Here’s an old joke: Way back when, as the state of Maine was carved out of the original Massachusets Bay Colony the borders between Maine and New Hampshire weren’t precisely fixed. After some time passed the states worked together to make clear the borders. After this process was finished an intrepid reporter tracked down a farmer whose farm, previously thought to be part of Maine, had been definitively classified as belonging to New Hampshire. The reporter asked to the farmer what he thought about this. The farmer replied, “Thank Goodness. I don’t think I could have lasted through another Maine winter.”
In a week which saw a viciously overmatched MBTA flail most helplessly, Gov Baker actually proposed $40 million in cuts to the states transportation budget, coolly trying to assure us that such cuts will not affect service. Massachusetts, you see, doesn’t have “Maine winters”
After his speech, the Republican was asked his strategy for dealing with the overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature.
“Kumbaya,” he replied.
Despite the adversarial nature of the question and his attempts at an ironic, rather than irenic, reply Baker is likely to find more allies than enemies in the State House. This is not because there are closet Republicans lurking amongst the Democratic fold. Rather this is because a quaint parochialism is the starting point for all discussion, political or otherwise, on matters affecting the CommonWealth.
Just like the farmer, whose perception of winter’s severity seems to be dependent upon more or less arbitrary lines on a map, both Gov Baker and the Legislature of the CommonWealth are gifted at taking the wrong things seriously.
In a recent kerfuffle here on BMG I was accused of dishonesty because I made the statement that within a radius of 50 miles from Boston there exists 8 million people (this includes, of course, the residents of the City themselves). My estimates come from the Office of Management and Budget which defines a “Combined Statistical Area” in and around Boston that is, more or less, enclosed by this 50 mile radius. My… interlocuters… accused me of dishonesty because why? Well, because 8 million seemed like a big number to them. I was accused of making it up. That was the extent of their proof that I was lying: their notion that Boston and the surrounding areas couldn’t possibly be choc-a-bloc full of 8 million people actually gave them permission to inveigh against me, in some instances rather viciously.
If the above mentioned Combined Statistical Area used by the OMB were an actual coherent city, it would be the tenth largest city in the country. I will, no doubt, be accused of making this up, but the truth of it is readily available to anybody who bothers to look.
Boston has an inferiority complex. Massachusetts has an inferiority complex. We like, it seems, to think of our accomplishments as intellectual and ideological but not really all that impactful or weighty as the ‘real world’ measures these things. This sense of inferiority is so ingrained that it is invoked res ipsa against striving: Any challenge to these assumptions is met with open hostility and vehement, though often incoherent, push-back. Such incoherence as a $40 million cut to transportation which won’t have impact or accusations that I’m making Boston and surrounding environs out to be more populous than it is… Yea, think about that one… or the clear statement made here at BMG that Boston just isn’t up to the task of holding an Olympics.
However, an inferiority complex isn’t, per se, a reason not to do something. What’s important is what we have done, what we are doing and what we will do. Sadly, however, all that we have done and are doing and are proposing to do is to make us inferior: that is to say to fulfill the prophecy; our complex is treated not as a struggle with perhaps mistaken feelings of smallness but a blueprint for how to think small. We do not attempt to find out how big or small the CommonWealth really and truly is, we merely assume a smallness. The refusal to raise taxes in order to generate revenue is step one in actualizing our delusions of insignificance.
Massachusetts Gross Domestic Product for 2015 is projected to be $462 Billion. That is not a small number. For a state in the union that is 14th in population to already be 12th in GDP would seem to imply we punch, very well, above our weight. The question that is begged is how much would a truly adequate, or even robust, transportation infrastructure increase that GDP? If we spent $1 Billion, which is only slightly more than two tenths of one percent of GDP, on our infrastructure would we see increases in that GDP of greater than two tenths of one percent?? I, for one, think we would. Instead, we cut.
The CommonWealths transportation infrastructure is, depending upon the metric used, either the 6th or the 5th largest in the United States. This would seem to be yet another example of punching, again with ability and agility, above our weight class. Certainly the demand, on the part of many, for transportation resources cannot be denied. So why deny it?
In 2030, fifteen years from now, Boston will be 400 years old. It may also be, at that time, a world leader and a world beater, in many technologies, industries and spheres. Or it may be in a self-inflicted decline. The choice, it seems, on which it is to be is before us right now.
…and at one point I wasn’t completely sure you had interpreted the map correctly, but I apologize if I came across as doubting your integrity on the matter.
On Friday, petr told us that
and
and
Then, just over 24 hours later, he created this post, which is largely about that topic.
That I disagree with petr on the subject of the Olympics is not the reason I offer this advice: Your instincts on Friday were better than the impulse that led you to make this post on Saturday. You’d said everything. Coming back to complain that the counterarguments were wrong did not move the ball downfield. Next time, when you declare yourself done with something, be done with it; you’ll be happier.
It’s an itch that can’t be scratched.
You really need to get a grip on your denial of the fifty mile radius claim you made. Copy and paste is sometimes the easiest way of revealing the truth. On February 4 at 1:13pm you wrote:
If you drew a line from Boston to Manchester NH, a distance of about 50 miles, and used that as a radius of a circle, the center of which is Boston, you would encompass some 8 million people (including those in Merrimack NH). This represents a pool of people who have the option of traveling to Boston within an hour (minus those, actually in the city…).
It is not close to the truth yet you continue to pretend that you never wrote the aforementioned words. The truth was revealed by scout here:
6.6 mil in 50 mile radius of Bean-town, not in MA
Guess you didn’t bother with the links. Here’s the county breakdowns:
County Cd Total Pop
Windham CT 4,570
Barnstable MA 17,524
Bristol MA 475,025
Essex MA 743,159
Middlesex MA 1,503,085
Norfolk MA 670,850
Plymouth MA 494,919
Suffolk MA 722,023
Worcester MA 696,984
Hillsborough NH 327,138
Merrimack NH 3,637
Rockingham NH 254,619
Bristol RI 49,875
Kent RI 68,290
Newport RI 6,383
Providence RI 622,061
radius 6,660,142
6,660,142
scout @ Fri 6 Feb 9:37 PM
The combined statistical area, while it appears goes a bit more than 50 miles out in spots, is indicated in petr’s link to be a bit more than 8 million. The point is made and stands. Nitpicking to the point of casting aspersions on one’s honesty is so unattractive and unproductive.
petr said this:
While Providence may be served by the T, none of NH is, so his “other states” and a notable component of his 8-Million-served-by-the-T claim are false.
…If I inadvertantly, even sloppily, included that statement. I did not mean to state that NH was served directly by the MBTA. Since you think I’m dishonest to begin with I doubt this will do much to change your mind, but there it is…
I did mean to state that people in NH commute to Boston. I know a number of them personally. Some of them drive to Haverhill and take the MBTA from there.
The 8 million number included in the CSA is defined by commuting patterns. Commuting patterns are the bolt around which the entire discussion hinged. The CSA includes areas of NH where people commute to Boston, of which there are many. This is easily proven by watching 93 during rush hour and counting the NH plates.
A friend of mine on the NH Executive Council has been pushing to extend the Lowell line, possibly as far as Concord.
Please refrain from:
a) Telling me what I think, without my ever having expressed those thoughts. Nowhere have I said that I think you are dishonest. I said one of your claims was false, which you seem to have acknowledged, after a fashion.
b) Making statements about my state of mind based on the thoughts you have imagined that I have. You have no idea what will or will not change my mind.
Remarks like these do not bolster your case. They do support accusations of ad-hominem attacks and lumping all opposition together. You’re trying much too hard.
But, I would agree greater Boston is not small even with the true numbers.
As a somewhat related aside- If it weren’t’ for NIMBY zoning regulations re. housing density, your numbers could very well be reality.
I thought the first paragraph was going to be a Scott Brown joke (R-Kittery, NH) not that we need any more.
If this large metro area means everyone’s going to pay for it, shouldn’t we be giving all the metro area some kind of say in it — and not just the city of Boston?
Or are you arguing that the 600,000 people in Boston should be able to make the millions and millions of people around it have taxation without representation?
Unless everyone’s willing to share in the pain of paying for it, citing the metro population is just a bunch of meaningless numbers.
For this to be anything approaching fair, there should be at least one of the following three things:
1. A statewide vote and/or vote in all the cities in the metro area or with venues cited nearby.
2. If there is no statewide vote, every city and town should have to agree to host the Olympics, and not just Boston.
3. The State Legislature should have to pass a bill agreeing to take on all liabilities for costs of the event, and not just the city of Boston.
Boston shouldn’t be able to dump the costs of this on the state without some kind of vote that occurs with full sunshine and transparency (including lots of advanced warning for citizens to lobby their legislators), and the state shouldn’t dump the costs of this on Boston.
The best solution would, of course, be a ballot question. This is a unique situation that the public is more than capable of making their minds on. They deserve a vote.
You simply cannot divorce the fortunes of the people living in the city from the fortunes of the people living around the city. Boston is not an island and it is very likely, probable even, that the number of people actually physically present in the city on any given noonday is two or three times the number of people resident in the city. If the surrounding area did not have commuting resources sufficient to handle that daily influx then those people would either be forced to find housing in the city or the city would go without that influx: then Boston would be the true backwater people think it to be.
This is an extraordinary thing. The number ‘600,000’ gives you leave to think that the city of Boston is NOT the central geographic fact of existence for millions of people. That is the point of this diary: you think small.
Furthermore, you get mad we people challenge your assumptions. Vexation without cogitation is, in fact, every bit the evil that taxation with representation is…
There are ~650K people living in Boston. You think that a million people commute into the city on a daily basis? Really?
Making up imaginary facts from whole cloth does not help your credibility.
… your credibility is little assisted by your rage at the simple idea that Boston is bigger than you think it is. Nor by your clear inability to question your own assumptions: petr must be a liar because he thinks Boston, and the CommonWealth, is more capable, bigger and better than hrs-kevin does.
Yeah, that makes sense….
Please, stop me before I aspire again!!
I saw that you had a back and forth with some others about the size of the metro population. I did not participate in that. You appear to be simply lumping everyone who disagrees with you into one unit and pretending that we are simply interchangable. We are not.
I know how big Boston proper is and how big the metro area is. I know that the metro area is much larger than Boston alone.
This comment is nothing more than a lazy ad hominem attack meant to distract readers from the fact that you simply made a fact up and aren’t reasonable enough to acknowledge that you should do some more research on the topic.
