Rest in Peace Teddy

It might seem hard to understand how someone that has never met someone could feel such a great loss when that person passes away. Teddy Kennedy wasn’t just a senator or the lion of the congress that many news agencies have coined him to be. He was bigger than life even with the tragic legacy of his brothers as his shield and the love of the people that returned him to his office every six years for almost five decades. He was a simple man that just loved life and loved people and that was the ultimate source that made him a great man.

I spent the weekend watching the wake and celebration of his life at the JFK Library, the Mass in Boston, and eventually the burial in Arlington National Cemetery and I still can’t personally shake the loss of this man that some would call just another politician. I gave my own personal account of what he did for my father and my family without a second thought and I wonder how many other lives he touched? From the families that had loved ones on the planes that were hijacked on September 11th to people not even in his district he reached out to in order to heal their pain. Not just once but over and over again. Calling all of the families and loved ones personally to let them know that THEY were not forgotten. Their loved one was not forgotten. In doing so he formed a bond with the people and it was a bond that brought him closer to them as if he were family. It’s something that Teddy did his entire life.

His passing was like losing a father figure or the favorite uncle that you wished you had growing up. Teddy was bigger than life but he would be just as comfortable in a soup kitchen with homeless people as he would be dining at the Ritz. How anyone endures the loss of two of his brothers by assassination is beyond my personal comprehension and I‘m sure yours as well. How you lead a family and not implode after those events personally is a testament to his strength and spirit as a man and to his faith in God. Most people would have coward in fear and yet Teddy spent all of the days of his life in public service and in doing so sent a message to America, we can never give up if we believe our cause to be true. He carried the torch forward and honorably in the place of his three brothers.

My heart goes out to his family but especially to the love of his life Vickie. Without her, he would have been just another politician and the Kennedy legacy would have died. Yes, he could have still done great things but his mission would not be the same without her to heal him so he could help so many others. She saved him and he in turn saved countless others.

Rest in peace and you will be in our prayers Teddy.

Papamoka

Working the System and it’s Legal?

Picture courtesy of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority

How sweet would it be to just work short of two dozen years and retire for life with a full pension. Let’s just sweeten the pot and give you one hundred percent paid medical insurance for life. Would that not be the ultimate job or what?

No you would not be working for some drug cartel or some underworld mob family with friends for life so to speak. Nope, working for this good old boy network in good old Mass A Two Sticks is where you need to fill out an application.

It gets better… How could that be you dare to ask? I’m going to tell you how and you will want to call our 1-800 number and place your order today! You can retire and find state work elsewhere and still collect a full pension without limitations. How can this be Papamoka you might say. Well the Boston Globe has the scoop and this is what they have to say…

MBTA's retirement plan pays off for two
Ex-officials get pension, work government jobs

By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff
August 21, 2007

Two former top officials at the MBTA are taking advantage of the generous terms of the agency's retirement plan, which allow employees to begin receiving a full pension at an early age, while simultaneously collecting six-figure salaries in other government jobs.

Former MBTA general manager Michael Mulhern, 48, who became executive director of the MBTA Employees Retirement Fund after retiring, takes home more than $350,000 a year: a salary of about $225,000 and a pension of about $130,000.

James Rooney, 49, a former deputy manager at the MBTA, now makes $255,000 as executive director of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, while drawing an MBTA pension of more than $70,000.

If they were employees covered by the state pension plan, they would have qualified for much less. To get a full pension, most state employees must wait until they are 65, but MBTA workers can receive a full pension after 23 years of service, regardless of age.
If they had retired from the state, Mulhern would have qualified for a $35,000 pension and Rooney just $3,000, and they would have faced strict limits on how much they could earn in a government job.

As the MBTA struggles to pay its bills and has been forced to raise fares three times in six years, some specialists say the pension plan is a fringe benefit the state can no longer afford. The T receives one-fifth of every sales tax dollar paid in Massachusetts. - Boston Globe

WOW! Does anybody think this is not a sweet deal or what? It gets better… using accumulated sick and vacation time that is good for life you can buy into the early retirement with saved time! If that isn't good enough I hear that you can buy into the plan with cash! Place your order today. The MBTA takes Mass sales tax only. Some conditions apply... ummm somewhere but apply for your pension today! This offer (loop hole) may end soon... or not?

I for one thought that the MBTA was a state run agency but apparently they have a different set of rules to go by. Why should the MBTA have such a sweet heart deal when every other state government job is limited to the laws laid down for state pensions?

