Category: Massachusetts

The child support plaintiff sends her condolences

by philg

A friend’s sister recently died of cancer at age 62 (despite Joe Biden’s pledge to eliminate cancer). He had previously been sued by the mother of the people who used to be his children. As is conventional in Maskachusetts, she was able to obtain a court order that her child support profits be guaranteed in the event of his death via life insurance. The successful plaintiff learned of her kids’ aunt’s death via the kids and reached out to her former defendant… to ask for confirmation that his life insurance that would benefit her was up to date.

Speaking of Maskachusetts and cash… (source):

Matt Gorzkowicz, Healey’s budget chief, said officials believe most of the unexpected revenue was generated by the state’s new surtax on annual income exceeding $1 million — the so-called millionaire’s tax — and collections from capital gains, all money that state officials largely can’t use to balance the budget as a whole.

This is the first year that MA is living its principles of taking from the rich to give to the poor. Previously the state constitution required a flat rate tax (I guess that also enables taking from the rich and giving to the poor because the rich paid a lot and didn’t receive much in the way of services). I wonder if those who are subject to the 9% rate (previously they paid 5%) will eventually wander up to New Hampshire or down to Tennessee, Florida, or Texas, thus restoring revenue to its previous percentage of state GDP. This has been the pattern with federal tax rates over the decades, i.e., a roughly constant percentage of GDP extracted despite wildly varying rates:

(Note that the Federal government went on a “wartime footing” in the 1940s, with taxation ramping up from 5 percent of GDP to 20 percent and then has stayed on this wartime footing ever since!)

Friends who live in what Zillow says is a $2.5 million house in the Boston suburbs are in the process of negotiating the purchase of a $4 million to-be-built house here in Jupiter. They’ll pay the millionaire tax on their way out partly because they bought their house in 2007 for $1.45 million. Adjusted for official inflation and expected realtor commission, it is actually worth about the same as what they paid (which means they’ve lost money when you factor in maintenance and pre-sale repair expenses and they’ve lost huge $$ if you compare to the S&P 500), but they’ll have a fictitious capital gain that is larger than the $500,000 married couple exclusion for a primary residence:

Massachusetts is still getting money from them, even more than before, but the bureaucrats aren’t privy to their escape plans. I.e., the state government is on a sugar high, at least with respect to them, and the inevitable crash will come in 2025 when the new house is finished and the Pack Rats are loaded up.

Circling back to the original topic… it’s important to remember that a human in his/her/zir/their 60s is like a 9-year-old dog and that cancer can strike either kind of animal at any time. Get that estate plan tuned up and, unless you love progressive political schemes more than your own children, have a way to move out of Massachusetts (16 percent state estate tax) as soon as the first cancer diagnosis is received!

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Birth control pill sculpture wins a prize at a suburban Boston public high school

by philg

Here’s a prizewinner from the AP Art class at the Lincoln-Sudbury (Maskachusetts) public high school:

(I blacked out the student-artist’s name in case she one day becomes a Deplorable.)

I’m not sure if “penis made from birth control pills” is the title of the work or if it has a title at all.

Science shut down the high school in question completely or partially for 1.5 years. Part of this period was “hybrid” in which students gathered two mornings per week and then retreated to their suburban bunkers. Presumably SARS-CoV-2 was told not to spread during these handful of hours, but the virus would have rejected a demand to refrain from spreading during a full school week.

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New Maskachusetts program to make income inequality look more extreme than it is

by philg

I’m not sure how anyone comes up with a Gini coefficient of income inequality in the U.S. given that we have so many means-tested taxpayer-funded “not welfare” welfare programs. A person with zero income making the U.S. look extremely unequal may yet have the spending power to occupy a $60,000/year apartment, consume $30,000/year in health insurance, buy groceries, own a smartphone with service, and enjoy high-speed Internet at home via the new “free broadband” program.

There’s a new challenge in Maskachusetts… “Making Transit More Affordable: MBTA Board Approves Low-Income Fare Program to Benefit Riders in 170+ Communities” (MBTA.com):

… the MBTA today announced that the MBTA Board of Directors has unanimously approved the MBTA’s plan to implement a reduced fares program for riders with low-income. This program, which has been a topic of research and planning by the MBTA and many partners for the last decade, is an exciting improvement for fare equity.