I never said you were a liar in general, but you absolutely *did* make that one fact up and I called you on it.
Hence my point.
Either we need to ensure everyone who’s impacted by the games gets a full and fair say in whether or not we should have it, or Boston 2024 needs to be put out of its misery.
the topic of discussion in order to avoid admitting you dropped a huge mistake on BMG. ‘fess up, you were wrong to start.
“Such incoherence as a $40 million cut to transportation which won’t have impact or accusations that I’m making Boston and surrounding environs out to be more populous than it is… Yea, think about that one… or the clear statement made here at BMG that Boston just isn’t up to the task of holding an Olympics.”
With an emphasis on “incoherence”.
It was a position that never really existed as I understand it. Proposed by Deval, left unfilled, now cut along with other budget cuts.
After reading this article is it really so easy to dismiss such a position?
http://marshfield.wickedlocal.com/article/20150207/NEWS/150208473
n/t
I don’t think that it is the wrong thread, as I did start this diary with a joke about arbitrary borders and Maine Winters. And the MBTA has had lots of weather related issues recently.
As pointed out, Governor Deval Patrick proposed the idea but it was never really followed through upon. I’m not sure if the position of chief climatologist is even on the radar for Gov Baker… but if it isn’t it may be, yet another example of thinking small.
https://malegislature.gov/Committees/House/H51
and
https://malegislature.gov/Committees/Senate/S51
Do we REALLY need full time staff as well?
I agree that the sentiment “keep Boston a small place with humorous space savers for dug-out parking spaces, and not a global-level metropolis that stands in the spotlight” is the urge behind many objections to the Olympics, but certainly not all of them. On one hand, Boston seems ludicrously small compared to other recent and future candidates such as Rio, Rome, Tokyo, and Paris. But, so did Atlanta.
However, we would need to back almost Athens-level improvements in our infrastructure in order to pull of an event like this. I think much of the debate may come down to those who believe such improvements will eventually happen because the need is there, and those who believe it will only happen if spurred by an external cause, such as the Olympics.
In my view, the requirements for the kind of improvements we are contemplating should be driven by our collective view of the society we want to be. The transportation system requirements should be driven by a long-term view informed by who we have been, who we are now, and who we want to be in the future.
Much of our current transportation infrastructure is centuries old. Our railroads use real estate, bridges and tunnels that were planned, designed and built in the mid 19th century. We should therefore expect that the infrastructure we build now in the early 21st century will still be in use by the turn of the 23rd century.
Our much loved and celebrated public spaces (such as the Boston Common, the Esplanade, and the Emerald Necklace) have a similar history. We should similarly expect changes and expansions we make now to still be in use two centuries from now.
If we allow the requirements for these improvements to be driven by the 2024 Olympics, we already see what will drive those requirements:
– Money in the pockets of Olympic proponents
– Convenience for Olympic participants, poobahs, and proponents
– Whims of the top 1/2 percent who control the Olympic process
– Outright venal corruption
I am unwilling to sacrifice the values, infrastructure, rights, and society that have been passed along to me and to us for such an ill-conceived, self-serving, shallow, and utterly corrupt enterprise.
In my view, whatever is built from the resulting requirements will almost certainly betray the values of our ancestors, ourselves, and our progeny.
I remain unconvinced that the second half must necessarily follow.
BMG has been chock-full of threads that, in my view, demonstrate that the proponents of this mis-guided proposal have NO long-term interest in the city or region whatsoever.
They instead offer evidence that the requirements offered by the organizers are as I described. Can you offer any evidence to the contrary?
I’m not sure whether the second half of my argument “necessarily” follows, and I suggest that that is irrelevant. It seems to me that we have a large and growing body of evidence that the requirements of the Olympic proponents are focused solely on the short-term self-interest of the participants.
Those requirements, if we allow them to drive the “improvements” in infrastructure that are being contemplated (highways, venues, housing, transportation, public spaces, even public laws) will, in my view, result in changes that work against, rather than in favor of, both our short-term and long-term interests.
I’m sure the organizers are in fact going to lobby for what they perceive as their narrower needs, but infrastructure improvements are a public endeavor and as such will need to take the bigger picture into account. I just don’t think that the needs of the Olympics and our broader needs are mutually exclusive.
I agree that the “needs” of the Olympics and some of our broader needs may not be mutually exclusive. Requirements are something different, though. By “requirements”, I mean the components of a “Request For Proposal” (RFP). “Needs”, in my view, are abstract platonic essences — “requirements” are one way to articulate and make explicit those needs.
In my view, the requirements offered by the IOC (in what amounts to an RFP) and responded to by the proponents (in an explicitly titled “bid”) are as I characterized them.
For example, I’ve seen no mention of regional economic impact (short or long term), impact on various demographic groups (short or long term), or even environmental impact in any of the IOC requirements. In other words, the IOC doesn’t care about any of those things.
What the IOC cares about is the short-term self-interest of the events themselves. That priority drives their requirements. A bid that responds to those requirements reflects their priorities.
I therefore argue that, given those priorities, there is a vanishingly small likelihood that major transportation initiatives motivated by the Olympic proposal will be responsive to or even acknowledge the priorities that should drive major infrastructure investments like this.
I’m reminded of several long-gone computer system manufacturers who mistakenly thought that if they built exactly the system that their first and largest customer wanted, they would have an “architecture” and “platform” from which to expand their offerings. They learned the hard way that the result of that strategy was a product that narrowly met the precise needs of that one customer. Those companies failed because they realized, too late, that their “success” with that customer destroyed their ability to meet the requirements of any others.
Atlanta’s MARTA is, I think, a good example of what we can expect in this regard.
Just figure out what we can do with what we do have and make a competing Olympics that is less sleazy, cumbersome and stupid. Who needs a brand franchise other than brand conscious yuppies?
Just invite athletes from all over and run something that fits our reality. That would be hilarious, call it the Nulympics or something.
That way, there would be utter autonomy to fit it to the place and the expense from what amounts to ego fluffing Thomas Bach and the other IOC poobahs could just be ditched.
let the Swells just go fund raise for that and make it another manageable spectacle like the marathon. It would be great, it would probably be welcome and it would be ours, not some flailing out of control grandiosity lummox.
… don’t understand how different the Boston2024 bid is from other bids. It really may, as far as is possible, meet the criteria you have laid out above.
That it is not the chris-rich, ne-plus-ultra, of Olympic non-sleazy, en-encumbered bids is perhaps a function of your perception and not really about the bid…
Nothing is preventing you.
And the text stream could finally dry up and wither as us doubting Thomases are put to flight by the right of might and might of right.
The flimsy gossamer speculations could at last give way to the unassailable bulwark of the known.
… I will certainly try. But…
… your passive-aggressive insults lead me to believe that, short of God and Sonny Jesus hitting you square between the eyes on the road to Damascus, it’s a futile endeavor.
But, if you say you are serious, I will try.
I think your first is dishonest, no one here is auggestinfn Boston ought to stay that sort of place-we are suggesting it is that sort if place and the Olympics will not fix it. I so shudder at Athens level improvement since I do not want is on the hook for Athens level debt or white elephants.
The second paragraph is entirely accurate and I wish the debate was held along those principles. I am honestly asking if you feel the Boston 2024 bid comes close to the kind of long term catalyst you hope it will be, or if it seems they are proposing bare minimum band aids and socialized inconveniences instead of long term sustainable growth?
Curtatone definitely has a solid proposal for an Olympics that socializes the risks and rewards withkt burdening taxpayers-to me it seems light years away from what the actual bid is proposing. But I want your honest feedback either way.
I’m not seeing the connection.
I don’t think anyone believes that Boston isn’t up to doing the Olympics in the sense of making an assertion that it can’t be done on a physical level. The argument, rather, is whether (or to be more precise, how likely it is) Boston can do so without (a) severely disrupting the ordinary lives and affairs of its residents for a significant period of time, and/or (b) creating expenses that will fall on the taxpayers, either via cost overruns or via diversion of resources that would perhaps have been spent anyway, but in the absence of the Olympics would have been spent on something more beneficial to the Commonwealth and its citizens. And assuming that there’s a non-zero risk on both counts, whether the benefits of having the Olympics here, or the likelihood of those potential benefits actually accruing, outweigh the costs.
Since we’re currently operating in an environment in which we can’t seem to raise the funds for needed investments now, even when they’re demonstrably needed and have direct public benefits attached, I’m not sure how it’s relevant to talk about the size of the Massachusetts economy when we discuss spending on a non-essential project. We may be a wealthy economy, but that’s still only relevant to the extent we can access that wealth. And if we can’t get to it, it doesn’t matter to our spending decisions that the reasons we can’t raise revenue are bad ones. Good or bad, we still don’t have any spare money, and it hardly seems like an inferiority complex to ask ourselves whether it’s a good idea to spend anything on luxuries before we take care of the glaring necessities.
(Although it does occur to me that if the big developers and such whose names grace Boston 2024 really, really want to have the Olympics here, one way they could help make it happen would be to start lobbying right now for a tax code that allowed the Commonwealth to make the investments we need, and then pay the resulting higher taxes proudly. In other words, to do something to convince skeptics that we really can afford their entertainment and prestige project, because we’d be able to pay for it out of current revenue without scanting anything else. The likelihood of this happening is, of course, approximately zero — and that may be telling all by itself.)
… I was not discussing spending on ‘a non-essential project’ I asked specifically if spending slightly more than 2 tenths of 1 percent of state GDP specifically on transportation infrastructure would yield greater than a 2 tenths of 1 percent increase in GDP. I think that it would. Instead, we cut.
And we cut because we don’t believe the CommonWealth of Massachusetts to be really as big or as rich as we think it to be.
You are correct when you say we are not accessing the wealth. But the reason we are not accessing the wealth is simply because we refuse to see that it is there. Everything that Gov Baker says and does telegraphs a poverty of imagination and a clear inability to think bigger.
The refusal to countenance an Olympiad in Boston is exactly the same reason to refuse to make investment in our infrastructure: Boston can’t afford it.
Yes, we can.
“We,” as you posit yourself, are not “accessing the wealth” of the Commonwealth because the public elected people like Charlie Baker. You don’t like ballot questions and you don’t like the will of the voters in elections for public office. Should we just let you make all of our spending choices?
We are not accessing the wealth in large part because our own allegedly “Democratic Party” legislators vigorously protected the interests of the very wealthy.
