It is also Gov. Maura Healey’s deadline for taking in new immigrant families who are flocking to Massachusetts seeking free housing and support under the state’s “right to shelter” law.

So, if a family with children comes trick or treating at your door looking for shelter, they are liable to be immigrants from Haiti or Afghanistan or Ecuador looking for a place to crash.

Massachusetts is an internationally known sanctuary or handout state.

That may be an exaggeration, but you get the point.

The state is so overflowing with migrants that there are no longer the means to care for them.

There is no more room at the inn, Healey said in so many words– as if that will stop them from coming. Massachusetts is overflowing with immigrant families from around the world with few places to house them.

“If there is no place for them, where do they go?” House Speaker Ron Mariano sensibly asked.

It is a good question.

But Healey does not seem to have a good answer. She said that even though the state does not have “enough space, service providers or funds” to expand shelters, “Families with high need, including health and safety risks, will be prioritized for shelter placement.”

If the shelters are full, newly arrived immigrant families will be placed on a waitlist if they are not “immediately connected with shelter.”

Since no immigrants, let alone illegal immigrants, are sent back to where they came from, where do they stay while waiting to be housed?  In tents on the Boston Common? Not likely.

Healey’s remarks translated mean that the state will somehow continue to house and feed incoming immigrant families despite their immigrant status and despite Healey’ Halloween deadline that goes into effect Tuesday.

Winter is coming and no one should be left out in the cold. Everybody agrees on that.

The challenge is coming up with a solution.

While the state has the capacity to accommodate 7,500 immigrant families, or 24,000 individuals, there are currently some 7,200 families in the system, 3,489 families with children living in hotels and motels and 3,629 in traditional shelters.

They get taxpayer-funded free housing, free food, free medical care, security, free schooling for the children and so on. The taxpayers get the bill without even a thank you.

They are still coming, and the problem is still growing.

Unless Healey gets a handle on it, it will consume her administration just the way the COVID pandemic consumed Gov. Charlie Baker, her predecessor, limiting the time and energy he could have spent on other issues, like the MBTA, for instance.

But just as COVID was not Baker’s fault, Healey, although a welcoming progressive, had nothing to do with the immigrant invasion. It was Joe Biden who opened the borders and let millions of foreigners into the country with no questions asked.

It is also Biden who has refused to deal with the problem or provide Healey with the federal funds she needs to pay for Biden’s reckless and wrongheaded open door immigration policy.

And all the big talkers of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, from Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Eddie Markey on down, have been unable to extract a dime from Biden to deal with the problem.

Healey was rightly proud to have signed into law the recent tax cut bill.

But at the rate the state is spending money on the immigrants, and with no help from Biden, she soon may have to raise taxes to pay for it all.

It is costing Massachusetts taxpayers $45 million a month to house and care for the immigrants already here. Healey has already burned through $350 million previously appropriated for the immigrants. She is now asking the Legislature for $250 million more.

If the additional $250 million is approved by the Legislature—which it has not yet taken up—Speaker Mariano said it would not even be enough “to get us to the end of this month.”

The end of the month is here.

Happy Halloween.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

She is the state auditor who wants to take down the Massachusetts Legislature, and she is on her way to doing it.

DiZoglio, a former legislator herself, is seeking clear authority from the voters to audit — or, as some fear, oversee — the workings of the House and Senate the way the auditor does other state agencies.

Toward that end, she is halfway to gathering the 75,000 signatures of Massachusetts voters needed to get the issue on the 2024 ballot for voter ratification as she awaits a decision from Attorney General Andrea Campbell paving the way for her to sue the Legislature to comply.

Either way it is all but certain that the question will not only be on the ballot, but, given the public’s general negative attitude toward the Legislature, it will surely pass.

While most in Massachusetts speak well of their representative or senator, the same voters look much less kindly on the Legislature as a whole.

Both House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka oppose the move on the grounds that the Legislature is a separate branch of government that makes its own rules and governs and audits itself.

Others on Beacon Hill, where DiZoglio has gotten little support, believe it is a vengeful political power grab by DiZoglio who had a controversial and rocky road with the Democrat leadership in both the House and Senate when she served in both branches before being elected auditor in 2022.

DiZoglio, of course, denies the charges, saying that she is fulfilling a campaign promise to bring accountability and transparency to the Legislature.

DiZoglio seems unperturbed by the little support she has gathered from her colleagues at the State House, from Gov. Maura Healey on down, all of whom are fellow Democrats, as is just about everyone else on Beacon Hill.

Massachusetts is a one-party Democrat state and, since the few Republicans at the State House don’t count, the Democrats end up fighting among themselves.

Merits of DiZoglio’s issue aside — and there are questions of tampering with the legislative process — she continues to gather momentum, attracting support outside the State House from Republicans, Democrats, conservatives and liberals.

Last week, the conservative Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance joined the left-wing Our Revolution in support of DiZoglio’s cause and offered volunteers to gather signatures.

“The more the merrier,” DiZoglio said, adding that she now has 530 volunteers out gathering signatures that are all due to be filed with the secretary of state Nov. 22.

If DiZoglio succeeds, she could shake up the Legislature the way it was rocked a generation ago when the move to reduce the size of the House from 240 to 160 members was approved.

Back then, after a long struggle in the 1970s, the Massachusetts League of Women Voters, then an important public interest lobby group, was successful through signature drives, media campaigns and lobbying, to win the battle to reduce the House by 80 members.

It was an idea that seemed good at the time. It was supposed to make the House more efficient and transparent, which is a joke. Democracy is designed to be messy.

What it did, however, was to make the Speaker of the House more powerful since the smaller House, with fewer dissidents, was easier to control. Many important issues, once hatched out in open House debate, are now decided behind closed doors and rubber-stamped by the House.

In that way the House is indeed more efficient, but the quality of the legislation approved and the way it is passed depends on the nature of the speaker and the leadership team he has around him, not the rank-and-file members.

Also, in a smaller House, members who were once approachable by average citizens became distant once they were stashed away in their new offices protected by staff and press secretaries. Minority representation also took a hit.

Speaker Mariano, a moderate Democrat with a steady hand amidst the growing progressive crowd at the State House, has by all accounts been a good, fair and common-sense leader. Whack job progressives do not rule the House as they do the Senate.

So, at age 77, it was generally greeted as good news when Mariano said he will run for re-election and remain as speaker, at least for a while. He just might be the last moderate Democrat to hold the job. After him comes le deluge.

But no matter his skill and experience, it will be tough going to stem DiZoglio’s voter drive to bring the Legislature to heel.

But be careful what you vote for. You just might get it.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

Instead, Biden is providing Hamas, Iran’s jihadist proxy, with $100 million in humanitarian aid that will surely end up in the hands of the Hamas terrorists.

The United States says it does not pay ransom for hostages, except when it does. That is when Americans are taken hostage by Iran or one of its proxies, and a Democrat, like Joe Biden or Barack Obama, is in the White House.

Then the U.S. is fair game and Iran, the biggest spreader of terrorism in the world, keeps taking Americans hostage. The money keeps rolling in.

Hardly had Biden announced approval of the $100 million in aid to the Palestinians in Gaza then Hamas, which controls the place, released two Americans they had kidnapped during their barbaric killing spree Oct. 7 where they slaughtered 1,400 people in Israel, including women and children.

Among those killed were 30 Americans, who Biden failed to mention —or hold Iran accountable for — in his rambling and confused speech last Thursday. Other Americans, including children, were also kidnapped and are being held in Gaza, if they are still alive.

It is a good thing that the two Americans — mother and daughter Judith and Natalie Raanan from Illinois — were released.

Maybe if Biden comes up with another $100 million for Hamas to rip off, he can get two more Americans released.

It is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Obama sent a planeload of cash to Iran to release five U.S. hostages. And Biden is, or was, unfreezing $6 billion for Iran in exchange of five American hostages Iran recently let go.

Biden’s policy, like Obama’s before him, is to pay terrorists rather than eliminate them.

The Jew-hating, America-bashing mullahs in Iran and the Islamic terrorists have Biden’s number and have had it since the day Biden launched his humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan where 13 U.S. American service members were needlessly killed at the Kabul Airport.

Smelling weakness, Russia’s Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and China inches closer to invading Taiwan.

Meanwhile the U.S border remains wide open and nobody, including the FBI, knows how many terrorists are among the almost two million getaways that have crossed illegally into the U. S.

During his visit to Israel, Biden was supposed to hold a major summit on the Israel War in Amman, Jordan, with Jordan King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

But, using the bombing of a hospital in Gaza as an excuse — for which Hamas was guilty of  — Abdullah stiffed Biden and cancelled the meeting. And the photo op of Biden making peace in the Middle East was never taken.

So, Biden flew all the way to Israel to settle for a photo of him hugging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Tel Aviv airport.

It was at that meeting that Biden advised Netanyahu how to conduct the war, something he has never done with President Volodymir Zelensky in the Ukraine.

Of course, Biden can attack Putin. Biden does not have hate-filled Russians demonstrating against him and his support of Ukraine. But he has thousands of hate-filled antisemitic pro-Hamas groups in the U.S. demonstrating against Israel but has little to say about them.

Biden is brave enough to attack Putin, who started the war in Ukraine, but fearful of even uttering the name of Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei, let alone attacking him.

Biden needs to take the next exit on his road to appeasement.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

All she needs to do is enforce it.

The law as written, and passed forty years ago, was never intended to house and feed the explosion of migrants from around the world storming into Massachusetts.

It was passed and signed into law by liberal Democrat Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1983 to deal with the relatively small number of homeless families and pregnant women who were residents of Massachusetts, not residents of other states or countries.

But the law has not been interpreted or enforced the way it was written. Instead, progressives have proudly waved it as a banner of compassion and an invitation to migrants from around the world to come to Massachusetts where they will be cared for.

Liberal Massachusetts is the only state in the union with such a law.

The word eventually went out that Massachusetts was a soft touch. So the mostly illegal immigrants came, and are coming, to the point that Healey had to call a state of emergency and bring out the National Guard to help deal with the influx of all the foreigners making their way to Massachusetts.

The situation has gotten so bad, and so costly, that Healey last week announced that the state can no longer guarantee shelter or housing for any more arrivals.

She made no mention of the social impact the immigrants have had on the communities where they are being housed in motels, or what will happen to immigrants who keep on coming.

Currently there are some 7,023 immigrant families in the state’s shelter/welfare system, or some 23,000 people. Of the number, 3,300 families are living in motels and hotels and the rest are in shelters.

Healey last week announced that the state has run out of shelter space, service providers or funding to continue housing immigrants. On Nov.1 it will not add any more shelter units and limit the number of families housed in the system.

The Healey administration will soon have spent all the $325 million appropriated in January to deal with the immigrant crisis. Healey, meanwhile, has requested another $250 million from the Legislature.

“This level of growth is not sustainable,” Healey said. Then, in a mixed message, she said, “We are not ending the right to shelter law. We are being very clear, though, that we are not going to be able to guarantee placement to those who are sent here after the end of the month.”

Healey, however, doesn’t have to end the shelter law, she just needs to enforce the way it was written to cover homeless Massachusetts residents, not outsiders.

The 1983 law, in defining a resident, states that “any such person who enters the Commonwealth solely for the purposes of obtaining such benefits under this chapter shall not be considered a resident.”

The law also provides help for pending homeless families with money for rent, utility bills, home heating bills, moving expenses and furniture storage, none of which would appear to apply to illegal immigrant coming to Massachusetts from countries around the world.

It is good, but probably futile, to keep asking President Biden for financial aid to deal with the immigration problem.

“We need everyone to understand that we are entering a new phase of this shelter challenge,” Healey said. “Massachusetts will continue to rise to this challenge. That’s who we are. But I want there to be no doubt. This is a federal problem that demands a federal solution.”

