{"id":13161,"date":"2012-04-09T06:59:22","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T10:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=13161"},"modified":"2012-04-09T06:59:22","modified_gmt":"2012-04-09T10:59:22","slug":"sometimes-politicians-do-things-that-are-so-arrogant-its-almost-funny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=13161","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes Politicians Do Things That Are So Arrogant It&#8217;s Almost Funny"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:MassStateHouse.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-img-inserted zemanta-img-configured\" title=\"The State House in Boston\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/e\/e8\/MassStateHouse.jpg\/300px-MassStateHouse.jpg\" alt=\"The State House in Boston\" width=\"300\" height=\"400\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The State House in Boston (Photo credit: Wikipedia)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>On Thursday the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bostonherald.com\/news\/politics\/view.bg?articleid=1061122395&amp;format=text\">Boston Herald<\/a>\u00a0reported that a six-member conference committee of lawmakers in Massachusetts charged with creating a bill to boost government performance, accountability and transparency and increase oversight of spending have decided to hold their meetings in private.<\/p>\n<p>Representative Peter Kocot (D-Northampton) stated:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>&#8220;Holding open meetings, during which negotiators would discuss differences and seek common ground on bills overhauling government administration and finance laws, might inhibit frank negotiations.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>\u201cIf you look at the rules of committees, the joint rules, conference committees are not included in those rules. Conference committees operate under a separate set of rules and typically it\u2019s been very common practice in the Legislature to close conference committees so that the members of the conference committee can have a frank and open discussion of the merits of the bills.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Good grief!<\/p>\n<p>Massachusetts is a one-party state. If you would like more transparency and more honesty in the Massachusetts government, you need to make it a two-party state. Even if you don&#8217;t agree with one of the parties, having two parties in government tends to make government more accountable.<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"float: right; border-style: none;\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=759577d0-800e-4ef8-a37b-1cdb6730b865\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday the Boston Herald\u00a0reported that a six-member conference committee of lawmakers in Massachusetts charged with creating a bill to boost government performance, accountability and transparency and increase oversight of spending have decided to hold their meetings in private. Representative &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=13161\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[295,2688,2685,142,2691,2690,2687,2686,2689],"class_list":["post-13161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-boston-herald","tag-committee","tag-conference-committee","tag-massachusetts","tag-massachusetts-government","tag-massachusetts-state-house","tag-northampton","tag-peter-kocot","tag-transparency-in-state-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13173,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13161\/revisions\/13173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}