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Latest poll shows Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly support trans rights

And want a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision giving corporations free reign in political funding, but are very meh on the nursing-ratio question, WBUR reports.

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Yes on all three questions.

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2 out of 3 ain't bad

No on the nursing question - talked to a friend who has several relatives in the medical profession - the nurses are telling her to vote yes and everyone else is telling her to vote no.

This sounds like a logistical disaster.

I love nurses. My mom's a nurse (retired) and I have had some amazing - though fortunately infrequent - care at MGH. But sticking a one size fits all glove on something as complex as health care can't end up a good thing.

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the nurses are telling her to vote yes and everyone else is telling her to vote no.

To me, that nurses are urging for 'Yes' votes seems at least intriguing if not compelling. Why would you vote 'No' when those who this directly affects (it's seemingly a labor issue) are telling you that they would prefer a 'Yes' vote?

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Exactly, not a care issue. The front line people not benefiting from the law are saying it is bad for care. I'm voting with them.

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It's a labor issue, which is why it eventually becomes a care issue. If staff is overburdened, they cannot provide adequate care, no?

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Where are the stats that overburdened nurses are causing health risks in Mass. I'm sure there are anecdotes, but never heard of this as a systemic problem.

This is a solution in search of the problem.

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https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2018/07/02/voters-to-decide-whether...

A study commissioned by the Massachusetts Nursing Association found 90 percent of nurses surveyed — a little less than half of whom were members of the association — said they did not have enough time to "properly comfort and assist patients and families." Further, 77 percent reported medical errors, including wrong medications and dosage.

That paragraph has a link to the study in it if you open it.

Also, you expect the people who oppose the measure to study the very thing that they are voting against? Do you think I'm stupid?

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That's an unbiased poll.

Errors, pretty much all of us make errors at work. Better systems will probably go much further than more people fixing an errors problem.

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Without doing any of your own research. But, can you pinpoint where the polling methods were flawed? Or is this purely an argument from emotion?

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Let me poll 3rd graders on whether recess should be longer.

Etc.

Do you EVER do any independent thinkig?

Or are you a DNC/union bot?

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Got it.

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I was polling gazelles to see if they didn't like getting eaten by cheetahs.

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Nurses are frontline people...

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If it were closer to California's bill, which has more flexibility built into it and a more realistic timeline for implementation, I'd vote for it. But it's too rigid, has to be implemented unrealistically quickly, and has smaller ratios than the CA one.

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Who says it actually has to be implemented by the originally planned date?
If that was really the case, I wouldn't STILL have to get (supposedly) legal weed from an illegal source.

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It's "free rein," like with a horse.

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OK, so the question, if I read it correctly sets up a fifteen person commission (um, state expense? Nope, says they're unpaid) to check into it. But, as with most fairly sneaky proposals, there's more...

"The commission would also be required to develop reports on (1) political and election spending in Massachusetts, (2) the legal ability of the state government to regulate corporations, (4) proposals for federal constitutional amendments, and actions recommended for advancing the proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution.[3]"
https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_Question_2,_Advisory_Commission_fo...(2018)

Well, on the Federal level, it's hopeless, but the state level is an entirely different matter.

[ed]: Here's a link to the ballot measures:
https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_2018_ballot_measures

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Who are these 21% that are No on 3?

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who showed up to vote for Scott Lively. There are retrograde assholes who value party over country and humanity everywhere, even in our own little blue haven Commonwealth. Hell, some of them post here. (Hi FISH and dmc!)

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Sample Specimen Ballot for upcoming Election available by email, request via https://www.boston.gov/departments/election

Or request via another City/Town Clerks Office or Election Commission.

Post a favorite Sample Specimen Ballot !...

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All of us righties have been saying for a long time that after 2nd Amendment fell, the 1st would be the next domino.

The thing that puzzles me (in an academic sense) is that throughout history, rights get curtailed because of wars or other major disruptions to society. America in 2018 isn't at war the way it had been shortly before the Alien and Sedition Acts passed or the way it was in 1917 when the federal government criminalized criticism of Wilson's foreign policy. GDP growth is good. Real incomes are ticking up a bit. We've never been freer to communicate or to travel or to obtain material possessions. Food is cheap. So what gives?

