Bloodthirsty Liberal

As Aggie reported yesterday, more Americans than ever are on food stamps—45 million, or the population of Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan combined—about one in seven Americans.

Democrats couldn’t be happier. They’ll tell you welfare is stimulus, that it shows our humanity (the more humanity the better, I guess), that it benefits their reelection chances. Maybe they won’t tell you the last part, though it’s probably the chief reason for their support.

But if welfare in general and food stamps in particular are so holy, isn’t their abuse a sin? Where’s the outrage from the Left over taking food out of the mouths of the hungry?

Pat Lu, 48, pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and fraud after police raided his Quincy, Mass. mini-mart and said he was personally skimming $30,000 per month from the federal government’s food-stamp debit card system. Bail was set at $100,000.

According to a report from NECN-TV, Lu was the ringleader of a complex scheme involving at least 53 suspects engaged in welfare fraud that has netted $700,000 in the past year and a half.

Police said customers would come into Lu’s store with debit cards they had received as part of the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Lu would swipe the card, ring up a phony sale for the value of the card, give the customer 50 cents on the dollar in cash, and pocket the rest.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said there were 31 arrests in Boston on Thursday, though police refused to disclose the locations. The Patriot-Ledger reported that another 21 people have been charged with redeeming their food stamp benefits fraudulently.

I’ve been hearing stories like this on Howie Carr’s local radio show for years.

Haven’t I, Howie?

Are you paying attention, Gov. Deval Patrick, wherever you are this morning? Another 32 EBT “anecdotes” arrested or cited yesterday and charged with welfare fraud.

You say the Herald is in “the business of making people angry,” so wasn’t it nice of the Boston police, the attorney general, the state auditor, the IRS and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to join in our jihad against your loyal constituents?

…

I know a few of these places they busted. Like the C Mart Supermarket on Washington Street. I always wondered why all those cars were lined up on Washington Street, waiting to get into the tiny parking lot. Now I know.

And the New Saigon Sandwich Shop — good, cheap sandwiches, but they’d never take a credit card. Now I understand. I was just using the wrong kind of plastic.

Just two weeks ago, state Auditor Suzanne Bump was in Deval denial, even dismissing this poverty-pimp crime wave with the governor’s own favorite word — “anecdotes.” Now she’s seen the light, or maybe the polls. She’s describing EBT fraud as “a trend that is literally sweeping across the nation.”

Of course, other states care enough about the taxpayers to crack down. Consider Florida. Before a layabout can get an EBT card there now, he has to pass a drug test — and he has to pay for the test himself. Call it, tough love. Call it, reducing the welfare rolls, very quickly.

Anecdotes? Here’s an anecdote I heard yesterday, Governor, from two people, including a cop in Lawrence. These two people have both seen workers from a Lawrence “nightclub” up at a big discount store in Salem, N.H., buying cases of Corona beer and paying for them with a Mass. EBT card.

The average layabout collects $450 a month on his card. And 20,000 cards are “lost” every month (and then replaced at no charge). Do the math — could be close to $9 million a month in fraud, just on those “lost” cards. Yet Deval’s appointees claim it’s too expensive to put the welfare recipient’s photo on the card.

…

A mother with three kids from Lowell named Annette called me last night, distraught.

“I see people in the checkout line buying better food that me because I’m on a budget, and I can’t afford tenderloin like they can.” She paused. “And then they pull out the iPhone.”

Which you paid for too, Annette, one way or another.

Maybe you don’t like the word “layabout”. Maybe you prefer leech or deadbeat. Dems call them the “less fortunate”, and no doubt many of them are. So, why on earth wouldn’t we protect the precious resources to make sure their needs are being met?

You don’t have to answer that. I already did above.

* Except for the necessity of “rare earth” minerals, the harm to migratory birds, the visual clutter, and noise pollution.

** Except when the wind doesn’t blow—this being a case where the Left doesn’t believe in Climate Change.

*** Not now; probably not ever:

Boston utility NStar has agreed to pay a starting price for power from the Cape Wind project that is substantially above the cost of conventional energy and will slightly increase the average customer’s monthly bill beginning the first year the offshore wind farm generates electricity, according to a 15-year contract filed with state regulators Friday.

The price, 18.7 cents per kilowatt hour, is the same as what National Grid agreed to pay when it signed a contract in 2010 to purchase half the power generated by Cape Wind. NStar’s deal is to purchase 27.5 percent of the wind farm’s total output. Since the Cape Wind power represents only about 2 percent of the energy distributed by NStar, it is expected to have a moderate impact on the average customer’s bill, $1.08 a month. Customers in the Boston area pay about $86 a month.

