Category: Massachusetts

Massachusetts private school students zoom ahead

by philg

The school in our town shut down on the afternoon of March 12. Initially, the school decided that teachers wouldn’t be tasked with any online teaching. This was consistent with my theory that #1 priority for a public school is welfare enterprise for employees and that #2 priority was teaching.

This theory turned out to be wrong. Our email inboxes were flooded with content regarding the school’s heroic efforts to continue providing meals to students entitled to welfare. Could the school add $300/month to the mom’s EBT card and task her with microwaving whatever was purchased from a supermarket? Apparently that would be too challenging, so the school decided that they would have people come in to cook every day (spreading coronavirus to each other?) and then hire drivers in school buses to deliver the food to students, most of whom were located a 30-minute drive away in Boston (part of the METCO program that brings exotic skin colors to the suburbs while relieving wealthy Boston skyscraper owners from paying property tax).

How about the teachers? They email students with some assignments on Monday morning. These review material previously taught. They host a couple of Google Classroom hangout sessions each week, in which the students chat amongst themselves.

Facebook post from the father of an 8th-grade student here in our town (soon to be home to the most expensive school, per student, ever constructed in the United States):

Quarantine Day 30+ in a district with some of the highest teacher salaries in Massachusetts and a future $100m middle school building:

How was your video lesson with your teachers today? Have you guys started learning something new?

Papa, seriously, today we talked about our teachers’ dogs, dogs other teachers would love to get, and some other unrelated nonsense. For 45 minutes.

A follow-up:

“Papa, our teachers finally stopped pretending. This week’s science homework is ‘reflect on last week’s homework'”

The 8th grader spends roughly five hours per week on schoolwork, including the video chat. There are no grades.

Maybe things are better in Brookline, a top school district within Massachusetts? “The teachers are useless,” said a friend. “The kids are getting nothing.” His perspective was confirmed by another friend in that town: “Very close to giving up on Brookline schools, which have devolved into about one half hour of Zoom per day. It’s teacher’s union saying ‘you can’t make us teach’ and weak administration and School Committee — and somehow parents just aren’t organized enough even here…” (ordinarily she is a huge believer in the power of bigger government to fix any problem, and a loyal Clinton/Warren-style supporter of unionized labor)

How about high school? I ran into a 10th/11th grade English teacher walking his dog in the during what used to be the school day. He described his current work schedule as “intense.” What hours was he actually online with the students? “12-2 every day.”

What about private school? Friends have 3rd and 6th graders in a local school for intellectually and financially elite children. The teachers transitioned seamlessly and immediately to Zoom, working from 8 am to 2 or 3 pm daily. There are substantial homework assignments afterwards, especially for the 6th grader. Although the children are Zooming ahead, so to speak, academically, a lot of parental effort is required. There are numerous breaks and small tasks that require the mother and father to step in at various points throughout the school day.

Related:

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Elizabeth Warren wants to fight inequality with a $3 billion ferry for the nation’s richest people

by philg

Are you a lower-middle class taxpayer in Iowa or Arkansas? Elizabeth Warren wants you to buy $3 billion in ferry tickets for the nation’s richest people, i.e., folks who can afford summer houses on Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and similar island retreats: “Markey, Warren, Keating Seek Federal Aid for Steamship Authority”:

With the financially strapped Steamship Authority in mind, the Massachusetts Congressional delegation is requesting $3 billion in aid to keep the country’s ferry industry afloat.

In a letter sent to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and senate leaders Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer on May 7, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and Cong. Bill Keating pleaded for additional dollars for ferries, citing the SSA’s plummet in passenger traffic and the fiscal strains caused by the pandemic.

What else can middle-class taxpayers in the mostly plague-free “flyover” states buy for us?

(How much does $3 billion buy when it is not a U.S. state government spending the money? Indonesia has a Navy with roughly 140 vessels and 55 aircraft to patrol its 3,000 x 1,100 mile territory, which includes 17,504. islands. The total military budget of Indonesia is about $9 billion (Wikipedia), so presumably the Indonesian Navy spends close to $3 billion per year.)

Related:

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Old rich white people can play golf again in Massachusetts

by philg

Do you belong to a dark-skinned inner-city victim group? Even if you’re under 20 years old and nobody your age has ever died from Covid-19 in Massachusetts, stay in your public housing 2BR with 4 or 5 additional family members please. Wear a mask if you venture out onto the sidewalk or be fined $300.

(The mask law also applies to 3-year-olds, despite the Swiss saying that the science is settled regarding children under 10 not being able to spread the virus.)

