Free Republic

Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday announced that NStar [NST] — as part of its bid to merge with Connecticut-based Northeast Utilities — has agreed to buy 27.5 percent of the electricity that will be generated by the yet-to-be-built Cape Wind project. And by “agreed” we really mean “succumbed to unprecedented pressure from Patrick’s team, designed to ensure that the offshore wind project may some day, with enough government coaxing, actually break ground.”

Hours after Mitt Romney eked out a win in the Iowa caucuses over former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Gov. Deval Patrick called the victory for the former Bay State governor a win for the Tea Party. Appearing on the CBS Early Show on Wednesday, Patrick defended President Barack Obama and called the Republican cast of challengers “interchangeable.” “It’s a win last night for the Tea Party agenda. That was really the big winner. I mean the candidates in many respects are interchangeable because they’re all offering exactly the same plan, and that’s a plan that says that everybody in America...

Gov. Deval Patrick signed legislation Wednesday adding the words “gender identity” to the state’s non-discrimination laws, a bid to prevent discrimination against transgender residents seeking housing, employment, credit or post-secondary education. The bill also expands the state's hate crimes statutes to include violence perpetrated against transgender men and women. Patrick said he signed the bill as a matter of “conscience” even though lawmakers had stripped a provision that would have required all “sex-segregated facilities” to grant admission to people based on their gender identity, rather than their biological gender. The provision, viewed as a key component by advocates of the...

Deval Patrick is working on a new book — and he wants you to help write it. The forthcoming publication will be about “the politics of conviction,” Patrick wrote in an email to supporters this afternoon. “I want to highlight some of the shining examples of it across this Commonwealth and the country that are strengthening our communities and inspiring the next generation of citizens,” Patrick wrote. “If we believe that there is a different way to do things, if we want to see conviction matter more than convenience in our politics, we need to start making the case for...

Russell and Patricia Caswell are a hard-working couple who may soon have their American Dream taken from them by the unholy alliance of local and federal law enforcement officials seeking to cash in on the Caswell’s property. The Caswells face this dilemma even though they have broken no law and have spent their entire professional career working to combat crime with the very police force that now seeks to take their property though civil forfeiture. What is happening to Russ and Pat, however, is by no means an isolated instance and local law enforcement’s end-run around state laws designed to...

Gulfstream Aerospace has picked Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport as the new site for a $23 million maintenance facility for its new ultra long-range G650 corporate jet. The project, announced Friday, is expected to add 100 jobs to the 130 technicians Gulfstream already employs at the airport. There will be 200 construction jobs associated with the 100,000-square-foot hangar. Construction starts in April and the building is expected to be ready by the middle of 2013, according to Gulfstream, a unit of Virginia-based General Dynamics. Gov. Deval L. Patrick expressed his excitement for the project. “It goes announcement by announcement, ribbon cutting by...

An 11-year-old Ipswich girl was hit and dragged by a truck while riding her bike to school Wednesday. Now, residents say the details surrounding the horrible incident are becoming all too common in the Bay State. Police say the suspect who hit the sixth grader as he pulled out of the driveway of his home is an illegal immigrant who doesn't even have a license. It turns out 35-year-old Wanderson DaSilva-Neto has an outstanding warrant for his deportation back to Brazil.

A few months after Massachusetts’s governor rejected a federal program that checks the immigration status of local arrestees, a drunk illegal alien with a criminal history killed a motorcyclist in the state and another who had been deported racked up his sixth drunk- driving charge. Had the state participated in the federal Secure Communities program, both men would have been turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation long ago. Instead, they were released by local police and allowed to continue committing crimes in their respective communities. That’s because the state’s governor, renowned open borders advocate Deval Patrick,...

Here’s what we know about the Marshfield murder case: The allegedly killer was apparently here illegally. He gave police a fake name, and his “real” name doesn’t appear on any immigration documents (according to ICE). His visa number on the passport bearing Almeida’s name and photo “was issued to a Kuwaiti female in Beruit in 2003.” AND… This guy with these blatant immigration problems was arrested in June—three months before he stabbed a 24-year-old woman to death. Why wasn’t he caught then? Why didn’t ICE flag this guy and his bogus documents, or demand that he clear up when/where he...

Three defiant Bay State sheriffs hell-bent on tougher immigration enforcement have taken an end run around Gov. Deval Patrick, traveling to Washington, D.C., to hammer out their own version of the Secure Communities program in a stinging rejection of the administration’s stand on illegals. “The governor is out of touch on this issue, and he really and truly does not represent the interest of the people of Massachusetts on this issue,” Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson said. “We’re basically saying to the governor, ‘Look. You’re entitled to your position.’ But the governor doesn’t elect us. We represent the people of...

