Category: Chelsea

Selective enforcement and the public slumlord: Part 3, the conflicts of interest

20 January, 2012 (11:27) | Chelsea, Corruption, Enforcement, Law, Massachusetts, Michael McLaughlin, Public housing, Regulation, Rental |

[Concluded from yesterday's Part 2 and the preceding Part 1.]   By:David A. Smith   All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. – George Orwell   Bad enough it is, as we saw in preceding parts, that the Chelsea Housing Authority as controlled by the deceitful and now-fired Michael McLaughlin used [...]

Selective enforcement and the public slumlord: Part 2, the value of unenforced defaults

19 January, 2012 (10:11) | Chelsea, Corruption, Enforcement, Law, Massachusetts, Michael McLaughlin, Public housing, Regulation, Rental |

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]   By:David A. Smith   A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise. – Niccolo Machiavelli   Self-interested reasons, that is   Yesterday we saw that under the leadership of overpaid duplicitous former director Michael McLaughlin, the Chelsea Housing Authority aggressively enforced against complaining residents while ignoring those [...]

Selective enforcement and the public slumlord: Part 1, the power of intimidation

18 January, 2012 (10:58) | Chelsea, Corruption, Enforcement, Law, Massachusetts, Michael McLaughlin, Public housing, Regulation, Rental |

  Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. – Lord Acton   By:David A. Smith   Few are more powerful than an imperious public housing authority director   Turn over a rock and the beetles scurry, and if you watch attentively, you can learn a lot of entomological ecology.    You insect, Gregor [...]

Defending the indefensible

21 November, 2011 (12:11) | Chelsea, Executive pay, Massachusetts, Public housing, Scandal, US News |

By:David A. Smith   Everything to do with this tale is indefensible – except the speed with which the protagonist lost his job.  Even that is not enough, as we’ll see by examining three good investigative stories by Andrea Estes and Sean P. Murphy: Boston Globe (30 Oct) (Arial), Boston Globe (3 Nov) (Georgia), and [...]