Public-school students in Massachusetts are set to get free lunch and breakfast thanks to a new 4% tax on people's earnings above $1 million.

Massachusetts in 2022 voted for a constitutional amendment to tax high earners. It went into effect at the beginning of 2023.

State House News Service, an independent news wire, reported that $1 billion of the state's record $56.2 billion fiscal budget for 2024 will be funded by its new 4% tax.

Gov. Maura Healey signed the budget on Wednesday, making Massachusetts the eighth state to adopt a plan for free school lunch since the expiration of federal free school lunches that had emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The outlet reported that a portion of the $1 billion expected to be gathered from the new income tax would be used to provide all public-school students in Massachusetts with free breakfast and lunch, if they want it.

WCVB reported that state lawmakers agreed to allocate $523 million of anticipated revenue from the new tax on education and set aside $477 million for transportation.

In February, President Joe Biden urged lawmakers to pass his billionaires' tax proposal, which would impose a minimum 20% tax on households with a net worth of more than $100 million.

Unlike Massachusetts' new tax, which is on income, the proposed billionaire's tax is aimed at wealth.

Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told CNBC the proposal would target "big corporations and the wealthiest Americans," while protecting people who made less than $400,000 a year from tax increases.

Biden also signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in February, which included a 15% minimum tax on corporations earning more than $1 billion.

"As dueling court rulings leave the future of mifepristone in limbo, Gov. Maura Healey announced Monday that Massachusetts is stockpiling about a year’s worth of the abortion drug to preserve the state’s supply. 

Flanked by reproductive rights advocates and fellow lawmakers, Healey stood on the steps of the State House to deliver a message: “Abortion will remain safe, legal, and accessible here in Massachusetts.”

She outlined several steps her administration has taken to protect access to mifepristone, including an executive order confirming that medication abortion remains protected under state law.

Healey said the University of Massachusetts purchased about 15,000 doses of mifepristone at her request last week, before dueling court rulings put the abortion drug in limbo."

Read the full piece here: https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2023/04/10/maura-healey-executive-order-mifepristone-stockpile-access-medication-abortion/

Republicans like to rail against public schools as “government schools,” with the implication that they are sites where the government brainwashes children with liberal and “woke” ideology. Now, Florida Republicans are in court arguing that Florida public schools are their government schools and can be required to push their message—all the way down to the books in the school libraries. In response to two lawsuits against the Escambia County and Lake County school boards and, in one case, state education officials, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and the two school boards are arguing, as Moody put it in her brief, that “Public-school systems, including their libraries, convey the government’s message.” According to Moody, who is representing the state, public school libraries are “a forum for government speech,” not a “forum for free expression.” The logical extension of that position is that whoever is in charge of the government gets to decide on all of the information that is not only taught in schools but available in their libraries. Republicans are of course safe in pushing this idea because while they will ban books with LGBTQ+ characters and anti-racist messages, Democratic administrations tend to leave decisions up to the professionals in the schools. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, for example, is not pushing for the removal of books with straight characters because she is herself LGBTQ+. This lawsuit, reported on in depth by the Tallahassee Democrat, is a classic case of Republicans ignoring concerns about hypocrisy to simply argue for whatever gives them power at any given moment.

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Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey Cutting Firefighter Funds, Offering College Financial Aid to Illegal Aliens https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/01/12/massachusetts-gov-maura-healey-cutting-firefighter-funds-offering-college-financial-aid-to-illegal-aliens/

Gee... I wonder how that happened? 🤔

Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll asked state residents Wednesday to open their doors and assist housing migrants after the Democratic governor, Maura Healey, declared a state of emergency Tuesday as the state is faced with a vast shortage of shelters.

"Most importantly, if you have an extra room or suite in your home, please consider hosting a family. Housing and shelter is our most pressing need and become a sponsor family," Driscoll said.

Driscoll's comments echoed Healey's statement Tuesday in calling on residents to "offer a helping hand."

"This is a national issue that demands a national response," Healey said during a press conference at the State House in Boston. "In the meantime, we’re simply asking the federal government to use the tools already available to give these brave parents a chance to work and support their families. At the same time, we’re calling on everyone in Massachusetts to come together, help us meet this moment in our state, and offer a helping hand."

