Editorial

The tribes' claim seems unsupportable

New York Times November 2, 2009
Editorial
Cape Wind

The tribes' claim seems unsupportable. "Traditional cultural properties" tend to be defined areas - a ceremonial burial ground, for instance - not a huge, unenclosed portion of the ocean.

After eight years of arduous state and federal environmental reviews, the promoters of Cape Wind, a wind energy project off the Massachusetts coast, had every reason to believe that they were home free. Then the Wampanoag tribes asked the Interior Department to declare all of Nantucket Sound, where the 130 wind turbines would be built, a "traditional cultural property" and, they hoped, block construction.

Tribal officials say their culture requires them to greet the sunrise each day and that this ritual requires unobstructed views. Their claim should be rejected by the responsible federal and state officials. Another round of bureaucratic reviews would drag out an approval process that has gone on much too long and give opponents time to find some other way to derail the effort.

The tribes' claim seems unsupportable. "Traditional cultural properties" tend to be defined areas - a ceremonial burial ground, for instance - not a huge, unenclosed portion of the ocean. Awarding Nantucket Bay such status could cast a legal shadow over a host of other activities, including shipping and commercial fishing.

The alliance includes many local people but has been largely underwritten by wealthy homeowners.

There is also evidence that the tribes have been working hand-in-glove with the project's main opposition group, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. The alliance includes many local people but has been largely underwritten by wealthy homeowners from Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod who hate the idea of having 440-foot windmills on the horizon.

The Minerals Management Service, the agency overseeing the approval process, believes that the claims are bogus. But still to be heard from is Brona Simon, the state's historic preservation officer. If she agrees with the service - and she should - then the matter goes to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. If she does not, then it goes to the National Park Service for further review and then to Mr. Salazar.

One way or the other,
Mr. Salazar should approve the project.

One way or the other, Mr. Salazar should approve the project. Cape Wind is supported by the Massachusetts government and the great majority of its citizens, who see it as a clean alternative to the power plants that contribute to global warming. Rejecting, even delaying it, would send a dispiriting message to other developers who are further behind Cape Wind.

In Europe, wind farms are a familiar sight. If this country is going to do its part to address climate change, they must become more common, and welcome, here.

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Sorry Charlie

Charlie Baker is a scripted and robotic empty suit
Apologies to his misguided supporters

By Sam Adams, Boston Patriot.

OK, I have given this some thought. I even let it ruminate in my mind over the weekend before sending this note to all of you fine people right now. But you know what, sometimes you just have to call it like you see it. So with that being said, I would like to publicly say "Sorry" to all of the Charlie Baker supporters out there.

Would you trust this man to return sane budget management to our state?

No, I am not sorry for criticizing Charlie for announcing his candidacy and then immediately taking off for vacation. I am not sorry for calling him an out of touch empty suit, or for saying he is indeed very much like his former employer and hero, the turncoat Bill Weld. I am not even sorry for pointing out the fact that Charlie Baker is so scripted and robotic that he can't even honestly answer the most basic of questions without feeling like he needs to confer with a campaign aid. No, I am not sorry for any of those things. What I am sorry for is the fact that those of you who support Charlie Baker are painfully misguided. You have been led to believe that he, and others like him are the "next best hope" for Massachusetts. But what those that are trumpeting this party line are intentionally not telling you is that that he actually embodies eveything that is wrong with the Republican party in this state.

Seriously, I have tried to be fair about this but to be perfectly honest, the more I see of this guy, the LESS I like him. I am STILL waiting to hear a good reason why I should support him other than the fact that the MA GOP "powers that be" are clearly in his camp. Last I checked, that sorry organization has done about as much to bury the Republican party in this state as the Democrats have.

That being said, I strongly believe the following issue needs to be addressed.

Some of you may or may not have caught this but Dave Wedge's article in the Boston Herald on 9/11 was more than just a little troubling. If you missed the article, let me quote:

"GOP gubernatorial candidate Charles Baker runs a charity that's funded ultraliberal outfits which have fought for tuition breaks and driver's licenses for illegals, accused American soldiers of torture and blamed Israel for "genocide" in Palestine, a Herald review found..... The Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation, of which Baker is chairman, has given $30,000 to the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition since 2002, records show. The agency is a driving force on Beacon Hill for immigration reform, including pushing a controversial bid to allow illegal aliens to pay the same tuition rates as Massachusetts residents at state colleges.

