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Who's the lowest level federal official who gets a motorcade and the right to shut our roads at rush hour?
By adamg on Thu, 09/18/2014 - 8:54am
Well, seems Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was in town today. And as befits somebody of his august position, naturally, he stayed at the Ritz and got a motorcade full of Escalades that, of course, got a full police escort and had Storrow Drive blocked at rush hour?
His public schedule.notes he and his entourage will do it all again tomorrow, starting at Harvard at 9 and then across the Charles back into Boston for an 11 a.m. grip-and-grin with Tom Menino and a bunch of college presidents at BU. River-road motorists take note.
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Comments
"improving education and
"improving education and increasing equity"
shuts down half of city to do it
the term "limousine liberal" was never more appropriate
Cadillac Commies
Not that I think Arne Duncan is anywhere near communist, but for this purpose alliteration trumps reality.
You've got a future career in
You've got a future career in writing Herald headlines.
Mercedes Maoists?
Land Rover Leninists?
Acura Anarchists.
Beemer Bolshevists?
Subaru Syndicalists?
Rolls Royce Revisionists.
Maserati Marxists.
Kia Kleptocrats
I think I'm out of ideas.
One more
Infiniti Illuminati?
Boston is full of
Subaru Socialist!
Eagle Egalitarians
Eagle Egalitarians
You know, because DSM reached over borders.
Kia Kakistocrats, the whole
Kia Kakistocrats, the whole damn lot of them!
Volksheviks?
Volksheviks?
Did I oversleep?
The schedule says the Harvard and BU events are tomorrow (Friday 9/19.) He's in Lawrence this afternoon and in Mattapan at 6 this evening.
Hey, stop ruining a good rant
Hey, stop ruining a good rant about them damn Washington lib'ruls.
Washington corruption has gotten so bad
It's rent a hole in the fabric of space/time!
Do you think
Duncan should get a police escort that shuts down roadways? I don't, and it has nothing to do with liberals or conservatives (2 sides of the same coin, window dressing for the useful idiots).
Why does everything devolve to smartass snipes about:
The Herald
Fox
Lib'ruls
Some self described conservatives of course do the same thing,using their buzzwords.
Why does the federal Secretary of Education (imho one of the most useless and unnecessary federal departments, and no, I'm not a self described conservative or Republican) get a police escort and roads shutdown? Legitimate question.
Venn Diagram
Perhaps they fear the substantial overlap of common-core haters and gun nuts?
But, hey, you can't have a command and control police state without a show of giant armored balls.
Also, he might actually learn something from taking the T with BPS and Cambridge School kids.
People want to soapbox, other
People want to soapbox, other people are going to laugh at them. If you don't like the sting, stay off the soapbox.
It doesn't add
to the conversion. Serious question,politics and rabid ideology aside: Why does the federal Secretary of Education get a police escort, SS in black, dark tinted windows SUVs armed like they were in a combat zone, and road closures? Who the fuck is he, Louis XIV, the Sun King? This shit is getting ridiculous. Even POTUS, it's a circus everywhere he goes ( REGARDLESS of who is president). They behave like a ruling class elite in a totalitarian country like the chicoms, Cuba or North Korea.
He should really
take the Red Line, like BPS students in 8th grade or higher.
According to the one episode
According to the one episode of Battlestar Galactica I watched, being the Secretary of Education makes you a powerful leader, enough that if you end up as the next in line of succession you will become the best leader humanity has to offer, so I guess we should respect the seat as much as possible!!!!
Best. Comment. Ever.
(or at least today)
Harvard square was a mess too (but isn't it usually?)
JFK + Eliot St in Harvard Square was blocked off by a swarm of motorcycle cops + blue lights. Eliot St heading towards JFK was blocked entirely so traffic was backing up and had nowhere to go.
Looks like the public schedule you linked says those events are Friday (tomorrow), so guess we'll get to deal with this again in the morning...
First off
Why would Obama hire the head of Chicago's Public Schools as he's Sec of Education. Chicago literally has one of the worst school systems in the country.
Is it so bad that its
Is it so bad that its graduates don't know the proper use of the word "literally"?