Then you have to ask yourself, why the hell isn’t the legislature fixing this hideous and abusive loop at tax payers expense? Jim Braude of 96.9 FM Talk Radio hit the nail on the head today when he stated, and I’m paraphrasing, that it is a simple fact of life that the legislature is not going to fix it because it may upset the trough that they one day hope to feed at.

You as a voter don’t even have a say as to fixing this mess and the legislature will turn its back on this issue just as Finneran proved that it could be done when he over ruled the repeal of the income tax rollback voter approved ballot question. When it comes to disgusting waste, you only have to look as far as Beacon Hill and the gutless gentry club that is our legislature.

Years ago they tossed tea into Boston Harbor for just such a similar outrage. Now all we have to do is flip a few tea bags out the window as we pass through the ever leaking Big Dig tunnels. Please stop and pay the toll though at the end of your protest. Our state really needs the money.
Papamoka

Link to this post and we will reciprocate.
Special thanks to 96.9 FM Talk radio and the Boston Globe on this post...

Technorati Tags:
MBTA, Tranist Authority, Boston Busses, The T, Riding the T, Bay State Corruption, Golden Pension, Mass Pensions, State House, State Treasurer, Governor Patrick, Sal Demasi, Eagan and Braude, Talk Radio Boston, 96.9 FM Talk, Tax Reform, Sales Tax, Retirement Funds, Tim Cahill, Finneran, Romney, Governor Romney, State waste, Budget Buster, Health Care for life, Political Hacks, Barbara Anderson, Citizens for Limited Taxation, Budget Watchers, State Budget, Tim Murray

New England Heat Wave

Picture courtesy of National Weather.Gov

Choose your weapon. Ice Cream or Slush drink to cool you down when it is unbelievably hot?

Keep tabs on your elderly relatives and neigbors during these hot spells. Most of all make sure your little ones are drinking plenty of water and if they have to be out in the sun make sure you put sun block lotion on them.

I have to run, it's Midnight and the kids need to have on moon blocking ray protection. Also known as pulling the summer blankets up an over them as they sleep the night away.

Papamoka

Gay Marriage is Safe in Mass a Two Sticks…

What happened in Boston today really was not about Gay or Lesbian people having the ability or right to legally marry. Although I am very much in favor of gay marriage, today was really about our state Constitution and keeping it intact as a living working document that is fair for all citizens of the state. Placing any language in it that bans the personal rights of any individuals happiness is not for the place of government at any level.

Over at the Boston Herald they had this to say about it…

Lawmakers defeat gay marriage ban amendment by five votes
By Casey Ross
Boston Herald Reporter
Thursday, June 14, 2007

The state Legislature has defeated a proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage, ending a three-year campaign to overturn its legalization after several lawmakers switched their votes in the final hours of a dramatic legislative battle.

The proposed constitutional ban was defeated in a roll-call vote of both houses of the Legislature shortly after 1 p.m. today, triggering a thunderous ovation by gay couples in the State House. The final tally was 151-45, giving supporters of gay marriage a victory by 5 votes.

The vote means the ban will be blocked from reaching the 2008 ballot, and that gay marriage has survived its final challenge, barring an unlikely effort to resurrect the ban at a later date. - Boston Herald

For all the folks that were demanding that gay marriage be banned in this state I’d suggest that you look around at your own family. Chances are that someone that you love very dearly is gay. Would it ever be right to deny that person the happiness of having a state recognized lifetime commitment? We should define marriage as love between two people and leave it at that.

Now that the state is out of the peoples personal lives can we get something done about matters that are really important? Is it true that cats and dogs are living together. Now that just isn’t right.

Papamoka

Cross posted at Bring IT ON!

*****This post has been linked to at the Gun Toting Liberal

Mayor of Boston Solves Crime and Murder Wave

Boston’s Mayor Tom Menino has brilliantly solved the violent crime wave in his great city in one week’s time by simply pointing out who is truly to blame for all the murders of the children and people of Bean town. Not that this is the great game of Clue and the Butler did it in the kitchen with a hammer. It’s far more complex than that.

The good Mayor put many hours, okay he gave it a few minutes, and he is pointing the finger at the Mafioso, gangbangers and ruthless hit men in the Boston media for it. They are the ones responsible for killing the kids and innocent bystanders in Boston. Reporters by day and yet ruthless murdering Bastid’s by night. Yup, the press is responsible for the endless murderous crime wave in his city.

Think again Mr. Mayor! Are you just NUTSO?

Grieving mothers and fathers should be outraged! Rather than offering even a political bandage to the hemorrhaging of the people suffering under his trust he points the finger at the press for reporting the crimes? And that is common sense from this political hack? How?

