Fiddling While Rome Burns

Yes, let's all eat to the beat ! Let's all just melt in this wonderful summer weather and forget everything going on, or NOT going on, as the case may be, and enjoy a few escapist pleasures in Fall River brought to you by Mayor "Tumbleweed" Flanagan and his BIG LIE Machine, the Fall River Herald News (HN). After all, every local political neo-fascist needs a news scrubbing and persona creation machine like the HN, the local rag of rags newspaper with direct ties to the Tumbleweed administration. So what you are reading these days on the pages of the HN, the plethora of good news stories about Mayor T-Weed and happy news fluff pieces that seem to be given more news space than existing REAL news about Fall River, are carefully designed to keep the bad reality hidden and present the picture of this City Tumbleweed Flanagan and the HN want you to see.

Sorry to say, but this City needs action on it's ever growing crime problem, not a Mayor taking credit for ideas that have been proven winners for decades elsewhere, like farmer's markets and arts festivals available to the general public, as opposed to the wealthy few. There are NUMEROUS such happenings across this country, and have been so for many years. This is far from a new idea. The fact it has not existed here for generations the way His Weedness and the HN are now touting  bespeaks more of the fractured, largely ethnic and self- restrictive population sectors of the City than it does any previous administrations lack of activity to make it happen. The Mayor taking credit for it never had to occur, yet his Donkey face, thank to the HN, has been planted squarely on the effort.

Do you mean to tell me that the arts community in this City could not have achieved this melding of the two forces, local agriculture and local arts, and work with previous administration's to gain the permits needed to accomplish this feat? If it could not, they are truly a feeble lot and do not understand the power of their own economic potential , which would give them power to get things done here, instead of sitting back and not forcing in a more efficient manner the full development of the Arts District. If you need a consultant for no pay, I am available!

 Frankly, the development of the Arts as a local economic driver for property value increases and saving and increasing the number and profitability of the local small businesses, especially the ethnic restaurant trade which is one of this regions hidden jewels, is woefully underdeveloped, and may be this City's last real indigenous chance at survival. If you looked elsewhere in Massachusetts, and across the country, such Arts based economic development is working quite successfully, after the recession and as a direct answer to it. In fact, it was a major subject discussed at the Annual Mass Municipal Association (MMA) meeting last year. I wonder if any of our local elected officials and legislative delegation were there - or maybe they were too busy shopping, playing golf , fishing, or filling their trunks with booze to hear about it! I don't recall it ever being discussed at a City Council meeting. Maybe I missed it, that is quite possible, but I've never heard or seen a word about it, have you? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

This mayor, our own Mr. Tumbleweed, has made a procession of local neighborhood visits that reflect the old joke about eating a Chinese food meal...a short while after eating , you want more. His visits are similarly unsubstantial to meet the real hunger citizens have to see their lives, and the municipality, improve. This mayor talks and glad hands people to death, and delivers NOTHING but bread and circus, just like the old Roman dictators. And while our own version of Nero fiddles with happy news and pretty pictures around town, the City's citizens are being robbed, beaten, drugged and shot in numbers that he promised long ago would be reduced.

Crime, violent, gang and drug related violent crime has reached epidemic proportion, especially in the Housing Authority properties. Even one of this City's grand toads, the Director of the Housing Authority, who once tried to stand up to this tin pot tyrant of a Mayor, has become a docile lapdog once he was threatened with his job, of that I have no doubt. I also have no doubt that Mayor Tumbleweed has started using the jobs at the Housing Authority as his own patronage haven. More proof that Tumbleweed Flanagan is no better than any of his predecessors. In fact he might even be worse, because he's lied about so many things in opposition to what he claimed and promised he'd do even Mayor Correia is starting to look good in comparison. Especially in some financial areas, Correia was right. Tumbleweed has no clue about public finance, and it's quite clear by his appointments so far, doesn't want one.

Last year's budget was just balanced in the very final seconds, or so we hope. It's still not clear if any line items were purposely overspent. I'm sure we may never know since this Mayor has kept on the audit firm of Hague and Sahady, the firm unable to determine how much cash has been incorrectly accounted for, or is missing , or disappeared. They claim it's not a problem, but anyone who understands accounting knows that if you can't account for things down to the penny, at least for general ledger balancing purposes, and the issue is C-A-S-H, you cannot say whether things really are OK. The amount of "misplaced" cash on the ledgers, at last report, was "down" to $1.5 million, give or TAKE a few grand. But Tumbleweed broke yet another promise, because insiders I know specifically asked Tumbleweed before he took the oath of office if Hauge and Sahady would remain, and they assured me a huge change would be made. One must now assume that the inside info about the City's books and financials are so bad, that there are so many bodies buried within the bowels of this involved rancid collection of incestuous political harpies, that it's too dangerous to the powers that be who have traditionally run this City to risk being found out without bringing this whole rotten castle down on their heads. That would end everyone's gravy train, including Tumbleweed's.