It’s going to take some politician’s kid getting killed by a drunken illegal alien before the hacks finally figure out that there’s a mighty big problem here. You know what happened in Milford on Saturday night. A totally smashed illegal from Ecuador is accused of running a stop sign and mowing down a 23-year-old American on a motorcycle, and then proceeding to drag him, screaming, under his truck for a quarter mile. When the illegal finally ran off the road, the American became disentangled. He was still alive. But then the illegal backed his truck back over him, according to...

It’s going to take some politician’s kid getting killed by a drunken illegal alien before the hacks finally figure out that there’s a mighty big problem here. You know what happened in Milford on Saturday night. A totally smashed illegal from Ecuador is accused of running a stop sign and mowing down a 23-year-old American on a motorcycle, and then proceeding to drag him, screaming, under his truck for a quarter mile. When the illegal finally ran off the road, the American became disentangled. He was still alive. But then the illegal backed his truck back over him, according to...

Evergreen Solar Inc., the Marlboro clean-energy company that received millions in state subsidies to build an ill-fated Bay State factory, has filed for bankruptcy. Evergreen, which closed its taxpayer-supported Devens factory in March and cut 800 jobs, has been trying to rework its debt for months. The company announced today it is seeking a reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware and also reached a deal with certain note holders to restructure its debt and sell off certain assets. Evergreen secured a $58 million financial aid package from the Patrick administration to help build the $450 million Devens factory. The...

Sacked MBTA punks back on the job (includes drug use, child rape, assault, and assault vs co-workers) "The MBTA has been forced to rehire seven drivers and other key employees after they were fired for offenses ranging from dozing at the wheel due to drug use, child rape, and assaulting and making bizarre threats of violence against co-workers - after bureaucratic arbitrators overturned their dismissals on technicalities. News of arbitrators’ leniency toward public servants entrusted with passenger safety has alarmed T crash victims, rider advocates and the pols who oversee the region’s sprawling transit system. ... Papapietro said he doesn’t...

Gov. Deval Patrick showed up unexpectedly at a hearing today to urge lawmakers to pass legislation that would make certain undocumented immigrants eligible to pay in-state tuition rates at public colleges and universities, cautioning legislators against be caught up in the “hyperbole of immigration.” “It’s time for us to fix the law. This really is a matter of fairness,” Patrick told the Committee on Higher Education, after apologizing for showing up unannounced. “I just ask you to keep in mind the faces, the lives, and real experiences of the young people whose future is at stake,” Patrick said. The bills,...

Lawmakers and unions slammed Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday for triggering a pay-raise bonanza to the tune of nearly $10 million with a 3 percent salary hike for as many as 4,000 state managers — even as Bay State residents face frozen salaries and unemployment. Jay Gonzalez, Patrick’s finance and administration secretary who released the news of the pay raise, argued that state managers haven’t gotten a raise since July 2007. “We have to make sure state government is a place where people actually want to work. We need to retain and attract good people,” Gonzalez said, adding that he and...

Candidates lob shots during convention Open season on Scott Brown officially kicked off yesterday with five of the six Democratic candidates seeking to reclaim the “people’s seat” training their sights and barbs squarely on the freshman U.S. senator during speeches at their party’s state convention in Lowell. “When Ted Kennedy went behind closed doors with lawmakers and lobbyists, he always fought for us,” Bob Massie, the nonprofit executive who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 1994, told some 3,000 Democratic delegates gathered on the floor of Tsongas Center. “When Scott Brown goes behind closed door with lawmakers and lobbyists and...

How can this be? The value of your home keeps going down, yet the property taxes never stop going up. Back in 2006, didn’t candidate Deval Patrick promise to cut property taxes? If he does have to testify under oath at Sal DiMasi’s corruption trial next week, I hope someone asks him about that pledge, just to establish his reputation for veracity, or lack thereof. “Governor, did you know you were lying when you vowed to cut property taxes, or maybe we all misunderstood you, and you really meant to say you were going to cut property values? Which is...

BOSTON (AP) — Gov. Deval Patrick is proposing tougher gun laws to help curb youth violence. Patrick said Monday his bill would tighten existing gun laws by giving police new criminal sanctions and investigative tools to go after guns and gangs. The bill would also create three new gun-related crimes — assault and battery with a firearm, assault with a firearm, and a "felon in possession" law that matches existing federal law. Patrick said he would also ask for $10 million in public and private funding to fill in gaps in programs and resources needed to make neighborhoods safer, including...

