Howie Carr thread August 2013

fri column ping. Have been traveling again (Pittsburgh, Gettysburg, Baltimore) and I think I lost my wireless mouse the last motel so tough to cut and paste entire columns, or am too busy or tired so...

column

Thanks to smartphone have been able to hear parts of the show (after seeing F.Lloyd Wright's Kentuck Knob, hearing Howie's death pool though occasional dropouts...

preview

Now maybe Whitey Bulger really does have to take the stand — if only to explain how he happened to have his photo taken with infamous perv priest Fred Ryan.

So Wednesday night Whitey’s lawyers dropped a bunch of photos, and a lot of them are familiar — four of them, in fact, I’ve put on promotional magnets.

The three brothers, circa 1965-66, Whitey in the white suit, Whitey with the black goat, and Whitey in his leather topcoat and hat, making the rounds of the South End...

Sun column ping

Carr: Friendly advice for new media mogul

EXTRY, EXTRY: Howie Carr outside Fenway Park with yesterday’s Boston Globe and a hot dog. Only one, he says, is really tasty.
Sunday, August 4, 2013 By: Howie Carr

There’s a sucker born every minute.

That’s the first thought that comes to mind about John Henry’s purchase of The Boston Globe and other assorted media dinosaurs for $70 million in cash. In other words, as someone noted yesterday, John Henry’s 164-foot yacht may well be worth more than his crumbling newspaper empire.

Another old saying seems equally appropriate for the occasion: A fool and his money are soon parted.

Do the math. The New York Times spent a combined  $1.4 billion to buy the Globe and the Worcester Telegram, and now Pinch Sulzberger walks away with a nickel on the dollar, minus pension obligations.

As stunning as that squandered $1.1 billion for the Globe is, consider that in 1999 the Sulzbergers wasted another  $300 million on the Telegram, or is it the Telegram & Gazette?

We’ll know John Henry’s gone native if he shows up on Morrissey Boulevard tomorrow wearing a bow tie.

Speaking of which, the Globe’s rumpswabs are surely in a dither this morning. So many new rear-ends to kiss, as Alexander Cockburn once said when his newspaper changed hands. Don’t worry though — they don’t call them bow-tied bumkissers for nothing.

As you assume the helm of the Titanic, Mr. Henry, remember how far astray the Globe has wandered these last few decades. Despite what all those assorted drifters tell you in the boardroom, here are a few things you ought to know:

Whitey Bulger did not keep the drugs out of Southie.

If a crooked Boston city councilor hands you a video of what he claims are American soldiers raping Iraqi women and it looks like a porn movie, it probably is  a porn movie.

Running “fake but accurate” stories from “60 Minutes” on the front page will probably not rebuild the moribund brand.

You’re under no obligation to endorse Charlotte Golar Richie for mayor simply because she’s a woman and she’s black.

The first syllable of “newspaper” is “news” — not opinion, especially the predictable moonbat drivel that your new plaything specializes in.

Rampant, serial plagiarism is no longer a workable model for your columnists in this Internet age.

I hope Mr. Henry has done his due diligence, because the first buyers of newspapers that have gone belly up do not exactly have stellar track records. Like you, Mr. Henry, these would-be entrepreneurs usually buy for pennies on the dollar, thinking they’re getting a great deal. A few years later, they’re conducting their own fire sale … for pennies on the dollar. Think Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis.

Mr. Henry, do you remember how hard it was last year to find a Bigger Fool to take Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford off your hands? There aren’t a lot of LA Dodgers left in the newspaper business. They all went bankrupt years ago.

Good luck, Mr. Henry, and I mean it, or my name isn’t Mike Barnicle.

column

today's column

btw I am actually up just past 6:15 am and Howie is supposed to be on Boston Herald Radio with Jeff Katz at 6:20. Will try to record the segment

Carr: Whitey Bulger saga headed to final chapter

By Howie Carr/Boston Herald 8/5/13

Jurors who heard seven weeks of evidence in the mob trial of James “Whitey” Bulger face a new endurance test today — closing arguments that could top seven hours in length, followed by what could be days of deliberations starting tomorrow as they comb through four decades of evidence of murder and extortion.

