Battle of the Bulger (Can I Be a Witness? Edition)

June 7, 2013

The Boston Globe is reporting on its website that its reporters can cover the trial of mobster James “Whitey” Bulger.

Judge rejects Bulger effort to ban Globe journalists

US District Court Judge Denise J. Casper ruled today that Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen and reporter Shelley Murphy can cover the trial of James “Whitey’’ Bulger, the South Boston gangster who was recorded on jailhouse tapes describing his disdain for the two journalists who have chronicled his career for decades . . .

Bulger’s defense team put Cullen and Murphy on their witness list, saying they might need to be called to impeach testimony from key prosecution witnesses. But federal prosecutors, citing comments Bulger made in the jail conversations, said he was motivated by his disdain towards Cullen and Murphy.

 

The feeling is, of course, mutual, as Cullen’s column in today’s dead-tree edition illustrates.

I’ll be glad to submit some sample testimony right here so they can decide whether they really want to call me as a defense witness.de5e692f74914a5487db1f8aabf250e4-de5e692f74914a5487db1f8aabf250e4-0

I believe Whitey Bulger is a deeply cynical and vicious criminal who made millions by killing and intimidating people while he was protected by a deeply corrupted FBI.

I believe he made millions from the drug trade, extorting money from drug dealers even as he and his apologists propagated the nonsense that he never was involved in drugs.

 

And etc. in much the same vein. Except all that’s, well, moot now.

But not yet for Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr, who’s also on Bulger’s witness list and has not been dismissed from it by today’s ruling. So Carr can continue to produce drive-bys like Wednesday’s piece:

Picture 8No question about it, I’ll find courtside seat

First I tried to get a victim’s seat in the courtroom — no go.

Then I figured I’d just attend Whitey’s trial as a reporter — but Bulger put me on his witness list, although I am confident the judge will eventually decide to allow me to watch the trial, even if I do have to be a witness — a hostile witness, that is.

But given my dismal record in court, I don’t want to take any chances. So I filled out a jury questionnaire just in case that might get me inside.

 

And etc. – including most notably Question 39:

Based upon any … articles you have read, have you formed an opinion regarding James “Whitey” Bulger that would prevent you from being a fair and impartial juror in this case?

I think I read several hundred times in the Globe that, “Jimmy kept the drugs out of Southie.” Is that true?

 

The hardreading staff can’t really say, but maybe Kevin Cullen can.

 

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Hark! The Herald! (Whitey You Can Drive My Carr Edition)

June 1, 2013

From our Walt Whitman desk

As the hardreading staff noted earlier, the Boston Herald is all aglow over the imminent trial of James “Whitey” Bulger, especially the personal involvement of its star columnist Howie Carr (who “vowed to watch Whitey every step of the way through judgment day,” according to the feisty local tabloid).

And maybe testify on the mobster’s behalf. From today’s front page:

 

Picture 1

 

And the navel-gazing piece:

 

Picture 2

 

Yeah yeah – I’m Spartacus. Lede:

It’s not exactly the resume-enhancer I’d have picked for myself — “defense witness for Whitey Bulger.”20130601howie

But I can’t say I wasn’t expecting it either. And I’m not sure how serious Whitey’s lawyers are. Maybe they’re just trying to keep me and the Globe reporters out of the courtroom.

There’s an old saying in the law: If you have the facts, pound the facts. If you have the law, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table.

Hey, J.W. Carney, lay off that table. Put your shoe back on.

 

Carr says he’ll probably “be relieved of my awesome responsibilities as a defense witness Monday, when the feds and Whitey’s lawyers make their final motions.”

That’s a relief, eh? He can then go back to “watching Whitey every step of the way” yak yak yak.

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Hark! The Herald! (Battle of the Bulger Edition)

May 31, 2013

From our Walt Whitman desk

The Boston Herald is still pounding away at Gov. Deval Patrick (D-Elsewhere) over the Massachusetts welfare rumpus, but the feisty local tabloid has its eye on bigger game next week when the trial of James “Whitey” Bulger begins in earnest.

Here’s the preview the Herald ran in today’s edition:

 

Picture 1

 

And here are some of the details:

 

Picture 4

 

Picture 5

 

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It’s all fabulously overdone:

Look for Howie Carr, who vowed to watch Whitey every step of the way through judgment day, on the video reports.