It is disingenuous to blame this on “the public” or on Charlie Baker — we Democrats offered NO alternative to the public. We cut off Governor Patrick at the knees (if not higher) in 2012 when he attempted to raise taxes on the wealthy. We put forward a gubernatorial nominee whose response to every question about raising taxes on the wealthy was that she was “open to consider it” (Coakley-speak for “no”). Our own overwhelmingly Democratic legislature just removed the term limits on Mr. DeLeo, rewarding his anti-tax posture (not to mention his loud defense of the Probation Department criminals and their criminal conspiracy).
We Democrats have nobody but ourselves to blame for our refusal to “access the wealth” of this Commonwealth.
I wrote “people LIKE Charlie Baker.” I do not blame him for the legislature’s lack of courage on taxes. They allowed, pre-Baker, the income tax to be cut and a tax rebate rather than doing something sensibly conservative like paying down our unfunded pension liability and the parallel unfunded health obligations for retirees. If the Democratic clowns won’t even stop those kinds of tax cuts (and this is not the first of its sort) then they share the blame. But Baker’s election does change the equation, making it harder for the Dems to grow a collective spine.
I hope that the election of Mr. Baker, followed immediately by the declaration of “Speaker-for-life” Bob DeLeo, changes the equation in a way that encourages progressives to grow a collective spine — I think it’s time to clean house and remove a good many “Democrats” who seem to be well past their sell-by date.
growing a spine is not going to happen, but they might be embarrassed into acting like progressives. The Senate has incentives to provide a contrast. Rosenberg is markedly more progressive than DeLeo and the Senate Dems are generally also more than the House Dems. I can hardly wait until people start comparing legislators with overlapping jurisdictions like Sen Pres Rosenberg to Rep Ellen Story, or Sen Ken Donnelly with Rep Jay Kaufman. Kaufman will barf on his turtleneck shirt during one of his cable shows if Donnelly shows his true roots as a labor social-democrat while Kaufman does his Deleo/suburban pedant routine. Alas, Rosenberg does not vote but the policies the Senate pursues will start to build pressure on the House.
… In last week’s episode of Soap, we discovered not only Speaker DeLeo but also his daughter Thatcher, are taking meetings, ‘behind closed doors’ with Roger, the chiropractor, but that Roger is Stan Rosenberg”s long lost son. As for Jay Kaufman, wearing the second turtleneck of the day, he can no longer write bills for DeLeo without invoking St. Vitus’ Dance. But this is nothing because Ellen doesn’t know that Jay’s son Mortdecai, in order to leave the Senate, has to kill the bill that killed the Velodrome. Mort doesn’t know that that bill was written by Ellen. Deleo”s other daughter Jodie is contemplating becoming his son. Life is also not exactly a bed of roses for Stan’s friend Bryon, his affair with the Boston Globe has become complicated by the fact that the Globe is now blackmailing him. Confused? You won’t be after this week’s episode of Soap.
The connection is straightforward. Something needs to push policymakers to advocate and execute needed infrastructure improvements.
Some people will hope that the political process, which has signally failed in the past decades, will suddenly transform itself into one that benefits policymakers who advocate long-term investment. This the source of your quotes about what “big developers” should do.
Others will say they won’t. They haven’t lately, and won’t effectively. Instead, we see infrastructure improvements in Spain, Greece, Brazil, Italy, and other democracies spurred by the desire to yes, “show off” their city.
It’s the way politics should be vs. the way politics are.
It isn’t mechanistic at all. That is what I find so appalling. The prevalence of this childlike faith in pulleys, levers and fulcrums.
I see a complex socio political ecosystem with a lot of irrational and contending elements in a dynamic and unpredictable state of interaction.
The model of being realistic isn’t even that imaginative. The
“should be” is a fairy tale and the more worldly ‘are’ resembles a comic book, superimposed on a long building dynamic that is more like the Rosetta stone.
And then the servile confidence that this local gaggle of abject doofuses who managed to attain some stature here are the proper and reliable party to pull this thing off after they have blown it out of the gate is nearly a thing to wonder at.
Has life in Boston gotten so sophomoric in its go go phase that this is what passes for astute? Is everyone too busy to do the dull basic heavy lifting of civics that they must have a cheap short cut?
It’s interesting to look at the country list. The main thing they have in common is that they are fairly homogeneous cultures with more flexibility to push national pride circuses through. It should also be noted that they all have significant debt problems at this time.
This may suggest that they are note a good bet for emulation.
Fixing our broken stuff is a long brutal slog. And there will be all manner of conflicts as to what should be fixed, when and for whom as we are a jealous bunch prone to bickering.
Feeding delusions of significance in order to grow a mythic contraption isn’t going to make the subways run on time in all weather.
It has to do with voters being unwilling to pay taxes, or with officeholders so unable to communicate with their constituencies that they can’t figure out a way to sell changes in the tax code to a majority of the voting public, or both.
Most of us here would probably agree that in abstract terms, we can afford the infrastructure fixes — indeed, that it’s fiscally improvident not to make them. But saying that something needs to be done to push policymakers into taking action, and that the Olympics are something, assumes away the heart of the issue here. Which is, obviously, the fact that just because the Olympics are something doesn’t mean that they’re something that would necessarily work. Or work as hoped, and without causing collateral damage that would outweigh the good they did.
That’s what’s at the core of the argument from the maybe-let’s-not side, or so it seems to me. A lot of us who’re skeptical about the Olympic project would be much less skeptical if it could be demonstrated to a reasonable observer’s satisfaction that the project would be highly likely to result in the infrastructure improvements that we actually need (which do not necessarily correspond to the “infrastructure improvements” that Olympics organizers and promoters would find necessary for the games). Without some convincing evidence on the point, and some reassurance about who’s on the hook for cost overruns, it’s only rational to be concerned about the diversion of what revenue we do find ourselves able to raise, as a matter of political reality, to a set of supposed investments that wind up being valueless to the public at large. I asked earlier for an example of a modern Olympics that had actually enabled a democracy that had been unwilling to spend money for needed infrastructure improvements to make those improvements. If anyone does have a good model, I continue to think it would be helpful to bring it forward so we can examine it and borrow the useful parts for Boston’s plans.
The desire to show off is a strong motivator for a lot of people, I get that. But refusing the opportunity because you don’t feel like you have the money still isn’t evidence of an “inferiority complex.” It’s evidence of not wanting to spend limited funds on a big party when you need durable goods more than you need a good time. The argument seems to be that Massachusetts taxpayers and voters and lawmakers will want to spend money for the party when they don’t want to spend money for the durable goods, and will therefore realize that yes, we totally have the money, our feeling that it can’t afford stuff is all illusion. This may wind up being true of our lawmakers, but I remain less than convinced that it’s going to be true of the general voting public.
but it does appear that some people who live nearby have an inferiority complex about the city they don’t actually live in.
Sorry guys, Boston is not your “trophy wife” to show off to your out-of-town friends. It’s a place where people live and work. As with any city, there are things that need improving, but fear of not being in “world class” is not in the minds of 99.9% of people who actually reside here.
The idea that the Olympics is the only way for us to improve our transportation infrastructure is laughable at its face. Does that mean that if we don’t win the bid we are doomed to an inevitable decline? Hah!
We need to fix our transportation issues now, with or without the false incentive of Olympic visitors. Tell me, do you invite people over to your house to force yourself to clean it?
… to a particular point of view. That’s fine… However, from my point of view, your passion certainly shades into venom directed at persons (myself) who are trying to, first, see things as they really are and, secondly, judging those things to be pretty darn capable. I think Boston is a helluva city. I think the CommonWealth is the best place upon the entire earth to dwell. And I think we can be even better. I’m, for sure, a homer. Where is the sin in that? That I see things differently than you is no crime. And if they come out better in the end than you would like…well, that’s not my sin.
I’m not sure, also, that I’m precisely making the case that the Olympics are the only way for us to improve our transportation infrastructure. The case I make is just this: the knee jerk antipathy to the Olympics is no different from the knee jerk antipathy to think bigger or try harder or make progress in any other endeavor. The same reason we refuse the Olympics is the same reason we’re stuck in the situation and unlikely to get out. Thinking small isn’t something that suddenly occurred to Gov Baker or to Speaker DeLeo in the face of the Olympics. It’s pretty much how each has operated throughout the entirety of their existences…
And if we overcome that poverty of imagination then any case against the Olympics evaporates also…
The amazing thing is not that Charlie Baker proposed to cut $40 million dollars from the transportation budget. No, the amazing thing is that Charlie Baker, with a straight face, says that such cuts will have no effect and, further, such a ridiculous statement is unlikely to face anything in the way of scrutiny in the Legislature!!!
It seems that merely disagreeing with you is interpreted as “vitriol”. Not sure what you are referring to. It certainly does not even remotely describe any emotion I was feeling when I wrote that.
Look, there is no problem with pushing the Olympics for its own sake. Go ahead. But pretending that it is going to be an engine for positive change in Boston seems far fetched.
I also fail to see why rejecting the Olympics means that we cannot have a positive vision for progress in Boston without the Olympics.
“trophy wife”, “laughable” “false incentives” are a bit on the acidic side. In another post you actually accused me of “making up imaginary facts” which seems like piling on (if I’m making them up, of course they are imaginary…)
I’m not saying I mind it or it bothers me. It does not. I mention it because it does seem excessive in the face of my point that Boston is bigger and better than you think it is. One might think that, if I’m wrong, a valid criticism you may engage might be to accuse me of being a pollyanna or hopelessly out of touch idealist. That is not the criticism you employ. Dishonesty and venality are the accusations employed against me. For saying that Boston is bigger than you think it is. And the only proof you give is some version of truthiness: “I think it so” does not make it so.
Really? That is an example of “vitriol”. And since when is “a bit on the acidic side” equivalent to “vitriol”?
Yes, you are not the only one who should be allowed to use colorful language to make a point. That does not equate with “rage” or “vitriol”.
I really don’t know what you are talking about w/ regard to size. I am not sure we have a different conception of its size at all. I am quite positive that you are mistaken in the number of commuters entering the city relative to its population. Is that what you are referring to as its “size”?
Sorry, but you are making stuff up. The numbers you stated our purely out of your head and you cannot come up with any documentation to back it up. You are the one to make the claim. Back it up. Do a Google search.
I think that I have criticized your arguments in a number of different ways on this topic in the last several weeks. I have certainly not restricted myself to the times you have made questionable statements. Nevertheless, it seems that in a debate that hinges on logic and facts, it should be fair to point out when false information is being put out.
