Category: Massachusetts

Migrants are welcome on the island of Martha’s Vineyard….

by philg

… but they need to be “off island”. “‘I Ended Up on This Little Island’: Migrants Land in Political Drama” (New York Times, today):

Ardenis Nazareth, newly arrived from Venezuela, was standing in a McDonald’s parking lot across the street from a San Antonio shelter a few days ago contemplating his next steps. … Then she made an enticing offer: a free flight to a “sanctuary,” he recalled, where there were people to help them get on their feet. The place was called Massachusetts. … he was surprised when he found himself on Martha’s Vineyard, a small, picturesque vacation destination in the Atlantic. “I thought I was coming to Boston,” he said. “I ended up on this little island.”

“I left my country to support my family,” said Mr. Nazareth, a 34-year-old construction worker. He said that since leaving his home country 18 months ago he had tried to make a living in Peru and Chile. But he could not make ends meet, and word spread among his friends that Venezuelans were managing to enter the United States, where jobs were plentiful.

On Thursday, Mr. Nazareth expressed gratitude for the warm reception that he and his brethren had received in Martha’s Vineyard. “They’re treating us super well,” he said.

“We’re getting food, clothing, all our needs met. I love Massachusetts!”

The migrants arrived just as the busy season ended and during one of the worst affordable housing shortages in the island’s history.

The church where they are staying is home to the sole homeless shelter on the island. St. Andrew’s sits in a quiet corner of Edgartown, off the main drag where summer visitors feast on dripping ice cream and oysters.

“We are meeting their needs for food, shelter, and we are definitely supplying them with a lot of love,” said Lisa Belcastro, the manager of the only homeless shelter on the island. “They need to be off island. Their immigration appointments are not here.”

Perhaps this need for migrants to “be off island” will abate if the Obamas begin work on a migrant shelter at their 29-acre Martha’s Vineyard estate. Given the number of seasonal houses on MVY, there should be immediate space for at least 50,000 migrants to live between now and May 2023. After that, Google Maps shows that there is plenty of undeveloped land near the MVY airport and to the south. Much of this land is actually owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and thus there would be no obstacle to building permanent housing for as many migrants as wish to settle in this exclusive vacation paradise.

Folks in Massachusetts who say that life in Texas and Florida is intolerable due to malgovernance, the lack of abortion care for pregnant people in reproductive health care settings, etc., now also say that migrants are being injured by being transported from Texas and Florida to Massachusetts. One friend on Facebook, regarding Air DeSantis:

State tax money should not be used to fund a politician primary [sic] at the expense of the lives of asylum seekers whose life’s [sic] are already miserable.

He implies that arriving by chartered jet to MVY is somehow a bad thing for asylum-seekers. If Florida and Texas are bad due to their respective infestations of Republicans, shouldn’t the Massachusetts Democrat be happy and relieved that a migrant has found his/her/zir/their way to Massachusetts? Gavin Newsom says that being given free transportation to a Democrat-governed Science-following state is “inhumane” and that the people who arrange this transportation should be prosecuted as kidnappers.

Not everyone sees this as criminal kidnapping:

Another strange aspect to Democrats’ response to the arrival of migrants in their own states and cities is the allegation that Ron DeSantis is wasting taxpayers’ money by chartering regional jets. Colleges can afford to charter regional jets to move sports teams around. If a state-funded college can afford to charter a regional jet, why can’t a state afford to charter a regional jet or Airbus A320? (Florida state government took in 21 percent more than was spent in the last fiscal year, resulting in a $22 billion surplus. If we assume per-passenger charter costs of $1,000 that’s enough to fund transportation for 22 million migrants.)

Update from Alex (comments below): “MA National Guard Activated To Aid Martha’s Vineyard Migrants”. Rather than enjoy access to water, cash jobs from folks with “No Human Being is Illegal” signs on their front lawns, etc., the 50 migrants will be moved off the island at gunpoint by 125 soldiers and confined to an inland military base.

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The working class buys a mini-split air conditioner for a homeowner in our old town

by philg

Congress and the Biden administration have signed up the working class to pay for the laptop class’s new electric cars ($7,500 each) and also for the gender studies degrees, and attempted degrees, earned by the children of the laptop class (“no one with a federally held loan has had to pay a single dollar in loan payments since President Biden took office”; studentaid.gov).

These programs raise the question “What else can we make a working class renter pay for?”

I was chatting with the owner of a $2 million house in our old town in the Boston suburbs. She had a mini-split air conditioner installed in an accessory apartment that she will be renting out at the fabulously high market rates now due to property owners. I asked her how much it cost. Her response:

$8800. ENTIRE cost rebated by MassSave. Free mini split.

