Howie Carr thread week of 11/11/12

Howie thread for the week starting off with his Sunday Boston Herald column. Howie is off his radio show tomorrow (McScreamer alert) due to Veteran's Day--Observed.

Mon column ping

Another death stirs up Whitey Bulger memories
By Howie Carr | Sunday, November 11, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo

And so it goes. Whitey Bulger gets another continuance, and another one of the people in the accused serial-killing gangster’s sordid past won’t be down for breakfast.

The latest new trial date is June 6 — D Day. And the newly deceased is David W. Davis, a career coat-holder, first for Mayor Kevin White and then Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.

Davis, who died last week at the age of 80, figured prominently in one of the most outrageous abuses of power in the accused mass-murdering mobster’s rancid career.

It was September 1987, at the pinnacle of Whitey’s power. He and his then-girlfriend Teresa Stanley were undertaking one of their regular chores — ferrying bundles of cash out of the country, this time to Montreal.

They were flying out of the old Delta terminal at Logan airport, presided over by payroll patriot Davis, the Dukakis flunky who at the time was executive director of Massport.

Whitey wasn’t even trying to hide the cash in his satchel. His political clout was such that daring to cross him could, and sometimes did, mean the end of an honest cop’s career, and most of them knew it. But the pre-TSA security guard apparently didn’t recognize the Senate president’s brother. He opened the bag and saw that it was stuffed with wads of $100 bills, the fruit of Whitey’s insidious cocaine racket in Southie.

Whitey grabbed the bag and ran for the exit. Finally, he yelled at a guy, “Kevin!” and then tossed the bag of cash to him.

By this time trooper Billy Johnson, in plainclothes, had arrived on the scene. A Vietnam veteran and one of the most decorated troopers in Massachusetts State Police history, Johnson quickly got into a shouting and shoving match with the foul-mouthed fiend.

Johnson could have arrested Whitey for disorderly conduct, but that would have just put the heat on people further up the line, such as his boss and the district court judge who would have caught the case. So Johnson told the drug kingpin to screw and settled for writing a four-page incident report. Now the story begins to get interesting.

The next day, airport boss Davis showed up at the barracks. He had never spoken to Johnson before and now he was imperiously demanding his report on a known killer and bank robber. Johnson would say later that Davis told him he was there at the behest of Whitey’s brother, Senate President Billy Bulger.

Davis’ feeble response was that he “thought” he hunted down Johnson on his own.

The trooper and the hack went back and forth for a while, with Johnson insisting he wouldn’t hand over the report until Davis gave him a receipt. Finally Davis stalked out. A few days later, Johnson was back in a cruiser, his Logan career over.

In 1998, Johnson committed suicide. He had other problems besides defying Bulger and his overpaid henchmen, but being in effect fired for doing his duty had a lot to do with his premature death at age 50.

In 2003, Billy Bulger was desperately clinging to his $360,000 job as president of UMass. At the congressional hearings about corruption in the Boston FBI office, Bulger’s lawyer handed out copies of a letter from Davis. All these years later, Davis’ new story was that he had not gone over to the barracks and harassed the late hero trooper at Billy Bulger’s behest.

Davis naturally dummied up about exactly who had ordered him to go over. Obviously, it wasn’t the Senate president. As a Massport minion, Davis didn’t belong to the Bulger mob. He was a made man in the Dukakis gang. It was like the Five Families in New York. To reach out to a soldier in another family, even the powerful boss of a rival family had to go through channels.

But it hadn’t taken long for some Dukakis caporegime to get the order to Davis, who didn’t dare sneeze without permission from the State House.

Writing his letter, Davis knew what the follow-up question would be: Who did send you over to the barracks on that errand for Whitey? So Davis’ letter was written on plain stationery, with no address or telephone number where he could be reached to answer the embarrassing questions.

All these years later, they’re dying off quickly, all the links to Whitey’s life of crime. Just in the past few months, first it was his ex-girlfriend Teresa Stanley, then his top Cambridge bookie Tommy Ryan. And now the guy who let trooper Johnson know who the real bosses in Boston were.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061173895

Wed column ping

Please, John Kerry, just go away!
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, November 14, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

Photo by Chitose Suzuki
Finally, a silver lining in the dark cloud of last week’s election returns.

John “Liveshot” Kerry is in the running to become secretary of defense, which means he wouldn’t be a senator from Massachusetts anymore.

Please God, let it happen. How can we miss him when he won’t go away?

Twenty-eight years in the Senate, and name me one thing he’s done. Go ahead, take your time, and by the way, marrying gold digger Mama T doesn’t count.

