Tag: massachusetts

Anti-Marijuana Ballot Campaigns In Maine And Massachusetts Accused Of ‘Fraudulent’ And ‘Misleading’ Petitioning Tactics

Campaigns that are working to put measures to roll back marijuana legalization on the ballot in two states are facing accusations of “fraudulent” and “misleading” signature gathering tactics—and not for the first time.

Now, however, new social media posts from both states appear to show signature collectors for each measure arguing that people who support legal cannabis access should sign the petitions in order to advance or protect marijuana reform.

A video posted to Reddit of a signature gatherer for the Massachusetts proposal—which would repeal state laws allowing the regulated commercial sales of recreational marijuana while maintaining legal possession and continuing the medical cannabis system—shows the man collecting signatures outside a supermarket next to a sign that says “keep cannabis legal.”

When confronted by a marijuana reform supporter who recorded the petitioner’s interactions with voters, he appeared to be trying to convince them that it is important to qualify the anti-cannabis measure for the ballot in order to then defeat it.

“This is what we’re fighting against right here. That’s why we vote no,” he said. “If we can get this to the ballot right here, we vote no.”

The person who captured the video pointed out that Massachusetts voters already approved marijuana legalization years ago, and that the only way it could be imminently repealed is if the new ballot measure qualified for the November election. If the initiative does not get enough signatures to go before voters, the state’s laws will remain the same.

“It’s my job,” the petitioner insisted, however. “I know what I’m talking about.”

“It’s a group of rich folks from out of state that want to basically take marijuana to when it was a medical marijuana card,” he said. “We don’t want that to happen.”

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Insanity! Boston University Advertises DEI and Black Power Courses

In yet another example of wasted money going to colleges Campus Reform is reporting “Boston University, a private Massachusetts-based research institution, appears to intertwine progressive ideology in its history department.”

In addition, instead of preparing students for the workforce “It seems to not just celebrate diversity in terms of job opportunities, however, as it includes a “Statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” on its webpage.”

This was banned throughout American schools as part of an executive order after President Trump was reelected President in some part because people wanted wokeness and DEI purged from academia.

The statement of DEI they have on the website reads like a BLM statement “The Boston University History Department recognizes and mourns the long history of racial injustice that has left deep scars on our society and which continues to manifest in horrific incidents of racial violence, including the very recent murders of Black men and women at the hands of police,”

The anti American bias of these courses is blatent.

The contrast in how they describe racial extremism couldn’t be stronger.

“The first, entitled “White Supremacist Thought: Self, Culture and Society since the 18th Century,” examines the “the simultaneous, mutualistically symbiotic emergence and sustained codependent development of autonomous individuality and white supremacy in western Europe and the United States from the 18th century to the present day.”

Black Supremacy is described very differently Black Power in the Classroom: The History of Black Studies,” which aims to center “Black experiences, cultures, knowledge production and identity formation in the United States and in the African Diaspora across time and space.”

In other words according to these racist leftists Black Power is good but White Power bad.  Of course Americans favor neither yet its worth pointing out the disparity in how these ideologies are framed.

“The word “supremacy” is not used in reference to any other race in the other courses’ descriptions.”

An earlier course offered a few years ago represented this ethno supremicist sentiment.

A “Topics in History” class offered in the summer of 2020 explored the theme of “Race, Gender, and Representation.”

“Through abolitionism, women’s suffrage, workers’ rights, AIDS activism, the Movement for Black Lives, and anti-prison organizing, we explore the relationship between visual culture and representation in U.S. history, and examine marginalized and minoritized peoples’ mobilization of visual and print media to clapback and correct pervasive stereotypes and misrepresentations in popular culture,” the course description states.

One associate professor was the co-editor of Radical Teacher’s special issue on “Teaching #BlackLives Matter” and a contributing author to “Colonize This! Young women of color on today’s feminism.”

Gender and racial ideology should be relegated to the ashbin of history.

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Massachusetts Public School District Permits Sikh Students to Carry Knives While Banning Weapons for All Other Students

Hopkinton Public Schools in Massachusetts has a policy that carves out a specific religious exception to its strict no-weapons rule, allowing initiated Sikh students to carry a ceremonial knife known as a kirpan on school grounds, while prohibiting knives, guns, replicas, and other weapons for every other student.

