26 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2018
    1. Housing As a Human Right

      Well, I like the idea of all people having great, healthy, comfortable and safe housing.

      The premise of this argument is that greedy developers have caused skyrocketing real estate prices. But that is not necessarily so. Many things have driven prices upwards, including inflation, the misuse of environmental code regulations, initiatives that limit growth. In fact, just in California it is estimated that we need 180,000 new housing units built a year to keep up with demand. But we are far below this number. In 2015 and 2016 we built around 100,000 new units each year. It takes a long time to pass all regulations and inspections for new construction.

      So, to take a stand against developers is just classic Marxist analysis and it fails. This crap of pitting one group against another (capitalist vs the working class) is misguided and does not reflect reality.

    2. Congress has allowed most of our existing housing investments to go towards benefitting the wealthy.

      You are loosing me here, Cortez. Check your facts. Liberals in Congress have passed zoning and environmental legislations that intended good results, but ended crippling the production of new housing.

      The Low Income Housing Tax Credit has had its share of shady deals. https://www.knkx.org/post/affordable-housing-program-costs-more-shelters-fewer. Why are you willing to support and expand corrupt systems? I admire that you claim not to take corporate money because that would corrupt your value and ability to act freely. But why then turn around and give your support and money to a corrupt government system. When was the last audit of a housing authority? "There have been only seven audits of the 58 state and local housing agencies that the IRS relies on to watch the program since it began in 1986."

      What you propose is more government regulation, more shady deals, fewer houses built, more poor people having to leave your city.

      In your FB video, https://www.facebook.com/Ocasio2018/videos/1657607570996587/ "Speaking Out Against Giveaways to Big Real Estate", you mention four crises in NYC. Affordability, Income inequality, Immigration, Homelessness. Then you go on to state that a particular development is making all these worse by transferring wealth to the developers. My concern is that you sound so passionate, but you give no reasons why this development makes the four problems worse. You are angry at inequality and homelessness, but you do not propose a solution that is viable.

      In the next video, https://www.facebook.com/Ocasio2018/videos/1665992710158073/, you claim that the key issue is affordability. When asked to give more details and the mechanism for this you just repeat the mantra but offer no analysis.

      So, it seems to me that you are very good at thinking that your intentions are good. You believe that you understand the cause of poverty, inequality and homelessness. But I don't think the cause is a single bad entity called a "developer". The issues are too complex to just posit an us vs them mentality. I share your passion at wanting to curb corruption wherever it is present. Corruption by wealthy developers is as damaging to our community as corruption by well-intentioned government officials. The funny thing is that neither you, the well intentioned politician, nor a wealthy developer who resides outside the community ever live out the consequences of your actions.

    3. shouldn’t struggle to find employment

      Interesting. Thus far I have seen a tremendous problem with government jobs. I have seen first hand how people with guaranteed jobs can be difficult, lack motivation and bring down the rest of the team. Not sure that guaranteeing a job is a great thing. As with the two issues above, Medicare and Housing, your solution is to increase the role of government. But each time you cite a government program that should take the responsibility we find corruption, complexity and/or inefficiency. So, can it be done? Sure. But at what cost? Is the main issue really that there are structural barriers to employment? I am not sure.

      How will you assess success. Is 100% employment the measure of a successful plan? Would you cut other assistance programs since now all people would be able to pay for all their needs? How will you pay the estimated $200-400B required to enact this plan? Oh, yeah, a tax on the middle class, again.

      Just a few things to think about.

      Minimum wage laws tend to increase unemployment. I know, you may say it's those evil capitalist again, squeezing the working person. But no, the majority of businesses in America are small businesses. 89% of all firms have fewer than 20 workers.

      https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=NES_2015_00A1&prodType=table

      So, minimum wage laws are a great way of hurting the small business, the majority of business, in favor of the large business. If a mom and pop store has to pay wages that are higher than what they can afford, they will either cut employees or cut hours, or cut low skilled workers and hire only skilled workers. In Seattle in 2016, there was an attempt to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The net result was decrease in low-skilled jobs, and an expansion of large businesses.

      So, minimum wages sound great, but they tend to concentrate wealth in the hands of the already wealthy. Unintended consequences of well-intentioned policies.

      There is a theme here. Good intentions with a particularly marxian point of view inevitably lead to bad results.

      What is the role of a low-paying job. The role has always been as a training ground for inexperienced workers to have a sort of internship where they learn basic job skills. Then they move on to better jobs. We know that this is still how low-wage jobs function. These are valuable places of transition. They are entry points into the market.

    4. Gun Control / Assault Weapons Ban

      I would love to polarize America on yet another topic. But the data does not support this argument.

      "There is no clear correlation whatsoever between gun ownership rate and gun homicide rate. Not within the USA. Not regionally. Not internationally. Not among peaceful societies. Not among violent ones. Gun ownership doesn’t make us safer. It doesn’t make us less safe. A bivariate correlation simply isn’t there. It is blatantly not-there. It is so tremendously not-there that the “not-there-ness” of it alone should be a huge news story."

      https://medium.com/handwaving-freakoutery/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between-gun-ownership-and-homicide-1108ed400be5

    5. Medicare For All +

      Love this idea. I really want all people to have optimal health. Good health benefits the individual and the greater community.

