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Sunday column ping

Scandal only way out for state hacks
By Howie Carr | Sunday, January 29, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

Forget the countdown to the Super Bowl. What the hacks on Beacon Hill are breathlessly awaiting are the indictments in the Probation Department scandal.

It used to be that elections produced change at the top in the Legislature. Now turnover in the leadership is solely at the discretion of the U.S. attorney, whoever it is, whichever party he or she belongs to.

Once upon a time, a new speaker took power when he amassed a certain number of signed pledge cards from the membership. Now, he takes over when his predecessor receives a target letter from a federal grand jury.

No need to recite the squalid corruption of the past 20 years. Just remember that the last speaker to leave under his own power was George Keverian (D- Papa Gino’s). He left the old-fashioned way in 1990, after running for statewide office and getting crushed.

It’s hard to describe the depth of the corruption and cronyism in the Probation Department. Here’s one story you’ve never heard about a probation coatholder, who’s still on the payroll while simultaneously collecting a state pension. He’s the son of a very powerful hack, and back in the 1980s, this kid was fitfully attending a state college in Western Massachusetts.

On the Fridays before long weekends, a State Police helicopter would land on the quad, and this hackling would board it for the trip back to Boston. I’m not making this up. You couldn’t expect this type of pampered puke to ever really ... work, now could you?

The day before Paul Ware began the investigation that led to these impending indictments, I wrote a column about a probation officer who’d been arrested in the driveway of an alleged heroin dealer in Taunton.

Both his father and his grandfather were solons who became judges, and his mother was running for state rep. (She lost.) He had a law degree, and had started out in a district attorney’s office, but there were issues, as they say.

Again, though, you couldn’t expect the guy to actually go out and get a real job, now could you?

This second kid, was he a beneficiary of judicial or legislative hackerama? That’s the irony here. This scandal isn’t about re-storing good government, it’s about a turf battle between the corrupt judiciary and the corrupt Legislature.

Several hacks have already been indicted by Marsha Coakley, and out west one probation officer has been arrested for allegedly intimidating a witness. This reputed P.O. thug wasn’t even directly related to a hack — he is described as having grown up with the children of an aide to the indicted commissioner, John O’Brien. And O’Brien is a wholly owned subsidiary of Felon Finneran, the corrupt ex-House speaker who took the Fifth when questioned by Ware.

No one is certain exactly when the indictments are coming down. But I’ll know when I see the indicted solons walking past my radio-station office, heads down, on their way to the traditional post-plea bargain interview for a talk-show host’s job.

If you’re indicted, you’re invited to fail in radio. Some things never change.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1399286

Last night I attended a trivia night at a restaurant in Lynn; my classmate and fellow radio guy (at the time) Gary Leavitt was there. He does impressions (stuff on youtube) and is a conservative. I recalled with him how someone did a song about a Walter Dyer stunt in late 1980, and Gary helped out.
The tape of this song is long gone.

Walter Dyer was a leather shop owner (even though he’s passed on, the business survives: Walter Dyer IS leather) and in late 1980 he paid someone to toss $1,500 in dollar bills from
a plane flying over Central Sq. in Lynn. Publicity stunt.
In his Globe obituary (2003), it was said:

“”Mr. Dyer drew national attention on Dec. 19, 1980, when he decided to shower the residents of Lynn with 1,500 $1 bills. The money was to be dropped from a low-flying airplane. Nearly 4,000 people, including Mr. Dyer, assembled in Central Square for the big event with fish nets and garbage bags to reel in the loot. But the pilot of the plane miscalculated and the money fluttered out to sea.”

So some guy does a song about it—there was an instrumental break and we had Gary do comedy shtick in the voice of Howard Cosell. Again the tape is long gone but I remember the song:
Oh Walter Dyer, you surely are no flyer
Please don’t drop your money from that plane
You got bamboozled by the weather, you crazy man of leather
Please stop it, before it blows away to Maine.