Blue Mass Group

The opportunity for meaningful reform and actions that bring transparency and encourage civic engagement, raise the ethical bar in politics and serve the public good come along from time-to-time on Beacon Hill.  Those opportunities came and went last week with barely as moment’s notice as the majority party on Beacon Hill, the Status-quotocrats voted against meaningful reforms.

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In his recently re-publicized rebuke to John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, Milton Friedman neatly but inadvertently articulates the failings of the American brand of free-market conservatism.  Friedman makes the classic conservative mistake of confusing public service with public servitude, responsibility for others with an abdication of responsibility for one’s self.  In his classic line, “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country,” Kennedy is speaking of the country as the collection of individuals who compose it – he asks each of us, individually, to ask what we can do for those around us, our national family.  This is a rejection of the state as patron and a rejection of the state as an end in itself.  There is no master-slave relationship here; any more than there is a grantor of favors.  There is only a mutual responsibility that transcends our self-interest.  This is the concept Friedman cannot countenance:

In a much quoted passage in his inaugural address, President Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic “what your country can do for you” implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, “what you can do for your ‘country” implies the government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary.

To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served. He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.

The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather “What can I and my compatriots do through government” to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom?

   Forget all the democratic propagated drivel about how tea partiers are for less government, thusly less taxes. Well that’s true.   But about the “All for myself, the hell with everyone else”.THAT IS JUST A PLAIN FLAT OUT BOLDFACED LIE.   I had the honor of attending a spaghetti supper fundraiser for a friend whose house burned down last month. My friend is a well known Republican, who is also a tea party force in her area.   Over 200 people crowded into a small Polish hall to dine, mingle with good friends, and make some new ones all to help out a friend in need.   EVERYTHING was donated. From local businesses, to just plain individuals wanting to help.   So much for the awful stereotypes promoted by democrats who want to cut social service to our most needy, and just want to “hack” for their own gain.   I’d much rather cast my lot with people who show they care about their neighbor, rather than democrats who now only just talk a good game.

Supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas did not report his wife’s income from conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, as required by law.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife’s income from a conservative think tank on financial disclosure forms for at least five years, the watchdog group Common Cause said Friday.

Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation’s IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled “none” where “spousal noninvestment income” would be disclosed.

. . .

Federal judges are bound by law to disclose the source of spousal income, according to Stephen Gillers, a professor at NYU School of Law. Thomas’ omission – which could be interpreted as a violation of that law – could lead to some form of penalty, Gillers said.

“It wasn’t a miscalculation; he simply omitted his wife’s source of income for six years, which is a rather dramatic omission,” Gillers said. “It could not have been an oversight.”

Bob Massie will be speaking at the Concord Dems meeting 1/26/11

Background information on Robert Kinloch Massie:

Bob Massie has been working on issues of social justice, business, governance, and sustainability for more than twenty-five years.  Massie received his bachelor of arts degree from Princeton University in 1978, magna cum laude, and his master’s degree in social and theological ethics from Yale Divinity School in 1982.  

In part as a response to the Citizens United SCOTUS decision, Vermont may propose a Constitutional amendment removing personhood from corporations.

In Vermont, state senator Virginia Lyons earlier today presented an anti-corporate personhood resolution for passage in the Vermont legislature. The resolution, the first of its kind, proposes “an amendment to the United States Constitution … which provides that corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States.”  Sources in the state house say it has a good chance of passing.

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The language in the Lyons resolution is unabashed. “The profits and institutional survival of large corporations are often in direct conflict with the essential needs and rights of human beings,” it states, noting that corporations “have used their so-called rights to successfully seek the judicial reversal of democratically enacted laws.”