"Climate change is real and occurring at an unprecedented level."

Overwhelmingly supported by the scientific evidence.

"Climate change of this magnitude is caused by humans."

Also overwhelmingly supported by the scientific evidence.

"Climate change is caused by humans who mostly live in the United States Of America, a little bit in Western Europe, and absolutely nowhere else."

No one is claiming that but much of what we were experiencing now has been driving by first world countries. That is changing with China and India moving up economically.

"Climate change is caused by white Westerners and the only possi.."

This is not the logical endpoint of the debate. There are numerous ways to deal with the climate crisis that don't necessitate burning that particular straw man.

You won't get much of an argument on "the climate has measurably changed since we started measuring it".
The issue is the chain of reasoning that goes:
Climate change is real and occurring at an unprecedented level.
Climate change of this magnitude is caused by humans.
Climate change is caused by humans who mostly live in the United States Of America, a little bit in Western Europe, and absolutely nowhere else.
Climate change is caused by white Westerners and the only possible solution is for white Westerners to adhere to the Puritan ideal of extreme temperance, of self-denial to the point of self-harm, the same ideal that Puritans have considered vital to Earthly salvation since they were run out of England four hundred years ago and people burned individual lumps of coal for heat let alone do anything on an industrial scale.

Not everyone follows you down that hill.

Thanks, Lee and InMD. I thought I remembered hearing both that obscenity isn't protected and that it's hard to justify (or at least justify consistently) that something counts as obscenity.

Could Obama have sought to gain politically from withholding an important defense system from US allies? Under the current standard, just the possibility that he did is an impeachable offense.

No, because, again, you've failed to notice a very important point: Different appropriations have different rules.

The missile defense shield, as a Defense Department project, like all DoD weapons projects, could be exited for various reasons under the law. The reason that Obama said he canceled it was a 'cost-benefit analysis by an administration', which he almost certainly, under the law, had a right to do.

If he didn't have the right to do that, if Congress had not said he could, like they generally always defer to the President in things like that, someone would have pointed that out, instead of just whining he helped Russia.

Meanwhile, the aid to Ukraine was not given any of those exits, very specifically, on purpose. The Administration was literally not supposed to play any part in that process, mostly because...Congress did not trust him to make a good decision on that topic.

And...honestly, he wouldn't have had a choice anyway....it was foreign aid without any sort of requirements on the part of the other country, which means...there's nothing for him to decide, so there's no reason a President in general would be able to call it off.

I swear, this is like I'm arguing Trump stole a car, and other people are arguing that the cops who arrested him drive cars too. Yes. They do. Legally. Some cars people are allowed to drive, others they are not. The people who write the laws decide that.

--

But you're arguing the wrong thing now anyway. The OMB just released a memo saying that Trump had nothing to do with the delays. Trump's just been lying to everyone for months, saying he withheld the aid because of security concerns or something, when it reality, it was the OMB's choice without his input at all!

It's a real shocker. What a twist. It's...almost as if...someone figured out him holding up the aid wouldn't be legal...and...uh...invented a new story where he hadn't done that. Huh.

Yeah, those damn neoliberals, wanting to solve the problem with minimal cost instead of implementing every item on the far left's wishlist at once. How can anyone take them seriously?

The papers were all up in arms about Obama's betrayal of our Eastern European allies to appease Russia. Romney charged "Obama stopped missile defense shield 'as a gift to Russia'" Politifact rated Romney's claim "half true". Could Obama have sought to gain politically from withholding an important defense system from US allies? Under the current standard, just the possibility that he did is an impeachable offense.

But I wasn't aware of the incident with Kissinger.

Imma walk into City Hall tomorrow and dismiss the entire City Council and install myself as Lord Viceroy of Los Angeles.

"But Chip, the law doesn't let you do that!"

Oh, we're lowering the bar that far, are we?

WW6: That was on top of a fairly generous professor salary. And a lot of us would consider $60k a year (actually $80k for the years she was active) a nice chunk of money for a side job.

Okay, I give up.They're back now. Someone delete the other two of them, please, the last has the least typos.

I seriously sat here for five minute refreshing before I reposted, just to make sure they had vanished after I edited them. They were. And then...magically back

Alright, I've been thinking about this. I don't think that we can compare this to anything in recent memory.

