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Deputy fire chief to become next fire commissioner

The Globe reports on Mayor Walsh's announcement this morning that he'll be naming Joseph Finn as the next permanent head of the Boston Fire Department.

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Comments

SOON!

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Finn as commissioner what a joke, the union brought and own the Mayor the fix was in before the False committee ... Oops FACET committee even did their phoney search... Finn was no initiator of the mediation program or harassment & discrimination concerns it came out of the lawsuit from 4 female firefighters that sued the department, Finn has always lived in Milton never boston but tried to vote as Dorchester resident ... The department will be set back 50 years ... To bad and what a waste of taxpayer money on a fake search

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Finn as commissioner what a joke, the union brought and own the Mayor the fix was in before the False committee ... Oops FACET committee even did their phoney search... Finn was no initiator of the mediation program or harassment & discrimination concerns it came out of the lawsuit from 4 female firefighters that sued the department, Finn has always lived in Milton never boston but tried to vote as Dorchester resident ... The department will be set back 50 years ... To bad and what a waste of taxpayer money on a fake search

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Could your information be any more wrong? He doesn't even live in Milton its Quincy!

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He can live outside the city. Just saying. But now, he has to move in. I guess. It's a good appointment, the FD and city will benefit from it.

No, really. So, simple vote up/down, but I think it's a good appointment.

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The people spoke on Election Day, and loudly and clearly expressed a desire to return to this kind of machine politics. We get the government we ask for.

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Never underestimate the stupidity of the American voter. Look no further than Pennsylvania Ave.

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Thanks, was getting bored of the "add 'in bed' to a sentence" meme.

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Adam, if you're still trying to defend this current administration, you're a dying breed. Even the most extreme leftists are quick to distance themselves from this guy.

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Yes, Obama has serious faults - he was never the liberal we'd hoped he'd be - but if you compare economy under the current regime with that under the previous one, I'll take the former any day. In any case, you're being silly if you think the left's disenchantment with him is something new, as opposed to something that started not long after he took office.

More important, though, I'm at a loss to explain why you decided to inject national politics into a discussion about a purely local issue, except that, for some reason, rightwingers love to do that and I guess you're just unable to help yourself.

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Because I'm disappointed with the current administration, I'm a right winger. Got it.

Furthermore, as you're well aware, my response was to a comment, I'll concede it was not relevant to the topic of the original post, but relevant to the comment in which I responded.

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who dislikes Obama a "Rightwinger"? Because i'm an atheist and undoubtedly believe in science, but most certainly dislikes Obama. Maybe you're the one who's a political extremist.

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Wait so only believers can be conservative by that logic? Scientists can only be left?

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The left's take on it. Same as their argument that anyone who is slightly conservative is a racist.

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The 101st Keyboard Brigade is not in the least "slightly" conservative. Not everybody whose post appears here is a member, but most of the anonymous rightwingers who try to post here are.

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someone doesn't agree with your fantasy liberal utopia, doesn't mean im a rightwinger. Im FAR from a tea bagger, im just not a socialist!

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...but know that this is a local story.

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..crap.

He's got the angry white guy screech about his presence in the White house and he's got shrill progressives in a twist because we aren't like sexy sexy Europe yet.

I'm enjoying the spectacle and how it demonstrates the similarity of the screechy sides of this right left thing.

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To get the money needed for something like a mayor's job you have to grub money from corporate or big labor sources.

Pick yer poison.

There are three elements in a state of dynamic equilibrium.

1. The Speculators who have some project to sell.

They use leverage to get the most sympathetic shill on board. Includes, grifters, developers, pr types and chamber of commerce boosters.

2. Contented affluent Ditzes.

They mainly care about style over substance things.

3. The Disgruntled.

They are complex and multi faceted which reduces their coherence.

Mumbles was able to work the PR leverage from the speculators while coddling the ditzes and peeling off enough disgruntled to have a working game plan.

It would be interesting to see how these archetypes were expressed across time.

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Did I miss a Very Important Political Science course somewhere?

Maybe Marty Walsh won because he got the most votes. Big Money can buy air time, convince some voters to go their way, but the reality is that he won because he got the most votes from Boston voters that cared to go to the polls. Most big developers don't even vote here, they don't live here. They do what they can with their money. Good luck to them, it's a free country.

