Carla Howell part of Carla Howell's conspiracy to preserve gov't waste?

Carla Howell has sworn up and down, round and round, that there is $12 billion worth of waste in state government. She won't say exactly where (the list is in the same safe as McCain's plan for finding bin Laden), but it's there. See, Howell is so much smarter than everyone else. Or something.

I would imagine that anyone running for governor who knew how to slash billions of dollars of waste would say something. Mitt Romney, Christy Mihos, and Deval Patrick -- rank outsiders all -- kept mum about it. Ambitious insiders who know every inch of Beacon Hill also won't sacrifice that knowledge for their own ambitions. You know how hard it is to get Tim Cahill to do something he sees in his political interest, for example.

Can you imagine how easy it would be to become governor by showing how to save taxpayers thousands of dollars? It would be a slam dunk. Yet these guys decided, and still decide, not to go that route. Neither did some lady named...Carla Howell. Sure, she knew there was $9 billion being wasted back in 2002 when she ran for governor, but really wouldn't tell us where. Maybe Candidate Howell decided not to upset insiders with the secret knowledge everyone on Beacon Hill shares, that same secret knowledge that upsets Crusader Howell so much. Candidate Howell either didn't know, or didn't reveal how o save taxpayers' money and save her own campaign. Pity, too -- had Candidate Howell come forward with this information, she coulda been governor, rather than coming in fourth.

Or maybe Christy Mihos, Tom Reilly, Chris Gabrieli, Jane Swift, Kerry Healey, Shannon O'Brien, or other gubernatorial candidates could have said something but didn't. Yet apparently they were complicit in the Secret Society to Waste Taxpayers' Money. So it seems that everyone who's run for governor in the modern era knows about the massive waste in Massachusetts, but is too dishonest or incompetent to turn such understanding into a winning campaign. Or they're dumb enough that they can't find such obvious waste, which probably should eliminate them from any real role in state government.

Including Carla Howell. At least, according to Carla Howell.