Mittwit Leaves the Way He Came In -- Says One Thing, Then Does Another

• Just days after defeating Shannon O’Brien, Romney made a sanctimonious pledge not to make patronage appointments. "I look for people who get jobs based on what they know, not who they know," he said. Romney went so far as to say that "political connections "will be held against an applicant for a job in his administration: "That will have to be something that’s overcome, that will not be an advantage, that will be a disadvantage."

2002 Boston Phoenix editorial.

Governor Mitt Romney, despite his stated opposition to patronage appointments, installed more than 200 Republican activists, current and former state employees, and others to boards and commissions in December, including departing Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey. [] He appointed about 200 people to boards in December and about 100 in November, according to a Globe tally.

Boston Globe, January 3, 2007

The Mittwit Has The Media A-Twitter

Wikipedia: Mormon underwear (from Andrew Sullivan, time.com)
Mitt Romney is a liar, he's a hypocrite, and he wears funny Mormon underwear (we're pretty sure). His company, Bain Capital Partners, just bought ClearChannel, so maybe he'll make some money in his doomed Presidential campaign. He zigged left here, he's zigging right on the campaign trail, but he's got no core. Just another corporate tool.

David Broder apparently didn't dig deep enough to realize that the Mittwit ran as a moderate when he ran for Mass. governor, before he began running against our state as a Presidential candidate. WaPo: Romney Leaving Mass. With Mixed Record: As Governor Eyes National Stage, He Faces Scrutiny of His Performance at Home

....Romney is a staunch conservative....

Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe apparently has access to The Google:

Boston Globe: JOAN VENNOCHI
Romney's dance to the right

When he ran against Ted Kennedy for the Senate in 1994, Romney wrote a letter to the Massachusetts Log Cabin Club, pledging that as "we seek to establish full equality for American gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent." During that same campaign, Romney was accused of once describing gay people as "perverse." In response, Romney's campaign vehemently denied that he used the word "perverse" and said that he respected "all people regardless of their race, creed, or sexual orientation."

While running for governor in 2002, Romney and his running mate, Kerry Healey, distributed pink fliers at a Gay Pride parade, declaring "Mitt and Kerry wish you a great Pride weekend." He backed domestic partner benefits for public employees, winning the endorsement of the national Log Cabin Republicans. In his inaugural speech, he promised to defend civil rights "regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or race."

As governor, he appointed openly gay and lesbian people to high-profile administration positions. He doubled the budget line item for the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, until he tried to disband it last May -- more political theater for the Republican right.

But why didn't the Boston Globe dig up the sacred Mormon underwear for the last gubernatorial campaign? Why didn't Shannon O'Brien? Inquiring minds wanted to know.

Andrew Sullivan: Mormon Sacred Underwear

Kerry Healey: Stop Calling Deval Patrick a Cop-Killer

I've thought this every time I heard Healey's ad attacking Patrick for defending a cop-killer, and Charles Pierce deconstructs what's wrong with her misleading ad:

TAPPED:

ONE WHAT? As much as I hate to risk the wrath of the Tapped Grammarians again, I have to point out that this advertisement, which is causing a stir in the Massachusetts gubernatorial race, is an even cheaper shot than it would appear at first glance -- and, at first glance, incumbent Lieutenant Governor Kerry Murphy Cuchulain Tir na Nog Healey ought to be thoroughly ashamed of it.

However, pay close attention to the last two lines, which say: "While lawyers have a right to defend admitted copkillers, do we really want one as our governor?"

That "do we really want one" business is the problem. It's a rancid enough business to imply that a defense attorney who does his job too well is disqualified prima facie from being governor, but look a little deeper. That sentence also can be reasonably read as calling Deval Patrick a "copkiller," whom we don't want as our governor. Taken in at the lickety-split pace of television advertising, it certainly can be heard that way. (By the way, no arguments based on the premise, "No voter would be stupid enough to..." have been valid since 2004, so keep them to yourself.) I don't think it's an accidental double-entendre. I think some smug little ad boy was being clever here. I think he ought to be fired, too.

--Charles P. Pierce

I saw this on Suburban Guerrilla.

Multimillionaire Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Denounces 3% Pay Raises for Judges

Nice threads
Boston Globe, April 19, 2006: Healey raps pay raises for judges

House and Senate leaders reached a tentative agreement last fall to raise trial judges' salaries to about $130,000 a year, up from the current $112,777, but the two chambers have yet to reach a final agreement on the spending bill that includes the money. Together with an already negotiated salary boost for other court employees, the raises for judges and clerks would cost $42 million a year.

Healey said the spending bill represented ''the kind of reckless behavior with the taxpayers' money that we cannot afford."

The judges lobbied legislators successfully last year for the pay raise, arguing that they haven't received one since 2000 and that Massachusetts lags behind almost every other state in judicial salaries.

Let's see, first pay raise in six years, total $17,233, comes out to less than $3,000 per year, or about 3% per year.

And our lieutenant governor, who's running to replace the Mittwit? Here's her pitiful financial situation:

Boston Globe, April 13, 2006: Millionaire gubernatorial candidates withhold tax returns

This year, [Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kerry] Healey is again refusing to release her returns, as she did in 2002. She is a multimillionaire who spent nearly $2 million on her own campaign four years ago. Her husband, Sean Healey, president of Affiliated Managers Group, an asset management company, recently sold $13 million in corporate stock, giving the couple ready access to more than twice what Romney spent in 2002.

