Good day all. Last week, while listing to the Howie Carr show on my way home from my Real World Job, he started chortling over a story broken by the newspaper he writes a column for, the Boston Herald. It seems that former governor, “Coupe” Deval Patrick was spending taxpayer funds he wasn’t allowed to.
And what was he spending this money on? Why travel junkets of course. Here are a few details from the Boston Herald:
A legislative investigative panel has launched a preliminary probe into Herald disclosures that the Patrick administration stockpiled millions of dollars in public money to pay for the governor’s trade missions and other expenses, and may compel top Patrick officials to testify.
“As is my practice in all investigations, we will always go where the evidence takes us,” state Rep. David Linsky, chairman of the House Post Audit Committee, told the Herald in an interview.
I’m not familiar with Representative Linsky, but he is a Democrat, a politician and a member of the Massachusetts legislature. (This is not meant to be an endorsement here)
Linsky’s comments came as Gov. Charlie Baker weighed in for the first time on a Herald investigation uncovering off-the-books trusts funded by $37 million in contributions from quasi-public agencies including Massport and the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority.
$37 million? While Coupe Deval is a chump, that ain’t chump change. Now we’re talking about real money.
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo yesterday said he wanted to scrutinize the Patrick administration’s maneuvers and Linsky will lead that probe. “We are at the very preliminary stages of an investigation,” Linsky said, adding that he was stunned at the revelations by the Herald that millions of dollars from quasi-public agencies were used for trade missions. “What the Herald uncovered caught all of us by surprise,” Linsky said.
[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMIyDf3gBoY’]
Sure it did. Coupe Deval’s has a history of playing fast and loose with the taxpayer’s money. For instance, (According to the Herald again),
February 2007: Leases $1,166-a-month Cadillac, and spends $27,000 to redecorate his office, including $12,000 on drapes. Under pressure, reimburses state for office expenses, partially pays for Caddy.
March 2009: Appoints state Sen. Marian Walsh to $175,000 job that was vacant for 12 years. Walsh quits amid public outcry.
Deval Patrick was Barack Obama before there was a Barack Obama. He has always felt that he was entitled to whatever he wanted at taxpayers expense, and mostly, he got away with it…Until now. The Boston Herald, which isn’t your typical left wing moonbat run newspaper, really got the goods on Coupe Deval. For instance:
The administration tapped one of the trusts to fund $1.35 million in overseas travel between 2011 and 2014. That trust also funneled millions of dollars to the state tourism office’s advertising agency — on top of its direct budget appropriations. It handed over $223,000 to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the report noted, and sank $500,000 into a PR boondoggle known as Brand USA.
Of the quasi-public funders of these trusts the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority dug the deepest, contributing $23.5 million because, a spokeswoman told Battenfeld, “the (Patrick) administration asked us to.” (You’ve heard the expression, “an offer you can’t refuse”?)
Read the whole editorial. It lays out just how Deval Patrick basically embezzled taxpayer funds for his own use. Now, as to whether or not any of this can be used to prosecute Mini-Obama, I don’t know. What will happen is Patrick is going to be reamed out but good. He’s out of office, was replaced by a Republican and no one has his back now. As the various agencies that forked over money to Patrick’s slush travel fund, I have a feeling they are going to get an anal probing surpassing those of an Area 51 Alien.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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A black Demonrat, this is going straight to the memory hole.