Posted on 10/15/2011 10:30:46 PM PDT by raccoonradio
Howie thread for the week starting with his Sun. Herald column
Sun. column ping
Hack Tolman steps up to (lick) the plate
by Howie Carr
Recession? What recession? Don’t tell Steve Tolman about any economic downturn. Until Thursday night, he was a state senator, like his brother before him, collecting, with all his “bonuses,” $83,640.26 a year.
But now the solon has resigned, to become president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. How much will you be making now, Steve?
“How much do you make, Howie?” he replied.
Of course, my salary doesn’t have to be filed with the Department of Labor. I was just looking for some information in advance.
“The salary’s the salary,” he replied, unhelpfully.
Is it around $130,000? I suggested.
“Yeah, somewhere in there.”
That’s about how much his predecessor, Robert Haynes, a lifelong union hack, was making. Of course, most of these pinkie-ring union thugs have multiple jobs.
Haynes, for example, was on the board of Blue Cross/Blue Shield until earlier this year. That was worth another $72,700. In 2008 he grabbed another $24,656 from something called the “Mass. AFL-CIO Workforce Development Programs Inc.”
Total take: $219,223.
“I’m not going to be making anything extra,” Tolman said. “There’s a new bylaw — no other salaries.”
Hmmm, that doesn’t sound like my AFL-CIO.
Anyway, Tolman stuck around the State House last week long enough to vote for the casino bill, after which the other solons bid their customary farewells to their colleague. Sen. Tom McGee, whose father was the second-to-last speaker not convicted of a felony, talked about a trip to Washington.
Sen. Stephen Brewer mentioned Tolman’s brother Warren, who once ran for governor on the taxpayer’s dime. Brewer claimed the two Tolmans “remind you of another band of brothers that rose to political prominence.”
Who? The Creedons? The Bulgers? The Langones?
In his own remarks, Tolman thanked the staff — “I’d like to change the law so you can organize.”
Great, just what we need. Another public-sector hack union.
I asked the solon emeritus if he’d already applied for his state pension.
“Me? I’m a baby.” He’s 57. But he said he wouldn’t start collecting as long as he is AFL-CIO president. That must have shocked one of his dear friends, Sen. Ken Donnelly, the Democrat double-dipper from Arlington who in addition to his Senate salary grabs a $51,187 firefighter’s pension. In the hackerama, these are the good old days.
President Tolman said he wants to “rebrand” the union, which I guess means he wants to reach out beyond the traditional pinkie-ring crowd, to the layabouts who wear nose rings and eyebrow rings. The new generation, in other words. The Occupy Boston crowd.
My advice for Steve would be to grab that state pension now. It’s the only way to win the respect of your greedy members. To be a proper union boss in Massachusetts, you can’t just feed at the public trough, you have to lick the plate.
URL for above
http://bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view/2011_1016hack_tolman_steps_up_to_lick_the_plate/
I see Massachusetts hasn’t changed all that much since I left (fled) in 1976 : )
After all, these good people spend every waking moment in deep concern over the little people of Massachusetts (to the rest of Norumbega, aka "Massholes"). This public service to the little people is performed with love and the deepest caring in exchange for a few seconds of ballot marking. Viewed cosmically, this is one of the greatest frickin' bargains of all time, ne c'est pas?
How can you Massholes put a price on love, as exemplified by the life and glorious times of the Holy Virgins and Martyrs, Saint Edward of Chappaquiddick and St. John of Hyannis?* Most niggardly of you, especially when one thinks of the beeswax and donations expended over the centuries on those two totally non-Irish foreigners, Sts. Cosmas and Damian!
*Note to the Supreme Pontiff: "Benny, what in the Hell is holding up that canonization?!"
Wed column ping
Reason has no space in Occupy’s debt relief
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, October 19, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
So now the hippies in all the Obamavilles across the country want their student loans “forgiven”?
I’m confused — I thought the student loans were covered under last week’s demand for ALL debt everywhere to be repudiated, or in the other demand on their list for free college tuition for all, even non-illegal aliens.
But now at the MoveOn.org Web site you can sign an online petition to wipe the slate clean — but only for the fleabaggers.
Here is someone named Robert Applebaum waxing rhapsodic on the prospect of erasing all student loan debt:
“With the stroke of the president’s pen, millions of Americans would suddenly have hundreds, or in some cases, thousands of extra dollars in their pockets each and every month.”
If that’s the goal, then let’s go back to last week’s plan, to abolish all debt. Think how much extra money you’d have in your pocket if you didn’t have to make that monthly mortgage payment, or the car payment, or take care of the credit card bills.
“As consumer spending increases,” Applebaum continues, “businesses will begin to hire, jobs will be created, and a new era of innovation, entrepreneurship and prosperity will be ushered in for all.”
Dude, think of all the stoners living in their moms’ basements. Don’t let their glassy eyes and slack jaws fool you, these incoherent college boys are the next generation of Steve Jobs, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. Freed of their onerous student loans, man, they’ll be like, totally unleashed to begin “a new era of innovation.”
Solar-powered bongs. Assembly-line tattoo parlors. Fake-ID factories. Pottery cooperatives. To paraphrase Chairman Mao, “Let a thousand Solyndras bloom.”
But if college is free, how will Harvard be able to continue paying Elizabeth Warren $372,000 a year for whatever it is she does at the law school? Maybe she sees the handwriting on the wall, and that’s why she’s out chasing the “hick” vote.
“Instead of saddling entire generations with debt from which there is no escape, let’s empower the American people to grow this economy on their own!”
Debt from which there is no escape? Then why did you take out the loan, dude? Was somebody, like, holding a gun to your head? Did someone spray PCP on your weed that day? And did you read — excuse me, did somebody tell you — that there is currently a shortage of 600,000 skilled workers here in the United States?
Maybe if you’d gone to trade school instead of getting a phony-baloney bachelor’s degree in art history, you could afford to move out to your own apartment, or at least get the hell off the Greenway.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1374381
Nonsense, Mary! Massachusetts is chock full of jobs at this pay scale. You must be a Republican.
Rats! That’s what I’ve been doing wrong! LOL!
Rats! That’s what I’ve been doing wrong! LOL!
Forgiving debt is worse than a zero sum game. If the creditors are made to pay, no one will ever get a loan again, ever. If the government is made to pay, than the frugal and providential are once more burdened by the feckless and irresponsible.
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