Gov. Deval Patrick’s ties and campaign support for William Lantigua are in the spotlight as the Lawrence mayor faces a corruption probe and scrutiny of a $35 million state bailout for the down-and-out city. It was revealed yesterday that state and federal investigators are probing Lantigua’s dealings with Lawrence tow companies, night clubs and taxi outfits. Lantigua has denied the allegations. The Lantigua bombshell comes as Patrick weathers other distractions. He’s faced criticism for his national book tour. Last week he was named as a possible witness at the public corruption trial of former House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi. A...

Gov. Deval Patrick’s new book will debut at No. 25 on Sunday’s New York Times [NYT] best-seller list — but it doesn’t quite stack up to the tomes penned by U.S. Sen. Scott Brown and former Bay State Gov. Mitt Romney.

Gov. Deval Patrick’s skyrocketing political star could come crashing down in the mud if he’s forced to reveal damaging testimony at the upcoming corruption trial of former House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, experts and political foes say. “It’s the worst of all possible worlds for Patrick,” said Thomas Whalen, political professor at Boston University. “He’s looking to the national spotlight but Massachusetts is like quicksand, you try to get out and it sucks you back in.” DiMasi’s trial starts next week at a time when the governor is in the midst of a national media blitz promoting his memoir, “A...

The words and spirit of Senator Edward M. Kennedy were evoked this morning at the groundbreaking ceremony for the educational institute that will bear the late Democrat’s name. Under glorious skies, hundreds of former staffers, local and national political figures, as well as average citizens, flocked to the groundbreaking for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate. It will be built, starting later this summer, on Columbia Point next to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. ... The ceremony included a film about Kennedy’s nearly 47-year career, which ended in August 2009 when he died...

Massachusetts faces a "disappointingly slow" economic recovery, a prediction that economists from several local universities and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston called the "best-case scenario." These economists, who constitute the editorial board of MassBenchmarks, a University of Massachusetts journal, made the bleak assessment during a recent meeting in advance of the publication of a quarterly economic snapshot off the state. The snapshot, which estimates the growth rate of the Massachusetts economy, is scheduled for release at the end of this month. The board also said earlier views that Massachusetts' economy was rebounding from the recent recession faster than the...

Who says Gov. Deval Patrick isn’t creating good jobs? Just ask Sean Q. Curran, a Patrick fund-raiser and State House lobbyist who also likes to raise money for himself. Curran, former co-chairman of Patrick’s campaign committee, is now making life uncomfortable for the governor after landing a $30,000 gig for a hacked-up public agency with the awkward name of South Shore Tri-Town Development Corp. The agency, created by the Legislature to oversee redevelopment of the old Weymouth Naval Air Station, hired Curran in October — in the middle of Patrick’s re-election campaign. Conveniently, Tri-Town didn’t disclose hiring Curran until a...

Gov. Deval Patrick is absolutely right: Don’t blame Cleve Killingsworth for your insurance premiums going up so high, so fast. Blame the man who’s truly responsible — Deval Patrick. Killingsworth is the Miami Heat of Massachusetts health care. It’s hard to believe someone that expensive could suck that bad. But as offensive as Killingsworth’s $11 million buyout may be, AFL-CIO president and Blue Cross Blue Shield board member Robert Haynes had it right: “With $13 billion in revenue, it’s like pennies,” he said of the board’s compensation. Complaining about Killingsworth’s incompetence is like complaining about a leaky bathtub on the...

Late Wednesday afternoon, without advance notice and without fanfare, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed an Executive Order mandating the acceptance of "gender identity and expression" -- including transsexuality, cross-dressing, and related behaviors - throughout state government. The order also requires affirmative action in the hiring of transsexuals and diversity training for all state employees.

In a move blasted by opponents as an “end run” around lawmakers, Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday quietly signed a controversial transgender rights executive order, called the bathroom bill by critics, making it illegal to discriminate against state workers on the basis of “gender identity.” “This is going to set off a firestorm, and it’s certainly something the governor should have given us a heads up on,” said House Minority Leader Bradley H. Jones (R-North Reading). Patrick signed the changes with no announcement. The measure was a major issue during Patrick’s tough re-election battle last year. The executive order, unlike a...

BOSTON - Gov. Deval Patrick hopped on a plane to Chicago Friday evening for a meeting with President Barack Obama’s top political advisor David Axelrod, one the principal architects of the president’s 2008 election and a former advisor to Patrick’s first campaign for governor. The meeting between Patrick and Axelrod comes just days after the governor flew to Washington, D.C. to have dinner with Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine, the former governor of Virginia and a classmate of Patrick’s at Harvard Law School. Over salad, salmon and calamari on Tuesday night, Patrick and Kaine discussed the president’s re-election campaign...

