siriel | Reading

Oy, Massachusetts! This year we're doing our democacy at the honors level: we have, for our sins, nine ballot questions.

As is customary, I have left doing my homework to more or less the last minute. Can I cheat off your work?

Here's my thoughts so far. All texts except where otherwise indicated taken from the above link at the Sec of State website:

Question 1: Broadening the public records law:

This proposed law would make most records held by the Legislature and the Office of the Governor public records under the Massachusetts Public Records Law. This proposed law would exempt documents related to the development of public policy and communications between legislators and their constituents, if those communications are reasonably related to a constituent’s request for assistance in obtaining government-provided benefits or services or interacting with a government agency.

A YES VOTE would make most records held by the Legislature and the Office of the Governor public records under the Massachusetts Public Records Law.

A NO VOTE would make no change to the Massachusetts Public Records Law.

I like transparency and accountability, so am inclined to YES, but also I really like a lot of the outcomes we've gotten so I am reluctant to tamper with the system as it is without knowing more about it. The Lege, itself, is against this and I don't know if there's some good reason why beyond enabling corruption.

I guess I am really interested to hear whether anyone has any cogent reasons for voting NO.

Question 2: Letting public defender lawyers unionize:

This proposed law would specify that employees of the Committee for Public Counsel Services (“CPCS”) are permitted to engage in collective bargaining with their employer. It would also require CPCS, after executing a collective bargaining agreement, to request the appropriation necessary to fund such agreement from the Governor.

A YES VOTE would specify that Committee for Public Counsel Services employees may form a union to collectively bargain with their employer.

A NO VOTE would make no change to the law governing labor relations for Committee for Public Counsel Service employees.

This is a law to allow public defenders – the lawyers provided at state expense to indigent defendants – to unionize and collectively negotiate for a raise.

The obvious reason to vote NO is because it will cost MA money, maybe a lot of it. I think that is bullshit. It seems to me there are four compelling reasons to vote YES:

• I think the lawyers that do this are goddamn heroes – or at least are asked to be – and should be adequately compensated;

• I don't want the legal defense of indigent defendents dependent on this service to be undermined by inadequate compensation of their legal counsel (nor of their legal counsel being over-assigned);

• I don't want public defender jobs to pay so poorly that few to no lawyers are willing to take them, I want them to be good jobs that attract vigorous competition from lots of qualified job candidates;

• and, most importantly, SOLIDARITY FOREVER: all workers are workers, even in the "professional" jobs, and I will always vote yes on the right for workers to unionize. If Massachusetts can't handle unionized public defenders, oh well. Ruat caelum.

Question 3: Eliminating political party primaries:

This proposed law would eliminate political party primaries for state elections and instead establish a system where there would be a single, all-party primary in which all candidates, regardless of their party affiliation, would be listed on one ballot, and voters could vote for any candidate on the ballot. The two candidates receiving the most votes in the primary would advance to the general election ballot.

This proposed law would require candidates for governor and lieutenant governor to run and be listed jointly on the ballot in the primary.

This proposed law would provide political party status to any group whose candidates for any statewide office received at least 3% of the ballots cast in the state primary.

What is proposed is what I understand is meant by a "jungle primary".

I have very mixed feelings about what I have heard about it. On one hand, I've mostly heard negativity, and the argument that it increases the influence of money on elections – I don't actually know that's true.

On the other hand, my understanding of MA politics suggests this would guarantee we never see another Republican governor again in our lifetimes. The current party primary system is basically affirmative action for our GOP minority. If they had to compete head-to-head against Democrat (and other, progressive) candidates in their primary, they'd never get another candidate on the ballot.

Thing is, historically, MA has had some very nice Republican governors, most recently Charlie Baker. I am sad at the thought of giving up on the MA Republican party, but given the disease that is Trumpism, maybe there's nothing left but to put that dog down.

Question 4: Allowing Election Day voter registration:

This proposed law would permit eligible individuals to register to vote or update their voter registration address on Election Day.

