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Recently, a Massachusetts State Representative named Byron Rushing sponsored a bill to find out what companies in Massachusetts may have profited from slavery, as well as having the state investigate itself, to determine whether it financially benefited from slavery dating as far back as the Massachusetts Bay Colonies. Read the full article from the Boston Herald and the associated press.

Other than this Mass. State Rep. being completely out of touch with what his constituency cares about, why would this story catch my attention and ultimately, my disgust.  Well unfortunately I think this legislation is a symptom of a much bigger issue, which is a really poor batch of politicians nationwide, regardless of their party, and the unwillingness of really good men to get involved in the profession, but we’ll get to that later…

The last time I looked at my bank account we’re in the midst of a recession, and to top that off Massachusetts is on the brink of a California-like bankruptcy, so that’s where the disgust begins with Rep. Rushing.  The first part of his bill requires the state of Massachusetts (specifically the Secretary of State) to investigate at length how Massachusetts may have profited from slavery and then produce a book that documents all the finding. This, of course, would be funded with taxpayer dollars.  One of the fundamental rights we fight for here at Unmutual Grizzly, is the right to keep as much of the money you earn as possible, and finding out that your state Rep. wants to take and use your money on such an endeavor is infuriating and unjustifiable,…but the rage doesn’t stop there.

One way to try to slow down a recession is by finding way to help businesses flourish, which has the effect of generating more tax dollars and creating more jobs (a win-win). However, Rep. Rushing has gone out of his way to do the opposite in his slavery bill, by requiring businesses such as banking and financial institutions, as well as insurance agencies to spend their own money on internal investigations into their past and turn over the results to the state, or no longer continue doing business in Massachusetts.

So, just to recap, Rep. Rushing wants to make it tougher and more expensive for companies to do business in Massachusetts, or ask them to no longer do business here at all, while spending the hard-earned money of local citizens on his personal “history project”, and all for what?  What would be the outcome after all these businesses provided their reports and the state published it’s introspective book? Do I hear crickets?

After we spend millions on this project, and potentially cost jobs and revenue, what’s next on the agenda? Maybe we should see who made money bootleggin’ during the prohibition era, or we could levy fines on any company that manufactured “Whites Only” signs to post outside of bathrooms during segregation. I could go on about the nonsensical nature of this bill forever, but what about the bigger issue…

Rep. Rushing is not alone out there. Politicians all over this country are no longer representing us, their representing themselves, and better men aren’t running against them or even challenging them for that matter. I’d like to say that Rep. Rushing is just a misguided idealist who had good intentions, but considering how far his head would have to be buried in the sand to even conceive of such legislation, I’m going to have to say he’s actually just a arrogant fool. The only way to turn the tide is to make your voice heard, support better candidates whenever they come along, and continue to expose stories like this when they try to evade our attention (that’s my job). On that note, if you’d like to tell Rep. Byron Rushing what you think of his bill, you can reach him here.