It’s time for the annual turkey shoot, and this year I’m feeling particularly thankful for the bumper crop of gobblers out there, running loose across the development landscape of Massachusetts.

This year’s turkeys are a particularly juicy bunch, ranging from the countless developers who all think what Boston needs is just one more luxury apartment tower to the pot-clinic gold-rush that is quickly going up in smoke.

And let’s not forget the grand redevelopment of downtown Quincy that now looks to be going nowhere fast, or casino developers with loads of hometown political connections who somehow wound up on the losing side of one of the biggest development competitions in the state’s history.

Ready, aim, fire:

Too Much Luxury

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh should put a ban on any new luxury apartment towers in the city. Really, it’s gotten that bad. Developers are like lemmings; they will follow whatever the latest trend is until they go tumbling over the cliff, and the surge in towers featuring $4,000-a-month and up apartments is a prime example. (See also the telecom hotel boom of the late 1990s.)

Scrolling through a listing of Boston’s luxury rental projects, I stopped counting at 65, a group that ranged from relatively new towers to older condo buildings leasing out high-priced units. That’s before we get to the 832 new deluxe apartments John Hynes is building in the Seaport, the largest single apartment project to date in the city. Rents are already starting to come down, with thousands more of these luxury units – most so cookie-cutter you can’t tell one from the other – slated to open up over the next few years. In their hunt for warm bodies, building owners are offering to pick up broker frees, let new residents move in rent-free for a few months, or even chip in $1,500 towards a fancy new closet.

Choose Wisely

Jam-packed with history and right on the Red Line, Quincy Center has a huge amount of untapped potential. What other downtown is the final resting place of two presidents – John Adams and John Quincy Adams, no less – but then allows a traffic rotary be built around the church that houses their burial crypts? The church is finally to be reconnected with the rest of downtown, but the city’s $1.6 billion downtown redevelopment plan is in shambles. And one big reason for that was the choice of a relatively untested developer, Street-Works, to take on one of the largest development projects in Bay State history. After six years and no sign of a ground-breaking, city officials finally gave the firm its walking papers earlier this year. Apparently Street-Works’ biggest project before that was some planning for an Ohio university – peanuts by local standards. What in the world where they thinking in Quincy?

Up In Smoke

Pot advocates thought they hit the jackpot when voters approved a medical marijuana law in November 2012. It looked like Massachusetts was the latest state to join the cannabis revolution, following in the footsteps of Colorado and Washington, where medical pot paved the way for full-blown legalization. Two years later, Bay State officials are still struggling to license a network of clinics after a start-and-stop review process marred by all sorts of insider political favoritism, including a former congressman who tried to cash in. Now the feds say they will prosecute pot clinics that open within 1,000 feet of schools or public housing, including one planned for Downtown Crossing, of all places. The last time I checked, Boston officials had spent years trying to turn around the bedraggled shopping district and were finally seeing success with the construction launch of the new Millennium Tower. Really, can’t someone pull the plug on this circus?

Casino Losers

Maybe Massachusetts politics aren’t so incestuous after all. That’s one reading you could give to the state’s multibillion-dollar casino license competition that has seen the triumph of Las Vegas casino tycoon Steve Wynn and fellow out-of-state gambling giant MGM. Or maybe the losing bidders just blew a winning hand. Suffolk Downs had the backing of both the late Mayor Tom Menino and House Speaker Robert DeLeo, whose district includes East Boston. Somehow Suffolk managed to mess up a neighborhood referendum in East Boston, only to controversially get another shot after moving the project to the Revere side of the track.

For its part, Mohegan Sun spent years pushing plans for a casino in the Western Massachusetts town of Palmer, even opening a storefront in the depressed town, only to lose a referendum there as well. It then lost out a second time after teaming up with Suffolk Downs on its failed bid for the Boston-area license. This one may have been in the bag, but Suffolk still managed to drop it.

Of course, there are many other turkeys out there that would make great target practice, time and space permitting. Gov. Deval Patrick’s decision to spend his eight years championing green energy, with barely a nod towards lagging residential construction and soaring home prices, takes the cake in my book. Gov.-elect Charlie Banker and Attorney General Martha Coakley, his erstwhile opponent, kept up the tradition, unable to mention the two words “housing prices” in any of their debates. And don’t get me going about proposals for “zoning reform” that actually make it harder for builders in our already NIMBY-paralyzed state. This being Massachusetts, the one thing we will never have to worry about running out of is turkeys to poke fun at.