MaxwellDB It's me. I am the product.

I Never Knew It Was *This* Hard Being a Lobbiyst

Mass. state rep apologizes for comparing lobbyist badges to Holocaust tattoos

A Massachusetts state representative has apologized for comparing lobbyists with Holocaust victims when he was commenting on a proposal to require lobbyists to wear badges.

Representative John Binienda, a Worcester Democrat, said he had made an “inappropriate analogy” on Wednesday when he criticized the badge proposal.

“No comparison can be made between the Nazi regime and a rules proposal made by members in good faith. I apologize to the sponsors as well as the people of Massachusetts for my words,” he said.

Binienda, who heads the House Rules Committee, said Wednesday that a Republican proposal for a rule change to force lobbyists to wear badges while talking to lawmakers smacked of tattoos that Jews were forced to wear.

“The idea of the badge by lobbyists to me, I kind of find that revolting,” Binienda told the State House News Service in article posted this morning. “Hitler during the concentration camps tattooed all of the Jewish people so he would know who was a Jew and who wasn’t, and that’s something that I just don’t go along with.”

This is what you get when a political party gets to be lazy about its dominance in a state. Sheesh.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.