Howie Carr thread week of Jan 10, 2010

Sunday column ping

Tight race means days are numbered for Deval Patrick
By Howie Carr | Sunday, January 10, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

Deval Patrick is the canary in the coal mine for Barack Obama in 2012.

And Martha Coakley is Deval’s canary. And if I were Deval, right about now I’d be looking for the phone number of Herald veterinarian Dr. John de Jong.

The closer Scott Brown comes to winning the special Senate election next week, the worse it is for Deval’s already-dim prospects for re-election. I mean, Martha has but a supporting role in what state Sen. Scott Brown calls “the machine.”

As attorney general, Martha is the official custodian of the state broom. Whenever a hack gets in a jam - last week it was Dianne Wilkerson - Martha shifts into inspector mode, leaving no stone unturned, except of course the one the perp is hiding under.

Nothing to see here folks - move along. That’s Martha’s motto.

But the voters have figured out the grift - better late than never.

Consider what numbers Deval would be polling right about now if he were the Senate nominee. He’s the nominal boss - figurehead, actually - of the state hackerama.

Deval et al had been counting on state Treasurer Tim Cahill’s independent run to drain off just enough anti-Deval votes to re-elect him in November with, say, 41 percent. It’s an interesting strategy. Gov. Jon Corzine tried it in New Jersey two months ago. He’s now former Gov. Corzine.

Then Deval figured the economy would recover and save him - did anyone see the unemployment numbers Friday? Not even CNBC could put a shine on that sneaker. You can only say “unexpected” and “lagging indicator” so many times, especially when the real jobless number is more than 17 percent.

If Martha Coakley, who after all has built a career on not rocking the boat, is struggling to pull away, then what is going to happen next November to the guy who actually told the brain-dead voters of this state that he could improve their lives ... and cut their taxes?

You may be a Scott Brown voter if ... you’ve been wondering what Martha Coakley can start collecting for a state pension next month at age 56 if she’s sworn into the U.S. Senate.

The answer is ... $41,000. I’m sure Martha would claim that she has no plans to do the double-dip, and I’m equally certain we can believe her.

Just like Deval Patrick was going to cut your property taxes. Just like Barack Obama wasn’t going to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 ...
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1224467

Anthony Galluccio e-mail: Booze charge ‘was completely false’
By Dave Wedge | Sunday, January 10, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Politics

Jailed ex-state Sen. Anthony Galluccio pledged to continue to fight to prove he is innocent of charges he drank booze and hinted he may seek public office
again in an impassioned e-mail sent to supporters.

“When the recent violation was alleged that I used alcohol, I knew it was
completely false and believed that I could prove it in court,” Galluccio wrote in the e-mail, a copy of which was obtained by the Herald. “My promise to
abstain from alcohol and get counseling and treatment was and is my word and goes to the very core of who I am. I have not breached the promises I made to my family, my constituents, my colleagues, the court and myself in any
way. I hope that you can respect my determination to prove my innocence regarding the violation of probation.”

Galluccio, a Cambridge Democrat, was sent to jail for a year last week by a judge who found he violated the terms of his probation when he failed a Breathalyzer test while under home confinement.

The pol has claimed that his whitening toothpaste led to the positive reading and vowed to pursue an appeal of the judge’s finding. Before the violation, he was under house arrest after pleading guilty to charges connected to an
October hit-and-run crash.

“In contrast to my original act of leaving the accident, for which I accepted responsibility, this allegation was completely different,” he wrote. “People will say I am crazy and that I should have just agreed to the allegation and made a deal but my family and I made a decision not to do that. The starting point to moving forward was honesty and accepting responsibility. Admitting to
something I did not do was not an option, even knowing how serious the consequences might be. I hope all of you will take a closer look at the case and the proof put forward. I think you will then understand how I feel.”

He also said he misses his legislative work and hinted that he could return to public service.

“To say I am sad or even devastated would not begin to say how helpless I feel,” he said. “I am not disappearing, just resigning until this bad storm passes.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1224499

Monday show ping. Driving around today: on Rt 1-A in Wenham,
Hamilton, Ipswich, Rowley, etc.—when I saw lawn signs they were for Brown exc. one Coakley sign. At one point I was on
Larch Row in Wenham and following a car with two bumper stickers: Baker for Governor...and Coakley for Senator...?.. The car turned into the driveway of a prob. well to do
home...

anyway

Looking for Howie’s facebook fan page? Either go to his page on WRKO site (or howiecarr.com) and look in lower
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Monday, Jan 11th

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Max Robins TV Guru and Vice President of The Paley Center (formerly The Museum of Television and Radio) will be with us to answer all of those nagging questions about your favorite show on the boob tube...

