Tolerance and intolerance

Introduction

First, I'm taking the word "gay" back.  It now means being happy with a light heart, as someone would be if he or she, without any pressing duties or worries, was walking through a meadow filled with flowers and birds, with patches of trees with which to get some shade if the warm sun got too hot.

"Intolerance" means an unwillingness to tolerate someone else's beliefs.  I am male.  I have always been male.  A doctor can confirm this.  If you want further proof, an examination of my chromosomes can confirm this.  If you want me to "change my mind" about my gender, you are intolerant.

I desire to have the romantic company of women.  I have desired the romantic company of women since I became an adult.  For ten years before I became an adult, I desired the romantic company of girls my own age.  If you want to change my mind about that, you are intolerant.

There are large numbers of people who also desire the romantic and sexual company of people of the opposite sex.  They know who they are and they are proud of who they are.  If you want to change their mind about that, you are intolerant.

Tomorrow, a group of veterans, called the South Boston Allied War Veteran's Council will honor Boston's Irish roots by holding a parade through Sough Boston.  They love living in Boston.  They love being Irish, at least for one day.  They love being veterans.  Their parade gives them the opportunity to express their triple pride.

A short history of this holiday

This is the reason why they celebrate St. Patrick's Day, copied from their page on the history of the parade. The photo was on their page, but I moved it to a different part of my page.

General John Henry Knox brought the 55 cannons captured at Fort Ticonderoga.  In March, the troops positioned the cannons on Dorchester Heights.

They had cut down trees to cannon size, hollowed them out and blackened them over fire to look like cannons.  Surprise was just around the corner....

On March 17th, 1776, orders were given that if you wish to pass through the continental lines, the password was "St. Patrick". The British had seen all the cannons on the Heights and left Boston.

Dorchester Heights, Boston, MA

The South Boston Allied War Veteran's Council celebrates being Boston residents, being veterans, and being Irish because all those qualities are a part of their history.

The British, fooled by the fake cannons, left the city of Boston.

They evacuated the city.

In 1901, over a century ago, the City of Boston decided to celebrate this historic victory with a parade.  If you want the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council to change the reason for having their parade, or the message of the parade, you are intolerant.

This next text is copied from another page on the website of the South Boston Allied War Veteran's Council.

1901 was the very first celebration of Evacuation or St. Patrick's Day Parade. It was on the 125th Anniversary, on the day General George Washington and the Continental Army forced the British to end the occupancy of Boston.

Defining tolerance and intolerance using examples

Tolerant	Intolerant
Knowing and celebrating who you are.	Trying to convince somebody that they're someone else.
Celebrating living in Boston.	Forcing a Boston resident to celebrate living in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles
Celebrating three Red Sox World Series Championships since 2000 and now a fourth Championship as of 2018.	Forcing Boston residents to say that they'd rather live in New York City.
Celebrating being Irish, at least for a day.  BTW, I'm part-Scottish, and since the Irish and the Scottish are both Gaelic, it's going to be easy for me to join in the celebration.	Forcing a resident of South Boston to celebrate any other heritage on St. Patrick's day.
Celebrating being veterans.	Forcing a veteran to celebrate those who desecrate our country's flag, dishonor those who have served our country in uniform, and those who, while wearing the uniform of their country, disobey the legal orders of their military superiors.
Hosting and taking part in a parade in Boston that celebrates being a Boston resident, being Irish (at least for a day), and being a veteran.	Forcing the South Boston Allied War Veteran's Council to have any other message, political, sexual, or social, in their parade.

News stories about the dispute

These are the first three paragraphs of a March 15, 2014 U.P.I. story.

BOSTON, March 15 (UPI) -- The Boston Beer Company, maker of Sam Adams Beer, has announced it will not be involved in the city's St. Patrick's Day Parade, because gay groups are excluded.

Boston Brewing's decision came after a Boston restaurant, Club Cafe, said it would no longer serve Sam Adams, the Boston Globe reported.  The restaurant's move quickly gathered online support and Boston Beer released a statement Friday saying it was ending its involvement in the parade, scheduled for Sunday.

Participation by homosexual groups has become a hot issue in both Boston and New York this year.

These are the last three paragraphs of the same story.

New York Mayor Bill De Blasio has said he will not participate in the country's largest St. Patrick's parade, set for Monday, and the city council president said individual members can march but there will be no official council president.

In Boston, Mayor Marty Walsh tried to negotiate a settlement that would have allowed a gay veterans group to march.  He has said that as things stand he will not be there.

Organizers of both parades have denied being homophobic and have said gays and lesbians are welcome as individuals.

Remember, the organizers of both parades have the legal right to allow or deny the participation of any group because both parades are political speech and thus protected from the anti-discrimination laws of any state or the United States.

Link to Hurley vs. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., docket #94-749, decided June 19, 1995 by the U.S. Supreme Court.  This case is published on the Oyez website.

These paragraphs were copied from a website that focuses on legal issues.  Oral arguments in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc. were held on April 25, 1995.  The decision was announced on June 19, 1995.

Q. Did a Massachusetts State Court's mandate to Boston's Veterans' Council, requiring it to include GLIB members in its parade, violate the Council's free speech rights as protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments?

A. Yes. A unanimous court held that the State Court's ruling to require private citizens who organize a parade to include a group expressing a message that the organizers do not wish to convey violates the First Amendment by making private speech subordinate to the public accommodation requirement. Such an action "violate[s] the fundamental First Amendment rule that a speaker has the autonomy to choose the content of his own message and, conversely, to decide what not to say."

Link to two very tolerant press releases by the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council.

This next message is for those of you who, by this definition, are intolerant.

I have a suggestion for you.  You can take it or leave it.

Why don't you find a good lawyer and sue the South Boston Allied War Veteran's Council in court?

As a temporary Irishman, I wish you good luck.  Link to a post that mentions my ancestry.

Elizabeth Warren, foolish redistributionist

Copied from an article dated March 6, 2014 on the Think Progress website:

U.S. Senator Warren (supposedly representing Massachusetts) ...

... plans to introduce a bill that would create an “America that invests in those who get an education” by revising the tax code and enacting the Buffet rule.

The Buffet rule is named after billionaire Warren Buffet and would establish a minimum tax on income in excess of $1 million.  The measure, which never got out of Congress, raises approximately $50 billion in revenue and ensures that millionaires do not pay lower tax rates than middle-class families.

She doesn't get it.

She just doesn't get it.

Most Americans make economic decisions with a lot of knowledge of the potential gains and losses, due to the unquestionable fact that there is so much knowledge that is available to the average American.  Senator Warren underestimates the education of the American consumer, investor, and even the students.  There are many things that Elizabeth Warren knows nothing about, and that includes most of what she should know in order to do her job as a U.S. Senator.

