Posted on 07/15/2012 4:02:42 AM PDT by raccoonradio
Howie thread for the week starting with his Sunday Boston Herald column
Sunday column ping. btw next week at this time (or so) the Boston Phoenix is scheduled to finish up their broadcasting of alternative rock on WFNX-FM 101.7, a station they sold to Clear Channel. CC is tight lipped about what the format of 101.7 will be though possibilities include conservative talk (a simulcast of Talk 1200?), liberal talk (but why?), Spanish language, etc. We don’t know, but once I find out (prob next week at this time) I’ll pass it along. Wouldn’t it be outrageous if the station that used to be Boston Phoenix radio turned into the FM home of Katz, Beck, Rush, Jay, and Hannity?
I was on a WFNX messageboard and some people were suggesting writing to FCC to complain. I pointed out that the station’s owner, Stephen Mindich, had voluntarily sold the station to Clear Channel...and “the FCC is not in the format regulation business”. See, there’s free commerce and something called Free Speech. Nobody put a gun to his head to force him to sell to the folks who syndicate Rush. Instead, Mindich chose to sell to CC and now has $14.5 million reasons to be happy and all of them have George Washington’s picture on them.
So anyway, we’ll find out next week. This is just speculation....Howie’s Sun column:
Hey, it all depends on the meaning of ‘demeaning’
Latest beef is more EBT baloney from Gov. Anecdote
By Howie Carr | Sunday, July 15, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo by Herald file
Gov. Deval Patrick doesn’t like “anecdotes.” You know, all those news stories that are so embarrassing for his most loyal supporters and the welfare programs that enable them to live high on the hog.
Like the convicted heroin dealer from Roxbury who used his EBT card for bail money. Or the illegal alien from Ecuador who police say was drunk when he ran over and killed an American citizen in Milford — the third such fatality in Milford in a few months.
These are all just ... anecdotes, as the governor lectures us whenever another such atrocity occurs.
John Adams once said that facts are stubborn things. So are anecdotes, because they tend to be based on facts. And so it was that this week the Democrat-controlled House voted 152-1 to override Gov. Anecdote’s vetoes of certain mild reforms in the welfare program known as EBT cards.
The governor was not pleased, especially by the debate over the hundreds of millions of dollars of waste, fraud and abuse in his beloved handout programs for the non-working classes.
“Some of the comments,” he harrumphed on Thursday, “by some of the members, were very demeaning.”
Demeaning? That’s odd, because I pored over most of those debates, looking for usable red meat in my column — and I found next to nothing demeaning. Everything was very measured, too cordial in fact, considering the level of anger among taxpayers outside the State House.
But maybe I just overlooked the good stuff. So Friday morning I called the governor’s press office and asked for a list of “demeaning” comments made by solons in the recent debates.
By late afternoon, no one had called or emailed me, so I telephoned the State House again to request a listing of the demeaning comments.
When the phone didn’t ring, I knew it was the governor.
When law enforcement or the media come up with an “anecdote” it always includes sworn statements, police reports, rap sheets, mug shots, etc. Yet they’re immediately dismissed as anecdotes. Now the governor accuses legislators, 80 percent of whom are members of his own party, of “demeaning” rhetoric, and is unable to cite even one example.
These demeaning comments — they’re nothing but anecdotes, I guess.
I went back and reread one of the House debates, from April 25. Here’s what one of the reformers, Rep. Marty Walz of the Back Bay, said:
“We need to make sure that benefits (go to) those who need them and not to those who abuse our system.” Now that’s some real demeaning hate speech.
The usual Deval allies opposed any sort of reform. Rep. Carlos Henriquez (D-Zipcar), a few weeks before he was charged with using his ex-girlfriend as a punching bag, said: “We’re spending a dollar to chase down a dime.”
They always say that. They’re always opposed to fraud and abuse, but ...
You want some demeaning rhetoric? This was from Rep. Ruth Balser (D-Newton):
“If a poor woman wants to go to a job interview and she needs to put on lipstick, she’s not going to be able to.”
I hate to use the “a” word again, but could we have some names and dates to go along with that sad story, Ruth?
Here’s Rep. Alice Wolf of Cambridge: “We’re being Big Brother. We’re looking over their shoulder and trying to tell them exactly what they should do. We should be empowering them to make good decisions.”
Oh but we are, Rep. Wolf. If the layabouts have to walk to an ATM to get the cash to buy that next tattoo or 40-ouncer, maybe that will “empower” them to think twice. And by the way, no one is telling them exactly what they should do. Only what they should do with our money, as opposed to money that they have “worked” for, if you’ll pardon the expression.
