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SURVIVOR CAMBRIDGE PART 2: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast

Episode Two: Sugar-Coated Gentrification

Hello, and welcome back to Survivor Cambridge, the TV show that chronicles the downfall and banana-slip slide of “Life As We Know It” on the island of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Both our competing tribes live, work, and fight for survival daily on the streets of Cambridge.

Last week, as you recall, Tribe #2, with its rock-grip hold on the Cambridge City Council, pushed through a mega gift, worth skillions of bucks for the greedy, graspy real estate division of MIT, protestwhich is quickly becoming the Kingpin of Cambridge Real Estate. Theirs is the power to squeeze out everyday homeowners and families by unleashing thousands of graduate students to suck up available local housing; theirs is now the authority to build a tower reaching 25 stories or more, and 2 million square feet of offices, homes and labs, or whatever MIT wants to build.

Just to review, Tribe #1 is made up of the city’s diverse population, with a heavy emphasis on those living near or below poverty levels. Given the quickly rising rents resulting from the area’s rapid gentrification, oddsmakers give Tribe #1 little chance for survival.

Not unless they can Outwit, Outplay and Outlast Tribe #2!

Tribe #2, the odds-on favorite, whose motto is “Build, Baby, Build!” is made up of pro-business folks, some of whom actually live in Cambridge, who are the engines of all this development activity in the city. Tribe #2 wants to continue building housing, office and lab facilities for the engineers and technicians drawn into the city by all the new commercial development; engineers and technicians who will eventually outbid families and poor people for the city’s limited housing.

Tribe #2 is clearly the most dangerous and least likable tribe in today’s show. Its members have grown rich and, what’s worse, increasingly entitled as the value of Cambridge real estate continues to climb. It’s a sad irony that Tribe #2 is attempting to remove zoning restrictions at the same time their real estate holdings have become so valuable the tribe no longer needs up-zoning to access reasonable profits.

Want to see something tragic? Look at things from Tribe #1’s point of view. They’ve arrived at a critical juncture; a moment when their salaries no longer keep pace with inflation, when the cost of college is priced beyond their children’s reach, when assisted housing appears to be a distant memory, and section 8 vouchers are no longer large enough to cover the gap in their monthly rent check. And now, just at this critical moment, along comes a once-in-a-lifetime overheating of the Cambridge real estate market.

This Week’s Tribal Challenge: Race For The Future

As you’ll recall from last week’s show, the City Council voted prudence and good stewardship off the island, voting 7-1 to approve a massive up-zoning package for MIT in exchange for some $14 million in cash and a significant commitment to creating low-cost incubator office space for new business development. This was counted as a victory for Tribe #2 and a loss for Tribe #1, who will never see a penny of the swag paid by MIT.

The rapid succession of Tribe #2 victories as evidenced by city council votes on up-zoning petitions, has put Tribe #1’s back against the wall. As more developments are approved, more of the tribe’s families are squeezed out of Cambridge and sent into that dark unfriendly night.

Note the irony in Tribe #2 trumpeting this ongoing gentrification as their attempt to create affordable housing, while Tribe #1 has seen for itself that gentrification, no matter how you sugar-coat it with modest set-asides for affordable units, pushes the lower and middle economic stratas out of their homes and into someone else’s city.

So, this is basically a fight for survival, in the meanest sense, for Tribe #1. And this week on Survivor Cambridge we’ve got a challenge that reflects how desperate the situation has become.

Tribe #1 and Tribe #2, are you ready to race each other for the Survivor’s Crown?

Excellent! You realize the losing tribe will need to find somewhere else to live, or somewhere else to build 16- and 18-story residential towers? Tribe #1 and Tribe #2, you will race against each other, but each with a different challenge. Tribe #1, your challenge is simply to drive your cars from Central Square to Memorial Drive via Western Avenue. The only catch: Western Avenue will be a virtual parking lot, because we’ve simulated the expected auto impact from all of Tribe #2’s towers and up-zoned buildings, which will bring a minimum of 50,000 additional car trips onto Cambridge roadways.

Tribe #2, given your lock-hold on both the Planning Board and the City Council, you are being asked to get the entire Central Square Up-Zoning package approved and legislated before the first car from Tribe #1 reaches Memorial Drive.

The winning tribe of this challenge will be crowned Survivor and be allowed to live (or develop towers) in peace on the island.