What if you’re old, rich, and white? Fore!! “Golf courses in Massachusetts can open, effective immediately”

“We’re All In This Together” is the banner across the main street of our town. Good reminder as one drives one’s $130,000 Mercedes SUV to the golf course!

Related:

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Bostonians protest Melania Trump

by philg

“Boston Medical Center employees to protest Melania Trump’s visit on Wednesday”:

Some 250 people who work at Boston Medical Center are protesting a scheduled visit Wednesday by first lady Melania Trump to a hospital program that helps babies who were exposed to drugs in the womb, according to opponents of Trump’s appearance.

A local reporter asked on Facebook for “thoughts” on this visit. Here are some sample responses regarding this high-achieving immigrant woman from the locals who describe themselves as “feminists”:

Could be part of a series on other parasites, bedbugs,vampire bats, ticks

She can stay away! We dont want her hypocritical interest in children here. Please! Is she only going to visit the rooms of white kids? What if there is an immigrant child staying there? Will she kick them out of the hospital? The visit is a joke!

Differences between escort services in New York and Boston.

[One difference is that the escort who gets pregnant in New York harvests a maximum of $100,000/year (tax-free) for 21 years while in Boston the child support profits are potentially unlimited and the payments last for 23 years. See Real World Divorce and “Child Support Litigation without a Marriage”.]

Fake breasts, fake personality, fake husband

My comments might not be suitable for the Globe…they won’t be too kind. Worst FLOTUS of 45 of them…#BeBest Zero sense of irony – married to the world’s biggest cyber bully and she picked that as her cause? While he puts children in cages and separates mothers from their babies? She had a chance to use her global platform to do good. #epicfail

Every single comment is a no to Melania’s visit! I’m so glad that we live in a smart state!

Now they are moving from NYC to FLA, because we haven’t treated him nicely…Trust me as a life long New Yorker who knew all about DJT when he was just another sleazy socialite, we do not want him here! Floridians you have our deepest sympathies, but please keep him…puhlease!

How much do we need to raise to cover her pre-nup? Freedom for us and the civilized world if we ante up and she spills the beans. My checkbook and pen are at the ready.

No win situation. She’s coming to see an amazing program but also one that confirms a narrow view of brown and black people held by the White House. Yet Bmc depends on federal dollars so protesting- which seems obvious when an anti immigrant admin visits a remarkable institution that welcomes all— puts Bmc funding in jeopardy. It’s a perfect set up for a vindictive small-minded president to confirm his preconceptions and cut funds. Another chance for we liberals to play into trumps hand. For an idiot he sure knows how to agitate us and get the result he wants.

[This last one is my favorite, an acknowledgment that “Big Medicine” depends on “Big Government”.]

It occurred to me that the haters are part of a community that produced enough babies addicted to opiates that a special hospital program had to be created. On the other hand, Melania Trump has, to the best of my knowledge, never produced a single opiate-addicted baby.

Also, given that many of the above sentiments are from women, where is the solidarity among the sisterhood?

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Supercharged ionized alkaline water too pure to be tested by pH strips

by philg

The only thing that our neighbors love more than spending $250,000/resident-learner on a new school building is expressing contempt for stupid Republicans and their “anti-Science” attitudes.

What is the beverage of choice for these folks who consider themselves highly intelligent and experts on science? As evidenced by what sells well enough at the town supermarket to merit endcap marketing:

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Fatherhood of a child born after divorce in Massachusetts

by philg

A friend’s son got a call the other day from the woman who’d divorced him a year earlier (wedding planning and uncontested divorce legal proceedings combined lasted far longer than the marriage itself). She had found a higher-income sex partner at some point during the brief marriage and it seems that she’d given birth to a child 13 months after a divorce agreement was approved by a judge (this kind of divorce-by-agreement rather than actual litigation happens about 17 percent of time in the county that we sampled within Massachusetts (statistical study for Middlesex)).

The divorce didn’t become final until 120 days following the approval by the judge and Massachusetts presumes that a child born within 300 days of the technical end of a marriage is the responsibility of the ex-husband. A birth certificate application with the new husband’s name on it as the father had been rejected (tough to believe that all of these town and county record-keeping systems are linked!).

The new mom wanted her discarded former husband to sign an Affidavit of Nonpaternity. The situation turns out to be sufficiently common that there is a standard form.