For Biden, to come up with billions in federal money for Massachusetts and other states burdened with illegal immigrants, is to admit he created the problem in the first place by opening the borders and allowing people in who do not belong here.

Healey would have been better off if she demanded Biden shut down the border.

It is just too bad that Healey is still not attorney general.

That way she could sue Joe Biden for not enforcing Donald Trump’s strict border laws – the way she used to sue President Trump for enforcing them.

For Democrats, though, the law, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

It is certainly not much of a home when a bunch of Nazis come knocking on the door.

Well, they did not exactly approach the front door last Saturday of the Arlington four-bedroom house Gov. Maura Healey, 52, is living in with her partner Joanna Lydgate, 42, and Lydgate’s two children from a previous marriage.

But the right-wing members of New England-based NSC-131 (National Social Club) did cause enough of a disturbance that the cops had to be called.

In a story covered by WBZ-TV, a half dozen or so State Police cruisers with blue lights flashing in the night descended on the quiet neighborhood to deal with the 25 neo-Nazis protesting the influx of illegal immigrants into the state.

“New England is ours, the rest must go,” the masked and hooded demonstrators chanted before being led away by state troopers. No arrests were made.

It is not known if anyone was in the house at the time, but the ruckus did disrupt the neighborhood, which is made up of million-dollar single-family homes with children.

“It was scary,” one neighbor, with blue lights flashing all around, told WBZ-TV, “especially in this neighborhood, there’s a lot of kids, a lot of families.”

He said it was one thing to demonstrate outside public buildings, but another outside private homes.

“All that stuff, they can do somewhere else. Don’t be bringing it to people’s front lawn and trying to intimidate people. Because that’s not how you do things,” he said.

While people, especially children, could be traumatized by a phalanx of cops descending on their neighborhood at night, it does not compare to the ugliness they see coming from Israel and Gaza on nightly on television news.

Still, where the governor lives is a problem. Unlike many other states, Massachusetts has no governor’s mansion, although the governor does have a housing allowance of $65,000 to go along with her $222,000 salary. But she does deserve some privacy.

In addition, Healy is the state’s first openly gay governor who, unlike past governors, is not married and has had no traditional family life with a spouse and children or a traditional family home.

While her relationship with Lydgate is not new, Healey moved in with Lydgate weeks ago after Lydgate’s husband moved out.

What happened in Arlington was predictable. Healey had to know that she would be subjected to protesters and demonstrations — given the uncivil times we live in — wherever she lived, just as former Gov. Charlie Baker was with protestors outside his home in Swampscott and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu outside her home in Roslindale.

It is not enough these days to protest outside the State House or on City Hall Plaza. Protesters want to intimidate public officials and their families at their homes, like pro-choice demonstrators did to Supreme Court Justices in and around Washington.

Now it’s Arlington’s turn, and some neighbors on the street where Healey lives do not like it.

The bottom line is that the state needs a safe and secure official residence for the governor that is shielded from the mob.

This is not to say that the state should build a mansion for the governor.

A solution could be for the state to build a residence for the governor within the State House that would be safe and secure and give the governor personal privacy.

It would be like the residence the president has at the White House, where he both lives and works. Like the White House, the governor’s residence would be separate from the governor’s office on the third floor of the Bulfinch section of the State House.

There is plenty of room for a residence in the non-Bullfinch additions to the State House, especially in the extension that was added in 1895.

It is the most secure public building in the state with plenty of space for demonstrators to make their case outside on Beacon Street

Renovations in the non-Bullfinch section of the building are common. Walls have frequently been torn down to make room for offices for governors, legislators and staff.

It would be no great feat to construct a two- or three-bedroom private residence for the governor in the building and away, at least for a while, from the madding crowd.

People on at least one street in Arlington would be most grateful. Or maybe not.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

Nowhere.

And his personal grandstand visit will make little difference.

And that is too bad for the Americans held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, and too late for the Americans already killed by the terrorists who invaded Israel and launched a grisly killing spree.

Like Obama before him, Joe Biden will fold. He will not punish the Iranian terrorist schemers behind it all.

It is not in his nature. He is an appeaser, like Obama, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and their ilk in the Democratic Party.

Back then, Obama vowed that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, fighting forces seeking his ouster, would face military consequences if Assad used chemical weapons against them.

Within a year Assad launched a deadly sarin gas attack on a suburb of Damascus he allegedly thought harbored rebels. Instead, he used sarin gas to kill 1,400 innocent men, women and children, all of whom died ghastly deaths.

What did Obama do? Nothing.

Instead of ordering a military strike on Assad, he backed down. For cover he sought Congress’ blessing for a strike, which he knew he would not get.  Case closed.

Now comes Joe Biden who, contrary to all proof, says there is “no clear evidence” that Iran is behind Hamas’ barbaric invasion of Israel. Perhaps the president does not watch television.

Or maybe Biden is waiting for a phone call from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to set him straight.

Biden could probably get more straight information from Khamenei than he is getting from National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

Eight days prior to Hamas’ shocking terrorist attack on Israel, Sullivan said, “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

If that is the information Sullivan gave Biden, one shudders what rubbish he must be pouring into the president’s ears today. Sullivan is Biden’s top advisor on Iran, Israel and the Middle East.

You can blame Sullivan all you want, but he is probably telling Joe Biden what Joe Biden wants to hear. And that is because Biden and the Democratic progressives around him will do just about anything to get Iran back to the negotiating table over a treaty that Donald Trump thrashed.

This includes making Iran oil rich again by suspending Trump-initiated economic sanctions, and by largely ignoring repeated Iranian proxy attacks on U.S. personnel in the region.

If you tie this to Biden’s humiliating and deadly pullout from Afghanistan and his surrender of the U.S. southern border to immigrants, then it is little wonder why the Iranians look upon Biden as a weak.

Included in the millions of illegal immigrants Biden has let into the country, some two million are “getaways,” meaning that nobody knows who they are or where they came from

Still, Sullivan’s advice is probably far less damaging than the advice Biden had been getting on Iran from Rob Malley.

Malley is Biden’s Special Envoy to Iran, who is currently under State Department investigation for allegedly mishandling classified material related to Iran. He was quietly suspended in June and placed on leave. And the State Department is not commenting on the case.

Biden will supply Israel with all the military equipment it needs. But like Obama before him, Biden will seek to ease his way out of the situation without taking any meaningful action against Iran.

Yes, Biden is sending a second carrier strike group — the USS Dwight D, Eisenhower — to join the Gerald R. Ford strike group — to the Mediterranean Sea region and the coast of Israel, but don’t expect it to launch any rockets or land any US Marines to rescue the Americans held hostage by Hamas.

It is more a matter of a show of force, like his trip, to dissuade Iran and its proxies from intensifying its attacks on Israel.

Asked what advice he would give to Iran or any Islamic terrorist or military groups from joining in on the invasion, Biden told “60 Minutes”  “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t.”

That ought to do it. It is too bad he did not go to Afghanistan, or at least to the southern border.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

After all, he is a progressive who spoke to progressives at a progressive rally on a progressive issue—support for Israel.

The only thing is that he stood up for the Hamas terrorists as well.

Which is why the crowd booed him.

And if this doesn’t get him a Democrat primary opponent in 2026 when he seeks reelection at age 80 then nothing will.

And his potential opponent was right behind him waiting to speak next.

He is fellow progressive Democrat U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, 35, of Newton who is champing at the bit to run for higher office. He was elected in 2020 to succeed Joe Kennedy III, who Markey defeated for the U.S. Senate,

The rally zeroed in the atrocities afflicted upon on innocent civilians by Hamas and its depraved  killers who murdered and mutilated hundreds of Israeli women, children and the elderly in a surprise attack last weekend.

They crossed into Israel from Gaza and initiated an unheard-of bloody reign of terror, beheading children and killing 27 Americans. They also took some 150 men, women and children hostage and are holding them in tunnels.

They fired hundreds of rockets and missiles supplied by Iran into Israel killing more. It was the worst attack on Israel in 50 years.

Many in the pro-Israel rally, some waving Israeli flags, had relatives or friends who had been brutally killed, captured or are missing.

So, the last thing hundreds of Israeli supporters who showed up at Monday’s pro-Israeli Boston Common rally wanted to hear was Markey talk about some sort of moral equivalence or similarity between the two groups—the Hamas murderers and the innocent murdered.

Markey did denounce Hamas for it “heinous attacks.” But he also warned against playing into Hamas’ hand by countering violence with violence.

He said, “Hamas wants continued instability, not normalization. They gain support when there is a crisis. That is why the United States, and the international community, must keep pushing for diplomacy and the ending of casualties on all sides.”

As the boos began —and Israel was on the verge of invading Gaza to wipe out Hamas once and for all– Markey said, “There must be a de-escalation of the current violence.”

In other words, Israeli was supposed to absorb the attack and then seek to make nice with Hamas as it has done with Hamas in the past. This time it was different, and Markey should have read the room and figured it out.

But he didn’t and it’s a wonder he was just booed and not driven from the stage. He sounded like Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Rep.  Ilhan Omar,  Rep Cori Bush and the rest of the Hamas- supporting Squad.

While Markey has been a traditional supporter of Israel, his remarks calling for de-escalation rather than support for Israeli justice—and revenge—fell flat. He was roundly booed for a minute or so before allowed to continue.

It was bad. Massachusetts U.S. senators do not get booed. The last time it happened was more than 50 years ago when then pre-Chappaquiddick Sen. Ted Kennedy was booed off the stage by anti-Vietnam War demonstrators at a 1968 Hubert Humphry rally in Boston.

But it could be worse for Markey. Kennedy had no opponent.

Markey may have created one in Auchincloss, who looks as lean, hungry and ambitious as Markey looked when he was first elected to Congress almost fifty years ago.

Following Markey to the rostrum, Auchincloss, who is of Jewish descent, a Harvard graduate and U.S, Marine combat veteran, instantly turned Markey’s boos into resounding cheers when he clearly contradicted Markey over de-escalation.

Auchincloss said, “Now is not the time for equivocation. Hamas is an internationally recognized terrorist organization that is executing and raping civilians. Israel is a liberal democracy with the right and responsibility to defend itself and it says, ‘de-escalation is not possible when they are taking hostages.’”

While Markey did not tear up when he was booed the way Kennedy did back them, he was obviously shaken by the negative reaction he received.

Markey may believe that war is not the answer.

Sometimes it is.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

Before that, he spent 26 years in the CIA, which he headed, and was a member of the National Security Council.

Do not include him among the 51 disgraced intelligence officials who signed the deceitful letter calling the suppressed Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation during the 2020 election.

Throughout Gates’ career, he got to know Joe Biden well, both when Biden was a U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and when he was Obama’s vice president.

He summarized his opinion of Biden’s expertise on foreign policy in his book, “Duty, Memoirs of a Secretary of War,” published in 2014.

He said he liked Joe Biden personally, but “I think he’s been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Asked if he still believed that on the eve of the 2020 presidential election, which Biden won, Gates, who oversaw the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq under Bush and Obama, said, “I think I stand by that statement.”

And in 2021, he said he was sickened by Biden’s botched and humiliating 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan that cost the lives of 13 U.S. service members, a mistake that did not need to happen.

It was a sign of weakness that damaged America’s reputation worldwide and emboldened Russia to invade Ukraine and Iran to back Hamas to invade Israel.

One only wonders what Gates must think now following the Iranian-sponsored murderous invasion of Israel by its Hamas terrorist proxies in Gaza, which it has financed after Biden indirectly paid the mullahs in Iran $6 billion in ransom money to free five Americans held hostages.

