If you try to pin down CA Republicans on what they'd actually do to reduce housing prices, they'll just hand-wave about repealing some unspecified "regulations." MAYBE they'll say CEQA if you press them hard enough for a specific one.
That's not a real plan.
They aren't any more likely than NIMBY Dems to offer solutions that would actually work, like mandated upzoning or property tax reform. Because they live in the same neighborhoods as those NIMBY Dems and have exactly the same attitudes about keeping them that way.
And the real shame with that is that while obviously Republicans aren't winning California anytime soon, a coalition of YIMBY Dems + all Republicans would probably amount to a majority for real reform. If Republicans were actually interested in YIMBY solutions, that is.
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Lindsey Graham has been in the Senate long enough to know this wouldn't work. The Texas legislature has a 2/3rds quorum requirement. In the U.S. Senate, a quorum only needs a simple majority.
The GOP leaving DC would not shut down the Senate the way the Texas walkout is doing.
Another problem with Graham's idea: to dissolve a Senate quorum, you would need one Republican to stay in the Capitol to raise a point of order. So if all Dems were present and the one Republican to raise a point of order, that's 51. Clearly a quorum.
When Republicans controlled the Senate, some liberal activists suggested Democrats do the same thing to retaliate for denying Merrick Garland a hearing, then to stop Trump confirming justices.
Dems didn't do this because, just like Graham's threat now, the math doesn't work.
Republicans claim they are bullish on winning back Nevada because Clark County is "trending right."
Okay, let's look at the actual numbers here. Is that really true?
What the numbers actually say is a lot more complicated. From 2000 to 2020, we see a steady trend *up* in Democrats' topline each cycle. Republicans' topline, meanwhile, has bounced around all over the place and if anything has gone down very slightly.
So why, then, are people claiming Clark County is trending right? Because they're starting the clock at 2008. Obama massively overperformed in Clark in 2008 and 2012, then there was a reversion to the mean in 2016 and 2020.
No, he wasn't. Thanos was just recycling the same Malthusian crap that's been used by hundreds of years of politicians to justify forced sterilizations in America, famines in British India, and China's one-child policy.
Malthus has been proven wrong time and time again.
First of all, when societies face scarcity, families have *more* children because they need more capital to get the same resources. Fertility rates are negatively correlated with a country's level of development.
And second of all, the scarcities that cause these population pressures are a direct result of governments taking away people's power to act in their own interests.
If you look through history, you see a startling fact: famines do not occur in democracies. Ever.
There is a whole class of Twitter trolls who direct swarms against anyone who criticizes Ron DeSantis. Fried is obviously a top target, but they also go after small-time commenters. It's eerily cult-like and doesn't seem organic.