Amherst Town Center 9/11/11. Commemorative flags will not fly again until 2016, unless
So I'm trying to anticipate the excuse the Amherst Select Board will conjure up this evening during the 7:15 PM flag discussion to reject placing on the local 3/25/14 election ballot the never ending question of flying the commemorative flags every 9/11, thus allowing the voters decide this issue once and for all.
Sure they will mention the shameful 2007 Amherst Town Meeting vote by a whopping 96-41 not to fly the flags annually. And that advisory resolution had requested they fly at half staff, which completely negates the argument that the commemorative flags are "too festive."
Kind of hard for the average person to misread the intentions of twenty nine 3' by 5' American flags at half staff.
And I'm sure one of them will argue that governance by referendum can be a dangerous thing. Would slavery had ended 150 years ago if it were put up to a popular vote at the time? Or would women have been given the right to vote in 1920 if it had been decided at the ballot box?
Of course the counter to that is we are Amherst, the only town (according to Tracy Kidder) with a "foreign policy." So sure, historically speaking the townspeople would have done the right thing.
As they will do on March 25 if the Select Board has the courage to allow this festering issue to come to a vote.
After all, they seem to love the tagline: "Amherst, where only the h is silent." Then why not let the people speak?
Hahaha. I truly hope they defeat your hopes of ever having the flags flown. Your blog offers us citizens to interract - you simply get in the way, mostly, no offense - and this issue takes up WAY too much space. You're a total narcissist! You will LOSE, and I, for one, will be glad to see it.
ReplyDeleteI knew I could count on you.
ReplyDeleteLarry try not to look too festive. Ah fuck it. Come in wearing an American flag shirt and ask some folks from Westover to come in uniform to sit in the crowd. You are a roach to the Town Council and all they want to do is squash you and whatever you say or do. It's not about what you present anymore, but rather about you. And that's the sign that you won. You are the anti Crist (the H is silent) to a town of intellectual extreme leftists who'd need a committee to figure out how to change a light bulb. A great mentor of mine would refer to them as imposters.
ReplyDeleteActually we might be needing those flags soon as today Obama told Iran that they either eliminate nuclear weapons very shortly or we are attacking, and this time he really really truly means it.
Larry, female suffrage WAS decided "at the ballot box."
ReplyDeleteAre you familiar with how an amendment to the US Constitution gets ratified?
And to my many critics -- You didn't vote for Obama, either. You voted for an elector whom you knew would vote for him.
On a more direct level, there were communities who found creative ways to elect women before they could even vote -- in a time when a woman used her husband's first name too (e.g. "Mrs. Larry Kelley" and everything was handwritten with the Palmer Script, "Mrs." could be made to look like "Mr." -- and in one case that I know of, was.
No one, including her husband, was going to tell the state that the person whom the local community had elected/persuaded/begged to deal with the state was female. No one -- because she was good at it and they knew it.
Well, calling the results of a vote that goes against you "shameful" really loads things, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteI think the old-fashioned term for you is "sore loser".
"in a time when a woman used her husband's first name too"
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately women's "rights" took a very wrong term some years ago.
Really? What part of not being discriminated against in hiring, pay, educational opportunities, etc. do you object to?
ReplyDeleteIf you want to believe many myths perpetuated by feminist groups and printed by the media as fact even though debunked then please do.
ReplyDeleteNo flags in classrooms, no reciting (learning) of the pledge (unless you become involved in scouting)
ReplyDeleteAmherst is a lost cause.
The MA family wanting their town schools to modify the pledge would love Amherst!