Nobody has ever denied that when it comes to his trade — gigolo — John Forbes Kerry is one of the all-time greats. He’s in the Gigolo Hall of Fame. See, a really good gigolo might snag one heiress in a lifetime with a nine-figure trust fund. Kerry has married two. When it comes to gigolos, he’s Steve Jobs.

And now, having never worked a day in his life, he is the richest senator of them all, thanks to his second wife’s first husband’s trust fund.

Senator, when the president calls, you can’t turn him down. Remember that. You served in Vietnam —President Nixon sent you to Cambodia at Christmas 1968, four weeks before he became president. I heard you say that.

Think of Liveshot’s great quotes, and I don’t just mean the endless “botched jokes,” as he calls them.

At the ribbon-cutting of the Big Dig: “This tunnel will be a bargain.”

In Ohio, at the end of the 2004 campaign: “Can I get me a hunting license here?”

Favorite Red Sox [team stats] player: “Manny Ortez.”

Reading a late baseball score at a campaign rally: “Detroit 2, Red Sox 3.”

Or, “I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against the $87 billion.”

Then there’s his most commonly quoted statement, most often uttered at airports and ice cream stands and clam shacks and everywhere else where a line has formed and he doesn’t feel like standing in it behind the plebeians: “Do you know who I am?”

Then there was the evening on Nantucket when he posed with all the young chicks sipping their drinks with penis straws.

This is the only guy in the world who claims to have once run the Boston marathon, but can’t remember the year. He’s also the only nimrod who says he had a 24-point buck in his sights down on the Cape, but couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger.

Remember in 1971, when he threw somebody else’s medals over the White House wall? This is a guy whose second wife’s first husband’s trust fund provides him with five mansions, SUVs at each location and a private plane called the Flying Squirrel — and he’s extremely concerned about carbon footprints. Your carbon footprint, not his.

Liveshot, you don’t have to go home, wherever home really is, but you can’t stay here any longer. If they offer you the defense job, take it. As Oliver Cromwell told the Long Parliament in 1653, “In the name of God, go!”

And take your $8 million yacht that you didn’t pay the state sales tax on with you.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061174640

Fri column ping

Tim Murray’s ambitions could crash and burn
By Howie Carr | Friday, November 16, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

Photo by Mark Garfinkel
So Lt. Gov. Tim “Crash” Murray “would like” to be governor?

I’d say the little fella’s getting a bit ahead of himself here. It doesn’t matter what he likes, what counts is how much his old pal and alleged fundraiser Mike McLaughlin “likes” him — especially if what we’re all expecting to happen to the former $360,000-a-year head of the Chelsea Housing Authority does indeed occur in the coming months.

In which case, the question isn’t, “Can Tim win?” Then the question is, “Will Mike stand up?”

As someone who has known Mike McLaughlin for a long time, my prediction is no. I would also say that if I were McLaughlin’s attorney, I’d be very pleased with Timmy’s speech yesterday before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. The higher someone’s profile, the easier it is for a defendant to trade him up to the feds. Mr. Big is always a better catch than Mr. Small.

Crash’s problem is, Mike McLaughlin attached himself to Murray like a boil. They talked more often than Gen. Allen and Jill Kelley. Murray claims he knew nothing about McLaughlin’s rather dodgy past as a state rep, Middlesex county commissioner and then appointed hack. Murray’s ignorance seems hard to believe, but remember, Crash is at heart a city councilor — a Worcester city councilor at that. It took him three tries to pass the bar exam.

But let’s stipulate that, as preposterous as it seems, Murray had no idea who, or what, McLaughlin was. And Mike’s son only got the $60,000 job at the Registry after a nationwide search.

But check out Tiny Tim’s reports to the Office of Campaign and Political Finance. He’s paying one lawyer $6,000 a month. Then there’s also Donald Stearns, the former U.S. attorney. He puts in a bill every once in a while. It’s unusual when you start running for governor and your biggest expenses are legal bills.

Forget the mysterious accident in Sterling that the state police tried to cover up for months. Forget his ever-changing accounts of what happened. Murray still hasn’t released his cellphone records. We don’t know who Crash Murray was talking to in the pre-dawn hours last November just before his Crown Vic achieved liftoff.

And what are his qualifications? Mayor of Worcester? Please, number one, that’s a ceremonial position. Number two, have you driven through Worcester lately?

Of course, you know what Tiny Tim must be thinking. If Johnny Pockets Tierney can get re-elected, if Liz Warren can win after lying about being a minority, then anyone can win as long as they have a “D” after their name.

Maybe, maybe not. What do you think, Mike McLaughlin?

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061175097

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