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To: raccoonradio; Andonius_99; Andy'smom; Antique Gal; Big Guy and Rusty 99; bitt; Barset; ...
Special Sat column ping

Silence in House speaks volumes
Saturday, March 23, 2013
by Howie Carr

Call him “Rep. Weiner,” this unnamed solon whose name you already know, and if you don’t, you can find it easily enough in the Daily Mail of London.

His extinguished colleagues in the Mass. General Court have lowered the Cone of Silence over Rep. Weiner’s latest alleged unspeakable actions. If the Boston Mafia had observed its own code of omerta this rigorously, they’d still be running organized crime around here.

It’s all about Rule 16, which seems to boil down to this: Dummy up, lest somebody someday drop a dime on you when you get a bad ice cube, or feel an insatiable urge to stuff some FBI cash in your bra, or steal enough absentee ballots to vote 
every illegal alien in your slum apartment house.

Loose lips sink ships, and maybe you, if the guy you rat out decides to trade you up to the feds.

So you can understand how deeply concerned both the House speaker and the chairman of the House Ethics Committee are about the “integrity” of the process, especially the speaker, considering the last three speakers are convicted felons.

The Ethics chairman is Rep. Marty Walsh, the real Marty Walsh, not the alias that then-Sen. Jim Marzilli gave the cops when he was arrested for flashing old 
ladies in Lowell.

Marty, who is also an 
official of a union, said all proceedings are “confidential,” and that he would have “no comment, including to confirm or deny,” on any Anthony Weiner-like hijinks that “may or may not have been referred” to his very ethical Ethics Committee.

Rep. Weiner is the third rep to run into trouble this year, if you include the 
solon emeritus in Lawrence who violated a restraining order. He’s the fourth if you throw in the judge’s son who was worked over by a lobbyist in Dartmouth. Ironically, Rep. Weiner’s eccentricity, shall we say, surfaced on the radar screen a day after a Herald reporter was ejected from a House ethics training session.

It seemed like such an 
innocuous gathering. A few people reciting the State House’s 10 Commandments: I am the Speaker, thou shalt have no gods before me; thou shalt not get caught stealing; thou shalt not covet thy chairman’s bagman. … But no, we weren’t allowed in. Because the House is such an august body. They call the U.S. Senate the world’s most exclusive club. The Mass. House may be the world’s least exclusive club.

Say what you will about the Boston City Council, when Chuck Turner went down for the count, they ejected him from City Hall. OK, so it cost them $100,000 because they didn’t wait until Chuck was sentenced. At least for once they tried to do the right thing.

column link

14 posted on 03/23/2013 12:25:30 AM PDT by raccoonradio
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To: raccoonradio; Andonius_99; Andy'smom; Antique Gal; Big Guy and Rusty 99; bitt; Barset; ...
Sun column ping

Future clearer than a Menino quote
by Howie Carr
Sunday, March 24, 2013

Run, Mumbles, run.

Not that Hizzoner needs any encouragement from me or anyone else. All signs indicate that he’s made up his mind to seek a sixth, or seventh, or whatever term.

(Click on the Herald page here for some of Mayor Thomas Menino's greatest audio hits.)

Exhibit A: He’s finally moving out of the Parkman House. If he were planning to lame-duck it, why return to North Dedham, er Readville? He must go back to being a man of the people, not Liveshot Kerry’s high-hat neighbor in Ward 5.

Exhibit B: He’s running the little fundraisers again, the $25-a-head times with city employees. How much simpler it is to raise $500 a pop from everyone in the extended families of the bar owners, the developers and the city contractors — you know, the ones who didn’t plow the streets this winter.

The mayor has already got more than enough dough on hand to crush What’s-his-name, but he needs these small contributions to show that he’s not a tool of the big-money interests, although of course he is, not that any mayor is ever anything but.

These are hopeful signs to all of us who understand how much the mayor means to the city, and we have the sound cuts to prove it. The golden age of Boston pro sports is ending — no more “jumbletrons” or “potta-potties” lining victory parade routes for the “Red Sock.”

But Mumbles still roots for the city’s “ionic” teams. Sure, “Wes Wexler” may be gone, but there’s that tight end, “Grabowski.” I mean, “Gonk.” He’s as valuable to the Pats as “KJ and Hondo” are to the Celts. And by the way, wasn’t it terrible what that guy said Friday about the wife of Vince “Wilcott,” er, Wilfork.

Hizzoner is 70 now, but “just ’cause you got a few gray hairs doesn’t mean you’re over the hell.”

As ever, he looks to the future, to a “city mooing forward.” Some problems remain, rats for instance, but the mayor is working on ways to “ ’radicate the problem.”

In the meantime, “Young people are fudding, not fleeing the city.”

Ya hear that, Councilor Connolly. Just like in the days when “Martha Luther King Jr.” moved here to go to BU, they’re still fudding the city. Because the Menino administration is “trying to bridge the grap.”

No gender gap for Hizzoner — “We must unlock the potential of all our woman.”

Mumbles knows what is expected of him — he must develop “stregic plans” to “bing business” to the city. And he is. Just look at “New Balance ca-spanding in 
Brighton.”

All these months on the disabled list have given the mayor time to ruminate. Sometimes we forget what a philosopher he is.

“We know this country didn’t become great by excludin’ folks and leavin’ each other on their om.”

Om … om … om … Actually, leaving people on their “om” hasn’t worked out that badly for some, but Buddhists remain a very small percentage of the Boston electorate.

“Will we move forward together or will we go back to the tricks, trickle-down philosophy that Mitt Romney believes in?”

A resounding no to that tricky trickle-down trick thing. So what, Mayor, is job one?

“Our first tasker task is improvin’ public education in our city.”

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. And — knock on wood — you’ll be hearing it for four more years.

15 posted on 03/23/2013 9:07:50 PM PDT by raccoonradio
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