Gov. Deval Patrick has been a strong proponent of reduced tuition for illegals, calling it 'a matter of simple justice.' MIRA also has backed failed bids to allow illegal immigrants to obtain Massachusetts driver's licenses and state-issued IDs. The Baker-run charity donated $10,000 to MIRA in 2005, at the height of a bitter Beacon Hill battle over immigrant licenses."

Wedge's article goes on to say:

"In 2006, Baker's charity gave $5,000 to Physicians for Human Rights, a Cambridge-based group that authored a study purportedly documenting "systematic use of torture by the United States during its interrogations of detainees at U.S. detention facilities, including Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan."

Wedge's description of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition is spot on. For those of you unfamiliar with Physicians for Humans Rights, let me fill you in a bit. Physicians for Human Rights is blame America first organization that hasn't met a left wing cause, politician or historical revisionist/conspiracy theory that it hasn't adopted. They claim that Israel is an 'apartheid regime' and they have made numerous absurd charges against the CIA in the wake of 9/11 and the legitimate associated security concerns of this country.

Don't believe me? Go see for yourself here.

Now would someone please tell me what Charlie Baker's excuse is for this? Really, I would love to hear it. The way I see it, at worst this man knowingly approved money to be donated to some offensive and despicable groups (And that is without even following the next step in the money trail which Wedge explores further in his article.

And at best, if all you can say in his defense is that he was ignorant and didn't know, well, to this particular citizen patriot, that is pretty sorry as well.

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The crown jewel in our green diadem

The 1,100 acres which saves Cape Cod for our grandchildren

The trails and vistas out to Cape Cod Bay are remarkable at the Wellfleet Audubon.

Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary is a priceless part of our heritage

By Walter Brooks

Displays are up close and personal.

Bob Prescott points to the solar panel.

A visit to a frog pond.

Turtles soaking up the September sun.

Have you ever even noticed the small sign on the left side of Route 6 as you speed towards the Cape tip, just past the Wellfleet Drive-In?

It says "Entrance: Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary", and it is easily the most unspoiled and lovely attraction on all of Cape Cod.

I say this with full knowledge of our 30,000 acre National Seashore and the tens of thousands of acres preserved in conservation in all fifteen of our towns, because this was among the first in the late 1920s when conservation and green were little known or valued.

Back then the Mass. Audubon became the first of its kind in the nation to purchase a large parcel of land to preserve it in its natural state for future generations.

The initial purchase of 200-odd acres on Cape Cod Bay has grown to over 1,100 and is one of the most delightful nature study opportunities in America.

The live displays of our local sea life are coupled with wide vistas of wetlands, frog and turtle ponds and marshes which lie in the flight paths of most eastern birds migrating each Spring and Fall.

It is also a very user-friendly environment for all ages.

Sanctuary Director Bob Prescott is starting his second quarter-century in Wellfleet, and his enthusiasm is the same today as when he began.

He doesn't appear to have aged in the 26 years he's spent there.

This last Sunday my wife and I spent two hours there with our nine and eleven-year-old grandchildren, and we could have stayed for days.

Be sure to visit here soon, especially now as the seasonal bird migrations begin anew. In the two hours we spent there we saw blue and green herons, egrets, heard kingfishers, a dozen other birds, blue claw crabs, several different turtle species and visited the frog pond and butterfly garden.

Over a century ago Anton Chekov said, "Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day."

At least here at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary some good folks are reversing that process.

Read these and learn more about this treasure:

• The Wellfleet Sanctuary Blog.
• The Wellfleet Sanctuary website.
  

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Situational environmentalist

Editor's note: The following editorial originally ran in the Providence Journal.

Hypocrisy makes the world go ’round. Thus it is with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Mr. Kennedy first got into the environmental business as community service after a drug arrest back in the ’80s, and has made a lot of money presenting himself as one of America’s most avid environmentalists — indeed, as a kind of Cotton Mather of Green. But in practice, he’s a lot more, well, situational.

Thus energy-poor New England waits and waits . . . while the oil and coal keep getting shipped in.

