Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

The poor MA GOP. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

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Do they really have to make it this easy?  It’s not even fun.  Well, maybe a little.  đŸ˜‰

Senate minority leader Richard Tisei has an op-ed in today’s Globe in which he castigates both the Governor and the legislature.  He is shocked! shocked! that, in a time of high unemployment and falling revenues, the legislature “is occupying itself with most trivial and frivolous issues.”  Here’s his oh-so-pious bottom line:

The Legislature should convene in emergency session to discuss what can be done to jump-start the Massachusetts economy, restructure government, and make service delivery more efficient.

But more importantly, we need to stop debating inconsequential legislation like the Fluffernutter bill and focus on doing everything we can to promote job growth and get the state’s economy back on track.

Oh, tut tut!  There’s that ol’ Fluffernutter bill again, every Republican’s favorite bugaboo.  Where’s Senator Barrios when we need him?

Sadly, elsewhere in today’s Globe, we learn the following:

Republican state lawmakers are pushing for a change in law that would require public elementary and high schools to instruct students on the proper use and display of the American flag…. The bill would mandate that schools also teach students about “the proper etiquette, the correct use and display of the flag.” The proposal is set to come up at a public hearing Tuesday at the State House. The bill is cosponsored by the five Republican members of the Massachusetts Senate, including Scott Brown of Wrentham, a candidate for the special election to fill Edward M. Kennedy’s US Senate seat. (AP)

Ah.  A real job-creator, that one.  Focused like a laser beam on “what can be done to jump-start the Massachusetts economy, restructure government, and make service delivery more efficient.”  No doubt this bill — co-sponsored by Senator Tisei himself — has nothing to do with draping the Senate Republican caucus in the flag (fortunately, a fairly small flag would suffice) when one of its tiny number is running for US Senate.  Because as we all know, there has been an absolute epidemic lately of improper displays of the flag in public schools around the state, which has led directly to the drop in budget revenues.

Please, Senator Tisei.  Make it a little more challenging for us, will ya?

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Comments

  1. held hearings on ACORN in the Commonwealth
    so we can decide wither to defund them
    of the ~$35,000 in state funds this year?

    • But since they’ll do anything to support the democratic agenda, including illegal prostitution, it ain’t happening.

  2. Does the economy need jump starting?
    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…

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    p>

    Oct. 25 (Bloomberg) — The economy in the U.S. probably grew in the third quarter at the fastest pace in two years as government stimulus helped bring an end to the worst recession since the 1930s, economists said before reports this week.

  3. Does the economy need jump starting?
    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…

    <

    p>

    Oct. 25 (Bloomberg) — The economy in the U.S. probably grew in the third quarter at the fastest pace in two years as government stimulus helped bring an end to the worst recession since the 1930s, economists said before reports this week.

    • Is the recession over? Yes

      <

      p>Does the economy need jump starting? Yes

      <

      p>Low levels of economic growth do not translate into job growth because the labor pool constantly expands. So it’s not enough to stop the contraction.

      <

      p>Further, credit remains tight and the foreclosure & mortgage crisis has a few more bumps to go.

      • no politics either way, but commercial real estate is the next huge shoe to fall.  That will take out the regional banks.  Talk to people who know.

        <

        p>We ain’t out of the woods yet folks.

  4. …though I would be happy to teach proper flag etiquette.  I’m usually first to jump when I notice the US flag displayed incorrectly.

    • those pathetically faded flags shredding in the breeze from the sides of patriotic, petro-guzzling, carbon-farting SUVs?

      • …knock some sense into those who have a “God Bless America” bumper sticker on one side of the vehicle and a Confederate flag sticker on the other side!

  5. Of course, the filing of flag bill and the op-ed were not concurrant – rather, the Glob chose to report them simultaneously.  And, as you know, I am a big fan of adding civics to the curriculum as a matter of bona fide civic engagement.

    <

    p>That said, a piece of paper as a handout or a Scout or VFW official making a class visit shoudl suffice for flag ettiquette.  Does that REALLY require legislation?  Are the teachers of Mass. that for removed from civic decency that they need a LAW?

