People don’t really think of it as a real estate book, but I think the last chapter of PJ O’Rourke’s “Parliament of Whores” is a really incisive look at why voters in localities make choices about land use that are both bad and against their purported ideological commitments.
It’s where O’Rourke, a self-described libertarian, describes how he and fellow residents in his New Hampshire town voted to kill an otherwise-legal townhouse development that wouldn’t have thrown off enough tax revenue to support the services its residents would consume.
Thus leading to the closing line of the book: That every government is a parliament of whores and in a democracy, the whores are us.
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Congressional jobs are prestigious, and if you don’t like working there, find it too stressful, you can find a different job with a more congenial work style somewhere else. I don’t appreciate this whining. (Your boss doesn’t like errors? Poor thing.) buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/addyba…
Sometimes their work hours interfered with their personal lives!
Right, but also not all non-optimized personnel management is news. Are you kind of a bad boss and people quit because of it? Well, that’s too bad for your organization, and also how a labor market works, especially a tight one.
I tried something new with tomato sauce last night. Serves 8: Sauté 1/2 lb chopped bacon until mostly rendered; add 3 shallots sliced into rings and cook until softened; add 3 cloves minced garlic and 2 small red chiles, chopped, and cook until fragrant…
Add 1/2 cup tomato paste and cook about 1 minute; add 1/2 cup red wine and cook until mostly evaporated; add 2, 28-oz cans crushed tomatoes, simmer about 15 minutes. Add chopped basil and salt and pepper to taste. Great depth of flavor from the wine, tomato paste, bacon & chiles.
Some people have asked what kind of pasta with this. I did penne, but would also work with spaghetti or bucatini I think. And yes, I am aware of amatriciana and know I did not invent the bacon-tomato-hot pepper combination, though I’ve never seen wine in amatriciana.
People keep saying Biden's speech on Afghanistan was "Trumpian." They're right. Biden took something correct Trump said -- the US should stop using our military in ways divorced from our national interest -- and unlike Trump, did something about it. businessinsider.com/joe-biden-afgh…
Since the Cold War, the US has had too many wide-eyed ideas about what our military could do to reshape other countries. What happens in Afghanistan should be not our job and not our problem, and Biden overcame the bureaucracy to make it so. businessinsider.com/joe-biden-afgh…
So yes, the speech was cold and harsh. Soaring rhetoric about what's wrong in the world and how we can fix it has led us to a lot of stupid places over the decades. Biden gives his empathetic speeches where they belong: domestic affairs. businessinsider.com/joe-biden-afgh…