Boy Scouts were collecting donations for care packages to send to our troops and the Cambridge Mass city councill said they couldn't cuz it was a political statement. The collections were boxes put in the polling places. But were ordered to get them out cuz it was a political statement.

As it happens, I donated a few bucks to the local Boy Scouts (or maybe it was Cub Scouts -- they seemed awfully young) collecting for such a cause at Kroger a couple weeks ago.

Here's the statements by all concerned about what went down. Here's the "He said, she said" between scout leader and the election board leader who put a stop to this:

http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/archive/x481183298
http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/archive/x1149887907

Who do you believe?

I'm confused by the scout leader's statement "after the scouts got approval from the Election Commission twice". Why ask twice? Did something change at one end or the other? Was it because the first response was tenuous, at best? Typically, I don't bend over backwards seeking permission unless I want something in writing, or I'm trying to figure out if she's drunk or not.

Here's supportive statements from the actual city council folks. I think it's quite clear that the city council folks were supportive.

http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/x1855994157
http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/x799509415

Note that there's typically some autonomy for the government folks running elections relative to the executive arm. That's why most states have their Secretary Of State as a separately elected office.

The city council are a bunch of nutbags, imo.

They said it was political statement to give stuff for care packages for the troops and then hide behind the oh, they didn't get 'written' permission. BFD, support the efforts for the troops.

AFAICT, what the election board leader said on the "political statement" business was it was something one of her staff members said, specifically:


The staff member also told Mr. Patterson that she knew there was a prohibition against some signs being placed within 150 feet of the polling area, and that the rule might apply to signs for the project.

The key word seems to be "might".. Certain activities can't be too close to an active polling place. I'd probably tell the same thing to anyone wanting to conduct any activities at/near an active polling place, were I in elections. Maybe she said more about this, but I'm going off those written transcripts that I could find.

Of course, the real issue is that it was blown out of proportion by the election board manager, who should have known that dissing the Boy Scouts has some consequences. I'm confused about your nailing the city council on this. They are the ones who passed the unanimous resolution to support this in advance. The people who run elections are a separate animal, though, and they appear to have done their actions here in a vacuum independent of city council.

I stand corrected on the CC thing.

But when is giving a can of fucking soup a political statement. Hasn't the lefties message been that we 'all' support the troops, not the mission? Are all the troops republicans or something?

I find this as such fucking bullshit. I honestly believe that election board manager(thank you for that) made the political statement here, not the friggin Boy Scouts. Cambridge is liberal and it showed right here, imo.

All by itself, without context, no it's not a political statement. But context is important. If the idea is to label the foodstuffs with a picture of a Boy Scout shaking George W.'s hand, or a label with a blurb like "since George W. can't even get you proper body armor, here's a token of our sympathy", that might fall into the politicizing realm.

Of course, the claim made was that it was not knowing whether or not they had permission to be there that led to their being shut down. It wouldn't have been that hard to spot check and find out, assuming the scout troop couldn't present written authorization for the locations. That's the part where things seem to turn stupid. It'd be interesting if a reporter actually checked with the people who run the precinct sites to find out if they were indeed contacted by the scout troop.

It's clear that there are rules governing these things in polling places, but if the scouts want to collect for any cause they want, I don't see any reason they can't do it, given the appropriate conditions.