The Census Bureau has published statistics for 2013. A total of 605,700 commuters. Note that the number includes people who live in the city and drove to some other part of the city to work. That number is not reported, but would obviously reduce the total of the population increase due to commuters. The assertion that “the number of people actually physically present in the city on any given noonday is two or three times the number of people resident in the city” is not supported.
Also please note that I did not make any reference to the source of that assertion, or say anything about his character.
* Margin of error: +/-10,422
Substitute went for drove in the third sentence above.
as the website for the City of Boston reports that 300,000 commuters come into the city daily, not including this who reside within and remain within the city daily.
http://www.cityofboston.gov/transportation/modes.asp
Wait… What!!
They are, obviously, not thinking small enough… get on that, willya? Somebody needs to set them straight and you’re just the Euclid to do it.
of what is an “auto commuter” as it includes people who drive from the city and go outbound, people who live within the city and commute within the city, people who drive through the city (from Quincy to Somerville for example) and people who live outside the city and commute into it.
I will stick with the official estimate by the City of Boston that there are only 300,000 who commute into the city on a daily basis. You can believe in a Texas based study whose definitions you do not understand. OTOH, you could read the info by the governmental entity that has the most direct data and interest in reporting it.
you made is in citing the “urban area” numbers, which includes geography well beyond the city of Boston. After all of the effort you have made in obfuscating the truth about the population of metro Boston it is truly surprising you would blow this one about what Texas A&M called a “metropolitan area.”
You used an undergraduate college newspaper as your source. Here is what the report authors wrote about urban areas:
Urban Area – The developed area (population density more than 1,000 persons per square mile) within a metropolitan region. The urban area boundaries change frequently (every year for most growing areas).
… any such ‘positive vision’ existed there would be no knee jerk, nearly hysterical and often incoherent opposition to the Olympics. Any such positive vision would certainly countenance the possibility of a Boston Olympiad and make the decision on a more sober basis.
And if we reject the Olympics on the grounds of an unreal, pettiness and negative vision, who or what will magically come along and replace that with the positive vision you so seek?
We have been living and building it all these years.
There has been some knee jerk reaction to this, for sure. Is that all so bad? We are really and truly rushing into this decision without fully understanding this. What is the rush? Why can’t we have this discussion *before* bidding on the Olympics. Why can’t we bid on the 2028 or 2032 Olympics *after* we have definitely determined what we want to do and have assured ourselves the citizens are not going to get screwed and that we are going to get the result we want. What is the rush?
I also would tend to think that you are not being all that open minded if you cannot even conceive of a positive vision of Boston that does not include the Olympics.
is the extraordinary effort by people in Somerville and Medford to hold the Commonwealth accountable for its promise to build the Green Line extension in response to the BigDig mess. We did not need the Olympics for this. In twenty years, we won’t even call it the “extension.” And if we continue to put pressure on Beacon Hill, we will have a better MBTA even without the Olympics.
was the revitalization of Roslindale Square under Menino, which has had an actual impact on my own life.
For those of us who live in the city, we want a vision that takes into account the neighborhoods in which we live, not just the needs of tourists and suburban visitors.
the Seaport Innovation district, the daylighting of the area around the Garden by putting the Green Line underground, the Harbor clean-up (yeah, it was under a federal court order), the slow clean-up of the Charles, the flyover at the Sagamore Bridge, the slow expansion of rail from Hartford to Springfield, the expansion of Logan, RGGI and the growth of the renewable energy industries here.
Thank gawd the Olympics got us to do all of those things! Where would we be without them?
I am not Pollyanna. There is a lot left to do. Let us know, petr, when you actually work on something like these projects.
It’s as if Boston got out of its funk and turned toward transforming the legacy elements of its manufacturing phase into something better fitted to the present.
Basic property value increases were a huge incentive but the growth of the Bio-medical sector looks like a major engine as well. When I worked in the field in the early 90s, there was some doubt as to whether it would amount to anything.
Is it simply that more people around the world will recognize Boston because of the Olympics. I suppose that might be nice if we could be sure the cost would not be too high.
But apart from that, what? More tourism? That might be nice, but that hardly counts as a grand vision.
Better transportation, sure, but we need that with or without the Olympics.
Redevelopment of Fort Point channel? Sure. That might be nice, but it will probably happen on its own, given the huge demand for downtown real estate. Even so, that doesn’t seem like an especially grand vision either.
The only grand vision here is that of hosting the Olympics itself. Yes, that would indeed be a huge undertaking. It is simply not clear that it really is a vision of anything much more than the event itself.
I remember a lot of pride when Boston hosted the DNC. Perhaps all the people here were dead set against it back then, too. I don’t know. I’m proud that Boston will finally host the National Education Association’s Representative Assembly in 2017, an event so large that only 14 cities in the US can handle it. Yes, I am proud of my city — not just the millionaire athletes who play in its general region. (Or is some of the 1% better than others?)
A lot turns on your actual relation to the event. The NEA event looks like something better suited to the particulars of Boston. It should be interesting to see how it works out.
I have yet to see anyone argue that Boston HAS to have the Olympics. Some of us think it might be helpful for that purpose, but that’s as far as it goes. I would argue that as the state capital and most significant city in the state, any Bay Stater has a right to be proud of it, concerned about it, offer an opinion about it, etc.
He appears to be suggesting that if don’t jump on to the Olympic band wagon Boston may slip into “decline”. No doubt it was hyperbole, but I should be allowed the same indulgence.
… I’m suggesting that if we confront the smallness of thought inherent in our system now we may stop the decline. We may be able to do this sans an Olympiad. However, rejecting an Olympiad on just these delusions of insignificance concretizes them further and will make them that much more difficult to overcome…
I don’t see any evidence that we suffer from any such thing unless you consider opposition to the Olympics to be tautologically the same as “smallness of thought”.
And who exactly are you claiming has “delusions of insignificance” pray tell? Not me, I hope.
… A man who thinks winter is tougher on that side of the border than on this, to be a man constrained by an overwhelming smallness of thought. But, then again, that was just a joke.
Or so I thought…
… until I saw Gov Baker on the job, assuring us that cutting $40 million from the transportation budget (moving the border, and presumably the harshness of the weather, from here to there) would have no impact.
I watched Mitt Romney and feckless legislature sweep Big Dig debt under the MBTA rug and pat themselves on the back for their cleverness.
I watched the legislature first deflect a gas tax and up the sales tax just for the sake of not giving Deval Patrick a victory. Then I saw them up the gas tax so that Deval Patrick couldn’t close loopholes.
I watched the Senate President say, “Ka-ching” in what was surely a low point for the CommonWealth.
I’ve heard “reform before revenue’ and then, after some halfhearted reform, the refrain was heard no more. ‘death before revenue’ is a more accurate cry, and perhaps even the motto of this speakership.
You know what else I saw? I saw “No Boston Olympics” formed BEFORE the State Senate even voted on their feasibility study… before there was a bid. Before there was even serious discussion of a bid…. as the Senate was discussing the feasibility of the bid, people were opposed to it. That’s a very smallness of thought right there. If you don’t see it, then I can’t help you.
So the fact that there was opposition to the Olympics too early is your “smallness of thought”. Fair enough.
But now it is no longer early. In fact now it is getting late given that Boston has already been awarded the US bid.
I agree with you about your comments regarding our political “leadership”, but I don’t see exactly how that relates to the Olympics or a vision for Boston.
No, but that tends be the catalyst for major cleanups in my household. Those things I’d otherwise put off instead get done.
That is why I gave that example. Yes, most people do clean their house, if necessary, when company is coming over.
But who invites company over purely to force themselves to clean?
We don’t need to host the Olympics to get the better transportation infrastructure we so desperately need.
… as your use of the term “desperately’ indicates. “Desperately’ means things are really, really bad. If we didn’t fix things when they were bad, but let them descend into really bad… and then didn’t fix things, rather allowing the really bad to descend into really, really bad… Wherefore will we, now — and of a sudden — get the gumption, much less the wherewithal, to act such that we go from desperate to merely acceptable?? How will we even know?
For, if you accept just for a moment, my contention of cowardice and small-think on the part of both Gov Baker and Speaker DeLeo, what checks are in place to ensure that we can go from really, really bad to good? What’s to stop those amongst us who fear the word ‘taxes’ and ‘cost’ from taking our present situation from ‘really, really bad’ back to merely ‘bad’ and calling that success?
At the very least the effort to prepare the city for the Olympics gives us some externally derived measurables. Is that such a bad thing? I, for one, wouldn’t trust either Gov Baker or Robert DeLeo to adequately describe a reasonably robust transportation infrastructure for the CommonWealth. And I already know they’re not willing to pay for it even if they could describe it. And, for sure, for all his political prowess, Deval Patrick couldn’t get that done either. Who will? How will we measure it? What’s the end game? At least with an Olympic bid we can attempt to define what we want.
We are, from my point of view, completely lacking in vision. Gov Baker doesn’t have the inclination, nor the imagination and I think he’s ten times smarter and a thousand times more creative and imaginative than Speaker Deleo.
From whence, will it arrive…?
I have no disagreement with you about your general assessment of our political leaders. However, I really don’t see that the Olympics is the way to fix the problem.
Bad public servants are not going to turn into good ones because we host the Olympics. Bad public servants should be replaced.
I have much higher hopes that our recent woes brought on by these storms will result in improvements than the Olympics will.
In my experience, the people most comfortable in their own skins were those who never felt they needed to prove anything. The ones who needed to make a big show to “prove themselves” did so from a less confident position.
Maybe those who think we have to put on an Olympic event are the ones with the “Boston inferior” complex.
And once more leads to the conclusion that the booster contingent is being appallingly sophomoric about the whole thing.
Over and over again it is about stoking feelings, nothing more than feelings.And when the pragmatists show up and remind them of the bad fit between IOC demands and Boston supplies it’s time for a sulk and a pout bout.
That’s the paradox that traps em. If they can’t come up with anything better than refried versions of the Simpsons monorail episode the are pretty well toast.
… but I don’t think it germane in a CommonWealth with crumbling transportation infrastructure whose Governor wants to cut the budget for transportation infrastructure. Gov Baker might be comfortable in his own skin, and personally missing the need to prove anything about himself, but his utterances suggests any proofs in which he does believe, require of him austerity, retreat, frugality and the most cautious of baby steps.
The confident may not feel the need to prove themselves. This is also true of the timid and the timorous, as well as those completely lacking in imagination.
If we reject the Olympics on the basis of a timid and tentative notion of our own capabilities… From where will we get the imagination and courage to do anything else… anything at all?
