BY DAN VALENTI

NO ties is a loose term. Many dimensions to explore. Start with: How about ties to school unions?

As stated before this is nothing but a conduit outfit that will stifle any positive outcome for Kapanski.Former judge my ass why is she even working at her age.

Many of those who will be interviewed are mandated reporters who will lawyer up so as not to incriminate themselves.

Jefferson County Schools, Colorado, dealing with similar issues. Parents are upset and suspicious after being kept in dark regarding pornography and sexual abuse issues committed by school staff.

In Pittsfield, parents need to stay engaged and demand information from the school board and school administration.

What shouldn’t be dismissed is the fact that the far left agenda in the school system has made it so much easier for people with deviant tendencies to take advantage of students. Encouraging teachers to worry about the gender of students and getting involved in hiding it from their parents so they form a secret little club is very dangerous. This is too much familiarity and destroys the normal teacher-student relationship. I’m not saying Pittsfield schools didn’t have people taking sexual advantage of kids for many years before the Trans mania, but the far left agenda has made it so much easier for these sexual predators.

January 04, 2024

Is anyone surprised that State Senator Paul Marxism, State Representatives Tricia Country-Buffet, John Barrett the career politician, and the newly elected Leigh Davis all accepted the 11.39-percent state government public pay raise on 01/01/2025?

Boston is an expensive place, of course, but it still costs a good sum of money to live in Western Massachusetts, which has the most severe need for social services state funding due to its distressed regional economy, while many greedy lobbyists in Boston make 6-figures – some of the greed-balls even make 7-figures – salaries per year.

Governor Maura Healey cut around $400 million in state funding for social services in 2024. Are Marx, Country-Buffet, the career politician from North Adams, and Leigh Davis going to ask Healey to restore the state funding cuts for the people in need of social services in their respective Berkshire County state legislative districts?

What good is state funding for public education when the state under-funds social services that families, especially children, need to live stable lives in a tough economy? What good are Healey, Marx, Country-Buffet, Barrett, & Davis? Answer: They are all NO GOOD!

Jon Melle

DEI structure would appear to be close if not at the very center of most of these allegations. And yet, not one city administration official has suggested anyone look in that direction.

What this suggests to me, is that that is exactly where the focus of any and all investigations begin. Look where tey do not want you to look. This whole problem may be hiding in plain sight. Does Earl have the moxy to call it out cuz nobody else dares touch this powder keg lest they be labeled racist and bad people not doing good things.

When was Matthew O’Sullivan put back on active duty?

https://www.berkshireeagle.com/crime/egremont-police-berkshires-sheffield-excessive-force-brutality-investigation-brady-list/article_6ea7f2fe-824a-11ed-9207-cf8379497a4d.html

January 05, 2025

The Boston Globe’s editorial about rules reforms in the corrupt and secretive Boston Statehouse was frustrating for me to read because the minimum state public pay for a Member of the Massachusetts State House of Representatives and the State Senate is at least $104,000.00 per fiscal year, while the state lawmakers do nothing but DISSERVICES to the people and taxpayers they are supposed to be serving in the government.

There have been many news articles and commentaries about why the Democratic Party lost the working-class vote to Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the Swamp in 2024. Governor Maura Healey’s public record is a perfect illustration of why the limousine latte liberals are disconnected from the economic realities that the common people face on a daily basis.

Healey cut around $400 million from state funding for social services in 2024, but says she is for public education. What good is public education when the children in need of social services that she cut state funding for in 2024 do not allow for families to have the needed economic stability for their children to learn? Answer: Children cannot learn without social services state funding because they end up in economically unstable homes, communities, and public schools.

Healey put forth additional state funding for gambling in Massachusetts, but it is well understood that the state lottery with its net profits of over $1 billion per fiscal year, the commonwealth’s 3 casinos, and online sports betting, are all regressive taxation schemes for the state to cash in on the working-class. Moreover, the youth are having record levels of gambling addiction rates that will cost society a lot more taxpayer dollars than the billions of dollars per fiscal year in the regressive gambling revenues that greedy lobbyists, such as Dan Bosley, love because it allows them to receive and cash in on huge state tax breaks for their big business clients that do not exist in entire regions of Massachusetts, especially Western Massachusetts.

