Starting at the top:
Baker may tighten grip on state GOP
Baker plan for GOP stirs defiance
Were I a younger man I would like to get a grip on her.
Democrat Jay Ash is Baker’s first cabinet pick
Baker’s cabinet pick raises eyebrows
Charlie Baker makes a splash
More like a bellyflop:
"Richard L. Taylor, a one-time state transportation secretary and Governor-elect Charlie Baker’s choice to play a key role in his transition, abruptly resigned from the post Friday after the Globe confronted him about his extensive unpaid tax and business judgments of more than $1 million. It is not the first time Taylor has encountered financial troubles. During his two tumultuous years working as the Weld administration’s first transportation secretary in the early 1990s, he ran into highly publicized problems involving the misuse of expense funds and unpaid taxes."
Turns out there is nothing new at all about the revolving door of public $ervice.
Baker taps Northeastern official as chief of staff
Another Democrat picked who was already leaving for the position.
East Boston Democrat gets a top Baker post
Charlie Baker taps Kristen Lepore for budget chief
A government and industry veteran?
Human services pose early test for Charlie Baker administration
Baker names Sudders as health and human services chief
Even Coakley praised the pick.
And after quite a delay:
"Infant deaths get new scrutiny; Rules call for cases to be reported to state" by Jenifer McKim, New England Center for Investigative Reporting December 01, 2014
Social workers will be routinely alerted to investigate all unexplained infant deaths in Massachusetts for signs of abuse and neglect, according to new state guidelines scheduled to go to police, firefighters, and hospital workers by the end of the year.
The recommendations are meant to improve investigations of deaths attributed to Sudden Unexpected Infant Death, the leading cause of mortality among children between the ages of 1 month and 1 year in Massachusetts. They will also apply to other unexplained child deaths.
While police often alert the Department of Children and Families to unexplained deaths, the new guidelines are intended to assure that all infant deaths are reported to the agency. Emergency workers will be advised to notify DCF social workers whenever they encounter the unexplained death of a baby, according to Carlene Pavlos, a state Department of Public Health official.
The recommendations are part of a 55-page report recently released by the state Child Fatality Review Team, a group cochaired by the public health department and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Each year, dozens of Massachusetts children die suddenly and unexpectedly. In 2009 and 2010 combined, 90 infants under the age of 1 died, according to the report. Risk factors involve what are known as unsafe sleep conditions — such as putting children to sleep on their belly, sleeping with an adult, or with excessive bedding. Black non-Hispanic infants were three times as likely to die as white non-Hispanic babies between 2001 and 2010, the report says.
But the new guidelines — released in a report filed on the medical examiner’s website this fall — already are prompting concern from some families and groups involved in the prevention of unexpected infant deaths, which include sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, as well as accidental suffocation and entrapment, and other unexplained causes.
Among them is Milford Police Chief Tom O’Loughlin, who lost his 3½-month-old son, Michael, to SIDS on the Monday before Thanksgiving in 1992. He said the new directive could cause unnecessary pain for families suffering from the death of a child.
“If there are no facts and circumstances that indicate neglect or abuse, I don’t believe that the family should be subjected to a DCF investigation,’’ O’Loughlin said.
The fatality review team was created by the Legislature in 2000 to examine deaths of children and recommend ways to prevent future tragedies. While the advice cannot be legally mandated without a law change, the guidelines will create a baseline for emergency personnel when considering whether to report a death to social workers, Pavlos said.
According to the report: “The recommendation, which will be distributed to mandated reporters statewide, states that any unexplained death of a child establishes reasonable suspicion of abuse or neglect and advises reporting these deaths” to DCF.
Representatives of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner were not available for comment.
DCF officials said they encourage anyone concerned about the safety and well-being of a child to file a report.
However, DCF spokeswoman Cayenne Isaksen said that when it comes to sudden infant deaths, the agency is most focused on educating families and caretakers about reducing risks, referring interested parties to visit www.mass.gov/SafeSleep to learn more.
The recommendations come four months after a New England Center for Investigative Reporting story published in the Boston Globe found that children supervised by state social workers die suddenly and unexpectedly at a rate at least twice that of infants statewide — suggesting more should be done to educate caretakers to protect some of the state’s most vulnerable children.
Diana West, a spokeswoman for the Illinois-based La Leche League International, a breast-feeding support group, said the new policy would unfairly target breast-feeding mothers who espouse bed-sharing, because state health officials warn that bed sharing increases the risk that infants could suffocate.