Who’s we? I thought it was Boston 2024 making the pitch.
After all, any reasonably large city could do that. Forget the Olympics. Let’s launch Mars colony and call it New Boston.
Why are you thinking so small.
😉
You seem to be convinced that if we reject the Olympics, it will be because of “a timid and tentative notion of our own capabilities.” And yet, the opposition is founded in cost-benefit analysis, unanswered questions about costs, and policy priorities that place hosting an Olympics far down the list of desirable goals.
I mean, look, maybe having the Olympics in town is awesome and inspiring and has ineffable aspirational and symbolic benefits to somebody. But part of what the coldminded insistence on looking at the practicalities ought to be telling you is that it is really doesn’t have that kind of aspirational significance to as many people as your formulation assumes. “This is expensive and complicated and risky, and I don’t see that the potential benefits are worth it,” is not the same thing as “I’d give my soul for this if only I were good enough to make it happen. How tragic for me that I’m not.”
…which, honestly, I think is a pretty constructed emotion. I think there’s some confusion in the 2024 organizers’ minds and they don’t realize that the USA! F_yeah! aspect of these games is conflicting with the Boston-vs-everywhere-else mentality of our local professional sports fans. So I just can’t see basing any rational argument pro or con upon national pride, regional pride, civic pride, or any variation thereof.
Why do I say “constructed”? Note that those identities feel very real to sports fans, but honestly, once you start moving from emotional identification to arguing about concrete issues like taxes or traffic, observe how quickly the discussion splinters into East/West, urban/suburban/rural, union vs. non-union, T-commuter vs. driver, “white ethnic” vs. “minority”, Massachusetts vs. New Hampshire, and any other division we might think of.
It’s all feelings, conjecture and fuzz, but it gives them a cohesion to offset their lack of numbers.
The opponents are generally trying to be pragmatists and are exhibiting that fragmentation based on which facet of imposition most galls them. For some it might be the civil liberties presumptions. Others are aghast at the breezy way the physical details were slopped together.
And others object to the attempt to bypass process.
Opposition, in itself, makes the cohesion and where the many strands of disagreement make the rope needed to hang the thing and bury it.
If you’re for a more open process, push for that. If you think there should be greater civic benefits, push for that. There’s going to be a bid. Isn’t this where we should be looking to shape the process? I’m all for blasting the poobahs in charge of the bid if it turns into an IOC boondoggle, but we’re not there yet.
So I don’t quite get the opposition to something that’s in the theoretical stages. To me, that’s pure NIMBY. It’s no for the sake of no. I’m sorry, but I’m not seeing nobility in the insistence that we dare not entertain the idea.
…6 6s for you!
I too see the opposition for its own sake as NIMBYism on a grand scale.
That may be what you see, but it’s not really there. People have reasons, and they have been telling you about those reasons for months now. It’s pretty insulting for you to say they don’t have any beyond a desire to oppose.
And if we are to have a counter characterization of boosters, it has been this comic rush to tell opponents when it is correct to oppose as if they assume that’s what seizing the initiative looks like. It’s the classic ivory tower entitlement imposition of a mandarin class in a house of glass.
It’s lazy and underwhelming. If they want to resolve opposition, as has been repeatedly suggested by numerous opponents, they need to get cracking on specifying just how the various objections are a crock.
They haven’t.
You have a gaggle of ivory tower academics and professionals, like architects, who will gain a lot from this, along with the various real estate speculation plutocrats who want to channel real estate speculation their way and gain an advantage over competing real estate speculators.
And it has been persuasively argued by sharper legal minds than mine that the opening gambit of ‘theoretical’ projection was so manifestly half assed and ham fisted as to leave very little room for adjustment in the more “real” stages that presumably follow.
That is what is so funny about this cult of professionals swirling around the porcelain IOC bowl, they are just not very good. I don’t see an Ian McHarg, a Jane Jacobs or an Olmstead among them.
They are just a bunch of lazy mediocrities who ground away at obtaining credentials and tenure from a protracted series of navel gazing exercises and turgid papers locked away where no one comes to read.
And we are supposed to have faith that this preposterous contraption will fly and be ready in the short run of years ahead.
I still haven’t found anyone in my community who thinks its a good idea, not the conservatives, nor the centrists nor the lefties… no one. And the bonds of my friendships are strong enough that I wouldn’t object if someone I know actually does favor the thing. So far I got nothing.
…but as I posted elsewhere it largely comes down to don’t let this happen to us; let it happen to someone else.
Suppose some man is lewdly propositioning some woman in a bar, and describes what he wants to do “for” her. When she responds “I don’t want anything to do with you or your offer, find somebody else”, she is NOT making a “NIMBY” argument.
She is quite reasonably saying exactly how she feels: that she wants nothing to do with the man and nothing to do with his offer. Presumably the man in question will seek other women and may eventually find a willing partner.
In my view, the Olympic proposal is essentially the same, as is the BMG response to it.
…there is a good argument for not enforcing de facto BMG orthodoxy here and letting the supporters and undecideds have their say.
It’s that Boston has already agreed to the transaction and now we’re just haggling about the price.
It’s specious at best.
It’s about quality of argument, period, and when one side has crap quality, fuzzy conjecture against a focused opposition with breadth as well as depth, the fuzzy argument is in for some problems.
And the transaction is still in a provisional stage based on a bunch of mandarins cutting a deal without much scrutiny. If the opposition is going to do it’s job, this is the time to hit and keep hitting until the thing is really decided in 2017.
How many dodges do you have to twist through before the basic fact of broad based opposition sinks in?
…at least to the USOC’s satisfaction. Presumably they chose the American city that they thought had the best chance of showing the IOC that it could be a successful host and thus bring the Games to the United States.
resolve the question. They asked standard questions of all US cities that placed a bid and chose one. They answered ZERO questions.
The very fact of Boston being chosen suggests that it gave more satisfactory answers than other US bidders, does it not? Why would the USOC choose Boston if did not think Boston could win over the IOC and meet their requirements?
it is an incredibly attractive bid since it promises everything without offering any real guarantees to the taxpayer except the prospect of mucking up the region and leaving us with the bills.
Again, the USOC resolved ZERO questions.
I have no quarrel with the exchanges here, even if some strike me as tedious.
I am merely rejecting the premise that the arguments against can be accurately characterized as “NIMBY” — in my view, that improperly trivializes them.
…that NOBODY should be the victim of what you describe, even if she does blurt out “find somebody else”. The metaphor only works if you are suggesting that the Olympics not happen at all.
A lewd proposition isn’t a crime, it’s just a lewd proposition. A bar is a bar, and in the scenario I describe there is no “victim”. There is, instead, a woman who chooses to say “no”.
I think the metaphor works just fine. Some other woman, and some other city, may well say “yes” (people do, after all, get laid from time to time). That’s not “NIMBY”, it is instead declining an offer.
Lewd to me automatically means creepy, harassing, something that would earn a slap in the face, for which there are more gentlemanly alternatives.
We have been, here at BMG, discussing this very topic for so very long, since at least mid 2013, if I recall correctly. So that would be years, and not just months. The people who, then, said “it won’t happen” are now, after it appears that it could happen, are saying “It should not happen.” It appears, to this observer at least, that they have modified only their adverbs and not their entrenched stance: one might expect an effort, at the least, towards simply understanding a middle ground rather than the vehemence of a continually shouted ‘hell no.’
The bid committee has bent over backwards and near double again to address concerns. Maybe they haven’t addressed them perfectly, but they are certainly trying to do so. Opponents are simply not even listening, pretending rather that no efforts have been made.
They have? So where are the missing bid documents? Where are the background documents that justify their budget numbers? Where is their raw polling data? What exactly is “proprietary” about the withheld documents? Who owns them and why won’t they make them public? Does keeping parts of the bid secret really help give us an advantage over competing cities? Why? Every city is unique, how much can another city copy from our proposal? And why should that matter? Why can’t the IOC force all bidders to be 100% transparent so that all can benefit from the best ideas?
The IOC pays zero dollars for this so they really could care less how much it costs, so it is not like bidding on a large government contract where bidders may try to just undercut a competitor’s bid. There is simply no reason for this amount of secrecy and no one has yet to begin to explain the need for it.
And don’t forget that they originally had no intention of even revealing any part of the bid document. They only did so after they got realized what bad PR they were creating.
Yes, they are making an effort to reach out after much public backlash for not doing so sooner, but “bending over backward”? Absolutely not.
The reason that those of us opposed to the Olympics appear to have “an entrenched” stance is because so far nothing from the pro-Olympic side has proven our concerns are not well founded.
Not want the Boston commons our Franklin Park destroyed?
It’s NIMBY to be worried that we’d destroy 900 jobs and the center of our restaurant industry’s food infrastructure in favor of a billion dollar stadium that would be vacant before and destroyed after the Olympics?
It’s NIMBY to worry about how the hell we’re going to pay for this, without sacrificing desperately needed projects for decades, a la the big dig?
It’s NIMBY to be concerned of what will essentially amount to a city wide shut down, restricting traffic, business and our day to day lives for weeks and weeks?
Screw that BS. NIMBY is not wanting a wind turbine, or a new school near your house. NIMBY is opposing affordable housing projects in your town. It’s NIMBY to oppose projects that everyone needs, but wealthy towns like it better when they’re in poorer towns – jails, power plants and so on.
No one needs the Olympics, and nothing can be NIMBY if it’s forcing the public to pay for private events. The Olympics is an absolutely vast project that would have consequences lasting decades. It is not NIMBY to oppose it – and a pox on anyone who would suggest otherwise.
…if somebody else’s public space will be “destroyed” (a characterization I reject) instead.
…if somebody else’s jobs and industry will be “destroyed” (same caveat) instead.
…if another city or jurisdiction will pay for this (not yet clear) instead.
…if another city will be “shut down” (hyperbole alert) instead.
The only way this isn’t NIMBY is if there are no Games at all in 2024, and barring the outbreak of World War III that’s not realistic. So I guess I’m going to break out with a case of the pox because you say so, but I can live with that:)
Your post is a big ball of assumption. Are the Commons destroyed by Shakespeare every summer or the Walk for Hunger? We don’t even know what the public might be on the hook for yet. If it’s for things like the Red-Blue and North-South connectors, then I’m in favor of that hook.