The American economy is dynamic

People in this country are allowed to make changes to their economic situations whenever they feel like it.  Many people have done it, some voluntarily, others were encouraged to do so by the benefits of various government welfare programs, and still others were forced to accept these benefits because their income shrank.

Over the past five years, there has been a very large-scale shift in the middle-class.  Many people who were working full-time jobs before Obama was elected are now working one or even two part-time jobs, thanks to a feature of the Unaffordable Care Act which imposes a harsh tax on any company that has 50 or more employees.

As a direct result of this harsh tax, companies all across the United States have reduced the number of hours that individual employees work down below the 30-hour threshold that is mentioned in the law.  These companies are thus taking advantage of the dynamic U.S. economy, and the reason why they are doing it is because this makes good business sense.

Elizabeth Warren is a classic redistributionist

She wants to rob from the rich, with a public goal of helping the poor.  If this is done more-or-less voluntarily, it is socialism.  If, however, the wealth is confiscated by a government, then this is Karl Marx's version of Communism.

Copied further from the same March 6th article.  Notice that the writer, Mason Atkins, doesn't even call it Elizabeth's plan.  He calls it "Warren's plan" and "the Buffet rule".  This is simply a cowardly coverup.  Warren Buffet didn't push very hard for the redistribution of wealth, but Elizabeth is pushing.

Warren’s plan would allow students with outstanding student loans to refinance at lower rates.  The cost of the change would be covered by a “dollar for dollar” effort where for “every dollar the Buffet rule brings in, we use that dollar to refinance student loan debt,” she explained.  She estimated that recent graduates who borrowed the maximum in undergraduate loans could see their payments drop by $1,000 a year and total interest paid over the life of the loan could be cut nearly in half.  Students with graduate loans or borrowers from private lenders would save even more, Warren projected.

Warren Buffet's "rule" and his projections were forced on him by a president who has been proven to use the I.R.S. to harass his political opponents.  Mr. Buffet has written extensively about wealth creation, and he has authentic first-hand experience.  The mutual fund that he began decades ago now has shares that are being bought and sold at a price of over $180,000 each, up from "only" $170,000 three months ago.

Here are some price charts of the Barkshire Hathaway Class A shares:

Three months	Six months
One year	Two years	Five years

Please notice that five years ago, according to this chart, the price of this mutual fund was "only" around $80,000 per share.  Since then, shareholders have seen the price grow by an additional $100,000 per share.

Warren knows how to make money, and it isn't by taxing the wealthy people who include his earliest and thus wealthiest shareholders.

March 25, 2015 update

Elizabeth Warren's student loan plan has been defeated.

Copied from an article published today (March 25th) in The Hill, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill, where Congress does its' business.

Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked an effort by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to attach an amendment aimed at lowering student loan rates to the budget.

Senators voted 46-53 against Warren's amendment to the Republican budget resolution.

Warren's amendment would have allowed people with college loan debt to refinance at interest rates from the 2013-2014 academic year.  The Massachusetts Democrat, who is rejecting calls to run for president, said the move would allow undergraduates to refinance their loans to a 3.9 percent interest rate, with a "slightly higher" rate for graduate students.

"Millions of borrowers are still stuck paying interest rates at 6 percent, 8 percent, 10 percent and even higher," she said.

Her plan would have been paid for by requiring millionaires to pay at least a 30 percent effective federal tax rate.

Her plan would redistribute money from millionaires to college students.

That's redistribution, which inflicts economic punishment on those millionaires for the "crime" of having a lot of money.

January 7, 2020 update

These are the first four paragraphs of a January 7, 2020 Washington Times story.  The links in these paragraphs were in their story.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on Tuesday rolled out a proposed rewrite of U.S. bankruptcy law, including a repeal of certain provisions of a 2005 law supported by 2020 Democratic presidential rival Joseph R. Biden.

Ms. Warren’s proposal would make it easier for debt-ridden Americans to seek bankruptcy and. For example, it would reverse a provision in the 2005 bill that required people to seek pre-filing credit counseling.

“Thanks in part to the 2005 bankruptcy bill, our current system makes it far too hard for people in need to start the bankruptcy process so they can get back on their feet,” Ms. Warren said on her campaign website.

She also wants to make student loan debt dischargeable during the bankruptcy process, akin to other consumer debts, and make it easier for people to keep their homes and cars during the bankruptcy process, among other changes.

CNBC published a similar story on the same day.

The biggest reason for student loan debt is because greedy college professors, like her, were paid far more for their services as a teacher than they were worth.

These are the first two paragraphs of a January 12, 2012 Associated Press story that was published on the MassLive website.  The link in the first paragraph was in their story.  Note: This story was corrected by the Associated Press in March 2019 to show the accurate dollar value of her stock in IBM.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was paid $429,981 as a Harvard law professor from 2010 to 2011 and got nearly $134,000 in consulting fees on legal cases in 2010.

Warren's new personal financial disclosure report filed recently with the Senate shows she got $90,000 from a Florida law firm for her work as an expert witness against credit card companies in an antitrust case.

When any university has to pay $430,000 to one person to teach one class, all of the students at that university will be forced to pay a higher amount of tuition, room and board, and other fees to that university.

January 15, 2020 update

These are the first four paragraphs of a January 14, 2020 Washington Examiner story.  The link in the second paragraph was in their story.

Elizabeth Warren promised to cancel student loan debt for up to 42 million Americans on the first day of her administration, bypassing Congress to do so administratively.

The Democratic presidential candidate said, in a plan released Tuesday, that she would direct her secretary of education to "compromise and modify" federal student loans consistent with her plan to cancel up to $50,000 in debt for 95% of student loan borrowers.

"We can’t afford to wait for Congress to act," Warren said in the plan.

The Massachusetts senator said that the Education Department, through the Higher Education Act of 1965, already has the authority to cancel student debt.

As I said on Twitter in response to a tweet that included a link to this story, any bank whose student loans are cancelled by any U.S. President will refuse to make new loans on the legitimate grounds that these loans will instantly become financial losses for those banks, possibly leading to the financial failure of those banks.

"Sen. @EWarren promises to forgive student loan debt on Day 1 if she's elected.

She also says she doesn't need Congress to do it, either."

Every bank whose loans are cancelled will refuse to make new loans. #ElizabethWarren has been smoking high-potency marijuana.
. pic.twitter.com/SMSpviwMqO

— David the Republican (@BennytheKite) January 15, 2020

Elizabeth's friend Barak also wants to redistribute wealth

The first YouTube video was recorded, with Barry's own voice, in 1998.

