Author: nick
John and I continue commentary and reading Rules for Radicals Source link
Pudding River in flood, near Mt. Angel, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. With the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Review Council’s final recommendations finally available, one particular recommendation stands out. In the section titled, “Shift to Private Market through Depopulation of Existing National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) Policies,” the council recommends establishing a voluntary “take-out” program that would transfer eligible policies to private insurers — similar to what states like Florida and Louisiana call depopulation programs. There is also a recommendation for a flood insurance marketplace, similar to the Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplace, that would allow private insurers…
GOP gains hope in 2026 midterms amid redistricting and shifting voter trends challenging Democrats. Source link
Universities across the country are facing unprecedented government scrutiny of everything from the rise of antisemitism to the lack of viewpoint diversity in the left-leaning social sciences. Nowhere Source link
The way I see it, the US has two unappealing choices: Launch a full-scale ground invasion and try to topple the Iranian government. Try to create the appearance of a win, and declare victory by claiming the objectives were met even when they clearly were not. President Trump can choose option #2, but it would be widely perceived as a defeat. International relations scholar John Mearsheimer put it best: “Most of them say that President Trump should quickly declare victory and withdraw from the war. He can do this, but it will be perceived as a humiliating defeat for the…
Home prices are squeezing American family budgets. The median home price is up 60% since 2019, now five times the median household income. The country is short more than 4 million homes, and a record 22.6 million renter households are spending more than 30% of their income on rent. Housing costs have risen another 14% in just the last two years. While Americans are fighting for a place to call home, a recent Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Homeland Security investigation revealed major eligibility errors in HUD housing programs. HUD found nearly 6,000 confirmed ineligible tenants,…
From Brooks v. Lowes Home Centers LLC, decided yesterday by Judge Jerry Edwards, Jr. (W.D. La.): In resolving a prior motion in this case, the Court discovered that the plaintiff’s briefs contained misquoted or mischaracterized precedent…. Mr. Wilkins[, one of plaintiff’s lawyers,] took full responsibility. Wilkins explained that he utilized an artificial intelligence (“AI”) platform, Claude, to generate the brief. As part of his process, Mr. Wilkins had Claude’s draft reviewed by a human law clerk, who discovered that Claude had hallucinated quotations. Mr. Wilkins then confronted Claude with the identified errors and entrusted Claude to correct them. Instead, Claude…
Photo by Doğu Tuncer Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently inveighed against the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act during an appearance at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. The New York congresswoman was invited to speak at Martin Luther King Jr.’s former congregation on May 10, at the invitation of Senator Raphael Warnock, the current senior pastor there. Many political observers interpreted this as the unofficial launch of an Ocasio-Cortez presidential campaign. “This, to me, is someone who is at least thinking seriously about running for president,” New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie said in a YouTube…
Sport has always been an American obsession, and the greatest sportswriter in America today is by far Phil Mushnick. His twice-weekly column in the New York Post is a guillotine, ridiculing the obnoxious, drunken, gun-carrying, women-bashing, N-word-saying, multi-millionaire sports stars whom the rest of the press treat with the obsequiousness of medieval servants. No one keelhauls rapacious and arrogant sports stars like our Phil, but only those who deserve it. Mushnick is a sports fan like no other. And he’s on the side of the angels as he takes on those billionaire-backed sell-outs, the commissioners of football, basketball, and baseball.…
They’re at it again: Yesterday, the unions representing the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) workers reached an agreement with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the railroad. It’s not yet clear what’s in the agreement, but the demands of the striking workers were rather extraordinary: Pay raises of 5 percent, plus three years of retroactive raises since their last contract was hammered out in 2022. This might make sense if they were destitute, but they are not: “More than 325 Long Island Rail Road workers are raking in over $100,000 a year in overtime on top of their…