The politics of everything else don’t trump the Big Dig mess
Boston Herald’s old-man-roaming-the-’hood columnist Joe Fitzgerald is being widely panned, correctly in my opinion, for using the Big Dig death to push for the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in Massachusetts. It is a big deal when somebody dies in a super-expensive public-works project that has been surrounded by controversy and safety concerns, the big deal, even. To focus on the Big Dig, its management and its status is not a tricky attempt to bury the amendment drive, but a necessary response to an urgent and extremly important issue that ultimately is about the legitimacy of Massachusetts governing institutions. Can Massachusetts citizenry hold its trusted politicians and civil servants responsible and accountable, or is the political establishment on Beacon Hill so entrenched that it is practically untouchable?
Nor can the people’s demand for investigations, explanations, and accountability be undermined by rhetorical questions about why voters and politicians spent so much time arguing about gay marriage, illegal immigration or wind farms when the real issue, as we will undoubtedly be told, should have been the state of the Big Dig. Such tactics can not be allowed to work. The many issues related to the Big Dig were almost impossible to advance before the accident because of stonewalling.
The tunnel death did not create fears about the Big Dig’s safety, it confirmed them. It has swept aside all of the excuses that have been used to sandbag people’s concerns about the project. The tunnel can no longer be said to be safe, and future assurances that it is safe aren’t likely to be accepted with less than a lot of accompanying evidence to back up that claim, and the passage of a lot of time without additional structural breakdowns.
Update: Looks like I’m in synch on this one with Charley over at the very good liberal group blog Blue Mass Group. Go read. And stay mad. (link via John Daley).
