Finally, we’re No. 1!
It took a while, but thanks to Gov. Charlie Parker, Maskachusetts now has the worst unemployment rate in the United States — 17.4%.
Very impressive, because while recording the state’s highest unemployment numbers since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began tracking statistics in 1976, the commonwealth also has the third-highest virus death toll among the 50 states.
What a daily double for Tall Deval — worst unemployment in the country, third-highest number of deaths.
And did you see the headline in Saturday’s Herald about Tall Deval’s latest exhortation to the public on his marvelous stewardship of the surging-spiking-skyrocketing panic:
“Keep doing what we’ve been doing!”
Baker no longer presides over an administration. He’s running a cult. Numbers don’t matter, you just have to believe, conform, comply, drink the Kool-Aid — or else! (Unless you’re a looter in downtown Boston, of course.)
Most of the local media are fully invested in the daily dose of panic porn, even as Gov. Parker’s sermons become ever more incoherent. Increasingly, he stumbles, Joe Biden-like, over his prepared remarks.
On Thursday he announced a new program with the acronym “RAFT,” then promptly forgot what the letters stood for.
“Sorry,” he finally mumbled.
For the record, the runner-up to Maskachusetts in the June BLS stats is New Jersey, with 16.6% unemployment. The benighted Garden State’s governor, Phil Murphy, just happens to be a Needham High School classmate of … Charlie Parker’s. Not to mention Harvard College. Coincidence?
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s New York finished third with a dismal 15.7% unemployment rate. Thanks to Cuomo’s decision to infect nursing homes with COVID-19 patients early on, the Empire State still has by far the highest number of deaths, followed by NJ and MA.
Do you begin to detect a pattern here? The more draconian the state shutdowns, the more impervious the governors are to the actual facts on the ground, the higher both the states’ death tolls and the unemployment numbers.
Yet the hysteria persists in large segments of the population, fueled by media determined to use it to defeat President Trump. How is it POTUS’ fault that 42% of the nation’s deaths have occurred in three Northeastern states misgoverned by rabid Trump haters, who are so determined to drive him from office that they are willing to trash their own states’ economies?
A year ago, the MA unemployment rate was 2.9%. So was Maine’s. Yet even with Janet Mills, a governor almost as unhinged as Baker, Maine’s unemployment rate has only risen to 6.6%.
It’s been said that lotteries are for people who aren’t good at math. Wearing masks at this late date is for people who aren’t good at reading charts.
Here are Gov. Charlie Parker’s own MA statistics, with the death rate per 100,000 in various age groups.
Deaths among MA residents under the age of 20: zero per 100,000. (That’s right, zero.) People from 20-29: 2 deaths per 100,000; 30-39: 4 per 100,000, 40-49, 10 per 100,000.
Altogether, throughout this entire panic, exactly 137 MA residents under the age of 50 have died of the virus. No one under the age of 50 has died in at least four days. The average age of the dead is 82.
Altogether, as of Friday, MA had 8,184 “confirmed” deaths, of which 5,328 were in the nursing homes, which are supposedly regulated by Gov. Charlie Parker’s incompetent state government.
The operators of these death houses have handed him $52,000-plus, not to mention another $47,000 to an unindicted co-conspirator named House Speaker Robert DeLeo as well as $32,000 to Lt. Gov. Karyn “Pay to Play” Polito.
With a dysfunctional RMV, MBTA, DYS, DPH, rampant hackerama, over-the-top State Police corruption etc., Charlie Parker’s got a lot to hang his swollen head over. But even by Baker’s abysmal standards, Friday was a big day, beyond the unemployment numbers.
The former superintendent of the state-run Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, one Bennett Walsh, was among those sued in federal court in Springfield for $176 million by the survivors of one of the 76 veterans who died in that horribly mismanaged Tall Deval nursing home.
After his appointment to the $122,299-a-year hack job, Walsh duked $950 to Tall Deval and $1,000 to Polito.
How long until the governor is added to the complaint as a defendant? Three, two, one….
Then there’s one of Charlie Parker’s judges — Paul Sushcyk of the Probate and Family Court. He faces a disciplinary hearing Monday for allegedly grabbing a female court worker’s rear end while she was sitting on the barstool next to his, after which he is charged with pulling out a flask of whiskey.
The honorable jurist is now charged with, among other things, “undignified behavior” and “undermining public confidence in the courts.”
What public confidence?
Before his appointment, Sushcyk gave $500 to both Tall Deval and “Pay to Play” Polito. Another nationwide search, as Gov. Michael Dukakis used to say.
Speaking of the Duke, until now he was widely considered the state’s all-time worst governor. And Dukakis coined another phrase that seems ever more appropriate to describe Gov. Charlie Baker’s governorship:
“The fish rots from the head.”