Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Post Comment | AlterNet

Post Comment | AlterNet: "RE: A car in every garage - a Pot plant in everyones home - !
Posted by: cat007 on Jul 23, 2008 2:15 PM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]

Well there will always be two sides to everything. I see a real analogy here between drug laws and the death penalty. The more violent the state the more likely it has the death penalty. Really you could infer that the death penalty encourages crime. Different people see things different ways. I think I'm right. You think you're right. Who's to say who's right?"

No profit in housing the homeless | SocialistWorker.org

No profit in housing the homeless | SocialistWorker.org: "What other solutions are being offered? Rather than trying to occupy vacant houses, Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke suggested that cities and states should destroy vacant homes to help bring supply and demand back into balance.
In a speech in March, Bernanke praised the Genesee County Land Bank in Flint, Mich.--a 'highly depressed' market, in his words--for acquiring vacant units through tax liens and demolishing them. Bernanke sniffed that such programs could 'mitigate safety hazards and reduce supply.'"

According to the Census Bureau, U.S. households on average have 2.57 people. So the vacant housing stock could provide homes to at least 47.5 million people--or about 15 percent of the U.S. population. And that's a conservative estimate when you consider that many vacant houses could comfortably house many more people than the household average.

To put this number in perspective, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimates that 3.5 million people in the U.S. experience homelessness in a given year, and about 842,000 people are homeless in any given week. So there are enough vacant homes to house the homeless in any given week 56 times over.

Further, in 2005, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights estimated the global homeless population at 100 million. So, roughly speaking, there is enough vacant housing to provide shelter for nearly half the world's homeless population in the U.S. And when you factor in the growing amount of vacant commercial real estate, such as office buildings and shopping centers, an even further dent could be made.

Meanwhile, in the Southwest, tent cities are arising, occupied by people who lost their homes to foreclosure. The city of Santa Barbara, Calif., for example, has set aside 12 parking lots to allow people who lost their homes to live out of their cars. In many cases, the people living in the lots still have jobs, but simply can't find affordable housing

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Matthew Yglesias


Matthew Yglesias: "I saw this for sale at a conservative t-shirts website. I'm not necessarily one to say that torture is a subject about which we shouldn't joke. Torture-related satire and other forms of torture humor are, I think, a clear way of coming to grips with the horror of what our government have become. It's a difficult subject to contemplate, and express a view on, without resorting to humor on some level.
But that of course isn't what's happening here. Instead we see conservatives deciding to embrace torture as constitutive of conservative identity. If you're a conservative, you like torture. If you're against torture, you're not a conservative."

Friday, July 4, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist - Rove’s Third Term - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Rove’s Third Term - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com: "Al Gore never claimed that he invented the Internet. Howard Dean didn’t scream. Hillary Clinton didn’t say she was staying in the race because Barack Obama might be assassinated. And Wesley Clark didn’t impugn John McCain’s military service"

A Lucrative Deal for Rush Limbaugh - Readers' Comments - The New York Times

A Lucrative Deal for Rush Limbaugh - Readers' Comments - The New York Times: "It just goes to show you that certain drug addicts and liars do well in the right wing political climate that arose with the sainted Ronald Reagan and will (we fervently hope) fade a bit with the departure of G.W. Bush.
— dbsweden, Sweden"

A Lucrative Deal for Rush Limbaugh - Readers' Comments - The New York Times

A Lucrative Deal for Rush Limbaugh - Readers' Comments - The New York Times: "we are so in awe of wealth in america, we dare not admit that what we are extolling is insatiable greed, so many who claim to be God fearing christians, or the voice of honest 'decent folk' lap up the cash"