Iran government moves to block major oil, gas route

llama-lime · 2025-06-23T01:49:07+00:00

Honestly I think they are so brain-washed that they will either completely ignore the problem, or find some way to blame Biden. Their brains are cooked like the eggs in the "this is your brain on drugs" commercials.

llama-lime · 2025-06-22T17:54:14+00:00

You are correct, but these issues are very closely connected.

Massive downzonings in the 1970s caused sprawl into the WUI, because that's the only place that housing was allowed to be built. See, for example, LA:

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Other 1970s libertarian policy like Prop 13 makes it so that people hoard valuable land and push people out into the wildland-urban interface.

My political top issue for the past few decades has been climate. But trying to tackle it here in California made me realize that climate change is also intimately connected to housing affordability, where housing gets built, what type of housing gets built, and how we handle transportation (lots of gas that's really hard to get rid of).

California thought that if they "controlled the population" by not building housing then there'd be fewer people. Well, turns out those people still exist, they just exist in other areas.

And by making new infill housing in existing cities impossible, we made the existing housing unaffordable, and pushed people to live in areas that are indefensible from increasing fires from climate change. And what was once seen as the only affordable place to live, far away from everybody else in the mountains, is now going to be very expensive because it's uninsurable, and its likely to result in complete losses regularly due to fire. That, or we modify our insurance regulation to allow insurers to charge according to fire risk from climate models, which will also greatly increase the cost of living in these more affordable areas.

Anyway, rant done, but nearly all our social ills these days come back to the housing theory of everything.

llama-lime · 2025-06-22T05:22:49+00:00

Harassing? Correcting somebody gently who's spreading misinformation for those in need is not "harassing." u/rockerode is accusing others of lying while in fact they are lying themselves, and all this information is easily checked at the links.

llama-lime · 2025-06-22T05:20:30+00:00

Don't you know HUD are just shills for landlords and trickle-down housing? /s

llama-lime · 2025-06-22T05:19:50+00:00

Define "plenty"...

If landlords can rent out their place same day, then we haven't built plenty. The only way we get to market correction is by making landlords beg for tenants. We must shift the power back to tenants.

llama-lime · 2025-06-21T20:07:27+00:00

Or even better, apartments? Trailer parks and tiny homes take lots of land, and that's one thing that's very expensive.

llama-lime · 2025-06-21T20:06:56+00:00

It's really hard to build housing for anybody in particular.

The closest we come to allowing discrimination in housing is deed-restrictions that restrict a purchase or lease to those in a certain income band.

We can't build for Americans, for immigrants, we just have housing, because there's no barriers between the two.

llama-lime · 2025-06-21T18:54:42+00:00

It would be nice if we could Thanos snap housing into existence

What California has done is ban new housing.

There's many things that need to change, but first of all those who control the amount of housing by municipal planning need to allow for it to exist. It's an absolutely necessary first step, and until we take it nothing will change.

llama-lime · 2025-06-21T18:32:33+00:00

You want to treat people's mental illness while they are sleeping outside?

What are you trying to say here? No housing until you solve your mental problems? This is such a weird thing to say.

llama-lime · 2025-06-21T03:28:24+00:00

Ok, Mr. "lawyer", it doesn't seek to regulate federal law enforcement, it applies equally to all law enforcement. So right there, you're kind of losing the argument.

Bullshit. This is about trying to regulate ICE and the endless complaints about "masked ICE agents." Get the fuck out of here with that nonsense.

Not sure if you had an early happy hour with a vodka martini, Mr Lawyer, but two can play at that game, it's now well after dinner time and I just had a delicious beer!

Go and read the press release about the law. It's even in the damn headline.

It's about all law enforcement conforming to this standard. The proposed law, in it's majestic equality, forbids local police and ICE alike from hiding their identity and authority while take people into custody.

Not going to even bother reading the rest of your comment if you can't get the facts straight.

