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Hot U.S. jobs market spurs push to reach those left behind More HERE

Expanding Crackdown on Government Assistance
The Homeland Security Department has announced that immigrants who legally use public benefits like food assistance and Section 8 housing vouchers could be denied green cards under new rules aimed at keeping out people the administration deems a drain on the country.
The Department has announced they will now enforce a long-standing, but also long-ignored, requirement that immigrants not become a burden on American taxpayers.
Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who signed the proposal, said it would push immigrants’ to be self-sufficient or to rely on their family or the business that’s sponsoring them to be in the U.S. for help, rather than to take assistance from the government. MORE

Violence, Neglect and False Advertising: The Fall of a Massachusetts Special Education School
When current and former staffers at Tri-County Schools for troubled youth gathered for a reunion this May at the Brass Cat bar in Easthampton, they did not know what was coming.
By the end of that month, the head of the nonprofit that operated Tri-County for 30 years would announce the school's abrupt closure for the next school year. Two months after that, the reasons for that closure would become clear: the release of a damning investigation which found repeated abuse of the often traumatized children the school was designed to serve.  MORE


As I make those daily delivery trips in my truck along the roads of New England, I can tell you that the Fall Colors are now starting to show up in Northern New England. With the temperatures dropping at night, the fall foliage will be everywhere else very soon. If you want to know how it’s looking on the Back Roads and High Hills. You can keep updated for some real time foliage reports that are specific to each state here.
Maine
Vermont            Massachusetts
Connecticut      New Hampshire