Several of my homeowner friends up in Massachusetts are making huge profits from their rooftop solar systems. The general rate-payers, including the working class renters, have to buy electricity from them at full retail rates or higher, depending on when the systems were installed.

One friend lives in a 12,000-square-foot compound. He installed a solar system in 2016 that, due to subsidies from those who did not own property and/or did not install solar, was completely paid for within 4.7 years. It is now yielding an annual profit of 23 percent of the after-tax-credit 2016 cost.

I get paid double the value of the electric. I get to both use it and sell it after I use it. I know that makes no sense, but Democrats make the rules in MA.

He tried to explain a complex system in which he fake-sells his clean power to companies that want to fake-claim that they use all renewables, but my head was spinning from all of the market distortions.

Perhaps New Jersey runs the same system. Here’s a car with NJ plates (maybe a coronapanic refugee?) that wonders “I don’t know how many freeloaders I can afford??” (If the driver is part of the working class, Joe Biden just added a lot of college graduates to the list with his cancellation of student loan debt!)

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Boston builds a ghetto for the 2SLGBTQQIA+

by philg

From state-sponsored media… “Community unites after an LGBTQ+ senior housing project in Boston was defaced” (NPR, July 14, 2022):

The road to building The Pryde, a Boston housing development aimed at LGBTQ+ seniors, has been surprisingly smooth. That’s what made last weekend’s homophobic vandalism all the more shocking.

Among the slurs and death threats covering the perimeter of the construction site, which takes up nearly an entire city block of the Hyde Park neighborhood, were messages saying, “We will burn this,” “die slow,” and “die by fire.”

Meanwhile, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu also responded on Twitter, writing, “Hate & acts of vandalism will not be tolerated at the Pryde — or anywhere in Boston.”

“This affordable, LGBTQ+ senior housing development has been led by local residents, boosted by neighborhood voices & fueled by united support. We will move even faster to get it done,” Wu said.

Intolerance will not be tolerated by the tolerant!

From the developers:

Pennrose, in partnership with LGBTQ Senior Housing Inc., has been selected by the City of Boston to develop 74 new apartments for seniors 62 and older in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston. Construction has begun on the 120 year old former William Barton Rogers School that will undergo a historic rehabilitation. Rent-restricted studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments will be available to households and individuals at various income tiers (30%, 50%, 60%, 80% and 100% of Area Median Income). Several apartments will be set aside for homeless individuals. A housing lottery will be conducted, and 70% of the apartments will carry a City of Boston resident preference during the initial lease up of the community.

So many questions! First, why aren’t all of the apartments set aside for those who are currently homeless? (who has a greater need for a home than a homeless individual?) Massachusetts needs to catch up to California with its 160,000+ unhoused residents? Second, if Maskachusetts is Tolerance Central, why do members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community have to live apart from those who do not identify as 2SLGBTQQIA+? Would it be okay to build rent-restricted housing for Black people? For Asian American and Pacific Islander people? If discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is forbidden under Massachusetts law, how can this new government-sponsored development discriminate against cisgender heterosexuals who want to live rent-free?

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Florida’s crummy welfare system leads to a lot more interracial interaction?

by philg

Although I don’t like to sort people by skin color, I have noticed that we interact much more frequently with Black and Latinx people here in Florida than we did in Massachusetts. Everyone who worked on our house in Massachusetts was white, for example, while folks in the service industries here come in a rainbow of skin tones, often within the same crew. For white suburbanites in Boston, Black people might as well be aliens. They exist on a different planet and interactions are uncommon, even in service settings.

Although Florida has a higher percentage of Black residents, the difference is not large enough to explain our experience. I’m wondering if the explanation can be found in the states’ respective welfare systems. CATO’s Work versus Welfare Trade-Off 2013:

In Massachusetts, unless a person puts a $0 value on leisure time, being a successful welfare entrepreneur is vastly smarter, from an economic point of view, than working at the median salary. The spending power of the welfare recipient is 118 percent of the worker’s and that’s before considering cash income that the welfare recipient might obtain from under-the-table work and also discounts to EBT cardholders.

How about in Florida? The same chart shows that Florida is one of the worst states for enjoying the welfare lifestyle (unless you love the beach!). At least as of 2013, a welfare recipient in Florida enjoyed only about 41 percent of the spending power of a worker. Therefore, it is not economically rational to spend multiple generations on welfare unless one puts a very high value on leisure time/Xbox.

Whatever the reason, I think it is good for our kids to see that the well-paid guy who runs a paver restoration business happens to be Black while his helper is white.

