Senator Eileen Donoghue shares her thoughts about her first year in office as the State Senator for the First Middlesex District in a January 2012 0n-line newsletter. Her district includes the communities of Lowell, Dunstable, Groton, Pepperell, Tyngsborough and Westford.

Read it  all here.

Don’t miss this important update from the  Small Business Assistance Center from Stacie Hargis the Director:

Something just happened to the Center! As the New Year unfolds, the Center is looking forward to a bright 2012 as we have had much success to build on from last year.2011 meant results that made a difference in the communities of the Merrimack Valley! … And we look forward to continuing that success, but with a new name. As of today, the Lowell Small Business Assistance Center will officially be known as theMerrimack Valley Small Business Center.

A reminder:

The Merrimack Valley Small Business Center is a program of Community Teamwork, Inc. in collaboration with Middlesex Community College, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and the City of Lowell – Division of Planning & Development.

The mission:

The mission of the Merrimack Valley Small Business Center is to provide entrepreneurs from ethnically and economically diverse groups with the education, tools and resources needed to create, sustain or expand viable small businesses.

Check-out the January 2012  Newsletter here.

In a move announced by mail by the Town Clerk and sanctioned by the Board of Selectmen, some Tewksbury voters will again be moving to a new location to cast their ballots. The former Town Clerk had consolidated the voting sites to two handicapped-accessible sites – the new Senior Center on Chandler Street and the fairly new Public Library also on Chandler Street but adjacent to Route 38. It was a move that proved to be controversial with some and did see a bit of a log-jam with snow piles and an outpouring of voters for the special election for the U. S. Senate back in January, 2010.

 Tewksbury Senior Center – Precincts 1 & 2 (photo from the Tewksbury Patch)

In an information sheet tucked into the 2012 Census Form envelope, voters learned that Precincts 3 and 3A will be casting ballots at the Lowell Assembly of God Church on Andover Street/Rte. 133 and Precincts 2 and 2A will vote at the Recreation Center on Livingston Street.  Added to the Clerk’s voter information notice - with redistricting at the most local level completed – was a list of fifty streets that have precinct changes.

Tewksbury residents and registered voters need to carefully check the Census mailer for this important information. Also, mail back the Census form ASAP.

 Recreation Center – Precincts 2 & 2A (photo from the Tewksbury Patch)

 Lowell Assembly of God Church – Precincts 3 & 3A (photo from church website)

It started with Nixon, or more accurately, with the 1960 televised debate between a handsome and charismatic John F. Kennedy and a sweating Richard Nixon, whose 5 o’clock shadow made him look like a crook.

Technology continued to change presidential election campaigns, and it’s doing so in ways that are likely to soon make New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary irrelevant. Worst of all, there may be nothing New Hampshire can do about its diminished importance but grin and bear it.

One wonders as well about the importance of Iowa and those caucuses!

Read the full editorial here at nashuatelegraph.com.

*Sidebar:

The state of New Hampshire has held a presidential primary since 1916, but its current importance didn’t emerge until 1952 when – after the state simplified its ballot access laws in 1949 seeking to boost voter turnout – General Dwight Eisenhower demonstrated his broad voter appeal by defeating Senator Robert A. Taft – widely known as  ”Mr. Republican” – who had been favored to win the nomination and on the Democratic side when Senator Estes Kefauver defeated incumbent President Harry S. Truman –  leading Truman to abandon his campaign for a second term of his own. In 1968 Senator Eugene McCarthy nearly defeated President Lyndon Johnson – sending a strong message that had Johnson declaring:  ”I shall not seek, and will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

Many Greater Lowell legislators made a big mistake in 2011. My State Representative, James Arciero, was one of them. In this column, I will offer them a chance to do something right in 2012.

People who should be saving for the future are instead gambling on their future. The state legislature can help solve that problem.

The savings rate in the United States is too low. After the Great Depression and through the mid eighties the personal savings rate was around 10 percent. In subsequent years, the rate fell sharply. During brief periods it even went negative – we were spending more than our income.

During the Great Recession, the savings rate increased, but only to 5 percent. Despite the recovery being weak, people are again saving less. The personal saving rate was only 3.5 percent in November.

Insufficient saving is bad for individuals and bad for the overall economy in the long run. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the problem is most severe for low-income families.

Among other reasons, the poor do not save because:
- they often have nothing left to save after spending on necessities,
- they know a modest hard-saved bank account can be wiped out with just one unexpected financial hardship,
- they typically get much lower returns or negative returns after bank fees,
- saving implies thinking about the future whereas the poor are struggling to make it through the present,
- they are encouraged to spend by both Madison Ave. and Pennsylvania Ave.

Consider a household with an annual income of $350,000 (the cutoff for the top 1 percent). It should be very easy for them to save 10 percent of their income. If they use a workplace 401-K, they may get matching contributions. If their investments do well they could be millionaires within a decade. If they are cautious it will take two decades.

Now think about someone making $35,000. It puts them well above the poverty level but becoming a millionaire seems like a fantasy. Assume they somehow manage to put aside 10 percent of their income. Assume they somehow avoid excessive bank fees on accounts with low balances. Assume they get an interest rate of 2 percent. It will still take them about 100 years to accumulate a million dollars.

