Eleven Congress Members From NY Send Letter To US Postmaster General – BKLYNER
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Category: Local Interest,
Banning plastic bags: State, local officials often clash
Republican lawmakers typically tout the benefits of local control. But in states across the country, they have taken action to rein in cities that want to enact progressive measures such as gun control laws and minimum wage hikes. Now plastic bags have become an unlikely flashpoint in the conflict between blue cities and their red state legislatures.
In recent years a handful of states – Arizona and Missouri in 2015, Idaho, Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016, Minnesota in 2017 – have enacted “bans on bans,” joining a group that already included Florida, Indiana and Iowa.
…New Hampshire is not among the 32 states with home rule that, through their state constitutions, allows cities and towns to adopt policies on their own initiative.
Instead, this state and seven others permit cities and towns to take these local actions, but only if the Legislature passes an enabling law.
State Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, D-Portsmouth, championed that bill (SB 410) in 2016, which the state Senate rejected by a 12-8 margin.
Banning plastic bags: State, local officials often clash | New Hampshire
Ahhh, the GOP: 100% against large government making decisions for local municipalities… …Until it might put them at odds with big business, that is.
‘Surfer bros’ protest house party crackdown at L.A. City Council meeting
Surfer bros’ protest house party crackdown at L.A. City Council meeting
Hilarious. the Chair took it so well, too! Kudos LA City Council for having a sense of humor.
California says it will ban crude from Trump offshore drilling plan
California will block the transport of petroleum from new offshore oil rigs through its state, officials told Reuters, a move meant to hobble the Trump administration’s effort to vastly expand drilling in U.S. federal waters.
California’s threat to deny pipeline permits for transporting oil from new leases off the Pacific Coast is the latest step by states trying to halt the biggest proposed expansion in decades of federal oil and gas leasing. Officials in Florida, North and South Carolina, Delaware and Washington, have also warned drilling could despoil beaches, harm wildlife and hurt lucrative tourism industries.
California says it will ban crude from Trump offshore drilling plan
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How gentrification really changes a neighborhood
I knew the price of my new home in Kirkwood, just not what it would cost the neighbors who’d lived there for generations
How gentrification really changes a neighborhood – Atlanta Magazine
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Why Martin Luther King Jr. wore a Hawaiian lei on Selma march
King visited Hawaii a number of times during his life. Just a year before the Selma marches, he spoke at a Honolulu conference for the Hawaii State Human Rights Commission—the first committee of its kind in the United States—of which Rev. Akaka was a board member. King found the Islands’ multiethnic population and everyday society to be an inspirational source of “racial harmony” as the struggle of African Americans made headlines across the continental U.S.
…”As I think of the struggle that we are engaged in in the South land, we look to you for inspiration and as a noble example, where you have already accomplished in the area of racial harmony and racial justice, what we are struggling to accomplish in other sections of the country, and you can never know what it means to those of us caught for the moment in the tragic and often dark midnight of man’s inhumanity to man, to come to a place where we see the glowing daybreak of freedom and dignity and racial justice.”
Why Martin Luther King Jr. wore a Hawaiian lei on Selma march | Hawaii Magazine
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SF will wipe thousands of marijuana convictions off the books
San Francisco will retroactively apply California’s marijuana-legalization laws to past criminal cases, District Attorney George Gascón said Wednesday — expunging or reducing misdemeanor and felony convictions going back decades.
The unprecedented move will affect thousands of people whose marijuana convictions brand them with criminal histories that can hurt chances of finding jobs and obtaining some government benefits.
Proposition 64, which state voters passed in November 2016, legalized the recreational use of marijuana in California for those 21 and older and permitted the possession up to 1 ounce of cannabis. The legislation also allows those with past marijuana convictions that would have been lesser crimes — or no crime at all — under Prop. 64 to petition a court to recall or dismiss their cases.
Rather than leaving it up to individuals to petition the courts — which is time-consuming and can cost hundreds of dollars in attorney fees — Gascón said San Francisco prosecutors will review and wipe out convictions en masse.
SF will wipe thousands of marijuana convictions off the books – SFGate
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Manchester police officer collapses minutes before expected guilty plea in hit-and-run
Another big bad cop turns out to be a weak, spineless wuss.
Think of all the people he treated without humanity or compassion and here he is breaking down like a little child in the face of consequences for his own actions. Typical.
Harvard can save West Station, bu tthe question is are they willing to back up claims of being a good neighbor by putting their money where their mouth is?
