Howie Carr thread week of Aug. 1, 2010

Tue column (special) ping. btw did you hear about the Cohasset mom who was charged with her 18 yr old son
with throwing a booze bash for teens? Turns out she
had an assault charge against someone she knew (supp. her
ex-husband), probably drunk when she did that.

It’s time to fold on slots, Deval Patrick
By Howie Carr | Tuesday, August 3, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

Since when is Deval Patrick against set-asides and preferences for certain privileged classes of people?

Hey, Deval, your moonbat pals put all these dog trainers out of work with their stupid vote on the 2008 referendum question. The people at Raynham have been deprived, through no fault of their own, of equal opportunity. This is about fairness. Think of this bill as affirmative action...

We want our slots, dammit.

This is a jobs bill, Governor - not just for the unions, but for crime reporters. Always remember the three rules about life at the State House. Nothing on the level. Everything is a deal. No deal too small.

There seems to be a lot of confusion out there, starting with the number of tracks. There are three of them left, now that Suffolk and Wonderland are merged, or whatever. And Suffolk wants a casino.

So are the hacks really going through all these hoops for George Carney of Raynham? And Gary Piantowski, the titan of trotters?

Let’s face it - this legislation is not about revenue, which will be minimal, or economic development, which will be even more miniscule.

No, there’s something else going on here, and I would guess that anyone who’s not directly involved in the sneaky stuff really wants to know what it is - am I right, Sal DiMasi?

For instance, I’m somewhat skeptical that Senate President Terry Murray can’t flip two votes in the Senate so that the Legislature can override the governor’s veto. The day will never come in Massachusetts when you can’t buy two solons on the cheap.

I understand why Murray wants to keep this piece of, uh, legislation at arm’s length. But I can’t figure out Deval’s game. Is he really worried that if he signs off on slots that the moonbats will defect en masse to Jill Stein? I guess when you can’t crack that big 38 percent ceiling in the polls, you can’t afford to lose even a few trustafarians Nov. 2.

He can’t make the gambling-is-bad argument. To say you’re for casinos but against racinos is like saying you’re for Scotch but against gin.

But you know the Legislature will be coming back to fix this. The pinky-ring thugs of Big Labor were knuckling Deval, and now they’ll be arm-twisting the solons. The trades have gotten so bloated for so long on Big Dig money they can’t believe those halcyon days are never coming back. They aren’t, but the pipedream of a big casino payday lives on.

Don’t kill the job, Deval. Theirs, or mine - covering future corruption trials in federal court.

Do the right thing, Governor. Give ‘em their slots and then let the chips, as it were, fall where they may. And you - I’ll see you around the courthouse, Deval.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1271934

Wed column ping... “Deval can’t win without Cahill, and Cahill can’t win, period.”—HC. A vote for Cahill is
a vote for Deval—me.

Job at Tim Cahill’s Treasury in the bag for triple-dipper
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, August 4, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

There has been another nationwide search by state Treasurer Tim Cahill. And the winner is Michael Sweeney, who until recently was the type of hack you only rarely see, even in Massachusetts.

Sweeney was a triple-dipper. I kid you not. In the bust-out City of Lawrence. According to the chief of staff of the new mayor, Willie Lantigua, Sweeney was grabbing $75,000 as city planning director.

And $26,000 as the city’s Title I coordinator.

And another $25,000 as parking director.

Now, Sweeney was an early hire of Tim Cahill back in 2003. He was a lawyer for the Retirement Board, and worked on the cases of Billy Bulger and Franny Joyce, and given those three jobs he was holding down at the end in Lawrence, he obviously picked up some tricks from the Southie reprobates.

In January 2006 he left the Treasury to go work for Lawrence Mayor Kevin Sullivan. But just in case, he kept his hand in - on Dec. 10, 2007, he ponied up to his old employer Tim Cahill. Just $150, but it’s the thought that counts. But really, he wanted to stay close to his Andover home, and Sullivan was term-limited, so in 2008 Sweeney covered his bets by duking $50 to Willie Lantigua, the state rep who would become the next mayor of Kabul on the Merrimack.

Alas, the new mayor and the Cahill coatholder did not exactly hit it off. On his first day in office last January, Lantigua fired him. The City Council blocked that move, but two days later, Lantigua laid him off anyway.

