Tag Archives: John Burciaga

2nd Annual Greater Newburyport Field of Honor – Bartlet Mall

A look over Frog Pond on the Bartlet Mall at the flag display on the morning of September 11, 2011

Special time for families among the flags

(Newburyport) I attended the 2nd Annual Field of Honor program on sunny Sunday afternoon on the Bartlet Mall in Newburyport.

Ten years after Muslim terrorists violated this country, numerous speakers remembered the victims and praised the responders.  Much was made of the way this country dropped its differences and pulled together to get through the tough times surrounding the tragedy.

Below is a collection of my pictures taken at the event.  Individual pictures are of participants.

Newburyport High School singers

Steven Baddour

Mike Costello

Kevin Hunt

John Burciaga

part of the crowd

EJ Ouellette

bagpiper

Mayor Donna Holaday

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Guilt By Association Covers Both Sides of the Aisle

Congressman John Tierney - Are we to believe that he had no knowledge of his wife's part in an illegal gambling operation run by her brothers?

I hope John Burciaga can swim.  Why?  He keeps going off the deep end.

Arizona in the crosshairs,” in the January 14th issue of The Newburyport Current is yet another of his misguided, conclusion-jumping endeavors.

Wait until John reads the New York Times article entitled, “Looking Behind the Mug-Shot Grin,” in their January 15th issue.   The NY Times reporters reveal that, brace yourself John, Tucson shooter Jared Loughner was a Bush-hater. 

The theme of John’s article is to tie Arizona Governor Brewer, Arizona Senator Kyle, and Sarah Palin to what happened in Tucson.  But if the shooter was indeed a Bush hater then, using John Burciaga’s normal logic, we’d have to transfer the blame instead to those who have never stopped blaming Bush for everything. 

John regularly uses guilt-by-association in his articles.  Someone does something, and even without solid proof he’ll connect them to something else.  Sarah Palin puts crosshairs on a map and so because of it someone like Jared Loughner rushes off and shoots people.  Far fetched, don’t you think?

I also take issue with John describing Arizona Governor Jan Brewer as being, “homely.”  That’s an unfair call as well as a dubious way to make a point.  If I tell a reader that every time I see Barack Obama give a speech his ears seem to fill the room, am I being persuasive? 

I’m hoping that in a future article John will do a guilt-by-association story surrounding the recently sentenced Patrice Tierney.  Our US Congressman’s wife, according to published reports, has a father, son, and two brothers involved in illegal gambling. 

Their illegal gambling operation shifted to Antigua in 2003 after one of Patrice’s brothers was convicted in the US of tax evasion and money laundering. 

Patrice managed the US bank account used by her out-of-the-country brothers from 2003-09 before getting charged by the feds.  The feds said that she had lied to the IRS about the source of the nearly $7 million that flowed into that bank account.  Her excuse for her behavior was that she was just trying to help her brother’s family in the US and was, “willfully blind,” as to how the money sent her way was earned.

Meanwhile, anyone trying to connect Congressman John Tierney to his wife’s illegal activities has been confronted with the Sergeant Shultz trifecta – “I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!”  Remarkably, it would seem, the crooked background of Patrice’s family and the fact that she managed an account for them while they’re on the lam in Antigua, failed to get the Congressman’s attention, over a seven year period, about any possible improprieties.

Does it look like a stretch to you to use that guilt-by-association approach on John Tierney?  However, can anyone out there recall a Democrat ever being subjected to such scrutiny from Mr. Burciaga?

(This article appeared in the January 21st issue of The Newburyport Current.)

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Filed under Barack Obama, John Tierney, Newburyport, Newburyport Current, Sarah Palin

Taxes Are Good??

Paying taxes is good, according to John Burciaga, because it keeps us from becoming evil rich people.

You talk about a hard sell.  I hope that the Newburyport Current editors did not force John Burciaga to write an article advising us that taxation is a good thing.

Whatever the incentive, he made a run at it last week with “The Taxation Myth.” 

I recall back in the day when people would come to our door trying to sell encyclopedia sets and vacuum cleaners.  That was not easy to do but the items being sold made sense to some of us and we became buyers.  But selling taxation as a good thing?  How do you talk anyone into buying that?

John tries it using the “logic” that without taxation there would be rich people….and this is bad.  And even worse, the rich people might not want to associate with those who are not as rich as they are.  He cites those snobs, who built mansions in Newport (RI), and would not associate with those of lesser wealth.  A heavy dose of taxation would have righted that social injustice if John had his way.

What John cannot come to grips with is that most of us can manage our money better than the government can.  When we hear, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you,” we expect the worst.  John, on the other hand, is delighted.

I think that most Americans are willing to help others.  They will do it without being forced to especially in situations they are informed about.  But if you take money from folks and they learn of it being used unwisely, the taker has a quick two strikes against him. 

I wonder what the taxpayers in Boston think about the idea (described in the Boston Herald) of pouring millions of dollars into the worst schools in the city at the expense of the rest of the schools.  Shouldn’t those who perform well be getting the rewards?  I wonder if John is fearful of successful students getting even further ahead academically.

John’s friend from Hawaii (or wherever?) in the White House has clearly demonstrated a lack of financial sense.  Why would anyone want him using our money?  John might have used Barack’s money management for some sort of reservation about giving the government too much money but the lefty in him would not allow it. 

Maybe in a future article John could explain why the rich people these days (John Kerry?) seem to be on the public payroll and why he wants to give them more money to waste!

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Filed under Barack Obama, Newburyport Current, President Barack Obama, Senator John Kerry

Luminaries on the Left Lit Into

John Burciaga gave capitalism a good whacking in the Newburyport Current (May 7th) – “Goldman Sachs: Poster boys for capitalism”.    He states in the article, “I’ve had my glimpse of the business world and excused myself, lest I were found guilty by association.”