…

The utilities currently pay about 8 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity, and NStar originally balked at becoming a Cape Wind customer, arguing the wind farm’s cost was too high. That position changed last month, when, after nearly a year of negotiations, state energy officials agreed to endorse a proposed merger between NStar and Connecticut-based Northeast Utilities if NStar made several concessions, including buying power from Cape Wind.

“We know that it will take a diversified approach using all available renewable resources to meet the state’s climate change goals,’’ NStar spokeswoman Caroline Pretyman said. “We recognize that renewable energy has a cost associated with it but we see this as an investment in our state’s clean energy future.’’

The agreement left little room for NStar to negotiate the price it would pay for the energy, dictating, according to regulatory filings, that the utility’s purchase price “shall be substantially the same’’ as the price National Grid agreed to pay. NStar also committed to purchasing a comparable amount of power from another project, if Cape Wind has not begun construction by the end of 2015.

You have to admire the government’s logic: they feel they can compel a utility to pay about 133% over the market rate for electricity because the “deluxe” electricity they’re being forced to buy amounts to only two percent of the supply. I think I heard Tony Soprano make such an argument once.

The strict stipulations on prices and terms led critics to question the state’s role in bringing about the deal.

“The ‘negotiation’ around this contract was a complete sham,’’ said Robert Rio, a spokesman for the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a trade group that has long opposed the high price tag for Cape Wind’s power. “We’ll never know what the final [price] could have been because NStar was hamstrung in the negotiation process.’’

Renewable energy proponents, however, see the deal as a coup for Governor Deval Patrick, who insisted that NStar’s $17.5 billion merger to Northeast Utilities should promote cleaner sources of energy.

That explains it: Don Deval decreed it.

But what I don’t get is how this thing is supposed to save money:

Despite the high price of Cape Wind’s power, supporters have argued that the project will help lower New England energy prices in the long run.

…

That’s because Cape Wind’s costs will be paid for by fixed contracts with the utilities. With no fuel costs when the turbines are rotating, it will displace power on the grid from energy sources with higher fuel costs, according to the study.

“Cape Wind would have a substantial impact in reducing spot market prices,’’ said Mark Rodgers, a Cape Wind spokesman. “That ultimately filters back to all of us electricity consumers in New England.’’

Rio, meanwhile, said he thinks that any such savings would actually be “incredibly minuscule.’’

“I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to make money on this thing,’’ he said. “It’s real fuzzy math.’’

That also sound like The Sopranos.

How can something that costs twice the market rate (and is scheduled to cost more every year, throughout the contract) ever be cheaper than the traditional sources? Unless the price of the traditional sources is artificially inflated by manufactured shortages? (Right Capo Obama?)

PS: Cape Wind is not popular among the resident of Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard; it was built over Ted Kennedy’s dead body—literally. Exactly how do the wind freaks ever see this not-so-clean, not-so-reliable, not-so-cheap resource expanding?

Refineries?

Refineries are so… southern:

Gasoline prices, rising quickly across the country, could increase even faster in New England over the next year because of the shutdown of three refineries that serve the Northeast and the likelihood that another could close in the summer.

Economists estimate that the loss of these plants, which account for at least half of the East Coast’s refining capacity, could boost New England gas prices by as much as 15 cents per gallon – over and above increases driven by unrest in the Middle East and other global factors. The additional price increases would result largely from added costs of transporting fuel from Gulf Coast or overseas refineries.

The price of diesel and heating oil, which also are refined at the facilities, could rise as well.

…

“You don’t have refineries in New England, you don’t have pipelines,’’ Felmy said. “You’re really an island.’’

Yeah, but why? Why have our elected leaders left us here on a very cold, very expensive island?

Refiners are shutting plants after losing billions of dollars in recent years due to a combination of factors. The weak economy lowered demand for gasoline, tighter environmental regulations raised costs, and increased global competition squeezed profit margins.

In the last six months, oil production companies Sunoco Inc. of Philadelphia and ConocoPhillips Co. of Houston have each closed a Pennsylvania refinery and put it up for sale – with few potential buyers emerging – as they exit the refining business. Hovensa LLC, a refiner in the US Virgin Islands, closed a refinery on St. Croix that primarily supplied the East Coast.

