Ex-girlfriend of NFL player admits making up domestic abuse claims to ‘trash his career’

Apr 26, 2018 3:41 pm

San Francisco 49ers linebacker Reuben Foster was charged with felony domestic violence, but his ex-girlfriend now says she made up the allegations. (Robert Reiners/Getty Images) 

Aaron ColenSTAFF WRITER

When San Francisco 49ers linebacker Reuben Foster was charged with felony domestic violence, he was in jeopardy of being cut from the team. Now, the woman who accused him claims she made the whole thing up, KPIX-TV reported Thursday.

What was he accused of?

In February, authorities did a welfare check on a home in response to a possible disturbance. After speaking with Foster and the alleged victim, Elissa Ennis, Foster was arrested and charged with felony domestic violence, forcefully preventing a victim from reporting a crime, and illegal possession of an assault weapon.

Ennis, now Foster’s ex-girlfriend, told police Foster punched her in the head at least eight times, dragged her by her hair and physically threw her out of the house, and ruptured her eardrum. Police searched his home and also found a Sig Sauer 516 assault weapon and a large capacity magazine, which are illegal in California.

Under NFL rules, simply being charged with domestic abuse could lead to a six-game suspension for Foster, and 49ers general manager John Lynch made it clear Monday that Foster would be cut if found guilty.

What does she say actually happened?

On Wednesday, Ennis released a statement through her attorney, Stephanie Rickard, saying her injuries were caused by a fight with another woman. She said after the fight, Foster attempted to break up with Ennis.

In response to the breakup, Rickard said Ennis told Foster “if he broke up with her she would ‘trash his career.'”

“[Foster] did not strike her, injure her, or threaten her,” Rickard said.

Rickard said Ennis tried to recant her initial accusations, but the district attorney’s office decided to file the charges anyway. Ennis apologized to everyone involved, including Foster, in the statement.

Foster has a court date next week on the charges, which as of Wednesday afternoon had not been dropped.

Spent billions to improve access to Logan airport so they can tax you to drop off passengers? The tax everything crowd has found an ally in the unelected environmentalist groups.

Dropping off a friend at Logan? It could cost you

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GLOBE STAFF/FILE

More than 20 percent of the drivers entering Logan Airport are dropping off a friend or family member. What if they all had to pay for it?

By Adam Vaccaro GLOBE STAFF  AUGUST 27, 2017

The Massachusetts Port Authority has agreed to study imposing a fee on drivers who pick up or drop off passengers at Logan International Airport, part of a deal with environmentalists seeking to curb congestion and air pollution amid a surge in airline traffic. 

Each day, more than 20,000 cars enter Logan to leave friends or relatives at a terminal or meet their arriving flights, according to Massport.

The Conservation Law Foundation, a Boston environmental group, says these trips could be reduced by charging people for driving to Logan. 

“It’s hard to pull up” at Logan, said Rafael Mares, a vice president at CLF. “You’re worried when you drive there you could be stuck in traffic because so many people are driving. All of those problems will only increase as the number of flights go up.”

Massport, which runs the airport, agreed to study the fee as part of a broad truce with the environmental group. CLF, meanwhile, agreed not to oppose the agency’s $250 million plan to add 5,000 parking spaces at Logan if Massport examined other measures to reduce auto emissions at the airport. The review is expected to be completed by July 2019.

Logan has added more than 15,000 annual flights since 2015. The new parking spaces, the agency argues, may actually result in fewer cars; pick-ups and drop-offs can involve up to four trips in and out of the airport, two for a departing flight and two for a returning arrival, while people driving and parking their own cars come in and out once.

Such fees are not unusual elsewhere in the world, especially in the United Kingdom, where more than a dozen airports have implemented tolls over the last decade. It’s rare in the United States, though some transportation specialists predict such tolls are destined to make their way across the pond.

“I believe that a pick-up and drop-off charge for private automobiles will be the next major charge for US airports,” said Ray Mundy, a transportation professor at the University of Missouri St. Louis. “The rationale is to encourage more and more people to use high occupancy vehicles and public transportation. It also has the effect of raising revenue for airports. I think those two rationales will overcome resistance to charging people for pick-up and drop-off.”

At most airports, including Logan, Uber, Lyft, and taxi drivers already pay fees that are passed on to the customer, Mundy noted. “We’re only a half-step away from saying private automobiles, we’re going to start charging them as well,” he said.