An individual who is eligible to vote could register to vote on Election Day by going to the polling place in the precinct where they live during voting hours and presenting proof of residency and signing a written oath. Proof of residency could be a valid photo identification, or documentation showing the individual’s name and the address where the individual resides, such as a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, residential lease, wireless telephone statement, paycheck, current student fee statement or other document from a post-secondary school, or another government document or correspondence. The written oath would require the individual to certify that they are a citizen of the United States, are at least 18 years old, are not legally prohibited from voting, and have not and will not vote in the same election at another location. The oath would require the individual to acknowledge that providing false information is a felony punishable by not more than 5 years imprisonment or a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.

If an individual did not present proof of residency, they would be allowed to cast a provisional ballot, which would be counted only if the individual returned to provide the required information before the close of polls for a municipal election; within two days after a state primary; or within six days after a state election.

Individuals who register to vote on Election Day would be registered to vote in future elections as well as in the election taking place that day.

Individuals who are already registered to vote would not be able to change their political party affiliation on Election Day.

The proposed law would take effect on January 1, 2028.

I'm wildly in favor of anything that improves the citizenry's access to voting. The only reason I can see not to vote YES on 4 is if it's some sneaky way to roll back other voter registration provisions. Like, I can't figure out whether or not it requires a higher standard of evidence of eligibility than other ways of registering to vote; if so, that could be a problem because it sets a precedent. I don't get why "Individuals who are already registered to vote would not be able to change their political party affiliation on Election Day" is in there: why are we rolling that back? Was that already rolled back? Does this include for primaries? Does it matter? It used to be that if you wanted to vote in a primary and were unenrolled, you showed up, declared for a party, got the ballot, voted, and then on check out declared yourself unenrolled. These days (last I checked) an unenrolled voter (like 60% of us in MA) can just vote in a party primary without having to join the party or unjoin it after.

Question 5: Limiting state tax revenue collection:

This proposed law would change the limit on how much revenue the state can collect in a given year. The proposal would limit state revenue in a given year to the net amount of state revenue from the year before, increased by a rate equal to the average growth of wages and salaries in Massachusetts over the most recent three years. If revenue collected by the state in a given year exceeds the limit, the excess amount would be refunded to taxpayers the following year. The proposed law would include all revenue from the surtax on incomes over $1 million when calculating the revenue limit and when determining whether state revenue exceeds the limit.

The provisions of the proposed law would all be effective as of July 1, 2027.

Bwahahahah, absolutely not. Suck it, billionaires. Vote NO on 5.

Question 6: Establishing a Nature for All Fund by earmarking tax revenues:

This proposed law would establish a Nature for All Fund that, subject to appropriation by the Legislature, would receive 50% of state taxes collected from the sale and use of sporting goods, recreational vehicles, and golf courses for the first year of its operation. After July 1, 2028, the Nature for All Fund would begin receiving, subject to appropriation by the Legislature, 100% of state taxes collected on the sale and use of sporting goods, recreational vehicles, and golf courses. The sales tax revenue received by the Nature for All Fund would exclude sales tax revenue transferred to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority State and Local Contribution Fund and the School Modernization and Reconstruction Trust Fund. The proposed law would allow the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs to spend the money in the Nature for All Fund for natural resource conservation.

[...cut for length...]

This is very involved, and I can't tell if it's a good idea or not. I'm generally in favor of natural resource conservation, but I have no idea if this is a good way to go about it or not. Opponents say they don't approve of "earmarking specific revenues for specific purposes" (e.g. exact quote from the League of Women Voters): why? What's wrong with that? I thought we already do a bunch of that, like the lottery funding education (do we still do that?) and tolls on the Mass Pike funding its upkeep. Using tax money from sporting goods, recreational vehicles, and golf courses to fund the upkeep of nature sounds fitting and similar to how we've done other things. What am I not getting?

Question 7: Override municipal zoning lot-size minimums on single-family homes, drop them to a max of 5,000 sq ft:

This proposed law would allow single-family homes to be built in a residentially zoned area as long as the land on which it is to be constructed is at least 5,000 square feet, has at least 50 feet of land bordering the street, road, or public way that it faces, and has access to public sewer and water services.

The proposed law would allow cities and towns to reasonably regulate certain aspects of those single-family homes, including their height, distance from neighboring buildings, open space, parking requirements, and whether they can be rented out on a short-term basis. The proposed law would also allow the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities to issue guidance or regulations to administer the proposed law.

