What if a central figure in the Russian collusion scandal — a former U.S. senator, in fact — died? In his obituaries, would the alt-left media ignore not only the decedent’s role in the scandal, but the collusion itself, totally?

Yes, they would. In fact, yes they did, last week.

Because this was not the imaginary Trump collusion scandal, this was the real Russian collusion scandal, engineered by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy back in 1983.

Nothing to see here folks, move along!

The 83-year-old dead guy is John Tunney, former one-term U.S. senator from California, son of ex-heavyweight champion Gene Tunney and law-school classmate at UVa of Ted Kennedy.

Most significantly, Tunney was Kennedy’s D.C. drinking buddy — the original Chris Dodd, you might say. In his last campaign, in 1976, his Democrat primary opponent, Tom Hayden (aka Mr. Jane Fonda) described Tunney as “a Chappaquiddick waiting to happen.”

After he lost his seat in 1976 at age 42, Tunney still palled around with Teddy on those summerlong drinking binges down on the Cape. But in May 1983, Teddy had a bigger assignment for Tunney than the usual beer run to the packy at the ­Hyannis rotary.

Tunney was assigned to go to Moscow, and make the Evil Empire an offer it couldn’t refuse: The Soviets and the Democrats would join forces to deny President Ronald Reagan a second term in 1984. The Soviets would retain their slave empire, and the Democrats could resume destroying America.

How do we know this? Because when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, the KGB’s secret files were opened to Western researchers. In the Kremlin, a British reporter discovered a 1983 memo from the head of the KGB to Yuri Andropov, then the Soviet dictator.

The KGB memo described Tunney as Teddy’s “close friend and trusted confidant ... charged to convey the following message, through confidential contacts... ”

Comrade Tunney explained that Teddy controlled the media in the U.S., and that his fellow travelers would do whatever the hero of Chappaquiddick instructed them to do.

“Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews ... The senator (Tunney) underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side.”

In other words, the Reds and their fellow travelers in the Democratic party had to make it seem like the “news” wasn’t Russian disinformation. You know, exactly like they tried to do with Hillary’s dirty dossier. And Tunney’s outreach was designed to accomplish the same outcome as Clinton’s dirty dossier — the election of a corrupt Democrat puppet the Russians could control.

“Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988,” the memo read. “Kennedy does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic Party may officially turn to him to lead the fight ... .”

Does anyone doubt that even then the Democrats had utter control of the parlor pinks in the card-carrying mass media? A couple of years later, Teddy would succeed in spiking a devastating 27-minute ABC “News” documentary about RFK, JFK and the final hours of Marilyn Monroe’s life. Ask Geraldo Rivera sometime how he happened to lose his job at ABC.

And this was long before ABC “News” hired conniving Democrat hacks like George Stephanopoulos, Martha Raddatz and Brian Ross.

Nothing came of this first treasonous Democrat-Russian plot to subvert a U.S. presidential election. Andropov was dead eight months later, and Kennedy and Tunney resumed their lifelong happy hour, soon to be joined by Chris Dodd.

This 1983 memo is not some libelous Fusion GPS made-up oppo-research fiction. This is from official KGB files. It’s been reported in The Times of London, Forbes magazine and it’s between hard covers in a 2006 book. Ted Kennedy never denied it, nor did Tunney.

But in all the major obituaries for Tunney last week, there was not one single word about this original, real Russian collusion. All the national newspapers that have been printing one false story after another about Trump’s “collusion” for more than a year gave this real Russian collusion story a good leaving-alone.

Are you surprised that the alt-left media would again ignore the biggest Russian “collusion” story in American political history, while simultaneously promoting endless nonsense about a 2016 collusion that never occurred?

Me neither. They don’t call it fake news for nothing.

Order Howie’s new book, “Kennedy Babylon,” at howiecarrshow.com.

It’s time to abolish the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The G-men have degenerated into nothing more than a racketeering enterprise, a banana republic-style criminal conspiracy of vast proportions.

Now we know that the FBI was plotting a coup against President-elect Trump.

The crooked cops even had a name for their Democrat cabal — the Secret Society. It’s all laid out in black and white, in the post-election texts the FBI neglected to delete as part of their ongoing obstruction of justice.

How many scandals does the FBI get a pass on?

As a society, we’ve eradicated earlier threats to the public order — the American Communist Party and La Cosa Nostra, among others. Is the current police-state incarnation of the FBI any less sinister than either of those two mobs?

The solution is very simple — we have the DEA take over all federal police functions, just like they did with the Whitey Bulger investigation here in Boston because the FBI was too corrupt to be trusted. Maybe the U.S. Marshals could help out, too. They’re a lot better at finding fugitives than Famous But Incompetent.

Abolishing the FBI may sound like a radical solution, but they have metastasized into a clear and present danger to the Republic.

This latest attempted coup is so much worse than Watergate or any of the earlier scandals that have rocked the Bureau.

This Comey-Strzok-Page gang didn’t need no stinkin’ warrants. Or, if they did bother to get them, they made up the evidence they took to the courts — like the dodgy dossier.

And now we find out the FBI is claiming that 50,000 smoking-gun texts between the two crooked lovebirds, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, have disappeared due to a “misconfiguration.”

Do you believe this? Me neither. This is, after all, the FBI. They lie like a rug, always have, always will.

Think about Zip Connolly ­— “decorated” FBI agent now doing life in a Florida prison for a gangland hit in Florida. Or H. Paul Rico, another G-man who died in a prison hospital in Oklahoma after being arrested for yet another organized-crime rubout in Oklahoma. And this is just the Boston office, where gangster Stevie Flemmi told the DEA that he and Whitey Bulger were bribing six — six! —agents.

Boston, the same FBI office where the agents knew that a hood named Teddy Deegan was going to be hit, and by whom. Yet they let it happen and then allowed four innocent men to be framed for the murder in order to protect the serial-killing brother of Flemmi, who after all was paying them all off.

As evil as all this stuff is, it pales in comparison to what it now appears was an attempted coup by the top brass of the FBI.

The “Secret Society,” as the plotters call themselves, is now desperately trying to cover up how they attempted to rig a presidential election on behalf of the most corrupt candidate in American history, Hillary Clinton, using a fake document largely produced by Vladimir Putin’s operatives.

That’s the real Russian collusion — the FBI using Kremlin-generated disinformation that Hillary Clinton paid millions for to violate the civil rights of American citizens.

And now the G-men claim they’ve “lost” the evidence, just like the Deep State “lost” Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 emails and IRS crook Lois Lerner’s hard drive.

It’s time to put the FBI out of business, throw as many of these corrupt G-men into prison as possible, raze the J. Edgar Hoover Office Building in D.C., sow the land with salt, hold an exorcism and turn it into a parking lot.

There is only one way to restore the rule of law and order. The FBI must be abolished.

Order Howie’s new book, Kennedy Babylon, at howiecarrshow.com.

John Forbes Kerry — how can we miss him when he won’t go away?

It’s laughable, this talk of Liveshot wanting to run in 2020, but is anyone really surprised? He still truly believes he was robbed in 2004 by those Diebold voting machines in Ohio. Dammit, He deserved to be president — his initials, after all, are JFK! Just ask him.

So many questions ...

Is this trial balloon real, Mr. Secretary, or is it another one of your “botched jokes”?

Does this mean that Lt. (j.g.) John Kerry is reporting for doody, I mean duty, again?

Is it true that you were you not running for president before you were running for president?

Will you be reuniting the 2004 dream team with John Edwards, or is he too busy with his ambulance chasing and writing child-support checks to his baby mama?

Can I get me a Kerry 2020 bumper sticker here?

Please don’t tell me this means we have to host another wretched national convention in Boston.

Have you paid the excise taxes for your new downsized yacht on Martha’s Vineyard yet?

Will you be flying to Florida in a few weeks to see “Manny Ortez” in spring training?

Are you still “fascinated by rap”?

Have you figured out yet how to meet that 53-year-old widow from Chicopee who won the $758 million Powerball drawing last summer?

Does your upcoming run for president mean that you’re unavailable to play the role of Thurston Howell III in the new movie, “Return to Gilligan’s Island”?

Have you ever been able to remember the year you ran the Boston Marathon?

This wonderful news first appeared in an Israeli newspaper. Supposedly, the Toast of Tehran was telling some Arabs to hang in there because Trump would soon be gone and the Democrats could get back to appeasing bloodthirsty Muslim terrorists in the Mideast again.

But the money quote from Kerry was that “he was seriously considering running for president in 2020. When asked about his advanced age, he said he was not much older than Trump and would not have an age problem.”

How about a charisma problem? Or competence?

Is it a coincidence that this news breaks the same week that all the Beautiful People are jetting into Davos? Kerry watches all those private jets with all those billionaires so terribly concerned about global warming and he thinks — what about me? Why haven’t I been invited to denounce the carbon footprints of all the deplorable Trump voters? Where’s my private jet?

