HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: lmh@world.std.com (Larry M Headlund)
Subject: Re: Bulger
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 23:28:11 GMT

In article <4387@mitech.com> gjc@mitech.com (George J. Carrette) writes:
>In article <BZS.93Jan6181957@world.std.com>, bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>> Meanwhile, Flynn is pushing for a city sales tax for Boston, not that
>> I find that the worst idea in the world.
>> 
>> Cities are expensive to run...
>
>XXX => The City of Boston has *lost* a significant amount of its population
>       in the last 20 years...
>
>Fewer citizens, fewer Police, fewer Fireman, fewer children in
>the school system. What the heck is costing all the money? 
>
	Mostly services and matching funds which at one time were State or
Federally funded that have been pushed down to the local level.  Over the
last twenty years there has also been the effects of deinstitutionalization,
full access education,  etc.
>> (Getting them to spend the money honestly is the real problem, maybe
>> someone should tell Flynn he can have his sales tax when he manages to ...
>
>How about, Boston can have its sales tax (or worse, income tax)
>when it gets rid of rent control.
>
	As the result of vacancy decontrol Boston has not had significant
rent control for 10 years.  The relatively high turnover for Boston means
that there are few units still under rent control.  Cambridge and Brookline
are another story.


-- 
Larry Headlund  lmh@world.std.com    Eikonal Systems (617) 482-3345
From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: Bulger
Date: 12 Jan 93 04:38:15 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <BZS.93Jan11195903@world.std.com> bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>
>From: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com (Jim Mann)
>>But the fact that Albany is the capital is probably a godsend
>>to the rest of the state.  If NYC was the capital, they'd have
>>even more control over how the state is run.
>
>So? They probably *should* have more control, all the rest of the
>state does is vote higher state income and property taxes knowing full
>well 80% of that is going to come from NYC and not affect them much
>(especially if it's posed as "business properties valued over $10M",
>or rate increases for incomes over $100K which are pretty rare north
>of The Bronx (in NY state.) Then they vote in conservative republicans
>like Rockefeller (by a hair) to make sure NYC doesn't spend anything
>in proportion to their responsibilities (at least Cuomo has been
>better in this regard.) No one is deluded or fooled, even if some
>folks upstate like to imagine they are.

And not just the upstate folks. The suburban free-loaders living on
Long Island,  and in Westchester and Jersey have systematically stripped
the city of everything that they could carry. 

>>I've always thought that one problem in MA is that Boston is
>>the capital, and too much of Legislature is directed at doing
>>what is best for Boston and the other towns inside of 128.
>
>Isn't that where most of the people live? You want maybe an
>international airport in Deerfield?

But you can't compare Boston to a real city.  There's not even a decent
bookstore in that college theme park masquerading as an urban center.
Western Mass should secede and join Vermont. Boston could annex
New Hampshire to replace us: the New hampshirites appreciate Boston's
right wing looney talk radio shows more than we do.

>
>>I think a city in the center of the state (Worcester, for
>>example) would make a far better capital, because the 
>>legislators then wouldn't be overly influenced by the
>>concerns of the state's largest city, but could look at the
>>state as a whole a bit more.
>
>Oh, there's an idea, let's make them stare at cows more to get some
>perspective...

Hardly any cows in Worcester. Lots of junkies though. You guys can keep
the state east of Springfield. We'll get a fast rail link to NYC courtesy 
of Clinton, and can do quite well without you. Especially after we 
reclaim the drowned towns.

>
>I don't think Penn is a particularly good model for real states like
>MA, NY and CA. When was the last time you felt an urge to go to Penn
>for any reason? Can't say I ever have. The best I've ever heard of
>Pittsburgh is that they say the atmosphere is not quite poisonous any
>more.

It serves a useful purpose: keeping Ohio at a distance.