[State Representative Michael] Moran’s district includes much of Brighton and Allston, including the site of a massive project that would take down a decrepit Mass. Pike viaduct, straighten the highway, and free up dozens of acres, now owned by Harvard, for new development.
…In a public comment letter also signed by other elected officials representing Allston and Brighton in the House, Senate, and Boston City Council, Moran urges the state to “monetize the total benefits” to Harvard — the “single biggest beneficiary” of the Pike realignment — to guarantee the construction of West Station sooner rather than later. In other words: While Harvard has already committed to covering a third of the station’s cost, the state should hit the school up for the majority of it.
…In general, the Greater Boston region, which might otherwise have become the eastern end of the Rust Belt, shouldn’t take its universities for granted. Yet there are some problems that only an institution like Harvard can solve. It would be a shame if the university stood aside as a major transit hub — the key to an urban vision for Allston — fell victim to bureaucratic inertia.
Stormy Daniels Once Claimed She Spanked Donald Trump With a Forbes Magazine
Slate’s Jacob Weisberg reported that in 2016, Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford, told him that in 2006 she and Trump began a sexual relationship that lasted nearly a year. The Daily Beast published a story citing friends of Daniels saying she had told them about a fling with Trump. In Touch published an interview with Daniels from 2011 in which she herself described having a sexual affair with Trump. And Mother Jones has learned that Daniels years earlier talked about having had a sexual relationship with Trump—and in lurid detail. According to 2009 emails between political operatives who were at the time advising Daniels on a possible political campaign, the adult film actor and director claimed that her affair with Trump included an unusual act: spanking him with a copy of Forbes magazine.
In early 2009, Daniels announced that she was considering challenging Sen. David Vitter, the Louisiana Republican who two years earlier had been snared in a sex scandal. Vitter’s phone number was discovered in the records of the so-called D.C. Madam, who ran a prostitution ring in the nation’s capital. Vitter, who now is a lobbyist, was a prominent social conservative who opposed abortion and gay marriage. Daniels, who grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, told reporters she wanted to highlight his hypocrisy. She offered up a potential campaign slogan: “Stormy Daniels: Screwing people honestly.”
Stormy Daniels Once Claimed She Spanked Donald Trump With a Forbes Magazine – Mother Jones
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Hawaii False Missile Alert: Emergency Worker Reassigned
The mistake occurred after 8 a.m. Saturday when the employee initiated an internal test of the emergency missile warning system — a drill performed regularly by the agency after it reinstated its Cold War-era nuclear warning system in response to North Korea’s ramped up ballistic missile tests. The Washington Post reports that the worker sent out a false warning after choosing “Missile alert” from the dropdown menu that initiated the internal test. He should have chosen the “Test missile alert” option instead.
Hawaii False Missile Alert: Emergency Worker Reassigned | Time
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Louisiana teacher handcuffed, arrested after bringing up brass salary at school board meeting
Jeezus Kerrreyst…. Clearly some of the individuals involved need to be put in handcuffs and dropped into the swampy morass that is the Louisiana justice system but the teacher is not in that group….
New Hampshire police officers colluded with federal officers to circumvent state law.
The question: Can federal officers conduct a search that is prohibited under New Hampshire law, then turn over the evidence to state police so that state prosecutors can file charges in state court?
New Hampshire police officers colluded with federal officers to circumvent state law.
Answer: Not without spitting on the laws of the country and state they are operating in.
Right of feds to make drug arrests at I-93 immigration roadblocks challenged
District Court Judge Thomas Rappa is considering whether to dismiss state drug charges against 16 people stopped at federal Border Patrol immigration checkpoints on Interstate 93 in Woodstock in August and September.
Three Border Patrol canine handlers testified they had legal grounds to conduct a search of the vehicles involved. Because the amount of contraband was below Border Patrol guidelines for prosecution, the handlers said the materials were handed over to Woodstock police.
Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the NH American Civil Liberties Union, said the Border Patrol could have brought charges in federal court, but chose not to. In choosing to delegate to the Woodstock Police Department, Border Patrol should have followed state law — which would have required search warrants, he said.
Bissonnette told Rappa that what the state was trying to say that the entire state of New Hampshire — because all of it is within the 100-mile zone in which Border Patrol has authority — is subject to warrantless searches.
Right of feds to make drug arrests at I-93 immigration roadblocks challenged | New Hampshire
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