Benjamin Cole Posted May 6, 2022 Share Posted May 6, 2022 1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said: No, I live about 75 miles southwest of Fort Worth outside the largest town in the county with a population of 20,000 (30,000 including the college in the spring and fall), 40,000 for the whole county. Inflated property values are a statewide problem. My daughter thinks it portends another housing bubble crash. The only way she might be able to afford purchasing a home. As bad as Texas is, rents and housing costs have already destroyed California, and all of the West Coast. Property zoning is much loved, but does thwart new supply. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted May 6, 2022 Share Posted May 6, 2022 70 people had access to the draft. How the Supreme Court could proceed with the Roe leak probe (nbcnews.com) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted May 6, 2022 Share Posted May 6, 2022 Putin’s new flagship ‘on FIRE in Neptune missile strike near Snake Island’ weeks after Moskva sunk, Ukraine claims (the-sun.com) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted May 6, 2022 Share Posted May 6, 2022 Republican candidate charged with murdering his cancer survivor wife wins his primary from JAIL | Daily Mail Online Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 6, 2022 Share Posted May 6, 2022 Sky News:COVID news live: US severely restricts use of Johnson & Johnson vaccine over blood clot fears. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://www.westernstandard.news/features/study-finds-plastics-found-in-masks-present-in-patients-lungs/article_056590f2-0615-5bc9-aab0-730e7704634e.htmlhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969722020009 Same plastics in masks ---------------------------------------------------- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted May 6, 2022 Share Posted May 6, 2022 Evidence that Supreme Court leak came from the right laid out by New York magazine columnist (msn.com) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W. Niederhut Posted May 6, 2022 Share Posted May 6, 2022 The Republican Axis Reversing the Rights Revolution Can Anything Stop Republicans From Rolling Back Rights? - The Atlantic May 6, 2022 Ron Brownstein: “Since the 1960s, Congress and federal courts have acted mostly to strengthen the floor of basic civil rights available to citizens in all 50 states, a pattern visible on issues from the dismantling of Jim Crow racial segregation to the right to abortion to the authorization of same-sex marriage.” “But now, offensives by red-state governments and GOP-appointed federal judges are poised to retrench those common standards across an array of issues. The result through the 2020s could be a dramatic erosion of common national rights and a widening gulf—a ‘great divergence’—between the liberties of Americans in blue states and those in red states.” “The only lever Democrats have to resist these efforts is their unified control of the White House and Congress. In theory, this allows them to pass federal legislation establishing a new floor of nationwide rights on voting, abortion, LGBTQ issues, and other areas. In practice, that’s proved to be an empty promise.” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted May 6, 2022 Share Posted May 6, 2022 (edited) On 5/5/2022 at 6:10 PM, Ron Bulman said: Man, you've got that right Paul. My taxes go up another $1100 they will take 1/6 of my disposable income to pay without dipping into savings/retirement accounts. Combined with record electric bills in January/February $450/350 it gets me down. It's all about the billionaires and millionaires wanting more, more, more. We've never had enough money to even make a down payment in our 40 years of marriage and my 70 years of living here on the Monterey Peninsula California Coast. Now...garages are $500,000. Homes start at 1 million! Old shacks! I kid you not! We rent...and are barely making that! When property values started exploding here in the 1990's and went into the outer space insanity levels from 2,000 and to even now, our county assessors couldn't increase assessment values fast enough to get their windfall 100's of millions in inflated value taxes. County governments LOVE this real estate hyper inflation. It's been a financial income revenue source windfall gift from heaven for them. When the Bush recession hit in 2007 property values dropped more than half throughout California in just one year. Here on the Monterey Peninsula they maybe dropped 25% in that time. It took five years but the property sales rates here came back to pre-Bush collapse levels and now 9 years later have doubled again. What was so real and not even denied however...was how the County never lowered the assessment rate for property taxes all through the Bush collapse years! They kept them at pre-2007 levels! Home owners were furious! The county never really explained why they couldn't get new lowered assessments or came up with excuses about "their stalling" in that effort. When new real estate sales prices explode higher however...BOOM! The county assessors are right on it. But watch how they become possum minded turtles when sales amounts decrease. Cities and counties here are as much "profit" minded money grubbing machines as any corporations in my life-time