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State Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill today tapped former Republican lawmaker Paul Loscocco as his running mate in a bid for the governor’s office, with both men leaving their longtime political parties to run on an independent ticket. Both Treasurer Cahill and his running mate will be with us in studio to answer your questions.

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January 14
Former presidential candidate as well as chairman, CEO, and editor in chief at Forbes Media Steve Forbes will be with us to talk about his book How Capitalism Will Save Us: Why Free People and Free Markets Are the Best Answer in Today’s Economy as well as discuss the current state of the economy.

Special Tue column ping

Felon Finneran’s disbarment: Check
By Howie Carr | Tuesday, January 12, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

Let’s go down the Felon Finneran checklist:

Convicted of obstruction of justice - check!

Stripped of his $32,000 state pension - check!

Forced out in disgrace from his $400,000 lobbying job - check!

Denied a presidential pardon for lying under oath about his racist gerrymandering schemes - check!

Disbarred as morally and ethically unfit to practice law - check!

In prison where he so obviously belongs - sadly, no.

Fired from his pathetic, failed, ratings-challenged train wreck of a radio show - no, no, no.

Well, to paraphrase Meatloaf, five outta seven ain’t bad.

How unfortunate that yet another escape hatch has been closed to Rep. Chromedome. How’s that new radio contract coming along, Mistah Speakah? The Advil-addled hack doesn’t seem to have a lot of options here, especially not with an endless stream of bent pols looking for no-heavy-lifting radio jobs to prove to their parole officers they too are avoiding association with other known criminals, like, come to think, Finneran.

Not that this will be a permanent disbarment, of course. You will notice that it’s retroactive to January 2007. I believe that this wretched reprobate can apply for readmission to the bar after five years - in other words, 2012.

I would never say that the fix will be in, but didn’t Felon Finneran’s top aide at the State House used to be a guy named William F. Kennedy? And isn’t this same William F. Kennedy now the chairman of the Board of Bar Examiners - surely not a bad friend to have under such regrettable circumstances as this, no?

Plus, if a lawyer who connived with Jerry Angiulo, and who went to prison for it, can get his ticket back, then why not Felon Finneran? I refer of course to William Cintolo, who is now defending Sal DiMasi, who followed Tommy Taxes into the speakership and now into the dock in the U.S. District Court. Oh, and by the way, Sal’s roster of clients included two of Jerry’s LCN soldiers - the Vinnies, Ferrara and Federico.

Small world, isn’t it?

I know the Felon’s cronies are crying in their beers, claiming that he’s been railroaded for nothing. Maybe, but then, they didn’t lug Galluccio for any of his really terrible booze-fueled accidents, did they? Just like they never bagged Al Capone for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

The worst thing the Felon ever did (that we know of) was overturning the mandate of 1.5 million Massachusetts voters to stop the cut in the state income tax to 5 percent. So much for democracy, when a palpably corrupt, now convicted criminal, who on his best day never got many more than 7,000 votes, can give the finger to all of us who actually have to go out and work for a living, unlike Finneran and everyone he’s “helped” over the years.

I still want this talentless crook out of radio, but that’s going to happen, in time. And I really thinks he needs to do at least a short bit. And I have faith that’ll happen too. It took a while to get Galluccio, after all, but we did.

In the meantime, the Felon is disbarred. Thank you, Jesus.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1224922

Wed column ping
Why vote for Scott Brown? Let me count the ways
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, January 13, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo
Photo by Christopher Evans

You may be a Scott Brown voter if:

* Unlike Martha Coakley’s campaign, you know how to spell “Massachusetts.”
* You’ve already voted absentee, and you’re urging all your friends to do the same by Friday, just in case.
* You think maybe Martha should be spending more time chasing criminals and less time chasing old ladies in their garden clubs.
* You know at least a few people who voted for Obama in 2008 who are now planning to use their ballot Tuesday to “repent.”
* You’re wondering why last week liberals were so angry that the word “Negro” was listed on the 2010 census form, but now that Harry Reid uses it . . . nothing to see here, folks, move along.
* You’re appalled that ex-Lynn Mayor Chip Clancy, who was fired by the voters in November, is now at age 59 going to collect a $79,200-a-year public pension, with survivor’s benefits for his wife, who by the way has a hack job of her own in the court system making $84,869.90 a year.
* You belong to a union, and they’re telling you to vote for Martha Coakley, and when you ask your pinky-ring thug business agent about the 40 percent tax she wants to impose on your “Cadillac” health plan, he slowly takes the stogie out of his mouth and says, Forget about it, da boys will take of all-a youse.
* You’re puzzled as to who killed the three U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan on Monday, because Martha Coakley said there aren’t any terrorists there anymore.
* You heard that the Amish are going to be exempt from the Obama-Coakley health rationing, and you’re wondering, how does one become Amish?
* You can’t believe any Republican would ever agree to let David Rodham Gergen moderate another debate.
* You’re angry that, when you had to take a pay cut in 2009 to keep your job, the Democrats on Beacon Hill jacked up the sales tax by 25 percent.
* You know Martha Coakley lost the debate when you hear her Kool- Aid drinking sob-sister supporters comparing her performance favorably to . . . Shannon O’Brien’s.
* You’re wondering why the cops, who should know Martha Coakley best, are all endorsing Scott Brown.
* You’re thinking that maybe, just in case, you should lay in some champagne for Tuesday - and does anyone else need anything while you’re up in New Hampshire?

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1225238

As usual, Martha did nothing.

Everyone: Wed show ping. Today’s show should be a doozy.
Just for the shoving incident alone.

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Head of the New Hampshire republican party, former Governor John Sununu will join us to discuss the special elections in the Granite State and the effect of the Massachusetts Senate race on the future of health care and the nation.

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Dates set in election to replace ex-Sen. Galluccio
By Associated Press | Wednesday, January 13, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Politics

CAMBRIDGE — Dates have been set for the voting to fill the vacant seat of former state Sen. Anthony Galluccio, who resigned after being jailed for violating probation in a hit-and-run case.

Secretary of State William Galvin said Wednesday that party primaries will be held April 13, with the special election scheduled for May 11.

Galluccio, a Cambridge Democrat, failed two alcohol breath screenings that had been part of his probation for the October accident that slightly injured a father and son. Galluccio blamed the failed tests on sorbitol in his toothpastes, but a judge ordered him to jail for one year.

Candidates for the seat must submit nomination papers to local officials by March 2 and to the Secretary of State by March 9.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1225374

Rattled Dems fret over health of Senate seat
By Howie Carr | Thursday, January 14, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

It’s all about health care.

The race to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate has come down to one issue, and it’s not Sen. Ted Kennedy’s “legacy.” It’s the misshapen health-care bills that have scared the bejesus out of an ever-growing majority of American voters, even in this bluest of states.

Asked his view of the bill, the Republican candidate, state Sen. Scott Brown, says succinctly: “It kinda stinks.”

A month ago, he was 30 points behind his Democratic opponent, the don’t-make-no-waves attorney general, Martha Coakley. She was cruising, playing the one card she never leaves home without - the gender card.

Then the specifics of ObamaCare started leaking out. The cuts in Medicare - $500 billion, or as Brown prefers to say, “half a trillion dollars.” Then the state’s union members began to hear about the president’s insistence on a 40 percent tax on their “Cadillac” health care plans.

Overnight, the old dichotomies, Democrat-Republican, red-blue, lost their resonance. This has become a struggle for self-preservation - medical and fiscal. As the old folk song goes, Which side are you on?

“This race affects everyone - everyone,” Brown says over and over again. “Forget about the letter after my name. If I win, this broken health-care bill goes back to the drawing board.”

Which is why the city was buzzing yesterday with unconfirmed reports that Barack Obama may have changed his mind about staying out of the race. The rumor was that he may fly into Boston this weekend on behalf of the flailing Coakley, whose lead in the latest poll has shrunk to two points. Coakley is still favored to win, but what Brown calls “the machine” is stunned. In the most recent Rasmussen poll, Brown leads Coakley among independents 71-23.

“They are in an absolute panic mode,” one prominent Bay State Democrat was saying yesterday. “They don’t care if bringing in Barack energizes the Republicans and independents - how much more energized can they get? Obama’s people have to get the minority vote out, and Coakley sure can’t do it herself. It’s risky, but it may be the only way now to save her.”

The national Democrats are pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race in the final days. On TV and radio here, Scott Brown’s first name is now “Republican,” as in “Republican Scott Brown.” The SEIU, moveon.org, NARAL - all the usual suspects are on board. The “A” word - abortion - is heard once more in the land. But Coakley’s first 30-second hit piece fell a bit flat when, at the end, the campaign misspelled the name of her state as “Massachusettes.”

