In this interview, the subject of the Kansas Newspaper raid speculates that the motive comes from "a confluence of personal animus from the mayor, a personal attempt to intimidate us from the police chief, and basic incompetence from the judge and the county attorney." Judges and county attorneys/district attorneys being rubber stamps for corrupt cops have caused needless deaths and trampled on folks rights plenty in the past.
Just remember Ethan Couch in 2013 diagnosed with Afluenza, A condition where someone is too rich to understand the consequences of their actions.
He was 16. He and a bunch of friends went to Walmart. They stole beer and drove drunk. He killed 4 people on the side of the road. A passenger in his car suffered brain damage and was paralyzed.
This kid was sentenced with a 10 year parole. He violated that parole by going to a party to drink. He and his mom fled to Mexico to avoid punishment. He was captured and then given a 720 day sentence in prison.
He murdered 4 people and paralyzed one of his friends. He got parole. Violated parole. Fled the country. And then was given 2 years in prison.
This is how you know that being rich sets you up for life. It doesn’t matter what they’ll do - it’ll end up a slap on the wrist at best. The system is unjust and corrupt.
Driving drunk is absolutely stupid and anyone who does should be punished. The kids a shithead and deserved about 10 times more the prison sentence he got, but he did not start the night planning to kill 4 people with his friends. It was an accident, completely and absolutely preventable and one he is solely responsible for and should have gone to prison for his negligence, but an accident.
This girl told her boyfriend she would kill him this exact way. She had this planned. She drove by that same place earlier. She got in that car knowing it was going to to end the way it did.
Only one person in those examples intended to kill someone, and then followed through with the plan. Murder is worse than unintentionally killing and hurting people through negligence.
After rising for 10 consecutive quarters starting in fall 2020, the median U.S. home sale price has now declined for two straight quarters, to $416,100, according to federal economic data. That is still $87,100 above the quarter just before the pandemic, or an increase of 26.4%.
A person who buys that median-priced home with a 20% down payment and an average interest rate would have a monthly mortgage payment of about $2,300.
Any 1-3 folks wanna go in on a house together since it’s going to take a min of 2 full salaries to buy a home these days?
Really is that how Germany is? And all this bullshit about inflation it is called Corporate Greed and we need to be singing it to rafters. Fucking greedy corporations making record profits while wages stagnate.
All raising rates do is continue to make it impossible for average American to own a home.
Germany is a terrible comparison here. Home ownership in Germany is about 50%, true, much lower than the US’ 65%. However, the majority of those rentals are apartments rather than houses, since even small towns are highly densified, very unlike the USA. There are many state landlords which provide rentals at a very attractive price; it’s rare for people to spend more than 30% of their post-tax income on rent. Furthermore, there are extremely strong protections for renters, restrictions on rent increases, and they can renovate their apartments as they please. That’s very different from what American real estate corporations want.
Interesting, I didn’t know that about Germany. I’ll have to look into how that is working out for them, seeing as probably quite a lot of people my age and younger won’t be able to afford to buy.
Yeah, this was the outcome that was predicted when they allowed real estate brokers to also be property managers.
People wonder why starter homes havent existed on the market for 25 years and the answer is because nobody builds them, and when they do go up for sale, real estate agents are sending them the way of clients they already represent as property managers.
Why sell a house for 3% commission just once when you can sell it to somebody you are already partnered with and then make a 5% comission every month for the rest of your professional career while maybe only putting 15 hours per year worth of work into the unit?
Pretty much every issue in America comes down to the partnership of banks, real estate agents and landlords.
$28000/year doesn’t sound that ridiculous for the average priced home. Obviously that won’t get you anything in a high COL area but if you’re somewhere else that seems manageable.
Gets easier over time as well since wages should rise over time and your payment should basically stay the same.
All right let’s talk through this a bit. Let’s say you earn like 90K a year.
Uncle Sam takes about ~25%ish to make things simple, so we’re looking at 67,5K take home, so $5625 monthly. But you’re doing as the logical advice says and you’re paying 5% into your 401K since your job matches it, and it comes out pre-tax, so recalculating, you’re at $5250 a month take home. But wait! There’s also healthcare to pay, which has medical, dental, and vision paid separately, post-tax, which we’ll say is around $250 a month, so now we’re actually down to $5K take home.
A mortgage that comes to $28K yearly would be something like $2300/month, so we’re down to $2750 for everything else.
Now, assuming you’re between 25-45, you’re a millennial who likely hasn’t been able to save up 80K for a 20% down payment, so you’ll be paying mortgage insurance, but you’ve got a great credit score, so you’ll be adding about $400 a month for the PMI. Then there’s property taxes going straight into your escrow account, which we’ll say is around $400 to make things simple.
