HACKERAMA!
Call this Mass. zombie movie ‘Week of the Living Hacks’
Old hacks never die — they just keep getting busted again and again and again.
This has been like old home week in the hackerama, what with obscene pay raises, falling-down-drunk state reps, jailbirds running for their old offices, a tripledipper fined $10,000, an extra-greedy sheriff who looks like a burnt-out hippie, and last but not the least, the Return of Troopergate.
First, ex-Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, Bureau of Prisons #21757-038. As soon as I heard the wonderful news that she was seeking a new term (in the legislature, not prison), I tweeted out a bulletin with the famous photo of her stuffing the feds’ C-notes into her bra.
It was fun to be using Twitter again, without guilt, now that Elon Musk has freed it of its Stalinist shackles. All of us can have fun again! And so immediately, Donnie Palmer, a Boston Republican candidate, tweeted back at me: “Some invest their money in an IRA, others invest their money in a BRA!”
Exactly, Donnie. The only thing that surprised me was how many people would still be asking how an excon can run for office.
How soon everyone forgets — until Dianne won the Roxbury Senate seat in 1992, it had been traded back and forth for decades between two jailbirds, Bill Owens (MCI-Walpole) and Royal Bolling Sr. (he did his federal stretch at Danbury).
Danbury, of course, was also where an earlier worthy from Roxbury, Mayor James Michael Curley, served his second prison term. I can’t remember where ex-Rep. Dave “Okie” O’Connor of Mission Hill did his five-month bid back in the early 1970’s.
In other words, if Dianne can just make the primary ballot, her campaign slogan should be, “The Tradition Continues.”
Then there’s the Democrat sheriff of Nantucket, James A. Perelman. The insane new state budget raised his salary from $108,970 to $196,000 a year. This former cook-turnedcourt-officer has no jail, which accounts for his current salary below that of other sheriffs.
I immediately tweeted out that story, too. But honestly, I wasn’t that interested until I got a picture of the sheriff. When I put out that photo out it got just the reaction from the Twitterati that I’d anticipated.
“He looks like a roadie for the Doobie Brothers!” someone tweeted back at me.
Except that roadies for the Doobie Brothers weren’t in the habit of wearing three badges.
Next came breaking news from the 413 area code – Richard Theroux, an infamous western Mass. payroll patriot, had been fined $10,000 by the State Ethics Commission.
Theroux made hack history in 2016. At the time, he was collecting three paychecks and/or pensions from the hackerama.
So he decided to set a new world’s record by running for state rep and start grabbing an unprecedented fourth check. I wrote a column about Theroux’s going for the gold and he dropped his bid, but he was still jammed up.
It turns out, like every other hack, he has a summer place on the Cape. But when Theroux went down for summer junkets for one of his hack sinecures, he would use what the State Ethics Commission called “phony receipts” to collect yet more cash for staying at his own condo.
Then he signed vouchers to pay his own bogus vouchers — $5650. Now he must pay back the stolen money and a $10,000 civil fine.
It’s a sad way to celebrate his 50th anniversary at the public trough — Theroux scored his first hack job at the age of 19, in 1972.
“It was a mistake but not on purpose,” this Hack Hall of Famer is quoted as saying in the local newspaper.
Speaking of the State Ethics Commission, this week it also decided that a veritable Who’s Who of the Worcester County hackerama should be fined $20,000 apiece for their roles in the sordid scandal of Troopergate.
In case you’ve lost track of Troopergate in the
unending stream of MSP corruption, this one involved a bunch of unemployable state slugs trying to tamper with a State Police report. The botched cover-up involved the arrest of the hack daughter, Alli Bibaud, of a hack judge Timothy Bibaud, who used to be a coatholder for the dim oaf who is the district attorney of Worcester County, Joe Early Jr.
Among those who tried to suppress the brag by Alli (who of course used to be a Mass Pike toll taker) about what sexual acts she’d had to perform to get the money to purchase her narcotics was Richard McKeon, the disgraced ex-colonel of the MSP.
This being Massachusetts, the crooked McKeon will not lose his $170,947-ayear state pension, nor will his pathetic minion, exCapt. Susan Anderson, who’s grabbing a $141,487-ayear kiss in the mail.
Speaking of Worcester, do you suppose Rep. David “Sleepy” LeBoeuf has recovered from what must have been a hangover of
epic proportions after his arrest Tuesday night in Quincy for Driving While Democrat?
Is there anyone in Worcester County politics who is not a complete bleeping disgrace?
Not just the above-mentioned stalwarts of Troopergate, but what about Sleepy’s fellow DWD pols – ex-Lt. Gov. Tim “Crash” Murray, who was going 108 m.p.h. at dawn in his pajamas surveying “storm damage” when he collided with a wall.
Or Rep. Paul Kujawski, who after his OUI told me, “I’m not like you guys from Boston. When I got to the State House, I thought everybody was my friend.”
Or Rep. John Fresolo — not enough room to go into
his tawdry record. Just Google his name and mine, and a brief primer will pop up from 2016.
One last thing: On Friday, the governor put out a press release bragging that the Commonwealth is the first state to be officially named an “age-friendly employer.”
Just ask Arthur Tobin, the clerk magistrate of the Quincy District Court. He just got an $18,600 pay raise this week, up to almost $174,000 a year. Not bad for an old timer who turns 92 in three weeks.
William Faulkner once said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
And in the hackerama that is Massachusetts, the past is not still just collecting a paycheck … it’s getting pay raises.