But because jurors were told they could go past Labor Day, Philip Tracy Jr., a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor, said he believes they are feeling a sense of relief that the end is in sight a month early. And that, he said, could make for thoughtful, relaxed consideration of the facts.

“The jurors have to be thrilled that they’re going to be able to go home. They’ll take their time going over everything. By the end of the week they’ll be back and the verdict most likely will be guilty on all counts,” Tracy predicted.

The 32-count federal indictment, headed into the jury room, charges the former head of the Winter Hill Gang with 19 murders, racketeering conspiracy, extortion, money laundering and drug distribution — the latter, a crime his lawyers acknowledged made him a millionaire many times over. U.S. District Court Judge Denise J. Casper has allotted assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Wyshak Jr. and the defense team of attorneys J.W. Carney Jr. and Hank Brennan three hours each for closing. Wyshak has asked for an additional 30 minutes for rebuttal. The two legal teams have been barred from commenting outside court and this will be their first opportunity to sound off on the evidence and testimony that was presented.

Tracy said Wyshak and assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Kelly “put a tight case together and that case was that Bulger was the CEO of a criminal enterprise that killed people.” Carney and Brennan, who plan to split their presentation, are expected to attempt to embarrass the FBI, to show that Bulger was not a top-echelon informant and that among the 19 murders he’s accused of being involved in, he did not strangle his partner Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi’s girlfriend Debra Davis or Flemmi’s stepdaughter Deborah Hussey. Both women were 26.

Though Bulger, 83, chose not to testify, and will have a second opportunity to speak his mind unchallenged by cross-examination at his sentencing should he be convicted, Tracy said, “I think he got out his message already. He controlled the drama of this case to the very end.”

Tue column ping

It's All Over, Whitey
By Howie Carr 8/6/13

The Whitey Bulger jury gets the case today, and three words come to mind: open and shut.

How long will it take them to render a verdict? The over-under is in hours, not days.

“They were hunters, but they didn’t hunt animals, they hunted people,” prosecutor Fred Wyshak said yesterday in the middle of his 31⁄2-hour closing. “These were the scariest people walking the streets of Boston.”

And they were even more frightening when they were driving the streets of Boston, because that’s when they opened fire on you with their machine guns.

Granted, Whitey’s lawyers had nothing to work with, but still, here’s what their three-hours-plus of haranguing the jury boiled down to: “The government allowed serial killers to walk amongst us, so teach them a lesson by freeing a serial killer to walk amongst us.”

This is sometimes called a “nullification defense.” Another term is ragtime.

The jury now has 33 counts to decide. Seems to me Jay Carney has already conceded the 14 non-murders. He’s admitted, twice now, that Whitey made (as he put it in his opening statement) “millions upon millions upon millions of dollars” in the rackets. He used the M-word again yesterday.

So he’s basically not disputing the drug, extortion and money-laundering counts against his client. As for the weapons charges, last week he asked an FBI agent from Los Angeles why they didn’t just charge Whitey with weapons violations out there in Santa Monica, because those felonies would have been a “slam dunk” for the law.

As for the murder charges, Whitey’s only defense seems to be that John Martorano, Stevie Flemmi and Kevin Weeks are not nice people. This is news? If Whitey had ever done anything for anybody, wouldn’t we have already heard from them, if not on the witness stand, at least out in front of the cameras outside the courthouse?

There was a columnist for the Globe who used to write — and unlike him, I’m not making this up — that Whitey gave money to the church. But then the only photo they could find of Whitey with a priest during this trial showed him in white bucks chilling with an admitted pederast, Monsignor Fred Ryan.