Healey just gave state lawmakers and top state constitutional officials such as herself a huge state public pay raise of 11.39-percent, while the Social Security cost of living adjustment is 2.5-percent in 2025. Healey is the second highest paid Governor in the 50 states second only to New York State Governor Kathy Hochul. I think Healey symbolizes the “If there is no bread, let them eat cake” historic quote that has never been proven to be historically true.

The reason why rules reforms in the Boston Statehouse are a pipe-dream is because state lawmakers giveaway billions of dollars in state tax breaks per fiscal year to their wealthy campaign donors. Some registered lobbyists in Boston report 7-figure incomes of over $1,000,000.00 per year. It is said that once a State Representative or State Senator retires from the Boston Statehouse, they never really leave because they become greedy lobbyists, or use their political connections to own marijuana dispensaries, and the like.

The government is supposed to serve the people and taxpayers, but the opposite is true. There is nobody representing the common people in Boston and beyond. Moreover, in the Swamp, K Street’s corporate lobbyist firms write federal legislation such as Obamacare, Trump’s 2017 single largest in U.S. history tax cut bill, and so on.

In the early- to mid-2020’s, the Swamp has spent a record amount of federal money with K Street’s corporate lobbyist firms reporting record earnings in the tens of millions of dollars each. How does that help the “Rust Belt”, the Farmers, the working-class, and so on? Answer: It does NOT help the common people one bit, who have been paying 40-year-high U.S. inflation while their net income has lost ground to Bidenomics.

Do I believe that Donald Trump will change the system of government? My answer: Not really; Trump is misguided. He will be favorable to the billionaires, the elite corporations, and so on, while saying that he is for the common people and citizens of the U.S.A. Also, I believe that a lot of otherwise good people fear Donald Trump’s upcoming second administration. I hate it when bureaucracies remove government officials from being compassionate and human in their official duties. I fear that Donald Trump’s leadership will be be more machine-like than humane over the next 4-years.

Jonathan A. Melle

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“Massachusetts legislative reform requires more than lip service”
The Boston Globe, Editorial, January 05, 2025

On Beacon Hill the Legislature ended the year in much the same way it operated throughout the 2023-24 session. Only a handful of lawmakers were in their seats to witness the final passage of two major health care bills and nearly 100 pieces of legislation, enacted during a marathon 14-hour session.

There were no roll-call votes. And odds are that few lawmakers other than those in leadership and the half-dozen members of the conference committees that drafted the health care bills behind closed doors knew what was actually in them before the pro forma voice votes were taken.

Welcome to the Massachusetts Legislature — a body with a propensity to work in secret and to draft rules that guarantee each and every member is beholden primarily not to the voters who sent them there but to the House speaker and Senate president from whom all power and most perks are derived.

It is a body that remains exempt from public records and open meeting laws — thus allowing most of its real work, including drafting a state budget, to be done in secret. Legislative leaders have been so adamant about maintaining that way of life, including shielding its inner workings from the scrutiny of the state auditor, that Auditor Diana DiZoglio opted to go to the voters last fall to win the right to audit the Legislature’s books.

And voters spoke loudly — with 72 percent voting their approval of the measure. But that overwhelming vote is no guarantee of success.

“We’ll be solely focused on following that law,” DiZoglio told the editorial board, “even as legislative leaders remain focused on stymieing transparency, not supporting it.”

When lawmakers convened on New Year’s Day for their swearing-in ceremonies for the new session, House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka certainly paid a good deal of lip service to the idea of rules reform. But calling something a “reform” doesn’t make it so.

“It’s great to say that you are interested in rules reform after 72 percent of the voters say they want more transparency in the General Court,” DiZoglio said. “But the reality is there has to be a cultural shift for any new rules to work. And right now the real power lies in the hands of just a few.”