My hypothesis is that it's (as Sergei Brin famously put in that leaked video) boredom and apathy. We've all (most of us at least) had freedom and prosperity for so damn long, we've lost sight of what conditions are necessary to make it happen because we've never seen the difference. So some of us go about screaming bloody murder about socialism being cool or accusations being equivalent to evidence of guilt or freedom of speech being unacceptably dangerous. Because most of the people nodding along don't know any better.

Sure, there are a few true believers and a few manipulators but most people going along with this aren't thinking too deeply about the implications of what they're going along with. Here's a leftist, having been mugged by reality, saying roughly the same thing:

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What planet are you writing from?

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The one where Texas (Texas!) is a patchwork of legally-binding gun-free zones, Massachusetts is a hotbed of activism to run S&W out of business, and leftists across the land look me in the eye with a straight face and tell me that plain and simple language in the nation's founding documents don't mean what they say because "complexity."

Amy Chua wrote up a nice piece for the Atlantic a few weeks ago about us all needing a common set of values in order for us to function as a pluralistic society.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/the-threat-of-triba...

On the face of it, there's nothing to object to here. But if you take it to its logical conclusion, then you have to start admitting things like the 2nd Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear arms and the 1st Amendment protects all speech, especially the controversial kind. The words on the page are one thing; the cultural value of actively aspiring to live up to the meaning of the words on the page is orthogonal to that (on paper, there's free speech in China too), and the thing that makes America great is that (up to now) most people took that seriously and tried to live by it.

Well, we can't have that. So oh how convenient...a few days later an anonymous accusation gets published claiming Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld both groomed women for Judge Kavanaugh. Go try proving a negative.

That's the planet I'm living on Adam. The one where every inch of freedom must be defended against a thousand cuts of derision, slander, and outright power grabs. If this Constitutional Convention the ballot question is asking for actually convenes, what amendment would come out of it?

Would it say that only for-profit businesses have no right to political advocacy? Well if taken at face value, it would shut down the entire lobbying apparatus in DC. You might think that's good. But it won't be.

Here's an example: Congress and the Executive Branch would be able to pass any regulation they want and no one would be able to spend the money necessary to tell them why it would be a bad idea. For example, Congress could pass a 500% tax on prescription drugs, or a cap on salaries paid to employees of hospitals that accept medicare or medicaid. And there would be a whole host of socialist cheerleaders egging them on to do it. But just like in Venezuela...it would lead to disaster because people don't work for free. Except there would be no one to campaign against such a regulation and the echo chamber would prevail.

But! you might say. There'd be nothing that prevents non-profits from lobbying congress. OK, cool. So all that cash that flows from corporate lobbying would start flowing into universities and paid-for think tanks incorporated as non-profits. And with a slight fig-leaf of extra overhead, the lobbying and campaign contributions will continue as is. And this is obvious, so forgive me if I make the assumption that this proposed amendment would bar any and all political spending, period.

Well cool. But what's political spending? Is paying for a lawyer to argue in court that the ramrodded legislation in my example is a violation of the Constitutional rights to property? We all know a good lawyer does PR too, so are there now constraints on how any person on the company payroll may communicate with the public to advocate for the company and its shareholders?

What's a corporation? If U-hub weren't a one-man operation and you had an employee and/or owned your own servers, you might form an LLC to limit your own exposure to risk if your sever farm catches fire or your employee sues you for not giving him a religious holiday in honor of the Feast of Maximum Occupancy. Would you now be limited in what you can publish on your website? If you were pushing a political position (not that you do that, of course), would you not be able to take out ads to gin up a user base?

Where's the built-in limit to safe-guard rights and freedoms?

All of these questions have messy answers. The way we have (to date) addressed them if by acknowledging that centralized decisionmaking is ill-suited to providing these answers and we have left government out of it. That cultural value is enshrined in the Bill of Rights as written. Now people want to take it apart. Why?

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The 1st Amendment does not protect "all" speech.

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you *read* that whole thing? I just listen to a couple of minutes of trombone music, Charlie Brown style, to get the gist of it

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n/t

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The only exception to the blanket protection is direct incitement to violence. Leave it up to the hard left to take that and run with it by equating disagreement with violence and viola! any speech you disagree with is violent and subject to the banhammer.

Well, I don't like where that leads. So I'm going to assert that yes, for all intents and purposes the First Amendment DOES protect all speech.

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It still doesn't.

