An update on Everett United

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It’s a very small step in the right direction, but it’s (slightly) better than nothing: a letter to the editor, signed by various Everett personalities, was posted to the Everett United Facebook page yesterday, and it included the phrase “Everett United, a Wynn supported group.”

The letter is reprinted in full below:

Everett has always been a tough and resilient city.  Like our much lauded football team, we play hard.  Multigenerational rivalries, competition and decades old slights and offenses long forgotten add to a complex culture.  Politics here is a beloved full contact sport.

Those of us who call Everett home have been both shocked and amazed to see long time rivals, disparate ethnic communities and diverse political factions coming together united in a common vision for Everett’s future.

The Wynn Resorts proposal for a world-class resort complex in Everett has sparked imaginations and ignited Everett pride.  It has made us question our ideas about what our community can be and the kind of city we might just be able to leave to future generations.  Many preconceived notions about our little city and our inherent inferiority complex are truly being questioned.  Just listen to the reactions as neighbors look at the project renderings with the gleaming tower, lush landscaping and waterfront parks.  “I can’t believe that could be in Everett!” is heard over and over again.

The financial implications are truly game changing with a one time payment of $30 million, ongoing yearly payments of $25 million, additional tax revenue from hotel and food taxes and much more. This turbo-boost to our City’s beleaguered tax base is a foundation upon which we can build.  There will be a vigorous debate about how these funds are allocated and how we agree on shared priorities for the future of our city but this staggering opportunity is within our reach.

People across the city have come together to support this project and this new vision for Everett’s future.  Over 1500 signs promoting the Saturday, June 22 vote blanket the city.  Everett United, a Wynn supported group made up of Everett residents and business owners, has over 800 members and a large, enthusiastic and dedicated team of volunteer precinct captains, door-to-door canvassers and phone callers spreading the word to fellow neighbors.  Their very active Facebook site is closely monitored by thousands of Everett residents supporting and monitoring the project’s progress.  18 current elected officials, the Chamber of Commerce, over 100 local businesses and numerous others have come together to endorse the project.  Everett’s leaders have put politics aside to stand together in a way none of us have ever seen before.

Ultimately the decision on which community gets the sole license for our region, the billion-dollar plus investment, and all the jobs and benefits that come with it lies with the Massachusetts Gaming Commission.  This is a competitive process with Everett, Milford and East Boston all in contention for one available license. Everett is United and standing together as never before.  It is crucial that everyone comes out to vote on Saturday, June 22 to make our voices heard and show everyone that no one wants it more, needs it more or deserves it more than the City of Everett.  It’s our time.

Mary Boever
Robin Brickley
Paul Dobbins
Tom Fiorentino
Vincent Ragucci
Roger Thistle

This is, of course, verification of what we already knew, essentially. Nevertheless, it’s good to see a public record of it. Obviously, it’s not nearly enough: one letter to the editor, stuffed in amidst a flurry of other Facebook and web site messages that make no reference to the Wynn Resorts/Saint Consulting Group/Everett United nexus, will reach only a small percentage of Everett United’s audience. And even among those who read the letter, the phrase “Wynn supported group” may not click unless it’s repeated prominently over and over.

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No Saint in this game: Is Wynn Resorts using Everett United to gain casino support?

Miscellaneous, Politics, , , , , , , , ,
An image on Everett United's Facebook page.
An image on Everett United’s Facebook page.

(UPDATE 5/31/2013 6:48 PM EST: The headline of this post has been changed from “No Saint in this game: Wynn Resorts uses Everett United to gain casino support” to “No Saint in this game: Is Wynn Resorts using Everett United to gain casino support?” Additionally, per Seth Cargiuolo’s request, I have removed a screenshot of his Facebook profile that included a photo of his minor children. This photo has since been replaced with a screenshot of his newest profile.)

(UPDATE 6/3/2013 11:34 AM EST: I have updated this post to reflect confirmation from one of the Facebook commenters that she did not delete her own post on the Everett United Facebook page.)

Several weeks ago while scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed, I ran across a post that had been Liked by an acquaintance from my old hometown of Everett, Massachusetts. The post was written by Everett United, a group I’d never heard of before, and it concerned a new casino being proposed for Everett by Las Vegas casino/resort mogul Steve Wynn.

Out of curiosity, I began reading through the group’s Facebook page. Having lived for nine years in Everett, it seemed improbable to me that anyone would find it a good idea to place a casino there. A small suburb just north of Boston, Everett had just under 42,000 residents in the 2010 census, and its median household income is $48,319 (about 8.4% below the national average). From long personal experience, I know that Everett is, in every way, the polar opposite of glamorous.

The Facebook page for Everett United, which launched in March, describes the group as “a coalition of local residents and business leaders who support the idea of a world-class resort hotel and entertainment complex in Everett.” The group’s dedicated web site, EverettUnited.com, contains a similar statement: “Everett United are your neighbors…the clerk at the checkout counter…your friends and co-workers. Together, we view the Wynn Resort and Hotel in Everett as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to greatly improve our city and quality of life. It’s a project we need, and deserve, more than any other community” (ellipses in original).

