Howie Carr Live Thread 4/4/07

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE column

Bulger skips again: Thanks for Nothing
by Howie Carr
Boston Herald.com

This town needs an enema.

Jack Nicholson’s line from Batman seems even more appropriate than usual today, with the news that Billy Bulger has won yet another photo finish with yet another grand jury.

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls. Ain’t that the truth, Lenny Bruce?

You could see this latest broom job coming for the last few weeks. When the local feds started taking the heat from the PC posse after last month’s illegal-alien round-up in New Bedford, the easiest way to change the subject would have been to indict the Corrupt Midget.

But ... nothing ... happened.

No charges of obstructing justice, or suborning perjury. No aiding or abetting a fugitive. No nothing.

Kind of like what happened - or didn’t - after 75 State Street. And after Billy’s amnesia attack in 2003 at the Congressional hearings into organized crime and FBI corruption.

I know bad things happen to good people. But why do good things have to happen to bad people?

It was a lengthy investigation. The G-men rounded up the usual suspects. They left no stone unturned except the one the bad guys were hiding under. Thanks a lot, U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan, for your fine impersonation of Tom Reilly. The only thing missing today is a press release that begins with the word, “Unfortunately...”

It’s crummy news in a wet, miserable cold week. And even more infuriating are the crocodile-tear quotes in the paper about how terribly oppressed the Bulger family has been over the past few years by the Inspector Clouseaus in the federal prosecutor’s office.

Billy and the sainted Mary and the nine spalpeens have been through hell, his attorney, Senate President Travaglini’s new business partner, told the Globe.

All that the long-suffering Bulgers had for sustenance during their long, twilight struggle was Billy’s $196,000-a-year state pension, not to mention the summer place in Mashpee, and by the way is there any truth to the reports of a new condo in Naples, Fla.?

Then there is Billy’s son-in-law, who works for the Senate and who by an amazing coincidence happened to be there in 1996 at a Senate door-opener’s home in Southie with two convicted felons, Billy’s brother Jackie and Whitey’s grave-digger, at the exact moment when, out of the blue, Whitey Bulger telephoned. And isn’t it odd that Whitey would make a social call right after the feds had finally discovered his “Tom Baxter” alias and he needed to get out of the country pronto, with a lot of his coin collection that he could easily convert into cash in the U.K.?

Why would the feds suspect that anything could possibly be amiss with such a gathering of worthies? Or that Billy Bulger would know that his relatives, in-laws and minions would be together to take a call from ... The Man?

“Hurtful,” is how the son-in-law’s lawyer described the terrible suspicions. Imagine the indignity, “to be under the microscope for all of this period of time, even though they’ve done nothing wrong.”

Hurtful? I’ll tell you what’s hurtful. How’d you like to be a survivor of John McIntyre, or Deb Hussey, or Bucky Barrett, three of the 20 or more people murdered by serial killer Whitey, of whom Billy once said, “There is much to admire”?

During the recent trial in which the McIntyre family won a $3 million award from the federal government, the feds turned over photos of those three bodies, or should I say, skeletons, because that’s all that’s left after they were buried in shallow graves for more than 15 years, first in a house in Southie, then on a beach under the Red Line tracks.

You can look at the photographs of the skeletons, including the skulls, with the hole made by the bullet Whitey fired into McIntyre’s head after finding that it was too tiring to strangle him the way he did Deb Hussey.

The photos are all there, filed under Exhibit 47, “John McIntyre Forensic Photographs.” Go down to the clerk’s office in the courthouse on Northern Avenue, you know, across the street from where Whitey machine-gunned Brian Halloran and Michael Donahue on a fine May afternoon in 1982.

What a nice victory this is for the Corrupt Midget. He’s still here, still collecting that fat pension. His puppets still run UMass and the state Senate. The House speaker has represented gangsters who used to work for his brother. As for Billy’s “foes,” Tom Reilly is gone, Mitt Romney won’t be back, and neither will that ingrate Tom Birmingham . . . .

If only brother Jim could somehow be informed of Billy’s latest triumph, so that he too could bask in the glow of reflected glory. But something tells me Whitey already is - basking, that is. And what’s not to bask about? After all these years, the fix is still in.

Howie’s regular column

Greed knows no bounds for Mass. hacks
By Howie Carr
Boston Herald Columnist
Wednesday, April 4, 2007 - Updated: 03:56 AM EST

The hack gold rush is on at the State Retirement Board.

First the most powerful pols jack up their pensions. Now come the rank-and-file payroll patriots, citing the “Billy Bulger decision.”

It’s trickle-down economics, Beacon Hill style. If the Corrupt Midget can abscond with an extra $17,000 a year, then why not some guy who took early retirement from the Division of Insurance in 1992?

“So any adjustment,” he writes, “should be retroactive now for 14 years.”

Here’s a guy who was at the Firearms Record Bureau who in 2003 took early retirement (is a profile of the average applicant beginning to emerge?).
This guy wrote the State Retirement Board seeking a higher pension for his “state parking space, travel and cell phone expenses etc.”

His cell phone. He wants a higher pension because he had a cell phone.

And let’s not forget the “etc.” How the heck did Billy Bulger ever forget to include “etc.” when he was going all the way to the Supreme Judicial Court to get his pension jacked up to $196,000 a year.

God knows he deserved it - 43 years of gainful unemployment, first as a state legislator and then as president of UMass. He had a brother too - I’ll think of his name.

The CM’s insatiable greed opened the door for a bunch more college presidents, including a greedhead ex-House speaker named Bartley who’s jacked up his yearly kiss-in-the-mail from $138,000 to $150,000.

So far only six of the lesser coatholders have applied to have their pensions bloated even more, but this is only the beginning. At the time of the SJC’s tragic decision in favor of Bulger, state Treasurer Tim Cahill said that they were opening a “can of worms.”

“Be that as it may,” one applicant said, “the court has spoken and I request that my pension be adjusted.”

Upwards, naturally.

Here’s one gentleman from the Mass. Rehabilitation Commission who wants his pension to “include all ‘travel reimbursements’ that were earned in my 34 years of State service.”

He doesn’t even put “service” in quotation marks. But he does sign the letter “Respectively your.”

They may be functionally illiterate, but they’ve got the grift down. They learned from the best, Billy Bulger. Just as the CM sent over a large check to the Retirement Board when he resigned, to establish his rights to an even fatter pension, these ham-and-eggers offer to pay their “contributions,” now that it’ll set them up for payoffs 10 or 100 times greater.

“As we predicted,” Cahill said yesterday, “the court’s decision in the Bulger case created a slippery slope, but we’re trying to hold the line to protect the majority of public employees, retirees and taxpayers in Massachusetts.”

Meanwhile, more of Bulger’s cronies continue to line up at the trough for still more. Franny Joyce, the tin-whistle player in Bulger’s band, a former postman who later was given a lifetime job running the Mass. Convention Center Authority, just tried to hike his pension by claiming that his three highest years of salary should include the money he walked out the door with.

Franny’s lost twice, but will probably continue his appeal. He’s represented by the same lawyer who’s handling the appeals of two convicted felons on the Bulger crew, Billy’s brother Jackie and the loathsome ex-House speaker, Tommy Taxes Finneran.

Last Saturday on the Cape I ran into one of three state reps who have been trying to Bulgerize their pensions. It was Tom George, age 68, a Republican who put in most of his pension years in the big money job of moderator of the Town of Yarmouth.

“Billy Bulger,” he said, “is an inspiration to all of us.”

That’s true, I suppose. If you’re a greedy, sticky-fingered hack.

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