Most candidates for governor live in the lap of luxury

Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, her husband and two children live in a waterfront mansion in Beverly assessed by the city at $2.5 million. The Healeys also own a house next door, as well as a vacation condo in Florida and land in Vermont on which they plan to build a $2 million vacation home.

Please god, will a competent Democrat beat this empty designer dress?

Tom: It's Called 'Vetting'. Try It

Massachusetts, while one of the most progressive and liberal states in the country, has had Republican governors for the last 20 years. We'd really like to end that streak. Why can't we get better candidates?

Yesterday's Boston Globe:

Reilly picks St. Fleur for campaign
Running mate is seen as rising political star

This morning's Boston Globe:

Reilly's pick delinquent on taxes, loans
St. Fleur says she is repaying debts

State Representative Marie P. St. Fleur, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly's choice to be his lieutenant governor running mate, has had three delinquent tax debts in the last four years, including an April 2005 federal tax lien of $12,711 against her and her husband, according to records examined yesterday by the Globe.

St. Fleur, in an interview last night, disclosed that she also owes $40,000 in delinquent federally backed student loans.

St. Fleur told the Globe last night that she had paid down the federal tax debt to about $8,000 by making $500 monthly payments since last spring. But later last night, Corey Welford, a Reilly campaign spokesman, corrected her, saying that she had in fact made only one $500 payment last May and that the balance is still more than $12,000.

From boston.com this afternoon:

Rep. St. Fleur withdraws as Reilly's running mate

State Representative Marie St. Fleur today pulled out as a candidate for lieutenant governor after the Boston Globe reported that she has delinquent tax debts in three of the last four years and owes $40,000 in student loans, a senior Democrat said today.

The announcement came one day after Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly announced that St. Fleur was his choice to run as his running mate. Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run separately until the party primary, and then run as a ticket for the general election.

Where do they get these people? Who thinks they can aspire to high public office while a tax delinquent? How can a career politician who's been our Attorney General for 8 years, before that Middlesex County District Attorney for 7 years, an attorney for 36 years, pick a running mate without a cursory reference check? They would have caught the delinquent loans on a routine pre-employment credit check.

As a result of this, and in what may be an opportune time for him to get this out, our other declared Democratic candidate, Deval Patrick, revealed today that he himself is also tax delinquent, though in his case it is 'former' tax delinquent. From the Boston Herald:

St. Fleur quits race; Patrick reveals tax delinquency

Deval Patrick, Reilly’s top rival for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, released a statement disclosing that he, too, had been a tax delinquent.

"More than a decade ago, Diane and I had an installment agreement with the IRS to pay, on a monthly basis, an unexpected tax liability,” Patrick said in a statement issued to The Associated Press. “We missed one or two of our installments. This triggered an IRS lien. We took immediate steps to pay off the balance and within five months discharged in full the $8,778 we owed.

I thought the Republicans had the market on incompetence cornered. This is pissing me off. We'd better beat the empty dress (Kerry Healey, Lt. Gov. to the Mittwit) in November.

Good Riddance to the Mittwit

Have a nice life back there in your true home, Utah, after your Presidential run crashes and burns. Goodbye, our own living, breathing, press-conference holding Ken Doll. Even the Herald, our right-wing Murdoch rag, is sick of his schtick.

Yesterday's Boston Herald editorial:

Hey Mitt, it’s been swell!

OK, so Mitt Romney isn’t running for re-election. Well, we didn’t exactly stop the presses for that one.

The bad news is that Romney pretty much gave up the day job months ago — not a good thing. Legislative leaders have been working on that assumption too, for the most part treating the governor like the little man who isn’t there.

Now, in the wake of last night’s announcement, he really isn’t there — his eyes presumably set on bigger stuff. So it’s time for Romney to do the decent thing and turn over the day job to someone who (1) wants it and (2) is perfectly capable of doing it. That would be Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey.

Being governor of Massachusetts isn’t beanbag. Memo to Mitt: Don’t let the screen door hit you in the backside.

Yesterday's Globe editorial:


Romney exits right

OUR NEW YEAR'S wish: a governor who wouldn't rather be elsewhere.

By thumbing his nose at Massachusetts after less than three-quarters of one term as its chief executive, Mitt Romney, yesterday surrendered his clout and squandered his legitimacy. If, as it appears, his heart and mind are no longer in Massachusetts, he should resign.

Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey is inexperienced. But the state would be far better off in the hands of someone focused on state problems, rather than someone touring the country ridiculing the people he was elected to serve. Romney has joked in several states that, as a Republican here, he feels like ''a cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention."

Today's Globe:

Facing hard realities, Romney accrued modest list of successes

Less than three years into the CEO-style governorship of Mitt Romney the broad reform agenda he promised in the early days has been reduced by the political reality of Beacon Hill to a more modest series of legislative accomplishments.

Horse-trading and patronage, long the currency of the State House, have been anathema to Romney. That reluctance to deal, combined with his uncompromising nature, has meant that many Romney proposals -- even bottom-line, money-saving moves -- were ignored, killed, or gutted by the Democrats who run the Legislature. Close courthouses? Not in our districts. Merge the Highway Department and Turnpike Authority? Forget it.

Even on reinstating the death penalty, a hot-button issue on which polls have indicated that Romney had popular support, the governor lost a vote in the House by nearly 2 to 1. Eight years earlier, a capital punishment bill failed on a tie vote.