When he ran for the office of governor, Michael Dukakis made quitea few promises and people looked what they heard. However, reality set in after he took office and a lot of promises could not be met because they were nice to have made, but impossible or extremely difficult to pull off and it appeared Dukakis had gone back on his word.

At the next election voters wanted to send him a message, especially state employees. Whereas he had won the first election by a landslide, the idea was to have him win but decidedly not in a landslide so he would see how much he displeased the people and would do better during his second term.

Unfortunately, too many people sent the message so the result was his opponent winning by a comfortable majority and we end up with Governor Edward King, and that did not go all that well.

Had the right number of people sent the message, we would have had a better governor the second time around as it was later found when he ran again and won that he had learned his lesson.

The idea was a good one. Too many people seeing that, chose to send the message. 

Initial gentrification may seem to be going very well and the city wants the new money to know they have a place to settle. The whole city is “built to suit”. In the process more and more property is being bought up and remodeled once they get the “vermin” out.

Controlled, it could be good, but if the message gets out to too many and the city becomes the center of available high end housing, the glut could cause a decrease in prices and loss of investment as rents will have to be lowered to the point those who are not moneyed can move back in, a situation that could have been avoided had the city not gone stupid with landlords selling decent affordable homes for the prices speculators are willing to pay, driving the locals out of town in the hope of making a killing in real estate.

When the malls came it killed the downtown area as stores moved out and left a lot of emptiness that the city is trying to deal with. 

On-line shopping is killing malls just as they did the downtowns, leaving vast almost empty building with a few stores keeping the mall on life support with many malls being repurposed to anything but mercantile.There are many caverness buildings surrounded with huge parking lots waiting for no one to show up.

People stayed with a city on life support and kept it alive enough to have the promise of good investments reviving the comatose. But rather than guarantee a balance between those already here and those they would like to come, they are choosing the Dukakis Message approach and acting like every new luxury apartment and condo will have someone who wants one no matter how many there are.

The eagerness to benefit from the real estate gouging boom may result in too much supply and a surprising lack of demand.

And tumble weeds.

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