Who were the names in:

2016?
Clinton and Sanders. We can argue over whether we should include O'Malley and Lessig, of course.

2012?
Nobody.

2008?
Clinton and Obama. We can argue over whether we want to count Gravel (I caucused for him!) or Edwards or Richardson. (I had to google to remember those two.)

2004?
This *MIGHT* be the closest one. Kerry, Edwards, Dean, Clark, Kucinich, Gephardt, and Moseley Braun.

2000?
Gore. Maybe Bradley. But Gore.

1996?
Nope.

1992?
Jerry Brown, Bob Kerrey (he came to my college and promised to legalize pot), Tom Harkin, and Paul Tsongas. (Edit: I can't believe I forgot Clinton.)

1988?
This is the one I started this comment for because I remember political cartoons making jokes about "The Seven Dwarves". They couldn't freakin' *BELIEVE* that Gary Hart, Dick Gephardt, Paul Simon, Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, and Michael Dukakis were all running.

Poor Gary Hart.

Out of all of those, 1988 and 2004 had the most Credible* candidates running.

And how many Credible* candidates ran this time? Depending on how you want to swing that asterisk around (I mean, we'd have to take at least Kuchinich off of those lists up there if you want to get vigorous), we've had (deep breath):

Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke, Bill de Blasio, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper, and Eric Swalwell. And that's not counting Mike Gravel! And those are only the names that people have actually heard of who have dropped out!

Still in: Andrew Yang! And others! Like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, Julian Castro, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Michael Bloomberg, and that Joe Biden fellow.

We've had as many Credible* people drop out as were in the whole thing in 1988. We could lose that number again and *STILL* have 3 candidates left over.

We've never had a field winnowed in such a fashion because we've never had a field like this.

In previous years, if two or three people dropped out, we'd be left with one person (plus, of course, the Marianne Williamson types, bless their souls).

Nothing like this has happened before.

If you're trying to make the assertion that the delay was due to some sort of security review: It wasn't, and there wasn't a security review anyway: https://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/ranking/release/fact-sheet-dod-certified-that-ukraine-met-corruption-benchmarks

The DoD had already reviewed Ukraine for corruption, several times, and had consistently been giving them money that required them to do these reviews. The last one was May 23, 2019....while it's work pointing out the delays actually sorta started in late June. So they weren't asked to do another one of those reviews, because they'd just have said 'Uh, the last review isn't out of date.'.

The review the DOD was asked to do was an 'effectiveness' review. Read the second paragraph of page 7 of the linked Amb. Taylor testimony. (I don't want to put in multiple links so I get held up in moderation. And you can't search)

'At one point, the Defense Department was ask to perform an analysis of the effectiveness of the assistance. Withing a day, the Defense Department came back with the determination that the assistance was effective and should be resumed'.

So that review, the review everyone keeps talking about and calling the wrong thing, took only a single day anyway. (Probably because what the DoD was asked to review was the DoD's own plan for how to do the aid...which obviously the DoD thought would work. Duh.)

After which point the DoD continued to ask for the money that they had been given by Congress, and required to give to Ukraine. Presumably, you'd think they'd know if they hadn't finished a required review.

And the President, with the illegal collusion of someone he had installed in the OMB to do this, continued to refuse to give their own money.

Fun fact: If the DoD had concluded that the program wouldn't be effective, they would still have to give out the money. Their passing the money would still be required by law.

Because, again, Congress allocates money and is completely in charge of when and where exceptions and alterations and holds and what bullshit the president invented. He has no right to do anything in that area unless the law give him that right.(1)

The 'security reviews' the DoD had already been doing are actually part of the law in general, when we give any money to any foreign government. The DoD only conditions payment on these security reviews because the law requires them, not because the president wants them.

Sometimes the President is given limited authority, or even a lot of authority. Here, he was not, because...honestly, Congress didn't actually trust him WRT Ukraine.

Oh, and Trump's 'national security team' was asked to review the aid at the end of _August_, which was already after a month of illegal delays, but, again, the president has no authority to hold up the money anyway. That review...doesn't appear to have happened?

