Blue Mass Group

After reading the Boston Globe description, the transportation reform bill appears to be a missed opportunity.

Boston Globe Transportation Reform Bill

Let the celebration begin because there entity called the MA Turnpike Authority is now called the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.

Reform!!!

Earlier this year, Representative Barney Frank filed H.R. 1255, a very simple residents and family rights bill.  All this one-page bill does is give the most basic of rights – it requires notification to the parents and guardians of the nation’s most profoundly disabled people with developmental disabilities who reside in Intermediate Care Facilities (ICF-MRs) of federally-funded class action lawsuits and the ability to opt-out of such lawsuits if they so desire.

You can read the bill and the list of the current 34 sponsors (which enjoys true bipartisan support) here:

http://www.govtrack.us/congres…

This week our friends at Democracy For America are announcing another round of winners for their Netroots Nation scholarship contest. If you weren’t on the list of winners and you can’t find the money/time/energy to get to Pittsburgh August 13 to 16 for the convention, don’t despair…there is another way!

For the third year in a row we’ll be taking advantage of the rich multimedia capabilities of Second Life to bring you live streaming audio and video from Netroots Nation right to your own computer monitor. Through Second Life we’re able to bring you not only streaming video, but also real time discussion and participation in the panels from the comfort of your own home, exclusive online panels and information displays from nonprofit organizations, online retailers and great progressive companies. Oh, and did we mention it’s free?

Join us over the fold and we’ll walk you through the particulars of how to participate and how to support our work with sponsorships.

ATTENTION PATRIOTS:

This Saturday, June 20th the Worcester Tea Party will be hosting a RALLY FOR RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT from noon to 3 in Worcester’s Elm Park. Among the speakers scheduled for the Rally for Responsible Government are:

·Chip Faulkner, Assistant Director of the Citizens for Limited Taxation

·Todd Feinburg, Morning Co-Host on WRKO Radio

·David G. Tuerck, Executive Director of The Beacon Hill Institute and Chairman, Department of Economics, Suffolk University

·Nicholas Sanchez, Professor of Economics, College of the Holy Cross

·Carla Howell, President of the Center for Small Government

·Kamal Jain, an expert in government transparency.

This event is free and open to the public.  Citizens are encouraged to arrive early and to bring chairs or blankets and a picnic lunch.  

This rally is a family event and will include FREE ARTS AND CRAFTS and FACE PAINTING for children.  Attendees may bring pro-economic freedom, anti-overspending signs.  For more information visit www.worcesterteaparty.com or visit the Worcester Tea Party Facebook page.

I know the GLBT community is more than simply frustrated with Obama w.r.t. GLBT issues.  He campaigned on removing DADT, and his administration’s pro-DADT comments have been ugly.  He’s cozied up to Rick Warren, who (a) made homophobic comments, (b) supported homophobic issues at the ballot like Prop 8, and then (c) lied about it.  Just recently, he meekly threw the GLBT a bone the size of a splinter when it became clear that a fund raiser was going to bomb due to his inaction on GLBT issues thus far.

Frankly, Obama’s been a dud on these important civil rights.

So, what’s he got to do (with poll)?

Now I’m old enough to remember open, around the clock conference committees, and frankly am rather relieved that I do not carry on my back the job of listening to the public debate in the conference committee, listening to the private speculations of conference committee members who might be supporting my clients priorities in executive session, and then trying to weigh the relative importance of those public and private remarks so I could translate it all to my clients and give them an honest guess at what might emerge. Sometimes I guessed right and was a brilliant analyst and sometimes I guessed wrong and was clearly not “in the loop” .

Nobody’s in the Bunker on this Bunker Hill Day — all the key players in the loop are in the State House trying to pick up a scrap of information from anybody who might know anything about any of the remaining “Big 3” conference committees (Ethics, Transportation and Budget).

