It's on the front page:
2 more arrested in David Ortiz shooting
The official story is a case of mistaken identity, and so much for the bad booze.
Joe Biden defends his 1970s position on school busing
The controversy that sprang from Thursday night’s debate raised questions about whether the 76-year-old Biden can maintain his front-runner status in the 2020 race amid a series of incidents that have left him appearing to some as being out of touch with today’s Democratic Party, but it is unclear whether those events will erode Biden’s strong support among African-American voters, some of which comes from his having served with Barack Obama.
Biden spoke Friday at the annual convention in Chicago of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a civil rights group founded by Jesse Jackson, who is its president. Earlier on Friday Jackson told CNN that Biden had been “on the wrong side” of the busing issue, but in introducing Biden at the convention, Jackson said he has “the stuff that it takes to make America better.” Biden said he respects Harris, but “30 seconds to 60 seconds on a campaign debate exchange can’t do justice to a lifetime commitment to civil rights,” he said.
That still might be it for him.
[flip to below fold]
As Cape Cod readies for tourist season, last year’s deadly shark attack is on everyone’s mind
Welcome to the Encore Boston Harbor hotel
The room co$ts $600 a night and doesn’t overlook the harbor, but you do get a 55-inch HDTV, plus a 24-inch flat screen over the bathtub (let's hope no one is watching).
"Why does it take DCF so long to release information on child deaths?" by Kay Lazar Globe Staff, June 28, 2019
The troubled state agency in charge of protecting children can’t yet say how many kids died of abuse and neglect last year. Or this year. Nor can it say how many children in its care, all told, have died so far in 2019, whether by accident, injury, or some other means.
A spokeswoman for the Baker administration said that
data was “
not readily available” Friday, a day after the Essex district attorney’s office announced it is investigating three unrelated deaths since mid-April of children in the care of the Department of Children and Families.
The administration said it
will eventually report that information to the state’s child advocate, who is responsible for issuing annual reports,
but the time lag between children’s deaths and the public release of information about them can be significant.
Child welfare advocates say the lack of prompt reporting makes it difficult to understand the plight of children in the state’s care in real time, or how the department could swiftly correct emergent problems.
The
latest deaths are
still under investigation by the state medical examiner.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a cause of death.
DCF has long been plagued by a lack of transparency and accountability, and despite episodic efforts by the governor and Legislature to fix it, problems remain.
Yeah, they are more worried about seed-to-sale tracking of pot than they are the most vulnerable children. Not only do you get sick of the excuses, but you start to wonder what's really going on. This is all in the hands of those who lecture upon their moral superiority as the state, too.
Earlier this year, the department acknowledged it
relies on a largely paper-based system to track thousands of children in foster care. The department
vowed to rectify that with a new computer system by this fall.
Yeah, keep in mind the paper system still in place for later, and let's pray there are no glitches like with the DMV, welfare, and unemployment updates.
See: Sunday Globe Special: For the Children
Is it?
State lawmakers were
fed up with delays and a lack of context in DCF’s data in the aftermath of a string of children’s deaths about
five years ago. They
ordered the creation of a task force to develop more timely and complete data on the welfare of children and families in DCF care. It
gave the task force
until early 2022 to get the job done.
That's what we call a lot of hand-waving and arm-flailing to show they are doing something about the problem, without actually doing anything about the problem.
At least they got their pay raises that will buffer their pensions and perks!
Two years later,
progress has been slow. Susan Elsen, a child welfare policy advocate at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, a member of that task force, says she is
optimistic it will eventually “bring about the data transparency that’s needed,
but we
have our work cut out for us.”
Why? I mean, they can track all the cars moving around, cameras are ubiquitous, we have fusion centers in case of security threats, electronic data collection of all kinds, but the thing the state is most charged with and what they say they take with utmost seriousness -- the protection of vulnerable youth -- and it's we don't know. It almost makes one think the incompetence is a cover for something far more nefarious.
Oh, and about those new computer systems:
DCF’s problems precede Baker. Five years ago, the public was
outraged about missing children in DCF care after the department acknowledged it wasn’t tracking teens who’d run away from foster homes. Governor Deval Patrick’s administration
promised to upgrade technology in order to do a better job of tracking runaways — and all the children under the supervision of DCF.....
Yeah.
Nothing was done, huh?
Just threw a lot of contracts out to well-connected contacts and consultants and we will get back to you.
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Page 5 Related: Mother recalls final visit with child who died in DCF care
How awful.
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The Globe is really waving the kids at us these days.
Page 2:
"‘Flawed’ study shows possible lasting effects from drug exposure in the womb" by Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff, June 28, 2019
A
new study involving thousands of Boston families
found that children exposed to multiple drugs in the womb are more likely to face physical and mental difficulties as they grow up.
The study, published Friday in the online journal JAMA Network Open, is the first to examine a large group of opioid-exposed children over many years and seek to identify the developmental consequences.
Yet the research fails to untangle the host of factors that affect how children fare, and several specialists in newborn medicine said it does little more than point to avenues for future research.
Lead author Romuladus E. Azuine, director of epidemiology research at the US Health Resources and Services Administration, said the study provides “very
shocking and troubling” insights into the potential
aftereffects of the opioid crisis.
“The opioid epidemic is not an epidemic of the present. It is an epidemic of the future,” Azuine said. “We have shown long-term consequences for children.”
The study found that drug-exposed youngsters were more likely than their peers to be born small or premature, have growth problems and conduct disorders as preschoolers, and suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder when they get to school.
Is this another bogus, agenda-pu$hing, $elf-$erving study that is really saying nothing because that is where this thing goes.
All the women took opioids (heroin, oxycodone, or methadone) while pregnant —
but most also smoked, drank alcohol, and used other illicit substances. The
analysis did not tease out the effects of the different substances. It
also provided no information about the children’s
home environment, which research has shown to be at least as influential as drug exposure during pregnancy.