I think about this when I see people spending their hard-earned money at Tedeschi buying lottery tickets like they are candy. They would be better off buying a little candy and saving the rest. However, even with almost impossible odds, getting rich quick seems more plausible for low-income earners than building a nest egg through a disciplined saving program.

There is a non-profit based in Boston called the D2D Fund (Doorways to Dreams – see www.d2dfund.org). Their goal is to help low-income earners save.

One technique they use is prize-linked savings. People like winning prizes (see the lottery above). If savings institutes link a raffle or lottery to making deposits, people are more likely to save. Participants cannot lose their savings, but they can win a bonus. Prize-linked savings programs have been successful in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and recently in the United States.

A program called “Save to Win” debuted in Michigan in 2009. By depositing only $25 in an interest-bearing account, savers qualify for prizes. The program has expanded significantly with 50 credit unions now participating. The idea is spreading to other states.

The problem: prize-linked savings accounts would violate Massachusetts state law. It is not because we need to protect investors from banks running gambling operations. It is because the state wants to protect its control over lotteries.

Yes, the Commonwealth that generates about $900 million in “profit” per year via lottery sales, and the state legislature that last year authorized three resort casinos, will not allow a Boston-based non-profit to offer savings accounts that have prizes attached.

Massachusetts is not the only state to prohibit prize-linked savings. However, some states, including Rhode Island and Maine, have changed their laws.

In the recently released book Poor Economics, MIT researchers study incentive systems that help fight poverty. One issue they focus on is the time inconsistency problem: “we think about the present very differently than we think about the future.” They offer that: “incentives can push individuals to take some action that they themselves consider desirable but perpetually postpone taking… the key challenge is to design ‘nudges’ tailored to the environment.”

That is the idea behind a savings match program offered by Community Teamwork here in Lowell. By opening an Individual Development Account (IDA) and meeting savings goals, members can get matching funds for buying a home, paying for education, or starting a business. An important component of the program is financial literacy.

Federal funding and private funds raised by Community Teamwork have helped many of the 46 IDA participants buy a home, go back to school, or save enough to put themselves in a position to do so. As program director Christina Santos-Gordon says, “people’s lives are forever changed.”

Programs like those offered by Doorways to Dreams could forever change many lives without the need for outside funding.

There are already an estimated three hundred thousand people with a gambling problem in Massachusetts. (I just went to the mass.gov web site and the top item under most requested links was the lottery results.) In a UMass-Dartmouth poll, 51 percent of respondents thought casinos would increase gambling addiction. The answer should have been 100 percent. A National Gambling Impact Study Commission found that people are twice as likely to get addicted if they live within 50 miles of a casino. Wouldn’t it be better to get people hooked on saving?

Lotteries, and soon casinos, are an extremely regressive form of taxation. A study by the National Center for Policy Analysis reports that high-income earners spend less than 1 percent of their income on gambling. Low-income earners spend over 10 percent. Shouldn’t the state do something progressive for those most vulnerable to the lure of compulsive gambling?

Representative Arciero has agreed to file legislation to enable prize-linked savings. I suggest you contact your state legislators and ask them to support it.

The lessons on driving safely, paying attention, following the rules of the road, noting the particular hazards of a roadway, being courteous, having patience, avoiding the distractions of phone calls and texting and wearing your seatbelt hold true whether driving on Route 114, Route 495, Andover Street or on the Hunts Falls Bridge.

Read the Alex Bloom article “Accident alley: Rte. 114 turns from rural to deadly” here at eagletribune.com.

From the article:

For the first time in decades, the Legislature managed to create new state legislative and US congressional districts that, by and large, put the voters’ interests above the politicians’.

Read it here at boston.com. – “Mass. voting maps reflect State House evolution”

Take a look at our past blog post and comments from MassMoments on the history of the gerrymander: http://www.richardhowe.com/2011/02/11/massmoments-birth-of-the-gerrymander/

I took this photo a year ago trying to give a sense of that crazy winter weather to family and friends living in Florida and elsewhere. Remnants of the snowfall of December 26, 2010 through January, February, March and April of 2012 lasted well into Spring.

This morning at 10 I’ll be speaking at the Chelmsford Public Library at 25 Boston Road about the coming of the American Civil War. The talk is free and open to the public so please join us if you’re able. More information is available on the library website.

The next regular breakfast meeting of Greater Lowell Area Democrats - the first in the New Year - will be held tomorrow – Saturday January 14, 2012 – at 8am SHARP at the Independence Grill at the Radisson Hotel in Chelmsford.

The regular agenda will include updates and discussion on: ward/town caucuses for the 2012 convention delegate selection (training at the meeting); the race for U.S Senate nomination; the Presidential Primary locally and nation-wide; dates and deadlines for local ward and town committee reorganization; redistricting results; national convention delegate selection caucuses – and other topics on the minds of members.

At 9am there will be a caucus training/discussion session for the 2012 Massachusetts Democratic Convention delegate selection caucuses scheduled to be held locally between February 11 and February 20  to be followed by a brief discussion and training session for use of Votebuilder. It’s important to review all the rules, discuss the minor changes approved by the DSC, and answer any questions about the process.

GLAD Members, Associates and interested Democrats are invited to attend the GLAD meetings along with elected and appointed officials.

Directions: Independence Grill at the Radisson Hotel – Exit 34/Rte. 495 – take right off Rte 110 at the hotel sign / parking in front and behind the hotel.