You know I read the summary and the article.

I feel bad for the young people. I don't feel bad for adults who chose to move there when they couldn't afford to buy; they couldn't afford to live in SF, and had no business moving there. If they could have afforded to buy, then they would have gained equity, and if they found they couldn't afford to live there any more, they could have sold and gone someplace cheaper.

I support a COLA, and I am gleeful about Utah's compassionate homeless solution of simply putting them up in housing, which is cheaper than dealing with them being homeless. You really know nothing about me.

I complain that you're providing anecdotes instead of statistics, and you respond by doing it three more times. You're batting zero.

The article is really about a "Panic" button, not a 911 call.

I'm aware of that. I was simply responding to the parent poster who did post about 911.

I don't care about any of those problems. I don't care if people are forced out of San Francisco. There's no particular reason why anyone who isn't making their property make money should be permitted to live anywhere in particular in a capitalist society. In theory, they should be permitted to live somewhere (right to life) but there's no right to a home on the California coast.

It's part of the natural cycle that places get gentrified and begin to suck, and people move to new places and make them cool, and then they eventually get gentrified and begin to suck. The fallacy is the idea that you can live near civilization and yet not experience change. You can live in the boonies and have stability or you can live where progress happens, and experience progress.

I'd rather the basis of our distribution of wealth permit cool people to live in cool places as a reward, but it doesn't. But on the other hand, cool places are mostly because of cool people. You can make a garden of the desert or a cultural wasteland of a highly populated city.

The way you stated, but also paying property taxes, meeting any agreements which the council placed on their development to mitigate their impact, et cetera.

Free stuff is all around us. But it is portioned out on specious bases until some have more than they need, and some have less than they need.

I ask for statistics, I get back an anecdote. Welcome to slashdot, I guess.

I don't know that actually makes sense. The banks own (outright, through foreclosure) less than 8% of the housing in any given state and less than 2% in most states. In a few states, they might be able to influence it that much. But the problem is that a percentage of the homes they own will be damaged to the point that they are complete write-offs which are actually worth less than a vacant lot due to the cost of demolition...

The elephant in the room is mercantilism. Corporations discovered that under capitalism they could buy the government and turn it into their personal playground. The NSA is just one predictable arm of a corporate government.

You don't actually have to steal the vehicle. Armed assault on a vehicle is carjacking. If the window was broken out, it was probably broken out with a weapon. If used in an attack, a stick or rock can become a "deadly weapon". Courts tend to side with the driver, and courts tend to side against homeless and unemployed people. It would probably be pretty easy to show carjacking here with some video evidence of people beating on the bus with stuff.

You, sir, need to lay off the ego and get with statistics. Unless you have some, you're just wasting airtime.

Not only are you wrong (both types of government routinely use both types of control) but the American government uses lots of both types of control. Look at how much of our population is in prison or take a look at the reaction to a WTO protest sometime if there is any doubt.

To spellcheckers.

I leave symbols to the symbol-minded. --Carlin

Yes, republic. Not democracy. Sorry, but my level of support for the republicans running this nation has run thin.

The "under God" bit is a violation of the first amendment, and was added retroactively to deliberately violate it. Our fucking pledge is unconstitutional. We're pledging to violate the constitution.

Bullshit. In fact, this nation was divided away from the British, and it can be divided again if necessary.

That's the biggest lie of all. It's liberty for the rich and justice for no-one.

So yes, I very much object to the pledge.

I objected to it in elementary school, and had to stand facing the wall for refusing to say it because of the God content. My mother was raised catholic, but became an atheist. I went to a baptist day care because it was cheap, and they told me lots of cute little stories on a felt board which taught me about how ridiculous Christianity was. To me the stories were no more credible than the [mainstream, typically Disney] cartoons they'd show us in between on rainy days.

I object strenuously to a bullshit, jingoistic, illegal, borderline traitorous pledge.

When you live in a capitalist society, the economy is never the least of the concerns. Nor, in fact, can you afford for it to be. This in itself wouldn't be a bad thing if the distribution of wealth were not biased towards assholes.

You'd be surprised to learn that there's even dumber reasons people call ...

Why don't they tack on a $100 "911 call charge" to the caller's phone bill for every call? That ought to make the idiots learn pretty quickly.

The charge would be waived if any emergency personnel are actually dispatched.