HERE IS HOW I WILL VOTE ON ELECTION DAY!

STATE ELECTION

William Francis Galvin HARWICH Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Ward 0 Precinct 3

TUESDAY, NOV 4th, 2014

Please Note: This is NOT a valid official ballot. Candidates for some local offices are not reflected in the ballot below. These offices may, however, appear on your ballot when voting.

SENATOR IN CONGRESS EDWARD J. MARKEY     7 Townsend St., Malden Candidate for Re-election DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR AND LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR COAKLEY and KERRIGAN      DEMOCRATIC ATTORNEY GENERAL MAURA HEALEY     40 Winthrop St., Boston                          DEMOCRATIC SECRETARY OF STATE WILLIAM FRANCIS GALVIN     46 Lake St., Boston Candidate for Re-election               DEMOCRATIC TREASURER DEBORAH B. GOLDBERG    37 Hyslop Rd., Brookline                 DEMOCRATIC AUDITOR SUZANNE M. BUMP     409 North Plain Rd., Great Barrington Candidate for Re-election   DEMOCRATIC REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS NINTH DISTRICT WILLIAM RICHARD KEATING     10 Briarwood Ln., Bourne Candidate for Re-election         DEMOCRATIC COUNCILLOR FIRST DISTRICT JOSEPH C. FERREIRA     7 Thomas Dr., Somerset                    DEMOCRATIC SENATOR IN GENERAL COURT CAPE & ISLANDS DISTRICT DANIEL A. WOLF    168 Main St., Harwich Candidate for Re-election    DEMOCRATIC REPRESENTATIVE IN GENERAL COURT FOURTH BARNSTABLE DISTRICT SARAH K. PEAKE    7 Center St., Provincetown Candidate for Re-election DEMOCRATIC DISTRICT ATTORNEY CAPE & ISLANDS DISTRICT RICHARD G. BARRY     20 Highland Ave., Barnstable              DEMOCRATIC COUNTY COMMISSIONER BARNSTABLE COUNTY MARK R. FOREST     83 Indian Memorial Dr., Yarmouth       DEMOCRATIC BARNSTABLE ASSEMBLY DELEGATE HARWICH EDWARD J. MC MANUS     41 Parallel St., Harwich                 DEMOCRATIC