No deadly detail is too small, so Herald reporters will be tweeting live . . .

[Reporter Laurel Sweet will] be close enough to look into Whitey’s eyes as loved ones of his 19 alleged murder victims take the stand. She’ll also be able to read jurors’ reactions to the gruesome evidence and chilling testimony.

 

Sweet.

Crosstown, there’s no word yet from the Boston Globe on who’ll be close enough to look into Whitey’s eyes, but today’s edition does feature this:

Globe’s Cullen, Murphy may testify in Bulger trial

Lawyers for James “Whitey” Bulger, who has bragged about strafing The Boston Globe offices with gunfire during the busing crisis of the 1970s, may call two of the newspaper’s journalists as defense witnesses at his upcoming trial.

His legal team filed a list of 78 potential witnesses Thursday, including Globe columnist Kevin Cullen and reporter ­Shelley Murphy.

Both have covered Bulger for decades and earlier this year published a book detailing his rise to power in Boston’s underworld and his capture in 2011 in Santa Monica, Calif., ­after 16 years on the run as one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives . . .

Other journalists on the ­potential witness list include former Globe reporters Gerard O’Neill and Dick Lehr, as well as Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr.

 

Damn – the Herald forgot to mention that part in its full-page promo, although it did have this online (tip o’the pixel to Mike Deehan at Massterlist).

Then again, there’s always tomorrow.

 

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Massachusetts Welfare? Well, Foul! (II)

May 30, 2013

This is mother’s milk to our feisty local tabloid.

 

Picture 2

 

The Boston Herald is on the Massachusetts welfare abuse scandal like Brown on Williamson. Today’s edition goes yesterday’s one better, with three – count ’em, three – full pages of pleased-as-punch coverage.

 

Picture 3

 

Picture 4

 

You’ll notice there are two Truth Squad screeds (here and here) about Deval Patrick’s no-show response to State Auditor Suzanne Bump’s audit of the Department of Transitional Assistance, along with one Howie Carr mail-in, a high-dudgeon editorial,  and this editorial cartoon.

 

Picture 9

 

There’s also this roll call (You Asked for It!) of the Senate votes last week rejecting photo IDs on EBT cards 30-8. (Full vote here.)

 

Picture 14

 

And this convenience store receipt purportedly showing a seven grand balance on someone’s EBT card.

 

Picture 8

 

It just doesn’t get any better than this for the Herald (from its editorial):

[I]t isn’t just the zombie-benefits problem.

It’s the individual who claimed to have had his EBT card lost or stolen — 127 times. It’s the use of a Massachusetts benefits card in St. Thomas — over a period of four months (surprise, they happened to be the coldest months of the year in New England). It’s the double-dipping, and all of the other clear signals of fraud that DTA missed along the way.

 

But the Herald’s not missing any.

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, the DTA rumpus is just monkey-business as usual. Page One:

 

Picture 10

 

But instead of piling on, the stately local broadsheet goes the misery-loves-company route.

 

Picture 12

 

New Bay State slogan: Thank God for New Jersey, eh?

 

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Massachusetts Welfare? Well, Foul!

May 29, 2013

The new audit of the Massachusetts welfare system gets very – say it with me – different treatment in the local dailies today.

Boston Globe Page One:

 

Picture 1

 

Lede:

Massachusetts gave millions of dollars in questionable public assis tance to people who were listed as dead, used multiple Social Security numbers to boost their payments, or apparently sold their benefit cards for cash over the past few years, according to a state audit released Tuesday.

The report by State Auditor Suzanne Bump is the latest study finding that the state did not do nearly enough to ensure that welfare benefits went only to qualified recipients. The head of the agency that administers the aid quit in January after another scathing report from the inspector general.

Bump’s audit found that 1,160 recipients were either dead or used a deceased person’s Social Security number, costing $2.4 million between July 2010 and April 2012.

It also flagged another $15.6 million in suspicious transactions from electronic benefit cards between 2010 and 2012, including cards that were used as far away as Alaska, Hawaii, or the US Virgin Islands, suggesting the recipients either no longer lived in Massachusetts or had extra cash for travel.