Too close to Goldman Sachs?

That “guilt by association” thing, he writes of, can be a good guide.  Staying away from bad folks like Goldman Sachs is terrific advice. 

With this in mind, I wondered why John’s article never referenced President Obama’s still-in-place connections to Goldman Sachs.  The President received $994,795 in campaign contributions from them.  He also has several people in his administration, including Timothy Geithner, with ties to Goldman Sachs.  How does the President escape from a guilt by association perception?

A week ago, John wrote an article for The Current entitled, “It was never easy being green.” In it, John gave unqualified praise to Rachel Carson and the Sierra Club.  Do they deserve it?

Rachel Carson's malaria connections?

Rachel Carson was a marine biologist who wrote as if her training also made her an expert on pesticides.  She asserted in Silent Spring that DDT had questionable value and some readers took her assertion and went on to get DDT banned.  Prior to this, DDT had been part of successfully eliminating malaria in Europe and North America.  Under Rachel’s initiative and the zealotry of followers, Africa was denied the protection DDT provided.  The result was an estimated thirty million deaths in tropical Africa from malaria and yellow fever. 

Rachel originally had a co-author (Edwin Diamond) when the manuscript that became Silent Spring was started. Edwin had been a professor at MIT as well as Science Editor for Newsweek.  Reason for quitting the writing with Rachel?  “It (Silent Spring) was an emotional, alarmist book seeking to cause Americans to mistakenly believe their world was being poisoned.”  Shades of Al Gore? 
 

Louisiana black bear - protected at what cost?

Another of John’s favorites is the Sierra Club. Back in the 1990s, the Army Corps of Engineers studied and determined that the levees on the southern end of the Mississippi Rivers needed to be raised and fortified.  A spokesman for the Army Corps at the time said, “The 303 miles of upgraded levees (along the Mississippi River) were needed because a failure could wreak catastrophic consequences on Louisiana and Mississippi.” 

The Sierra Club ignored the warning being more concerned about the disruption the levee improvements would cause the Louisiana black bear.  Therefore, when the Army Corps tried to start the levee-improving project the Sierra Club filed suit and prevented the work from getting started.  In late August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana.  The levees, as they were, proved no match for Katrina – $81 billion worth of damage and 1,836 deaths. 

John frequently makes sport of Fox News’ claims of being “fair” and “balanced.”  Overlooking Obama’s connections to Goldman Sachs, Rachel Carson’s connection to lives lost from malaria, and the Sierra Club’s connection to the Hurricane Katrina disaster assure me that John will never be accused of either.

 ( Appeared as a letter-to-the-editor in the Newburyport Current on May 14, 2010. )

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Filed under Barack Obama, Katrina, Newburyport Current, President George Bush, Uncategorized

Hear, See, Speak No Evil of President Obama

Criticism offends his defenders

Criticism offends his defenders

I guess the point of the Newburyport Current’s editorial, “Another anti-Obama overreaction,” and John Burciaga’s, “Goodbye to town hall meetings from hell,” is that those of us in disagreement with Mr. Obama are fair game for any cheap shot that comes to mind.

The editorial “only” describes us as, “hysterical,”  while Mr. Burciaga chooses; “politically unwashed, naïve, reliant on bloggers of low mentality, nonreaders, yahoos, clingers to idiocy like a crucifix, rejecters of Jesus Christ, and thugs.”

I think that what escapes these writers is that Barack Obama received only 53% of the popular vote in the past election.  So even back in November (2008) 47% of the voters did not want Barack Obama to be the President. 

Bringing things up-to-date, the September 12th daily Presidential Tracking Poll by Rasmussen has, “33% strongly approving of the way Barack Obama is performing in his role as President.”

Both written pieces seem to assume that the President won by a landslide and is still held in high regard.  The facts indicate otherwise.  53% bought into Barack Obama’s campaign rhetoric but far less are still on board as the reality of implementing his ideas kicks in. 

Mr. Burciaga’s cheap shots made perfect sense to the winners early on but now they sound like they belong to an extreme lefty who is not paying attention to what has gone on since Barack Obama took over.

A person strongly approved by only 33% of the voting public should have expected some opposition when he tried to get the schoolchildren of the voters to consider: (1) What they could do to help the president, and (2) What is President Obama inspiring you to do.  For the President even to think that such questions are appropriate reminds me of Brian’s line in The Breakfast Club – “Claire, you’re so full of yourself.”

It interested me that GHW Bush addressed the nation’s schoolchildren in 1991.  His efforts were not received any better than Obama’s were.  If the Current editorial had stated that the Democrats’ negative reactions to President Bush were, “anti-Bush overreactions,” I would have conceded that the editorial was evenhanded…….but it did not happen.

Mr. Burciaga writes as one who is tolerant of only those who agree with him.  I wonder if he realizes that it was Obama’s ideas that turned some of the town hall meetings into sideshows not the elected officials attempting to defend them.  Congressman John Tierney was very wise to defend Obama’s ideas from long distance rather than from before a live audience. 

Looking ahead, I wonder how Mr. Burciaga will handle the compromises that the increasingly unpopular President will have to make to salvage any of his increasingly unpopular plans. 

Nonetheless, one thing remains certain, no matter what Barack Obama says or does, Mr. Burciaga will be available to demean all critics in The Newburyport Current.

( Appeared as a letter-to-the-editor in The Newburyport Current on September 18, 2009. )

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Filed under Barack Obama, John Tierney, Newburyport, Newburyport Current, President Barack Obama