Absolutely. I get a lot of value for my tax dollars. I like safe infrastructure. I like having well maintained parks, traffic lights, good schools, safe cars, safe school busses, public transportation options, libraries and well paid government employees who serve the community. Those things aren’t free, but it’s the price I pay for the standard of living that I want. And that standard of living, when supported by tax dollars, is maintained community-wide, which reduces such problems as poverty, which in turn reduces crime. It’s a pretty good deal.

People who grumble about high property taxes in good school systems also don’t seem to appreciate how much funding that school system increases their property values. Maybe they don’t have school age kids, so they think they’re not receiving any benefit, but if you dug up their house and planted it two towns over where they would pay lower taxes, their house is now worth $100k, $200k, maybe $1m less, just to save like $1k a year.

And don’t even get me started on the Live Free or Die/rugged individualist people who imagine themselves as some kind of cowboy living in the wild Wild West as they drive on roads funded by taxpayer dollars, eat meat inspected by safety inspectors, live and work in buildings and drive cars that comply with safety codes - every single thing they can do safely throughout their day is thanks to some kind of government regulation. Most of those people have never traveled to other countries that lack our kind of standards, maybe they’d appreciate what they have.

That said, I don’t think they are the majority or even close. I think most people like a government that guarantees a certain standard of living, infrastructure and safety for its citizens. The “Live Free” people who want to dismantle it are outliers and the government officials who actually vote to dismantle it do so only because they are bought and paid for by big business.

100% that it mostly evens out because if something isn’t taxed, or is taxed lower, they make up the revenue somewhere else. That said, property taxes are local and can vary wildly depending upon where you live, esp in ME. If you live in a ME city or a town with public water/sewer, the property taxes are much higher than in a rural town on a home of equal value. And of course, property taxes are based on the value of a home, which a lot of people don’t get as they just look at the dollar amount of what they pay. My property taxes in MA are 5x higher than my property taxes in ME (no public water/sewer), but my house in MA is worth 3x more and the MA taxes pay for public water, sewer, trash removal/recycling (not covered in my ME property taxes), excellent town amenities and I’m in a top MA public school system, so I’m getting a lot of value for that tax money.

Does this museum have a gift shop? Would not be antiquey- but def has weird covered.

https://cryptozoologymuseum.com

Honestly I see this as a major customer relationship issue to be handled by management. If the manager says it’s a problem, they should handle it themselves and not shirk responsibility.

I’m sorry that you feel threatened by women who demand to be treated as equally valuable humans. The good news is that insecurity is a treatable condition.

Republican women employ impressive mental gymnastics to minimize or excuse misogynistic comments, because they need the approval of Republican patriarchal men in order to feel powerful in a conservative social hierarchy that makes them second class citizens.

Yes. This is the kind of grievance that the far right exploits in order to manipulate the masses to hate people they think have a higher social status than they do. Whenever I see the recurring “masshole” theme here, I cringe because the most important lesson of history is this kind of bullshit leads to dark places. When you press them to explain it, they can’t. MA did nothing to them, and if anything, they are ME’s most valuable ally. We don’t see all this hate for NH, which is full of hard right militia neo-Nazis. But what they don’t have in NH is a large prosperous city to resent.

Good jobs bring large populations of skilled people and, in turn, a higher CoL. People-y and expensive are things that Mainers dislike the most. Life is full of trade-offs. People in MA trade 12 hours of their day schlepping to and from their jobs, which they have to in order to afford their housing, and they have little to no free time. Mainers have all of the free time but less of the money. Nobody is actually happy. But I’ve never heard a MA person diss Mainers. They love ME, think of the people as really friendly, helpful, down to earth.

I appreciate this debate because I’m trying to understand the facts. Even if they are climate change denying right wingers (which most certainly not all of them are - and maybe fewer than we suspect are), we definitely want to show up for them. WF boycott? What organized efforts are there to support the lobstermen?

Wear a costume, get candy! I hope you have tons of fun!

Please vote.

Massachusetts is one of our most reliable democracy defenders, and they are saving us from straight up nazi bullshit from the far right. They are an ally. Let’s not do this.

Subhuman? Wow. That’s straight up Third Reich Trumperspeak. Massachusetts, New York, California, etc., are our most reliable defenders of democracy, and I think it’s in our best interest to not dehumanize them.

I think the more active/vocal it is, the more it will scare large swaths of people into voting for the theocratic, know-nothing, conspiracy theorist, fascist, democracy-hating, lawless, racist, sexist and xenophobic Republicans which are a clear and present danger to democracy. I don’t think most Americans want to live in a China or North Korea.