The new program will provide riders who are aged 26-64, non-disabled, and have low income with reduced fares of approximately 50% off on all MBTA modes. Program participants will demonstrate eligibility via existing enrollment in programs with a cutoff of 200% of the federal poverty level (or lower).

The MBTA estimates the cost of the program to be approximately $52-62 million (including administrative costs, operating costs to meet induced demand, and fare revenue loss).

Without this program, a resident of Lockdown Land with 201% of the federal poverty level in income would be considered better off than someone with 200%. But with this program, the higher income person actually will have less spending power, assuming that he/she/ze/they ever uses public transit.

On net, any program likes this makes the quoted numbers on income inequality in the U.S. misleadingly extreme, which is good news, I suppose, for any political party that thrives by stoking envy.

Apropos of transportation, a friend of a friend’s hangar here in South Florida, complete with C1 Corvette and Nissan Fairlady Z (“Datsun” for Americans at the time):

And a photo of an almost-finished house that I snapped after departing from this airport:

(Jupiter Island, not to be confused with Jupiter; Intracoastal Waterway in the foreground and Atlantic Ocean in the background.)

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Maskachusetts spends 6.5X to feed the undocumented compared to what the native-born receive

by philg

A little Migrithmetic today…

A Maskachusetts resident with no W-2 or 1099 income gets $291 per month in SNAP/EBT (“food stamps”). Someone who walked across the border recently gets $1920/month in taxpayer-funded meals ($64/day). “How much is Massachusetts spending to shelter and feed migrants and homeless? I-Team obtains vendor contracts” (CBS):

Massachusetts has not been shy about how much money the shelter and migrant crisis is costing taxpayers. The I-Team looked into where some of the money is being spent, obtaining vendor contracts for services and hotels, including a no-bid contract for $10 million for a company providing meals.

WBZ first reported finding dozens of migrant families sleeping at Logan Airport, and the state is housing hundreds of others in overflow shelters like the one at Melnea Cass Recreation Complex.

But these locations do not include the thousands of homeless and migrants living in hotels and motels. So just how much money is the state paying for lodging?

Records obtained by the I-Team show the state has 17 contracts for housing totaling more than $116 million. Those contracts are only for fiscal year 2024 and end in June.

In some cases, the hotels are collecting money from the state for three meals a day, $16 for breakfast, $17 for lunch and $31 for dinner. That means $64 dollars a day per person.

Also covered by the Deplorables at the Daily Mail under the headline “Boston’s migrant shelter luxury: State pays $16 for breakfast, $17 for lunch and $31 for dinner as they live in hotels for free after entering the US illegally”. (A headline that will brighten any hotel owner’s day! You can choose 100 percent occupancy with migrants or raise your rates as former competitor hotels remove their inventory from hotels.com and similar.)

Meanwhile, state-sponsored media says that Texas has unwisely spent $1,450 per migrant to send them to Democrat-run cities and that it is “inhumane” to send a human to where he/she/ze/they can get weekly abortion care and gender affirming surgery. (If an all-Democrat state or city is a model society, second in virtue only to Hamas-run Gaza, why is helping someone to relocate there “inhumane”?)

It is tough to get an all-in number for what Massachusetts spends on migrants’ housing, health care, and food, but the estimated cost is $400 per day per migrant in New York City (source). In other words, after four days, taxpayers in NYC have spent more on each of their new neighbors than Texas spent to send them to NYC. (We are informed that migrants reduce crime and enrich host cities and countries economically and culturally, so NYC will ultimately come out ahead on its $146,000/year investment in each migrant.) Presumably the costs are similar in the Boston area.

A friend who likes to take full advantage of the McDonald’s app and refuses to spend more than about $5 per meal showed me a typical receipt:

In other words, a Migrant family of three could have enjoyed a delicious lunch for less than $1.50 per person had they been willing to walk through the miserable Boston weather to the nearest Scottish restaurant.

