Howie Carr thread week of Jan. 25, 2009

Do not adjust your Speaker, it’s Sal Dimasi
By Howie Carr | Sunday, January 25, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

Welcome to talk radio, Sal DiMasi.

I know, you haven’t officially resigned as speaker yet, but after Felons Flaherty and Finneran, we all know the drill. Where else can a shady House speaker driven from office in scandal hope to work?

Our radio station policy is, “If you’re indicted you’re invited.” Or, at the very least, a new host is required to have a fugitive warrant out on him, preferably for some really dastardly crime.

For you Sal, we make an exception. Your transactions have been so, well, innovative. Not our employees’ usual run-of-the-mill felonies - perjury, motor vehicle homicide while drunk, etc.

No, Sal, you have an, ahem, accountant. This accountant, an unregistered lobbyist, gives you a third mortgage on your condo - even Honest John Rogers never thought of that one! Then the accountant paid off the legal bills of your liquor-store-owning in-laws.

Wow! Nobody will ever pick up on that one, Sal.

But now the cops have the State House surrounded yet again. So come out with your hands up, Sal, and welcome to the exciting world of Boston talk radio, where it doesn’t matter how rotten your ratings are, you’ll still get paid big bucks. At least if you’re a disgraced, corrupt pol.

First we’ll need some publicity photos. Head-on and profile - it’ll be good practice for later, if you know what I mean. Then you’ll be needing a producer. Almost all of ours have been laid off. May I suggest a dear friend and client of yours: Vinny “the Animal” Ferrara. Is he in or out right now? I can never keep it straight.

This has been a week of transitions, at the White House and at the State House. But in our venerable democracy, some things never change. Like, nationwide searches.

Meet Jonathan Kujawski, age 23, the newest employee at the state’s Division of Industrial Accidents, hired Jan. 4 as a compliance officer for $35,713 a year. The job, I am told, was posted.

Boy Kujawski’s father is Rep. Paul Kujawski of Webster, once described by Felon Finneran as a “good man.” Of course he is - when he was arrested for OUI, according to reports at the time, he urinated outside a State Police cruiser, allegedly wetting a trooper’s boots. Then he climbed into the back seat and slurringly inquired of the cop, “Do you know who I am?”

A potential co-host for Sal DiMasi, perhaps?

In 2007, Rep. Kujawski’s brother Jan made $88,769 as a special investigator for the ABCC. And now the stooge solon’s son graduates from his hack summer job as a Mass Pike toll taker to a permanent state job for 35K.

I guess I don’t have to tell you who Rep. Kujawski supported for House Speaker two weeks ago.

The more things change.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1147558

Ooops-I think this was my fault. Instead of cutting and pasting the screen names for everyone in, I just entered
“All” in, figuring that since I’d pinged people before,
it would automatically reach everyone. Wrong! Guess it just
reaches those who have posted in the thread! So I’ll
ping everyone for real now to the Sat. column! Here goes.

special Sat column ping

Time to roll the credits on the Mike Connolly saga
By Howie Carr | Saturday, January 24, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

Mike Connolly hasn’t been this embarrassed since he held a press conference in Room 157 at the State House with his fly unzipped.

This is more absurd than the time he showed up at a Paul Tsongas press conference impersonating a reporter, screaming hostile questions at the then-congressman.

This Wellesley play of his - using his City Hall office to promote his own real estate biz - is dumber than when he tried to fly the State House flag at half-staff when John Belushi died of a drug overdose.

It’s worse than when he called Fitchburg “Pittsburgh.” Or when he was chairing a meeting and said, “Let’s meet again next Tuesday. What day of the week does Tuesday fall on next week?”

They didn’t call him the Secretary of Space for nothing, you know. And now the four-term former secretary of state has hit the jackpot again. You’d think he’d be happier than a pig in you-know-what - a part-time, $85,000-a-year job on the Boston Licensing Board, his worthless son on the Boston City Council for $87,500, his wife, Lynda, with her own $140,000-a-year hack sinecure as chief justice of the district courts.

