Monthly Archives: May 2014

FROM THE SECRET FILES OF THE MASSACHUSETTS PATRONAGE DEPARTMENT, MPD, (Formerly known as the Massachusetts Probation Department)

February 14, 2010

FROM: John J. O’Brien, Commissioner

TO: James Joseph “Whitey” Bulger, Jr.

ADDRESS: Somewhere in Santa Monica, CA (for internal use only)

RE: Your application for employment

 

Dear Whitey:

How wonderful to receive your application for future employment in our agency, in the event you ever return to your home state. Here at the Patronage Department we receive numerous applications, but rarely from someone so highly qualified to deal with criminals, killers and thugs. O'Brien

However, as Commissioner of the Mass Patronage Department it often falls upon me to perform the most difficult and unpleasant tasks. Thus, with a heavy heart and my hands raised high in the air, I regret to inform you I must reject your application for employment at the MPD.

Please don’t take this as a personal rejection. Far from it! With two of your nephews already on the department’s payroll, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to bring another Bulger aboard. Your brother William has written to me with expressions bordering on outright bragging of your numerous talents and accomplishments—your entrepreneurial spirit, your gang leadership skills, your hair-trigger response to challenges, your managerial finesse in parceling out punishment. All skills we could easily put to good use at the MPD.

In fact, because of the many obstacles you face in returning to Massachusetts for a personal interview, I took the liberty of having a surrogate sit through your civil service exam. And I’m pleased to inform you your score was so exceptional you already outrank almost all other applicants.

But alas, I cannot offer you a job should you eventually return to Massachusetts. Ordinarily, someone like you with glowing recommendations from the F.B.I. and the Massachusetts Senate, not to mention multiple good conduct reports from the Mass Correctional System, would be a shoo-in for almost any position in the MPD. But I cannot step aside and allow you to take the Commissioner’s job, as you requested. Not even if you hold a gun to my head as you—no doubt jokingly—suggested.

And so, Whitey, I hope you won’t hold it against me that I cannot fulfill your request for suitable employment at the MPD. As for your idea of serving our department in some security capacity, I can only reply that MPD employees are not allowed to carry loaded firearms, especially in the Commonwealth’s courthouses. Another reason why I hold our prissy, pettifogging judges in such contempt.

Next thing you know they’ll be turning patronage into a crime!

And so, Whitey, I wish you great success in finding a new career path for when you ultimately return to your home state. A career path that would support any claims of personal redemption and improved moral character you might make to offset all those murder, robbery and extortion charges.

Your nephews send their love and wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day!

Sincerely,

John

John J. O’Brien

Commissioner and CDJ (Chief Dispenser of Jobs)

Massachusetts Patronage Department

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

COURTHOUSE OUTRAGE

The Following letter by Seth Teller was sent to our city councilors. I reprint it here, with permission, because Seth does such a great job encapsulating the negligence of Cambridge city agencies and departments in representing the interests of the East Cambridge neighborhood against those of a private developer.

Dear Councilors,

The residents of Cambridge, and the Council itself, have been terribly served by the various City departments and agencies on the Sullivan Courthouse matter.courthouse

The Community Development Department has been mostly absent throughout the process. Apart from some minor comments around the edges of the proposal, we haven’t seen any informed pushback to the misinformation the developer has been spreading over the City: the questionable traffic studies, the garage parking study, the wind study, and the lighting impact study. The developer didn’t even mention, in their application to the City, the anticipated impact on surface parking in East Cambridge. They didn’t even mention the anticipated impact on residents’ privacy. Did the City or any of its agencies call them on any of this? No.

The Traffic and Parking Department certified, quickly and in writing, the Developer’s proposal to long-term lease 420 parking spaces in the municipal garage. Yet after months of wrangling, we citizens were able to analyze the City’s actual parking data. It shows without any doubt that the garage is headed for full occupancy, even “without” any development at the Courthouse. How could your T&P department have gotten this basic fact so wrong?

Meanwhile, the City Solicitor’s opinion on the critical legal question underpinning the proposal is nothing more than a parroting of the developer’s attorney’s assertions. She did not even acknowledge the existence of a contrary opinion by a nationally-known land-use attorney hired by us citizens. There is no more polite way to say it: this is dereliction of duty.

Councilors, there are myriad technical objections to the current proposal. And there are serious legal objections as well; we maintain that the Planning Board simply doesn’t have the right to grant this permit. But beyond the technical and legal objections, there’s the overarching moral question: should the State of Massachusetts be allowed to discharge the debt it incurred in the 1970’s on the backs of today’s Cambridge residents alone?

Here’s how this story could continue, if only the Planning Board, and the City Council, could find the courage to stand up and say to the State, “This process is simply unacceptable. You cannot take a planning disaster from the 1960’s and 1970’s, which all agree was allowed to be built ‘only because of state supremacy,’ and perpetuate that disaster forever by transferring the site to private ownership.”

Folks, as representatives and residents of our City, it is time to take a stand here. Let’s use every means at our disposal to send this completely inappropriate proposal back to the State, and back to the drawing board. Yes, that will likely mean waiting for the next Governor and her or his administration. But they can’t do any worse than the current administration, who have stonewalled us at every turn. And there’s a reasonable chance that they will do better.

We’ve lived with this monstrosity for four decades. Let’s take a few more years to get it right. Let’s block this proposal with every tool we have, and put the State on notice that their current RFP and sale process is a dead duck. They simply must issue a new RFP that states explicitly that whatever is to be built in the City of Cambridge, by a private developer, shall respect the City’s zoning ordinances. Meanwhile, on our end, let’s convene a grand conversation among all citizens of the City about what ought to be done with the site, as part of the Master Planning process that has been so much discussed of late. (A useful precursor to that conversation would be to hold the next Planning Board hearing in East Cambridge, so that the residents most directly affected, including many seniors who were here before the Courthouse was built, can weigh in.)

