How bra-zen of her.
Posted on 04/05/2009 4:37:24 AM PDT by raccoonradio
Howie thread for the week starting with his Sunday Herald column
Sunday Column ping
New cover-up hits Senate - Ladies, how many candles?
By Howie Carr | Sunday, April 5, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
What’s going on with all these, uh, matrons in the state Senate who apparently don’t want to admit how old they are?
That’s a rhetorical question, of course. But these days, when information is so accessible, you’d think these mature female politicians would come right out and admit how . . . young they are.
I noticed this birthday code-of-silence phenomenon while thumbing through the 2006 edition of the Massachusetts Political Almanac. I was looking for Sen. Marian Walsh’s birthday - she’s about to turn 55. Walsh’s page includes her birthplace (Boston) and all her degrees. But no dates, for anything. Then on the facing page from Walsh, I saw a photo of Sen. Sue Tucker of Andover.
Guess what? Same deal. No birth date listed. But Sue, or whoever sent in her biography, wasn’t quite as thorough as Maid Marian. Lady Tucker graduated from Michigan State . . . in 1966. You’re busted Sue: You are 64 years old.
I called the publisher of the Almanac, Steve Lakis. He couldn’t have been more diplomatic about this distaff Senate birthday amnesia.
“They all, I’m certain, look younger than their years,” he said.
The Senate president, Therese Murray, also forgot to list her age. But in the 1995 official state “bird book” of elected officials, her year of birth was said to be 1947. No birth date, but I got it from her flack - Oct. 10, 1947. Please don’t lose this information. You may not see it again for awhile.
Sen. Karen Spilka of Ashland lists her birthday, Jan. 11, but not the year. It’s 1953. You do the math. I’m too much of a gentleman to out her.
Sen. Joan Menard of Fall River used to list her age, but no longer. She’s 73. OK, maybe I am a cad.
Sen. Susan Fargo of Lincoln wants you to know the year she graduated from Camelot High at Harvard - 1993 - but neglects to mention the year she graduated from Peoria (Ill.) High School. Sen. Far-gone, as she’s known, is 66 years old.
Then there’s Sen. Cynthia Creem, who was first elected to the Senate in the Monica Lewinsky year of 1998, running on the slogan, “Join the Creem Team.” The captain of the Creem Team is also 66.
Not all the women in the Senate have an omerta policy when it comes to birthdays. Sen. Pat Jehlen doesn’t mind you knowing she was born Oct. 14, 1943. But then she’s from Somerville, where women’s fashions have evolved in recent years from big hair to flat shoes. Makeup is strictly optional as well in the community formerly but no longer known as the All-American City.
I haven’t ordered the new issue of the Almanac yet, but since January the Senate women have a new headache - freshman Sen. Jennifer Flanagan of Leominster. She was born in 1975. And what can you say except . . . how dare she!
By the way, most males, politicians or otherwise, don’t have the same hang-up about age that women do. But I found at least one male solon who didn’t list his age in the Almanac.
Shame on you, Rep. Jim Miceli of Wilmington. He turned 74 on March 25.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1163508
Why do they mot list their FOB, it can’t be they are worried about age discrimination, these rat bastid politicians have their jobs for life or even longer.
Monday show ping. No Red Sox game today btw due to rain and this is a good time to remind people that there is some slight pre-emption of Howie’s show on WRKO due to the Sox;
namely, the fact that many games begin at 7 pm ET and WRKO
dumps out of Howie at 6:25 pm to do their pregame show. In
these cases you can still hear Howie at WCRN AM 830 and
other places.
For weekday afternoon games, those (few) tilts will be on
WEEI 850. Also Wed night games as far as I know are on WEEI.
So hopefully the only Howie pre-emptions will be on those
nights when the Sox gave a 7 pm start, and it isn’t Wed.
Tomorrow’s 4 pm start should be on WEEI as will the Wed.
night game (AFAIK) and the Thu afternoon game
Wed column ping
Pols playing ‘I Love Money’
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, April 8, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Just another day in the hackerama . . .
Former acting Gov. Jane Swift announces that she’s closing her campaign account, giving her last $159,000 to a charity. How generous of Swifty. But back on Jan. 1, 2003, when she left office due to ill health (the voters got sick of her), the Bride of Chuckie had $1,212,998 stashed in that account.
What exactly happened to the other million dollars plus? What did you spend it on, Swifty?
Meanwhile, Democratic state chairman John Walsh journeys to Newburyport last weekend and addresses five different Democratic city and town committees in Nicholson Hall. He exhorts his fellow hacks to buy as many copies as they can of the dying Boston Globe. Subscribe, he says, or at least buy a paper on your way home.
You can understand the hacks’ attachment to their stricken Morrissey Boulevard comrades - and I do mean comrades. If the Globe folds, who will write the shameless puff pieces describing the hacks as “gutsy?”
And finally, a “quasi-public” authority has released its payroll. It’s the Mass. Health and Educational Facilities Authority (HEFA), where state Sen. Marian Walsh was to be interred for $175,000 a year.
The Herald reported March 25 that HEFA’s executive director, Benson Caswell, is paid $225,000 a year, and he also gets a free cell phone, Internet service, and a health club membership. Plus he grabs $5,000 for a car, free parking and - get this - a “transit pass.” Free car, free parking and free “transit pass.” This is another payroll Charlie who’s not content to feed at the trough. He has to lick the plate.
After Caswell, the top salary at HEFA goes to Danielle Manning. At $150,000 a year, Manning is the “director of financing programs,” and should not be confused with the “director of finance,” Joseph Cullen, who makes $145,000.
