Taxachusetts comes from the time of the Dukakis administration actually.
But it's a reasonable question to ask. The answer is because the state's corrupt incompetent legislature is so entrenched they fear nothing - least of all being voted out of office.
The past 3 speakers have walked out of the state house straight into federal indictments. They completely ignored a ballot initiative passed by the citizens regarding reducing the income tax rate. And they did their best to keep from having to vote on the question of gay marriage. And when the current liberal do-nothing governor from their own party started to make noises about tax rates they ignored him as well.
Mass. is a microcosm of the entire country. This is what happens when everyone is concerned with their small local issues and cannot look at the larger picture. So as long as your local rep keeps bringing home whatever you care about - traffic lights, condoms in the schools for kids, whatever - you vote for him or her, and nothing changes.
This is and always has been about buying the slaves to prop up the ego and the pirate's wallet..not solving problems or halting the march to socialist slavery. Give us a candidate who has a real vision, not the age old fake..."tell me what I want to hear" kind. Those days are over, too much is a stake.
Down here we are not that way.In fact we are the ones that go to the council meetings and raise hell with them and they are republicans(Big gubmint types.They wanted to raise taxes and we told them that they would be voting themselves out of office if they did that.They folded like a cheap suit.They still need to be voted out because they are spineless big gubmint types.And when I say we raise hell,I mean we really raise hell.