Howie Carr: Boston needs a makeover. Fast!
The Boston Globe found itself faced with some shocking news yesterday:
“Working-age residents are leaving Massachusetts at a growing rate.”
Stop the presses! Replate the front page!
Why would anyone want to leave Boston, or what William F. Buckley used to call Sodom and Begorrah.
That was a long time ago of course. Begorrah’s long gone. Nothing is left but Sodom.
Can I suggest a few possibilities for the escalating exodus, in no particular order.
Rotten weather – eight months of winter, more rainy days than Seattle.
High housing costs – even as productive citizens flee, residential real estate prices in Massachusetts remain high.
This is because all the trust-funded virtue signalers who have those “Hate Has No Home Here” signs in their front yards are in fact totally committed to every NIMBY proposal to keep their hometowns migrant-free.
Illegal aliens, and all the calamities associated with Third Worlders from the non-working classes – more crime, disease, out-of-control welfare and fewer resources for non-criminal American citizens, especially children in the public schools.
Terrible infrastructure – the more money they spend, the worse everything managed by the hacks in the public sectors gets.
I’m talking here about, just for starters, roads, public education and the MBTA.
Just the other day, there was another story about how the Legislature is finally getting serious about “fixing” the T. Right, sure they are.
They’ll hire a few more “decarbonization” experts at $200 large to strategize about it.
The utter breakdown of law and order – as the illegals get away with driving around unregistered, uninsured, uninspected vehicles, everyone else figures, why the hell can’t I?
It’s the same way with everything else. The cops look the other way with illegals – if I’m wrong please let me know – so pretty soon everybody else feels why shouldn’t I get away with everything too.
Doesn’t matter what it is – shoplifting, fare-jumping, selling drugs, getting automobile insurance, etc.
What the Democrats seem to have forgotten, if they ever knew, is that no society ever has two sets of laws for very long, because no people are going to obey the rules that another group doesn’t have to follow.
How about taxes? How’s that millionaires’ tax working out for the hackerama? If you have a lot of assets, it takes a while to wind down everything, but already tax revenues have been mostly falling, from month to month.
You move to New Hampshire, Florida, Tennessee, Texas – no income taxes. That’s an extra 5% increase in take-home pay right there.
Political corruption – it’s not a top-of-mind issue for most people, but it’s real, and it makes all of the above societal blisters even worse, because everyone in the hackerama is just concerned with lining their own pockets.
Want a couple of examples?
How about the Spinelli’s Ravioli no-bid $10 million contract to provide millions for all the foreign freeloaders flopping in the old no-tell motels across the Commonwealth?
On the records of the Office of Campaign and Political Finance, the general manager of Spinelli’s is listed as Jeannie Giuggio. On March 27, she maxed out to Gov. Maura Healey — $1,000. Three months earlier, she maxed out for 2023 – another brand. Ditto for 2022.
Giuggio is 70 years old, and is listed on the state voter records as living in Rockport, a quaint seaside village which by the way has no “migrants” squatting on the dole.
The “manager” of Spinelli’s, according to OCPF records, is Rita Roberto, age 66. On state voting rolls, she’s registered at the same address in Rockport as Giuggio.
Roberto gave a grand to Maura Healey last Dec. 20 – the same day as Giuggio. Plus she’s given another $1,200 to Healey over the years.
A $10-million no-bid contract, to a company whose managers gave $5,200 to the governor. That’s an excellent ROI! I daresay most of the people who are leaving Massachusetts haven’t had the same kind of luck with their investments.
How about the City of Boston’s new “chief climate officer,” one Brian Swett. He’ll be making $195,000 a year.
It was another nationwide search, after he ponied up $3,250 to Mayor Michelle Wu, including the maximum $1,000 in December. (It’s always important to make sure that if you’re planning to remain in Massachusetts and grab big bucks in the hackerama, you have to make sure you’ve done the right thing every year. This is why so many of the maximum contributions come in December. Come January, you can max out again – right, Ms. Giuggio?)
It’s not that politics in other states isn’t dirty. It’s just that it’s even dirtier here in Massachusetts.
It used to be, though, that you could make the argument that the quality of life here in Massachusetts was in some certain ways superior.