HBO has a new documentary out about the last months of Obama’s reign of error in foreign affairs.

One of the stars is Obama pajama boy Ben Rhodes, a trust-funded aspiring novella writer. Rhodes, who drove a bus for Obama during the 2008 Iowa caucuses, was apparently the real secretary of state. From the National Review: “Rhodes is seen giving orders to Kerry and telling him how many questions he’s allowed to answer — two. Kerry spends much of the film flitting around trying to look useful.”

Actually, that’s how he’s spent the last 74 years — flitting around trying to look useful. So far he hasn’t succeeded.

“On a visit to Greenland,” National Review continues, “he says, ‘This is seeing firsthand things I’ve read about and I think it’ll make me a more urgent advocate.’ ”

By the way, the title of this new documentary is “The Final Year.”

Only, of course, in the case of John Kerry, it never is.

Order Howie’s new book, “Kennedy Babylon,” at howiecarrshow.com.

The hacks at every level of government regard motorists the same way that McDonald’s regards cattle — whenever they get hungry, we’re dinner.

Amid the rush of other news — FBI scandals, coddling of illegal aliens, the Super Bowl, etc. — you’ve probably missed the most recent avalanche of assaults on America’s most oppressed majority, car owners.

Let’s take a look at what happened last week:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is demanding that Congress raise the federal gas tax by 25 cents per gallon to raise $375 billion for pointless road-construction projects that never end, and only make traffic more congested, not less.

The city of Boston is considering charging for neighborhood parking permits that would allow residents to park in spaces that even City Hall concedes don’t exist.

On Beacon Hill, the Legislature last week held a hearing on 97 different transportation bills, all of which would soak the Massachusetts motorist even more — including one that would charge residents for every mile they travel.

Let’s start with the proposed hike in the federal gas tax, because it’s a good example of how these plundering schemes work.

Right now, the economy is on fire. So the Chamber’s argument is this is the right time to soak the people because, finally, after eight years of Obama-era malaise, they finally have a few bucks in their pockets ... so they won’t even notice when we pick their pockets!

Conversely, when the economy is a tailspin — as it was under Obama — the hacks argue that’s the perfect time to raise taxes. They’ll tell you it’s because revenues are down because everyone’s too broke to travel or ship goods and that more gas-tax revenue translates to a “stimulus” for the moribund economy by giving money to road contractors, i.e., Chamber of Commerce types and the hack trade unions, i.e., Democrat voters.

To sum up: It’s always the perfect moment to raise gas taxes.

Next, the crackpot proposal to charge for resident parking stickers in the city of Boston. Here’s all you need to know: in the North End, there are 4,000 parking permits, and 1,600 parking spaces. That undisputed statistic leads me to believe that the current charge for a permit — zero — accurately reflects the worth of said permit, which is nothing. End of argument.

Finally, we arrive at the State House, where for the second time in three months the hacks are considering legislation to impose yet more tolls on state roads. That bill is S. 1987, and as Chip Faulkner of Citizens for Limited Taxation said, “It’s like Groundhog Day,” the way the General Court keeps trying to mug motorists.

The solons last week also took up another bill that keeps reappearing like a bad penny — this year it’s called H. 1828, which would establish a Pabst-blue-ribbon commission to study “a user fee that is based on the number of miles traveled on roads in this state by motor vehicles.”

Gee, I wonder what this “task force” of extinguished payroll patriots will recommend. What a great idea, letting the very ethical scandal-free commonwealth of Massachusetts track every driver’s movements. What could possibly go wrong? But not to worry — this 1984-style shakedown includes provisions to “ensure drivers’ privacy.”

Of course it does. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

But dammit, the hacks need more money for our “crumbling infrastructure.” It’s not enough what they already grab — sales tax on car sales, municipal excise taxes, fees to the Registry for registration and drivers’ licenses, inspection fees, tolls, gas taxes (up three cents per gallon in 2013) etc., etc.

The Reason Foundation compiles an annual Highway Report on road costs in all 50 states. These numbers are truly astonishing, not to mention appalling.

For maintenance disbursements, the national average is $25,996 per mile. In Massachusetts, the hacks spend $78,313 per mile.

Then there’s the cost of “administration” — the hackerama, in other words. Nationally, the average hack cost is $10,051 per mile. In Massachusetts it’s $74,924.

Faulkner from the CLT read off these numbers (again) to the Legislature’s Transportation Committee at the hearing last week.

“The most irritating aspect of these revelations,” he said, was that “the committee didn’t appear to be disturbed by these statistics whatsoever, or even interested.”

These particular highway robberies won’t go anywhere — not immediately, anyway. You see, this year the hacks on the hill have their eyes on an even bigger heist — the referendum to almost double the state income tax, but only on “millionaires.” This attempt to rob the taxpayers (all of whom will, in short order, be defined as “millionaires”) has been rejected at the ballot box five different times in the past 50 years.

But now the hackerama has concluded that the electorate has been sufficiently dumbed down to vote to beggar themselves for the benefit of the nonworking classes.

This is why the hacks feel no need to even defend themselves and their current depredations, let alone this long-dreamed-of Crime of the Century, the graduated income tax. They think we’re too stupid to figure out what’s going on, that the average voter is so dumb that all he cares about is the Super Bowl.

The sad thing is, the hacks may be right.

Order Howie’s new book, Kennedy Babylon, at howiecarr show.com.

Now that the State of the Union address is over, can we get back to the nation’s really pressing business — releasing the memo about corruption in the FBI and Justice Department?

I mean, the SOTU was fine, mostly for what it wasn’t — namely, an endless string of Obama vacuities: “Folks … fossil fuels … that’s not who we are … the planet … let me be clear … common sense gun control … workplace violence … we may never know the motives … .”

And what about those responses — JoJoJo Kennedy, Maxine Waters, Uncle Bernie as well as someone from the “Working Families Party,” 98 percent of whose members are nonworking, I guarantee.

But mostly, I missed the incarcerated Democratic congressman response on the JBN — the Jailbird Network. It must have been because DNC chairman Tom Perez just couldn’t decide among all the party’s statesman emerti currently in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons — Corrine Brown (67315-018), Chaka Fattah (72340-066), Anthony Weiner (79112-054) or William Jefferson (72121-083). Oh, that’s right, Jefferson was paroled Dec. 20.

But now, let’s release the FISA memo, Mr. President. The Deep State is in pure panic mode. This investigation of the brooming of the Clinton email espionage probe as well as the dodgy dossier already resembles what happens when you’re in a dark kitchen on a summer night and you suddenly turn on the lights — watch all those cockroaches scatter in every direction.

This four-page memo outlining the banana republic police state tactics of the Obama administration is the work of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) or, as Nancy Pelosi called him yesterday, “Dennis Nunes.”

The Botox queen was so hysterical on CNN that she even turned on her fellow traveler, Chris “Fredo” Cuomo, hissing at him, “With all due respect, you really don’t know what you’re talking about right now.”

The fact that all these Democrats and their crooked-cop friends in the FBI are about to be busted is driving them into ever higher fevers of distemper.

Trump Derangement Syndrome will do that to you.

On MSNBC yesterday, John Heilemann played Joe McCarthy to Nunes’ Alger Hiss:

“Is it possible,” Heilemann screeched, “that we actually have a Russian agent running the Intel committee on the Republican side?”

Meanwhile, the memo is still under wraps for a few more hours. And it was reported yesterday that the just-ousted FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is being investigated because he “appeared not to act for about three weeks” on the probe of the perv emails of one Carlos Danger.

According to The Washington Post, the inspector general of the Justice Department is wondering why McCabe, a Bureau desk jockey and Hillary fanboy, was slow-walking the probe. You may recall, McCabe’s wife received $700,000 in cash from Clinton entities when she was running for the state Senate in Virginia.

So now the IG is trying to figure out why McCabe did nothing about the perv emails that would have embarrassed the woman whose friends gave his wife $700,000. Memo to the IG: McCabe had 700,000 reasons.

One last point: McCabe is apparently lawyering up. I can’t wait until the DEA or the marshals start perp-walking these bent G-men out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in handcuffs.

Order Howie’s new book, Kennedy Babylon, at howiecarrshow.com.

By the squalid standards of his family, JoJoJo Kennedy had a successful evening in Fall River this week.

I mean, not one young woman was raped, drowned, crippled or beaten to death with a golf club. No one tried to play footsie with Adolf Hitler, crashed an airplane, died of a drug overdose, told a Barnstable cop that she was drunk, screamed “Do you know who I am?!?” or began slamming his head into a wall (Uncle Max, this means you).

Many wiseguys, of course, have made sport of U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III, especially that strange whatever-it-was going on with his lips, the thin line of drool. Was it really caused by Chapstick, or, as one internet wag asked, Chappaquiddick-stick?

To paraphrase his great-uncle JFK back in 1961:

“Ask not what your country can drool for you, ask what you can drool for your country.”

