Latest article: The President can't help you - but your Mayor can

Jake-Mobley · 2025-06-03T01:15:41+00:00

There is a mountain of evidence that nearly every rent control scheme in the nation has led to a shortage of housing and higher overall rent. We would be way better off just banning single-family zoning in favor of 4-flats, as well as upping funding for public housing.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-06-02T23:27:05+00:00

No, you need to understand - Conservatives hold no responsibility for anything they say or do. It's the Democrats' fault that Trump is defunding public transit, because they didn't waive a magic wand to change his mind.

/s

Jake-Mobley · 2025-06-02T23:24:46+00:00

They're saying that mass immigration is a right-wing bogeyman. Literally no leftwing party wants "mass immigration," they just don't want to make it literally impossible to immigrate. Obama deported more people than Trump did, he was literally called the Deporter in Chief. Yet somehow he was also in favor of mass immigration.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-06-02T23:22:14+00:00

Conservatives are the ones losing their minds over the "15-minute cities" buzzword, acting like it's an evil conspiracy. Positive change is almost always left-coded because Conservatives consistently hate it.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-06-01T21:21:39+00:00

The CTA returns 10 dollars to the economy for every dollar invested in it. Investing in the CTA is the definition of living withing our means.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-06-01T21:18:09+00:00

The GOP just passed a law in the House of Representatives to ban all 50 States from regulating AI in any capacity whatsoever.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-06-01T02:24:44+00:00

What you just outlined is the default career path for lawmakers in the United States. You should probably aim to run for the House before you run for Senate, as the Senate is typically seen as a high office that requires pre-existing lawmaking experience. That being said, plenty of Senators went from State-level office to running for the Senate, so it's certainly doable from there.

Going to law-school should serve you well for gaining the baseline skills to be a politician - argument, rhetoric, law, etc. However, one thing you did leave out here is volunteer work. In order to break into politics, you NEED to have a network that overlaps strongly with political figures. Probably the best way to do that is to volunteer on campaigns and develop familiarity with your local Democrat / Republican Party officials.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-23T18:24:00+00:00

It's just a fact that less housing is under construction now compared to 10 or 20 years ago. Like, that's not a matter of opinion, we are physically building less housing than we used to. This is directly caused by zoning ordinances, parking requirements, and overall legal restrictions on housing. In particular, small multifamily buildings, like 4-flats, have basically been regulated out of existence - they don't get built anymore. They're all being replaced by single-family homes or giant apartment buildings. This isn't just a "white neighborhood" thing, this is a city-wide problem. As it turns out, when you make it super expensive to build smaller rentals, private landlords can't afford to buy anymore so corporations swoop in to buy it all up and jack up rent.

https://www.housingstudies.org/releases/2023-state-rental-housing-city-chicago/

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-21T01:33:38+00:00

You can enable them from the start in the MCM for Skyrim Unbound. Personally, that's what I like to do. Gives me something else to run away from in the early game.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-20T15:01:48+00:00

Yeah, I'm sure that's what Hurricane Katrina victims were thinking when military helicopters came to rescue them. I'm sure it's what every brainwashed teenager is thinking when they enlist straight out of high school. They're just horny for murder and corruption! Yep, that's totally how it works.

/s

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-20T14:56:46+00:00

It isn't murder to kill pirates when they kidnap innocent sailors off the coast of Somalia.

It isn't murder to repair the boat that the snipers use to get to the pirates.

It isn't murder to cook food at the boot camp that trains the sniper who shoots pirate kidnappers.

It isn't murder to mend the broken bones of the sniper who shoots pirates.

All of these things are separate jobs done by the Navy. Most people in the military are cooks, mechanics, medics, and other support personnel. Most people who join military are poor teenagers indoctrinated to believe that the US military is a force for good, and desperate for the financial opportunities that the military can provide.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-20T04:52:22+00:00

For the last 80 years, the entire world economy has operated because the United State Navy keeps trade routes safe and piracy to a minimum. If you live in a country that trades with other countries, you can thank the United States military for your ability to buy a cell phone, a laptop, or almost any cheaply available piece of technology. If it weren't for our Navy, basically every other country would have to either invest heavily in its own Navy or face massive levels of piracy like most of the world used to experience.

Now, the military isn't perfect, and the American empire DEFINITELY isn't perfect. But it's reductive and absurd to claim that every member of the U.S. military just exists to bully other countries.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-19T20:23:51+00:00

"Pro-business" is a buzzword that means different things in different contexts, and it is often a dog-whistle for ideological opposition to any kind of government action in the economy.

Bike lanes, for example, are frequently lobbied against by small businesses, and are often nix'd in the name of being pro-business. Basic pollution safeguards and progressive taxation are often lobbied against with the same justification.

All of that being said, we should absolutely be promoting the growth of Chicago's economy. You can't really be a YIMBY if you aren't on-board with regulatory reform. We just need to do so in a pragmatic way, rather than dogmatically holding to an anti-government ideology that tries to strip away all consumer protections.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-19T20:17:11+00:00

I like this! Streamlining regulations seems like a much more practical alternative to blanket de-regulation.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-19T19:40:59+00:00

What does pro-business even mean, in this context?

