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Greg Palast | How Hillary Votes Were Suppressed in Wisconsin

Journalist Greg Palast. (photo: unknown)

Greg Palast, Greg Palast's Facebook Page
Palast writes: "As a former professor of statistics (really!), I can tell you that the full survey raw data shows unequivocally that Clinton's voters exceeded Trump's in Wisconsin - but they were blocked or left uncounted."
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Betsy DeVos Assailed by Protesters at College Campuses Across the Country
Moriah Balingit and Sarah Larimer, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Education Secretary Betsy DeVos faced student protesters Thursday night at Harvard University, where she laid out her belief that school choice - including allowing taxpayer dollars to follow children to private schools - is the solution to many of the problems that beset public schools."
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DOJ Demands Facebook Information From 'Anti-Administration Activists'
Jessica Schneider, CNN
Schneider writes: "Trump administration lawyers are demanding the private account information of potentially thousands of Facebook users in three separate search warrants served on the social media giant, according to court documents obtained by CNN."
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Supreme Court Poised to Deal a Sharp Blow to Unions for Teachers and Public Employees
David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times
Savage writes: "The Supreme Court is poised to deal a sharp blow to the unions that represent millions of teachers and other public employees, announcing Thursday it will consider striking down the mandatory fees that support collective bargaining."
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ICE Acknowledges It Targeted Sanctuary Cities in Its Most Recent Sweeps
Adolfo Flores, BuzzFeed
Flores writes: "ICE said it had intentionally targeted jurisdictions that don't permit its agents inside their jails."
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Most Countries Have Given Up Their Colonies. Why Hasn't America?
David Vine, The Washington Post
Vine writes: "Why, in 2017, decades after the civil rights and decolonization eras, does the United States still have colonies and citizens who lack full democratic rights by law?"
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Senate Bill Aims to Strip Protections From 1,098 Endangered Species Including Utah Prairie Dog, Florida Panther
Center for Biological Diversity
Excerpt: "Republican U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee of Utah introduced legislation this week that would strip federal Endangered Species Act protections for animals and plants found in only one state. Known as intrastate species, such imperiled animals and plants make up the majority of the 1,655 species protected under the act."
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Here's How to Support Puerto Rico as It Recovers From Devastating Hurricane Maria
Remezcla
Excerpt: "With the island expected to go without power for months, Puerto Rico now needs our help. The US territory is in the midst of a financial crisis and already struggling in many ways."
READ MORE

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By Jay Fitzgerald and Keith Regan

09/29/2017

No sanctuary | The Barney Tingle Show | Prep-school gold mines

Happening Today

Cape Verde PM, Post-hurricane relief, King memorial

-- Gov. Charlie Baker, Mayor Marty Walsh and Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Rosalin Acosta attend the annual El Mundo breakfast in honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, Boston Park Plaza, 50 Park Plaza, Boston, 8 a.m.

-- Tim Connelly, executive director and CEO of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, and other CEOs will discuss gender wage equality at the Boston Women’s Workforce Council’s 2017 Best Practices Conference, Colonnade Hotel, 120 Huntington Avenue, Boston, 8 a.m.

-- Massachusetts Clean Energy CEO Stephen Pike attends his organization's third annual Student Clean Energy Symposium, Rubin Campus Center, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, 8:30 a.m.

-- The 10th annual Public Performance conference continues for a second day, 120 Tremont St., Boston, 9:15 a.m.

-- Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and the Massachusetts Manufacturing Innovation Initiative participate in a job fair and manufacturing expo for students and young people, Flex Innovation Center, 25 Drydock Ave., Boston, 11 a.m.

-- Gov. Charlie Baker, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, Attorney General Maura Healey, Sen. Michael Moore and Boston Police Department Sergeant Cecil Jones participate in the Massachusetts Law Enforcement Memorial Foundation’s 31st Annual Memorial Ceremony, Ashburton Park, 12:30 p.m.

-- Gov. Charlie Baker meets with Cabo Verde Prime Minister Jose Ulisses Correia e Silva to welcome the Cabo Verde Delegation to the State House, Room 360, 2 p.m.

-- U.S. Rep. Richard Neal gives the keynote address at the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce's Business and Government Forum, Mass. College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, 25 Foster St. - 9th floor, Worcester, 2 p.m.

