"Patrick rushes to sign, veto late bills
by STEVE LeBLANC Associated Press
BOSTON - Gov. Deval L. Patrick is gearing up to sign or veto dozens of bills rushed through by lawmakers during the frenzied last days and hours of the Legislature's formal session.
The bills include initiatives to rein in health care spending and pump more money into repairs for the state's crumbling bridges. They give Patrick the chance to put his stamp on new laws while bulking up his political resume.
Given only 10 days in which to sign or veto a bill once it is enacted by lawmakers, Patrick is wasting little time. On Monday, he will head to Goshen in the western part of the state to sign a bill expanding broadband access to underserved areas.
Patrick had pushed for the bill to aid the 32 towns with no broadband access. All but one of the communities are located in Western Massachusetts. Also as soon as Monday, Patrick may sign another bill allowing the state to borrow almost $3 billion to speed repairs for between 250 and 300 "structurally deficient" bridges.
Patrick has said that the bill would create thousands of engineering and construction jobs while saving the state an estimated $1.5 billion in avoided inflation and deferred maintenance costs. There are currently 543 structurally deficient bridges on state-owned roads.
If the state continued at the current pace, the number of spans in need of repair would jump to 697 in eight years, an increase of 28 percent. With the borrowed money, the number should decline to 450, a 17 percent drop. transportation officials said.
It is not the only bond bill on Patrick's plate. Other bills authorizing the state to borrow huge sums of money include a $1.7 billion environmental bond bill to help improve parks and protect open space, and a $2 billion education bond bill to help pay for repairs at the University of Massachusetts and other state colleges.
Yet another bond bill would let the Turnpike Authority use the state's credit to look for better deals on the bond market, and avoid $2.3 million a month in new debt payments. Patrick also has a few environmental bills awaiting his signature.
One would require the state to reduce by 2020 greenhouse gas emissions in Massachusetts to 20 percent below 1990 levels to help combat global warming. By 2050, the goal is to have emissions drop 80 percent below 1990 levels. Another bill would help make Massachusetts a leader in environmentally friendly jobs. The "green jobs" bill would provide funding to encourage green startup companies in Massachusetts and offer grants to help train workers for jobs in the green economy.
Sick of that agenda-pushing garbage.
The bill signings are not only good photographic opportunities for Patrick, but also give him a chance to claim victory on a series of key initiatives - a sharp contrast to his public failure to convince lawmakers to back his plan to license three resort style casinos.
"The governor is at this point racking up some accomplishments, some legislation he's been pushing for; it's a nice payoff for him," said Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University. "He finally comes across as someone who's in charge."
Patrick has already signed some of the last-minute bills.
At a Statehouse ceremony on Wednesday, surrounded by lawmakers and cheering gay rights activists, Patrick signed a bill repealing an almost century-old law that had been used to bar same-sex couples from marrying in Massachusetts. The elimination of the 1913 law made Massachusetts the second state in the country after California to allow homosexual and lesbian couples from other states to wed.
Sick of that agenda-pushing garbage.
In a quieter event on the same day, Patrick signed another bill formally establishing a Universal Pre-Kindergarten Program to help provide voluntary, universally accessible early education and care for preschool-age children.
Bill signings can run the gambit from the hundreds of mundane bills signed by governors with no fanfare to higher-profiles bills that call for a more public ceremony.
One of Massachusetts' glitziest bill-signing ceremonies came in 2006 when former Gov. W. Mitt Romney filled Faneuil Hall with the state's political bigwigs - including U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy - to sign the state's landmark health care law."
"6 Die as Georgia Battles Rebel Group" by MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
MOSCOW — Troops from the former Soviet republic of Georgia battled separatist fighters in a rebel republic overnight, killing at least six people and wounding more than a dozen others, officials from both sides said Saturday.
Violence between Georgia and the rebel republic, South Ossetia, has flared recently after months of relative calm. Each side accused the other of setting off the fighting, which began Friday evening and continued through Saturday morning, and involved mortars, grenade launchers and small-arms fire.
Earlier on Friday, six Georgian policemen were wounded in the border area by a roadside bomb, the Georgian Interior Ministry said. A spokeswoman for the separatist government said South Ossetia sustained most of the casualties, including all of the deaths. Among the six people killed, five were civilians, she said. Georgia said that six civilians and one Georgian policeman were wounded on the Georgian side of the border.
South Ossetia, an impoverished patch of mountainous territory on Russia’s southern border, won de facto independence following a bloody war with Georgia after the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Its autonomy is largely unrecognized internationally. Georgia has accused Russia, which maintains a peacekeeping force in the region, of aiding rebel fighters there and in Abkhazia, another separatist region of Georgia."
Now how could the Boston Globe have missed that, unless it was on purpose?
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A bomb exploded at a bridge on Saturday, killing at least nine security forces in a valley where Pakistani troops are battling Islamic militants, police said. Police officer Bashir Khan said the remote-controlled bomb hit a vehicle traveling from police headquarters in Mingora, the main town in the troubled Swat valley, as it carried money to pay the salaries of the staff in the nearby town of Kabal. Khan said the bomb was planted at a bridge between the two towns. Senior police officer Khalid Nasim said the attack killed six police and three paramilitary troops. He said four others were wounded."
"Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization"
I'm not buying that!!!
Yeah, the globalists are on the retreat, uh-huh!!!
The NYT sure can serve up the shit, can't they?