The policy, formally created in 2024, makes Hopkinton the first school district in the state to explicitly accommodate the kirpan for Sikh students.

These policies have received new scrutiny following the sentencing of Vickrum Digwa, a 23-year-old Sikh man convicted of murdering 18-year-old British university student Henry Nowak in Southampton, England, on December 3.

Digwa stabbed Nowak five times with an 8-inch dagger he carried in addition to a kirpan.

Under the district’s general weapons policy, possession of any “dangerous weapon” is banned on school premises, at school-sponsored events, or on school transport. This includes guns, knives, pocket knives, slingshots, brass knuckles, explosives, ammunition, and even replicas or toys that resemble weapons.

Violations can lead to suspension, expulsion, police referral, and possible exclusion by the School Committee.

However, the policy includes a dedicated section titled “Considerations for Recognized Religious Artifacts Resembling Weapons.”

It directs that sacred religious articles must be approved annually before the start of each school year or before the student begins carrying the item. The district evaluates exceptions based on school safety and reserves the right to suspend permission during specific events.

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Massachusetts Sues UnitedHealthcare Over Alleged $100 Million Fraud

Massachusetts sued UnitedHealthcare on May 29, alleging the company defrauded the state’s Medicaid program by making seniors appear sicker than they were to secure higher payments.

The company contracted with MassHealth to provide a Senior Care Options—which combines Medicare and Medicaid benefits into one plan—for seniors aged 65 and older.

UnitedHealthcare allegedly received more than $100 million in fraudulent payments from MassHealth between 2015 and 2025, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell stated in the complaint.

UnitedHealthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, said the complaint is “meritless and doesn’t accurately describe our Senior Care Options program” in ‌a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.

The legal complaint alleged UnitedHealthcare inflated payment rates in three ways.

Upcoding

Massachusetts paid UnitedHealthcare a per-member, per-month rate for each senior enrolled in the plan based on UnitedHealthcare’s assessments of the member’s health conditions.

UnitedHealthcare allegedly labeled members as having behavioral health disorders such as depression or anxiety, or substance use disorders to gain higher reimbursement rates, according to the complaint, when the members had no diagnosis or treatment on record for such conditions.

An analysis by the attorney general’s office revealed that nearly 30 percent of UnitedHealthcare’s 2014 through 2024 behavioral health assessments lacked any matching medical claims to support the mental health diagnoses reported to the state.

Keeping Overpayments

The insurer’s internal reviews identified that many members were incorrectly placed in the highest and most expensive level of care despite not qualifying for it, according to the lawsuit.

While the company eventually downgraded these members to lower-paying levels, it allegedly failed to inform the state of the prior errors or return the extra money it had already collected.

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MASSIVE EBT & CHARITY FRAUD EXPOSED: Dominican Immigrants in Lawrence, Massachusetts Buying Food with Your Taxpayer-Funded Stamps and Free Charity Donations, Then Shipping It Overseas to Sell for Profit in Santo Domingo Bodegas

Independent investigator Muckraker has blown the lid off a sophisticated, long-running Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) and charity fraud operation in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Dominican immigrants have been openly buying groceries with food stamps (EBT/SNAP cards) or taking free food from charities and food banks, loading it into shipping barrels, and sending it straight to the Dominican Republic — where it gets resold for profit in local bodegas. The pipeline runs from Massachusetts corner stores, through shipping hubs in New York, all the way to Santo Domingo.

According to the Muckraker Foundation:

Lawrence, Massachusetts

Lawrence is a small city about 30 miles north of Boston. It has the highest concentration of Dominican immigrants of any city in Massachusetts, and the highest rate of SNAP enrollment in the state.

John has been delivering goods in Lawrence for over 11 years, six days a week, 35 stops a day. He knows the community intimately.

“I’ve been witnessing the Dominican residents going to food bank lines and collecting non-perishable goods,” he told us, “and then packing it in barrels and in boxes, and then they ship it back to the Dominican Republic.”