No, that's proper use.
No, that's proper use.
My head literally exploded
when I learned that the secondary definition of "literally" is "figuratively."
Seriously!
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
Darn dictionary publishers are literally killing me by encouraging this annoying overuse.
English dictionaries are
English dictionaries are generally descriptive, not prescriptive. Look up "irregardless".
LITERALLY
LITERALLY
Why not hold the whole thing
..at Madison Park HS?
The gripping ritual later has an interesting feature.
What do photojournalists spray? Is it like an aggravated skunk?
And no one forced disruptive half assed scheduling on Harvard, so it's an importance potlatch all around with a dash or two of whoyaknow as needed.
Cue Harvard apologists and another sortie on the importance of being important.
"Spray 'n Pray"
It refers to the modern technique of just mashing the shutter release button and firing off dozens or hundreds of shots during a press scrum, all to get one or two useable photos. Versus the old techniques of shooting a single roll (maybe two rolls if you were posh and had two camera bodies), or just a couple of sheets of film or plates (in the press camera era).
Nice.
What a great lore share and addition to discourse quality.
So the Secretary of Education visits two elite private colleges?
So the Secretary of (Public) Education visits two elite private colleges, shutting down the city in the process? I agree with Chris Rich, why not Madison Park or some of the other failed BPS? As for Menino and the disastrous school system he left behind, what exactly does he have to offer other than the trite, "workin' togetha is pahht of it" nonsense? What a shameless farce.
Losing your touch
First of all: 10:44 am? Shouldn't that be 2:34 am?
No connection here to Robin Williams death or abortion?
Come on!
And someone beat you to "liberal limousine".
Time for more coffee.
Jeeze Fish, we're kind of
..strange bedfellows. But we are both comparably unpopular.
You are despised for being a crusty old conservative and I'm despised for poking fun at progressive fuss budgets and generation x snots who seem to be a major part of the readership.
At the end of the day though, I try to really practice the same tolerance they aspire to, so if I came across you struggling with a snow shovel and a stuck car, I'd probably help you push it out of the ditch without giving a shit what your politics are. It's how you build bridges. It's why I wrote a sympathetic appreciation of what cops go through..
It's not enough to agree with their outlook in large part, nooo, you have to go along with the low level hypocrisy, generational conceits and neurosis, and references to star wars.,
Hillary Clinton
That old hack is unemployed and still has a motorcade.
yesterday evening, too
One block from Govt Center, approximately 6:30 pm yesterday, a heavily-guarded motorcade with State Police motorcycle escorts stopped traffic and I got to watch the whole parade move through. The long black town car was preceded by a big, black escalade with secret service members literally hanging out the window darting looks fast in all directions. State police motorcycles ahead & behind everything. It was over pretty quickly thanks to the bike troopers handling the traffic.
I guess it makes sense; Secretary of Education is a cabinet position and 15th in line to succeed the Presidency.
Pecking order for peckers
Secty of Transportation was just here for the Ruggles station expansion announcement with the dean of Northeastern but I don't recall any traffic disruptions...then again I wasn't looking.
Wrong Transportation Secretary
And besides, MassDOT head Davey would probably have taken the T to the event. He T'ed it to work when he ran the T, which makes him one of the rare MBTA heads who knew how the system worked first hand.
That's how to run it
The cure for MBTA problems? Make every MBTA employee take the T to work, no special parking, take your chances with the rest of us. and pay for it 100% out of their own pocket.
And oh yeah...
...make 'em wear identifying insignia. "MBTA Employee on the way to work, please tell me your concerns." Hehehehe.
One problem
This should absolutely be the rule for the executives. They should also be assigned a random commute with at least one transfer each month, using a wheel chair and not allowed more than two hours.
However, you can't take a bus or train to work if you are the bus/train driver who makes the first runs of the morning or the last runs of the evening. That would be a tricky feat.
There's an argument for 24-hour service!
Right there.
I'd rather they gave refunds
I'd rather they gave refunds for any service arriving more than 30 minutes late....paid from the MBTA pension fund. Obviously you'd have to prevent a tax-payer funded bailout of the fund as well.
