Posted on 06/21/2008 10:33:22 PM PDT by raccoonradio
Howie Carr thread, starting off with his Sunday Herald column
Bench helped the Celtics, but hurts you
By Howie Carr | Sunday, June 22, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com
The ballot question to abolish the state income tax is already paying dividends for working people - the annual money grab by the state’s greed-crazed judiciary is DOA.
It wouldn’t have looked good, you see, to heap another $30,306-a-year raise on top of the judges’ $16,917 pay hike back in 2006. Plus, these criminal-coddling clowns were also grubbing for an annual cost-of-living adjustment, which is just an automatic, invisible raise.
God, do these Payroll Charlies on the bench ever come up for air? You know the old saying. It’s one thing to feed at the trough; these hack judges are licking the plate.
This latest scheme, along with pay raises for a handful of elected pols, was fronted by the traditional “blue-ribbon commission,” a group of people about whom a song was once written:
“How can we miss you when you won’t go away?”
The co-chairman of this commission is one Paul Guzzi, another bust-out pol. Last week he was denouncing the proposed abolition of the 5.3 percent state income tax because it “goes too far.” If you make $50,000, ending the state income tax would mean you’d get to keep an extra $2,650 of your own money. No pay raise, just a smaller heist by the hackerama.
But dammit, that “goes too far.” An extra $50 a week for you is “irresponsible.” On the other hand, a $50,000 raise for a bunch of failed lawyers who were starving to death in the Dreaded Private Sector, now that is good public policy. If we don’t pay these black-robed bandits what they “deserve,” they’ll quit and get another job. I hear the International House of Pancakes is hiring.
So, you can see why even the tone-deaf pols at the State House knew enough to immediately toss Guzzi’s obscene money-grab into the circular file. House Speaker Sal DiMasi needed that kind of heat like he needs a fourth mortgage. And Terry Murray, the president of the Senate, isn’t a lawyer, so she has no need to go along with the polite fiction that these unemployable frauds are any more deserving of a bigger welfare check than the gimme gals of Gloucester High.
The senator who usually masterminds the judicial holdups is Bob Creedon, whose brother, by an amazing coincidence, happens to be a judge. But Creedon is now taking early retirement - he’s running for clerk of Plymouth Superior Court, which will almost double his salary, not that he needs it. His wife is a state rep. Hey, good things happen to good people.
Poor Bob Creedon - you know his brother Judge Mike is going to be all over him about not getting a raise this year. Maybe the judge will even threaten not to vote for his brother as clerk, not that it’ll make much difference. Sen. Creedon is running unopposed. In the DPS, you’d call it a golden parachute. In Bristol County, it would be known as the Bayou Buyout.
But the judges will have to wait ’til next year. The best quote in the paper was that another five-figure heist would “send the wrong message” to the voters.
Actually, the problem is that it would send the right message: These layabouts don’t care how much it costs you, they’re going to get theirs. And what’s almost never mentioned is the byproduct of a $48,000 public sector pay raise - a $38,400-a-year increase in their pensions.
You read that right. Their state pensions would balloon another $38,400 if (or is it when?) they get this next raise. If they’d scored the extra 30 large and lasted three more years at the trough, these bums would be collecting pensions of at least $128,000 a year. Not bad for contributing three or four grand to the “right” pols to get their robes. Not too shabby for a job where you only have to show up 35 weeks a year.
Did you notice, though, that it wasn’t only the judges who tried to take advantage of all the confusion in the wake of this latest outburst of bread and circuses. This week’s circus was the Celtics [team stats], so while you were watching the breathless coverage from Shillville, everybody on the public trough was thinking up new ways to relieve you of a little more of your bread.
Here is a sampling of headlines from yesterday’s papers. It must be the weekend, and it must be summer:
“MWRA proposes increase in rates”
“Mass Pike considers $100 million in new tolls”
And of course, the traditional: “State senator may use bipolar defense”
But who cares? How ’bout them Celtics!
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1102420
Are you like Howie’s publicist?
I do his ping list.
Ha! Another Howie masterpiece BUMP!
I am constantly floored by Massachusetts voters.
What in God’s name is wrong with those people?
I assume that Howie is on vacation for this whole week.
Well, let's see, this is lib central,,,,home of the whackjobs, let's handout money to anyone and everyone, except of course, the WORKING taxpayers.....the libs here drank the koolaid years and years and years ago, it's inbred here, if you're a republican you're considered strange, weird, unusual. We have the likes of fat teddy, gigilo and of course, miss barney frank. We have judges run amok, drinking, cross dressing, letting perverts run the streets, but hey, they deserve a raise, we have teenagers intentionally getting pregnant so they can collect welfare, we have families who generation after generation are on welfare, it's a right of passage, a way of life here, an entitlement if you will, illegals are running amok, no registered/insured vehicles, no licenses, free medical care, and God only knows what else, but hey, this is GAYsachusetts, live and let live,,,,,at the taxpayers expense.
