Cross-posted from the Accountable Strategies Blog
Powers Fasteners may well be guilty of all of these charges and may deserve to have the book thrown at them. But certainly others are to blame in this mess. Yet from the tenor of The Globe?s reporting, in particular, I?m getting the feeling that the glue supplier is getting stuck, so to speak, with the rap.
The big revelation in today?s Globe story is presented without attribution and yet stated as fact that Powers Fasteners never mentioned the Singapore problems to Big Dig engineers.
It?s certainly possible that Powers didn?t bring up the Singapore problems to their Boston clients. But that is not necessarily relevant if, as Powers Fasteners asserts, they were unaware that the fast-drying version of the glue was being used on the Big Dig tunnel. The fast-drying version, it turns out, was less strong and reliable than the standard epoxy that Powers Fasteners was also supplying to the Big Dig project and reportedly thought was being used to secure the ceiling tiles.
In fact, as The Globe notes in the 10th paragraph of the story, Powers Fasteners engineers did warn Big Dig engineers that the fast-drying version was not appropriate for use in securing overhead tiles. Why is this piece of exculpatory information placed so far down in the story?
If in fact Powers Fasteners was unaware that the fast-dry glue was being used on the Big Dig tunnel ceiling, why would they feel obligated to tell Big Dig officials about the Singapore problems they were having with it? Say guys, just in case you might decide to use our fast-dry product for a purpose we warned you was unsafe, we want to let you know that our fast-dry product isn?t working well in Singapore.
Today?s Globe story is based on apparently leaked documents, which immediately raises questions about the motivation of the leakers and who they might have been. Could it have been Coakley, or could it have been Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the engineering consortium that managed the design and construction of the project? Could it have been Modern Continental, which actually applied the fast-dry epoxy? Could it have been the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority?
And how do we know, by the way, that Powers Fasteners didn?t say anything about the Singapore problems to the Big Dig engineers? The Globe makes that assertion based on the claim of an unnamed lawyer in the case.
In yesterday?s story, we learned, by the way, that Bechtel is negotiating a settlement of the case with Coakley to get them off the hook of possible criminal and civil charges for numerous defects in the project.
And it is the Globe?s editorial page that informs us today that Coakley may have a conflict of interest in this case because she is pursuing both civil and criminal cases against Powers Fasteners and potentially other parties. If Powers Fasteners is found guilty of the criminal charge, it will be easier for Coakley to obtain civil convictions and damages against them.
None of this is to assert that Powers Fasteners is a acompletely innocent party here that?s being framed. It does appear from the documents that The Globe obtained, that they deceived their Singapore supplier about the poor quality of their fast-dry epoxy. The authorities in Singapore may well have a legal case against them. But it?s not clear yet, despite The Globe?s assertions, that Coakley has a case against them.
I would have been fine, by the way, with a story that simply reported that Powers had had problems with its fast-drying glue in Singapore, and left it at that.
This is about getting the absurd $1000 cap on criminal penalties lifted.
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Once that is done, then it starts to make sense to go after the bigger fish.
Has always been one of, “If you want to hold someone responsible, go to the top.” In this case, that would be him, seeing as he was the Governor at the time of this disaster.
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I’m sure Romney has a great reason why we shouldn’t hold him to his own standards…..or his past records…..and his flip-flopping. The truth is, if he had done a proper job with this instead of concentrating on his Presidential aspirations, we would have much more information to go on by now.
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A fish rots from the head…
I have a post about it HERE and HERE.
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The Turnpike Authority fought off every attempt – beginning in the 2003 House One – by Romney to gain control of the project, and the SJC even said there was no ’emergency’ to justify compelling Amorello to turn over information. Until there was a fatality, of course.
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GIVE THE AG TIME! I DO not understand why every report acts as if this is the ONLY indictment!
Yes, the Turnpike did fight to remain an indepedent authority but control over the Big Dig is governed by a management contract between the State and the Turnpike. The 1997 MHS law gives the ownership to the Turnpike once it complete, in fact the Turnpike didn’t become the owner until this year. All the Big Dig contracts are Mass Highway Contracts because the Turnpike cannot receive federal funds.