Meanwhile, Sunoco also has put up for sale a facility in Philadelphia that accounts for about nearly one-fourth of East Coast refining capacity. Sunoco, which says its refining business has lost nearly $1 billion in the past three years, plans to shutter the Philadelphia refinery in July if no buyer is found. “We could stay in the refining business and put the entire company at risk,’’ said Thomas Golembeski, a Sunoco spokesman, “or we could exit the refining business and stop the financial losses.’’

…

New England has no refineries of its own to take up the slack. Gulf Coast refiners have extra supplies to offset the loss of production in the Northeast, but pipelines that carry gas, diesel, and heating oil from the Gulf Coast to the region do not necessarily have capacity for the additional volume, according to an analysis released last week by the Energy Department.

Why is refining gasoline and heating oil economically viable on the Gulf Coast, but not the Atlantic coast? The article doesn’t say, and makes only one mention of “tighter environmental regulations”. But if closed refineries leave us on an island, I want to know why we’re there.

Instead, we get this:

With gas prices rising steadily in recent weeks, Governor Deval Patrick has directed state inspectors to step up efforts to ensure that gas stations are not engaged in price gouging, false advertising and other deceptive practices, state officials said Sunday.

“We want to get ahead of the curve here,” Barbara Anthony, the state’s undersecretary of consumer affairs and business regulation, said in a phone interview. “We want to make sure that no one’s even thinking about price-gouging.”

Anthony said that while nine inspectors perform regular audits of gas stations to ensure compliance with state regulations, Patrick has asked for increased oversight in light of recent price hikes nationwide.

In a statement, Anthony’s office cited data from a AAA report showing that gasoline prices have risen for 11 consecutive weeks, and that Bay State drivers are currently paying $3.73 per gallon on average, up from $3.30 at this time last year.

The averages for other New England states on Sunday were $3.99 in Connecticut, $3.84 in Maine, $3.80 in Rhode Island, $3.81 in Vermont, and $3.71 in New Hampshire, according to AAA.

Stop your grandstanding, Deval. Our gasoline is cheaper than most of the rest of the region—and way cheaper than California’s. The price is going up nationally because your big brother, Barack, wants it that way.

You could do us all a favor and offer incentives to the oil companies to reopen the local refineries before prices spiral into the $4 and $5 range, but something tells me you’re not going to do that.

First, the facts:

Gov. Deval Patrick is primed to serve as a political pit bull for President Obama this weekend as he hits the airwaves in Washington, D.C., pointing out Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s flaws while boosting his own national profile, pundits said yesterday.

“It’s timely. You have these two pivotal primaries coming on Tuesday, to have him come in and appear as an anti-Mitt Romney surrogate is perfect,” said Richard Benedetto, a former White House correspondent who now teaches at American University. “Patrick, as the current governor in Massachusetts, could point out all the things that Romney did wrong.”

Patrick has had no qualms about attacking Romney in the past, telling CBS’s “The Early Show” last month that “he has occupied just about every position available in politics in the course of this campaign.”

But Republican consultant Keith Appell, who is based in Washington, D.C., said Patrick’s new role as campaign co-chair is unlikely to hurt any Republican presidential candidate.

“He’s an ultra-liberal governor from the ultra-liberal state of Massachusetts. The more a guy like Patrick talks, the more ginned up the base becomes,” Appell said.

Patrick is scheduled to go on MSNBC on Monday morning, and was in talks to appear on “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. The airtime comes as Patrick plans to lunch with Obama this weekend as part of the National Governor’s Association gathering.

Oh, I’m sorry. Those aren’t facts; the facts have been obscured.

The facts are that a former Clinton hack, Stephanopoulos, is set to interview a former David Axelrod client, Patrick, on a (ahem) news show for the benefit of their mutually preferred candidate, Barack Obama, who should have to pay for what is in reality a campaign commercial—at the very least be required to say “I’m Barack Obama, and I approved this sexual favor.”

I’ve called the lamestream media cheerleaders before, complete with pom-poms and pleated skirts, but I think that’s misleading. They’re actually on the team, throwing blocks, lobbing softballs, teeing it up. You name it. Stephanopoulos should be wearing a letterman’s jacket for Team Obama.

Obama’s campaign chair, our very own Governor, is proud of his contribution to the housing bubble

Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, President Barack Obama’s friend and campaign co-chair, told The Daily Caller that he’s proud of the work he did for Ameriquest as it pumped up the nation’s mortgage bubble.