(It wouldn’t have made great financial sense for her to try to collect 23 years of child support from this guy given his low-ish income and the fact that a DNA test might get him off the hook, but marrying the lover/biological father and collecting from the ex-husband can work; see “Post-Divorce Litigation” for a link to a NY Times article about an example situation:

“I pay child support to a biologically intact family,” Mike told me, his voice cracking with incredulity. “A father and mother, married, who live with their own child. And I pay support for that child. How ridiculous is that?”

)

Related:

  • Q&A on this topic with answer from lawyer: “You, as the bio-dad, have no rights if legally the child has another father. … If his rights are not terminated, you can file for child support and he must pay it.”
  • discussion forum thread, in which a responder asks the new sex partner of the divorce plaintiff: “Just to toss this out there; are you 100% [sure] this is your child?” (also provides some insight into how long it may take to litigate a no-fault divorce in Massachusetts: “My GF and myself have been together for 4 years, and now have a baby together. However she is in the process of getting Divorced but its not final yet.”)
  • relevant statute

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Harvard graduate discovers that the suburbs are packed with narrow-minded white heterosexuals

by philg

The old white guy who led the First Parish church in our suburban town, a union of Congregational and Unitarian, retired. The Millionaires for Obama on the church hiring committee found Manish Mishra-Marzetti, a young Indian-American (Indian from India, not Indian like Elizabeth Warren) to become the new minister (in 2015). He, his husband, and their two adopted kids (characterized as “African American” in the video link below) moved into our midst.

On paper, at least, this guy is exactly the kind of person that the residents say that they want to assist and/or get to know better. He’s the child of immigrants. His skin is nearly as dark as a Virginia Democrat headed out for a party. He identifies as LGBTQIA. He organized trips to our southern border to assist migrants. He sermonized against the evils of Trump and Trump supporters.

In a YouTube talk, he tells the story of playground interactions with the soccer moms. Spoiler alert: He bailed out on our boring suburb and moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan. This can’t be because he didn’t want to pay the 30-percent property tax increase (we are demonstrating our commitment to environmentalism by bulldozing a 140,000-square-foot school, having trailers trucked in to house students for three years, and constructing an identical-sized school on the same spot (full story); at $110 million and considered per-town-resident-student, this will be the most expensive school ever built in the United States). As pastor, he received free housing from the church and I don’t think that the church-owned house was subject to property taxation.

Watch the video (start at 8:30 if you’re pressed for time) and see what the Harvard Divinity School graduate learned!

The video made the rounds on our town’s mailing list. Some excerpts from the Millionaires Who Hate Trump (formerly the Millionaires for Obama):

Where is the outrage? The outrage each and every one of us should feel that we are the cause of this man and his family moving half way across the country so they could feel welcome!

Being black in America is dangerous, especially these days. Being a woman in America is dangerous as well. Being a Muslim is dangerous. Being any person of color… Being poor and homeless is dangerous as well – and there are homeless in the suburbs, even [Happy Valley].

When we were in our adoption classes years ago, one lesson I heard there and have learned over and over again is that if our children say they are being discriminated against, we had best believe them. For those of us that are members of the dominant society, it is not possible to fully recognize all the nuances of racism.

It’s unfortunate that the First Parish could be blamed for Manish’s
unhappiness, because they extended an invitation to him and his
non-traditional family, which other organizations might have denied. [i.e., because it was two daddies and two adopted children, this guy should have been grateful for the job because the rest of the country is even more hostile to gay multi-racial families? Where is the evidence that other Americans are yet more racist?]

it’s awesome how open and welcoming Ann Arbor has been, guess I need to check my own prejudgment of the general Midwest! [the minister’s new job, mentioned favorably in the video, is in Ann Arbor; folks here know so much about the rest of the U.S. that they assume Ann Arbor is solid MAGA land! (the square around Ann Arbor voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016)]

He talks about his children which is a difficult issue for a male parent. [What better way to show one’s lack of prejudice than to assert that men are inferior at handling the challenge of talking about children?]

The perceived’symbolic moat around our Town should be a wake-up call that I hope our Town leaders will address. Perhaps the [Board of Selects] might consider forming a Task Force on Ethnic and Gender Diversity and Inclusion in [Happy Valley]. The enormous amount of money we are spending on a school building will not make a “school” unless we teach the values of embracing differences to both parents and children in school and outside in “playgroups”.

As a person of color [who let her in?!?], I am quite tired of “seeing the intent” of my fellow citizens, and having to assume the best of them every time I’m asked where I’m from (or even “where my people are from” if I don’t play along nicely. Even in the [Happy Valley] post office I was asked if I was from Outer Mongolia. Hey, I’m from New Jersey.) I’ve spent a lifetime of assuming the best of people when they make me feel like “other.” Maybe it’s time for the majority to take a deeper look at their own biases and presumptions. Please don’t whitesplain Manish.

