This is all too weird. But if you oppose casino gambling, you can’t help but love it.
Adam Bond, chairman of the Middleborough Board of Selectmen and the guy who did more than anyone to try to bring the world’s largest casino to his adopted hometown, has quit the board. It seems that Bond wanted his fellow selectmen to try to grab more money from the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, which would own the casino, and which is now beset by legal problems, starting with the crimes of its former leader, Glenn Marshall.
(As an aside, it’s a shame that Sal DiMasi’s replacement as Massachusetts House speaker, Robert DeLeo, is a fan of casinos. Casino gambling is bad news, and we shouldn’t want it anywhere. More than anything, though, we need to keep it out of Middleborough.)
Cape Cod Times reporters George Brennan and Stephanie Vosk have a thorough account of the Bond shenanigans, and Alice Elwell of the Brockton Enterprise offers a good overview as well. In the Boston Globe, Christine Legere reports that Bond plans to keep his weekly radio show, which is broadcast here on Thursdays at 11 a.m. I shouldn’t, but it’s hard not to look when you happen upon a car crash.
As Elwell reported in a previous story, Bond had already alienated the board with his blog, which, I have to confess, is too tedious for me to wade through — though I do enjoy his claim that one of the selectmen, Mimi Duphily, “wanted to ‘rip my face off.'”
So I’ll give the great Gladys Kravitz the last word:
[A]s the person who has been putting Bond under a microscope since 2007 — believe it, this is a good day. This is a great day. It’s a pick up your American flag, go outside and stand on your porch or the hood of your car and let out a big WhooHoo type of day.
The king of all drama queens had a meltdown and provided you with an extra seat on the Middleboro Board of Selectmen. Now pick up a broom and sweep away the damage. Then pull back the curtain on the light of a better day.
One down, four to go.
More: The Enterprise editorializes on Bond’s “unconventional and inappropriate” behavior.
Discover more from Media Nation
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
Gladys Kravitz
I see that Bond is still spinning himself as an altruistic savior for the town of Middleboro. Groan. Our very own little Rod Blagojevich. One day he’s Adam Bond, the next, he’s Gandhi.I once drove down to a Mass. Highway meeting? Why? Because I knew Bond would be there, trying to delay or stop long-awaited and much needed safety improvements to Rte.44 – because they could delay construction of his casino. He didn’t disappoint.Good riddance.
O-FISH-L
It’s almost unbelievable that thanks to Sal DiMasi, I have to drive 90 miles, for two hours, across three states to legally play blackjack, but the gays can legally play marriage at my local town hall. Good riddance to bad rubbish.This being a media site, what’s the over/under on trophy wife Debbi DiMasi’s New England Cable “News” show being canceled now that Sal is powerless? You know, the show she does with the wife of the developer who was given favorable treatment on that LNG deal down in Fall River? I give it a month.
Fissure
I read your post on GK’s site stating that “chaos is good” in M’boro. Care to elaborate on that? Do you have any idea what it’s like to live in a war torn town where threats and mudslinging abound from both sides, where we’re left with a BOS who blindly kiss the tribe’s butt, where people are more concerned about the motivations of an exiting Selectman than the possibly illegal actions of the four who remain seated? How can this be good?
Dan Kennedy
Fissure:chaos = no casino
O-FISH-L
If Jessica Van Sack / Hilary Chabot’s story on Mass. State Police barracks closing in today’s Herald is true, Middleboro will be seeing much more traffic, casino or no casino. If H-3 in Foxboro closes, watch for D-4 in Middleboro to pick up the slack. All the drunks at the stadium and on I-95 will be infiltrating your birthplace, Dan.
NewsHound
O-FISH – like I’ve written before – I agree you should not have to drive 90 miles simply to pursue the happiness guaranteed to you in our Constitution. The City Clerk 5 minutes from your house who freely issues marriage licenses to gays should host blackjack at his or her office one night a week and once in a while on Saturdays. Given the choice between the two alternatives, I’d choose blackjack, too.Middleboro is too nice a town for a casino owned by anybody.
Gladys Kravitz
O-FISH,I wasn’t aware that gay marriage caused addiction, child neglect and abuse, spousal abuse, corruption, increases in drunken driving, burglary, rape, murder or caused lower property values, cannibalization of local business, destruction to the environment or an increase in suicide. But perhaps I’m mistaken. Seems like DiMasi made the right call on this one.Gladys
Dan Kennedy
Fish: Get a map. Foxboro Stadium will never have any impact on Middleborough.
HNG
I know next to nothing about Bond’s “shenanigans,” so I won’t comment. But, yes, his blog IS tedious! Just a narcissist talking to himself.
mike_b1
Fish: ever heard of the Internet?http://www.gamblingplanet.org/blackjack.phpYou don’t even have to leave your house.