In the second video, you will hear Barry's voice as he called in to a Chicago radio station in 2001, fourteen years ago.  The transcript of his words is printed onscreen in the video.

America, love it or leave it

I really hate to break the bad news to Elizabeth and her redistributionist friend Barak Hussein Obama, but some of the wealthiest people in this country have had enough of the "tax the rich" dreamers and schemers.

They're leaving the United States.

This is the first sentence in an article dated March 11, 2014 on the Finance Page of the Yahoo website.  There are brief interviews with five former Americans later in the same article.

3,000 Americans around the world renounced their citizenship last year.  Meet five U.S. citizens who have given up their passports -- or are thinking about it -- to escape an overly complicated tax code.

When you see the phrase "overly complicated tax code", remember the Dodd-Frank law (PDF 848 pages, not counting the regulations), which regulated a very large portion of the American banking sector that was functioning with already high government regulations, and remember the thousands of pages of the Unaffordable Care Act, (PDF, 906 pages, not counting the regulations), which is now bankrupting millions of Americans because of higher insurance premiums caused by unnecessary "benefits" like pregnancy care for single men and senior citizens.  Are single men likely to get pregnant?  How about senior citizens?

Leaving America and moving to Belize

These are the first two paragrraphs of an article dated November 24, 2013 on the Huffington Post website.  All links in these paragraphs were in their article.

Expats have settled all over Belize, but one spot is starting to earn lots of attention lately... Corozal, the northernmost of Belize's six districts.  It has the second-largest population of the districts with about 35,000 people and shares the border with Mexico.  Once considered the undiscovered gem of Belize, this district and its tidy little capital of Corozal Town are quickly rising on the radar of foreign retirees and other expats, and there are lots of reasons why.

One big reason is that it's generally less expensive to live here than are other areas of Belize.  In large part this is because of that border we mentioned with Mexico... the city of Chetumal, Mexico, is just on the other side.  Since Belize has little domestic manufacturing and relatively high duties on imported goods, shopping trips to Chetumal -- to Sam's Club and other big-box stores and supermarkets -- help Corozal residents beat the higher prices on imported goods paid by folks elsewhere in Belize.

Chetumal is also where most in Belize go for medical care from an excellent, modern hospital.  But there's also a small and efficient public hospital in Corozal Town, fine for most general medical needs.

By the way, if you're looking to relax and enjoy life when you move to Belize, you can definitely do that. For just $25 to $30 Belize dollars ($12 - $15 USD) per day, you can hire someone to clean your house, do your yard work and more...

Real estate in Corozal is also less expensive than other places in Belize because Corozal doesn't have the notoriety of more popular destinations like Ambergris Caye or Placencia.  Deals still abound in Corozal for raw land, single-family homes, and residential developments.  Another plus is that this part of Belize gets less rainfall than the rest of the country, a big benefit for fans of dry, sunny days.

If you can see why Belize is such an attractive place to live, you can also see a good reason why people like Elizabeth Warren should think twice before trying to force wealthy and already heavily-taxed Americans to pay even more taxes for any reason, including subsidies for college students who have student loans.

Oh by the way, during 2013, a record number of Americans emigrated to other countries.

Some reading material for Senator Elizabeth Warren

I hope she reads them before she makes another fool of herself.

These essays were all published on my "Conserving the Nation" blog.

Redistribution of wealth, published September 28, 2012.

Taxes and national income, published October 22, 2012.

We're ignoring 200-year-old wisdom, published November 15, 2012.  Benjamin Franklin said that a penny saved is a penny earned.  I simply updated his wisdom for the 21st century by modifying his sentence into the following sentence, which every government official, including one particular Senator, should read and understand.

A trillion dollars saved (by not spending it) is a trillion dollars earned.

I do hope that she understands this principle before I move to Belize.

May 19, 2016 update

Goofy Elizabeth Warren has been one of the least effective Senators in the entire U.S. Senate. She has done nothing!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2016

May 20, 2016 update.

She is being considered as Hillary's Vice-President.

These are the first two paragraphs of an May 18, 2016 Editorial in the Washington Times.  The links in these paragraphs were in their story.

If the millennials can’t have Bernie Sanders at the top of the Democratic ticket, Hillary Clinton is feeling the burn (if not the bern) to put Sen. Elizabeth Warren at the bottom of the ticket.  This would wreathe the campaign in clouds and tendrils of estrogen, the female “gender” hormone, and give Hillary the opportunity to set two precedents in one.

The Constitution requires that both president and vice president be Native Americans, and Ms. Warren claims to be a Native American as well (born in Oklahoma), descended, at least in part, from the Delaware and Cherokee tribes.  Her claim is in dispute, however, and the only proof she has produced to back the claim she made in a campaign biography in 2012 is her contribution of two “family recipes” to the Pow Wow Chow Cookbook, published by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, Okla., in 1984.

April 22, 2019 update

On November 6, 2018, Elizabeth Warren, who pretends to represent this state in the U.S. Senate, won reelection against Geoff Diehl, who I supported in many ways.  During the campaign, she denied using a dubious claim of American Indian heritage to win an employment contract as a professor at Harvard University, which is why I often call her "Pocahontas" on my Twitter account (BennyTheKite, named in honor of Benjamin Franklin).

On February 9, 2019, she declared herself to be a presidential candidate.  Link to a New York Times story published that day.

These are the first three paragrraphs of an April 22, 2019 New York Times story.  The link in the second paragraph was in their article.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has structured her presidential campaign around a steady unveiling of disruptive policy ideas, on Monday proposed her biggest one yet: a $1.25 trillion plan to reshape higher education by canceling most student loan debt and eliminating tuition at every public college.

Ms. Warren’s sweeping plan has several planks.  She would pay for it with revenue generated by her proposed increase in taxes for America’s most wealthy families and corporations, which the campaign estimates to be $2.75 trillion over 10 years.  In addition to eliminating undergraduate tuition at public colleges and universities, she would expand federal grants to help students with nontuition expenses and create a $50 billion fund to support historically black colleges and universities.

She would eliminate up to $50,000 in student loan debt for every person with a household income of less than $100,000; borrowers who make between $100,000 and $250,000 would have a portion of their debt forgiven.

Any time a debt is forgiven, the lender has lost any part of the principal amount that has not been repaid as well as the interest payments on that debt.

Meet a murderer on March 24th

Hillary Clinton is scheduled to be in Boston on that day.