In a stunning reminder of the situational ethics of Governor Patrick, Dianne Wilkerson is being sentenced today, the same day that Deval Patrick takes his second oath of office. Here's an oldie but goodie where Patrick makes a phone call in support of the already multiple time convicted, ankle bracelet wearing, Diane Wilkerson. (Video link below)

Gov. Deval Patrick said yesterday that he still hasn’t watched the parole hearing of felon turned cop killer Dominic Cinelli or reviewed the con’s lengthy criminal record even as House Speaker Robert DeLeo joined the outcry over Cinelli’s controversial release. “No, no,” said Patrick when asked if he’d examined the video of the six-member parole board interviewing Cinelli, who was serving three concurrent life sentences. The then six-member board — chaired by the governor’s former campaign driver Mark Conrad — included two other Patrick appointees who voted unanimously to spring Cinelli shortly after the 2008 hearing. The career criminal allegedly...

Gov. Deval Patrick announced today he is trimming legislative salaries — and his own pay — by .5 percent in the face of a mounting budget deficit and continuing economic recession. The pay cut means lawmakers would see $307 slashed from their pay and earn a base salary of $61,133 and Patrick’s pay would go from $140,535 to $139,833. The salary cut is the first since 1998. “The median household income for the Commonwealth for the preceding two-year period decreased by .5 percent,” Patrick wrote in a brief letter announcing the cut. The salary reductions will begin Wednesday, according to...

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has declared a state of emergency as the season's first snow storm barrels into New England.

A broken campaign pledge by Gov. Deval Patrick could end up costing Massachusetts ratepayers big bucks if yet another massive wind farm is built off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. When he first ran for governor in 2005, the then-relatively unknown Patrick broke out of the Democratic pack by endorsing the controversial Cape Wind project. But Patrick’s support came with a little-noticed catch: He said Cape Wind’s developer should compromise by agreeing to a 10-year freeze on electric rates once the 130-turbine wind farm was “up and running.” But five years later, Patrick’s Department of Public Utilities approved a 15-year...

A quartet of controversial judicial picks by Gov. Deval Patrick — including the wife of a deep-pocketed state representative — have escalated infighting on the Governor’s Council as some members say nominees are being rushed through before a pair of lame ducks leaves office. Councilors Mary-Ellen Manning and Marilyn Devaney also are criticizing Patrick’s nomination this week of state Rep. Garrett Bradley’s wife, Heather, a Plymouth County prosecutor. Bradley (D-Hingham) gave Patrick a maximum $500 donation in March and has donated more than $36,000 to the state Democratic Party since 2006, records show. He’s also given more than $130,000 to...

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick on Tuesday vowed to adopt the rest of an advisory panel’s immigration reform recommendations, including pushing for in-state tuition for illegal immigrant students at state colleges, during his second term. The Democratic governor made the announcement to cheers at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition’s annual Thanksgiving luncheon. The group’s executive director served as co-chair of the advisory panel that made the recommendations. “Now, as we stand on the threshold of another four years, I want to commit to you that we will implement this report in its entirety, working with you, over the next...

Gov. Deval Patrick says he’ll use his second term to try to implement the rest of an advisory panel’s recent recommendations on immigration reform, including in-state tuition for illegal immigrant students and more English classes. Patrick told immigrant advocates Tuesday that the moves will help better integrate the state’s immigrant population, seventh largest in the country. Last year, an advisory panel released a report on possible Massachusetts immigration reforms, and advocates have been pressing Patrick to push for dozens of recommendations in the report.

<p>BOSTON (AP) — U.S. defense contractor Raytheon announced a series of layoffs Tuesday just days after Gov. Deval Patrick denied asking it to delay terminations until after the state elections.</p> <p>The announcement follows three other rounds of layoffs announced by Massachusetts employers in the immediate aftermath of last week's elections.</p>

BOSTON—The Raytheon Co. is laying off employees just days after Gov. Deval Patrick denied asking the company to delay terminations until after the state elections. The Associated Press asked Patrick three days before the election if he'd heard about pending layoffs at Raytheon. He said it was just a rumor. He bristled when asked if he requested Raytheon delay any terminations, saying the company was adding jobs.