    • Tisei submitted his op-ed at the same time his flag bill is up for a hearing (this Tuesday).  The Globe (a) ran his op-ed when he wanted them to, and (b) ran the AP piece about the flag bill when it’s appropriate to do so given the upcoming hearing.  Hard to see a conspiracy there, unless Terry Murray and the Globe’s op-ed page touched base to time the hearing with the op-ed.

  7. Here are some things that violate the flag code:

    <

    p> * flag magnets or stickers on cars
    * flag or image of flag as component in clothing, ranging from pants to bikini to handkerchief on head.
    * hanging the flag over hood, trunk, or sides of a vehicle in a parade
    * No flags on napkins, on a box, or any other disposable or soil-able circumstance
    * no flag or flag image should be used as a part of any athletic uniform.  It may be used for military, police, fire, emergency, or patriotic uniforms and organizations.

    <

    p>

    <

    p>So, really?  The number of ways we violate the flag code in America is mind-boggling, and Tisei has just hit on the tip of the iceburg.

      • but let’s get real.  Walk through a teabagger rally and count the number of offenses in clothing and on autos.  Then go to the liberal rally of your choice and see if you can get to 20% of the same number of offenses per capita.

        <

        p>The right has draped themselves in the flag quite literally, and often in direct violation of the flag code.

        • I have seen nough liberals display the flag improperly to protest whatever. Hang ’em. And no, I don’t sing the Star Spangled Banner upon command.

    • A number of my peers were arrested and beaten by cops because they “desecrated” the flag by wearing it stitched to their shirts or across their butts. It seems that “desecration” has more to do with the message being wrapped in the flag than whatever the actual wrapping is.

      <

      p>I was taught, as a Boy Scout growing up in the Washington DC area, that if a flag so much as touched the ground that it had to be bundled up and delivered to the military to be burned. I wonder if our local flag-protectors include this in their contemplated new legislation.

      <

      p>By the way, traditional standards also prohibit flying the flag in the rain and after dark at commercial establishments. I seem to remember that a special exemption was carved out of the official flag-handling standards some time ago (during the Nixon years, as I recall) in the spirit of “patriotism” — it seems it was deemed “impractical” to take the jumbo-size flags down at night and in the rain.

      <

      p>Meanwhile, the flags that surround the base of the Washington Monument have been a magnet for patriotic fervor. The response of the US military to an early proposal by Republican Congressman Bob Wilson to require the military to arrange and conduct “appropriate ceremonies” for the raising and lowering of each of the fifty flags (begun daily in 1958, when fifty holders were installed although only 48 flags were needed at that time) was less enthusiastic than Rep. Wilson had hoped. The U.S. Army stated that (from the above history):

      [A] “proper” flag ceremony at the the Washingon Monumument would require 100 men to the raise the 50 flags, while lowering them would require 200 men and a brass band. These large numbers were required since, to be a proper military ceremony, all 50 flags would have to be raised and lowered at the same time.

      <

      p>The flags at the monument have remained flying 24 hours a day after Presidential Proclamation 4064, by President Nixon, on July 4, 1971. Speaking of irony, this came days after the June 30, 1971 ruling by the Supreme Court allowing the publication of the Pentagon Papers revealing the shocking (for its time) duplicity of the U.S. government. On June 22, 1971, the United States Senate passed a non-binding resolution urging the withdrawal of US troops by the end of the year. A month after the proclamation, on August 3, 1971, the US government admitted for the first time that 30,000 CIA-sponsored “irregulars” were operating in Laos. It seems that when Republicans get caught betraying everything that America stands for, they start bleating about the sanctity of the flag.

      <

      p>The irony of a party continuing to defend the sanctity of the flag itself after so thoroughly trashing the traditions it represents (most recently issuing formal White House directives calling for abuse, kidnapping, and torture) is particularly striking to me.

      • Flags can be flown after dark if illuminated by a spotlight and there are such things as all-weather flags.  I’ve been told that kissing the flag is an appropriate response to accidently touching the ground.  Boy Scouts is where I learned my flag etiquette as well (though the BSA Handbook gets the color symbolism wrong) and I developed a reputation as the flag expert in my troop.