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Maskachusetts dumping migrants into a Black neighborhood

by philg

“[Lockdown and forced vaccination mayor of Boston Michelle] Wu acknowledges ‘pain’ of state plan to use Roxbury rec. center as overflow shelter site” (Boston.com):

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu responded to Gov. Maura Healey’s potential plan to use the Melnea A. Cass Recreational Complex in Roxbury as an overflow shelter site for migrants. Wu said she is working closely with the state to find solutions amid the ongoing migrant crisis, but expressed some frustration around the idea of using the Cass complex.

“For the first community where this is being proposed to be Roxbury, a community that over so many decades has faced disinvestment, redlining, disproportionate outcomes, it’s very painful,” Wu said during an appearance on WBUR’s “Radio Boston” Monday morning.

Amid historic levels of migrations, the emergency shelter system in Massachusetts has been under stress for months. Healey declared a state of emergency last year, and instituted a 7,500-family cap on the system. For months she has been pressuring federal officials and lawmakers to give Massachusetts more funding to deal with the crisis and make it easier for migrants to obtain work permits.

But the flow of migrants into the state shows no signs of slowing. More than 600 families were on a waitlist for emergency shelter as of Friday, and dozens of families have been forced to sleep at Logan Airport.

When I arrived at MIT in 1979, Roxbury was a Black neighborhood. This history describes what a hater might call a population replacement:

By the early 1970s, a combination of declining property values in Roxbury and rising values in the South End and discriminatory home lending practices had conspired to push Boston’s black community into Roxbury. As Latinos moved into Boston in greater numbers in the 1970s and ’80s, Roxbury became more heterogeneous. In 1990, the neighborhood was 79 percent African American, 14 percent Latino and 3 percent white.

[in 2019], Roxbury is 53 percent black, 28 percent Latino and 12 percent white.

It seems that there is no room for migrants in Weston, Wellesley, Dover, Concord (a sanctuary city), Lincoln, Newton (a sanctuary city), or other nearly-all-white towns with 1-2-acre zoning minimums. Maybe Newton doesn’t make sense because the teachers are on strike and migrants are entitled to a U.S. taxpayer-funded education (teacher strikes are illegal in Massachusetts, but 98 percent of the Newton teachers voted to break the law; apparently, they can’t be fired from their union job even when they violate the law).

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  • America’s Welcomer-in-Chief is visiting Jupiter, Florida today! “President Biden heads to Jupiter, Miami for high-priced campaign events” (WPTV): “On Monday night, the White House announced he “will participate in a campaign reception in Jupiter” at an undisclosed location at 2 p.m. after arriving at Palm Beach International at 12:15 p.m. … Details on the Palm Beach County visit are being kept tightly quiet, but it is likely to be a pricey event.” (a border open to low-skill migration enriches American elites by about $500 billion per year in pre-Biden dollars: Harvard study using pre-Biden levels of immigration as well as pre-Biden dollars (i.e., it is probably closer to $1 trillion/year for the rich today))
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Somerville, Maskachusetts votes for permanent Hamas rule of Gaza

by philg

“Somerville City Council calls for ceasefire in Gaza” (Boston Herald):

The Somerville City Council is requesting President Biden to call for a ceasefire in Gaza but stopped short of endorsing a measure calling for the dismantling of Hamas and the administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Roughly 500 supporters packed Somerville City Hall on Thursday, crowding the Council Chamber and two overflow rooms to make their voices heard that fighting must come to an end in Gaza.

Councilors deliberated for well over two hours before approving in a vote of a 9–2 resolution that received multiple amendments. It explicitly calls for an “enduring ceasefire, provision of life-saving humanitarian aid in Gaza, and the release of all hostages.”

If there is an “enduring ceasefire” doesn’t that also mean enduring rule by the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”)? Separately, the parallelism here is tough to miss:

Councilor Kristen Strezo proposed an amendment demanding the dismantling of Hamas as well as the dismantling of the Netanyahu administration.

From state-sponsored public radio/TV:

Somerville is the first city in Massachusetts to call for a ceasefire, according to the local advocacy group Somerville For Palestine. Other local governments, including San Francisco and Minneapolis, have also passed resolutions. Cambridge City Council will hear its own ceasefire resolution on Monday, and it’s expected to pass.

I would love to see one of these cities take the next logical step and vote to have Hamas officials come over and govern a city here. If Hamas is an ideal government for Palestinians then why isn’t it an ideal government for Americans, both documented and undocumented?

