Massachusetts spent more than a quarter-million dollars on a get-out-the-vote mailing for welfare recipients. Governor Deval Patrick claims the state had no choice.
It???s an election year???and Republican Senator Scott Brown???s poll numbers are strong.
Demos, the George Soros-backed ACORN-like outfit, has never before succeeded in cowing a state into mailing out voter registration forms to the Welfarians. But the group???s chairwoman has never before had her mom running for the U.S. Senate in a state her group had sued. The Massachusetts Democrats??? Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, self-described founding mother of Occupy Wall Street, also mothered Amelia Warren Tyagi, welfare-rights advocate.
And it helped that Demos hired the law firm of Ropes & Gray, where Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick???s wife is a partner, to sue the state that Diane Patrick???s husband leads. But trust them when they say the fix wasn???t in. The daughter didn???t sue to benefit her mom and the governor didn???t cave to benefit his wife.
Really they didn???t.
Welcome to Massachusetts, where, the former president of the state senate???s ???America???s Most Wanted??? brother awaits trial for a multi-decade serial-killing spree. One current Bay State congressman, whose wife recently finished a stint in federal prison for her role in an illegal gambling operation, ???sat in boxes with bookies at Fenway Park??? and ???knew everything,??? according to his convicted felon brother-in-law. Another congressman???whose boyfriend ran a call-boy service from the congressman???s DC townhouse in the 1980s, and whose ex-boyfriend???s next boyfriend landed a six figure job with Fannie Mae after a recommendation from his paramour and their congressional overseer, and whose current beau got busted in the representative???s presence for growing marijuana???retires after fifteen inexplicable reelections.
Massachusetts is Family Matters, Family Ties, All in the Family???pick your sitcom. Saddam & Sons and Qaddafi & Kin would have done better here than in their dynastiphobic homelands. If you???ve got the name, the people of Massachusetts ain???t got no shame.
Certainly Elizabeth Warren gets this. Professor Nepotism landed her Ivy League sinecure because of her Harvard husband Bruce Mann and the supposed Cherokee heritage of her great-great-great grandmother.
She certainly didn???t win tenure based on her academic qualifications.
Save for a few specialists who obtained PhDs rather than JDs, Elizabeth Warren, Rutgers Law ???76, is Harvard Law???s only tenured professor with a degree from a sub top-ten law school. So exclusive is Harvard Law that just five of the hundred or so tenured faculty members earned degrees from law schools ranked in the bottom half of those top ten schools. Where does Warren???s alma mater rank? 82.
Scott Brown famously referred to the office he won in 2010 as ???the people???s seat.??? But who, really, has peopled the seat?
The Kennedys owned the office for fifty-seven years. After John abdicated to become president, he engineered his college roommate into the seat as a placeholder for his younger brother. ???I spent a lot of money for that Senate seat,??? daddy prohibitionbucks Joe Kennedy declared. ???It belongs in the family.??? Ted Kennedy, who outside of a two-year stint in the army had never worked a paying job, held the U.S. Senate for 47 years before his family engineered family flunkie Paul Kirk as his replacement.
Before the Kennedys owned the seat, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. did. His grandfather Henry Cabot Lodge did too. And so did his great-great-great grandfather George Cabot. And before Lodge, Jr., Marcus Coolidge, a distant cousin to Calvin Coolidge, held it.
In Massachusetts, it???s a Family Affair. Somebody cue Mr. French.
Nepotism and bribery corrupt the political process. A politician who trades off a name or buys votes with conscripted taxdollars seeks self aggrandizement rather than the common good. So many political offices and government checks share an unearned quality. The citizen looking to vote himself a welfare check and the politician looking to give away other people???s money to win himself an office both seek something for nothing.
The Senate election in Massachusetts comes down to whether government goodie giveaways, of the kind suggested by the House of Warren???s push to register Welfarians, outrage or attract more voters. Welfare Queen Elizabeth calculates that the tax takers outnumber the tax makers in the Kingdom of Kennedy. Poll workers will proof her math on November 6.