QUESTION 1: LAW PROPOSED BY INITIATIVE PETITION Do you approve of a law summarized below, on which no vote was taken by the Senate or the House of Representatives on or before May 6, 2014? SUMMARY This proposed law would eliminate the requirement that the state’s gasoline tax, which was 24 cents per gallon as of September 2013, (1) be adjusted every year by the percentage change in the Consumer Price Index over the preceding year, but (2) not be adjusted below 21.5 cents per gallon. A YES VOTE would eliminate the requirement that the state’s gas tax be adjusted annually based on the Consumer Price Index. A NO VOTE would make no change in the laws regarding the gas tax. QUESTION 2: LAW PROPOSED BY INITIATIVE PETITION Do you approve of a law summarized below, on which no vote was taken by the Senate or the House of Representatives on or before May 6, 2014? SUMMARY This proposed law would expand the state’s beverage container deposit law, also known as the Bottle Bill, to require deposits on containers for all non-alcoholic non-carbonated drinks in liquid form intended for human consumption, except beverages primarily derived from dairy products, infant formula, and FDA approved medicines. The proposed law would not cover containers made of paper-based biodegradable material and aseptic multi-material packages such as juice boxes or pouches. The proposed law would require the state Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) to adjust the container deposit amount every five years to reflect (to the nearest whole cent) changes in the consumer price index, but the value could not be set below five cents. The proposed law would increase the minimum handling fee that beverage distributors must pay dealers for each properly returned empty beverage container, which was 2¼ cents as of September 2013, to 3½ cents. It would also increase the minimum handling fee that bottlers must pay distributors and dealers for each properly returned empty reusable beverage container, which was 1 cent as of September 2013, to 3½ cents. The Secretary of EEA would review the fee amounts every five years and make appropriate adjustments to reflect changes in the consumer price index as well as changes in the costs incurred by redemption centers. The proposed law defines a redemption center as any business whose primary purpose is the redemption of beverage containers and that is not ancillary to any other business. The proposed law would direct the Secretary of EEA to issue regulations allowing small dealers to seek exemptions from accepting empty deposit containers. The proposed law would define small dealer as any person or business, including the operator of a vending machine, who sells beverages in beverage containers to consumers, with a contiguous retail space of 3,000 square feet or less, excluding office and stock room space; and fewer than four locations under the same ownership in the Commonwealth. The proposed law would require that the regulations consider at least the health, safety, and convenience of the public, including the distribution of dealers and redemption centers by population or by distance or both. The proposed law would set up a state Clean Environment Fund to receive certain unclaimed container deposits. The Fund would be used, subject to appropriation by the state Legislature, to support programs such as the proper management of solid waste, water resource protection, parkland, urban forestry, air quality and climate protection. The proposed law would allow a dealer, distributor, redemption center or bottler to refuse to accept any beverage container that is not marked as being refundable in Massachusetts. The proposed law would take effect on April 22, 2015. A YES VOTE would expand the state’s beverage container deposit law to require deposits on containers for all non-alcoholic, non-carbonated drinks with certain exceptions, increase the associated handling fees, and make other changes to the law. A NO VOTE would make no change in the laws regarding beverage container deposits. YES! QUESTION 3: LAW PROPOSED BY INITIATIVE PETITION Do you approve of a law summarized below, on which no vote was taken by the Senate or the House of Representatives on or before May 6, 2014? SUMMARY This proposed law would (1) prohibit the Massachusetts Gaming Commission from issuing any license for a casino or other gaming establishment with table games and slot machines, or any license for a gaming establishment with slot machines; (2) prohibit any such casino or slots gaming under any such licenses that the Commission might have issued before the proposed law took effect; and (3) prohibit wagering on the simulcasting of live greyhound races. The proposed law would change the definition of “illegal gaming” under Massachusetts law to include wagering on the simulcasting of live greyhound races, as well as table games and slot machines at Commission-licensed casinos, and slot machines at other Commission-licensed gaming establishments. This would make those types of gaming subject to existing state laws providing criminal penalties for, or otherwise regulating or prohibiting, activities involving illegal gaming. The proposed law states that if any of its parts were declared invalid, the other parts would stay in effect. A YES VOTE would prohibit casinos, any gaming establishment with slot machines, and wagering on simulcast greyhound races. A NO VOTE would make no change in the current laws regarding gaming. YES! QUESTION 4: LAW PROPOSED BY INITIATIVE PETITION Do you approve of a law summarized below, on which no vote was taken by the Senate or the House of Representatives on or before May 6, 2014? SUMMARY This proposed law would entitle employees in Massachusetts to earn and use sick time according to certain conditions. Employees who work for employers having eleven or more employees could earn and use up to 40 hours of paid sick time per calendar year, while employees working for smaller employers could earn and use up to 40 hours of unpaid sick time per calendar year. An employee could use earned sick time if required to miss work in order (1) to care for a physical or mental illness, injury or medical condition affecting the employee or the employee’s child, spouse, parent, or parent of a spouse; (2) to attend routine medical appointments of the employee or the employee’s child, spouse, parent, or parent of a spouse; or (3) to address the effects of domestic violence on the employee or the employee’s dependent child. Employees would earn one hour of sick time for every 30 hours worked, and would begin accruing those hours on the date of hire or on July 1, 2015, whichever is later. Employees could begin to use earned sick time on the 90th day after hire. The proposed law would cover both private and public employers, except that employees of a particular city or town would be covered only if, as required by the state constitution, the proposed law were made applicable by local or state legislative vote or by appropriation of sufficient funds to pay for the benefit. Earned paid sick time would be compensated at the same hourly rate paid to the employee when the sick time is used. Employees could carry over up to 40 hours of unused sick time to the next calendar year, but could not use more than 40 hours in a calendar year. Employers would not have to pay employees for unused sick time at the end of their employment. If an employee missed work for a reason eligible for earned sick time, but agreed with the employer to work the same number of hours or shifts in the same or next pay period, the employee would not have to use earned sick time for the missed time, and the employer would not have to pay for that missed time. Employers would be prohibited from requiring such an employee to work additional hours to make up for missed time, or to find a replacement employee. Employers could require certification of the need for sick time if an employee used sick time for more than 24 consecutively scheduled work hours. Employers could not delay the taking of or payment for earned sick time because they have not received the certification. Employees would have to make a good faith effort to notify the employer in advance if the need for earned sick time is foreseeable. Employers would be prohibited from interfering with or retaliating based on an employee’s exercise of earned sick time rights, and from retaliating based on an employee’s support of another employee’s exercise of such rights. The proposed law would not override employers’ obligations under any contract or benefit plan with more generous provisions than those in the proposed law. Employers that have their own policies providing as much paid time off, usable for the same purposes and under the same conditions, as the proposed law would not be required to provide additional paid sick time. The Attorney General would enforce the proposed law, using the same enforcement procedures applicable to other state wage laws, and employees could file suits in court to enforce their earned sick time rights. The Attorney General would have to prepare a multilingual notice regarding the right to earned sick time, and employers would be required to post the notice in a conspicuous location and to provide a copy to employees. The state Executive Office of Health and Human Services, in consultation with the Attorney General, would develop a multilingual outreach program to inform the public of the availability of earned sick time. The proposed law would take effect on July 1, 2015, and states that if any of its parts were declared invalid, the other parts would stay in effect. A YES VOTE would entitle employees in Massachusetts to earn and use sick time according to certain conditions. A NO VOTE would make no change in the laws regarding earned sick time. YES! THIS QUESTION IS NOT BINDING SUMMARY Shall the state senator from this district be instructed to vote in favor of legislation to expand the radiological Plume Exposure Emergency Planning Zone around the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, an approximately 10-mile-radius area, to include all of Barnstable, Dukes, and Nantucket Counties? YES! THIS QUESTION IS NOT BINDING SUMMARY Shall the state representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of legislation that would allow the state to regulate and tax marijuana in the same manner as alcohol? YES!