Those arguments are unlikely to be persuasive to passengers, said Charlie Leocha, founder of Travelers United.

“You can imagine what the passenger perspective is: ‘Hell no,’ ” said Leocha, who lived in Boston before launching the Washington, D.C., advocacy group. “From a passenger point of view, it’s one more system of nickel-and-diming.”

Massport chief executive Thomas Glynn cautioned that the fee study is but one aspect of a broader review the agency is conducting of ways to limit vehicle trips. Moreover, he suggested he isn’t sold on the idea.

“We are happy to study it and see what the results have been” elsewhere, Glynn said. “Advocates think it will reduce pick-up and drop-off. I don’t know.”

Glynn also said there is a “fairness” consideration, since many drivers heading south or west after leaving Logan already pay tolls for the harbor tunnels, which may seem like an airport fee to them.

In 2013, about 28 percent of passengers got to Logan via a personal drop-off, according to a Massport survey — the most common route to the airport that year. That figure has since declined, to 21 percent, with the advent of Uber and Lyft at Logan. By comparison, 11 percent of passengers park at the airport.

Adding more parking spaces, Massport reasons, could encourage more people to drive themselves to the airport. But Mares said additional parking isn’t enough to address the problem and that an entry fee may be necessary to discourage driving.

Since Massport is also planning transit improvements as part of the agreement with CLF, including increased Silver Line service and airport shuttles from the suburbs, the threat of a driving fee may encourage passengers to instead take public transportation.

Whether such a charge would have the intended effect is unclear. Mundy, the St. Louis professor, said casual fliers may not be deterred by a small fee and will factor it into the cost of travel.

“Most people learn to absorb those $2 to $5 charges pretty easily,” he said.

In the United Kingdom, charges tend to range between $1.30 and $5. Mundy said these airports have not published much information about whether the fees are having the intended effect. But a 2015 study of congestion at London’s Heathrow Airport suggested the fees need to be closer to $15 to affect drivers’ behavior.

Dallas/Fort Worth International is the only US airport charging drivers to access its grounds. The fee has been in place since the airport opened in the 1970s, and it varies depending on how long a car is on the grounds. The road through the airport is also a common shortcut between two local highways, and those drivers are charged a premium toll to cut through.

The fee is $4 for drivers on the airport ground for fewer than eight minutes, because that indicates they are simply cutting through, compared to $2 for eight to 30 minutes, indicating a pick-up or drop-off.

But Dallas/Fort Worth spokesman David Magana said the fee isn’t so much to deter drivers as it is to fund maintenance. Despite the higher fee, more than 1.5 million drivers still used the road as a shortcut in 2016, according to airport data.

“We’re still getting a significant number of transactions,” Magana said. “As drivers get used to toll roads, it’s just one of those to them.”

State Representative William Straus, cochair of the Legislature’s Transportation Committee, said a Logan fee would likely run into stiff public resistance, especially if it’s to manage traffic.

“I do not believe that you could gain public acceptance for paying for the privilege of entering state property,” he said. “What you’re saying is, ‘We’re not charging you to give you something of benefit, like a better airport. We are charging you to affect your behavior.’ ”

But Mares at the CLF thinks the public could accept a fee if the harbor tunnels and airport roads become so congested it is difficult to get to Logan. Already, nearly 108,000 vehicles enter Logan on an average day. That’s up nearly 9 percent from 2011 and approaching the all-time high of 110,690 in 2007. 

“If they’re at risk of missing a flight that costs them a lot more than ground transportation ever will, they might appreciate that these kinds of solutions will lift that stress,” Mares said.

Adam Vaccaro can be reached at adam.vaccaro@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @adamtvaccaro.

It's time for universities to stop putting up with this anti white silliness and permitting the degradation of western culture.

Shakespeare portrait torn down by Ivy League students over lack of diversity — but a new image is up

Dave Urbanski  16 mins

William Shakespeare (AP Photo) 

You’d think that University of Pennsylvania students ripping down a long-standing portrait of William Shakespeare in the English department and delivering it to the chair’s office — saying the image of the world’s most famous playwright doesn’t reflect enough diversity — would be enough of a shock.

Oh, but there’s more incredulity to come.

When the students brought the portrait to department Chair Jed Esty’s office after a Dec. 1 department town hall discussing the election, Etsy apparently didn’t blow his top. In fact, according to a statement he released to the Daily Pennsylvanian, he seemed downright supportive.