As the U.S. Secretary of State on September 11, 2012, she watched as the U.S. Ambassador to Libya was brutally murdered.  Three other members of the embassy were also killed as they tried to protect him and the security of the embassy itself.

Multiple requests for increased security were sent to Hillary because of prior well-documented attacks.  These requests were all denied by Hillary.

Copied from an article dated May 7, 2013 written by Jake Tapper on CNN's website:

The four Americans killed last September in Libya, Ambassador Chris Stevens, information officer Sean Smith, and former navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, is not the White House's favorite topic of conversation

"Let's be clear. Benghazi happened a long time ago," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said last week.

Not that long ago – just eight months in fact, and there are still many outstanding questions from individuals with first-hand knowledge of the events, career diplomats.

"The question that we would ask is again, 'How thin does the ice need to get until someone falls through?'" former regional security officer in Libya Eric Nordstrom said before Congress last October.

Nordstrom testified about his request for 12 security agents. Why was this denied?

"What makes most frustrating about this assignment? It is not the hardships, it is not the gunfire, it is not the threats. It is dealing and fighting against the people, programs, and personnel who are supposed to be supporting me," said Norstrom. "For me the Taliban is on the inside of the building."

Under the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this is the definition of murder.

Murder committed with deliberately premeditated malice aforethought, or with extreme atrocity or cruelty, or in the commission or attempted commission of a crime punishable with death or imprisonment for life, is murder in the first degree.

Murder which does not appear to be in the first degree is murder in the second degree. Petit treason shall be prosecuted and punished as murder. The degree of murder shall be found by the jury.

The Winchester Connection (formerly the Boston Connection)

Copied from a story on the Boston Globe website dated September 13, 2012, only two days after the multiple murders.

Glen A. Doherty, a Winchester native who was a former Navy SEAL, was one of four Americans killed in Libya by a group of suspected Islamic terrorists, his sister said today.

Doherty was 42 years old and was working as a security contractor when he was killed with US Ambassador John Christopher Stevens in the American consulate in Benghazi late Tuesday during what officials believe may have been a coordinated terrorist attack.

“He was on security detail and he was protecting the ambassador and also helping the wounded’’ when he was killed, said his sister, Kate Quigley of Marblehead.

Quigley said her family grew up in Winchester and that her brother wanted a life “filled with adrenaline. … He was always an adventure seeker.’’

All of Glen's family and friends are invited to greet Hillary

All of the public is invited, too.  After all, she did so much to help a Navy SEAL when he asked for the help.

When Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton asked Navy Seals to kill Osama bin Laden, they did their job.

When Navy Seals begged Hillary Clinton for help on 9/11/12, they were ignored and abandoned during an eight-hour firefight.

Date: March 24, 2014 Time: TBA Place: The Union Club of Boston Address: 8 Park Street, Boston, MA 02108 Attire: Informal

The other invitation

Copied from an article dated March 8, 2014 in Politico:

The upcoming Ready for Hillary event will take place at the Union Club of Boston on March 24.  Clinton donor Elaine Schuster will serve as a co-host.

Ready for Hillary is a pro-Clinton super PAC that has been trying to capture the energy around a potential second run at the White House for the former secretary of state.  Clinton has said she will make her decision on whether to run in 2016 by the end of this year.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/ready-for-hillary-clinton-boston-event-104444.html#ixzz2vPDCRLxJ

The Celtic's image problem

I'm referring to the Boston Celtics, my home-town basketball team. This page shows the team history, decade by decade.

Notice that they haven't done anything worth writing about during the current decade.

The team and the fans

The social contract

Every sports team depends on loyal fans to support it, and the Boston Celtics are no exception.  Teams pay millions of dollars to each of their players.  Some of the players receive tens of millions of dollars.

Money doesn't grow on trees.  Every team has to ask their fans to support the team by offering them good entertainment in exchange for the money that fans pay to watch the team live in a building like the Boston Garden, now rebuilt and renamed.  Fans who watch a game live also support the team when they buy food and drinks during a game.  This money goes to the food vendors, who pay a fee to sell the food and drink inside the team-owned building.

Even fans who don't watch a game live can support a team through their cable-TV or satellite-TV fees, through the sales of team merchandise, and through advertising on radio broadcasts, printed newspapers, and sports blogs.  None of them would have much of an audience if the team wasn't popular with their fans, which leads to the real problem.

The Boston Celtics aren't popular with the fans.

Past Celtics glory

The team isn't losing games year after year because the Celtics have poor-quality athletes on the team.  They can't be compared to the New York Mets baseball team, which went many years without any winning seasons.

The Championship team photo, 1981

They were the champions of the National Basketball Association in 1981. Please notice the curly-haired kid sitting second from the right in the front row.  His name is Larry Bird.

Larry is one of the reasons why the Boston Celtics won three championships in the early 1980s. Watch some of his highlights in this video.

I still remember hearing a radio broadcast one day when Larry was a member of the team.  As reported by the sports reporter for that radio station, at the very beginning of a practice session for the team, the coach told Larry to go to the center of the basketball court with a basketball.  When he got there, the coach said to Larry that if he could make a basket on his first try, the whole team would be able to skip that practice session.

Larry made the basket, and the coach kept his word.  He sent the team home for the day, and the whole team got a big boost in their confidence level.

These are two other reasons why the Boston Celtics won three championships in the early 1980s.

Dave Cowens, on the left, and John Havlicek. They were professionals on- and off the court.

The team is losing games because they don't have an enthusiastic fan base.

There is a specific reason for this.  The Boston Celtics have a bad reputation.

The source of their image problem

The thrill of victory ... In the 1986 draft, they liked and wanted to select a man named Len Bias. He was an exceptionally good player. Look at him participating in this dunking contest.

Look at his basketball highlights as a college player.

... and then, the Celtics made the biggest mistake in their history ...

These paragraphs were copied from an August 5, 2004 story on the E.S.P.N. website.

NBA commissioner David Stern is handed a piece of paper and walks to the podium.  He unfolds the paper.  "With the No. 2 pick in the NBA Draft," he says, "the Boston Celtics select Len Bias, University of Maryland."

Bias, the ACC Player of the Year who averaged a league-leading 23 points and seven rebounds during his senior season, grins shyly as he rises from his seat and walks proudly across the Forum and onto the stage.  He is cool and confident, not displaying his excitement outwardly.  For he knew he was going to Boston, that he was going to be a Celtic.  He had become close to Celtics president Red Auerbach, a friend of Bias' coach at Maryland, Lefty Driesell.  Bias had even spent a week the previous summer at Auerbach's New England basketball camp, working with young players.