“The government,” Carney bellowed, “is buying the testimony of these witnesses.”

Funny, that’s almost exactly the line Whitey’s brother, Billy, used in his book, saying the charges against his coke-dealing, serial-killing sibling were “purchased.” This was after Billy tried to get one of Whitey’s gang underlings, Zip Connolly, appointed Boston police commissioner. Zip is now doing 40 years in Florida for a mob hit.

Zip Connolly wasn’t mentioned in Carney’s closing, but my book about Martorano was. “How do you think the families of his victims feel when they walk by a bookstore and see Martorano’s face on the cover of the book ‘Hitman’?” Carney asked.

Probably a lot less bad than they felt when your client slaughtered their relatives.

column

Howie ping for today
The gaudier the patter: Top Whitey trial quotes

Wednesday, August 7, 2013 By: Howie Carr

Everyone except maybe his brother Billy is disappointed Whitey Bulger didn’t take the witness stand in his own defense. Still, the trial produced many memorable quotes and exchanges. Here are some of them:

Stevie Flemmi, nicknamed “Dr. Mengele” by Whitey for his joy in pulling out the teeth of his victims’ corpses, on his treatment at MCI-Walpole: “I would have liked the conditions to be more humane. I mean I’m a human being. I think I would like to have a chair.”

Johnny Martorano, when asked about the Winter Hill Gang hierarchy.

Prosecutor Fred Wyshak: “So it was a democracy, so to speak?”

Martorano: “So to speak.”

Bulger attorney Hank Brennan to informant Flemmi: “Quid pro quo? Is that just Latin for rat?”

Bulger lawyer Jay W. Carney cross-examining Kevin Weeks: “What would you do if (someone called you a rat)?”

Weeks: “Well, why don’t you call me outside when it’s just me and you and see what I do.”

Weeks: “I lied to my parents. I lied to my wife. I lie to my girlfriends.”

Carney: “What lies do you tell your wife?”

Weeks: “‘I’m not cheating.’”

Carney: “What lies do you tell your girlfriends?”

Weeks: “‘I’m not cheating.’”

Kevin Weeks on what the prosecutors called the “House of Horrors” at 799 East Third St.:

Weeks: “You know, I never liked the house after people getting killed it in anyways, so I was kind of relieved when I heard Stevie (Flemmi) was coming by with his stepdaughter.”

Carney: “Why were you relieved?”

Weeks: “You never know, it could have been my time.”

John Martorano: “We were up to our necks in murder.”

Extorted bookie Dick O’Brien on taking George Labate, one of his agents who wanted to quit, to visit Whitey:

“Mr. Bulger came over to him and said, ‘You’re going to go your own way?’ He said, ‘You know, we have a business besides bookmaking.’ Labate says, ‘What’s that?’ Mr. Bulger said, ‘Killing (expletives) like you.’”

Carney cross-examining Weeks about his sweetheart deal:

Carney: “You won against the system?”

Weeks: “What did I win? What did I win?”

Carney: “You won five years ...”

Weeks: “Five people are dead. Five people are dead.”

Carney: “How does that bother you?”

Weeks: “Because we killed people that were rats, and I had the two biggest rats right next to me. That’s why it ...”

Whitey Bulger: “You suck.”

Weeks: “(Expletive) you, OK?”

Whitey Bulger: “(Expletive) you, too.”

Flemmi on the creed of the Winter Hill Gang:

“In for a penny, in for a pound.”

Bulger: “Do what youse want with me!”

column

Thu column ping

column

Vivencia Bellegarde banks on us

Howie Carr, 8/8/13

Look at it this way: Vivencia Bellegarde is only laying on the voodoo curses that Americans can’t be bothered laying on anymore.

Of course this is nothing more than what Gov. Deval Patrick would call an “anecdote.” She’s from Haiti, and as a newcomer to our land, it’s just part of her cultural heritage that she would, as the state trooper put it, “begin screaming that I was a ‘dumb motherbleeper’ for paying for food when she gets it for free.”