“I served on the board of the holding company for that company, and it was work that I was asked to do with some of their fair-lending issues, and I’m proud of that work,” said Patrick, who was appointed Feb. 22 by Obama as one of his 2012 campaign’s co-chairs.

Patrick served on the five-member board of Ameriquest’s holding company, ACC Capital Holdings, from 2004 to 2006. This was when the mortgage bubble rapidly inflated under pressure from President George W. Bush, 1990s regulations, numerous Democratic-affiliated housing groups, as well as executives in Fannie Mae and Wall Street companies.

Ameriquest was a leading cause of the bubble, in part, because it began the practice of selling mortgages to people that were deemed by other mortgage companies to be a bad credit risk. For example, the company pioneered the practice of selling mortgages to people without asking for documentation of their income, greatly raising the chance that each loan would go into foreclosure.

In turn, Ameriquest sold the flawed mortgages, dubbed no-doc subprime mortgages, to Fannie Mae and Wall Street, and profited from the processing fees.

The subsequent foreclosure of many risky mortgages dragged down Wall Street and the national economy. Since then, the street unemployment rate has remained well above 10 percent, and the nation’s formal debt has risen by $5 trillion. The median wealth of African-American households fell by 53 percent, according to a 2011 Pew study.

They’re going to vote for him again, guys.

No offense to anybody who might be offended, but isn’t public buggery illegal?

On a cool August evening, a man was walking on a paved path through the Medford section of Torbert MacDonald Park when he locked eyes with a stranger. The man, a computer technician who is gay, believed that the look suggested that the stranger wanted sex, according to gay-rights advocates.

But the stranger was an undercover state trooper, who arrested the technician – not for a sex crime, but for trespassing – after he wandered 50 feet off the path, according to a police report.

State Police arrested 31 men at the park this past summer, most of them for trespassing, reviving fears in the gay community that the police were once again targeting gay men. The sexual orientation of most of the men is unknown, but their arrests prompted gay-rights advocates to meet recently with high-ranking public safety officials in Governor Deval Patrick’s administration.

What does this have to do with gay rights? Are the so-called advocates confessing that the impression that all the guys skulking in the bushes are gay men looking to hook up? Isn’t that profiling? Isn’t that hateful? I thought at least a few of them were bird-watchers, and if bird-watchers trespass, don’t they deserve equal treatment under the law?

And what about the people who don’t go there to hook up or watch birds? Do they have a right not to be creeped out, not to have their kids chase a lost ball in the brush, only to come across four more? Are straight couples permitted to bonk with abandon in public parks?

In 1989, State Police agreed to stop using undercover officers as decoys to crack down on alleged sexual activity between men at highway rest stops, according to a Globe report at the time.

But police officials say the recent work at the Medford park did not target any one group. Their overall goal, they say, was to maintain safety in state-owned parks and protect delicate grounds, which have been damaged by people veering off main paths to use drugs or engage in sex.

Officials at the state Department of Conservation and Recreation said that “men who have sex with men’’ go off main paths at the Middlesex Fells Reservation to have trysts, trampling on natural resources, according to a draft of the department’s resource management plan.

The language rankles advocates, who said it unfairly blames one group of people. DCR officials said they would revise the language in the plan’s final draft.

I can see why the gay community is upset: they don’t want to be lumped in with drug addicts. Fair enough. But stay on the trails and get a room, and nobody will bother you. I’m a prude, but I think dinner and a movie first is more romantic than anonymous hook-ups by the monkey bars. Sorry.

PS: If Governor Patrick were half as smart as he thinks he is, he would set the environmentalists against the gay advocates. One busybody old lady banned (temporarily) the sale of plastic water bottles in Concord. You think she and her ilk would stand for all those Cole-Haans and Johnston & Murphys trampling the fragile and threatened flora in public parks? Tell them Walden Woods has become the latest Ramrod Bar and they’ll be out there with their flashlights, binoculars, and walking sticks.

We in Massachusetts are in a unique position. Yes, we have our heads up our a**es, but that’s hardly a unique position—anyway, I mean metaphorically. With RomneyCare, a Democrat-dominated State House, and Obama’s little brother, Deval Patrick, we are a microcosm of Obama’s experiment in government.

Take illegal immigration—please!

