Hope the governor had a nice vacation

The governor’s Colombia trip is over and here is what your money paid for. The Memorandum of Understanding between the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Colombia comes with a translation into Spanish. That’s the good news.

The rest of the story kind of goes as follows:

They probably didn’t spend much time on it given the obvious typo of the word Party (Partiy) in Article 9.
The document is clear in stating that it does not provide any legally binding obligations. (So, remind me why the governor’s presence was required when the agreement includes no obligations…)
The document is extremely artful in its use of indeterminate gobbledy-gook speak like “foster” and “encourage.”

All this is a little bit like John Cage’s “Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds.”

Articles 4 and 5 task the Massachusetts Office of International Trade and Investment, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative with developing specific work plans and focusing on certain priority areas. We hope to share the names of the liaisons in each of these offices who will be executing the important work of increasing our economic interactions with our 33rd largest trading partner.

I do hope the entire entourage enjoyed the weather, which was in the mid-60s.