>It sounds like their read on this case is that someone could abuse this time to, say, read Mein Kampf during Citizen’s Time, and they wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop them. The court case left measures like time limiting/mic cutting/etc open; however, my town doesn’t want to be the one sued over it, and I kinda don’t blame them.

Have you ever been to a town hall meeting? Citizens say absolutely bat shit crazy stuff all of the time. The consequence of someone reading Mein Kampf in their 2 minutes of time is... absolutely nothing. Nothing happens. Everyone is just bored and annoyed.

>My municipality is reacting to the court case by considering pulling Citizen’s Time from meeting agendas. (So much for a win for free speech, huh?)

Any town that gets rid of basic citizen engagement because someone might say something annoying or rude is doing a disservice to democracy for absolutely no conceivable benefit of the citizens they supposedly serve, besides sparing the dozen people at a town hall meeting from being slightly annoyed for 2 minutes. They should feel shame at their failure to uphold basic democratic principles because of their fear of a brief moment of mild discomfort and annoyance.

>I think some of the boards are kind of panicking; they can picture someone coming into the meeting and being horrific and then if they time-limit them or adjourn the meeting, they end up being sued.

Run a camera. Time limits to speaking time are legal. You can cute someone off after their unhinged rant once the time limit is over, just like you can cut off the little old lady who wants to talk about about the kids next door playing too loudly for 10 minutes. This isn't even hypothetical. You can watch Town Hall footage all over the internet of people's unhinged or hilarious rants, and after the time is up, no gives a shit and just moves onto the next person.

>Are there any better suggestions I could suggest? I understand why they’re worried, but I want to make sure I keep my ability to make a fuss over the font size choices for the new town center sign.

I don't understand why they are worried and I give them no such charitability. The absolute worst case scenario is that the dozen people at a town hall meeting listen to an unhinged 2 minute long rant, feel mildly annoyed, and then move onto the next person. That's it.

Angry and rude words won't hurt you. You don't need to be afraid. You certainly don't need to start ejecting basic democratic principles and participatory government over this incredibly stupid and completely irrational "fear" of hearing annoying and rude words from a random citizen.

And your attitude leads to straight up corruption. A "honorable opposition" is absolutely essential for good democratic governance. The implosion of the Massachusetts Republican Party into an unelectable MAGA cult is a large part of the reason why we have corruption like this. A healthy Massachusetts would have a left wing Republican Party in the form of Baker and Weld like Republicans. They might not win, but they'd at least be a check on the near open corruption that we see under single party rule.

Yeah, and some women do it because they enjoy it and don't find it painful or shameful.

One of my friends was a stripper. She liked her job. No one put a gun to her head. She was a very fit lady and just didn't find her body shameful, and so she was quiet happy to be paid to show it off. She didn't need or want anyone like you to "save" her by taking away the option to be a stripper.

If we were really concerned about people being involved in involuntary sex work, we'd have a well regulated and legalized industry. Criminalizing sex work just means that criminals run sex work, police access is far more dangerous and unhelpful, and that there are no rules.

A strip club where they serve weed instead of alcohol sounds like a brilliant idea. If absolutely nothing else, stoned patrons are a lot less likely to be a problem that drunk ones. Granted, that isn't what they are doing immediately, presumably because the state won't let them.

Personally, I wish they'd just legalize weed the way that alcohol is legal. I like going out. I like going out and sitting around with friends in a bar like environment. I just don't like drinking. If I drink, even if I don't drink enough to have fun, I get absolute shit sleep that night. If I drink enough to have fun, I'm going to get shit sleep and wake up feeling like absolute crap. On top of that, if I do it often, I get fat.

Weed on other hand though? If I smoke "too much" weed, I just have a really good nights sleep. I'd go out to the bars a lot more if worst price I was going to pay is a good nights sleep.

You misunderstand. I don't hate it. Bad art awesome. I like it. I literally hope we keep it forever and will be disappointed if they give into public pressure and bring it down. What other city has two massive bronze arms holding up a big flaccid schlong? That's a thing to brag about and show people. The only thing we need to do to improve it is to give it a good nick name. "Two arms holding aloft a big floppy dong" is just too long to say.

You'll be shocked to learn that not everyone is healthy.