The U.S. and Qatar have agreed not to act on any request from Iran to access that money for the time being, the Associated Press is reporting. But it is not a full refreezing.

Biden’s appeasement of Iran, like former President Barack Obama before him, knows no end. Biden also released five Iranians held in U.S prisons.

Gates warned us that Biden was incompetent.

When Biden rescinded the strict economic sanctions placed on Iran by President Trump, he only made Iran richer. And it has done nothing to stall Iran’s drive to build a nuclear weapon that Iran has vowed to first use on Israel and then on the United States.

Iran under Trump was reeling. Iran under Biden is rocking.

The Iranian support of the Hamas terrorists does not even take into consideration the $80 billion in military equipment that Biden left behind when he cut and ran in Afghanistan.

One can only speculate how many of those 42,000 pickup trucks and SUVs, the thousands of Humvees, or the 64,000 machine guns — to name only a few items — Biden abandoned in Afghanistan that have ended up in the hands of Hamas terrorists.

One can also only speculate how much of that $6 billion headed to Iran has allowed them to use other money on hand to supply the rockets and missiles it rained down on Israel to start the war.

Yes, Biden does support military aid to our strong ally Israel, which has long been U.S. policy. But he also provided indirect military support to Iran, our enemy, by lifting the sanctions and gifting them billions that had been held in escrow.

And each time Biden bows to Iran, the mullahs there thank him by chanting, “Death to America” after they finish chanting “Death to Israel.”

All of this is a pathetic attempt to get Iran back to the nuclear negotiating table to restore the 2015 nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) that Obama approved but that Trump thrashed.

As if Iran is going to abide by anything it signs.

Think what you will about Trump, and there is a lot to think about. But there were no wars when he was President. China and Russia were held in check, and he had Iran on its knees.

Trump warned Iran of major retaliation if it killed a single American. Iran’s proxy Hamas has killed so far killed 27 and Biden has not responded.

Joe Biden’s massive blunder in Afghanistan led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war between Israel and Hamas.

And now Biden is supplying both Ukraine and Israel with massive amounts of American military aid to protect their borders while the wide-open U.S. border with Mexico remains unguarded.

The only entity that seems to be functioning under Biden is the U.S. military arms industry.

We should have listened to Bill Gates.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

It has nothing to do with him.

It is true that candidate Biden did promise that there would not be “another foot” of the wall built if he became president.

“There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration,” he said in August 2020.

And on his first day in office, he halted all construction of the wall being built under Trump, which was to stretch along much of the country’s 2,000-mile-long border with Mexico.

Subsequently, the country has been deluged with millions of  illegal immigrants, along with the fentanyl that some smuggle.

Under Biden’s grudging administration, though, some 20 miles of new wall will go up in the “high illegal entry” area in Rio Grande Valley sector of Southeast Texas where thousands of illegal immigrants have been crossing weekly.

If you look at it Joe Biden’s way, though, he is right. It’s not his fault. He is not responsible for a single foot of the new wall going up.

Walls, he believes, are racist and don’t work anyway. It has nothing to do with him, even though he is the president.

So, if he is not responsible for putting up the new wall then who is?   “They” are, he said.

Who are “they” forcing him to go against his anti-wall principles?

Congress, of course.

You see, there just happens to be billions of dollars for new wall construction laying around that was appropriated, but not spent, in 2019 for border wall construction in south Texas.

Biden said he tried to get Congress to redirect the funding but failed.

“The money was appropriated for the border wall,” he said. “I tried to get them to reappropriate, to redirect the money. They didn’t. They wouldn’t. In the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriate for. I can’t stop that.”

What a pathetic joke. It is also a pathetic and desperate attempt by a failed president to get people to buy into the myth that he is doing something about securing the border while appeasing fellow progressives by blaming Congress for forcing him to patch up a piece of the wall.

He expects his supporters will buy his explanation, and they probably will.

These are the same people who have bought into the Biden administration lies that the border is secure even as millions of unvetted immigrants have poured in the county straining humanitarian resources across the nation.

Biden is lucky that Hamas terrorists, or other terrorists, have not yet crossed the southern border the way they have in Israel. However, this year U.S. border agents have encountered a “growing number of individuals” on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist trying to cross the southern border, according to Department of Homeland Security data.

The deadly Hamas invasion of Israel from Gaza should serve as a lesson to the U.S.

Israel, like the U.S. was supposed to have a secure border with Gaza. Yet the Hamas terrorists shot their way in, capturing towns, massacring civilians and taking hostages. In the U.S. you can just simply walk in.

People should note that the attack on Israel came at a time when the country, like the United States, is seriously politically divided. In Israel the division is over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to curtail the powers of its Supreme Court.

In the U.S. division is everywhere.

The difference is that Netanyahu takes responsibility, is willing to stand up for what he believes and take the heat.

Biden, an old political con artist, dissembles, blames everyone else and hides.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

All she has to do was go to Foxboro and try to book a hotel room for the iconic Army/Navy football game on Dec. 9 to be played at Gillette Stadium. There is no room at the inn, however.

Had she even made a reservation in advance, it would have been canceled since all the rooms at the Comfort Inn in Foxboro and other hotels near Gillette Stadium have been taken over by illegal immigrants her administration has sent there.

As reported by the Herald’s Joe Battenfeld, scores of service academy graduates, families and veterans are now scrambling to find hotel and motel rooms that were cancelled to make way for the illegal immigrants.

And the hotel operators love it because it is a financial bonanza for the hotel and motel operators. The state (taxpayer) is paying jacked up prices to house the immigrants and there is no set date for them to leave.

It’s a wonder Healey did not provide the immigrants with free tickets to the game, since everything else they receive in benefits is free.

It is the first time the almost shrine-like nationally televised game will be played in New England. Given the rude reception Army and Navy fans and families are receiving, it may be the last time , too.

Tourists coming to Massachusetts for the fall had also better check their reservations or they may be sleeping in their cars,

It is one thing for the Healey administration to provide aid to the homeless under the state’s 40-year-old “right to shelter” law. It is another thing to push U.S. citizens aside in doing so.

Healey needs to get a handle on what illegal immigration is doing to her administration — and to the people and the state — or it will soon do her in because what is happening is unsustainable. It is all people are talking about.

While it currently costs taxpayers $45 million a month to pay for the influx of illegal immigrants, that is a pittance compared to what the real costs will be unless Healey changes policy.

She, like Joe Biden, has an open borders policy.  And she just filed legislation asking the Legislature for an additional $250 million to help pay for it.

Healey, like the rest of the Democrats running big states or big cities can beg  Joe Biden for significant financial relief all they want, but they will not get it.

That is because for Biden to provide aid for them to deal with the crisis is an admission that there is an illegal immigration crisis in the first place. To admit that he would also have to admit that he caused the crisis when he thrashed all existing secure border policies and waved in some six or seven million mostly unvetted immigrants into the country.

Now, even as he has resumed building Trump’s border wall—something he vowed he would never do—he still denies that a crisis exists. It is too little too late

So, Healey is on her own.

Yet Healey, like follow Democrat Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Boston, probably still believes the border is secure. That is what Pressley said to CNN host Jake Tapper last weekend. Tapper was so astonished he had Pressley repeat what she said.

Anyway, if Healey and Pressley won’t go to Foxboro, they surely won’t go to Eagle Pass.

One thing Healey could do to curtail the flow of immigrants from around the world flocking into Massachusetts is to suspend or amend the so-called “right to shelter” law.

Properly interpreted the law, passed 40 years ago, was designed to provide shelter for homeless families that were Massachusetts citizens and not for illegal immigrant families from around the planet.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul, both Democrats, are pushing to suspend New York City’s similar old “right to shelter” mandate that was aimed at providing shelter for the city’s homeless, not for of illegal immigrant families that Biden let into the country.

Healey can talk all she wants about windmills and climate change, but all the people are talking about is illegal immigrants and their impact on their communities.

It would also help if Healey were more transparent and accountable when it comes to the immigrant homeless crisis.

Hundreds, now thousands, of Illegal immigrant families are quietly dumped into motels and hotels in unsuspecting communities while people and local officials are kept in the dark.

And when they are reported on, like  in Foxboro, Healey is “distressed.”

She should be. She sent them.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

And that is what MacArthur did.

The famous World War II general made his remarks days after President Harry Truman fired him because MacArthur, the commanding general in the Korean War, wanted to expand the war into China. Truman did not.

“There is no substitute for victory,” MacArthur said as Chinese troops poured into North Korea to support the North Korean Army routed by U.S forces.

MacArthur wanted to push them back to China and then go in after them.

Truman, seeking to avoid war with China, thought otherwise. The outspoken president said, “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the president. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”

So, after a lifetime of distinguished military service, MacArthur, like his father before him, just faded away. After years of quiet retirement, he died in 1964.

If anyone should fade quietly away it should be Army Gen. Mark Milley.  But the difference now is that generals don’t fade away anymore. They become consultants.

That is the direction that Milley is headed in after he resigned as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last week.

One wonders what MacArthur, who stood up to President Truman over Korea, would make of Milley, who rolled over for President Biden and Biden’s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, which held America up to ridicule around the world.

Recall that it was Milley, the so-called military expert, who said in February 2022 that if the Russians invaded Ukraine, they would capture the capital Kyiv in 72 hours. Some should tell the general the Russians failed and that the war is still going on.

Testifying before Congress, Milley, who mastered the look of the gruff, put-upon leader, earlier called the craven Afghanistan withdrawal, which he said he advised Biden against, “a logistical success but a strategic failure.”

That is small solace to the families of the 13 U.S. service personnel killed by an ISIS suicide bomber at the Kabul airport during the precipitous evacuation.

To them, it was a disaster, not a logistical success or a strategic failure. It was a human failure by Biden and Miley, his chief military advisor. And if Biden rejected his advice, Milley should have done the honorable thing and resigned.

But he did not. When asked by Congress why he did not resign over the deadly Kabul withdrawal, Milley said, “It’s a political act if I resign in protest,” and he was not a politician.

Which is a joke. All Milley did was play politics during his four-year tenure under President Donald Trump who, to his later dismay appointed him, and then under Joe Biden, who sainted him for making the military go woke.

The “nonpolitical” Milley even took a shot at presidential candidate Trump during his resignation speech when he said generals like him “don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen or to a tyrant or a dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.

“The oath they take, he said, was to the Constitution.

Milley’s jab at Trump came after Trump called Milley “a woke train wreck” and a “traitor” for dealing with the Chinese military behind his back when Trump was president and Milley’s commander-in-chief. The left called Milley a hero.

This was in reference to Milley’s phone calls to Communist Chinese Gen Li Zuocheng in Beijing during the Jan.6 Capitol riot, to inform his Chinese counterpart that the U.S. was stable and would not attack China.

Milley believed that Trump had become unhinged after his election defeat and could go rogue. So, without the commander-in-chief’s (President Trump’s) knowledge or approval, Milley called the Chinese during the Jan. 6 riot to tip them off about any U.S. attack on them.

He told the general: “Gen. Li, “You and I have known each other for five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”

If an underling had done that to Milley, he would have been court-martialed.

Now as a civilian consultant, Milley is free to call the Chinese anytime.

It’s a good thing Milley was not in on the Normandy invasion.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

That way she would be in a good position to force current state Treasurer Deborah Goldberg, a fellow Democrat, to tell her and the public why she is ruining Shannon O’Brien’s life.

It would be a good old fashion grudge match, and the debate would make boffo television.

In fact, Shannon could probably beat Goldberg who has not had a challenger in the last two Democratic primary elections. For O’Brien, campaigning well and winning may be the best revenge.