 

 

Helpful chart:

 

welfare

 

 

Other fun facts to know and tell:

• The Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance “provides aid to roughly one in seven people in the state”

• That’s about 885,000 people

• Who receive $1.7 billion a year

• And drive the Boston Herald to distraction

Not surprisingly, Page One of today’s feisty local tabloid is sharp, if a bit hyperventilating:

 

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Inside, the gimme gals and guys get the usual double-barreled treatment, complete with the told-you-so front pages of yore:

 

Picture 3

 

And Howie Carr mails in the usual about  the “Department of Terrorist Assistance,” although it’s probably safe to say Tamerlan Tsarnaev is not among the 1164 ghost riders.

Anyway, just for the record, here’s the Herald’s bottom line (note the “possible,” “suggesting,” and etc.):

 

Picture 5

 

Listen – the hardworking staff hates paying taxes as much as the next guy, assuming the next guy isn’t Mitt Romney. And there’s no question the DTA has problems that should be fixed. But isn’t this being blown out of proportion a bit?

1164 out of 885,000?

$18 million out of $1.7 billion?

Really, there’s gotta be something better the Herald could hyperventilate about.

Then again, it wouldn’t sell as many papers, would it?

 

 

 

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Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Murray?

May 23, 2013

The local dailies have very – all together now – different takes on yesterday’s swan song for Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray.

The Boston Globe runs it upper left on today’s front page:

 

Picture 2

 

The Boston Herald gives it all of Page One:

 

Picture 3

 

And page two . . and page four . . . and page five . . .

 

Picture 4

 

Picture 5

 

Never one to disappoint, the feisty local tabloid features all the usual aspects in today’s coverage, starting with Joe Battenfeld’s batting Murray around:

IMG_2307.JPGTim Murray, we hardly needed ye

When Tim Murray flees the lieutenant governor’s office, he will leave behind a historic legacy: that we don’t need a lieutenant governor . . .

Despite Patrick’s flowery tribute to his second banana yesterday, Murray had no power or influence in the administration and usually could be found standing behind the governor at press conferences, saying nothing. The lieutenant governor ranked so low he didn’t even merit one of those cool MEMA vests that Patrick wears during disasters.

 

And etc.

Next up, Howie Carr mails in his balding retreads:

010512murray03‘Crash’ is no test dummy

The Worcester Chamber of Commerce?

Nobody’s all that surprised to see Tim “Crash” Murray take the golden parachute. But shouldn’t it have been a more appropriate job, like, say, with NASCAR?

 

Ha-hah!

As you’d expect, the going-away party is a lot more subdued crosstown at the stately local broadsheet. In addition to the straightforward Page One piece, there’s this sober-minded assessment from op-ed columnist Joan Vennochi:

Murray’s ambition meets reality

IF ONLY there were no mysterious car crash.

If only he weren’t embroiled in a possible fund-raising scandal.

If only Governor Deval Patrick resigned and left the job of acting governor to his lieutenant governor, Timothy P. Murray could be the Democrat to beat in 2014.

Murray’s ambition — always grander than his profile — felt more delusional as time and controversy dragged on.

 

Even the boyos at the Herald would agree with that, yeah?

The Globe also features a largely judgment-free editorial about Murray’s departure:

An unsurprising end to Murray’s once-promising political career

The announcement Wednesday that Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray will resign to lead the Worcester Chamber of Commerce mainly served to ratify what most on Beacon Hill basically knew: that his recent political scandals had left him without a path to higher office, while his current duties were too limited to sustain an ambitious person’s career.

Murray’s departure ends an awkward chapter in Massachusetts political history . . .

 

That level of understatement, however, is entirely missing from the Herald’s editorial today:

Lt. Gov. Tim Murray yesterday gave the people of Massachusetts his two-week notice, thus drawing a curtain on one of the most underwhelming tenures of a statewide office-holder in recent Massachusetts history. And that’s saying something.

Murray is trading the privilege of elected office for what amounts to a bigger salary and a shorter commute, resigning with nearly two years left in his term to accept a lucrative job as president of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Now, we aren’t particularly sorry to see Murray go but we happen to think elected officials shouldn’t throw over the voters simply for the favor of a fat paycheck.

 

Wait a second . . . the Herald spends all this time saying Murray was a useless slug in a worthless job, but now he should have stayed?

The hardreading staff will be at the chiropractor’s if you need us.

 

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Hack Attack by Boston Herald!!

April 25, 2013

From our Two Different Worlds desk

Luckily for us, our feisty local tabloid has dug deep and unearthed the real villains in the Boston Marathon bombings.