I wear one because I'm going through chemo therapy, have no immune system, and getting sick could kill me. My loved ones wear masks so that they can safely be with me and not have to worry about killing me. I go to a building full of people in my situation every week.

Stop trying to make it happen.

It looks like someone holding either a massive turd, or a giant dildo. It looks that way because of the back of the arms don't have an arm like structure, and there are "back of the arms" seen from almost every angle. This picture is slightly better than most because it has the least amount of back of arms / massive turd / giant dildo in the shot possible and it is dark.

It's not disrespecting MLKs memory to think that this statue looks like some holding a massive turd or giant dildo. You don't have to find an angle where it is least awful. Sometimes art is just awful. It's okay. I'm totally going to show out of town folks the hands holding a massive dildo statue, because it's hilarious. Sometimes art is so bad it is hilarious, and these arms that appears to be holding up a massive, floppy dong are just one such piece. Stop trying to be proud for the "right" reasons, and accept the hilarity of being proud of our arms holding aloft a giant dildo statue for the hilariously wrong reasons.

More like second fall than second winter. We never really had winter, unless you count that single fraction of week where it stayed under 20 for a few days.

I know global warming is bad for a lot of places, and that's good enough reason to be against it... buuuut ignoring the suffering inflicted on billions of others, it seems pretty freaking sweet here. I can suffer Maryland weather.

Right, because police unions need more power. We still don't have them all wearing a camera and work on the " trust me bro" method of self policing.

No, I do in fact appreciate what the government does. I also just appreciate what the government doesn't do well. I wish that sort of nuance was something that was acceptable these days, but unfortunately we seem to live in a polarized era where things are only good or bad, black or white, and all nuances are lost. Government now is only a thing that is either pure incompetent evil, or faultless and the answer to every solution for most politically active people. Both views are obviously wrong, but we can't seem to admit that anymore because that sounds too much like giving the other side a win. This is why you can't admit that maybe some fixes to enable the private sector might be a part of the solution, and why a conservative is unable to admit that maybe the government also has an important role in enabling solutions.

I do in fact want the government to build on and expand on public services. If an area is growing or wants to grow but can't because of zoning, I want them to expand the public infrastructure to support it. Extremely restrictive zoning that basically forbids densifying an area is not a rational response to a housing crisis, nor is getting the state involved in building more housing when that is something that is easily and vastly more cheaply and efficiently fixed by less restrictive zoning. The government should focus on doing the things that only the government can do effectively, like infrastructure maintenance and improvement to accommodate growth. The much more efficient private sector should be enabled to do the things that only it can do efficiently and effective, like adding to the housing stock. Unfortunately, this is a position of too much nuance in our emotionally charged and polarized political system.

>We have to agree to disagree. When we have a problem as big as our housing issue, no solution should be off the table because of "feels".

It's not feels. It's literally just looking at the past track record of the state executing literally any building project. Close your eyes and pick one, it's years late and wildly over budget.

>Your solution still requires the state to get involved

No, it actually doesn't. It requires cities and states that created the problem with their zoning laws to stop creating the problem. They only need to stop doing the bad thing that they are still doing RIGHT NOW, despite the housing crisis, to fix the housing crisis.

>However, if its not near public transit and its all high end luxury condos

Housing costs in Massachusetts have nothing to do with how "luxurious" our housing is. Leave Boston and travel around a little bit. Boston housing is not "luxurious" and too much luxury has nothing to do with our housing costs. We actually have literally some of the oldest, most poorly maintained, and least "luxurious" housing in this nation. The reason why literally all new housing is called "luxury" housing is because any house in the greater boston area with flat floors that won't give you splinters and a modern heating/cooling system can claim with a straight face to be "luxury". You literally can't make a new apartment that isn't "luxury", because literally anything new, no matter how spare, is "luxury" over the housing stock that it is replacing. The cost of housing in Boston has nothing to do with how nice it is. The only two things that matter to how much a new condo costs is where it is, and how big it is. Everything else is a rounding error.

>...being brought up as foreign investments, its basically useless.

This is a bogyman that only really exists in extremely high end housing sitting on top of sky scrappers. Housing in Boston is not expensive because of them damn foreigners buying housing and than insanely keeping it empty instead of renting it out.