Separately, we have learned a lot about pavers! Our patios, walks, and driveway are a mosaic of red bricks and white concrete tiles. Over time, the brick color had faded so that the contrast between these items was reduced. More seriously, tree roots had grown underneath and made the surface uneven. Cleaning up after 20 years of neglect required (1) picking up a lot of the tiles/bricks and removing all of the tree roots underneath, then putting everything back down again, (2) painting the bricks with “concrete stain” to restore their bright color, (3) putting new sand in between all of the bricks and tiles to hold them in place, and (4) sealing everything with clear sealer that is supposed to last 2-3 years (at which point it will just need a pressure wash and a reapplication of the sealer). Total cost to rehab 3,000 square feet of patio? $8,000. That’s 8,000 good reasons to continue being a renter!

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COVID-19 vaccination coverage among the nation’s smartest people

by philg

I’m still on the mailing list for City of Cambridge (Maskachusetts) updates. Every day they send out their dead pool data. From yesterday:

Nobody died yesterday in Cambridge because everyone got the Sacrament of Fauci, right? The Harvard-educated Democrat-voting folks in Cambridge wouldn’t contribute to coronaplague by running around unvaccinated like the Deplorables in the Unspeakable Republican South, certainly. Well…

Only 73 percent fully vaccinated?!!? Now that vaccines are emergency-used authorized for 6-month-old babies, how can this be? And how does this compare to a state in which public health authorities do not promote the idea of injecting children with experimental medicines that are designed to prevent deaths among the elderly? The percentage of Floridians (DeSantis voters!) who are fully vaccinated is currently 68 percent. Maybe the answer for how the intelligent people who live next to MIT and Harvard can have such similar vaccination coverage to the morons of Florida is that the newly approved COVID shots for babies require at least 8 weeks for the baby to be considered “fully vaccinated” and the emergency use authorization for sticking babies was issued only a month ago.

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Adults versus Kids; a Science-based response to COVID-19 in Maskachusetts

by philg

Recent emails from the Handel+Haydn Society in Boston… Adults:

Kids:

From the linked-to page:

All participants in H+H Youth Choruses activities must be fully vaccinated for Covid-19, and we provide further that H+H agrees to comply with the then-applicable U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidance regarding mandatory employer vaccination programs. Masks are required for all indoor activities at all times.

Recall that, like California, Massachusetts is a state that decided marijuana shops for adults were “essential” and had to remain open while public schools were closed for 1.5 years and forcibly masked for at least 1 additional school year (unclear what will happen in the Boston Public Schools for 2022-2023).

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Massachusetts contemplates California-style tax rates

by philg

Maskachusetts has been prevented by its constitution from imposing California-style progressive tax rates to fund its Progressive government goals. That could change in November if voters approve an amendment that would enable forcing the rich to pay their fair share.

Currently, Massachusetts is ranked among the top 15 states in percentage of residents’ income taken to fund state and local government (Tax Foundation). TX runs state/local gov. on 8.6% of what its residents earn. FL takes 9.1%. MA takes 11.5%. The champions include NY at 15.9% and CA at 13.5%. Government by Science (philosopher kings) is not cheap, apparently.

The Pioneer Institute provides some analysis:

The amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution would have a particularly significant impact on retirees and small businesses. It would affect a long list of “income” categories, including salary, capital gains (on the sale of investments, homes, businesses and other assets), dividends, IRA and 401K distributions, interest, royalties, and commissions. In any one year, should the totality of these income streams exceed $1 million, the state would increase existing income taxes by 4 percent on the excess.

“Pass-through” companies such as partnerships, limited liability corporations, subchapter S corporations and sole proprietorships are taxed via individual returns. These mostly small businesses, nearly two thirds of which are subchapter S corporations, employed almost half of all private, for-profit employees in Massachusetts in 2019.

Passage of the constitutional amendment would force many pass-through businesses to pay the new 4 percent tax on top of the existing 5 percent income tax. Subchapter S corporations, which currently pay Massachusetts’ unique “stinger tax” of up to 3.9 percent, would face a total state tax burden of up to 12.9 percent, a rate higher than large corporations pay.

In addition, adopting the tax hike amendment would give Massachusetts the nation’s highest short-term capital gains tax (16 percent) and the highest long-term capital gains tax in New England.

… the tax hike amendment falls primarily on households selling a family home or business to finance retirement. Nearly half of all parties affected by the tax earn $1 million or more only once in a decade; over 60 percent do so only twice.

The tax would apply to more residents every year. To adjust for inflation, the tax amendment uses the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, which has lagged well behind household income and wages in Massachusetts. State legislative salaries, on the other hand, are tied to median household income, which has risen much faster.

