a progressive income tax and thinking it is okay for illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates, Patrick decided, instead of spending less, to raise the sales tax in the middle of this horrific recession. And, due to the unfortunate voting system that is used in America, which makes it almost impossible for independent or third party candidates to win, Baker is the only viable alternative to Patrick. He has some ideas that would truly make our state a better place, such as requiring doctors to actually make their prices public and to cut spending by at least $1 billion (PDF). To paraphrase Baker’s most recent ad, if you want change, change governors.

A video of Baker’s rally last weekend with New Jersey governor Chris Christie at Memorial Hall, Melrose, MA:

Paul Loscocco, the running mate of independent Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill, dropped out of the race today and endorsed Republican Charlie Baker. In a somewhat sad series of events, Cahill’s campaign manager and senior advisor also quit last week, but Cahill declares that he will stay in the race.

In addition to being sad, this turn in the gubernatorial race illustrates why our electoral system, plurality voting, is simply bad. Plurality voting, which is used in almost all elections in the USA and in most of the world, means that in each race, you vote for one candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins.

Although this is probably the simplest voting method, it’s far from the best. A result of this system is that independent and third party candidates are maligned for “taking away” votes from the major party candidate who is the most similar to them.

I support Baker in the governor’s race, but I’m not happy that so many of my fellow Baker supporters constantly bash Cahill, almost more harshly than they criticize Baker’s chief opponent, Democrat (and incumbent) Deval Patrick. Of course, it makes sense for Baker and his supporters to wish Cahill wasn’t running, since if his ideas and image are indeed more like Baker’s than Patrick’s, then his presence in the race hurts Baker.

But the only reason this makes sense is because of the stupid voting system that is in use. Adopting a better system, such as Borda count, range voting, or my personal favorite, instant runoff voting, would get rid of this problem by allowing people to express their true preferences without inadvertently helping their least favorite candidate.

I want Baker to win but I also admire Cahill’s decision to run as an independent, and I wish there was a Libertarian in the race, so that these views would get more exposure, even if he or she had no chance of winning. In the Massachusetts Senate special election, I liked independent/libertarian Joe Kennedy the best based on platform alone, but I recognized that he had no chance of winning, so I supported Scott Brown, whom I like, too. I wish that I could have these opinions without feeling torn between two camps (Republican and libertarian), and without the members of the two camps angrily insulting each other. I wish that I, and everyone else, could vote in a way that expresses our true preferences. With a different voting system, we could.

A group of Boston media outlets agreed yesterday to allow Green Party candidate Jill Stein to participate in a gubernatorial debate that they are hosting on September 21. Previously, they weren’t going to let her take part because she hasn’t raised $100,000 (the other requirements include a campaign office with 3 full-time staff and getting 5% of the vote in at least one poll). I think Stein should be allowed to participate in as many debates as possible, as should all third party candidates.

As it stands, Stein may or may not be able to participate in the October 26 debate sponsored by the same consortium. She got to participate in the televised WBZ debate a week ago, but not the WBZ radio debate tonight or the WTKK one on Thursday.

The media shouldn’t automatically give candidates more time and attention merely because they are supported by more people. As one of my favorite sayings goes, what is popular is not always right, and what is right is not always popular. Popular, well-known candidates don’t necessarily have better ideas than little known ones. In fact, if you look at the direction the country has been going lately, third party candidates are likely to be better than the two parties that have been in power.

The Herald’s Margery Eagan writes that it’s unfair for Stein to have the same amount of time and questions as the other three candidates – Deval Patrick (D), Charlie Baker (R), and Tim Cahill (I) - because “she has no chance.” But if the system ignores and marginalizes third parties like the Green Party and Libertarian Party, how are candidates from these parties going to ever have a chance? It’s a vicious cycle: lesser-known, less popular candidates raise less money and do worse in polls, so the media excludes them, making them even less known and less popular. To make popularity (as shown by polls and/or fundraising) a requirement for debates is unfair, because popularity is not an indicator of how good a candidate’s ideas are. The system punishes candidates who have no chance, which gives them even less chance, when the fact that they have no chance is largely the fault of the system!

Ideological diversity is always a good thing. Who cares how much money a candidate raises, how many staffers they have, or how they are doing in the polls? Let’s allow all viewpoints to be heard, and then maybe America can have real change and voters will have real choices.

Carla Howell and the folks at the Center for Small Government are trying to get an initiatie to roll back the sales tax on the 2010 ballot. Toward that end, there is a new campaign called the Alliance to Roll Back Taxes and a new website, RollBackTaxes.com. (I designed the header for it ). We’re aiming to get the sales tax reduced from the new rate of 6.25% to 3%. Check it out!

Facebook: Roll Back Taxes

Twitter: @CarlaHowell