Their calls for assistance from residents come after Healey announced that a state of emergency exists "due to rapid and unabated increases in the number of families with children and pregnant people — many of them newly arriving migrants and refugees — living within the state but without the means to secure safe shelter in our communities."

The state said there are nearly 5,600 families or more than 20,000 people in the state shelter system. Massachusetts is a right to shelter state, and must provide emergency housing to families in need.

Healey said there are numerous contributing factors to the migrant crisis, including "federal policies on immigration and work authorization" as well as a lack of affordable housing and the end of COVID-era programs.

Healey said she hopes the emergency declaration will provide more federal funding, and expedite work permits for immigrants.

The Massachusetts declaration follows similar pronouncements by New York state and the city of Chicago in recent months.

New England getting more rain, watching Hurricane Lee’s path after flooding, sinkholes

Sept. 12, 2023

Parts of New England already soaked with rain were expecting more precipitation on Wednesday, as residents in Massachusetts and Rhode Island spent the day cleaning up the flood damage while bracing for Hurricane Lee as it barreled north toward the region.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey issued a state of emergency Tuesday night following the “catastrophic flash flooding and property damage” in two counties and other communities. The 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain over six hours earlier in the week was a “200-year event,” said Matthew Belk, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boston...

Removed from an earlier version of this article is this important fact. The record rainfall for a single day in Massachusetts was Aug. 18-19, 1955, corresponding to Wilhelm Reich's cloudbusting work. In 24 hours, 18.15 inches of rain fell. This was one of two extreme rain events in August of 1955 (see below).

They are leaving this out because of the massive orgonite gifting effort currently underway in New England. This incredible neutralization of the weather control arrays has also disabled flights between the southwest and New England. There are no "planes" flying today in Southern California.

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Massachusetts Taxpayers to Subsidize College Tuition for Illegal Aliens https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/08/14/massachusetts-taxpayers-subsidize-college-tuition-illegal-aliens/

Confronted with an unexpected moment of reckoning, some moderate Republicans are pointing out that the party has some important decisions to make about its future: 

Are they going to be the party of former President Donald Trump or a party that wins elections?

Are they going to be able to excise the "extremism" in their party that more Republicans are openly talking about?

First test: The first indication of where the party is headed will come this week when Republicans, anticipating they will ultimately hold a slim House majority, choose their nominee for speaker.

Some of the most Trump-aligned lawmakers want Rep. Kevin McCarthy to commit to a more combative stance against the Biden administration. While McCarthy expects to prevail, the unfolding drama will show what he has to sacrifice to keep Republicans in the House on the same page. CNN reported Monday that Trump has been quietly working to shore up support for McCarthy. 

Moving beyond extremism: Two moderate Republican governors who will be handing over their jobs to Democrats next year are speaking out about how their party failed in a year when it should have romped.

"Voters, generally speaking, especially in battleground states, aren't interested in extremism. They just aren't," Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker told CNN's Jake Tapper in an interview that aired Monday on "The Lead." Baker, who will be replaced by Democratic attorney general Maura Healey in January, said Trump's influence hurt Republicans on Election Day and is driving people from the party.

Third strike for Trump: Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, long a Trump critic, was more unvarnished in his criticism during an interview Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." 

"Commonsense conservatives that focused on talking about issues people cared about, like the economy and crime and education, they did win," Hogan told Dana Bash. "But people who tried to relitigate the 2020 election and focused on conspiracy theories and talked about things the voters didn't care about, they were almost universally rejected."

In that regard, American voters were sophisticated, splitting tickets to elect Republicans in certain races and Democrats in others.

Hogan, who will be replaced by Democrat Wes Moore in January, said this is the third straight election Trump has cost Republicans. "It's like three strikes, you're out," he said, adding, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And Donald Trump kept saying, 'We're going to be winning so much, we will get tired of winning.' I'm tired of losing. I mean, that's all he's done."

Others are not quite as direct, even if they're saying some similar things.

Read more.