-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu
From: Terri Buchman <buchman@osf.org>
Subject: Re: Bulger
X-Xxmessage-Id: <A776E2F55C01080E@alimac4.osf.org>
X-Xxdate: Mon, 11 Jan 93 08:40:21 GMT
Organization: Open Software Foundation
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d16
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 13:38:40 GMT

In article <lkrgr8INNil8@news.bbn.com> Ron Newman,
rnewman@bbn.com writes:
>I hate Billy Bulger as much as anyone around here, but
>on the front page of today's Globe business page, Joan
>Vennochi's column points out that Bulger may have done
>the citizens a service by killing the hurriedly-drafted
>Boston Garden bill.   Among other things, Bulger says that
>the bill would have required the MBTA to make a 0%-interest
>loan to the Garden developers, and would have given away
>a parcel of state-owned land at no cost.
>
Actually I think that Weld suffers more than Bulger on the
Garden deal.  I have read accounts in the paper (Globe) that
said that the gov's staff regarded the expanded Garden Bill as
nothing special.  However, the bill was expanded from a few
paragraphs to over 12 pages long.  Delaware North (DN) was
given lots of goodies, including loans that didn't start
accumulating interest until 2006.  DN would have gotten about
$400,000 in advertising revenue from and expanded North Station
instead of that money going to the MBTA.  Delaware North would
have gotten sweetheart land deals in the North STation area as
well as other perks.  

I think that Bulger had legitimate reasons for not passing the
garden deal.  I do, however, question his timing, as the
refined bill was introduced in Oct. 92 and Bulger claimed that
he didn't have time to read it and act on it until the midnight
session.

TerriB.
From: gjc@mitech.com (George J. Carrette)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: State Socialism
Date: 8 Jan 93 13:27:20 GMT
Organization: Mitech Corporation, Concord MA

In article <58382@dime.cs.umass.edu>, yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
>>The benefit was that the slaves lived. And their children lived, and so
>>on until the time when their descendants were no longer slaves.
> 
> Some did, some did not. Still, it's a bizzare argument.

Saying it is "bizzare" is that your way of ignoring the argument?

  Do you agree or no with the observation that WHEN PEOPLE OWN THINGS
  they tend to take care of them better than when they don't own things?

Agreed, a truly bizzare concept for somebody who grew up in another world.


> This is counter-factual. During WWII and after detente there was substantial
> economic exchange between the US and the USSR. 

The economic exchange between the US and the USSR was absolutely
*noise-level* compared with the amount of economic exchange
between the US and FRANCE, WEST GERMANY, ITALY.
What was going on between the US and the USSR was centrally controlled 
and an extremely small percentation of people and economy of the USSR
was exposed to the US. There were only a handful of western power-brokers
on the US side that were allowed to do anything. e.g. Armound Hammer.

Compare that to the situation in China now and in the last 10 years.
Millions of people are being exposed to direct contact with western economies 
and western "economic exchangers" every day.

-gjc


> Please cite a source for 
> this "decision" of Lenin's. I don't believe it.

I'm going through my early writings of Lenin right now. Don't forget
that at the time Lenin siezed power most western agents in Russia
were agitating in one way of another for Russia to re-enter the war.

But try to use some common sense here, and not just rely on
the "citing of sources." 

You do know that Lenin signed orders that took away the property
of foreigners, don't you?

Do you think maybe he *thought* about that? Do you think that he
thought that the foreigners would just say "ok, no problem, we will
go ahead as before" and that foreigners would not be afraid that
anything they build in the future would also be subject to being taken?

Do you think that maybe he thought that foreigners would react negatively,
that perhaps they would leave? 

-gjc
Newsgroups: ne.politics
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Subject: Re: Bulger
Organization: The World
	<BZS.93Jan6181957@world.std.com> <4387@mitech.com>
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 00:07:18 GMT


>XXX => The City of Boston has *lost* a significant amount of its population
>       in the last 20 years...
>
>Fewer citizens, fewer Police, fewer Fireman, fewer children in
>the school system. What the heck is costing all the money? 

Fewer tax base?

Unless the geographic size shrinks or is mothballed somehow some of
those factors probably don't go down nearly linearly with population.
And some factors like the T probably don't go down in cost much at
all, cutting a few bus lines here and there doesn't make much
difference.

But consider other factors like caring for the Charles River and other
recreational areas, things like the July 4th stuff, I doubt these go
down in price at all (probably the opposite for completely different
reasons) relative to the population.