This summary is not a great one. What this is doing is proposing a law that would forbid towns from have zoning that requires larger lots than this, which a bunch of them – almost all of them, maybe? – currently do. Or so I'm told; nobody has provided specific examples to me. I would love to see a list of which municipalities will be impacted by this.

I don't like, on principle, using state law to override local democracy, but the housing crisis is very real and I want to see way, way more housing in MA. Also, I see the value in homogenizing zoning in the state, to make development less of a per-municipality legal quagmire. My inclination is pretty strongly to vote YES, but I am curious whether there's any real arguments against this.

Question 8: Repeal the legalization of recreational marijuana:

The proposed law would change the type and amount of marijuana that may legally be possessed in Massachusetts by repealing the laws that legalize, regulate, and tax the retail sale of adult recreational use marijuana in Massachusetts.

I'm not even going to bother quoting the rest of the summary. That would be an Oh HELL No from me.

Question 9: Keeping (or repealing) the 2024 law on firearms:

Do you approve of a law summarized below, which was approved by the House of Representatives on July 18, 2024 by a vote of 124 to 33, and approved by the Senate on July 18, 2024 by a vote of 35 to 5?

Summary

This law makes a number of changes to Massachusetts laws governing firearms. [...]

I am not going to quote the summary both because it is long and because it is bad for a bunch of reasons, including grammar.

The situation is that in 2024 the Lege passed a law, and this question is whether we still want it, or whether it should be repealed. A YES means keep the law on the books, a NO means repeal it.

I really have no idea. The entire text of the very long law as passed is at the bottom of https://www.sec.state.ma.us/divisions/elections/research-and-statistics/2026-Information-for-voters/2026-ballot-question9.htm – which is to say the bottom 90% of the page. I haven't read the whole thing, not least because even if I did, I haven't sufficient familiarity with the legal context to make heads or tails of it.

A lot of anti-gun-control people have been describing it as a badly written law, and that's why they want to repeal it. The Against passage in the red book says,

Chapter 135 isn't about public safety—it is a deeply flawed, 116-page piece of bureaucratic overreach that wastes valuable tax dollars and burdens local communities. Passed without proper planning, the law mandates an expensive, real-time electronic tracking system that the state hasn't funded and doesn't know how to build. It also forces local police departments to enforce a confusing patchwork of vague rules, pulling officers away from investigating violent crime to plow through piles of administrative paperwork. State agencies have struggled to explain the law, issuing dozens of clarifications for rules that treat harmless historical re-enactors and antique hobbyists like criminals.

I am sympathetic to all of that, and the In Favor passage is vacuous "gun control is good" vagueness, which doesn't explain why this law in particular is good and necessary, since we certainly weren't lacking in aggressive gun control legislation prior to 2024.

OTOH, I am not much inclined to trust a lot of the self-appointed 2A defenders, not least because I keep catching them in lies. So I don't know what here is actually true.

So that's what I've got. Wanna tell me how to vote? Comment below.

siderea

1) My PCP feels that I do not have thyroid cancer. Hooray. He also feels, given that my thyroid function is falling off the cliff, that I should be taking a thyroid hormone, levothyroxine, to replace what it was supposed to be doing for me. Today I started on it.

Iiiiiiii don't think I can be compliant with this. It has to be taken on an empty stomach, with no food in the four hours before and no food or drinks except water in the hour after. Consequently, most people take it on waking and then have to wait before eating or, more crucially, drinking coffee. And you're supposed to take it with a big glass of water. And, no, you can't take it with other medications. In general. And something like half my specific medications (and supplements) have interactions with it.

My doctor said I only have to wait a half hour after taking it to have coffee with milk and sugar, but could take it with black coffee, which is absolutely not what reputable sources on the internet say. See this discussion of "Altered Intestinal Absorption of L-Thyroxine Caused by Coffee" [2008, Thyroid, S Benvenga, L Bartolone, et al] which found (N=8) black coffee reduces the effective dose up to ~50%, and is the basis of the standard recommendation to wait at least an hour after taking the levothyroxine.

