You have to look far, wide, and probably futilely to find anyone who has anything but kind words about Tagg Romney, the son who best blends his father’s purebred retriever looks with his mother’s straightforward warmth. Which is why it’s so bizarre to see him front and center in a petty controversy in his hometown of Belmont.
First, a few facts. Like every other community, rich and not, Belmont could use cash, so local officials came up with the seemingly bright idea of selling a town-owned 5.5-acre wooded parcel in the midst of upscale Belmont Hill.
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I'm sure this is part NIMBY-but 5.5 acres with 1/2 acre zoning would create 11 homes assessed well over 1 mil $ in BELMONT. The tax revenue from these homes would surely exceed any payments from a hospice which would immediately claim non/profit/non taxable property status.
....and a third of a mile of distance between the Wolfeboro nursing home and the Romney home ( not to use the word "compound") is a lot different from chancing ptoection and privacy on being hidden behind a bunch of trees in an area whose streets open access to all comers.
An anti-hospice website - now that must be something!
I didn't know Tagg was running for office. Was he the only speaker to oppose the hospice? Hospice care is so important to so many families, I wouldn't care if it were in my neighborhood (JP), but that's where all the nursing homes were years ago and look what happened to them.
dont read the papers or watch TV ?? Tagg is running, hard, to be a son of a President. apparently he has the same problem with inappropriate or just plain stupid comments as daddy and grand daddy.
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And all this time I thought Mormons were Christians!
Please remember that Belmont isn't only mansions! Belmont has triple-deckers and modest single-family homes, too. It also has really extraordinary schools, so the prices on those triple-deckers and modest houses are pretty high, but not every one is super-rich!
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In Wolfeboro the Romney's "cottage", assessed at $8,076,000, is down dead-ended Clark Road, past the 104 bed SunBridge nursing home. The separation - about a third of a mile - and 10,000 miles of human awareness and careing.
goes to show that "purebred retriever looks" have nothing to do with compassion, empathy or intelligence.
and, no, nothing bizarre here: the Romneys are entitled to get what they want, when they want and how they want it. dont kid yourself, if there was a Romney who needed hospice, permits would be flying out of Belmont's zoning dept and the place would be built and functional in a couple of weeks. you know, the turnaround thing. also known as flip flopping.
Yet another sample of Romney shoot-in-the-footitis. Yeah, it's a Romney son, but what difference does that make? This anti-hospice Tagg merely relects yet again the sort of self-absorbed dimness that Granny Lizzy and her Barry the O boss try to heap on Mitt Romney and his GOP campaign. And in this case, the Demomob would be correct - a hospice is not a deterrent to a neighborhood unless the neighbors want to have their venison barbecues on the surveyor lines their properties share with the hospice. Ridiculous... Tagg and his Belmont snoots.
Sorry but I might have been able to agree with your post if it hadn't been completely derailed by a spontaneous and random bout of insults and name-calling. After that I just couldn't continue to read it. Which is a shame because you might have had something worthwhile to say.
Maybe the Mormon Tabernacle of Belmont could add a wing - for hospice onto their huge monstrosity overlooking Rt2?
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Tagg Romney's position is very embarrassing. This does not reflect well on his family as it tries to project compassion to the American public.
Brings to mind the hot air circulating around THE windfarm offshore the Cape, but still close enough to disturb the view of the sometime occupants of a compound in Hyannisport. Why not evoke the same comparison with the the actions of the late head of that household? Oh, right, he's democrat and isn't running for anything.
Very short memory you have there. I clearly remember Ted Kennedy and Walter Cronkite being taken to task for their opposition to the wind farm. Were you on extended vacation at the time?
Being rich (or the son of the rich) allows one to keep the unpleasant things in life at arms length. Totally unsurprising. In a sense, being rich is much like being a celebrity. Many of them are so removed from "real" life that they have very little understanding of what it is actually like. I'm sure it never crossed his mind that opposing a hospice to defend the value of his property might come across as a bit selfish. That just isn't going to be on his radar.
That said, I do know a guy worth close to $100M who is as down to earth and generous as you could hope to find. So wealth is not necessarily an excuse for being obtuse.
One question for Tagg. What impact did the temple have on the home values of those it towers over? That 94,000 square foot "monument", that blocks out the sun from those homes beneath it, must have been a huge magnet for the immense Mormon population that exists in the Boston area. Something tells me Tagg has a lot more of his father in him than his mother. I would urge Tagg to visit a hospice and see the work that's done for human beings nearing the end of life. Maybe then he could see that having a site devoted to the care of those unfortunate people might not be such a bad thing after all, even in his own backyard.
What a candidate's grown sons do would be irrelevant to a campaign (who among us feels confident we can control the social behavior of our grown children?) if Tagg wasn't so prominent a spokesman for his father's campaign. Hard to believe he doesn't have more sense than to give Democrats and the anti-rich this ammunition. A hospice? I can see opposition to a methadone clinic, but who can be opposed to a hospice?