Last week a group of Massachusetts sheriffs reached out directly to the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and arranged to send fingerprints of arrested individuals in their custody to ICE. Gov. Deval Patrick, who adamantly opposes the Secure Communities program, reacted angrily:

“We already send all the fingerprints we gather to the federal government. The only thing the sheriffs are doing that’s different from what we do already is grabbing headlines.”

…

Now, the first part of that statement is factual but false.

Yes, the Patrick administration supports sending fingerprints to the FBI and, yes, that’s part of the “federal government.” Alas, it’s not the part of the federal government that has anything to do with immigration. No doubt Patrick would support sending fingerprints to the Smithsonian or Mount Rushmore, too.

What the sheriffs are doing is sending the prints to the only place that matters, and that’s a policy Patrick continues to oppose.

Which make his other claims — the sheriffs aren’t “doing anything different,” those are “our policies” — out and out lies. Whoppers. Utterly untrue.

Yeah, but illegal immigration is a victimless crime, right?

First there was the horrifying case of Matthew Denice, a 23-year-old Milford man crushed to death allegedly by a drunk-driving, repeat-offender illegal immigrant. Patrick’s response: No change in policy is required?.?.?.?we already send all fingerprints?.?.?.?blah, blah, blah.

Just days later, President Barack Obama’s Uncle Omar — more than 20 years illegally living and working in Massachusetts — was busted for OUI. And again Patrick insisted that all is well. “We don’t need to change our policy,” he insisted.

And now it’s the Eduardo Alementa Torres case. Not 24 hours after Patrick’s attacks on the “headline-grabbing” sheriffs, Torres is arrested for his sixth OUI. Not only has he been deported at least once already, but he’s wanted by the Department of Homeland Security.

And still, if it were up to Patrick, Torres’ prints wouldn’t have been sent to ICE.

And just this morning, I read this heartbreaking story in my Boston Gob:

MARSHFIELD – Patricia Frois had finally left.

She had moved out of the second-floor home she shared with her boyfriend, Marcello Almeida, at the Village of Marshfield Apartments on Saturday after another episode in what family and friends described as a volatile and violent relationship. A neighbor on the first floor took her in, allowing Frois, 24, a place to stay while she figured out her next move.

But she ran out of clothes and was sneaking upstairs to grab something to wear to work yesterday morning when she ran into Almeida in the foyer, a neighbor said. She thought he would have already left for work by 8 a.m.

Investigators said Almeida stabbed Frois repeatedly, injuring himself in the process.

Frois, who relatives said has a 5-year-old son with Almeida, died at a hospital 30 minutes later.

Heartbreaking, yes, BTL, but relevant how?

Patience:

Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz said Almeida had a Brazilian passport. In a statement issued last night, Cruz’s office said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has no record of Almeida entering the country legally.

The visa number on his passport was issued to a Kuwaiti woman in Beirut in 2003.

Investigators said they were trying to confirm Almeida’s identity.

The 22nd paragraph, if I count correctly. But the story immediately makes the point that illegals are reluctant to report domestic violence for fear of going to the authorities. The story doesn’t mention her immigration status, but who can deny she would be alive today if Almeida had been deported? Or that Matthew Denice would be alive if the illegal repeat offender drunk driver had been deported?

Deval Patrick holds our safety in less esteem than political favoritism. Listen for the echo from the Obama administration.

President Obama decided to rewrite the law, calling for deportation of only the most heinous of criminal illegal aliens. Of course, that’s a double tautology (or is it a triple?): they are aliens because they are here illegally, which is only the first of several crimes even the most law-abiding of them commit. Not paying taxes, driving without a license, forging documents to get a driver’s license, forging the license itself—these are just some of the offenses routinely perpetrated by anyone and everyone in this country illegally.

But enough of my hard heart. I’m not sure whose Willie Horton he is, Obama’s or Deval Patrick’s, but he’s made to order:

You know what happened in Milford on Saturday night. A totally smashed illegal from Ecuador is accused of running a stop sign and mowing down a 23-year-old American on a motorcycle, and then proceeding to drag him, screaming, under his truck for a quarter mile.

When the illegal finally ran off the road, the American became disentangled. He was still alive. But then the illegal backed his truck back over him, according to prosecutors.

Told later he’d killed the young man, Matthew J. Denice, cops say the illegal shrugged.

At his first appearance in court Monday, Nicolas Guaman needed a translator, even though he’s been in the country for five years. Apparently he’s picked up at least a bit of our lingo along the line — in the cab of the truck, cops found cans of Budweiser cerveza, which he was somehow able to purchase.