Some have also wondered about the background his handlers selected for his SOTU response — specifically, a black vehicle with its hood up. I understand that after Chappaquiddick the Kennedys made sure that Fat Boy’s ’67 Oldsmobile Delmont went straight to the compactor, lest it go on tour for the next half century like the Bonnie and Clyde death car.

But still, was that black Mustang really the look a Kennedy needed for the family’s biggest shot on national TV since Ted made his statement from Hyannisport denying “suspicions of immoral conduct” and that he had been “under the influence of liquor” while driving off the Dike Bridge with a drunk girl who wasn’t wearing underwear.

Actually, I feel a little sorry for JoJoJo. He’s a white heterosexual Irish Catholic — if it weren’t for his last name, his fellow Democrats would have a bounty on him. (And if you don’t believe me, just ask Stevie Lynch, Steve Murphy or Dan Conley.)

He’s not a bad kid, either. His IQ is above 100 and he’s not a hot-tempered moron like his old man. But he is stuck inside with the modern Democrat party.

Let’s consider some of his Chappaquiddick-stick speech:

“Like many American hometowns, Fall River has faced its share of storms.”

Like Lizzie Borden’s ax, with which she gave her father 40 whacks, or Chris Herren’s heroin problem, or, more recently, the ongoing corruption probe at City Hall …

“We hear the voices of Americans who feel forgotten and forsaken.”

Paging Mary Jo Kopechne.

“We see an economy that makes stocks soar, investor portfolios bulge and corporate profits climb, but fails to give workers their fair share of the reward.”

As Nancy Pelosi says, that extra money in deplorable Americans’ paychecks is just crumbs. Think how embarrassed his great-uncle JFK would be to read JoJoJo’s words, considering the president’s famous description of his own 1962 tax cut: “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

“A Justice Department rolling back civil rights by the day.”

Does JoJoJo know who allowed J. Edgar Hoover of the always corrupt FBI to bug Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? That was his grandfather, Robert F. Kennedy.

It’s always hard, delivering the SOTU response. It’s harder if you’re stupid, or a Kennedy, or both.

For more on the Kennedys’ sordid century in the public eye, order Howie’s new book, “Kennedy Babylon,” at howiecarrshow.com.

In October 2016, Barack Obama said “no serious person” would suggest it was possible to rig an American election.

Turns out, for once Barry was telling the truth, but it wasn’t from lack of trying — not just by his own administration, but also by Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, the crooked FBI and, last but not least, the Russians, who sold the disinformation the Clinton Crime Family used to try to fix the election.

Forget dirty tricks — this was an attempted coup, as the House Intelligence Committee memo makes clear. These banana- republic thugs were trying to overthrow a duly elected president of the United States.

The Daily Mail sums it up pretty well: “FBI Memo reveals James Comey used dodgy ‘golden showers’ dossier to get Trump team surveillance warrant even though top officials KNEW it was paid for by Hillary and British spy who wrote it was desperate to keep him out of office.”

In case you’ve forgotten, Comey told a Congressional committee last year that the fake dossier was “salacious, unverified.”

But he used it anyway, over and over and over again. His fired No. 2 corrupt G-man, Andrew McCabe, whose wife took $700,000 from Clinton cut-outs in 2015, said under oath that the fake dossier was the only “evidence” the crooked feds had to get court approval to surveil Trump’s campaign.

Without the fake dossier, there is no Russian collusion or investigation.

And now we know that the dossier is a figment of the imagination of a deranged British troll named Christopher Steele. It was Steele who told a corrupt deputy attorney general that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.”

As the House memo says, “An independent unit within FBI assessed Steele’s reporting as only minimally corroborated.”

Translation: very fake news.

How can any serious person blame Trump for being angry about this? The Democrats and the crooked cops were trying to railroad him, still are as a matter of fact. But the paid Democrat operatives in the alt-left media compare Trump to Nixon.

Nixon? If you want to make a real analogy to Watergate and 1972, Hillary would actually be Nixon, and Trump would be McGovern. Like McGovern, Trump was the victim of a conspiracy, only it was so much more than a “third-rate burglary.”

The only difference is Nixon didn’t even need that black-bag job on the DNC headquarters. He won 49 states.

Hillary, on the other hand, despite having the covert support of both the U.S. and Russian governments, still lost in an Electoral College wipeout.

As corrupt as the Democrats were, they were even more incompetent.

But their only regret is that their conspiracy failed. And now that they’re busted, they can’t even keep their talking points straight.

Half of the talking-head hacks say it’s “demagoguery or democracy.” The other half of the amen chorus on CNN dismisses the Intel Committee report as a “nothing burger.”

The memo can’t be both, but apparently it is.

Order Howie’s book, “Kennedy Babylon,” at howiecarrshow.com.

The bad news for U.S. Rep. Mike Capuano and Secretary of State Bill Galvin is that they have primary opponents in their re-election bids this year.

The good news is their opponents are Boston city councilors, which means they have approximately three chances of defeating the two sixty-something incumbents:

Slim, fat and none.

The Commonwealth of Virginia used to be called “the Mother of Presidents.” The Boston City Council is the mother of losers. Oh sure, your average city councilor — and at best, they’re average — can still be elected to one of those forgotten-but-not-gone county posts, like register of probate, or deeds, or clerk of courts.

But serious political office? Forget about it.

Don’t get me wrong, being a city councilor is not a bad gig. You get $200,000 for “staff,” and the salary, at least until the next pay raise, is $99,500. Think about that — just under $100,000. You might say Boston city councilors are “on sale.” Or is it for sale?

Actually, though, there’s really nothing to buy from them. The Boston City Council has zero power. Councilors used to meet once a week, on Wednesdays, but now I think it may be down to every other week. I guess there aren’t as many Bostonians turning 100, so they don’t have to take those tough votes on which centenarians get congratulations, as well as the traditional commemorative Beanpot.

To more fully understand the council’s utter irrelevance, let’s consider the higher elective office that city councilors traditionally aspire to — mayor of Boston. Here is an alphabetical list of people who were Boston city councilors at one time or another who have run for mayor since 1967:

Felix Arroyo, Tom Atkins, Bruce Bolling, John Connolly, Rob Consalvo, Peggy Davis-Mullen, Larry DiCara, Baby Flats Flaherty, Ray Flynn, Maura Hennigan, Peter Hines, Barry Hynes, Chris Iannella, Tito Jackson, Freddy Langone, Tom Menino, Dapper O’Neil, Mickey Roache, Michael Ross, Rosario “Sister Sunshine” Salerno, John Saltonstall, John Sears, Joe Tierney, Joe Timilty, Charles Yancey and Sam Yoon.

That’s 26, and for those of you keeping score at home, exactly two of them — Flynn and Menino — ever became mayor. And only Raybo won the election while serving on the City Council.

As Barney Frank used to say, “Only two things can happen if you run for Boston City Council, and both of them are bad. Number one, you might lose. Number two, you might win.”

Actually, there are good things about the job, other than the fact that the statesmen’s pay is about to go up yet again, to $103,000. The late Chris Iannella once pulled aside a new member of the body and asked him if he knew the best part of being on the Boston City Council.

“The parking spaces,” Chris whispered to him.

By the way, Chris’ son Richie was also a city councilor, and he eventually moved up, or sideways, into the office of register of probate. He succeeded ex-Councilor Jim Connolly, and was in turn succeeded by ex-Councilor Felix Arroyo, father of another bust-out councilor named Felix Arroyo.

These invisible county posts are the only kind of job a city councilor can realistically expect to ascend to, and so they’re passed down among the council’s also-rans. Maura Hennigan is the clerk of courts, succeeding another ex-councilor, John Nucci. In addition to running unsuccessfully for mayor, Maura also failed in a bid for state auditor, as did ex-Councilor Charles Yancey, yet another failed mayoral candidate.

Two city councilors ran for High Sheriff — Steve Murphy and Dapper O’Neil. They both lost. Two unsuccessfully tried to become state treasurer — Murphy, again, twice, in 2002 and 2010, and Larry DiCara in 1978.

Poor Larry, he had to wait five years to lose his next attempt to move up, to mayor.

As for the other failed treasurer candidate from the council, Steve Murphy, in 2016 he finally got himself one of those died-and-gone-to-heaven county sinecures, register of deeds, succeeding ex-Councilor Mickey Roache.

Which brings us to the latest two city councilors improbably trying to move up — Ayanna Pressley running for Congress, and Josh Zakim for secretary of state.

I’m sure Capuano and Galvin are grateful for their opponents. At a time when the Democratic party is returning to its roots, either would be vulnerable to an ambitious young pol in a protected class who holds an elective office with some actual responsibility and authority.

Is it too late for some local town tree warden or library trustee to pull papers? They’d be taken a lot more seriously than any member of the Boston City Council.

Order Howie’s book“Kennedy Babylon” at howiecarrshow.com.