So this is basically crap. Agenda-pushing crap.
Significantly, the study
does not reveal the number of children who suffered bad outcomes. It shows that the drug-exposed children had higher odds of having certain problems,
but not how prevalent those problems were.
The
questions the study raises are critical because increasing numbers of babies have been born dependent on opioids in recent years. The number of women who were addicted to opioids when they delivered babies quadrupled across the nation from 1999 to 2014, according to a federal study last year. In Massachusetts, one of the states hardest hit by the opioid crisis, the increase was even greater: more than sixfold from 1999 to 2013, the most recent year measured.
To better understand the effects of such trends, researchers from the Health Resources and Services Administration, Johns Hopkins University, and Boston Medical Center delved into the medical records of 8,509 mother-infant pairs who agreed to participate in a study starting in 1998. Called the Boston Birth Cohort, the group consists of low-income urban mothers who delivered babies at Boston Medical Center. Of them, 454 children, about
5 percent, were exposed to opioids in the womb.
The ultimate goal should be zero, but once again we have a mountain being made of a molehill and being presented as an urgent mainstream problem.
The authors
acknowledge that their work doesn’t separate the effects of opioids from the alcohol, tobacco, cocaine, and other illicit substances the women also took.
I mean, c'mon!
For example, it’s
already well-known that babies born to smokers are more likely to be undersized or premature. Because the mothers who took opioids were also more likely to smoke, it’s not clear whether the opioid exposure made any difference.
Dr. Stephen W. Patrick, a Vanderbilt University specialist in newborn medicine who has studied opioid-exposed babies, said the study
fails to answer the burning questions about the long-term effects of opioid exposure in the womb.
“What the study shows us is that polysubstance exposure can be associated with adverse outcomes,” he said. “It highlights the need for close follow-up for substance-exposed newborns.”
BPH out of the plastics yet?
How about the lead in the water?
EPA looking out for any of that?
Dr. Barry
Zuckerman, a Boston Medical Center pediatrician and
one of the study’s authors, acknowledged the study’s limitations. How each substance contributes to the bad effects remains an unanswered question, he said.
“Any implications for prevention have to go beyond just stopping opioids,” he said. “In the real world, we
need interventions to address all substances and risk factors.”
That's what this is. A big push for the total surveillance society under the guise of your health.
Let's pray the kid doesn't get sent into foster care.
Decades of research into the lives of children exposed to cocaine and methamphetamine in the womb has shown that
it’s not the drugs alone that affect how the children fare — it’s the environment where they grow up and the stresses they endure. Poverty, violence, and trauma have at least as much influence on a child’s future as the chemicals the child was exposed to during gestation, said Barry M. Lester, director of Brown University’s Center for the Study of Children at Risk.
Are opioids somehow worse for babies than cocaine and methamphetamine? Lester said it remains unknown, and the
recent study, in his opinion,
sheds no new light, but Zuckerman,
while acknowledging that the study is “flawed,” said opioid use may amplify the negative effects of a person’s life circumstances. It’s known that they affect the brain because opioid-exposed infants suffer from withdrawal at birth, something not seen with cocaine, he said.
Right, there is no cocaine addiction or withdrawal.
Maybe someone should piss test the doctors who put their name on this pos.
The study, he said,
provides “documentation of what we clinically have always seen,” he said. “It adds evidence to the concern that all of us clinicians have had for these mothers and babies.”
Oh, yeah, it backs up what they have spewing, I gotcha.
Dr. Jonathan M. Davis, chief of Tufts Medical Center’s division of newborn medicine, said the study provides “important information” about the complexities of patients’ lives.
Opioid use, he said, occurs amid a
web of social, emotional, and economic factors. It can be a
sign of a troubled life across generations, starting with childhood trauma — which leads many women into addiction — and continuing into adult lives afflicted with poverty, violence, and stress.
Imagine what living in a place like Gaza does to the kids, huh?
Or Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or Libya. Or Syria. Or Yemen.
The
new research points to the importance of taking care of the children after they leave the hospital, he said.
Just don't leave them in the hands of the DCF.
“We’re sending them home and wishing them
good luck,” Davis said. “Every one of these opioid-exposed babies
should be referred for early intervention and
tracked and followed.”
Is it just me, or do the incongruous contradictions and mixed messages of this $lop make you wanna cry like a baby?
Dr. Munish Gupta, a
pediatrician specializing in newborns at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center,
reacted to the study
with alarm, saying he
feared it would
scare pregnant women
away from necessary treatment because it doesn’t distinguish between women who used illicit opioids and those who took prescribed opioids to treat their addiction.
Doctors
strongly recommend that pregnant women who are addicted to opioids, rather than simply stopping all drugs,
take a different type of opioid, either methadone or buprenorphine. These drugs control cravings and prevent overdoses, enabling women to stabilize their lives, focus on health and nutrition, and deliver healthier babies,
but inevitably the
fetus is exposed to the drugs and often
will undergo withdrawal at birth. That’s considered
better than the alternative: Some 90 percent of pregnant women who stop heroin use will
relapse, exposing the fetus to high and irregular doses of opioids and risking overdose and death.
Yeah, just keep taking the pre$cription pharmaceuticals!
Wow!
Dr. Davida M.
Schiff, medical director of a Massachusetts General Hospital clinic for women with opioid use disorder and their children, says her patients are often reluctant to take the recommended medications because they fear the effects on their babies. She
worries this latest study will make it even harder to persuade them.
“We know that these families are very
high risk,” she said. “Can we
pour the resources into actually supporting them as opposed to providing more judgment and stigma and shame?”
They don't have to worry, it's not them I'm judging.
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If only we had more female leaders, huh?