For instance, he says he favors alternative energy like windmills — somewhere. But he has in his famous strident voice viciously and untruthfully attacked the effort to put up a wind farm in Nantucket Sound, one of the best places in North America for such a project –– close to the grid of a highly populated area, and with protected water and reliable wind. Thus energy-poor New England waits and waits . . . while the oil and coal keep getting shipped in.

But then, the Kennedy family has summer places from which members would be subjected to looking at the windmills five or six miles away. Can’t have that. So Mr. Kennedy joined forces with other rich, powerful folks, who have, with big checkbooks and back-room deals, so far kept this overdue project from contributing to our clean-energy supply.

Mr. Kennedy says he opposes wasting oil, but he is also in the plastic bottled-water industry, much of which is a giant oil-guzzling, anti-environment boondoggle. (The bottles are made from oil and shipping them around wastes more oil. And the liquid, despite the lie-rich ad copy, is often worse than tap water.) He has strenuously fought state legislation aimed at reducing the use of wasteful bottled water in New York.

He showed no respect for democracy - or the need for clean energy.

And now there’s the curious case of BrightSource, a company that wants to put a big solar-energy operation in the Mojave Desert, in California. In this case, Mr. Kennedy opposes an effort by some environmentalists to set up a National Monument in the area to protect it from the alleged horrors of the solar operation proposed by BrightSource. Foes say the project would hurt local eco-systems –– just the sort of argument, proven to be fraudulent, that Mr. Kennedy used against Cape Wind.

But then, he happens to have a financial stake in BrightSource! His funniest remark about the project is his complaint that the National Monument crowd is “putting the democratic process and sound scientific judgment on hold to jeopardize the energy future of our country.” In the Cape Wind case, he and his allies have used sheer financial and political power against the wishes of the vast majority of the population to be served by the wind farm. He showed no respect for democracy — or the need for clean energy. That was then, anyway. Maybe in the California case it’s different? In any case, it’s all about the needs of Mr. Kennedy.

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Gloucester Daily Times takes stand for local fishing industry

Editorial: NMFS' use of false data to set catch limits can't stand this time

It would be one thing to establish rules and regulations for commercial fishing based on credible statistics or other data.

Bill Amaru, a trawler fisherman on Cape Cod, "found over 100,000 pounds of errors and omissions" in NMFS records.

It is something else entirely to establish them based on demonstrably, admittedly flawed data.

Yet that is what the National Marine Fisheries Service intends to do - again.

The agency concedes that its information on catch histories of various fishermen is wrong. The minutes of a March 1, 2006 NMFS committee meeting readily admit the agency had "no expertise or time for correcting these errors."

Yet, it intends to impose an entirely new regulatory regime known as "catch shares," based on those erroneous catch histories, starting next May - with the critical, decisive data use to set fishermen's limits based on documentation NMFS' officials concede is inaccurate.

Shocked? You shouldn't be. That's because NMFS exuded this same level of arrogance in the wake of the infamous "Trawlgate" fiasco, when, at the turn of the new century, regulators conceded the trawling tactics used to "scientifically" assess fish stocks used the wrong-size nets - yet still used the flawed data to support regulatory rules that have already driven far too many fishermen right out of business.

Using false records for fishermen's landings this time around would wrongly drive down their allowable catch limits - and thus artificially, once again, limit their ability to earn a living. And it is yet another example of a rogue agency that must not be allowed to trample on the livelihoods of commercial fishermen with any means necessary - yes, even admittedly false premises.

This should bring the city's congressional delegation out in force, to demand regulations that are fair and well founded. Sen. John Kerry and Congressman John Tierney have spoken frequently about their support for the fishing industry; now is the time to turn that talk into action.

Indeed, it is almost beyond comprehension that NMFS thinks its impending regulations are justifiable.

Maine fisherman Bill Doughty told Times reporter Richard Gaines that NMFS failed to credit him with about 40 percent of his catch one year and 25 percent of it in another.

Bill Amaru, a trawler fisherman on Cape Cod, said he "found over 100,000 pounds of errors and omissions" in NMFS records. Geir Monson, owner of Seafreeze Ltd. in North Kingstown, R.I., called the statistics, "some of the worst workmanship I ever have seen of any type of work." And he made another good point:

"If this record-keeping was in a commercial company," he said, "the company would be bankrupt and the people in charge of the record-keeping would be in jail for falsifying records."