The group maintains it is safe when mothers avoid other risk factors, such as smoking, using drugs or alcohol, or allowing a baby to overheat.
“Deeply grieving parents will now have to go through an investigation that presumes guilt and assumes something nefarious was done to the child,” she said.
Death investigations should be left to the state’s medical examiner and law enforcement, West said.
But Pavlos, director of the Bureau of Community Health and Prevention at the state health department, said the recommendations would help create consistency in child death reporting.
She said emergency workers are conscious of being sensitive to families who have lost a child. At the same time, she, too, said the state is most concerned about getting the word out about safe sleep.
“It is critical that parents put infants to sleep on their back, on a separate sleep surface and without clutter,” she said.
Although the state Child Fatality Review Program is supposed to file reports annually, this is the first study since 2011, when the group examined child deaths between 2006 and 2008.
Authors said the unfunded program is hindered by a lack of resources and delays in receiving death certificates.
The program includes 11 local groups directed by county district attorneys who submit information and recommendations to a state team.
Other key recommendations on infant deaths that come from state and local teams urge:
■ Coordination between the Department of Public Health and hospitals, along with others, to direct safe-sleep messages to different groups, including people who do not speak English, immigrants, and grandparents.
■ Adoption by law enforcement of standard protocols to handle death-scene investigations of children who die suddenly and unexpectedly.
■ Launching of a multimedia public education campaign, headed by the Department of Public Health, to teach families about safe sleep.
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Yeah, this state really cares about kids, and so does the Globe:
Charlie Baker must address K-12 achievement gaps
Charlie Baker will need to catch up on challenges of higher education
Grandfather’s memory inspires Baker’s UMass scholarship
Going to be quite a tall order getting it through the State House.
Charlie Baker planning to meet with President Obama Friday
Governor-elect Charlie Baker meets with President Obama
Charlie Baker attends Republican governors conference
Time to make a transition:
"Maura Healey names former labor secretary to transition team" by Megan Woolhouse and Beth Healy, Globe Staff November 27, 2014
Attorney General-elect Maura Healey has named to her transition team Joanne Goldstein, the former state labor secretary who left office earlier this year amid criticism of her handling of the rollout and poor performance of an online system for managing unemployment claims.
Can we have Marty back?
The system, launched in July 2013, for several months experienced serious problems that delayed benefits for thousands of unemployed workers, leaving many of them unable to cover rent, food, and health care expenses. Goldstein characterized the rollout and the system as a success, even though e-mails later obtained by the Globe through a public records request showed a chaotic debacle that created problems for both workers and employers.
I want to know how we can ever be expected to believe state officials about anything anymore. It's all knee-jerk lies for public relations and image purposes.
Related: State Lied About Unemployment Website
She was only the lead liar, and the "puni$hment" was a plum job assignment.
Goldstein, now associate vice president at Northeastern University, did not respond to requests for comment. Healey, who takes office in January, said in a statement, “I selected Joanne Goldstein as a member of this committee because of her deep experience in labor and employment law and her record of leadership of the fair labor division in the attorney general’s office.”
Goldstein led the division, which enforces wage and other labor laws, under Attorney General Martha Coakley, who decided to give up the office to run for governor and lost a tight election to Charlie Baker. In the attorney general’s office, Goldstein worked on cases involving unemployment fraud and companies’ failure to contribute to the unemployment fund.
Goldstein’s tenure in the AG’s office overlapped with that of Healey, who ran the civil rights division from 2007 to 2013, when she left to run to succeed Coakley. Goldstein left Coakley’s office in 2010, when she was appointed labor secretary by Governor Deval Patrick.
Healey also noted Goldstein’s tenure as general counsel to the Utility Workers Union of America in naming her to the 19-person transition team. Healey revealed the members of the team in an e-mail to supporters and on Facebook.
“During this transition and in the coming months,” Healey wrote, “I’ll be traveling around Massachusetts to meet with community leaders, activists, policy experts, business owners, and concerned citizens to continue our conversations and to lay out my aggressive agenda as the People’s Lawyer.”
The transition team, led by Deborah Shah of Boston, one of Healey’s campaign directors, is predominantly made up of lawyers.
Members include: Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, EMC Corporation general counsel Paul T. Dacier, and Steve Oleskey, a Boston lawyer who represented prisoners captured in the war on terror and held at Guantanamo Bay and who received a lifetime recognition award from the American Bar Association for his commitment to service of the poor.
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I guess I should like them all because they played basketball, right?