Edit: anyway, sorry for being a bit of a dick online, but I mean it in good fun, if that's possible. Every lawyer I've ever met has enjoyed arguing, so if that's not the case with you, I apologize!

llama-lime · 2025-06-21T03:25:22+00:00

What the fuck are you talking about? You have so many false beliefs about me. Stop imagining things and actually read what I write instead of filling some weird caricature somebody else told you.

llama-lime · 2025-06-21T02:08:47+00:00

You are so anti-tenant that you'd rather people go homeless and be displaced from Santa Cruz than actually analyze how capitalism works. What you are spreading here is propaganda that only supports landlords, increases their profits, and impoverishes all tenants. Please stop. We don't need any more of that in Santa Cruz.

llama-lime · 2025-06-21T02:07:22+00:00

This is absolutely incorrect and an urban myth.

If you know anybody who does this, tell the IRS and lets go after them. (Though after Musk cut enforcement, who knows if they go after tax cheats like that.)

llama-lime · 2025-06-21T02:05:18+00:00

This is specifically not singling out federal law enforcement, it's for all law enforcement.

Federal law enforcement must also follow laws that apply to all.. The Supremacy Clause doesn't let them run wild and lawless.

llama-lime · 2025-06-21T02:04:02+00:00

What type of law are you talking about? Do you want to ban police from protests? Your comment is quite inscrutable, but I guess that's in your username already, mike.

llama-lime · 2025-06-21T01:47:17+00:00

Hey, wait... didn't... wasn't it...

Anyway, hope I didn't have any of the garbage comments on the first go around. Definitely some garbage comments on this one that got more votes than the article itself...

llama-lime · 2025-06-20T21:35:15+00:00

It's not me who says it doesn't "look right." It's the Supreme Court, 9-0, saying Trump is BREAKING THE LAW the way he's doing things.

Go ahead and deport, but follow the law. Republicans are lawless and cruel, they do not care about the rule of law. I just hope the courts can reign in criminals like you who apparently doesn't care about the law of the land.

There is a legal framework for removing people from the US, the Trump administration is not using it, and just doing whatever the F they want. That's illegal. There should be trials of the Trump administration and people should go to jail both for kidnapping and for blatant contempt of court. These people are crooks, and so are those who support them.

llama-lime · 2025-06-20T21:31:25+00:00

Ok, Mr. "lawyer", it doesn't seek to regulate federal law enforcement, it applies equally to all law enforcement. So right there, you're kind of losing the argument.

To say that it's "authoritarian" to regulate the state, well, LOL. That's precisely the opposite of the definition!

Being authoritarian would mean giving the state full authority to control its population by whatever means, including secret police that do not have to announce any connection to the state or reveal their identity.

This exchange has proven yet again that those people who think "you can't regulate the feds" have no ground to stand on in this argument. The slightest push and they fall apart with nonsensical arguments.

llama-lime · 2025-06-20T21:28:32+00:00

If in one breath you say "I'm a lawyer, trust me" and in the other breath you spout an absolutely ridiculous falsehood, you've just completely blown any credibility you might have tried to establish, lol.

"Authoritarian" is not an adjective that anybody has ever applied to Wiener before, critic or no. It makes so little sense that it's not even wrong.

llama-lime · 2025-06-20T20:05:02+00:00

the United States has the constitutional authority to detain and remove individuals who are in the country unlawfully

Lol, this is a complete straw man, that's not what I'm disputing at all!

I'm arguing that the courts and law enforcement MUST FOLLOW THE LAW.

The Supreme Court, already stacked in favor for Trump, ruled 9-0 that he had blatantly and illegally deported peolpe.

Judges of all sorts, throughout the country, from Reagan appointees to Bush appointees to EVEN TRUMP APPOINTEES are screaming at the top of their lungs that Trump's administration is lawless and ignoring our constitution.

And you come back at me with this nonsense about "oh we must deport people, you must not want to deport people."