Update: Clearly Tribe #1 had the more difficult task. In a move hailed as “Unexpectedly mischievous and tactically brilliant!” Tribe #1’s competitors quickly abandoned their vehicles for wheelchairs, which should have cut their time in half and given them a victory, had it not been for all the angry motorists who objected to anyone—even someone in a wheelchair!—cutting in front of them. We were still totaling up Tribe #1 casualties as Tribe #2 not only won approval of their Central Square up-zoning petition, but also laid down the cornerstone for their first 18-story residential tower.

Join us for the next episode of Survivor Cambridge.

• Watch as waves of low-income residents get stuck once again on Western Avenue, attempting to make their final Exodus from Cambridge.

• See members of Cambridge’s Community Development Department turn their attention to up-zoning Porter Square and North Cambridge. You’ll want to see just how high these folks can build towers on that side of town.

• Watch the Cambridge School System begin dismantling all the schools that become superfluous once most of Cambridge’s families are chased out of the city.

• Watch current residents vote the entire City Council off the island. Except Minka (of the unpronounceable name) who is elected Mayor for her courage in standing up to her colleagues and MIT.

• And please, remember to watch your back. If it can happen to Tribe #1 today, can your tribe be far behind?

Survivor Cambridge is a production of Blind Elephant Press.

Tell Me Lies: A Republican Songbook

Tell me lies,

Tell me sweet little lies

 …goes the refrain from Fleetwood Mac’s elegy to love, “Little Lies,” never envisioning it would someday become the default anthem for the Republican Party.pinocchio

The verse, innocent as it seemed at the time, goes on to threaten eventual public exposure…

Oh, no, no you can’t disguise

(You can’t disguise, no you can’t disguise)

Well, the Republicans, bless their little hearts, have resolutely ignored the import of the second two lines of the refrain, as they continue to cling to the first two lines as a strategic response to whatever they find unlikable in our shifting political landscape. In fact, they’ve been so successful in elevating lies to a status where they’ve become worthy of discussion, we are often placed in the unenviable position of defending reality or a political position against the onslaught of either (choose one) gross stupidity, willful misrepresentation, or extremist religious ideology.

(If you chose “ All of the Above” consider yourself smarter than most people who vote for Republican candidates.)

What songs must echo through your mind when you vote for the party that angrily shouts “Death Panels!” in response to a proposal that seeks to help the elderly prepare for their end of days.

Tell me lies,

Tell me sweet little lies…

And what refrain do you sing to yourself when you deny Global Warming and minimize it as a liberal conspiracy to hobble industry and waste taxpayer dollars? Even as you’re forced to shout, rather than sing, to be heard above the 100 year storms, once-in-a-lifetime floods, and record-breaking droughts and wildfires that are suddenly multiplying on the planet like Pharaoh’s plagues?

Tell me, do they really believe God made Adam from dust, and Eve from Adam’s rib bone? Or that Darwinism is heresy, Evolution an atheist’s revenge? Could anyone with higher than a fifth grade education truly believe that?

Tell me lies,

Tell me sweet little lies…

 But the biggest, balls-of-brass lies are the ones they sing about George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama (yes, the “Hussein” must be kept silent because lying, possibly unhinged Republican extremists regard the name as proof positive that Barack Obama is not only a Muslim but an Islamic terrorist out to destroy the American way of life).

And, of course, it’s also final proof—if any is needed—that our president wasn’t even born on American soil!

Oh, no, no you can’t disguise

(You can’t disguise, no you can’t disguise)

Then there’s the question of their wholesale ransacking of government programs. Programs critical to the upward mobility of the middle class; programs crucial to the very survival of the social safety net. The Republicans blame it all on Barack Hussein Obama and his policies, as if he were responsible for the size of the national debt, as if he chose to conduct two wars at once, as if the country’s financial sector collapsed on his watch instead of his predecessor’s, as if his policies somehow led to the recession he inherited!

As Bill Clinton said about the Republicans at the Democratic convention, “They made the mess, then blame him cause he hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough.”

So, why suddenly do we need to throw out the character and conscience of America, as illustrated in the warp and woof of 80-plus years of humane, socially progressive legislation? Why should financial scarcity brought on by the excesses of a Republican administration; an administration so unconcerned about the public treasury it’s prescription drug bill prohibited the U.S. government from bargaining for better prices; why should Bush’s many over-indulgences, managerial incompetencies and financial missteps be allowed to kill off programs that were the work of many administrations and the combined will of the American people in the modern era?

There was no need to defenestrate government programs, no need to tinker with Medicare benefits, no push to reduce social security cost-of-living adjustments before George W. Bush embroiled us in two unwinnable wars and looted the treasury with two rounds of tax cuts. As was often remarked, no previous president had ever called for tax cuts in the midst of a war—let alone two wars!