That’s the process that should have been followed from the start. We’ve lost a few years and dissipated a lot of energy getting to this point. We can’t get the time back, but we can avoid wasting all that good work. It’s not too late to fix this situation, but correcting it will require the Council to step up and take a stand against this outrageous proposal and the process that produced it.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Seth Teller
281 Hurley Street

 Something Is Out Of Alignment

We’ve reached a moment in time where city agencies like Community Development, Traffic, and the City Solicitor, appear to be out of alignment with the needs and vision of Cambridge’s neighborhoods and citizens.

Seth’s letter illustrates not only the bias of city agencies toward development, but also the frustration that many of us have in attempting to protect Cambridge’s unique quality of life, affordability and diversity. Pro-development advocates have been all over this proposed Courthouse renovation, bobbing their heads up and down as if it represents the best chance we’ll ever get to extract a good deal from the developer. Why fight it, they seem to ask, when playing nice will still give us some leverage? And who can blame them for looking at it that way, once you see our city agencies wagging their tails and licking the developer’s hand? With the CDD, Traffic and Parking Department, and City Solicitor all seeming to roll over and play dead in the face of the state and the developer’s arguments, we are left with a group of understandably outraged citizens standing alone in their fight to have Cambridge’s legal zoning laws enforced. Citizens who wish our city agencies would STOP being so ludicrously helpful to our adversaries. Yes, I call them “adversaries,” as I would call any developer who seeks to impose his or her will against our zoning laws or the best interests of our neighborhoods.

I’ve wondered for some time about this almost gleeful rush on the part of the CDD and T&P to support developers’ demands. I mean, why would T&P certify the sale of parking spaces to the developer when the city already has need and use of those parking spaces? I ask that at the same time realizing this is the same T&P that never seems to have a problem certifying additional construction and traffic congestion for the Fresh Pond and Alewife neighborhoods. Just who is it exactly who is setting the mission for these departments? And isn’t it time that mission was re-examined?

I used to think it was our former City Manager who was playing the tune, and the ultimate reason why all city departments were so strongly and reflexively pro-development. But Healey’s gone and the tune keeps playing. Could it be his ghost…?

How many courthouses, 18-story towers and shoe-horned Alewife developments must we endure before our CDD, T&P and City Solicitor start to realize they work for us—today’s Cambridge residents, rich and poor—and not for the affluent thousands who will one day populate those oversized developments they keep facilitating?

TAX THE RICH OR KILL THE POOR

Wealth is essentially finite. There’s only so much to go around.

When a nation’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, the rest of its citizens are left with little scroogemore than long days of struggle, painful progress and unattainable dreams. We see it in the Middle East, in Africa and Asia, and in Third World countries where rulers and their cliques soak up all the wealth like so much gravy.

And we are seeing it today in America.

It won’t be long before we reach the tipping point, when students won’t have money for college, cities won’t have money for schools and libraries, governments won’t have money for basic services, and the poor won’t have anywhere to turn.

It seems as if we’re living in a Charles Dickens novel where the same Dickensian actors—greed, hard-heartedness, self-righteousness and moral vacuity—have once again stepped center stage to suggest, by their actions if not their words, that it might be better for the poor to die and decrease the surplus population.

No matter that those actions are thinly disguised behind Big Lies repeated over and over by agents and tools of the wealthy—by newspapers and TV stations owned by the rich, by a political process and Supreme Court controlled by the rich, by sound bites and legislation pushed by rich politicians—that taxes are unfair, that corporations are people, that the wealthiest among us have no obligation to assist the poorest, that government exists to protect wealth rather than its citizens, and that the surest way to help the poor is to advance the purpose and cause of the wealthy.

How can we still be talking about trickle down economics when so little wealth ever actually trickles down?

If you accept one basic premise—that wealth is finite—then all the financial, economic and social upheaval in our country starts to make sense. There isn’t enough to go around when one sector gets a lock-tight grip on the purse and the purse strings. Once that happens, with so little left on the table, those of us who aren’t rich find ourselves battling each other for an ever-dwindling share of the pie. Programs compete against programs. The needy compete with the needy. Infants battle the elderly and the poor for nutrition allocations. Recovering alcoholics challenge the homeless and disabled veterans for shelter dollars. Sesame Street scraps for funds needed to regulate Wall Street. All the while, the public sector continues to implode and gentrification elbows families and poor people out of their homes.

The recent attack on public sector unions in Wisconsin is merely the edge of the scythe as it begins to mow down the social contract we grew up with and came to expect from a civilized society. Collective bankruptcy is the problem, not collective bargaining!

Tax breaks for the wealthy that began with Ronald Reagan and continued under George W. Bush were beyond obscene, as are the bone-deep cuts to government programs now regularly enacted by a government bled dry of its assets by the Republican Party under the guise of fiscal responsibility. By protecting their excessive assets, the wealthy among us are endangering the lives and livelihoods of so many others. Children will go hungry; students will forgo college; retirees will see their pensions cut; people will lose their jobs and homes; many will go without winter heating fuel; cities will lay off police, teachers and firemen; while the health of our poorest citizens will dramatically decline—all so that a small group of wealthy individuals can amass and accumulate ever more and more money.

Tax the rich or kill the poor? What would Charles Dickens have done?

How about Jesus?

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This is an updated version of an essay I wrote a few years ago. It’s quite shocking to me how far things have gone downhill since then. With the Republicans, as good servants of their wealthy masters, continuing their assault against social security and medicare, and virtually stymieing any attempts to combat Global Warming, this world is becoming a harsh and unfriendly place in which to live.