“Air and maritime assets under our commands conducted operations to assure the defense of the United States and Canada,” a NORTHCOM statement to ABC News said, adding that “the patrol remained in international waters and was not considered a threat.”
A U.S. official also told ABC News that the Pentagon had been tracking and expecting this patrol for several weeks, since well before the exercise began. Four U.S. destroyers and P-8 aircraft were also sent to shadow the patrol.
Roman Catholic Church Pours $2 Million into Discrimination against LGBT Americans - November 15, 2012
The Roman Catholic Church hierarchy funneled $2 million into entirely unsuccessful efforts to advance discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the four marriage ballot states of Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington this election cycle. An updated HRC report, available at www.hrc.org/catholicreport, provides a snapshot of just how much money the Church, along with its close ally the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), poured into campaigns aimed solely at depriving LGBT Americans of dignity and respect.
Good PR move to distract where the diacese spend their cash. We know what the Catholic Church values based on the money they spend trying to influence politics; hey, just like the time they spent millions trying to prevent the statute of limitations from being expanded for child sexual abuse…
That article is over a decade old, and from when the church was led by a different pope. I have no love for the Catholic Church, but try to engage in good faith.
I always love how the Catholic Church gets to have it both ways: they simultaneously are bound by centuries of traditions that they revere, but are also not to held accountable for the damage that they’ve done merely a decade ago.
Have they apologized for trying to force their morally backwards religion on people? Have they funded lobbies to expand LGBTQ rights to reverse some of the damage they’ve done historically?
Do you think that the Cardinals who run the diaces who donated thone millions of dollars have reformed their ideas regarding same-sex marriage?
All the Catholic Church has done is to dress up their bigotry as inclusion, and credulous news agencies do their PR for them about how much the Catholic Church has changed to be more inclusive.
So I ask you, if you think they’ve changed: what exactly have they changed? They still lobby the government to impose their religion on the rest of us, they still believe that “acting on” gay urges is evil and weak, and they are still hiding child predators. The Catholic Church is an enormous institution, and merely replacing the CEO doesn’t mean that every franchise is magically aligned with his new vision.
So how is pointing out their actual values (a particularly ironic turn of phrase) “bad faith?”
They’ve shown their contempt for sexual minorities for centuries; I think we should believe them.
PR pope says PR talking point. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was a piece of shit homophobic bigot, long before he was made pope. Still refuses to meet or acknowledge the victims of his clergy. He’s nothing but talk, and not even his own followers listen to him. Go to any third world country full of Catholics and see if they treat LGBT people well because the pope said so.
Also, how does he claim to be pro lgbt while passing decrees that prevent priests from blessing same sex unions?
Why don’t we just move into vacant homes? Don’t pay rent or buy, just move in. There’s so many in my area that if I did get caught and kicked out of one I could just go down the street to the next.
"Everyone is welcome here, even the gays. They're just lesser members who can't actually participate in the sacraments. But they're still welcome! They're just like, 3/5ths welcome..."
We should make owning residential, single family real estate for commercial purposes illegal. You own it, you live in it, don’t live in it, don’t own it. That would make gobbling up houses and renting them out unprofitable and force cities to open up multifamily development
That sounds nice in theory but what happens when you want to sell your house?
The only potential buyers would be people who either currently rent or are ready to sell their old house as soon as they buy yours.
What if someone wants to fix it up first? Nope, they can’t do it. It will cut out the flippers but we’ve also just cut out all the renovators and restorers.
We could do something like this (and it may not be a terrible idea) but there will definitely be a cost. If we add that law, all the people who currently own homes (that includes both investors and owner occupiers) will see the value of their real estate holdings drop. In the US, over 65% of people own their homes and for most of them, their home is their single biggest asset. Richer people can diversify more so while this law wouldn’t hurt the 35% who don’t currently own homes, it will disproportionately affect the poorer end of the 65% homeowners (who have proportionately more of their savings tied up in their home).
If we don’t also address that problem at the same time we’ll create a cohort of people who can’t afford to retire because we killed their plan of downsizing when their kids move out and living off the difference.
The only potential buyers would be people who either currently rent or are ready to sell their old house as soon as they buy yours.
What if someone wants to fix it up first? Nope, they can’t do it. It will cut out the flippers but we’ve also just cut out all the renovators and restorers.