You have to not love a politician that knows he is selling the people a bag of goods that even he can not honestly want to buy. I couldn’t write this kind of fiction from the Mayors mouth if I wanted too! The Boston Herald and Laurel J. Sweet have this to say about it…

Menino chides naysayers: Violence ‘not out of control’
By Laurel J. Sweet
Monday, April 2, 2007 - Updated: 01:38 PM EST

Despite a murder rate 60 percent higher than last year’s body count and bloodshed that continued to escalate with a shooting last night, Mayor Thomas M. Menino defiantly denied yesterday that Boston is in crisis, instead blaming the media for negative headlines.

“A lot of people want to believe it’s out of control. It’s not out of control,” Menino assured a packed house at Greater Love Tabernacle in the heart of Dorchester’s shooting gallery, where he was welcomed by thunderous applause.
“This city works. The problem is you’re always seeing headlines about the bad news. I wish we had a good news newspaper. The Good News of Boston. The bad guys don’t control this city, they only control the headlines.”

The Rev. William E. Dickerson II’s Palm Sunday pulpit became Menino’s bully pulpit to blame the media for alarming Bostonians, even as word spread in whispers through the congregation that 18-year-old Dwayne Graham of Hyde Park, repeatedly shot Friday at 3:45 p.m. on board an MBTA bus, had succumbed to his trauma. A man was later shot on Angell Street just outside Franklin Park Sunday night, and is expected to survive.

Graham’s slaying pushed to 16 the number of murders so far this year, compared to 10 on April 1, 2006. Less than four hours after Graham was shot, a yet-unnamed 27-year-old man was gunned down, also in Dorchester. – The Boston Herald

There was another piece that I wrote over at the Gun Toting Liberal the other day based on the Boston Crime Wave out of Control. That article touched on this Mayors inability to understand that his city is being overrun by violence on every level. The story in The Boston Herald today just backs up my point in the previous post. Is this not the same logic that the Bush people are trying to use on all of America by stating the very same thing on what is really happening in Iraq? Using President Bush’s and Mayor Menino’s logic, people in the press are dangerous folks and are trying to kill us all both in Iraq and in Boston. Is it in their esteemed opinion that the truth is to harsh to be heard by the people most affected by it?

When the people of any given city in America are scared to death to walk the streets at any time during the day or night there is a problem. When your neighborhood is ruled by the local gang then there is a problem. When you long for the respect of the local organized crime families and the respect they had for the cities neighborhoods there is a serious problem. This has become the common story on the local Boston news to hear of stabbings, murders and flagrant crimes that the citizens of the great city of Boston are so terrified of. Law and order is out of control and yet the local police and the Mayor’s office disagree on how to solve it. Budget cuts don’t allow for more cops on the beat and yet they say they have the problem under control.

SNIP

Boston’s security lies in the hands of the people and if they continue to elect a mayor who does not believe that a crime wave is happening, then they will continue to have to bar the doors, make the children sleep in the basement in case a drive by shooting happens, or just simply move out of the city entirely. The protection of any city’s people lies in the hands of the voters. Keep the status quo or dodge the bullets? Make a choice and vote accordingly. – Gun Toting Liberal

I would honestly have to say that this Mayor is not only wearing rose colored glasses but the man must have a serious case of cataracts!

Let’s all have the press cover the beautiful flowers grown in the public gardens by our teens but not show the hearses loading up for all the funerals across the city for their peers. Let’s have the press print heart warming and interesting articles on teenagers learning wood shop skills but not show the hearses loading up the pine caskets built by those same kids that some of them just might be buried in. Yuppa, the press is killing the people of Boston and they are doing it with PC’s loaded with 38 caliber fired words. The deadliest ammo known to mankind. For that matter the press is in fact the deadliest weapon any politician can face.

I salute the reporters that do the job right and Laurel J. Sweet has nothing but the facts in this piece. Apparently, Mayor Menino has some spare fairy dust he wants to sprinkle around that happens to be a by product of bovines out to pasture to mask the crime wave in Boston. If you shovel enough of the Mayors fairy dust it just might cover the hearse of the next child killed in Boston. For shame is on you Mayor Menino, a disgusting self proclaimed and self spoken shame.

Sorry Mayor Menino but you are out of touch!

Papamoka

Technorati Tags:mayor tom menino, boston, dorchester, boston herald, laurel j. sweet, guardian angels, cops on the beat, beat cops, inner city crime, gang violence, drugs, dare, boston police, childrens funerals, innocent bystander, 96.9 fm talk, eagan and braude
Generated By Technorati Tag Generator