Blue Mass Group

Another interpretation (0 Replies)

The total lack of enforcement provides very little incentive for cyclists of any age to bother stopping. You have almost zero chance of ever being stopped by a cop and then will almost always get a warning. Even if you get some kind of fine, it won’t affect your insurance or driving license.

Having said that, I have no problem with some relaxation of the stopping laws for bikes, but I don’t think anyone complaining about cyclists running lights/stop signs is talking about people going slowly through a stop sign when there is little or no cross traffic. I have no problem with that. I just don’t want them blowing through red lights at high speed as I am crossing the intersection in my car or running me over when I am in the cross walk.

The penalties and enforcement are different (0 Replies)

Currently the law is rarely enforced for pedestrians and cyclists in Boston and the penalties are much lower than they are for motorists (assuming they get an actual ticket and not just a warning).

A $20 fine would be far less than a motorist would have to pay for a ticket for failing to stop, and we all know that cops aren’t going to be ticketing very many cyclists even under the new rules, so I don’t think this is such a big deal. Police already have the capability to exercise their judgement when choosing who to pull over and usually don’t snag people who are going 5 miles over the limit or who just caught the tail end of a yellow light. I would hope they would exercise the same judgement with cyclists.

Not entirely convinced (0 Replies)

I do not think that signing a ballot is exactly the same as a vote, but personally I would not sign for someone that I would not be willing to vote for. I don’t necessarily believe there is anything wrong with allowing people to sign more than one nominating petition, but I am not convinced the current rule is necessarily all that bad or is really disenfranchising anyone. As I said, even with this rule in place, I assert that anyone who is not organized and determined enough to obtain 3000 valid signatures would have had little hope of winning.

As to error rates, if you tell people up front they can only sign one petition, then most people will remember if they have already signed one, so I don’t think the error rate argument is a particularly strong one.

I would like to hear an explanation of the rational behind the current rule. Is it meant to discourage some type of fraud in which signature companies could gather a set of people who will sign any petition for a fee? Was it specifically intended to drive down the number of people who will be able to get enough signatures? Does anyone know the history behind this?

Not sure I think the rule is bad (4 Replies)

One could argue that perhaps one’s last signature should count instead of the first, since you might have a better idea of who you would prefer, but that would be logistically more difficult and would leave candidates with uncertainty about whether their signatures would hold up. I do think that signature gatherers should be required to tell you that you may only nominate one person, because currently they do not always do that.

In any case, I would argue that if you cannot manage to gather 3000 signatures, whatever the reason, you have absolutely no chance of getting enough support to win the office. That really is not that large a number for a city of >600K,000 citizens.

But to be fair (1 Reply)

I am not aware of any liberal political group trying to register themselves as a tax-exempt organization. It is quite possible that there are many more conservative groups trying to do this than liberal ones.

It is also not unusual for the IRS to target a particular subgroup that has been previously identified as stretching or breaking the rules. The problem in this case is that the subgroup comes from a particular political philosophy. Obviously, they should have thought twice before doing this, even if someone genuinely believed that tea party groups deserved extra scrutiny.

You have to admin that groups that are adamantly against taxation are probably more likely to find questionable ways around paying taxes.

Let's see what Gomez has to say (0 Replies)

This is an election. We don’t have time to wait for what the IRS has to say, especially since Republicans would instantly accuse Obama for abusing his authority if the IRS actually said anything about this case before the election.

The issue is now public. It is entirely up to Gomez to explain it to satisfaction of the voters. In the meantime, we can feel entirely free to speculate. That’s politics.

Still no evidence (1 Reply)

You have presented absolutely no evidence that Markey is not saying what he personally believes. You are the one making the claim, so it is up to you to present evidence, not for us to prove that Markey said something similar in the past. This is an extremely rare issue, so it is utterly ridiculous to suggest that we assume that Markey would have been on the public record on it in the past.

Go ahead and argue that Markey was wrong. I have no problem with that, but it is totally bogus to assert that he is pandering without providing some more evidence that is so.

What stupid logic (0 Replies)

If being on a government list automatically leads to repression then I guess we should all refuse to identify ourselves for the census? Right?

I see absolutely no reason why the government should not keep track of who has any thing that might present a harm to other citizens, including guns, ammo, explosive materials, toxic chemicals, nuclear waste, dangerous animals, or whatever.

Yes, I am sure there are plenty gun owners with paranoid fears of the government, but I don’t see why we have to pay any more attention to that than fears that the UN is going to invade Texas or that the Boston Marathon bombing was actually a government black-op.

West Roxbury/Roslindale (2 Replies)

Plenty of sign holders for Lynch at the Holy Name rotary, which hosts voting for multiple precincts, but very few actual voters. Turnout looks to be extremely low there. Markey has zero campaign presence in this neighborhood, so hopefully that is a good sign.

There were quite a number of mayoral campaign signs up, and Dan Conley was there shaking hands next to a woman handing out Dan Connolly literature.

Way too generous (1 Reply)

I don’t know if a month is long enough for him to learn his lesson, or if he is even psychologically capable of learning a lesson. I hope your trigger finger is quicker the next time he transgresses (and we all know that he will).