I am grateful that justice was served yesterday for so many reasons

  It remains to be seen if things change radically across the country now that the cops have seen one of their own get convicted. 

This could be a watershed moment for this country.

Two proposed ordinances

 

For those who haven't seen the latest from the Council. Two proposed ordinances have been suggested, one asks the Mayor for a quarterly financial report on money coming in and going out. The Mayor has said she won't veto it. But says she thinks it places a huge burden on division heads and the CFO. And has made reference to an outdated Town Meeting.

The other claims to help residents in neighborhoods organize into groups like the Friends of Saxonville. The first iteration has many rules, a minimum amount of signatures required and filing for nonprofit status, which the author claims that the groups would have access to elected leaders. They made changes to the number of signatures needed to form the group.

Both of these are just going to be bullet points on campaign flyers if passed. Do we really need permission from the government to assemble as a neighborhood group? I think not. Will these groups really have any more influence than regular residents do now? 

While serving on Town Meeting it was a struggle sometimes to get the accurate financial paperwork in our hands on time. Nothing has changed since we became a city. The administration drags their feet to the last possible moment and expects the council to decide not having the opportunity to digest the numbers. So the candidate for Mayor proposes quarterly reports that will take administration and division time to generate. 

IMO, both of these are just to make the administration look bad. Will the tax payer benefit from all this posturing... not likely.

How about this idea for an ordinance that benefits the tax payer, before any vehicle or machine of any kind that runs gas or diesel that is requested for replacement is first evaluated by an outside inspector to determine its overall condition. For as many years as i can remember, any request for a car, truck or tractor is made by a division head and supported by pictures of rusty section of a floor board or a number of hours on an engine. We replace to many vehicles without proper vetting.

 

Are many residents just unaware

 On Sunday and Monday i was out doing Keep Framingham Clean duties as I've done since the first Green Up Day many many years ago now. The amount of trash Ive seen year to year doesn't seem to change much. Years ago it was cans and bottles, coffee cups and plastic bags. Now a days, way more plastic water bottles, hardly any plastic bags, lots of face masks and fast food wrappers, nips and gloves.

But today it hit me.. on the way back to my home on Sunday and today I noticed a huge amount of trash and recycle carts on the street ready to be picked up. As anyone who's lived here more than a year knows, today is a holiday for the Town and no trash will be picked up. Large sections of residents don't either know what today is, have no connection to city hall or just choose to stay unaware. It's reflective of our connection to local government. At any given council meeting there's no more than 50 people watching on Facebook. Perhaps 100 people watching on TV from home. 

They (local politico's) need to figure out how to engage with more residents with timely information and reasons why residents should want to be informed. Trash carts out 1 or 2 days in advance are just one example of the disconnect.

the 20 year Afgan war will end before 9.11

If it were not for a pandemic that has killed over 500k people in our country, an insurrection, mass shootings, school shootings, cops killing innocent black people, cops stealing and newspapers going under, more attention might have been given to President Biden's decision to withdrawal the remaining troops from Afghanistan. Over 2400 hundred service members have died in the name of justice for the 9/11 attacks which killed over 3k people. Not to mention the thousands of wounded both physically and mentally who will hopefully be the last generation to face war. 

The estimated 2 trillion dollars spent on this war perhaps kept the military complex well fed and the jobs helped those in the industry, but most American's didn't have any skin in the game, there was no draft, and hardly any opposition to the war when it first started.  

The parallels to the Vietnam are striking. In both, we tried to inject ourselves in places we weren't invited, tried to through money at propping up governments that could not survive on their own. It remains to be seen what will happen when we pull out and stop funding the Afghan army. But I am glad to see the end of this war in my lifetime. I hope there will be some recognition by this City and State for those who come home after Sept 11th 2021.

The POW MIA flag is back at the White House

 I've written about how Trump made the law to fly the POW MIA flag on top of the White in 2017. Then in 2020 he moved the flag to behind the White House.

I give Biden credit for reminding Americans of those who went to war on our behalf and those who didn't come home yet. There's a whole generation that knows nothing about what the flag stands for. Predominantly displaying the flag at the White House is the right thing to do.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/09/politics/pow-mia-flag-white-house/index.html

 

And today Biden declared

National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/04/09/a-proclamation-on-national-former-prisoner-of-war-recognition-day-2021/