Reporters and lobbyists monitor the usual and secret routes between the Ways and Means Committee offices, the Speakers office, the Senate Presidents office and the Governor’s office looking for W&M staff or Members shuttling back and forth as they try to nail down the final details in three different conference committee reports, each one extraordinarily complex and complicated in it’s own right and inter connected to each other besides. 

crossposted at ONE Massachusetts

This is a big loss.

North Shore Music Theatre, which during its heyday was the largest nonprofit theater in the region, announced yesterday that it failed to raise enough money to reopen this summer and will close for good.

In addition to the folks who had already subscribed and probably won’t get their money back, there are just a lot of people who won’t get to see good theatre.

The closing leaves a huge hole in the arts scene on the North Shore, where as many as 350,000 people a year attended the theater’s slate of lavishly produced musicals staged in the round.

I saw a bunch of shows at that theatre.  They were great — well staged, well performed, just really enjoyable.  And, of course, the closing of the theatre is the loss of a significant economic engine in that region as well.  A lot of people worked there; a lot of people bought tickets and spent money in other ways there.

Now, the article identifies a couple of circumstances that go beyond just being hit hard by the economic collapse of late 2008 (big fire in 2005 that left the theatre in debt, and unexpectedly poor ticket sales for a 2008 show).  So hopefully this isn’t a harbinger of things to come for other arts organizations.  

Still, there is actually something you can do to help.  To the flip….

Hello BMGrs, Although I regularly read Blue Mass Group, today’s post is my first. I know many of you are deeply concerned about the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan. This issue remains at the top of Congress’ agenda and we have been debating additional war funding for some time now. Last night, the House passed the Conference Report for H.R. 2346: Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009, which provides funds sought by the Administration. I voted against this bill because I just don’t think it gets us closer to ending these conflicts. I really do believe that President Obama will change the course of the wars and I did struggle over whether to support this bill as a show of support for him. Ultimately, my decision came down to the fact that, as I write this, I think our policies toward Iraq and Afghanistan are inadequately formulated. I hope and expect that to change, but right now I have too many unanswered questions over how we will bring an end to these conflicts. I was concerned that a vote in support of H.R. 2346 might imply that I accept the current situation as is. I don’t. However, I certainly am [...]

(Cross-posted from Blue News Tribune. Blame sabutai for putting me in a metamood.) Here is something I am tempted to call misguided activism: http://www.jennymccarthybodyco… But is it? It certainly gets one’s attention. It got me thinking about the state of activism in the Obama era. For one thing, I didn’t hear a single Democrat mention John Ensign yesterday. If he were a Democrat (and this were June 2001), the GOP would howl. So all hail leftist restraint, or maybe leftist prioritizing. But sometimes, I must admit, I miss the delirious, joyous defiance that was Queer Nation (“We’re here, and we’re queer!”). They are alleged to have stormed into St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and thrown holy water on to the ground to protest the Catholic Church stance on gays. At the time, even pro-gay rights people were offended by Queer Nation. One person argued to me that they kept some people in the closet, because they didn’t want to be associated with that type of militancy (this anecdote was given without examples). But here is what I remember: President George H.W. Bush saying he had no problems with gays, just the militant ones. He wouldn’t have said that if [...]

How do you solve a problem like Scot Lehigh? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? Yes, the CBO costed out a not-finished, in-progress, incomplete version of a Senate health care bill, and found it wanting. That's to be patched up, but it's a real, substantive issue. But to Lehigh,  A bigger issue, however, is whether liberal overreach will get in the way of possible bipartisan accomplishment. The critical issue there centers on proposals for some kind of public plan for health coverage. Oh really? Liberal overreach? Overreach supported by at least 65% of the public. Some overreach. Sounds more like a mandate to me — something for which you'd get punished if you didn't do it. No, don't you see, the real goal is bipartisanship. You see, we have to compromise with people who, explicitly or implicitly, don't want health care reform to pass, in order to pass health care reform. And is this sequence not a perfect example of circular logic? Different proposals float around for restricting public plans in ways designed to ensure fair competition. But though the design is tricky, the political test is simple: a bill that can clear the Senate without resorting [...]