The only way to pry disgraced ex-Senate president Stanley Rosenberg out of the State House will be with the Jaws of Life.

Have you seen all these newspaper editorials and politicians demanding — nay, thundering — that the scandalous solon must step aside and … retire?

How can Rosenberg retire when he’s already been retired since 1980, when he got his first hack job at the State House.

At age 68, Rosenberg has 38 years of gainful unemployment in. Why should he check into a retirement home, when he’s already in one — it’s called the Legislature.

Think about it. His replacement, the “acting” Senate president, is Harriette Chandler, age 80. House Speaker Robert DeLeo, the unindicted co-conspirator, turns 68 next month. DeLeo’s majority leader, Ron Mariano, is 71. The State House has become Marian Manor West.

Consider how long it’s been since Pee Wee Herman’s better half had a real job: Jimmy Carter was president, Ed King was governor, Kevin White was mayor, Tip O’Neill was the congressman. That’s how long Stanley Rosenberg has had his snout buried in the public trough. And you think someone like that is going to quit out of a sense of shame?

This is the same sticky-fingered bandito who engineered last year’s mega-heist of the taxpayers, $18 million a year in extra cash for the hackerama, just to give himself — and down the road, his 31-year-old spouse — a big fat kiss in the mail.

The other aspect to this latest sordid State House tale is Sen. Sal DiDomenico, D-Everett. Like Brutus, Sal has a lean and hungry look, and he ain’t waiting for no Ides of March either. He’s already given his pal Stan two in the hat — leave the gun, Sal, take the cannoli.

Here’s my advice for everybody on Beacon Hill: Don’t stand too close to DiDomenico, unless you want to get a rocket in your pocket.

Consider DiDomenico’s career. He starts out as an aide to Sen. Anthony Galluccio of Cambridge. Galluccio went down when he was under house arrest for OUI and failed a Breathalyzer — blamed it on his toothpaste, remember?

DiDomenico runs in a special to replace Galluccio and defeats Tim Flaherty, son of convicted felon Speaker Good Time Charlie Flaherty. After losing this very close primary race to DiDomenico, young Flaherty proceeds to go down on a witness-tampering rap — which he pleaded down to “disrupting a state court proceeding.”

DiDomenico was able to defeat Flaherty because of a monster turnout in his hometown of Everett. The biggest hack in Everett back then was one Stat Smith, the state rep. Shortly after DiDomenico’s election, Stat does a Dixie on a federal voter-fraud rap — go figure! Did four months in Club Fed — Bureau of Prisons #94906-038.

After Stat went to prison, he was replaced on Beacon Hill by another local Everett hack named Wayne Matew­sky. He didn’t last long either, going down in a torrent of headlines about unpaid debts and screaming obscenities at a restaurant table next to a 7-year-old having a birthday party. And now a bus runs over DiDomenico’s “leader,” Stanley Rosenberg. What happens twice happens thrice happens … .

Order Howie’s book, Kennedy Babylon, at ­howiecarrshow.com.

Imagine if a college professor ever said of Barack Obama: “I wouldn’t mind seeing him dead.”

It would be the end of the egghead’s career, tenure or no tenure.

Instead, consider the case of the ancient Barry Bluestone, a longtime UMass Boston “economist” now passing his dotage at something called, believe it or not, the Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy.

You can’t make this stuff up. It’s at Northeastern University. They teach you how to pass the time when you’re on a broken-down Green Line train.

At 73, Barry Bluestone is a hack’s hack. He gives money to Hillary Clinton and JoJoJo Kennedy. And this is what he said about President Trump at a public lecture last week:

“Sometimes I want to just see him impeached other times, quite honestly — I hope there are no FBI agents here — I wouldn’t mind seeing him dead.”

Talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome.

What does Bluestone have to be blue about? He works about as often as Santa Claus, but he thinks he’s a working-class hero. How much do you want to bet he’s got a blue sign in his front yard that says “Hate Has No Home Here.”

Unless he’s talking about the president of the United States.

Not only is Bluestone a deranged peddler of hate speech, he’s an idiot, worrying about the FBI. Doesn’t he know that until quite recently, the top frauds in the corrupt FBI were covertly trying to destroy Trump with Russian agitprop paid for by Hillary Clinton? Nah, he probably has no clue.

Here’s the first old story I turned up with his name in it, from the days when another of his heroes, Deval Patrick, was driving Massachusetts into the ground:

“Economists to back bid by Patrick to raise tax.”

It was the state income tax, but hell, it could have been any tax. I found him in another clip, from 1997, on my own list of overpaid state hacks. He was making $103,785 — in 1997!

As Oscar Wilde used to say, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”

And those who can’t teach, teach at UMass. And now, apparently, at Northeastern.

Here’s another story about the doctor, from 2006, headlined “Patrick may tap top players for development.”

Two of the “top players” — Bluestone and then-Sen. Brian “Multiple Choice” Joyce, now indicted on federal bribery and money-laundering charges.

Speaking of the G-men, do you think the Secret Service will paying Bluestone a visit? Nahhh, in modern academia, left-wing hate speech is a resume-enhancer. Actually, wishing ill of Trump is a resume-enhancer in a lot of places, including the FBI, where one of the top agents describes Trump voters as “ignorant hill­billies.”

Here’s another headline from yesterday: “Deadspin Contributor Thinks College Conservative Students Should Be ‘Held Under Water Until They Stop Breathing.’ ”

Asked about his vile hate speech, Bluestone sniffed merely that he “strongly opposes” assassination of the president.

If you want to see how unhinged the non-working classes have become, check out the postings on the Globe message board:

“Kudos to professor Bluestone for saying out loud what a growing number of Americans, let alone people across the planet, fervently wish … It is at least comforting to know that the legal punishments for impeachment and conviction for high treason include the death penalty.”

The hate is everywhere on the left.

Order Howie’s book, Kennedy Babylon, at ­howiecarrshow.com.

What do you call a formerly starving-to-death lawyer?

“Judge.”

So many attorneys at law, so few billable hours. Which is why so many of the local bar are endlessly elbowing one another to get those black robes — not to mention the $172,000 salary for 35 weeks of “work” per year, behind which comes the pension and the pretty much free health care.

And don’t forget, the otherwise-unemployable hack judges of Massachusetts have gotten three $6,250 pay raises in the last year, with another one slated to kick in July 1.

So today, let’s consider one hack’s 12-year quest for a judgeship, which ended recently with his confirmation to early retirement on the probate court.

C’mon down, Paul Sushchyk.

For Paul, the fifth time was the charm.

Not that his academic credentials weren’t stellar, you understand: Mount Wachusett Community College, Westfield State and Western New England College School of Law. Wow!

In 2005, at age 50, Sushchyk made his first bid for early retirement — he went for the probate court. In a no-doubt-unrelated development, he also wrote a $500 check that year to the man who was appointing judges back then — Willard Mitt Romney.

Romney didn’t seek re-election, so his lieutenant governor, Muffy Healey, jumped into the fight. Sushchyk was Johnny on the spot — $500. He threw in another $210 for her running mate, Reed Hillman.

Sadly for Sushchyk, Muffy muffed her chance, and Deval Patrick became governor. Sushchyk waited until 2009 before he applied for early retirement again. The Judicial Nominating Commission didn’t recommend him.

Deval was re-elected in 2010, so Sushchyk did what every other hack in Worcester was doing back then — he gave $50 to soon-to-be-disgraced Lt. Gov. Tim “Crash” Murray.

After having done the right thing by the ruling Democrats, Sushchyk gave it another shot in 2014. He applied again for the probate court. Once more, he was nixed by the JNC.

But then Charlie “Tall Deval” Baker got elected, and Sushchyk figured he was back in business, or actually, out of business, and into some robes. No heavy lifting, that’s what being a Massachusetts state judge is all about. Actually, no lifting, period.

In 2016, Sushchyk applied for a judgeship for the fourth time — this time he went for the Superior Court. Again, the JNC nixed his bid.

But on May 2, 2016, two very, very significant events happened in the extinguished career of Paul Sushchyk.

Number one, he wrote a $500 check to Tall Deval.

Number two, he wrote a $500 check to Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, the patron saint of the Worcester County hacker­ama, the Joan of Arc of the 508 area code.

Ding ding ding ding! On Dec. 1, 2016, he applied for a vacancy on ... the Westboro District Court.

At this point, everything gets a little hazy. Even though Sushchyk applied for a district court judgeship, he was nominated for his first choice, the probate court. I emailed him last week, seeking clarification, but I received no response.

In my email, I told him I was writing a how-to column for hungry hacks (although I didn’t quite put it that way), and that I was wondering if he thought his twin $500 donations in 2016 had greased the skids for his long-sought journey to the public trough. I pointed out how his tenacity in seeking to get a “job” in the judiciary might prove a good example for other wannabe payroll Charlies.

“Your experience seems quite illustrative,” I emailed him Wednesday, “which is why I’m seeking your input.”

