Lynn obviously has serious work to do, with the 3rd highest crime rate in the state, 106th in the entire country. Living right next door most of my life, I've always had a vested interest in the city. It's impacted me for the better - my family owned a business there for around 20 years. It's also produced the absolute low point of my entire life thus far, when my then 18 year old cousin was shot down in the city by a concealed handgun, becoming just another statistic.
Mayor Chip Clancy says he hasn't heard outcries about high crime rates at any recent neighborhood meetings. I'd like to know what neighborhoods those meetings are in. Lynn, like most cities, has its safe areas as well as its dangerous ones. While there may not be any outcry in Ward 1, that doesn't mean there aren't people who are literally crying. At least six families are crying about someone who was robbed from their lives forever in Lynn this year.
Lynn can't become a prosperous city again until it figures out how to tackle its crime problem, how to get community members involved and how to mitigate and prevent the underlying problems that fuel violent crime. It's no easy task and will take some time, but the city has got to realize it has a serious problem on its hand - that there is that outcry, even if it's only bubbling at the surface.
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Obama v. Patrick
Posted by Jon_Keller
What a differenceOn more than a few occasions during the campaign, we discussed the links and comparisons between Barack Obama and Gov. Deval Patrick - their similar educational backgrounds, the fact that they shared the same political guru (David Axelrod), and the striking similarities between their rhetoric and campaign styles, right down to copping each other's turns of phrase. Coming as they did during a period in which the Patrick governorship was not going so well, to put it mildly, these comparisons at times led us to speculate apprehensively about what an Obama presidency might bring.
It's awfully early to draw hard conclusions, but it only seems fair to re-visit this exercise and note the contrast between the way each man spent his first few post-election weeks.
By December first of 2006, Patrick had accomplished two things - the unnecessary alienation of much of the local press corps with a caustic speech to the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association finger-wagging about how their reporters had been blind to the story of his ascendance; and the appointment of a completely unprepared family friend, Joan Wallace-Benjamin, as his chief of staff, a disastrous choice that lasted barely three error-filled months into 2007 before experienced political hands were brought in to stabilize the administration's internal and external game plan.
Obama? Experienced, savvy chief of staff, check; seasoned appointees to key economic and foreign policy positions, reaching well beyond his circle of friends and political allies, check; an unprecedented plethora of press conferences and a couple of high-profile personal one-on-ones, expertly handled with grace and humor by the president-elect (and Mrs. Obama), feeding media hunger for news while seizing immediate control of messaging, check.
It is the difference between the behavior of an arrogant neophyte who doesn't know what he doesn't know and that of an experienced politician eager to put the b.s of the campaign behind him and get down to the hard business of governing. Viva la difference!
And Jon Keller's comments have what exactly to do with Lynn's crime other than you wanted to post it?
Gov. Deval Patrick pledged to reform the way business gets done on Beacon Hill but continues to fill his administration with loyalists and stock the state judiciary with campaign supporters.
The latest Patrick backer to land on the bench is Kenneth King, a Newton lawyer and associate professor at Suffolk Law School who was tapped by the governor this week for the Middlesex Juvenile Court. Records show King gave Patrick’s campaign $200 in 2005 and $100 in 2006.
Also this week, Patrick appointed PR exec Jacqueline Conrad and Assumption College CEO Mark Bilotta to the Massachusetts Health and Educational Facilities Authority board. Bilotta has given $875 to the governor’s campaign since 2005, including a $250 donation just last month. Conrad has donated $250, records show.
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