Posted on 05/08/2011 4:45:00 AM PDT by raccoonradio
Howie thread for the week; I don't see a Howie column in today's Herald on their site but we'll get going anyway
no Sun column far as I know
Unrelated but here’s my rant about Peter Blute.
http://cf.telegram.com/town_portal_includes/display_full_blog_tt.cfm?TOWN=Rutland
Pushing your blog is not very becoming.
He’s too busy counting his cash to write.
Howie will be @ the B&N in Nashua, NH today @ 2 hocking his book.
Seriously, how did this man graduate from college with the ignorance of a hockey puck?
Or we could tell Chappaquiddick stories until he gets back on line?
ha—to be honest he did extra columns a wk or two ago to help promote his book. I haven’t seen a hard-copy version of the paper yet (a slight getaway to VT) but I assume he “has the day off”
Taxes keep rising despite property Deval-uation
By Howie Carr | Tuesday, May 10, 2011 |
http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
How can this be? The value of your home keeps going down, yet the property taxes never stop going up.
Back in 2006, didn’t candidate Deval Patrick promise to cut property taxes? If he does have to testify under oath at Sal DiMasi’s corruption trial next week, I hope someone asks him about that pledge, just to establish his reputation for veracity, or lack thereof.
“Governor, did you know you were lying when you vowed to cut property taxes, or maybe we all misunderstood you, and you really meant to say you were going to cut property values? Which is it?”
It’s that time of year again. Proposition 2 1⁄2 override season. Saturday they passed one in Scituate. Wherever you go, it’s the same old story. The selectmen say they’ve made “Draconian cuts.” They’re dealing with “fixed costs.”
Fixed costs means they can’t lay off their wife’s nephew.
Isn’t municipal government grand? I can sum it up in two words: Willie Lantigua.
And so the tax bills just keep on rising. Just ask Kathy from Foxboro.
“I bought my house in 2006 for $330,000, it’s now worth $240,000,” she was saying the other night. “The town claimed I had a ‘finished basement.’ I took the assessor down to see it. It has a dirt floor, only it was mud, because it still had 3 inches of water in it from the flooding last spring.”
Surely the town did the right thing by you, Kathy.
“I got a $17 reduction. I thought it was a joke when I saw the bill. Seventeen bucks.”
Another Draconian cut. Nowadays, everybody is running down to City or Town Hall to file for an abatement. But don’t forget to call ahead. A lot of these places close early now.
Town Hall’s got a million excuses for why your tax bill keeps going up.
State law, don’t you know. What’s theirs is theirs, and what’s yours is theirs.
And God forbid anybody suggests maybe level-funding the school budget. They immediately threaten to cancel the football season.
“I bought my house in Springfield in 2005 for $150,000,” a guy named Joe was saying, “and I just sold it for $95,000. But my property taxes went from $2,500 to $3,000.”
And why do you have to file for a new abatement every year? If the house was overvalued last year, why does it go back to the old overvaluation this year?
Meanwhile, on Beacon Hill, the state hacks were holding a hearing last week to raise the income tax. They call it “An Act to Invest in Our Communities.”
Invest in our communities — sorry, I already did. In my own, and in Willie Lantigua’s.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1336806
I was listening when the lady called in with the $17 abatement tale. I thought she sad she was from Boxbourough - gots to pay for those Acton/Boxbourough schools!
Regardless of whatever city/ town she’s from, $17 is an absolute kick in the teeth of a joke.
My God, I thought a vein was getting ripped out from my ear when that voice started shrieking at 3:06PM. I couldn't change the channel fast enough.
Who's on WTKK now that that knob (Severin) has been canned? I need to listen to something on the way home and it isn't gonna be McPhee. I'd rather listen to NPR.
McPhee? No thanks - she’s God awful.
Hannity is on WXKS 1200 on the dial
Michael Bower, who had co-hosted with Jay, is on now
and I think some guy from Salt Lake City calling himself
Chunga is co-hosting (then at 6 they have Dr Keith Ablow
if you’ve ever heard of him)
Howie is back tomorrow though WRKO won’t carry the 6 pm
hour. Celts playing on WEEI, Sox bumped to RKO (perhaps the last time this’ll happen—Celts down 3 games to 1 in their
series) so WRKO has the VERY exciting Sox pregame at 6
tomorrow
reminder for Willie Lantigua
Check channel 830 from worcester and 560 from Spfd for tonight
Indeed, perhaps for last time this season, Celts playoffs on 850 push Sox to 680 with the VERY exciting pregame show at
6 pm pre-empting Howie on WRKO. Also try online if need be
Joe DeNucci, stop crying over spilt hacks
By Howie Carr | Thursday, May 12, 2011 |
http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Hey, Joe DeNucci, stop squawking. You and your crew had a good run, 24 years. Head to Florida and enjoy the kiss in the mail.
