Left In Lowell

We’ve had a rash of “new” anonymous commenters in the recent budget post by Mimi.

We’ve seen drive-by commenters before, making all sorts of anonymous accusations without much in the way of backing it up. Attacks were rampant on this blog, for instance, when the previous City Manager was…shall we say…on his way out. Those anonymous commenters were, of course, sticking up for their bud in a sort of raw, hurt way. As repulsive as some of those comments were at the time, they were actually pretty darn transparent in their motives.

We allow, and will always allow, some level of “anonymity” (of course, in this day and age of information, sometimes it’s easy to put two and two together, so there’s always risk for the anonymous writer on the web). That is not my issue.

But we’re in an election season, and we all know the lines which are drawn between the city’s “factions.” There are the people who like the current management situation, and there are people who would do anything they can to undermine it. Those city councilors claim otherwise of course…to outright state their opposition to the current CM would be a political death sentence, in my opinion. But actions speak louder than words, or rather, often their own words speak louder than their protestations to the contrary. We see over and over again the pouncing on Lynch in meetings, the aha! See! attitude every time they perceive an opening (whether or not there are facts to back them up). This has been the pattern since Lynch was hired.

That makes me wonder. Is this ambulance contract “issue,” “brought” to “light” by an anonymous commenter in that budget thread, an issue which appears to be made from whole cloth, a trial balloon for an election attack to rally around? Are they searching for the next “hasn’t moved forward on the Arena, see? see??” attack, as we saw in the last election (which, by the way, failed miserably). The Mercier(s)-Kazanjian-Caulfield-Lenzi wing of the City Council, while not monolithic in its disapproval of the CM in every case, certainly has a somewhat united agenda, if actions and words are to be believed. And they might have a majority, but they can’t seem to bring the CM down to the point of unpopularity and imminent removal. Not yet, at any case. So the war rages on.

I am all for bringing the hidden to light. I am all for questioning the City Council, the CM, the School Committee, and all government transactions; to err on the side of transparency, and to always remain vigilant of cronyism, even with those I support. What I don’t accept is the idea of making up a nonexistent issue, so that the GOB faction has something to run on.

If this is all you got, guys, it’s pretty damn lame.