Once again, naked progressive overreach sets Donald Trump up for a win.
Republicans, of course, have distrusted the CFPB since its inception. Partly the objection is practical, because its creation embodies the classic Beltway approach: rather than fix a broken regulatory system, throw another powerful agency atop the heap.
.. In this case, however, the objections are also constitutional. Philip Hamburger, a Columbia University law professor and author of “Is Administrative Law Unlawful?,” notes that the lack of democratic accountability almost CFPB.
.. “This agency is so independent that it does not need congressional funding, and it now has declared itself self-appointing—even in opposition to the president’s appointee,” he says. “The CFPB is thus a reminder of how the administrative state can go to dangerous extremes.”
Horror in Las Vegas polarises the world of religion
SINCE the horrific massacre in Las Vegas, the word “evil” has been heard with unusual frequency, on the lips of political leaders as well as clerics. This evil-talk is not just a reflex response or a banal statement of the obvious. It has philosophical implications, and often places the speaker in a particular corner of the debate about guns.
In the first minute of his response to the killing spree, Donald Trump termed it “an act of pure evil”. Striking an unusually scriptural tone, he went on to quote a verse from the Psalms, proclaiming that “The Lord is close to the broken-hearted, He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.” Even in that comforting passage, talk of evil is in the background. It comes a couple of lines after the declaration that “The Lord turns his face against those who do evil, He will erase their memory from the earth.”
.. In the first minute of his response to the killing spree, Donald Trump termed it “an act of pure evil”. Striking an unusually scriptural tone, he went on to quote a verse from the Psalms, proclaiming that “The Lord is close to the broken-hearted, He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.” Even in that comforting passage, talk of evil is in the background. It comes a couple of lines after the declaration that “The Lord turns his face against those who do evil, He will erase their memory from the earth.”
.. Another clear implication of the stress on “evil” is that there is no point trying to stop its effects through regulation. If evil is an inexorable feature of a fallen plane of existence, one that has been tainted from the very start of things by human sin, then no policy measures will ever remove it. The only response to evil is to identify it clearly, to avoid secular soft-headedness, and perhaps to mitigate its effects as and when they arise, without presuming to abolish it. In other words, gun control will not work.
.. the Vatican under Pope Francis has shown sympathy for the view that the “structural violence” implicit in unjust and unequal societies is as much to blame for gun deaths as any individual moral calculus. The Pope has particularly condemned the sale of weapons for profit, whether within countries or internationally, as a huge moral scourge.
Why Housing Is Unaffordable in California
in California’s coastal metros more than two-thirds of cities and counties have policies explicitly aimed at restricting housing growth, such as limits on density.
.. When a developer wants to break ground, local governments impose multilayered reviews that can mean getting approval from the municipal building department, health department, fire department and planning commission as well as elected officials.
Neighbors can delay or block projects using the state’s 1970 Environmental Quality Act. It isn’t coincidental that California’s housing prices soared during the 1970s. Getting a building permit in San Francisco takes about three times as long as in the typical American metro.
.. All told, it costs between $50,000 and $75,000 more to build a home in California than in the rest of the country. Building a low-income housing unit costs $332,000—about $80,000 more than the median home in Dallas or Phoenix.
.. Opponents accuse developers of being greedy, but their real gripe is that subdividing the lots would increase the housing stock and thereby diminish the value of their own homes.
.. California’s housing policies are intrinsically regressive. Limiting the supply drives up home values in well-to-do coastal communities, while pricing everyone else out of the market. Households in the lowest quartile in California spend about two-thirds of their incomes on housing; those in the top quartile spend just 16%.
.. The conundrum California’s landed gentry face is they want to boost their home values—and at the same time to have an abundant supply of low-wage workers to mow their lawns and clean their pools too.
Hurricanes, Climate and the Capitalist Offset
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Texans will find few consolations in the wake of a hurricane as terrifying as Harvey. But here, at least, is one: A biblical storm has hit them, and the death toll —38 as of this writing — is mercifully low, given its intensity.
.. This is not how it plays out in much of the world. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch ripped through Central America and killed anywhere between 11,000 and 19,000 people, mostly in Honduras and Nicaragua. Nearly a decade later Cyclone Nargis slammed into Myanmar and a staggering 138,000 people perished.
.. The storm will be a “speed bump” to Houston’s $503 billion economy, according to Moody’s
.. he expects the storm to derail growth for about two months.
.. Climate activists often claim that unchecked economic growth and the things that go with are principal causes of environmental destruction. In reality, growth is the great offset. It’s a big part of the reason why, despite our warming planet, mortality rates from storms have declined from .11 per 100,000 in the 1900s to .04 per 100,000 in the 2010s
.. growth isn’t just a matter of parking lots paving over paradise. It also underwrites safety standards, funds scientific research, builds spillways and wastewater plants, creates “green jobs,” subsidizes Elon Musk, sets aside prime real estate for conservation
.. it’s also only one of four Category 4 or 5 hurricanes to make landfall in the United States since 1970. By contrast, more than twice as many such storms made landfall between 1922 and 1969.