But now, about 60 of Joe’s nearest and dearest coat-holders at the auditor’s office have been shown the door, and he’s squealing like a stuck pig. Joe, maybe when you endorsed Suzanne Bump, you should have handed her a list of names of your favorite hacks who you wanted kept on. Did you do that? No, I didn’t think so.
Joe DeNucci is a good guy, but cripes, the people he took care of over the years. I remember one woman, her husband was — well, let me put it this way, if you come by one of my book signings, I’ll gladly point out his mugshot to my poster of the feds’ 1975 Winter Hill Gang organizational chart.
That’s the way it worked with DeNucci. Speaker Thompson, the Iron Duke, gave him a job when he was a washed-up pug. He returned the favor.
So can we take a look at some of the people who got two in the hat?
Bump whacked U.S. Rep. Richie Neal’s wife, Maureen. Also hit was a member of the Democratic state committee from Holliston, Bob Cassidy. Also office flack Glenn Briere, of the old Springfield Union, and his assistant, Frank Dyer, an old Herald hand. Good guys, Glenn and Frank. They must have wanted to stay on, because after the primary, they both duked money to Bump.
Looks to me like Bump’s people at least gave it some thought before they squeezed the trigger. Consider the two daughters of Joe “the Horse” Salvati, the North End errand boy who was framed by Joe Barboza and the FBI for a murder he did not commit. The Horse’s daughters were obviously victims of a terrible injustice. DeNucci took care of them. But when Bump got in, and started checking out the staff, she found one of the daughters was apparently much more highly regarded than the other one.
So one of Salvati’s daughters got the boot, and the other one didn’t. And by the way, wasn’t Joe recently awarded about $27 million by Judge Nancy Gertner for his wrongful imprisonment? I don’t think money’s a problem anymore for the Salvatis.
One other thing: Can we stop pretending that Joe DeNucci endorsed Suzanne Bump because he liked her? He endorsed her because he loathed her primary opponent, then-Worcester County sheriff Guy Glodis. DeNucci hated him even worse than Mumbles Menino did, and for the same reason — Glodis made sport of him. He was trying to push DeNucci out.
But now Glodis is the one who’s out, and so is DeNucci. And Joe seems to have forgotten one of the oldest axioms of the State House: When you’re out, you’re out.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1337369
Dining on lobsters while you pay bill
By Howie Carr | Friday, May 13, 2011
| http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
This column is dedicated to Willie Lantigua, the mayor, or should I say the alcalde of Lawrence.
I know the $100,000-a-year onetime deadbeat dad with the $45,000 hack girlfriend is in a jam this week for improperly grabbing free fuel assistance.
But supermarket receipts represent a different form of handout in Willie’s World.
Supposedly, the hacks at the State House are going to stop the layabouts from using their Auntie Zeituni cards to buy booze, lottery tickets and lap dances. But, whatever halfhearted crackdowns the kleptocrats at the State House impose, Willie’s constituents will still be able to use their EBT cards to buy any kind of food they want. So check out the seafood this gimme girl was buying at her local supermarket, paid for by your tax dollars.
“SELCT LOBSTER 56.93.
“SEA SCALLOPS 15.66.”
Altogether, the EBT bill was $205.99, and it included passion fruit, mango juice and more.
Last weekend, at one of my “Hitman” book signings, a cashier at a large local supermarket handed me a fistful of these receipts.
“You wouldn’t believe what I see every day,” the cashier said, but I would. I used to frequent a big supermarket in a district overrun with freeloading illegal aliens. The last time I went to that market, I told the cashier that this would be my final trip to her store. I couldn’t stand to watch anymore of the rip-offs. The cashier nodded silently.
“I have to put up with this for eight hours a day,” she whispered, lest the PC Police overhear her. “How do you think I feel at the end of my shift?”
Like a Republican, would be my guess.
When they replaced food stamps with EBT cards, one reason given was that the illegals’ self-esteem was being damaged by the dirty looks being given to them by all those mean-spirited Americans who pay the taxes to support everyone who’s moved here for a permanent vacation.
After studying the receipts, I realize there’s another reason that the plastic has replaced the stamps — the Democrats don’t want voters knowing how high on the hog the layabouts are living. Here’s one bill for $44.68. That left a mere $860.70 on their EBT card. No wonder they’re buying lobster.
Here’s another one, a bill of $25.07. That gimme girl had only $608.95 left on her card.
What are the words of that old song from “West Side Story?” Everything free in America. At least if you’re illegal.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1337614
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