(Full disclosure: I portrayed a talk-show host in Connolly’s movie, once called “Gentleman from Boston,” now “Beacon Hill.” I even offered to write a new opening scene to the movie, which I was planning to lift frame for frame from “Goodfellas.” You might call it plagiarism. In Hollywood we call it an “homage.”)

Anyway, Connolly got lucky when he hooked up with the winning Republicans after the 1990 election. Actually, it was his brother-in-law, ex-city councilor Jim Connolly, who is married to Mike’s sister Paula Connolly, making her Paula Connolly Connolly.

Mike left elective office in 1994 for the usual reasons - the voters got sick of him. So did his staff. There were allegations that he was twisting arms for contributions. Try not to let it destroy your faith in the integrity of Massachusetts state government.

The Connollys were one of those Boston Democrat families that threw in with the Republicans - the Flahertys of Southie are another. So Paul Cellucci appointed the Secretary of Space to the Boston Licensing Board, and soon a judgeship was handed to the lovely Lynda (his co-writer on “Beacon Hill.” I just checked it out on IMDB; I’m number 11 on the cast list, in case you were wondering).

Next to be taken care of: son John “Don’t Call Me Zip” Connolly. After a slimy campaign in 2007, Boy Connolly was elected to the City Council. And you know, it’s amazing how many contributions a nice young man with a father on the board that controls liquor licenses can net from the, ahem, hospitality industry.

Check out the reports on file with the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance. Here’s a contribution from Douglas Bacon of the Last Drop in Oak Square and the White Horse Tavern on Brighton Avenue. Here’s Mr. Ralph Kaplan, owner of Kappys Liquors, and the Epsteins of Horizon Beverages. Who says nobody cares about the City Council anymore?

My favorite is the bartender at Cooperfields who maxed out to Councilor Connolly with a $500 contribution two days before Christmas last month.

Other contributors to Boy Connolly: ex-state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson (indicted), ex-Sen. Henri Rauschenbach (acquitted) and John Fish, the employer of Detective Mumbles Menino Jr.

And now at age 61, Mike Connolly is throwing his weight around, in Swellesley of all places, asking the eternal question, Do you know who I am?

I could go on talking like this, just like I do in Connolly’s movie, connecting the dots, hack by hack, sleazy play by shady maneuver. And I’m sure Mike would like it to end the way my monologue does in his movie, with the crooked House Speaker frowning as he listens to me on the radio, finally leaning forward and yelling at his driver: “Turn that (bleep) off!”
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1147341

DiMASI TO RESIGN

http://bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1147732&format=text

Embattled Speaker Sal DiMasi to resign
By Dave Wedge | Sunday, January 25, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Politics

Embattled House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi is stepping down effective Tuesday, ending his 30-year career as a lawmaker as an ethics scandal continues to swirl around him.

DiMasi sent a letter to House members tonight announcing he is resigning as speaker and relinquishing his North End representative’s seat. The announcement ignited a furious scramble for support among the two lawmakers vying to succeed him - House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Robert DeLeo and Majority Leader Rep. John Rogers.

Loyalists to the two lawmakers jockeying to succeed him huddled at the State House to plot strategy in hopes of taking over the gavel.

DiMasi has been hounded by illegal lobbying charges lodged against his close friend and former campaign treasurer Richard Vitale, who is accused of ushering legislation through the State House to benefit his ticket broker clients.

DiMasi has denied involvement in the ticket legislation.

Should DiMasi step down Tuesday, as he’s told lawmakers, a vote on a new speaker could come by the end of the week.

DiMasi’s letter of resignation:
http://bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1147746

The following is the text of the letter that House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi sent to House members, announcing his intention to resign.

January 25, 2009

To the Honorable Members of the House of Representatives:

Today, I made a personal decision that leaves me with mixed emotions. Effective 5 p.m. on Tuesday, January 27, 2009, I will resign as the state Representative from the Third Suffolk District and as Speaker of the House.

I am excited on the one hand to move on to other challenges and new opportunities. I am sad to leave the House of Representatives, which has been like a home to me and the people who are like family. I came to this final decision today with my wife and children. This decision was not made lightly and was made for a very simple reason: For me and my family, it is time - time to move on, time to return to private life and time to return to my first professional love, the law.

