Posted on 01/27/2007 11:47:21 PM PST by raccoonradio
The hack du jour is Lynn Mayor Edward J. Clancy Jr. They call him Chip, on account of all the chips off the old block from his family who are slumbering on public payrolls.
The Clancy family motto: Once you go hack, you never come back.
Lets start with his wife, Beth, an assistant clerk at the Essex Juvenile Court . . . and his brother James, an assistant clerk at the Salem Superior Court . . . and his brother-in-law Scott Mooney, who was just hired last summer at the Registry of Deeds in Salem as a project manager for $39,663 a year.
The mayor refuses to discuss any of these nationwide searches. But he does not deny any of it, including the fact that from 2003 until last summer his nephew was on the payroll of Essex County Sheriff Frank Cousins. (Young Clancy has since become a cop in Nashua.)
Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin, where you never go out the way you came in.
Thats certainly true of the mayor, whos likely looking at a six-figure pension as he reaches the checkout counter. It aint Billy Bulger, but it aint bad.
My interest in the Clancy clan was piqued by a letter to the Hack Hotline from an admirer in the shire that was once known as Essex County.
A call was placed to the Chipster at City Hall last Wednesday. And then another. Neither was returned. I asked the woman answering the mayoral phone for his e-mail address, and was told he had none. I guess at age 56, hes not really a happenin high-tech kind of guy.
So I sent the assistant three, maybe four e-mails, as I learned more and more about the depth of the Clancy clans addiction to the public trough. These too went unanswered. Finally, on Friday, I telephoned yet again to Lynn City Hall, but Mayor Chips must have been Chips Ahoy, because he never got back to me.
I briefly considered calling him one final time Friday afternoon, but then I remembered. Lynn City Hall closes every Friday at 12:30 p.m. Last one to the gin mill is a rotten egg!
Every city and town in Massachusetts has at least one parasitic political-courthouse clan like the Clancys. Sometimes they get so greedy that they start getting lugged out in handcuffs - just ask the Bulgers, or the Asselins.
More often, though, the hack families follow the Clancy m.o. Remain invisible at all costs. A call from a newspaper - dummy up. The way it works is, one family member becomes a payroll patriot - in this case, Chip Clancy - and pretty soon, everyone in the family has a no-heavy-liftin job. For the next 30 or so years they keep their snouts buried in the trough, never once lifting their beady little eyes lest they find themselves exposed.
Of course they all contend that they could be making more in the Dreaded Private Sector (DPS). You know, that paradise of downsizing, outsourcing, layoffs, givebacks, annual double-digit increases in health insurance, and, at the end, no pension.
Instead, the Clancys chose the yellow-brick road, the path less traveled (unless of course youre related to a mayor who used to be a Frank Bellotti coatholder and then became, in order, a city councilor, a state rep and a senator). There is a phrase that describes the kind of jobs the Clancys have at the courthouse. That phrase is early retirement.
Again, it would have been nice to get the mayors side of the story. I also would have liked to discuss Chips future monthly kiss in the mail with him. My envious correspondent speculates Chip ran for mayor in order to boost his pension. Eighty percent of $130,000 is a lot better than 80 percent of a state senators pay.
Surely that number cant be right - 130 large to go home every Friday at 12:30? Somewhere Buick-dealer-turned-federal-snitch Bob Brest must be chuckling.
Howie Carr column ping
Now Andy Levin moves to Michigan recently to run for being a State Representative in Lansing. Don't feel bad for Andy that his name did not pull him through yet. Jenny Grandstand found Andy a state job to hold him over.
Not as undercover as what is happening in your courthouses, just a little more in your face.
A tip of the hat to the Detroit Free Press, that has real forums now, where someone spilled the beans on Andy Levin.
I did a search looking for some answers, my sister went to St Mary's, and graduated three years before Clancy. I ran across a picture of Tom McGee's kid, State Sen Lynn. I see that he has grown from a tall moron to a tall fat moron. I hadn't seen him since my Uncles funeral 25 years ago. (My Uncle and McGee Sr were drunks together. Life long friends.)
Like the Sullivans in Cambridge? They're now on - what - their third generation?
Thanks for the ping, I love Howie, love his columns, always spot on! We're going to miss gigilo not running for president, we'll have to find someone else who's just as entertaining to amuse us, oh wait, we've got deval, YES WE CAN, yes we can WHAT????........four years of this crap! How many more Mistah Speaka, how many more will be driven from the state of MA? Here today, gone tomorrow! lol!
Nice to see the hometown hacks exposed.
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