CARR: Baker does some fundraising for hacks
Gov parties with fattened hacks
This is a picture that’s worth a thousand words.
It’s GOP Gov. Charlie “Tall Deval” Baker, in Westport Monday night, at a Democrat fundraiser addressing a crowd of his fellow Beacon Hill hacks.
Standing behind him is Senate President Stanley Rosenberg.
Tall Deval had just vetoed the bill that increases the pay of Rosenberg, a career hack, from $97,500 to $142,500, as “irresponsible.”
After which, Tall Deval was driven down to Westport to party with his alleged foe at a $100-a-head time for Sen. Mike Rodrigues, the guy in the middle between Rosenberg and the governor.
How stupid does Tall Deval think the voters are?
He’s a Republican, or claims to be. With a wink and a nod, he vetoes the pay raises, then goes off to party with the tax-fattened hyenas he’s publicly denouncing.
Notice how Senators Rosenberg and Rodrigues are holding their hands. Are the solons praying ... or preying?
The hacks, up to and including Baker, jammed this obscene heist through because they figured they had cover — President Trump and the Super Bowl. Nobody was paying attention, or so they thought.
Back in the 1980s, the hackerama tried a similar robbery, albeit much smaller than this one that reduces the great Plymouth mail robbery to a footnote. The hacks did that one on Halloween. It became known as the Halloween heist.
This bipartisan thievery needs a name, too.
The Super Bowl robbery, we’ll call it.
All day Friday, I was calling and emailing Baker’s office at the State House, asking him why he would party with the perpetrators of the greatest theft in the Commonwealth since the Brinks job.
When the phone didn’t ring, I knew it was Tall Deval.
Basically, this is a pension sweetener for Rosenberg and House Speaker Bob DeLeo, the unindicted co-conspirator, as he’s described in the federal indictment. They’re both 67, so this will mean an extra — repeat EXTRA — $3,000-plus in their monthly kisses in the mail.
But then these parasites realized their grab would be repealed by the voters, so they threw in pay hikes to the state’s already grossly overpaid and underworked judiciary. That makes the robbery repeal-proof.
But it gets worse. The wrinkly reprobates also dished out pay raises — “stipends,” they call them — to all the reps in so-called leadership. The unindicted coconspirator has sole discretion on who gets the extra dough.
What the speaker giveth, he can taketh away.
It was left to a Democrat, Rep. Jonathan Hecht of Watertown, to explain how pernicious this is. He spoke during the debate on whether to override the veto Thursday. (It was, of course, overridden.)
In the 1970s, Hecht pointed out, only nine House members got anything above their base pay. As a string of ethically challenged speakers realized the ironclad control the extra dough gave them, the number of payoffs skyrocketed — to 28 by 1980, to 34 by the mid-1990s and until now, 55.
Now, Hecht said, 80 Democrats — two-thirds of the party’s members in the House — will get the extra do-re-mi.
If they ever step out of line, the speaker can cut their pay.
Do you think these unemployables will ever vote against Mistah Speakah? This is democracy?
Here’s an example of the phonybaloney titles they’ve concocted. One of the hacks at the Tall Deval lovefest in Westport was Rep. Patricia Haddad of Somerset.
She is the “speaker pro tempore” of the House, whatever that means. She used to get an additional $15,000 annually. Now she will collect $50,000 extra a year. For doing exactly nothing. Like DeLeo and Rosenberg, she’s 67, or will be in May. What a nice boost for the speaker pro tempore’s pension!
Did I mention that the hacks attached an “emergency preamble” to this catastrophic bill? That means they don’t have to wait 90 days for the pay hikes to kick in. Here’s the exact wording on their pay grab:
“It is hereby declared to be an emergency law, necessary for the immediate preservation of the public convenience.”
Their convenience, certainly not ours.
No wonder Tall Deval didn’t really try to stop this. It was an emergency, damn it.
Recall the squalid past of the solon Tall Deval was feting — Mike Rodrigues. Back in 2009, at Small Deval’s behest, the legislature imposed a sales tax on alcohol. That doesn’t seem terribly outrageous until you remember that the state already has an excise tax on booze.
In other words, Rodrigues et al. voted to impose a tax on a tax. Rodrigues thought it was a splendid idea. (It was repealed by the voters in the next election.)
But Rodrigues is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. A couple of days after that outrage, he was spotted in New Hampshire, at a state liquor store, loading the trunk of his car with cases of cheap no-sales-tax Granite State booze.
He might have gotten away with it, but the statesman had proudly attached a “Senate” license plate to his vehicle. He was busted.
One final point: This memorable Bristol County time took place at a swank, upscale venue known as Bitter Sweet Farm.
No joke — Bitter Sweet Farm. Sweet, very sweet for the hacks. Bitter for the taxpayers, who once again are left holding the bag. Listen to Howie’s radio show 3-7 p.m. every weekday on WRKO AM 680.