"Female candidates make history, waves in debate" by Stephanie Ebbert Globe Staff, June 28, 2019
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar was the candidate most likely to invoke He Who Must Not Be Named in the first night’s debate, positioning herself as a fierce contender who is willing and eager take on Trump, said Betsy Fischer Martin, executive director of the Women & Politics Institute at the American University School of Public Affairs, but Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic strategist, thought Klobuchar came off as calibrated in her debate persona, while some of the other women presented what today’s voters demand — authenticity. Women candidates — like Hillary Clinton — have often been encouraged to be themselves, even as they’re criticized at every turn for being too tough or not tough enough.
“It was refreshing to see Elizabeth Warren as a woman candidate stand up there and be the same Elizabeth Warren you’ve seen every day,” Marsh said. “That is a
major step forward for women in general.”
Fischer Martin was a producer for the 2000 US Senate debate in which Republican Rick Lazio unexpectedly left his podium and charged toward Clinton asking her to sign a pledge, looking aggressive and more than a little too macho. Fischer Martin didn’t spot gender-based missteps of that caliber this time around, but she was struck to hear Washington Governor Jay Inslee try to distinguish himself as the only candidate who passed a law protecting abortion rights, and taking sole credit as the “one candidate that’s actually advanced the ball.”
“If you’re going to mansplain something,” Fischer Martin questioned, why would you choose reproductive rights, on a stage with three women?
In doing so, he set up Klobuchar to deliver her best line of the debate: “I want to say there are three women up here who fought pretty hard for a woman’s right to choose.”
US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand also tried to make the case that she was being talked over by the men onstage, and even offered the floor to Marianne Williamson, a spiritual author and lecturer who is also running for president and hadn’t yet gotten a chance to speak.
“It struck me as being frustrated,” said Fischer Martin, who noted that Gillibrand got less speaking time than most of the candidates but that her frequent attempts to cut in were largely unsuccessful.
“I think she
rubbed some people the wrong way, for sure,” she said.
Conversely, Kamala Harris
owned the debate stage, interjecting, running over time when necessary and even using the clamor kicked up by Gillibrand to her advantage.
“Hey guys, you know what? America does not want to witness a food fight,” Harris said, to applause. “They want to know how we’re going to put food on their table.“
To Marsh, the women’s performance — and the audience’s receptivity — proved a different lesson than some took from the 2016 election.
“Women are more political and more empowered than ever,” she said. “The
perfect way to defeat Donald
Trump is to
have a woman do it.”
And if not, it will be 0 for 2 and a worse trauma than in 2016.
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You guys are better off letting Bernie take the loss.
Page 3:
Another ‘Varsity Blues’ defendant pleads guilty
Page 4:
"Haverhill man held without bail in killing of 82-year-old Groveland man" by Emily Sweeney and John R. Ellement Globe Staff, June 28, 2019
HAVERHILL — Leedell L. Graham
left his Cedar Street
home last Friday and
walked some
4 miles into neighboring Groveland, where he allegedly went into the home of Patsy Schena
and killed the 82-year-old man when Schena walked in minutes later, prosecutors said Friday.
Graham, 48, was arraigned in Haverhill District Court on Friday on a charge of murder. He appeared in court wearing a gray T-shirt and looked calmly around the courtroom. For a moment, he stared in the direction of a woman who was crying.
Graham was ordered held without bail. A probable cause hearing is scheduled for Aug. 1.
Essex Assistant District Attorney John DePaulo said in court that
surveillance camera footage showed Graham arriving at Schena’s home at 4:16 p.m. on the day of the murder, June 21.
Further
video footage showed Schena arriving at his house at 4:23 p.m., the prosecutor said.
Graham left the house at 4:30 p.m., the prosecutor said. He is 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighs 280 pounds.
Police discovered Schena’s body around 11:46 p.m., officials said.
DePaulo said a
bag was found about a 10th of a mile from the house that contained the handle of a knife, Schena’s car keys, and a lamp that State Police believe is the murder weapon.
A
second bundle was found about a half mile from the house that included clothing Graham was allegedly seen wearing along with a piece of jewelry that authorities allege had been taken from Schena’s house, he said.
DePaulo said
investigators have stitched together images from various surveillance cameras in Haverhill and Groveland, and they were able to track Graham as he walked the 4 miles or so to Schena’s home.
“There is a
series of surveillance cameras that pick him up —
some of them private, some of them public cameras — that have him walking from Haverhill over to Groveland,” DePaulo said. “The defendant can be seen walking to the house.”
They sure do make a strong case for the total surveillance society, 'eh?
A no crime society -- at least in the streets.
Earlier Friday, officials spoke with reporters outside the Groveland police station. During the press conference, Blodgett disclosed that Graham and Schena had “
various business dealings” with each other, but he declined to be more specific.
“The defendant in this case knew the victim through various business dealings,’’ Blodgett said. “I am not going to speculate about a motive.’’
Hmmmmmmmmm.
What kind of business dealing?
He said the medical examiner concluded the cause of death was “blunt and sharp force trauma.”
Oh, they got that one done quick.
Schena was a
longtime building inspector who worked for the town from 1979 to 2015. Blodgett said the business between the murder victim and the man accused of killing him did not involve town matters.
Take care of your own, I see. An important person.
Through Blodgett’s office, Schena’s family issued a brief statement prior to Graham being arraigned.
“We appreciate the hard work and diligence of the Essex County DA’s Office, the Essex State Police detective Unit, the Groveland Police Department and the Haverhill Police department,’’ the statement reads. “We are especially grateful for the outpouring of support from the community.”
Boy, do they have their hands full, what with the DCF deaths in same county.
The family also added that “we
request privacy from the media at this time as we lay our beloved father, and grandfather, to rest.”
Schena, according to his online obituary, had his own home building company for nearly 40 years, and also loved the antique business.