Then, you’re going to have your homeowner’s insurance, which might be around $150 a month, plus you’ve bought in an actual neighborhood, so you’ve got a little HOA fee of $30 a month.
Now, we’re down to $1720 a month after we’ve covered taxes and just having a place to live. This is where we get into the fun budgeting items.
Basic utilities (electric $80, gas $50, internet $90, water $30, trash $20, car fuel $40) come to around $310/month. You’ve then got your mobile devices ($100), maybe two streaming accounts ($25), and then accounting for things you pay yearly (Xbox $5, Office $8). You likely had to pay for the move into your new home as well as a couple of newer furnishings on a credit card, so we’ll assume just some base card debt of $300/month. Plus since you’re a millennial, you’ve likely got a student loan you’re still paying ($200/month). Overall, we’re around $950 just living in this house, which brings us down to about $770/month at this point.
We haven’t yet accounted for food and amenities which can vary widely. A nice food budget that allows for a couple meals that can be made at home these days will run a single person about $100 a week. Amenities can range anywhere from haircuts to tampons to sandwich baggies so you can bring your lunch and snacks to work, and then if you’ve got one small cat, you’re adding in litter, food, and pet insurance. If you’re allergic to grass, like I am, you’ll need to pay for lawn care, too which can add an additional $100-200. If you’ve got a car payment, you’re adding an additional ~$400.
Let’s assume that your meals, amenities, and car payments eat up that remaining $770 a month. If you are ever too tired to make dinner one a week, you’re already going over budget. If the 15-year-old water heater goes, you’re looking to go into debt to cover that, and if you do something like get married and have a kid, the hope is that the spouse is bringing in another $90K because childcare is so outrageous, one of you would just be better off staying at home with the kid. If property taxes go up, the funds going into your home escrow are going to make things even tighter.
Could you make your $2300/month base mortgage work if you’re making 90K/annually? Yeah, with a very tight budget and having none of the more asinine homeownership issues, it’s more or less doable. That said, there’s just not a lot of people in the 25-45 age bracket that are earning that 90K and the average is coming around to $2300/month, and this is all assuming you can get a bid accepted when there’s some corporation planning to rent the property who’ll offer 20% over the asking price.
I appreciate you typing this out because I think it’s a realistic representation of what a typical millenial homebuyer would go through. I experienced much the same as I am a millenial who came in with 5% down in a high COL area before interest rates plummetted.
My original reply was to a user who quoted the article saying that the $2300 payment was for a buyer with 20% down. That immediately frees up your $400/month PMI, which makes the entire thing FAR more manageable. I would also suspect that many millenials that are in considering buying a home have already paid off their student loans and credit cards so that’s an additional $500/month. Freeing up $900/month makes this much more doable. Add in a second salary of a spouse, or rental income from a roommate and it’s more comfotable still.
I’m not at all saying that home prices are anywhere near reasonable, just that it can be done in the hypothetical scenario laid out in the article.
It’s doable but the requirements are basically people who I would consider to have ‘made it’. It’s not really accessible for middle class when only the top end of the middle class have access to the whole package. People below that line can afford it, for a ways down the rung, but they need to chip away at the lifestyle until it is essentially living just above the poverty line.
$600 groceries, a car, streaming services, double income salary, house, vacations… those are well off people by today’s standards.
I couldn’t survive anymore without dual income. It sucks. The only thing I can think now is if you’re not married you need a roommate to even afford that house. Didn’t use to be that way.
On a side note: this is also why teenagers should not be driving cars. She was 17 and able to driver her friends around? WTH?
Until she’s 18 she should not have a driver’s license
Once 18 she should, until 21, only be able to drive around with an adult over 21 next to her to monitor her driving
Cars are 2 tonnes of death on wheels, why do we allow irresponsible teenagers to play around with that?
Well then again, this is the US were talking about, teenagers can get near military grade weapons as well and nothing ever goes wrong with that, so what am I complaining about rite?
The vast majority of teenagers are fine and require transportation to get to work/school. I wouldn’t argue against restrictions on passengers but completely stripping them of driving would fuck up so many things. How does a 18-21 year old get back and forth to college without a car for example?
Public transportation is the standard here in europe for that kind of stuff, almost nobody among my classmate come by car. They all use the tramway, busses or bikes
That is an Americas problem. All the cities there are very badly designed, just for cars. In Europe (holy hell, the Netherlands) you can get everywhere by bike or public transportation or just plain walking and it’s awesome. In the US things are the way they are because of bad city design and lack of any public transportation.
