I’m not saying you shouldn’t push for a new way for legislative oversight, I’m just saying the system isn’t inherently set up the way the State Auditor wants it to be.

You should push for a voter initiative to fix it!

Nahant (40 steps)

https://www.facebook.com/pages/40-Steps-Nahant-Beach/218399361506895/

As an alternative, Rhode Island, particularly Providence, is incredibly progressive and LGBTQIA+ friendly. It’s about an hour from Boston and has an MBTA commuter rail. It also has a significantly lower cost of living than the Greater Boston Areas in Massachusetts (it is still considered the GBA)

Avoid the Bridgewater area, aka the Deep South of Massachusetts.

Yay let’s roll over to government corruption

Plum island

The Catholic religion used to be huge here before the priests started diddling little boys. It’s dwindled to almost nothing in the last 15-20 years.

Well they vote that way so they get good offices, nice committee assignments, the kiss of death in the MA house is to piss off the speaker. Legislators get pay bumps based on the committees they serve on. So the speaker has lots of leverage over members of he house…

He was Deleo’s hand picked successor. No one should be surprised by this. I do hope she is successful and exposes some of the petty shit the all powerful speaker gets away with. Like if you don’t toe the line, you get a shitty office, or lousy subcommittee appointments…. Or or or….

And she did say she was going to look at how committee chairs get assigned. That’s got to rattle mr mariano….

Replace it when the Wampanoag un-kill 53% of the Americans in the most brutal ways possible.

I definitely need to do better

There’s videos of him very well mannered and “hinged” if you will. Some folks say this is what Athol does to a man.

Others have done the heavy lifting but I'll add a few thoughts I haven't seen so far.

The governor is a married lesbian and it literally wasn't in the general conversation during the election. Maybe I live under a rock but I didn't know that about her until after the race was called.

We've been seeing periodic demonstrations by right-wing hate groups. Most memorably last year's Southie parade. They weren't welcome and importantly, someone tracked them down... They came from out-of-state. THEY ARE NOT US. Some asshole tried to start a rally on the Common (note: singular) a couple years ago and his crew of about 20 ran away when faced with thousands of angry counterprotestors. They lasted minutes. It would be laughable if it wasn't such a terrible cause.

We don't generally go for megachurches. Religion around here is something done privately if at all.

The most hate you're going to get is if you wear orange in a bar on March 17, wear a Yankees hat ever, or drive slowly, especially in the left lane. Avoid those behaviors and you'll be fine.

If you're just going to act like a dick this conversation is over.

queer person and lifelong mass resident here. a few thoughts:

• some people will make comments to you that are offensive. most of the time they're trying to be funny and may not be educated enough on trans issues to know they're being genuinely hurtful. people in massachusetts speak in "go fuck yourself," and sometimes that involves punching down. don't take it as anything more than banter and throw it back in their face.

• there will always be transphobes, anywhere. massachusetts is safer than most other places for lgbt people, but don't get your hopes up that absolutely everybody in the state will be lovely to you all the time. generally speaking we keep to ourselves and don't care, but not always. it's easier to be queer in mass than anywhere else, but it will still be difficult at times. a lot of the comments here are about how wonderfully queer-friendly this state is - which is true! - but it's still good to approach it with at least some caution.

• as for legislation...you can relax on that front. even state republicans tend to be much more progressive than their counterparts anywhere else in the country.

• you will see republicans. you will see qanon nutjobs. you will see a discouraging number of thin blue line flags. there's lunatics anywhere. personally i think that the conservative lunatics tend to be loud with the pro-trump imagery in massachusetts to "own the libs", which gives the illusion that there are more right wingers than there actually are. there might be some people who swing more conservative than their neighbors, but the actual conspiracy theory lunatics tend to be clustered into little pockets. there are much less of those people here than there would be in somewhere like texas.

• boston is expensive. you might look at the northampton area. iirc there are a good amount of queer bars and basement bands in the worcester area.

the sad fact as a trans person is that nowhere is 100% safe, 100% accepting, or 100% free. but! massachusetts is much safer, much more accepting, and much freer on queer issues than the rest of the country. there's transphobic assholes just about anywhere, but you should not get discouraged by it if you move to massachusetts. here, at least, they don't speak for the rest of the state. it can be easy to get discouraged, but there are many things up here to love. and while you'll have to both work fairly hard for housing - shit's expensive up here - you can be happy and comfortable. good luck to both of you!! if you have questions, reach out i'll do my best to answer them. ❤️❤️

To paraphrase Chuck from an old interview, “I used to be a Republican but they are all full of it. Democrats are slightly less full of it… so if I have to pick one I guess I’m a Democrat today.”

Yes, I know the original post was a pic of BB-2. I was just using the crossposters mistake to vent about the lack of funding for the wonderful museum at Battleship Cove. BB-59 is not currently sinking like the Texas was, but she is slowly losing a battle to corrosion. Considering how much money the Commonwealth wastes every year, a couple million over a couple years for paint and a deck isn't an unreasonable idea.

This is the most Massachusetts thing I've read today!

Spent half of my growing up years in South Lancaster (which is probably one of the more conservative towns in the state), the other half in Warwick (it has a population of 750). My parents and their friends were mostly republican/conservative minded, but when we kids started noticing some of friends were LGBTQ+ our parents made it very clear that all people are people, and people love each other. That was pretty much it. In comparison I live in Indiana now and one of my republican coworkers participated in “gay hunts” as a teen (I didn’t ask for specifics on that; figured it was probably best not to know).

Massachusetts is one of the best places to live anyway, but it’s also very accepting of all people that can drive to our standards. The culture may be a little shocking; it’s been said that the west coast is polite but not nice and the east coast isn’t polite but is nice. We will help you with anything but will find every possible iteration of stupid known to humanity and call you it. Just brace yourself.

We have problems but not San Fran level problems.

You may need to relearn to drive among the massholes, but outside the car you’ll be safe!

Medfield

We have nobody to blame other than the enlightened centrist idiots, the boomer idiots, and the conservative idiots

These are the morons who sell everyone’s soul out to politicians and corporate crony capitalism

Be proud assholes Be proud

Can’t believe the state flag hasn’t been replaced yet.

Wicked Queer