Monday, March 07, 2005
Saving Bechtel's Savings
Signaling that the 'Save Bechtel' tattoo is again rippling across Team Reform's drum-line, Willard Mitt's legal counsel, Mark D. Nielsen, recently tried to again yammer Massachusetts AG Tom Reilly into blaming the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority for the financial problems associated with the Big Dig.
Nielsen, who has laughingly been called a Construction Law specialist, is seemingly trying to get Reilly to blame the Turnpike for providing poor oversight to the project, a position that would take Bechtel off the 'hey youse guys certainly ran a crappy project' hot-seat. (source: Boston Herald, 3/5/2005; Boston Globe, 3/6/2005)
So is the Fraud Governor trying to use his legal counsel to dampen Bechtel's potential Big Dig cost-recovery lawsuit liability?
Well, Romney does have ties to the construction giant.
He allowed them $1.3 billion in contracts (source: Associated Press, 6/2/2000) when he was the Salt Lake City Winter Games chef - despite their having authored a flawed 20-volume study that apparently underestimated the cost of the games. (source: cfo.com)
And SLOC hired several of Bechtel's top executives as senior vice presidents.
And Romney's $150,000-a-year Loathsome Spokesman once fawned that the Fraud Governor "has a great deal of respect for Bechtel" and that the company "is one of the world's finest consulting firms." (source: Boston Globe, 2/28/2003)
But are these ties to Bechtel reason enough to try to protect the company from liability lawsuits, or does Romney have another agenda in mind?
And what happened to that Big Dig audit that Romney promised back when he was Fraud Candidate? As KMarx writes, today, Romney promised "to audit and personally inspect Big Dig spending." Or was Willard Mitt referring to another Big Dig?
Snow Job
Remember how Willard Mitt stood tall in the wake of Katherine Abbott's firing, and declared that the Mass Highway Department would heretofore plow Parkways that thentofore had been(tofore) the responsibility of the Department of (MDC job) Conservation and Recreation?
Well look what the Rat dragged in.
Seems that the MHD/DCR snow plow policy was not Willard Mitt's after all. It had been designed by ... Katherine Abbott, just one fey day before the Blizzard of 2005 cost her a year of pension salary average.
According to those who purport to know these things, "Abbott had signed a memo of understanding between MassHighway and DCR (nee MDC) the day before the kids were hit."
Zounds. And now its Romney's reform?
Kudos to Mostly Harmless for fleshing out this tale of Romneyesque duplicity. MH ironically notes that MassHighway "only provides snow removal from curb-to-curb. In other words, they don't do sidewalks."
We're only surprised that Team Reform didn't try to solve the sidewalk plowing problem by ... removing the sidewalks.
Signaling that the 'Save Bechtel' tattoo is again rippling across Team Reform's drum-line, Willard Mitt's legal counsel, Mark D. Nielsen, recently tried to again yammer Massachusetts AG Tom Reilly into blaming the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority for the financial problems associated with the Big Dig.
Nielsen, who has laughingly been called a Construction Law specialist, is seemingly trying to get Reilly to blame the Turnpike for providing poor oversight to the project, a position that would take Bechtel off the 'hey youse guys certainly ran a crappy project' hot-seat. (source: Boston Herald, 3/5/2005; Boston Globe, 3/6/2005)
So is the Fraud Governor trying to use his legal counsel to dampen Bechtel's potential Big Dig cost-recovery lawsuit liability?
Well, Romney does have ties to the construction giant.
He allowed them $1.3 billion in contracts (source: Associated Press, 6/2/2000) when he was the Salt Lake City Winter Games chef - despite their having authored a flawed 20-volume study that apparently underestimated the cost of the games. (source: cfo.com)
And SLOC hired several of Bechtel's top executives as senior vice presidents.
And Romney's $150,000-a-year Loathsome Spokesman once fawned that the Fraud Governor "has a great deal of respect for Bechtel" and that the company "is one of the world's finest consulting firms." (source: Boston Globe, 2/28/2003)
But are these ties to Bechtel reason enough to try to protect the company from liability lawsuits, or does Romney have another agenda in mind?
And what happened to that Big Dig audit that Romney promised back when he was Fraud Candidate? As KMarx writes, today, Romney promised "to audit and personally inspect Big Dig spending." Or was Willard Mitt referring to another Big Dig?
Snow Job
Remember how Willard Mitt stood tall in the wake of Katherine Abbott's firing, and declared that the Mass Highway Department would heretofore plow Parkways that thentofore had been(tofore) the responsibility of the Department of (MDC job) Conservation and Recreation?
Well look what the Rat dragged in.
Seems that the MHD/DCR snow plow policy was not Willard Mitt's after all. It had been designed by ... Katherine Abbott, just one fey day before the Blizzard of 2005 cost her a year of pension salary average.
According to those who purport to know these things, "Abbott had signed a memo of understanding between MassHighway and DCR (nee MDC) the day before the kids were hit."
Zounds. And now its Romney's reform?
Kudos to Mostly Harmless for fleshing out this tale of Romneyesque duplicity. MH ironically notes that MassHighway "only provides snow removal from curb-to-curb. In other words, they don't do sidewalks."
We're only surprised that Team Reform didn't try to solve the sidewalk plowing problem by ... removing the sidewalks.