The objective of the group is to drum up support for a June 22 citywide referendum in Everett, required under state casino law, in which Everett residents will decide whether to approve the host agreement between Wynn Resorts and their city. If they do, the proposed hotel and casino complex will then be one of three contestants for a Greater Boston casino license, whose winner will be decided by the Massachusetts gambling commission.

Continue reading No Saint in this game: Is Wynn Resorts using Everett United to gain casino support? →

Underground theater

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New York filmmaker Joshua Z Weinstein took an above-average interest in subway dance performers. (By “above-average,” I mean he glanced up from his newspaper long enough to notice them, which is more than can be said for most of us.)

It’s a good thing he did, too, because he deftly managed to elevate what can often seem an irritating (and invariably loud) performance into something approaching art:

After weeks of calls, I managed to book an afternoon shoot with some of the men, who call themselves the W.A.F.F.L.E. (We Are Family for Life Entertainment) crew: J-Black, Goofy, Boy Aero, Lex Aero, John-O and Sonic. I focused my lens on their hands seizing poles and feet fluttering in the air. As I zoomed in, I noticed that these self-taught artists are not just part of an underground subculture; their graceful moves also evoke a classical ballet.

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The amorality of economics

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In an easily-digestible piece for The New York Review of Books, Paul Krugman explains why economic austerity became so mainstream so fast:

Everyone loves a morality play. “For the wages of sin is death” is a much more satisfying message than “Shit happens.” We all want events to have meaning.

When applied to macroeconomics, this urge to find moral meaning creates in all of us a predisposition toward believing stories that attribute the pain of a slump to the excesses of the boom that precedes it—and, perhaps, also makes it natural to see the pain as necessary, part of an inevitable cleansing process. When Andrew Mellon told Herbert Hoover to let the Depression run its course, so as to “purge the rottenness” from the system, he was offering advice that, however bad it was as economics, resonated psychologically with many people (and still does).

By contrast, Keynesian economics rests fundamentally on the proposition that macroeconomics isn’t a morality play—that depressions are essentially a technical malfunction. As the Great Depression deepened, Keynes famously declared that “we have magneto trouble”—i.e., the economy’s troubles were like those of a car with a small but critical problem in its electrical system, and the job of the economist is to figure out how to repair that technical problem.

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“Shall we do this weekly?” A statistical jaunt through View From Your Window history

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The daily View From Your Window feature.
The daily View From Your Window feature.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the two years I’ve just spent in grad school (an all-too-short, intercontinental reprieve from working life that just ended with Thursday’s graduation ceremony), it’s that diversions from studying and writing papers are absolutely crucial in order to stay sane.

Enter The Dish. Longtime readers of my blog (hello, family) will know that I’m a Dish obsessive, and I probably spend more time scrolling through its contents than on most other sites combined. One of the blog’s most popular features is the View From Your Window, which is really two features in one. In the daily version, Andrew Sullivan posts a reader-submitted picture of a view from a window, with a caption revealing where the photo was taken. And in the weekly feature that runs every Saturday, Sullivan posts a view from a window without any caption, inviting readers instead to guess the location. Dish readers are scarily accurate, generally finding the exact window of whatever building the photographer was in when (s)he snapped the photo. (And yes, I will be sending in a guess for Saturday’s View From Your Window contest.)

Since I’ve spent much of the last month or so cramming in last-minute papers, reports, and presentations, the need to escape has become more pronounced as well. And so that is how I came to catalog — sporadically, in fits and starts between bursts of academic inspiration — every daily and weekly View From Your Window post in the “modern era” of VFYW — the honorary category I’ve awarded to the library of posts starting from the very first weekly contest on June 9, 2010. (The source file is available here.) Continue reading “Shall we do this weekly?” A statistical jaunt through View From Your Window history →

Like shooting fish in a barrel

Politics, ,
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x92OWufIWcU]

Anthony Weiner officially announced his candidacy for mayor of New York City on Wednesday:

The improbable campaign that Mr. Weiner, a Democrat, unveiled on Wednesday hinges on his image as a shunned outsider whose political solitude has unburdened him from coddling New York’s powerful special interests and freed him to speak uncomfortable truths, according to those close to him.

A scrappy political street fighter, never known for forging alliances or sharing the limelight, Mr. Weiner said in an interview that “to some degree, this is my most natural footing.”

Of the endorsements that his rivals are collecting like trophies this year, he said, “I’ve never really structured a campaign that way.”

Instead, after a self-imposed two-year exile, the 48-year-old former congressman will initiate a series of neighborly public outings intended to showcase him interacting with ordinary New Yorkers and send a clear message: The scandal has passed, and a tough city is prepared to hear him out. That process is expected to start on Thursday, when Mr. Weiner visits a subway station in Harlem.

“There may be, or are, many New Yorkers who would never vote for me,” he said. “Even those New Yorkers, I want to have a conversation with.”

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