Please Note: This is NOT a valid official ballot. Candidates for some local offices are not reflected in the ballot below. These offices may, however, appear on your ballot when voting.

VOTE ON ELECTION DAY!

TUESDAY, November 4nd

Attorney General Martha Coakley 

Congressman Bill Keating

State Senator Dan Wolf

Town of Harwich Caucas Date Saturday, March 1st 2014 at 11am Town Hall

Call John Bangert if you are supporting Martha Coakley 508-514-0143 of jjbangert@gmail.com

FIND YOUR TOWN's CAUCUS PLACE

Public Beach Access will be denied, unless the Attorney General's Office Fights for access for we the people!

Public Beach Access will be denied, unless the Attorney General's Office Fights for all of us in this Commonwealth!

The Attorney General, after reviewing the beach access case that the town of Harwich and the friends of Harwich Beaches has brought to preserve public access to the extensive accreted sands west of the Wychmere harbor Jetty, has decided to not participate in the suit.

While there may be reasons why the state can't participate, in making the notification to the court, the Attorney General's office appears to be entering a stipulation with the landowners that will undercut the good reasons why the Town and Friends group should continue on with the suit. I essence supporting the landowners efforts to close public access to this publicly financed resource.

Please write the Attorney General and ask that if the State is not going to participate, they certainly shouldn't undercut the public's ability to secure and protect public access to the shore front and Commonwealth tidelands. On Cape Cod we need the state to help defend beach access.