Unlike Goldberg, who was a wealthy Brookline selectman when she was elected treasurer in 2014, O’Brien did her time at the State House having served in both the House and the Senate before she was elected treasurer in 2000.

Before elected treasurer Goldberg was beaten in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor in 2006 by Tim Murray of Worcester, Gov. Deval Patrick’s running mate.

O’Brien, 64, who served as state treasurer from 2000 to 2004, was recently suspended by Goldberg, 69, from her $181,722 position as chair of the Cannabis Control Commission without any public explanation. While locked out of the office, O’Brien is still being paid.

The commission oversees and regulates what is now a $5 billion industry.

O’Brien was appointed to the post by Goldberg after O’Brien cut ties with a firm that proposed establishment of an outdoor marijuana-growing operation.

O’Brien was cleared of any conflict and the firm’s license application was approved by the commission.

Meanwhile, because Goldberg has given no reason for her action —which may not even be legal — O’Brien has seen her reputation shattered.

While remaining mum, O’Brien filed suit last week in Suffolk Superior Court to get her job and reputation back.

O’Brien’s suit states, “Treasurer Goldberg has willfully side-stepped both Massachusetts law and any process at all, let alone due process, by removing Chair O’Brien while deceptively attempting to label her action merely a ‘suspension’.”

It says, “The statute enabling the CCC provides Treasurer Goldberg with no authority to ‘suspend’ a commissioner, much less to do so without any process whatsoever.”

Since the suspension O’Brien has been mocked and ridiculed as speculation over the suspension has gone viral.

Did she do something wrong? If so, what was it? Or is it something more personal?

Whatever it is, O’Brien and the public need to know, especially in this age of transparency and accountability that Democrats so often talk about.

O’Brien, the 2002 Democratic Party nominee for governor, was well known and respected after she easily defeated four established fellow Democrats in the primary. They were Robert Reich, Senate President Thomas Birmingham, Warren Tolman and Steve Grossman.

She was defeated in the gubernatorial election by Republican blow-in Mitt Romney by 1,091,988 votes to 985,981.

Had O’Brien won she would have been the first woman elected governor in Massachusetts, 20 years before Maura Healey. In fact, there might not even have been a Gov. Maura Healey had O’Brien prevailed.

There is some status in that, or at least there was until Goldberg sprung the trap door.

And Goldberg won’t talk about it. All Goldberg will say about the matter is that she disciplined O’Brien after a fellow CCC commissioner, and a staffer, made “several serious allegations” about O’Brien’s behavior.

But Goldberg, in Kafkaesque fashion, will not say what the mysterious allegations are, only that O’Brien is guilty of them.

Instead of coming up with specifics, Goldberg has put O’Brien in the nightmarish situation where she must prove to the public that she is not guilty of these unnamed accusations and charges.

Shannon O’Brien, whatever she did or did not do, deserves better than this. The public deserves better than this, too.

Let’s just hope that Goldberg is more forthright and transparent in handling taxpayer’s money than she is in handling O’Brien.

Run, Shannon, run.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

If Boston Mayor Michelle Wu wants “a temporary new approach” to alleviate the Mass and Cass drug and homeless nightmare, she should consider utilizing Fenway Park.

The ballpark is empty and will remain empty until the spring when the hapless Boston Red Sox return for another dismal season. The last placed hometown team’s last 2023 game was Sunday in Baltimore.

Not that relocating the tent dwelling for down and out drug addicted souls from Mass and Cass is a solution to the problem. But relocating them to Fenway Park for the winter would give Wu time to come up with a better idea.

It would also bring the homeless in from the cold.  It would end the practice of tearing down the tents only to have them shortly reappear and give Boston time to clean up the crime-ridden area.

Pitching their tents in the enclosed structure of Fenway Park would at least provide some relief from winter storms as well as a sense of security. Crime and violence at Mass and Cass has been an ongoing problem.

It would also allow Boston Police the ability to recognize and take out drug dealers currently operating in the open-air Mass and Cass drug market. These are dealers who prey on the 100 to 150 or so drugged out residents who make Mass and Cass their home.

Authorities would have much more control if the drug addicts were housed in Fenway Park where they would be protected from predators, at least temporarily.

The Fenway Park idea is proposed in the wake of a failed neighborhood $10 million proposal to relocate the homeless encampment at Mass and Cass (Massachusetts Ave. and Melnea Cass Boulevard) in the South End to a proposed permanent recovery campus at nearby Widett Circle on land owned by the MBTA.

Wu, while thanking the residents for their idea, said the plan was not feasible and Gov. Maura Healey shot it down anyway.

Wu’s ultimate plan is to send homeless drug users to city owned Long Island to be treated at existing structures that need restoration. To do so, however, the city needs to rebuild the Long Island Bridge that was demolished in 2014 for safety reasons.

While the city has received a key permit to rebuild the bridge, it still faces opposition from Quincy officials and residents. The only road to the bridge goes through the Squantum section of Quincy.

That solution, if it ever takes place, is in the future. Wu needs to clean up Mass and Cass now, if only on a temporary basis. It would at least show that she was on top of the problem.

However, getting Fenway Park to agree to the proposal is another thing.

The park and the Boston Red Sox are owned by John Henry who also owns the Boston Globe, which his wife Linda Pizzuti runs.

The owners have been staunch supporters of all things progressive and woke, including minority rights, diversity, inclusion, civil rights, equity, LGBTQIA+ rights, child trans rights, racism, illegal immigration, drug addiction and homelessness, so the idea is worth considering.

Not only would it be a helping hand to the city and the state, but it would also make national headlines and boost the image of Henry, the Red Sox and the Boston Globe.

The idea is not as far-fetched as it seems. John Henry made his progressive credentials quite clear when he bought the Red Sox and changed the name of Yawkey Way, named after philanthropist Tom Yawkey, his predecessor, to its original name of Jersey Street.

Henry said he was “haunted” by Yawkey’s alleged racism. The Red Sox under Yawkey were the lasts major league team to hire a black player.

Lost in the renaming was the fact that Jersey Street, like the neighboring streets in developing Boston in 1850, was named after an English noble—George Agustus Frederick Child Villiers, the 6th Earl of Jersey. His family, like the family of the others, made its fortune from the slave trade before the English abolished it in 1833.

But that’s another story.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

And that is to go to the border.

Meloni is the prime minister of Italy who last week went to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, the Eagle Pass of the Mediterranean, where desperate migrants from Africa have overrun the island.

Joe Biden has not only avoided visiting the Mexican border to witness firsthand the illegal immigrant invasion that is taking place but refuses to even talk about it.

Biden did make a controlled, three-hour stopover in El Paso in January en route to Mexico City, but it was so programmed that he did not see any of the immigrants, let alone those sleeping in the streets. He was kept away from reporters, and he did not take any questions, of course. He never does.

Within three days prior to Meloni’s visit to Lampedusa, some 8,500 migrants from Tunisia, seeking to get to mainland Europe, landed on the shores of the once quaint island of 6,000 inhabitants.

The new invasion came just as Merloni, in her speech to the United Nations in New York, said the UN could not afford to ignore the worldwide problem of immigration and the smugglers behind it.  She called on the UN to conduct “a global war without mercy’ against smugglers.

Biden, by contrast, does not utter a word about immigration, let alone the Mexican cartels who are smuggling thousands of illegal immigrants as well as deadly fentanyl across the Mexican border daily.

While it is a trickle compared to what is taking place at Biden’s open border with Mexico, the increasing flow of immigrants into Italy is tending to destabilize Meloni’s far right administration.

Lampedusa lies between Sicily and Tunisia, just 70 miles from the North African coast. Although a one-time sleepy island, it is now Italy’s ocean “border” with North Africa.

And thousands of desperate migrants seeking to escape poverty, crime and chaos in Sudan, Libya and Tunisia, are landing on the island as a first desperate step to get to mainland Italy and into the European Union.

Lampedusa may be the size of Martha’s Vineyard, but it is not quite so famous, nor is it a tourist attraction.

The last time the island made international news was when Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the last Prince of Lampedusa, published his 1958 classic novel “The Leopard.”

A book about the unification of Italy in the 1860’s (Il Risorgimento), it was later made into a movie that starred the late Hollywood actor Burt Lancaster.

That aside, Meloni was elected partially on her promise to crack down on illegal immigration, unlike Biden, who continues to wave millions of illegal immigrants into the country through his open borders policy.

It has been a policy of thrashing all former President Donald Trump’s border security measures with a program of waving everyone in with no questions asked. And cities and state cross the country, with no guidance, policy or financial aid from Biden, are stuck with dealing with the immigrants.

Meloni, at least, is trying to do something about it. Yet despite her concern, some 127,000 immigrants have landed on Italy’s shores so far in 2023, which is double the number during the same period a year ago.

And Italy’s allies in the European Union are not doing much to help. In fact, Meloni last week complained that while Germany has curtailed the influx of immigrants into its county, it is financing the NGO “charity ships” that help immigrants get to Italy.

She said the charity and rescue boats were a “pull factor” for immigrants crossing the sea to Italy from Africa.

The Biden administration, which ignores the immigrant and drug-smuggling Mexican cartels, also funds NGOs along the border that help illegal immigrants cross into the U.S.

Biden should do what Merloni does. And that is go to the border to witness the damage he is doing to the country he has sworn to protect and defend.

But Biden is not a leader. Otherwise, he would rush to the sound of the guns. Instead, he stumbles away.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

While those are the issues everyone else is talking about, speakers at the 2023 Massachusetts Democratic convention in Lowell last weekend instead talked about everything else, especially abortion, green energy, climate change, saving the planet and the Republican threat to democracy.

No one, including Gov. Maura Healey, nor local Lowell politicians like U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan or state Sen. Edward Markey or Lowell Mayor Sokhary Chau  even mentioned the 900 illegal migrants from Venezuela and Haiti who are moving into the city’s only downtown hotel. Lowell City Manager Tom Golden did not even show up.

That hotel, the UMass-owned Lowell Inn and Conference Center, is a short walk from the Tsongas Convention Center where the Democratic gathering was held. Dormitory students were kicked out and immigrants are moving in.

But it was unmentionable at the convention, as were issues like the serious hike in violent crime in cities across the country as well as inflation that has hammered the middle and working class.

Instead, they heard Markey shout, “We are going to keep fighting protecting our planet, protecting our people, protecting our democracy from attack by MAGA right-wing Republicans.”

The cult of climate change disaster got so bad (or good, if you are a cultist) that you expected John Kerry, Joe Biden’s world traveling climate czar — and Markey’s mentor — to leap onto the stage and announce that the end of the world was upon us if we don’t listen to him.

Three years ago, Kerry predicted that the world would suffer a “climate catastrophe” in nine years unless gas emissions were not curtailed.

This means that you have only six years left to make out your will before the planet burns up. You might want to spend it all now since there will be nobody left alive anyway.

All the speakers, from a shrill Sen. Elizabeth Warren on down echoed the climate change message including Healey, while failing to bring up the economic problems of families living paycheck to paycheck.

The other major theme of the worked-up Democrats was the alleged attempt of Republicans “to destroy our democracy.” And that means to fight off “the dark forces of Trumpism,” according to Senate President Karen Spilka.

You’ve got to “hold your nose” when it comes to GOP policy Healey told the crowd because it is a party filled “with so much hatred.”

In contrast, she said, the Democratic Party, is “a beacon of hope and opportunity in this country.”

Even state Treasurer Deb Goldberg got into the act when she told the convention, “We must take our country back.”

From whom, she did not say since Massachusetts is a one-party state that is totally controlled by the Democrats.

The Republican Party in Massachusetts has been wiped out. If the GOP were to hold a similar convention it would need a phone booth to accommodate it, if they could find one. Phone booths are as extinct as the GOP in Massachusetts.