But even if I only wait a half hour, I really don't have a spare half hour in my schedule to add to my wake up routine so I can continue to have my coffee and morning meds at an adequate time to get to work on time. And I forgot that drinking water on an empty stomach gives me a stomach ache. And sitting around for a half and hour after I wake up, woozy with a stomach ache waiting to be able to take my wake-up pills (or any NSAIDs for pain) and have my delicious, comforting cup of coffee (which Mr. Bostoniensis has been bringing me in bed) is even more miserable than it seemed in prospect.

The internet tells me there's an alternative, Tirosint, which can be taken with coffee and food, though not with all meds. It's allegedly more expensive, but apparently not that much more expensive, and I would argue I have medical justification.

Weirdly, there's a lot of advice not to take it within 4 hours of taking iron supplements, but none of that advice mentioned multivitamins, which is where I get my supplemental iron, nor using cast-iron cookware, which is how lots of people get their supplemental iron.

2) I checked my email before I was going to settle in to write, and discovered I was the victim of credit card fraud and maybe identity theft. Somebody ordered a ~$12,000 balance transfer from my personal credit card, so I got to spend the afternoon on the phone with my credit card company cleaning that up.

I've heard people say bad things about Elan, but I've only had really good experiences with them. Especially when dealing with problems. There's been times their customer service has dipped down to merely perfectly adequate, but mostly it's been legit fantastic.

They were able to tell me the fraud was perpetrated by someone calling in and representing to be me. So the perp doesn't have my online password. I said, "So they had my SSN?" (because authenticating on the phone typically requires the last four of the SSN) and she said no, not necessarily, there's other ways to authenticate. Which: hmmm.

She's canceled my card and is sending a fresh one. I'll get to spend however long updating all the places I store it online. I also await a call from the fraud department.

This is the card I had as the payment form of record with my life insurance when it was compromised, so that might be where it got got.

3) The biopsy I am getting in November comes in two options. It can be done as an office procedure without anaesthesia, or you can have it done in the hospital under anaesthesia, where while they have you under, the gynecologist can do a more thorough assessment and maybe remove obviously cancerous bits if they present on inspection.

My gynecologist was upfront about this: the office version is much cheaper. I asked her, given I had awesome insurance, what, if price is no object, she would recommend on clinical grounds, and she promptly said the hospital version, observing she would be able to do a more thorough job and also having anaethesia would be much nicer for me. I said I would lean towards the anaesthesia version, but would need to know how much more expensive it was.

Well, I got the estimate today. The nice estimate office – whose vmail has been full for a while and whom I ratted out to the billing deparment – finally got back to me. My share, according to what they could tell of my insurance, is estimated to be about $1,300. I can do that. It is 2x what she said the office procedure is, but it's way less than the $3,500 presently between me and my out-of-pocket-max which I was emotionally bracing to pay. And it seems worth it to me to do it under anaesthesia, if only because of my back.

Also, the total amount estimated to be billed to my insurance is the eye-watering $17,000.

Maybe more if the procedure runs long. If I understand correctly, the anaesthesiologist is paid by the 15 minutes.

The worst-case estimates I found online said $12,000. I'm kinda glad I asked, just from a morbid curiosity standpoint.

Like I said, the estimate is that I only wind up paying about 10% ($1,300) or so of that. Since my co-insurance is 20% and I'm not going to meet my OOPM, I assume that means that on average the allowed was half what they intend to bill.

siderea

[Reminder: don't be talking about your health online except under a pseudonym.]

I've been going through a lot with my health recently. Sort of. It's a bit weird and hard to talk about because it's not exactly that I've been in ill health. At least probably not. The waveform has yet to collapse.

I suppose it is fair to say part of what is going on – a substantial part – is about the interaction of being a disabled person and getting medical care: the way I am disabled makes it hard and extra time consuming to go places to meet people, like say going to medical facilities to meet wih medical professionals.

It can also cause exacerbations of my disability. This means a not-huge amount of medical appointments actually works out to be a huge amount of medical appointments for me because it often has a huge impact – sometimes including medically – on me. For instance, it recently took me a week to recover from the consequences of a recent medical exam, where by "exam" I mean "sitting in a chair waiting for the exam to start", and by "consequences" I mean "increased pain the following day, which then fucked up my sleep, which slowed my recovery from the aggravation of my pain, which protracted the disruption of my sleep from pain, lather, rinse, repeat; and also left me exhausted from all the sleep I was missing."