I intend to combine by legal and consulting work with many of the major issues we have addressed together during my time as Speaker - expanding access to health care throughout the nation and increasing the use of cleaner, more renewable energy, as we have done so successfully here. These will be exciting times to promote these ideas because of the new commitment of the Obama administration in Washington.

While my heart is heavy, it is also full. We have accomplished so much, together. No one can take away our legacy of triumphs on behalf of the citizens of the Commonwealth.

Together, we rewrote the national storyline on health care with landmark legislation that is well on its way to insuring every man, woman and child in the Commonwealth. There are more than 430,000 people who are now insured and many more who will live better and longer for generations because of our work.

Together, we led the nation in energy reform with Green Communities, Green Jobs, Advanced Biofuels, Global Warming Solutions that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and promote the use of cleaner, more renewable forms of energy. There are millions who will live cleaner and greener because of our work.

Together, we made an historic decision to advance civil rights by protecting marriage equality. Together, we said no to gambling’s casino culture. Together, we protected the poor and indigent. Together, we authored unprecendented investments in public education, social programs, local aid, life sciences, workforce training and more. I was pleased, before I became Speaker, to be a primary author of legislation that reformed the banking industry and the restructuring of the Massachusetts Trial Court System, among other major accomplishments.

All of us will live, work and raise families in a better Massachusetts because of our work.

A second Sunday Howie column? We are blessed! (And
see the news about Sal DiMasi above.

Mayor Michael Flaherty? I wouldn’t bet the house
By Howie Carr | Sunday, January 25, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com

Question: Why did City Councilor Mike Flaherty announce his candidacy for mayor on YouTube?

Answer: Because there is no Web site named YouHack.

So I was watching his recorded announcement, in his kitchen. The words were nonsense, but I couldn’t take my eyes off that high-end Yuppie KitchenAid mixer on the granite counter behind him - close to $500, would be my guess.

Then you realize: a year from now, that pricey mixer is going to be on an even fancier granite counter - in Duxbury.

Baby Flats has 600 large to blow on this fight. Why doesn’t he just give everybody in the city a buck and put his house up for sale?

Tell me where he beats Mumbles. In Southie, of course, and in coastal (read: white) Dorchester, and Charlestown. That’s Wards 6, 7, 16 and 2, which wouldn’t be bad, except that the city has 22 wards.

The only issue this year in Boston is rampant corruption and cronyism, and the Flahertys aren’t part of the solution, they’re part of the problem.

For the record, Baby Flats is not related to convicted felon ex-House speaker Good Time Charlie Flaherty. But Felon Flaherty’s son, Tim, represents Baby Flats’ cousin Frannie, who was recently indicted in an alleged MBTA no-show job scam.

Baby Flats’ father is the former state rep and judge Mike Sr. Before Flats Senior retired to the bench, he was in private practice. Then his cousin Jimmy Flaherty, who was simultaneously on payrolls at both the State House and City Hall, was murdered by a gay hustler in Florida.

Flats Senior handled Jimmy’s estate for his beloved Aunt Millie. Imagine Aunt Millie’s surprise when she got the bill from her dear nephew - he’d charged her his usual billable-hour rate for watching Jimmy’s gay porn videos, and for standing in line at the post office to buy stamps.

The joke in Southie was, it was the first time in 40 years Flats hadn’t cut in line after yelling, “Do you know who I am?” Mainly because he was making money waiting his turn.

I don’t have room to run down all the Flahertys on public payrolls. Baby Flats’ sister Peggy is the clerk of the South Boston district court, appointed, like her daddy, by a Republican governor.

Maybe Flats Jr. can campaign on a platform on mandatory drug testing for firefighters. But first he’d better bounce it off his uncle and his cousin, both of whom are longtime loyal members of Local 718.

Flats understands he’s the longest of longshots. He wanted to be district attorney even when Dan Conley was on the City Council. That’s why, before he voted for Flaherty for president of the Council, Conley made him promise he wouldn’t run even for DA.

Flats would still love to be Mr. District Attorney, but the only way to get rid of Conley now would be a judgeship, and appearing in that ad for Kerry Healey in 2006 probably put the kibosh on any future favors from Deval.