 Oh yes, Mayor Tumbleweed has now become the grand keeper of secrets, the Templar Knight of the Holy Grail of financial scandals committed by political figures involved with this City in the last couple of decades. Funny thing is that  every rational citizen of Fall River knows someday they will hear about them and are waiting for the news and a final cleansing. It's too bad the pols don't realize this as well.The one who brings down the ugly beast will forever be greatly remembered and revered. It's too bad some pol doesn't stand up to this task. Instead we have a newspaper running articles and letters  praising the passing of a long time serving  ethnic mayor who's greatest claim to fame was being found guilty of crimes against the public interest while serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the Fall River Housing Authority (FRHA). The real mind blower was that after conviction, he still served in that capacity, that the powers that  be at the time didn't throw his thieving rear end out of office. But that's the nature of electoral service in this political backwater called Fall River.

And what about crime? Sure there was that big public push, covered extensively by the HN, when Racine became Chief and many officers volunteered  to help attack  the dirty rathole of unserved warrants, unserved because of personnel cuts over the recent past, especially under Correia. But that was a long time ago. Since then the violent crimes have grown again. There is no substitute for officers in service, and adding only a couple will not do. Crime, and the growing gangs in the City, thrive on such bad news. But our Mayor Tumbleweed has no answers, only a "Top Ten" list which takes the place of police footwork city wide in the hopes a few good bits of news will offset, IN THE PUBLIC'S MIND,  the  hideous daily grind of shootings, drug dealing and home invasions that seem epidemic. And again, there is no official stand by Mayor Tumbleweed on the one thing that is destroying this City more than poverty , unemployment and poor education...DRUG ADDICTION , especially of our ever growing young population. From  Mayor Tumbleweed and the HN you hear N-O-T-H-I-N-G. It's hard work, and will take generations to fix. It's not a "sexy" political issue. It's bad news for a politician, not a winner in their eyes. That's why you'll never hear of Mayor Tumbleweed's  initiatives in bringing the forces of Recovery together to tackle this biggest of all Fall River problems. You see , it's easier to steal someone else's ideas of a farmer's market and arts exhibit combined, giving them a back alley near the "Justice Center" (HA!) and having some new photo-op pictures taken for the HN. That doesn't take real commitment, only a politician's sociopath mind for good press. No, solving a decades long, generations cursing REAL issue like drug addiction and the crime related thereto is just too messy and too much of a loser with which to get involved. Tumbleweed won't do it...he's too much of a phony politician and hasn't the guts to try.

There are so many things this mayor is NOT doing, so many areas he's either back tracked on promises or just plain lied about, they boggle my mind, which is no easy task. I must admit to a sense of exasperation where Mayor Tumbleweed is concerned. It's rather obvious his mind is way beyond Fall River, that he has no intention of solving deep rooted issues that threaten this City. He will not be here long enough, which given what I've witnessed so far is not a bad thing. Yes, there are problems with his ridiculous decision with regard to the YMCA and his seemingly paradoxical support for low-income housing at the Wampanoag Mills, with the still unbalanced budget for FY2011, and the growing yearly disparity between the revenue needed to run the City's most basic functions and this City's ever increasing related expenses, a gap that one or two year grants will never be able to bridge.

 Yes, Virginia, there is a thing called municipal bankruptcy and it is coming soon to a neighborhood near you. But don't tell Mayor Tumbleweed Photo-op, you might upset his plans, like sitting there for a beautiful picture of him and some "Eat 2 the Beat" food vendor, smiling that DONKEY grin, that "What , Me Worry" look for all the world to see. That's his speed. Nothing substantial, just the flash, the pretty pictures conjured in the minds of he and his Press Agent, the HN. Fiddling while Fall River burns. Fiddling while this City heads for the poor house. It's already there. But you'd never know it listening to Tumbleweed and the HN. After all, he plans to just roll away anyways, roll away just like a tumbleweed , for something bigger and better.

Don't you folks get it yet?