RIGHT STUFF
Marty Walsh one of the few good men
You can’t knock Marty Walsh for jumping ship.
The Biden administration is deflating like one of the toy balloons he ordered shot down the other day.
Besides, you’d leave too if you had to sit between Alejandro Mayorkas and Pete Buttigieg at Cabinet meetings listening to Joe Biden babble about balloons.
Mayorkas is Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security who will not visit the “secure” southern border to witness the illegal immigrant invasion his open border policy has brought about.
This is not to mention the fentanyl that he is also allowing to flood the country and kill thousands of young people.
Buttigieg is Biden’s Secretary of Transportation, who won’t go anywhere near a problem either unless forced to do so, like visiting the massive Ohio railroad derailment Thursday, three weeks after it spewed toxic chemicals all over the place.
The area around East Palestine, Ohio, site of the derailment, looks like a bombed-out railroad yard in Ukraine after the Russians retreated. Unlike Ukrainian leader Volodymir Zelensky, Buttigieg runs away from the sound of the guns, not toward them.
Say what you will about Walsh, 55, he at least had enough experience in Boston politics as a union guy, a state legislator and Boston mayor that he at least would have made an appearance in Ohio.
Everybody knows that half the battle is just showing up. You look, you nod, you leave. Problem solved.
And a guy can take only so much working for the bumbling and stumbling Joe Biden even if he is, like Walsh, a long-time Biden supporter.
He had to have at one point looked around at Biden’s crew and said to himself, “Who are these people? What am I doing here? They don’t even talk like me.”
So Walsh, after two years of service, has left as Biden’s Secretary of Labor to head the National Hockey League Players’ Association, a more lucrative position that will pay him $3 million and keep him in Boston.
In this way, he is following in the footsteps of former Gov. Charlie Baker who recently became president of the NCAA.
Walsh, paid $221,000 as labor secretary, leaves a department of some 16,855 employees and a budget of $14.2 billion to represent a hockey union of some 1,000 members.
Walsh as labor secretary headed off last year’s threatened national railroad strike. He will now negotiate the NHL collective bargaining agreement that will expire following the 2025-2026 season.
Not that Walsh really left Boston for Washington in the first place. He commuted most of the time.
And after being the head man in Boston, he found it challenging to be working for someone else, taking orders rather than giving them. He found it much more fulfilling to be the first man in Boston than second man in Washington.
Walsh, who succeeds outgoing executive director Donald Fehr, 74, has been criticized for not being a lawyer, as though having a law degree is vital in negotiating contracts.
Walsh did not have a law degree when he was mayor and negotiated countless contracts, including with the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Union
Besides, Boston is a hockey town and Walsh is a hockey fan from Dorchester. He even looks like a hockey player, albeit a retired one, of course.
He was a season ticket holder during his youthful drinking days after surviving cancer as a child. He admitted being thrown out of a 1995 Bruins game for drunken behavior.
It was then that Walsh began to turn his life around, beginning with his journey for recovery, a recovery that has led to abstinence from alcohol ever since.
“My name is Marty Walsh and I’m an alcoholic,” Walsh said during his 2016 speech at the 2016 Democrat National Convention.
Not only has Walsh been a successful politician as a legislator, a mayor and a Cabinet secretary, but he is also an inspirational leader who has led by example.
The puck stops here.