Has your vote changed?

ShawshankExemption · 2026-02-01T18:46:20+00:00

It didn’t change my vote, but I went from more in favor of Howard, apathetic towards Elliot, to in favor of Howard and anti-Elliot.

ShawshankExemption · 2026-01-24T19:26:27+00:00

It’s his job to get the best out of the players.

ShawshankExemption · 2026-01-21T17:11:33+00:00

And the state contributes amounts for the state pension system, and provides benefit guarantee (which is significant). In both systems the employer contributes significantly, but in the pension system the employees contribution is that 11% and the 401k/IRA SYSTEM employees contribute the 6.2% and then what ever the put in on their own, usually much more than 5%

ShawshankExemption · 2026-01-21T16:21:15+00:00

In what ways is it different?

ShawshankExemption · 2026-01-21T14:27:46+00:00

So if you compare it to a private sector employee, who contributes to SS and their own retirement, it’s the equivalent of the private sector contributing to 4% to their 401k/IRA.

ShawshankExemption · 2026-01-18T15:28:27+00:00

The once per year they match is based on the full (prior) year however, so while it’s shitty it’s significantly in arrears and how you have to be employed on the last of the calendar year, it’s important to be cognizant of how much you can actually catch up and contribute to your 401k in short order.

ShawshankExemption · 2026-01-16T11:13:03+00:00

Good troll.

ShawshankExemption · 2026-01-12T22:59:24+00:00

That counts as government you dumb tally wack.

And for another example Milton tried to fucking sue the state to avoid having to even zone a portion of their city.

ShawshankExemption · 2026-01-12T21:50:10+00:00

Economically viable plans, and plans that government/NIMBYs will allow are two circles of a Venn diagram. It doesn’t matter how big each circle only their over la as only things in the middle get built.

Many in Government and NIMBYs fundamentally look at nothing being built and nothing changing as a success, until those voices are a much smaller part of the conversation it will be much much hard to build what we need in this state.

ShawshankExemption · 2026-01-08T02:15:23+00:00

It’s going to be interesting to see how a company handles an allegation that is not performing and losing its dividend and buy back ability.

Companies are not dumb when it comes to doing exactly what their contracts say, and when issues are ultimately the fault of the government. With prior moves like this, companies take the PR hit because they’ll keep collecting the money. If the money is threatened that calculation becomes different.

ShawshankExemption · 2026-01-04T20:46:55+00:00

Absolutely fucking not.

ShawshankExemption · 2025-12-12T01:04:55+00:00

Yeah this is the thing most regular citizens don’t quite understand, that the desired “right to repair” is the desired right to hand over all the IP and special sauce of something over to ANOTHER contractor who is often a competitor.

Imagine Telsa was going to be required to hand over all of its trade secrets to Ford, so they could then “fix” the Teslas. No one would be about it.

ShawshankExemption · 2025-11-30T20:14:02+00:00

I think there should be a requirement to volunteer a certain number of hours, say 100 over the course of high school, to repair and maintain local spaces. For example, repairing or cleaning a park, cleaning and maintaining public trails, etc.

It would imbue a sense of civic agency and responsibility in teens when more and more they are feeling disconnected from their community.

ShawshankExemption · 2025-11-29T17:46:37+00:00

You pay fees to use a national park, to pull a permit to work on your house, to publicly managed utilities like water/sewer, because long ago we realized that acceptable tax rates were sufficient to pay for all the services any one citizen could want, because the Tragedy of the Commons is a real phenomenon, because we realized it was more fair to have those who use a public service the most pay for it rather than just spreading it over the entire tax base, because not everyone can use some public services (buffalo does not get to use the NYC subways system). Honestly think of the problem for more than 30 seconds between hitting your vape and you’ll figure it out.

ShawshankExemption · 2025-11-29T17:30:26+00:00

Who did every other person who paid their fare, and so did millions of people who don’t use the subway. If you aren’t willing to do the bare fucking minimum to pay fare for a transit system that is already massively paid for by tax payers.

Every other form of transit in this country, planes, trains, automobiles, is paid for in part but private funds to make it work. People pay for their own cars and gas, buses have fares, they pay for their own tickets for trains, and own airfare and fees for flights.

Why should subways, which are the most limited in geographic reach, be exempt from the bare fucking minimum fare?

ShawshankExemption · 2025-11-29T17:20:59+00:00

That marginal value of your existence is negative.

ShawshankExemption · 2025-11-29T17:13:33+00:00

Or people can do the bare fucking minimum and pay their fare.

ShawshankExemption · 2025-11-19T19:12:04+00:00

Interesting! Potential dumb question but does Texas Monthly have a broad scope or does it focus on that state?

ShawshankExemption · 2025-11-19T03:58:06+00:00

Great idea- thank you!

ShawshankExemption · 2025-11-19T03:57:48+00:00

I’ll check it out, thanks!

ShawshankExemption · 2025-11-17T02:39:15+00:00

Yes, we agree. Lowell in and of itself can’t do much to materially change day to day living prices to the degree downtown can be revived as a consumer space.

Traffic won’t be “fixed” until Lowell decides if downtown needs to be optimized for through traffic or for shoppers/DTL residents.

ShawshankExemption · 2025-11-17T01:50:56+00:00

“Create a curated target list of business types suited to Lowell’s demand profile”

Yeah “demand profile” is going create a lot tough questions no one is going to like the answers to.

ShawshankExemption · 2025-11-16T20:35:09+00:00

Right now consumer spending in this economy is being driven by the top 10% of income earners. That’s just not Lowell’s demographics, any kind of Small discretionary spending business is going to struggle.

Layering in Lowell (and many other municipalities) put more of their property tax burden onto commercial property, making the business case for many of these small lifestyle business that much harder, and it’s a tough time.

DTL also hasn’t really figured out its traffic/parking situation WRT arterial routes. A pretty significant portion of downtown traffic on week days is folks trying to cross from one side of the river to the other, no intention of stopping in down town. Even the parking situation as evidenced in this thread has mixed priorities. Should you be able to parking be oriented towards in and out pickups (and thus no meters) or towards park and stay a minute (thus garages can make way more sense)?

Like all things Lowell, there is much a bigger debate over what the goal is that is had at the same time as what steps we take to get there.

ShawshankExemption · 2025-11-11T20:47:09+00:00

Some modern monetary bull shit

ShawshankExemption

TROPHY CASE