-- U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren visits Christian Community Church to speak with local elected officials and community leaders about disaster relief efforts for hurricane victims in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, 108 Beacon Street, Worcester, 2:30 p.m.

-- Kayak founder Paul English talks on ‘Radio Boston’ about pledging funds for a Boston memorial to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., WBUR-FM 90.9, 3 p.m.

-- U.S. Richard Neal and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren attend a community meeting on the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Chestnut Accelerated Middle School, 355 Plainfield St., Springfield, 5 p.m.

-- Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders is honored at the Megan's House Foundation gala, UMass Lowell Inn and Conference Center, 50 Warren St., Lowell, 6 p.m.

Today's News

ICE raids deliberately target sanctuary cities in Massachusetts

This is a major escalation in the battle between the Trump administration and sanctuary-city supporters in Massachusetts: ICE officials have arrested 50 illegal immigrants in Massachusetts, along with hundreds of others nationwide, as part of a four-day Trump administration crackdown on illegal immigration in cities that have declared themselves safe havens for immigrants, according to reports by the Boston Globe’s Jeremy Fox and the Boston Herald’s Matt Stout. “This is focused on areas that have . . . self-proclaimed they are not going to cooperate with ICE,” said Shawn Neudauer, a spokesman for ICE, as quoted by the Globe.

The feds went out of their way to single out Massachusetts, where the Supreme Judicial Court recently ruled that local police can’t detain people wanted solely on federal immigration violations, a ruling some saw as providing legal support for sanctuary cities, as the Globe reports. An official in the administration of Gov. Baker, who opposes making Massachusetts a sanctuary state, said authorities here were not notified in advance of the ICE raids.

Btw: The name of the nationwide fed operation itself is almost a taunt at sanctuary cities: “Operation Safe Cities,” though many of those arrested across the country didn't have criminal records, according to reports.

Report: Healey’s office conducting criminal probe of addiction-treatment scammers

From the Globe’s Evan Allen and David Armstrong: “Jillian Fennimore, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey, confirmed the office is conducting a criminal investigation of addiction treatment scams, which have proliferated amid the national opioid addiction crisis.” Healey’s office is reportedly focusing on a “far-reaching insurance scheme that recruited drug users and sent them to treatment centers in other states to exploit their benefit payments,” the Globe reports.

Boston Globe

Massachusetts mobilizes to assist those fleeing hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico

Across the state, officials are mobilizing to help those hit hard by hurricanes Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico. In Boston, school officials are preparing for an influx of students from Puerto Rico, starting as soon as next week, reports Cristela Guerra at the Globe. Meanwhile, officials at the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency and the executive offices of Housing and Community Development, Health and Human Services and Education are convening as a task force to make sure the state is ready to help those seeking aid here, reports SHNS’s Katie Lannan at the Greenville Recorder. Shira Schoenberg at MassLive has more on what state officials are doing to help those leaving Puerto Rico.

DeVos greeted by hundreds of protesters at Harvard

From Hannah Natanson at the Harvard Crimson: “Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s appearance at the Harvard Kennedy School Thursday met vocal protest from hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside—and silent disapproval from students indoors, many of them hoisting banners made from bedsheets. ... With shouts from the hundreds-strong crowd outside—‘Education is a right, not just for the rich and white!’—echoing in the brightly lit John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, protesters in the audience periodically stood and silently unveiled large posters. ‘WHITE SUPREMACIST,’ read one.” Devon was at Harvard for a conference on school choice and charter schools.

Harvard Crimson

Another charter school hair-do controversy

Speaking of charter schools: What is it with charter-school administrators and minority-student hairstyles? Anyway, there’s another charter-school hair-do controversy in Massachusetts, this time at Benjamin Banneker Charter School in Cambridge, reports Jim Morelli at Fox25.

Fox25

Did you hear the one about Barney Frank supporting Jimmy Tingle?

Two sharp wits are politically teaming up. From the Globe’s Jim O’Sullivan: “Jimmy Tingle, the comedian and newly declared Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, has signed up a member of the old guard as his honorary campaign chairman. Former congressman Barney Frank, who stepped down in 2013 after more than two decades in the US House, will campaign with Tingle, the Cambridge comic said, after ‘encouraging me for months to get in’ the race.”

Boston Globe

Did you hear the one about Gabriel Gomez running for Senate again?

