Ultimately, any law will require state violence if it is to be enforceable. This means that some kind of police force will be required in any society that isn't pure anarchy. The system might have the cops brutalize civil rights protestors, but it also might employ them to protect protestors from terrorists or to arrest a CEO who has committed billions in wage theft. The specifics matter, even if our current specifics are so screwed up that it's hard to see how to untangle them.

> I think this is a trope now - there is a real push for reform and while I believe the system needs an overhaul, I do believe that progress is being made and new recruits are not "constantly looking the other way"...

I would love to believe that, but there are just too many stories of police misconduct that keep coming out, even misconduct occurring post-George Floyd. Really makes it seem like the touted reforms are token at best (and outright distraction at worst -- gee, look at that, police funding is actually going up!).

> Said anther way, if you don't see change then you are not fucking paying attention.

There's been a patchwork attempt to slightly mitigate police misconduct in some states, but the broader systems and the incentives are the same, which means the same patterns will emerge over time. So long as the system is arranged in such a way that the police can routinely cover up their own misconduct, the police will continue to trends towards bastardry. Put differently, the police have very few checks and balances in place right now.

ACAB doesn't mean that literally everyone with a badge right now is a bastard. There are good cops... temporarily. What ACAB means is that every good cop will eventually either become a bad cop or they'll get drummed out of the force.

Notably, a cop who doesn't personally abuse their power but does allow other cops to abuse theirs is still a bad cop. I can easily imagine a new recruit joining up to try to change the system from inside, only to get relentlessly bullied and screwed over because they don't let it slide when their coworkers do evil shit. Nobody can maintain that position forever, both because it's difficult to have that much moral conviction and also because the other cops will eventually force them out.

ACAB throws a lot of people because they think the bar is literally, "shooting unarmed Black men for sport, or extorting sex from teenagers during traffic stops." They can't imagine their Uncle Fred doing either of those things, not when Uncle Fed is such a nice guy to them, plus Fred may be Black himself. But they don't think about that time Uncle Fred gave his cop buddy Sergeant Sam an alibi for that hassle he got into last year over an unfortunate traffic stop that escalated into a foot chase, or the other time Uncle Fred, "lost," some paperwork that would have implicated his other buddy Officer Jess in something that was totally just a misunderstanding, you see. They don't realize that those are the sorts of things that allow systemic abuse to rampage freely for decades, making Fred just as culpable as Sam and Jess and all the other bastards he helped continue their bastardry. Fred's a bastard too, even if he's never murdered or raped anyone himself.

Mainly so that you don't look even ruder than they are, making yourself seem like a hypocrite...

Now access to public transportation is a good reason to consider another location. You're not treating these people as if they're smelly human garbage but instead taking their needs into account.

> mostly industrial

Ah but see, it's not entirely industrial! There's Clifford Playground right across the street, plus there's still some residential housing in the area. Someone would object and say that there must be a better place.

> There's also a hotel right at the South Bay Center that is away from residential neighborhoods enough where they wiukdnt be impacted.

I would bet good money that if you proposed sticking this new building there, some people in those neighborhoods would still claim to be impacted. Plus it looks like there are a number of schools within a few blocks of the South Bay Center anyway, so that automatically disqualifies the location by NIMBY standards.

There are better and worse places to put low-income housing, but requirements this strict just means that such housing will never be built.

So the issue is, everywhere is next to kids. If we use NIMBY arguments, then there's literally nowhere we can put unhoused people. Everywhere with any kind of infrastructure is going to have other people living somewhat nearby, and that means families, and that means children. The simple fact that there might be a child within 5 miles cannot be used to prevent adding an apartment building for formally unhoused or lower-income people, because that would mean that such housing simply can't exist and the problem remains unsolvable. If we want to solve homelessness, we need to modify the criteria for housing them, and NIMBYs never propose reasonable criteria.

> What will happen is the property and the surrounding area will be trashed with people getting high, crime increasing and turn into a micro Mass and Cass. I wish it wasn't true but it absolutely is and if you think otherwise then you're delusional!

Housing-first solutions are evidence-based and proven to work better than treatment-first solutions. Seriously, google it and you'll find mountains of evidence. Giving someone a home doesn't magically make all their problems go away on its own, but it does make some of their problems go away, and it makes many of their remaining problems dramatically easier to address.

> The anomaly keeps happening repeatedly and it's always favoring the same side

Al Gore has entered the chat

Any election this close needs a few recounts. That said, you're not wrong that the GQP has been particularly lawsuit-happy these days, so they were probably thinking of suing no matter the margin.

Why would anyone rigging an election choose to win by exactly one vote? Why wouldn't you win by enough so it's not weird?

There's absolutely no reason for Dems to rig elections in New England.

The Cape can actually be quite nice this time of year. There's less to do than in the Summer, but you also don't have any crowds to compete with and plenty of wilder areas to explore.

> Fall River's motto is "we'll try" which seems appropriate for most police.

Whoa, look at the overachievers over here!

In that context, he gets creamed at the polls, and it isn't close. Much as I dislike Baker, I would need to have a lot more faith in the GQP electorate than I do to believe he has any kind of chance of finding a foothold.

Maybe the GQP will be ready for sanity after another round of Trump and his MAGAts losing badly, but in that scenario they would probably just be out of serious contention for a few election cycles. Trump gave his party permission to be bigots and many of them won't jump ship just because he's lost all viability. This results in an effective split in the GQP between the power-mongers who only care about the will to power and the bigots who only care about being told it's ok to hate minorities, and those factions will have a hard time supporting the same candidates in that scenario.

Baker only has a shot right in the primary now if he skews hard Right and Trump drops out of '24. Neither of those things seem likely.

In that context, "like," just means, "for example." Comparing two politicians isn't figurative language, so it isn't a simile. The impression is that /u/BF1shY was considering Baker in a Democratic primary rather than a GQP one, though even if they meant, "we," to mean the GQP, it still wouldn't be a simile.

I grew up in the SF Bay Area and I totally agree. Drivers out here scare the shit out of me. Not nearly as much as Connecticut or New York drivers, and then there's NH drivers who clearly have no will to live, but at least 1 out of every 5 drivers in Mass. has no business being on the road. Driving when I'm back in California is so much less stressful.

The entirely of Rt. 1 is a warcrime. Also, the 93/95 interchange should be taken out behind the chemical shed and shot.

Hilldale, 1955, clearly. Or possibly Narnia, if someone lost a wardrobe off the side of their truck.

Did they get evicted if they refused to pay?

I didn't realize, "stop being such monstrous assholes to service workers," was a hot take but here we are.

I get what you're saying, but I would actually prefer a competetive race between two sane options. The Democrats would be a lot better if they weren't running against Saturday morning cartoon villains hellbent on tying Democracy itself to the train tracks. Right now, Dems can just skate on, "not an existential threat to the nation," and not actually deliver true Progressive policies.

Wait, it's possible to drive under 100 mph in New Hampshire? What about Live Free and Die?

To be fair, it doesn't say what they'll try.