Cities throw big events. Quite frankly, Boston doesn’t have nearly enough. Check out Montreal if you want to see a city that has cultivated a festival atmosphere. On any given summer weekend Montreal is teeming with festival goers. Granted, the Olympics are a festival dosed with gamma rays, but the NIMBY, to me, is that we should unite in opposition against the very idea. I can’t get behind that and I think it’s premature to transform legitimate caution and concern into firm opposition.
I’m against public money paying for the events, I’m for a public vote and I’m not going to be for it unless there’s some tangible transportation upgrades and new housing attached. I do like the idea of expanding the city center in the direction of Dot Ave. I don’t care about three weeks of congestion (I’m even for it). I do care about the jobs at the New Boston Food Market, though it seems to me part of this deal would involve finding a new location for that operation.
Obviously, individual notions of what constitutes a successful Olympics will vary, but what’s the opposition seems centered around the idea that it’s complex. Yes, it’s complex. Lots of things could go wrong. Until I know what those specific things are, I’ve got nothing to oppose. Notionally, I’m more inclined to listen to the folks attempting to do the complex thing than those opposing it from the jump. Then again, I’m for vastly expanded public transportation, universal health care and free public college too. Sure, those things matter and the Olympics are a grandiose trifle, but I’m pro frivolity.
for the construction of the stadium, the 14,000 seat volleyball arena on the Common (look at the pics in the bid if you want to get a sense of how many buildings will go up and how many trees will be taken down), the velodrome, the Village, all new buildings on Franklin Park, large but temporary alterations to the Convention Center, two media centers, and an unidentified amount of construction on college campuses, Lake Quinsigamond and other locations TBA.
The Olympic bid is clear about those costs being born by the taxpayers through what the bidders call “public-private” partnerships.” Since the bidders have no assets, that means we pay and they decide how the money is spent.
I repeat here that I will support a good bid, but this ain’t one.
I’ve been through the bid docs and they do no specify the public will pay for any of those structures. I get the suspicion. I have it too. Yet the line on what costs the public would bear has not been drawn.
What we’ve got right now is a rough sketch of what the Boston 2024 folks would like to do. They already need to figure out a new spot for the velodrome (Curtatone immediately rejected it). Anyway, I would think B2024 organizers would recognize that public money for a stadium is a non-starter in Massachusetts.
I made on January 14:
CNBC is reporting today that in an interview with Exec Vice President Erin Murphy that public funding might be needed for the construction of Olympic buildings, in addition to the the infrastructure improvements they want:
“Murphy counters that no taxpayer dollars would be put toward the “operation of the games,” although public spending would go toward infrastructure costs like roads, buildings and transportation.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102329308#
Murphy and others have since reiterated Boston 2024’s intention to use tax money for the construction of buildings. The bid itself mentions only one source of funding for those buildings and those are bonds issued by the public-private partnerships. Since the bidders are bringing zero in assets to the projects, the bonds will have to be backed by the full faith and credit of the Commonwealth and/or the City. A private business might pay for the media centers if they think they can sell them afterwards for a profit but no private party will pay for the stadium, the volleyball arena and the buildings on Franklin Park, all of which will be torn down after the games, nor will they pay for changes to the Convention Center or buildings on college campuses since they cannot re-coup the expenses.
I have worked on enough multi-hundred million to billion dollar bond issues to know that if Boston 2024 had assets they would bring to the party, they would have mentioned them to strengthen their bid.
Boston 2024 has told us they want tax money for buildings and we would be foolish to not believe them.
…what Murphy’s definition of “operation of the games” is. If construction of buildings for the Games is not directly under the heading “operation of the games”, then what in the world is?
to their website. I would like to know also. I think I know but I would rather not speculate with an incomplete answer.
Presumably it encompasses costs involved in running the events, salary’s of Olympics staff, maintenance of facilities, transportation of athletes and officials, and so on.
In any case it is a very good question, which should have been answered in detail in the bid documents but was not.
I remember seeing an insistence that no public money would be used for the venues and facilities themselves, but only for infrastructure. I did express concern over how that applies to eminent domain for such facilities since the Constitution requires just compensation.
I have heard some people say that public costs will be restricted to “infrastructure” but I have heard others say that it will include building venues.
In any case, we can resolve the issue by passing laws that will prevent Boston 2024 from relying on public funding or publicly funded loan guarantees. Then we won’t have to argue about this anymore.
How is that even a comparison? It’s not a 14k stadium, it doesn’t require desroying huge swaths of the park, including trees that have been there since the freaking revolutionary war.
I stopped reading there, BTW. That’s enough quackery for one night.
This whole thing strikes me as more like a horny guy on the make (see my other similar comment).
Just because a thirty-something woman might want to have a child someday does not mean that the guy in the tacky suit and Donald Trump hair propositioning her is a suitable father.
you gave me, somervilletom.
Bleeaahhhh!
Don’t go there. However true your comment is, please, just don’t go there.
Come on, where’s your sense of humor?
🙂
I am tired of putting up peer reviewed papers from some of the worlds best sports economists,taking about my own first hand experience working on a similar Olympic bid that failed for similar reasons, and discussing the actual cost overruns at actual games that actually happened, and having that all dismissed as NIMBYism or knee jerk opposition or pessimism or the dumbest one an inferiority complex. These are means of silencing the debate and avoiding answering the critical questions the bid has failed to address. We should ask them, we should demand answers, demand a vote, and demand that any bid be a catalyst of the magnitude that Mayor Curtatone proposed.
All you boosters talking about improvements should read the damn bid-it’s proposal for the T is for the rest of us not to use it during the Games. That’s it. No new trains,no new lines, remember it’s “walkable” and around the well known neighborhood of “midtown”. Those boosters who want a catalyst and want an affordable games we can all enjoy should read the bid-those ain’t the games the IOC ever delivers. Maybe then we can have a conversation based around reason rather than the middle school cafeteria discussion this discussion has degenerated into.
I do think NIMBYism comes into play, but I also have read the bid. I did not see plans to shut down the T to anyone not participating in the Games, and I really don’t think proponents are the ones trying to silence the debate. I’ve liked Curtatone’s proposal all along too and have sometimes thought that among BMGers at least if you and I got together – a skeptic who has worked on this and open to improvements and a cheerleader who sees the value of constructive critique and questioning – we could plan a Games worthy of the Hub of the Universe.
This is exactly how I approached my work at Chicago 2016. This is exactly what we were trying to do. Tom had a great analogy comparing the bid to an RFP proposal from a company bidding for a government contract. I help write those in my current day job for my firm. The bidder has to tick off the entities every single requirement or face rejection. The IOC operates the same way but on a much larger scale.
To bring it back to Chicago 2016-our bid reached a crossroads where we had to choose between ticking off the IOC’s boxes and fulfilling our community engagement promises to the communities where the Games were going to be held. This will happen to Boston as well. And that is why the community turned on the games and yelled at their alderman-which led to the alderman yelling at Mayor Daley-which showed the IOC Chicago wasn’t behind the games and we got fourth place. His mayoralty ended the day he was blindsided by that result on the plaza named for his father.
I would love for you and me, and Curtatone, and other bid proponents and skeptics to get together and make a bid worthy of the Hub-such a bid will be rejected.
One of these days the Olympics is going to say yes to a bid that leans in favor of doing right by the host community. It will happen. I’m not saying it will happen in 2024, but Boston ought to gamble that it can be the first.
As you noted, Mayor Walsh has material political reasons for erring on the side of the people who elect him. Like you, I think Curtatone nailed it. I guess I’m not sold on the notion his vision can’t be realized or that a subsequent PR blitz about how Boston has redefined what an Olympics bid proposal should be won’t put pressure on the IOC. The whole thing runs on American money and participation.
Why ever deliberate, research or plan anything?
Just let a bunch of feckless poobahs shoot craps or draw straws and if the issue is still in doubt, hose it down with that handy can of PR Blitz coming in shorts and quarts.
No sooner will the fog clear than a glistening Olympic Oz with yellow brick roads from Castle Island to Magazine Beach will bedeck the ecstatic city as everyone is immersed in the bliss haze that of the secret Blitz formula and special sauce.
This is the first I’ve heard of special sauce. I like sauce, and if it’s special …
… actually enjoy hard work, effort and striving to be better today than we were tomorrow.
There is, in fact, no sauce more special than that. You should try it sometime. I know you’ll like it.
… than we were yesterday. Derp on me.
Some of us also come up short again and again… but we keep trying.
And it is quite comforting. The best they can come up with is nebulous touchy feely stuff because covering the details is beyond them.
The closest they can get to authority is to claim to have read the bid as if it were holy writ and not some hack job of misplaced wishful thinking.
And they share a common solipsism. Each individual imagines themselves as an island deciding what the discussion terms should be and so on as if any of us cares about hollow ploys. They rarely cite efforts to canvass or find out the breadth of support or opposition.
I have a sense the various parties in charge of this thing have been running internal polls by now and the numbers are not inspiring.
I believe by BMG convention that calls for front-page status.
What the heck!?
… to start a real conversation but between some of the responses, the many spite-ratings, and SomervilleTom making nauseating analogies and spamming Trump porn, it’s clear that many don’t want to take it seriously. I’d prefer if that not end up on the front-page. I don’t really think, 100+ comments or not, it’s a front-page worthy diary… as much I would like to sanely discuss some of the issues herein. I am, despite standing behind everything I said, rather sad about the direction the whole thing took.
‘Tis a shame, but that’s why the downrate.
we are lucky that so many people added quality posts along the way
I’m on a browser that does not let me see who voted and thus had no way of knowing it was you. (Honestly I thought it was TBD who has been awfully quick to downrate me on Olympic diaries.) I thought it was the most inocuous and uncontroversial comment I could possibly make and thought it was emblematic of how badly so many of these diaries, not just yours, have gone.
I still think it would have been nice for a different perspective to have been front-paged. I think I’ve done pretty well downrating only for attitude on these threads rather than for disagreement. In fact there are a few comments that I have uprated even though I don’t completely (or maybe not much at all) agree with them just to provide positive reinforcement for engaging without attitude and to counterbalance all the downrating, which has been more prevalent on Olympic threads than any other topic I can remember. Thank you for your explanation, though.
I uprated you on a few posts.
I just use that system mainly as an acknowledgement that I read the post.
It’s the same way I use Google Plus. It’s a cue. And if I think the argument is crap or specious, it gets a down.
But really, if you hang on that and worry about it it might be useful to branch out a bit and find other intertoobz things to get involved with.
