Yes but which party are you?

new parties get overrun with ops and grifters immediately

the future of politics is independents

The pro gun pro-abortion party

But what if I've invested a lot of emotional energy into hating "welfare queens" for the last 30 years?

Honestly I’m not sure I’ll still be living in America in another 5 years

But what of the poor poor homeowners who's property values will drop due to reduced demand? What about the poor landlords who will have to lower their rents?

But who owns the land the blocks stand on? Who gets it stolen from them if the government takes it to build on? How are they compensated? How are the construction costs paid for? How are those costs offset?

Utilities and maintenance are shared in an apartment block, how is the rent enforced to cover these things? Does the government forcefully evict people? Is this a police or military function? Who pays for this use of resources?

The Soviet style tenement works in a society without any personal property rights (or civil rights) but becomes more problematic the deeper you dive when applied to a less autocratic state.

Americans have zero problem with confiscating private property. Of black and brown people.

Not disagreeing with you, but one reason politicians will go out of their way to suck up to homeowners is that homeowners vote a lot more:

"The analysis, done just ahead of the midterm elections, found that if renter turnout in the 2016 presidential election had matched homeowner turnout, Hillary Clinton would have won four key swing states (Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin). Researchers estimate that if only renters had voted and all homeowners had abstained from voting, Donald Trump would have won just five states. However, while 67 percent of eligible homeowners voted, just 49 percent of eligible renters voted in the 2016 election. Approximately 30 percent of the eligible voting population are renters."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/30/report-rent ers-lean-more-democratic-much-less-likely-vote-than-homeowners/

The same deal that property owners get when existing property gets bulldozed to make room for shitty overpriced condos?

You're talking like this is arcane mysticism that has never been pulled off.

And once again, fuck Dr. Zhivago. That reactionary NIMBY nightmare porn.

Most celebrated reactionary piece of shit movie until Forrest Gump came along.

I have zero sympathy for people losing fake money when the house they live in lowers in value. YOU STILL HAVE A HOUSE TO LIVE IN.

As for people who have extra houses as investments or that they rent out, I hate those people and want the government to appropriate their houses with the minimum compensation to not trigger a revolt.

Government in Canada constantly sells public land to private interests and it's seen as a completely one-way street. The gov't should be perfectly allowed and expected to buy land back for public needs.

Before the 80s provincial governments actually had like, employees that could do non-administrative stuff. Like they maintained roads with their own workers and equipment instead of just contracting out to whoever bribed the ruling party the most. Cities for the most part still work this way but you increasingly see city roadwork being done by contractors. Heck, countries used to run their own military design & production facilities ("armouries") but now it's all done by companies for profit.

You can argue something can be gained from contracting out, but something is also lost. When your government loses all capacity to directly ACT, it becomes beholden to those contractors. Especially if the industry becomes a monopoly or cartel, they basically hold their services hostage unless they get their price. This is part of the reason why e.g. highway maintenance is so goddamn expensive.

There is no reason a government can't have its own construction arm, with some competent architects and engineers, construction workers, site managers, equipment pools and maintenance workers, etc. The reason we don't see it now is because since the 80s we've been trained to see the government as incapable of doing anything itself, only capable of funding stuff through private companies.

Yeah fuck people with multiple houses and absentee landlords.

I've mentioned my awful yuppie ex-friend before, but this one was a doozy. The very last night I ever hung out with him, after yammering on and on about scouting out houses to buy as rental properties, he announces that his wife is pregnant.

Not only was it odd that he decided to lead the night with property acquisition rather than that news, but this guy and his wife had spent 13 years swearing that would never have or want kids. I ask what changed, he says...

"We're way more established now. With these properties, we'll have a lot of passive income coming in. We're so secure, it just makes sense. Where else do you go?"

He described deciding to have a first child as little more than the next step in building a long term investment portfolio.

Never trust capitalists to build Commie Blocks.

It seems the vital needs for these projects to succeed are access to public transportation to access workplaces (haha, murika), services within walking distance of housing (schools, markets, clinics) and ongoing maintenance.

From the brief wiki entry seems that project had zero of three of those. Just build overcrowded housing, corral as many poor people in it as you can, stop maintenance and expect something good to happen.