But he did not respond. The judge crossed the river into the paradise of gainful unemployment, and then blew up the bridge behind him before any other starving barristers could follow him into the promised land of no work.

So I decided to ask the governor if those $500 donations had turned the tide after the first four unsuccessful attempts. Tall Deval’s office responded:

“The administration was pleased to nominate Paul Sushchyk, who was unanimously approved by the Governor’s Council for the probate court.”

In case you were wondering, in total Paul Sushchyk spent $4,175 on political contributions before he got his lifetime $170,000-a-year sinecure. On July 1, he’ll get that money back — and then some — when the judges grab their fourth $6,250 pay raise in 18 months.

Moral of story: In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

Order Howie’s book“Kennedy Babylon” at howiecarrshow.com.

Jack Hynes was one of the classiest guys I ever worked with.

Jack, who died Monday at age 88, was an old-school gentleman, always understated, never losing his cool.

After he retired, it was always great to see Jack down in Chatham. Whenever I had a book signing at the Yellow Umbrella on Main Street, he’d drop by and we’d catch up on current events. I called him a couple of times recently on his cellphone, but he never picked up. I should have tried harder.

Jack was one of the last living links to several threads of Massachusetts history, one of which was Chappaquiddick. But first let me tell you my most memorable conversation with Jack Hynes.

It must have been 30 years ago. He was the anchor at the old Channel 56 on Morrissey Boulevard, and I was a part-time reporter/commentator. To get to Channel 56 from the old Herald, I had to drive by Whitey Bulger’s South Boston Liquor Mart.

In the warmer months, Whitey and his fellow serial killer, Stevie Flemmi, would hold court out on the sidewalk next to the traffic rotary, so that they couldn’t be bugged.

Anyway, Whitey knew who I was, and he also recognized my car, so whenever I drove through the rotary, he’d always fix me with a long, baleful glare. It was not pleasant, but what could I do? He had police protection and I didn’t.

Needless to say, I never set foot inside the Liquor Mart. If I wanted a road beer after work, I would cut across Preble Street to Andrew Square.

Anyway, one night I am in the Channel 56 newsroom editing my tape package, and Jack comes up to me and says in his usual mild, soft-spoken way:

“Howie, I stopped by the Liquor Mart last night to buy a bottle of wine.”

Now he had my complete attention. He said he’d gone up to the counter to pay, and some thug he didn’t recognize had struck up a conversation.

“Jack,” the plug ugly said, “how come Howie never comes in here?” Jack shrugged, because he was from the old “I-didn’t-see-you-you-didn’t-see-me” school of dummying up.

“Well, listen, Jack,” the guy told him, “you tell Howie, if he ever comes in, we got a fresh dumpster out back just waiting for him. It’ll be another Robin Benedict.”

Robin Benedict was the Combat Zone hooker murdered by her Tufts professor boyfriend. He dismembered her body and tossed it into a dumpster. Her remains were never found.

I thanked Jack for the information. Both of us knew there was nothing we could do. It just showed how brazen the Bulger mob was — one of Whitey’s thugs felt he could casually tell a major Boston media figure, the son of a former mayor no less, that the brother of the state Senate president wouldn’t be averse to murdering another high-profile semi-civilian, namely me.

Those were the good old days all right.

Jack’s connection to Chappaquiddick was through his first TV employer, Channel 5. After Ted Kennedy pleaded guilty to reduced charges the Friday after he killed Mary Jo Kopechne, the Kennedys needed a TV feed for Teddy’s half-assed mea culpa from Hyannis Port. They wanted Channel 5 to handle it because the station GM, Hal Clancy, was an old Joe Kennedy hand.

They also preferred Channel 5 because the anchor would be … Jack Hynes, whose father, John B. Hynes, had in the 1949 mayor’s fight finally eliminated that longtime political thorn in the side of the Kennedy family, James Michael Curley. I think Teddy’s handlers figured he might be slightly less panicked if he were sharing the set with the son of the man who had avenged his beloved grandfather, Honey Fitz.

So Jack Hynes was in Hyannis Port that evening, introducing Ted on national television. Fat Boy read his prepared statement, after which he turned from the first Channel 5 camera to the second one. He then began speaking, supposedly extemporaneously, to the people of Massachusetts, humbly seeking our advice and counsel.

“But actually,” Jack Hynes said, “Teddy had his cousin Joe Gargan beside the second camera, holding cue cards with the entire second statement blocked out on them. Teddy no more ad-libbed his second ‘personal’ statement than he did the first.”

Why are we not surprised?

Anyway, Joe Gargan passed on in December, and now Jack Hynes, too, is gone.

But Jack, I’m thinking of you today, just as I used to think of you every night after I finished my shift at Channel 56 and headed down Preble Street to Andrew Square. Let me just say one final time, Jack, thanks for the heads-up.

Order Howie’s new book, Kennedy Babylon, at howiecarrshow.com.

Is that all there is?

Peggy Lee summed up yesterday’s indictment way back when in her song, and then added:

“If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing.”

Thirteen Russians indicted, and not a single Boris Badenov or Natasha among them. No collusion, no effect on the election, and the only “real U.S. persons” the no-goodniks (to use Boris’ word) interacted with were “unwitting.”

Hillary Clinton described the Russian meddling in the 2016 election as another 9/11. Comrade Chris Matthews, among many others, agreed. Some clown from the New York Times said it was worse than 9/11 and Pearl Harbor.

Let’s look at some of the Russkie terror attacks. From page 7:

“On or about May 29, 2016, Defendants… arranged for a real U.S. person to stand in front of the White House in the District of Columbia under false pretenses to hold a sign that read ‘Happy 55th Birthday Dear Boss.’ ”

Next, class, please turn to page 23:

“Defendants and their co-conspirators asked one U.S. person to build a cage on a flatbed truck and another U.S. person to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform.”

This is what the FBI has been working on for more than a year now instead of running down multiple solid tips on the Florida shooter Nikolas Cruz. First things first, comrades. What’s next for the intrepid G-men, putting out a BOLO on “moose and squirrel?”

I’m surprised that all the Clinton campaign contributors who work for the special persecutor, er, prosecutor, are so angry about these particular aliens. After all, they had only “traveled to the United States under false pretenses” and “also used, possessed, and transferred, without lawful authority, the social security numbers and dates of birth of real U.S. persons without those persons’ knowledge or consent.”

As the president triumphantly noted, the no-goodniks began their perfidious treachery in 2014, when everyone assumed that any rumblings of a potential Trump candidacy were nothing more than a ploy by Trump to extract a raise from NBC before the next season of “The Apprentice.”

And it must have galled Robert Mueller’s dirty tricksters to have to admit, on page 6, that the ring operated with “the stated goal of ‘spread(ing) distrust towards the candidates and the political system and the political system in general.”

Key phrase: in general.

One of Boris and Natasha’s last internet postings before the election: “Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it’s not a wasted vote.”

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, even a long-since discredited story. That’s the motto of the very-fake-news media. Here’s a sample of yesterday’s headlines, and any resemblance to the facts contained in the actual indictment is purely coincidental:

CNBC: “Russians conducted ‘information warfare’ against US during election to help Donald Trump win.”

But here’s the best, from Mother Jones: “Mueller’s Latest Indictment Shows Trump Has Helped Putin Cover Up a Crime.”

And naturally every story last night contained the words that so soothe the unhinged moonbats: “The investigation continues….”

As does the search for the Fountain of Youth, D.B. Cooper, Sasquatch, unicorns and the Loch Ness monster.

By the way, even after the election was over, Boris and Natasha didn’t give up. Four days after the vote, they organized two dueling rallies in New York. One was a pro-Trump rally, the other, larger one was called “Trump is NOT my president.”

Time to close with some more Peggy Lee. Truly, this should be the theme song of the Mueller “probe.” As we drop the needle back on the record, 12-year-old Peggy’s father is taking her to see the Greatest Show on Earth:

“I had the feeling that something was missing/I don’t know what, but when it was over/I said to myself, ‘Is that all there is to a circus?’ ”

The answer, Peggy, is yes. Or should I say, “Da?”

Order Howie’s new book “Kennedy Babylon” at howiecarrshow.com.

There’s a new hackerama in town — the Cannabis Control Commission.

The Weed Commission, for short.

Their offices are at 101 Federal Street, on the 13th floor — high above the city, in other words. It’s off to a great start — nine or 10 employees that I counted on the state comptroller’s great new website, seven of them making over $121,142 a year.

And one of those is a former state senator, Jennifer Flanagan. And when I called the Weed Commission yesterday looking for info, guess who picked up the phone — Dot Joyce, who used to work at City Hall for the late Mumbles Menino. She’s a consultant.

The Weed Commission’s budget for the last 10 months of this fiscal year is $7.5 million. Eventually they’re supposed to get up to 38 hacks, I mean employees.

Whenever a new agency is started, it’s like a gold rush — for hacks. Maybe more than a gold rush — it’s a stampede.