Do you know how many times I’ve been asked where I’m from? Exactly zero. Because I’m white. It’s not difficult to understand how a question like that, given our society’s history, could bother a person of color who not only has to field the question frequently but recognizes that the question often comes with undertones of “do you belong here?” [You belong if you want to spend $250,000 per town-resident student on a renovated school!]

I cannot convey enough how valuable this book has been for me. Everyone can get something from it. White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo [I don’t think it addresses how whites should deal with the fact that average white IQ and income is lower than average Asian-American IQ and income]

Speaking as a woman who was an international athlete in the 70’s and who suffered greatly from the negative assumptions then prevailing about physically strong women and the privileges available to male athletes which were denied to women, I can attest that although times have changed for the better, I still see anti-female intent in events where others don’t necessarily see it. The Kavanaugh interviews were a good example.

[From a guy with an Indian-sounding name] Most (All!) immigrants are vulnerable. On some difficult circumstances they had to leave their native country. They are looking for support and help. [Maybe the U.S. could set up a program where an immigrant who wants support and help could get free housing, food, health insurance, and smarthphone from the government? To be funded by taxes on the native-born…] Hence an immigrant can feel intimidated by seemingly unfriendly questions. … The color of skin adds another layer of sensitivity. Here it is a function of profiling the person as less intelligent or of lower character. I observe this as a cultural issue in the US because of the history. Because of my own skin tone, i have faced such individuals.

On Sunday afternoon, over a hundred people gathered [at the church] for a facilitated workshop and discussion of our reactions to the video. … The First Parish, founded in the New England tradition of individual thought and conscience, is a democracy. [I wonder how long a member would last after expressing the individual thought that Donald Trump would make a better president than Hillary Clinton!] Many people who thought they had gone out of their way to welcome Manish and his family to the church and to [Happy Valley] are disappointed by their failure to make that welcome fully understood. [The white say-gooder (few actually take action and rise to the level of “do-gooder”) is doomed to be misunderstood] We do need to take a careful look at who we are and who we appear to be when we deal with newcomers and people who feel like outsiders. [i.e., the problem is mostly the appearance of white narrow-mindedness]

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Massachusetts ballot questions

by philg

This year we voters in the Land of Righteousness (i.e., Massachusetts) get to decide…

Question 3: whether the government should continue to be able to imprison people for up to 1 year and/or fine them up to $50,000 for failing to keep up with proper thinking regarding transgender bathroom and locker room access. (boston.com)

Question 1: whether the government should set the maximum number of patients a nurse can take care of (varies by type of facility, e.g., 3 patients/nurse in “step-down” and 1 patient per nurse for ICU; see boston.com)

Question 2: creates a commission to study ways to work around the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. Decries the “corporate takeover of the First Amendment”

Can we infer from the above that citizens are more or less happy with everything else that goes on in our state?

Question 3 is the most interesting one. The current law is from 2016 and provides for correct bathroom thinking. Anyone who identifies as a woman can use a women’s locker room, for example. Folks in Massachusetts pride themselves on not being racist, sexist, and stupid, like the Trump supporters in other states. And yet tens of thousands of seemingly righteous Massachusetts voters signed a petition to put a “restore hatred and improper thinking” question on the ballot.

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Voters heed Democrat call to push an older white guy out of Washington…

by philg

… but it turns out that the first step to tearing down the white patriarchy is voting out a Massachusetts Democrat, perhaps not the intended result!

Michael Capuano spent 20 years in Congress, most recently comfortably and apparently securely ensconced in the bizarrely shaped Massachusetts 7th district. He virtuously denounced Donald Trump, including with threats of impeachment (“it’s more important to follow your heart than do the practical or political calculation”).

Capuano expressed outrage at the Trump Administration’s separation of people claiming to be under 18 from accused illegal border crossers claiming to be their parents. While focusing his attention on separated children 2,000 miles away, he was defeated by Ayanna S. Pressley, a woman roughly 5 miles away who had previously been separated from her father by a divorce lawsuit (boston.com). (also, Wikipedia says she lives with a stepdaughter, i.e., a child who is separated from at least one parent much of the time. So Capuano overloooked two local children separated from parents!) Pressley’s Boston City Council web page:

career has been marked by history-making campaigns and a relentless determination to advance a political agenda focused on women and girls and breaking cycles of poverty and violence. … diversify economic and wealth building opportunities for women and people of color, and strengthen support services for families of homicide victims and sexual assault survivors. In 2013, she formed the Elevate Boston coalition to ensure issues uniquely impacting women and girls and the LGBTQ community were part of the 2013 Boston mayoral race debate.

