At Bob’s suggestion, I’m posting a link to a recent bit on my blog (www.devalexperience.com) that may be of interest to BMG readers.
[I have copied the piece here – Bob]: Deval Patrick’s opinion piece was published in today’s Boston Globe. It’s a specific, step-by-step plan for what we should do next in this fiscal and political fiasco. But it was more than that, too.
As usual, Deval has the vision and the courage to point to the real issue — what he calls the “Big Dig culture” of Beacon Hill. In a sad irony, Romney’s first steps were to affirm that culture once more, by appointing a political insider to investigate, another non-engineer at the helm. Today’s Globe’s news section reported on that, too. Transportation Secretary John Cogliano, now in charge of oversight for the Big Dig, brings to the job no engineering degree and no specific experience in highway safety, management, or construction. Before rising to prominence in state government, Cogliano worked in the family business, Blue View Nurseries in Canton, — a job which might equip him to superficially beautify the Big Dig mess, but not to fix it.
Coincidentally, Deval Patrick himself has had specific experience dealing in an adversarial capacity with Bechtel — the same company involved in Big Dig oversight — when he was general counsel at Coca-Cola (see our coverage below). He sought redress and eventually sued Bechtel on Coca-Cola’s behalf for cost overruns and dicey safety issues in constructing a new plant for Coke in Ireland. Enforcing oversight on Bechtel was a process Deval described in NECN’s “This Week in Business” interview as lengthy, complex and requiring tenacity. It’s exactly the sort of skills needed to sort out what went (and is going) wrong with our $14b+ infrastructure project — although Deval was too modest to mention it in today’s op-ed piece.
The two pieces of reportage provide a classic counterpoint in what to do right (Patrick) and how to do it wrong, again (Romney). I can’t think of a better way to demonstrate the differences in approach and culture with what we’ve got in our current governor and the vast, decisive improvement we can expect with our next one.
Your link doesn’t work however. Go to link to read.
Because you used the word “panacea,” which is often used somewhat derogatorily (suggesting a purported cure-all that won’t actually fix much), I assumed your post would be critical of Patrick’s suggestions. Having looked at it, obviously it’s not. You might consider re-titling your post!
I always get ‘panacea’ confused with pangea. I wasn’t sure what Patrick was planning as far as supercontinents were concerned.
..is THAT Deval’s home base?
The alliteration (Patrick’s Panacea) was intentional. The connotation was not.
if it catches on.
And Deval has as good shot as anyone in getting nomination.
Because Reilly is such a bafoon, I cannot predict the primary now. But Healy should win it all, unless perhaps Romney’s Big Dig Save is shown to be phony and Deval’s fight with Bechtel is real and gets good play.