      However, expanding a poorly running system seems like a bad idea.

      The costs of Medicare for All for 10 years are estimated to be about $32 trillion, according to the Mercatus Center, a free market-oriented think tank at George Mason University, as well as an earlier study by the Urban Institute's Health Policy Center.

      Cortez has no way of paying for this. So, it has to be paid for by the middle class, as all things are. If you tax the rich, that may not increase revenue. Cortez claims $2T in increased revenues by taxing the rich. Revenue sometimes goes up when there are tax cuts, sometimes when there are tax increases. Just wishing that more revenue will come from taxing the "rich" has no inherent truthfulness to it.

      Medicare and health care in the US is several times more expensive than similar systems in Europe. Why? I don't see her analysis of why the best universal system, that of the UK can cost about $3,400 per person, whereas in the US the cost is $8,500. Expanding this expensive, inefficient system to all people seems like a bad idea. Why not propose a better system?

      Unlike most European countries, in the USA pharmaceuticals are allowed to market directly to consumers. Plans similar to Medicare may work out well in Europe, but the exact same plan will have drastically different end results in America.

      She claims that prices for co-pays, premiums and deductibles are skyrocketing under our current health system that includes The Affordable Care Act. How is this going to be any different under Medicare for All? Medicare prices are rising. Compared to European models, Medicare participants pay a lot more and get a lot less.

      Medicare as of 2018 is drawing down its trust fund assets. The fund will be depleted by 2026. So, we can't even keep the current Medicare alive, how is Cortez going to pay for Medicare for All? Wishful thinking and good intentions cannot pay for it. The only people that will end up paying are the diminishing middle class.

      Medicare is bloated, complex and inefficient. So, unless I see more specifics on this plan (Medicare for All) and how it will differ from Medicare, how it will cut prices, how it will limit pharmaceutical's direct access to consumers, and how this plan is not just expansion of a decrepit system, I am not convinced at all.

      Sources: Comparison of health care systems: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror-wall-2014-update-how-us-health-care-system

      UK: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/05/americans-uk-health-system-trump-nhs

  2. Mar 2018
    1. Configure app

      Runs before routes are setup

    2. Set CORS Headers

      DANGER: educes security, only for dev, not for production

    3. find({}

      finds all mathching items

    4. remove

      removes all found items

    5. index.js

      1) sets up the connection to DB. mongo.connect 2) connects all models

    6. 3000

      port server runs

    7. function(req, res) { res.sendFile( __dirname + '/views/index.html') });

      callback

    8. '/'

      route name

    1. CORS Headers

      to interact with folder from the browser

    2. install

      install is what makes particular modules available

    3. express

      comes from node_modules. this is why we do the exports, so other parts of the app can import them. that is how we make them available

    4. init

      creates package.json

    5. mongoose

      mongoose is a DB API, it is not the DB itself

  3. Feb 2018
  4. Dec 2017
    1. git add Rakefile

      Are we supposed to change directories? These commands do nothing. git hist shows no trail: $ git hist --all

      • a97b670 2017-12-11 | Hello uses Greeter (HEAD -> greet) [juancarlucci]
      • 6dc342b 2017-12-11 | Added greeter class [juancarlucci]
      • 71a5655 2017-12-11 | Added a Rakefile. (master) [juancarlucci]
      • 73848f6 2017-12-11 | Moved hello.rb to lib [juancarlucci]
      • 00f9e39 2017-12-11 | Add an author/email comment [juancarlucci]
      • b4b43ef 2017-12-11 | Added a comment (tag: Ver1) [juancarlucci]
      • 87ed367 2017-12-11 | Add a default value (tag: v1-beta) [juancarlucci]
      • d8bf589 2017-12-11 | Using ARGV [juancarlucci]
      • 3deeb33 2017-12-11 | First Commit (tag: v1) [juancarlucci]
    1. git revert HEAD

      git revert HEAD produced error: $ git revert HEAD error: There was a problem with the editor 'vi'. Please supply the message using either -m or -F option.

      Solution: change .bash_profile file to include this: export EDITOR="atom -w"

      Then save. Back on command line, use this line: source ~/.bash_profile That gets the bash file updated, and now revert works

  5. Oct 2017
    1. Visualisation and Cognition

      Mamita, Dianis & Tono! This is the paper that I spoke to you about. The first five pages are a bit long winded. They say, power is not attained by certain cultures/individuals due to their "superiority", etc. But rather by their ability to build alliances.

      Alliances are always built by convincing others that your idea is worth supporting.

      1) Abstraction allows us to have all the tools for convincing others.<br> 2) The holders of the key to decipher the abstraction have tremendous power.

      This single paper changed my perspective so many issues.

      By the way, the annotations here are public. You can annotate yourselves by getting the free "Hypothesis" https://web.hypothes.is/

      Abrazo!

      Juan Carlos

    2. Who will win in an agonistic encounter between two authors, and between them and all the others they need to build up a statement ? Answer: the one able!to muster on the spot the largest number of well aligned and faithful

      All ideas, all cultures, all individuals that have power do so through alliances.