Condolences for the latest Big Dig victim...and the rest of us.

Sadly, the endless series of blunders, budget overruns, and downright criminal activity have resulted in the ultimate injury - death. Earlier this week, a portion of the Ted William's tunnel came loose from its supports and collapsed, killing a female occupant of a passing car.

This is of course the worst possible tragedy, and nothing can be said to make it better. The only hope is that this serves as the final impetus for the hopelessly incompetent management of the Big Dig project to finally own up to what everybody in Boston has known for years: that the Big Dig is a fiasco. Not only has it served to scoop up billions in taxpayer dollars and shove them into the pockets of corrupt people all down the line, it has created an unnatural disaster unparalleled in our time. We will have to live with the ramifications of this testament to beaurocratic incompetence for decades. That is, if we are lucky. Some of us will not have to live with it...we'll simply be dead.

Forget Enron. Forget suing companies like Microsoft. It is the people who slither though life, adding absolutely no value, stealing people's money and, tragically, their very lives, that we need to finally cease to tolerate. The products of their actions are infamous. The largest benefit to society would accrue if we simply said "enough". We will no longer tolerate this. Spend what's left of our tax dollars not on bridges to knowwhere, not on subsidies to thriving business, but rather on enacting laws that stipulate the harshest possible penalties to be extracted on these unscroupulous vermen of our society.

We can all live with that.