“His
hobby of antiques became his
retirement business and you could
find him on the field every Sunday at Todd Farm in Rowley,’’ the obituary reads. “Always greeting people with his beautiful smile, he was known for mentoring many local builders and helping his community.”
The family described him as a “
devoted father who taught his girls how to snowmobile, ski, skate, fish, clam dig, build treehouses and go-carts, throw a punch, a strong work ethic and how to be successful in life.”
Why would anyone want to kill him?
Or was it just a robbery gone bad?
According to court records and the Essex County sheriff’s department, Graham was released from the Middleton House of Correction on April 26 after he completed a six-month sentence imposed in the Haverhill courthouse last Dec. 17.
He pleaded guilty to a charge of distributing Class B drugs, records show.
I sure hope that wasn't the business they were in together.
Graham also was prosecuted in Essex Superior Court in 2006 on armed robbery and illegal firearms charges. He pleaded guilty in September 2006 to a felon being in the possession of a firearm and armed robbery, among other charges, and was sentenced to a three-to-five year term in state prison, records show.
Old revolving door.
Graham completed his state prison sentence and was released on Oct. 18, 2013.
The math doesn't add up.
Groveland Police Chief Jeffrey Gillen said the
arrest of Graham
may help the town start to recover from the
shock of Schena’s
murder, the first in the town of 6,400 people since 1992.
“I personally knew him,’’ Gillen said of Schena. “He was very
popular, very
well known. This cuts to the core of our community. It was
shocking.”
Gillen expressed condolences to Schena’s family.
“He was a wonderful man,” Gillen said. “On behalf of the board of selectmen, I know they also wanted to extend their thanks and their sympathy to the family.’’
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"Man stabbed near Boston City Hall" by John R. Ellement and Emily Sweeney Globe Staff, June 28, 2019
A
man believed to be in his early 30s was
stabbed in an
alley just off City Hall Plaza early Friday following an argument with another man, Boston police said.
The optics of that are awful!
The man is being treated at Massachusetts General Hospital after suffering multiple stab wounds in the wide alley that runs between Court Street and the side of the
plaza lined by a string of stores and the Moakley Veterans Quarters, police said.
The incident took place around 5:16 a.m. and the suspect ran from the alley onto Court Street, said Boston Police Superintendent Paul Donovan, chief of the Bureau of Investigative Services. Police are
reviewing multiple security cameras that line the alley, he said.
“The ongoing investigation has determined that the victim was in a
dispute in the alley with the unknown male. That unknown male then fled out onto Court Street,’’ Donovan said, while asking the public to share any information they may have with police.
Donovan said police are trying to determine whether the violent act involved any area residents.
The man is in critical condition, Donovan said.
A portion of the plaza between the MBTA’s Government Center Green Line station and the alley was
sealed off with both yellow and red police tape
while homicide detectives and the department’s
evidence collection team scoured the area.
Police expected to complete their on-scene investigation Friday morning.
Brad Porter, a 69-year-old Vietnam-era US Navy veteran, said he was in his apartment at the Veterans Quarters on the seventh floor when the stabbing took place, but
did not hear any sound indicating an act of violence was unfolding below.
Porter, who has lived in the veterans’ quarters for two years, said he frequently spends his days sitting at different locations in the plaza. “It’s like my backyard.’’
On many nights, he said, people
congregate near the T station
to drink and then use the alley as a public
bathroom.
Oh, so Bo$ton is already becoming like San Francisco!
“That’s
sad to hear,’’ he said when told about the stabbing.....
And using the alley as a toilet, too, right?
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So what was it, another drug deal gone bad?
Shoulda ran for it:
"Police: He came at her with scissors while she was running on Esplanade" by Sophia Eppolito and Adam Sennott Globe Correspondents, June 28, 2019
A 23-year-old
woman was hospitalized Friday after a
man allegedly stabbed her with a pair of scissors in an unprovoked attack as she jogged along the Esplanade, according to police.
The
incident touched off a foot chase with State Police,
shattering the calm of a hot, sunny afternoon along the Charles River. Police said they eventually caught up with Luis Olivo, 37, who allegedly struggled with troopers before they
used an electronic weapon to subdue him.
That's a polite way of saying they tased him.
The woman, who is from Allston, is expected to survive.
She was running on a stone footbridge spanning the Esplanade’s lagoon before the attack. The woman suffered a cut to her head, along with multiple other injuries to her head and body, after Olivo allegedly stabbed her in the head, tackled her, and then hit her “suddenly and without provocation,” according to State Police.
He then ran away, police said. Troopers converged on him near the intersection of Commonwealth Avenue and Dartmouth Street and were able to “end the violent threat the man was posing,” State Police said.
Good thing the State Police were nearby(??).
Police said they found previous addresses for Olivo in Boston and Everett.
He faces charges including armed assault with intent to murder and is being held on $100,000 cash bail. Olivo is set to be arraigned Monday.
Along the
busy waterfront on Friday evening, there were
few signs of the mayhem that had unfolded earlier,
but the incident left
some visitors worried about their
safety.
Yeah, business is booming over there.
“I thought I was safe. I
felt safe until now,” said Fern Perera, 20. “I run here, too.”
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Just another day in history.
Page 5:
"Dorchester man missing in White Mountains" by Jeremy C. Fox Globe Correspondent, June 28, 2019
Searchers scoured a section of the White Mountains for a fourth day Friday, seeking a Dorchester
man missing since a hike Monday, a New Hampshire official said.
Christopher Staff, 70, set off early Monday morning to hike the 31-mile Pemigewasset Loop, known locally as the Pemi Loop, Lieutenant Jim Kneeland of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department said.
The
number of searchers swelled to about 50 on Thursday and Friday, he said,
with help from the Army National Guard, the Appalachian Mountain Club, the Pemigewasset Valley Search and Rescue Team, the Upper Valley Wilderness Response Team, New England K-9 Search and Rescue, Lakes Region Search and Rescue, and US Forest Service personnel.
