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2019–2020 Massachusetts Legislature
The 191st Massachusetts General Court was the meeting of the legislative branch of the state government of Massachusetts, composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives. It convened in Boston at the Massachusetts State House, on January 2, 2019, and ended on January 6, 2021, during the fifth and sixth years of the governorship of Charlie Baker. Senate and House districts were drawn based on the 2010 Census. In the 2018 elections, the Democratic Party increased its majorities in both chambers, flipping two seats from the Republicans in the House and one in the Senate. Although Republican Governor Charlie Baker easily won re-election to a second term, the Democrats maintained veto-proof supermajorities in the legislature. The session was notable for the wide-range of flash-point issues discussed; among these were climate change, police reform, the state's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare reform, and education funding. Other notable legislation included ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Massachusetts State House
The Massachusetts State House, also known as the Massachusetts Statehouse or the New State House, is the List of state capitols in the United States, state capitol and seat of government for the Massachusetts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, located in the Beacon Hill, Boston, Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston. The building houses the Massachusetts General Court (State legislature (United States), state legislature) and the offices of the Governor of Massachusetts. The building, designed by architect Charles Bulfinch, was completed in January 1798 at a cost of $133,333 (more than five times the budget), and has repeatedly been enlarged since. It is one of the oldest state capitols in current use. It is considered a masterpiece of Federal architecture and among Bulfinch's finest works, and was designated a National Historic Landmark for its architectural significance. Building and grounds The building is situated on of land on top of Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts, Bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most populous city in the country. The city boundaries encompass an area of about and a population of 675,647 as of 2020. It is the seat of Suffolk County (although the county government was disbanded on July 1, 1999). The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest MSA in the country. A broader combined statistical area (CSA), generally corresponding to the commuting area and including Providence, Rhode Island, is home to approximately 8.2 million people, making it the sixth most populous in the United States. Boston is one of the oldest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. Founded in 1828, it was predominantly built by Martin Van Buren, who assembled a wide cadre of politicians in every state behind war hero Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest active political party.M. Philip Lucas, "Martin Van Buren as Party Leader and at Andrew Jackson's Right Hand." in ''A Companion to the Antebellum Presidents 1837–1861'' (2014): 107–129."The Democratic Party, founded in 1828, is the world's oldest political party" states Its main political rival has been the Republican Party since the 1850s. The party is a big tent, and though it is often described as liberal, it is less ideologically uniform than the Republican Party (with major individuals within it frequently holding widely different political views) due to the broader list of unique voting blocs that compose it. The historical predecessor of the Democratic Party is considered to be th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is an independent nonprofit research center in Washington, D.C. EPIC's mission is to focus public attention on emerging privacy and related human rights issues. EPIC works to protect privacy, freedom of expression, and democratic values, and to promote the Public Voice in decisions concerning the future of the Internet. EPIC pursues a wide range of civil liberties, consumer protection, and human rights issues. EPIC has pursued several successful consumer privacy complaints with the US Federal Trade Commission, concerning Snapchat (faulty privacy technology), WhatsApp (privacy policy after acquisition by Facebook), Facebook (changes in user privacy settings), Google (roll-out of Google Buzz), Microsoft (Hailstorm log-in), and Choicepoint (sale of personal information to identity thieves). EPIC has also prevailed in significant Freedom of Information Act cases against the CIA, the DHS, the Dept. of Education, the Federal Bureau of Invest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech recognition, computer vision, translation between (natural) languages, as well as other mappings of inputs. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' of Oxford University Press defines artificial intelligence as: the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. AI applications include advanced web search engines (e.g., Google), recommendation systems (used by YouTube, Amazon and Netflix), understanding human speech (such as Siri and Alexa), self-driving cars (e.g., Tesla), automated decision-making and competing at the highest level in strategic game systems (such as chess and Go). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Postal Voting In The United States
Postal voting in the United States, also referred to as mail-in voting or vote by mail, is a form of absentee ballot in the United States, in which a ballot is mailed to the home of a registered voter, who fills it out and returns it by postal mail or drops it off in-person at a secure drop box or voting center. Postal voting reduces staff requirements at polling centers during an election. All-mail elections can save money, while a mix of voting options can cost more. In some states, ballots may be sent by the Postal Service without prepayment of postage. Research shows that the availability of postal voting increases voter turnout. It has been argued that postal voting has a greater risk of fraud than in-person voting, though known instances of such fraud are very rare, with one database finding absentee-ballot fraud to be the most prevalent type of election fraud, comprising about 24% of 491 reported prosecutions between 2000 and 2012. Processing large numbers of ballots and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