All six-six statewide offices from the governor on down are controlled by Democrats.

The two U. S senators, Warren and Markey, are Democrats, as are all nine Massachusetts members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Th Massachusetts Legislature has been under Democratic control for a lifetime.

The 40-member Massachusetts state Senate, which Spilka controls with a heavy hand, is made up of 36 Democrats and three hapless Republicans. There is one vacancy which Spilka is attempting to fill with another Democrat.

The Massachusetts House is composed of 129 Democrats to 30   Republicans, with one Independent.

Convention blather aside, the only difference maker at the convention was State Auditor Diana DiZoglio, who urged fellow Democrats to support her signature drive for authority to audit both the House and Senate. She’s a maverick.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

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That just about sums up President Joe Biden’s attitude when it comes to providing aid to New Yorkers who are being dragged under by the hordes of illegal immigrants who have invaded the city.

Biden did not even meet with New York Mayor Eric Adams during his four–day visit to the city and the United Nations.

His message to New York and Mayor Eric Adams was: Get lost.

Be warned, though, as New York goes so goes the country.

Biden politically cannot and will not come up with funds to bail out cities and states that have been overwhelmed with five million illegal immigrants from around the world thanks to his open border policy.

To do so would be an admission that he is responsible for purposely opening the once secure border to let the flood of illegals in as well as for the deadly fentanyl that many of them carry into the country,

And while he will talk about protecting the border of Ukraine, he will not utter a word about protecting the borders of the U.S.

If Biden did not even meet with Adams, who campaigned for mayor as “Brooklyn’s Biden,” or with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, what chance is there that he will meet with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, or Gov. Maura Healey, both of whom are begging for federal immigration aid? Slim to none.

It is all right for Biden to release $6 billion in confiscated funds to facilitate Iranian terrorism around the world in his one-sided prisoner swap, but he will not come up with a nickel for Americans in New York.

That $6 billion is close to the amount of money Adams is spending dealing with the immigrant crisis in his city.

Adams said, “I am hoping he (Biden) understands this beautiful city that’s the economic engine of the entire country is being saddled with a $2 billion that we spent already, $5 billion we’re going to spend in this fiscal crisis, and $12 billion in the next two budgetary cycles.”

“New York doesn’t deserve this; the asylum seekers don’t deserve this,” he said.

And Hochul is reduced to begging illegal immigrants to “go somewhere else.”

It is great that the five Americans held in Iranian captivity were set free. But it not so great that he let the world know that the U.S. is in business when it comes to paying ransom for hostages.

Still, Biden only did what President Barack Obama did when Obama, Vice President Biden and then-Secretary of State John Kerry in 2016 secretly sent $400 million in cash to the Iranians for the release of four U.S. hostages.

“The U.S. does not pay ransom,” Kerry said as the $400 million was shipped to Switzerland to be laundered into euros so not to break U.S. currency laws.

Not only is the U.S. under the Democrats in the business of paying ransom for hostages, the hostage takers like the Iranians and the Russians are increasing the prices.

Meanwhile, Biden continues the Obama/John Kerry policy of sucking up to our enemies like Iran and China. Biden punishes Americans with his open border and war on fossil fuels, while rewarding America’s enemies.

At least the billions of dollars donated to Ukraine is being used to fight the Russian invasion and to defeat Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

Yet, everyone knows that the $6 billion turned over to Iran will not be used for humanitarian purposes as promised. That’s a Biden myth. The money is fungible and will be used to build more Iranian missiles and drones to sell to Russia as well as to continue to fund terrorism.

So, in a roundabout way Biden is helping Putin.

While Biden has shown a closed fist to helping New York and other cities and states swamped with illegal immigrants, he is sending $1.1 billion in “humanitarian” aid to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

This is the same Taliban that Biden bowed to when he ordered the humiliating abandonment of Afghanistan in 2020 that cost the lives of 13 Americans at the Kabul Airport.

Kabul, yes.

New York, no.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachucsetts political reporter and columnist.

Lowell is well known as a city of Democrats and immigrants. And it is Gov. Maura Healey’s first convention since she was elected governor.

It is only too bad that the one-day convention will be over days before the arrival of hundreds of illegal immigrant families from Haiti and Venezuela, who will be housed in the city’s only downtown hotel.

Otherwise, it would have been fitting for Healey and the Democrats to welcome the immigrants to the Tsongas Center so that delegates could meet and greet the new arrivals.

But the Democrats, from Gov. Healey, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Sen. Eddie Markey and Lowell Congresswoman Lori Trahan — all of whom support Joe Biden’s open borders policy — will be long gone before the immigrants even arrive.

And that is too bad because these leaders will not get a chance to witness what their open borders policy is doing to the cities and towns across the state.

Besides, it’s Lowell’s problem now, not theirs. Lowell, like other cities in the state, has a problem dealing with resident homeless people and families, let alone similar families from around the world who have entered the country illegally.

While it has been like pulling teeth getting information about the immigrants from the Healey administration—even City Manager Tom Golden has been left in the dark– it is known that the UMass-owned Lowell Inn and Conference Center (ICC), is being refurbished to house the immigrants.

The 242-room facility, once a Doubletree Hotel, was bought in 2009 for $15 million by UMass/Lowell to double as a dormitory and hotel when UMass President Marty Meehan was chancellor. It spent another $5 million on improvements.

Meehan, a former Lowell congressman, said at the time, “I believe this facility in the heart of town will become the social, cultural and intellectual hub that was envisioned when the hotel was built in1986. It will be an extremely attractive place for our students, their parents and for academic and corporate conferences and meetings.”

That was then. Now, UMass is negotiating with the Healey administration over the price for turning the ICC over to the state to house immigrant families who have no means, little education, no English and few skills in the heart of the city where businesses are already struggling.

The turnover is a forgone conclusion. UMass/Lowell students living there have been kicked out and the hotel has cancelled all room reservations as well as planned wedding receptions and other events.

Instead of talking about the hordes of illegal immigrants who are overwhelming the state, Healey, like Joe Biden at the UN, is more likely today to talk about politically correct issues like climate change and clean energy.

She is also expected to talk about her decision to ban state purchase of single use plastic bottles, even as convention delegates will be shelling out $5 for a plastic bottle of water after they have driven to the convention in their gas-guzzling SUVs.

In announcing her ban on plastic bottles, Healey said, “In government we have an obligation to stop contributing to this damage and charter a better plan forward.”

Would Healey have said that about illegal immigration. It is so much easier to ban a plastic bottle than it is an illegal immigrant.

This is not to say that we should not help illegal immigrant families We should. It would be so much better if Healey were more transparent about sending these immigrants to unaware and unprepared communities. Also, it would be better all-around if the border were closed, order re-established, and immigrants stood in line to come in legally rather than breaking into the country.

Short of sending illegal immigrants back to where they came from—which no politician has the stones to do–there is little choice but to help.

And Americans help. Not the politicians so much, though, because they exempt themselves from the laws they pass. It is the average American who bears the burden.

Yet the citizens did not create the problem. The politicians did, the very same politicians who now expect the people to deal with it.

So, it would do the governor a lot of good to put the plastic bottle aside for a moment today and address the citizens, who are generously paying for it all and putting up with it.

A simple thank you, governor, would suffice — at least for now.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

Perhaps not, but we will never know.

Because the Trump-supporting conservative Republican did not become governor. He was soundly defeated in the November election by progressive Democrat Healey.

So, it is her problem, not his. But Diehl does have a few comments to make about it, one of which is accusing Healey of “adding fuel to the fire” by calling for work permits for the migrants which will only urge more to come.

And while several issues were highlighted during the 2022 campaign for governor, like Diehl’s support of Trump, illegal immigration was not one of them, even though some 50 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, had just landed at Martha’s Vineyard in September.

The migrants arrived on two planes provided by Florida Gov. Ron DiSantis to make a point, and he did.  And that was to show how welcoming to illegal immigrants liberals can be as long as they don’t end up in their backyard.

Then-Gov. Charlie Baker called out 125 members of the National Guard to escort the immigrants off the island to the Joint Base Cape Cod on the mainland to avert what the MV chamber of commerce called “a humanitarian crisis.”

The residents of the Vineyard acted as though they lived on the Italian island of Lampedusa where last weekend some 7,000 immigrants from North Africa landed and overwhelmed the island that has a population of just over 6,000 people.

Now that’s a humanitarian crisis.

Now, thanks to Joe Biden’s open borders and the Commonwealth’s open doors, the state has been deluged with illegal immigrants from around the world seeking shelter and sustenance under the state’s “right to shelter” law.  Massachusetts is the only state with such a law.

More than 6,500 immigrant and homeless families are now living in overcrowded state-funded shelters and in hotels and motels across the state.

Healey has declared a state of emergency and called out 250 members of the National Guard to help deal with the costly crisis.

However, the word is out that Massachusetts is a state that provides
“wraparound” benefits for illegal immigrants. So, more are coming.

Said Geoff Diehl, “If Gov. Healey wants to show compassion, she’ll end the red-carpet benefits that attract illegal immigrants and focus on the struggles and needs of the lawful residents of the Commonwealth who are already having a difficult t time with rising inflation that is making it harder and harder to live in one of the highest-cost states in the nation.”

One of the first things Healey should do, he said, is to enforce the so-called “right to shelter” law to Massachusetts residents and not to people coming into the U.S. illegally from countries around the world.

That alone, he said, would stop the financial “bleeding of the state of at least $45 million month.”

Diehl also took Healey to task for urging Joe Biden to speed up work authorization permits so that illegal immigrants can find jobs.

“That’s like adding gasoline to an already raging fire,” Diehl said.

“If people from other countries learn they’ll get work visas and free housing in Massachusetts, our state will be the number one destination spot in the world for illegal immigrants and will end up just like New York City,” he said.

“Yes, our nation was built on immigration and we’re a stronger, more diverse culture because of it,” he said, adding that it was legal immigration he was talking about and not the illegal immigration crisis that is now taking place.

Diehl should drop any plans he might have of running for governor again in 2026 though. By then the Democrats will have illegal immigrants voting. And they won’t be voting Republican..

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

No ifs, ands or buts there.

If approved by the voters in the 2024 state election as a ballot question, it would make State Auditor Diana DiZoglio one of the most powerful politicians on Beacon Hill.

Attorney general Andra Campbell, a fellow Democrat, certified the legality of the initiative last week.

But DiZoglio will now have to gather the signatures of 75,000 certified voters to get the question on the ballot.

“I’m going to make it happen,” DiZoglio said. “I’m going to run it as a state-wide campaign.  I can do it.”

While gathering the signatures is a huge challenge, DiZoglio’s effort will be helped by the public’s view of the Legislature. While most voters are satisfied with their local representative or senator, they  are not so satisfied with the institution as a whole.

Who would have thought, though, that it would take a Democrat state auditor to take on the Democrat Legislature before a Democrat governor would? Where are all the Republicans when you need one?

In Massachusetts government and politics, the Legislature reigns, no matter who is governor, Democrat or Republican.

Of the three branches of government, the executive, the judicial and the legislative, the Legislature may be seen the least favorable, according to the polls, but it is still king of the Hill.

Governors come and go but the Legislature is always there. And it is run by Democrats. And it does not like anyone looking over its shoulders.

Governors, Democrat or Republican, who want to get things done, usually go hat in hand to the Legislature. Governors who do not are handed their hats.

So, it is rare for a governor, including Democrat Gov. Maura Healey, to take on the Legislature and expect to walk away a winner. It is much better to just bow.

And even if governors get elected by attacking the Legislature, the way Republican Bill Weld did in 1990, it is only a matter of time before legislative reality sets in and they succumb.