Fortunately, Cahill snatched his old campaign contributor off the hack waiver wire. See, the general counsel of the Lottery, Charlie McIntyre - the son of former Quincy senator and mayor Jim McIntyre, who had replaced the son of former Treasurer Jack Driscoll, who went to Boston English with another treasurer named Bob Crane - decided to move up to the New Hampshire Lottery.

So they moved a Treasury lawyer down to Braintree to replace the Quincy senator’s son, which opened a job at the Treasury for the triple-dipper from Lawrence who gave $150 to Tim Cahill. He returned to Cahill’s payroll in June, after his four-year raid into Essex County.

He makes $85,000 a year, a pay cut, but any port in a storm, right?

“I didn’t get a single phone call from anyone to hire Mike,” said first deputy treasurer and general counsel Grace Lee yesterday. “I knew he could do the job and we don’t have a lot of time to break people in at this point. And by the way, could you put in the story that I have two jobs and I only get paid one salary?”

I’m sure Mike Sweeney is not a bad guy. Neither is Tim Cahill for that matter. But Tim Cahill is still trying to sell himself in this governor’s fight as some kind of “outsider.” He is not. Here’s the reality: Deval can’t win without Cahill, and Cahill can’t win, period.

Deval Patrick - hackerama as usual. Tim Cahill - ditto.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1272184

Fri column ping

Gov. Deval Patrick, lend me your ears!
By Howie Carr | Friday, August 6, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

He didn’t quite pull a Marie Antoinette and tell the pothole-stranded commuters on Interstate 93 north to eat cake, but Gov. Deval Patrick came close Wednesday afternoon.

“There’s opening night for Shakespeare on the Common tonight, so maybe think about coming out there with me and enjoying the performance and going back a little later.”

How very chi-chi of you, Deval. Perhaps you could have also invited the hoi-polloi over to the Hasty Pudding Club for an aperitif.

Prithee, Governor, trifle not with the voters. The traffic jam was not much ado about nothing. It’s one thing to lie about cutting property taxes, or to callously jack up the sales tax 25 percent, or to appoint one unqualified jackal after another to the bench. It’s bad enough you thumb your nose at 15,000 jobs. But now you’re making sport of the electorate. Yea, verily, thou comest across as a motley fool.

Most people, Deval, and not just legislators, tune you out whenever possible. You know, a tale told by an idiot and all that....But you don’t make light of a massive traffic jam with an election coming up in less than 100 days. Ever hear of road rage?

“If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” That’s the Merchant of Venice. Think Nov. 2.

Now, perhaps Deval was tuckered out from the “machinations, hollowness, treachery and all ruinous disorders” of the past few weeks at the State House. Or maybe he thought he was but taking arms against a sea of troubles.

His hagiographers at the dying broadsheet said his “tongue (was) slightly in cheek,” when he mentioned the play (Othello, natch), but irony’s a tough sell in a three-hour traffic jam.

Governor, do you understand, a lot of these drivers were unable to get to their jobs, or more likely, given your wonderful economy, job interviews. Others were rushing home to pick up their kids at camp or at the neighbor’s because their spouses had to drive to their second or third jobs. And a lot of people stuck in that mega-traffic jam, Governor, were on their way to do their weekly shopping in New Hampshire, where they don’t have a sales-tax “holiday,” they have a permanent vacation.

The people suffering through that gridlock - those are the same voters you chased up to New Hampshire, trying to get them to pay $40 or $50 in Mass. sales tax on their new tires, while turning a deaf ear to John Kerry’s $437,000 bill.

Your snotty little comment didn’t look...gubernatorial. You came across like Macbeth: “Now does he feel his title/Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.”

Deval, there is a tide in the affairs of men - say, the water main break in Weston - which, taken at the flood, leads onto fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.

In other words, I beseech ye, shut up or verily, you’ll end up You-Know-What Creek without a paddle.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1272680

Howie; Once again, thanks for letting Steve from Montreal, attack our country.
Please remember that you Howie Carr are supposed to be a United States citizen.

Or, maybe it pleases you to have Steve from Montreal, state issues the in a way you may feel really happy with yourself so that you do not worry about losing listeners by stating them directly

Please keep up the good work running down our Country from a reoccurring caller. Just an idea, but want don’t you set up a reoccurring caller from south of the border, just pick any country between Arizona and the Panama Canal. Remember they need to wish an elected official in our country dead

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