It's not, of course, And no one is calling for NMFS' top regulators to be sent to the slammer. This is the government, of course, so not only is nobody in trouble for such shoddy work, but that shoddy work is about to be accepted.

Even more absurd, NMFS spokeswoman Maggie Mooney-Seus said that, while the agency acknowledges the problem, it cannot make corrections before next May, yet still intends to use it to set catch quotas. And any fisherman who wants to make a complaint about faulty data, in hopes of a correction in time for the 2011 season - 20 months away - has only until Oct. 31 to file the complaint.

Simply put, this should be NMFS' last straw. Federal legislators simply cannot accept the approach and conduct on the part of an agency that indeed seems to have no sense of accountability whatsoever - no sense of the need to back up its business-killing tactics with viable data, and no sense of the need to hold off on any regulatory changes until it at least validates the records used to put these new limits in place.

That must change, and it's time our government leaders on all levels recognized this renegade agency's downright incompetence, irresponsibility and misconduct.

NMFS must get its house and data in order before making wholesale changes in the regulation of the New England fishery - and any move to fishermen's catch shares must be held until there's a sense they are based on true and credible data.

There's sure no reason to think NMFS could ever deliver that.

This Editorial appeared in the Gloucester Daily Times on 9/10/0.

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The Spirits of Massachusetts are bought in New Hampshire

How our state leaders made our Granite State neighbors richer

This is the New Hampshire State Liquor Store 1 mile over the Massachusetts border, and yes, the car and most the others are from the Bay State not the Granite State. Walter Brooks photo.

Tax-Free Savings - Stock Up and Save, or Live (tax) Free or Die

By Walter Brooks

The new sign is easily read from the highway. The Mass. Sales Tax was recently increased and added booze.

That's what the big new signs reads at New Hampshire State Liquor Stores just over the border from Taxachusetts.

The liquor prices were always cheaper in New Hampshire, but the just added Massachusetts 6.25% tax on booze makes it irresistible.

When I stopped to check this it out this past weekend on my way home from Maine, every car I saw in the parking lot was from Massachusetts where our one-party Democratic State Legislature just increased our sales tax 25% and included alcohol in the items taxed for the first time adding 6.25% to the cost of liquor and wine bought locally.

Our Democratic Governor signed the bill demonstrating to one and all that he is as removed from the "real world" as our long-discredited, corrupt and dictatorial one-party legislature.

These wealthy political poobahs are too well off personally to mind a Draconian tax increase, and they are totally indifferent to your needs, problems or welfare.

The fact that unemployment is almost 10%, the worse it's been in decades, means nothing to these rich, fat political hacks who are completely insulated from your retribution because of our de-facto one-party system on Beacon Hill.

They can NOT  be touched, and it's YOUR fault

The last Governor who called Cape Cod his home was Francis Sargent. He founded the Goose Hummock Shop in Orleans and lived at the tip of Barley Neck in East Orleans. His ilk included US Senator Ed Brooke of Oak Bluffs, US Attorney General Elliot Richardson of Eastham and Shirley Gomes of Harwich.

Thomas Jefferson said that "a people get the government they deserve", and Massachusetts deserves these narcissistic nabobs because you and I put them in office by our votes.

And the Republican party in Massachusetts is just as guilty.

The GOP POGs, "Petrified Old Guard", which control the Republican party machinery, is more interested in foisting conservatives who are stuck in the GOP past, than offering voters the kind of Progressive Republican men and women whom this state regularly elected a generation ago, men and women like Governor Frank Sargent (Orleans), Ed Brooke (Oak Bluffs), Elliot Richardson (Eastham) and Shirley Gomes (Harwich).

Independent and Democrat voters supported these Progressive Republicans every time they ran for office.

That was then, this is now

A perfect example of the state GOP's fascination with bourgeois capitalist conservatives instead of people-friendly pols is the party's present back-room fostering of an large insurance company C.E.O., probably the least popular job in America today.

Reminds us of the 2004 Gail Lese Cape Cod carpet bagging flop by Mitt Romney.

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Wait a while before renaming things for Ted

Unseemly haste during time of grief always causes regret

The Zakim Bridge is one of the World's Top Ten and should be renamed for Ted Kennedy. Above is the Amber Alert sign on the bridge during yesterday's downpours as the state mourned his loss. Walter Brooks photo.

