Falling Awake

Ignoring (or being ignorant of) basic economic principles leads to liberal head-scratching.  They know their hearts are in the right place, so why doesn’t utopia ensue?

 A case in point:

Affordable homes draw flak in Marin

Habitat for Humanity and Marin County seem like a perfect fit: A well-regarded builder of affordable housing meets a progressive locale acutely short of homes for low-income and middle-class workers.

The two have had a rocky relationship.

Habitat for Humanity volunteers in the county grew so frustrated with neighborhood opposition in the 1990s that they disbanded their chapter of the international organization. Habitat is trying again with four proposed houses just outside this upscale town along San Francisco Bay but is meeting more hostility.

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[Bill] Duane says he and his neighbors aren’t “NIMBYs,” the acronym for Not in My Backyard, a label often stuck on affordable-housing foes. Neighbors think the bad traffic around the site on a vacant hillside would get worse, and they say the houses are poorly situated on land that floods in winter.

Let’s quickly dispense with the two objections cited.  First, the increase in traffic caused by the addition of four single-family homes must surely be negligible.  That’s not the issue.  Second, how exactly does a hillside flood?  And even if it could, how is that the neighbors’ concern?  If Habitat for Humanity wants to build houses there and they’re not violating any zoning laws, surely that’s their business.

The neighbors want to protect their property values.  They want their sizeable investments to make money, not lose it.  But liberals aren’t allowed to say that.  Profit is a dirty word, after all.

The only principle of economics that I can wrap my brain around is the law of supply and demand, but that’s enough to figure out San Francisco’s housing shortage.

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Okay, it’s been about three months since I posted on this topic, and I’ve been thinking about it, and reading about it, and here’s where I am now:

If you’re buying what Al Gore’s selling, here’s what you have to accept:

1. The mean global temperature is rising
2. If the mean global temperature is rising, that’s because atmospheric CO2 levels are rising
3. If atmospheric CO2 levels are rising, that’s because of increased industrialization
4. If industrialization is causing CO2 levels to rise, resulting in a rise in mean global temperature, that will have bad consequences
5. To avoid those bad consequences, we have to drastically change our behavior

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I haven’t posted in a long time.  My attention has been tied up in surviving day-to-day.  It’s very hard when your boss hates you.  It’s harder when he hates you more when you do a good job.  For the last two months, I’ve been battling him, and I was never prepared for this kind of combat.

I get home, I eat, and I go to bed.  The next day, same thing.  Over and over.  That’s been my life the last month or so.

I think things will be better in two weeks.

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UPDATED 5/6/07

I just wanted to tack on an addendum to this post, as it looks very bleak the way it stands.  I’ve been getting more page views on this than anything I’ve posted in the last month, and I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that I’m still in that stituation.

In a nutshell, I’m good.  I am enjoying my job more than I have in years.  I’m proud of the fact that I was able to continue to do a good job for no other reason than my own work ethic, but I have to say I’m ridiculously pleased at getting a pat on the back now and then.

Anyway, that’s it for now:  I’m good.

The Old Testament

(Entry dated 6/8/00) 

This took up the bulk of my time over the past year.  I would set it down for months at a time, not daring to move on to the other works for fear that I would never return to it.

It is not listed in the The New Lifetime Reading Plan, at least not in the body of the book, but the introdction states: “We asssume that nearly every reader of this book will own a Bible and be at least somewhat accustomed to reading it.”  Also, how can one read St. Augustine’s Confessions, Dante’s Divine Comedy, or Paradise Lost without familiarity with the Good Book? Read the rest of this entry »