... the agony of defeat

Unfortunately, Len Bias had a problem.  Unlike Larry Bird, Dave Cowens, and John Havlicek, he wasn't a professional off the court.

Soon after Len Bias was drafted by the Celtics, even before he played in his first game as a Celtic, he died of a cocaine overdose.

These paragraphs were copied from the same E.S.P.N. story:  The photo was found with an image search.

As Bias walks out of Madison Square Garden, the glare of bright sun forcing him to squint, he heads toward a taxi on 33rd Street and 8th Avenue with his father, James, his agent, Bill Shelton, and Steve Riley from the Celtics' front office.  Children on the sidewalk ask Bias for his autograph.  "The Celtics still aren't going to beat the Knicks," one of the children says with a smile.  Bias is amused.  "We'll see," he says, smiling.

He gets into a taxi and heads off to La Guardia Airport and an Eastern Shuttle flight to Boston to meet the media and visit Reebok's corporate offices, where he is discussing a five-year endorsement package worth $1.6 million.

Later in the day, tired, weary and excited to return home, Bias and his father board an evening flight and land at Washington's National Airport at 10 p.m.  They drive to the family home in Landover.  At 11:30 p.m., Bias leaves and heads to his dorm suite in College Park on the University of Maryland campus dorm room that he shares with teammates Jeff Baxter, Keith Gatlin, David Gregg, Phil Nevin and Terry Long, a friend and former Maryland basketball player.

It's midnight, June 19, 1986.  Bias arrives at his dorm room in Washington Hall.  He is met by various teammates and friends, including basketball players Gatlin, Gregg, Long, Baxter and Keeta Covington, a defensive back on the Maryland football team.  They laugh, talk, and munch on crabs in the dormitory suite until 2 a.m.  They talk about Bias' future as a Celtic, the spectacular opportunity to play with the greatest and winningest organization in the NBA, the incredible break to play with a legend like Bird, and a championship core of players in McHale, Parish, Ainge and DJ.

But Bias is edgy, frustrated.  He becomes sick of talking about himself, his newfound wealth, his fame and the expectations with the great Celtics.  He suddenly feels a mountain of pressure.  He decides to escape.  "I'm getting away from here," he says to the gang.  He abruptly leaves the dorm and takes off in his new Nissan 300ZX.  "I figured he was going to see a lady," Covington would later say.

Bias speeds toward Cherry Hill, just off the Maryland campus.  He stops by a small party and talks to David Driggers, a friend with whom Bias has often played pickup basketball games.  Soon, Bias departs.  It is 2:30 a.m. At 3 a.m., Bias returns to his campus dorm room.  Suddenly, reports will later reveal, cocaine is being passed around the room on a small mirror.  For the next three hours, the small group of friends and teammates snort cocaine.

At 6 a.m., while sitting in a chair talking to Long, Bias closes his eyes and begins breathing heavily.  His body begins to quiver and shudder.  Shockingly, a series of seizures wreak havoc on his 6-foot-8, 210-pound body.  "Lenny! Lenny!", Long screams.  He doesn't get a response.  Bias passes out and slumps back in the chair.  Long and Tribble begin screaming.

At 6:32 a.m., a hysterical Tribble dials 911 as Long and Gregg try to revive Bias.  The dispatcher answers the 911 call and Tribble screams, "It's Len Bias.  He passed out.  His body his shaking.  You have to get here fast.  You have to save him."

The commotion awakens Baxter and Gatlin, who see Bias on the floor, his body convulsing.  "I was in a state of shock," Gatlin would say later.  "I was so scared."

Long begins to administer CPR.  The ambulance arrives at 6:36 a.m.  Paramedics find Bias, in a blue Reebok shirt, jeans and sneakers, collapsed in a chair.  They try, desperately, to restart his heart, to no avail.  As paramedics quickly wheel Bias out of the dorm, roommates and other teammates and friends in the dorm follow.  The ambulance speeds off to Leland Memorial Hospital, just a few miles away.

At 6:45, Gatlin calls the Bias home in Landover. Bias' mother answers.  "Len had a seizure and they're taking him to the hospital," he says.  She drops the phone, races out of the house and heads toward College Hill.

Dr. Edward Wilson, chief emergency room physician at Leland Memorial, injects Bias with drugs designed to help his heart recover from cardiac arrest.  Five drugs are administered: sodium epinephrine (a form of adrenaline), sodium bicarbonate (to normalize the acidity in the bloodstream), lidocaine (to control hyperactivity and an irregular heartbeat), calcium (to stimulate the heart muscle) and bretyline (a secondary drug to control irregularity of the heart).  It doesn't help.  Bias is still unconscious.  Electric-shock treatment is then administered.  Still no heart beat.  A pacemaker is implanted after Bias' heart registers a flat line on the monitor.  There's no heart beat.  He never begins breathing on his own.  He is pronounced dead at 8:50 a.m., due to cardio-respiratory arrest.

Epilogues

These three paragraphs are part of an undated page on the E.S.P.N. website.

The Len Bias Morality Play began with a single bizarre phone call, placed from a dormitory on a college campus to a 911 dispatcher whose Baltimorese hammered flat the word "phone" and who, from his tone of voice, apparently assumed this whole thing was a put-on, a prank by a bunch of rowdy university kids with nothing better to do.  It was approximately 6:30 in the morning.  The voice of the caller was slurred and hesitant, and the voice kept repeating the victim's name until the dispatcher declared, "It doesn't matter what his name is."  But Brian Tribble was also (presumably) prodigiously high, and this was really happening to him -- his friend was having a seizure on the floor of his suite, 1103 Washington Hall, on the University of Maryland campus.  So Tribble kept repeating the name, and uttering panicky phrases like, "This is Len Bias.  You have to get him back to life.  There's no way he can die."

A moment earlier, we have since learned, Len Bias sat up on a bed, bent over a mirror, proclaimed himself "a horse" -- a nickname his teammates had used for him because of his on-court grace and physical presence -- and snorted one last line of cocaine.  A moment earlier, Bias was fine, just a young man celebrating his future the way many young men have/will celebrate their futures.  Then he got up to use the bathroom, and he stumbled, and he sat back down on the bed, and he lapsed into a seizure.  There were three other men in the room.  One, Terry Long, placed the handle of a pair of scissors in Bias' mouth to prevent him from biting his tongue; another, David Gregg, held Bias' legs.  Brian Tribble phoned his mother, who told him to call 911.