I wrote “Should Republicans run only black women for Congress and Senate?” back in June, but now it seems that Democrats will beat the Republicans to this goal line.

[Capuano used to be Mayor of Somerville. The current mayor has been in the news lately for boycotting our local Sam Adams beer in favor of foreign-owned beer after the Sam Adams founder said some kind words about the Trump tax cuts, e.g., “I mean, Americans — I’m the largest American-owned brewery at 2 percent market share. We were paying 38-percent taxes. And competing against people [the 85 percent of the industry that is foreign-owned] who were paying 20. And now we have a level playing field, and we’re going to kick their ass,”]

In other Massachusetts primary news, the one state official who has gone on record as being in favor of 50/50 shared parenting (the default under the law in Alaska, Arizona, and Nevada; the default in practice or via guidelines in Delaware, Pennsylvania, etc.; see Real World Divorce for the details) was attacked for her Governor’s Council position. Marilyn Devaney, for example, opposed the nomination of a divorce litigator (Maureen Monks) to a family court judgeship after it emerged that she had represented only one male client in a courtroom during her multi-decade career (source). (There is no indication that Devaney is hostile to female judges; she was enthusiastic three years later about a female Supreme Judicial Court nominee: “Lenk to be first openly gay SJC justice”) Some folks who had been successful plaintiffs in winner-take-all custody and child support lawsuits here in Massachusetts turned out with signs in at our local polling station to oppose Ms. Devaney. Their choice was Nick Carter, a white male whose web site indicated that he was primarily running against the hated occupant of the White House: “I want to ensure that whatever Donald Trump and his Department of Justice attempt to force on the states, the judiciary here in the Commonwealth is deeply committed to upholding the rights of all our citizens.” Mr. Carter won our suburb, but Ms. Devaney prevailed in the complete district 56/44.

Another candidate who ran against Donald Trump actually won. Jay Gonzalez will be the Democrat opposing the incumbent Republican(!) governor. The “On the Issues” section of his site:

AIMING HIGH ON THE OPIOID CRISIS [not Trump-related, but I love this turn of phrase]

President Trump has disparaged and discriminated against people of different ethnicities, backgrounds, religious beliefs and genders, and he has stoked fear in their communities. President Trump’s unconstitutional Muslim travel bans and increased raids to detain and deport immigrants have been particularly harsh, disruptive and fear-provoking for immigrant communities across the country and across Massachusetts.

Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet and to our future. President Trump is taking us in the wrong direction on climate change. As President Trump and the Republicans continue to take the country backward, it’s more important than ever that we have leadership here in Massachusetts that moves us forward. [Is it obvious that Massachusetts would be harmed by a warming climate? If someone decides to vacation here because Florida has been washed away or is too hot, that’s a positive for Massachusetts, right?]

The (popular) incumbent governor, Charlie Baker, is not mentioned. Perhaps this is due to our booming state economy (thank you, President Trump, for continuing to dump a river of tax dollars into the pharma and health care industries!). Mr. Gonzalez is passionate about women being leaders…

Women must be full and equal participants in our economy. For Massachusetts to reach its full potential, women must have equal career opportunities, equal pay, and workplaces free from discrimination and harassment. Women who work hard every day and contribute to our collective well-being should earn enough and have the additional support they need to provide for themselves and for their families. Women should be represented in leadership positions in business throughout our economy to ensure their full and fair participation at every level.

So he wants a quota system for women in business management, but is happy that two white guys will compete for the top state government management job (governor)?

He is opposed to the river of federal tax dollars that has made Massachusetts rich:

Today, our health care system is broken. It is too expensive, too complicated to navigate and inadequately addresses the health care needs of our residents.

Our local hospitals and pharma companies complained to him that our health care system is “too expensive” and they want to accept lower prices from the central planners in Washington, D.C.?

Large swaths of the ballot was reserved for sinecures such as Register of Deeds (example guy who was getting paid $110,000 per year back in 2015 and working four hours per day; I think the pay has now been bumped to $142,000/year). The general election ballot should be even tamer, with most victors of the Democrat primary running unopposed.

Readers: What’s going on in your states? Are the white male Democrats who’ve been decrying white patriarchy losing their jobs? Are local and state candidates whose jobs have nothing to do with the Federales campaigning against Donald Trump?

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