The trooper continued: “She repeatedly called me a racist and told me she was from Haiti and she was gonna ‘put voodoo on my white (expletive).’ ”

Talk about ingratitude. She ran a Boston Globe delivery truck off I-93 — after all the sniveling editorials and puff pieces they’ve written about the millions of Vivencia Bellegardes who have swarmed into this country when they realized that the old song is true.

Everything free in America.

Where’s the gratitude? The Globe has realized its dream, converting all the old working-class neighborhoods into non-working class neighborhoods, and this is the thanks they get — one of their drivers forced off the road by one of the beneficiaries of its immigration policies. As the trooper wrote, “She didn’t care about the guy she hit because he isn’t dead and all she cares about is smoking a cigarette.” You know, this is what celebrating diversity is all about — different sets of rules for citizens and for the layabouts who have moved here. For instance, Americans are only supposed to have one EBT card. Vivencia Bellegarde had three of them “with only one of them bearing her name.”

“I questioned her as to why she had other peoples’ EBT cards and she began screaming.”

It’s only a matter of time until Barack Obama announces that the state police “acted stupidly.”

Back to the narrative: “Sgt. Kenneth Foley entered the room to try to calm her down and convince her to complete booking and she immediately called him a racist and began screaming.”

Apparently Vivencia was extremely concerned about her 5-year-old child at home.

“She then shouted that she was ‘coming for all you white motherbleepers.’ I asked her to clarify what she meant by that and asked if she was threatening me or the other troopers’ lives and she refused to answer.”

I’m perplexed. If this is such a racist society, why doesn’t she go home to the socialist utopia of Haiti? No one’s forcing her to stay here, living on the arm, with no job, although somehow she manages to own a 2006 Cadillac, three EBT cards and God only knows how many other freebies from the “racists” who, unlike Vivencia and the millions like her, actually have to get up in the morning and go to work for a living.

Maybe under its new ownership, the Globe will write the truth about the likes of Vivencia Bellegarde. But don’t hold your breath.

Another Howie column ping

Recalling Those Brave Few Who Stood Up To Whitey Bulger

by Howie Carr

"A great day is coming, especially for the people who stood up to this archfiend and survived. But not all of Whitey’s foes lived to savor this impending moment of triumph, and many of them deserve to be recalled as we await the inevitable verdict.

• Lt. Col Jack O’Donovan, Mass. State Police. He was one of the first to realize that the FBI’s Boston office was just another branch of the mob, and he authorized the bug at Whitey’s Lancaster Street garage in 1980. Whitey was apoplectic, and according to Stevie Flemmi’s political-corruption DEA-6, Whitey went to his brother Billy, the state Senate president, seeking relief.

In the next state budget, a rider was anonymously attached that would have forced the retirement of O’Donovan, Whitey’s most relentless nemesis. It was discovered, and Gov. Ed King, another underrated politician, did something Mike Dukakis would have been too terrified to do — he vetoed Whitey’s personal budget rider and saved O’D’s job. Billy Bulger said later under oath that he had no idea who attached the no-fingerprints rider.

• Paul Corsetti, police reporter for the old Herald American. Corsetti was doing a story on the gangland slaying of Whitey associate Louie Litif. Corsetti got an anonymous call offering him information. When Corsetti arrived at a Quincy Market bar, he was met by Whitey, who told him he knew where he lived, what car he drove, and where his young daughter went to day care. Paul showed up in the newsroom the next morning wearing a gun.

• John E. Powers, first president of the state Senate from South Boston, later became clerk of the SJC. Powers fired Whitey from his no-show janitor’s job at the courthouse. Later, when Billy became president of the Senate, the salaries of Powers and his top aides were frozen — for five years. It was Powers who first observed of the top-to-bottom corruption in the Bulgers’ Boston, “It’s as if Al Capone’s brother was president of the Illinois state Senate.”

