LinkSwarm for December 23, 2022

Greetings, and welcome to a Christmas Eve Eve LinkSwarm! It got down to 14°F yesterday, and only up to a balmy 30°F or so today. In addition to trying to stay warm, I’ve been working finishing up my latest Lame Excuse Books catalog, which went out earlier this evening. (Drop me a line if you want a copy.) Due to that, I think I’m going to break this LinkSwarm into two parts.

  • House passes pork-filled omnibus spending bill that 18 Republican senators let escape the senate. The amount of bad stuff in here will probably require multiple links tomorrow…
  • The real cause of homelessness in California.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom, newly inaugurated Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and legislative leaders are pledging decisive action on California’s homelessness crisis, which raises a pithy question: Why did it erupt during a period of strong economic growth?

    The reasons often offered include a moderate climate, the availability of generous welfare benefits, mental health and drug abuse. However, a lengthy and meticulously sourced article in the current issue of Atlantic magazine demolishes all of those supposed causes.

    Rather, the article argues persuasively, California and other left-leaning states tend to have the nation’s most egregious levels of homelessness because they have made it extraordinarily difficult to build enough housing to meet demands.

    Author Jerusalem Demsas contends that the progressive politics of California and other states are “largely to blame for the homelessness crisis: A contradiction at the core of liberal ideology has precluded Democratic politicians, who run most of the cities where homelessness is most acute, from addressing the issue.

    “Liberals have stated preferences that housing should be affordable, particularly for marginalized groups … But local politicians seeking to protect the interests of incumbent homeowners spawned a web of regulations, laws, and norms that has made blocking the development of new housing pitifully simple.”

    Demsas singles out Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area as examples of how environmentalists, architectural preservationists, homeowner groups and left-leaning organizations joined hands to enact a thicket of difficult procedural hurdles that became “veto points” to thwart efforts to build the new housing needed in prosperous “superstar cities.”

    While thriving economies drew workers to these regions, their lack of housing manifested itself in soaring rents and home prices that drove those on the lower rungs of the economy into homelessness.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Benjamin Netanyahu manages to form new government in Israel. It only took two months since the election!
  • Mayor Adler’s legacy in Austin:

  • Members of Houston rap group The Sauce arrested for making sauce. And by “sauce” I mean “meth.”

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Barnes and Noble to closes 30 stores in 2023…wait, they’re opening 30 stores??? Did I suddenly wake up in 1999?
  • Not news: Buying a used Blazer in El Paso. News: an ex-Cartel Blazer.
  • Lawsuit frees the Eleanors.
  • History matters talks about why the Soviet Union agreed to share control of Berlin with the allies after World War II. Pretty much all the History Matters videos are worth watching, but this one is particularly amusing.
  • “Journalists Warn Of Frightening Trend Where Rules Apply To Them.”
  • Awww:

    I want to know what song is playing on that TV…
    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Pressed for time, so more links tomorrow…

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    One Response to “LinkSwarm for December 23, 2022”

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