Coming down the pike.....
The next few weeks will be historic in many ways. Elections in Iran may force the price of crude past 80 bucks a barrel, and I thought 3.00 a gallon for gas on July 4th was going to be outrageous... throw on 19 cents tax increase a gallon and we are 3.50 by late summer.
Deval sends cigars and flowers to DeLeo and Murray and is now in violation of their own ethics rules.... you gota love this... the flowers can't be the ones we buy at Alston Cambridge exit off the Pike from homeless guys.. no.... they have to be over 50 bucks... and you bet those cigars are more Cuban related than Virginia.
The rumor is that servicemen and women who were forced to re-up past their enlisted dates could get 500.00 a month for every month they were forced to stay... retro back to 9-11. This is the fairest proposal I've ever seen for the young vets who have been deployed multiple times, now in multiple wars.
Banning texting and non hands free cell phones is coming and none to soon. Every day now while driving I run into, or get behind or almost get run into and see just how bad it's gotten. Young more so than older, I guess we have less to say or be heard, are endangering us all.
And while we demand ethics and transportation reforms, that must be done in the next few weeks, ALL of the State House deliberations are behind closed doors and most rank and file house and senate members are also excluded. The system of secrecy will be something that is used against most of them next year in the election.
The FDA is going to be in the business of regulating tobacco. More information for us to read on the package, we will know now, exactly what other chemicals are put into the cigs, harder to find places that sell them and scientific evaluation of smoke free products will begin very soon. Funny though, they pass over menthol... an additive to Newports that are favored by our African American brothers and sisters. It's about time the FDA regulated this drug as they do with any other known health risk. History shows us, we just can't rely on the tobacco companies to police themselves and not make smoking worse than it really is, by adding known carcinogens. Greed and denial on the cigarette manufactures side forced the FDA to step in along with a trying to quit President, a dying senior Senator and more well meaning, but zealot anti smoking do gooders. Humans smoked tobacco long ago and survived. But they didn't smoke as much as we do and it certainly didn't have added chemicals in it.
posted by Jim Pillsbury @ 3:14 PM
9 Comments
9 Comments:
Lots of topics covered here. Thanks for summarizing so much in this one place. I am concerned to see you say so much is still happening behind closed doors. Are we not suppose to be "transparant" in all this stuff now? How can it be transparent if we can not even see into the room? What do you mean when you say some reps and senators are not even allowed into these discussions? Is it really that secretive, and if it is, are our reps the insiders, or the ones locked out of the room? Not sure which option is the better of those two, but I would be curious to know where they stand.
Why is Deval sending flowers and cigars to anyone? And is he sending them on our dime, or out of his own pocket? This is getting more and more ridiculous every single day. Ethics reform is a joke, they are still doing their secret deals and lining each others pockets. What ever reforms they make will not be enough. The reforms need to be made by an outside coalition that will not benefit or be hurt by them. The voters should have representation on the committee making these reforms.
What’s with all the attention to nicotine suddenly? This has been around for 100 years at least, why suddenly are they going to have the FDA regulating this? It is a good thing to have more information about what is contained in cigarrettes, but lets face it, if you smoke, you are not exactly someone who is overly concerned about health, or you would not be doing it. Look around you, the less educated, less intelligent you are, the more likely you are to be smoking. So what makes anyone think that making this information more accessible to users is going to stop them from smoking? They already have shown they make poor, unintelligent decisions.
Nothing here is good news for any of us residents. Iranian elections are going to be the catalyst for more trouble in the middle east, and you are right, that will ultimately impact our pockets. Deval sending goodies to those voting on issues at the state house, well, that does not bode well for us. More of the same old boy politics at the state house. Do the soldiers deserve the payment, yes. But can we afford to pay it, no. No texting or dialing while driving? Sure, that is a great law, but ultimately, it gives cops just one more reason to pull us over, and write us a ticket we can not afford to pay which will up our insurance rates. Why can’t people just use common sense and recognize the danger of doing this things while driving? Deliberations behind closed doors, that can mean anything good for the tax payer. More regulation of nicotine, that means the cost for gathering this information and then printing it on the package will be passed on to consumers who will either chose to ignore it, or will finally stop smoking. If they stop smoking, then the revenue from the tax on this will go down, so then they will have to tax something else, and we will someone end up paying that also. So, bottom line is, we are going to pay for every thing the do, they just try to make it sound like it is good for us so we complain less about paying for it. Don't you agree Jim?
That $500 payment to serviemen forced to spend more time deployed is long overdue. When you are “forced” it is no longer a volunteer army, and those who have their right to come home after doing their time denied should be compensated in some way for that. I must say it seems pretty ironic that these men and woman fighting for our right to have freedom of choice are having their freedom of choice taken away from them on such a important issue. How come we are not doing more to make sure their rights are being protected? I would be curious to know who many of the casualties and fatalitites are to men and woman who were “forced” to extend their stay. Imagine the impact that would have on your mental state, and the state of your family. As a nation, we should be doing much more to support the families of these soldiers who are deployed. Many left jobs to serve, and those jobs will not be there when they return. The lost benefits, income, seniority, and it is not just them, but their families that are suffering from these losess. Don’t we owe them something more than a thank you when they return?
Ethics reform in MA is nothing but a joke. They have the unethical politicians designing the reforms. That is like having the bank robber count the money in the safe to see if it is the right amount. They will reform what does not benefit them and write new regulations that they already know how to get around, and they will tell us how ethical they are while doing it. This is an equation for disaster. The saddest part of this whole scenario is that it is actually an improvement over what we had. The bar was set pretty low, does not take much effort on their part to improve on what existed already.
Pay the soldiers with the money from the gax tax and have the FDA oversee the ethics reforms in MA and we are all set, right? Seriously, what a mess we are in here in MA. How can we not see that we need to change things, including the people currently in office. Voters need to be more aware, and less apathetic about that state of our state. If we don't get more involved, then we have no one to blame but ourselves for the issues that exist here. Time to be responsible adults people and make the changes that need to be made. People like Pillsbury can not do it without our support, remember that when elections role around in 2010.
How many more taxes do they think we can pay before we run out of money just like the state has? We are not the only state facing this economic downturn, ALL the states are. Are all the other states raising taxes like we are doing here in MA? Somehow, I doubt that. If other states are able to find a way to balance their budgets without over burdening their residents, then we should be able to also. Maybe we can hire the legislators from one of those states to come in and teach our legislators how to do their job since they clearly don’t know. I am serious about that. If we are stuck with them until 2010 maybe we need to think about training them. Even our dogs can be trained, so there is hope for them.
You gotta love those Iranians eh? protests in the streets 5 miles long and the President doesn't call in the troops.... we have come a long way folks since 1953, Carter, Iatolla, hostages and with a finger on the button in the Bush years. Millions of people and not all fanatics, without guns and bombs, just their voices.
It may turn ugly, but to see human beings, in those numbers, call for justice in an election, is inspiring, no matter what the faith. Not since the Civil Rights Marches and the Vietnam War protests have we had that kind of commitment to justice.
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