Howie had said he’s off tomorrow because he’s making a speech in RI (I believe) and the colonel will be in for him. Don’t
know about the rest of the week. I, however, will be on vacation BUT hopefully should still be able to do the ping
(even though I’ll be out of range of the show and not only do I not have a laptop or other comp. where I could listen online, but I’d be busy with other activities anyway.
Do you know what percentage of MA pols run unopposed? I believe it runs 95% or so. It really is an inner circle racket!
I have read that about half of MA voters are pretty conservative, but the Dems have handled gerrymandering (remember, gerrymandering was born in MA!) so effectively that it doesn't matter.
Of the people I know, about half vote as conservatively as they can, given the options available. The other half -- unfortunately -- operate on the "I never vote -- it only encourages them!" principle. :(
Yeah, that's why so many run for the exits! /s
I know of only one (1) former judge who returned to private practice -- Owen Todd. And I don't think he was a judge very long. In fact, thinking about it, I wonder if he took the judgeship to gracefully leave his former firm, because when he went back to private practice, he didn't go back to the firm -- he took a partner and started his own. And from what I hear, he's good -- he's one of the lawyers other lawyers get to represent them when they need someone!
I think that George Carlin was picked by someone in the last death pool, but I may be wrong about this. I do know that George Carlin has been picked before for the death pool every now and then.
We’ll see if he was in the death pool. Howie is back
tomorrow, I think (he said the Col. would be on today as
Howie is making a speech in RI but AFAIK he’s on the
rest of the week).
Here’s the Monday show ping; I am off to the Buckeye State
and the Keystone state for a week, but can try to maintain
the ping list from afar. Will miss hearing Howie this week!
Will try to ping Howie’s columns, too, but if I don’t
just check out http://www.bostonherald.com on Wed. and
Fri. (assuming he doesn’t do a special column for some
reason)
Now MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle will have to find a new source
of material.
(It was revealed that Barnicle stole bits of Carlin’s
“Brain Droppings” and included them in his Boston Globe
columns, claiming they were his lines. When asked about it,
Barnicle claimed he had never read the book. Then someone
dragged up a bit from WCVB/Boston’s “Chronicle” in which
he declared the book has “a yuk on every page”.
That’s ok. Mrs. Barnicle is the breadwinner in that family anyway.....
http://www.bankofamerica.com/newsroom/presskits/pdfs/finucane.pdf
Barnicle, that is.
Not Howie.
Wed ping live from Ohio
Howie column
Even a ‘permanent vacation’ must end some time
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, June 25, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Sticky-fingered toll collectors at the Mass Pike? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
A clean-up of this kleptocracy is in order. And thank God, there is one man who can do the job. And that man needs a job.
I refer, of course, to Fat Matt Amorello - a hack’s hack.
What perfect timing. Just last week, the lawyer for the former chairman of the Mass Pike admitted that his client was on “permanent vacation.” As in, unemployment.
The recession is officially here. Fat Matt Amorello, the bloated hack, is unemployed.
Only that’s not exactly the way the former Pike boss’ lawyer put it last week.
The phrase Tom Kiley used was “permanent vacation.”
Permanent vacation - funny, that’s how most people would have described Fat Matt’s final gig at the public trough. He was making $223,000 a year mismanaging the Turnpike and the Big Dig, and when he was fired, he took with him $55,000 in unused vacation time, and left uncashed another $73,000 for 614 unused sick hours.
Sadly, though, Fat Matt is only 50 years old, still too young for the monthly kiss in the mail.
After learning of his setbacks in the Dreaded Private Sector, I called Fat Matt’s lawyer, Tom Kiley, and asked him about the “permanent vacation” quote that I’d seen in the State House News Service account.
“I don’t recall using those exact words,” he said. “But it does sound like something I would say.”
So Fat Matt is not, you’ll pardon the expression, working?
“Matt is not currently employed.”
Has he got something new lined up?
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
Hmmmm. Do you think Jane Swift’s husband, Chuckie, is looking for help at his Berkshire County blueberry ranch? Maybe Christy Mihos could use a pump jockey or two down on the Cape.
Mr. Kiley, what was this reference you made to some work by your client in India?
“It was a business assignment, he completed it successfully.”
Fat Matt completed something successfully? Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
The news about Fat Matt’s unemployment came last week at a meeting of the State Ethics Commission. The commission will hold a hearing in August on whether Fat Matt violated the conflict-of-interest law back in 2006 when he changed the Pike’s sick-leave buyback program - resulting in an extra $260,000 being paid to Matt’s minions.
Fat Matt’s defense: He can’t remember. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before for a client of Tom Kiley’s. Remember Billy Bulger’s fateful appearance before the congressional committee in 2003, when he explained his amnesia regarding all things Whitey by saying, “There is a tendency to forget.”
Well, that tendency is still going around, bigtime.
Last week, Kiley told the Ethics Commission that “the ability to be precise isn’t there.”
