Interview with Grace Ross

Political Grind recently had the opportunity to interview Grace Ross, the Green-Rainbow Party candidate for Governor in Massachusetts. All of us at Political Grind thank you for your time and wish you the best on November 7th.

“Grace Ross has been a life-long activist working with diverse, low-income leaders to abolish poverty and on progressive causes from nonviolence, the environment, and international solidarity to anti-racist struggles, women’s rights, union organizing and gay/lesbian civil rights. She grew up in New York, came to Harvard for college and graduate work and found her home in the streets and primarily low-income communities’ struggle for survival and justice. She is a white lesbian living in Worcester.”

You can visit the Grace Ross/Martina Robinson campaign site at graceandmartina.org

Political Grind:
In a time where our nation seems to become further divided on an almost daily basis, the Commonwealth also appears to be growing apart from itself through increasing disparity in education, wealth, and overall socio-economic mobility. As a candidate, what single issue do you consider most vital that we address in order to curb this growing disparity in Massachusetts? How would you approach that issue?

Grace Ross:
Putting the resources of the state toward the revitalization of our local community economies. Small businesses are facing a similar economic disparity toward larger and larger corporations. We have to reverse the negative economic spiral our local economies are in by supporting small business development and creating policies that put more money into the hands of regular people. Money spent locally passes through 7 hands on average before it leaves our communities as opposed to money spent at a big box company for instance. And small business owners also spend their money locally. So we need to increase minimum wage, move to single payer health care to lift the health care insurance burden off of individuals, small business owners and local municipalities, move to locally owned and controlled renewable energy – and thus create reinforcing positive economic spiral for our local economies.

Political Grind:
Since PoliticalGrind is a site that seems to appeal to a younger generation of politically active citizens, global warming is an issue very important to our audience. As a society we have reached a point where there is no ignoring the reality that something to curb global warming must be done in the coming years. Our next Governor will have access to some of the world’s most elite academic and industrial resources regarding alternative energy. How would you utilize this opportunity to evoke change in the Commonwealth while potentially positioning Massachusetts as a world-leader in the alternative energy industry?Grace Ross:
Instead of dangerous delays & denial, we need political leadership to engage all of us in creating the change we need now! Engaging all of us in creating change successfully is what I am trained in and best at!

Conservation: replacing light bulbs, appliances, weather-proofing, and moving to Green Building Standards for new building and renovation. We must plant and protect trees to shield our homes & streets – a tree over a house means 15 % lower energy use to cool and 10% lower to heat. We can cut our current energy use and utility bills 30-50%.

Renewable energy: replacing huge oil, coal & nuclear plants with local wind, solar & water energy. Most of our shoreline has winds of 15 miles per hour – perfect for wind generation and reasonable and thoughtful windmills could fuel much of our energy needs. Solar panels on millions of unused roofs – cuts our bills, gives a durable, locally or individually controlled energy source. 100 to 300 of the state’s damns can be used for low-flow hydro-power. Co-generation technologies can further cut energy use. With low and no-interest loans to get small business, home owners and our municipal governments over the initial invest hump, we can support a fast transition to renewable energy with repayment of costs in 3 to 7 years in most cases. Our energy needs are more than covered!

Transportation will take longer. I will foster regional planning initiatives to address transportation. But we move first to public transportation for people needing it most & create a ridership base, then we create an interlocking public system so people get out of cars, its easier to replace with less polluting technology and healthier for us all. We use bus routes first to identify movement patterns and then shift to light rail and pools of cars like zip cars and common destinations so people can finish their trips in a vehicle if necessary.

The state must partner with local communities and provide needed resources to move to effect cluster development and in-filling to create neighborhood-style housing construction and then use easements, eminent domain and purchasing to protect remaining wetlands. Moving to neighborhood development is better for people, our environment with easier public transportation and conservation solutions. And as global warming brings more flooding, we will need those wetlands to back up flood waters and let them drain more naturally over longer periods of time.