“Students removed the Shakespeare portrait and delivered it to my office as a way of affirming their commitment to a more inclusive mission for the English department,” Esty’s statement read.

That’s not all.

Students replaced the Shakespeare portrait with a photo of Audre Lorde, a female writer who once described herself as “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” Etsy noted that the photo of Lorde will remain until the department decides what to do with the mostly empty spot Shakespeare once took up.

Junior Mike Benz, an English major, told the Daily Pennsylvanian that the students taking matters into their own hands was a bold, positive move: “It is a cool example of culture jamming.”

Sophomore Katherine Kvellestad, also an English major, agreed. 

“I think it’s cool that Penn students stepped up and decided to get the ball rolling,” Kvellestad told the paper, adding that students have more leeway to make a radical stand and “get the job done.”

Here in the WaPo is the diversity of the Democrats: envy and completely open borders for personal gain.

Politics
In Nevada, a tightening race threatens Clinton’s post-NewHampshire ‘  recall’

By David Weigel and John Wagner February 15 at 12:18 PM

LAS VEGAS — Less than a week before the Nevada caucuses, Hillary Clinton’s political nightmare came to the Origin India restaurant near the Las Vegas Strip. More than 100 activists were packed between a curry buffet and a canvas sign for Bernie Sanders. They talked. They made caucus commitments. They cheered as a “multiethnic coalition” of speakers asked them to dump the longtime Democratic presidential front-runner.
“She had the same information as Bernie, and she voted for the war in Iraq,” said Vicenta Montoya, an immigration lawyer. “She supported a wall along the border. And while she was secretary of state, she did absolutely nothing to alleviate the hardship of people separated from their families.”
“The white Americans have already shown the momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire,” said Zaffar Iqbal, a doctor and a member of Muslims for Bernie. “Now is the turn for Nevada to stand up.”

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Until quite recently, Clinton’s campaign saw Nevada as a chance for a face-saving victory after an anticipated defeat in New Hampshire. But that defeat turned out to be a trouncing. Now, the Sanders campaign is trying to prove that she can be beaten anywhere. N Nevada, where the senator from Vermont is facing off against Clinton’s allies among organized labor leaders and a L Latino-heavy electorate, has become the first test.
Clinton’s hopes rested on her overwhelming advantage among voters of color — part of a “firewall” her aides have claimed in many states that follow overwhelmingly white Iowa and New Hampshire on the electoral calendar. Sanders, however, is betting that his appeal among young and working-class voters, revealed so dramatically in New Hampshire, is strong enough to transcend race.
Nevada is a chance to disprove “this firewall fantasy that the Clinton campaign has put out there,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’s campaign manager. “If we do well, it destroys that myth.”

Sanders’s aides say there is strong evidence in their internal polling that young and working-class Latinos are coming his way. Even the Clinton campaign is now playing down expectations. In a conference call with reporters last month, campaign manager Robby Mook said Clinton held a 25-point lead in the state. But in the wake of the New Hampshire defeat, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon pointedly called Nevada “a state that is 80 percent white voters,” universally seen as a way to undercut the story that Sanders is making gains outside of progressive white voters. (In 2008, fewer than 70 percent of c caucus-goers were white.)
And both campaigns competed intensely in the state over the weekend — with more appearances to come before the caucuses in five days. On Saturday the San d ders campaign asked in an email for “volunteers across the country to help us call Spanish-speaking voters in Nevada and find out who is for Bernie and who is still undecided.” Clinton’s campaign deployed squads of Spanish-speaking union members.
Twelve Sanders campaign offices have mushroomed across the state. He is outspending Clinton in TV ads by roughly 2 to 1, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Those ads, which began in November, now feature the Latina politician Lucy Flores, a former state legislator, explaining why she thinks only Sanders can fix the country. More than a hundred paid staffers have hit the ground, aided by Latino pro-Sanders groups from as far away as Los Angeles. On Sunday, San d ders even wound up in the same black Las Vegas church as Clinton, sitting at the opposite end of the first pew.
“The people of Nevada were some of the hardest hit by the Wall Street meltdown,” Weaver said. “People lost their homes, they lost their jobs.”
Clinton’s performance in Nevada’s 2008 caucuses taught her campaign two crucial lessons heading into this year’s race. Her victory in the popular vote revealed an advantage against B Barack Obama among Latinos and Las Vegas union workers — an advantage her supporters anticipated would grow even stronger against Sanders. And her loss in the delegate count, despite the popular-vote win, revealed an organizational weakness and strategic shortcoming that her aides vowed to correct this time around.
Mook ran that 2008 Nevada campaign. As the caucuses neared, the culinary workers, an important constituency, were on the fence.
“The Culinary Union endorsed Obama at the last minute,” Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.), a Clinton endorser, recalled during a visit to one of Clinton’s seven campaign offices over the weekend. “Then, the members voted for Hillary. It was really something to see.”

