Tag Archives: business

Affordable Housing, Role Playing Games, Legal Wranglings, Inspiration, Tragedy, and Everything Since Friday

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This entry is part 65 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Yeah, apparently I’m skipping Friday updates more often than not. I should stop that. Actually stick to my own schedule.

One of the big topics that ended up being discussed today in the stream was the whole rich/poor divide and the idea of affordable housing… spawned by an article about a new building in NYC that’s going to have a separate entrance for it’s less privileged residents (who they agreed to take in so they could get a tax break, mind you).

The topic of “affordable housing” comes up frequently here in Maryland. Particular in Silver Spring. The issue is a little different than it is in places like NYC.

Here we have the problem of people building a lot of expensive housing that is then bought/rented by people who mostly work and play in DC. This leaves people who work in Silver Spring (which has a wide diversity of jobs and pay rates) unable to afford to live there (in some cases), pushing them farther out where public transportation is less viable, leading to a bit of a traffic problem and a bit of a parking problem (which leads to all sorts of other problems… like local businesses being able to do solid business because people can’t get to/part at them easily or actual residents not being able to find parking/get around easily during the day).

A number of members of the community here are very interested in trying to build and maintain an actual community. One that’s vibrant at all times during the day…. not just during rush hour. What’s been in place has been slowly slipping away as development has boomed and busted a few times. (Most of what’s being built are one or two bedroom apartments/condos… not conducive to people with families, encouraging more transient people who go elsewhere to put down actual roots.)

It’s an interesting situation. A problematic one. And one I know I haven’t come up with a good solution to (mainly because I’ve got some very mixed feelings about all the affordable housing solutions I have seen–some of which were laid out in the article that Nancy shared–but some of those concerns are at odds with my desire to have poor people actually treated as people, since I’ve seen that be one of the best ways to help someone get back on their feet).

Needless to say, a number of people disagree with me on a lot of those points.

I’m okay with that.

Like I said, I don’t have an answer, so the discussion obviously needs to keep going on somewhere.

Here’s the extra long feed (which contains a few interesting discussions or starting points, so you should check it out)…

Lots of Oddities, Some Real Stupidity, A Bit of Humor, and the Blackest Black

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This entry is part 62 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Apparently, the push yesterday to let the FCC know how we think they should rule on Net Neutrality once again crashed their website. So much so that at least one of the groups that was facilitating the electronic submissions just up and printed out the messages that didn’t get through and hand delivered them so they’d be in by the comment deadline.

Maybe, just maybe, there’s enough volume of ordinary people and money from big organizations (like Google) to swing this the right way.

I’m not holding my breath. I’m not even all that optimistic. But at least I can see there’s a chance.

Guess we’ll see soon enough.

Everyone keep your fingers and things crossed.

Now, on with the feed…

Piercing the Corporate Veil, A Study in Bayhem, Bubbles, Box of Pox, and Suddenly Poor

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This entry is part 59 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

The Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case creep and speculation continue.

Now there’s some rumblings among some who are supposedly more law-savvy than I am about this close bond between a corporation’s “religion” and the religion of the people who run it may be an exploitable tear in the corporate veil that protects those who run a corporation from certain financial and legal issues.

If that’s true, then that may be a semi-good thing to come from all of this.

But I’m not sure how that would all play out. It very well may end up being worse all around for everyone.

Of course, it may not matter all that much if the economy as a whole–on a global scale–pops all at once.

There are apparently some rumblings (again, from people who know a lot more about the issue at hand than I do) about how over-valued a lot of things out there in the financial and investment world are. And how little corporations (and actual people with lots of money) are investing in things. Real estate, stocks, bonds, each other… few are seeing a chance for a good return on their investment so they’re just holding on to their money.

And while that’s going on, the various central banks of various nations are, in one way or another, pumping more money into the economy… which is, of course, trickling up into these stockpiles. Because (and the article in today’s stream doesn’t touch on this idea, but it’s a pretty glaring omission) the vast majority of people don’t have investments like what they’re talking about, so all that money can only trickle up to the businesses that own and produce what the people at street level are buying.

With that money “stuck” in the cycle, it seems it’s leaving a bit of a vacuum for those who need it most while, yet again, the rich get richer. But if and when this massive series of bubbles pop, everyone’s going to lose big as everything plummets in value–including those vast storehouses of money.

Kind of terrifying.

About as terrifying as hearing that the CDC misplaced a box of smallpox sometime in the 50s. It’s okay, though… they found it. Sitting in a store room in a lab that’s been used by the FDA for the past 40 or so years.

That just leaves me wondering what the heck else has been misplaced over the decades and never missed.

