Disturbing racism allegations at suburban school | Biden and the radical middle | Wu faces developer revolt | Rebranding political pork | Quick hits | About Contrarian Boston |
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Wu has a major image problem in Boston’s powerful real estate industry. But as the mayor moderates her rhetoric, is it too little, too late?
Maybe dissing developers wasn’t such a hot idea after all.
To the delight of her more ardent supporters, shortly after taking office Boston Mayor Michelle Wu ended the open-door policy that major developers, with their job and tax revenue-generating plans, traditionally enjoyed with city mayors.
In her first major move, back in February, Wu effectively stuck it to developer Don Chiofaro and his proposal for a tower on the downtown waterfront, ostentatiously shifting planning attention to East Boston.
Additionally, Wu still appears intent on proposing some form of rent control, having just dramatically boosted the amount of subsidized housing developers must build, and recently declaring that all new towers in the city must be net zero in carbon emissions when they open.
So maybe not all that surprisingly, developers have grown increasingly wary of Wu and her plans, especially as economic storm clouds loom and financing for new apartments, labs and other projects go south.
Now Wu appears to be softening her rhetoric.
“We understand that it can’t be all give-give-give on the side of the developers. There are things the city needs to do better,” Wu told WBUR this week. She added that the city is “working on a commitment to really hold tight to approvals timelines.”
Yet it’s not clear whether soothing words will cut it now, especially if Boston decides to push ahead with a bid to bring back rent control. For many developers, that is likely to be a non-negotiable.
One top development executive, noting he had just come back from a holiday party filled with real estate and business people, indicated that the Wu administration has a tough hill to climb to win them over.
“The talk in the room was how tone deaf this administration is at a tough time in the market, when they should be doing everything possible to stimulate development. Hello, suburbs!”
A terrible and growing trend: Natick schools the latest to grapple with racist, anti-Semitic incidents involving sports teams
A Natick High School sports team has had its season nixed and school officials have requested a hate crimes investigation into racist and anti-Semitic material posted online and potential violence toward female students.
High school officials “discovered a racist act (a published video) against our Black students” and upon further investigation, turned up “an anti-Semitic, anti-Ableism” group chat involving one or more winter sports teams, Anna Nolin, superintendent of Natick schools, informed students and parents in a Friday afternoon email.
The probe of the online chat group led to “an additional investigation” by school officials into “potential violence towards girls.”
School officials have asked Natick police to launch their own investigation into potential hate crime law violations, according to Nolin.
Natick High School
“The police chief, NHS school principal and I have been working for the last 36 hours to ensure accuracy, legality and care for all regarding these recent heinous acts in our high school,” Nolin wrote in an email. “I have filed with the Natick police for a hate crimes investigation which will run concurrent to our own investigation.”
The news out of Natick comes less than a day after dozens of superintendents across Massachusetts spoke out against racist graffiti targeting Dr. Omar Easy, Wayland’s superintendent.
School sports programs across Greater Boston have been rocked over the past two years by allegations of racist, anti-Semitic and other behavior.
The investigation by Natick school officials, and now likely Natick police as well, is not over.
Nolin noted that the behavior may have extended beyond the winter sports team whose season has been cancel to “others” who “may be involved in this type of discriminatory and racist behavior.”
The team in question will now be required to attend training conducted by the Northeastern University Center for Sport and Society “in toxic speech prevention and bystander training” as well as spending “additional hours” in the Anti-Defamation League’s Removing Bias and Hate in Sport groups.
So what’s driving this disturbing behavior?
Nolin, in her email to Natick parents and students, offered up some ideas that are certainly worth considering.
Overall, the “pressures of the pandemic have made people more raw, less tolerant, and more inward-focused,” Nolin said, taking aim at “keyboard warriors.”
“It’s a weird post-pandemic time,” Nolin wrote. “Students have shown some dysregulated and risky behaviors in schools, and parents have shown more apathy and more extreme anger / emotional responses to things previously not demanding this manner of reaction.”
Can Biden tap into the frustrations, and righteous anger, of the radical middle?
The political extremes have sucked all the oxygen out of the room for far too long in our country.
And it’s not just the Trumpies that have poisoned the well of political discourse, but the uber progressive/academic left, which brooks no dissent from its view that our nation is uniquely fallen and may even be unredeemable, with a history built on a foundation of lies and hypocrisy.
It’s a skewed, ideologically distorted, dead end vision. Good luck trying to mobilize voters to defend democracy if that’s truly what you believe. After all, why would anyone bother?
Does that mean we shouldn’t look at our nation’s many failings, including the original sin of chattel slavery? Of course not. As Lincoln said, “we cannot escape history,” and that is as true today as it was 160 years ago in 1862. (It’s a beautiful quote - here’s the link.)
But there remains a hopeful arc to American history. We learn, often very painfully, from our mistakes, and strive to do better.
All of which is a roundabout plug for this David Brooks New York Times piece, “Biden’s America Finds its Voice.”
Ukraine’s battle to save itself from Putin’s Russia has helped reinvigorate our own country’s flagging belief in its core principles of democracy, freedom and opposition to autocracy, Brooks writes.
The NYT columnist points to the wildly enthusiastic reception Zelenskyy received during his historic address to Congress, which Trumpie stinkers like Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz were unable to dampen with their typical idiotic antics.
Brooks writes, “There was fervor, admiration, yelling and whooping. In a divided nation, we don’t often get to see the Congress rise up, virtually as one, with ovations, applause, many in blue dresses and yellow ties.”
And Biden’s pragmatic but principled approach, and his ability to forge an unusual but effective partnership with Zelenskyy, may prove to be an historic turning point, Brooks writes.
“But the truth is that both men have delivered again and again. The military struggle in Ukraine might turn grim in the coming months, but both men are partly responsible for a historic shift in the global struggle against brutality and authoritarianism.”
The bigger challenge now is for Biden to forge that same, commonsense, middle ground when it comes to domestic politics and policy.
He’s made strides on that front, but the jury is out.
If Biden can do that - and tap into the radical middle - he could very well become an underrated gem, like Harry Truman.
Political pork renamed? Mass. congressional delegation brings home $250 million for local projects
Congress swore off earmarks for a decade, but now they are apparently back.
No longer called earmarks, lawmakers now have to attest that they don’t have a personal stake in any of the projects they secure money for.
Rather, the practice of bringing home the political bacon has been rebranded as “community funding,” according to this Globe story, which lists the various projects that members of the state’s congressional delegation brought home to their districts.
Quick hits:
Really can’t blame them: App-based drivers make push for a union CommonWealth Magazine
Bike rage - bicyclist-on-pedestrian crime, in a park no less: “Police seek to identify bicyclist in an assault” Cambridge Day
Musk facing serious financial challenges: “Elon Musk’s Finances Complicated by Declining Wealth, Twitter Pressures” Wall Street Journal
Looks like the poor guy was just hungry: “Attila the Hun raided Rome due to starvation, not bloodlust, study suggests” LiveScience
About Contrarian Boston
I have fielded emails over the past couple of months asking what Contrarian Boston is about.
Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.
For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.
An online newsletter, Contrarian Boston publishes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In Contrarian Boston you’ll find analysis of the day’s news, and original reporting as well.
Our focus is:
· Politics and all levels of governance, good and bad, with an emphasis on state and local, with some national mixed in;
· Economic growth and business, especially real estate, housing and new development projects;
· The media and why it does what it does;
· Education, from school board spats to the doings of multibillion-dollar university endowments;
· And whatever else catches our fancy.