So, it is a shock to the Democrats at the State House, especially to Senate President Karen Spilka and House Speaker Ron Mariano, that their authority is being challenged by a state auditor who is also a fellow Democrat.

Adding to the astonishment of many Beacon Hill insiders is  that DiZoglio is one of their own, having served three terms in the House and two in the Senate—rocky as they were– before being elected auditor in 2022.

She is not the first former Democrat legislator to serve as auditor. The last four before her were all former state representatives. But she is the first to seek a full-blown audit of the Legislature.

However, she is also the first to have openly clashed with both then-House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Spilka.

Both Spilka and current Mariano have maintained that historically the Legislature as an institution makes its own rules, polices its own members, conducts its own audits, and that the state auditor has no business or authority to infringe on its workings.

DiZoglio disagrees and made it an important public issue, both when she ran for the auditor’s job in 2022 and when she was elected and sworn in.

A large portion of her campaign centered on fighting for transparency and accountability for the Legislature and by promising to audit both branches of the Legislature. Critics say it is payback for the way she was treated as a legislator.

The auditor has the authority to audit all state bureaus and agencies, including quasi state agencies like the MBTA and MassPort, but previous auditors, all Democrats, have steered clear of auditing the Legislature.

Until now.

DiZoglio, 40, will get the signatures. And if it passes, it will be a major power shift and put her on the map as a major political player.  Politically DiZoglio is on a roll.

If I were Sen. Ed Markey, I would be looking over my shoulder come 2026 when at age 80 he will be up for re-election.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

Otherwise, she would have been quickly taken to tasks over her handling of the disruptive and costly illegal immigrant invasion of Massachusetts.

But she gets a pass because there are no Republicans of any state-wide stature around anymore to take her on over the issues. The GOP in Massachusetts has been wiped out.

Yes, Healey’s predecessor former Gov. Charlie Baker was a Republican, if in name only. But he governed like Democrat, which is why the Democrats loved him.

And Democrats can rest assured that Baker voted for Healey over GOP conservative Geoff Diehl in the 2022 gubernatorial election.

Not only was Diehl defeated, but the Democrats went on to win all six of the state’s constitutional offices and maintain its overwhelming control of the Massachusetts Legislature.

The few Republicans who survived in the House and the Senate are those who go along with the Democrats anyway.

So, there is no opposition and no noteworthy Republicans left to take Healey on.

The Democrat Party controls Massachusetts, from top to bottom. And it is the rare Democrat who will criticize Healey and risk being disciplined and cancelled by the progressives who control the party.

Consequently, it is the Democrat Party that bears the onus for the illegal immigrant mess that has thrown the state into such turmoil that Healey had to declare a national emergency and call out the National Guard to deal with it.

The Democrat mindset on illegal immigration was spelled out succinctly by former Attorney General Martha Coakley, who Healey worked for, when she stated, “Technically it’s not illegal to be illegal in Massachusetts.”

Given what is happening in Massachusetts, she may be right.

More than 6,300 immigrant families and homeless are now living in overwhelmed state funded shelters and in hotels and motels across the state. And more are coming.

They are provided free housing, food, medical care, clothing, schooling, transportation, security, phones, interpreters and so on, costing Massachusetts taxpayers $45 million a month.  On Wednesday Healey asked the Legislature to appropriate $250 million more.

The word has gone out that Massachusetts is the only state in the nation with a “right to shelter law” which is interpreted to mean that it must provide shelter to all homeless families.

It was passed in 1983 following the outpouring of patients from mental institutions that Dukakis had shut down, as well as for the general rise in homelessness.

Which is all right. Only when the proposal was signed into law by a liberal Democrat governor it was aimed at helping relocate homeless families who were residents of Massachusetts, not illegal immigrants from around the world.

The law specifically states that anyone “who enters the Commonwealth solely for the purposes of obtaining benefits under this chapter shall not be considered a resident.”

This would appear to apply to thousands of illegal immigrants who have descended upon Massachusetts seeking assistance.

But since there is hardly any politician around to support or enforce the law — it was, after all, passed 40 years ago — Democrats are free to ignore it or interpret it anyway they want with no one around to question them. Which is what they do. They control everything.

Healey would not even consider suspending or repealing the law so that the state could catch its breath anyway.  After all, technically it’s not illegal to be illegal in Massachusetts, right?

“No, Healey said on the matter. “I was never going to end, nor did I have the authority to end, the right to shelter in the state.”

Of course, she has the right to amend, curtail or repeal the law. She is the governor. All she has to do is file legislation to do it.

But she won’t. It would never get through the Democrat-controlled Legislature anyway.

That is one of the results of living in a one-party state. It’s their way or the highway.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

How many can ride a Harley or an Indian motorcycle? Fewer.

How many do both? None.

Except for Kristi Noem. She does both, which is not something to sneeze at.

She is a rancher and businesswoman frequently seen on horseback and riding a motorcycle, most notably on a 50-mile Legends Ride for Charity at South Dakota’s annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally at the height of the COVID shutdown in 2021.

South Dakota, like Florida, remained open during the COVID pandemic.

Not that the 51-year-old conservative Republican governor of South Dakota is running for president or vice president.

But she is available for the second spot if Donald Trump comes knocking. And he just might.

She is articulate, energetic, and attractive, and she says all the things that Trump and his conservative base like to hear.

Her stock with Trump rose dramatically last Friday when Noem endorsed him for president at a sold-out GOP fundraiser in Rapid City, S.D.

No, she did not do it on horseback or from the seat of a motorcycle.

She did it from the stage at the pro-Trump rally. She told Trump and the roaring crowd of Trump supporters, “You made America great again once, and you will do it again.”

Trump responded: “I get endorsements, some good, some bad. Some don’t mean anything. Hers mean a lot.”

Especially as it came following his latest round of Democrat-produced indictments. Democrats want Trump in the Big House, not the White House.

Trump, despite his legal woes, is still so far ahead in the polls that he appears to have the Republican nomination sewed up.

However, he has given no sign of choosing a running mate, even though he could select one of the half dozen or so Republicans running against him, excluding those who have turned against him, like Chris Christie and Mike Pence.

This exclusion would also include Nikki Haley, once Trump’s ambassador to the UN. Trump may want a woman on the ticket, but it is highly unlikely it will be Haley, not when he’s got someone like Noem around.

While Trump is right when he says that voters vote for a president, not a vice president, this time it might be different.

That is because he and his running mate would be running against President Joe Biden, a feeble 80-year-old, and Vice President Kamala Harris, 58, who, like Biden, has trouble putting a cohesive sentence together, let alone two.

Also, it is a race to the bottom over who is less popular in the public opinion polls, Biden or Harris.

At the same time, Trump is 77 years old, so it is conceivable that, whoever of the two senior citizens is elected president, they could not finish their term and their running mate could become president.

Granted at this point that Noem is relatively unknown and comes from a state that is small in population, with fewer than one million people. It has only three electoral votes.

Yet South Dakota is booming economically, largely due to Noem keeping the state open for business during the pandemic.

And just recently she launched a $5 million taxpayer-funded national television ad campaign to lure more workers to come to South Dakota where taxes are low and expectations high, along with a fine quality of life in the prairie state.

Her creative and catchy ads show her dressed as a plumber, an electrician or a welder talking about how good jobs at good wages await workers who want to move to the state.

She has put her state and herself on the map.

As Bill Napoli, a former lawmaker from Rapid City, observed to Politico: “You’ve got to remember something: South Dakota has been 50th in everything for as long as everyone can remember. We were just a nice, quiet docile state that never did anything. She thrust us into the national limelight.”

Trump noticed.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

Remember him? He is the former Fitchburg Republican state senator who was indicted by then-Attorney General Maura Healey, now governor, on a questionable gun charge. Tran has pleaded not guilty.

Jones, of course, is the 25-year-old, $4.4 million New England Patriot cornerback who walked last week after Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden dropped all serious gun charges against him,

In Tran’s case, Healey, running for governor in 2022, drudged up a three-and-a-half-year-old disputed gun theft case against him.

Tran at the time was running against Democrat U.S. Rep Lori Trahan of Westford, a Healey supporter, in the Lowell centered 3rd Congressional District.

The indictment, the only such indictment Healey sought in the eight years she was attorney general, came after Trahan endorsed Healey in the Democrat gubernatorial primary for governor.

Trahan not only twice contributed $1,000 to Healey but raised an additional $30,000 to $50,000 for Healey’s gubernatorial campaign.

Healey, during the congressional campaign charged Dean Tran, a Vietnamese American, with the alleged theft of a firearm from an elderly constituent who previously asked for his help in disposing of her late husband’s catch of weapons. Tran denied the charge and returned the weapon.

The Fitchburg Police Department investigated and found no wrongdoing and the Worcester District Attorney Office, which had jurisdiction, never even took the case up.

Someone bought it to Healey’s attention three years later and Healey, helping out her friend Trahan, swooped in and destroyed what chance, little that it was, of Tran defeating Trahan in the 2022 election.

What Healey did back then smelled, and it still smells today

Yet despite the indictment, Republican Tran, a Donald Trump supporter, was able to gather 36.4% of the vote (88,585) to 63.5% (154,492) for incumbent Democrat Trahan in the heavily Democrat district.

Trahan said she knew nothing about the indictment or how it came about.

Rather than drop the flimsy case — and halt the wreckage of Tran’s life — attorneys from Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office sought to send Tran, a Vietnamese American, to prison for a year on a rejected plea deal during a court appearance last week in Worcester Superior Court. Campbell is Haley’s handpicked successor.

A more fitting action would have been for Campbell to investigate what prompted Healey to resurrect a dead legal case to go after Tran in the first place.

But don’t hold your breath. Dean is a Trump Republican and justice, such as it is, is controlled by Democrats. Democrats do not investigate Democrats.

Besides, Democrats not only want to defeat Republicans, like Trump and Trump supporter Dean Tran, they want to destroy them.

It is just too bad Tran does not play for the Patriots and have all the connections working for him that Jones had. If he did, Healey would never have indicted him in the first place.

Jones was arrested in June at Logan Airport after security discovered two loaded semi-automatic firearms in his carry-on bag, a Glock 43X and a Glock 19 along with 54 rounds of ammunition,

It is not as though Jones planned to use one or another of the Glock’s on an opposing stand up quarterback or a speedy wide receiver, he just did not know they were in his bag, or so he said. Really?

What’s the big deal? Everybody walks around packing two guns, don’t they?  Especially in the NFL.

As far-fetched as it seemed, Hayden and the state bought into the, “I did not know I was carrying two loaded guns ready to board an airplane” defense and Jones walked. He did not even have to say that a stranger handed him the bag.

Assistant District Attorney John Blazos, who “prosecuted” the case, wrote, “it cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Jones had knowledge that he possessed the firearms in his bag at the time of the incident.”

It also cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that justice is fair and balanced in Massachusetts. Like Jones, it’s in the bag.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

This is what America is facing in 2024, and nobody likes it. Most people would like both men to go away.

In the Middle East, after eight years of fighting, and a stalemate — and some one to two million casualties — both Iran and Iraq agreed to a United Nations settlement to end the war.

It is too bad Biden and Trump cannot do the same. Where are the clowns at the UN when you need them?

That settlement allowed both Iran and Iraq to claim victory, which they did, much like Biden and Trump both did in 2020.

Biden won, of course, but Trump claimed that he won too, despite the results.

So now both are getting it on again as both candidates have a lock on their party’s nomination even though no primary votes have yet been cast.

Last week’s Wall Street Journal Poll, in a two-man race, had Biden and Trump tied at 46% each with 8% undecided. The polls showed that more than 70% of people polled think Biden is too old to run again.

