Posted on 07/15/2006 6:34:18 AM PDT by PajamaTruthMafia
Business as usual on Big Dig boondoggle By Joe Fitzgerald Boston Herald Columnist
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Insanity, according to one insightful definition, is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.
That’s us, the populace of Massachusetts, doing what we have always done, which is why we are getting what we have always gotten, except it’s never been more flagrant than what we’re witnessing right now.
What makes this Big Dig scandal so atrocious is its scope, not its substance, for corruption, greed and graft are nothing new in Massachusetts.
Indeed, we have become so inured to the venality of so-called public servants that we’ve coined a term, “politics as usual,” meaning we’re really not all that surprised whenever we discover that they’ve sold us down the river once again.
But this time it wasn’t a new courthouse in Cambridge or a garage beneath the Common or a convention center boondoggle that squandered public funds and betrayed public trust; those were family matters, fouling only our own nest here in Massachusetts.
But the Big Dig, the largest public works project in American history, would become its biggest pork barrel, too, with more than $14.6 billion being entrusted to a crowd that we know winks at the notion of integrity, grabbing all it can, wherever it can.
So shouldn’t we have known what was going to happen?
Lonise Bias, whose son Len died from an ingestion of cocaine 20 years ago, just days after being drafted No. 1 by the Celtics, likes to tell youthful audiences a tale about a young man who came upon a snake that he befriended.
He held it, cuddled it, fed and nurtured it, until the day it sank its fangs into him. Howling, the boy asked why he had been bitten, to which the remorseless reptile replied, “You knew what I was when you picked me up.”
Seriously, if you’re from Massachusetts, are you really shocked to discover you’ve been betrayed again by empty vessels masquerading as servants of the people?
Offended? Yes. Repulsed? Certainly. Infuriated? Absolutely.
But if you’re truly shocked, you must be from out of town.
They say Milena Del Valle was killed by a three-ton ceiling panel. Wrong. That was the instrument of her death, not the cause of it. The cause was the ethical indifference that made the instrument lethal, and those whose character flaws were involved know who they are this morning.
Del Valle and her husband did nothing wrong.
How could they have known that entering a Big Dig tunnel meant they’d be passing through the valley of death?
In the wake of that tragedy, Matt Amorello’s knee-jerk response was to insist the tunnels were still safe, two days before it was revealed more than 240 additional fixtures were questionable.
The man insulted our intelligence.
Politicians - including one who’s running for president and one who’s running for governor - insisting there’s nothing political about their pronouncements are also insulting our intelligence.
Can’t they be candid, just once?
Legislators jumping into the fray to make sure their constituents are well-represented are insulting our intelligence, too, if they’re the same ones who just conspired to muzzle those constituents on the volatile issue of homosexual matrimony.
It’s enough to make you despair, if this is where you make your home. But truth be told, we’re only reaping what we’ve sown in Massachusetts, and it’s a bitter, fatal harvest.
Political leadership ought to be seen as moral leadership, too, but here they’re regarded as a choice, not a combination.
Obviously there were more than a few who made the wrong choice.
Then again, what’s new?
Living in the People's Republic of Kalifornia, I am well aware of the fact that, at some point, a person does have a responsibility to leave a liberal hell hole. Decisions have consequences. Liberals don't know that, but the rest of us should know what to expect.
That's a very good question....not ignorance
Several states began building turnpikes in the late 40's and early 50's. To pay for them, they established publicly owned corporations called turnpike authorities which would sell bonds to raise the funds to build the turnpikes. The bonds would then be paid off with toll revenue. This occurred before the establishment of the Interstate System. Interstate funding law forbade the use of federal funds on the construction of toll facilities, but it allowed the Federal Highway Adminiastration to sign the routes along tunrpikes. Thus, I-90 was routed along the New York State Thruway and the MassPike.
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