By: Dr. Bharani Padmanabhan MD PhD
In 2012 I wrote in the Valley Patriot that the toxic Martha Coakley refused to get justice for 15yo Tiffany Guyette when the exalted Jerry Remy’s son Jared raped her. Coakley intentionally let Jared walk between the raindrops without registering him for statutory rape. She did it to allow Jerry and his wife gain custody of Tiffany’s child as the, you know, grandparents, in the best interest of the child of course. Emily’s List rewarded the toxic Coakley for this and proclaimed that all women should choose her over Juliette Kayyem.
To no one’s surprise, Tiffany is not the only child that the toxic Coakley has harmed. When Coakley was Attorney General, she blocked the people from voting to repeal legalized gambling. The SJC reversed her. When Coakley ran for Governor, she shared advisors with the DraftKings gambling company. After Coakley crashed out of public office, you’ll never guess who Coakley’s new client is. DraftKings! Sports betting became legal with the toxic Coakley’s full-throated claim that DraftKings etc. are games of skill and not chance. And now we have a raging epidemic of gambling addiction in our children.
When the Mass. Council on Gaming and Health, run by gambling industry bigwigs, itself sounds the alarm on a huge spike in the number of children with gambling addiction, we must care. CBS 60 Minutes termed it a public health emergency (February 4, 2024). This is particularly important because the Department of Public Health has stopped the longitudinal study touted as the safeguard that justified legalizing gambling. We have no state data on how our children are being harmed, just so DPH can’t embarrass the toxic Coakley.
DPH Commissioner Dr. Robbie Goldstein doesn’t care that parents are bringing their children in for gambling addiction. Robbie doesn’t think college kids who gamble away student loan money on cellphone apps deserve safety and protection, because that entails Robbie going head to head against the toxic Coakley, her DraftKings, and the $94 million that the state made in 2023-24 in taxes from sports betting. The money is so enormous that Encore Casino happily pays a $40,000 fine annually for illegal betting on local college sports. Robbie ain’t got the gumption for stands that will cost him personally. With Robbie as Commissioner, our children are doomed.
As if that level of toxic legacy were not enough for one Attorney General, we also have Steward Health. Yet another of Coakley’s catastrophes was the sale of nonprofit Caritas Christi to private equity which, in the form of CEO Ralph de la Torre, promptly looted the hospitals and caused a patient to die because an essential tool was repossessed for nonpayment. On September 20, 2011, the toxic Coakley swore in court that the sale was in the public interest and assented to everything Steward said. Looting a hospital is in the public interest, you see.
In order to misdirect away from the toxic Coakley, Brian McGrory and the Globe have focussed on Ralph’s yacht, exactly like Congress wagged a finger at Detroit auto executives flying to DC on corporate jets, as if Congress was going to protect the public purse. And Maura Healey, who worked under Coakley at the time, jumped in to demand that Steward leave the state, so it would be out of sight and out of mind, with no one grilling the toxic Coakley under oath about what she got from Ralph for allowing all that looting. Lisa Kashinsky admiringly quoted Healey asserting “It frankly disgusts me that a particular CEO came and chose to do what it appears he did…The blame, the fault is with Steward and its management.” Robber barons and looters exist. It was the toxic Coakley’s duty to protect us from one such Ralph de la Torre.
Steward began right here. No Coakley, no Steward. “It frankly disgusts me” that Healey is running interference for the toxic Coakley. Because I am not a Boston journalist, I wonder how far money was spread within the AGO to deem that sale in the public interest. I expect Andrea Campbell to never question Coakley under oath about this, cuz that requires minimal integrity.
And we still haven’t discussed Coakley allowing that patron saint of pedophiles, Bernard Law, to flee justice in the dead of night. Or for fighting poor Bernard Baran, an innocent gay man who lost his health in prison after being homophobically framed. As toxic legacies go, Martha Coakley’s is worse than any other Attorney General since 1780.