…

So far we know this about Guaman. In addition to being arrested three times since 2007 for driving without a license, the Milford police said he got a year of probation for assault and battery on a police officer. This was apparently the same incident in which the alleged killer, according to the Middlesex News, was also charged with attacking a firefighter “after a 2008 incident in which he interfered with the treatment of a family member who had allegedly attempted to enter someone else’s house.”

Gov. Patrick’s flack yesterday issued this statement about Matthew Denice: “Our deepest condolences go out to the family and friends of the victim of this terrible crime. .?.?. The Governor’s policy is that serious criminals who are here illegally should be deported.”

Oh yes, he also had his six-year-old son with him. Now, I don’t know how an illegal alien with his record escaped deportation—of course I do. Remember who our governor is.

We get reminded every day:

My guess is that Hurricane Irene is going to kill a lot fewer Americans in Massachusetts this year than illegal aliens are. But don’t tell that to Gov. Deval Patrick — he doesn’t want to talk about dead Americans and the drunk Ecuadorians who killed them.

…

“Well,” Deval began, “first of all it’s a terrible, terrible tragedy for that family and my heart goes out to them and my prayers to them and the community who are outraged.”

Notice, he didn’t name the family, or the community, even though he attended a hearing in Milford on Secure Communities, the program to round up criminals like the accused Ecuadorian. Naturally, Deval vehemently opposes Secure Communities, and next he explained why.

“You know, illegal immigration didn’t kill this person. A drunk driver killed this person.”

Suppose an American had so brutally killed an illegal alien, dragging him down the street as he screamed, and then delivered the coup de grace by backing over him. You can bet Deval would not only have known the illegal’s name, but would have visited his family, cameras (and interpreters) in tow. But with only an American taxpayer dead, the governor wanted to keep the subject on drunken driving.

“And, uh, we have laws about that.”

We do, but we also have a state Attorney General who once notoriously said, “Technically, it’s not illegal to be illegal in Massachusetts.” She studied at the Bill Clinton School of Parsing. We also have “sanctuary cities”, a governor who threatens to withdraw from the Secure Communities program, and an electorate that tolerates it all.

From the tragic to the farcical:

This Ecuadorian roofer’s name is Nicholas Guaman, and he’s not to be confused with another Ecuadorian roofer named Luis Guaman, who’s accused of murdering a mother and her child in Brockton in February and then fleeing home.

By the way, this little scene took place in Framingham, where another illegal alien was arrested for drunken driving Wednesday night. This invader was from, of all places, Kenya, and his name is Obama. I’m not making this up — Onyango Obama, age 67.

Obama almost sideswiped a Framingham PD car, and then he had the nerve to tell the cop that he had, in effect, acted stupidly. The cops took Obama back to the police station, where cops said he blew a .14 on the Breathalyzer.

Sigh.

My standard boilerplate on illegal immigration: this country has only been made stronger and greater by immigration. Those seeking to come here and embrace our way of life, our founding principles, only renew America’s spirit. Those who, in effect, defecate on our principles, however, whose first experience in this country is repeatedly to violate its laws, only corrode our spirit. And the jackals and lapdogs in government who abet them in order to curry favor are nothing short of traitors. I believe that’s fair.

Just as Mike Dukakis had to accept responsibility for the assault, robbery, and rape committed by Willie Horton on furlough when he was serving a murder sentence (life, without parole), so Patrick, and by extension Obama, will have to answer for the crimes of Nicholas Guaman. I believe that’s fair.

Oh, and just to head off any accusations of racism, as were recklessly hurled when George H.W. Bush raised Willie Horton’s case in 1988, he is still doing time, thankfully in Maryland, not Massachusetts, at the Jessup Correctional Institution. Visiting hours are from 1 to 8, Wednesday through Sunday, though you need to make an appointment.

You know what the second biggest hoax is—after global warming, that is? Green jobs.

There’s no green (in the colloquial sense) in the green economy:

Last year, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced the city had won a coveted $20 million federal grant to invest in weatherization. The unglamorous work of insulating crawl spaces and attics had emerged as a silver bullet in a bleak economy – able to create jobs and shrink carbon footprint – and the announcement came with great fanfare.

McGinn had joined Vice President Joe Biden in the White House to make it. It came on the eve of Earth Day. It had heady goals: creating 2,000 living-wage jobs in Seattle and retrofitting 2,000 homes in poorer neighborhoods.