Yes, minimum driving age should be 18 and even then require adult supervision.
8 year olds go to school in the same town they live in and the school district has busses to go pick them up or their parents can go drop them off quickly. The same can’t be said for a student going to a college in a different town/city there’s not going to be a public transportation option that just goes straight to their school or to their job from school or whatever they need to do. They might be able to accomplish it by switching busses a couple times or something but that will add a ton of time to their commute. It’s not practical.
On top of that, pushing the driving age back will just result in a bunch of inexperienced 18/21 year old drivers and we’ll be having the same conversation about them after a few years go by.
I used to ride 25 kms (16 miles, give or take?) to and from work, every day. These distances aren’t extreme eitherloads of kids would (and do) drive that to school every day as well.
The thing that makes that possible is safe and comfortable bike lanes. More than 30 kms? use busses. If you have a good public transportation system, these busses will have direct connections and drive every 15-30 minutes during school hours.
I know, this sounds insane in the US but that is because car manufacturers have brainwashed US citizens with the nonsense that this is how it must be. Your cities are godawful, all of them, because every city is Designed for cars, not for humans. If you get into a city designed for humans you’ll be amazed. I know because every American is amazed by how beautiful cities can be when they see them.
I did it every time in around 45 minutes. First week was heavy and slower, then I got used to it. I had windy days which cost me either more or less time, depending on of I had the wind in my back or not. I had rainy days where I could get wet, or if I had a poncho, get a bit wet. But it was always doable and a great exercise.
Imagine this, my mother when she was 65 would regularly go ride with my sister. They literally said (and did) that for less than a 100kms (say, 60 miles) they wouldn’t even change into their special biking clothes as that wouldn’t be worth it. On many occasions they would do well over 60 miles in a day, just driving “slowly” in their bikes for fun to see the landscape and all. Super healthy for body and mind.
This is what happens when you have a country designed for people instead of cars.
So it’s about half as slow as a car. When I was in my last years of college my school was 20 miles in one direction from home and then I worked in another town ~15 miles from there and then another 20 miles back home. If I had been trying to manage that on a bike/public transport it would have been much harder to schedule that and there’d have been no time for anything besides traveling and work/school. It was rough even going by car but that was the only place I could find in the field I wanted to get into that would hire me without having finished my degree.
Sure, it won’t work for everyone but bikes and public transportation typically works well for most people if only they’d try it. Cycling is very healthy and much better for the environment and frankly, car dependent cities as we have them now simply are unsustainable
Nobody is saying that cars should be completely banned. Cycling should be encouraged. Governments should sponsor buying bikes, build loads of GOOD cycling infrastructure (look at the Netherlands for examples for gods sake, cycling infrastructure in the Americas is a dangerous joke), make owning and using a car more expensive, make it easier to arrive to destinations by bike than by car. Invest heavily in public transportation.
The US could have had all that the Netherlands has now but it doesn’t. It has huge and ugly cities that can only be used by car owners. If you don’t own a car you’re a second class citizen. You will mill out on good jobs. All that is insane to me. I never NEEDED a car. I can have one, but bikes are easier 100% of the time in sub 15 mile radius.
I guess that’s a point but not the one you think it is. I think it’s telling of the abysmal state of public transportation and cycling infrastructure that a car is required to almost survive at this point, or at the least to be a functional member of society… It shouldn’t be like that
It doesn’t matter what age is it. It’s not like people suddenly stop being reckless and careless at 21. I’ve heard enough horror stories of people who are way ahead of legal age doing dangerous stuff.
Generally speaking, people get more responsible when they get older. Yes of course there are exceptions, some people bever grow up, but seriously… Giving a 16 year old a sports car? Are they nuts?
In Germany you can drink beer before you can drive a car. Usually people still will kill people with a car when they are old enough to drive. Drunk or not.
Point is that young people cause disproportionally more accidents due to lack of experience driving, lack of experience living, lack of knowledge, and lack or responsibility
The 11th Circuit ruling quoted those passages and asserted that “the use of these medications in general — let alone for children — almost certainly is not ‘deeply rooted’ in our nation’s history and tradition. Although there are records of transgender or otherwise gender nonconforming individuals from various points in history, the earliest recorded uses of puberty blocking medication and cross-sex hormone treatment for purposes of treating the discordance between an individual’s biological sex and sense of gender identity did not occur until well into the twentieth century.” The ruling also said that the Alabama law does not amount to discrimination based on sex or transgender status and is therefore subject only to the lowest level of constitutional review.
That Dobbs ruling is just going to infect everything conservative judges touch, isn’t it?
