By Harold Traveler
City Desk
We woke up to the news that in the dead of night the Senate discharged its constitutional duty to advise and consent to the nomination of the architect of the lawless Epstein child rape file coverup to the position of, wait for it, Attorney General of the United States.
Their work done, they fled for a richly-unearned six week vacation. Fortunately, by voting for Blanche at 4:30 a.m. they were able to make the 7 a.m. shuttle and their lunch date in the Hamptons.
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| Where's the mojo, asks the Boston Globe? |
Sen. Mitch McConnell's (R – Hadestown) staff put out a statement, faithfully transcribed by all media, in which the totally alive Senator “said,” “I was thrilled to support Todd Blanche's confirmation and look forward to many productive 20-minute telephone calls with him.” According to the press release, McConnell was so happy he danced a Kentucky reel before doing a couple of handsprings.
With these spineless cowards and poltroons flying under the radar until well after Labor Day, our thoughts turn closer to home.
How's it going in the Hub of the Universe?
An untutored observer might conclude things are doing just fine. The city enjoyed two huge festivals this summer – the World Cup and the Tall Ships. Hundreds of thousands enjoyed themselves without incident, except for the threat posed by the Scots of drinking the town dry. Even the formerly wretched Red Sox are on a tear, due not at all to their world-championship caliber disabled list.
But if you ask our business community and their jock-sniffers at the Boston Globe, the city has lost its mojo, whatever the f*** that is:
Boston has lost its swagger. Talk to people across industries and you’ll hear that the boundless vibrancy we once took for granted has faded. The World Cup brought a jolt of energy that disappeared as suddenly as it arrived, a reminder of how enervated this city, especially downtown, can feel.
Oh, yes, let's decide that Boston is in the dumpster because rich s***s, interviewed by text from their $12 million oceanfront estates in Osterville, say so.
And what pray tell do these titans think us plebes should do about it? You'll never guess:
And the state’s economic engine — a turbocharged model that outperformed from the early 1980s to the pandemic in 2020 — is sputtering. If Massachusetts doesn’t become a more attractive place to live and run a business, more people and jobs will leave and the quality of life here will fray.
Let's see: Boston has a highly educated workforce, internationally-renowned universities, a well-developed network of sophisticated enterprise support services, like lawyers and private equity, access to world-class health care, a healthy environment, an international airport, and fried clams. What else is needed to grow a business and thrive in Boston?
Any guesses? The tycoons are complaining about “a broken housing market, soaring living costs, high taxes, an aging population, the hostile White House.”
Well, if they are so upset about the Mad King's hostility to their beloved home town, maybe they could do something about it, like stop filling the coffers of Republican dark-money PAC's and start speaking out about his assault on American democracy.
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| Want mojo? Pay the man! |
As for the aging population, that's a national problem. There's a simple cure for it: immigration. Letting young immigrant families stay, rather than torturing and tormenting them, would be a great way to grow the nation's base of young families, consumers, and taxpayers. And that's why these moguls have been so outspoken in their opposition to the Mad King's persecution of immigrants, amirite?
As for high taxes, taxes here aren't higher than in, say, the capitalist paradise of California, as calculated by the same right-wing source cited by Edelman. And the millionaire's tax imposed beginning in 2022 hasn't caused an exodus of immiserated job creators to more business-friendly places like Alabama or North Dakota.
Just today, The Boston Globe reported on a young Quincy entrepreneur who located his business to Silicon Valley. Why? Let's see: both taxes and living costs are higher there than here, so that can't be it. It turns out that the venture capital community in Boston wouldn't fund his pitch, but the one in California did. Is that really the fault of Mayor Wu and Governor Healy?
The other factor mentioned is that Massachusetts enforces noncompetes, thereby reducing mobility and choices for young techies. California doesn't. That's because the business poo-bahs here like noncompetes because the closer their employees are to indentured servitude, the more advantageous for them.
So we can't wait for the 40-part Globe series blaming craven venture capitalists and self-interested business moguls for the supposed decline in mojo levels.
There is in all this garbage one point of legitimate concern: the crushing cost of housing in Massachusetts is driving out young families. That's largely because unlike booming hellholes like Phoenix or Dallas, developers can't just feast on open wasteland and build vast housing tracts. This part of the world has been settled for centuries, and if you go 40 miles from State House dome you don't find prairie or desert, you find Worcester. [Same difference – Ed.]
The obvious solution is to try to build housing where there's open space, especially denser transit-adjacent sites. For example, five miles from downtown, on the Blue Line, there's a defunct race track once known as Suffolk Downs.
How's that going?
The Boston authorities approved a huge new transit-friendly dense development six years ago. Since then nothing has been built on the Boston half of the site.
Whose fault is that?
If you said that it's the fault of the developer who promised to build the project and then sat on their Texas billionaire asses, you're wrong, according to the business shills [Surely, editors? – Ed.] at The Boston Globe.
The real problem according to them is that Boston requires a portion of the apartments to be affordable, and it won't shtup the developers with huge decades-long tax cuts.
The Globe sees the choice as binary: either bribe the developer or leave the site empty.
That's not actually the complete list of options. The youngish tigers at the Globe may not remember this, but there was a time in America when government built hundreds of thousands of units of affordable housing. Today, hundreds of thousands of families still live in them.
More recently, in New York, a program called Mitchell-Lama succeeded in building hundreds of thousands of units of affordable housing:
By offering developers low-interest-rate mortgages that covered up to 95% of project costs, generous property tax breaks that reduced operating costs over time, and, sometimes, a ready-made site to build on, New York City and State funded the creation of permanent units, kept so by limiting developers’ profits and, initially, placing perpetual restrictions on how much a co-op share could be sold for and how much a rental apartment could be rented for.
We are aware that in recent years, the housing has become less affordable as owners have bought and flipped their units. That's something that could be easily tweaked.
In any event, why not try it at Suffolk Downs? The problem with bribing developers, as recommended by the Boston Globe, is the same as bribing the Mad King: it's not a purchase, it's a subscription. You have to keep paying the protection.
In other words, it's a racket.
In the meantime, subsidizing low and limited profit development organizations could hardly do worse than six years of futility in East Boston. If you're looking for a mojo generator that doesn't involve spending millions of tax dollars to line the pockets of rich a******s, look no further.
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