Globe editorial
Short Fuse
July 5, 2009
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Seat belts: Money on the table, carnage on the road
Massachusetts has the lowest rate of seat belt use in the country, so the incentives federal highway safety administrators have dangled to improve their use applied especially here. But legislators left that carrot - worth $13.6 million - behind when they failed to pass a primary seat belt law by July 1. (Currently, drivers can be cited for failing to wear a seat belt only if they are pulled over for a secondary reason.) Oddly, the House chairman of Ways and Means, Charles Murphy, who claims to cast a gimlet eye on state finances, opposed the law on “libertarian’’ grounds, according to the State House News Service. If $13 million won’t move him, how about the tragic death of a 21-year-old Bourne woman - and the injuries of her three friends - who were in a car crash last weekend? None of them was wearing a seat belt.Romney: A portrait in political caution
Pictured in Mitt Romney’s gubernatorial portrait is the landmark healthcare legislation he helped enact. But the former governor is so leery of embracing the type of individual mandate Massachusetts has that he is verbally amending the law. “The term mandate means different things to different people,’’ he said after Tuesday’s unveiling ceremony. “We had a financial incentive for people to get insurance.’’ Actually, we have a legal requirement that those who can afford it carry insurance - and a tax penalty if they don’t. So though Romney says it’s too soon to contemplate a second presidential campaign, he’s already busy splitting hairs.Morality: The family-values state
Despite the Commonwealth’s Puritan history, few politicians in Massachusetts run for office as crusaders against what they see as personal vice. And ever since same-sex marriage became legal here, scolds elsewhere have taken to describing the state as the very symbol of moral decay. Yet for all the claptrap about “defending marriage,’’ the Bay State is doing a terrific job at it. Statistics show Massachusetts has the second-lowest divorce rate in the country, not to mention the third-lowest teenage birthrate. Maybe those “Massachusetts values,’’ as Louisiana Senator David Vitter once put it (before getting caught up in a prostitution scandal), aren’t so scandalous after all.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