This interacts poorly with the apparent fact that it does not seem possible for me to have any contact with the medical establishment without a medical professional finding a lump or other potential sign of cancer. It has never turned out to be cancer. It just seems that I am... lumpier... than normal. But it means that when I present for medical problem X, not only do I wind up having all the subsequent medical appointments for X, I will also wind up having all the subsequent medical appointments for problem Y, which is Oh Look A Lump Maybe This Is Cancer.

When I got the CT scan of my aorta, they happened to get a look at my thyroid, and, because this was at the same hospital I presented to for the neck infection of 2022, they had a comparator. The radiologist reported that since 2022 the small lump they found on my thyroid then is less small now. So I've been dealing with the follow-up of that (doctor, labs, ultrasound, labs, more doctor).

This raises the obvious question of whether I have noticed any symptoms of thyroid malfunction, for which the answer is: sure, a little – but for decades. Doctors have been running thyroid panels on me forever, and they all come back fine. None of those symptoms have become much worse in the last three years, and one of them has gotten a bit better. The labs are finally showing something a tad off, but not actually that unusual for someone my age.

Then in July, I got a symptom that has nothing to do with my thyroid. It's one of those minor symptoms that they tell people with uteruses who have been through menopause means It's probably nothing. But... call your doctor. Unfortunately, my uterus was already being eyed with suspicion of trying to go rogue with cancer because lumps had already been found there (when my hip was imaged in 2022). I waited hopefully for a week or so for the symptom to go away on its own, and it didn't, so I called my new gynecologist (who is awesome). They weren't able to get me in to see her until mid-September which is just as well because of all the thyroid-related care I needed to show up for. Over the last few weeks the gynecologist (and the lab) ruled out a bunch of less serious problems. I have a ultrasound and a biopsy scheduled for November. This was convenient in that it gave both Mr Bostoniensis and I time to get all our seasonal vaccinations done, which will be useful given how much time it seems I'm going to be spending in medical facilities.

Also, there was a biannual teeth cleaning and a mammogram somewhere in all this.

So that's where things are. I've been dealing with an large amount of medical care which isn't to treat any of the things that have actually been problems for me, but to assess whether I have a problem I don't yet know about. It may all of it be nothing. It is to be hoped that it is nothing. But it has been so far and looks like it is going to continue to be a tiring, stressful, logistically-challenging, and physically painful nothing that hits the out-of-pocket-max on my health insurance.

It's awkward to try to talk about. I have multiple doctors concerned I might have cancer so I am going through tediously much medical care which is all about cancer. But I almost certainly don't have cancer. Just not absolutely certainly. The odds are very low that I do. I probably don't. "Ugh my schedule is all fucked up because of all the medical appointments for cancer my doctors think there is a very small chance I have."

The problem is that the odds just went from one in a hundred to one in twenty. And as we all know, that's a 1 on a 1d20. So this is basically a reasonably easy, but not sure-fire, saving throw.

So: I'm dealing with all doctors all the time, only not really, it's just that it takes very little doctor-visiting to cast a long shadow on my schedule including by causing medical complications of my pre-existing disabling conditions; and none of that medical care is to treat any of those pre-existing disabling conditions; it's not, in fact, to treat any condition at all at this point, since it's all diagnostic (e.g. imaging) or prophylactic (e.g. vaccines); it's to identify whether or not I have a medical condition that, while very bad to have, I am very unlikely to have.

(And no, nobody has done anything futher to investigate the cause of my chest pain back in June. Everybody is too preoccupied by the Oh Look A Lump Maybe It's Cancer question.)

This week, I have a telehealth appointment with my PCP to follow up on whether he thinks I need to do something about the thyroid lump and I have a scheduled flu shot at a pharmacy. In the next month (Nov), I have an ultrasound and a biopsy, the latter of which will be done in an operating room with an anaesthesiologist.

It feels slightly absurd and dramatic, but cancer is bad, so I guess this all makes sense.