Spilka and Mariano both indicated in their opening day speeches that revisiting the July 31 deadline to end formal sessions in election years — a practice abandoned this year and in 2022 — would be among those “reforms.” Spending more time in formal session would at least provide more opportunities for roll-call votes, which require more members to actually be in the chamber and publicly indicate whether they support the legislation being voted on. Spilka also suggested moving up committee reporting deadlines for bills — which would help address the leisurely pace of legislative activity that causes some of those end-of-session logjams.

“I would hope in the new session we will redouble our efforts to make sure that substantive, complex matters are taken up in formal sessions with the predictability, the accountability, and the full consideration that they deserve,” said Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, during a speech on the Senate floor Monday.

DiZoglio, a former legislator, agrees, suggesting that at minimum rules reform should include more recorded roll-call votes and a requirement giving lawmakers at least 72 hours to read a bill before having to vote on it.

“The real problem is they’re constantly suspending their own rules,” she added.

But structural reform, the kind that might provide transparency throughout the legislative process and the all-important budgeting process, is still far off.

The process of co-opting the 22 new lawmakers joining the Legislature this year — and keeping the old ones in line — begins almost immediately as the speaker and Senate president announce their leadership teams and new committee chairs and vice chairs. Each of those jobs brings extra pay — and as a Globe analysis last year showed, some of those committees have little or no reason to exist other than to provide financial rewards for soldiers who stay loyal to leadership.

Globe reporters Emma Platoff and Laura Crimaldi found that at least a dozen committees had not held a single hearing during the period of the analysis nor considered a piece of legislation. With this year’s 11 percent hike in base pay (to $82,044) and travel stipend (an additional $22,431 and $29,908) no one will make under $104,000. Committee chairs will now get at minimum $22,000 to $44,000 extra tacked on to their salary. In the Senate with 40 members and 42 standing committees, eight leadership posts for Democrats and another three for Republicans, everyone gets something extra — and then some.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Congress, for all its own flaws, provides extra pay only to the House speaker, the president pro tempore of the Senate, and the House and Senate majority and minority leaders. And yet somehow members of Congress are still eager to vie for committee chairmanships.

The California Legislature follows the congressional model.

Modest reform in Massachusetts could certainly start by jettisoning those committees that no longer seem to be needed — as demonstrated by their workload. DiZoglio suggests adding a modicum of democracy, encouraging members to campaign for chairmanships among their colleagues and allowing the “full body” to participate in the process.

But extra pay isn’t the only way leaders buy loyalty. There’s also the tried and true method of allowing lawmakers to “bring home the bacon,” by spreading around taxpayers’ dollars for local earmarks in the state budget — a dog park here, a game room at the local senior center there. Last year the Massachusetts Taxpayers Association put the number of House earmarks alone at 748, adding more than $80 million in new spending to the then $58 billion budget.

But the not so well-kept secret of closed-door budgeting is that those with the power — Mariano, Spilka, House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz — are those whose districts benefit the most. Shocker, right. And then there are the so-called “stealth earmarks” — the ones adopted at the last minute in the legislative process as “consolidated amendments” — whose contents are pretty much a mystery to the rank and file until they’re passed.

Again, Congress provides a model for at least a modest reform — a requirement that every such amendment must carry the name of its congressional sponsor.

And let’s not forget this is allegedly a full-time Legislature, with nearly all lawmakers making well into six-figure salaries — and yet at least half reporting outside jobs or business interests. How much those outside interests actually represent isn’t known in many cases because the state’s financial disclosure law is so outdated — its top bracket indicating only if the job brought in $100,000 or more.

The Massachusetts Legislature, among the least transparent in the nation, is ripe for reform. The protestations of its leaders notwithstanding, it’s only the vigilance and pressure from voters that can make that happen. Now there’s a New Year’s resolution worth taking on.

Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.

Good morning Ms. Lady,
 
Please be aware that these are not City of Pittsfield matters and that the Mayor is not tryin to hear that.

Thank you