It's a two pronged solution. Train and employ much better police with actual accountability and also address socio-economic issues dramatically. We need police. But we have one level above Soviet police quality. Should be two years of training with certain important subjects covered, should be associate and bachelor degree requirements for police above the most basic levels, etc...Police are a terrible solution to crime. If they manage to arrive to an active crime scene they are as likely to make things worse as they are to be of any actual help. You want crime to come down? Address poverty issues instead.
You mean a immigration problem that has been building for decades, where the current problem started to build up Before COVID? If people actually looked at the numbers, and the trajectory it was on before COVID hit, they would see that it was already in motion at the end of 2019, and it only dropped off because of COVID. It returned back to the same trajectory it was previously on prior to COVID.Really? We have a serious immigration problem, we had horrible inflation, which granted is coming down, and two major world conflicts, either of which (especially Israel) could explode into a major war at any time. It is hard to say how much Biden is responsible for these, but I think she needs to distance herself somewhat from Biden without, if possible, throwing him under the bus.
Just wait until the climate crisis hits full swing and half of central america becomes uninhabitable. The 'immigration problem' is going to look like a joke.You mean a immigration problem that has been building for decades, where the current problem started to build up Before COVID? If people actually looked at the numbers, and the trajectory it was on before COVID hit, they would see that it was already in motion at the end of 2019, and it only dropped off because of COVID. It returned back to the same trajectory it was previously on prior to COVID.
Boy, wouldn't it be a mindfuck if the first real gun control legislation came from the leadership of two progressive gun owners.I am really beginning to like Walz for the end game stretch.. he doesn't come off as someone fake pretending to be the next Jack Kennedy.. he tells it like it is!
We did have an assault weapons ban. Damned thing expired.Boy, wouldn't it be a mindfuck if the first real gun control legislation came from the leadership of two progressive gun owners.
Hard to beat that! Where it's at!Dave Bautista is on board.
Deadline: Dave Bautista Smacks “Massive Piece Of Sh*t” Donald Trump, Again: “Who Hates Taylor Swift?”.
Dave Bautista Smacks “Massive Piece Of Sh*t” Donald Trump, Again: “Who Hates Taylor Swift?”
Dave Bautista smacks Donald Trump again in a new video, calling the former president a "massive piece of sh*t" while defending Taylor Swift.deadline.com
It's a two pronged solution. Train and employ much better police with actual accountability and also address socio-economic issues dramatically. We need police. But we have one level above Soviet police quality. Should be two years of training with certain important subjects covered, should be associate and bachelor degree requirements for police above the most basic levels, etc...
So what I'm hearing is legalize recreational drugs, pass universal basic income and universal healthcare, and build a shitton of affordable housing.The trouble is, the general direction-of-travel in the neo-liberal West seems to be the exact opposite - combining being 'soft on crime' with doing nothing to address the causes of it.
I sometimes suspect this is because the elites tend to secretly admire criminals, because they remind them of their own ancestors. Criminal violence is how most of our current ruling elites got where they are, after all.
Most wealthy people today are so because their distant ancestors were more effective criminals than everyone else.
So what I'm hearing is legalize recreational drugs, pass universal basic income and universal healthcare, and build a shitton of affordable housing.
I'm so glad the Republican party is on board with all that so that a Democrat barely-a-majority can pass those pieces of legislation
I can’t speak to the rest but Starmer is right about housing. Much like the US, the UK suffers from crushing regulatory burdens on building housing. The best way to alleviate the crisis is to remove those burdens, not to build more public housing. (It also has the virtue of being free)No idea about the Republican/Democrat Parties, but Starmer here (with his huge unassailable parliamentary majority) is announcing more massive cuts to the benefit system.
Labour to bring in ‘own reforms’ to benefits system to save £3bn
Work and pensions minister says government will not go ahead with Tory plans but needs to make savingswww.theguardian.com
He also shows no intention of increasing the supply of social housing (preferring to just hope 'the market' will do it)
Keir Starmer’s Market Solutions for Housing Won’t Work
Fixing Britain’s housing crisis requires rebuilding the country’s publicly owned housing system — the opposite of the private developer–centered approach recently announced by Keir Starmer.jacobin.com
He also doesn't seem to be doing much to address the crisis in the NHS, preferring yet more reorganisation (something the Tories did repeatedly).