• Trooper Billy Johnson, the statie attached to F Troop at Logan Airport. At Terminal A, he once stopped Whitey from illegally taking $100,000 cash out of the country to Montreal. The next day a Dukakis hack named Dave Davis showed up at the barracks and demanded Johnson turn over his only copy of the incident report on the Senate president’s brother. Johnson refused, and was immediately transferred out to the boondocks. He later committed suicide. Davis, now also deceased, later wrote a letter claiming none of his bosses at the State House had ordered him to dispose of the incriminating evidence.

• Mayor Kevin H. White. Yes, he was known for melodrama, but he once described on TV how in 1975 he almost spent the night at the Boston Athletic Club because he knew Whitey was in the area and was supporting another candidate.

“I never felt more scarred in my life.”

It was also Hizzoner who first dared to publicly state the real source of Billy Bulger’s power:

“If my brother threatened to kill you, or you thought he would kill you, you’d be nothing but nice to me.”

All of the above are gone now, but wherever they are, I hope that they can watch this rare occasion when good does finally prevail over evil. Even if it does sometimes take good decades to get its act together.

Tue column ping

Johnny Martorano’s move got ball rolling

by Howie Carr 8/13/13
Like most people in Boston, Johnny Martorano was in a good mood yesterday afternoon.

“If Whitey wasn’t an informant,” he was saying, “I never would have come forward.”

Martorano was the catalyst. If he doesn’t step forward in 1998 and start talking about the murders, this day might have never arrived. Once Martorano vanished from “the pod” in Plymouth, it wasn’t long before Kevin “Two” Weeks started telling where the bodies were buried, literally.

“I’m glad I stepped up and tried to turn it around” Martorano said. “And now I’m just glad it’s over.”

Or is it? What did Jay Carney say outside the courthouse yesterday?

“You haven’t heard the last from Jim Bulger.”

Is that a threat, Counselor? Odd that less than two weeks ago he had a chance to go up on the witness stand and spill his guts, and instead he soiled his drawers. He claimed the trial was a “sham.” Now he’s convicted on 31 of 32 counts, and his lawyer says Whitey is “pleased” with the outcome. Huh?

The problem with Whitey testifying was that he would have been cross-examined. And the very first question would have been, “Mr. Bulger, didn’t you become a rat for the feds in 1956 after you were arrested for bank robbery and realized you could do a lot better at sentencing if you ratted out two of the other guys in your gang?”

I think it was Whitey’s other lawyer, Hank Brennan, who said Whitey went to trial “to highlight the corruption and complicity of the FBI in criminal activity.”

And who exactly became a multimillionaire while engaging in that criminal activity?

Remember how Carney asked for a couple of days off in the middle of the trial? Whitey was having a tough time getting up at 4 a.m. Didn’t like being shackled for the daily ride up in the Ratmobile either. And then there were all those humiliating requests for early bathroom breaks — what a drag it is, having an 83-year-old prostate.

Well, look on the bright side, Whitey. Now you can sleep late. And you can go to the bathroom whenever you want to.

So we haven’t heard the last of Jim Bulger, eh? Carney probably means “60 Minutes.” After all, it was Johnny Martorano’s “insane lies” on “60 Minutes” that drove Whitey to begin his own memoirs out in Santa Monica. Now Whitey wants his own opportunity to spew out insane lies.

You know, about how he had “immunity,” even though it was given to him by a dead guy, Jeremiah O’Sullivan. Of course he had immunity, that’s why he ran away with an arsenal and millions in cash and hid for 16 years.

I hope this sordid tale has one more chapter, and that its first words are, “Welcome to Tulsa.”

Whitey, did you know that Oklahoma has the highest per-capita number of executions of any state?  For Johnny Martorano, it may not be quite over, but wouldn’t it be worth it, one more trip, to strap Whitey onto the gurney where he so richly belongs.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.