Howie Carr: Massachusetts Hacks Forgot How to Do Nepotism Right

Can't anybody here play this game, the game in question being nepotism? It should be the simplest scam in the hackerama — getting family members the same kind of phony-baloney, six-figure, no-heavy-lifting public-sector job you have, behind which comes the 80 percent pension. But the hacks seem to be losing this most basic skill — or at least the ability to take care of their family and pals and not get caught.

Check out these two headlines from the past few days: “Ex-UMass official fined $10K for hiring brother.” “Ex-judge fined $4K for appointing father to oversee home sale.” The most chilling part of those headlines? The phrase “ex.” That means the hack has suffered a fate worse than death, namely, being separated from the public trough. As we all know, it's almost impossible to get fired from a hack job in Massachusetts, even if you're caught red-handed.

But really, directly hiring your own relatives? Has everyone forgotten Rule 1 of the hackerama? You don't hire your own relatives, period. What you do is, you get another payroll patriot to hire your father/brother/girlfriend etc. Then in return, you hire their significant other. You scratch my back… As James Michael Curley used to say to his son Frank, when explaining to him why crooked people like themselves should always use cash and never, ever have a bank account: “I shouldn’t even have to explain this to you…” Yet here we are. I have to explain it all, again.

Let's begin with former Probate Judge Lawrence Army, Jr. He was one of many tragically terrible judicial appointees of ex-Gov. Charlie Baker. When Army was nominated in 2022, the usual anonymous letters were sent to the Governor’s Council. The “Concerned Lawyers of Worcester County” alleged that at his hearing, Army had made “material misrepresentations and lies.” The Council didn’t care because it is, and has always been, as the aforementioned Gov. Curley once said, “a hock shop.”

As soon as he got onto the bench, Judge Army was presiding over a divorce case and had to select a Special Master to handle the sale of the marital home. He skipped over the list of eligible lawyers and made a very special appointment to the $450-an-hour plum job. Judge Lawrence F. Army Jr. appointed as Special Master a lawyer by the name of Lawrence F. Army Sr. It was a nationwide search! And now Junior is an ex-judge.

Next, let's go to UMass, where another “ex” marks the spot. This time it's an ex-associate provost named Heather Sharpes-Smith. Note that hyphenated last name — once upon a time, that alone would be enough to establish your wokeness and thus invulnerability from any kind of disciplinary action, let alone having to work, at ZooMass.

But nowadays, it takes more than a mere hyphenated last name to establish your exalted status on the totem pole of DEI intersectionality. Not checking nearly enough woke boxes, Sharpes-Smith was making a mere $154,531.41 a year and going nowhere fast in hackademia. Think Elizabeth Warren before she became a fake Indian.

The big-money jobs at UMass now go to people with first names like “Nefertiti,” who makes $443,456 a year dispensing “equity.” Studying the ZooMass payroll, Heather must have despaired that she would ever earn as much as, say, Kumble Subbaswamy ($443,456 last year) or Murugappan Muthukumar ($355,399).

So Ms. Heather Hyphenated Last Name decided to settle for the sort of crumbs available to those in her downtrodden class. She asked if she could hire a “guy” for a temporary job. The “guy” was her brother, and I'll bet that like Sis, he doesn't have a really woke DEI name.

Amazingly, despite his lack of modern hackademic credentials, Heather's brother got the job — another nationwide search! Must have been part of the UMass affirmative-action program. Then he got hired to a permanent job for $68,000, which at UMass is nothing, absolutely nothing. But she's now an ex-associate provost.

Tania Fernandes Anderson: The Ultimate Hack

Tania Fernandes Anderson seemed to have everything going for her — first illegal alien African Muslim on welfare married to a first-degree murderer ever elected to the Boston City Council. But she wasn’t content to slurp at the trough. Tania had to lick the plate.

She hired her sister and her brother for big-money City Hall hack sinecures and was fined $15,000 by the State Ethics Commission. She went crazy. Didn’t the honkies know who she was? “What the bleep do I have to do in this bleepin’ Council,” she screamed with cameras rolling, “in order to get respect as a black woman?”

This was before she took the $7,000 in cash kickbacks in a bathroom at City Hall… from another relative. Now she’s going to prison — must be racism, right? Why didn't Tania just get one of her fellow Council wokesters to hire her shiftless, entitled kin?

Monica Tibbits-Nutt: The Master of Incompetence

Consider the MassDOT secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt, who even after the $900-million Turnpike service-plaza scandal is in no danger of losing her job because, well, you know. Despite her breathtaking incompetence, she makes $206,496 a year.

Before the nationwide search by her very simpatico friend the governor, the Ohio blow-in Monica was executive director of the 128 Business Council, whatever that is. Would you care to guess who the “director of development” for the 128 Business Council is now? That would be a party named Lispeth Tibbits-Nutt, who just happens to be married to… you only get one guess.

According to her bio, Lispeth Tibbits-Nutt once “worked in advocacy and coalition building” and also ran, as you might have guessed, a “community art gallery.” After which came the nationwide search. Come on down, Lispeth Tibbits-Nutt! The point is, the old ways can still work, without “ex” marking the spot.

As James Michael Curley would say, I shouldn’t even have to be explaining this to anybody. Until midnight, you can pre-order Howie’s new book, “Mass Corruption: Vol. 1 The Cops” at howiecarrshow.com and save $5.