Of Millionaires and Snitchin'

Oh, the irony. On New Year's Day, the Globe reported on the Boston area's high rate of millionaires (one in every 20 households, apparently) and on January 2, the mayor crowed in his inaugural address about the city's bright economic future and then suggested the answer to stopping violent crime is for pesky bystanders to stop being such chickens and start testifying. Right, because the root cause of high crime is, um, a lack of witnesses? Bostonist understands that Menino wants to carry on the dumb-but-passionate momentum of his campaign against "Stop Snitchin'" shirts, but seriously, can we talk about segregation, income disparity, and the fact that most of the millionaires who are carrying us boldly into the future live in the western suburbs and have no interest in Boston's schools or police? Maybe someone should start making t-shirts that say "Stop Investin' Your Money in the City Where You Made It" or "Stop Creatin' a Tax Code that Forces Corporations that Want to Extract Profit from a City to Do More than Just Create a Few New Service Sector Jobs." Perhaps that would encourage the mayor can get on his high horse about those problems, and t-shirts like that would definitely have ironic, hipster appeal.

Image courtesy of the International Association of Millionaires