Listen, gay rigths just aren’t deeply rooted into our culture, so no one in LGBT+ has any rights whatsover now.
Also, labor laws really weren’t a thing before the 20th century, so effectively immediately you are all property of your corporate overlords.
Also, slavery is deeply rooted into our cultural history, so effective immediatly all black people should report to their closest slave distribution center for allocation to a member of the superior race.
P.S. Clarence Thomas is legally considered to be a white man. We will not be responding to inquiries regarding this ruling.
It’s this actually. Just like a tiger or leopard or any other uniformly multicolored mammals. It’s a mutation of a gene that’s supposed to tell the cells to stop being that color at certain points.
Attorney John Eastman and co-defendant Scott Hall, two of the 18 co-defendants charged in the Georgia election interference case alongside former President Donald Trump, have been booked at the Fulton County Jail, according to the Fulton County Inmate Record Database.
Eastman is charged with nine counts, including two counts of conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree. The indictment names him as among those allegedly involved in a scheme to **solicit public officers to unlawfully appoint Georgia presidential electors. ** “He is going to trial, there will be no plea deal,” Eastman’s attorney told ABC News.
Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman, is charged with seven counts, including two counts of conspiracy to commit election fraud. He is among those accused of conspiring to commit election fraud in Coffee County.
Get rid of the GI Bill, or at the very least, tie it to the draft. As in, you don’t get post service benefits unless there’s a draft going on. Otherwise you just volunteered.
Then, provide those same benefits we provided since 1944 to the legal and medical professionals. Kids enter into service at 18-20 and come out as public defenders, nurses and doctors, where they are subject to working in poor areas to help the underserved.
Nearly two-thirds of the deaths in 2021 were homicides, although unintentional shootings have killed many children. No matter how young the victims, pediatric gun-related deaths have left their mark on nearly every corner of the U.S.
More than 80% of the gun deaths were among males 19 and younger. Black male children were more likely to die from homicide. White males 19 and younger were more likely to kill themselves with guns.
We can see two issues here.
First: Suicide rates are rising sharply among white boys. Why?
Second: Crime is rising sharply for black boys. Why?
Removing guns doesn’t solve the problems leading to suicidal ideation or the problems that lead to homicide. We have the ability to fix those issues without undermining 2A protections. We know that poverty in dense areas is a strong predictor of criminal behavior, and that education is a strong counterbalance to that. We also know that both parties are choking off funding to poor, urban school districts, albeit for different ideological reasons. (Republicans want to cut all public educations. Democrats want to keep school funding local so that property taxes in wealthy areas aren’t funding schools in poor areas, ensuring that wealthy areas have access to better schools.)
Thank you for a well thought out comment. Ita refreshing to read something like this sometimes. Sometimes it feels like everyone is on their own radical side.
I’d also add strickter punishments for the owner of the firearm if it was used in a crime by their child. I have a kid. I plan to buy a gun. If my kid kills someone with my gun, then as far as I’m concerned I’d be directly at fault. In addition to that I think parents should be legally liable for any violent crime their child does. If the parent has the legal authority over their child, they should also be held liable.
My kid is learning to drive and I was surprised he doesn’t need insurance. But the reason is I’m still the “driver” while he is operating the car. Im responsible for issues, my insurance pays any claim, and of course I can’t have a couple beers despite not being behind the wheel. We have an example
Why can’t we model responsible Gun ownership after cars and driving?
Because the right to keep and bear arms is an individual constitutional right. It would be like modeling your right to join and raise your kid in a religion off of licensing requirements for being a doctor. (And hey, religion will fuck kids up for the rest of their lives, even if they manage to escape.)
Ok, then free speech. Also in the Bill of Rights as an individual right the government can’t infringe.
Yet there are limits, there are consequences, non-government entities do not need to abide. The classic example is you can’t yell “FIRE!” In a crowded theater. Your right to free speech ends when it endangers someone else.
Similarly, your right to bear arms should be limited when it endangers someone. If you bring a weapon to a bar, a crowded space, carry in a city, brandish it during road rage, or when someone rings the doorbell, or if someone is able to access your weapon or you keep your ammo in the same place as your weapon, or you let someone use it without training, or you do something stupid when people are around, or you hunt by. Blasting away at every rustling bush, or you hunt where your bullet can co e down where there are people, then you are endangering people. You not respecting the tool and its capabilities shows that you are not fit to carry. There are consequences, and they need to happen before you actually hurt or kill someone
So, restrict rights before they can potentially be used in a way that might cause injury to someone, correct?
