Dumb Is as Dumb Does

AI has arrived. Not coming, it’s already here, and that means we’re already behind in regulating it. Good discussion on that process on Stephanie Ruhle’s show last weekend.

It’s the same problem the internet was when it hit the stage. We all knew there were going to be problems, but we didn’t yet know what they would be, so we couldn’t attack or regulate them until they were in play and already causing trouble.

Sure, there are voices calling for immediate regulation, but what do you regulate? It’s actually a question about democracy itself right now, because of the nature of the man currently in the White House. He does stuff that we would never have considered our president capable of, so we find that we need laws we would never have considered, just to hold this fool in check. But if we start passing laws to control AI before it is developed, we will surely stunt its development and fall behind the rest of the world in the AI race. It appears that due diligence is the only process to control AI, and getting enough of a Democratic majority in the House to move swiftly when the need arises is the way to create that process.

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Who didn’t see it coming? Two of our National Guard patrolling Washington, DC were shot, and one has died. It was inevitable but the idiot in the White House was too stupid to see it coming and too egotistical to be able to do anything about it. What he has done is call out additional police to protect the guard. What? That’s right! First Trump claimed there were not enough police in DC to protect the people, so he called out the guard, and when a couple of them got shot, he realized what a tragic blunder he’d made, so he moved police who were already protecting the citizens to protecting the guard, So, there are even less cops protecting the citizens and one member of the guard is dead. What a gigantic clusterfuck. Typical Trump governance. If he is as effective in the negotiations in Gaza and Ukraine, we’re sure to be up to our eyeballs in WW III by spring.

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It’s fascinating how the Trump people, led by the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, are whining about the Biden administration letting all those killer Afghans into the country when it was the same brain-dead MAGAs that were screaming about us not getting enough of the same Afghans out of their country when we closed down our war over there. The guy who shot the two National Guardsmen fought with us before we left Afghanistan and it was the Trump people who were screaming to bring more of those people here to protect them. They were not wrong at the time, but you can’t have it both ways. This guy has been radicalized since coming to this country.

Another instigator of the MAGA mess, GOP rep Mike Turner, was interviewed about the shootings on Face the Nation this week and this is one seriously dumb SOB. It’s obvious he has no concept of who to blame it on, but he knows someone is to blame, so he babbles on about Joe Biden not vetting these Afghans who fought with us and then came over here. At the time it all happened, Tucker and the rest of the GOP did nothing but bitch about us not doing enough to get all the Afghans who sided with us here, so yes, there was probably slipshod vetting done in the rush to get them all out of their country. But there’s also the fact that vetting is not a one-stop process and the work was never followed up by the Trump administration, so whining about what wasn’t done by Biden’s people is a lost cause.

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Pete Hegseth’s order to kill them all isn’t just barbaric, it’s a crime, and a violation of International law. The fact that the administration has no evidence that the boats we are blowing up are carrying drugs seems to have no effect on anyone. Of course, Hegseth doesn’t need proof of anything to do what he is doing. He is just a thug carrying out the orders of a bigger thug.

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New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani went down to Washington and kissed just the right amount of ass to get a president who had backed his opponent to make nice. Yes, he is a guy who has never held a job, which would mean he is equipped to do nothing, but he seems to generate just enough bullshit to get into the right spaces. Now it’s a question of whether or not he can create the action he needs to get shit done. He’s smart, there’s no denying that, but the question becomes is he smart and functional.

Mamdani’s first program, the one on which he got elected, was freezing stabilized rents. That will not happen, despite its many proponents, and anyone who can think knows that. It would destroy the small real estate business in the city, a business that pays a shitload of taxes even as it struggles to keep its head above water. That segment of the industry is what is carrying the majority of the affordable housing in this city. Sure, the city builds more housing, but it has never learned how to take care of it, and looking at what it is building now, all one can think is “future slum.” The segment of stabilized housing that currently exists in smaller private buildings throughout the city is in desperate straits. Limited income, trying to hold out against crushing property taxes, and expanding insurance and maintenance costs are forcing owners to hold apartments empty and even shut down perfectly good buildings. Yes, there is an answer to this problem but it’s not Mamdani’s. There is a basic flaw in all affordable housing plans. It is that the industry that provides it should pay for it. That doesn’t work; has never worked. Affordable housing benefits the entire city, not just those living in it, and should be the responsibility of the entire city, not just the small percentage who own the housing and are being driven out of their minds by aggressive city controls.

The solution is simple. Owners of stabilized housing should be allowed to subtract what they receive in stabilized rent from the market rental value of the apartments in question and then get a property tax deduction for that difference. This would spread the burden across the whole tax base instead of the small group of owners. It’s the perfect solution, so naturally no one likes it.