Most cases end in plea agreements, so it's not exactly uncommon for prosecution to pile up scary indictments to improve their negotiation position. Plead guilty to a reduced charge or risk a billion years at trial, doesn't require a master of game theory to work it out.

Trial by jury is pretty uncommon outside your high school civics textbook.

It's really easy to get a grand jury to indict, it's not an adversarial process.

That said, presumably the DA wouldn't swing for this unless there was something more there.

A city can't function solely with high wage, white collar professionals, and there's a practical limit to how far low and middle wage workers can commute from cheaper exurbs.

We're seeing the cracks starting to form now. It's getting harder and harder to find city workers to take jobs that historically have been pretty desirable, even if they only offered modest wages in return for stability and great benefits. Bus and train drivers, teachers, nurses, etc are necessary to make the city run, but don't offer the high salaries that are increasingly necessary to afford living within or reasonably near the city. A complete drain of vital workers as cost of living continues to rapidly outpace wage growth.

We're facing an exodus of working class people from exactly the places where they are needed. These high cost of living hubs will be the homes of the very wealthy and the desperately poor and few in between. A city full of elites but no teachers or garbage collectors because they can only afford to live 2 hrs away.

High cost homes and tent cities surrounded by massive congestion as the people who help make the city run languish in long, miserable commutes.

Hope the NIMBYs enjoy the neighborhood character they fought so hard to preserve. It'll sorta still be there as long as they avert their eyes from the nightmare of extreme poverty and homelessness they are creating.

The same applies in expensive vacation spots like the Cape or the Berkshires. People buying or renting expensive houses only to find that there's no waiters at the restaurants or all the other service jobs that don't pay the high salaries required to live there.

Takes a real galaxy brain cop to manage to engage in the few types of gun flipping schemes that might actually get prosecuted.

Cops in MA already have a tidy grift opportunity by using their exemption to the approved firearms roster to flip unapproved pistols on the secondary market for a hefty premium.

The reporting on police is riddled with euphemisms and other evasions of responsibility like this. It drives me insane.

A journalist writing the phrase "officer involved shooting" is a disgrace, yet this pro-cop PR speak seems to be entirely normalized in our press.

According to our press cops never commit crimes, only former cops do.

>I apologize, but I really do not want to get into the exact town I live in. I do not mean to be rude or stifle discussion, but I am a volunteer elected official in my town. Many people in this post seem to have a lot of vitriol on this topic. I am not comfortable doxxing myself at that level. I have shared more than I normally might in this circumstance because I feel that the discussion is important for all of us to be having.

Fair enough. Please understand I mean this in a sincerely polite way, but NIMBYs have been caught exaggerating, if not straight up lying about, such concerns so many, many times in past campaigns to stifle much needed development and it's really hard for me to extend much generosity when it comes to such claims. Maybe it's true in your town's case that further development would propose near insurmountable challenges that should merit special exemption, but you'll forgive me if I have my doubts.

>In terms of water and sewer alone, my town cannot support this level of development. We literally cannot just choose to spend money and increase our capacity. The public water and sewer services in my town are separate entities from the town government. This is more common than people might realize in Massachusetts, though it is not the way the majority of municipalities are structured. Even if our sewer commission was willing to increase services, which they might be willing to do, they lease capacity from one or more adjacent municipalities since we do not have the density and demand to support a treatment plant. These municipalities are not looking to lease us more of their limited supply. Could this legislation force us to build a sewer processing plant for several million dollars that can only be used by a comparatively small number of people? It may. Again, the full repercussions are not yet known because the legislation is not as clear as it might seem.

Seems like a legit concern. The state legislation should be persuaded to make sure to hit these utility providers with their big anti-Nimby stick too to make sure they do their part to accommodate expansion. I'm sure the Big Bad state has enough energy to slap around any utility providers that cause problems. This seems like a far more fruitful avenue than trying to lobby to prevent all development, because the insane housing shortage is going to make such positions increasingly untenable. I imagine it's easier to influence such policies if a town has earned a reputation of dealing with this dire matter in good faith rather than those that reflexively oppose any development. Now is a great time to get on the winning team and secure some influence to steer policy.

>In addition, the increased housing as specified by this legislation could cause a double-digit percentage increase to our town's population. Our school, fire, and police services are at capacity. Our budget is tight enough that our debt needs are planned out and maxed for many years in future. We cannot add capacity without new infrastructure.

sounds like your town needs to reassess their budget, perhaps including taxes. A growing town means growing expenses, but also growing amenities that justify a tax hike. People who want to live in dirt cheap, rural areas always have the option to move to more remote, out of demand areas. Populations grow, the remote community of yesteryear become outer neighborhoods of a growing nearby metro. Such is life, nothing is forever.

What town are you referring to and what kind of rezoning in your town is getting proposed that is simply too burdensome? Please be specific, the details matter a lot.

I'm not one of these people who thinks NIMBYs are solely motivated by racist motives like "neighborhood character", they often have very strong, material interest reasons to oppose further development. Investing in infrastructure improvements is expensive and inconvenient, no doubt about it.

That's the thing though, everyone recognizes the need for additional housing and other associated infrastructure, but nobody wants to deal with it.

