Another thing you’ll miss about Taxachusetts is the soon-to-be mileage tax on your car.
The Mass state legislature is considering a bill to impose a $0.001 (tenth-of-a-cent) tax on every mile of every car you drive every year.
If you have a two car family, and you each do 20,000 miles per year, that’s another $400 per year to register you two cars ($200 each).
So, not only do you have a 6.25% sales tax when you buy the car, and a registration fee, an excise tax, and outrageous insurance premiums required to register the thing, you have $4.oo per gallon gasoline, about $5.oo in tolls to get in and out of Boston, parking at $20 per day, but the money used to pay for all of these taxes has already been taxed at 5% by the state and varying rates by the Feds.
And now they want to tax the miles you drive!
You see, the elitist statists and collectivists don’t want us to drive. They don’t even want us to own cars. They want us to walk, use bicycles or take the “public” transportation.
They don’t want us to live in suburbs, or, heaven forbid, the rural areas where we could actually be somewhat self-sufficient. Self-sufficiency is anathema to collectivists and statists.
They want us all to move into the city where they can control our trasnportation, our water, our lights, our heat, our electricity, every aspect of our lives.
They are incorrigible, meddling busybodies intent on micromanaging every aspect of your life from birth, whether that’s even allowed, to death, which may be hurried along if you become a “burden to society”, as defined by them.
The usual causes - tribalist voters combined with the "something for nothing" crowd, influenced and manipulated by left-wing journalists, loud, liberal academics (with which Massachusetts is overrun) and union thugs. The result is what you see - an entire state slightly to the political right of San Francisco.
John "F'n" Kerry cleverly exploited the Irish Tribalists by creating the impression that he, too is Irish. The Irish Kennedy's could do no wrong. And who could forget the Bulgers!
The Italian Tribalists vote for their hacks.
Barney's gerrymandered district encompasssed a large Jewish Tribalist population, combined with welfare-magnet cities. There are many conservatives in MA, but they have been denied representation, partly through gerrymandering.
The liberal hacks have a engineered stranglehold on state governance and they're not about to let go.
It is hard to explain to outsiders how we can be so screwed up politically but you have to understand a couple of things that factor into this.
The first factor is the "JFK factor." For some reason, JFK is worshipped by the vast majority of the people. When I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, virtually everybody in my neighborhood had a portrait of JFK hanging on their wall or propped up on their bedroom dressers. As a result, this adulation spreads to anybody with the surname Kennedy. I don't think anybody named Kennedy has EVER lost an election in Massachusetts. In fact, in the primaries, a Democrat concerned about an unusually strong Republican candidate will find some local drunk named Kennedy and get him on the GOP primary ballot. The result will be that the "Kennedy" will win the primary and then drop out of the race, allowing the Democrat to safely run unopposed in the general.
When I was younger, I figured that the JFK worshippers would eventually start dying off but inexplicably, they are replenishing their ranks with new generations of Kennedy lovers. Now we have some young freckle-faced Kennedy running for Barney Frank's seat. Don't know much about him or how he's related to the rest of the Kennedy clan, but he's got the tousled hair and the toothy smile so you just know he's going to automatically win in a landslide no matter how good the Republican is (and we are running a good one in Sean Bielat.)
The other factor is the "college factor." Massachusetts is home to a disproportionate amount of colleges and universities. The result is that upwardly mobile parents from all over the country (and world) send their offspring here to be educated (and indoctrinated in liberal ideology).
Due to the fact that the Boston area has a perfect climate (we have all four seasons in moderate proportions), great sports teams, access to first-rate beaches, skiing, hiking, etc., great hospitals and so forth, many of these students, now indoctrinated in liberal ideology, decided to stay and make the Boston area their home, further adding to the liberal population.
I will say it again. Boston (and New England as a whole) is far and away the best area to live in the continental United States. This is why so many conservatives decide to stay here and stick it out, despite the hopelessness of ever getting conservatives elected to public office. I've lived in most other parts of the country for a time, the hot and sticky Southeast, the hot and dry desert areas of the Southwest, the crowded shores of SoCal, the mean streets of NY/NJ, and I keep coming back to New England because politics aside, this really is the best place to live when all other factors are considered.
I just wish it wasn't so hopeless, politically.
In an ordinary election, Mitt Romney would not be worth the weather, but I would roll in pollen and walk through a Kenyan beehive to vote against Obama.
Never mind...see tag...
It is even more satisfying to live in a state where you occasionally actually get to vote FOR a good person who is a candidate you agree with and support.
Hope you have an opportunity to gain that experience.