Remember when Felon Finneran got booted from the 400-large-a-year lobbying job at the Biotech Council? For a while it looked like Sen. Jack Hart of Southie (who defeated Baby Flats for an open House seat in ’96) might get the job. Flats was sniffing around that potentially open seat too, but it was not to be - kind of like his run for mayor this year.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1147734

How long till future House Speaker Bob DeLeo or John
Rogers has to resign due to improprieties, just like
DiMasi, Finneran, and Flaherty before him...?

I even checked the Boston Phoenix last night to see what they had to say. They pointed out DiMasi _could have_ resigned a little while back; now a newcomer gets put into office with their first task being an important bill called House 1:
aka the governor’s budget!

Oh yet another Howie article. Ping! Show ping too while
we’re at it.

Sal Dimasi is once, twice, three times ... still shady
By Howie Carr | Monday, January 26, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com

What happens twice, happens thrice.

And so farewell Sal DiMasi, the third consecutive speaker of the Massachusetts House to resign in disgrace. Naturally none of it is his fault. Sal was framed. He is the victim, he said yesterday, of nefarious unnamed forces - “certain people who are very powerful turn against you.”

These people are more commonly known as the authorities.

As DiMasi now knows to his deep chagrin, nobody nowadays is willing to take a fall for anybody else. The concept of omerta silence is dead, not just in the Mafia, but in society as a whole.

When you have to worry about one guy rolling over, you’ve got a problem. When you have to worry about two guys dummying up, you’ve got a big problem. When you’re sweating whether three guys will stand up, it’s time to write a letter that begins:

“To the Honorable Members of the House of Representatives . . . ”

It’s practically become a literary genre - the farewell letter of a shady speaker. Of course they’re hard to compose, when you’re in a photo finish with a grand jury. Sad Sal talked, like his predecessors Felon Flaherty and Felon Finnerty, about how much he loves the House, which “has been like a home to me and the people who are family.”

A crime family.

He neglected to apologize for forcing his members, his sheeple, to vote in lockstep for him a mere three weeks ago, when he had to know the posse was closing in.

Instead, DiMasi resorted to fantasy. The House, he said, has a “distinguished reputation.” Surely he meant to say, “extinguished reputation.”

Of course, the moonbats were with him to the bitter end. And why not? He prevented the people of Massachusetts from having a vote on gay marriage, an obnoxious subversion of democracy that Sal referred to in ultra-PC terms as “protecting marriage equality.”

Odd, Sal went on in his my-goose-is-cooked epistle about gays and universal health care, and never once mentioned the dodgy characters with whom he will henceforth forever be associated: ticket scalpers.

What happens next? One candidate is Honest John Rogers, who once compared Felon Flaherty’s felony conviction to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The favorite is Honest Bob DeLeo, who for many years listed a post office box as his home address.

My money’s on DeLeo. Let’s go for four in a row. The old corrupt speaker is dead, long live the new corrupt speaker.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists
/view.bg?articleid=1147793

Wed column ping

Mr. John Rogers’ neighbors won’t be calling him Mr. Speakah
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, January 28, 2009 |

The luckiest man at the snowy State House this morning is Rep. Honest John Rogers.

Because he’s not going to be the next speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Hey, Rogers, wise up and stop whining. Who cares what you think Reps. Gene O’Flaherty and Jay Kaufman did or didn’t promise you? With what they’ve got on you - what with your bank-president political “consultant” and those mortgage payments he made on your summer house in Falmouth - how long do you really think you’d have been House speaker?

Just enjoy your few remaining moments as House Majority Leader, Mr. Rogers. You would have gone down in the record books as the John Paul I of speakers, the William Henry Harrison of the hackerama.

So Speaker Sal finally delivered his sayonara, and it would have taken a heart of stone not to laugh. It was a sloppy, malaprop-laden farewell, with references to the “austere body” - surely he meant “august” - and then referring to his “stallworth” legal counsel, Lou Rizzoli.

“What are the tell-tale signs,” Sal went on, “that it’s time to leave?”

I would imagine, Sal, it’s when you’re afraid to pick up your mail because it might contain a target letter from the grand jury.

“To my right,” Sal rambled on, deep in nostalgia for 1978, “was a man from Mattapan who would become a speaker.”

