“You just got elected and a lot of people are telling you it’s a great honor, it’s a great responsibility, it’s an amazing challenge. But I think it’s a gift,” she said. “And in the arena of pay-it-forward, this is an opportunity for you because you’ve been given this gift to now use it to advocate for people who really need our help.”
Haddad said her brother is Connecticut’s state director for the March of Dimes and met his wife in the 1980s at a March of Dimes charity auction.
“I promised that I would do a much better job in honor of their most recent anniversary and get people here on a bipartisan nature,” she said.
“This is not a partisan type of issue. We can all come together. I thought it was a perfect opportunity to bring together the new reps and start to indoctrinate you into how important it is to be an advocate.”
D’Emilia, the Bridgewater Republican, told the News Service afterward that he intends to work across the aisle and that he, like many of his freshmen colleagues, campaigned on economic issues.
“No matter red or blue, I think it’s important to put that aside and do the work of the people,” he said.
Amen, Representative D’Emila, Amen. Welcome to the March of Dimes Ark.
How about 49/1.
Those such as myself who do not receive a dime for advocacy on behalf of what we care about know we have to work with the gatekeepers we have, and say thank you for any progress made.
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p>That being said, Judy, I am more and more interested in systemic reform such as ensuring that Beacon Hill, both legislature and executive agencies are subject to open meetings laws, reporting laws, and adherence to fiduciary standards of behavior.
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p>You and I both know there is less and less openness, less and less true debate, and more and more “assistant deputy this” and “assistant deputy that” who almost never are involved in providing direct services to anyone, as well as consultants to simulate decreased jobs.
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p>There is a difference between a “public servant” and a “hack”.
I would like to add to your suggestions the absolute necessity of reforming the dictatorial powers of the Speaker and Senate President.
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p>Let’s see chairs/vice chairs selected by their peers based on merit and skills for the job(s) and do away with the quid pro quo operations on Beacon Hill wherein leadership create their empires through additional stipends (bribes) to their loyal followers.
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p>Can you imagine any other profession that has no criteria for serving on the various committees other than leadership’s appointment? No performance evaluations or even published attendance/participation on the committees.
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p>Yes, there is room for a lot of progress before worrying about pushing-up against perfection.
Maybe it’s that I’m not a professional lobbyist or advocate, but I think this post is short-sighted. We don’t have to insist on ideological purity within the Democratic Party, and it’s smart to work across the aisle to get things done. That was the point of the what Representative D’Emilia had to say–working across the aisle when possible.
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p>But I think we do have to insist on honesty in government and to insist that we don’t give legislators a free pass on good government issues simply because they promote our policies. I think this is so for two reasons. First, we ignore the populist element in the current political climate to our peril. If I, as a fairly well-informed, moderately liberal registered Democrat, find the defense of the “hack-progressive alliance” distasteful, I think that a typical independent voter is likely to find it maddening. Second, good government is itself a policy priority, or it should be. It is not something ancillary that we should be prepared to compromise on to get the “real work” done.
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p>By way of illustration of the problem, here are some comments by Representative Murphy about the Ware report:
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p>Really? Representative Murphy read the Ware Report and is not really concerned about the legislature’s role in the scandal? That itself is scandalous, in my opinion.
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p>TedF
First, I think that it is important for you to know that I and many of my lobbying colleagues, through our work with Common Cause and Mass PIRG work hard on promoting both significant government reform efforts like ethics reform, pension reform,and transparency in both law making and budget making at the same time we are promoting our issues.
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p>Since you quoted Rep Murphy’s remarksabove and characterized them as “scandalous in your opinion” I can tell you that if I agreed with your characterization (and I don’t) I am absolutely 100% confident that I could, in a meeting with clients, tell Rep Murphy that his comments were scandalous in my opinion, and go on to introduce my clients and let them tell him their stories about why he should support their proposed budget amendment.
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p>He might raise an eyebrow at my remarks, because he values my opinion, and he might even try to rationalize his comments in front of my clients, but then he would ask the participants to go ahead and tell their stories.
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p>My point is that progressive advocates can do to things at the same time.
Is that going to be the standard for condemnation? If there’s no videotape of the donation for the job going into the bra, then it didn’t happen?
Charlie’s a lawyer and speaking as one, and as your spirited defense of Jeff Perry pointed out, Perry was never even charged of wrongdoing after a real (?) investigation.
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p>And whenever any of us persisted in calling his behavior scandalous, it was always pointed out to us that it happened 19 years ago and the folks in Wareham reelected him anyway.
Judy, we were right to call Perry’s behavior scandalous and to assert that he was not fit to hold a public office. Why? Because he had violated the public trust. One difference between Perry and the legislative pay-to-play system is that there was no question in anyone’s mind that it was Perry who had been involved. Here, we could only determine which legislators have violated the public trust by conducting an investigation, and it seems that unless the U.S. Attorney or the AG steps in, that’s not going to happen. That’s the problem.