The Journal poll also showed that more than 60% of Republican voters believe that the four indictments against Trump were politically motivated, and that 78% believed that his actions challenging the results were legitimate.

It also showed that each time Trump gets indicated by a politically motived Justice Department or a pair of Democrat district attorneys, he rises in the polls.

If this is not a wake-up call at the Biden White House than nothing is.

That is because this time, unlike 2020, Trump the challenger can go after Biden’s dismal record as president, something he could not do before because Biden had no record worthy of attack.

And this time he will not have the corrupt mainstream media covering up for him as much as it did in 2020 when it allowed him to campaign from his basement and dodge questioning.

Yet, the progressive mainstream media hates Trump so much that it cannot see straight let alone do any straight reporting. It is not that they love Biden, it’s just that they can’t stand Trump.

It is so bad that they have no problem with Biden even though they cannot get him to stand still for a question or two. Biden answers no questions, holds no press conferences, does no interviews, and does not report to the people on important issues, like the war in Ukraine.  And it is all fine with the establishment media.

This time it could be different, though. Unlike 2020, this time Joe Biden has a lot to answer for, beginning with Hunter Biden and the millions in foreign payments he brought into the Biden family through influence peddling.

And it is only a matter of time before Republican members of Congress directly connect Joe Biden to is son’s foreign business dealings and direct payments to “the big guy” from China and elsewhere.

And that will blow up the myth that Joe Biden knew nothing of his son’s deal making schemes with business thugs in Ukraine, Russia and China.

Domestically, Biden is underwater on inflation and the economy with soaring food and gas prices and the general rise in costs of everything else. He has turned the country into an economic Burning Man Festival.

The working stiff and the middle class are living paycheck to paycheck under Bidenomics and everybody, except Biden, seems to know it.

Crime is out of control in the cities, mostly run by Democrats, across the country and the frightening development is not even worthy of a shrug from Biden.

And the crime problem has been exacerbated by Biden’s brainless open border policy that has seen illegal immigrants overwhelm unprepared cities with s Biden waves into the country and then walks away from.

All the while Biden smiles at Trump’s trials.

Iran or Iraq, pick one.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

Yes, she might say, the state is burdened, but that’s how cities grow.

No, the surprise would have been if she sent the 250 troopers to El Paso to deal with the nation’s illegal immigration crisis at the border.

A bigger surprise would be if she sent the illegal immigrants back to where they came from.

But that was never in the cards, nor will it ever be.

Joe Biden, bent on wrecking the country, opened the gates and there is no one around to close them.

Now millions of illegal immigrants from across the world, mostly poor and unskilled, have inundated the country and nobody knows who they are.

And if you criticize it, you are labeled anti-immigrant even though you support legal immigration and not the behind the back, deceitful and secret immigration policies of the Biden administration.

Instead of defending the country and the state from foreign threat or invasion these guardsmen are now on duty assisting illegal immigrant families staying in overflowing hotels and motels across the state.

And, speaking of secrets, the Healey administration is in behind-the-scenes talks with UMass President Marty Meehan, a Lowell native, to take over UMass/Lowell’s 252-room Lowell Inn and Conference Center and use it to house some 800 illegal immigrants from Haiti and Venezuela.

UMass/Lowell students living there have already been kicked out and reservations made by parents and guests have been cancelled. Even reservations for a block or rooms for an Oct. 7 wedding party have been scrubbed.

There are about 6,000 illegal immigrant families, including children and pregnant women, in emergency state funded shelters.  Some 2,400 of them are in state-subsidized hotels and motels, and more are coming.

And why not? Once here they get free housing, free food, free medical care, free schooling, free clothes, security, phones, drivers licenses and interpreters.

The word has gone out that Massachusetts is a “right to shelter” state, which must provide emergency shelter to homeless families.

The law was passed in 1983 when Gov. Healey was a 12-year-old girl growing up in Hampton Falls, N.H.

Then Gov. Michale S. Dukakis and the Legislature sought housing for Massachusetts patients who had recently been released from state mental institutions that had been shut down.

It was not designed to house illegal immigrants from around the world. I covered the law’s passing.

But the word is out. If you are going to enter America illegally, Massachusetts is going to give you the best deal you can get, and that includes New York and Washington.

Right now caring for the influx of illegal immigrants is costing taxpayers $45 million a month, and rising, while homeless veterans and drug addicts are sleeping in the streets. And things are going to get worse before they get any better.

But it is not Gov. Healey’s fault. She is new to the job and could use all the help and suggestions she can get. One would be to stop waving illegal immigrants in.

Another would be to get MassPort to drop its plan to build 27 new hangars at Hanscom Field in Bedford to house the growing number of private jets that the wealthy and well-connected fly in and out of the airport. The hangars could instead be converted into temporary housing.

It would help the climate change effort too since private jets emit at least 10 times more carbon pollution per person than commercial jets.

She could also seek to amend the “right to shelter” law to ensure that it applies only to Massachusetts citizens.

The easiest thing she could do, though, is tell Joe Biden to shut the border down.

But being the progressive that she is, the easiest thing is also the hardest.

Besides, that’s how cities grow.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

He could not do any worse than what we have now.

He is South Carolina Army National Guard Maj. Michael Haley who is currently deployed with his unit in Africa in support of the U.S. Africa Command. It is Haley’s second deployment, following the first in Afghanistan in 2016.

If elected, President Haley could bring him home, make him a general and rely on him to tell her and the American people the truth.

That way she and the American people could at least hope for some accountability surrounding President Joe Biden’s deadly, chaotic and embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan two years ago.

They are certainly not getting it now.  What they are getting, instead is a massive coverup from Biden and the Pentagon.  Their posture is that these things just happen, you see, and nobody is to blame, even as the country observes the second anniversary of that disaster with no answers.

Thirteen American service members—11 Marines, on Army soldier and one Navy medic—were killed outside the Kabul Airport  by a suicide bomber during Biden’s precipitous cut and run operation. The bomber could have been taken out earlier.

Former Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, who was wounded during the bombing, testified a year ago at a Congressional hearing that he and a fellow Marine spotted the suspected bomber outside the airport and requested permission to take him out.

The permission was denied, he said. “Plain and simple, we were ignored.”

He added, “There was an inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence.”

The bomb went off.

“I see the faces of all those we could not save, those we left behind.”

At that time, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, promised answers to the parents and relatives of those killed.

Milley said, “We owe them transparency, we owe them honesty, we owe them accountability. We owe them the truth about what happened to their loved ones.”

Since then, there has been no transparency, no honesty, no accountability and no truth. Nothing.

No one has been held accountable, not Biden, not Milley, not Secretary Defense Lloyd Austin, not Marine Corps commanding Gen Kenneth F. McKenzie, or the officer who denied permission to kill the bomber. Nobody.

Families of the men and women who were killed at the airport appeared again before the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee roundtable last week seeking answers but getting none.

They denounced Biden and his administration for the lack of answers to what happened that day outside the Kabul Airport.

“We’ve been lied to about what happened that day, as well as what happened to our children,” Greg Page, the father of Marine Cpl. Daegan W. Page who was killed that day, said.

Kelly Barnett, mother of Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin Hooever, who was also killed, said, “I don’t’ want to hear lies. I don’t want to hear excuses from Joe Biden, from the administration.”

Biden, calling the evacuation a success, is “like a knife in the heart for our families,” Christy Shamblin, mother-in-law of U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole Gee, who was killed, said.

Steve Nikoui, father of slain Marine Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui said that Biden should honor the 13 service members killed with a Rose Garden observance, which is not likely to happen.

Biden is putting as much distance between him and the event as he possibly can.

Upon the first anniversary of the bombing Biden issued a six-paragraph statement which including the names of all 13 service members who were killed. He called them heroes “working to save lives as part of the largest airlift evacuation operation in our history.”

On the second anniversary last Saturday, Biden’s second statement was pared down to three paragraphs with no listing of the names. He said those killed performed a “noble” mission but did not even say what the mission was. Or who they were.

Maybe he forgot.

Peter Lucas ais a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

If the 38-year-old surprise candidate of the year could perform Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” rap song at the Iowa State Fair, then anything is possible.

It is safe to say that no other candidate running could rap as well.

Vivek Ramaswamy has the political world talking, not only because of his audacity to compete against a stage full of political pros, but to do so while praising Trump, whom he considers a mentor.

They all, to one degree of another, are running against Trump. Vivek seems to be running with him.

And if the Milwaukee debate hosted by Fox News was intended to be a job interview to be Trump’s 2024 running mate, then Vivek scored well. With Trump a no show, Vivek was able to become his stand in and a center of attention.

Trump even raved about his Vivek’s performance.

If by some miracle Vivek did become president, one of the first things he would do is pardon Trump, who is facing jail time as a result of four Democrat produce political indictments.

Most of the others would prefer for Trump to serve time if he were to be convicted of anything.

Vivek has struck a chord with many Republicans and with conservatives as well. He has also ruffled feathers of the other candidates,

Chris Christie called him an “amateur,” former Vice President Mike Pence called him a “rookie,’ U.S. Sen. Tim Scott said he was “childish,” and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said he did not know what he was talking about.

It obviously grated on Pence, Christie and the others that an “amateur” like Vivek, who has never run for office before, was beating them in the polls.

Vivek took the attacks on him as high praise, considering that six months ago nobody even knew who he was, and he here he was besting most of the seven other GOP candidates on the presidential debate stage.

Vivek, who has been financing his own campaign, called them all “superPAC puppets.” He claimed to be the only candidate on the stage who was not “bought and paid for.”

It is interesting to note that while Haley and Vivek went after each other over foreign policy, both candidates were born in the U.S. from parents who migrated from India.

It is the first time that two Americans of Indian descent are running for president as Republicans.

Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris, born in Oakland, is also of Indian descent. Her father was born in Jamaica and her mother in India.

Indians, like other minority immigrant groups, have come a long way in America. It was not too long ago (2006) that Joe Biden, then a wiseguy Delaware senator, said, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”

Haley, 51, made her bones as a two-term governor of South Carolina and then Trump’s secretary to the United Nations. Her husband is a major in the South Carolina Army National Guard who is currently serving in Africa.

Vivek is a successful and wealthy biotech entrepreneur who founded Roivant Sciences, a pharmaceutical company.

He is also controversial, calling the climate change agenda “a hoax” and questions whether the government has told the public all it knows about the Islamic terrorists who crashed into the New York Trade Center and took 3,000 lives on 9/11.

He would build the wall, abolish the Department of Education and eliminate the FBI.

Vivek also questions the billions of dollars that have been sent to keep Ukraine in its war with Russia, money that could have been better spent helping Americans.

He is very young as presidential candidates go, but he has an ego equal or bigger than any of them, including Trump.

If asked if he would be Trump’s running mate, Vivek is likely to respond by asking if Trump would be his.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it – and yet there it was, a thoughtful, well written piece on relocating the sidelined State House statue of President John F. Kennedy to a friendlier place where people, especially tourists, can actually see it.

As things stand now, the statue, once prominently displayed on the plaza of the West Wing of the historic building, sits in lonely isolation having been shunted aside and practically hidden for years.

Its decline in State House statue stature is perhaps an indication of the lost power that the Kennedy Family once had in Massachusetts.

There was a time when a politician could not squeak in Massachusetts without the Kennedys knowing about it.

Now there is hardly a Kennedy around with the pull to do even the JFK statue justice.

Dedicated on May 29, 1990—which would have been JFK’s 73rd birthday—the bronze memorial to the slain president, which was accessible to all, was removed and placed aside on the State House grounds as a result of heightened security in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Jackie Kennedy, the president’s widow, John F. Kennedy Jr., the president’s son, and Sen. Ted Kennedy, JFK’s brother, all now long gone, attended the dedication.