This plan creates thousands of good paying jobs, and will create an immediate local market to nurture our local Mass renewable energy and conservation industries so they are ready when the rest of the world comes knocking on our door. Along with universal health coverage which we will need more than ever with global warming, all of us can survive!

Political Grind:
Both people and businesses are leaving Massachusetts. Explanations as to why this is happening range everywhere from people being over-taxed, to our economy becoming overcrowded with college graduates, to industry being unable to produce enough quality jobs. What do you see as the root cause of the “Mass-exodus” and how as Governor will you stop it?Grace Ross:
The problem is both the high cost of living – especially housing and utility costs and the fact that our incomes have not kept pace with these costs. We need living wages and real revitalization of our local businesses and economies to improve the income side (see living wages below). And we must move to locally controlled, renewable energy to bring down utility costs.

To address housing costs, I will do the following:

We need to move away from economic policies that focus on huge for-profit developers, scattered development and absentee ownership. For example, Fallon’s huge downtown hotel development was built on land provided at a reduced rate and he went bragging about the millions he had gotten in tax breaks – this kind of development gives huge subsidy to those who need it least and will make windfall profits while providing neither the needed tax base for the rest of us nor serving our housing needs. In my economic plan, we will shift those same resources into local development, non-profit and genuinely affordable development, neighborhood infrastructure (which also supports small, local business development) – soft second, public housing renovation, renovation of brown fields and boarded up downtowns providing local, higher paying jobs and supporting green-development to help save our environment. The Boston Redevelopment Authority needs to stop making bargain land deals with huge developers and help us instead to revitalize our local housing stock, renovate boarded up buildings and increase our housing stock to bring down the market and support municipal initiatives to limit huge rent increases. We will put state dollars into the housing trust fund and support local, mostly non-profit developers who can provide home-ownership options for those making less than $50K per year and rents that are even affordable for lower income families. We will pursue the paint companies and clean up our lead paint problems. We need as well to address the income side and increase minimum wage to a living wage which will also help small businesses and get money back into the pockets of local people and businesses who spend their money locally.

Political Grind:
Massachusetts is currently struggling to provide the funding necessary to maintain the same quality schools and infrastructure that we’ve had in our past. This is an issue that has forced many local cities and towns to drastically increase property taxes in order to keep up the status quo in their communities. Knowing this, how can a Governor cut back the income tax rate in Massachusetts without further harming local governments? No candidate in this race has yet explained how a tax cut could be beneficial to the people. We have only been reminded that the people had voted for a break on a measure several years ago. Knowing that there is a lot more to a tax cut than just giving back each person a few hundred dollars, do you believe that Massachusetts can really afford such a cut? Please share your thoughts on the issue, and let us hear how the cut would/wouldn’t be beneficial to voters.Grace Ross:
With a 42% average in crease in property taxes (passed on to renters by landlords), a hike in excise taxes, a 47% increase in tuition and fees at state colleges, the sixteen years of the “no new tax” pledge has been a lie. With the trend of increasing bonds to borrow money at the state level to cover needs? With the proposed ‘T’ fare increases for the Boston area? With the cuts in state services across the board, and most particularly in the schools where parents now have to pay “fees” for programs and services that were once a given?

The Massachusetts Green-Rainbow candidates for state office will not sign any “No New Taxes” pledge because they understand that the pledge is merely a slogan to disguise taxes that have been shifted away from the wealthy and the corporations onto the backs of the middle and lower income voters who use public services and therefore must now pay for them. The Green Rainbow slate of candidates understands that real tax relief results from tax equity the key to which lies in the reduction of regressive taxes and abolishing corporate welfare. By adopting real tax relief, the Commonwealth can raise revenue by greater than 15% while reducing the tax burden for more than 80% of its citizens. Currently the total tax burden for the wealthiest 1% is but 4.6% of its income. Everyone else pays nearly 8% or more.