Wrong Pecker
Secty Davey was at the event, but that's apples to wombats. I was talking about Secty Foxx of USDOT.
I stand corrected
I looked at the USDOT press page for something on the event, but ignored the Globe coverage.
Still, Foxx checked in at 2 spots higher than Duncan. Perhaps he pulled a Biden and came by Amtrak?
Boston runs on Duncan
except during motorcades...
Lord, let there be a Storrowing
If ever anyone deserved it....
Do you even know this person?
Do you even know this person? God, I hope I never descend to such a level of kneejerk animosity.
Yes, I noticed
..you favor a steady stream of basic derision over more pungent animosity blasts.
The scoldings could use some work though. They're kind of flat like last night's PBR.
All I know is
He's neither a head of state nor of government, yet the roads are closed because of him.
So, yeah, we are all rooting for a truck to get stuck under a bridge on Storrow Drive right before Mr. "I don't have time for traffic lights" comes by.
Of course, all that means for the rest of us is more G-D street closures for the guy who is 15th in line for the Presidency.
As much as I want to hate this....
The secretary of education is in the line of succession (way down the line, but there never the less).
This is standard protectee protocol
But, seriously,
what's the answer to Adam's question? Come on, we must have some government geeks here ...
Serious answer
I believe any official enumerated in the presidential line of succession is afforded some level of police detail/personal protection. That means roughly two dozen people, including Sec. Duncan, with the level of protection and pomp declining as one moves down the list.
Sec. Duncan is right around the middle of the enumerated list, so I'm curious how big this motorcade was? A limo for him, an SUV each for some aides and his detail, a marked police cruiser at each end and some outriders? 20 SUVs, an ECM truck and an ambulance? What?
Is there Motorcade envy?
That would be funny.
Oh, probably
All of this is solid evidence of the sort of autoimmune erosion of democracy that screams "hey everyone look - the terrorists have won".
Oh for Chrissakes, it's been
Oh for Chrissakes, it's been like this forever. This has fuckall to do with the kind of thing the kneejerk TERRISTS HAVE WON nonsense reaction calls for.
Actually, it hasn't
I've lived and worked in and around Boston for thirty years now. I lived by BU, went to MIT, worked at Harvard and MGH. You didn't generally even see a motorcade or roadway shutdown unless it was the President, Vice President, or Head of State coming through until about ten years ago.
Sure, there were limos and escorts, but no security theater parade on this level unless you came in on Air Force One or equivalent. Tip O'Neill's funeral was a singular incident of multitudes of motorcades, with presidents, former presidents, and heads of state. Everybody knew that was happening, though, and it was carefully coordinated to minimize closing times. Other than that, not much at all.
Sorry, but it definitely has not been this way forever - unless forever, to you, is ten or so years. It has everything to do with self-importance (and, maybe, police overtime detail shakedowns) abetted by "but, terrorism!!!" justifications at taxpayer expense.
Let them ride bicycles
Even Hubway cycles to demonstrate (im)practicality of government policy direction.
Funny story..
I was on the Tom Petty gig at Fenway a couple of weeks back. Petty, for some strange reason, insisted on a stretch limo for himself, whereas Suburbans are now the preferred method of rock star travel.
So we got a police escort from the hotel to Fenway and the best part was as we were going down Boylston Street toward Fenway, an exasperated commuter yelled at the stretch, "Fuck you, Obama!".
Might have been me; I just
Might have been me; I just yell that every time anything bad happens. I also yell "Benghazi!" before jumping into a swimming pool.
Really
And Tom Petty received a police escort why? If I get stuck because of a stretch lemo with a police escort, I'm inclined to get mouthy,too. Seriously, how did all this shit start? Who the fuck do these mere mortals think they are?
Police Escorts
Big, black SUVs with dark tinted windows
Ridiculous stretch lemos
Well armed bodyguards
Oh, and fuck you 'little people'. No, you most certainly may not legally arm yourself...no, you must follow all traffic rules and rules of the road you plebs....all animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Seriously, fuck this shit.
Because......
He paid for it. You think they give police escorts for free?
Yeah, just assumed they were normal police procedure
Good to know I was wrong.