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Romney could have simply torn up the contract.
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John H has no concept of how the MTA is organized, staffed, run, and enabled (as in drug abuse, not legislatively) by the Hacks on the Hill.
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Or perhaps John is simply suffering from Romney Derangement Syndrome.
This is from the eighth paragraph, and it’s not exculpatory. By that standard I think the 10th paragraph was generous for the lawyer’s assertion.
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As I said, Powers is clearly not blameless in this case. But the 9th paragraph of the story states that Williamson had no reason at that time, according to Powers officials, to connect the problems in Singapore with those in Boston because the Powers officials mistakenly believed Big Dig workers were using the more durable standard-drying form of their epoxy. My problem with the Globe article is that it is accusing Powers of a coverup that led to a person’s death. To date, there isn’t any evidence to make that claim.
Caps mine:
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Deliberate coverup? No. Possible evidence of negligence? Possibly.
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In general, I agree that there’s plenty of blame to go around.
Just like in Rhode Island, where for some reason the Warwick fire inspectors are not held responsible for failing to protect the public from people’s stupid mistakes, and the state is not held responsible for making sure that cities hire fire inspectors that actually inspect for dangerous conditions. For some reason we are letting our state inspectors and managers – hired by us and acting in our authority – off the hook. We, the people of Massachusetts, should take the responsibility for not taking responsibility, we built this tunnel and allowed it to be built the way it was.
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This was a really stupid design, as anyone has ever used epoxy to fix anything knows that it’s always a gamble if it will work or not. We shouldn’t have gambled with huge cement blocks suspended by glue over a highway. It was a criminal design, a criminal lack of testing, a criminal trusting of promotional materials by a small company, a criminal lack of inspections.
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What else didn’t they bother to test? Oh yeah, the cement, the single slurry wall design…Coakley’s the one who should be in jail for trying to get us to weasel out of our criminal responsibility.
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There’s leaps of quality between modeler’s epoxies, light construction epoxies, heavy construction epoxies, industrial epoxies, and even NASA’s epoxies.
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It didn’t fail because it was epoxy. It failed because it was the inappropriate epoxy.
A number of months ago, shortly after the ceiling collapse, the Globe showed a graphic of a cross-section of the ceiling mounts. I admit to not having a civil engineering background, but it struck me that, if the graphic was reasonably accurate, the design was incompetent. The design was of a cylindrical hole being bored into the concrete above, and the hole being filled with the epoxy. So, where is the vertical support? The hole should have at least been flared, which, after having been filled with the epoxy, the concrete ceiling would have provided substantial vertical support for the epoxy. With the cylindrical design, the vertical support would have been little more than friction.
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I’ll avoid going after NASA, which in recent decades has had its own problems, but I’mm merely mention, going upstream to Ms. Porc, that we seem to agree yet again. Whether or not Mittens was allowed access to “the information,” it seems to me somewhat silly to blame him for the ceiling collapse. Aside from the fact that Romney is nothing more than a glorified salesman, not a civil engineer, it is highly unlikely that minutiae such as how the ceiling panels were affixed to the concrete ceiling of the tunnel would have come to his attention. Even if he had been in office at the time that the engineering had been approved (which I doubt that he was).
as a redundancy measure
… is a far cry from a signed engineering drawing. The application of epoxy in this manner is not unique to the Big Dig and the NTSB agreed that, had the right mix been used, the engineering was sound.
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I understand this notion that epoxy shouldn’t have been used is an easy place to point the conversation for laymen because our common sense instincts seem to have a problem with it. But this really is a canard now.
…I just want to mention that I appreciate your response.
The media has it wrong, the pundits have it wrong, and for god’s sake, if a grand jury handed down an indictment, that means there’s actual evidence to show culpability. Powers is not a scapegoat. I think whatever has been found, it’s pretty damning, enough to go for a criminal manslaughter charge.
