But melting like soft-serve ice cream on a scorching summer day was not something its creator imagined would happen. Williams, a professor of art at the University of Richmond, understood the wax to have a melting point well above highs recorded in the District’s sultriest summers.
“The idea was that the ambient temperature, unless it got to 140 degrees, wouldn’t melt the sculpture,” Williams said. “But yeah, I’m not sure that the company ever tried just putting a block of it outside for days in a hundred plus degree weather.”
There’s a well-known relationship between abortion restrictions and worse health outcomes for women and children.
I’ve also read harrowing accounts from women who resorted to infanticide because they couldn’t get an abortion. While I couldn’t find the specific anecdotes I’d seen before, I found that the Wikipedia page on this topic has plenty of info showing that access to safe abortions does reduce infanticide.
As far as I know, you have the right to appeal even if you can’t afford a lawyer. Your appeal will just probably fail. But then Hunter’s appeal might fail. I’m not saying the justice system is fair, but this particular story seems like it would be something anyone in his situation would do.
I’m not going to pretend that if I were facing jail time and my lawyer said “this is another legal thing that can be done in the hopes of avoiding jail time” that I would say “I broke the law, I should just go to jail and serve my time.” I’d probably do the thing my lawyer said was an option.
He’s guilty. That’s not up for debate. At this point, it’s just fucking around with the legal system. No one should be entitled to that- It’s not an entitlement. It’s an abuse of the legal system and a waste of money.
No amount of repositioning the argument changes the fact that he broke a fucking law.
How did he break the law? This case has been set from the start that it is going to be used to drive gun restriction change. Either A, the form is unconstitutional, or B. It isn’t and gun restriction is completely legal.
Conservatives love to say free market works, shop for best price, blah blah… When you are having a heart attack, you don’t stop 911 from sending help until you shop around for the best ambulance service… You take the closest one, go to the closest hospital, and get service from the doctor on call.
Fuck insurance, we should have Medicare for all by now.
Conservatives are all liars. I mean, you know that. But the academic theory of the free market valuing things correctly requires an assumption that people can go without the goods and services being valued. It’s not even a misrepresentation on this one. It’s just a straight-up lie.
On top of that, shop for best price? During the one month of open enrollment where it’s allowed? What if the providers all leave the network halfway through the year, as regularly happens? They have literally made it impossible to shop around for the best price.
God forbid those with fatal defects should die before they had enough nervous system to fully appreciate the pain of their death. Or rather, Texas forbade, in the name of God. Isn’t there a commandment about that?
Nah his liver’s gotta be worthless. If you listen to the Knowledge Fight podcast (which does a great job of debunking Alex and Infowars) you’ll notice pretty quickly that Alex clearly hasn’t been sober for more than 24 hours at a time in years. He’s a raging alcoholic.
Ban corporations/private companies from holding empty residential housing. Problem solved. Not complicated. Our system fucking sucks and is designed to protect land owners which is why we’re in this situation. This is fucking up our entire society, slowly bringing us down, we’re losing to China. This change needs to happen soon otherwise we’re going to see the working class get milked hard enough that our real economy will collapse.
We have significantly more vacant units (around 15M) than homeless people (around 600k-1.5M by various estimates).
New dense energy efficient units connected to social services and green energy infrastructure would be great for everyone. But the idea that we just don’t have residential space to house people is totally wrong.
And where are they located, and why are they empty?
There’s your next big problem, a significant fraction of them aren’t where people want (or need) to be, or are vacation homes and don’t belong in these stats (unless you want to eminent domain them). Suburbs and ghost towns and remote regions pushes the average up.
More than 300,000 housing units in New York City sat vacant. However, the Big Apple’s total vacancy rate of 8.3% in 2022 fell slightly from five years earlier (9.7%). Meanwhile, San Francisco had over 52,000 vacant units in 2022 for a 12.7% vacancy rate.
Turns out nobody wants to live in checks notes New York City or San Fransisco.
a significant fraction of them aren’t where people want (or need)
There are definitely large numbers of vacant units in areas that were de-industrialized or hit with natural disasters. However, speculators moving in and gobbling up the properties at their bargain basement rates, then squatting on them to drive up the overall value of real estate in the area, result in artificially high real estate rates across these neighborhoods. Even in places with ostensibly low demand for housing, the prices remain higher than in historical periods of high demand.
Suburbs and ghost towns and remote regions pushes the average up.
Over-development in less accessible places can make neighborhoods unattractive due to the commute. But the solution to this problem is often to improve mass transit in these neighborhoods and develop local public services (schools, post offices, grocery stores, etc) at their centers. Then do the one thing that Americans hate and fear more than anything - BRING IN THE MIGRANTS. Populate the neighborhoods with large socially cohesive cohorts of new people and energize the neighborhoods with public works spending.
This creates a virtuous cycle of economic growth and development that brings in still more people and creates new demand for more goods and services. This is exactly what big midwestern towns did to revitalize in the wake of deindustrialization. Chattanooga, Tennessee installed public Gigabit internet and became the center of a Tennessee tech boom. Detroit accumulated a network of art collectives in its low rent housing and reinvented itself as a cultural center. Atlanta, Georgia is enjoying an enormous economic expansion thanks to new federally subsidized battery plants in the city.
When public policy identifies a housing surplus, policymakers can create a virtuous cycle of development by building new business capacity in the immediate vicinity. Then you solve joblessness, homelessness, and a stagnant economy in one go.
