The government of Massachusetts is a grotesquely bloated hackerama — $58 billion proposed for next year’s budget, mostly for hacks and foreign freeloaders and ZooMass bureaucrats.
It’s totally out of control. But I have some suggestions – some possibilities, as it were – to restore at least a little sanity to the welfare program known as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
I offer my “possibilities” in the spirit of the state Department of Transportation’s groundbreaking program, the “Office of Possibilities,” or, to use its obvious acronym, OOPS.
At OOPS, assorted payroll patriots and coat holders try to figure out how to squander even more taxpayer funds.
As appropriate as OOPS is to describe such a nonsensical waste of money, its name has recently been changed to “The Lab.”
The Lab? Think Wuhan, where Red Chinese mad scientists devised new ways to kill millions of people while getting laundered federal grants.
This new local Lab here is content to merely drive law-abiding taxpayers out of the state – and they’re doing a damn good job of it, 1100 a week and counting.
OOPS employs (and I use the term lightly) two hacks acquired on waivers from Boston City Hall.
One makes $166,400 and the other is pocketing $144,179 a year. Good jobs at good wages, and, it goes without saying, no heavy lifting. Behind which, comes the pension.
Here are my own pro bono OOPS-like suggestions for the state Department of Transportation:
First, eliminate OOPS and re-budget the money to, say, fixing potholes.
Or to making sure that all dead animals are removed from the side of any state road before they actually fossilize.
And how about DOT trying to schedule as road-maintenance projects as possible outside prime commuting hours? (I know the concept of “rush hour” is a difficult one for most of the six-figure hacks at 10 Park Plaza to comprehend, because it’s been so many years since any of them actually went to, you’ll pardon the expression, work.)
Here’s another tip for DOT: Stop hiring hacks. Most recent example would be Gus Bickford, former chairman of the Democrat state committee.
Gus just started Monday as the brand-new $163,000-a-year chief of “intergovernmental affairs” at the DOT.
How was the drive into Boston this morning, Gus? Oh, let me guess. You’re… telecommuting.
Another possibility for all state government: no more hack hires, period.
This means you, state Rep. Josh Cutler, who is taking early retirement to grab what the hacks admit is a newly-created job in the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development.
He will serve as “undersecretary of apprenticeship, work-based learning and policy.” The longer the title, the lighter the work load – that is an ironclad rule of the hackerama.
No new salary on the comptroller’s website yet for Cutler. But you can bet it will be a lot more than the $114,447.39 Mr. Chairman pocketed last year, or the $104,622.28 he collected in 2022.
No more $15,000 payraises for cabinet secretaries, either. Outrageous.
The biggest problem for the hackerama is that as the law-abiding working classes flee the state, they are being replaced by criminal illegal aliens who, despite what George W. Bush used to say, are not here to do the jobs that Americans won’t do.
The illegals are here to grab as much free stuff as they can, with zero consequences for whatever crimes they commit in their 24/7 all-expenses-paid-forever vacations on our dime.
Welfare for the entire Third World is getting expensive – over $2 billion, probably way over that.
Elections have consequences, and the vast majority of the state’s hack workforce certainly voted for this catastrophe. And they’ve been given repeated chances to voluntarily put their money where their mouths are.
After all, Hate Has No Home Here. But neither do illegal aliens in the fashionable suburbs where all the virtue-signaling Democrats live.
The comrades have been offered chance after chance to pay their fair share to support to the amigos in the style to which they have become accustomed.
For 20 years, they could have been checking the box on their state income tax forms to pay an extra 1 percent or so for the undocumented Democrat community. Only a couple thousand do it, and none of them are making big trust-fund money.
More recently, the Democrats were asked to turn their mansions in Dover and Chatham into flophouses for MS 13 gangbangers or ISIS terrorists. Exactly zero supporters of the fake Indian and Ayanna Pressley took advantage of that marvelous opportunity to Celebrate Diversity.
So my suggestion is, let’s make this charity mandatory – at least for state workers. To close the budget gap and to pay for all the indolent foreigners in the “Gateway Cities.” Charity begins at home – their homes.
When he was running Louisiana, Huey Long had what he called a “deduct box” – all state employees had to kick back a certain amount of cash, I think 10 percent, to keep the machine going.
Like Louisiana in 1935, the Commonwealth now needs its state employees to kick in to a new “deduct box” – to keep the fundamental transformation of America chugging along.
Nobody who works for a living supports this disorder at the border – look at the exit polls from New Hampshire. But if they’re going to continue wrecking the nation, let the people who claim to be in favor of it finally put their money where their mouths are.
Not everybody in state government, of course, should be assessed with the illegal-alien surtax. Nobody in the DOC unions, for instance. They’re normal Americans.
But how about UMass? If you have more than two diminutives in your title – say, associate vice deputy senior chancellor provost – then my suggestion is that you should pay an extra, say, 30 percent in income taxes.
It’s for the children, you know.
How about if your job is in DEI – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion? Shouldn’t you pay more, because after all, you’re a true believer. Especially if you had a college major that ended in “studies” – women’s, queer, African, sustainability, Taylor Swift, you name it.
For example, Nefertiti Walker is the vice chancellor for DEI at ZooMass. Makes $403,155.55 a year. Even after being assessed an extra 30 percent taxes to pay for our newest non-working-class Americans, Nefertiti would still be making $280,000 a year.
How about if you’re a failed politician on the UMass payroll? My suggestion is that your fair share should be an extra 40 percent state income tax.
Marty Meehan, ex-Congressman, makes $802,447.61 a year at ZooMass and has never worked a day in his life. Ditto, the hack ex-DA of Middlesex County, Gerry Leone, who pockets $371,421.25 a year.
Let the Americans who’ve never worked, like Meehan and Leone, support the non-Americans who’ve never worked. That’s my suggestion, anyway.
I know what the hacks are saying about me right now as they read this.
OOPS, he’s done it again.