Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Bush is one of the worst presidents in US history. I said that a couple of years ago. Carter said it again a couple of days ago, and his comments are all over the internet - many agree.

He's bad from the point of view of the conservatives, of the military, of the progressive/liberal/leftists, the journalists. Now even his own party. Everyone. Most likely Exxon and other corporations do like him.

Bush is a great president - from the point of view of an activist organizer. He makes everyone angry with everything he does. He tries to cover it up terribly, grossly denying it, or making little of it. Making more people angry. So for organizing, it's great. Everyone sees the problem.

It's tough organizing with a Democrat president. They do lots of terrible things, but people don't see it, they don't get angry at. Heck, with Bush it's still hard.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
That's the first key found to open HD-DVD discs.
Let's see how the popularity of this HD-DVD decryprion code increases over time.
Google links found searching for this string: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

may 2, 2007 2:13pm est
google 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Results 1 - 10 of about 321,000 for 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Try it too, post a comment with what date, time and timezone you searched http://www.google.com/search?q=09+F9+11+02+9D+74+E3+5B+D8+41+56+C5+63+56+88+C0
Hmmm looks like someone cracked HD-DVD. Cool!
Got some work to do today. Don't feel like it though.
Democrats and Republicans and media go on with their talks of "funding" and "ending" the war, trying to fool the public to vote for them, no matter which is their opinion.

In the end, nobody does anything that actually listens to what the majority has voted for - end the war. i actually don't think they will, the economic forces at play, embedded in various corporations and people, are still dictating more than the government, and the people's voices aren't strong enough yet.

It seems that maybe they public will get frustrated and and angry and have to go for yet another election, this time electing the most anti-war president they can manage.

The wars go on. People killing and dying on all sides of several wars, building up various forms of trauma, causing uncountable forms of suffering in the whole population. Lack of water, power, food, work, sanity.

Meanwhile, in Washington DC, the politicians of the two-party system posture and position themselves to see who will win or lose points, and who will get their career damaged or improved by the war.

Businessmen with economic interests in wars continue to campaign for it to go on - weapons supplies, security companies, contractors, lobbyists, spy and information services, food supply, etc. Another hundred billion dollars flows from mostly poor taxpayers to military-related corporations, for the purpose of building violence.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

We need stronger tenant laws in New York. The current laws, tenant organizations, and tenant lawyers in New York are simply insufficient to defend a person's right to housing.

That one of the wealthiest cities on the planet cannot do something as basic as insure that people have a roof over their head is not due to incompetence. It is clearly the result of putting people as a second or third second priority, after other extraneous priorities, all and any of which should come after the basic needs of human beings.

Especially in light of the fact that these other priorities are, in the greatest majority, personal gain by a few individuals. Many will claim and be confused by many other reasons, rephrase personal gain in a million ways, such as "city tax income" or "free markets". In the end they are just saying they are responsible for the rights of the property, but not for the life of human beings living inside the property. Or in the street.

This minority of people will never agree with stronger laws defending tenants and human beings, unless there are thousands of organized people who strongly state their need for better law.

I propose these laws and policies, summarized first, below in more detail and reasoning:

1. Policies and laws discouraging speculative interests with NYC housing property, and encouraging home ownership by people who live in the properties.

2. Policies and laws applying the city's income from property towards projects assuring that NYC taxpayers are able to find affordable housing.

3. Making NYC municipal government ratify in law human rights to housing, in this way legally binding the government to be responsible for dealing with the consequences of its own housing policy, rather than churches and charities having to care for the homeless the city creates.

4. Policies and laws making it a criminal offense to abuse of NYC housing laws, courts, and officials, not merely a breaking of city and court rules.

5. Laws and policies eliminating the anonymity and legal curtain of landlords, allowing tenants to know who and where their landlords are, what other properties they own, and what their housing-corporation policies and activities are in all their properties.

6. Laws and policies encouraging the actual use of housing for long term living purposes and resulting creation of communities of long term residents, committed to their neighborhoods, and solutions for the large numbers of NYC travelers and other temporary or sporadic residents, and out of state or foreign investing residents.

In more detail:

1- This is in my view the most important point - encouraging people to own their actual home, rather than to become landlords of lots of other people. A person who own a home does not fight with the landlord, but rather, they take care of their home, doing their own maintenance, and caring for their building, street, etc. A tenant and landlord, on the other hand, create eternal fights over who is responsible for what, constant trouble for courts and police, result in poorly maintained properties, eternal litigation for numerous reasons, courts babysitting landlords and tenants on their basic obligations, and all kinds of legal games by both tenants and landlords, most commonly landlords, who have higher financial motive.

NYC apartments are becoming ever more corporate speculative investments, rather than used for housing. Buying and renting large numbers of NYC housing units is profitable. It is profitable to have tenants continually move in and out. Investing in and simply stocking unused NYC housing is profitable. Buying or building for the purpose of actual living in NYC housing is not at all profitable, and in many cases, a fool's investment, a mortgage trap, little more than false dreams. A naive and elusive "American dream" of home ownership.

All this simply creates a situation where everyone in NYC is a tenant, and few are the owners. People all over the world buy NYC property merely for investment, and leave them unused. Corporations big and small own all the housing, and people who live in them seldom own it. And people are currently being forced to leave in ever increasing numbers, as NYC rent regulation laws slowly and steadily no longer apply, as planned, to thousands and thousands of apartments.

A city property lax law making taxes very low if one lives and/or works in one's own NYC property, and high taxes if one does not live in the property, would help with this. If the tax was higher according to how many apartments the person or corporation owns, it would be more interesting to sell them to people who wish to live in them, rather than continually accumulate and hoard apartments. Enforcement would simple, a tax declaration would simply need to accompany proof of residence, and clearly impossible for someone owning 100 buildings.

, given that housing is extremely costly to the city, and said landlords could be seen as abusing of NYC housing resources built over many years, for purely personal gain. There is currently no civil penalty for a landlord that, for example, evicts tenants for no legal reason, falsifies records, guilty of graft with city officials, or lies under oath in court, all of which happen daily in NYC housing court.

The simple reason is that there is an extreme shortage of housing in NYC, and those representing speculative capital has for years insisted they plan to build housing, when in truth they manage to merely evict people from housing and keep people circulating among a diminishing supply of apartments of ever increasing prices.