It disincentivizes speculative holding and buying up inventory to reduce supply without demonstrated demand. Large landlords are willing to sit on vacant inventory in order to keep market rates high. By penalizing holding units vacant, that should incentivise either setting more competitive rents, or selling/not buying excess inventory.

In markets where there is a true undersupply of inventory and there aren’t vacancies then, yes, this policy wouldn’t have much benefit.

That’s why the homestead credit would only be payable to the resident. Residency is what matters here not the paper owner.

I won’t claim there aren’t potential loopholes in a casually described plan, but the one you brought up doesn’t apply without fraudulent claims of residency.

Currently, large corporate landlords are willing to let housing units sit empty vs letting market rates drop. A company with 500 units makes the same amount leasing 400 units at $1500/mo as they would leasing 470 units at $1300/mo and they have less overhead. The realpage software lets them coordinate with all the other corporate landlords without direct communication.

The reason I think this policy would help renters is by making vacant units significantly more expensive and pushing corporate property managers to actually compete rather than sit on vacancies.

I think I’d rather see this adressed on the property tax side with a homestead tax exemption. Let counties and municipalities significantly raise property tax rates then offer homestead tax rebates to the primary resident. Maybe even offer a monthly rebate to match rent/mortgage payments. Rent would go up, but the rebate should match the rent increase.

This would make empty units, short term rentals, and vacation home more expensive to hold on to compared to being pccupied by a long term resident. This would also let each region decide on the ratio of occupied vs unoccupied net property tax rates to dial in what works for them. A coastal community might have a much different equilibrium point than a suburb to a big city for example.

A lot of areas already have homestead exemptions for seniors and low income residents, so it doesn’t even require much in terms of new legal frameworks.

And they will make sure to continue to not know a single thing about what was said. Ignorance isn’t a valid legal defence, but it sure is a common deflection tactic these days. Law makers have a professional and ethical obligation to become informed on the issues their constituents care about, but it seems like it’s rare to find one that remembers that obligation.

What could one legislator cost, Michael, 25,000 dollars?

Iowa pays its general assembly members a salary of $25k a yr. So $200k a yr in lobbying from a single company potentially buys a lot of influence.

Definitely, any changes natural or anthropogenic would be measured and to great accuracy. I just wanted to point out that the notion of the general public, especially if conditioned to distrust scientists and authorities, not noticing changes isn’t the outlandish part. See global warming denial despite years of record setting temperatures.

Ignoring conspiracy theory stuff, people aren’t very good at perceiving changes in light levels if they happen gradually. During any solar eclipse there are wide bands where only a partial eclipse is observed. It’s pretty common for people in those bands to not notice that something has changed even with 50% occlusion.

Do new oil and gas leases qualify as weather modification? What about clear cutting forests and draining wetlands?

The other benefit I can think of is keeping the fissile materials always sub critical. You don’t have to worry about a meltdown if the reaction is not self-sustaining. It’s an odd marrying of technologies, but I think people are being too dismissive.

Although, I wonder if the true purpose of such a device would be high output breeding of fuel for weapons use.

The stuff that is heavier than water ends up in the river delta, everything else dilutes into the ocean. Once it’s in the ocean, there’s not much humans can do about it. Promoting populations of sea grass and filter feeders like mussels can at least capture pollution in a form that settles to the seabed and improves water quality.

There will be pockets of pollution that persist for a long time, and floodwaters could stir some of that back up, but the above poster is correct. Cleaning up a river can be as simple as stopping the sources of the pollution. A dirty river is dirty because stuff keeps getting added to it. Of course stopping sources of pollution is way easier said than done.

Do the terms of their employment change when they get rehired?

Is private security not synonymous with mercenary?

The astronauts in orbit already have their ride home. This is a shift change not a rescue.

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Make America Depressed Again

MADA 2: The greatest depression

Most of those are pretty cool, but the watch really let the gimmick compromise the function. Clock faces need to have high contrast for minimizing the time it takes to read the time.

Honeybees are not the bee population that needs to be saved.

I see it as an extension of the myth of American purity and external corruption. “This person is evil, some outside power must have compromising info on them.” “Immigrants are violent criminals preying on innocent americans.”

These attitudes ignore the reality that bad people can come from anywhere. There are plenty of villians with very mundane origin stories. What matters is if everyone else has the will and ability to keep bad people in check and hold them accountable.

The grifters in charge need no other motivation than a sense of superiority and an opportunity to make a buck.

They’ve been doing this with “natural intelligence” for ages.