I think the alliterative Peeping Pascual has a better ring to it.

Even if he is it will most likely be with an ankle monitor which will either make him realize that he's being tracked and had better stick to the straight and narrow or he will hand irrefutable evidence to prosecutors for revocation of his bail and towards his conviction.

Thanks, I hadn't seen that yet.

The article shows how you'd need to sell a house for over $2m to have to pay the extra 4% tax on just $200k ($8,000 total).

The bigger problem in my eyes with bills like this is that it sets a dollar amount rather than something that will adjust with future changes in the value of money.

So I'd rather see something more complicated where they take the income of everyone in the state, determine what some predetermined percentage is (e.g. the 98% threshold) and the following year any income above that gets the higher rate.

Since a million dollars a couple of decades ago was a lot different in purchasing power or value than it is now it only makes sense that the level the tax takes effect should be moving up in the same sort of way or those subject to it will grow in ways that is not part of the ballot question.

>The reason the T is broken is because people were retiring at 38 with a full pension.

That's anti-union propaganda you're parroting. I'd have to dig and find it now, but there was a detailed report commissioned by the state comparing the finances of the T with the subway systems in municipalities in other parts of the country. The conclusion showed that pensions had essentially nothing to do with the budgetary problems of the T.

The information is available, but it is ignored by conservative politicians because it doesn't fit the agenda so you get to hear it stated as an undeniable truth that it is the pensions (i.e. unions) that are the root cause of all the problems. In fact if you hear Baker say that you can tell him to stuff a sock in it because it was his financial shell game in the 1990s that tied Big Dig debt to the T's budget and carries far more blame than anything having to do with the T's pensions.

You get to deduct the sales price, but there's also another deduction that is $500k for a couple (the linked article explains). Basically you'd most likely have to be selling a $2m home to even pay the higher rate on just small percentage of the home sale price.

>for people selling their house for $1m+

The article actually demonstrates how once you subtract the purchase price of the home and the $500k exemption for a couple most home sales wouldn't trigger it anyway.

They gave an example of someone selling a home for over $2m that the tax calculation dropped to $1.2m in taxable income. But since the tax is only for amounts over a million it would only be the $200k that gets taxed at the higher rate and would result in an increased tax bill of $8,000.

So cry me a fucking river that in a situation where you're pocketing $1.2m you have to pay an extra 0.7% in tax on that total amount (yes, zero-point-seven, it is less than a 1% increase in the total tax bill in that situation).

>crowd coming into the city from the burbs

I wish we had a shorthand term for this like NYC's "B&T crowd" (bridge & tunnel).

Yes!!!

(don't even care if you're lying, I just needed to hear that)

>the one high school dance I attended

Please, please, please tell me it was the junior prom!

But my floors are dirty from people tracking dirt in, why would I want to walk around the house without them on?

A tangentially related anecdote:

I know a woman who told me about the time a guy asked her out on a date and took her to a Warren Zevon concert.

She didn't know anything about Zevon or his music, but she said that when he played Excitable Boy she knew that she wasn't going on another date with him but was worried that she'd make it home.

Pre-pandemic if we were going away for the weekend I'd work from home Friday and would usually try to cut out around 3 pm and it would always be bad. I figure that there were usually a fair number of people like me that ordinarily wouldn't be on the highways heading out of town adding to traffic volume.

Yeah, I am in the same boat in that I like Salem for a visit about 9 months out of the year.

>You’re soo primed to argue you’re missing the idea and jumping to refute points I never made.

The reason you're being downvoted is because you're ignoring the real world punishments for ones that don't exist. My bringing those consequences up is not to "refute points" you made but to steer the subject to that real world.

So it's not me missing the idea or jumping to refute imaginary points, it's that you started with a ridiculous premise and were deservedly called out for it.

If you want to have this discussion maybe you should actually look at the laws for illegal gun possession and the penalties for subsequent offenses. You come off as foolish implying that there are no consequences or that it's a "slap on the wrist" when the minimum sentence jumps from 18 months to five years of incarceration?

You're the only one who is talking about this strawman who gets busted for illegal possession of a gun and is punished by being denied the ability to get a gun permit. Try bringing the conversation to a more realistic set of events.

Yes, but "free" and "universal" are two different things. There are not seats for every kid at 3 & 4 years old (by state law there must be one for all 5 year olds). It's luck of the draw whether your kid gets one or not. In fact, most seats for 3 year olds go to kids with identified learning disabilities and if you don't have an older sibling already in a school to get preference the odds get kind of long to get in. They've been expanding access, but it needs to be universal.

Washington, DC had much worse schools than Boston not too long ago but they are ahead of us on universal pre-K and it's demonstrating that the results are worth the investment.

Related to #4 but universal pre-K starting at 3 years old with free before and after school care that involves available tutoring.

There can be a huge discrepancy in learning for kids entering at 5 years old between those from a poor family and a middle-class one. Minimizing or erasing that difference is a huge step in improving the odds of the poor kids moving up the economic ladder. Kids who are well behind in 2nd grade have little chance of catching up and are less likely to graduate high school.

On the other side that can free up parents/caregivers to work more which can help the kids right now as well as padding their future.

Yeah, California could save themselves a lot of money by avoiding criminal trials if they just got rid of murder laws since OJ got away with it anyway.

/s

You think you're making a wise point, but you are not.

If the gun is owned by one of the parents or another adult in the home and it is legally owned there are a host of charges related to securing a gun and ammunition that they can be charged with.

If the gun is owned by one of the parents or another adult in the home and they are not permitted to legally own the gun then there are additional charges that they will face.

Your comment tries to pretend that the punishment will be non-existent if it is illegally owned because they will just go out and illegally acquire another gun, but the reality is that they are in more trouble because of it.

So, nice try but a swing and a miss and the downvotes demonstrate that most people see right through your silly trick.

>Police investigate these things to make sure before they throw the book at someone they're throwing the book at the right person.

Will this investigation take longer than the average time for a torch to burn out?

Asking for a friend.

>when my husband is pacing around

Just curious, do you have a son?

Some people make everyone remove their shoes to enter the house. Instead you could have an array of tap shoes to fit all household members and guests by the door to solve that problem.

Just head to the jeweler's building/district in downtown crossing and go floor to floor with your tale of woe. It's kinda cool to see the old school way that people bought jewelry anyway before the shitty mall shops took over.

Here's a few of my favorites

WMBR (MIT)

WZBC (Boston College)

WFMU (originally Upsala College)

Radio 1190 (CU Boulder)