There is one and only one reason why housing is expensive in the greater Boston area. That one and only reason is because it is literally illegal to build more dense housing. Every time you are in an dense and expensive area and see only three story building, they are that way because it is literally illegal to build them any taller and more dense. The states and towns that created this problem don't need to go build dense housing. They just need to let people that already own housing legally build dense housing. We don't need the state, which has proven it's absolute incompetence at large building projects, to jump in. They just need to get out of the way.

If the state has money burning holes in their pockets wants to do something productive to help the housing crisis, they should fix and expand public transit. I'm sure they will do it extremely late and over budget as they always do, but at least they would be do something that only the state can fix.

I'm less worried about people lining their pockets, and more worried about it being shitty housing that is literally an order of magnitude over budget, years late, and poorly managed. When a land owner is late and goes over budget on a building project, they lose their own money, and it's a few percentage points over budget, and it's a few months late. When the state does the same thing, they could 10x the cost, it can be years late, and it's the state's (mine and yours) money that they are lighting on fire to give to their friends.

The solution is crystal clear; let people legally build higher. Whenever you walk into a high density neighborhood and see that all of the buildings are three stories tall and set back from the sidewalk, it isn't greedy developers refusing to build more housing because they hate money. It's the city making it literally illegible for them to build higher or closer to the property edge. Seriously, every single time you see this, it's 100% zoning rules preventing more housing from being built.

We have a lack of more housing in dense areas because it's literally illegal to build it. That's it. That's the entire problem. Fix that and the problem goes away. I'd rather the state focus on fixing the problems it already has before trying their hand at property development because they created a housing crisis by making development illegal for the residents of this state. The state doesn't need to fix the problem that they created. They can just stop making the problem.

Well, mostly because I was being super sarcastic when I called the Massachusetts state government efficient in a corruption free.

I'm pretty sure the solution isn't low density housing in places that people don't want to live. It's great if you want to live in more rural areas, but they are rural for a reason, lower desire to be there. I actually like being able to walk outside my door, and walk to a coffee shop. I like that I can walk to all of my friends. I like that I can come home from work in my car, and then never touch it again.

The solution is to let people build higher density housing in places that people want to live.

Maybe we could just start by letting people that own property already build first, before unleashing the overwhelmingly corruption free and extremely efficient Massachusetts state upon the problem?

I don't get it. Why would a Russian oligarch find it funny that a big cargo ship moved cars between two American states via the cheapest means possible?

I think Russian oligarchs probably have some more serious stuff to worry about - like finding a way to keep ingratiating themselves with Putin so they don't accidentally fall out a window with three gun shots in the back of their head.

Shipping by water is hilariously cheaper than anything else. Money is always worth "a lot of effort".

They clearly don't, because if they did it would be an improvement.

It's really hard to not see someone either holding a massive turd, or a giant limp dick. It's not on my top 10 list of things to care about, and I have no rage boner, but geez.

"My politicians" have never once proposed, much less enacted a ban on police cameras. If a politicians, who I sure as shit didn't vote for, voted to ban police cameras, I will bet my absolute bottom dollar that it was done to appease the police union.

The police union and their political control over local governments is the beginning and end of 95% of policing problems.

And to be crystal clear, there is no law against police cameras. There is an ordinance that doesn't explicitly carve out an exception like it did for dashcams, but again, that exception was explicitly not carved out at the behest of cops.

There is basically no group of any serious size that is against putting cameras on cops, except for cops, and politicians that have been corrupted by cops. The only two serious groups in the world against putting cameras on police are corrupt cops and corrupt politicians. Unfortunately, corrupt cops and their corrupt politicians do in fact have a lot of power.

Hopefully this man's death will lead to policy change, one corpse at a time.

Let's see the police cam footage then. That should clear everything up.

Oh right, there is none.

The problem is a complete and total lack of police accountability. They might have been in the right, but we will never know because the police's absolute number one job above all else, is to protect the police. That's why we don't have footage of this shooting despite the fact that there isn't a single good reason for that.

I'm what way? A company sees that their books look fucked and warning that they are going to start purging based upon performance sounds long in advance sounds.... like the right way to do it. What's the legal issue?