This makes one SO PROUD to be a scitte-eating resident of Massachusetts!!!
Also see: The Incestuous State House of Massachusetts
"Waves of scandal rattle Beacon Hill" by Matt Viser and Frank Phillips, Globe Staff | November 2, 2008
Members of the House and Senate - and the Massachusetts public - have already been subjected to a stream of news about the alleged ethical failings of House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi and his close friends. As the taint of corruption settled deeply over the State House last week and subpoenas from the US attorney's office were delivered to top-ranking state officials by the hour, Senator Dianne Wilkerson's Senate colleagues quickly moved to purge her.
Beacon Hill is once again awash in charges of political corruption, cronyism, and influence peddling, a spate of scandals that seasoned observers describe as perhaps the worst in three decades. And the sense that shoddy or criminal behavior has become pervasive is peaking just as the state confronts its worst financial crisis in years and needs strong leadership from its elected officials.
Will we ever learn?
ALL INCUMBENTS OUT, Mass. voters! THIRD PARTY when you can!!!!
Lawmakers say they are being confronted by angry constituents in the waning days of their reelection campaigns.
Hi!
Top politicians have responded that Wilkerson's arrest by the FBI is based on the alleged actions of one rogue senator and that it does not reflect how Massachusetts politics really works.
Pfffft!
But federal investigators have cast a wide net in the case, and some fear that Wilkerson could give up additional information to seek a lighter sentence. Mayor Thomas M. Menino, Maureen Feeney, City Council president, and Senate President Therese Murray have all received federal grand jury subpoenas in the Wilkerson case and have been referenced in one another's subpoenas - creating the appearance of a web of unseemly politicking that stretches from the State House to City Hall.
They gonna believe a sworn liar?
As one grand jury prepares for testimony in US District Court, DiMasi is under siege, with several ongoing investigations, including a state grand jury probe into more than $2 million in payments paid by a state computer software contractor to three of his close associates. One of the speaker's associates who received payments, his personal accountant, Richard Vitale, gave DiMasi a highly unusual third mortgage on his North End condominium. DiMasi has repeatedly asserted that he had nothing to do with the award of a flawed $13 million contract to
Also see: Dirty DiMasi
Out he goes, voters!
In still another controversy brewing, in Central Massachusetts, Robert P. Spellane, a Worcester Democrat and vice chairman of the committee that regulates banks, has been forced to explain how he was able to forgo a year's worth of payments on a $340,000 loan from a local bank with an executive who supports him politically.
And while the charges did not involve or conflict with his public duties, state Senator J. James Marzilli's bizarre arrest on charges that the Arlington Democrat sexually harassed and accosted four women in downtown Lowell has only heightened the image that Beacon Hill is sliding out of control.
Yeah, that hasn't helped the image at all -- especially since the LIBERAL has GOTTEN AWAY with it!
The Senate has not expelled Marzilli, although it referred his case to the Senate Ethics Commission. There has been no action in the four months since the referral. He is not running for reelection.
For more on Marzilli go HERE
Over the years, reformers have seen the political establishment cut the budgets and challenge many of the powers of the State Ethics Commission and the Office of Campaign and Political Finance. In the early 1990s there was a full-fledged assault on ethics laws as state lawmakers sought to limit the investigative powers of the Ethics Commission, including taking away its subpoena powers in preliminary inquiries and forcing it to reveal confidential informants.
DiMasi, who was House chairman of the Judiciary Committee at the time, challenged an Ethics Commission subpoena of his records, taking the case to the Supreme Judicial Court. The court ruled in favor of DiMasi, saying there was no legal basis to subpoena his documents after his name appeared in a lobbyist's records as taking more than $700 worth of meals, golfing fees, and entertainment expenses.
Most recently, reformers were dismayed when the Legislature in 2003 repealed a statewide referendum approving the Clean Elections Law, a sweeping measure designed to break the stranglehold that, reformers believe, special interests have on the electoral process.
About the REPEAL of the Clean Elections:
"Republican Gov. Paul Cellucci -- frustrated by unsuccessful effort to lower the income tax -- pushed for a ballot question in 2000 to cut the state income tax rate, then 5.75 percent, down to 5 percent over three years.
The question was overwhelmingly approved by voters. But after the state's economy tanked in 2001-2002, lawmakers decided to freeze the rate at 5.3 percent. In 1998, voters approved a Clean Elections law to provide public campaign dollars for candidates who agree to limit the amount of money they raise and spend on campaigns.
Lawmakers, led by then-House Speaker Thomas Finneran, refused to fund the law. Supporters appealed to the state's highest court and won a ruling allowing them to auction off public property to pay candidates who had qualified for funds.
To stop the auctions, the Legislature agreed to fund the law for one year and put a nonbinding question back on the ballot. The wording of the second question -- "Do you support taxpayer money being used to fund political campaigns for public office in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?" -- virtually guaranteed it would be rejected. Lawmakers then killed it in 2003. --MORE--"
Oh, don't you just love the DIRTY GAMES the LOVABLE LIBERALS of Massachusetts play to LOOT your WALLET, taxpayers?!!!
It remains to be seen where, on the scale of past scandals, the current series of events will fall. In the early 1960's, a special commission found fraud and payoffs in the state's construction of Boston Common's underground garage.