That was only one of George W. Bush’s many firsts. Like being the first president to initiate a preemptive war; the first to make torture an acceptable means of interrogation; the first to attack a foreign country on trumped up evidence; the first to cripple his own war effort by starting a second war before finishing the first; and the first ex-president who can’t travel to foreign countries for fear of being arrested and tried as a war criminal.

Oh, no, no you can’t disguise

(You can’t disguise, no you can’t disguise)

By the time the Republicans—following the dictates of their millionaire and billionaire masters—finish dismantling assistance programs for the poor, eliminating food stamps and Pell grants, crippling Social Security and Medicare, killing off public sector jobs, there won’t be an America left to celebrate as the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

We’ll think of it instead as the Land of the Rich and the Home of the Poor.

And that’s no lie.

My Night In George W. Bush’s Presidential Library

Man, I’m just glad I didn’t get caught!

Then again, what can they do to me for breaking into the new, and as yet unveiled, George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum?George-Bush-center

I’m a blogger! I get paid (practically nothing) to go where others fear to tread.

Besides, whatever they do to me, it couldn’t be worse than what I experienced in the Bush Library’s Enhanced Interrogation Pavilion (a/k/a/ “The House of Pain”).

Though it was late at night, and not open to visitors, all the exhibits were furiously getting ready for opening day.

Okay, let me say this just once: This place is a treat! I never expected Bush’s Library to be so interactive, so true to the Bush legacy, or so compelling.

Visitors to The House of Pain feel like they’re actually being tortured in a black site prison. As a souvenir, when you eventually escape, you’re given a copy of your signed confession. The Bush Library’s “Easy Money” Wind Booth lets you know how it feels to be a bank CEO grabbing for free U.S. Treasury bucks during America’s financial free fall; and once you take two steps into the Cheneyville exhibit you feel like you’re out on the prairie hunting with Dick Cheney, which means any moment you could get shot in the face.

Speaking of Cheneyville, it might interest you to know that even though it wasn’t the largest exhibit, or the most complex, it did end up being the most costly exhibit in the entire Bush Center. Not surprisingly, it was designed and constructed in a no-bid contract awarded to the Halliburton Company.

George W.’s impish side comes out in many ironic touches added to the exhibits, such as the empty desk in Cheneyville supposedly awaiting the return of Scooter Libby from prison. You can recognize the desk by the photo of Valerie Plame that sits on top.

Then there’s this great exhibit room that doesn’t even exist. I’m not sure how they do it, perhaps with holograms or stealth technology, but it looks like a normal room when you look at it from the outside. As soon as you step through the door, however, you’re also stepping back outside the room through a different door, as though you had stepped through a time warp curtain rather than a room. The sign above both entrances, smugly declares this to be the “W.M.D. STORAGE ROOM AND WAREHOUSE.”

Simply put, you have never experienced a presidential library—or even an amusement park—to rival the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. It’s non-stop action, non-stop machismo sabre rattling and, to a discerning mind, non-stop destruction of America’s civil liberties, moral authority and international leadership.

For the kids, the Library has a Bicycle Center with indoor stationary bikes that let you race against the former president on some of his favorite runs around the hills of Camp David. One of the videotaped runs is the actual course George W. rode the morning he barely skimmed the CIA’s briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S.”

There’s also a room toward the back of the vast library complex called “The Educational President” that features video interviews with the millions of children who were inadvertently left behind during his presidency. “Sorry, kids!” George W. is quoted as saying. “I’ll get you next time!”

As I learned, from running around like an idiot in the middle of the night, the Library can exhaust you. By the time I was waterboarded for the sixth time I barely had the strength to play “Whack-A-Wimp” in the Alberto Gonzales Pavilion. “Whack-A-Wimp” is weirdly like “Whack-A-Mole,” except you whack Bush Administration U.S. Attorneys instead of moles, but only those who were fired by Alberto Gonzales for not prosecuting Democrats or voter fraud cases.

Centerpiece exhibit of the Bush Library is the Hurricane Katrina Hall, which has a replica of the basement White House conference room from which George W. held his videoconferences with Michael Brown (a/k/a “Brownie”) during the crisis. Also, featured is a diorama recreating President Bush’s meaningless speech from Jackson Square. The speech was given at night, you’ll remember, so that spotlights could light up the president and make him look super presidential or, perhaps, super human. The exhibit also features photographs of the California fundraiser President Bush was flying to when he made his in-depth flyover inspection of the death and destruction in New Orleans.