And the other party also has the same policy on the public housing and the homeless. Might as well vote for the one that doesn't hate gay people.

"opposes public housing in every form"

bahahahahahahahahahahahaha

i guess section 8 is just a figment of everyone's imagination, i guess, seeing as them dastardly demmycrats apparently eliminated every single instance of public housing & assistance in the united states with nobody noticing

It's the dumbest fucking argument. They'll be like "Errrr, the Dems failed on their climate change promises, might as well vote for the party that denies climate change."

It's similar to the Rich Person argument of "I'm not gonna want to make another million dollars if I have to pay an extra 10% of it in taxes!"

Or "If I pay you for the overtime you worked it will put you into a higher tax bracket and you'll end up losing money!"

"Oh well the the republicans are worse so I guess there's no way to ever hold democrats to account or even criticize them" is just as dumb.

By “accountable” you mean something useful and constructive or something like protest voting or not voting?

Definitely do not vote for Republicans. I'm not making that argument and I don't think anybody here is. The idea that criticism of Democrats equals support for Republicans is incredibly retarded.

But if you did vote for Republicans you'd be getting the exact same housing policy as you would from Democrats. So if housing policy is important to you, you probably shouldn't support either party and should abstain or find a third party that supports your ideals and principles. There are lots of them.

Section 8 has a 10+ year waiting list. Landlords are not required to accept it and most do not. If anyone in your family has an arrest record they are not allowed to stay in your Section 8 housing. If anyone in your household is arrested for any reason you lose Section 8 and get evicted. If you have any kind of job you will not qualify for Section 8 assistance.

Section 8 is not an answer to tens of thousands of the working poor living in their cars or on the sidewalk.

piss

A great example of the way Democrat super-majorities handle homelessness is Los Angeles county; it spends $1 billion per year on homeless assistance. They don't build public housing with it. There are 60,000 homeless people in LA in possibly the worst conditions with the least assistance in America. Where does the money go? Who knows. But there are more homeless there every year.

When I moved to the USA for a few years I ended up getting an "apartment hunter", it's mostly a scam - they work for the landlords, but they do know what's available among the medium-size rental buildings. I never ended up going with their findings for my rentals, craigslist got better value and I didn't feel as manipulated.

The hunter told me "of course I'll remove any building that allows former convicts from your results", and I was like "actually I don't mind, with an apartment block with maybe a hundred people in it, who cares if one or two have a record?". The hunter told me "no you don't understand, very few buildings allow former convicts to rent there, so the ones that do are like 90% former convicts. You don't want to live there."

That was in Minnesota, not sure if that experience varies much between states.

Landlords are not required to accept it and most do not.

Are you kidding? The money comes every month without fail, directly to them. I've had three landlords, they absolutely love it.

>>>If anyone in your family has an arrest record they are not allowed to stay in your Section 8 housing. If anyone in your household is arrested for any reason you lose Section 8 and get evicted. If you have any kind of job you will not qualify for Section 8 assistance

Wouldn't it be easier to change the rules? Otherwise, you're just going to end up with government housing that won't take people with an arrest record.

who is gonna change the rules John

>>>>Oh well the the republicans are worse so I guess there's no way to ever hold democrats to account or even criticize them" is just as dumb.

Jesus, we've gone over this.

No it's: "The Republicans are worse, so I guess there's no way to ever say that the Democrats are just as bad, and have anyone but Glasseye and ashtar ever take me seriously again. "

Republicans are worse. That's the no-shit Sherlock epiphany that makes you worth listening to. They're trying to keep black people from voting. They're denying that climate change is real. They're interfering with the pandemic response, and supporting Donald Trump, who is nothing more or less than Pere Ubu for realsies. They're using "Critical Race Theory" to erase history.

And they do it all for what? Tax cuts and deregulation. In the words of Lou Reed: you'd eat shit and say it tasted good, if there was some money in it for you.

I vote for Democrats to keep Republicans out of office, and you are never going to make me regret that, and why would you want to? There have been Democrats whom I like. I would take a bullet for AOC, who I think may be younger than Boxxy. Anthony Weiner broke my heart. I will never forget Mario Cuomo. And there have been Democrats that I hated. FUCK ED KOCH. Al Sharpton is an acquired taste.