We asked him how he knew the food was being purchased with food stamps.

“Some of them have openly told me and my wife that that’s what they’re doing,” he said. “And then the other way is the math.”

The math is straightforward. A 50-pound bag of rice costs $30 in Lawrence. That same bag costs $35 in the Dominican Republic. Add shipping, and the economics make no sense unless the food was free or paid for with government benefits.

John drove us through the streets of Lawrence and showed us the evidence hiding in plain sight: blue shipping barrels, stacked outside corner stores, for sale. Not one store. Not two. Store after store after store.

“These barrels aren’t trash cans,” John said. “They’re being used to ship the product.”

Every one of those stores also advertised, prominently, that they accept EBT.

Abigail has worked in Lawrence since 2011. She asked us not to disclose her profession, but her job takes her inside people’s homes on a daily basis.

“Many of them will have large boxes, large bins in their apartments full of the food that they give out at the pantries here,” she told us. “And when I ask them what it’s for, they say they mail it back so it can either be given to their families there or be sold in the bodegas there.”

We asked if these patients knew they were doing something wrong.

“No,” she said, and laughed quietly. “They feel entitled. They feel like that’s what we come here for.”

We asked how widespread she believed the fraud to be among the patients she visits.

“About half,” she said. “Half the people I see.”

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Massachusetts House Passes Social Media Age Verification Digital ID Bill

Massachusetts just voted to force every social media user in the state to prove their age to a tech company. 

The bill passed the House 129-25 on Wednesday, banning children under 14 from social media entirely, requiring parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds, and mandating that platforms build age verification systems to enforce all of it. If it becomes law, the policy takes effect on October 1.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

House Speaker Ron Mariano and Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz framed the legislation as protection. “This ban would be among the most restrictive in the entire country, helping to protect young people from harmful content and addictive algorithms that have a proven negative impact on their mental health,” they said in a joint statement. 

They also described the broader goal: “The simple reality is that Massachusetts must do more to ensure that our laws keep pace with modern challenges – especially when it comes to protecting our children, and to setting students up for success in the classroom and beyond.”

The bill doesn’t say how companies should verify ages. It leaves that to Attorney General Andrea Campbell, who would have until September 1 to write the implementing regulations. 

That vagueness is deliberate, according to Michlewitz, who said it gives the AG flexibility in a changing industry. 

But the practical reality of age verification is that someone has to prove who they are. 

That means government IDs, facial scans, or behavioral tracking, and those requirements don’t just apply to kids. Every user on the platform has to go through the system, because you can’t filter minors without checking adults, too.

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Hey Guys! Did You Know It’s Racist to Have to Go to School in Your Own School District?

What happens when you give leftists everything they want? That’s a trick question. They never get everything they want, because if you give them everything they say they want, they’ll always come up with something more to want. They are never satisfied. I think the word “greed” applies here.

Case in point: let’s go to one of the bluest states in the nation and check in on a lawsuit that alleges racism in the way school district borders impact minority students. While the issue at the center of the Massachusetts case is pretty simple, the framing of it all will likely get complex.

A group of minor children are suing the Massachusetts Department of Education, the Massachusetts Board of Education, and several educational leaders in state government. Since the kids are too young to even comprehend why they are suing the state, their “next friends” are signed onto the complaint. Typically, in legal terms, if you’re a minor your “next friend” could be your parent or someone else with certain guardianship responsibilities.

See what I mean? The left is already making it complicated, and I haven’t even told you what this is all about yet.

So, let’s get to that. These kids are suing the state because their lawyers maintain they are being denied a better education because of where they live. Most, if not all, of them live within the boundaries of the Boston Public Schools district. But they’re not asking to be given the opportunity to go to another school within their district. They’re not asking for more money, resources, or staffing for their own school district.

Instead, they want to be able to go outside of their school district into the better neighboring school districts in the suburbs. They want to essentially erase the geographic borders that separate the city from the suburbs.

It’s as simple as that. If I’m that eight-year-old minority child in the Boston Public Schools district who is a party to this lawsuit, I don’t want to go to school where I live in the city. I want to go to school where you live if you live in the suburbs. And if I don’t get what the adults in my life tell me that I want, then you’re a racist.