Another factor is not how many people live in Boston but how many
people use Boston. When someone lives in Newton or Framingham but
comes in town for "things Boston" (even just shopping, I mean,
shoppers expect the roads and other transport to be there, they expect
police around etc) then the numbers you cite may be misleading. One
way to assure collecting on that kind of activity fairly would be a
city sales tax.

>> (Getting them to spend the money honestly is the real problem, maybe
>> someone should tell Flynn he can have his sales tax when he manages to ...
>
>How about, Boston can have its sales tax (or worse, income tax)
>when it gets rid of rent control.
>
>Hmm. But maybe if Boston got rid of rent control, then property values would
>rise and more income would be available from the property tax,
>and there would be more residential property development
>and upgrading of the city and then maybe (see XXX above)
>some income-producing and property-tax-paying -population- would
>return to the city and then the sales tax wouldn't be needed, etc...

You're probably right. Bringing it back to Bulger, has anyone ever
looked into rent control and similar practices (public housing) in
Southie? From my experience I think you'd find some pretty startling
things, like politicians buying votes hand over fist in that part of
town with these sorts of things. Conversely, take a drive through
black neighborhoods in the actual southern portions of Boston and
wonder why there are no streetlights and the streets are in a state of
disrepair that one generally associates with, well, not a northeast
city. Don't guess, take a drive someday, the blatant disparity would
be shocking even to a hardened political conservative.

I think some day the story that will be written about Boston will be
about how they took the programs meant to help poor people and handed
the goodies out to their friends, and it was done so blatantly no one
even knew where to begin to fix it.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die    | bzs@world.std.com          | uunet!world!bzs
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202        | Login: 617-739-WRLD
From: James_J_Kowalczyk@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: Bulger
Date: Thu,  7 Jan 93 16:31:11 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
  <BZS.93Jan6181957@world.std.com> <4387@mitech.com>

gjc@mitech.com (George J. Carrette) writes:

>How about, Boston can have its sales tax (or worse, income tax)
>when it gets rid of rent control.
>
>Hmm. But maybe if Boston got rid of rent control, then property values would
>rise and more income would be available from the property tax,
>and there would be more residential property development
>and upgrading of the city and then maybe (see XXX above)
>some income-producing and property-tax-paying -population- would
>return to the city and then the sales tax wouldn't be needed, etc...

Boston does not have rent control.  As far as I know, only Cambridge and
Brookline still have rent control.

Jim Kowalczyk
Andover, MA
Newsgroups: ne.politics
From: lmh@world.std.com (Larry M Headlund)
Subject: Re: Wall Street Journal Condemns State Legislature (was sort of Bulger)
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 23:44:23 GMT

In article <1ik1moINNd7u@transfer.stratus.com> lmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com writes:
>In an editorial in today's WSJ (1/8/93), the state legislature in general and  
>Billy Bulger in particular were rapped as being against democracy for Bulger's
>parliamentary games to avoid bringing term limits to a vote.  Given the  
>behavior of Bulger over the years, I'd call the editorial right on target.

	I read that editorial , also.  I did sort of wonder how the editorial
writers _knew_ that "an overwhelming majority of people ... wanted a vote on 
term limits".   This is not to defend the action of the Great and General Court
but this will of the people == the views of the WSJ gets to me sometimes.

>When is Southie going to wake up and vote the joker out of office?
>
	The question is why does he get re-elected?  The answer is that as
an old-style consituent service politician he serves his constituent and his
powerful position is used to "bring home the bacon" to Southie (and Boston
in general).  You may not like him,  I may not like him,  but why should a
resident of Southie who is one of his constituents trade him in?
	A correct answer to the above guarantees you a successful career in
politics.  


-- 
Larry Headlund  lmh@world.std.com    Eikonal Systems (617) 482-3345
From: rh@smds.com (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: Bulger
Date: 8 Jan 93 00:37:22 GMT
Reply-To: rh@ishmael.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Software Maintenance & Development Systems, Inc.