  8. I’ve got bookmarks of the GOP’s funniest quotes:

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    p>Here’s one:

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    p>

    “Is this book fiction or nonfiction?” said Barney Keller, spokesman for the Massachusetts Republican Party. “Governor Patrick couldn’t get 81 legislators to vote for his casinos. Why does he think that 10,000 people would come to hear him speak? Next thing you know he’ll throw out the first pitch at Fenway and claim 30,000 people came to see him do it.”

    <

    p>And:

    <

    p>

    “If these are what Governor Patrick can claim as accomplishments, then watch out Steve Jobs,” said Barney Keller, spokesman for the state GOP. “Deval Patrick is about to claim credit for the new iPhone.”

    <

    p>Time to add fluffernutter onto the list.

  9. I would really like to see some attention paid to respect for the office of the Presidency of the United States.People who do not like this president can vote to not re-elect him at the next election. But the disrespect I see online for our President is unbelievable. Our President is just as much a symbol of the country as the flag is.

      • I’m sorry I cannot abide your equivalence because the polices of these two Presidents are not even close.

        <

        p>Bush invaded a country on the theory that preemptive wars are just if there’s a 1% chance that the country has a nuke.  Bush rolled out torture in Gitmo, Bagram, Abu Grhaib and CIA black cites. Honest to god torture.    These are policies so egregious I cannot separate the President who implemented them from their evil nature.  He is not an evil man but the death, destruction and torture he unleashed on the world was and is.  And we will pay for it.  

        <

        p>What is the nature of Obama’s presidency that raises his policies to this level of objection?

  10. Dartmouth just passed a by-law that mandates all usa pow state and town flags flown on town property must be made in U.S.A. This by-law was sposored by the Dartmouth Democratic Town Committee. All urge all DTCs to sponsor a by-law for their town. I think it is equally as important as teaching our kids flag etiquette

    • What’s so magical about a flag being made in America?  I mean, they cost next to nothing relative to the purchasing budgets of municipalities.  You want to have a bigger impact?  Require their vehicles are made in America.  Heck, requiring that their buildings be built/rehabbed with a greater percentage of regional or national products would have a much better impact.  I’m not sure what the goal is exactly, but whatever it is, it’s got a mighty small impact.

      <

      p>Oh, it’s symbolic, I get it.  Right.  Far better to show symbolism than to actually live by some principles.  Bah.

      • Unfortunately I got labeled as a protectionist by the finance committee just because of this by-law. This by-law was not about economics but solidarity. Our flag being manufactured in a country that explicitly prohibits the very rights our flag represents is wrong and I didn’t want my town to encourage it.

        <

        p>Personally I try to buy as many American made goods as possible, but on a municipal level we can not mandate those others purchases.  But those who hold onto a ideology of free market will be flushed out if we all enacted a by-law like mine in Dartmouth, it happened here  

        • on a municipal level we can not mandate those others purchases.

          <

          p>Why not?  Sure, some are impossible (try buying a computer manufactured and assembled in the USA), but others are simply a matter of paying a premium for the USA version.  Do you mean that on a municipal level we can not of that we will not because our collective principles on this matter aren’t as important as the additional fiscal cost of maintaining those principles?

          • Like I previously stated, I stand by American made products, but at the municpal level I feel that will entail more of a protectionist fight. Many Free marketeers will fight it tooth and nail, I am personally a fair marketeer per se. America should stand by it’s priciples and trade only with countries who hold those same principles themselve OR are at least making advances toward it. Countries like Communist China will not allow change until the people change it and demand a democracy, then I am open to trading with them if the laws are in favor of the worker.

  11. This is just another example of the anti-freedom party at work: the GOP wants to tell women what to do with their bodies, block knowledge about contraceptives and, as we see here, dictate what teachers say in class.

    <

    p>The GOP should worry more about fixing the economy that George Bush and his cronies broke and less about telling people what to do and what to think.

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