One thing that is helpful to me is that he knows where the bodies are buried. And you know, the sad reality is that we have to dig up a lot of those bodies, and bury them properly…. there are some agencies … where the nickname is that of their legislative sponsor. And people in communities know that if you want something from that agency, like a job [for a relative] … There are all kinds of guardians and old relationships, and arrangements that were arrived at to solve some problem that you can’t know about unless you were there. All that stuff needs to be unwound and brought into the sunlight. And it is so helpful to have someone who understands all that to be on the team and to be on our side.
The argument, essentially, is that it takes one to know one, right? It’s the same reason police departments hire former gang members to serve as liaisons to active gangs, for example — because they know the streets, and they speak the same language. How, one might rhetorically ask oneself, can you disassemble the hackocracy if you don’t understand how it works? Or, as Adam G. pithily puts it, “[t]akes a hack to deal with hacks.”
Jay, perhaps the state’s foremost critic of the “hack-progressive alliance,” is skeptical, arguing that “Patrick’s now playing on legislators’ turf and by their rules. It’s been done before — and it’s failed before.” Nonetheless, there is a certain logic to the exhumer-in-chief argument. You can’t dig up the bodies if you don’t know where to put the shovels. (Incidentally, the “Aloisi knows where the bodies are buried” meme appears to have originated at Outraged Liberal’s place.)
Two major, major questions remain. First, do Patrick and Aloisi have a list of shovel-ready projects — not for infrastructure, but for the metaphorical bodies we’re talking about? What does it mean to dig up those bodies and rebury them? I’d love to see a serious, detailed plan for doing that.
Second, the reason some (me, for instance) remain skeptical is not that they doubt Aloisi’s smarts, or his navigational skills, or any of that. It’s that what could make Aloisi very valuable could be exactly what undoes him, and the Governor’s transportation agenda with it. Aloisi needs to be ready to make his former colleagues — all the guys with whom he spent a lot of time and developed a lot of relationships, and from whom he made a lot of money — really, really unhappy and uncomfortable. He needs to be willing to burn his bridges. Because as soon as Patrick and Aloisi start talking about real reforms, Aloisi’s cell phone is going to start ringing non-stop. Can he really say “no” to the folks on the other end of the phone? After all, the thing about the bodies we’re talking about here is that they’re not actually dead.
Patrick gets one shot at this. If he blows it, that’s it.
is there any other route? i give him a lot of credit for trying to do what everyone wants of the governor: let some daylight in.
… be the solution. Let the so-called ‘compromised’ manager do his work, but in very bright daylight.
… is an often under-valued commodity. In insufficient ‘quantities’ it can be a huge overhead multiplier. Worse, it can result in hidden ‘land mines’ that sit for years.
Maybe he should have considered Matt Amarillo.
maybe Matt can help out with footage if needed.
Those that sounded the alarm for decades on the Big Dig in previous Dukakis, Weld, Cellucci,Swift, and Romney Administrations feel Governor Patrick shows a lack of any ethical standards in this appointment. Jim Aloisi is a most competent person that has a resume of self service before public service.
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p>The reporters from the Globe, Herald, and other media outlets have also just recently further documented the Aloisi record and most disgusting resume.
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p>As someone who as been there, I have done so also on my personal Blog site as well as a written commentary on many other of the Guilty, Enablers, and Heroes on the Big Dig.
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p>Unfortunately, the facts and viewpoints of those who have blown the whistle over the years and doing so now are not listened or taken into consideration.
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p>Massachusetts truly needs another WARD type Commission more stronger than the one that was formed during the Government Center Scandals that will be listened to and followed for all government contracting.
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p>Does anyone fear based on the Aloisi track record that he is the best person to oversee $Billions in Agencies worth and contracts?
That Aloisi has the “most ideas and creativity, bar none”. I don’t doubt that. And that talent was on display in the 90’s when he helped cook the Turnpike’s books and hide the Big Dig mess in the first place. Hardly a stellar use of his abilities.
“Whitey” Bulger for FBI director?
If he does, real progress can be made. If he doesn’t, it will be like making Marlon Brando the head of the FBI. I suppose at the end of the day, the question is: what is in it for Aloisi. It is easy for everyone to see what he can gain by working the old “go along to get along” system. It’s harder to see what becoming the Governor’s undertaker in chief has to offer. Perhaps he has started to think about the fate of his immortal soul. Aloisi: Alas, poor Yorick!, I knew him, Deval . . .
Clearly, Deval is doubling down on this one.
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p>Deval needed, and needs, someone who will put the commonwealth ahead of self dealing!
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p>A bold step would be to declare Massachusetts closed for business as usual. Start by declaring MA a hack-free zone. Then shine a light in the dark corners.
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I decode the whole “reburying bodies” thing (yech, by the way) to be about revisiting old problems and resolving them in new ways with someone who knows their respective histories and casts of characters.
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p>I’m not convinced about Aloisi is the best Virgil to Patrick’s Dante by a long shot, but it’s not an unreasonable approach.
“Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself / In dark woods, the right road lost.”
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p>It is the mid-point of his first term, after all.
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p>Personally, I don’t think the Gov. is anywhere near as lost as old Dante was, apparently, but the journey into Hell certainly has a lot of resonances with the Big Dig fallout.
…because he helped bury them. Deval is not only admitting that his new Sec. of Transportation was a corrupt and back-room dealing hack who played a key in the legendary debacle that is the big dig, he’s saying that a big reason he hired him!
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p>Funny he never mentioned this great strategy of hiring back all the worst hacks during the campaign.