"Mumbles was able to work the PR leverage from the speculators while coddling the ditzes and peeling off enough disgruntled to have a working game plan."

I guess so. Whatever. His power came from a carefully coddled (read: well taken care of in the best sense of the word) group of Boston residents, elderly, minority, elderly minority folks that need taking care of. He built connections across the city to every neighborhood. He got those votes because he went after them and took care of folks.

He was a white politician from Hyde Park that would get votes everywhere.

Marty Walsh got help from a lot of folks, but if you're going to argue class warfare, if that's what you're doing, do you really want to imply that union firefighters are one percent (or 0.01%) and against everyone else?

You left out the cohort of 'just ordinary folk trying to make a living' (and living in) a city where prices are being driven through the roof by speculation and flight capital.

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You left out the cohort of 'just ordinary folk trying to make a living (and living in) a city where prices are being driven through the roof by speculation and flight capital.

They usually end up getting played... hence disgruntled.

It is also funny how in college choked Boston, every casual assertion must somehow be from a "course".

The suffocating sophomorism is another distinct kultur element.

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...when I sell, number four is gonna be rich. Hence, not disgruntled. Shame it's got to be that way, though...
Unless...they hang in there and wait another generation, then either very rich or poor.
"They usually end up getting played... hence disgruntled."

Hey, it's flight capital or investment capital. They get played, they can be disgruntled, but it still don't make them Bostonians.
Not a casual assertion, you broke it down into three categories:

1. The Speculators who have some project to sell.
2. Contented affluent Ditzes.
3. The Disgruntled.

Last Pol Sci I took (naw, jes kiddin, shucks) those were the three food groups.
OK, not from a course. Speculators, Ditzes and Disgruntled (Oxford comma optional) are just something you made up that really doesn't apply here.
So, really, you trying to make a political name for yourself? Fail.
"The suffocating sophomorism is another distinct kultur element."

Kultur? What is that? Oh: from 1914
: culture emphasizing practical efficiency and individual subordination to the state
3: German culture held to be superior especially by militant Nazi and Hohenzollern expansionists

WOH. Thread just got Godwinned in a most subtle and clever way. Danke, Rich man.

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My god you really twisted yourself in knots over this.

I wonder why people get so manic here?

The urge to win is impressive even when the prize is minuscule.

With luck you didn't go into debt with some credential mill.

I sure didn't.

I'm working with simple pattern recognition.

A post about the latest glitz tower hits the transom.

The Disgruntled rise to carp about the lopsided priorities of glitz overload.

Then a few Speculators show up to tout it and dismiss objections.

The Ditzes then show up all excited at the prospect of new status trophies.

"Ditz" also owes its origins to the very same sinister forces that appropriated Kultur.

Otto Von Bismark was terribly alarmed at the ditz epidemic that accompanied the Franco Prussian War and commissioned a little known study.

Just clowning you.

Thanks for playing.

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But where can I get a bismark , the pastry not the Otto , hold the Franco-American spaghetti.

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To get the money needed for something like a mayor's job you have to....

Last I checked, nobody was putting a gun to my head telling me I had to vote for the candidate who bought the most air time, or who had the most effective "get out the vote" organization. The choice to get money out of politics is entirely in the hands of the voters.

And I don't think I'm any smarter than the average voter, either: the ways other people are being manipulated are, of course, more obvious to me than the ways in which I am being manipulated.

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and the Yuppies of the City could give two shits who the next Commissioner is. The average stay in the City for these balloon heads is 3 years, they sell their luxury condos and they are off into the sunset.

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The average stay in the City for these balloon heads is 3 years

I'd be interested in seeing your source for this - particularly the part about selling their condos and leaving the city (and not buying a new one in the city). That would be very interesting information on purchase and migration patterns, indeed.

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..tends to have some comparably narrow thing it cares about a lot to the exclusion of big picture outlooks.

A shrewd candidate merely has to pander to whatever that is in a reasonably convincing manner and they are in.

The last election was the Ditz/Speculator hegemony in decline as resurgent disgruntleds propelled Walsh to office.

Disgruntled is neither left nor right. Pundits might speak of swing voters. It can be either or some elaborate combination. Different people are disgruntled about different things.. duuh.