Then there’s the newest revelations from the Snowden files. Seems the U.S. government did, indeed, have a whole lot of personal communications on hand that they probably shouldn’t have. How do we know? Because Snowden handed a bunch of it over to the Washing Post. So now all the officials who’ve been swearing up and down that their organizations never took and retained anything like these newly revealed documents are saying, effectively, “Okay, yeah, we had those, but they’re different! It was only a minimal violation of those people’s privacy! What Snowden’s doing with them is worse than what we did!”

Yeah, not buying the blame shifting, guys. You’re still the ones who collected it–and have been lying about it. Sure Snowden’s in the wrong, that’s not news. You’re still in more wrong overall.

Anyway, here’s the rest of the feed…

Discrimination, Diversity, Voices and Images From Beyond, Living Above Venus, and the Impeccable Bad Piper

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This entry is part 57 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

This came through the feed late today:

“Without a robust religious exemption,” they wrote, “this expansion of hiring rights will come at an unreasonable cost to the common good, national unity and religious freedom.”

That’s the justification, in part, for a group of businesses (who claim to be religious) for asking that they be exempt from non-discrimination rules when it comes to those totally wrong, creepy, and detrimental GLBT “people.”

To me, that says “In order to be united, we must exclude this entire group of people. In order to be free, we must oppress these others who don’t fit our beliefs.”

This is a result, direct or in, of the Hobby Lobby decision from the Supreme Court yesterday. The one that people (who are happy with it) have been swearing up and down that it won’t lead to anything worse than some (skeevy whores) not getting their pass to free sex (“birth control”).

Well, there ya go. Not more than 48 hours later and this request has been made.

It makes me sick. It makes me disappointed in any genuine faith-based organization that would condone, let alone support, this kind of exclusion in this day and age. (And, yes, I am regularly disappointed in a number of faith-based organizations.)

The biggest problem with the Supreme Court decision is that it was based on other exemptions already on the books. I take issue with those, too.

There’s a difference between secular society and spiritual life. One is shared among people who don’t always agree on things. In order to be part of that secular world–especially as an incorporated business–you have to play by the same rules as everyone else. Exceptions to the rule of law should be few and far between and supported by a distinct need.

Thinking gay people are icky does not make eliminating them from your presence a need.

Opposing birth control is just fine. Don’t make use of it in your life. But how other people feel about that is out of your hands. Especially if you’re “just” in a titled position in a free-standing entity like a national chain of businesses. A secular entity. You want to be a faith-based organization? Fine, change your structure and all your other behavior to be one. Then you get to play by those rules and be as picky as you want.

This whole thing is an nasty mess waiting to explode.

And I don’t have a good, coherent solution to make it any better. Mainly because the existing laws are a mess. Partially because the way we’ve done business for more than a century is a bit of a mess.

Anyway… here’s the rest of the feed…

Political Progress, Severe SWAT, Riotous Raccoons, Diminutive Dwellings, and Interest Intelligence

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This entry is part 52 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

In the feed today is a totally adorable video of people feeding a whole passel of raccoons in a parking lot.

It’s one of the stupidest things I’ve seen people do on the Internet today. (That’s saying a lot.)

I grew up in the woods. I’ve had numerous “close encounters” with raccoons. They’ve all been amusing. But that doesn’t mean I go out of my way to interact with these critters. It’s typical to see three, maybe four raccoons trundling along in the dusk… especially if there’s a trash bin nearby. But, more often, you’ll see solitary ones or pairs doing their thing. If you’re in an area where you see this often, they probably won’t dash off when they see you–they’ll just continue on their way.

That, in and of itself, is kind of a problem. It means they’ve gotten used to humans being around them. It also gives the false impression that they’re really okay with humans being around them and can easily lead to people thinking, “Hey, let’s play with the cute animals!”

Which is a very bad idea.

In the video there are more than two dozen raccoons gathered around this nimrod who’s handing out Doritos. In a parking lot. During daylight.

That is not typical in any way, shape, or form.

This is a whole colony of raccoons who have been trained out of most of their natural habits–being nocturnal, not grouping up, showing at least some minor trepidation when humans are around, actually foraging for food. No doubt this has occurred after years of people feeding them in that parking lot (which I’m guessing is for a park of some sort).

Here’s what this sort of thing leads to…

  • A bunch of raccoons that can easily catch and spread disease–not just among themselves, but over to humans, too
  • A situation where someone is more apt to get bit or scratched or otherwise wounded by a raccoon (which never ends well for the raccoons in the area)
  • A hazard for pets and other animals (not to mention children)
  • A game of Russian roulette as to when that cute and passive gaggle of fuzzies is going to decide you most certain are not done feeding them as they swarm you

These are wild animals, people. They should be treated with some amount of respect and, whenever possible, left to their own devices.

Unless you like the idea of going though treatment for potential rabies infection. If that’s the case, then by all means go snuggle with those little banditos.