The HEFA payroll was released by Liam Sullivan, the authority’s flack. He makes $100,000 a year, the same salary as Mary Ann Wayne, whose job title is “manager - NMTC program & special projects.” Then there is the “director of administration,” Linda Lane, who makes $98,000. There are two “deputy directors of financing programs,” who make respectively $96,000 and $74,100, as well as an “associate director of financing programs” for $76,000.
Then there are HEFA’s other “managers” - the IT manager makes $92,500, the manager of the pool loan program makes $90,000 and the accounting manager makes $82,500, while the senior staff accountant gets $58,000.
Even assistants do well in the hackerama. At HEFA, the marketing assistant makes $63,000, and the “administrative assistant finance” makes $60,000.
Hey, John Walsh, forget about telling your payroll patriots to buy the Globe every day. Call up HEFA and order them to start hiring some of your bow-tied bumkisser comrades who are about to be kicked to the curb by the New York Times [NYT]. Now that would be a “gutsy” move.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1164228
23 more counts against Dianne...
>>Disgraced ex-state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson has been slapped with 23 new corruption charges that allege the Roxbury politician took bribes as far back as 2002 from a businessman trying to develop a piece of state-owned land.
A new federal indictment alleges that in November 2002 Wilkerson “began asking” an unidentified businessman for money in exchange for help on his plans for a $100 million development on state-owned land on Harrison Avenue.
The businessman “made a series of payments” to the senator ranging from $500 to $1,200 between 2002 and 2006, federal prosecutors allege.
What exactly does this agency do? Serious question . . . I don't have a clue as to why it exists in the first place. And at those prices!
It provides high paying jobs for hacks that’s what it does.
WRKO keeps running a public service announcement with Deval
plugging the similarly sounding MEFA, the Mass Educational
Finance Association. Now that’s MEFA folks, not HEFA.
I was afraid that was its sole raison d'être -- sort of like all those city agencies Menino's not cutting, preferring to get rid of teachers and policemen!
How bra-zen of her.
WEIM AM 1280 in Fitchburg is back to talk but they’re not carrying Howie (....yet, who knows?/they used to.) They have a morning show feat. former WRKO newsman Ben Parker, then syndicated talk
with Fox News Talk’s Brian (Kilmeade) & The Judge (Andrew
Napolitano) and then John Gibson, with Hannity at 3. Not sure what they have at 6.
(may be Fox Sports, or, often, a Red Sox game. Spanish
stuff relegated to overnights and weekends. )
Fri column ping
‘Need’ the Globe? Don’t make me laugh
By Howie Carr | Friday, April 10, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Now the bow-tied bumkissers are telling us we “need” the Globe.
Maybe, but only for comic relief. The Globe is the “SNL” of newspapers, a yuk on every page. Let’s go straight to the list, a very partial list, of Globe blunders.
- March 2003: Since-indicted Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner holds a news conference at City Hall, complete with a blowup of a still he claims shows an American soldier raping an Iraqi woman. The video capture turns out to be from a Hungarian porn movie. Alone among the media, the ever-gullible Globe runs the XXX-rated photo over three columns, even though readers can see 1-inch square sexual images within it, as the ombudsman later put it. An editor’s note follows.
-The Joe Yandle scandal. The imprisoned murderer claims he became a heroin addict while serving in Vietnam. The Globe campaigns to free the killer, 60 Minutes picks it up, his sentence is commuted, but then he’s rearrested. Turns out Yandle was never in Vietnam, a fact uncovered, never by the Globe’s trust-funded reporters, but by a Viet vet who simply asked the Pentagon for Yandle’s military record. Yandle was paroled last June; his Boswell is now a metro columnist.
-April 2005: The Globe runs a horrific story about Canadian hunters shooting harp seal cubs by the hundreds, the sea running red with blood. In fact, no such hunt had taken place. An editor’s note follows. February 2007: A geriatric Globe columnist hisses that “global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.”
-April 2006: The Globe runs a front-page sob story about an ex-con who can’t get a job because of the state’s draconian CORI laws. The ace scribe notes the jailbird just finished a 40-year term, but doesn’t say what crime he committed. He murdered a Boston cop.
-October 2006: A Globe writer opines how much he loves the change baskets at the Mass Pike tolls in Allston. “Occasionally,” he writes, “I even throw the basket a head fake.” The last baskets had come down three years earlier.
-The Globe’s coverage of Whitey Bulger through most of the 1980s portrays him as a cross between Robin Hood and Jimmy Cagney. When a Globe photographer gets pictures of a city work crew doing a job at his liquor store, the Globe refuses to embarrass “Jimmy” by printing them. Jimmy gives money to priests, the Globe reports. And don’t forget that with the help of his fearless fed friend Zip Connolly, Whitey “kept the drugs out of Southie.”
-July 2006: The Globe runs a blockbuster scoop about a memo warning of the dangers of the Ted Williams Tunnel, supposedly written in 1999. Turns out the memo’s author is a rather dodgy sort, no one had ever seen the memo before the Globe printed it and the events mentioned in it hadn’t occurred until years later. An editor’s note follows.
-And now the latest, as their rag hemorrhages almost $2 million a week, Globe reporters shake down corrupt pols for quotes about how much the city needs their corrupt, bankrupt newspaper in order to ferret out . . . corruption.
Forget the Internet. You pampered clowns ought to put your lame act on Comedy Central.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1164722
A Howie Carr masterpiece!
As always, thanks for the pings.
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