And as it turns out, it is the $ame old leader$hip here in Ma$$achu$etts:
"Election was awash in cash, but effect is unclear" by David Scharfenberg | Globe Staff November 13, 2014
This fall’s state election set at least two Massachusetts political spending records: the most outside money dropped on a governor’s race — $16.9 million on the general election alone — and the most cash poured into ballot campaigns, at $28 million.
But even in an era of supercharged political spending, it’s not clear that money can buy an election.
A small group of conservative activists pushing to repeal automatic increases in the state’s gas tax won their referendum fight, even as contractors and engineers eager for gas-tax-funded road and bridge work outspent them 31 to 1.
I'm $urpri$ed, I really am.
Warren Tolman lost a hotly contested Democratic primary for attorney general, despite shelling out $700,000 more than rival Maura Healey.
I'm partly responsible, but then voted Republican in the general.
And in the governor’s race, political operatives are split over whether Charlie Baker’s financial edge on Martha Coakley made a significant difference.
The big spending came amid considerable concern about the impact of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allows unlimited corporate and union spending in elections.
Coakley, in a post-election press conference, blamed her defeat partly on the decision — and on one group, in particular, that is funded by sizable corporate contributions.
“I think we’ve seen the ability, because of Citizens United, for outside groups, largely anonymously, to come in and target a particular race,” she said. “There’s no mystery to the fact that we were outspent 10 to 1 in negative advertising by the Republican Governors Association. I don’t think that’s a good trend for Massachusetts or for the country.”
The line drew applause from supporters. But the impact of the Supreme Court decision was more complicated than Coakley suggested.
The ruling has undoubtedly accelerated a trend toward greater outside spending, all over the country.
"But.... still.... but."
*********
A coalition of beverage companies and grocers spent $8.8 million to defeat a ballot measure that “really won it.”
But....
“There are reasons why a lot of people believe we should keep big corporate money out of our politics,” said Phillip Sego of the Massachusetts Sierra Club, still stunned a few days after the vote. “Our democracy is fragile, and it can easily be destroyed.”
I hate to break it to him, but rigor mortis set in long ago.
If big money won the bottle fight, though, its impact on other ballot questions was not so clear.
While gambling companies outspent their opponents $13.9 million to $659,000 in their effort to keep the state’s casino law on the books, analysts said that may not have been the deciding factor.
How do you like the roulette wheel spin of the propaganda pre$$?
Yeah, it didn't matter when it came to those dear-to-their-heart casinos!
Fred Bayles, a Boston University journalism professor and a longtime observer of Massachusetts ballot campaigns, said the casino companies’ financial edge may have helped them persuade some undecided voters.
But he said the gambling companies, which held a solid lead in the polls for months, probably would have prevailed anyway. The glimmer of casinos, he said, is potent.
“Visceral is too strong a word,” Bayles said. “But this is personal.”
Campaign spending, he argued, was not decisive in the battle over automatic gas tax hikes, either. “It was a real pocketbook issue — ‘This is going to cost me more,’ ” he said.
YUP! All that gas tax money goes to paying off Big Dig and T debt anyway! That's why despite all the dough the roads and bridges are in horrible shape.
Poorly financed supporters of repeal, Bayles said, did not need a big megaphone to make that argument.
Joseph T. Baerlein, the public relations executive who ran the “no” campaign on the gas tax measure — his television ads highlighted the importance of bridge and road repair — argued that campaign spending did make a difference. But it wasn’t his side’s $2.6 million to $84,000 advantage over the “yes” campaign that mattered, he said.
The pro-Baker super PAC, he noted, spent millions attacking Coakley on the gas tax. And that constant message — this is a gas tax, not revenue to repair crumbling infrastructure — was insurmountable, he argued.
“We were sort of collateral damage,” said Baerlein, who had never before lost a ballot measure campaign.
They were innocent civilians that were killed in a war, huh?
Holly Robichaud, spokeswoman for the pro-repeal group Tank the Gas Tax, had a tart rejoinder: “I would say that’s desperate spin by people that just got their butts kicked by us.”
They even have their own newspaper for such things.
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Yeah, that's them.
“I know Charlie Baker, and I know he’s interested in fostering a deep economic connection between the Commonwealth and Israel.”
I'm not going to drop any names, but I'm tired of the Jewish supremacism all throughout the jew$paper. Sorry. And I can see nothing is going to be changing at all.
Baker has returned to urban areas since election
Compassion in the corner office
Baker outlines plan to address homelessness
I will vouch for that.
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
Charlie Baker’s leadership needed for transportation
Charlie Baker’s chance for tomorrow’s transportation