And, BTW...I think this needs be repeated as a reply, on every single single post that assert the hold up was legal: The president and his administration repeatedly lied about, asserting it was some sort of banking problem. Not that there were outstanding security reviews.

1) I'm sure there's some national security arguments to be made for some things, but a) distributing foreign aid is not one of them, and b) making those argument would have to be in public, or at least known by Congress.

Well what about Obama agreeing to pull US missile defenses out of Eastern Europe if Putin would hold off on annexing Crimea and eastern Ukraine until after the 2008 US election?

There we have an agreement with Putin (who is the big bogeyman) to do harm to the security of our allies in return for Putin delaying an foreign policy "crisis" until after Obama beats his political opponent.

But that's not quid pro quo or abuse of power or bribery or anything because Obama was a Democrat. The same rule covered him for Fast and Furious, and the attempt to exert executive privilege across the entire executive branch, which would normally be contempt of Congressional oversight, and his rewriting US immigration laws, and Title IX, and illegally firing an IG that was investigating one of his allies for child sexual abuse and misuse of federal money, or using the FBI and CIA to try and rig the 2016 election and later to undermine the US government, all to serve the interests of himself and Vladimir Putin.

As I've said, the Democrats have dropped the impeachment bar so low that there are no Presidents who shouldn't have been impeached, from Washington to Lincoln to Chester A Arthur.

This will have profound consequences going forwards, and they're not going to like it a bit.

Your first paragraph seems to just restate my comment, that increased density can lower rents, but also at the cost of lower market desirability.

Again, I really am quite in favor of high density housing- My job depends on it, its what I do for a living! A lot of good things would flow from increased density, not just rents but an improvement in the environment as well.

But increased density isn't a magic potion to cure the affordability gap. It can at most be one tool in a large arsenal.

Even in Silicon Valley, the return on investment of an apartment building has to pencil out and compete with all other investment opportunities.

Meaning that the distance that an ROI can fall is limited; Once it falls to be less than some other investment like equities then the money flows there, and the project doesn't get built at all.

So unless all the other variables like construction cost and land fall as well, increasing the number of buildable lots will only have a minor affect on rents.

Googled: the cost that land use restrictions impose on rents.

Google's first link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/09/30/the-verdict-is-in-land-use-regulations-increase-housing-costs/#57f087784162

It in turn has lots of links that should work for you.

Google's other "hits" also seemed full of things which would answer your question.

Chip, buddy, this is incoherent. If property values plunge then rents plunge. If the restrictions in California were lifted and high rise towers sprang up in the dense high demand areas then values, and rents, would decrease or at the very least stagnate. As you correctly note that is exactly why NIMBY's fight so viciously against development as they benefit enormously from high property values (their properties are worth more) and from high rents (their properties generate more income for them). I mean sure they also don’t want more crowds of people, obstruction of their views and changes in their neighborhoods but the property values and rent impacts are their biggest concern (albeit one they hide).

We know that more building can control housing costs. The Japanese and the Europeans have done it in lands more geographically constrained than California suffers. California, however, has insane building restrictions that keep people from building denser housing and insane property tax rules that lower the opportunity cost of keeping their lots single family. But localized pockets in California? Isn’t that describing entire swaths of some of the best employment prospect real estate in the country? Isn’t Silicon Valley still largely suburban in nature currently? It ain’t that way because no one wants to live there or because building timber, steel and concrete is magically a thousand times more expensive near San Jose.

Making fun OF her is probably the wrong way to describe it. I am poking fun at the DOOM scenario as it is being presented.

I can't make fun of her. She just seems screwed up. She seems to genuinely lack the ability to understand the people on (what she perceives as) the other side. You look at a David Hogg, you can see malice. I don't get that from her.

Then again, I could have been a David Hogg too if I were a scrawny 17-year-old thrust onto the national stage.

In a healthier society, adults would have helped these children through their trauma, teaching them how to channel their passions constructively. But this is Idiocracly.

I have a semi-serious proposal to create a New Homestead Act, whereby the federal government confiscates those vast tracts of unused lands or dying small towns across the Midwest and West, and gives away parcels free to the poor.

The response I get is "Why would anyone want to relocate to a place where no one wants to live, and where there are no jobs?

we have statistical full employment with jobs that pay for sh!t

Median incomes are going up, not down, and are at all time highs.