“Maybe Martha should talk to some people who actually live here,” Brown said yesterday.

The deluge of attack ads began a couple of hours after the final debate Monday night, just after Coakley left the spin room. She’d turned in yet another lackluster performance, informing the audience that there were no terrorists left in Afghanistan, two days after one of the slain CIA operatives was buried in nearby Bolton, and on the same day that three U.S. servicemen were killed in the war that she seems to think is over.

But Brown won the debate when he fielded a question from the hyper-liberal moderator, David Gergen, who asked him how he could possibly vote to kill health care while sitting in Ted Kennedy’s seat.

“With all due respect,” Brown told the Sunday chat-show fixture, “this is not Ted Kennedy’s seat, it’s not the Democrats’ seat, it’s the people’s seat.”

Brown was in the midst of an Internet “money bomb” fund-raiser, and after slapping down Gergen, by the end of the night he had raised $1.3 million - $800,000 above the campaign’s goal.

In the state’s suburban town halls, voters are lining up to get absentee ballots, just in case the weather takes a turn for the worse Tuesday. For example, in Yarmouth, on the Cape, during the primary last month, 183 residents voted absentee. By Monday, the number of absentee ballots given out in Yarmouth was 543. It’s the same in all of the more conservative cities and towns.

Despite the bitter January cold, the Brown campaign has been swamped with volunteers. On the weekends, there are Brown “standouts” at every major intersection. Representing a gerrymandered, heavily Democrat district in the state Senate, Brown is used to having his yard signs disappear, but this time there’s a difference.

“My own supporters are stealing them from each other,” he said. “They say, I need it more than you. I live on a busier street.”

The Democratic establishment is relying on yesterday’s tactics. On Tuesday night, a reporter for the Weekly Standard was assaulted outside a Coakley fundraiser in D.C. by a Democrat operative. The video was quickly posted on the Internet, but the Boston Globe, the Kennedy family house organ, pretended it was still 1973. Their headline: “Reporter takes stumble.”

Just like Martha Coakley. She may yet hang on to win, but even she does, one thing is certain. As Scott Brown said, it’s not Ted Kennedy’s seat anymore.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1225447

Yet another Howie column...ping

Scott Brown present in absentee voters’ minds
By Howie Carr | Friday, January 15, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

Oh yes, the “stalkers” are out there. Just ask Martha Coakley, the wrinkly attorney general who is not “privy” to the facts of the assault on the reporter on Capitol Hill, or so she says.

Yes, the stalkers are out there, and what they are stalking is the state’s city and town halls, taking absentee ballots. Let’s go straight to the numbers, as of closing time Wednesday afternoon.

We can begin with my own hometown, Wellesley. In one business day, Wednesday, the number of absentee ballots cast went from 741 to 869. Next door, in Weston, the number went from 341 to 437.

Are these Scott Brown voters, or are these moonbats who are voting for Martha Coakley because they’re wondering where the heck did she get that accent, coming from “struggling” North Adams and all?

I’m not saying Scott Brown is going to win Tuesday. All I want to do here is pass on some of the numbers of absentee ballots in various towns over the past 48 hours:

Newton, 1158 as of 5 p.m. Tuesday, to 1490 Wednesday

Plymouth, 787 to 921

Scituate, 407 to 509

Weston, 341 to 437

Weymouth, 537 to 661

It becomes increasingly clear, Scott Brown is winning among the people who work for a living, as opposed to Democrats, who are Martha’s voters.

You want some more absentee numbers, and how they increased from Tuesday until Wednesday?

Marlboro, 738 to 822

Southboro, 159 to 249

Waltham, 517 to 674

Needham, 554 to 699

Falmouth, 1044 to 1194

Chelmsford, 604 to 782

This is one day, mind you. A working day, as opposed to a Democrat day - a Martha Coakley day.

At this point, it’s too late for the Democrats to pull out the absentee vote. Oh sure, the local city and town halls are open today, but in a lot of the Democrat municipalities, the city halls close at noon. Do you know what they call afternoon in the welfare cities?

Morning drive.

Let’s be clear here, Brown-Coakley is a fight between the working classes and the nonworking classes. If you have a job, if you pay your own way, then you’re for Scott Brown. If you’re a moonbat, or a hack, or an illegal alien, or if you have a trust fund or are from New York (or most likely both) then you’re for Martha.

Are the nonparasites of Massachusetts still the majority? We’ll know soon enough.

But look on the bright side, layabouts. If we win, we’ll still have to go to work Wednesday. And you won’t.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1225744

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