The 911 call prompted a dozen more phone calls, the story quickly rippling outward.  The paramedics arrived and transported Bias to Leland Memorial Hospital, as Tribble and two of Bias' Maryland teammates, who had been partying with him, began to clean up after themselves.  Another teammate, Keith Gatlin, phoned Lonise Bias to tell her Len had had a seizure and was clinging to life; in their haste, she and her husband, James, rushed off to the wrong hospital.  Before Bias even arrived at Leland, a source phoned a television reporter named Dave Statter, who did not cover sports but knew Len Bias because everyone in D.C., and especially in Prince George's County, knew Len Bias, because he was a kid who had grown up within walking distance of the Maryland campus, because he had played ball at nearby Northwestern High School.  And because hours earlier he had moved close to becoming a millionaire, agreeing to a lucrative endorsement deal with Reebok that he planned to sign the next week, and proclaiming that by being drafted by the Celtics, his dream had been realized.

These are the last sentences of the first paragraph.

"But Brian Tribble was also (presumably) prodigiously high, and this was really happening to him -- his friend was having a seizure on the floor of his suite, 1103 Washington Hall, on the University of Maryland campus.  So Tribble kept repeating the name, and uttering panicky phrases like, 'This is Len Bias.  You have to get him back to life.  There's no way he can die.'"

That undated E.S.P.N. page also quotes the opinion of the autopsy report.

LEONARD K. BIAS, a 22-year-old Black male, died as a result of cocaine intoxication, which interrupted the normal electrical control of his heartbeat, resulting in the sudden onset of seizures and cardiac arrest.  The blood cocaine level was 6.5 milligrams per liter.  Toxicological studies for alcohol and other drugs were negative.  Due to the ongoing investigation of the circumstances surrounding his death, the manner of the death is ruled UNDETERMINED at this time.

"There's no way he can die." - Brian Tribble, who was in the room when Len Bias took his last dose of cocaine

Brian was, of course, dead wrong.  If you use cocaine, then yes, you can die.  Len Bias proved it by putting cocaine into his body and by dying immediately afterward.


These are the first five paragraphs of a June 25, 1986 Los Angeles Times story.

BALTIMORE — University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias died of "cocaine intoxication" after ingesting an unusually pure dose of the drug that stopped his heart within minutes, Maryland's chief medical examiner said Tuesday.

Dr. John E. Smialek attributed Bias' death last Thursday morning directly to cocaine, "which interrupted the normal electrical control of his heartbeat, resulting in the sudden onset of seizures and cardiac arrest."

The 22-year-old Bias "was a very healthy individual" who showed no evidence of heart disease, Smialek said at a crowded news conference here Tuesday afternoon.

Smialek said there were no indications that Bias had used alcohol or taken any other drug in the hours preceding his collapse in his Washington Hall dormitory suite on the College Park campus.

He said that the autopsy conducted on Bias' body showed no evidence that Bias was a long-term user of cocaine and that it was "possible" that the fatal ingestion was the All-American's first encounter with the drug.

These are the first four paragraphs of a July 10, 1986 Orlando Sentinel story.

WASHINGTON — An assistant Maryland medical examiner said Wednesday that the autopsy of University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias indicates Bias most likely smoked the cocaine that killed him and that the drug may have been purified through a process called free-basing.

Dr. Dennis Smyth, the assistant state medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Bias, said that redness in Bias' windpipe and the high concentration of cocaine found in his blood suggest he did not ingest the drug in powder form through the nose as had been previously disclosed by the chief medical examiner.

''It all points to the most likely route of the cocaine was by inhalation,'' Smyth said.

The high concentration of the drug in Bias' blood stream -- 6.5 milligrams per liter -- also indicates that he did not snort the drug.  ''We've never seen people snorting get levels that high,'' Smyth said.

Link to a blog page, written in September 2011, and titled Len Bias and the Decline of the Celtics on a personal blog called Nonstop 80s.  His death was only part of the reason for the decline of the team's fan base and the beginning of a very long series of games that they lost.  The bigger factor was the team's response to his death.

My analysis

It isn't pretty, but it has to be done for the benefit of the remaining fans.

This is how a professional team in any sport deals with a tragedy

1. They find out what happened.  According to Maryland's Chief Medical Examiner, as reported on June 25, 1986 by the Los Angeles Times, "University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias died of 'cocaine intoxication' after ingesting an unusually pure dose of the drug that stopped his heart within minutes."


2. They find out what mistakes were made that allowed this tragedy to happen.


3. They change their procedures so that this mistake doesn't happen again.  I would like to see every NBA team have a retired player mentor every new draftee, in order to help him adjust to being a professional basketball player.  I would also like to see every current player and every draftee be subject to a random, unannounced medical test for illegal substances in his body.


4. They do what they can to reassure their fans that this tragedy will never happen again.  This means telling sports reporters and the team's fans about the changes that the team has made in their procedures.

Any team that does this is maintaining the social contract that they have with their fans, despite the sadness of the tragedy.

In fact, any team that does this during a tragedy deserves to have more fans because they have demonstrated, during a tragedy, that the team cares about their fans.


The Boston Celtics have never completed this process.


When they found out that their number two draft pick had died, they talked with the team's medical staff.  They talked with the hospital doctors.  They read the autopsy report.

That completed step one.

They had long discussions behind closed doors about team policies and procedures, and the policies of the National Basketball Association.

They discussed and debated whether they, as a team, should be more strict with the standards of conduct that they impose on any person who is (or will be) on their team.

That completed step two.

And then they halted this very necessary process.

From my point of view, as a ex-fan, the Boston Celtics never made any changes to their procedures.  Players who have a drug problem can still play on the team.  College players who have been drafted by the Celtics can still have parties with drug dealers before their first game.  The public has no assurance whatsoever that any of their players will show up at their next game because there is always the possibility that any of their players may die of a drug overdose.

The team has never, ever reassured their fans, not once since 1986, that the team will even find out if any of their players has a drug problem because they don't even take the vital step of drug-testing the players.

How many times have the Boston Celtics won an N.B.A. Championship since 1986?

Once.

(clickable link)

Now you know why.

The Boston Celtics fan base has decreased since 1986 because the team violated the terms of their social contract.  This caused the team to begin losing more games than they win.

I have a challenge for every person who is intellectually honest and who considers himself or herself a fan of the Celtics.  It's in the form of two related tasks.

1. Count how many pieces of team-licensed clothing you see tomorrow.


2. Remember (or research and document) how many pieces of team-licensed clothing you saw daily in 1985, the year before Len Bias died.  That was more than 30 years ago.

Link to the store that sells this item.	Link to the store that sells this item.
Link to the store that sells this item.	Team-licensed baby clothing!

Link to the store that sells this item.

Link to the Celtics store, which sells this item.

Another way to perform this task is to compare the unit sales of team-licensed clothing at an authorized retail store with the same statistic from the same store from 30 years ago.

