Saturday, April 21, 2012

Housecleaning Of Tidbits

I have been tossed out of the 2nd and tossed into the 6th so I now have switched reps but will follow with great interest the primary battle to run against Keiko Orrall. This will have Adam Bond against Roger Brunelle, Jr. I am sure the debates will be fascinating since I saw Jr’s performances several times in the previous round and his patter was basically “I’m a union guy so vote for me.” Maybe someone can ask Jr. about Pacheco? What is his opinion of the Pacheco Law? EBT card reform? Public pension reform? On and on.
Adam does have a great slogan “People Before Party.” Very catchy and distances him from any connection with the entrenched.
If I ever get around to updating my sidebar I’ll have to put Shaunna O’Connell out there for all the positive she has done with the attempts at EBT card reform. At least it has the tar and feathers crowd in an uproar.
The Tea Party Museum in Boston had an elaborate and quite ornate weather vane designed by craftsman - from California. Sound familiar? Go out of state? Amazing!
The Learning Channel - why is it called that? Very little learning and a lot of questionable sensationalism with their latest entry being Eden’s World a reality show based on a seven year old climbing the show biz ladder. IMO this borders on child abuse. Watch it and have an air sickness bag available.
Best Buy is heading to join the ranks of Circuit City.
Representative Russell Holmes who is on of the point persons on EBT card reform was actually solicited to buy someone’s EBT card for fifty cents on the dollar.
Who is Stephen Murphy? He is the President of The Boston City Council and he actually is having an extended moment of fiscal sanity for a public official. The reason? The obnoxious and overly costly buy-backs that are so prevalent in public contracts.
The buy backs are also based on you final earnings so if you had sick days from twenty years ago they have appreciated substantially in value.
Marathon Monday is our own local madness that garners nary a line of two in the rest of the nation. Is there anything more overblown than this event? Well….maybe the Pan-Mass Challenge which ties up summer traffic in knots as virtually every bike rider violates as many rules of the road as possible. But - of course - it is all excused because it is for charity.
I thought the far left (AKA - Looney Left) would be clever enough to create something besides Faux News to display their collective ire at FOX News. I love the way the ratings keep going up just to aggravate them.
I see that part of the job description of the Secret Service is to check out the local talent. Do the female agents get the cabana boys?
GSA shows our tax dollars hard at work. The administrator who set up the Vegas beer bash is now on administrative leave - with pay, natch.
The GSA simply proves the old adage about this is how people spend money when it is other people’s money.
Patriot’s Day is a holiday in Massachusetts and IMO should replace Columbus Day as a national holiday.
Romney picked up seven points on Obama in a poll among registered voters. That was accomplished in one week.
My wife - The Lovely Cynthia - enjoys watching Dr. Phil. Since I am fae ro urbane and sophisticated I just get glimpses. More and more Dr. Phil’s show is resembling Jerry Springer.
Mets fans I know were right about Bobby Valentine. Gone by June?
The G & E looks like the place to be if you wish to “lawyer-up.”

Thursday, April 12, 2012

EBT, Elections & Other Stuff

EBT card abuse is rampant. The Probation Department is an ongoing joke. Tim Murray and the late night/early morning cover-up. Department of Employment Security mis-management. MBTA a wreck. Political appointees under investigation. So where is the governor? Out raising money for one of the most glorious presidential failures in American history? Don’t know.

Howie Carr had it right. If you get bagged for anything in this state just request you be treated like Uncle Omar.

Brockton has the usual plethora of six figure employees lead by the police and school department. What was of interest to the Enterprise was the significant differences in salary for virtually the same job in city hall versus the school department. Pays to be in education.

A blow out win for Steve McKinnon.

10% turnout in Middleboro for the election.

All the potential weaknesses of the Red Sox managed to surface in the first six games.

Market Basket scored very high on the yearly Consumer Reports super market indicators. Wal-Mart was at the bottom. No surprise to me.

I took the Wonderlic sample test and went 12/12. Eat your heart out NFL!