Let's try to learn from history rather than repeat it

By Walter Brooks

The minute a great or famous person dies there is always a rush to rename things in their honor. Boston did it a decade ago when it named the majestic new bridge crossing the Charles River the Leonard P. Zakim Bridge. The roadway on that bridge is the John F. Fitzgerald Expressway (Route I-93) named for Ted Kennedy's maternal grandfather.

Not one person in a thousand today knows who Zakim was.

The bridge's name commemorates Zakim who was a Boston civic leader and civil rights activist. Originally Massachusetts Republican Governor A. Paul Cellucci wanted to name it the "Freedom Bridge," however in 2000 local clergy and religious leaders, including Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, requested the Zakim name shortly after Mr. Zakim's death from myeloma. Gov. Cellucci agreed to the naming, but community leaders from the insular community of Charlestown objected to the name as they felt that since the design reflected the nearby Bunker Hill memorial, it should be named the "Bunker Hill Freedom bridge". Today the unwieldy full name of the bridge is "The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge".

Today not one Massachusetts resident in a thousand has the slightest idea who Zakim was. The unseemly haste in naming what is now a symbol of our state's capital city for him seems ill-advised in the extreme.  The Travel Channel has ranked the Zakim Bridge 9th in their list of the World's Top Ten Bridges.

Cape Canaveral becomes Cape Kennedy becomes Cape Canaveral

When Ted Kennedy's brother, President John F. Kennedy, died in 1963, his widow Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis suggested to President Lyndon Johnson that renaming the Cape Canaveral facility would be an appropriate memorial. However, Johnson recommended the renaming not just of the facility, but of the entire cape which had born the name Canaveral for four centuries. Accordingly, Cape Canaveral was renamed Cape Kennedy.

Honor Ted in a manner in which the ages will approve.

This was not popular in Florida, and a decade later the state passed a law restoring the former 400-year-old name. The Kennedy family issued a letter stating they "understood the decision". Jacqueline also stated if she had known that the Canaveral name had existed for 400 years, she never would have supported changing the name of the cape. The Space Center itself retains the "Kennedy" name.

A serendipitous way to honor Ted and undo a mistake

Senator Kennedy must also be honored, but let's do it after the hysteria has settled and in a manner in which the ages will approve.

One idea would be to undo the state's mistake of a decade ago and rename one of the World's Top Ten Bridges in his name, the Ted Kennedy Bridge with his grandfather's name on its roadbed already.

And while we're at it, let's ask the President to rename his Healthcare Bill as "Kennedy Care" and let his former Republican colleagues votes against that.

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Boston Globe urges President to back Cape Wind

GLOBE EDITORIAL
As leader of green economy, Obama should back Cape Wind

August 29, 2009

AS PRESIDENT OBAMA vacationed on Martha's Vineyard this week, he had many occasions to look at the horizon. And if he didn't realize that he was looking at the site of a major dispute over offshore wind power, activists on both sides journeyed to the island to remind him. He should also understand that he can play a key role in resolving it.

Neither Obama nor his administration has yet weighed in on Cape Wind, the controversial 130-turbine wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound that could supply the electricity needs of more than 300,000 homes on the Cape and Islands. If Obama's pledges for a greener economy are to be kept, his administration should not delay any longer the arduous process that began in 2001 to develop this clean energy source.

The proposed offshore wind project has sustained more than seven years of heated debate; political maneuvering, including some by the late Senator Edward Kennedy, a project opponent; and environmental review. It now awaits a decision from the Department of the Interior - the last major regulatory hurdle its developers must clear for the project to move forward. As the country's first proposed commercial offshore wind farm, and the only project of its kind this far along in the approval process, Cape Wind could open the door for developers to harness the vast wind energy resource along the nation's eastern seaboard. The approval could make Massachusetts the trailblazer of a power source that is an essential part of the country's strategy to address global warming and to achieve energy security.

In January, Interior's Minerals Management Service, the federal agency charged with assessing Cape Wind's potential impacts on the environment, published a detailed report that found the wind farm would pose little harm to fisheries, birds, and other wildlife. The agency also concluded that developers could readily address any navigational concerns for ships and planes posed by the 440-foot turbines.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is now responsible for issuing a decision on the project. Salazar, like Obama, has spoken publicly about the importance of offshore wind as an energy source, but has not indicated whether the administration plans to approve Cape Wind.