And a felon. But I repeat myself.

This is how corrupt the State House has become. The solon who’s been designated to speak for Honest John Rogers’ doomed effort is Rep. Paul Kujawski.

But maybe it’s just history repeating itself. Here’s a quote from the Constitutional Convention of 1787, from future Gov. Elbridge Gerry, the father of gerrymandering: “In Massachusetts the worst men get into the Legislature. Several members of that body have lately been convicted of infamous crimes. Men of indigence, ignorance and baseness, spare no pains, however dirty, to carry their point against men, who are superior to the artifices practiced.”

Paging Dianne Wilkerson, Felon Finneran, Jim Marzilli, Chris Asselin, Good Time Charlie Flaherty, Brian Dempsey, Bob Spellane . . .

So now it’s the turn of Bobby DeLeo, who I never tire of reminding you is Felon Finneran’s classmate at Boston Latin ’67. Enough said. But wait, there’s more. His top enforcer is Tommy “Petro” Petrolati, who’s been known to take money from at least one gangster.

Somewhere this morning, yet another grand jury is being empaneled - on spec.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1148308

Fri column ping (below) and show ping. Ann Coulter scheduled to be on at 3:30 today and IF Horshack shows up (and if
there’s no breaking news) maybe, maybe, maybe a death pool
today at 4.

Maybe.

Surprise! Disgraced ex-judge best man for the job
By Howie Carr | Friday, January 30, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

What hiring freeze? There has been another nationwide search, and the winner is disgraced ex-state judge and State House hack Michael Livingstone.

Did someone say something about a state budgetary “crisis”?

You’ve read about Livingstone. Until last June, he was a probate and family court judge in Plymouth County. Then he cut a deal with the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct, which dropped various charges against him in return for his resignation.

The allegations included sending a threat to a Section 8 tenant, secretly grabbing fees from former clients and claiming as income tax deductions various business expenses relating to his allegedly closed law practice.

A bent Massachusetts state judge. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Livingstone resigned June 12. Then began the longest, most nerve-wracking 148 days of his worthless layabout life. That was how long it took him to wedge his snout back into the public trough.

His new employer is Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson, a good guy. Hodgson, a Republican, hired the bust-out judge as “coordinator of contract compliance.” Livingstone is taking a huge pay cut, from his $129,000 judicial pay to $39,197.25 a year. Boo-hoo.

You know how when judges are making their annual demand for a pay hike, they always claim they could be making really, really big bucks in the Dreaded Private Sector. It’s their little fantasy, and I’m being kind. Livingstone is the reality. Without their robes, 99 percent of these hack judges would be starving to death, desperate to make anything close to the $39,000 Livingstone is collecting.

A call was placed to Sheriff Hodgson about his new employee.

“I asked him what had happened,” the sheriff said, “and he told me these were administrative charges, not criminal. He said he had gotten a letter saying what he’d done was permitted, but that the commission didn’t think so.”

And of course, the sheriff also got a few calls. One came from ex-Sen. Biff MacLean, the caudillo of Bristol County, fined $512,000 on his way out the door. The sheriff said he also heard from “Mayor Markey” - that would be Judge Jack Markey of New Bedford, himself suspended without pay from the bench for three months in 1998 for trying to fix a domestic-violence case.

And then there was New Bedford City Councilor John Saunders.

In an amazing coincidence, Saunders took a $200 contribution from Livingstone in 2002, just before acting Gov. Jane Swift appointed Livingstone to the bench.

Livingstone got his judgeship the old-fashioned way. First he worked at the State House., for Rep. Mike Flaherty, himself a future judge and the father of both a court clerk and the wannabe mayor of Boston. Then by sending contributions to the usual suspects, and I do mean suspects.

Felon Finneran, who was convicted, got $300 from Livingstone. Ex-Sen. Henri Rauschenbach, who was acquitted, grabbed $250. Rep. Jailbird George Rogers, whose second, post-prison political career ended after the cops confiscated hundreds of gay porn videos from his house in New Bedford, received $600. U.S. Rep. Barney Frank took in $250.

Four words to always remember about Massachusetts state government: Nothing on the level.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1148716

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