The Massachusetts secretary of state is reporting that turnout is heaviest in the suburbs — exactly where Republicans need it to be if Charlie Baker is going to upset Deval Patrick in the governor’s race. If there’s such a thing as a Republican enclave in Massachusetts, it’s the South Shore area, and one South Shore town already had 25 percent turnout before noon. Also, a local PBS reporter appearing on my radio station this morning said that the voters she talked to in a downtown Boston precinct were breaking two-to-one for Charlie Baker. Meanwhile, Barney Frank and his partner were...

Call this good news/bad news for Barney Frank in his fight to hold onto his job in Massachusetts’ 4th CD. The Boston Globe reports that Frank has a 13-point lead — but only gets 46% of the vote in a two-way race, 46-33. With a week to go before voting, Frank’s inability to get a majority may reveal a serious problem, and the Globe notes that enthusiasm may be that problem (via Jim Geraghty): US Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Newton, leads his Republican challenger, Sean Bielat, by 13 percentage points among likely voters in the Fourth Congressional District. In...

A new Boston Globe poll puts Barney Frank ahead of his GOP challenger, Sean Bielat, by a 46 to 33 percent margin. That may sound like good news for the incumbent, until you consider that Frank, who was first elected in 1980, has never won a general election by fewer than 20 points -- and that he's notched at least 64 percent of the vote in every race since 1990. It's not hard to see what's going on here. As I wrote back in January, when Scott Brown knocked off Martha Coakley, Massachusetts is a perfect example of how the...

MELROSE — With New Jersey Governor Christopher J. Christie offering a blueprint for GOP victory, Republican Charles D. Baker brought 800 chanting supporters to their feet yesterday as he promised to replicate Christie’s victories in Massachusetts. In one of Baker’s most energetic events to date, Christie regaled the crowd at Melrose City Memorial Hall with stories of his election win over an incumbent in a three-way race last year and the confrontations with the Legislature over taxes and spending that followed, recounting it all with the gusto and bravado of a storyteller at a tavern. He playfully threatened to “go...

Two men standing behind President Obama at a campaign rally for Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA) are wearing a shirt with his face on it.

Barack Obama the vigorous campaigner showed up at a rally for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick in Boston on Saturday...

John Kerry fires at GOP Senate nominees By: Carol E. Lee October 16, 2010 03:49 PM EDT BOSTON – Sen. John Kerry took shots Saturday at Republican candidates up and down the November ballot, including a dig at Delaware Senate hopeful Christine O’Donnell’s admitted dabbling in witchcraft. “You’ve got what’s her name, Christine O’Donnell, in Delaware,” Kerry said, speaking at a rally for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. O’Donnell, he said, “wants to take away health care." “I think she thinks she’s going to wave her wand and it will all disappear,” Kerry quipped, “but this is real folks.” Kerry’s efforts...

BOSTON—President Barack Obama was trying to help Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick win re-election on Saturday, but more important to his own political future, maintain a Democratic Senate. After a Patrick rally at the Hynes Convention Center, the president was traveling to West Newton for a fundraiser at the home of Caritas Cristi CEO Ralph de la Torre. The event was expected to raise $500,000 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. It is charged with electing party members to the U.S. Senate. Obama wants to maintain a Democratic Senate to pass the remainder of his first-term agenda. Both it and a...

Amid the maelstrom of controversy over the nation’s first offshore wind farm, one truth is as plain as the proposed 440-foot turbines in Nantucket Sound are tall: Its energy will be very expensive. That’s not just compared with power from coal and natural gas, but with renewable power from other sources. Once the 130 turbines begin rotating, the energy produced will cost up to 50 percent more than energy today from some land-based wind farms and twice as much as some hydroelectric dams. The cost will increase customers’ monthly electric bills about 2 percent, and for many that is too...

A devastating Nov. 2 defeat could cost Gov. Deval Patrick more than his lofty position and promising political career - it could scuttle the happily-ever-after ending to his million-dollar “inspirational” memoir and turn it into a bookstore bomb, experts said. “It would be a horrendous event,” said Hub book agent and attorney John Taylor “Ike” Williams. “The publisher would have a hard time with that book.” The success of Patrick’s 200-page autobiography - titled “A Reason to Believe: Lessons from an Improbable Life” and priced at $21.99 - hinges largely on the governor raising his national profile. That’s a far-fetched...

Taking a rare hard-nosed stance on immigration, Gov. Deval Patrick scolded the illegal alien aunt of his close political ally President Obama, saying she’s not “entitled” to anything but human decency. “I heard that at one point she said she was entitled to become a citizen and I don’t think that that’s the case - with all due respect - I just don’t think that people who are here illegally are entitled to anything other than the respect you would give another living soul,” Patrick told the Herald. In the one-on-one interview - the first of four State House Insight...