So, it would be reasonable to have a political literacy test before allowing someone to vote, since their voting patterns have the potential to cause real harms, correct? Or to ensure that you aren’t allowed to read about Nazi ideology, so you can’t copy it?
or you keep your ammo in the same place as your weapon,
…Isn’t that the entire point of having a firearm if you intend to use it to defend your life? I literally have a gun beside my door that I put in my pocket before I get the mail because we have aggressive bears in my area that are too comfortable with people. I’ve had bears on my front porch, I had one that tried to come in through a window screen.
Consequences can not happen before; consequences are something that happen after the fact. You can’t redefine consequence as something that happens to you in order to prevent you from doing a thing that you might not have done in the first place. What you’re proposing would be like preemptively jailing someone because they fit the patterns of someone that might be more likely to commit a crime at some point in the future.
or you keep your ammo in the same place as your weapon, …Isn’t that the entire point of having a firearm if you intend to use it to defend your life?
Sure, that’s the big contradiction n trying to keep a firearm for self-defense. If it’s readily accessible, odds are more likely someone will be shot on accident or a moment of emotion, than that you’ll defend yourself. If it’s locked up, with the ammo elsewhere, you’re following best practices to keep your family and friends, and yourself safe, but then can’t use it to defend yourself
I have mixed feelings about this, because I can see that it would applied in a racial manner by law-and-order Republicans. E.g., black parents in a high-crime area have a gun for protection–since cops don’t give a shit–kid steals the gun and shoots someone, and there’s an immediate judicial lynching of the parents.
I’m in favor of locking guns up around kids, but I’m generally opposed to laws that mandate it, both because of costs (a gun safe that’s worth a damn easily costs $1500, and a good one starts at about $4500), and because some people–e.g. women that are being stalked–may need to have ready access to a gun at all times.
I completely understand the concern regarding this being applied in a racial manner. I don’t really know how to get around that, though. Any law that could be abused, will be abused, so we should be very careful, but I personally am not knowledgeable enough to come up with a solution. I do think that in the example you’ve provided is valid and can and does happen. But to avoid that we would need a change in culture, and that happens slowly. Maybe stricter punishments for parents of kids that commit crime could lead to a change where people start taking more responsibility for their children. Maybe it’ll lead to just increased incarnation of minorities. I don’t know. I’m glad that I’m not in charge of making those decisions.
Regarding locking guns up and having laws about how to safely store a gun in your own home, I oppose those. I’m willing to accept the risk if the punishment for mishandling them is severe enough. But like I said, I don’t know where that like should be drawn. I think my main point is that I’m for personal responsibility, and we should be encouraging that, instead of removing the choice completely.
But to avoid that we would need a change in culture, and that happens slowly.
Yes, it does. But that’s the real solution.
It’s like getting physically fit; you don’t throw out your television and XBox because you’re fat and sit on your ass instead of going to the gym. You change your habits. The television and XBox are not themselves the problem.
Maybe it’ll lead to just increased incarnation of minorities.
That seems to be the most likely outcome, esp. since prosecutors have fairly broad discretion on charging. I think that making a case for gross negligence would be a different category though, e.g., you knew your child was directly involved in violent criminal behavior and you knowingly left a firearm where you had reason to believe your child could access it easily then you are guilty of being an accessory. But I’d want that bar to be pretty high.
Democrats want to keep school funding local so that property taxes in wealthy areas aren’t funding schools in poor areas, ensuring that wealthy areas have access to better schools
I’ve seen D’s increasingly propose more state and national funding for schools, exactly the opposite of your claim. That’s in addition to increased state and federal funding for expanding pre-school, for school lunches, for at least some free college
I lived in Chicago. I saw Chicago moving more funding to charter and magnet schools rather than funding schools properly. Charter schools et al. don’t have to take all students, so CPS lost the funding, and still had to take the most difficult cases.
I think that the most rational approach is to, first, eliminate all state funding for private education, charter school, magnet schools, etc., ONLY fund public schools. And second, pool all of the tax revenue state-wide–which means that you also need to make property taxes a state issue rather than a local-school-funding issue–and the divide taxes based on the number of students in each school, with allowances made for differences in costs (e.g., it’s more expensive for a teacher to live in L.A. than it is in Blythe, so there needs to be some kind of allowance for higher teacher pay in L.A. than in Blythe).
no, i dont think. civilians handling any firearms is a hobby. The government will always have enough stupid teenagers to murder anyone who opposes them, if they really want to (a la russia). The concept of a ‘militia’ could possibly be effective, but I would expect that to be organized, not 19 year olds buying assault rifles. since the one and only purpose of a firearm is death (or, if you wish to split hairs, the threat of death), it means the hobby, firearms, is actually the hobby, death.
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