Earlier this month, Sandra Lee, 63, of Mount Tabor, N.J.,
died at Androscoggin Valley Hospital in Berlin, N.H., after she was rescued while showing signs of hypothermia as she hiked Mount Washington in
high winds and bitter cold, authorities said.
Just hours later, 80-year-old James Clark, of Dublin, Ohio, was rescued on Mount Washington after his teenage grandsons left him hiking alone. New Hampshire Fish and Game has said it is
considering criminal charges against the family,
as well as a bill for the rescue.
See: Bo$ton Globe's Island
The
area where crews are searching for Staff
had rain earlier this week. It’s
been warm and humid for the last couple of days, Kneeland said.....
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Related:
Nigerian community mourns loss of cab driver shot in Boston
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Page 6:
Supreme Court will decide on continuation of DACA
Related:
"The Alabama
law that would ban the most common method of second-trimester
abortion has
never gone into effect, because a district court judge and then a
reluctant panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit
said that, under Supreme Court precedent, it placed an
undue burden on a woman’s right to abortion before fetal viability. The law is distinct from the statute passed this year by the Alabama Legislature that would virtually outlaw abortion in the state. That
law has yet to start its way through the legal process....."
They blame the father, it's as if the legal process itself is a pregnancy, and what do they mean a reluctant panel?
It's either the law or not the law.
WTF?
Avowed neo-Nazi in Charlottesville car attack sentenced to life in prison for federal hate crimes
What struck me was the life term for one death (heck, half a million were worth it) whereas some only get 3-5 years, while others can murder and maim and you never hear about it.
The deciding factor must have been "Fields’s professed admiration for the militarism and racial purity doctrine of Nazi Germany — a fascination that has been well documented over the past two years in court testimony and media reports. The memo offers new details, though, including about Fields’ trip to Germany with high school classmates. ‘‘When the group visited the Dachau concentration camp, the defendant said, ‘This is where the magic happened,’ and then skipped happily down the train tracks that transported Jewish prisoners to the camp,’’ Kavanaugh wrote about a classmate’s recollection."
Too bad he couldn't have been impeached:
"Representative Joseph Kennedy III is calling on the House to begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump, adding his voice to
a growing Democratic chorus calling for action in the wake of the scathing report by special counsel Robert Mueller..... "
Now it is a scathing report!
So who are you loyal to?
"City council members in St. Louis Park, a Minneapolis suburb,
wanted to make sure that all residents felt welcome at their bimonthly meetings. So, last week, they
voted to stop reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. ‘‘I
hope it’s
not too
controversial,’’ St. Louis Park City Council Member Tim Brausen told the Star Tribune. ‘‘Our
community tends to be a very welcoming and increasingly diverse community, and we believe our citizens will understand.’’ It
did, in fact, prove to be controversial. ‘‘Anti-American much?’’ conservative talk show host Joe Pagliarulo tweeted on Wednesday. ‘‘St Louis Park should no longer be allowed to claim it’s in the United States of America.’’ Jacque Smith, the communications and marketing manager for the city, said
the council plans to revisit its decision at a July 8 meeting."
Before they begin they are all going to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
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Page 7:
Trump tells Putin (with a grin) not to meddle in elections
The levity came at a time when Putin has felt emboldened on the world stage, flexing Russian muscle in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and even South America, before the New York Times starting its $elf-$erving whining about fake news.
US tells Europe: Choose between us and Iran
The US special representative for Iran said Friday that European companies have a choice: Do business with the United States, or do business with Iran amid intensifying sanctions that will continue until Iran becomes a ‘‘normal’’ state.
Wow, an ultimatum! How absolutist of him! Very Sith-like.
What, btw, is a "normal" state?
One soaked in blood like the United States and Israel?
France experiences its hottest day on record
The heat is getting turned up on them all.
Pope offers Chinese clergy a way to register with civil agency
He at the G-20, too?
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Page 8:
"Democrats confront divisions over health care in debate" by Abby Goodnough and Thomas Kaplan New York Times, June 28, 2019
WASHINGTON — It was a command as much as a question, intended to put an end to months of equivocating and obfuscating on the issue: Which of the Democratic presidential candidates on the debate stage supported abolishing private health insurance in favor of a single government-run plan? Show of hands, please.
Just four arms went up over the two nights — Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York on Wednesday, and Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Kamala Harris of California on Thursday — even though three candidates who kept their hands at their sides have signed onto bills in Congress that would do exactly that, and after the debate, Harris said that she had misunderstood the question, suggesting she had not meant to raise her hand either.
The response, and ensuing confusion, reflected one of the deepest fault lines among Democrats heading into 2020 — on an issue the party hopes to use as a cudgel against President Trump as effectively as it did last fall, when Democrats’ vow to protect the Affordable Care Act helped them recapture the House.....
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What the Times never mentioned in the article was the show of hands regarding the undocumented.
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Page 10:
EDITORIAL
Cadet program is a first step in diversity at Boston Fire Department
Letters
Beacon Hill at work on a new formula for school funding
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
I found the bu$ine$$ section in the $ports, and I'm sure there is a le$$on in there somewhere!
Page 6:
Long-vacant Kendall Square lot may finally be developed
Martha’s Vineyard bus drivers go on strike
"Third Point’s Dan Loeb slams United Technologies-Raytheon deal" by Scott Deveau and Richard Clough Bloomberg News, June 28, 2019
NEW YORK — Reaction to the Raytheon tie-up has been thoroughly mixed. United Technologies and Raytheon are facing increasing pressure to explain the “economic rather than just strategic benefits” of the combination, Nicholas Heymann, an analyst with William Blair & Co., said Friday in an interview. “They’re going to have to come up with a lot more granularity about the value of this transaction for shareholders.”