COVID-19 Pandemic In Massachusetts
The COVID-19 pandemic in Massachusetts is part of an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. The first confirmed case was reported on February 1, 2020, and the number of cases began increasing rapidly on March 5. Governor Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency on March 10. By March 12, more than a hundred people had tested positive for the virus. Massachusetts experienced a first wave of COVID-19 that peaked in late April 2020, with almost 4,000 people hospitalized with the disease, and a rolling seven-day average of 2,300 new confirmed cases and 175 confirmed deaths a day. A second wave began in the autumn of the same year and peaked in January 2021, seeing higher daily case numbers but fewer deaths and hospitalizations than the first wave. There was a smaller third spike of increased cases and hospitalizations in March and April 2021, which resulted in significantly fewer deaths than the first two waves. A fourth wave ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Police Reform In The United States
The history of law enforcement in the United States includes many efforts at police reform. Early efforts at police reform often involved external commissions, such as the Wickersham Commission, that spelled out reforms but left to the police to implement them, often with limited success. A series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions under the Warren Court led to important changes in policing, with respect to civil rights and constitutional law. '' Mapp v. Ohio'' in 1961 and ''Miranda v. Arizona'' in 1966 were two highly influential court decisions. ''Mapp v. Ohio'' found that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures" may not be used in criminal prosecutions. ''Miranda v. Arizona'' required that criminal suspects must be informed of their right to consult with an attorney and of their right against self-incrimination prior to questioning by police. These decisions began to set national standards for policing. Spec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Climate Change
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate. The current rise in global average temperature is more rapid than previous changes, and is primarily caused by humans burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and industrial practices increase greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide and methane. Greenhouse gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight. Larger amounts of these gases trap more heat in Earth's lower atmosphere, causing global warming. Due to climate change, deserts are expanding, while heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. Increased warming in the Arctic has contributed to melting permafrost, glacial retreat and sea ice loss. Higher temperatures are also causing m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supermajority
A supermajority, supra-majority, qualified majority, or special majority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of more than one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority rules in a democracy can help to prevent a majority from eroding fundamental rights of a minority, but they can also hamper efforts to respond to problems and encourage corrupt compromises in the times action is taken. Changes to constitutions, especially those with entrenched clauses, commonly require supermajority support in a legislature. Parliamentary procedure requires that any action of a deliberative assembly that may alter the rights of a minority have a supermajority requirement, such as a two-thirds vote. Related concepts regarding alternatives to the majority vote requirement include a majority of the entire membership and a majority of the fixed membership. A supermajority can also be specified based on the entire membership or f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Massachusetts Republican Party
The Massachusetts Republican Party (MassGOP) is the Massachusetts branch of the U.S. Republican Party. In accordance with Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 52, the party is governed by a state committee which consists of one man and one woman from each of the 40 State Senate districts. The state committee elects party officers including a chair. The party currently has very weak electoral power in Massachusetts. It controls none of the state's U.S. House seats or U.S. Senate seats, and the only two statewide offices the party controls are the governorship and lieutenant governorship, which are currently held by Charlie Baker and Karyn Polito respectively. History Founding and early history (1854–1876) The Massachusetts Republican Party was founded in 1854. Drawing together abolitionist and nativist anti-Catholic elements, it quickly became the dominant political force in the state and a powerful arm of the national Republican Party. Significant founding figures include Se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2010 United States Census
The United States census of 2010 was the twenty-third United States national census. National Census Day, the reference day used for the census, was April 1, 2010. The census was taken via mail-in citizen self-reporting, with enumerators serving to spot-check randomly selected neighborhoods and communities. As part of a drive to increase the count's accuracy, 635,000 temporary enumerators were hired. The population of the United States was counted as 308,745,538, a 9.7% increase from the 2000 census. This was the first census in which all states recorded a population of over half a million people as well as the first in which all 100 largest cities recorded populations of over 200,000. Introduction As required by the United States Constitution, the U.S. census has been conducted every 10 years since 1790. The 2000 U.S. census was the previous census completed. Participation in the U.S. census is required by law of persons living in the United States in Title 13 of the United ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