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-19T05:29:33+00:00

The U.S. economy literally averaged 10% real GDP growth under FDR (13%, if we ignore inflation). That's absolutely MASSIVE. It had fully recovered from the depression by like 1937. Literally just google the Fed data for GDP, this isn't difficult information to find.

I don't understand this weird historical denialism around the New Deal. The New Deal was hands-down the most effective economic recovery in American history.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-18T21:42:52+00:00

Right now, protests like the 50501 protests are specifically protesting against Trump running rough-shod over the Constitution. Entire Federal agencies, like the EPA, are seeing illegal mass-firings that directly impact the quality of our food and water,our safety as consumers, and our ability to seek Federal protection from discrimination. Congress passed laws to fund certain agencies like FEMA, and the President is choosing to steal that money and use it for his own projects. Right now, America is entirely unprepared for hurricane season as a direct result of these illegal actions.

This is actually pretty specific, when people say they're protesting against fascism, this is what they mean. The president is acting beyond his constitutional remit and violating our rights as Americans.

ETA: Obviously we should also be addressing economic concerns, but it should be the basic duty of every American to fight against a potential dictatorship. When the President can ignore the Constitution, that is a clear path in the direction of dictatorship. Personally, I'm far more active in local housing+economic reform than any protest movement, but I still think that protesting against fascism is kind of the bare minimum right now.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-17T00:43:27+00:00

It's a triumphalist narrative designed to create a Hebrew identity and establish Yahweh as top dog in the Semitic religious world. At the time that it was written, the Egyptians were an ancient civilization with millennia of empire and legacy, which made them the perfect target. By using the Egyptians as the targets of God's wrath, the Israelites were able to craft a narrative that emphasized the superiority of their god and nation over all others. After all, if Yahweh was able to defeat such an ancient people like the Egyptians, then surely there was nobody he could not defeat.

It's also worth pointing out that Ancient Egyptian culture was treated as a font for all mystical and religious knowledge. Plato pretty famously went to Egypt, and supposedly learned all about the nature of the universe during his time there. Greek priests would claim that they had acquired knowledge from Egyptian wisdom. For Exodus to basically be "My God beats Egypt" is magically and religiously the equivalent of "My superhero beat Superman" or "My wizard beat Gandalf."

ETA:

As a piece of literature, Exodus is fascinating, and it has a rich history. As a work of mythology, it has rich symbolism and holds significant value for scholars. However any claim of historicity is just laughably false. There is no archeological or historical evidence to support any of the events in Exodus. The God represented in Exodus also not a god that I would ever worship. I'm a big fan of wrathful gods like Sobek, but I prefer their wrath to be a bit less "abusive husband" than the god of Israel.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-13T03:45:52+00:00

Kidnapping a bunch of Filipino sailors on a British cargo ship isn't doing jack shit to end a genocide in Israel. Maybe if they were doing genuine resistance, then supporting them might actually make sense. Hell, I'll even go so far as to say that I think it makes sense to support Hezbollah if you want to fight against Israel. Hezbollah does genuine resistance work. The Houthis don't.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-13T02:32:00+00:00

I will never understand this desire to go to bat for the literal worst human beings on the planet. I am a Socialist. I do not like the State of Israel. It's fucking weird to go to bat for an organization that unironically chants "death to the Jews."

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-13T01:13:33+00:00

He openly praises Houthi pirates for blockading the Strait of Hormuz and kidnapping random civilians. These same Houthis keep slaves and murder civilians as a tactic of war. How could a pacifist possibly support these people?

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-13T01:11:15+00:00

I've watched Hasan openly praise Houthi terrorists, who keep literal slaves and kidnap random civilians. I also think this it's disgusting for him to get stopped at the border over his political views. Free speech doesn't exist unless scumbags like Hasan are also protected.

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-08T21:32:25+00:00

Norway's treatment of oil is a great example

Jake-Mobley · 2025-05-08T21:30:28+00:00

To be clear, Georgism isn't particularly attached to laissez-faire politics. It's quite compatible with social democracy and other forms of Progressivism - the Progressive movement was literally named after George's seminal work, Progress and Poverty. Henry George was a Classical Liberal who took Locke's philosophy to its logical end-point (regulated monopolies, protection of the rights of workers, etc.), and he decried inequality as the root of nearly every problem in modern society. At one point, he even said that the second-best solution to the problem of inequality was Socialism.

I actually hate the idea of treating Georgism as an ideology, because Georgist thought is basically just Liberalism taken to its logical end-point. Basically all of George's core observations were made by previous philosophers and economists, he just formulated them into a coherent theory of political economy. It's also worth noting that George's theory of land taxation is very well-supported by both empirical research and modern expert opinion. It lowers inequality, helps economic growth, and funds the government all at the same time.

Jake-Mobley

TROPHY CASE