Investor opposition would appear to be the biggest threat to the deal. Analysts expect limited pushback from antitrust regulators given the small overlap between United Technologies and Raytheon.....
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That's odd because ever since the deal was announced, the Globe gave a cold shoulder to the hot topic.
Page 7:
"A
federal appeals court heard arguments Friday over whether the
securities fraud conviction against former drug company CEO Martin Shkreli, known as ‘‘Pharma Bro,’’ should be
thrown out. Defense attorney Mark Baker
urged the court in New York City
to overturn a 2017
guilty verdict for Shkreli, claiming that the trial
judge gave confusing instructions to jurors before their deliberations about whether it needed to find if his client intentionally set out to cheat investors. Baker noted that the same jury also acquitted Shkreli on related wire fraud charges, saying, ‘‘The split verdict speaks volumes.’’ Assistant US Attorney Alixandra Smith argued that the instructions were proper. The court is expected to issue a written ruling at a later date. A judge sentenced Shkreli to seven years in prison last year for his conviction on charges he looted a drug company he founded, Retrophin, of $11 million in stock and cash to pay back investors in two failed hedge funds he ran. At the trial in federal court in Brooklyn, investors took to the witness stand to accuse him of keeping them in the dark about huge losses as his scheme unfolded. The defense
argued there wasn’t any harm done because in the end all of them got rich off Retrophin stock. Before his arrest, the 36-year-old Shkreli was best known for buying the rights to a lifesaving drug at another company in 2014 and promptly raising the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill. He also
gained notoriety for attacking critics on social media under the moniker ‘‘Pharma Bro’’ and for being
barred from Twitter for posts about a female journalist."
Better drop a pill before continuing with the flashback drafts:
"Martin Shkreli’s reputation precedes him, and it affects jury selection" by Stephanie Clifford New York Times June 26, 2017
NEW YORK — A number of potential jurors in the fraud trial of Martin Shkreli were dismissed in quick succession Monday morning after calling the defendant “a snake,” “the most
hated man in America,” and “the
face of corporate greed.”
Shkreli is on trial at the US District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., charged with eight counts of securities and wire fraud. He denies the charges, which relate to his time running two hedge funds and at Retrophin, a drug company, but he is
much better known for instituting steep price increases on lifesaving drugs
as a pharmaceutical entrepreneur.
Several potential jurors on Monday blamed Shkreli broadly for the problems of the pharmaceutical industry. Two potential jurors, for instance, castigated him for raising the price of the EpiPen. (He did not.)
Others said they had been affected personally by Shkreli’s price increases. The jurors were not identified by name in court.
A man said both of his parents took Daraprim, a drug for a rare parasitic infection. Shkreli raised the drug’s price to $750 a tablet, from $13.50, overnight in 2015 while running Turing Pharmaceuticals.
“The price has been going up in the last few years, so they can’t afford their drugs,” the prospective juror said of his parents. “They’re struggling to pay” for their daily medical routine.
Further, the man said, he has several friends with HIV or AIDS — people who may use Daraprim for infections — who cannot afford their drugs.
Another man told the judge, Kiyo A. Matsumoto, “This is the
price gouger of drugs.” He added: “My kids are on some of these drugs. This impacts my kids.”
One woman mimicked throttling someone as she talked about Shkreli’s raising the price of “the AIDS drug.”
“Who does that?” she said. “A person that
puts profit over everything else?”
When Matsumoto told prospective jurors that Shkreli’s work in pharmaceuticals was not on trial, prosecutor Alixandra Smith corrected her.
“If the defendant takes the stand and testifies,” she said, prosecutors may introduce some of his exploits in the pharmaceutical world, too.
“The
defendant is the
face of corporate greed in America,” another potential member of the panel said.
Other potential jurors had
bad reactions to Shkreli himself.
One said she had not known what the trial was about when she walked in and saw Shkreli. “I looked right at him, and in my head, I said, ‘That’s a snake,’ ’’ the woman said.
After the potential juror had stepped down, Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer for Shkreli, said, “So much for the
presumption of innocence.”
The
potential jurors were questioned at a sidebar with Matsumoto, defense lawyers, prosecutors, and one
reporter from a news pool.
The
negative comments built up to the point that Brafman began to signal to Matsumoto when potential jurors had said enough that he could challenge them for cause, to stop them from going “on a tirade against Shkreli.”
He said Shkreli’s lawyers had
objected to a
reporter’s presence at the sidebar for that reason, among others.
“I’m anticipating an article, a piece, that will further complicate the already complicated job of defending someone so many people feel strongly about,” he said.
Jury selection is expected to continue at least through Tuesday morning.
Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager, headed into federal court in New York on Monday for the start of his securities fraud trial (Sam Hodgson/New York Times).
He still doesn't get it, and someone needs to wipe that smirk off his face.
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Related:
"Martin Shkreli is a
liar, a prosecutor told a jury at the
start of a criminal fraud trial in which the former pharmaceutical executive is accused of ripping off investors. “Lying to get investors money. Stealing from a public company and its shareholders to pay back those investors,” said Assistant US Attorney Karthik Srinivasan. “Lies upon lies upon lies. This is what this defendant, Martin Shkreli, did for years.” Shkreli, who
started on Wall Street as a teenager by working as an intern at a hedge fund operated by Jim Cramer, was arrested in December 2015 and accused of engineering several separate frauds tied to his control of two hedge funds he operated, MSMB Healthcare and MSMB Capital, as well as Retrophin Inc., a pharmaceutical company he founded in 2011. Prosecutors finally began presenting evidence Wednesday after a judge spent more than two days trying to find an unbiased jury of 12, with six alternates, to decide the case. Dozens of
people were rejected after voicing contempt for the former executive who gained notoriety for raising the price of a potentially life-saving drug by 5,000 percent."