That generation's Big Pit!
The State House was engulfed in scandal in the 1970's over bribes given to legislators by the contractor building the University of Massachusetts' Boston campus. The Senate majority leader, Joseph J.C. DiCarlo of Revere; a ranking Senate Republican leader, Ronald A. MacKenzie; and James A. Kelly Jr., the Senate Ways and Means chairman, all were convicted in federal court and sentenced to jail time.
That is what we need NOW!!!
"Each generation has had their scandals," said Jack Beatty, the historian and biographer of one of Boston's most famous rogues, James Michael Curley. "We will have a high-minded commission named after someone, and there will be resolves that Massachusetts will reform itself. But Massachusetts political culture being what it is, the infallible patterns will be repeated for the next generation."
Then INTO the HARBOR with them!!!!!
"This has got to stop," Representative Cory Atkins, a Democrat from Concord, said of the overall atmosphere. "Voters hate it. Our greatest asset is our integrity, and if we blow that, we blow the democratic trust."
The trust and integrity is SO GONE and SO YESTERDAY, dude!!!!
Governor Deval Patrick, who came to office vowing to change the culture, is now watching that culture career out of control. But even the self-professed reformer governor has taken his lumps, accused of using loopholes in state campaign laws to leverage jumbo contributions from lobbyists and businesses seeking favors from state government.
See: A Different Kind of Governor
Did I not mention the $1 BILLION dollar giveaway to the pharmaceutical corporations? Fact is, he ain't no different than the rest of the slime at the State House.
He also, like many prominent officeholders, endorsed Wilkerson in the Democratic primary despite her long list of previous legal problems, saying it was a matter of loyalty because of her early endorsement of his 2006 candidacy.
Also see: State Democrats Cut Criminal State Senator Loose
The turmoil could not come at a worse time, with legislative leaders huddling with their lawyers behind closed doors, politically weakened and distracted when they need to be focused on closing the $1.4 billion budget gap created by the national financial crisis and dealing with chronic financial problems in transportation, healthcare, and education. --more--"
Yup, we get BUDGET CUTS for the blind, mentally ill and schools!
Of course, "flushing . . . millions of dollars away supporting a highly profitable industry" when it comes to $300 million in taxpayer dollars for Hollywood is o.k., even as the price of a school lunch rises; paying $13 million for a computer software system that could have cost less than $3 million is all right because the winner was a close friend of the House speaker, even as my poorer-than-dirt district "has been struggling to close a $2 million budget gap."; the lottery shelling out "millions of dollars" for sports tickets for "lottery officials, their family members, and friends" is fine, even as schools are closing; making interest payments to banks to the tune of "a staggering $22 billion" for the Big Pit, as we call it around here, is required, even as bridges are neglected across the state; and again, paying off banks like UBS, who can "demand repayment of an additional $2 million a month beginning in January" while also receiving a "$179 million payment," while the state pension fund loses $1 billion dollars -- which still didn't stop the executive director from carving himself a nice "$64,000 bonus on top of his $322,000 annual salary."
Oh, and did I not mention the $1 BILLION dollar giveaway to the pharmaceutical corporations, even though "it's never been easy to turn a profit in biotech?" Flush that money away, too, taxpayer. Of course, the war looters were next in line for a handout. And should the state be appropriating money for a "multimillion-dollar reconstruction" of golf courses?
Nor is it RECKLESS to BORROW the STATE INTO OBLIVION so they can PAY INTEREST to BANKS while SITTING ON $2 BILLION DOLLARS!
Oh, about those immigrants:
"200 pack meeting on immigration
More than 200 people turned out last night at Chelsea High School for the state's first town-hall-style meeting on how to better integrate immigrants into Massachusetts cities and towns. About two dozen people testified during the two-hour session, calling for more jobs, interpreters, and English and citizenship classes.
Yeah, ummm, WHO is going to PAY FOR THAT?!! It sure as hell better not be the TAXPAYER!!!!!!!!
Others had more personal appeals, including a Somali Muslim who said she wanted a place to pray and a Honduran woman whose son won two college scholarships but cannot use them because he is here illegally.
You GOTTA BE SHITTING ME?! As they tell our kids to go to cheaper schools, pay more, and shut others down?
The meeting was the first of six planned throughout the state, as part of an executive order Governor Deval Patrick issued over the summer (Boston Globe)."
Un-fucking-real, readers! That's why they made it a brief, huh?
You READY to BELIEVE ME?
Need one final insult, Mass. taxpayers?
See: Massachusetts Gives More Money to Hollywood
Yup, but they are going to CUT JOBS and SERVICES to the BLIND!! Don't you just get SICK of the BULLSHIT?!!!!
Patrick last week unveiled a plan to close a $1.4 billion budget gap through a variety of measures, including eliminating 1,000 state jobs through layoffs and retirements and not filling vacant positions.
The governor, using his powers to balance the budget, unilaterally made $624.5 million in cuts last week. Of that, about $47.8 million are costs that will be taken on by other agencies, and about $24 million in trust money will be used to make up for the losses - so the actual reductions in programming made by the governor is closer to $550 million.