But more than a year later, Seattle’s numbers are lackluster. As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program. Many of the jobs are administrative, and not the entry-level pathways once dreamed of for low-income workers. Some people wonder if the original goals are now achievable.

…

“It’s been a very slow and tedious process. It’s almost painful, the number of meetings people have gone to. Those are the people who got jobs. There’s been no real investment for the broader public.”

Wow. What Seattle deems a failure, we in Massachusetts hail as a great success:

Gov. Deval Patrick is touting a “major milestone” in the state’s use of federal stimulus dollars — the weatherizing of 10,000 homes in Massachusetts.

Patrick said the initiative has not only saved money and energy for thousands of families but has also helped create much needed jobs as the state works to climb out of the recent recession.

Administration officials said that as of the end of July, the federal stimulus funded program has provided work for 129 private sector weatherization contractors and 21 special purpose electrical and heating contractors.

Nearly 3,000 individuals have received a stimulus-funded paycheck.

I don’t dispute the numbers: I couldn’t possibly know. But this is the Cash-for-Clunkers mentality. Once the car is bought or the window weatherized, it’s done. It’s out of the market. Car sales plunged after C-4-C. I wouldn’t be surprised if contractors were laying off workers after Wads-for-Windows. When government steers money toward political goals, rather than leaving the money in the private sector, jobs are not created, they’re borrowed.

Case in point:

In 2008, Reuters published one of those stories predicting that green power would be cost-competitive with fossil fuels in five years. Headline: “As Energy Costs Soar, U.S. Looks to Solar.” Among the prophets was Richard Feldt, then the CEO of Evergreen Solar, who said that “it’s not far away” and called for more subsidies. On Monday, Evergreen filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In the grave-dancing department, let’s note that failure is part of the risk-taking and creative destruction that drive growth, and that Evergreen got its start in 1994 with an innovation that reduced the costs of silicon panels. The bankruptcy is notable mainly because the Massachusetts-based manufacturer received so much taxpayer support.

Governor Deval Patrick took a $58 million stake in Evergreen in 2007 with direct subsidies and tax breaks in return for the company building a plant in the state. The goal was “to help Evergreen Solar grow and thrive right here in Massachusetts, and give us a head start toward building a clean energy economy,” Mr. Patrick said at the time.

I’m glad the windows are weatherized; it’s a laudable goal. But it’s not stimulus. And it’s typical of the entire Obama economic model. If you think you’re so smart, and think you’re ideas are so progressive, it must come as a complete shock when your bestest plans come a cropper.

I don’t know to whom the Invisible Hand of the market belongs, but it’s not nearly as clean or articulate as Obama’s. I guess Adam Smith was a racist.

Jeff Jacoby succinctly explains civics to those unclear of the concept:

[C]ollective bargaining in the public sector is in reality not reasonable at all. It is emphatically not like bargaining in the private sector, where unions representing labor contend with management representing owners for a share of the profits that labor helps create.

In the public sector, there are no profits to share. There are only taxpayers’ dollars, which neither government employees nor government managers create. As for the taxpayers who do create those dollars, they have no seat at the table when public unions negotiate over wages and benefits. Instead, government sits on both sides, negotiating with itself over how to spend the people’s money.

…

At bottom, collective bargaining in the public sector is profoundly antidemocratic: It denies voters final say over the public policies they must live under, by forcing their elected representatives to shape those policies in concert with unions. In effect, it transfers to union officials – interested parties not chosen by the people – decision-making authority that they have no legitimate right to. That is why until just a few decades ago, it was universally understood that collective bargaining was incompatible with government employment.

Jacoby is the only conservative (read: sane) columnist for the Boston Gob. But he was preaching to the wrong choir here.

As yesterday’s Gob explained:

The White House took the unusual step this spring of calling Governor Deval Patrick to discuss his plan to curb the collective bargaining rights of public employees, an indication that the Obama administration may have been concerned about the potential for national political fallout.

The call was made in late April, just after a tougher version of Patrick’s plan passed the House, sparking outrage from labor leaders who accused Massachusetts Democrats of launching a “Wisconsin-esque’’ attack on workers’ rights.

At the time, President Obama, Patrick’s friend and political ally, had been trying to fire up the Democratic base by criticizing Republican governors for slashing collective bargaining rights.

Patrick disclosed yesterday that several national labor leaders called the White House to express concern about the Massachusetts plans. Nick Rathod, the White House’s deputy director of intergovernmental affairs, then called Patrick.