The new George W. Bush Presidential Library, sitting on the campus of Southern Methodist University, on a 23-acre parcel curiously named The Green Zone, is scheduled to formally open later this week. The Center boasts many exhibits besides those mentioned in this report, most of which are listed as classified and not open to the public. Which is why you might also find it prudent to pay your visit at night.

As a curious side note—I have no memory of how it got there, but when I left the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum I held in my hand a copy of a confession, signed by me, stating that I had been living in this country illegally for 15 years and cheating on my tax returns that entire time. Neither of which was true, as far as I recall.

 

Whither Goest The Republican Party?

Like most of you, I take my Republican-issued declarations with large doses of honey and over-the-counter stomach-settlers. So when Reince Priebus, or Prince Rebus as I like to think of him, the Chair of the Republican Party, started issuing declarations about how the GOP needed to change, I naturally expected a bowl of mush.Prince1

Prince was presenting the findings of his 97-page Growth and Opportunity Project Report to a breakfast meeting of assembled Republican leaders, men and women with gray hair, aged bodies, and calcified opinions.

First, the voices from the study rose up to describe how the general population views “the Republican Party today.” Those voices loudly called out, “Scary”, “Narrow minded” and “out of touch”, essentially calling it a party of “stuffy old men.”

To that, I would only add the word “white” as in “stuffy old white men.”

But there was poor Prince Rebus, this morning’s star bearer of bad news, telling his bosses they were so unpopular they needed to stay indoors and away from the windows. And then he offered each of them a tall beaker of hemlock, that poisonous brew said to have killed Socrates, when he went on to explain what the new Republican Party would now stand for.

“First,” Prince declared, defining the way forward for Republicans and their Party, “we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform.” As if such heretic a thought might get lonely sitting out there by itself, he quickly continued, “Republicans today have to start speaking up for the little guy; it’s time we were the ones blowing the whistle at corporate malfeasance and attacking corporate welfare.”

Honestly, he really said that.

As blue-haired matrons and patrons of the party went faint, Prince ignored their wounded cries of protest, the shouts of pain—shouts of “Never!”, “No!” and “Say it aint so!”— from the gathered party members. Into that wall of growing agitation and protest, he blithely continued, “We should speak out when a company liquidates itself and its executives receive bonuses but rank-and-file workers are left unemployed. We should speak out when C.E.O.s receive tens of millions of dollars in retirement packages but middle-class workers have not had a meaningful raise in years.

“For the G.O.P. to appeal to younger voters,” Prince continued, “we do not have to agree on every issue, but we do need to make sure young people do not see the Party as totally intolerant of alternative points of view.”

Even though everyone at the breakfast knew in their heart of hearts the Party was, indeed, totally… and irrevocably… intolerant of anyone else’s point of view!

Also, in the hope of attracting younger voters, Prince called for an ”RNC Celebrity Task Force” to host star-studded events and fundraisers. Clint Eastwood and Pat Boone were two of the youth-oriented celebrities who first came to mind.

In pushing for more openness and acceptance within the party, Prince pushed his breakfast audience, “C’mon, guys, can we lighten up a bit? Can we stop bashing the gays for once. And stop doling out invasive ultrasounds as pre-abortion punishment? And no more thumping the bible—or the constitution, please!” (Well, he didn’t really say that, but it would have been delightful if he had!)

In an interview with Bob Schiefer around this time, Prince , with great candor, admitted the GOP did a “lousy job” of marketing itself. Adding, “This is no short term view…If we don’t start now, we’re not going to have anymore success in four years, eight years, or twelve years.”

Now, about those four years, eight years, or twelve years…

Here are a few questions I wish Bob Shieffer (perhaps channeling the spirit of Mike Wallace) had had the temerity to ask Prince, starting with.…”What gives you the right to survive as a national political party for those four, eight or twelve years? Shouldn’t your survival depend on earning the support of a significant segment of the population?”

And once Bob got started in that vein, he could have asked, “Why should learning to better market your ideas change anything? If you’re still pushing unpopular or antiquated ideas, you will remain unpopular. Then, the only way you can win elections would be to nominate stealth candidates who pretend to espouse popular viewpoints, but then renege on those positions once winning office. Sort of like Mitt Romney aspired to do in his long term etch-a-sketch evolution from Conservative Republican to Moderate Republican and back to Conservative at the end. Is that the new model? Keeping the lid closed tightly on zealots like Todd Akin or Chrstine O’Donnell so that everybody appears ginger peachy to the boob in the voting booth?”

