OOOPS

Iranian Justice, an Oxymoron

Roxana Saberi, 31, an Iranian-American free-lance journalist has been convicted of spying by the Iranian Revolutionary Court, and sentenced to eight years in prison. As reported in a WSJ ARTICLE, she is charged with passing "information" to American intelligence agents. But according to her lawyer, Abdul-Samad Khoramshahi and her parents, she is being railroaded by "inappropriately applied justice". Say it ain't so.

With one of our journalists in a foreign jail under suspicious circumstances, it didn't take long for the Obama team to come to her aid:

On Saturday, both the White House and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said they were deeply disappointed by the sentencing, and that the U.S. will continue to vigorously raise its concerns to the Iranian government

.

"Deeply disappointed"? What's next? An official stamping of the feet?

Why is this reminding us of the Carter Years?

Facts Are Stubborn Things

No one likes a scold, but at the same time, facts are stubborn and we avoid them at our peril.

An Editorial in the April 15th edition of OLD COLONY MEMORIAL may have been annoying to read. We don't like to hear our faults catalogued for all to see. However, the editorial, published, coincidentally, on Tax Day, makes a compelling case for the poor job we Plymoutheans have done in participating in Town Government, specifically relative to the May 9th Town Election.

To wit:

The only town-wide race is for one seat on the Board of Selectmen.

Three candidates are running unopposed for School Committee

There is no race for the open seat on the powerful Planning Board

The incumbent on the Housing Authority is running unopposed.

There is no contest for the seat on the Redevelopment Authority

Barely half of the precincts have races for Town Meeting member seats. Four precincts do not have enough candidates to fill all the open seats.

And this, in a town with almost 60,000 residents

The editorial sums up the situation succinctly:

Democracy is inherently a participatory process. It requires citizens to get involved. It means they must, first, register to vote (which you still have a few days to do in time for the May 9 election). Next, they are responsible to educate themselves about the process, the issues and the candidates (we work day-in and day-out to help you with that). Then they have to actually cast ballots (imagine if a whopping 50 percent of the electorate actually cared enough to vote). And, of course, if they really give a darn what happens in town, they can extend their participation beyond election day and volunteer to serve the community in one of literally hundreds of positions. Perhaps, they’ll even run for elected office (there are at least 42 Town Meeting seats on the ballot every year).

We have been debating a new form of Town Government for at least the last ten years. Maybe we could just concentrate on getting the existing system to work better through increased participation.

The Second Coming

Ninety years ago, Mr. Yeats wrote this poem to express his concerns that the heavy-handed resolution of the Great War and the upheavals of the Russian Revolution were poised to rent the fabric of the civilized world for decades to come. History has shown that those concerns were well-founded. We now find ourselves asking whether those words will be as prophetic as they are appropriate to our current affairs of state.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
the falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
the best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity.


surely some revelation is at hand;
surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are the words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

W.B. Yeats, 1919

CPA Surcharge to Continue Unchanged

The news from Plymouth's Memorial Hall yesterday was good, at least for those tax payers who really enjoy paying that 1.5% surcharge on their property taxes each year that enables the Town to participate in the Community Preservation Act (aka CPA) program. This is the program that allows the Town to use the proceeds from the surcharge to fund the purchase of open land, affordable housing and/or historic preservation. Yesterday, the Plymouth Town Meeting voted against two Articles put forth by Precinct 5's own Laurie Enos. The votes basically leave the program unchanged. The first article called for a roll-back of the percentage, while the second would eliminate it entirely. And the actual question was not whether these changes be made, but rather that the question(s) be put on the ballot so that the voters could decide. What happened to "let the people vote"?

Some folks think that this program is valuable in that it is matched with state funds that has, in the past, doubled its purchasing power. But with the fiscal crunch at the state level, the match is expected to drop to the 30% range this year. In addition, there is a sense that the CPA funds, and their use, exist totally outside the scope of the municipal budget. It's not clear whether a project initially acquired with CPA funds could result in future costs for the Town.

At yesterday's session, the Town Meeting also voted to use up to $1.4 million to purchase the 1820 Court House property. While the case can be made for preserving the dignity (see above photo) of this historic property, there are substantial questions regarding the costs of renovations as well as the possibility of environmental clean ups.

One solution is the possible availability of Federal funds to help defray the costs. First of all, this reliance on other levels of government to pay for local projects seems to ignore the severe fiscal problems being experienced by both the state and federal level. A second point worth considering is where do people think that these other levels of government get their cash. This process begs for some recognition that the taxpayers of Plymouth also pay state and federal taxes. Town fiscal programs that perceive such funds as "free money" are, at best, disingenuous.