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p>TedF
I did correct misstatements of fact, but I don’t ever recall offering a defense of his actions.
…you spun the lies of Perry like they were the complete truth…when I wanted to focus on the assault case he was at, you tried to confuse the issue by citing the incident he was not at…
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p>You enabled Jeff Perry to run for Congress, just as Jeff Perry enabled Scott Flanagan
and come to think about it your role as a copy editor and fact checker in both BMG and RMG. Sorry.
Judy, the report is pretty clear about the existence of a “pay-to-play” system in which the legislature increased appropriations in return for patronage placements. Ware acknowledged that he could not prove wrongdoing by any particular legislator, but there is a good amount of testimony and even a statistical argument showing, in my view, that there was almost certainly a good deal of corruption. Moreover, some of the legislators and former legislators Ware sought to interview refused to answer questions on the grounds that their answers might incriminate them! So for Representative Murphy to refuse to take action on the report on the grounds that it contained only statistical evidence of wrongdoing is indeed scandalous. And I’m a little taken aback that you seem not to think that there’s a problem here that he’s ignoring.
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p>TedF
when it comes to being found guilty of bad behavior and or poor judgment. The rule of law does not apply. Each of us are free to judge them using our own value system, and are free to differ with each other.
Judy, you seem to be saying that this is really a matter of taste or emphasis. The problem with your comment, from a purely pragmatic and practical point of view, is that I think it makes you less effective of a spokesperson for a progressive agenda, because it suggests that under your own “value system”, you aren’t overly troubled by the pay-to-play system (at least insofar as you say that you do not find Rep. Murphy’s comments scandalous and you lightheartedly admit to being a card-carying member of the hack-progressive alliance–“sprinkle me with holy water” and so forth. There are different components of persuasion. One is the merits of the argument you want others to believe. I agree with you that this has nothing to do with the pay-to-play issue. The other is “ethos”, the character of the person making the argument. If I am the man on the street, I am less likely, for example, to support, say, One Massachusetts’s call for reducing the tax expenditure budget–an entirely sensible idea–if I know that one of its spokespeople is apparently content with corruption in the legislature.
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p>TedF
we can be perfectly capable of finding Chairman Murphy’s remarks, as quoted in the press, understandable and not scandalous and at the same time be very angry at the reports of systematic abuse of power in the department of probation and hope that the authorities find them guilty as charged and put them in jail.
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p>One of my biggest challenges is persuading activists that they can influence public policy in a place where corrupt elected and appointed human beings have have poisoned the water so that ordinary people don’t want to swim..
So let’s drain the swamp!
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p>I appreciate your perspectives on this.
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p>TedF
I wish this post had a different title; I find the title “hack” as offensive as I find “Moonbat” and certain other slurs.
The majority of state employees are hard working employees, often behind the scenes and not especially powerful or well paid. “Hack” annoys me, it is like the “N” word, etc.
In the media!!! You got to love it — all the homework done for us. Hint: David Border is only #4
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p>The War Room Hack Thirty is a list of our least favorite political commentators, newspaper columnists and constant cable news presences, ranked roughly (but only roughly) in order of awfulness and then described rudely. Criteria for inclusion included writing the same column every week for 30 years, warmongering, joyless repetition of conventional wisdom, and making bad puns.
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p>The full list can be found here. Pass it along, argue about it, and print it out and glue each pundit’s photo into your scrapbook!
First, I don’t know the context, or what else Rep. Murphy had to say. I have had my experiences with being “quoted” and the quotes having no resemblence to what I had actually said if the whole conversation and context were in the newspaper.
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p>Secondly, I know Rep. Murphy to believe, as I do, that the whole idea of Democracy requires innocent until proven guilty. So does Paul Ware for that matter. I have no problem with Rep. Murphy making clear that nothing is proven with regard to a particular representative to date, and that Paul Murphy said as much.
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p>So frankly, I am not appalled or annoyed even at what Rep. Murphy is reported to have said, and would love to have heard the whole conversation.
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p>Wouldn’t you?
It is really a perfect issue.
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p>1. It is egregious – there is little doubt left that this is a hack hotel.
2. It puts him in the best role possible – fighting his party for reform.
3. It goes right to the legislature.
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p>Listen, let’s face it; DiLeo and company would have been happier than pigs in sh#t with Charlie Baker in the corner office. They could back off all policy initiatives, sit back, and run their fiefdoms.
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p>So, this is Deval’s moment. He needs to take the energy he brought to the campaign and campaign publicly against the Legislature. It might cost the Dems 10 seats in 2012, but those are the Dems who don’t push policy anyway.
…that the Governor indicated he will include this in new pension reforms.
A very enlightening story in today’s Globe
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p>of course
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This garbage has to stop.
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p>If this is the best we can do, then I think we need to reboot the entire system.