Then I would have liked Bob to sum it all up, “Prince, can you face up to the fact America has moved beyond—far beyond!—today’s Republican Party? Even if the party has managed to gerrymander enough districts to stay in a crippled position of power. America doesn’t want a Republican Party that disavows everything America stands for—tax fairness, women having the freedom to choose what happens to their bodies, gays having the freedom to marry, economic fairness, a generous government that supports, assists and protects its most vulnerable citizens, a government committed to furthering human rights here and abroad.”

And here’s what I would like to say to Prince once his proposals for an enlightened GOP fail to get traction. “Face it Prince,” I would admonish him, “The Republican Party is a gang of angry, embittered, mostly white and usually wealthy people trying to hold onto their power and their wealth in a country turning less white, more impoverished and more heterogeneous by the day. The first mission of the Republican Party today is to protect the wealth and privileges of the few, to promote a strict almost fundamentalist view of the Constitution, and to cripple the ability of the government to advocate for those less fortunate on the economic ladder.”

Those are the Republican views and policies Prince needs to rewire if the Republican Party wishes to survive as a serious political entity in America.

But rather than working to change the Party’s toxic policies or principles, Prince announced instead a $10 million dollar outreach program to polish up the GOP brand.

Anyone familiar with the Republican brand knows  $10 million won’t even begin to remove the stain.

 

 

 

THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE AND THEY’RE STILL SETTING THE TABLE FOR DINNER!

Think your opinion matters? Apparently not to our City Council. A majority of council members voted at an Ordinance Committee meeting to move along MIT’s upzoning petition before the public had a chance to speak its mind. Arguably, it was to allow our mayor, who had another engagement, to record her vote in favor of the petition. But in reality, you couldn’t fabricate a better example to illustrate what the council feels about your opinion or how they’re responding to the over-heating pressures for development in our city.Cambridge-CityCouncil2012-2013

Put simply, they appear eager to ride the rising tide of development with little concern for those of us who may get flooded out. With little concern for the diversity we’ll lose as they vote to bring in wave after wave of affluent renters. Or for families that get squeezed out by the higher neighborhood rents that accompany new market-rate housing. Or for neighborhoods that will suddenly have 14 or 16 story towers reaching into their sky, and thousands more cars clogging their streets.

The sellers of “progress” tell us this is the price we have to pay to get more housing and create a better Cambridge. Housing has become the shield behind which developers and business interests now hide their self-enrichment and self-interest. If you could prove what I postulated in the previous paragraph, that new market-rate housing chases out more families than it makes room for, and erodes diversity, they would still argue that inclusionary housing forgives all sins. And that providing 11-15% low or mid-level affordable housing in a housing development makes up for whatever loss of low- or middle-income residents it eventually chases out of the city.

Now, as the City Council pretends to effectively review a proposal that will add 2.1 million square feet of office, lab and residential space to a city already densely populated and excessively traveled by car, someone needs to shout “STOP!” Someone needs to exhort them, “Don’t agree to anything until you understand we’re facing a tsunami of development over the course of the next 20 years. Don’t agree to anything until you learn and study the consequences we face from projections that predict over 18 million square feet of new offices, labs and residences in the city. Which, according to Cambridge’s own published numbers, breaks down to over 50,000 new car trips daily, plus a similar number of additional commuter trips.

Forget the fact that MIT wants to build a skyscraper in our city, a 300 foot demonstration of their importance. Perhaps an easy way for pro-development votes on the Council to create a precedent for buildings significantly higher than our zoning has allowed to date. Forget the fact that MIT fails to address the problem of its grad student housing shortages, which seriously impacts the availability of affordable housing in Cambridge. Forget the fact that MIT operates like it can get what it wants just because it wants it.

Why would our City Council agree to such massive upzoning when they cannot imagine the consequences of such a decision? Nor can they understand the context of over-development in which they’ll be making their decision. Denise Simmons has commented on the fact that listening to presentations, citizen opinions and opposing viewpoints in a single evening doesn’t lend itself well to making informed decisions.

With the massive impacts that come with massive upzoning petitions, the City Council, as the stewards charged with protecting and guiding our city, need to do their homework. They need to find out how many thousands of car trips and transit trips this level of development would bring? They need to know how many millions of square feet of development the City is facing down the road, so we can sensibly prepare for whatever is coming.

To vote on the MIT petition, or the K2C2 recommendations without looking seriously at the future is like continuing to set the table for dinner even though your senses tell you the house is on fire.

It’s time to stop and think; to slow the rush to development and to rethink dotting the landscape with towers. It’s time to stop and study the future, before we rush headlong into it.

It’s time to say no to mindless development.

Then let’s see what develops.