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Socialists run out of other people’s hospital beds in Massachusetts

by philg

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money,” said Margaret Thatcher. She didn’t count on the U.S. Congress and Federal Reserve being willing to print however much was deemed necessary to achieve the ruling party’s goals.

One thing that the technocrats couldn’t print, however, is hospital beds. With just a trickle of undocumented immigrants over the past couple of years (compared to the flood that Texas has received), it seems that Massachusetts is running out of health care system capacity.

“‘Capacity disaster’: Mass. General Hospital says it needs more beds to combat ‘unprecedented crisis’” (Boston News 25):

Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston announced Friday that it has been dealing with an ongoing “capacity disaster” and that it’s in desperate need of more beds to help combat the “unprecedented crisis.”

The hospital has been operating every day for the past 16 months in “Code Help” or “Capacity Disaster” status, despite the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic being a thing of the past, a spokesperson for the medical center said.

According to the hospital, “Code Help” occurs when inpatient beds and monitored hallway stretchers are full, and “Capacity Disaster” is triggered when the emergency department is full, all hallway stretchers are being used, and there are more than 45 inpatients boarding in the emergency department awaiting a hospital bed.

What do the technocrats have to say about this kind of situation? It can all be fixed with a technocratic solution. “How to keep people out of the emergency room; Help for immigrants in arranging primary care visits leads to substantial drop in ER visits and costs, a new study shows.” (MIT News, 9/23/2023):

“This program is fairly low-touch and minimalist, yet it had a meaningful effect,” says MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, co-author of a new paper detailing the study’s results.

Separately, as the authors note in the paper, extending formal health insurance to undocumented immigrants “remains politically untenable” for the most part. On the other hand, jurisdictions might examine if other approaches increase care while, in this case, lowering emergency room traffic.

“There’s this tendency with health care to think that if you give people health insurance, you’re done,” Gruber says. “This study is saying the right system combines insurance as financial protection with other kinds of [tools].” He adds: “There is just huge potential to use data and science to get people to where they need to be in terms of getting the most efficient care.”

With data and science, all problems can be solved!

From the hospital itself…

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Triggered by Airsoft

by philg

We last encountered Andrew Stephens, superintendent of a high school in a suburb of Boston assuming that all Muslims affiliated with the school supported the October 7 attacks on civilians in Israel. See The recent flare-up in Israel, explained by Massachusetts public school principal for the email in which “Palestine” is recognized as a nation (would that be a positive for the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) and their supporters? If Gaza were a standard country, the IDF could simply flatten it as the US/UK did to Germany and Japan, without trying to sort out each person’s individual level of affiliation with the government in power and the war effort.)

Something more upsetting than the deaths of October 7 has now occurred, however, and I have a new email to share:

Dear [Lincoln-Sudbury High School] Students and Families:

I am writing to let you know that, today in the L-S Library, some students were online and observed by other students to be looking at and discussing airsoft guns. This created understandable feelings of fear and anxiety for some students and staff. I am writing to reassure our community that we investigated and followed all appropriate safety measures in conjunction with the Sudbury Police. The students in question were not in possession of airsoft guns or any other device that either is, or resembles, a firearm or weapon. As a result of our investigation and consultation with the Sudbury Police, we do not have any ongoing safety concerns at this time.

Thank you,
Andrew Stephens, LS Superintendent/Principal

The police were called to the scene of some kids looking at a web page with a picture of an Airsoft product that is part of a “game” (Wikipedia).

Question for readers.. the Wikipedia page says that compressed air isn’t used:

The name “soft air” referred to the compressed Freon-silicone oil mixture (later replaced by a propane-silicone oil mixture known as “Green Gas”) that was used as a propellant gas, which was significantly weaker than the cannistered CO2 used in proper airguns (pellet guns and BB guns).

If a low pressure compressed gas is required, why wasn’t simple air used, perhaps with a regulator? What was the advantage of using these exotic gases?

