Halloween

This year's trick-or-treater count is 10, I think. A neighbor's daughter brought her two youngest kids, and just minutes before I was about to turn off the light, about eight strangers showed up.

If not for dividing my evening time between watching the world series game and putting a Sauder side table together, I would have written an election post, which I still intend to do. Hopefully before election day.

Good night!

2010 Referendum Questions

There are three of them on the Massachusetts ballot:

Somewhat recently, our state sales tax was raised from 5% to 6.25%, and started including alcoholic beverages. Question 1 would make alcohol exempt from the tax again. I'm voting NO.

Question 2 would repeal Chapter 40b, which in simple terms allows developers to override some local zoning laws as long as at least 25% of their housing units are "affordable" which in this case is defined as sold to families whose income is no more than 80% of median. It's an old law which no doubt needs to be updated, but I think I'm going to vote NO because there doesn't seem to be anything better to take its place at the moment. I hear "repeal and replace" (sound familiar?) but until there is something to actually replace it with, I'm going with no. Same as "Obamacare".

Question 3 would lower the sales tax from 6.25 to 3%. Proponents contend that this will cut down on wasteful government spending and not affect municipal services at all, which is what they said when they tried to eliminate the state income tax two years ago. I don't buy into that fantasy at all, and have no doubt it'll result in a major increase in property taxes. Another argument in favor is that it will "send a message" to the legislature, though, knowing them, I think the message they get won't be the one we send. I'll admit that it could be very interesting to see what happens if it passes, and it just might, but I'm voting NO.

Anybody have better/other ideas? Let me know what you think!

The Candidates

We have a few interesting races that are way closer than they should be, in my opinion.

In the sixth district, seven-term incumbent John Tierney is being challenged by a guy who, in 2008, had a sign on his lawn depicting Barack Obama as Osama Bin Laden. But apparently that's okay because it was just a "parody" designed simply to get people to look at the presidental candidate more closely.

In the fourth district, Barney Frank holds what should be a big enough lead over Sean Bielat, who is in favor of keeping DADT in place because, among other reasons, short people (under 5'2") are barred from joining up and gays have no more of a right to serve than they do. Or something like that. I'm not kidding. Well, there goes the short homophobe vote.

In the tenth district, Norfolk County DA William Keating is in an inexplicably tight race with Republican State Representative Jeffrey Perry.

My own rep is Richard Neal. He usually runs unopposed, so I usually don't vote for him. This year he's running opposed, so I will vote for him.

And... we have the Republican Governor's Association apparently trying to buy the Governor's office for Charlie Baker, who trails Deval Patrick very slightly. Tim Cahill is still in the race, not exactly being Ralph Nader here, but he's probably taking more votes away from Baker than from Patrick.

Everybody! Get out and vote tomorrow. It's important.


Edit: had to fix Charlie Baker's name. I used to know a Tom Baker irl, but he's not running for governor.