We want them to pay their workers a living wage from their exorbitant profits (which they don’t do now); we don’t want those workers killed, worked to death or prevented from going to the bathroom when the need to...

If you don't like Amazon's jobs, then go work somewhere else. That's the thing about full employment where employers have to fight for employees. Speaking of that, presumably that's why Amazon has increased their min-wage to $15/hour.

As for the rest, the usual rules apply which means "worked to death" remains illegal and various people may be arrested... however that's nut picking. Amazon is so big that they will have problems, and those problems will end up in the news and will be highlighted because of people's agendas.

and we want Jeff Bezos to contribute to the common good by paying a higher rate in taxes then his employees.

"Wealth" isn't the same as "income", when the media breathlessly talks about his net worth as though it were his income what they're really talking about the value of Amazon itself. Asking him to pay taxes on his assets is asking him to dismantle his ownership of Amazon.

If we're going to talk about "contribute to the common good" regarding Amazon, them putting money into the pockets of everyone in America via competition is a serious "good". When my kids want specific books to read, the only alternative used to be either expensive or not-at-all, now it's typically $4 a pop. For that matter the 650,000 jobs Amazon created (up from 12,000 in 2005) should also be viewed as a "good".

Other than offending "he's too successful" instincts we don't have a problem.

Given that we know what the alternative looks like, which is “a gun battle between moving vehicles on a crowded freeway which ends up with two non-criminals shot dead and several other non-criminals injured”?

You have to weigh that right-now-this-time cost vs increasing the number of future incidents.

This is why Israel went to war with Lebanon and dropped a billion dollars of damage on their economy. It would have been cheaper in the short run to make a deal to get their people back, but that's encouraging hostage taking and rewarding what should be punished.

You also need to worry about "how do the police tell the difference between active shooters and active shooters"? The first group is economically motivated and descalating the violence makes a lot of sense. The second group is motivated by increasing their kill count and "descalating" translates into English as "giving them more time to increase the body count".

We (now) tend to forbid high speed chases because they're really dangerous and the bulk of them are done by civilians who you can let go home and you've defused the situation rather than made it worse. That's pretty irrelevant to this situation because the cops were dealing with active shooting before they got onto the stage.

You are now in the position of suggesting that taking hostages should make the police more likely to open fire.

As far as I'm aware, when someone takes hostages a large group of armed officers show up and try to deal with the situation. Taking hostages is an extremely aggressive action and will be treated as such.

My expectation is there has been a lot of research on the subject and if you've got something which suggests the best course of action is to simply let them go, by all means put it on the table.

the jewelry store owner started the shooting? Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea after all?

First of all, we're talking about what the police should be doing. The jewelry store owner isn't an agent of the state and is free to judge whether being armed increases or decreases his risk profile.

2nd, it's morally wrong to blame the guy being robbed for starting things. The armed criminals robbing the place have responsibility here.

3rd, you're assuming facts not in evidence. It's possible that the owner made a bad call here and was trigger happy. It's also possible the armed trigger happy criminals who were later running around shooting at things didn't give him a better choice.

assuming that with fewer restrictions the cost of housing would fall precipitously, but I don’t see any evidence to suggest that.

The developers are claiming these restrictions are a serious problem and the root of the problem. Occasionally they post the details on how it works and it's pretty convincing when you get into the detail weeds. Year long projects get turned into decade long projects because everyone is allowed to appeal the process. Restrictions on how much space needs to be used for a room result in fewer units which means they need to be sold for more. Restrictions on how many floors can be built result in fewer units per square foot of land which means the units you can build must cover everything.

Saying "there's no evidence" is simply nonsense. These restrictions are doing exactly what they're supposed to, which is prevent the creation of housing.

Yes, they are wildly expensive, more than even market rate apartments. But somehow, the political will was found, the budget was found, the ability and wherewithal was found to construct them.

At $600k a pop to build "low income" housing, every Billion dollars gets you 1700 units. At that rate you can house all of California's homeless for something less than a Trillion dollars, or roughly a third of California's GDP.

Or you can change the zoning/process rules which make this so expensive.

And yes, that's not going to be enough. After you change the rules you'll need things like drug treatment (etc). However at $600k a pop there is no path to success.