No joking around: The Globe’s Frank Phillips reports that Gabriel Gomez is still thinking of running for the Senate and that's he's still rather abrupt on the phone. He's certainly taking his time on a decision.

Boston Globe

Paid leave for Trump-bashing Bridgewater State professor

Call it a social media vacation. Bridgewater State University has placed Professor Garrett Nichols—whose Facebook rants blasting Trump supporters were spotted and reposted by a student—on paid leave, saying he had been the focus of threats, Sara Cline of the Enterprise reports. The school said Nichols is on “temporary leave” for “personal safety reasons.”

Enterprise

Silverglate: The Age of Trump crisis is the result of the … Age of Obama?

Civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate writes at WGBH that we’re living in a period of great political crisis, even worse than what was experienced during the Vietnam War and Watergate eras, and he’s laying blame for the ‘Age of Trump’ partly on President Obama, who he describes as a radical progressive in moderate-liberal sheep’s clothing.

WGBH

Senate at $25M in veto overrides and counting …

The Senate restored nearly $25 million to the fiscal 2018 budget on Thursday, overriding vetoes by Gov. Charlie Baker. The Senate action focused on funds for services and programs that help children, reports SHNS’s Colin Young at MassLive. With the House previously voting to add back $284 million to the budget, the Senate still has a long way to go if it plans to match the House override output.

MassLive

Is Lowell losing its clout in Third Congressional district?

The city of Lowell may be losing some of its historical clout in the 3rd Congressional district, where the seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas will be up for grabs in 2018, Christian Wade reports in the Salem News. At least three of the eight Democrats weighing a run would use the town of Andover as a base to run from, though some observers say winning the city will still be key to carrying the district and note that Lowell pols currently on the sidelines could quickly alter the face of the race.

Salem News

Dr. Seuss-banning school librarian gets the whoville treatment across the state

Cambridge Public School officials are trying to distance themselves from the school librarian who rejected Dr. Seuss books donated by First Lady Melania Trump for allegedly being “steeped in racist propaganda.” Naturally, the school district makes clear it supports the librarian’s right to personal opinions, but her opinions are not necessarily those of the district, officials are saying, according to a report by Dialynn Dwyer at the Globe. And, naturally, the Herald’s Howie Carr is all over the latest from the People’s Republic of Cambridge. The grandnephew of Springfield native Dr. Seuss says the librarian’s charges are simply “preposterous,” reports the Herald’s Chris Cassidy. Meanwhile, Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno has come to the defense of hometown hero Dr. Seuss, reports Dan Glaun at MassLive.

Banning Dr. Seuss would be a luxury for Boston library officials …

While Liz Phipps Soeiro wants to keep Dr. Seuss out of her Cambridge library, Boston officials would love to keep something else out of their libraries: Hypodermic needles on restroom floors, brawling homeless people, passed out drunks and addicts, etc. The Herald’s Dan Atkinson has the details.

Boston Herald

NYT: Law firms and others are now mining prep-school sex scandals for all they’re worth

Thanks largely to the outstanding investigative work of the Boston Globe, the public is now all too aware that the Catholic Church hasn’t cornered the market on sexual-abuse scandals – and that such abuses have occurred for decades at elite prep schools around here and elsewhere. Now the NYT’s Elizabeth Harris is naming names of prominent law firms, lawyers and professional investigators, here and elsewhere, who are making millions from the scandals, mostly by conducting research and defense work for schools hit by allegations.

NYT

Labor unrest at the Globe?

You can add labor unrest to the list of woes facing the Boston Globe. The BBJ’s Don Seiffert reports on an anonymous flyer being distributed around the Globe’s offices that singles out Globe owner John Henry, who the flyer accuses of “destroying” the newspaper and engaging in “anti-worker tactics.” It refers to a federal labor charge against the paper – and, as Seiffert notes, the only recent labor charge out there was filed by Teamsters Local 25, which represents Globe delivery drivers.

BBJ

Cape Wind project: ‘It’s Alive! … It’s Alive!’

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management earlier this week applied the bureaucratic equivalent of electric-shock treatment to keep the Cape Wind project technically alive, ignoring pleas to cancel the proposed wind farm’s federal permit and reaffirming the project's decades-long lease following a review of the seafloor's ability to support turbines, reports SHNS’s Matt Murphy (pay wall). The project still isn’t going anywhere without private financing – and that’s always been its main problem. ... OK, you know you can’t resist: The ‘It’s Alive’ scene from Frankenstein (YouTube).