The wind farm would slightly alter the view of the ocean from certain points on Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket; developers predict that the turbines would be visible from Edgartown, for example, as distant white smears on clear days.

Obama may have had time to enjoy the pristine view from the beaches near Edgartown this week, but Americans have run out of time to stick their heads in the sand when it comes to global warming. The administration should not wait any longer to show its support for Cape Wind, a project consistent with the president's pledge to support clean energy and open a frontier for harnessing wind power.

Boston Globe on Saturday, August 29, 2009.

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What IS capecodtoday.com?

Could it be the "newspaper of the future"?
Although the word "paper" doesn't fit anymore

By Walter Brooks

We started capecodtoday.com over a decade ago to fill what we believed was becoming a need for Cape Codders - local news and opinion written by and about Cape Cod exclusively.

Cape Cod's un-media
The 8 missing newspapers
These local newspapers have died:

Cape Cod Voice
Provincetown Advocate
The Oracle
Dennis Bulletin
Yarmouth Sun
Cape Cod News
Osterville Advertiser
Mashpee Messenger

The drop in local news we saw back then has grown exponentially ever since as more newspapers are either taken over by giant media groups or simply closed down.

When a local newspaper is sold to a media group, the purchaser has to find ways to pay for the purchase, and the easiest way for a financial person to do that is to cut staff. Since reporters are the highest paid, they go first.

The new owner doesn't live in the local area, and doesn't have to explain these cuts in quality to his or her neighbors at church next Sunday or at the next Rotary luncheon or Chamber of Commerce meeting.

Over time this means a drop in circulation since the readers were buying the newspaper for the very thing the new owner is eliminating, and thus the thing purchased has less value to those it was meant to serve.

This is NOT a situation we either like or applaud. We too were raised reading newspapers, and regret their diminution.

Every newspaper here is losing readers

Help make us better

● Write a letter.
● Register to comment (there are 3,000    
   others already registered).
● Sign up for our free daily updates.
● Suggest something for us to cover.

The latest figures we've seen indicate that less than 17% of Americans under the age of forty read a daily newspaper. CapeCodToday.com is our modest, Cape Cod family-owned response.

We are far from perfect, but always willing to listen to those readers who disagree with our coverage.

The result has been almost embarrassingly successful. Our web traffic last year was up 34% over the year before, and our advertising revenues are increasing almost as fast.

If you have an idea of how to make us better, please write either me or editor Maggie Kulbokas.

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Bay State Democrats hoisted on their own petard

America is a nation of laws, not of men
It seems that Mr. Kennedy wants to choose his successor

By Walter Brooks

Senator Ted Kennedy would have Massachusetts change the law which mandates how the Commonwealth replaces a United States Senator due to a departure from office in mid-term. Insiders are suggesting he will resign if the law is changed and thus have a say in choosing his replacement - instead of you voters doing it.

As our front page story reported today, Senator Kennedy has sent a letter to the governor, the state's Senate president and House speaker at a time when Congress is considering an overhaul of the nation's health care system, which has been a life cause of Kennedy's when he wasn't working with Republicans and the oil interests to stop America's first offshore wind farm.

Mr. Kennedy's concern for the health of his fellow citizens could more quickly be realized if he urged President Obama when he sees him shortly to immediately approve the positive final report on the Cape Wind project.

Kennedy would then repair his tattered environmental reputation and improve the air we all breath years before any beneficial effect of the health care bill he espouses.

Hoisted on his own petard

Kennedy's request is truly ironic when we recall the recent history of the legislation he now wants re-changed.

Only five years ago our other anti-wind farm U.S. Senator, John Kerry, was running for President, and we had a Republican Governor, Mitt Romney.

The law then allowed the governor to replace U.S. Senators when they left before their terms were completed.

In fear that if Kerry became President his Senate term would be vacated and Romney would replace him with a Republican, Kennedy and the Democrats in Boston changed the law to take away that authority from the governor and replace it with the present law requiring a quick election instead.

Now when Kennedy may himself not fulfill his term, and we have a Democrat governor, he wants to return to the old law.

That's about as classic an example of being hoisted on one's own petard as we've ever heard.

And besides, Beacon Hill is too busy this year raising your taxes and lining their own pockets to think about making laws.

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