experience view. They claim they are non-profit? Ha ... that's a shameless charade. When they get huge increases in tax revenue...they simply throw almost all of it into salary and benefit raises for all their employees. The bigger the salaries, the bigger the raises. It's the pyramid thing. In the 1980s or 90's all of our cities here came across a new gold mine tax revenue source. So sly but ingenious it was Mafiaesque in it's creation and implementation. The person who first thought it up has been revered by all California city managers since as an icon of new income scheming genius. It was called ..."The Hotel Room Tax!" For 100 years people have been coming to this well known tourist spot of California - the Monterey Peninsula. Each city made a killing on these tourist coming here to spend their vacation monies on lodging, food, shopping you name it. The city services like police, fire, maintenance did fine all that time. I've lived here since 1952. I know they did. Their budgets weren't strained. Heck, parking meters alone were a new income source and that brought in millions over the years. Then, out of the blue, someone somewhere came up with a new tax scheme. Place a city tax on hotel room payments ( to be paid up front by lodgers) ON TOP OF CITY BUSINESS INCOME TAXES already collected on yearly or quarterly hotel income revenues. Their public relations campaign to lull the citizenry into okaying this new but nebulous tax was an exaggerated claim that all these tourists and their presence demands had brought their city police, fire and maintenance budgets to the breaking point. Like all the police and firefighters here did was respond to these tourist needs 90% more than regular towns folk. It was complete BS. Yet, the public and reluctantly, hotel owners eventually bought it. Partly because it started off typically low. 1 to 3% Then they regularly started raising this 1 or 2 percentage points every few years. You know what it is now? 12% or more! You rent a hotel room here for $300 a night, and the cities here instantly collect $36! And we have between 10,000 and 15,000 hotel and motel rooms here! More than half the year, they are booked! I read last year that the city of Monterey ALONE brings in $10 million or more yearly just from Hotel Motel room taxes! And this is on top of retail sales taxes of 12 to 13%! Building fees and permits are in the 10's of $ thousands range to boot! And they ( cities and counties ) are still constantly putting out press releases that they don't bring in enough income to pay all their employee's salaries and benefits. This "our budgets are strained" crying poor game is a built-in tax increase rationalizing one that never ends. It's never enough. My whole point here is how city and county governments here, and obviously in other areas of the U.S. like Texas, have turned into ravenous never enough tax increase money demanding vulture machines. Non-profit entities? Please. This legalized ever higher taxes greed is rampant in much of America now. And imo one of the real reasons for the ever growing and stressful inflation and income divide between the wealthy and the rest of us. Sorry for the long rant... but this is reality now folks. Edited May 7, 2022 by Joe Bauer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W. Niederhut Posted May 6, 2022 Share Posted May 6, 2022 20 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said: Karine Jean-Pierre, a Black lesbian and longtime LGBTQ+ activist, is going to be the new (Biden) White House press secretary.--The Advocate Well, Ben, this shocking appointment must be stirring up considerable consternation in the MAGA-verse, eh? Not only is Jean-Pierre a woman, she's black, and she's not even a heterosexual! What in hell is the world coming to? 🤥 And, in comparison, just think of the many wonderful, heterosexual, Caucasian press secretaries that Donald Trump appointed (and fired) during his White House tenure! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benjamin Cole Posted May 7, 2022 Share Posted May 7, 2022 1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said: Well, Ben, this shocking appointment must be stirring up considerable consternation in the MAGA-verse, eh? Not only is Jean-Pierre a woman, she's black, and she's not even a heterosexual! What in hell is the world coming to? 🤥 And, in comparison, just think of the many wonderful, heterosexual, Caucasian press secretaries that Donald Trump appointed (and fired) during his White House tenure! It wasn't me that decided to prominently identify the new press secretary by her sex, race and private sexual life. IMHO, this is yet more divisive ID politics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benjamin Cole Posted May 7, 2022 Share Posted May 7, 2022 Man who stormed Capitol in caveman costume gets prison--AP By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN May 6, 2022 GMT A New York City judge’s son who stormed the U.S. Capitol wearing a furry “caveman” costume was sentenced on Friday to eight months in prison. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said Aaron Mostofsky was “literally on the front lines” of the mob’s attack on Jan. 6, 2021. “What you and others did on that day imposed an indelible stain on how our nation is perceived, both at home and abroad, and that can’t be undone,” the judge told Mostofsky, 35. ---30--- An "indelible stain"! Globally, too! It can't be undone. (Putting 200 million cluster bombs into Laos was nothing compared to Mostofsky's actions.) Mostofsky is going to prison, in part, for the stain he put on how the US is perceived globally. And that stain is indelible. So, remember wearing buffalo horns, or cave-man outfits, gets you serious slammer time. I have searched through the records, but no one wore a gorilla suit on 1/6. A few of the protestors looked like gorillas, but were un-costumed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Brancato Posted May 7, 2022 Share Posted May 7, 2022 As we discuss all these pertinent issues - Supreme Court, wars, new Omicron info with sub variants, insurrection, we would I hope realize that all of it serves to divide us amongst ourselves and distract from the giant sucking sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benjamin Cole Posted May 7, 2022 Share Posted May 7, 2022 38 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said: As we discuss all these pertinent issues - Supreme Court, wars, new Omicron info with sub variants, insurrection, we would I hope realize that all of it serves to divide us amongst ourselves and distract from the giant sucking sound. Verily, I sometimes wonder if the US public is being "played." If there is a way to divide the public along non-class lines, it will be done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W. Niederhut Posted May 7, 2022 Share Posted May 7, 2022 1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said: It wasn't me that decided to prominently identify the new press secretary by her sex, race and private sexual life. IMHO, this is yet more divisive ID politics. Huh? Divisive or inclusive, Ben? You remind me of a Fox News-watching in-law of mine who insisted a few years ago that Obama was "divisive"--presumably because he wasn't Caucasian. When I asked him why he thought Obama was "divisive," he mentioned that Obama didn't condemn the looters during the Ferguson riots! He didn't realize that Fox News had deliberately edited Obama's Ferguson speech, to delete Obama's condemnation of the violence and looting after Mike Brown's murder. Fox/Trumplican politics have been based on bigotry, xenophobia, and white identity politics and the "Southern strategy" since 2015. It dovetailed perfectly with Putin's "Gerasimov" strategy of dividing the U.S. along racial and cultural fault lines after 2015. Recall that Trump came to prominence as the anti-Obama-- the Birther-in-Chief. See if you can finally figure that one out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benjamin Cole Posted May 7, 2022 Share Posted May 7, 2022 34 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said: Huh? Divisive or inclusive, Ben? You remind me of a Fox News-watching in-law of mine who insisted a few years ago that Obama was "divisive"--presumably because he wasn't Caucasian. When I asked him why he thought Obama was "divisive," he mentioned that Obama didn't condemn the looters during the Ferguson riots! He didn't realize that Fox News had deliberately edited Obama's Ferguson speech, to delete Obama's condemnation of the violence and looting after Mike Brown's murder. Fox/Trumplican politics have been based on bigotry, xenophobia, and white identity politics and the "Southern strategy" since 2015. It dovetailed perfectly with Putin's "Gerasimov" strategy of dividing the U.S. along racial and cultural fault lines after 2015. Recall that Trump came to prominence as the anti-Obama-- the Birther-in-Chief. See if you can finally figure that one out. W- It is interesting that you feel divided from your in-law, on a race issue. I hope your family relations improve. It does seem that M$M plays up, is indeed obsessed with, ID politics. This highlighting of Identity not only serves to divide voters, but obscures much more important issues. For example--- The US government every year takes about $4,000 per resident ($1.4 trillion) and gives it to the DoD, VA, black budget and to pay pro-rated interest on the national debt. Thus, a typical family of four pays $16,000 to this complex of military outlays. This year, last year, and next year and likely in perpetuity. No one plans to invade the US, and indeed nations with nukes might as well be considered impervious to military invasion. So what is the true purpose of this $16,000 annual tax on a typical family? Have you ever seen M$M portray this tax in the way I just did? But very important (we are told) is the new press secretary's ID. You imagine MAGA people are inflamed over her appointment. Maybe they are---they too, have been duped by ID politics? Anyway, you are safer now, not only from foreign military invasion, but from domestic subversives. Mr. Caveman, of the 1/6 rebellion coup-attempt, is in prison for eight months. That is important also. https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/press-release/file/1353206/download There is a great photo of Mr. Caveman with a fur-skin cap in the above link. It appears he says he was "doing acid" during the 1/6 scrum. BTW, I understand psychedelics are being rehabilitated as treatment for depression. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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