So that is who he learned it from, huh?
"Lawyer paints picture of Shkreli as ‘strange’ as fraud trial opens" by Stephanie Clifford New York Times June 29, 2017
NEW YORK — An odd duck. Perhaps autistic. Weird. Maybe with Asperger’s. A guy who shuffled around his office in bunny slippers with a stethoscope around his neck because he felt comfortable that way.
This is how Martin Shkreli was
portrayed Wednesday for his trial on fraud charges —
by Benjamin Brafman, his
own lawyer.
“Is he
strange? Yes,” Brafman said of his client,
but, he added, “every single government witness will concur that Martin Shkreli, despite his flaws and his personality, is
brilliant beyond words.”
In a captivating opening statement, the lawyer
sought to alter a
narrative that the government had laid out to the jury seated in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.
Shkreli, 34, is best known for initiating a steep price increase on a lifesaving drug, and for his social-media antics that have drawn him enemies aplenty.
He is being tried, however, on eight counts of securities and wire fraud related to his time running two hedge funds, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare, and a pharmaceutical company he founded, Retrophin.
“The
question is going to be whether the case is nuts:
Nobody was de
frauded, nobody lost any money,” Brafman argued, telling the jury that the investors in fact made money because of Shkreli’s financial prowess.
Prosecutor G. Karthik Srinivasan said in his opening argument that Shkreli had convinced investors that “he was a Wall Street genius.”
“In reality, he was just a
con man,” Srinivasan said.
Shkreli
falsified investor statements,
backdated documents,
misled investors about his record as a fund manager and
misstated how much money was in the funds, “telling
lies on top of lies on top of lies,” Srinivasan told the jury of five men and seven women.
After Shkreli
lost millions of dollars in a trade, draining the remaining money from MSMB Capital, a few days later he founded MSMB Healthcare, in early 2011, the prosecutor said. About the same time, he formed the pharmaceutical company Retrophin, and had MSMB Healthcare invest in Retrophin. “The defendant was
on both sides of the deal,” Srinivasan said.
So he was like the banks during the MBS $windle.
When his debt for the trading loss came due, “he
stole money from MSMB Healthcare”
to pay the
debt, which the health care fund did not owe, Srinivasan said. Shkreli then told investors that he was shutting down the two funds, and told them they could have stock in Retrophin or cash for their shares.
Like a robbing Peter to pay Paul Ponzi scheme.
Those who
wanted cash could not get it and
threatened to sue, Srinivasan said, and that is when Shkreli arranged for Retrophin to “pay off” the MSMB investors.
He Madoffed with the loot?
“Retrophin owed these investors nothing — the defendant owed these debts,” Srinivasan said. When accountants told him to stop, Shkreli
arranged to hire the investors as consultants, a sham, the prosecutor said.
Investors may have
made their money back, Srinivasan said,
but Shkreli
still committed
fraud.
In his opening, Brafman flipped the setup that Srinivasan had constructed in trying to portray the investors and Retrophin board as victims and Shkreli as a villain.
Actually, Brafman said, Shkreli
was pushed out of Retrophin because its board thought he did “not conform to their idea of what a public company CEO should look like or walk like or talk like,” he said.
Retrophin, he said, is
now quite valuable — its market capitalization is more than $700 million — and the board is still “raping” Retrophin.
Chris Cline, a Retrophin spokesman, said: “The government has charged Mr. Shkreli with defrauding Retrophin. We will let the facts speak for themselves in court.”
Some
board members at Retrophin, many twice Shkreli’s age, “bullied” and “frightened” Shkreli, Brafman said, and questioned his sexuality.
“Whether Martin is gay or straight or bisexual is irrelevant; it’s 2017,” Brafman said. “Get a life, board of Retrophin. The Retrophin board? A
bunch of thugs.”
Meanwhile, the investors in Shkreli’s funds were sophisticates with money to burn, Brafman suggested.
They are “
crybabies” and
high rollers,
not people who needed money for rent or food, he told the jury, which is largely made up of working-class people, judging from the job descriptions given during jury selection.
Yeah, so if you rip off your own cla$$ it's okay, huh?
These
investors, he said,
knew investing in hedge funds generally, and this hedge fund particularly,
was risky; they also
made a lot of money with Shkreli.
One “inherited a hedge fund from her daddy” and invested that with Shkreli. A “fabulously wealthy” couple was “on the dysfunctional spectrum” themselves, tried to “adopt” Shkreli (not formally, Brafman clarified) and gave him religious advice. One of the Retrophin board members, he said, “was flying to Mykonos or some other island and Martin Shkreli was
like a hermit in his office” working away.
Once, after an investor encountered Shkreli in the slippers-and-stethoscope get-up when he dropped by the office, the investor said, “But Martin, you’re not a doctor,” according to Brafman. Shkreli responded, “I’m comfortable this way,” the lawyer said.
“Maybe he’s just
nuts, but that does
n’t make you
guilty,” Brafman said.
As for the government’s specific assertions, Brafman argued that some of the documents and arrangements in question were blessed by lawyers or board members, but allowed that Shkreli
sometimes played loose with facts.
“Martin is Martin,” he said. “He sometimes said some things to an investor on a certain date, but not everything he said was 100 percent accurate,
but he was truthful to the mission” of making Retrophin a success.
(Blog editor just shakes his head at the sophistry)
During the 2 1/2 days of jury selection this week, Brafman often
appeared exasperated. Hundreds of jurors were dismissed overall, most for vacation or work conflicts.
Dozens, however, were excused for strong views of Shkreli. On Wednesday alone, various potential jurors said, “I have no sympathy for a defendant like this,” calling him “unethical” and saying “just looking at him kind of twists my stomach.” A 20-something prospective juror referred to the one-of-a-kind album from the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan that Shkreli bought, and said he was “probably guilty,” not to mention that “he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan, so.”
