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Political Happy Hour: May 2, 2016

Here’s your afternoon James Squire One Fifty Lashes Pale Ale bottle of politics, from Joshua Miller of the Boston Globe at the Massachusetts State House.

MASS. DEMS ACCUSE BAKER OF FLIP-FLOPPIN’, via Jim O’Sullivan on BostonGlobe.com: “Massachusetts Democrats pounced Monday on Governor Charlie Baker’s fund-raising methods, including offers of direct access to special-interest groups, by sending a donations appeal of their own that labeled the governor’s techniques ‘a brazen strategy to trade donations for influence.’ The state Democratic Party ripped Baker for ‘flip-flopping,’ referring to his assertion days after winning the 2014 gubernatorial election that he would file campaign finance reform legislation designed to curb the fund-raising advantages enjoyed by incumbent. The governor has not filed such a proposal. ...” http://bit.ly/1QNX6oG

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THE STORY IN TODAY’S GLOBE, from Mr. O’Sullivan: “Governor Charlie Baker, who took office pledging to reform the state’s campaign finance policies, is expanding his record-breaking fund-raising operation to encourage more contributions from special-interest political action committees, with promises that donors would gain direct access to him.

Baker loyalists are launching a new effort to push the deep-pocketed groups, which are often clustered around industries or shared-policy goals, to donate. In doing so, Baker is preparing for an expected reelection bid and raising questions about the influence donors might have with his administration. ...’ http://bit.ly/1TGgXL5

LOBSTER WAR! David S. Bernstein has the skinny on the crustacean crusade on WGBH.org:

“Sweden used to seem so nice. But today, that Scandinavian scourge is New England’s newest nemesis; a malevolent menace to the maritime. Sweden has declared a lobster war.

Specifically, Sweden has asked the European Union to declare North American lobsters — Homarus Americanus — an invasive species. They claim that it endangers local native species. Really, one specific species: the local native lobster that Swedish fishermen catch. ...

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Massachusetts lawmakers in Washington suggest that Sweden’s suspect science is a bogus façade for the real motivation: eliminating the competition for Swedish lobster in the EU’s 28 countries. ... With Congressman Seth Moulton—who represents the lobster-rich North Shore—taking the lead, the entire Commonwealth delegation sent a letter last week in opposition to Sweden’s scurrilous attack. ...” http://bit.ly/1Z3R5Ko

GLUTEN-FREE POT BROWNIES. GLUTEN-FREE POT BROWNIES. GLUTEN-FREE POT BROWNIES, via Kay Lazar and Dan Adams on BostonGlobe.com: “One delivery service offers gluten-free marijuana brownies. Another promises a free marijuana-laced lollipop with each order. A third touts trained ‘caregivers’ and delivery until 4 a.m. These marijuana delivery services — the subject of an unsuccessful crackdown by Massachusetts health officials two years ago — were expected to fade away once the first state-sanctioned medical marijuana dispensaries opened last year. Instead, they have proliferated. More than two dozen of these Internet-based services are now openly advertising long menus of marijuana strains and edibles, plus prices and user reviews, the Globe found. ...” http://bit.ly/1W2H16p

NEW ENGLAND POT WATCH, via the AP in Montpelier: “Some Vermont lawmakers are making a last-minute bid to resurrect marijuana legalization. The issue appeared to have stalled in the House, but the Senate attached legalization to another bill that the House is expected to debate late Monday. If the bill passes, Vermont would be the first state to legalize marijuana by legislation. ...” Link via TheEagle.com: http://bit.ly/1SVbAHP

CHARLIE BAKER GOT EMOTIONAL ON FRIDAY talking to FOX25’s Sharman Sacchetti about his mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. One minute, 30 second package: http://fox25.com/1VHdSOl

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DID YOU SEE HOWIE CARR’S EXULTANT TAKE ON GOP CAUCUSES? If not, here it is: “... [Saturday’s] caucuses were yet another sad day for the GOPe here in Massachusetts. Weekends are when the Cruz people try to make up for the beatings they absorb from actual voters every Tuesday. As bad as Tuesdays are for the Cruz cult, Saturdays are usually their time to slither back into the game, mainly because nobody’s paying attention. But yesterday in Massachusetts, the local RINOs could deliver no more than four or so of the 27 votes on the table to the Calgary comet, Rafael Eduardo Cruz Jr. ...” http://bit.ly/1VHeQdl

DON’T MISS President Obama’s very funny and cutting speech at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner: https://youtu.be/hA5ezR0Kh80

YOUR MBTA-DELAY LONG READ NUMBER ONE, “The Showman | How U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara struck fear into Wall Street and Albany,” via Jeffrey Toobin in the new issue of the New Yorker about the might-be next attorney general: “... [W]hen Barack Obama was elected President, [US Senator Chuck] Schumer recommended that he nominate Bharara as the United States Attorney for the Southern District. Bharara was forty, and he brought a media-friendly approach to what has historically been a closed and guarded institution. In professional background, Bharara resembles his predecessors; in style, he’s very different. His personality reflects his dual life in New York’s political and legal firmament. A longtime prosecutor, he sometimes acts like a budding pol; his rhetoric leans more toward the wisecrack than toward the jeremiad. He expresses himself in the orderly paragraphs of a former high-school debater, but with deft comic timing and a gift for shtick. ...

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He believes in meticulous preparation and reveres the tradition of collegiality among current and former Southern District prosecutors, like Comey and like him. He also welcomes publicity. ...” Good read: http://bit.ly/1X4ZCON

The stunning photo of Bharara by Platon: http://bit.ly/1SGvwPS

YOUR MBTA-DELAY LONG READ NUMBER TWO, via Andrew Sullivan in the new issue of New York magazine:

“... Could it be that the Donald has emerged from the populist circuses of pro wrestling and New York City tabloids, via reality television and Twitter, to prove not just Plato but also James Madison right, that democracies ‘have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention … and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths’? Is he testing democracy’s singular weakness — its susceptibility to the demagogue — by blasting through the firewalls we once had in place to prevent such a person from seizing power? Or am I overreacting?

Perhaps. The nausea comes and goes, and there have been days when the news algorithm has actually reassured me that ‘peak Trump’ has arrived. But it hasn’t gone away, and neither has Trump. In the wake of his most recent primary triumphs, at a time when he is perilously close to winning enough delegates to grab the Republican nomination outright, I think we must confront this dread and be clear about what this election has already revealed about the fragility of our way of life and the threat late-stage democracy is beginning to pose to itself. ...” http://nym.ag/24jhmeW

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Our way of life may be fragile, but this newsletter schedule is as durable as Donald Trump’s hair. I’ll be back tomorrow.

Unless, of course, I encounter a ninja kangaroo like this one (!) on my drive home.


Joshua Miller can be reached at joshua.miller@globe.com.