There's a growing recognition that the need is simply too great to allow this game of every town saying "not us though" anymore and to just ram this shit down everyone's throat at the state level. That's a good thing, tough shit about how much of a pain it's going to be for you (and honestly everyone).

The population is growing, infrastructure improvements are desperately needed and it's good for the state to make towns do this whether they want it or not. You're always free to move away if rural living is that important to you, but creating de-facto zero-growth, gated communities is not in the public interest.

I love the vagueness of this post too. Anyone with a backyard could pretty easily have a chicken coop.

Proof that this is a rural town simply incapable of supporting a couple apartment complexes is that they have a few chickens and they live next to a farm. Sure, this could be the far flung frontiers settled sparsely by rugged, independent frontier-farmers, or just some suburb that allows backyard chicken coops. There are towns within the 495 belt that allow chickens for Christ's sake, this is a meaningless claim about rural living.

If this area is as rural and farm focused as claimed I very much doubt there's any real market interest in intense housing development. Somehow I doubt this is quite the pastoral community as being described.

The septic excuse is a time honored nimby cop-out. Refuse to build sewer systems then cite the inherent limitations of septic systems to impede further development.

It's pretty odd that "human trafficking" is what jumps first to people's minds. As if trafficking is the most likely reason a creep or criminal would accost an unknown woman in public.

When you hear hoofbeats, it's more likely horses, not zebras.

This weirdo could any of many unsavory motives, but human trafficking is not anywhere near the top of the list. That's not how trafficking happens

You know, your 60,000 comment had me curious, and the first hit on Google seems the likely source for your claim.

Ironically enough, the very next paragraph goes on to describe how your stranger danger panic is entirely misguided:

>...the reality is that nearly 60,000 people are trafficked into the country every year, and the majority of those are females, trafficked for sexual exploitation.

>Another common misconception is that human traffickers are kidnappers who drive large vans and swipe unassuming people from back alleys. Again, the reality, sadly, is far worse. Human traffickers operate in public, and will use all sorts of tools and tactics at their disposal to get what they want. These efforts often come in the form of psychological manipulation.

https://deliverfund.org/the-human-trafficking-problem-in-america/human-trafficking-statistics-and-resources/

I would simply not spread bullshit about the problem of human trafficking if it were something I actually cared about, but I suppose that's a matter of personal judgement. You're not doing anyone any favors getting all worked up about make-believe instead of the real thing.

That site has some useful info, might do you some good to come out of the extended Taken fictional universe and deal with reality going forward

>Human traffickers use any tool available to them to connect with potential victims. Contrary to popular belief, these predators rarely kidnap victims, but rather employ psychological manipulation to get what they want. The following are some of the signs of grooming for human trafficking employed by traffickers.

Keep living in fear that a stranger is going to throw a potato sack over your head. "Taken" wasnt a documentary.

The vast majority of trafficking in this country do not involve violent kidnappings by strangers, it's exploitation of people in vulnerable positions often by people they know and trust.

How many of them are "stranger danger" abductions? Jesus Christ it's the milk carton kid panic all over again.

Gee, it's almost as if there's some larger problem with policing in this country and this protest isn't only about 5 specific pigs that committed a murder. Come on, don't be obtuse.

If you're trying to save some cash you can always take the train to Providence and catch the minor league bruins game there. Tickets will be significantly cheaper.

If you want a nice club and you don't want to spend for a bat, an axe handle is plenty sturdy, fits the hand well, and dirt cheap. I'd take that over a cheap dowel.

You can totally get it mailed to you, I've done it three separate times off eBay. Licensing is the seller's problem, not the buyer's.

My limited experience with blue bikes is that they are heavy and are only 3 speed. They are fine for peddling around the city at low and moderate speeds, but I imagine you'd find them quite limiting if you were trying to do any serious mileage or got out anywhere where you could actually achieve higher speeds.

They are also time limited, so seeing them outside a 1hr ride from the nearest blue bike dock is a pretty good indication they have gone feral.

I get NIMBYs not giving a shit about people who aren't them needing housing. They got theirs and fuck everyone else.

Are all these people childless misers? Do they realize that by shutting out new housing stock they are all but guaranteeing that their children will have to move away once they are grown? I don't want to hear them whine about never seeing their kids or grandkids because their offspring had to move to the far flung exurbs, if not out of the area entirely, in order to find an affordable community.

We really need to start talking about NIMBYs with the same scorn we talk about dirtbike douches or graffiti vandals, because these people are absolutely anti-social assholes deliberately making the community a less pleasant place to live.

Maybe you should have thought of that before being born not rich.

"mad bomber" is a popular trapper style hat that is pretty common. LL Bean usually has them on shelves in the winter so you can try them on for proper fit.

Mine was quite comfortable, warm, and ugly as sin and was holding up fine right up until I lost it.

https://madbomber.com/

Might be time to find a winter hat that isn't elastic. You'd have to measure your head to find your hat size, but one that fits right should be more comfortable.

Something like a fur (or faux fur) trapper hat or something similar may be more comfortable, assuming it fits well

Compression headaches are common. Are your hats pulling on your hair?

A warm hat will do a lot to help your extremities.

You're wasting your time trying to appeal tickets that were correctly issued. Nothing you can say will result in the tickets being dropped.

Consider it an expensive lesson in your responsibilities regarding driving a car in a dense city.