Consider the Mass. Gaming Commission. You know, that stellar group of sleuths who couldn’t figure out that casino mogul Steve Wynn had been a bad actor since the Gerald Ford administration. When the story first broke (in a newspaper, naturally, not a government report), it seemed absurd that not a single one of the 27 payroll Charlies on the MGC making over $100,000 a year had a clue what was going on.

But it turned out to be even worse than that — the MGC spent $4.1 million on an outside investigation (I guess the $156,000-a-year security chief wasn’t up to the task).

In other words, the Mass. Gaming Commission leaves no stone unturned — except the one Steve Wynn is hiding under.

And now we have this year’s new model of the Mass. Gaming Commission — the Weed Commission.

You see, the hackerama needs a new outlet for up-and-coming hacks every year or so. Some of the state’s traditional hack hiring halls have been severely diminished. There are no more Mass Pike toll takers, for example. The Probation Department, a longtime favorite dumping ground for gal pals, nieces and nephews, was devastated by that federal grand jury.

As for Massport, since 9/11, it’s become harder to use Logan Airport as a dumping ground for the dregs of society — not impossible, but harder.

Which brings us to the Weed Commission. They are on a hiring binge.

The Weed Commission just this week put up a new website, mass-cannabis-control.com. Many, many good jobs at good wages are out there.

Consider the opening for “chief people officer.” They’re looking for a people person would be my guess. The chief people officer will “establish comprehensive and inclusive plans to recruit, interview and hire employees.”

At these agencies, the chief people officer is equipped with a dog whistle, only it’s not dogs that can hear it, it’s hacks. The CPO blows on the whistle, and every coat holder and payroll Charlie in Massachusetts comes running.

How about “director of government affairs,” which will pay between $70,000 and $80,000. That job entails “strengthening relationships with local, state, regional and federal officials — especially those who represent communities of disproportionate impact.”

How best to do that? By giving jobs (as opposed to work) to their worthless offspring, cronies and campaign volunteers.

If you actually work for a living, you may be unfamiliar with that phrase, “communities of disproportionate impact.” That means the neighborhoods with their hands out — you know the ones I’m talking about. The squeaky wheel gets the grease … and the six-figure hack jobs.

How would you like to be the “director of research” for between $90,000 and $100,000? He will be “overseeing the Commission’s ambitious and robust exploratory agenda.”

Exploratory agenda. That means junkets. Lots and lots of junkets. The Mass. Gaming Commission has Vegas, but the Weed Commission can go anywhere — Panama Red, Acapulco Gold, etc.

The Weed Commission — be there, or … keep working for a living. It’s your choice. Let the stampede begin.

Buy Howie’s book “Kennedy Babylon” at howiecarrshow.com.

Althea Garrison has lost so many political races in Boston over the last 37 years that she can’t even remember them all.

But now her luck may finally be changing. If Boston City Councilor Michael “Baby Flats” Flaherty is elected district attorney, as appears likely, he will resign from his $100,000-a-year City Hall sinecure. And the fifth-place finisher from last year’s election, Althea Garrison, will succeed him on the Council.

You’re pretty damn lucky, I told her Wednesday night. Aren’t you, Althea?

“After all these years,” she replied, “don’t you think it’s about time I had a little luck?”

Althea Garrison supports the Second Amendment, vociferously. She voted for Donald Trump. In 2016, when she was working for the state government, she had a picture above her workplace of Dr. Ben Carson. In other words, at City Hall she won’t just be one of the girls.

Her best shot is taking Flaherty’s seat, but she’s got other options for moving up as well. Another councilor, Ayanna Pressley, is running for Congress, and if she defeats Rep. Mike Capuano, Althea fills that open seat on the Council. Finally, Althea has filed for the special state Senate election that Linda Dorcena Forry just vacated, running as an independent.

I asked Althea to assess the odds that she’ll be in some political office by next year, if not sooner.

“About 87 percent,” she said.

Althea has spent a very long time preparing for her close-up. She first ran for the Council in 1981, when there were only nine members, all at-large. She was vying against, among others, Dapper O’Neil, Freddy Langone, Pat McDonough, Bruce Bolling, Joe Tierney, Jimmy Kelly and Chris Iannella, all of whom are now dead.

But Althea, at age 77, may be about to begin her rookie year on the Council. She’s the sole survivor.

For the record, Althea Garrison has one “w” on her permanent record. In 1992, she was running for state rep in Dorchester, as a Republican. The incumbent Democrat solon, one Nelson Merced, somehow messed up his nomination papers and was knocked off the ballot.

Althea got to run unopposed — always the best way to run! Alas, two years later, in the overwhelmingly Democrat district, she was ousted by Democrat Charlotte Golar Richie. And since then, it’s been one thing after another for Althea, one losing thing after another that is. The online city records only go back as far as 2005, so let’s look at her races.

In 2005, she ran at large and finished ninth. Then she decided to take on district councilor Charles Yancey — she finished third in 2007, 2009 and 2011. She ran at large again in 2013 and lost.

The four top finishers are elected to the Council. Last year Michelle Wu topped the ticket with 65,040 votes. Annissa Essaibi George got the final slot, finishing fourth with 45,564, barely edging Althea, who got 18,253 votes.

After speaking with Althea for a few minutes, I felt I had to ask her one important question.

“Althea,” I said, “did you ever go by another name?”

“Let’s not go there, please!” she said, and that’s OK by me. I’m not going there.

Meanwhile, Boston politics has a lot of moving parts right now. District Attorney Dan Conley is retiring, and I think we can all figure out why. He’s 59, and he wants to become a judge quickly, so he can get in his 10 years to max out his judicial pension before mandatory retirement at age 70.

And, in case you didn’t know, in addition to that sweet judicial pension, Conley will also be able to grab his monthly DA kiss in the mail, which I’m pretty sure he’s already fully vested in, being in the law enforcement Class 4. (Thanks, Bill Delahunt!)

Gov. Charlie Baker owes Baby Flats, who backed him in 2014. So Tall Deval will try to find Conley a judicial slot ASAP, to create a vacancy in the DA’s office that Tall Deval gets to fill with … Baby Flats.

If Tall Deval moves fast enough, Baby Flats will get to appear on the September primary ballot as an incumbent.

And Althea Garrison will become a city councilor — $100,000 a year. Not bad for someone who was making “a lousy 53 or 54 thousand a year,” before she says her bosses in state government asked her to retire. Althea says she refused, and is now collecting unemployment. But probably not for long.

I think we have identified one of the recurring themes at next month’s St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in South Boston. It’s Althea time!

Order Howie’s new book “Kennedy Babylon” at howiecarrshow.com.

There are only three possible ways to describe the top brass of the Massachusetts State Police and the Executive Office of Public Safety (EOPS).

Very incompetent, very corrupt, or both.

I’m going with both.

The latest news is that two more state police superior officers were booted down the stairs late Friday afternoon, one step ahead of multiple posses.

So long, it’s been good to know you, Maj. Susan Anderson and Lt. Col. Dan Risteen. Let’s discuss Risteen first. He’s thisclose to suspended trooper Leigha Genduso, an admitted drug abuser, drug dealer, money launderer and perjurer who last year made $151,000 in the MSP’s K-9 unit. I’ll bet her hound was great at sniffing out hidden drugs.

(By the way, Trooper Genduso told the federal court under oath in 2007 that during her years dealing drugs, her favorite concealment technique was to gift-wrap the weed, in case she was stopped on her way to Worcester by “law enforcements,” as she called cops. She also admitted that she had taken the Fifth Amendment before a federal grand jury to avoid “perjurizing” herself. Whatever La Genduso’s other attractions to her various drug-kingpin and top-cop boyfriends over the years, they don’t include her scintillating intellect.)

Genduso passed not one but two state police background checks, and even after word of her devastating admissions in her boyfriend’s 2007 federal drug case surfaced Monday on turtleboysports.com, she was still collecting a state paycheck until Friday. See what I mean about corruption?

On Friday morning, as I was gathering material for this column, I emailed a number of questions to the EOPS, which has control of the state police. My last question:

“Finally, has Lt. Col. Daniel Risteen filed retirement papers yet?”

That was at 10:22 Friday morning. At 2:56 p.m., the EOPS flack replied by tersely answering a couple of my questions.

“Your other questions,” he said, “relate to either pending lawsuits or investigations, so I respectfully decline to comment on those.”

An hour or so later, Risteen put in his papers. Am I prescient or what?

The other scandal involves Alli Bibaud, the daughter of a hack state judge who when arrested for OUI last fall admitted to honest troopers that she was both a junkie and a prostitute. She is also a one-time employee of the Worcester County district attorney, like her father the judge, the then-head of the state police, Richard McKeon (since “retired”), the state secretary of public safety, Daniel Bennett, and at least one of his top deputies, Jennifer Queally, although Bennett is dummying up about how wired his office is to the Worcester County DA. I guess the Worcester hackerama is part of the investigations.

