Good riddance to Sal DiMasi. The man promised he would break from Tom Finneran’s habit of using his office as a bully pulpit (bully as in jerk who pushes people around, not bully as in Teddy Roosevelt’s favorite superlative), but DiMasi proved every bit as bad. What Sal wanted, Sal got, and too many people on Beacon Hill willingly played the crony. Robert DeLeo was one of DiMasi’s inner circle, so don’t be surprised if he continues the trend of closed-door deals and strong arming his colleagues. Apparently, the Speaker job is as seductive as the Dark Side of the Force.
It’s mean-spirited of me to say this, but I want the guy to get convicted of something felonious so he’ll lose that bloated pension of his, especially since it looks like the guy stuck around only long enough to get a chunky pay raise. His claims of wanting to spend more time with his family and return to his law practice ring utterly false when you consider that, if he’d bowed out last year, before Governor Deval Patrick approved a 5.5 percent pay hike for legislators, his pension would be $3,000 a year less.
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Speaking of corrupt politicians, could Ron Blogojevich please just go the hell away? I’m sick of seeing this arrogant Ken doll on TV talking about how innocent and unfairly persecuted (and soon, prosecuted) he is. And comparing himself to Ghandi and King is just contemptible.
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Late breaking news! It’s no-go for a proposal to push back to conversion to digital TV to the summertime. A proposal floating around the US House failed to get a two-thirds majority vote, so on February 17, we can finally free ourselves of those incessant reminders that The Transition To Digital TV Is Coming!
The proposal was floated because not everyone in the country was ready to convert, critics claimed, yet A.C. Neilsen (those fine folks who still haven’t twigged to the fact that there are far easier ways to get their ratings data — ever heard of the Internet, you dolts?) conducted a poll that found that only 5.7 of US households aren’t ready yet.
If you, dear reader, happen to be among that 5.7 percent: you idiot. Have you been living in a cave for the past year? You knew this was coming, why didn’t you act sooner? Don’t make me wait because you can’t plan properly. And you know what? It’s TELEVISION. If you lose your signal for a few days or weeks, it won’t kill you. Really.
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Reading through state budgets during a depression is, appropriately enough, kinda depressing. I do not recommend it.
I have to say, what’s with all the tax increase proposals? Increasing taxes on meals, rooms, alcohol, candy, drinks…I call BS on that. I know we have services to pay for, but what people need right now is to keep their money in their pockets so they can spend it on their needs. You want to forestall foreclosure? Stop nickel-and-diming us to death.
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Unnecessary self-praise should be a bootable offense. Last week the Enterprise high muckety-mucks announced we were starting a new paper, covering Barnstable, and another local media source — let’s call it The Bombastic News — reported on this. Okay, no biggie so far.
Then, a few days later, another paper picked up on this and gave the paper an attaboy for having some cajones to expand rather than contract (newspapers are getting hit especially hard right now). The Bombastic News linked to the editorial, simultaneously patting themselves on the back for “breaking” the story: “…as reported in The Bombastic News…”
Careful, Bombastic News…that’s the kind of thing that’ll make you go blind.
The views and opinions in the Enterprise blogs are those of the author and are not neccessarily shared by Falmouth Publishing.