The income tax method in Massachusetts is allegedly “flat”, but because the state has been unwilling to raise revenues evenly and responsibly, our total tax burden is anything but flat. Because of the rise in property and excise taxes and proliferating usage fees, ordinary folks are now subsidizing the wealthiest among us, even as our communities are strangled and starving. Moreover the increasing bonds merely shift the tax burden to those who are not yet voters; our children and grandchildren.

The bottom 60% of Massachusetts voters who are also still in a recession (worse off than in 2001) pay more in property and other taxes and fees than their income taxes. In fact, the biggest drain the wallets of middle and low income citizens is the total accumulated cost of property tax, excise tax, the sales tax, and the many fees one needs to pay simply to live in this state. An example of just a few of these fees, which are really disguised taxes, are fees levied on: Driver’s license renewal, vehicle registration, homestead protection, sewer service, kindergarten enrollment in many communities, participation in school sports, music, art or other “frills”. Combine these “fees” with increases sales tax, excise tax, tangible property tax, and income tax, everyday folks are paying - as a portion of annual income - far more than the wealthiest among us for far less public services than were enjoyed by our parents.

We must restructure our tax system to require those at the top to pay the same as those at the bottom and create circuit breaker so people can take their property taxes off their state taxes as we move to rebuild our local economies an dput money back into local aid. We must close corporate tax loopholes such as the Raytheon and Fidelity tax breaks, and institute combined reporting and stop the tax breaks and infrastructure deals for siting huge corporations.

Political Grind:
In the most recent debate, you seemed adamant about not only an increase in minimum wage, but a drastic increase. In light of Washington’s complete neglect to raise wages since 1997, what do you propose as a fair and feasible wage increase that could help the people of Massachusetts? How will this increase benefit everyone over time?Grace Ross:
Small businesses, studies show, thrive when workers thrive. Working people need a living wage for a minimum wage or workers will continue to leave. Workers and small business owners spend it locally (not putting it in off-shore tax shelters); it will increase productivity which is most critical to our small businesses and like closing tax loopholes for huge corporations, balance the playing field for smaller businesses. I will cushion significant minimum wage increases with small business supports in the transition. Small business support and living wages will infuse money into our local economies which economists tell us cycles seven times before leaving our communities – creating a spiraling increase in local economies instead of present policies which continually starve them.

Political Grind:
You seem to be in favor of a Health-Care plan that goes even further than the recent legislation passed earlier this year. While many would welcome a plan that is even more drastic and beneficial to the average person, how could you possibly package your universal plan in a way where the State House would work with you?Grace Ross:
The legislation passed by the legislature (Chapter 58) and their public commitment to it will be a hurdle. However, they also know that this legislation was never touted to address spiraling health care costs – and even the big business journals I have spoken with know that they cannot even afford continually increasing health care costs. We have seen another jump in costs even since the passage of Chapter 58. And the latest national survey puts the actual number of uninsured in Massachusetts at 500-700,000; chapter 58 was posited on figures more like 250,000 uninsured.

The very impossibility of ever making chapter 58 work will be the greatest advertising for a genuinely comprehensive plan which can be paid for through existing health care dollars. Even Healey and Patrick are proposing steps that are foundation elements of a real, government sponsored plan. Healey is proposing letting cities and town governments buy into the state’s group plan – and we have gotten business questionnaires asking for that option as well. Patrick has touted one streamlined insurance form (a provision in early versions of Chapter 58 which insurance lobbyists got removed) and bulk buying of prescriptions. Even they realize we must move in this direction. And many legislators know that we must have real universal, government sponsored healthcare.

I will get them there the same way I have worked with the legislature in the past – you engage those already ready to work with you from your first steps, and then together you take on the rest of the legislature and you reach for the support assistance of the people to convince those elected leaders who are reluctant to do what we all know is ultimately necessary and the best solution for the people of this Commonwealth.

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