By: Lenny Mirra – 8-26
Our state budget includes a $200,000 earmark from State Senator Liz Miranda to a company called Bold Skin Babe Cosmetology Institute, Inc. for “scholarships for low-income students” in the beauty and wellness industry.
Sounds like a noble goal, and not a big deal in a $63 billion budget. The problem is the business does not appear to be a school at all, it operates as a day spa offering facials, waxing, chemical peels, and eyelash extensions. The website for the company describes no cosmetology school, no scholarship program, and no educational initiatives. Even the employees who work there were trained at other schools.
So why all this taxpayer money to a day spa that doesn’t seem to be training anyone? As we say in the news business, “follow the money.”
Campaign filings show that the spa’s owner, Akou Diabakhate, donated $1,000, the maximum annual donation amount, to Miranda in 2024 and again in 2025. Diabakhate has also served on the host committee for Miranda’s annual “Black Boston for Liz Miranda” fundraiser.
Using taxpayer money to fund friends who then kick back donations to those who help them is a long time grift in politics, and nobody does it better than Democrats on Beacon Hill. Miranda will get thousands back from the earmark to Diabakhate and taxpayers will fund it all.
This comes on the heels of a $2 billion state contract to develop a new courthouse in Springfield awarded to CoJo Real Estate, an entity owned by John Barros, who happens to be Executive Director for the Massachusetts Convention Center, and ex-con Conan Harris, who happens to be married to Representative Ayanna Pressley.
Barros has since withdrawn from the development team following outcry over his involvement and a lawsuit from the companies that lost the bid, but it’s important to point out that he was appointed Executive Director by the Board of Directors for BCEC, which is funded by hospitality and tourism taxes.
The members of the BOD are chosen by the Governor and the Mayor of Boston, and it’ll surprise no one to learn that they’re all donors to top Democrats including Governor Healey and Mayor Wu.
Sometimes the law catches up to the more greedy miscreants, as it did with former Middlesex County Sheriff John P. McGonigle who beefed up his budget every year to fund highly paid deputies who would then kick back money to him. Two deputies, Richard Parella and Robert Kucharzyk, testified that they paid McGonigle $40,000 to $60,000 to keep their lucrative jobs.
McGonigle claimed in his defense that what he did was acceptable “because it’s been done this way by others.” Indeed, it seems it’s always been this way on Beacon Hill where we saw three Speakers in a row get indicted on various crimes including Sal DiMasi, who was convicted of conspiracy, fraud, and extortion.
Tax dollars were again used to fund the grift, in this case tens of millions budgeted to software firm Cognos which was used to kick back tens of thousands to DiMasi. There was nothing complicated or unusual about the deal, in fact it was done in the usual manner with the “right” lobbyists being used to orchestrate deals.
It’s easy to say we can just vote out the corrupt pols, but not so easy when they’re allowed to build up huge war chests in their campaign accounts, much of it funded by the lobbyists, unions, and special interest groups that profit from our tax dollars. We can’t fix our horribly wasteful and corrupt one-party state government until we fix our campaign finance laws. ◊