Like Bill Burr, Jesus Christ, and Rick and Morty, I like Bernie Sanders a lot more than I like his fans. If Bernie became president, the red states would secede again, and this time all we have to do is let them.

There's a long list of Democrats I would rather see in the white house than Biden. Elizabeth Warren. Bernie Sanders? Oh Fuck me yeah, Id love that.


Go ahead and vote for Ralph Nader, or Howie Hawkins, or that crazy MILF from Hawaii. I won't criticize. Your vote is for you, to use as you like.


But "Democrats are just as bad." will always be a nonstarter. Any argument made after that is an automatic loser.

"Republicans are worse" creates a context where good faith criticism of Democrats can and should be tolerated, and heard, and maybe taken to heart

That's the line in the sand in the sand. I'm sorry that we need a line in the sand. But hear me now, and believe me later, the Republicans are fascist for real now. And this shouldn't be hard, or complicated at all.

When Ashtar first said that Trump was the lowest possible bar for Biden to clear, I agreed immediately, and I was happy, because I wrongly assumed that we weren't going to have a problem.

the point is that no apartments are being built and they aren't even talking about doing it, it's not even on the table, that billion a year is for ???

Readers of English will note;

>>>finally ramping up construction of homes for the unhoused.

Promises are nice, action is better.

You only have to take the briefest look at history to see that both halves of the capitalist-imperialist party have utterly failed to provide basic housing for Americans in our lifetimes.

>>>Promises are nice, action is better.

Sure. But now you're moving the goalposts that Crackersmack set up.

This was all about how I pasted crackersmack's words into my search window, and discovered that what he'd said wasn't true. The billion dollars that crackersmack seemed to suggest had been spent annually went into spending for the first time ever during the current fiscal year, which began July 1. That's six and a half months ago. I neither know what has been accomplished in six months, or what should have been accomplished. It's not relevent to my thesis, which is that Crackersmack is pulling fake facts out of his ass. They're not even talking about building housing for the poor?
Yes they are.

When the whole fiscal year is played out, maybe it will all come to nothing, and I'm not claiming otherwise. I can neither predict or control what LA will look like 6 months from now. What LA will look like in six months cannot be a fact in the present. We're talking about the facts.

>>>You only have to take the briefest look at history to see that both halves of the capitalist-imperialist party have utterly failed to provide basic housing for Americans in our lifetimes.

Welll, the VERY briefest look would be for me to glance around my weirdly shaped attic apartment, where I and an undisclosed number of cats kive thanks to a HUD sectioin 8 supplement. Anecdotal evidence of a white guy. I don't know what it would be like if I ever dropped below the line into homelessness, but without the help, I might have to find out. And right now, this is what I'm glancing at.

The point here is that things could be worse. Crackersmack likes to talk about entitlement programs under the Democrats, as "nothing" or "fuck all." It's not true. Trump's first budget planned to abolish legal assistance for the poor, which would have people powerless to challenge the system, or even wor the system. They were prevented from doing that. Maybe this was all theater, but maybe they really wanted to do that. It's not nothing. My life has been saved. Saving my crazy life may not be enough, but to me it's more than nothing. Things could always get worse. Maybe I'm not the only one.

Not that I give a fuck. In America, we have two capitalist parties, and one fascist party. I'm antifascist, and that's why I'm always going to support the Democrats, because they're not fascist. And the Republicans are fascists, for real now.

You guys are anticapitalist, so you're taking a different path. I think that it's always going to be that way, but I don't think of myself as pro-capitalist, and I bet you don't think of yourself as pro-fascist, am I right? No one here is the enemy, and that means we're wasting time on each other.

I'm not anti-capitalist, I'm anti-profiteering and anti-abuse. If you are making and/or selling something that isn't necessary for dignified human life I don't give a fuck how much profit you make on it. Sell Funko Pops at 1 million percent markup for all I care, as long as you treat the people making the dumb things with respect and pay them a living wage.