I’m not sure that the tax increase would be a bad idea. Due to the state’s 5% income tax and 16% estate tax, a successful person could already save $millions for his/her/zir/their children by moving to the vacation playground of Florida (see analysis below; kids will enjoy roughly 42 percent higher spending power if the parent moves 30 years prior to dying). We can therefore infer that most people who have chosen to stay in Maskachusetts don’t mind paying higher tax rates.

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Maskachusetts hosts multiple Covid super-spreader events while forcing kids to wear masks in schools

by philg

President Biden still has the U.S. under a state of emergency due to COVID-19. Maskachusetts takes our Scientist leader and “the virus” seriously, as evidenced by the fact that students in the Boston Public Schools are forced to wear masks:

(Just be sure not to wear an N95 mask that might have some effect, says the above web page.)

On the other hand, COVID-19 is not so severe that it should prevent packing tens of thousands of people into an indoor basketball arena for the NBA final games. Nor should COVID-19 discourage Boston from hosting the U.S. Open golf tournament (this weekend, with 100,000+ people coming in at various times (mostly outdoors while spectating, but then indoors and unmasked for hotels, restaurants, parties, etc.)).

So…. COVID-19 in Maskachusetts is an “emergency” for K-12 students, which is why they must continue to wear masks. It’s also an “emergency” for 6-month-old babies, which is why they must be injected with an emergency use authorized “vaccine”. But it is not an emergency for adults, who may gather in enormous crowds without masks, gather unmasked in bars, gather unmasked in “essential” marijuana stores, meet via Tinder after consuming alcohol and marijuana, etc.

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Official Lincoln Massachusetts Public School LGBTQ+ Pride Community Celebration

by philg

From back in April, part of an email from the superintendent of the Lincoln Massachusetts Public Schools (K-8 only; high school is shared with another town):

The school-sponsored event (in a town-owned house) is happening today, so I hope that readers in Maskachusetts will attend and perhaps report back to us why some members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community are excluded (it is only for “LGBTQ+”). Here’s a T-shirt to wear:

The same email that reminded us to lump together everyone on the rainbow spectrum into a single category also lumps together all Asians and Pacific Islanders into a common “culture and cuisine” that can be learned about in just over one hour via Zoom:

Happy Pride Month once again!

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Safety first in Maskachusetts

by philg

Common sense measures to fight SARS-CoV-2 are back in various parts of Maskachusetts. “Mask Mandates Are Returning to Schools as COVID-19 Cases Surge” (TIME, May 25) says that the good old days never ended in Boston per se:

Boston public schools, for example, have maintained a mask requirement. City health officials said they would recommend lifting the school mask mandate once daily COVID-19 cases in the city fall to 10 new cases per 100,000 residents. The positivity rate currently stands at 54.5 new cases per 100,000 residents.

Neighboring Brookline, however, was briefly mask-free. “Brookline reinstates indoor mask mandate for schools, town buildings” (WCVB, May 23):

The mandate that began Monday requires everyone to wear a face covering over their mouth and nose while inside the library, senior center, all public schools and any other town-owned indoor spaces where the public gathers.

Student Alice Gametchu-Walker said she noticed several of her classmates were absent from Pierce Elementary School.

“I thought it was a good idea because a lot of kids have been out with colds and COVID,” she said. “I decided to keep wearing a mask because I just felt safer wearing it.”

Now that climate change has brought months of brutal heat to Maskachusetts, maybe people could cool off and stay fit to fight off COVID-19 by swimming across Walden Pond? “Massachusetts DCR again restricts open-water swimming at Walden Pond while lifeguards are on duty” (Boston Herald):

Walden Pond State Reservation on Saturday announced that last year’s open-water swimming rules would return, effective Sunday. That means swimming is not allowed outside the area designated by ropes and buoys from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. while lifeguards are on duty.

Open-water swimming is only allowed during park operating hours when lifeguards are not on duty, DCR said in a statement, stressing the policy helps ensure that lifeguards keep their focus on designated swim areas inside the ropes and buoys. The allowed open-water swimming hours are from 5 to 10 a.m. and then from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

“We want visitors to our designated swimming areas to have fun while cooling off from the summer heat, but we also want to stress safety and the importance of taking precautions to keep yourself and your family safe this summer,” said Acting DCR Commissioner Stephanie Cooper. “Our lifeguards are a valuable resource, but we also count on the public to take an active role in watching their children when they are in the water, using caution when swimming at unguarded beaches, and utilizing safe swimming practices to avoid a tragedy.”

In Florida, meanwhile, you can swim in the open ocean when the surf’s up and the lifeguards have put out their red “you’d be an idiot to go out” flags. And, of course, wear a mask at your discretion.

Related:

  • They’re back to masks in Alameda County, California (NYT): “Alameda is the first county in California, and the largest jurisdiction in the United States, to issue a universal indoor mask order since the end of the winter Omicron surge.”
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