Other than high spending, it results in various social policies. Here are a look at five of the more liberal ones that Bay State municipalities have enacted:
1. Sanctuary Cities
If you like illegal immigration, you can thank some Massachusetts cities for making it more feasible.
Massachusetts has eight sanctuary cities, according to CBS News: Amherst, Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, Concord, Newton, Northampton, and Somerville.
The term “sanctuary city” usually refers to a municipality that welcomes illegal immigrants through local government services and limits cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Surely, many of these people come to America in search of a better life for themselves and their families. However, we’ve also seen some less-than-desirable illegal immigrants make their way into these cities, including terrorists, convicted killers, and child rapists, as NewBostonPost has reported.
While we shouldn’t vilify people who want to pick fruit and send remittances to their impoverished relatives back home, we also have to be a country of laws and a country that doesn’t incentivize awful criminals to come here.
2. Polyamory
Three municipalities in Massachusetts officially recognize polyamorous domestic partnerships: Somerville, Cambridge, and Arlington.
In these communities, domestic partnership recognition offers people a few benefits. One is visitation rights at municipal-operated health care and correctional facilities. It also allows for a child’s parent(s) or legal guardian(s) to give their domestic partners access to a child’s school records as well as access to the child, including school dismissal.
So if you, your wife, and your wife’s boyfriend want some legal recognition of your throuple, feel free to visit one of these communities and fill out some paperwork to make it happen.
3. Decriminalized Mushrooms
Somerville, Cambridge, and Northampton, three of Massachusetts’s most liberal cities, have effectively decriminalized personal possession of psilocybin, the drug compound found in what are known as magic mushrooms.
Psilocybin is a Class C drug in Massachusetts. The penalty for possession of these drugs is typically a fine of up to $1,000 or a prison sentence of up to one year for first-time offenders. For subsequent offenses, the penalty may include a fine of up to $2,000 or a prison sentence of up to two years.
But hippies of the Commonwealth need not fear. They can use shrooms in these three cities without worry the cops will enforce state law.
4. Topless Beaches
Last year, Nantucket voted at Town Meeting to allow women to go topless at its beaches, making it the first Bay State municipality with such a law in place.
Female breast exposure in certain circumstances constitutes Open and Gross Lewdness and Lascivious Behavior in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, according to Chapter 272 Section 16 of the state’s general laws; it carries a prison sentence of up to three years.
However, the penalty against female breast exposure could disappear if one citizen bill in the Massachusetts legislature were to become law, as NewBostonPost reported this week.
5. Reparations
Boston and Northampton mastered woke virtue signaling earlier this year when both formed reparations task forces. Amherst is planning to use a portion of its tax revenue from marijuana for reparations schemes.
Slavery was a terrible evil, though not a uniquely American one. However, no one enslaved in the 1600s, 1700s, or 1800s is still alive.
Municipalities should look for ways to improve the lives of all of their citizens, including black Americans. Yet taking from some people and giving to others based on their race is a dumb way to do it.
New to NewBostonPost? Conservative media is hard to find in Massachusetts. But you’ve found it. Now dip your toe in the water for two bucks — $2 for two months. And join the real revolution.
