A higher calling, Part 3
Posted: December 20, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: new hampshire, politics, state government, taxpayers 1 Comment »
A higher calling, Part 2
Posted: December 18, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Big labor, Boston Globe, corruption, politics Leave a comment »The Boston Globe — mouthpiece for big government, big labor, and of course big government labor — today made one of its infrequent forays into journalism, publishing this article about a fine public employee named Michael E. McLaughlin. McLaughlin was the Chelsea, MA housing director until he resigned last month after it was learned his salary was $360,000. That’s roughly $1,000 a day. A bit high for a humble civil servant? Well, I’m sure this guy toiled all hours night and day to better the lives of city residents. Except the Globe reports McLaughlin put in a grand total of 15 full workdays in Chelsea all year, so that works out to $24,000 a day. But hey, what’s 360 Gs in a country where fat-cat CEOs make billions by screwing the little guy and not paying any taxes, right? Damn right.
The Globe also says before he left his job, he paid himself $82,000 for unused vacation time, which could only happen if he took four vacation days a year since 2003. Then he wrote himself a check for $114,000 for unused sick time, which could only happen if he took a grand total of 3.5 hours of sick time over 12 years. The odds of those payments being legit are the same as Jeanne Shaheen winning American Idol.
So here’s another crook who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from taxpayers. OK, it’s Massachusetts, which for nearly a century has been a rank, foul, heaping pile of political corruption thanks to the inevitable horribleness of Democrats left unchecked. But that doesn’t change the fact that McLaughlin is an SOB and a thief.
Yeah, yeah … just another anecdote that shouldn’t be used to paint all public servants as lazy, bloodsucking losers? Tell you what — for every millionaire and billionaire that pays no taxes, I guarantee there are at least 10,000 public employees who are scamming taxpayers for millions every day. Guaranteed. The country’s finances — municipal, state and federal — aren’t a disaster because people aren’t taxed enough; it’s because those governments spend, waste and steal too much.
Public service: a higher calling
Posted: December 15, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Civil service, corruption, Maine, politics Leave a comment »We’re all tired of hearing about rich, greedy businessmen — those no-tax-paying, top-hat doffing, monocle-wearing robber barons responsible for the global economic mess we’re in — am I right? So let’s enjoy the heart-warming story of a fine public servant, a man who forsook the allure of the private sector and its hollow, meaningless pursuit of money. A man who sacrificed financial gain to give of himself to The People.
I’m talking of course about Mr. Paul Violette, former director of the Maine Turnpike Authority. After a 23-year career at the authority, he stepped down earlier this year, no doubt to let a new generation of community-minded leaders continue his tradition of selfless service for the good residents of Maine.
A few months after Violette resigned, the authority sued him for taking $160,000 for bogus accumulated vacation and sick time, redeeming $65,000 worth of gift cards for personal use and improperly charging tens of thousands of dollars on MTA credit cards. This week, Violette and two bonding companies agreed to cough up $430,000 to repay what the MTA says it’s owed. Turns out our public servant is a thief who stole nearly half a million bucks from toll-payers and taxpayers.
But wait — the guy’s not really a crook! After all, he’s not guilty of anything … yet. His lawyer says he’s certainly not admitting to any of the allegations — no, he just wants to settle the lawsuit and move on with his life. If the AG’s office is worth half a damn, Violette will be proclaiming his innocence all the way to prison.
But hey, Violette is just one bad apple among the legions of pure-hearted, unionized angels working for government, right? So don’t question your faith in the goodness of those who live off taxpayers. Certainly they’re to be trusted more than those who work hard to create and sell products and services that fill market needs and create livelihoods for others. Let’s keep those priorities straight …
I smell a Pulitzer
Posted: December 12, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Concord Monitor, new hampshire primary, politics Leave a comment »The Concord (NH) Monitor isn’t a bad newspaper … if it was the campus rag at a little east-coast liberal arts college. It’s all there: the vapid left-wing editorials (school vouchers violate the separation of church and state!); the oh-woe-is-everyone articles; the political cartoonist who has to label everything in his drawing to make sure people get it.
