Time For Action

I'm not going to waste time going over the sad details of what's going on in town. Everyone knows, it has been covered endlessly. But it needs to be described in terms of economics.

• Low rental unit inventory has caused prices to skyrocket
• Low single-family home sales inventory has caused prices to skyrocket
• Outside profiteers seeing the price increases have come into the market to buy properties to make a quick buck, further driving up prices
• Wall Street hedge funds are buying up entire city blocks and evicting tenants, doing bare-bones "upgrades" and tripling rents
• Absentee house-flippers are buying homes and listing these empty, furnished properties on peer-to-peer "home sharing" sites such as AirBNB, further reducing inventory from both the rental and sales markets

The Portland City Council has declared a "housing emergency", which is basically lip service to pacify advocates acting on behalf of genuinely aggrieved Portland residents who are making a living wage but unable to pay their skyrocketing rents. 

Action is needed. The City Council should adopt a policy that assists existing Portland residents with finding and keeping a place to live; that punishes and deters out-of-town mercenaries from looting and pillaging the Portland housing market, and funneling the profits out of state; and hinders the conversion of homes that could be used full-time to per-day "home sharing" rentals. 

Here's what needs to happen:

• Five-year extension of the current 90-day notice period for rent increases more than 5%
• Five-year moratorium on no-cause evictions
• Five-year suspension of zoning restrictions prohibiting tiny houses, RV's and campers from sharing a property with an existing home (lot size greater than 0.33 acres)
• The purchaser of any real estate property must honor the existing leases of tenants on the premises at the time the property is put up for sale, and purchaser must engage in good-faith stewardship of the property until all leases expire
• Tax rent for properties owned by out-of-area landlords at 33% (gross receipts, not profits; and grandfather in existing property management companies with more than 20 units under management and on-site offices & maintenance staff)
• Restrict per-day "house-sharing" listings to on-premises owners only
• Restrict the number of days a given property may be made available for per-day "house-sharing" rental to 90 days per calendar year
• Limit the conversion of an owner-resident home to a rental home to the expiration of a 3-year waiting period

This is merely an immediate set of first steps needed to stop the bleeding. The next three steps are as follows:

• Build
• Build more
• Build even more

Increasing inventory at all price points will help quell the tumult in the current market; so while the city should focus its energy on attracting and fast-tracking low- and middle-income rental unit construction, even luxury apartment and condo construction is good in some way. 

And let me say one more thing. This is a crisis of staggering proportions. Children are sleeping in homeless shelters even though their parents earn $50K a year and pay all of their bills on time. So anyone coming to City Council meetings with "not in my back yard" complaints or whining about "maintaining the aesthetic of the neighborhood" needs to be taken into the street and given a good ass-whooping. And City Council should ignore any and all concerns to this effect until things have stabilized.

The City Council has let a runaway housing market currently in the hands of out-of-state robber barons and Scrooge McDuck wanna-bes accelerate to the point where dual-income families are becoming homeless at the rate of dozens per month. The people of Portland shouldn't be tolerating this lack of action on the part of the City Council. The Mayor's office should be under siege, and every resident should be demanding immediate action -- action that puts Portland residents first, and moneyed interests dead last.

DOMA, Prop 8, and the Inevitable Equality

As I predicted in a post in December of last year, the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 were bent over at the waist and sodomized with a telephone pole by the United States Supreme Court this morning. Separate rulings with separate results, one better than I had expected.

Very Literally, Dying

By next year, the health insurance exchanges promised by the Affordable Care Act will be operational, and millions of people who couldn't get insurance before will be able to select and purchase a policy. Additionally, federal subsidies for those with lower incomes will provide assistance for people to purchase health insurance.

Except this is a complete pipe dream. I have direct, first-hand information on the topic --- from a high-placed executive working for an insurance company that is a certified participating provider in more than one of these exchanges --- and I am about to reveal why this system is just going to be another kick in the teeth for people who are hoping to finally purchase health insurance.

I'll give you the quick summary now: you won't be able to afford the insurance policies offered on the exchanges. Hardly anybody will, even with the subsidies provided by the government. Without a public option competing against these private insurance companies, the exchanges will barely make a tiny dent in the problem of covering millions of uninsured Americans. Period.

I will apologize in advance, this is complicated shit, and I will try to distill it down to its essence as best I can.

Bill Cosby and the Feeding Frenzy

By now you have all seen the e-mail and/or post on social media about something said or written by Bill Cosby, commonly referred to now as, "I'm 83, and I'm tired."

And you've heard about how it's a complete load of crap, and how he recently went on NBC's Meet The Press to set the record straight and call out the jack-meat douche-nozzle who tried to use his name to forward the greatest hits of the Tea Party's racist, treasonous horse-shit.

