The reality of the situation in Cambridge is that, at the start of this now 42 year situation, the first regent in the City Manager operation, James Leo Sullivan expressed a desire to create “neighborhood associations.”
Sullivan had been fired in the 60s and rehired in 74, with this very strong goal in mind. As usual when dealing with this one city managership with 3, perhaps 4 faces, the words sound so nice and the reality is so different.
A whole bunch of interlocked groups have “appeared.” Trouble is that the true, most important function of so many of these groups is cheerleading for the City of Cambridge.
Over the years, I have seen a lot of lying, and a lot of corrupt behavior, a lot of which, in reality, acts to implement the goals of the city government.
The exchange is at: http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/news/20160311/rossi-to-retire-as-cambridge-city-manager-in-june#loadComment.
The relevant part is not the news story, but the comments on the news story.
Probably the most visible and perhaps the nastiest of the cheerleaders is Robert Winters.
Talking with the machine is like talking to a scripted responder. The words commonly deviate markedly from reality, but the basic pitch normally can be described with the comment “You cannot possibly be that stupid.”
In this case, Winters strongly disputed my position that Cambridge has been very destructive.
Winters claimed to have no knowledge of destruction at Alewife, the Cambridge Common or on the Charles River.
The following is a photo published on his blog. This photo was transmitted by the City of Cambridge as part of a puff piece bragging of Cambridge’s destruction of more than 3.4 acres of irreplaceable woodlands AT ALEWIFE.
Winters claimed, in his printed comment, that he had no knowledge of destruction at Alewife. The trees lining the edges of this photo formerly filled the entire area.
It is very difficult to plead stupidity when you have published a report which calls you a liar.
Winters also claimed stupidity on the destruction of the Charles River. He gave the impression of lack of knowledge of massive destruction. I referred him to the Charles River White Geese facebook page with its condensations of the blog reports, some photos, and links to the big reports on this blog.
Winters explained the destruction of the Cambridge Common using another standard pitch: difference of opinion. The people he talks to think it is an improvement. But the people he talks to have major lack of concern for reality.
Normal people when faced with the reality of the explanation of why Cambridge destroyed the 22 tree excellent grove at the Harvard Square entrance to the Cambridge Common sneer at Cambridge’s explanation.
Cambridge explanation in the first full paragraph of page 4 of the Environmental Notification Form was that those excellent, beautiful trees, were blocking the view of the monument.
Here is the environmental notification form. Double clicking brings each page up to a good size. Read the first full paragraph on 4. The words I just used are the real English translation of the bureaucratize.
Interestingly, after really nasty words, Mr. Winters does not seem to have responded to my replies. You can only go so far with falsehoods, and unsupported nastiness, even when you couch the language so as to give yourself deniability.
This mentality is the foundation for the group which really is the foundation of the destructiveness of the City of Cambridge. Winters is the most visible member, the supposed intellect in the organization.
But usually, they do not put their nonsense in print.
Here are before and after pictures at the Cambridge Common.
This outrage, of course, has been turned into a pittance on the Charles River, but it is a very visible outrage, an outrage very important and very familiar to a lot of people. The Cambridge Machine cannot lie their way around this.
I am in the process of posting a 20 minute video on YouTube concerning the outrages of January and February on Charles River with a great deal of reality as opposed to what comes out of the Cambridge Machine.....