Deval Patrick and the Massachusetts welfare system.

The action gets started on Page One:

 

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Then it really picks up steam on pages 4 and 5.

 

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Here’s a close-up of the bureaucratic sweep:

 

Picture 5

 

 

So that’s five – count ’em, five – reporters on this story, plus his ‘n’ her bookend columns by Howie Carr and Margery Eagan.

Carr:

We deserve to know what our tax $ paid for

It’s time for all the bureaucrats, paper-shufflers and flak-catchers to come clean on the Tsarnaev clan, those chiseling Chechens who tried to kill us last week.

Open the damn books! If somebody tries to murder you, you have a right to know everything about them, privacy be damned. I want to know everything about them, and I want to know it now, right down to the quality of the weed Dzhokhar was peddling down at UMass Dartmouth.

 

Eagan:

Hacks covering own tracks in name of privacy

Here’s what we’re talking about: One accused mass murderer who’s practically confessed to killing three marathon bystanders, plus a police officer, and injuring 260 others. And his brother, killed after a gunfight in which yet another police officer nearly died.

Yet the state and federal government bureaucrats are telling you, me and every taxpayer who mailed their tax checks on the very day of the marathon bombings that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s privacy matters more than our right to know how extensively our tax dollars may have contributed to their terrorist plot.

 

But wait – there’s more! This editorial:

Supporting a terrorist

The Tsarnaev brothers lived in America long enough to understand the generosity of her people. In fact they should have understood that generosity better than most given that they benefited from it personally — and in the form of actual taxpayer cash.

We learned this week that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the apparent mastermind of the Boston Marathon bombing, was until recently supporting his family with the help of a government check.

 

And etc.

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, meanwhile, the welfare issue isn’t even on their radar screen.

The only question left: Which of the two is Bizarro World?

 

 

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Howie Carr’s Next Column

April 24, 2013

You’re Howie Carr and here’s what you wrote in today’s Boston Herald:

A hit to Deval Patrick’s welfare state

Is Gov. Deval Patrick serious? He doesn’t know the motivation of the terrorists?

On Sunday he went on “Face the Nation,” and host Bob Schieffer asked him if he had “any clearer idea” of why the “two young men” did it.

“Not yet, Bob,” Deval began, more than 48 hours after the shootout. “Uh, and it’s hard, it’s hard for me and for many to imagine what could motivate, uh, people to, uh, harm, uh, innocent men, women and children, uh, in the way that, uh, these two fellows did.”

Two fellows indeed. He’d rather
tell a whopper on national TV than acknowledge the grim 
results of his beloved immigration and welfare policies.

 

That would be the same Herald that featured this front page today:

 

Picture 1

 

You’re Howie Carr and you have the usual ten minutes to write your next piece, so you grab the Boston Globe for some easy pickin’s. And on Page One, you strike gold:

tamerlanTsarnaev brothers appeared to have scant finances

The older brother liked to look like a man of means, once posing for a photo in front of a gleaming Mercedes sporting a long wool scarf and white leather slip-on shoes. But Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was a stay-at-home dad, relying on his wife to work long hours as a home health care aide to support the family.

And the car? Tsarnaev most recently owned a 15-year-old Honda.

Tsarnaev’s younger brother never seemed strapped for cash, according to people who knew him at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth where he was a sophomore. But Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a scholarship student who earned spending money by selling marijuana, say three people who bought drugs from the 19-year-old.

 

Scant finances? Thank you, Jesus.

Best of all, here’s what’s buried in the 18th graf:

Indeed, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his family had so little income that they even qualified for state assistance until 2012, state health and human services spokesman Alec Loftus said Tuesday. Both brothers also received benefits through their parents when they were younger. The welfare benefits were first reported by the Boston Herald.

 

You’re Howie Carr and you’re thinking, it really doesn’t get much better than this.

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Whitey Wars in Local Dailies

April 10, 2013

From our Dueling Excerpts desk

For the past three days, the Boston Herald has been excerpting columnist Howie Carr’s new book Rifleman: The Untold Story of Stevie Flemmi, Whitey Bulger’s Partner.

(The hardreading staff suspects that lots of the book is Carr’s Already Told Story of Stevie Flemmi, but we can’t say for sure since we have no intention of actually reading the book or the excerpts.)