The lawyer for the Ethics Commission seconded that, saying that when he was deposed, Fat Matt didn’t have the “best recollection.” So he did learn something from being Billy Bulger’s stooge in the Senate all those years.
Fat Matt is also having knee surgery next month. Which means no heavy lifting - what else is new?
Actually, once the surgery and the Ethics Commission hearing are behind him, I see only one job for which Fat Matt Amorello could possibly be qualified . . . Imagine some night, pulling up to the Allston toll booth, and staring out of the booth at you, a dab of chocolate ice cream or tomato sauce dripping off his squirrelly goatee onto his stained Pike polo shirt, his short fingers outstretched. Finally, it may be time to buy a Fast Pass.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1103032
Is Howie deliberately trying to make his show boring by “JIP” the ending dregs of a trial that I bet most of even the Boston listeners have little interest in, except for the verdict?
JIP—joining in progress? Don’t know...am in Ohio right now, and then on to Pittsburgh so I can’t even hear the show. I did see on CNN that Entwistle got guilty verdict
now I’m in Pitt. at a cartoon convention
show ping
Neil Entwistle’s in for the time of his natural life
By Howie Carr | Friday, June 27, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com
He will of course join the Lifers Club.
Maybe not immediately, of course, because it will take Neil Entwistle a while to work his way from Concord to Cedar Junction to MCI-Norfolk. But his eventual membership in the Lifers Club is just one of the many stories you’ll inevitably be reading about this double-murderer in the decades to come.
Neil Entwistle will appeal for a new trial. And appeal and appeal and appeal again.
He will get a new lawyer, and then another, and then another. They will be working “pro bono,” and they will all have beards, and every single one of their petitions will contain these two words: “role model”.
Yes, in the years to come, Neil Entwistle will become a role model for the younger prisoners.
He will join 12-step programs and the Toastmasters, and he will teach English to incarcerated illegal aliens, just like Pam Smart.
He will take college courses. He will receive at least one degree, maybe more, and those, too, will be cited in his endless motions for a new trial.
He will claim he was framed, that his late wife did it, and that there is new DNA evidence. He will swear he was discriminated against because he’s not an American, that he had a disease, make that multiple diseases - addiction to Internet gambling, addiction to Internet porn, addiction to eBay scams . . .
I predict Neil Entwistle will end up on a Web site for jailbirds seeking female companionship, and he will become a chick magnet, at least among prison groupies. In his postings to the man-hungry spinsters, he will mention the tragic circumstances of his life, including his wife’s “suicide,” and his “love of foreign travel.”
Especially foreign travel with one-way tickets.
He will also write to the lovelorn women that he “loves children” and “mourns” Lilly, tragically taken from him by parties known and unknown to the vicious, politically ambitious prosecutors who have lynched this innocent young man from a foreign land.
Neil Entwistle will become a born-again Christian, and when that doesn’t get him a new trial, he will become a Wiccan. And when the screws refuse to give him a rock for his “religious services,” he’ll sue, which may at least get him a trip out of Norfolk, or Shirley, or Concord, or wherever he is by that point.
And when he appears in court, he will make sure that, like Warren Zevon’s Werewolf of London, his hair is perfect. Just the way it was during this trial.
His mum will start a Justice for Neil Committee. Contributions will be scant.
He will scour the newspapers every day, studying the new bylines, and he will send detailed 40-page letters to every gullible rookie reporter purporting to prove how he was railroaded. Ben LeGuer will show him how it’s done.
Massachusetts used to have weekend furloughs, who’s to say it can’t happen again? Is Deval Patrick any less nutty than Mike Dukakis? At least one killer got inducted in the Mafia during a weekend furlough. Ten or twenty years down the road, who’s to say Neil Entwistle won’t use a two-day pass to get married?
With any luck, nine months after the conjugal visit, you have yourself a little bundle of joy, and then you can petition the Parole Board or the governor or somebody to let you go so you can spend more time with your child.
You may scoff, but during the Dukakis years one stone killer after another made just that pitch to the Governor’s Council, to spend more time with kids they fathered on furloughs. Most of them were cut loose, and some immediately resumed their criminal careers.
And if by some strange twist of fate Neil Entwistle ever does get a hearing before the Parole Board, you can take this next one to the bank, too. The parole board will neglect to notify the Matterazzos.
All this, and more, will happen. You read it here first. But two things will never happen.
Neil Entwistle will never confess. And he will never, ever say he’s sorry. Because he didn’t do it. Just ask him, any day for the rest of his natural life.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1103523
Ah yes...a guest of honor here is Floyd Norman, the first African-American animator hired by Disney (Jungle Book,
Robin Hood, Monsters Inc.) In addition to fun “panels”
we have had a couple fun restaurant visits—last night a Buca di Beppo (family style Italian) and just this morning
a gathering for older fans and for military cartoon fans
here in the hotel restaurant.
Last year Carolyn Kelly (daughter of Walt “Pogo” Kelly)
was a guest of honor.
Pittsburgh is pretty interesting and it’s fun to go to the
roof of the convention center at night
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