0. Introduction.
1. Caveat.
2. “Special Permits” — Yet another non stop lie.
3. Poor dears want to know if Special Permit “Protections” are real.
4. The real game?
5. Summary.
0. Introduction.
Zoning is major in Cambridge politics, and the corruption in that process is the same corruption which is the basis for the outrages on the Charles River, at Alewife, on the Cambridge Common, and in so many other attacks on the environment and on resident animals.
1. Caveat.
The rot in the government of the City of Cambridge and the fake groups which keep it in power is such that it is impossible to tell the knaves from the fools.
The reality is that a tiny minority dominates politics in the City of Cambridge, and key in their domination is the non stop lying that the Cambridge government is holier than thou.
A tiny subminority controls the minority through, of course, lies.
The trouble is that the rest of the members of the controlling group are fully sold and committed to the lies upon which this entire House of Cards rest.
The commitment of the fools to the cause of the knaves is unswerving. It is impossible to tell the difference and it is thus silly to try to distinguish between the knaves and their totally committed fools.
2. “Special Permits” — Yet another non stop lie.
I have more zoning victories in Cambridge than anybody else not employed by the City of Cambridge. A major difference between my zoning changes and so many of those of the City of Cambridge’s staff is that my zoning changes do what I say they do.
A key part of the repeated lies out of Cambridge employees and their fake groups is the “Special Permit” concept.
The concept behind special permits is the difference between “base zoning” and the zoning the drafters want obeyed.
The difference between the two is that the drafters do not want developers to obey “base zoning”. They want the developers to provide development which complies with terms needed to obtain the Special Permits.
Then the Development Department and its fake groups run around yelling about how great the Base Zoning is for people concerned about overdevelopment.
Lies of omission control so much of the development activities of the City of Cambridge and its fake groups. The lie of omission on Special Permits is exactly that the writers do not want the Base Zoning to be obeyed.
3. Poor dears want to know if Special Permit “Protections” are real.
Activists in the local fake group are asking the City Council to find out whether base zonings are real.
This is a common sort of question coming out of fake group activists in various parts of the city after destructive zoning changes they have fought for are found to be destructive. They get oh so distressed, and frequently file further zoning changes to undo their supposedly inadvertent errors. The errors the have fought for come into reality because they do not care what is reality. They care to fight for what they have been told to fight for.
Then comes the common follow up. The scoundrels lie of their sainthood by trying to undo the terrible thing they have done. The key is that the vote on zoning matters requires 6 for a change (or more) in both directions.
So when they are doing their dirty tricks, all that is needed to kill the dirty tricks is 4 votes, but the fake correction requires the standard 6 (or more) votes to pass. There is a big difference between getting 4 votes for a position and getting 6 votes for the same position.
4. The real game?
The fake groups are fighting to destroy the zoning ordinance through creating a Master Plan which will then be introduced into the zoning ordinance as a basis for variances and special permits (never said of course).
Da, da, the next sale pitch for the Master Plan destruction will be the lie that the Master Plan will protect against Special Permit abuses.
Exactly the opposite, the Master Plan will be that much more fraud in place of real protections.
5. Summary.
I have attempted to pass on the following in response to the distress of the guilty on Special Permits. Naturally, it would have been censored. Reality is so distressing.
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The reality is that the Special Permit process is yet another con game out of the City of Cambridge and its Development Department.
These fake protections turn out to be meaningless if the developer satisfies the conditions required for the Special Permit. To the extent there is any discretion involved, people who will step on the City Manager's toes have only have to look at Healy's destruction of the life of Malvina Monteiro when she stood up to him, followed by universal condemnation by relevant courts followed by the total indifference of the City Council to having the power to fire Healy without all those protections Healy had. The City Council was totally not concerned about "reprehensible" from the judge, "ample evidence of . . . outrageous misbehavior" from the appeals court panel, and more than triple penal damages from the jury.
An excellent example of the con game was the destruction of zoning protections on the north side of Memorial Drive in exchange for fake protections which were clearly fake. The fake group which kept the neighborhood silent about that outrage has graduated to the State House voted destruction of hundreds of trees and a whole bunch of other stuff they tell people to ignore while yelling of supposed concern for the Charles River / the neighborhood.
But their leader is resigning before the victims see the destruction.