After the Worcester-ized brass got word that the daughter of their hack judge pal had been lugged, they threatened to discipline or even fire the honest troopers who made the pinch.

So now those staties are suing all the hacks in federal court. The MSP superior officer who directly told the troopers to unlawfully alter the reports to protect the hack judge’s junkie-prostitute daughter was the aforementioned Anderson, who like Risteen took the pipe Friday evening.

Anderson is a central figure in the Judgegate scandal. According to the troopers’ lawyer, Lenny Kesten, both troopers and their union rep will testify that Anderson told them that the orders to illegally change the arrest report came directly from Secretary Bennett.

Here’s what the honest troopers wrote about their now-former boss in one recent court filing:

“Major Anderson ... gave the plaintiff a direct order to commit and participate in multiple felonies, as part of an overarching and far-reaching conspiracy that Major Anderson told the plaintiff extended to ... the Secretary of Public Safety of the Commonwealth.”

I was thinking about that accusation last month when I and 400,000 other firearms license-holders in the commonwealth got threatening letters from this same Bennett “RE: Notice of Legislation Prohibiting Bump Stocks and Trigger Cranks.”

Basically, this career hack was demanding that law-abiding gun owners hand over these newly prohibited firearm enhancers to the state police “for destruction. Retention of such a prohibited item beyond the 90-day grace period will expose the owner to criminal prosecution.”

You know, I’ve been jammed up a few times over the years. But unlike the payroll patriot who signed that letter threatening me, I have never, ever been accused in a court filing of “participating in multiple felonies, as part of an overarching and far-reaching conspiracy.”

One of my questions for Bennett Friday was whether it is even remotely appropriate for someone in his current legal predicament to be threatening law-abiding citizens.

He refused to answer.

All I can say is, if I ever get lugged, I ask for no special favors. Just treat me like Leigha Genduso or Alli Bibaud.

At what point does the MIA governor, Charlie “Tall Deval” Baker, step in and start cleaning house? Maybe he should assign Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito to get to the bottom of all this — like the drug-dealing state trooper, Polito is from Shrewsbury, in Worcester County. And she knows the lawyer for the junkie judge’s daughter — he was fined $10,000 by the State Ethics Commission for making illegal campaign contributions to ... Karyn Polito.

Is there anybody in Worcester politics who isn’t dirty?

Okay, so that’s the “corrupt” part of the MPS and the EOPS. Here’s the other piece — their breathtaking incompetence. Consider again those 400,000 threatening letters the very ethical Bennett sent out last month to law-abiding Massachusetts gun owners.

Do you know how many gun owners have turned over their so-called bump stocks and trigger cranks?

“So far,” Bennett’s flack told me Friday, “the state police have received three bump stocks and one trigger crank.”

In other words, 400,000 letters, four responses.

This town needs an enema.

Order Howie’s book “Kennedy Babylon” at howiecarrshow.com.

Do you have the right stuff to become a trooper in the Massachusetts State Police?

Have you ever asked yourself, what kind of background do you need to get “on the job” and make $151,000 a year like trooper Leigha Genduso was making, at least until last week, when she was suspended?

The MSP is now claiming that it somehow knew absolutely nothing about trooper Genduso’s admitted sordid criminal background as a drug dealer, drug abuser, money launderer and perjurer. That’s the staties’ story, and they’re sticking to it.

Let’s examine the remarkable resume that Leigha Genduso brought to the table before she joined the MSP. She will answer your questions in her own words, from the day in 2007 that she testified under a grant of immunity at the federal drug-dealing trial of her then-boyfriend.

Less than a year after she copped to all of the crimes listed below, she was hired as a dispatcher for the state police. She was sworn in as a trooper in 2014. Can somebody say nationwide search?

Let’s go to the questions.

Trooper Genduso, what are some of the perks of living with a drug kingpin?

“I never paid rent. We would go out to eat; grocery shopping. He paid for my cellphone; it was very overdue. Things of that extent…”

Before you became a drug dealer, trooper, what was your job?

“I was cocktail waitressing.”

Grand juries — what did you do when you were subpoenaed to appear?

“Actually, I pled the Fifth every single time they asked a question.”

In your pre-law enforcement career as a drug dealer, what was your profit margin on that hundred-plus pounds of standard-grade weed you personally sold?

“I was making at least $200 a pound.”

But weren’t you making more selling the primo stuff, “High Bud,” the hydroponic cannabis?

“A lot more, 600, 700.”

As a drug dealer, you were doing a lot of drugs, right, in addition to smoking marijuana how often?

“Basically every day … I used Xanax, Wellbutrin, possibly Vicodin… The Xanax I would take to sleep. Wellbutrin for, like, depression.”

What about when the G-men ask you about dates of certain crimes you committed?

“See, I’m afraid to actually state dates because I don’t want to get perjurized (sic) for something I don’t recall correctly.”

In the underworld, when your drug-dealer boyfriend gets arrested and gives you control of a box stuffed with $275,000 cash, what is permissible for you, the moll, to spend the dough on?

“I got my wisdom teeth extracted … car payments, living situations, drinks, whatever … I even brought his parents out to dinner once.”

When counting the hundreds of thousands of dollars in ill-gotten gains that you made from selling drugs, trooper Genduso, what did you prefer — hand-counting the cash or using a ‘money machine?’

“It depended. Sometimes it would go through the money machine. Other times it would be as simple as five grand … To count a large number of bills at a time … it’s a lot easier.”

Tell us about depositing your boyfriend’s drug profits in the bank? Were there any special techniques you used?

“It was always under the sum of $10,000 … He would give me a bank-deposit slip with, most of the time, $9,000 in cash, and I would go to the bank in Middleton and deposit it … I asked him why it was never over $10,000 … Because anything over $10,000 will get you reported by the bank to the IRS.”

Before you joined the MSP, did your drug-kingpin boyfriend teach you how to pay bills with all the profits you made from the drug ring?

“He told me to pay through money orders … I’d get money orders up to $500 apiece … I was very worried about paying for bills with cash through money orders.”

When you were the dealer’s moll in North Reading, trooper, why did you put the house phone in your name rather than the hood’s?

“Well, basically, if any law enforcements (sic) were to try to tap into the phone line under my existing name, it would be a lot harder than it would be under his name.”

Your thug boyfriend set up a website so that his fellow hoods could expose suspected police informants. It’s called WhosARat.com? Who came up with that name, trooper?

“Oh, I did! I said the name as a joke and he stuck with it. That was me!”

This is your Massachusetts State Police!

Order Howie’s new book “Kennedy Babylon” at howiecarrshow.com.

The departed — that’s what you can call all the thousands of drug convictions erased from the books after the epic misconduct of Massachusetts law enforcement these last few years.

First it was the corrupt state crime lab chemists Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak faking thousands of criminal drug analyses.

And now we have the case of state trooper Leigha Genduso, who departed from the payroll last week after it was revealed that before she became a statie, she had admitted in federal court to perjury, money laundering and kingpin-level drug dealing.

This gangster’s moll was in the K-9 unit. Why do I see a lot more drug convictions … departing?

Yesterday I asked the Massachusetts State Police and the Executive Office of Public Safety how many cases Genduso had testified in and whether her rap sheet was ever disclosed to the assorted defendants, as required under law and legal ethics.

The EOPS responded with three words.

“No comment. Thanks.”

Genduso’s dearest friend in the state police was Lt. Col. Dan Risteen, who also departed the payroll last week, after news about his playmate’s rap sheet was published.

The departed Risteen, ironically, is a real expert on “The Departed” ­— he had a bit role in the 2006 Boston mob/corrupt cop movie of the same name. He played “Crack House Cop #1.”

Risteen was joined in that scene by “Crack House Cop #2” — Francis Hughes, then a MSP lieutenant.

Ironically enough, last November Hughes departed from the MSP payroll as abruptly as his pal Risteen during that other recent state police scandal, the brooming of a OUI case involving the junkie-prostitute daughter of a hack judge from Worcester.

The departed are really stacking up ­— the burgeoning scandals have also claimed Lt. Col. Richard McKeon and Maj. Susan Anderson, neither of whom appeared in “The Departed.”

So how long do you think it will take before the first motion to dismiss a guilty verdict based on Genduso’s testimony? I’m guessing the briefs will be stacked up by St. Patrick’s Day.

To set the stage for all the departures, let’s consider trooper Genduso’s admissions, under oath, about her lies to the grand jury, specifically about a money box containing $275,000 in cash from selling illegal drugs.

Q. Ms. Genduso, you lied to the grand jury about what you did with that box of money. We’ve established that already, right?

A. That’s correct.

Next, the lawyer asks the future state trooper about her sworn testimony that she delivered a bag of cash to a lawyer at a sub shop in Lynn.