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You're confusing it with a self-evident fact. I hold the opposite opinion for reasons I've stated. I won't say you're wrong, but I will say that the path your choice leads down is one I'd rather not travel, and you might not either if you took the time to have an original thought about the subject.

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Examples of speech that aren't protected: slander and libel. I reiterate, the first amendment does not protect "all speech."

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is on the one making the accusation of slander or libel. Barring proof, the speech is protected.

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The speech is illegal. "All speech" is not protected from the 1st Amendment. Glad we agree.

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I definitely agree that viola speech should be protected. Such an under-appreciated instrument.

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If i had to pay for that thing you wrote, I'd have to take a job as an indentured servant.

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Not one from this galaxy. Also combine with alternate universe.

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The funny thing about this whole debate is that it just didn't exist until the 1960's when Black Panthers and Malcolm X started openly carrying. In fact, the NRA used to support gun control.

"Less than a decade after Reagan argued that it was "ridiculous" for people to walk around packing heat, he changed his tune. In large part, the impetus was a 1977 coup within the NRA, with right-wingers seizing control of the organization from its traditional leaders, who viewed it as more of a sportsmen's club. Led by a journalist named Neal Knox, the new NRA leaders staked out a passionately anti-government course, depicting gun control legislation — in particular, the creation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms — as part of a sinister liberal agenda. As Knox himself put it when describing the 1960s:"

https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-support-mulf...
https://thepriceofsafety.weebly.com/the-black-panther-party-and-the-adve...
https://www.salon.com/2017/10/08/gun-control-and-history-its-never-been-...

My favorite question for gun advocates is to ask them what the 2nd amendment actually says, word for word.

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In fact, I ask it frequently in relation to each and every clause in the Constitution.

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Where does the First Amendment say that you have a right to know if somebody's body parts match the social assignment of their clothing?

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The first amendment says you get to declare yourself to be whatever gender you make up, but it also says you cannot use the force of government to compel me to act like I believe you.

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Because that's the only behavior that's being compelled here. How about you just don't harass anyone, regardless of what you think about how they choose to present their gender?

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God! You're so far off to crazy town I don't think I could have a conversation with you in person.

Here's a little ray of humility into your otherwise self-assured life: I don't claim to be right about everything all the time, but neither should you.

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So long as it stays inside your head and does not result in you excluding people from public restrooms,

How simple is that?

I happen to think that you are an evil space alien, but I still have to let you use the restroom if you buy pizza here.

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All I've seen is a law against harassment and discrimination against trans people. Can you explain what exactly that law is compelling you to do, assuming you're not actually trying to harass or discriminate against anyone?

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Here's what I honest-to-God object to:

Suppose a biological female who "identifies" as a woman this morning were to enter the men's locker room this afternoon. Under the broad antidiscrimination law, she cannot be kicked out if she claims that she "identifies" as a man. Likewise, a biological male can enter the womens locker room and could not be kicked out if he claimed he was a woman.

The way the law is written, there is no way to question the claim of the man who says he's a woman or the woman who says she's a man without subjecting oneself to charges of harassment.

Now, if you don't object to disrobing in front of strangers of the opposite gender, your immediate response to this would be that it's an irrelevant concern because no one would complain about something they don't object to in the first place.

BUT. I do object to disrobing in front of the opposite gender. For reasons of religious sexual modesty as well as for reasons of mercenary practicality: I don't believe members of the opposite sex should be naked together unless they are at the very least "friends" and I don't want to subject myself to charges sexual harassment by exposing my genitalia to a stranger of the oppose gender.

Well, about the only thing you can say about the former is that it's a value judgment on my part that is based in religion and ought not have the force of law. To which I say that it goes both ways. The law must not disallow me to live in a way that accords with my religious beliefs. Banning single-sex locker rooms would do just that based on your value judgment. That is also wrong.

And about the latter, you could say, no one is going to go into the opposite gender locker room if they're going to be offended by what they see. Mostly yes, but suppose you find one sociopath who goes into the locker room when I'm the only one in there. Suddenly I'm alone and naked with a woman who will metaphorically have me by the balls because she can claim that I disrobed in front of her without her consent. And why would she lie? As a transgender man, she would want privacy and wouldn't knowingly go into a locker room if she were going to be exposed.

All it takes is one sociopath and I've got to defend myself against serious allegations and in today's climate, I'd have to prove a negative.