That’s about as simple as this will get.

Now, for some much-needed background. The operating budget for Boston Public Schools in this current year is roughly $1.6 billion. This is spent to educate more than 50,000 students, which translates into about $31,000 spent on each student each year. This cost is comparable to sending your kid to a private school and paying $31,000 per year in tuition. Only in this case, you’re not footing the bill; the Boston taxpayers are.

So, what does that mean to academic performance?

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Woke Judge Admits “Taking A Chance” On Violent Criminal… Who Then Went On Shooting Spree

A Massachusetts judge openly confessed in court that she knew she was rolling the dice by giving a light sentence to a career criminal with a 20-year rap sheet packed with violence, guns, and assault convictions.

She did it anyway. Now Tyler Brown is back in custody after opening fire with 50 to 60 rounds on a busy Cambridge roadway, critically injuring two innocent drivers.

The shocking audio, released this week, comes straight from Brown’s 2020 sentencing hearing after he fired 13 rounds at Boston police officers. Prosecutors had pushed for 10 to 12 years behind bars. The judge gave him just five. He walked out on parole in March 2025.

In the newly surfaced clip shared on X, the judge tells Brown directly:

“I do realize I’m kind of taking a chance on you — when people stand up, police, experienced police officers, experienced probation officers, and they tell me this guy is a danger to the community.”

She went on to acknowledge she could not predict the future but was still willing to release him, saying she hoped her “intuitions” would prove correct and that Brown would not “endanger other peoples’ lives as you have in the past.” 

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Supreme Court Rejects Massachusetts Case Over Hiding Student’s Gender Identity

Supreme Court justices on April 20 declined to take up a case involving a Massachusetts schoolgirl whose parents say officials wrongly hid their daughter’s purported identity as a male from them.

At least six of the nine justices declined to accept a petition to rehear a lower court verdict in the case, which was brought by the girl’s parents in 2022 against the Ludlow, Massachusetts, school district.

The vote count on the petition and how each justice voted were not disclosed, nor were any comments offered by the justices.

“Today’s denial by the Supreme Court is a missed opportunity to defend parental rights,” Jim Campbell, chief legal counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, who was helping represent the parents, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“Social transition, including going by inaccurate or nonbinary pronouns and a different name, is a major intervention in a child’s life that puts the child on a difficult-to-escape pathway to medicalized transition, carrying the risk of life-altering damage. No school district should make important mental health decisions on behalf of parents and conceal those decisions from them, especially in opposition to the mental-health care that those parents have chosen for their children.”

An attorney representing the school officials did not return a request for comment by publication time.

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Massachusetts Dems Advance Bill To Limit How Far You Can Drive In Your Own Car

Massachusetts lawmakers are barreling ahead with a bill that would force the state to slash the total miles residents drive, all under the banner of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The proposal, Senate Bill S.2246, doesn’t slap a hard cap on your daily commute… yet – but it orders the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) to set binding goals for reducing statewide vehicle miles traveled (VMT). It also creates a new government council tasked with pushing people onto public transit whether they like it or not.

A local Boston report highlights the move:

“The bill proposed in Massachusetts would limit how far you can drive in your own car. So lawmakers say it would help reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. Now, while no specific mileage limit was listed, the bill would require MassDOT to set goals to reduce the number of statewide driving miles. It would also establish a new council to find ways to make public transportation more accessible for residents. Now, critics say A cap on personal vehicle miles would directly impact those in rural parts of the state.”

The committee gave it a favorable 4-1 vote and shipped it to the Senate Ways and Means Committee, keeping the radical plan alive on Beacon Hill.

This isn’t some fringe idea cooked up in isolation. It’s part of a broader push to ration mobility under the twin excuses of “climate” and “equity.” Similar thinking powers the 15-minute city concept – the urban planning fad sold as “convenience” but designed to make driving anywhere outside your little neighborhood a bureaucratic nightmare.

Need to visit family across town or haul supplies for a business? Too bad. The goal is fewer cars, fewer miles, and more dependence on government-run transit that’s already unreliable and crime-ridden in blue cities.

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