Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Where’s the EMERGENCY!

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 I don’t see foreign troops down the street.

I don’t see anything wrong outside my window.

I just took a ride outside in my wheelchair, seems like a normal day.

We have not had two senators in Congress this year. Or in 2004, or in 1980.

Why is the governor drastically overstepping his power for partisan party politics?  

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    • Where’s the emergency? I do not consider partisan politics an emergency. If John Kerry didn’t consider unemployed Americans important enough in 2004, I see no emergency in 2009. You forgot that our legislature did not consider it an emergengy yesterday. Democrats too!

      • Are you refering to the emergency clause that allows it to take effect immediately rather than in 90 days?  In that case we’d have to wait for almost Christmas and some important votes will have been taken by then, and we’d almost have an elected Senator.  It’s not “emergency” as in 911 life-or-death, but I would say it’s urgent.  As far as I can tell an “emergency” is whatever the legislature says it is.  The Constitution also says the Governor can convene the General Court in “extraordinary” circumstances, but leaves that ultimately to his discretion.  The Governor may have asked for emergency declaration, but the legislature still had to grant it.  Getting both to concur is how laws are made; sorry if you don’t like it.

        •  Senator John Kerry skipped a vote to extend unemployment benefits. I bet the families were considering it an “emergency”. Not John kerry, he spent the day campaigning. The other candidates made it back to DC to vote.
          I gotta admire how you dems can keep perpetuating the myth that you’re “for the workers” All I see you out for is your own fat wallets.
          BTW: The legislature didn’t grant it, Galvin did. If I’m wrong, I’d like to know the dems that turned tail and ran back.  

          • You might have forgotten. The Senate Republicans, in no manner deficient in partisanship and its sly uses, specifically juggled the Senate calendar to make things as inconvenient for Senator Kerry as possible.

            The following floats freely above facts or substantiation:

            I gotta admire how you dems can keep perpetuating the myth that you’re “for the workers” All I see you out for is your own fat wallets.

            Are you telling us that the blessed, big-hearted Republicans needed Kerry’s vote to extend unemployment benefits?

            •  John Edwards made it back. Bob Graham made it back. Joe Lieberman made it back. John Kerry was too busy thinking of himself! As usual.
              I have nothing in common with the National GOP.But change has to come from somewhere, certainly not you folks.

              • BTW, how can you be a registered Republican and claim not to have anything in common with the national party?  I know for a fact you agree with their positions on choice and gay rights…

                •  That choice is between the parents. Nobody else.
                  And marriage equality for ALL. With our laws as they stand now, my choice is marriage or life. I picked life.

  4. Pick out pretty much any chapter of the Mass General Laws- use the annotated version, which gives you a history of amendments to the laws. There are plenty of instances where laws were enacted or amended with an emergency preamble. One that comes to mind was when they changed the drinking age from 20 to 21 (or maybe from 18 to 20). Were there foreign troops in the street at that time?
    I’m pretty sure that the definition of an “emergency” is not only limited to imminent threats to life, limb, or liberty.  

      • I don’t have my annotated MGL’s handy, but yes, the age went down from 21 to 18, in the early ’70s, and then I think it went up from 18 to 20 in the late ’70s, and then from 20 to 21 in the early ’80s. Maybe someone else has a better memory, than I do. But in any event, there was an emergency preamble to the law that changed the drinking age.  

  5. “It’s OK, Governor Romney we got it. Thanks”

    <

    p>

    Former Republican Governor Mitt Romney used the emergency provision 14 times, Galvin added, including to increase the boating speed limit in Charlton and to change the office of town moderator in Milton.

    <

    p>Emergency over, Governor Romney went back to campaigning. In South Carolina.

  6. about this thread: that any of us is bothering to argue with billxi.

    <

    p>We really are desperate for a digestible news story.  

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