Calling the Commonwealth's Chief Law Enforcement Officer. Are You There?

Daniel W. Goldstone, at his collection agency, Norfolk Financial Corp., was disbarred this year. In 1996, a federal judge determined he had bilked a client [Sears, Roebuck] out of more than $800,000.(Globe Staff Photo / John Tlumacki)
Boston Globe: Debtors' Hell
Part I: Preying on Red-Ink America

Great piece in today's Boston Globe on sleazy collection agents taking advantage of lax government oversight to prey on small debtors, taking their cars and even their homes for non-payment of credit card debt. If our Attorney General Tom Reilly, Democratic candidate for governor, had guts, or a smidgen of opportunistic political sense, the two scumbags profiled, disbarred attorney Daniel Goldstone and his brother Chad Goldstone, would be served with papers tomorrow by the state seeking an immediate cessation to their operations. Unfortunately Tom Reilly has shown all the backbone of an invertebrate, and no political sense, so he'll continue to drive his gubernatorial campaign into the ground and ignore it.

My advice to Tom would be, the Globe has handed you a gift. This is an issue you have jurisdiction over, which would be popular with all voters! Jump on this!

Not holding my breath.

Tom Reilly Is Too Dumb To Be Governor

Boston Globe: Reilly won't sue over lead paint

In 1999, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly turned down pleas to join a Rhode Island lawsuit that resulted in a historic jury verdict earlier this year that could require paint companies to spend an estimated $1 billion or more to rid about 300,000 Ocean State homes of lead contamination.

Now Reilly is rejecting entreaties that he follow Rhode Island's victory with a similar suit against the paint industry, which sold lead pigment until the 1970s despite allegedly knowing for decades it was toxic, according to four advocates interviewed by the Globe who have met with Reilly's deputies to urge them to sue.

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Reilly's rationale: Massachusetts law makes such a suit difficult, and he feels stung by the outcome of the 1998 tobacco industry settlement that won the state $8.3 billion, but embroiled him in an ugly battle with several law firms over their legal fees, people who attended the meetings said.

Reilly's top aides said the attorney general is reluctant to work with private law firms again, the advocates said. And since his office does not have the resources to take on the paint industry alone, he will not pursue litigation on his own, these people said.

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Reilly's unwillingness to sue, according to Torres, Lawrence, Rabin, and Andelman, stems in part from the divisive court battle that resulted when the Boston law firm Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels and a San Francisco firm sued for an additional $1.3 billion in legal fees for their work on the state's landmark tobacco settlement. Reilly's predecessor, Scott Harshbarger, had agreed to pay the firms a 25 percent contingency fee for handling the case.

But after the tobacco industry paid the 50 states $246 billion to settle the lawsuit, an arbitration panel voted to award Massachusetts lawyers $775 million, or 9.3 percent of the state's $8.3 billion share. Claiming breach of contract, Brown Rudnick sued, spurring heated public debate .

Even though the law firms ultimately lost their fight, ``the AG's office has basically sworn off ever using private counsel again," Lawrence said....

Tom Reilly is an idiot. The firms who sued the state for more money for the tobacco settlement were (1) an out-of-state firm from San Francisco; and (2) Brown, Rudnick, a Boston DEFENSE firm that the state hired (as well as several plaintiff's firms), probably because of all its political connections. The real plaintiff's law firms who represented the state, experienced in mass tort litigation, didn't sue the state afterwards. The smart reaction of a smart politician would be to vow never again to hire a defense firm to do plaintiff work.

The state got $8.3 billion out of the tobacco lawsuit, and Reilly's nose is so out-of-joint about Brown, Rudnick's lawsuit (that Reilly WON) that he won't even try to put more money from guilty corporations back into state coffers. Nice call, genius. No wonder he's in danger of finishing third in the Democratic race for the nomination for governor.

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.