November 20, 2008 — EAST BOSTON — Struggling families and elders have support to help them obtain food stamp benefits in this tough economy. Project Bread, the state’s leading antihunger organization, has granted $30,600 to the American Red Cross, a community-based organization serving 300,000 people across 127 cities and towns in eastern Massachusetts. The grant enables the American Red Cross to help more families take advantage of the federal Food Stamp Program.

I was surprised to read this story on CNN & not the globe:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/08/22/toxic.schools/index.html

A 2005 study by the Center for Health, Environment & Justice looking at just four states -- Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Michigan -- found half a million children attending schools within half a mile of known toxic dumps.

The Outraged Liberal analyzes the latest out of New Beford; concludes the feds know exactly how to time a staged raid; the new staties need to seriously get their act together and fast - except for DSS Commissioner Harry Spence and Patrick flack Nancy Fernandez Mills, who, he says, just need to resign.

Jesse Kanson-Benanav was there with a camera.

I admit it: I was dubious about Eileen McNamara's first New Bedford column, in which she said state officials failed the immigrants, because her assertion those officials knew about the raid ahead of time was based on word from a federal flack, and how could we trust that?

McNamara fills in the gaps today, and proves that not only did state officials know about the raid weeks ahead of time, Harry Spence and the governor who kept him on as DSS commissioner really should just learn to shut up rather than get caught up in a Big Lie:

... Told that, in fact, members of Patrick's Cabinet had briefed him about the operation weeks ago and that Spence had participated in a conference call with ICE the day before the raid -- a fact the commissioner himself acknowledged in yesterday's newspapers -- [a Patrick flack] reconsidered: "I'd like to retract that statement until I talk to someone who actually knows something about this timeline." ...