Work — I think I’ve figured out the real demeaning word for Gov. Patrick and his followers. Work. Work work work work work.
Look at them run!
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061145827
The governor made a grammatical error. The plural of "anecdote" is "data".
If minority groups didn't exist, The Democrat PArty would have had to invent them.
to all, as Howie says:
—thoughts and prayers with Sandy and family as her mother is very ill with pancreatic cancer.
—Max Robins in studio today
Wow, sorry to hear that, I thought she was doing better....
” You want some demeaning rhetoric? This was from Rep. Ruth Balser (D-Newton):
“If a poor woman wants to go to a job interview and she needs to put on lipstick, she’s not going to be able to.””
My home town.......sheesh!
Amen.
Amen.
Wed. column ping
Bus goes round and round for O’Brien
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, July 18, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo
Photo by Dominick Reuter
Are there any stand-up guys left on Beacon Hill?
Not in the Probation Department, that’s for sure.
But it’s hard to blame the overfed rats who have now flipped. I mean, would you go to prison to protect John “Jack” O’Brien, the disgraced ex-Probation commissioner, a hack’s hack, a payroll patriot from BC who fawningly called Felon Finneran “Mistah Speakah”?
Jack O’Brien can only be asking himself two questions this morning:
• Is it too late for me to get on the train?
• Who can I give them?
It’s either that or, well, let me put it this way, Jack. When was the last time you rode a bus? Do you like buses? Buses where they pull up at night at the local lockup and you don’t get to make any phone calls home, and you don’t have any money for the canteen, and if you tell the screws you’re sick, they laugh at you?
Ask Sal DiMasi about the bus, Jack. Ask him soon, very soon, if you really want to know.
O’Brien’s indicted in federal and state court, there are multiple grand juries still out there, and if he’s convicted, he loses the $4,738 monthly kiss in the mail. Ask Sal about that too.
You have to wonder how smart Jack O’Brien was. He’s a neighbor in Quincy of Tim Cahill, the now-indicted ex-state treasurer. O’Brien needed hack jobs (as opposed to work) for his wife and daughter. So instead of talking to Cahill directly, he has his guy call Cahill’s guy.
Good thinking, Jack. Two more witnesses.
O’Brien’s guy was Ed Ryan, $93,000 a year. Now a rat. The assistant attorney general pointedly said in court yesterday that it was only “low-ranking legislators that dealt with Ed Ryan at that time.”
So what if they’re back-benchers. It’s like fishing. Sometimes you catch a minnow. You can’t eat it, but you can use it ... as bait, to hook a bigger fish. This is how an investigation is supposed to unfold — you work your way up the food chain, slowly, and all the while you keep reading the same headlines over and over again.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo denies he is the target of any federal probes.
This could get very entertaining. Before it’s over, there could be a line of convicted-felon payroll Charlies trying out for radio jobs at RICO, er ’RKO.
One of the defense lawyers thundered yesterday about the state and feds turning good Democrats into “cooperating witnesses.”
“What threats,” he was saying, “what promises, what inducements were made?”
I’m guessing they just mentioned something about the bus.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061146609
Princess and the potholes
By Howie Carr | Thursday, July 19, 2012 |
http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists So Deval Patrick said there was no money in the budget for Taunton State Hospital, but there is plenty of dough to fix the road to his mansion so first lady Michelle Obama doesn’t have to ride over, perish the thought, a pothole.
Michelle Obama — they don’t call her Mooch-elle for nothing.
But hey, it’s the least we peasants can do for our very own Marie Antoinette. After all, she and Barack can’t go to Martha’s Vineyard this year, what with the election and all.
So they’re bringing the Vineyard to Berkshire County. Before the visit to Deval’s mansion, James Taylor, the island troubadour, the moonbat’s moonbat, will be crooning his ancient soporific ballads at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield.
Don’t you love James Taylor? How does that song of his go, Sweet Baby James?
“The third of August was covered with potholes/So was the road from West Stockbridge to Richmond.”
And so it had to be repaired. Deval insisted. Conehead Road — I mean Cone Hill Road. As for Deval’s neighbors who were patiently awaiting their own repairs ... let them eat cake.
Richmond, Va., was the cradle of the Confederacy. Richmond, Mass., is the cradle of cronyism.
Imagine if Mitt Romney as governor had called up the town manager of Wolfeboro, N.H., and asked that the road to his lakefront digs be repaired so that he could entertain ... Laura Bush.
At $20,000 a head.
Squirrelly trust-funded demonstrators would have converged on Lake Winnipesaukee, brandishing hand-lettered signs.