Developer scales back air-rights project over Mass Pike

From the BBJ’s Catherine Carlock: “Real-estate development firm Weiner Ventures LLC is significantly scaling back its proposed residential development over the Massachusetts Turnpike in Boston’s Back Bay, scrapping plans to build a 17-story apartment tower and reducing the overall project size by 36 percent.” It’s just the latest episode in a decade-long, two-steps-forward-one-step-back development process.

BBJ

Senate Republicans call for hearing on sex-offender audit findings

This is interesting, via SHNS’s Matt Murphy: “Senate Republicans want their branch's Post Audit and Oversight Committee to hold a hearing into lapses in sex offender tracking and classification by the Sex Offender Registry Board following the release of an audit this week that found the state had lost track of hundreds of convicted sex offenders.” The Republican Baker administration has said recent Supreme Judicial Court ruling have hampered the registry’s ability to do its job and Gov. Baker has said he may seek legislative remedies.

SHNS (pay wall)

Are Massachusetts pipeline opponents in Rick Perry’s crosshairs?

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry is taking shots at local opposition to natural gas pipelines in New York – and CommonWealth’s Bruce Mohl writes that many wonder if it’s only a matter of time before Perry goes after Massachusetts opponents of pipelines.

CommonWealth

Bill that would punish lying in political ads called free speech attack

Proposed legislation that would make it illegal to make false statements in political advertisements is getting blasted as an encroachment on free speech rights, J.D. Capelouto of the Lowell Sun reports. Filed by state Rep. Colleen Garry, a Dracut Democrat, the bill would allow the state to seize all campaign funds from anyone found to have deliberately misstated an opponent’s position. From the Herald’s Joe Battenfeld: “Even for Beacon Hill, this is a bad idea.”

Lowell Sun

Worcester to try new approach with drug addicts

Drug users arrested for buying narcotics in the city of Worcester will be given the option of entering a treatment program rather than facing prosecution under a new program that could spread statewide if successful, Susan Spencer of the Telegram reports. State officials, including Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, on Thursday delivered a $99,000 grant to help fund a liaison position to work with treatment centers and law enforcement agencies.

Middleboro chafes under SouthCoast rail plan process

Officials in Middleboro say they were caught unaware by the state Department of Transportation’s decision to site a new train station in the town for the long-stalled South Cast Rail extension, saying the agency did not make good on promises to work with the community, Eileen Reece reports in the Enterprise.

Enterprise

Sunday public affairs TV

Keller at Large, WBZ-TV Channel 4, 8:30 a.m. This week’s guest: Treasurer Deborah Goldberg, who talks with host Jon Keller about the rollout of the new state marijuana law and how it compares with issues surrounding casino gambling here, and other topics.

This is New England, NBC Boston Channel 10, 9:30 a.m. With host Brian Shactman, this week’s focus: The opioid crisis, with interviews with Mayor Marty Walsh and the police chiefs of East Bridgewater and Plymouth, Allen Scott and Mike Botieri, respectively.

This Week in Business, NECN, 10 a.m. Massachusetts House Ways and Means chairman, Jeffrey Sanchez, the highest ranking state official of Puerto Rican descent, talks about the post-hurricane crisis In Puerto Rico; Fraser Cameron, the CEO of Velcro Companies, on concerns over their trademark; and Mass Politico’s Lauren Dezenski on the Trump tax plan, the push for Amazon and the future of Obamacare.

CEO Corner, NECN, 10:30 a.m. The founder and owner of J.P. Licks, Vince Petryk, talks about the growth of his company.

DC Dialogue, NECN, 11:30 a.m. UMass President Marty Meehan on DACA, NIH funding and updates on the five-campus system; Spradling Group president Scott Spradling on President Trump’s week; and Jim Brett of the New England Council on the potential for bringing Amazon to New England.

On The Record, WCVB-TV Channel 5, 11 a.m. This week’s guest: Attorney General Maura Healey, who talks with anchor Ed Harding and co-anchor Janet Wu.

CityLIne, WCVB-TV Channel 5, 12 p.m. With host Karen Holmes Ward, this week’s focus: Tackling homelessness.