O'Neill's crumbling legacy

boston globe ^ | July 19, 2006 | Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist

[ninonitti]

ALL POLITICS is local, Tip O'Neill famously said, and it surely doesn't get any more local than when a 6,000-pound slab from a project championed by the late House speaker falls on a 38-year-old newlywed from Jamaica Plain, crushing her to death as her husband drives her to the airport. O'Neill died in 1994, but the political culture he epitomized is alive and well and enshrined in the Big Dig, a slough of corruption, callousness, and cover-ups that had become a synonym for government mismanagement long before it killed Milena Del Valle on July 10.

It would be going too far to link O'Neill to the incompetent workmanship and negligent oversight that led to the collapse of a 3-ton ceiling panel in the Interstate 90 connector just as the Del Valles drove beneath it last week. But the culture that he embodied is still solidly in place. Only one month earlier the lords and ladies of Bay State politics had gathered to christen the longest section of the Big Dig as the Thomas P. ``Tip" O'Neill Jr. Tunnel and proclaim the immense -- and immensely expensive -- highway project his triumphant legacy.

``That project could never be complete until it bears the name of the person who made it all possible," gushed US Senator Ted Kennedy. ``So let us celebrate his great legacy today . . . and remember that our job in public life is to improve the lives of others." Valle's life was not improved by this troubled project. It was ended by it.

Kennedy isn't the only one whose comments, in retrospect, were cringe-making. ``Whenever you have a monumental project like this, you're going to have . . . inconveniences," lectured Boston Mayor Tom Menino just five weeks before the falling ceiling shattered the

.

[ninonitti]

Jacoby nails the Bay State Delegation to the cross.

[IncPen]

What state does John Kerry represent?

Oh yeah, I forgot.

[bfree]

Little chrissy matthews worked for old Tip and bragged about the tunnel. Indite him too.

[VOA]

... a 38-year-old newlywed from Jamaica Plain...

Newlywed?
Now there's something I did NOT hear on TV news.
Wonder if that was squelched by sectors of the MSM to protect their
liberal buddies in Massachussetts?

[lafroste]

Newlywed?

Yep. She and her husband were on their way to the airport for their honeymoon. How's that for suck?

[Thebaddog]

They are too freaking smart in Bosstown. How did they screw up the bolts?

[flixxx]

thanks for the post!

[Plains Drifter]

To bad Ted and John K. weren't in that car instead!!!!!

[RedRover]

There is a parallel of course between the culture of corruption in Boston and New Orleans. Public works=snoots in the trough=cutting corners in construction.

[Maeve]

Pretty good.
(On another note, I wonder if that tropical storm is going to hit Mass.)

[peeps36]

We have a bunch of ignorant and arrogant idiots at every level of our government.I look forward to a time when drunken bums and traitors are spit on by voters.This country will keep going down the tubes if we keep on electing degenerate blow-hards like Kerry and Kennedy.

[Cobra64]

To bad Ted and John K. weren't in that car instead!!!!!

They're the ones who built it!

[caisson71]

Too smart for their own good, obviously.
With names like Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry as their congressional representatives for years, the people of MA get exactly what those names imply - lies, corruption, graft, waste, incompetenence, pandering, ripoff, etc.

[Thebaddog]

But they were intelligent about it.

[IronJack]

In Massachusetts, corruption permeates the entire civil structure. It is systemic, cancerous, and deadly. Nothing gets done unless palms get greased, and the only interest anyone has in any "public works" project is the laxity of the overseers. In most cases, they're on the take too, so workmanship is second rate, jobs aren't done, twice as many resources are used as budgeted (even though nobody can demonstrate where any of those resources went), ghost armies of workers are paid, and a sloppy, dangerous piece of bloated, super-expensive junk is rolled out years late and below acceptable standards.

Then, when the inevitable argle-bargle starts over accountability, the same thieves that fleeced the public originally step in and "fix" the defects, again at a cost of millions.

Boston is the gift that keeps on giving. If you're a mobster, a politician, or a flim-flam man.

[IronJack]

By the way, Ted Kennedy, John Murtha, and Tip O'Neill ought to get together at the Big 'N' Drunk men's exchange to swap fashion ideas. And martini recipes. I understand Teddy's got one that's made with gin, more gin, and a secret ingredient made from juniper berries ...

[VOA]

She and her husband were on their way to the airport for their honeymoon.

Incredible.
Just part of Democratic Big Government looking out for The Little Guy
with great public works (snort!).

I'm not shocked that the first time I hear the victim was a newlywed
was in a column by a stand-up guy like Jeff Jacoby.

[mhx]

I think anyone in Congress, Republican or Democrat, would take that amount of money for a project in their district if they could get away with it.

[Richard Kimball]

Man, he must mail these in from another state. In Massachusetts, it is now illegal to run against a Kennedy or speak ill of Tip. It used to just be considered to be in bad taste.

[Clintonfatigued]

True, but a conservative Congressman would want the money to be spend effectively on worthy projects, not thrown into a rat hole.