“Romney Lied, My Prius Died.”
“8/3 Pothole Repairs — An Inside Job.”
I hope everyone who voted for Tim Cahill is happy. This is what you get with a 49 percent governor. No wonder Deval couldn’t deliver that property tax cut he promised in 2006. He needed the money for pothole repairs to his mansion.
Joe Biden and the Clintons at least launder their money a little — they “rent” to the Secret Service. Deval just has one of his minions order up the road fix, like it’s an assistant chief probation officer’s job.
Whichever of the commonwealth’s 351 cities and towns you live in, remember this the next time they put a Prop. 21⁄2 override on the ballot. These are your tax dollars at work. It’s not for the children, it’s for Mooch-elle Obama, Deval Patrick, James Taylor and the rest of the Beautiful People.
Let us imagine the motorcade wending its way from Pittsfield to Richmond. In the lead vehicle, the crash car, as it were, is Lt. Gov. Tim Murray. He don’t care about no stinkin’ potholes, or stonewalls either. He’ll be on his state-issued cellphone, and no, you won’t be getting the records of who he’s calling, no matter how many FOIAs you file.
Let’s just hope there’s not another heat wave on Aug. 3. If there is, the taxpayers may be on the hook for a new Olympic-sized swimming pool at the Sweet P.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061146893
head exploding
All: No Fri column for Howie from what I can see. He did put out one yesterday.
—
Poor timing: The following showed up on facebook a few minutes ago from The 99 Restaurants: “The Dark Knight Rises is finally here! And remember, nothing goes better with a great movie than a great meal and a great deal from the Ninety Nine!”
After about a dozen comments saying the post should be pulled down out of respect for victims, etc., it apparently was pulled down.
If Howie is successful in leaping to another station, would Ent. bother with keeping RKO as is? Mark S. of Boston Radio Watch tweeted to me that Ent. could just make a little money putting ESPN on full time on 680, if Howie left, or
maybe 680 would be the simulcast of WEEI-FM with ESPN going on 850, or who knows what.
At a time when Boston radio goes through a lot of changes,
get ready for ...possibly...more.
—Steve Leveille retired
—Gene Capoletti is retiring. Gil Santos will return.
—Lovell Dyett passed on
—WODS 103.3 switched from 60s-80s pop to “amp” current pop
—WGBH gets rid of most of its jazz to air more news/talk
—Tonight at 7 pm WFNX 101.7 breathes its last. It may keep running alt. rock over the weekend but Clear Channel is to take over soon. They are tight lipped about new format for 101.7 but ONE possibility is a simulcast of Talk 1200. Other format possibilities include Spanish language stuff,
liberal talk (why?), “variety hits” like the former Mike 93.7, Fox Sports etc.
—Howie contract up soon. If he can leave, does he get hired by Greater Media’s WTKK 96.9, or Clear Channel’s
Talk 1200 (which again MIGHT wind up on 101.7 as well)?
I doubt CBS would hire him. I can’t picture him on WBZ
AM (esp. as they do news by day. While they do have conservative talker Dan Rea on at night, I can’t picture
“the bugle” on WBZ...)
—
Soon there will be 5 national sports networks:
ESPN (now on WEEI overnights)
Fox Sports (The Sports Hub overnight; synd by Clr Chnl)
Yahoo!Sports formerly Sporting News Radio
newcomers are
CBS Sports Radio (maybe to wind up on Sports Hub?)
NBC Sports Radio (includes package of NFL games. Maybe if
ESPN goes to 680 or just AM 850, WEEI could run this)
From the Howie Carr show facebook page:
—
A note from Sandy:
My family and I want to give our most heartfelt thanks for the outpouring of love and offers of support for my most beloved mother who lost her battle with cancer this morning. She taught all of us to see the beauty in every day life. Her greatest joy was her family and her greatest gift was her ability to bring a smile to the face of anyone she met. Your thoughts and prayers touched her deeply and for that we will be forever grateful.
In her memory we would ask that anyone who cares to send flowers would instead make a contribution to The Circle of Caring at Hospice of the Good Shepard. They were a gift from God in the last months of my mother’s life enabling us to spend much treasured time at home together with her.
In memory of Sara Lynne Shack
Hospice of the Good Shepard
2042 Beacon Street
Newton, MA. 02468-1431
617-969-6130
Thank you all again for keeping us in your prayers.
Sandy
Sorry to hear this news, I kinda knew she’d pass before the week was out.
most likely 101.7 will be variety hits (like mike 93.7 was) as WHBA the Harbor prob to start Sun into Mon at midnight
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