All well and good. But lost in this little saga is the message for the idiots that sunk their few remaining teeth into this story --- hook, line, and sinker --- and were forced to spit the hook when they realized they got too close to the boat.

This, my gullible guppies, is for you.

Heroes And Villains

I give to you today a tale of heroes and villains. It won't be hard to find the heroes, not after this week.

We all owe a big debt of thanks to the brave men and women of the Boston PD, SWAT, Massachusetts National Guard, and other first responders who sprung into action without concern for their own lives to protect the local citizens and -- quite literally -- the entire nation. If those kooks were better funded, and more intelligent, they could have spread their pressure-cooker nightmare anywhere they wanted. Fortunately they were caught quickly.

But above and beyond the bravery of those trained and equipped to handle such things was the bravery of those private citizens on the scene at the time of the bombing. Without body armor or sidearm, these people jumped into a war zone to help aid the wounded. Without their sharp and selfless actions, the death toll could easily have been ten times as high. Those, in my eyes, are the true heroes.

We would all like to think we would do the same thing were we in that position, but acts of terror don't occur that often. Nor are many of us frequently in proximity to burning buildings or collapsing bridges or people accidentally in the path of oncoming trains. But what can we do, each of us, all of us, to be the heroes that we saw in Boston that day?

The Economic Patriotism Act of 2013

During the last presidential campaign there was a fair bit of attention paid to offshore investments, and the multinational corporations that avoid taxes by hiding profits overseas. When corporations earn profits from offshore affiliates (many of whom do business exclusively in North America, but are located in tax havens like the Cayman Islands), those profits are not taxed until they are transferred into the hands of the American parent company. It's a shell game aimed at cheating the American people, it has to stop, and we need a revision of the tax code to do it.

But really, we need to go further than that. Huge corporations are the tip of the iceberg, as the Internet has made it possible for nearly every opportunistic shit-bag mercenary to screw over his neighbors and the country as a whole with just a few clicks.

We need to punch these fuckers right in the gonads. This is how we can do it.

The GOP Already Has A Big Tent

One of the suggestions during the last 6 years of complete Republican collapse in national elections has been the idea of a "big tent," a welcoming posture of the party to allow different ideas, different cultures, different races, and different political agendas. This year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) really should show the world that this is in full swing.

The GOP already has a big tent: full of COMPLETE FUCKING LOONEYS!

Okay, so that's not entirely true. Some of them are just the same power/money-hungry filth who have run the party for over a century. But we'll get to that. First, the supporting cast.

Ignorance Is Conservatism

Do you know what kind of coffee you prefer? When polled, in the neighborhood of 80% of people said they liked a "rich, dark roast." With the way coffee has evolved into a topic with the level of variety and specificity of French wines or premium cigars, that number may be somewhat lower. But at the time this poll was taken, 80%. Rich, dark roast.

But then an actual taste test was conducted, allowing those same people to choose what kind of coffee they liked by experiencing it. When all was said and done barely anyone liked a "rich, dark roast." Most people preferred a light roast with caramel and/or chocolatey overtones, not similar in the slightest to the "rich, dark roast" they claimed was their favorite! The percentage of people who liked a "rich, dark roast" when computed from taste tests was in single digits.

Why the disparity? People are ignorant, and they believe what they're told.

The Precise Demographic

In the wake of Newtown, new gun legislation has popped up all over the country. Local, state, and federal lawmakers have jumped on the opportunity to try to move forward with firearm restrictions that will introduce a measure of safety to the "wild west" attitude held by the gun industry and its sticky-chinned fluffers, the National Rifle Association.

However, there isn't one piece of legislation I've seen yet that is going to do one damn bit of good in solving the problem of gun violence in America. Banning assault rifles or magazines over a certain capacity will merely push determined assailants to using multiple weapons and multiple magazines. Restricting access to firearms for the mentally ill, who account for less than 2% of gun-related deaths, will do little if anything to stop a rising tide of gun violence in this country.

What is needed is a law that can target the people who are the most likely to commit one of these heinous acts of violence, and prevent them from getting weapons --- while allowing the remainder of the population to continue to purchase and use their firearms.

I have devised such a plan.

A Question For Ricki Lake

Ricki? Hi. Shut the fuck up and keep reading. Because I have a serious question for you, one that eventually you will have to answer.

The most dangerous thing in this world is an idiot with a microphone, and that's what you've become while spouting this fucked up water birth bullshit. As if Jenny McCarthy didn't do enough damage with her vaccines-cause-Autism horse manure; now here you are trying to kill infants before they're even 10 days old. Fortunately, there are medical experts out there who are trying to get valid, scientific facts in front of the sheep that are stupid enough to follow your advice.