Results tagged “colorbostonist”

Just in case the prospect of death and destruction at the airport weren't enough, there's more news today in the ongoing saga of the route to the airport here in Boston. Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the contractor overseeing the Big Dig, has now announced that the bolts holding up ceiling panels in the Ted Williams tunnel - the ones that haven't already given out and caused a fatal ceiling collapse - may not be good for the long haul because the state's recent safety tests put too much load on the bolts. Color Bostonist cynical (and we're not alone in feeling this way), but when the same people who failed to provide a non-lethal tunnel say that the same thing that already killed one person may happen again and when it does it won't be their fault, we're more than a little bit skeptical. We'll just keep using the Callahan Tunnel for the time being, thank you very much.

When it isn't wrangling about healthcare, the state legislature has lately been wrangling about whether or not to let illegal immigrants who attend high school in Massachusetts pay in-state tuition at U. Mass. Other people have analyzed this matter more thoroughly and interestingly than Bostonist cares to, but Adrian Walker's column in today's Globe made Bostonist notice just how weird this country's relationship with illegal immigration is: On the one hand, plenty of people are unabashedly opposed to letting illegal immigrants pay in-state rates. But the folks who are campaigning for the bill that would allow the lower rates are illegal immigrants, and Bostonist finds something singularly odd about the whole thing: Clean-cut, culurally American teenagers are going around the state, aggressively campaigning for a proposed bill, but they're only using their first names because they're technically illegal and subject to seizure and deportation by the INS at any time. Of course, that doesn't happen, and none of the opponents of the bill, who rail unrelentingly against illegal immigration, are dropping dimes on these kids either (unlike our friendly live-free-or-die neighbors to the north, who tried unsuccessfully to arrest illegal immigrants in public places, on the theory that they were trespassing on America). Color Bostonist cynical and overly analytical, but this seems to us like a tacit acceptance of the economic benefits of having a permanent underclass: "Feel free to stick around, but no education for you!." Is Bostonist's bleeding-heart liberalism (and the fact that we are married to an immigrant who, despite being legal, has had her share of idiotic bureaucratic difficulties with INS) clouding our ability to understand the grave danger that well-educated young people pose to our nation? Dear readers, please set us straight.

Bostonist learned from today's Globe that Boston City Councilman Paul Scapicchio (about whom some unrelated, but interesting, news here) wants to change the rules regarding affordable housing lotteries to give priority to neighborhood residents. In the past, similar rules were rejected on the (probably correct, we suspect) theory that favoring neighborhood residents would perpetuate racial segregation (because new housing in, say, a mostly white neighborhood would end up going mostly to white people). But Scapicchio and others are backing the move now because, Scapicchio says, the problem of racial segregation in Boston has been supplanted by gentrification. To this, Bostonist can only say, unironically, "Really?"

And ridden they are, against all odds, sneering at Isaac Newton as they glide down the street. Their Boston following is fanatical and appears to have good deal more fun than the general populace. They form paramilitary squadrons to further their craft, bring chopper culture to Peru, and enliven the streets of this city a little bit just by going for a bike ride. It's almost enough to send Bostonist down to the basement with a how-to book and a propane torch.