O-FISH-L
Colonel Kennedy, if the Foxobro and Milton barracks close, Middleboro remains 29 miles away. Did you have a closer barracks, or is it you who needs a map?
ron-newman
Why is it more important to keep a casino out of Middleborough, as opposed to (say) Revere or Lynn or Gloucester?
Dan Kennedy
Ron: Because Middleborough’s where I’m from.I don’t want a casino anywhere. First, though, I don’t want a casino in Middleborough.Fish: Please explain to me how closing a State Police barracks in Middleborough is going to draw Foxboro Stadium traffic to town, especially since the two places are in completely different traffic corridors.They may be 29 miles apart as the crow flies, but so what?
NewsHound
Dan, since you are an Ole’ Nemasket yourself why don’t you tell how nice the beautiful, historic town really is – how it has a nice library, a restored town hall, a friendly downtown, good schools, nice demographics, and geographically the second largest town in the state with still beautiful farm land remaining – – – maybe you can enhance this and how all the horrors that go along with a gambling casino would make a treasure into another Revere. Not that Revere is so bad, but that Middleboro is too nice. You couldn’t be from a better place.I wonder if the children in Revere have 4-H or will be able to visit a herring run on a Saturday in April.
Dan Kennedy
Fish: That’s all fine, but how does that bring stadium traffic to Middleborough?
O-FISH-L
Dan, if the barracks in Foxboro is closed and those arrested are instead transported to Middleboro, loved ones who come to bail them will travel to Middleboro, no? You have a busy barracks up there in your adopted hometown of Danvers if I remember correctly. I never carried the state police badge nor did I drive a cruiser that was French and Electric blue. My uniform was midnight blue, my cruiser black and white. That said, I have a tremendous respect for the Mass. State Police, and I think the closest barracks to Foxboro is Middleboro. I may be wrong, Framingham is close as the crow flies too, but regardless it was good for Chabot and Van Sack to break the story today. Patrick wasn’t about to tell us until the Herald did. What a good little, scrappy paper. Patrick Purcell deserves kudos.
Dan Kennedy
Fish: A few drunks — even a couple of dozen drunks — are not going to have any effect on traffic. Good grief. You are really reaching.
O-FISH-L
Dan, the drunks will be in custody, it’s the sober family members who will infiltrate the town, no matter how you spell it, that I worry about. Either way, a nice scoop by the Herald.
Lis Riba
Of course, Marketplace recently reported that the recession is hurting casino revenues, too.I’m glad the state has managed to steer clear of these boondoggles, and hope our elected officials see the light… Or maybe not
fiferstone
Hi Dan, Fiferstone here:The chaos is only a good thing in that it makes it more difficult for the cabingo hall to become a reality.However, the chaos has also kept many other things that need to be accomplished from becoming realities as well. It’s bad thing because the 4 that remain on this board are so solidly in the collective pocket of the tribe and cabingo hall backers that they may as well be pieces of pocket lint. This fiddling is a distraction we cannot afford, while the town and the region burn merrily around us. If however, people want to move past the chaos and do something positive, if people want to shed the light of day on the gay goings on in Middleboro for the past 19 months (or more, depending on where your timeline starts), please write to the Massachusetts and the United States Attorneys General, the State Ethics commission, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Secretary of the Interior. Gladys posted some very useful addresses and there’s a wealth of info. there and elsewhere, with which you can fill your letters.Keep writing people.
Carl
My observations from next door (Lakeville) is that even with the more articulate Bond on the board, it didn’t make a lick of difference. The five gave more scutiny to a used woman’s clothing store than they ever did a billion dollar casino. The loss of Bond is a plus in that the same man who sat in the back room with Investor A and Lobbyist B and Lying, Rapist, Illegal Campaign Contributor Marshall won’t be negotiating anything except the cost of his body guards. But, he hasn’t left town. How can you miss someone if they won’t go away. The remaining board will continue as they have in the past. Which means no change. Middleborough needs two new strong people with conviction to come in. I hope the town elects them in April.
Bill H.
Honestly, “gay goings on” from fiferstone, the usual, predictable BLARNEY from Fish, come on. This is enough to make a grown man cry. Casino gambling is toxic. It alters forever the chemistry of a beautiful little town like Middleborough, it alters the nearby communities who realize NOTHING from the ensuing chaos, it’s bad news. Fish, let’s weave an ultra-liberal, anti-semitic thread in here. Help us out! Puleeze.
Rick in Duxbury
Dan, I think what Fish was saying was that the troopers for Foxboro Stadium have to come from SOMEWHERE. Crowds=arrests. Absent Foxboro Barracks, Middleboro Rotary is about to get a bit busier. Perhaps we should build a drunk tank within the stadium? Considering the horrific crashes by RI drivers between state line and 495 over the last few years, this is a really bad idea.
Dan Kennedy
Rick: I know exactly what Fish was saying. It’s ridiculous and he knows it. If you had 50 cars going back and forth, it wouldn’t make a difference.