This is what you will see.

Until the Boston Celtics finish the process that they began in 1986, by monitoring the off-court activities of their players during the playing season, and by telling their fans that they have changed their procedures, so that the death of Len Bias will never be repeated, the team will never get their old fan base back.

The people who pay to watch the game in the stands will not have much enthusiasm for the players while they play a game.  The team will be playing just to earn a paycheck, not because the fans want them to win.  That lack of enthusiasm by both parties in the social contract will continue to influence the on-court performance of the players, and ...

... and the team will continue to have losing seasons.

Links to previous essays about Massachusetts

If you click on any of these links, you will see essays that I have previously published on my other blogs.  All of the essays that are linked here are essays that have some relevance to people who live and/or work in Massachusetts.

I have arranged the essays in chronological order, oldest first under the name of the blog in which you can find them.

Conserving the Nation

The Funny Massachusetts Holiday Published June 16, 2012
This was the very first essay that I published on any of my blogs.  It tells the reason why there is a statewide holiday called Bunker Hill Day.  This essay was published on that holiday in 2012, more than a year and a half ago.

That's how long I have been blogging.


Yesterday's terrorism in Boston Published April 16, 2013
In this essay, I stated the facts that I believed about the bombing.  Many facts were not verified as of the date that I published this essay, and some facts are always in dispute whenever there is an incident of terrorism.  I stated the facts that I understood and believed.  For instance, I believed then, and I still believe today, that more than two bombs had been manufactured and left in a public space by the two known terrorists.

I Have to Say This

Urgent message for Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck Published September 1, 2012
I used to listen to both of these people via a local radio station, but both of them had recently become unavailable due to the fact that the local radio station had changed ownership.  The new owner had decided to broadcast prerecorded comedy instead of conservative talk shows.  I was hoping to alert both of these men to this fact, and also to alert them to the fact that both of their websites still listed that local radio station as a place where Boston residents could listen to their shows.


An earthquake happened in southern Maine Published October 16, 2012
Earthquakes are rare in New England, but I felt that one in Massachusetts.


If I ran a personals ad Published March 16, 2013
Some of you don't know it, but this is a copy of a "man seeking woman" ad that I really placed on the Boston version of Craig's List.  I did receive some responses to the ad, but none of them satisfied me enough to end my bachelor status.


A few of Boston's achievements Published April 17, 2013
This essay was inspired by the bombing on April 15th.  I decided to use the murders as a reason to brag about the large city located about five miles from where I live.  The City of Boston was the first city in the nation to accomplish certain things, such as building a subway system and building a public school system.  The essay doesn't mention one other worthwhile achievement.  Boston is the home of America's oldest restaurant, originally called Ye Old Oyster House.  This restaurant has been in continuous operation since 1826.

Oh by the way, America's oldest inn is located in Sudbury, Massachusetts, about 15 miles west of where I live.   It was named for a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  It has been in continuous operation since 1716.  This inn includes a restaurant.  I have eaten there, and I like their food.

Conserving the Mobile Nation

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick may be moving to Washington
Published December 18, 2012
This essay is based on a rumor that I heard.  That's why I did not phrase it as a certainty.  The rumor was that President Obama was preparing to nominate this Democrat as a replacement for Attorney General Eric Holder, who was and still is widely criticized for his handling of the "Fast and Furious" scandal.

In support of this rumor was the documented fact that Governor Patrick had placed his home on the real estate market at a lower price than some people believed it was worth.  Unfortunately for Massachusetts residents, Deval Patrick will still be the Massachusetts governor for another year.  He has chosen to not run for re-election, but whoever is chosen by the voters to replace him will not take office until January 2015.

In the meantime, he has still made it possible for illegal aliens to pay the same tuition rates as people who were born and raised in Massachusetts.  I am one of many people who hopes that the next governor corrects this economic inequality.


19,000 documented cases of welfare abuse published January 4, 2013
Almost 500,000 letters were mailed to welfare recipients during the autumn of 2012, which was also the presidential campaign season.  These letters asked them to vote.

19,000 of those letters were returned to the state agency that sent them out.  Those letters could not be delivered because those 19,000 people did not live at those addresses, and yet, those people were still receiving welfare benefits.

This essay mentioned the fact that a reporter from the Boston Herald was scheduled to be a guest on the Greta van Susteren show and that this reporter would be reporting to the nation about this scandal.


Seeing racism and sexism where it doesn't exist published April 11, 2013
This essay is based on my experiences as a boy attending a chess club in a Massachusetts library.


My favorite tweet during the past week published April 21, 2013
This essay includes a verbatim copy of a message that someone named Greg Guttfeld posted onto his Twitter account in response to the bombing in Boston.  His tweet expressed the same moral outrage and righteous anger that many of us felt when we heard the news from the Boston Marathon on April 15th, and I was happy to repeat his message for the benefit of everybody who was not fortunate enough to see his tweet on their own Twitter page.


This is why they call it Great Britain published April 23, 2013
That great nation honored the victims of the Boston Bombing during the London Marathon, and so, I honored them right back.  God bless the queen.


If you are eligible to vote in Massachusetts published October 11, 2013
During last year's Congressional election campaign, I asked every Massachusetts resident who lived in one of the towns within the 5th Congressional District to vote for a candidate named Michael Stopa.  He was one of three Republicans and two Democrats who was trying to represent the 5th District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

On election day, he finished in second place among the three Republicans, and Democrat Ed Markey beat the Republican candidate in the final election for that Congressional seat.

Deity Dialog

A Protestant church with a focus on social issues published October 15, 2012
One church in Massachusetts that I know well (because I spent many years as a member) has a long tradition of spending more time and effort on social and political issues than on truly religious topics.  These topics have included unilateral nuclear disarmament (the U.S. must throw away all their nuclear arms even if other nations don't),  South African apartheid, gay rights, abortion rights, and the expulsion of a hymnal that doesn't include any feminine references to God.


The Shoulder Test published November 29, 2012
This essay is named for a test that can be performed by any member of any church to test the sincerity of that church's sympathy towards those who feel sadness and grief.

I wrote that essay because a well-attended church in Massachusetts (a different one than the Protestant church mentioned previously) had failed to pass this test, and as a result, I was still feeling sadness and grief years after I had begun to attend their weekly worship services.

The essay quoted some Bible verses that I hoped would inspire the leaders of this large and well-attended church to be more sympathetic towards me and other grieving individuals.



It is likely but not certain that, in the future, issues that are focused on Massachusetts residents will be published on this blog.