Regardless, today’s Herald features the final excerpt in the three-part series:

010504rico‘Rifleman’: Agent Rico and Stevie like blood brothers

FBI always had a place for the thug

Gangster Stevie “the Rifleman” Flemmi is due in Boston in June to testify in his longtime underworld partner Whitey Bulger’s federal murder trial. In today’s excerpt from my new book, “Rifleman,” based on Flemmi’s 2003 confession, he details some of his dealings with corrupt FBI agent H. Paul Rico:

When they first met in 1958, Rico was a young FBI agent and Flemmi was an up-and-coming hoodlum. Pretty soon they were, you might say, thick as thieves.

 

And etc.

Previous excerpts include this:

 

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And this:

 

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All three come in the wake of the Boston Globe’s relentless promotion of the Kevin Cullen/Shelly Murphy book Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice. From the Globe’s February 10 front-page advertorial:

51YOYTrt7cLA window into Whitey’s brutal life and mind

New biography traces Bulger’s rise, reign, and the reckoning ahead

As he sits brooding in his drab cell awaiting trial, South Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger is telling friends that while he feels tortured by his cramped captivity, with its isolation, strip searches, and dismal food, he is ready and eager for “the big show” — the trial where he will defend his sense of honor if not exactly his innocence . . .

Bulger’s generous view of himself, not as a cunning killer and cynical informer but as a criminal with scruples and a kind of noble romantic, is detailed in a new and comprehensive biography of Boston’s most infamous criminal, to be published this week. Also detailed are all the reasons not to accept his self-serving self-portrait, from his long and murderous career as a gangster to his well-documented history of providing information to the FBI.

 

That would be Cullen and Murphy’s book, which was not only flogged on the Globe’s front page, but in numerous fiull-page ads like this as well:

 

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The hardguessing staff’s conclusion: The Cullen/Murphy book will do a lot better than Carr’s cut ‘n’ paste job.

We’ll leave it to you to check the Amazon numbers.

 

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Herald Columnists Double-Team Gomez

March 15, 2013

GOP Senate wannabe Gabriel Gomez gets tuned up real good in the Boston Herald today. Two columnists – Howie Carr and Michael Graham –  give Gomez a working-over (the kind of pigpile that’s a specialty at our feisty local tabloid) for the letter he sent to Deval Patrick asking to be appointed to the interim U.S. Senate seat.

Start with Carr’s drive-by:

GomezGabriel Gomez is one of Dem guys

Gabriel Gomez is the Eddie Haskell of the Mass. Republican Party.

Only instead of sucking up to Mrs. Cleaver, in January the Republican candidate for the Senate was currying favor with Gov. Deval Patrick, begging for the interim appointment to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by John F. Kerry.

Actually, given Gomez’s obsession with ethnicity, as shown in his obsequious missive, perhaps he should be referred to as the Eduardo Haskell of the state GOP.

In case you haven’t yet read his letter to Gov. Mini-Me, Gomez makes it clear that he is a “Latino.” A Latino of “Latino background,” he elaborates . . .

 

You get the idea.

On the op-ed page, Graham also gets his licks in:

GomezGOP can do better than Gomez

I supported John McCain in 2008.” — Gabriel Gomez, Feb. 28, to Fox 25.

“I supported President Obama in 2008.” – Gomez, in a Jan. 17 letter to Gov. Deval Patrick

Is it asking too much for a Republican candidate in Massachusetts to be, you know … a Republican?

 

And etc., winding up with this: “Do the GOP party bosses really think that what Massachusetts swing voters want is a candidate they can’t trust? A guy who says right up front — ‘hey, I’ll take any position — just give me the job!'”

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, meanwhile, it was GOP women abandoning Gomez.

Republican US Senate candidate Gabriel E. Gomez lost the support of two of the three leaders of his women’s coalition Thursday, a day after releasing a letter that showed him praising Governor Deval Patrick, a Democrat, and attest ing to his support for President Obama in the 2008 election.

Angela Davis of Foxborough and Rachel Kemp of Boston both left the campaign less than a week after they were named cochairwomen of the Women for Gomez group.

Kemp confirmed her departure but would not comment on her reasoning. Davis also declined to detail her reasoning, but in a message obtained by the Globe, Davis told Gomez campaign aides she was quitting, saying, “The last 24 hours have been a turning point.”

 

Yeah – as in turning against point.

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