“There was no message,’’ the governor said yesterday, declining to discuss the call in detail as he signed the collective bargaining changes into law. “They were just checking in.’’

Just checking in. Like, hey homie? How’s my brother from another mother? That kind of checking in?

Because I think it was more like this kind of checking in (as we reported the other day):

A Patrick administration official confirmed yesterday that the governor had received calls from several national labor leaders, including Richard L. Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, urging him to consider labor’s argument that the bill sent to his desk by the Legislature as part of the budget passed last week did not give union workers enough protection. The Patrick official said the tone of the calls was muted and nonconfrontational.

Muted and nonconfrontational. Just checking in. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more, know what I mean?

Then why did it take three months and two separate news stories to get the whole story out?

Nice Commonwealth ya got here. Shame if something happened to it.

Well, it made me laugh anyway:

Under pressure from national union leaders, Governor Deval Patrick reached an agreement with the House and Senate yesterday to soften a bill to limit collective bargaining rights for teachers, firefighters, and other local government workers.

The agreement, reached behind closed doors and slated for approval Monday, allows Patrick to argue that he is cutting health costs for cities and towns by $100 million without gutting workers’ rights. Patrick has been pitching himself nationally as a governor who can work with organized labor under tough budgetary circumstances, contrasting his approach with Republican governors who have fought divisive battles with unions this year.

The issue flared as recently as Sunday when Patrick, appearing with Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin on “Face the Nation,’’ was sharply questioned about why a Democrat was taking away union rights.

A Patrick administration official confirmed yesterday that the governor had received calls from several national labor leaders, including Richard L. Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, urging him to consider labor’s argument that the bill sent to his desk by the Legislature as part of the budget passed last week did not give union workers enough protection. The Patrick official said the tone of the calls was muted and nonconfrontational.

Muted and nonconfrontational—I’ll bet. As muted as Michael Corleone:

Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.

I’m hearing rumors that Patrick will be a late entry into the race against Scott Brown. Makes sense. He just won re-election, and the Lt. Governor (a Democratic stooge) takes over in the event of a vacancy. So the corner office is safe. An aside: people give Sarah Palin a hard time for leaving, but I don’t think we’ll hear a peep if Patrick quits. Also, nobody gives credit to Romney for not pulling the same trick. And he probably would have spared us a Patrick administration if he had run for a second term.

Anyhow, why not run? Only gnats have declared their intentions so far. I’m not saying Patrick would win—my money and my time would work against him—but he’s got friends in high places and plenty of dough.

Hee.

Hee-hee.

Hee-hee-hee-haw-haw-haw!!!!

Ten new jobs do not usually attract a press release with a quote from the governor, but Deval Patrick was eager this week to showcase a result from his much-criticized Israeli trade mission: a company that plans to build its US headquarters here.

But there was one vexing problem with the press release on Thursday. The Israeli medical device company, EarlySense, already lists a “USA headquarters’’ on its website, in Dedham no less.

So what about this is new? Avner Halperin, the company’s chief executive, said the Dedham address is not really his office. It is the address of a consulting firm that forwards EarlySense’s mail to Israel.

Phone calls to the company’s Massachusetts number, with a 617 area code, reach a voicemail box in Israel. The company has two employees in the United States, in Los Angeles and Connecticut.

“We, over the years, found it important to have a mailing office in the United States, as we operate and cooperate with different organizations in the United States … like probably any Israeli startups that you will find in the United States,’’ Halperin said by telephone (from Israel, not Dedham).

Well, okay, a small misunderstanding (what the Glob calls a “wrinkle”).

What about the jobs?

He promised that the firm is seeking office space this month for a real US headquarters, in part because of contacts made with Massachusetts executives and government leaders last month and also because the company signed a deal with MetroWest Medical Center to install equipment.

Halperin said some of the 10 new US employees hired this year may be relocated from Israel or from out of state. He said he does not yet know how many will be Massachusetts residents.

“We never hid that we are an Israeli company; we listed it’’ on the company’s website, Halperin said. But “when we give it an Israeli number, some people find it a challenge even to dial.’’

Considering he doesn’t even trust us to dial a telephone, I wouldn’t get my hopes up for one of those jobs.

But I don’t blame the company one bit. Anyone who can create even one job in this economy, regardless of where, is doing a mitzvah. If politicians want to spin or twist (or wrinkle) the story, that’s on them.

(See Barack and Caterpillar.)