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I am so sick of the media, the bloggers, and the pundits getting this whole issue so very wrong. It would only take a dedicated investigative journalist to suss out the real story here. But it’s just easier to pass around blame than actually do the homework, I guess. Makes for an facile storyline, doesn’t it?
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Good point. It’s tough for a zealous Prosecutor to convince a grand jury to indict..
I dare you to compare Martha Coakley to Mike Nifong. You’d be laughed out of Mass.
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Not only do indictments mean something, but then you get a jury trial. And hey! In the Duke lacrosse case, justice prevailed when Justice got involved, didn’t it? The system isn’t perfect, certainly, but if you have that little faith in it, I suggest you go live in North Korea, it must be about the same, right?
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You can try harder than that.
And I have no idea what North Korea has to do with this. Surely you’ve heard of the ham sandwich….
That this AG would never, ever, ever over-indict for political reasons!
Conventional wisdom is that a skilled prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict pretty much anyone for anything. The standard of proof is fairly low, and the defense doesn’t get to argue its side. I haven’t seen anything to suggest that the CW is wrong.
I share Lynne’s faith in the good faith of Martha Coakley, but I also still believe in the presumption of innocence, even for corporations.
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Re: ham sandwiches, some are guilty, some are not …
If you had (and I have,) you’ll agree that most construction problems happen because of faulty workmanship and installation, followed by shoddy oversight and negligent on-site management.
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In reality, Powers Fasteners should be at the very bottom of the food chain. I suspect there is tremendous political pressure for Coakley to tread lightly on the REALLY responsible parties, most if not all of which are in MA.
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Coakley is protecting her flank because, after all, she’s part of the MA political system. And ambitious.
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This is not to say that Powers isn’t culpable. Perhaps they are. But in the grand scheme of responsibilities, they really should be at the bottom of the list. Why start with them?
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Here’s a practical who’s-to-blame list as I see it, in descend order of blame:
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Where’s Mitt Romney? I exclude him because he had little control over the MTA. He almost couldn’t fire Amerello. Progressives can bump him up a notch or two if they like, but it’s a small and meaningless revision to the list.
…Powers Fasteners is the ham sandwich that Coakley got the grand jury (or someone) to indict, while ignoring the gorilla (Bechtel) in the room.
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I have never particularly cared for Coakley. She is a “go along to get along” kind of person. Her continued efforts to persecute the Amiraults were indicative of that.
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So now, she has a scapegoat in l’affair ceiling collapse, which scapegoat is probably not as politically connected as the general contractor, Bechtel. Sweet. Coakley, to try to enhance her political hind end goes for what someone upstream has called the low end of the food chain. And that commenter is exactly correct.
… theory that quickly. Point taken about the Amiraults and political connections, but I’m not being naive when I say there are other things to consider:
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Powers may actually have culpability here. They may even be the most culpable. To find out you would have to do months of investigation (that pre-date the administration). Newspapers and media outlets haven’t done that, but the NTSB engineers and the grand jury has. Given the different quantity and quality of inquiry it really shouldn’t surprise us if they came to a conclusion that didn’t match our media-fed always-assume-the-worst-about-the-big-dig sensibilities.
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Far from the pattern of behavior of being overly ‘nice’ to the management team, it should be pointed out that they seem to be essentially blackmailing them. I don’t have the exact citation but officials have even commented that the possible criminal charges are being considered, but what comes out will have to take into consideration the dollar figure that comes out of the cost recovery process. Not exactly the way to treat a ‘friend’. Beating up on the Big Dig is the most politically expedient way to get popular these days.
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Lets all just take a collective pause and, far from hoping that this group or that group gets raked over the coals, lets just hope that the truth comes out and the right people suffer the right consequences, regardless of what the general public’s popularly held views are or how the media behave. Thats what we should have hoped for in the Amiraults case and thats what we should hope for now.
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raj @ Mon Aug 13, 2007 at 11:44:16 AM EDT
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is just as relevant here.