Not at all. They can buy and renovate all they want. They just have to sell it afterwards rather than rent it out.
We could. Why would anyone want to make those investments once we’ve cut off all their profit potential?
Investors chase profits. We can cut off their profits but when we do that 2 things happen; some of them just leave the industry and some of them break the law to try to get around the regulations. Almost nobody just eats the loss and continues investing.
We didn’t cut off all their profit potential. It’s just limited.
I don’t really see the problem with this hypothetical. Small time flippers are unaffected. 10% or whatever profit is still profit. If it disincentivizes big commercial flippers or investors because they can no longer make “enough” profit, good, that’s the point.
The problem we see when we try to implement price controls is that they inevitably lead to shortages. The oil caps in the 70s are a famous example but the NYC rent controls were just as bad. The standard practice if you wanted an apartment was to look in the newspaper for open house listings that day. You would show up before the open house starts with at least 1 months rent plus first and last months rent as security deposit, in cash. If you liked the place you signed within the first half hour. If you waited someone else took the apartment.
Part of the challenge is that it’s not as simple as a 10% profit cap. What if someone owns a house for 2 years? Do we cap it at 20% profit? Do we index the allowable profit to inflation and then add a “reasonable” offset? Do we want to allow different profit caps for different renovations? (maybe we don’t want to treat swimming pools and solar panels the same way?) How long do you need to live in a house to consider it owner occupied?
As those regulations get more and more complicated you end up with a ton of loopholes. The more you do that the more profitable regulatory arbitrage becomes as a business model.
In general, tight margins favor large companies over small firms. They can operate at such a large scale where they can thrive off of profit margins that would starve small businesses. That’s the general issue with mega-retailers. They operate on single digit margins. Mom and pop can’t streamline their operations enough to survive on those margins.
Our housing stock needs both growth and maintenance. That comes from investment. If we push the private sector out of those investments without replacing them we’ll just end up with a crumbling housing infrastructure. If we cut large businesses out of it government would likely need to take up the slack. And to be clear that government intervention would need to be massive. The real estate market is huge and if we cut out the private sector we will definitely need to raise taxes, by a large amount, to cover it. That’s not off the table but we should walk into a decision like that with eyes wide open.
Why would anyone renovate a property if it’s just gonna sit on the market out of reach of potential customers? I would hope that investors would be smarter than that. Like we’re saying, homes should be for living, not for investing. If there’s no pressing need to renovate, then great. Don’t. Whoever wants to buy it as is now can. And if they want to they can renovate what they want at their own pace.
I’m assuming OP intends to specifically exclude rental companies. As near as I can tell this plan would also exclude individual renters. Not sure how that would play out if someone wanted to defray the cost of their home by renting out a room or subdividing their home.
Do you not maintain the things that you own just because there will never be a day where it is worth 10x what you paid for it?
Btw I really want to meet these flippers and landlords who are maintaining their homes. Every time I have dealt with one they are obsessed with making it look like the house is great, not actually maintaining it. Oh wow you sprayed cookie dough smell before showing it, hey check out that black mold in the basement that stupidly has fucking sheetrock.
I live in a rented house, and I’ve rented out a house I owned because I wanted to move and I was underwater on my mortgage. I get where you’re coming from but I do think there should be exceptions. Maybe just capping the rent at 110% of the mortgage payment or 0.5% of the appraised value would be enough to allow some rentals while discouraging people to buy houses just to rent them out.
How about instead of banning it we heavily disincentivize it? After 2 properties you pay 50% in property tax. This allows people to rent out homes to college kids and people saving for a home, without allowing vultures to pick at the bones of the middle class
“I need to pick a religion, but I can’t decide which… oh, yes, Catholicism looks good.”
You 👏 don’t 👏 need 👏 religion. Just live your life. Make genuine connections with friends. Be good to everyone. Try to leave the world better than it would have been without you. No magic required.
It’s easy and cheap for him to just claim “it’s for everyone” without actually doing anything to address the bigotry, systemic issues, and culture surrounding the religion. I get the impression this is by intent.
“the pope was asked how he could reconcile his “todos” message with the fact that LGBTQ+ people are excluded from the sacraments. The pope answered the Church has laws, but is still a place for everyone.”
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