It's really telling that @billmaher, who swoops in as some kind of crusader for free speech every time a neo-Nazi is banned from social media, is absolutely fine with BDS supporters being stripped of basic freedom of expression rights by ostensibly democratic governments.
Like, this guy had a problem with people deplatforming Milo Yiannopoulos when he was strutting around saying that pedophilia isn't that bad really. But Israel banning people from entering the country based on political speech? That's cool with him.
It's not hard to see that @billmaher has a very tortured, and skin-color-based, view of whose free speech matters and whose doesn't.
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This situation is now even more insane. WV Republicans are now moving to assert *they* in fact have the right to appoint De Soto's replacement, even though he formally defected to the Democratic Party before being vacated and under the law that would give Dems the replacement.
Honestly, this probably doesn't matter much, as even if Dems win this fight the GOP still has a supermajority and the heavily red seat will autoflip in the next election.
But it's still a crazy situation. And a legal case over this would be interesting.
I know those who just lost their homes are in no mood to talk about the politics of it right now, but this is yet another reason California's ridiculous zoning practices need to be reformed wholesale.
Climate change has made many outlying suburbs of L.A. simply too dangerous. Some can be rebuilt with better fireproofing, but some others will simply never be insurable and can't be built back.
Which puts greater urgency on allowing more density in the inner and coastal suburbs.
At the end of the day, some NIMBYs will have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to make more room in their neighborhoods, because as long as their obstinacy forces sprawl into the dry brush hills, we will have more people lose their homes to fire.
The CA Bureau of Prisons did once try to argue in court that too many inmates were being *paroled* to staff prison firefighting positions.
Harris' AG office represented the BOP during this period, but she only later learned this argument was being used and didn't agree with it.
It is true there is a prohibition on ex-convicts in CA from being certified as emergency responders, even if they worked as firefighters in prison work programs. Gov. Newsom signed legislation intended to create exceptions, but those can be hard to get. davispoliticalreview.com/article/the-us…
The main problem isn't actually the cold — a lot of that area is no colder in winter than parts of New England or the Midwest, and even gets fairly warm in summer.
The problem is the land. It's boggy, rocky, useless for agriculture, and not very good for buildings either.
Most of that area is covered by a formation known as the Canadian Shield, which was formed by the glaciers of the Pleistocene. It's just scattered patches of marshy, nutrient-poor dirt on solid bedrock. You really can't do much with that land.
Even if you shipped food in from elsewhere, you can't really even build cities in the first place because there's very little dirt to anchor a foundation in. It's mostly just rock.
The only reason for anyone to go out there is fishing, mining, or oil drilling.
Let me add something else: a lot of people are convinced that rail could never work in most U.S. cities because we have too much sprawl, but it's more complicated than that.
Transit can serve *residential* sprawl perfectly fine. What it can't handle is *commercial* sprawl.
In other words: it's still fairly doable to serve single-family neighborhoods with bus and rail service into the urban core, with park-and-rides and other concessions to meet drivers halfway.
The problem is when the places people *work* are sprawled across the city.
If there are a thousand different office parks, strip malls, and power centers around the city, good transit starts becoming impossible, because while you can affordably drive *to* a transit station, you can't drive *from* a transit station the last few miles.
Here's the big three things Democrats need to follow to fix the problems in their cities:
1. Police fairly but consistently. You don't have to jail people for minor offenses, but stop and ticket them. Don't let quality of life crimes go unpunished.
2. Stop privatizing local govt services. Homeless shelters should not be run by unaccountable corrupt nonprofits. Public works shouldn't be needlessly farmed out to contractors. Parks shouldn't be run by HOAs. Build a skilled, in house team of municipal workers and use them.
3. BUILD MORE HOUSING. Overrule the busybodies and reactionaries screaming at zoning board hearings. Cut the red tape. Stop trying to preserve the urban character of your city as was in 1993, stop driving people away with housing shortages, and just let your city grow.