Q. And you made up that story?

A. Well, not technically.

Q. You just said that you just left out a few things, right?

A. Right.

Q. But in fact, you actually made up a few things, too, didn’t you?

A. Well, what I was just about to say is that I did meet him at a sub shop in Lynn prior to that.

Q. With a bag full of $50,000?

A. No. No. But with a bag full of money that he gave me.

Q. Oh, with a bag of money that he gave you.

A. It was actually $5,000.

Think about it — not only is every last person trooper Genduso testified against going to be getting out of prison, but they’ll also be suing the commonwealth. Do you blame them? A lot of taxpayer money will soon be … departing.

Q. You talked about taking $50,000 in cash out of the money box yourself?

A. That part was a lie, correct.

Q. Thank you. And putting the $50,000 into a paper bag. That’s what you told the prosecutor and the agent here?

A. Yeah.

Q. That didn’t happen, did it?

A. No, it did not.

Q. And you told them that you then traveled to a sub shop in Lynn with the bag of $50,000?

A. Right.

Q. Which did not happen, did it?

A. Right.

Q. And gave that money to Atty. Zerola, $50,000 cash, that you had taken out of the box of money. And that did not happen, did it, ma’am?

A. Nope, it didn’t.

They could make a movie about the corruption in the state police and how many of the bent brass are going to be fired now that they’re busted. Too bad the perfect title is already taken ­— “The Departed.”

Buy Howie’s book “Kennedy Babylon” at howiecarrshow.com.

Can the Massachusetts Gaming Commission walk and chew gum at the same time?

How pathetic that these overpaid, underworked payroll patriots didn’t have a clue — not one scintilla of evidence — that Steve Wynn was a world-class bad actor.

And the MGC isn’t the only bloated governmental hackerama that has proven itself utterly incapable of the simplest investigations. How about the FBI, unable to follow up on multiple tips about the Florida school shooter, including a 13-minute call by a family member from Massachusetts to the FBI tip line in January?

Were the G-men too busy sexting their girlfriends to pass on the information?

And don’t get me started on the “background checks” of the Mass. State Police, because there apparently aren’t any. Right, Leigha Genduso?

Let’s begin with the Gaming Commission, which seems to have as its only mission gaming the taxpayers of the commonwealth. For the record, the MGC has 27 trough-feeders making more than $116,000 a year — 27! The median pay for an MGC coat-holder is $63,150 a year.

And yet apparently not one of these tax-fattened hyenas was available to investigate the suitability of Steve Wynn to receive a casino license. So the indolent hacks hired a New Jersey law firm for $4.1 million to do the sleuthing for them.

And the out-of-state law firm also turned up ... zip, zero, nada.

The original news about Wynn’s sordid past was broken, as almost all scandal stories are, by a newspaper — in this case The Wall Street Journal. I guarantee you the WSJ did not spend $4.1 million on its investigation. I doubt they put out $41,000 to nail it down.

When the story broke, Wynn complained that all the dirt had been fed to the Journal by his bitter ex-wife. Well, duhh! Doesn’t any private investigator digging for dirt know that the first stop you make is at the courthouse, to check out any divorce records of your target?

They may well be sealed. But at the bottom of some filing, you will find the signature — and the phone number — of the ex-wife’s lawyer. Do I have to draw you a diagram, Mass. Gaming Commission?

But the reality is, the MGC didn’t want to bust Steve Wynn. The hacks were salivating at all the money they were going to make “regulating” his new $2.4 billion casino in Everett. And behind that comes a big fat state pension.

So the MGC left no stone unturned, except the one Steve Wynn was hiding under.

Gross incompetence is par for the course for almost all government agencies. The only thing that perplexes me about the MGC’s dereliction of duty is that Steve Wynn is, or was, a big Trump guy. What better way for the MGC hacks to suck up to Gov. Charlie “Tall Deval” Baker and Attorney General Maura Healey than by bringing down a Trump fat cat?

I’m likewise puzzled by the FBI’s disinterest in the tips about Nikolas Cruz.

According to the transcript of the Jan. 5 hotline call, the relative of Cruz twice mentioned his obsession with ISIS. Naturally the “intake specialist” had no interest in a potential terrorist.

As we all know, tips to the FBI about Muslim terrorists go straight into the circular file. Think Omar Mateen and the Tsarnaev brothers.

But this time the FBI totally dropped the ball. They did absolutely nothing. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

The Latin satirist Juvenal once asked, “Who will guard the guards themselves?

The question now is, “Who will investigate the investigators themselves?”

Buy Howie’s new book “Kennedy Babylon” at howiecarrshow.com.

Pay no attention to those photographs on the Internet of Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito yukking it up with disgraced MSP trooper Leigha Genduso.

So what if Karyn posed with Leigha in what looks like the Seaport District, with the trooper practically spilling out of her strapless dress, as her recently “retired” ex-boyfriend, Lt. Col. Dan Risteen, looks on somewhat, well, hungrily.

“You’re leaping to the conclusion that I know this woman,” Polito was telling me Friday morning, when I cold-called her on her cell phone. “I take thousands of pictures, Howie.”

Yes, I said, but this isn’t just one picture. There are at least two. You can see them at turtleboysports.com. And by the way, Karyn, Leigha Genduso is from Shrewbury, just like you.

“I don’t know where she lives” Polito snapped. “I don’t know that she lives in Shrewsbury.”

Really? Have you forgotten that she acknowledged under oath that she was from Shrewsbury, although it is true that your BFF also admitted in court that she had committed perjury before a federal grand jury, in addition to drug dealing, income tax evasion and money-laundering.

So maybe Trooper Genduso was again just “perjurizing,” as she likes to put it, when she claimed to be from Shrewsbury.

“I take many pictures every day,” Polito kept repeating. “Now, I understand there is an investigation –“

So, Karyn, you were the state rep from Shrewsbury in 2007 when your BFF Leigha ratted out her gangster boyfriend and decided that her rap sheet qualified her for a job with the State Police. Did you write a letter of recommendation for your constituent?

“I don’t know anything about that, I, I – no!”

Well, that’s a relief. The future lieutenant did not write a letter of recommendation for her constituent, the gangster’s moll. She just posed for multiple photos with her.

In case you haven’t been following the multiple scandals roiling the State Police (and more are coming!), here’s another sample of Trooper Genduso as she rats out her thug ex-boyfriend in 2007. This is from her cross-examination by a defense attorney:

You knew at the time you went to the grand jury that you’d been a pot dealer, right?

Yes.

You knew you’d helped hide $275,000, right?

Yes.

You knew you cheated on your tax returns, right?

That’s correct.

And not just with the pot money, but with your waitressing tips, which everybody does, but you knew you did it?

I was just going to say everyone does it.

But you did it?

Correct.

Everybody does it, but not everybody’s watched as closely by the feds as you were at that time, right?

That’s right.

So that was Trooper Genduso’s excuse – everybody does it. Good attitude for a cop. During cross-examination, the lawyer for her drug-dealing ex-boyfriend produced testimony from her first appearance before the grand jury, when she took the Fifth Amendment over and over again.

Among the reasons you took the Fifth was to protect yourself, right?

Yes.

Because it’s a privilege against self-incrimination, right?

That’s correct.

And you say words to the effect – I mean, we have the exact transcript, but you say words to the effect –

‘I respectfully decline to answer the question and invoke my rights and privileges under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.’

You’ve got that mantra down pretty good, don’t you?

Right.

You can see why Leigha was such a prized catch for the MSP. She was ready for her courtroom close up. She’d memorized her Fifth Amendment rights, right down to the “respectfully.”

Even before she got her badge and gun and K-9, La Genduso had a wicked sense of entitlement. She seemed to understand that her choice of boyfriends – they were always bigshots, whether in the underworld or the MSP – gave her a lot of clout, especially when she was wearing a strapless dress.

When one of the defense lawyers brought up her boyfriend’s money box with $275,000 in drug profits, he asked what she’d spent the ill-gotten gains on.

“Wisdom teeth extraction, bills, mortgage, car payments, possibly clothes, drinks. Anything else you would like me to add?

What kind of clothes?

“It certainly wasn’t Gucci, sir.”

Then the lawyer started inquiring about her jailhouse visits to her gangster boyfriend, and how she was so concerned about going to prison herself that she asked him to plead guilty.

What did he say?

He said he’s not going to, that he’ll win the case, and like I said prior to this, that no judge will put me away for contempt for two years.

How was your demeanor at this time?

I was crying my eyes out. I didn’t want to go.

And what did he say about you testifying before the grand jury?

He told me to take the Fifth again, and just don’t worry about it, that I’ll go down to see the judge, and like I said, no judge will put me away for a long period of time.

Taking the Fifth, over and over and over again. The more I think about my conversation with Karyn Polito Friday morning, the more I can see why those two Shrewsbury besties so enjoyed having their picture taken together. Leigha took the Fifth in front of the grand jury, Karyn took the Fifth when she spoke to me.

(Buy Howie’s new book “Kennedy Babylon” at howiecarrshow.com.)