When a regressive, back-door tax that sucks money out of local economies, harms small businesses and families is the only idea that the Massachusetts Speaker of the House can muster, there is a serious deficit of creative and courageous thinking.
(excerpt from State House News)
The big-ticket stuff comes next. DeLeo has spent … well, more or less the entirety of his legislative career working on a bill that would expand gambling in Massachusetts, and the fruit could be borne next week. Casinos. Slots. Bob DeLeo becoming the public face of the casino culture in Massachusetts, the one and the same culture against which his predecessor railed, and against which DeLeo himself voted, less than two years ago. Times change, the reps who are meeting with constituents to explain why they were against casinos before they were for them will say. It’s about jobs now, they’ll say, or already have.
Craven flip-flop in the face of an about-face in leadership? Principled, economy-driven policy evolution? What’s the etiquette for convincing constituents that you’ve “grown” on an issue when, privately and sheepishly, you wouldn’t swear on a stack of one-eyed jacks that what you’ve done wasn’t taking an assignment from your chamber’s titular head and fulfilling it?
Sometimes, within the environs of the Great and General Court, it is polite to let the demons win.
(The article continues) DeLeo batted down questions this week about where the $378,000 in taxpayer dollars allocated in the People v. Sal DiMasi actually went.
Mr Speaker - Oh where, oh where does our money go? And we're supposed to trust the General Court with expanded gambling?
Perhaps the mess we are in is due to the "demons winning". This is the height of poor public and poor fiscal policy.