Opponents have been doing their homework for months, have linked to peer review papers, linked to other articles from outside experts, made appeals to the history of every other modern Olympic game, and made appeals to personal experience and knowledge they acquired working on a bid. You dismissed all of that in your post title as ‘an inferiority complex’.
During the run up to the Iraq War opponents had their very patriotism attacked for asking critical questions-not of their country-but of it’s values and capabilities. Questions that had they been taken more seriously by the media might have avoided a terrible war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives and destabilized an already volatile region for decades to come.
I am NOT arguing that the Boston Olympics would ever be a mistake of that magnitude. I am arguing that you are questioning our local patriotism so to speak, and our love for our city and state and our belief in how awesome it is. I love Boston and Massachusetts precisely for the fact that we have this heritage of putting education, health care, and the welfare of our citizens first. Those are the values I hope to preserve and expand-and those are the values an Olympic bid that is too expensive, with the public on the hook, and with the potential to displace hundreds of our most vulnerable residents directly threatens.
Let’s bid with our values and head held up high, not by compromising them or hiding from them as Boston 2024 is.
And to whom did I apply it?
You have consistently said opponent are NIMBY and have an inferiority complex. That’s name calling. We don’t have an inferiority complex-we love and care for Boston as much as any bid proponent. We just have the temerity to recognize that Boston, a city that is operating without a public transit system today for the first time since the 1890s, has a ton of other priorities and values to uphold first without compromising them for the Olympics. Boosters think we can have our cake and eat it too, history shows the opposite for every other games.
I want a 21st century transit system. That is the cap in the feather this city deserves-not a three week spectacle to generate revenue for Matt Layer and Wheaties.
… but that’s a sincere, and blunt, description of the situation from my point of view, and not name calling. I’ve been listening the the arguments for over a year now and that’s what they boil down to… a sense of inferiority. Your own broadsides on the subject are little more than “If Chicago couldn’t do it, no way Boston could…” That’s not name calling. That’s not a debating point or a gotcha. That’s honestly how I read your writings on the subject and all your energetic denials notwithstanding you’ve not convinced me otherwise.
I think that it is entirely possible to love and care for Boston — and still have an inferiority complex. The two do not exclude each other. I bet Charlie Baker loves the CommonWealth as much as I do. I still think his utterances demonstrate, clearly, he has a sense of inferiority about the state and its capabilities.
But that’s, honestly, little different from what the Bid Committee is saying and has spent not an insignificant effort upon trying to achieve to date. But you have not demonstrated very much willingness to take their talk all that seriously. Maybe, in the end, they will be revealed as charlatans and hucksters. Maybe not. Maybe they will, in fact, be able to pull of what they say. Many here have altogether elided that and skipped straight to cries of ‘charlatans’ and ‘hucksters’… with much fear and little evidence besides a ‘truthiness’ about the Olympics and they have manufactured some fairly turbid outrage along the way.
You specifically stated your opinion that a “clear statement [was] made here at BMG that Boston just isn’t up to the task of holding an Olympics”. That may be your honest perception, but it flies in the face of the fact that many of us have said repeatedly that our objection is not that we think that Boston is not up to the task, but that we think that the risk is not worth the reward. That is an entirely different proposition.
Likewise, it may be true that there are people who have an “inferiority complex” that either leads them to think we are not up to the task or to take the reverse tack and grasp the Olympic bid as a way to relieve their irrational sense of inferiority. There certainly have been public commentators stating that this bid was a result of such an “inferiority complex”. Perhaps your use of the term was a conscious reply to such criticism? In any case, it probably does not fairly apply to either side. It is pure hyperbole.
..It’s the very same thing. What, after all, are we ‘risking’?
If we were, to follow your own, prior, hyperbole and attempt to colonize a ‘New Boston” on Mars we would, in fact, be risking death in the frozen emptiness of the space between here and Mars: getting there requires we risk an existential deletion. That’s a risk.
According to opponents of the bid we risk not being able to get what we need because we’re optioning an overwhelming, overweening and wholly pointless distraction: an implicit assumption that Boston is neither big enough, nor rich enough to do both.
Are we risking an existential crisis with the Olympics? If the Olympics were a world shattering event, like a war, we most certainly would be… But really, it just goes back to the original point: only if the Olympics are too big for Boston is there any risk at all… Only if the CommonWealth is too small to do more than one thing or not capable of aligning both the Olympics and ongoing infrastructure improvement, do we ‘risk’ anything.
It’s the same point: the very use of the word ‘risk’ betrays that.
Saying America can’t stabilize or democratize Iraq is an analysis of the facts on the ground-not an analysis that America is not man enough for the task.
Similarly, Boston is a great city that could host a great games. Problem js, we have a lousy transit system that is woefully underfunded. Bet the USOC is shaking it’s head right now and muttering obscenities usher it’s breath. IOC watches the city at every stage of the bid and we are looking like the amateurs I said we were.
If it was rich enough it would have funded the T decades ago-but it’s not, we are running a deficit and lack the political will to raise the taxes to balance the budget and fix transit. I do not believe the Bid makers are chaladatabs-they are committed to the bare minimum requires by the IOC. Nowhere in that bid is an urban ring, a BRT, an extended silver line, a restored Heath line or North-South station connector.
When I say even Chicago couldn’t handle it it’s because I’ve lived here for nine years and lived in Cambridge for 18 years using the T almost the entire time and our lousy CTA is still infinitely better than the lousy MBTA. And it was still deemed insufficient for the IOC. That’s the reality none of you boosters are willing to face.
We can’t have a nice transit system and an Olympics anymore than we could have a tax cut or a war.
… Then I thank you for stating it forthrightly.
I think we agree on this, except I wouldn’t characterize it as ‘not rich enough’ but rather not accessing the wealth we clearly have, precisely as you described through lack of will.
This is exactly and precisely the reason I titled this diary “The Only Serious Case Against Boston 2024; Charlie Baker and a Complex Inferiority.” Gov Bakers statement that we can cut transit funding without impact is analogous to going to war simultaneous to cutting taxes: it’s viciously small minded. We agree. And we agree that, if such thinking obtains, we should not have the Olympics.
Where we differ, I suppose, is that I still have hope somebody can push the Olympics bid into a constructive, progressive, leverage for action. Maybe that’s not even realistic, but I’m going to hope. The worst case scenario is that we spent a lot of sound and fury definitively killing it and then proceed along the path we’re still a trod acting all proud of ourselves for dodging a bullet while we’re yet under the gun.
For me the best case would be to hold the Olympics and have it leverage the city up a notch…. but a close second to the best case would be to lose, or even withdraw, a bid after having a strong public conversation about our strengths, weaknesses and having identified possible paths forward. That’s not nothing.
I don’t think you mischaracterized what I am thinking. I guess you are diagnosing the legislature and Corner Office with an inferiority complex, I would agree but for different reasons. I think we can and should pump more money into public projects and public investments, I just completely disagree that the Olympics are the right catalyst or that this is the kind of bid Boston 2024 is going through with.
If Mayor Joe Curtatone’s proposal was the one that Boston 2024 was following I would be far less skeptical, especially if the feds and private capital picked up the tab and not the city or state. It would also create regional planning boards that I would hope would continue after the Games. His proposal has the potential of leaving a rich legacy, and I would disagree with ideological opponents of the Games that this proposal isn’t worth pursuing.
What I am arguing-and have been since my initial thread-is that the IOC as currently composed will not approve such a proposal. Boston 2024 knows this, and is doing the bare minimum to tick off the various requirements that the IOC has..
Those requirements are entirely different from what you, Christopher, Mayor Curtatone, or I might want in a bid. I actually think Boston 2024 is being transparent and honest in one regard-I think it is entirely upfront that it’s sole objective is to lure the Games and host them. That’s it. It doesn’t care about fixing public transit, leaving behind a bigger legacy, or remaking Boston beyond the neighborhoods it is proposing for certain venues. It certainly doesn’t care about cleaning up the IOC or remaking Boston into a more mixed use and transit oriented city. It just cares about getting the Games and that means getting them they way they are, not the way we want them to be. And we should all be leery hosting the current IOCs games based on past results in every host city.
How many times do I have to point out that you cannot simply sum up the views of all opinions as Boston is not big enough or rich enough? We are not saying that.
I am rich enough to buy a BMW but choose not to because there are better ways for me to spend my money. Likewise, Boston is “rich” enough to host the Olympics, but it seems to me there are much better ways we could spend our money.
It is utterly ridiculous and stupid to suggest that use of the word “risk” implies that I think Boston is not big enough. Every time you make a decision in the face of uncertainty there is a risk that things will not go as you like. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you think you are incapable of handling the consequences.
Very few if any people are claiming that this would be an “existential crisis”. If you want to go argue with those few people, go ahead, but do not falsely imply that it is an accurate characterization of those who oppose the Olympic bid.
I am sorry but you aren’t going to win any arguments (except perhaps in your own mind) by trying to redefine other people’s use of language to fit some perverse meaning of your own.
Well, all right, we keep using that word too. But I nevertheless suspect that the word “risk” does not mean what you think it means. Or what you’re asserting it means.
Risk-benefit analysis doesn’t imply apocalyptic risks, after all. It’s a mundane tool, useful in small matters as well as in large. It encompasses rational assessments of behavior in the real world, as well as any absolute constraints in play. Consider an ordinary reasonable person who’s considering whether to buy a set of sheets. They need new sheets, there’s an old set that’s wearing out, and these look really nice. What to do?
Maybe they can afford a hundred sets of sheets! but that’s irrelevant, because unless they’re sheet hobbyists or something, they’re only going to buy one or two new sets. So if they buy these, they’re not going to buy a different set. Is this the best they can do? Will they see others they like better later, and feel compelled to leave them because they no longer actually need sheets? Is it worth it to buy these possibly inferior sheets because then they can stop looking? What if they’re at an outlet of some kind, and this set is the only one of the kind still available, and if they don’t buy them the chance will never come again?
Spelled out like that, it looks absurd, but people do these internal calculations every day, so quickly that many of us barely notice the process. But it’s exactly the same kind of risk-benefit calculation that we bring to bigger and more complex issues. The risks with the sheets may be tiny, but we’re still talking about opportunity costs and best use of time and money.
If we buy the Olympics, it is altogether reasonable to assume on the basis of lived experience that we will not buy other giant public-works projects. Because this will be experienced as a giant expensive public project, and come out of the internal sense of budget for such projects. In that sense it’s not unlike the Big Dig: we can do it, but it means that we are not going to do other infrastructure projects in its perceived category. Now, maybe that’s not as much of a risk as skeptics think it is. Risk assessments often vary, and some of those assessments will be wrong. But once again, invocations of the power of hope and big dreams elide the problem. Hope is not a risk-mitigation strategy, let alone a demonstration that a given set of risks is being overvalued.