In article <4387@mitech.com> gjc@mitech.com (George J. Carrette) writes:
>In article <BZS.93Jan6181957@world.std.com>, bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>> Meanwhile, Flynn is pushing for a city sales tax for Boston, not that
>> I find that the worst idea in the world.
>> 
>> Cities are expensive to run...
>
>XXX => The City of Boston has *lost* a significant amount of its population
>       in the last 20 years...
>
>Fewer citizens, fewer Police, fewer Fireman, fewer children in
>the school system. What the heck is costing all the money? 
>
>> (Getting them to spend the money honestly is the real problem, maybe
>> someone should tell Flynn he can have his sales tax when he manages to ...
>
>How about, Boston can have its sales tax (or worse, income tax)
>when it gets rid of rent control.
>
>Hmm. But maybe if Boston got rid of rent control, then property values would
>rise and more income would be available from the property tax,
>and there would be more residential property development
>and upgrading of the city and then maybe (see XXX above)
>some income-producing and property-tax-paying -population- would
>return to the city and then the sales tax wouldn't be needed, etc...
>
>-gjc


-- 
Richard Harter: SMDS Inc.  Net address: rh@smds.com Phone: 508-369-7398 
US Mail: SMDS Inc., PO Box 555, Concord MA 01742.    Fax: 508-369-8272
In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die.
Newsgroups: ne.politics
From: jfc@athena.mit.edu (John F Carr)
Subject: Re: Bulger
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 02:26:53 GMT

In article <58527@dime.cs.umass.edu>
	yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:

>During the 1970's it was
>estimated that NYC had a net federal outflow of taxes close to $10billion.

What if you include state taxes and state spending?

I remember a lot of debate during the 1980s about federal aid to cities.
How much did NYC get?  What was the difference between federal taxes and
federal spending since the 1970s?

--
    John Carr (jfc@athena.mit.edu)
From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: State Socialism (last one, for sure)
Date: 5 Jan 93 05:24:30 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <4350@mitech.com> gjc@mitech.com (George J. Carrette) writes:
>In article <58185@dime.cs.umass.edu>, yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
>> I'm completely unable to figure out what your point is here. It seems
>> that you are arguing that it is somehow less wrong to be a slaver who
>> makes a profit from slaving than to be a jailer who just earns a salary
>> from running a labor camp. 
>
>That is not what I'm arguing -toward- but I'll agree with your observation
>of what follows from my argument.
>
>> Do you mean to argue that slavers treated their
>> human property relatively better because they were of market value? 
>
>Yes.
>
>> is someone who is condemend to a life of chattel
>> slavery and to have her children used as commodities better off than someone
>> who is sent to labor and starve in a Gulag? 
>
>Yes, they certainly were better off. The children of children of
>children of children of US slaves even more so. 
>
>And personally I'd take the treatment described in Uncle Toms Cabin 
>any day over the treatment described in the Gulag Archipeligo 

You might try to read a more informative source than Uncle Toms Cabin.
The sensabilities of the victorian reading public ruled out some of the
more brutal aspects of slavery.

>Millions of people just flat out disappeared into the Gulag never to be
>seen again, a great sucking black hole of death. 

This kind of comparative misery seems, at best, pointless. 


-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu

Newsgroups: ne.politics
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Subject: Re: Bulger
Organization: The World
	<BZS.93Jan6181957@world.std.com>
	<1993Jan10.230224.13553@athena.mit.edu>
	<BZS.93Jan10231752@world.std.com>
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 05:16:46 GMT


And for those of you who still doubt NYC can be a reasonable place
consider the following true (I guess, I know the person and it was
private e-mail tho to someone else here) story that just appeared in
my mail box:

>I was bitching about this on a subway in Manhatten and someone across
>the car yelled to me, "It's in the boot ROMs, just swap boot ROMs with
>a SPARC 2 and they'll boot 4.1.3 without any problems."
> 
>What a friendly city!

