Massachusetts Politics

Wrong Way to Keep Prisoners in Line.   The office of William D. Weinreb, acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, announced March 3 that two former corrections officers at the Essex County Correctional facility in Middleton had been sentenced for their involvement in getting a drug used to treat opioid addiction into the jail and conveying it to inmates.    The Weinreb announcement said that Katherine Sullivan, 32, of Londonderry, NH., was sentenced to 36 months of probation, 120 hours of community service, and was ordered to pay a fine of $5,000, after having pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring with inmates to distribute Suboxone, and that John S. Weir, 34, of Danvers, received the same sentence as Sullivan after a guilty plea on an identical charge. Inmates who received Suboxone from Sullivan and Weir reportedly sold the drug to other prisoners. Wrong Way to Fund Big Lifestyle. On March 15, a pain management physician pleaded guilty in federa...

I’ve been working for the railroad.   And not just to pass the time away.   No, I’ve been lobbying, which is undoubtedly easier than working on the railroad, involving as it does heavy, outdoor work in all kinds of weather. I am a registered lobbyist for the Massachusetts Railroad Association, the trade group for the state’s freight-hauling railroads. My colleagues at Preti Strategies and I have had this account for almost 10 years. It’s good work, advocating for things such as state funding for industrial rail access projects, which create jobs and stimulate the economy. And it’s good to work with the people who run the freight railroads.   They know their stuff, they tell you the truth, and they have the right touch in meetings with legislators.  They never break the furniture, if you know what I mean. I feel good about our freight railroads. And not just because they send us a check every month.   I feel good about the goods they keep flowing to Mas...

The state’s largest union held an event this past Thursday at Boston’s Old South Church to call attention to the “the damage the Republican Affordable Care Act replacement bill will inflict in Massachusetts.” The executive vice president of that union, 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, Tyrek D. Lee, Sr., told a large gathering of his members and assorted health care advocates, “This bill is a tax break for the richest and will shift costs to low- and middle-income people in the state and across the nation.” According to a physician-speaker at the event, James S. Gessner, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, there is “no federal policy that has had as positive an impact on my patients” as the Affordable Care Act.   Thanks to the ACA, Dr. Gessner said, “more families here in the Commonwealth have been able to acquire health insurance, and more patients have finally had peace of mind about their ability to get the medical care that they need.   This bill to rep...

NUCLEAR STEWARD ON STEEP LEARNING CURVE - Former Texas governor Rick Perry was confirmed by the U.S. Senate yesterday as secretary of the federal agency he once advocated eliminating, Energy, but whose name he famously could not recall during a big moment in a presidential debate, a lapse that doomed his faltering  candidacy.    Yesterday, Perry was quickly sworn in by Vice President Mike Pence.  Nice color photos of him taking the oath of office soon appeared online.   Perry’s wearing a Trumpian tie of blazing red and Clark Kent-style glasses.  He’s standing tall, erect and confident -- so confident he must have banished, at least for the moment, all thoughts of his illustrious predecessor as Secretary of Energy, Fall River’s own Ernie Moniz, a Ph.D. from Stanford, long-time professor at MIT, and world-renowned physicist.   When Trump offered Perry the top position at Energy in December, the New York Times reported, Perry “gladly accepted, believ...