Here’s a recent headline: Amidst campaign, despair. Featured in the article are man-in-the-street interviews in which folks admit they aren’t very excited by Obama nor by the Republican primary field. That’s despair? The lack of exciting presidential candidates means we’re all doomed? Seems the editors at the Monitor think our future as a society hinges on our supply of charismatic, big-idea government leaders. I prefer quiet, boring presidents. A series of Cal Coolidges would be perfect — it would mean the federal government’s not doing much and therefore not screwing much up.
Actually, one person in the article did express despair: “It’s sad,” he said, “but the middle class, sometimes it just seems we’re cattle out on the field. We get led to this pasture, this slaughterhouse … we work for the purpose of this big machine.” Wow, must be some dopey twenty-something out Occupying Concord, right? Nope, turns out he’s in his early sixties and has been working more than half his life — for the Postal Service. So this guy casts his lot with a public-employee union, gets decent pay and better-than-average benefits despite his lack of ambition, and he thinks he’s being led to slaughter by the “machine.” Big Mail is chewing up the middle class and spittting them out, eh?
A classic (not classical) liberal. Makes his own life decisions, gets a little disillusioned as he gets older because somebody might have it better than him, and he blames someone else. Just the type of person the Monitor loves to report on and cater to. Where these people come from, I have no idea. That many of them live in NH is a bummer.
Too bad Joe McQuaid’s on a manic get-Romney jag, but I’ll still take the Union-Leader any day over the drivel published up the road.
Dancin’ fools
Posted: December 8, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Occupy Boston, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, politics Leave a comment »Believe me, I don’t want to write about these people. They just aren’t worth dedicating synapses to. But you can’t help it when you see a headline like this one from today’s Boston.com:
Occupy Boston protesters mull whether to dance or to get arrested, as midnight deadline nears
Have you choked down your vomit? OK, let’s continue …
Tom Menino, maya uddacitya bossun, finally sprouted a small pair and informed the occu-flakes their time is up at midnight tonight, so hit the bricks before the boys in blue come hard. After breaking into discussion groups, the freedom fighters voted to draw a line in the sand, declaring they’ll have a dance party at midnight. Or maybe not, they’re not so sure. So Boston.com jumped on the breaking news and sent a squad of their top guns down to Dewey Square. One of the revolutionaries told them a dance party would allow the group “to assume the power for ourselves in this, to choose our own destinies here and not to allow them to choose it for us.” Uh, yeah. Arms are for hugging, too.
The reporters helpfully tell us the encampment is part of a series of protests nationwide that have been credited with drawing attention to the issues of social and economic inequality. I don’t know about that, but they’ve certainly drawn attention to the mechanics of disease vectoring.
Last post about the OWS protesters, promise. For a while anyway.
UPDATE 12/9: Apparently Menino’s testicles ascended back into his torso, because the BPD did nada when the clock struck midnight. As of mid-day today the place was still infested with pseudo-hippies. The Herald reports the group danced to a brass band last night. How the hell do you dance to a brass band? Hey, it’s a Sousa march – let’s shake our groove thang.
Breakin’ the law
Posted: December 4, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Occupy Boston, Occupy Wall Street, politics Leave a comment »Occupy Boston protesters tried to smuggle an industrial sink into their encampment scabies-ground-zero the other day. A sink. Imagine their disappointment when they figured out Dewey Square wasn’t plumbed for a kitchen. Surely it wasn’t to be used for people to clean up in — a collective honeypot would be my guess.
Meanwhile, a couple of the revolutionaries got into a fight — a discussion about alternate modalities of social justice in post-capitalist societies got a little heated, no doubt — and the Pigs busted one of them, man. Turns out the arrested guy was just in court a while ago for conspiracy to commit a crime, armed robbery and sexual conduct for a fee. Sexual conduct for a fee — you know, soliciting guys for a little rest-room rendezvous. Ha, those crazy kids. Hey, what are you gonna do? They are the 99%, after all.
Now remember, it’s the Tea Partiers who are the un-American mob. You know, terrorists — threatening the country and all it stands for, and so forth.
Barney pulls out
Posted: November 28, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Barney Frank, politics Leave a comment »
Barney Frank is retiring and won’t run for reelection to the House after 16 stints there (Just the 16? Pffffft. Who says we need term limits?). I don’t want to waste energy commenting on this guy. So let’s just say his stated reasons — too many constituents to serve in a re-drawn district, doesn’t like rasing money, just not up for it – are baloney. The real reason: his central role in the country’s economic collapse can’t be ignored, and now with fewer hard-core ethnic Democrats and more suburban independents in his district, his rear end likely would be handed to him in a (large) paper bag if he ran in 2012.