-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die    | bzs@world.std.com          | uunet!world!bzs
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202        | Login: 617-739-WRLD
Newsgroups: ne.politics
From: lmh@world.std.com (Larry M Headlund)
Subject: Re: State Socialism
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 20:00:34 GMT

In article <BZS.93Jan9014712@world.std.com> bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>
<public/private label perceptions discussion deleted>
>
>For example, I was in Paris during that row over wine and rapeseed oil
>a few weeks ago. The French papers (Le Monde, Le Figaro) were clearly
>complaining that one reason they resented the US's competitiveness in
>the European markets was that certainly if *they* denied their people
>things like health care and ran public schools and transportation
>systems like Americans did, well, they could charge less for products
>also!
>
>Isn't it nice to be characterized like we might characterize some
>two-bit third-world country?!
>
	A study of competiveness which was quoted in last weeks WSJ
made the point that European countries seem to have chosen "social
fairness/social peace" at the price of lower productivity (goods/$).
This confirms an impression I gained when working in several European
countries that my co-workers were:

	1. Unhappy with their high taxes.

	2. Unhappy that those who worked hard were not that much better
	   off than the indolent.

	3. Shocked by US crime.

	4. Shocked by US homelessness.

	5. Shocked by US health care and education system, as far as they
	   understood it.

What everybody seems to want is the good of both systems with none of the
evils.   
          The complaints of many Europeans regarding trade with the US
parallel the objections raised to NAFTA.
 

-- 
Larry Headlund  lmh@world.std.com    Eikonal Systems (617) 482-3345
From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: State Socialism
Date: 9 Jan 93 13:40:01 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <4398@mitech.com> gjc@mitech.com (George J. Carrette) writes:
>In article <58382@dime.cs.umass.edu>, yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
>>>The benefit was that the slaves lived. And their children lived, and so
>>>on until the time when their descendants were no longer slaves.
>> 
>> Some did, some did not. Still, it's a bizzare argument.
>
>Saying it is "bizzare" is that your way of ignoring the argument?
>

No.  It's my way of suggesting that your argument makes little sense. 
The immorality of the slave system is not ameliorated, in my judgement,
by the value that slavers found in maintaining a population of slaves 
especially after the importation of slaves was banned. 


>  Do you agree or no with the observation that WHEN PEOPLE OWN THINGS
>  they tend to take care of them better than when they don't own things?

No. Not necessarily true at all. I know that soome people accept this as
religious dogma, but, for example, Love Canal and Times Beach were owner
operated. People who own things for profit, will try to make a profit out of
them. This does not necessarily correspond to "taking better care of". 

>> Please cite a source for 
>> this "decision" of Lenin's. I don't believe it.
>
>I'm going through my early writings of Lenin right now. Don't forget
>that at the time Lenin siezed power most western agents in Russia
>were agitating in one way of another for Russia to re-enter the war.

What's the relevance? 

>
>But try to use some common sense here, and not just rely on
>the "citing of sources." 
>
>You do know that Lenin signed orders that took away the property
>of foreigners, don't you?

Yes. The Bolsheviks came to power on a platform that was hostile to
private property. That's my understanding anyway.

>
>Do you think maybe he *thought* about that? Do you think that he
>thought that the foreigners would just say "ok, no problem, we will
>go ahead as before" and that foreigners would not be afraid that
>anything they build in the future would also be subject to being taken?

Oh. If you just want to argue that Lenin discouraged foreign investment,
I'll accept that. But, the Boleshviks did not ask for the trade cutoffs,
the invasion of western military forces, etc. 


-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu
From: borden@head-cfa.harvard.edu (Dave Borden)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: Bulger
Date: 8 Jan 93 16:09:05 GMT
Reply-To: borden@m5.harvard.edu
Organization: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA,  USA

In article <73125@cup.portal.com> James_J_Kowalczyk@cup.portal.com writes:

>Boston does not have rent control.  As far as I know, only Cambridge and
>Brookline still have rent control.

Boston has vacancy decontrol.  What this means, at least what it meant in the
places I lived in the Symphony Hall area (not as nice an area as it sounds),
is that when a tenant renews a lease, the rent can only go up by a certain
percentage, which I think is related to the estimated increase in the cost
of living.  Low income tenants' rents only go up by the cost of living, if
they get the form in on time.  When new tenants move in, starting new leases,
the landlord can charge whatever he or she can get.  I don't know if there are
other systems in effect.


    - Dave Borden
      borden@m5.harvard.edu