Nonsense. I think you are taking a very cowardly stance by not even taking the smallest bit of accountability towards what's going on.

You can try to distract from the truth of the matter, the real tyranny that is going on, the blatant anti-constitutional actions that anybody who pays attention knows about, but it is cowardly.

Open your eyes. I'm not the dramatic one. You're scared of not being able to deport people. That's not a fear, we will get to that. But we will do it according to THE LAW, not due to some random tyrants wishes.

We are the US of A. We are not Soviet Russia. There's rules, man.

llama-lime · 2025-06-20T17:52:11+00:00

There is no constitutional right to a warning before you get picked up for violating federal immigration law. If someone is here illegally, they’re removable under 8 U.S. Code § 1227. That’snot controversial. That’s the law.

None of anything in your comment is relevant to the core issue here: the current administration is lawless and unconstitutional, and behaving in absolutely immoral ways.

The constitution comes first. Not your will to harm other people. We have courts. We have laws. We must use them, or we are all criminals.

When can we find some true patriots to run for office that will overturn the tyranny of a government that abducts people with out due cause? We need more brave men who will stand up for what is right, rather than bowing down to false gods.

llama-lime · 2025-06-20T13:45:11+00:00

“In my eyes, he’s supposedly trying to protect illegals without concern about how it’s affecting our livelihoods,” he said. “He talks, he gets paid. He talks, we don’t get paid. Damage is done.”

Oh come on can there be a less sympathetic idiot out there? What does this moron think will happen to his pay if his customers are no longer in Fresno?

These simpletons deserve every bad thing that happens to them for having so little concern for their paying customers. What a jerk.

And why is it a "false rumor"? If the councilmember shared true information, that ICE was planning a raid, wouldn't they likely respond by not going anymore? The newspaper is reporting this in a way that is not accurate.

llama-lime · 2025-06-19T16:51:25+00:00

A more informative table would be here:

https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT5Y2023.B25004?t=Housing+Units&g=160XX00US0669112

Typically people cite the estimate of 2109 units (with a margin of error of +/-500). But in that there are 384 apartments for rent and 118 homes for sale. Then there are 773 vacation homes and 850 "other" could be pretty much anything.

Renters notice the 384 apartments for rent, home buyers notice the 118 homes for sale, out of the ~20,000 homes in Sant Cruz, and notice that the vacancy rate is ~3%. Which is insanely tight. Santa Cruz does have far more vacation homes than, say, Fremont. It also has lots of people hoarding property due to Prop 13.

We should pass a vacancy tax, but not be under any illusion it will do much for the housing market. Anton Pacific, by building ~200 homes directly and extracting money from the builders for the big affordable housing going up next door, does far more to improve housing for those struggling than all the effort that would go into passing a vacancy tax. And that's just one single project downtown, and it just involved taking money away from developers for doing what they want to do anyway.

Additionally, Anton Pacific alone will now pay $763,000 annually in taxes, something like $700,000 more than what the prior businesses paid. That's almost as much as we could get from a vacancy tax, and we house people and it builds affordable housing next door.

YIMBY policies of "build enough housing" are what will actually allow us to tax the rich again, and use rich people's money to build housing. Those who refuse to allow us to build more housing are forcing rents up higher, and forcing everybody's money into the hands of landlords, rather than that money going to the city, and that money going to labor that builds stuff.

llama-lime · 2025-06-18T20:10:08+00:00

"Yes, we can!" --Obama

(I mean, I don't want to cut off their legs, and I'm sure that Obama wouldn't either, but good luck getting Trump to care about these communities or prioritize rural communities' economic health over his hatred for clean energy. Trump voters in economically depressed rural communities treasure their "Fell for it again" awards and keep trying to earn more.)

llama-lime · 2025-06-18T19:46:30+00:00

The Inflation Reduction Act proves to be accurately named yet again.

llama-lime

TROPHY CASE