Prior to its relocation, tourists from around the country and the world could walk up to the statue and touch it. They could pose for pictures or sit on nearby benches and contemplate the life of a remarkable president who was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22,1963.

Now, unless somebody told you something different, you wouldn’t even know the statue was there.

Kennedy was not only president, but represented Beacon Hill when he was in Congress, and he kept an apartment and voting address at 122 Bowdoin Street, beside the State House.

The Boston Globe editorial board is suggesting a couple of adjoining State House sites for the statue to sit and once again become visible.

In the interest of full disclosure and before anyone takes me aside for writing about the Globe, I must point out that I once worked for the Globe, although the two years I spent there, before quitting, were worse than the two years I spent in the U.S. Army. In fact, I liked the Army better.

That aside, however, the reasonable editorial suggested that the statue be placed on the site now displaying the statue of Mary Dyer, a Quaker missionary who was hanged for her religious beliefs.

That site is by the Hooker entrance to the State House on the corner of Beacon and Bowdoin Streets. Across from the site are private residences in a building that once housed the Bellevue Hotel.

That was where John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, JFK’s grandfather and a former Boston mayor of Boston, held court. JFK usually stopped by before heading to his nearby apartment.

A better site for the Kennedy statue might be Ashburton Park, which is directly behind the State House on Bowdoin St. and a former entrance to the State House.

The park is directly opposite 122 Bowdoin St and the apartment, Number 36, the Kennedy family maintained for years following JFK’s death. The building alone is a tourist bus attraction.

At one end of the bucolic park is the Massachusetts Law Enforcement Memorial. At the other end is the Massachusetts Firefighters Memorial.

In between, before current renovations began, is an open area of tables and chairs, surrounded by greenery where State House workers, tourists and nearby Suffolk Law School students stop by for coffee or lunch.

It is the perfect place for the Kennedy statue.

It is so perfect that JFK, if he were alive, could look down upon it from his apartment across the street and declare that it was good.

Perhaps his spirit can.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

Or Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Otherwise, he might still be alive.

It was Italian diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1532) in his famous treatise “The Prince,” which is a dark study about obtaining and keeping power, who wrote that when you strike an opponent or an enemy you must kill him, or else he will seek retribution and kill you.

Emerson (1803-1882), a well-known philosopher from Concord, reworked that to mean, “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”

Prigozhin, head of a mercenary army called the Wagner Group, which fought unhappily fought for Putin in Ukraine, led a short-lived mutiny against Putin in June. Prigozhin, in a march on Moscow, sought the ouster of several of Putin’s generals and perhaps even Putin himself.

Prigozhin struck but failed to kill the king.

Putin called the failed coup treason and accused his former friend of stabbing him in the back.

Days later Putin appeared to have forgiven him and allowed the sorrowful Prigozhin to move his forces from Ukraine to Belarus while continuing military activities in Africa.

Everyone, if not a lulled Prigozhin, knew his days were numbered. Putin is not a man who forgets and forgives.

Last Wednesday, on the eve of the first Republican presidential debate, Prigozhin’s plane was blown out of the sky by a Russian ground to air missile or a bomb shortly after taking off from Moscow.

Prigozhin, six lieutenants and a flight crew of three, were all killed, and Prigozhin was no longer a threat to Putin or Putin’s stranglehold on Russia.

Putin had read his Machiavelli.

It is not as though Putin was prepared to debate Prigozhin, or anybody else, the way debates are held in democracies like the U.S.

One of two things happen to Russians who oppose Putin They are murdered, or they go to prison, or both.

Things like that do not happen in the United States, at least not yet.

Joe Biden is not going to shoot down Donald Trump’s plane. He just wants to send him to prison on phony charges the way Putin does with his opponents.

Who would have thought for openers that President Joe Biden—in the first time in history–would sanction an FBI raid on a former president’s home seeking illegally held classified documents that Biden himself had stored in his own garage?

That was the beginning of Biden and the Democrat’s underhanded twisting of the U.S. justice system to bring down Trump and stop him from beating Biden in 2024 and becoming president again, which just might happen.

No, no one is going to blow up Trump’s personal plane, the glitzy Being 747 he flies around in traveling from courthouse to courthouse in between campaign appearances.

Like Air Force One, it is a hard plane to ignore. It has Trump’s name emblazoned on it along with the American flag. And Trump flies around the country as though he is the president in waiting, which he just might be.

And which is why he must be stopped, and why the Biden-controlled U.S. Justice Department has twice indicted Trump on questionable chargers, while a pair of progressive Democrat district attorneys in Manhattan and Georgia have piled on with two more ludicrous indictments.

The hope is that something, anything, will stick and destroy Trump’s chances of returning to the White House.

Hence, the latest effort to humiliate and destroy Trump by forcing him to pose for a mug shot at the Fulton County courthouse in Georgia where he pled not guilty Thursday to a series of phony charges that he sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.

Biden may not care about the damage he has done to the country by politicizing the justice system in order to take Trump out. But the country does.  It is all out of Putin’s playbook. Biden is an American version of Putin, only with a grin.

Biden may succeed in one Democrat kangaroo court or another. But Trump just might become president anyway.

Then all hell will break loose, and retribution will be a mother.

Because when you strike at a king, you must kill him, metaphorically speaking, of course.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

Markey said that one percent of the world’s population is responsible for half of all aviation emissions.

“The one percent can’t free ride on our environment and our infrastructure at a discount,” Markey said.

Markey last week sent out an email seeking signature support for his bill.

It can’t be true about Kerry, though. Markey owes his Senate seat to fellow Democrat Kerry. So, it is unlikely that he would turn on him.

But hardly had Kerry finished taking a beating before a Republican-led committee hearing for allegedly flying around the world on private jets, then Markey filed his bill blasting the rich for flying private and polluting the world.

Kerry’s explosive hearing before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on oversight — where Republicans were gunning for him — took place Thursday, July 13. Markey filed his bill the following Wednesday.

And in case you did not get his tax-the-rich message, Markey calls his bill the “FATCAT” act. It stands for the Fueling Alternative Transportation with Carbon Aviation Tax. It’s Markey’s idea of a joke. It adds almost a $2 surcharge to the current fuel tax per gallon for private jet travel.

In filing the bill, Markey said, “Billionaires and the ultra-wealthy are getting a bargain, paying less in taxes each year to fly private and contribute more pollution than millions of drivers combined on the roads below.”

Or to put it in another way, Markey maintains that one hour of flying private negates the climate benefits of driving an electric car for an entire year.

“It’s time to ground these fat cats and make them pay their fair share so that we can invest in building public transportation that communities across the country and our economy need,” he said.

“Not convinced?” Markey’s staff asked in a follow-up email last week. “Get this: private jets pollute as much as 14 times more than commercial flights and 50 times more than trains.”

Markey, a former member of the House, was elected to fill Kerry’s Senate term in 2013 after Kerry resigned to become President Barack Obama’s secretary of state.

Markey got a jump on any potential opponents back then after Kerry gave him advance notice of his resignation. As it was, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch of South Boston ran anyway but lost to Markey in the Democrat primary. Markey has held the seat ever since.

While it is far-fetched to think that Markey targeted Kerry, the coincidence is interesting.

After belittling Kerry over his world-traveling climate change diplomacy, Kerry was hammered by GOP committee members over his climate change trip to China, as well as his use of private jets.

Rep. Michael McCaul, committee chairman, said China was not an honest broker and was firing up fossil coal plants “pretty much every day if not (every) week.”

But it was GOP Rep. Cory Mills of Florida who got Kerry’s goat when referred to claims that Kerry used private jets to get around.

Kerry, obviously angered, said the charge was “one of the most outrageously persistent lies” against him.

He said that since his appointment as Joe Biden’s climate envoy, he has flown entirely on commercial planes or military planes, not private jets.

Kerry said it was “a stupid lie” that he traveled by private jet to attend the hearing.

The Heinz/Kerry family jet, a Gulfstream GIV-SP that Kerry once used, was apparently sold a year ago following a series of negative stories.

Given his haughty demeanor and elusive government lifestyle, Kerry in many ways is his own worst enemy, as well as a public relations disaster.

Much of the ridicule and animus toward him goes back to October 2019 when he traveled by private jet to Iceland to receive an award that could have been mailed to him after a Zoom appearance.

Asked about it, Kerry said that his travel by private jet was “the only choice for somebody like me.”

No doubt Eddie Markey, despite his bill, agrees.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

The one-time iron worker is at least bringing home the bacon, as they used to say, despite taking some heat for it.

He takes care of his 8th Congressional district that, while centered in Southie, rambles south to Quincy, Brockton and 18 other southeast communities.

If Massachusetts had more political leaders like Lynch in Congress the two federally owned aged bridges across Cape Cod, the Sagamore and the Bourne, would have been replaced by now.

However, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Eddie Markey, as well as the rest of the state’s congressional delegation, have been unable to secure federal funding to replace the functionally obsolete bridges.

Which is why Gov, Maura Healey has been forced to seek federal money from President Joe Biden on her own. And they are all Democrats.

Lynch, 68, who was born and bred in Southie and who still lives there, has come under scrutiny from progressives (the Boston Globe) for using “earmarks,” to direct federal funds from the budget to projects in his district.

While perfectly legal, Lynch recently won a $2 million grant for the South Boston Community Health Center, which provides health care for the needy, as well as another $1 million for the Gavin Foundation, which provides recovery assistance to people afflicted with drug addiction.

Lynch’s wife Margaret is an unpaid director at Gavin and is director of marketing and development at the community health care center, where she has worked since 1996, five years before Lynch was elected to Congress.

Lynch told the Globe that his wife’s salary came out of the health center’s general budget and was not related to the earmarks. The House Ethics Committee agreed with him.

Lynch has been able to bring home more earmark grant money — $40 million in fiscal 2022-2023 — to his district than any other Massachusetts member of the House.

Some of the earmarks also Include $4.9 million for storm aid to Hull; $2.4 million for the New England Aquarium; $1 million for the Brockton Neighborhood Health Center, and another $2 million for sludge hauling; $3 million for the education of home care health providers at UMass, and so on.

Ordinarily the Lynch earmarks, which go to help the needy, would be lauded by progressives.

But in this case, it is being used against him. It is a sign that Lynch, the most moderate of the leftist Massachusetts delegation to the U.S. House, is being set up for a progressive challenger.

Some progressives view him as an old, out of touch white guy from a past era who has been around too long and needs to be replaced. Before elected to Congress in 2001, Lynch served in both the Massachusetts House and the Senate.

“Calling me the least liberal member from Massachusetts,” Lynch once observed, “is like calling me the slowest Kenyan in the Boston Marathon.”

The observation was right on, but if Lynch said that today the progressives would be seeking his impeachment.

Progressive critics believe that Lynch can be seriously challenged in the 2024 Democrat primary by an outspoken progressive from the minority community, the way Ayanna Pressley beat veteran U.S Rep. Mike Capuano of Somerville in 2018.

Capuano, who like Lynch, was known as a politician who could deliver for his district, Pressley not so much.

But that does not matter with progressives who believe more in straightjacket liberal dogma than in caring for the needs and wishes of the people.

One wonders what modern day liberals would make of the late Rep. Joe Moakley, Lynch’s predecessor.

Moakley, chairman of the House Rules Committee, not only crushed all opposition to get $200 million to build the federal courthouse in South Boston that bears his name but employed half of South Boston to build it.

He saw to it that the federal government also paid $34 million to  Anthony Athanas of the famed restaurant Anthony’s Pier 4, who employed the other half, for the land it was built on.

And then Moakley named the Moakley Bridge, which connects downtown Boston to the Seaport District, named after his wife Evelyn.

Nobody complained.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.