And your hair-splitting is fucking tedious. LA county didn't have zero homeless budget last year. Homeless people just didn't just show up out of nowhere in LA in 2021. This is something funded in the hundreds of millions for years previous to this increase, and the budget is one billion now, and there is nothing to show for it except tens of thousands of people and families living in squalor. Many of them employed by incredibly profitable companies!

Section 8 serves what, maybe one out of a thousand Americans that need public housing? But in true shitlib fashion, as pathetic as it is, you still have the "fuck them, got mine" attitude. Cosplay as an "antifascist" all you want but the reality is that when Republicans come back into power in November it will be as much the fault of shitlibs enabling Democratic Party inaction as it will be the fault of the maga chuds.

And all the “true leftists” spreading RNC talking points since 2016 will take zero responsibility yet again, even claiming that “they told us so”.

If you morons spent half the energy you do spreading neocon propaganda maybe you could get one of your “truleft” candidates elected dog catcher somewhere.

I'm sorry if it's tedious when I factcheck your posts, something YOURE supposed to do.

Again, I'm not really trying to champion LA's mayor, I'm talking about you, and how your facts aren't really facts. Of course their budget wasn't zero before this year, and no one said it was, but it was also not a billion dollars, and I think someone implied that it was.


>>>And your hair-splitting is fucking tedious. LA county didn't have zero homeless budget last year. Homeless people just didn't just show up out of nowhere in LA in 2021. This is something funded in the hundreds of millions for years previous to this increase, and the budget is one billion now, and there is nothing to show for it except tens of thousands of people and families living in squalor. Many of them employed by incredibly profitable companies!

Oh, I get what you're doing now! You're BACKPEDALING. It I'm boring you, the solution is to either stop posting Herr, or get your facts straight.

>>>I Section 8 serves what, maybe one out of a thousand Americans that need public housing?

I have no idea, and obviously neither do you.

>>>>But in true shitlib fashion, as pathetic as it is, you still have the "fuck them, got mine" attitude.

Jesus, should I bother to correct such a malicious and willful misreading? Nah. Suck my balls, smackdaddy. I wouldn't have to define myself as an antifascist if I didnt have brain dead dweebs reflexively calling me a neoliberal, as if words didn't mean things. You're not really interested in what I am, and that just hurts my feelings, because I think you're SO FASCINATING!

Oh to be clear I would proudly take responsibility for 2016 if I thought I had anything to do with it. Nobody is a "true leftist" here, I thought it was hilarious that the avatar of unaccomplished, obnoxious white Karens was embarrassed by a stupid game show host that wasn't even trying to win. And I think at this point it's clear that I was right about Democratic governance not being functionally different than (even the worst) Republican governance.

lol you all being "antifascist" and "commies" or whatever now is just precious

you're both in your 40s or 50s too aren't you, good luck with that

>>>And I think at this point it's clear that I was right about Democratic governance not being functionally different than (even the worst) Republican governance.

When you make up your own facts, everything becomes clear.

I see we've come to the "childish insults" part of Crackersmack's set for this evening.

In March I'll be 64.

And you're what? 17?

Well guess now you’re just admitting you’re a shitcon getting off on ‘owning the libs’.

Nothing you do or say matters.

Sol after reading your posts here I don't think that you even understand what a conservative is. You're just learning about politics for the first time.

conservatives don't know what "conservative" means.

If Trump loses the Republican base, one way you'll know is a whole bunch of professors, think tanks and journalists will publish articles and do interviews with Terry Gross or whoever, and it'll be all about how "TRUMP WAS NEVER A REAL CONSERVATIVE". They did this with the last Bush, about halfway through the second term, when he had become incredibly unpopular. It's an argument that you can make whenever the Republican president screws the pooch once too many times. You could certainly make it with Trump, if he ever does something scandalous.

There's Libertarian conservativatism, and there's reactionary conservatism

and there's also those who identify as "conservative" and whatever those people seem to believe right now. That last one seems to be pretty fluid, no? When I use the word in that context, it means "whatever conservatives think they believe right now", and I'm not necessarily claiming to understand that stuff. It's a variable. It's X.

When I was 14, I passed out leaflets for George McGovern.