Brafman
also sometimes described his client in negative terms, telling jurors that “joining team Shkreli comes with a lot of aggravation.”
Still Shkreli, who had
sat through the government’s statement often rolling his eyes and making faces, sat straight up, smiling, looking like he was
watching a terrific movie when Brafman ripped through his opening statement.
When the lawyer returned to the defense table, Shkreli stood, put his arm around him, and patted him on the shoulder.
“Buckle up your seat belts, ladies and gentleman; you’re in for a good ride,” Brafman told the jury.
Oh, yay!
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"Shkreli vents at prosecutors, media in midst of fraud trial" by Patricia Hurtado Bloomberg News June 30, 2017
Martin Shkreli apparently
needed to vent as the first week of his criminal fraud trial in Brooklyn, New York, was nearing an end.
During a lunch break Friday, he
walked into a sixth-floor courtroom set up for reporters to watch his trial on closed-circuit television and lambasted the media and the prosecutors, calling the US attorneys in Brooklyn “the junior varsity” to those in Manhattan. “They
blame me for everything,” he said of the prosecutors. “They
blame me for capitalism.”
Poor Marty, huh?
His
five-minute tirade was interrupted by his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, who came to the door of the courtroom and asked, “Martin, can I see you a minute?” He then led his client away.
Earlier, prosecutors began laying out for jurors Shkreli’s entire business career, a more than decadelong stretch allegedly marked by zeal and deception. Shkreli, 34, is fighting charges of operating two hedge funds like a Ponzi scheme. He is also accused of looting $11 million of a drug company’s assets. He faces as long as 20 years in prison if convicted of the most serious charges.
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Says he was high on chocolate when he confronted the pre$$:
"Martin Shkreli’s
impromptu trial discussions with reporters at the Brooklyn federal courthouse are over as the judge overseeing the case ordered the former pharmaceutical executive to stop talking about it in and around the building, but he can go on discussing it on the Internet. Shkreli, on trial for securities fraud, spent about five minutes on June 30 in a courtroom set up for an overflow crowd, including reporters. He criticized prosecutors and the media while denying he defrauded the first witness in the case. The government argued a gag order was necessary to prevent Shkreli from causing a mistrial by exposing jurors to his
opinions. "
The bizarre case then sped to a close with the closing statements and a conviction:
"Shkreli found guilty on fraud charges" by Tom Hays and Larry Neumeister Associated Press August 05, 2017
NEW YORK — Martin Shkreli, the
eccentric former pharmaceutical chief executive
notorious for a
price-gouging scandal and for his
snide ‘‘Pharma Bro’’
persona on social media, was
convicted Friday on federal charges he deceived investors in a pair of failed hedge funds.
Shkreli,
upbeat and defiant outside the Brooklyn courthouse afterward, called his prosecution ‘‘a
witch hunt of epic proportions’’ but
conceded that maybe the government had found ‘‘one or two broomsticks.’’
Maybe Trump will pardon him.
Asked about his client’s social-media antics, attorney Ben Brafman said it was something they would be working on.
‘‘There is an
image issue that Martin and I are going to be discussing in the next few days,’’ he said, adding that while Shkreli was a brilliant mind, sometimes his ‘‘
people skills’’ need work. As he spoke, Shkreli
smiled and cocked his head quizzically in
mock confusion.
He still didn't get it.
Within an hour of leaving the court, Shkreli was
at home live-streaming on YouTube and calling the split verdict a
victory, despite his conviction on two of the most serious counts. Prosecutors had a different take.
Prosecutors had accused Shkreli of
repeatedly misleading investors about what he was doing with their money. Mostly, he was
blowing it with horrible stock picks, forcing him to cook up a
scheme to recover millions in losses, they said.
Shkreli, 34, told ‘‘lies upon lies,’’ including claiming he had $40 million in one of his funds at a time when it only had about $300 in the bank, Assistant US Attorney Alixandra Smith said in closing arguments. The trial ‘‘has exposed Martin Shkreli for who he really is — a con man who stole millions,’’ added another prosecutor, Jacquelyn Kasulis, but the
case was tricky for the
government because investors who testified said Shkreli’s scheme actually succeeded in making them
richer, in some cases doubling or even tripling their money on his company’s stock when it went public.
‘‘Who lost anything? Nobody,’’ Brafman said in his closing argument. Some investors had to admit on the witness stand that partnering with Shkreli was ‘‘the greatest investment I’ve ever made,’’ he added.
For the boyish-looking Shkreli, one of the biggest problems was not part of the case — his purchase in 2014 of rights to a life-saving drug that he promptly raised the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill. Several potential jurors were kept off the panel after expressing disdain for the defendant, with one calling him a ‘‘snake’’ and another ‘‘the face of corporate greed.’’
Hey, he had to cover his losses!
The defendant also came into the trial with a
reputation for trolling his critics on social media to a degree that got him kicked off Twitter. Among his other antics: boasting about buying a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album for $2 million.
He was a trailblazer then!
Shkreli, who comes from an Albanian family in Brooklyn, was
arrested in 2015
on charges he looted another drug company he founded, Retrophin, of $11 million in stock and cash
to pay back the hedge fund investors. Investors took the witness stand to accuse Shkreli of keeping them in the dark as his scheme unfolded.
Shkreli’s lawyer agreed his client
could be annoying but said his hedge fund investors knew what they were getting.
‘‘They found him strange. They found him weird. And they gave him money. Why? Because they
recognized genius,’’ Brafman said, adding that they had signed agreements that his client wasn’t liable if they lost their money.
Shkreli didn’t testify.....
But he's still smiling!
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The jury deliberated for five days before the judge gave him seven years and made him cry by wiping the smirk off his face, but he was still able to run the company from prison.
He had the good life, but now it's gone.