The reverse may be happening this year. Despite Clinton’s overwhelming support among union leaders, the Sanders campaign is making a concerted bid among the rank and file. And if his disadvantage among minority voters is fading, the Sanders campaign sees that as part of the pattern; as he becomes better known, supporters say, voters from every demographic warm to him.

The contrast was stark at the two candidates’ first post-New Hampshire rallies in Las Vegas. For Clinton, it was at a union hall in the suburbs, plastered with the banners of her labor allies — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the ironworkers union, the bricklayers, the American Federation of Teachers, and Service Employees International Union Local 1107. Less than a thousand turned out, many of them at the behest of their unions. And among the die-hards were people considering voting for Sanders.
“Hillary messed up on a couple big things,” said Miguel Landeros, a 19-year-old apprentice brick l layer who had come to the rally because the union was turning out members.
“People can say anything, but you’ve got to find out whether they’ve acted,” added Jose Ceniceros, also 19 and a member of the union.
Those young Latinos were outnumbered by activists who could count the ways Bill Clinton’s presidency had helped them — and by union members who were cold to Sanders’s promise of revolution. “The presidency is not some Jet Ski that you ride over the waves of partisanship,” Linda Overby, 58, said.
Clinton’s pitch was tailored precisely for skeptics like Overby. The former secretary of state recalled the 2008 economic crisis and suggested that the Obama administration deserved more credit than it had received for financial reform and the Affordable Care Act.
“This state was especially hard hit,” Clinton said. “Too many people lost their jobs. Too many people lost their homes. I remember going door to door in 2008, walking streets and neighborhoods, into people’s homes, people who had done everything right but couldn’t keep going because one family member had lost a job.”
Clinton also has reached out relentlessly to Latino voters, starting last year with an emotional roundtable with “Dreamers” — undocumented Latinos brought to this country as children — to whom both Clinton and Sanders favor granting legal status.
The Sanders campaign, with a later start on the ground in Nevada, simply contrasts that with the consistency of

his pitch for income equality. Over the weekend, the campaign dispatched surrogates who included Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Chicago mayoral candidate Jesús “Chuy” Garcia to rev up young voters and talk to union members. More than 30 shop stewards from the culinary union had a meeting with Grijalva, who then sped over to a town hall meeting where dozens of Sanders volunteers got an education on immigration policy.

“People committed a year ago, seven months ago, and committed to Hillary regardless of what was going to happen,” Grijalva said. “But members are not locked in.”
The town hall was light on criticism of Clinton and heavy on policy. But the volunteers also learned what to say if anyone repeated a critique Clinton had made: that Sanders’s vote against the 2007 immigration bill meant he was not a true ally.
“I would have voted against it, too,” Grijalva said. “She voted for the fence, and Bernie didn’t. So what does that say?”
Sanders’s rally at a high school gym on Sunday was at least twice as large as Clinton’s, and the senator picked up a bullhorn to thank an overflow crowd. It skewed young, and it appeared to make converts out of people who had only just heard of Sanders.
Inside the gym, a boisterous crowd repeatedly interrupted Sanders with cheers and chants of “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!” as he ripped through his 45-minute stump speech, decrying the influence of the “billionaire class” and recounting his progress in a race against “the anointed candidate of the establishment.”
Ferdinand Deguia, 28, a cook who said he was astonished to get a W-2 form that showed he made only $23,000 last year, said S Sanders appealed to him on several counts. Among them: his pledges to raise the minimum wage and offer free tuition at public universities and colleges. And Deguia liked what Sanders had to say about criminal justice reforms.
“I have friends and family who’ve got into the system, some for drug offenses, some more serious,” Deguia said. “I’ve seen it myself, the revolving door, and someone’s got to do something about it.”
Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report.

David Weigel is a national political correspondent covering the 2016 election and ideological movements. John Wagner is a political reporter covering the race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.