Most of my dear friends who have been here for decades, through thick and thin are among the disgruntled. It's old Boston adapted uneasily to the mumbles sledgehammer of grandiosity and jacked expenses.

As best as I can tell, they are tired of it being a Ditz world that they just try to live in..

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Politics as usual. When enough of the voters decide they've had enough of someone, they vote them out. In this case, they had a clean slate. Two new candidates.

"the Ditz/Speculator hegemony in decline as resurgent disgruntleds propelled Walsh to office."

If he beat an incumbent, your arguments might make a smidgen of sense. But since Menino resigned...
Maybe Walsh just won an election? Sometime the tea leaves are only good for making tea.

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These are the same douche-bros who have grills and hibachis on their roof decks who occasionally burn down condos.

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Has even one member of the "elite" Boston media asked to see the so-called "burnt hose" from the fatal Beacon Street fire? Is the city suing the company that made this "faulty" hose? Are we replacing all other flammable hoses? Or did the media and public get hosed on a false story? The Menino-era mandate to the helpful media to "keep quiet" and become a $150,000 spokesman for the Recreation (and every other) Department is sickening in this city.

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Menino-era mandate was that city employees should not talk to the press.

But, yeah, if that really was a "burnt" hose, then what's the follow up on that? I'm wondering if it was another case of a firefighter impaired on the job misunderstanding an order to give more water.

Since those two firefighters died in West Roxbury, what has really changed about the culture department? Why the resistance to change?

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That's quite the speculative post. If you know something that no one else does, why don't you share it with the class before you destroy someone's reputation. FYI, the BFD has had a random drug testing policy since 2010. Let us know what other changes need to be made to the culture of firefighting in your expertise.

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Indeed , well put. I had to click off the first time i read the speculative post. Two men died , and to suggest impairment on a selected group of men, they all know who is responsible for what , thats quite a burden to place on someone. I would rather remember that they had to restrain firefighters from rushing in , against orders. And good luck, Commissioner Finn !

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After all, they happily reported the derogatory stories about the guys who died at the Chinese restaurant. If there was something amiss in theBack Bay incident surely Sam Tyler and the Globe would be all over it.

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These are all good questions. And it makes you ask more questions about the state of the local media these days. Where is the solid police reporting? It seems like the Globe and the Herald are reduced to rewriting BPD press releases. I know newspapers are faced with serious reductions in staff and resources, but still.

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Burnt hose happens all the time. Ya, there's water in the inside, but the outside is exposed to fire. Even with the thermodynamic effect of the water cooling off the inside, the outside can be raised high enough to weaken the hose to way below its burst point, usually tested to 400 psi or so. So, burnt hose means nothing. Also, a lot of evidence will be lost in the time afterwards.

So, 'Menino-era mandates' still apply?

Wait for the official fire report.

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No, burnt hoses don't happen all the time. Very, very rare. More common in forest fires but still unusual there. They're actually designed to withstand a fire. But if it actually happened in the Back Bay, where is the hose? Where is the media asking to see the hose? FOIA? Why isn't the city suing the hose company if there was, in fact, such an inferior hose? I never suggested the deceased firefighters were impaired, quite the opposite. If you listen to the tapes, Lt. Walsh was completely calm but wasn't getting any water. I don't believe the burnt hose theory for one minute and that's from friends on the job. The dutiful Boston media doesn't dare ask any questions. Who knows when the next media layoff leads to a $150,000 "spokesman" job for the Mayor's Commission on the Elderly or other such nonsense? Shameless.

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Jimmy B? Is that you? Still trying to get that job back? YouTube videos weren't working out? Blog didn't help?

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Are you insane? If a fire flashes over, Like the one in the back bay did, nothing is going to survive. The hose included

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also be responsible for EMS which based on the whining above will be busy with Whambulance calls.

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SURPRISE, SURPRISE,SURPRISE. The other candidates must feel like the Probation candidates who were used for cover.

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I'm outraged. How dare Walsh appoint an individual who has been with the department for decades, knows the ins and outs of the organization, rose through the ranks and was universally praised during the tragic loss of two of their own?!

Could you imagine if a private company appointed a CEO who rose through its ranks through hard work and due diligence? The outrage.

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