The first post

Hello to all my readers, and Merry Christmas! This is a new blog, my fifth.  For the benefit of my international readers, Massachusetts is one state in the United States of America. On the right is the State Seal for Massachusetts.  The flag of this state is the middle of the seal on a white background. The knickname for this state is the Bay State, a reference to the Massachusetts Bay, the part of the Atlantic Ocean that is our eastern neighbor.

Also for the benefit of my international readers, the word "matters" has two definitions in the English language.  For that reason, I cannot predict how the word will be translated into other languages, but I chose that word to be part of the title of this blog because both of those definitions were appropriate.

The word "matters" can mean "topics".  In this context, this blog will be focused on topics that relate to the current politics, the current economics, the history and the future of this state, and other things that relate to this state.  That is one of my goals.

The word "matters" can also be a verb.  When I say that Massachusetts matters, I'm saying that this state is important to the rest of the United States.  Massachusetts is important to the rest of the country, for many reasons, and so, both of the definitions of the word "matters" are, I believe, accurate and worthy of being included in the title of this blog.

Early Massachusetts history

Before the United States existed as a unified nation, we were a collection of thirteen colonies.  The people in those colonies had been sent here by the King of England for economic reasons.  He wanted additional sources of revenue for his nation.  Our purpose as a colony was simple.

1. find things that had potential economic value


2. develop them, in order to turn potential economic value into real economic value


3. sell them, and


4. return some of the profits to the king.

An alternative goal was to send salable products back to England on the same ships that were still bringing people to this state. Any products that survived an ocean voyage on a wooden sailing ship (this was the only transportation method that was available at that time) would be sold in England. Some ships were destroyed during the voyage, due to a bad combination of ocean storms and the fact that a wooden ship can only withstand a limited amount of physical abuse from a storm.

In the early 1770s, colonists had already been living in Massachusetts for a century, but their relations with the then-current king were not good.  He had imposed many taxes that made it difficult for the colonists to provide for themselves and their growing families.  He had also imposed many regulations that many people were upset about.  For example, the British soldiers who had been sent here to enforce the king's orders insisted that they should sleep in the homes of the very people who were supposed to obey their orders!  This practice has now been explicitly forbidden by the third amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Massachusetts was a politically active society

An event took place on March 5, 1770 that helped to shape this nation's history.  It is called the Boston Massacre.  The following quote is copied from the home page of the Boston Massacre Historical Society.

The Boston Massacre was the killing of five colonists by British regulars on March 5, 1770. It was the culmination of tensions in the American colonies that had been growing since Royal troops first appeared in Massachusetts in October 1768 to enforce the heavy tax burden imposed by the Townshend Acts.

A "regular" is the name for most of the British soldiers, those below the officer level.  They are the ones who shot into a crowd that was loudly protesting the presence of some British troops on a Boston street.  Some of the people who were shot died from their injuries, thus making them some of this nation's first martyrs.  The place where the massacre happened is marked with a plaque that is embedded into the street.


The first armed resistance to British rule happened in Massachusetts.  I told that story in my very first essay.

One of the earliest one-day rebellions against British taxes happened at a Boston dock on December 16, 1773.  The event was called the Boston Tea Party.  British subjects drink tea often, but on that day, the "party" was very different.  Massachusetts colonists dressed as indians.  They boarded ships that contained tea, waiting to be unloaded (and therefore taxed).  They threw the tea into the waters of Boston Harbor as a protest against the excessively high tax that would have been due if the tea had been unloaded.  A replica of that ship is still docked in Boston.  The public is welcome to visit it and the museum that is aboard it.

Copied from a page on the website of the Boston Tea Party Historical Society:

It is estimated that hundreds took part in the Boston Tea Party.  For fear of punishment, many participants of the Boston Tea Party remained anonymous for many years after the event.  To date it is known that 116 people are documented to have participated.  Not all of the participants of the Boston Tea Party are known; many carried the secret of their participation to their graves.

The participants were made up of males from all walks of colonial society.  Many were from Boston or the surrounding area, but some participants are documented to have come from as far away as Worcester in central Massachusetts and Maine.  The vast majority was of English descent, but men of Irish, Scottish, French, Portuguese, and African ancestry were documented to have also participated.  The participants were of all ages, but the majority of the documented participants was under the age of forty.  Sixteen participants were teenagers, and only nine men were above the age of forty.

Many of the Boston Tea Party participants fled Boston immediately after the destruction of the tea to avoid arrest.  Thousands witnessed the event, and the implication and impact of this action were enormous ultimately leading to the start of the American Revolution.

Some of the Massachusetts contributions to this nation

The state of Massachusetts, like every other state, has a constitution.  The Massachusetts Constitution, I am proud to say, is even older than the U.S. Constitution because it was ratified in 1780, nine years before the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.  In fact, it is the oldest written constitution in the world.

These men all have two things in common.  They all were born and raised in Massachusetts, and they all became the President of the United States.

Copied from a wikipedia page:

1. John Adams, President #2


2. John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, and President #6


3. Calvin Coolidge, President #30


4. John F. Kennedy, President #35

In addition, George Herbert Walker Bush, who was President Reagan's Vice-President, was also born in Massachusetts, although he lived in Texas when he was elected President #41.

Current economic information

A U.S. government agency called the Bureau of Labor Statistics has a large amount of information on a wide variety of economic topics.  They even collect economic information on each one of the fifty states.  This page has some of the economic information that is focused on Massachusetts.

At least one future essay on this blog will focus on the recent economic history of this state, including the fact that we have had several Republican governors whose leadership has been beneficial to this state.

In fairness to our current Democrat governor, who has wisely decided to avoid a lot of questions that would be difficult to answer during a reelection campaign, the current economic situation in this state is doing pretty well.

Copied from a November 8, 2013 article in the Boston Herald:

A recovering housing market and resilient consumers boosted the Bay State economy in the third quarter, but federal fiscal policies continue to restrain growth, according to a University of Massachusetts journal.

Massachusetts real gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 3.5 percent, well above the national rate of 2.8 percent and more than double the state rate of 
1.7 percent in the second quarter, according to the latest MassBenchmarks published by the UMass Donahue Institute in collaboration with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

However, in fairness to the last four Republican governors, a new Republican governor would improve the Massachusetts economy even better and faster.

Future essay topics for this blog

I will write essays for this blog whenever I see an issue that relates to this state that I think is important to those of us who are fortunate enough to live in this state.  One essay is already being written about the last four Republican governors, the Democrat governor who preceeded them and the Democrat governor who followed them. That man is also the current governor.  A comparison of the two Democrats and the four Republicans is interesting.  Watch for that essay soon.