Maybe Tick, Tack, Tagg, Togg and Tootle could take a few minutes to visit a VA hospital when they take a break from managing those ten million dollar funds that Old Willard laid on them for a starter...priming the pump as it were...and maybe they could take a gander at what kind of sacrifices those who serve in the military make on behalf of the Nation. None of the Romney sons managed to serve, of course, but, hey, it's rough keeping the family afloat with a mere ten mil to start out with so they certainly couldn't be expected to live on a military salary, now could they? Still, I'm sure they all wear flag pins and are rootin-tootin Patriots all-aflame at the prospect of sending everybody else's kids off to Iran to fight, die and get maimed in the defense of the Romneys' right to hide their loot in Swiss or Cayman Island bank accounts...but, geez, why should they have to pay those brutal 13% taxes on whatever they can't hide from the taxman? It's a tough gig for those boys, scraping by on a few hundred thousand bucks a year in interest...as Mitt put it, those speaking fees of his hardly generated anything, maybe $450,000 tops...peanuts! C'mon...the Romneys already suffer enough deprivation without having to see their property values diminished just to let a handful of nobody's die in peace...be real.
Nicely said and very funny--not to mention right on the... money! Thanks.
After reading this article, I guess Romney's kid was the ONLY resident who opposed this. He carries so much weight in town that the officials just immediately caved into his demand.
Maybe it would be nice to see know if any other residents actually opposed this. And while a hospice is a noble effort, if Belmont really needed the cash as the article implys, maybe selling this "upscale parcel" to a private taxpaying citizen should have been an option.
I think you're missing the point that the Romey's pushed hard for a 94,000 Mormon temple at the top of Belmont Hill but Tagg spoke out against a hospice care facility. You also must not have read the column well as Brian points out there was plenty of opposition to this from people other than Tagg. Maybe Tagg should have stayed home on the night of the selectmen hearing in light of what he was a proponent of in the 90s. It's called being a hypocrite and a proponent of NIMBY. Which structure has more of a negative impact on home values, a monstrous temple hovering over a neighborhood or a hospice facility tucked away in the woods?
Ironic? It's not ironic at all. It is, however, very telling about the Romney's lack of charity outside of the Mormon church. For such a prominent family, their non-Mormon philanthropic endeavors pale in comparison to other wealthy families in the Commonwealth. That really does say a lot!
Are intimately aware that they have no other non-Mormon philanthropic endeavors? How would you know? Please fill us in.
While I think it is safe to assume that Tagg Romney supported the construction of the Church, it should be noted that to him (but not necessarily to others) that was an enticement to build a home (and increased the value of homes in the area due to attractiveness to purchase by his fellow Mormons). In contrast to that,a hospice could be a legitimate deterrent for him and it is not unreasonable to say that someone wouldn't have built a home if they knew about it. So my view is that he is guilty of acting in self-interest (not exactly a heinous crime), but not necessarily hypocritically. To the point of the article, of all things is it most certainly not ironic at all to me (that he would act his in self-interest). I think whether a hospice is appropriate there is a debatable point. I don't think comparing someone's looks to a dog breed is a healthy contribution to that debate. Most certainly, in a very liberal Cambridge-wanna-be town like Belmont, with liberal local officials, I doubt anyone was doing Tagg Romney any favors. In fact, his opposition likely slightly hurt the position of those opposed to the hospice.
If you knew something about hospice care, you'd realize they are in everyone's best interest.
Thank you for a very pertinent article. We do need to know how money and power affect our lives... Thank you.
Just another reflection of the Romneys. Whats mine is mine and whats yours is mine. Disgraceful.
The apple does not fall far from the tree. Everything for me, nothing for you.
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THESYSTEMWORKED: "Best collection of anti-Mormon bigotry I've read in a while..." ACTUAL ARTICLE: the word 'Mormon' used but three times: once in a caption, twice in a reference to the Romneys' support for construction of Belmont's Mormon temple. BOTTOM LINE: 100% disinformation...TheSystemWorked's track record as a stealth Republican operative/troll is still perfect!
Thank goodness for Brian McGory's investigative reporting! This story exemplifies the attitude of Trust Fund kids who talk a good game of compassion but make sure their property is protected from any intrusion that improves the human condition. How can the value of Tadd Romney's multi-million home be affected by a one story facility well hidden on 5.5 acres? Will this building interfere with the much ballyhooed tradition of Romney service toward the sick and dying? Are hearses more intrusive than mega SUVs? What contributes more to the health and welfare of a community? A McMansion thrown together on a half acre or a hospice designed to comfort the terminally ill? Romney NIMBY opposition is more than ironic. It's downright hypocritical and should be broadcast throughout the nation.