Now if only 10 other members of the Mass. delegation would just follow Frank’s and John Olver’s lead, I might not be so ashamed to admit I was born in Ma … Ma … Ma … you know, that place.
UPDATE 12/1: The Herald floats the notion that a Kennedy may be aiming for Barney’s seat (ehhh, that didn’t come out right, sorry). This Kennedy is Joseph P. III, son of former congressman Joseph P. II. With a name like that, you just know we’re talking about a forward-thinking guy who’ll put dusty old liberal ideas behind him and forge an innovative new political model.
So help me, if that district votes a Kennedy into Congress next year, Romney should invite Ahmadinejad to test his new nukes there.
Canada to bail on Kyoto
Posted: November 28, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Canada, global warming, Kyoto Protocol, politics Leave a comment »OK, Canada’s not New England. But we border on it, and a whole bunch of Canadians emigrated down here several generations ago, so let’s just go with it. Canadians … lousy drivers but good hockey players. Way too much Euro-style statism but they rescued Evinrude and Johnson, so they got that going for them. Despite all their speech-code show-trial commissions and bad music acts (Once there was this guy who …), sometimes they surprise us and do something sweet. Like elect Stephen Harper their PM, whose administration just floated this plan to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol.
Even US congressional Democrats had enough functioning brain cells to not ratify Kyoto, and now the times they are a-changin’ up north. While Canada says it will still kick in some cash to the UN Green Climate Fund, the US will not, so here’s hoping our neighbors will eventually follow suit there as well.
Of course, now Canadians have to worry their Green Party might go all Canucks-fan and burn down Ottawa.
The Union Leader endorses Newt
Posted: November 27, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, New Hampshire Union Leader, Newt Gingrich, politics 1 Comment »Is Newt Gingrich the Ronald Reagan to Obama’s Jimmy Carter? The medium-rare steak au poivre to Obama’s boiled tripe? The Audi S5 to Obama’s Citroen 2CV? The New Hampshire Union Leader thinks so, and who am I to question their editorial page, which is correct about 90% of the time? Well, I’m gonna question them anyway. While the UL endorsement is an unsubtle shot at part-time NH resident Romney, the argument that Newt is more conservative than Mitt is nowhere near a slam dunk (I hate to link to the Washington Post, but thank you, Jennifer Rubin). Granted, both are in the top percentiles when it comes to brains and accomplishments, and both are fully capable of delivering innovative conservative approaches to cleaning up the heaping, stinking messes that are the Obama government, Washington DC and an economy ready for hospice. But Gingrich is not the most electable GOP candidate.
Apparently Joe McQuaid thinks undecided voters eagerly catalog the intricate give-and-take between general-election candidates, ultimately choosing the one who’s demonstrated the most facility with facts and solutions. Hence, Gingrich’s superior knowledgebase and compelling vision will attract the undecideds and give him the presidency. But there’s a small hole in that logic: undecideds are morons. They vote for whomever they “feel” best about.
They “felt” better about young, glib Obama than old, fuddy-duddy McCain. And despite the pure failure of Obama’s presidency, they’ll still “feel” better about him than a pudgy, sallow guy named Newt. That, and the tsunami of muck headed Gingrich’s way from the Democrats and their army of rump-smoochers in the media will be just enough to do in Gingrich. Of course they’ll try the same with Romney, but Romney has the demeanor — and the cleaner track record — to rise above the Axelrod/MSM gutter and contrast nicely with a panicked, flailing and increasingly vile Obama candidacy.
UPDATE 12/2: Yeah, what he said.
NEWS FLASH: Obama keeps a promise
Posted: November 23, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: new hampshire, obama, politics Leave a comment »Keeping my usual keen, alert eye on daily events, I didn’t realize Obama was in NH yesterday (no word on whether Michelle flew up in the 757 a few hours later). But he was here, and reminded folks he successfully kept a promise.
Did he close Gitmo? End rendition? Try KSM in federal court? Ban lobbyists from the White House? Enact a net spending cut? Ummm, no. He returned to Manchester High School Central. A snowstorm cut short his last appearance at the school and he promised the principal he’d be back. This is what change looks like!
Recent Comments