No extra NHS funding without reform, says PM
Sir Keir Starmer promises 10-year plan for England as part of "biggest reimagining" of NHS.www.bbc.co.uk
Besides, if the Democrats are unable to accomplish these things because of the crap US political system, I have to ask - who created that system in the first place, and who ensures it can't be changed? That would be those elites again. Staring with the elite group of bourgeois white guy land (and slave) owners who created that system in the first damn place.
Who the hell is this?Dave Bautista is on board.
Deadline: Dave Bautista Smacks “Massive Piece Of Sh*t” Donald Trump, Again: “Who Hates Taylor Swift?”.
Dave Bautista Smacks “Massive Piece Of Sh*t” Donald Trump, Again: “Who Hates Taylor Swift?”
Dave Bautista smacks Donald Trump again in a new video, calling the former president a "massive piece of sh*t" while defending Taylor Swift.deadline.com
I can’t speak to the rest but Starmer is right about housing. Much like the US, the UK suffers from crushing regulatory burdens on building housing. The best way to alleviate the crisis is to remove those burdens, not to build more public housing. (It also has the virtue of being free)
Unfortunately that editorial writer has no idea what they are talking about and their piece lacks consistent internal logic. There are more total housing units but fewer people live in each one so that doesn’t matter. Housing is too expensive so we need to build ‘higher quality’ housing? Like, what? Housing is too expensive because we don’t enact enough price controls? What? Also, 85% of people are supportive of new housing so long as their conditions are met is a joke - nobody wants to admit they are against housing construction, they just make their conditions so absurd that they can’t be met.Actually having that same argument with people I know personally, IRL. I disagree, at least with respect to the UK (I can quite believe it works differently in the US, which is so different in so many ways, not least because of the vastly lower population density overall and the fact that it isn't dominated by one major city where all the jobs are and most of the wealth is).
The issue of housing shortages is far more complicated than that. I mean, where I am there have been new multi-story blocks of flats go up on almost every side of me in the last few years (pretty much every bit of unused land is getting built on now), but housing remains horribly expensive.
Which seems consistent with the argument in this opinion piece.
Yimbys hear this – simply building more homes won’t solve our housing crisis | Phineas Harper
The ‘yes in my back yard’ voices are getting louder, but housebuilding quality is more important than quantity, says writer and curator Phineas Harperwww.theguardian.com
I don't believe Starmer is right about housing, and it seems part of his horribly misjudged faith in 'deregulation' in general as the recipe for 'growth' (the favourite idea of those who want to pretend to help the poor while being terrified of annoying the rich), which seems very badly timed given we've only just had the results of the Grenfell inquiry (that catastrophe owed a huge amount to decades of right-wing fixation on 'removing red tape').
I do have mixed feelings about the Green Belt. I've always thought it existed largely to preserve the pretty views and fresh air of the wealthier people who mostly live in it or next to it....and can see it as a kind of ligature strangling the city...but on the other hand, once I eventually managed to venture out there (after a childhood spent pretty much entirely in inner London) I had to admit some of it is quite nice and there's something to be said for being able to actually get to some greenery occasionally. The main problem though is not the lack of housing as the lack of _affordable_ housing, especially in the places were there are actually jobs available. There are places where housing if fairly cheap, it's just that there are no jobs in those places.
Also
Labour, beware: Britain’s housing crisis is driving voters towards populism | John Harris
Whenever I talk to people who are bitterly disconnected from politics, they raise the lack of decent homes, says Guardian columnist John Harriswww.theguardian.com
So you haven't seen any over the Guardians of the Galaxy movies?Who the hell is this?
Unfortunately that editorial writer has no idea what they are talking about and their piece lacks consistent internal logic. There are more total housing units but fewer people live in each one so that doesn’t matter. Housing is too expensive so we need to build ‘higher quality’ housing? Like, what? Housing is too expensive because we don’t enact enough price controls? What? Also, 85% of people are supportive of new housing so long as their conditions are met is a joke - nobody wants to admit they are against housing construction, they just make their conditions so absurd that they can’t be met.
Housing is not magic - it responds to exactly the same supply and demand situation as every other good does. Want housing to get cheaper? Build more of it. Simple.
because it's a unique kind of good
Basically sums up the damaging British brand of NIMBYism that is also infecting the colonies and like nowhere else on the planet.