It looks like some of the latest Airsoft guns actually do use compressed air that is compressed on-demand with battery power. Explained by a retailer:

Contemporary electric airsoft guns use a mechanical system inside, the gearbox contains three gears and a motor that allows the transfer of electrical energy into mechanical energy. It’s a simple process that begins with a trigger pull, then the trigger contacts close thus completing the electric circuit from battery to motor. After the motor draws enough energy it will begin spinning and engage the first (bevel) gear. The bevel gear is blocked by an anti-reversal latch, so it doesn’t reverse. This bevel gear then engages with the second (spur) gear, which subsequently engages the third (sector) gear.

Once the sector gear makes contact with the piston, it pulls it back in order to compress the spring. Meanwhile, a tiny nub on the sector gear drags the tappet plate back which consequently also retracts the air nozzle towards the cylinder. With this motion set, it allows the next BB to feed up into the hop-up chamber. The tappet plate will return to its original position which then chambers the BB. With the piston released by the sector gear, a spring shoots back launching the piston through a cylinder to force pressured air out. The BB is launched out, mechanical energy which suddenly becomes pneumatic energy.

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White vs. Black in Maskachusetts

by philg

From a chat group with some of my friends who are still up in the Boston suburbs:

[9th grader] lost points on a grammar test today because she capitalized Black and also White when referring to groups of people. Her teacher said that only Black should be capitalized, as that is an identity – but white is just a color and doesn’t refer to a cohesive group of people.

Also:

My friend wrote a letter to the head of the private school saying they should take down the BLM-logo mural because they endorse the Palestinian attack. After much pressure, she agreed to replace it with a general message of inclusion without the BLM logo. This is what it was replaced with:

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Two-year anniversary of Boston’s order that 5-year-olds be injected with an experimental vaccine in order to appear in public

by philg

It’s the two-year anniversary of the Boston Covidcrats ordering 5-year-olds to be injected with a non-FDA-approved vaccine if they wanted to enter a restaurant, do an after-school sport, see a movie, or visit a museum. The Science-informed order says “vaccinated individuals are less likely to develop serious symptoms or spread COVID19 to those near them” (i.e., claims that the injection prevents transmission despite the fact that the injection was never tested for its ability to reduce transmission).

“Mayor Michelle Wu announces COVID-19 vaccine requirement for certain indoor venues in Boston” (Boston.com) summarized the situation:

The requirement will apply to indoor dining at restaurants, including bars and nightclubs; indoor fitness centers; and indoor recreational spaces, like theaters, concert venues, and sports arenas.

The first phase — requiring employees and patrons ages 12 and up to show they’ve gotten at least one dose of a vaccine — takes effect on Jan. 15. They will subsequently be required to show they’ve received at least two doses on Feb. 15.

Boston will also require children as young as 5 to show they’ve gotten at least one dose to enter those indoor spaces by March 1. And by May 1, children aged 5 to 12 will be required to show proof of full vaccination as well.

The order Monday follows similar policies in other major American cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. And it was announced in conjunction with other neighboring Massachusetts communities — including Arlington, Brookline, Cambridge, Salem, Somerville — that are advancing mirroring vaccine requirements for their local indoor venues.

Some initial resistance was anticipated:

Businesses will also be required to post a printed notice, available in multiple languages, informing visitors of the policy. And according to Wu, the city’s Inspectional Services Department will run checks to ensure compliance with the order.

“Once it gets to the point that it is part of the culture, part of the standard expectation, there’s much less direct challenge in compliance,” she said.

However, Wu described the proof of vaccination check as “just one more interaction that is already happening” between customers and staff.

“It would be a quick glance at an app or a card or a photo of your card,” she said.

If the following is true, why didn’t Mayor Wu order a real Chinese-style lockdown?

“We need to take every available action to protect our cities, residents, businesses, and institutions,” she said.

Why did the Followers of Science allow the filthy unvaccinated remnants to continue to congregate inside the never-closed (“essential”) marijuana stores, for example?

Separately, here’s a photo of the Scientist who imposed the order wearing a rainbow sash, but the sash lacks the trans-enhanced rainbow triangle that is part of our state religion. From “Boston mayor under fire after sending list of critics and protesters to police” (New York Post, July 16, 2023):

More recently…. “Boston Mayor Michelle Wu shows off photo from ‘electeds of color’ holiday party after defending gathering: ‘A special moment’” (New York Post):

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