 

Please email the Attorney General Martha Coakley at: ago@state.ma.us

AG Office Boston

One Ashburton Place
Boston, MA 02108-1518
Phone: (617) 727-2200
TTY: (617) 727-4765

AG Field Office Springfield

1350 Main Street, Fourth Floor
Springfield, MA 01103-1629
Phone: (413) 784-1240
Fax: (413) 784-1244

AG Field Office New Bedford

105 William Street, First Floor
New Bedford, MA 02740-6257
Telephone: (508) 990-9700
Fax: (508) 990-8686

AG Field Office Worcester

10 Mechanic Street, Suite 301
Worcester, MA 01608-2417
Phone: (508) 792-7600
Fax: (508) 795-1991

Coakley, Baker find something to like in the latest gubernatorial race poll | CapeCodOnline.com

Coakley, Baker find something to like in the latest gubernatorial race poll | CapeCodOnline.com

By STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

January 22, 2014

BOSTON - Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, has maintained her frontrunner position in the Massachusetts governor’s race with the latest poll showing her beating Republican Charlie Baker in a hypothetical matchup. 

Gail Bangert getting her questions answered at selectman Ed Mc Manus House Party for Martha!

Coakley was favorable to 53 percent of the 503 registered voters surveyed by MassINC in mid-January, edging Gov. Deval Patrick’s 52 percent favorability and beating Baker’s 32 percent favorability and that of her nearest Democratic rival, Steven Grossman, the state treasurer, whose favorability was 22 percent.

Nearly everyone has heard of Coakley, who lost a U.S. Senate race to Scott Brown in 2010, and all but 15 percent said they have a positive or negative impression of her. 

"Voters know that Martha has fought for them on key issues that they care about but what they look at is action and not polls,” Coakley campaign manager Tim Foley said in a statement. “That is why Martha is focused on building a strong grassroots campaign, meeting as many voters as possible in every corner of the state, and talking about her goal to create a more prosperous and fairer Commonwealth."

With 28 percent of voters viewing Coakley unfavorably, she was second only to Patrick, whose un-favorability clocked in at 38 percent. Neither Baker nor Grossman cracked 15 percent in the unfavorable column, and the rest of the governor’s race candidates were largely unknown to the poll takers. 

Baker, the 2010 Republican nominee, bested all the other Democrats in hypothetical matchups, a change from an early October Western New England University poll that showed Grossman beating Baker 43-30 percent. The latest poll had Baker besting Grossman 33-23 percent. 

"I am confident that once the people of Massachusetts know me as the only lifelong progressive job creator in this field, we win the primary and go on to defeat Charlie Baker in November,” Grossman said in a statement. 

Baker also started to close the gap with Coakley, losing by 39-29 percent in the latest poll compared to 54-34 percent in the October poll. The former state budget chief and health insurance industry executive was more widely known in the latest poll too, after 56 percent of respondents to the Western New England poll said they didn’t know Baker. 

"While this is the start of a long race and only one of many polls to come, it appears Charlie's positive vision and record of hands-on leadership is starting to resonate with voters,” Baker spokesman Tim Buckley said in a statement. 

UMass Boston political science professor Maurice Cunningham said the poll indicates voters have not faulted Coakley for her stumbles, including campaign finance irregularities that prompted the state Republican Party to launch a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. 

“It’s a testament to name recognition and how little the public pays attention to things that obsess [us] political types,” Cunningham said. “More depends on what’s going on in those caucuses.”

Democratic caucuses begin Feb. 8, and the election of delegates will be a key for the three lesser known candidates to win 15 percent of the vote in the June nominating convention, a threshold they must achieve to secure a place on the fall ballot. 

“I think all three of those lesser known Democrats are pretty good,” Cunningham said. “For any of them, it’s a really steep hill.”

The Republican caucuses began Jan. 11. Mark Fisher, a Shrewsbury Republican, is seeking to challenge the better known Baker on the GOP primary ballot. 