I know what the word ‘risk’ mean. I believe I am not mistaken in partnering the use of the word ‘risk’ with the statement that Boston should colonize Mars hrs-kevin has made as analogy (however facetiously he meant it…)
I don’t know how closely you’ve been following the debates here but this is not something new: we’ve long been discussing the purported parade of horribles the Olympics will be. This is the backdrop of the word ‘risk’ in this context.
This is where I have trouble. The Bid Committee has gone to a lot of effort to try to present a bid that purports to work inside of existing infrastructure constraints or which leverages planned infrastructures, that is to say public-works projects but which you are dismissing out of hand. You are writing, here and now, as though the stated commitments of the Bid Committee don’t even exist. As though all they have said and all they have done matters not a fig. I can’t accept that. I can accept that you have not read them and are, perhaps, ignorant of them. In which case it is incumbent upon you, if you wish to continue the discussion, to read them. I think there is much to discuss, and indeed, argue over in and about them. But I don’t think it worth discussing if we’re just going to re-iterate our biases. I have a respect for healthy skepticism. I’m not seeing skepticism here. I’m seeing a priori rejection.
The timing, you see, is suspect. I pointed out some time ago that the group calling itself “No Boston Olympics” was formed before there was a Bid Committee, indeed, before even the feasibility study was done.
I find that extra-ordinary.
Hrs-kevin wants me to avoid painting him with that brush, but he uses a lot of the same arguments. Your argument, if I may be permitted to paraphrase it as “there is no alignment between public needs and the Olympic event and therefore using for one is taking from the other” is just such a gambit they use. So you will have to give me a reason to think you are not, before the fact, making up your mind without facts in evidence.
I don’t automatically accept the case that spending on the Olympics is going to mean spending cuts or losses elsewhere. Indeed, as I have some sympathy for Keynesian arguments, one of which is that the government should, under certain circumstances pay people to dig hole and then pay them again to fill the holes in, I put it back upon those who would reject spending out of hand to explain why. Spending on a white elephant, under a Keynesian perspective, is better than no spending at all. I don’t particularly think this is going to be a white elephant, but there it is…
It is quite clear that there are plenty of people here with “more respect for healthy skepticism” than you. You simply have defined “healthy skepticism” as the kind that agrees with your point of view.
You are indeed mistaken in your use of the word “risk”. Badly mistaken. For one thing, you were actually replying to my Mars joke comment. You were replying to a comment in which I used the word risk in an entirely different context. In any case, my Mars comment had absolutely nothing to do with risk.
You really have a problem ever admitting you are wrong about anything to even the smallest degree, don’t you? Rather than simply saying, “ok, I went overboard on that one”, you have dig your heals in and try to rationalize every made up fact and every misstatement.
And once again, who cares when No Boston Olympics was founded? My opposition has nothing to do with them, but even if it did, what does it matter? Is there any evidence they are being secretly funded by sum evil-doing cabal for their own secret profit? No, there is not.
… that you are that invested in my incorrectness.
But honestly, if you think I’m that egregiously wrong, nobody has a gun to your head forcing you to read, much less reply, to what I write.
… that you are that invested in my incorrectness.
But honestly, if you think I’m that egregiously wrong, nobody has a gun to your head forcing you to read, much less reply, to what I write.
😉
I wrote this diary. Get your own and then complain…
Really now, you can just as well create your own website and do anything you want with it. You don’t own this website and you don’t just get to tell people to shut up when they fail to succumb to your flawed arguments and expect they will do so.
I see no reason why you should expect me to remain silent when you insist on putting a perverse interpretation on what I said in order to “prove” your point. If you don’t want me to respond to you, then please stop putting words in my mouth, redefining words that I use, or falsely attributing emotions or motivations to my comments.
I don’t know any of them or their motives.
Chris Dempsey is co-chair of No Boston Olympics. He was formerly an assistant secretary of transportation for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where he co-founded and ran the MBTA’s open-data initiative.
Liam Kerr heads the Massachusetts chapter of Douchebags for Education Reform.
Kelley Gossett-Phillips (apparently nee Kelley Gossett) is the Director of Policy and Advocacy and she joined One Family in 2013 as its Director of Policy and Advocacy. Prior to joining One Family, Kelley was Director of Policy at Horizons for Homeless Children where she advocated for increased resources and policy reform on behalf of homeless families. Kelley earned her Juris Doctorate from Suffolk Law School and her Bachelor’s of Arts from Boston College.
sound scary and powerful.
I mean Conor Yunits.
His reasoning is in this Commonwealth piece
but does that letter seem sketchy to you? Like political or something?
… perhaps you can explain your use of it?
n/t
for all I know. What’s their motive? Is it altruistic? They don’t look all that grassroots to me. The only name I know is Conor Yunits, but I don’t know the man himself. I want to say that he had something to do with a Deval Patrick campaign.
I feel like I have a guess as to the motives of many Boston 2024 people (besides money), but I’m curious about these folks. Besides, it’s information.
Not unless on examination we find that we’re comfortable that their statements and commitments are realistic, that we’re comfortable with the ways in which they plan to leverage existing infrastructure, and that we trust their competence and agree with their priorities sufficiently to be confident that they’ll approach problems in the future with our shared goals and priorities in mind.
So far at least, what they’ve put forward doesn’t fill all of us with the confidence you evidently feel. I simply do not, so far, see evidence of either the degree of professional competence that would make me comfortable trusting these people to get the job done well nor of any real interest in goals beyond doing whatever is necessary to bring the Olympics to Boston — a goal that I appreciate is central to the bid committee, but is of considerably less rank or value to those of us who are questioning the bid. Having them tell me that they’re competent and share my goals is not evidence that they are or do, when their actions and plans don’t back it up.
I have the sense that it seems obvious to you that simply having the Olympics in Boston would be a wonderful thing, and that it’s an exciting goal for its own sake. Perhaps, if so, that’s at the root of some of the disconnect here. All I can say in return is that for at least some of us, having a Boston Olympics has zero independent value. It’s not particularly exciting or inspiring or moving or whatever it evidently is to boosters; it has exactly the same emotional and spiritual valence as any less ostensibly glamorous big expensive project might. Only perhaps less, depending on your tolerance for and willingness to support the Bridezilla-on-steroids behavior sometimes exhibited by members of the IOC.
eom
… I wouldn’t say a word if we were on the other side of that examination and you decided, no, it’s not worth it. I’ve seen no evidence, however, of that examination…. only the assumption of that conclusion.
What is being proposed is an unprecedented public-private endeavor. There is no template. There are no guidelines. No previous Olympics has this map. We’re blue water sailing here. Maybe we can’t do it. Maybe it is impossible.
But maybe we can.
As I read the bid, and listen to the committee, I see a commitment to facing the concerns raised, including all of the concerns raised here. I see a sensitivity to public pressure including changing their plans, as they’ve said they would do all along, in the face of public feedback. I don’t see the venality and ledgerdemaine opponents claim and that leads me to believe the opponents are not sincere. I see, in the bid committee, a sincere belief in the CommonWealth that is lacking in those opposed to the Olympic: Most opponents dance around the notion that Boston is a provincial backwater but when they say things llke “it simply won’t be possible” or “Boston wants to play with the big boys” or they go to great and hysterical lengths to challenge numbers they think are ‘too big’ (absent anything but a truthiness to support their claims…). When they say these things and act this way, they betray their true feelings. And the more I challenge these assumption the angrier they get. That, too, is indicative…
I don’t say you are like this. But I can’t say you are not, either. If you think Boston isn’t up to the task say that. We can disagree about that. I think it is. Maybe you don’t. Maybe, If you honestly come by that view, and debate it honestly, you’ll change my mind. But don’t twist yourself into knots trying to tell me Boston is simultaneously capable and not capable. It makes me wonder why those who do try to think contradictory thoughts and which one they really hang your hat upon…
Where would you get that idea? From day one, every anti-Olympics ruminant has assumed that, because I don’t buy their arguments, I must be a starry eyed ‘booster’ who just wants to party. This too is an a priori assumption and, as tells go, it’s a pretty blatant one: it assumes adversarial posturing of the other based upon how strongly one feels themselves; if I don’t feel as strongly anti- as you, I must, therefore, feel just as strongly but in the opposite direction… It is not, strictly speaking, paranoia but it’ll do until paranoia comes along.
I won’t be heartbroken if we don’t do the Olympics. I have never said anything other than this. And I honestly don’t know if it can be done. I like to think that it can. That Boston, and the CommonWealth, can be pushed to a real challenge and rise to it. But if it can’t, I’d like to know definitively, not through some mushy formless, inchoate inability to imagine even the effort.
I will be heartbroken if we defeat the Olympics and pat ourselves on the back as though we did something special: sound and fury might give a momentary buzz and a false sense of accomplishment but as policy goes — as something people think is worth wasting a ballot question over — it’s a big fat zero. What’s more, it’s likely to rebound in ways not expected…
I won’t be heartbroken if we lose the bid, or even withdraw it, after a searing and and fearless inventory of the City and the CommonWealth and all the good and bad points therein, but I will be heartbroken if we avoid this self-analysis through some feckless, knee-jerk cowardice.
That’s where I stand.
All you, christopher, and the bid committee itself have done is assumed that conclusion. It’s fairly obvious they didn’t do all their homework before the bid.
I would argue I have done my homework, at least more of it than you or any other booster on BMG have put forth on your side of the debate.
Allen Sandersen and his colleagues have done their homework.
Still waiting to see any kind of empirical analysis from anyone on the pro-Olympic side…
that a person who thinks that an elected republican form of government with a constitutionally guaranteed democratic right to use the ballot thinks that a self-appointed group of wealthy people have a higher right to determine where the citizenry should spend their tax money.
The bid committee spent a few bucks doing research on a project they want, a project they decided before they enlisted in the cause. So what. Should we let the Mass Budget and Policy Center make all of our spending choices? At least they do not arrive at their conclusion before studying a matter. Or how about letting the Mass Taxpayers Foundation, on the other side of the policy fulcrum, make the decisions?
At least both of those NGOs are transparent in their research and reveal the details of what they report, unlike B2024. I am underwhelmed by your faith in a bunch of self-appointed Swells to make multi billion dollar decisions about taxpayer money.