That's what I object to: the law as written is setting people up to be exploited by individuals with malicious intent, AND all the cheerleaders for this law are sticking their fingers in their ears, changing lalala, and telling me that it's OK if a few innocent people get ensnared in a legal morass and have their reputations tarnished for life because PROGRESS! That's what I object to even more, come to think of it.

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There are already gay males in the locker room with you. Are you scared?

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BUT. I do object to disrobing in front of the opposite gender.

Use a stall. Pretend you are in Europe where many places have stalls and a common wash area. Or like an older generation in New England that didn't like undressing in front of anyone.

The way the law is written, there is no way to question the claim of the man who says he's a woman or the woman who says she's a man without subjecting oneself to charges of harassment.

Because that IS harassment.

How about this for a locker room scene. Pan Mass Challenge 2003. First day is 60 or 110 miles. The locker room is packed with women - including a couple of transwomen. Nobody is hiding. People are chatting while waiting for the showers. People take showers and then clear out to dress in the open area so that more people can get through. Many are scarred. Some are lacking limbs. Some have no breasts. Others are living with complications.

Nobody cares. We all rode long long distances that day with whatever we had to ride with - not a bad body in the place. The trans women, too. We were all sisters on wheels.

That's what being a secure adult means in this life.

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and explain to me why your definition of being a "secure adult"

a) is universally shared
b) should be universally imposed if it is not universally shared
c) has anything at all to do with addressing a real problem of preventing men from perving out on women changing in the locker room.

While you're at it, explain to the class how dismissing item c as rare and not worth worrying about is intellectually consistent with claiming that nearly all men would be sexual predators if let off their leash? Rape epidemic and all that.

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You aren't secure or adult enough.

Secure adults don't insist on penis/pussy checking other people based on their wacky paranoid fears that are not based in reality or statistically verifiable.

Simple.

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Because you haven't answered the question that I posed to you.

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Secure adults don't insist on penis/pussy checking other people based on their wacky paranoid fears that are not based in reality or statistically verifiable.

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you can't see past your own solipsism.

Modesty is not a whacky paranoid fear and values are not something you can measure the way you can measure the mass of the electron.

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Modesty is not a whacky paranoid fear and values are not something you can measure the way you can measure the mass of the electron.

That's fine, Roman. I have no problem if your feelings of modesty make changing in a locker room an uncomfortable situation for you. But if that's the case, you should refrain from using locker rooms. Change at home, find a stall, do what you have to do. But if the problem is your discomfort with using a public space for its intended purpose, along with other people who are doing the same, then it's on you to remove yourself from that space, not that the space be transformed into something that you are comfortable with.

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You realize that you have just, word for word, made my argument for single-sex locker rooms, right?

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They told *you* to do your changing elsewhere. The trans people can handle themselves fine, as will others who are in the locker room. Literally the only problem in this scenario is you.

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Banning single-sex locker rooms would do just that based on your value judgment. That is also wrong.

How do you feel about banning single-race locker rooms?

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I keep forgetting. Race is an immutable characteristic but sex isn't?

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Is a social construct.

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Particular gender roles can be, but gender is not a social construct. The distinction between gender and biological sex is an artificial one. It is concocted by people with vested interests in convincing the rest of us to not believe what we see with our own eyes. You are one of those people.

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Your cock- unsure ignorance does not change reality.

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Where does the first amendment say you get to bully people different from you until they wet their pants, then kill them for fun?

Seems to be why you are complaining.

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does it say you get to kill people for sport, but "bullying" is a red herring. If bullying is physical violence then you don't get to do it. If "bullying" is saying things I don't like then yeah...you do get to do it. The only limit is that you cannot compel me to listen, but I cannot compel you to shut up.

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Amy Chua wrote up a nice piece for the Atlantic a few weeks ago about us all needing a common set of values in order for us to function as a pluralistic society.

You want to force your values on others by bullying.

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Oh no! An internet anon asserts that I have contradicted myself when clearly I have not.

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You said you don't have a mental health professional. Go find one to help you.

Somehow, some way, you have conflated legal protections for people you don't like (which we wouldn't need if your lot could behave like humans and grownups about it) with the demise of guns and democracy?

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Seems like a prtection of rights... Oh you mean your "right" to oppress people along the lines of gender.

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