A coalition of the usual suspects - public service unions and advocacy groups have joined forces to attempt to get tax increases primarily an increase in the sales tax. As one advocate stated “We don’t need a bigger share of the pie we need a bigger pie.” Fat chance, folks.

Hillary Rosen of the DNC wrote an article highly critical of Ann Romney since Ms. Romney “never worked a day in her life.” I guess raising five boys while having MS is not considered a “job” to Ms. Rosen. Naturally the White House and DNC have tried to distance themselves from this loose cannon.

Marc Pacheco came before the BOS and I have to admit I did not watch the whole thing. I have a boredom threshold and Pacheco manages to hit it with great frequency. From the little I did watch he was not saying much - no great revelation - and seemed to be filling time with the love of his own voice.

How many folks went to the wrong precinct to vote? The new alignment was part of our census but most just toss that so you show up at the wrong place. I’ve been moved from two to six and now must engage in a nationwide search to discover who my rep is.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

More Whining By Me

Race baiting Spike Lee decided the best way to handle his ire over the Zimmerman case was to Tweet Zimmerman’s address. Since Spike has a history of getting things wrong he naturally tweeted the wrong address. Now an elderly couple are in hiding. Nice job, Spike!

So now the various race pimps get into the picture lead by the ultimate fraud Al Sharpton. You end up with a punk kid getting whacked needlessly by a member of the local militia who sees Black+Hoodie=Kill ‘em. I’m sure if Martin had a gun both he and Zimmerman would be toast.

The police station is in need and a great way of funding it would be the elimination of the Quinn Bill.

Foxwoods managed to give annual stipends to each tribal member that exceeded $100,000. Now they get nothing. The gin mill is two billion in debt.

“Welcome to the quest for the rare possibilities of life after death. Watch the hottest group of all female paranormal investigators on the journey to unearth the truth about the afterlife.” That is from the web site of the latest kooks to infest our town hall. Naturally they sent in one of their “hottest” to go before the BOS. After about a minute I’m sure the boys would have granted the eye candy just about anything she requested.

How can President Obama justify a budget that includes one trillion in new debt?
The Chevy Volt is now officially a disaster of Edsel proportions.

The Town of Easton is attempting to collect the $300,000 yearly parking revenues at Borderland State Park and earmark it for the park. The park? Turns out the money the DCR (Department of Conservation and Recreation) collects goes into the state general funds and not the park.

The EBT scandal won’t go away. Deval Patrick seems intent on defending the rampant abuses within the system and - naturally - blames the press for pointing out the failures. Shauna O’Connell of Taunton has been virtually the lone voice in our legislature regarding this issue since and eventually the hard work will reap dividends. Some minor changes have been made but more substantial ones are needed for the taxpayers and the deserving - the deserving who are painted with that broad brush thanks to the abusers.

Keith Olbermann got canned from his latest gig and this time at a network I never heard of. I enjoyed Olbermann on ESPN and especially Sports Center. He occasionally got in a cleaver political dig from his far left perspective and it would be enjoyable. Then he got his own show.

Rush, Beck and a few others occasionally cross the line but Olbermann seemed to do it on a daily basis. His venom and hate spittle fueled attacks on anyone right of center became commonplace and an embarrassment to those on the left you could no longer point bto the broadcasting ilk on the right and say “see!” So he got canned from MSNBC and no the network of whatever.

I don’t care about his politics nor do I care about his entertainment value from his approach to broadcasting - he just was not that good at it - Rush and Beck were far better. But what I do care about is the clear track record this truly unlikable individual demonstrated in his behind the scenes work. He was intensely disliked. The worker bees despised him and I am sure no tears are being shed by those who had to put up with this ill tempered lout.

Bob Kraft - the gazillionaire owner of the “we can’t beat the Giants” Patriots - is in another fiscal brawl with the town of Foxboro this time over a revenue producing billboard. So Kraft has attempted to put the fiscal collar on for 7M over a walkway from his parking lot - stimulus money. Then he tries to get a casino shoved down the locals various orifices via the smooth operating Vegas hustler Steve Wynn and now this. Oh the Patriot fans love this guy. Right. Twelve hours from moving the show to Hartford.