I don’t disagree with the rest, walkable cities are important, speculators shouldn’t be involved in housing, etc. But some places genuinely have a lack of available housing and the solution is to build away.
Some places have a lack of affordable housing. But anywhere you go, you can find living space at a high enough price point.
The only real exception is in the midst of a natural disaster or similar event, at which point the housing is typically exhausted because it is gobbled up by state bureaucracies for housing troops going in or refugees flooding out. And these sudden shortages are resolved by moving people to long term housing in surrounding areas, not by throwing up enormous tower blocks overnight.
That’s not even to say we don’t need new builds. A lot of the existing housing stock is old, poorly maintained, or inefficient. But the idea that we simply don’t have enough units to go around is real estate developer ad copy. It isn’t based in reality. And pursuing the policies advocated by the “not enough housing” folks inevitably leads to large new Luxury branded establishments that get sold off to speculators rather than lived in by the unhoused.
Ban corporations/private companies from holding empty residential housing. Problem solved. Not complicated
Who passes this law? Who signs it? My municipal and state governments are infested with real estate agents landlords, attorneys, and bankers, all of whom profit from artificially scarce housing.
A couple of other journalists have theorized that there might be some quid pro quo happening with the mayor and the family that owns California Waste Solutions.
There has been shady stuff happening city contracts and lawsuits around CWS. People are wondering if the recycling company might be paying off a politician in order to get preferential treatment with the city.
But who knows, the FBI has not announced charges. It’s going to be a while before we find out what is actually going on. It’s all just speculation right now.
“Under the SAVE plan, borrowers whose original principal balances were $12,000 or less will receive forgiveness after 120 payments (the equivalent of 10 years in repayment),” the White House explained in a statement in August."
So… if you borrowed $12,000 or less… First, who does that on a student loan?
AND, if you made monthly payments for 10 years…
AND if you still owed money…
It could be forgiven.
This was just a way for them to say they were doing something about student loans, but really do nothing about student loans.
Typical Dem leadership shenanigans: they’ll help their rich owner donors and their corporations with no strings attached and hardly any conditions.
When they do anything that solely or even primarily helps the other 90%, though, they’ll means test and otherwise restrict it to death and pretend that it’s the best they can do because of [current rotating villains] having to sell it to their voters.
Voters who have only ever been given a choice between Republicans and almost-Republicans that the DNC back with much more money than anyone to the left of Reagan.
2.5 million people qualified for this plan, one of 5 that were put in place.
The plan was largely targeting dropouts, because they tend to be most trapped by loans. They don’t get any income benefit from a college degree, and tend to have lower paying jobs. If you’re doing income based repayment at minimum wage, it’s possible for your loan principle to grow continuously.
I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it definitely would have helped people.
They claim 2.5 million but I doubt the real numbers would have been that high or, after 10 years of payments, that the outstanding debt would have been anything significant.
The federal government tracks all student loans, they know very explicitly how many people qualify.
If you’re making income based payments, and you have low income, the debt grows over time because the payments aren’t even enough to cover interest on the debt.
You are underestimating the amount of people who make very low payments based on their income. My SO can pay off their loan in 5-6 years based on our income, but if they didn’t have a proper job they could make minimum payments and pay off the loan in 25 years. You obviously will pay a lot in interest but people do that if they don’t earn a lot of money or make bad financial decisions.
Income based repayments such as SAVE calculate your payments as a percentage of your disposable income. This means it can be as low as $0 per month if you happen to be unemployed for even a short time. Interest still accrues, but doesn’t capitalize with SAVE. This can result in a “significant” balance.
So I’m not going to go into detail. Instead I’m going to ask you to truly challenge your belief here and look into it personally. Consider the interest rates, average wage, rate of inflation, and total cost for rent and other bills. Factor in food and gas costs appropriately.
That doesn’t matter though. I do celebrate that you have managed to pay off several loans succinctly without defaulting. Sincerely, well done. However, that in no way relates to what I asked.
It’s up to you, of course. No one here can force you. All I did was challenge you to examine what you are certain you know, that’s all.
I am certain, after paying to put my kid through college, that student loans are more than $12,000.
He graduated from a state school in 2018, his tuition was $10,000 a year, and he had a scholarship that paid $5,000 a year. I paid the other $5,000, laundered through my Amazon card for points. ;) But if we had done a loan, it would have been $20K.
So problem #1 - I’m not buying the stated number about how many people it will help. $12K is NOTHING when it comes to student loans.
Problem #2 is how much of that sub-$12K loan is still out there after 10 years.
In the end, it doesn’t matter since it’s all shut down anyway.
The big question is : Whereto are they dumping toxic loans? I would not put it pst some assholes to sell such “products” off to unassuming private shareholders as a “wonderful investement in business property” for their retirement…
Oh they don’t need to do that, we’ve already determined that some companies don’t have to suffer the consequences of their own actions because they’re “tOo BiG tO fAiL” so society has to suffer the consequences.
Just remember: when they win, they win. When they lose we lose and they still win.
Our form of capitalism is a fucking joke. Socialism for the wealthy owners and rugged individualism for the poors.
I was wondering this same thing. Who would take on a loan that a bank deems unprofitable? Is this like turning the loan over to a loan shark and the shark has means to ensure payment that banks don’t due to regulations? Are they selling to the govn’t? Either option is not good.
Alternate headline: two years after the result of failing to codify Roe v Wade for almost 50 years in spite of campaigning on protecting abortion rights, Dem leadership reiterate the obvious.
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