Just ahead of Patrick’s fiscal year 2015 budget filing, the poll commissioned by Boston National Public Radio station WBUR found the voting public divided on Patrick’s handling of the Annie Dookhan state crime lab debacle, the Department of Children and Families’ failure to monitor the whereabouts of a now-missing 5-year-old boy, and a botched rollout of the state’s new Health Connector website. 

Now into his eighth and final year, Patrick received a 53-39 percent approval rating, in general. The majority of respondents said they were following the Department of Children and Families and Dookhan stories, while about half the respondents said they were monitoring the Health Connector story not closely or not at all. 

Overall, 46 percent of the respondents believed the state is going in the right direction, while 38 percent believe it’s on the wrong track. Democrats made up 36 percent of the respondents and Republicans made up 11 percent. The margin of error was 4.4 percent, and the respondents were 81 percent white, with 34 percent receiving a high school degree or less education, and 43 percent completing college or reporting an advanced degree. 

People who viewed Baker favorably were split on their view of the state’s direction, while people who favored Grossman and Coakley were generally in favor of the direction of the state. Baker ran squarely against Patrick in 2010 with his slogan of “had enough” and has said he will run a more “enthusiastic” campaign this time around. 

Both Coakley and Grossman received some cross-party support, with a little more than 25 percent of people from the opposing party reporting a favorable view of them. Grossman received 8 percent favorability from Republican respondents. 

After the big three candidates, independent candidate and investor Jeff McCormick had the next-highest favorability rating at 9 percent. Democrats Joe Avellone, Don Berwick and Juliette Kayyem, along with Fisher, a Republican, and independent Evan Falchuk did not crack 5 percent favorability. Nearly all of the other candidates are unknown to at least 75 percent of voters.

Kayyem, a former Boston Globe columnist and homeland security official, had the highest recognition at about 26 percent, while Berwick, President Barack Obama’s acting chief of Medicare and Medicaid, was known by fewer than 10 percent of the voters surveyed. At Democratic events, Berwick has noted that conservative pundit Glenn Beck called him “the second most dangerous man in America.” 

As the Massachusetts Gaming Commission embarks on the final stages of licensing a slot parlor and casinos in western and eastern Massachusetts, the respondents were 53-39 in favor of the 2011 law, which allows for up to three casinos in three different regions.

Martha Coakley Caucus in coming up soon!

Hello Everyone,

We are supporting Martha Coakley for Governor and have been asked by the Coakley for Governor Campaign to be the Town of Harwich Caucus Organizer.

Harwich Democratic Town Committee
The Date of Harwich Caucus 
Saturday, March 1, 2014 at 11AM
Town Hall Building in the Don Griffith meeting room.  

We as Democrats are very lucky to have so many capable candidates running for Governor this year but I truly feel there is only one candidate who has worked very hard for the state of Massachusetts and all its citizens. There is not just a SINGLE issue she has poured her heart and soul into but as our Attorney General she has worked hard on ALL issues pertaining to Men, WOMEN and children. 

She's the only candidate that can beat Charlie Baker....Everyone knows Martha and Everyone knows her accomplishments.

Ready to get organized for the caucuses?

Whether you've been organizing for 1 day or 20 years, you know it takes local relationships, planning, and hard work to run a successful campaign. Please join us for the upcoming strategy session to help us plan, train, and get prepared to win your local caucus.

Below are the details for the meeting. Let us know you're coming by
 clicking here.

Cape Cod Strategy Session 
Wednesday, January 29

Centerville Recreation Building
524 Main St.
Centerville, MA 02632
 
7:00 PM

Thank you again for your hard work. It takes a team to win these campaigns, and I look forward to seeing you all at the strategy session.  
John and  Gail Bangert

 

Harwich Democratic Town Committee
The Date of Harwich Caucus 
Saturday, March 1, 2014 at 11AM
Town Hall Building in the Don Griffith meeting room. 

Handicapped accessible with elevators
Please call me if YOU wish to stand or sit with Martha!