Reuben Jonathan Miller, Halfway Home

At Amazon, Reuben Jonathan Miller, Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration.

Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox, Broke in America

At Amazon, Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox, Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending US Poverty.

Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox, Broke in America

At Amazon, Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox, Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending US Poverty.

Biden's Incoming Press Secretary Laughs When Asked Who Is Handling Baby Formula Crisis

From Katie Pavlich, at Townhall, "Incoming White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked onboard Air Force One Wednesday afternoon about the ongoing baby formula shortage rattling American parents."

"The shelves are wiped out," CBS News' @CHueyBurns says on the baby formula shortage in the U.S., calling it an "urgent need for families right now."

"You're starting to see pressure applied in terms of government accountability...A lot of questions about the supply chain." pic.twitter.com/hTju1wJbLS

— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 9, 2022

Stocks Skidded Friday, Dow Dropping More Than 900 Points in Broad Investor Selloff

Shoot, another week like this one and the Dow will be in correction territory. My funds squeaked out of the first quarter with a mild $500 loss, but if this keeps going, I'll be taken to the cleaners --- and imagine how everybody else feels! 

Oh boy this is going to be a rocky year, just in time for the November midterms!

At CNBC, "Dow plunges more than 900 points for its worst day since 2020, falls for a fourth straight week":

And at the Wall Street Journal, "Tech Rout Drags Nasdaq to Worst Month Since 2008":

Tech-heavy index slid more than 4% Friday, bringing its losses for month to 13%.

An April rout in technology stocks deepened Friday, dragging the Nasdaq Composite to its worst monthly performance in more than a decade, as soaring inflation and rising interest rates fanned worries of a recession.

The broad selloff has erased trillions of dollars in market value from the tech-heavy gauge, with investors souring on shares of everything from software and semiconductor companies to social-media giants.

The Nasdaq dropped 4.2% Friday, bringing its losses for the month to more than 13%, its worst showing since October 2008. The index is down 21% in 2022, its worst start to a year on record.

The broader S&P 500 has fallen for four consecutive weeks, shedding 8.8% in April and bringing its year-to-date losses to 13%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 4.9% this month and is down more than 9% this year. Both indexes logged their worst months since March 2020.

The punishing declines in tech and growth stocks mark a dramatic shift from recent years. Investors have ditched shares of some of the biggest tech companies, which had been stock-market darlings for much of the past decade and propelled the indexes’ gains from the pandemic lows.

Within just a few months, some of the most reliable winners morphed into losers. Netflix dropped 49% in April. Nvidia fell 32%. And PayPal Holdings declined 24%. All three stocks are down more than 35% in 2022.

Worries about the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, soaring inflation and the path of the economy have brought stocks sharply lower from the record levels at which they started the year. Many pandemic-era winners also have come falling back to earth as consumer tastes have evolved since 2020. And recently, earnings season has been dotted with some high-profile disappointments, delivering head-spinning one-day stock moves following the reports.

“We’re going into a higher volatility regime, when fundamentals matter again,” said Aashish Vyas, investment director at Resonanz Capital. “It does seem like we are at a systemic shift.”

The FAANG stocks, consisting of the popular quintet of Facebook parent Meta Platforms, Apple, Amazon.com, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet, have collectively lost more than $1 trillion in market value this month, the most since Facebook started trading in May 2012.

Investors say they will be tracking the next batch of earnings results in coming days for signs of slowing growth from other companies. So far, corporate profits are on track to rise 7% for the quarter, according to FactSet, the lowest year-over-year earnings growth rate since the last quarter of 2020....

The latest gross domestic product data showed that the economy recently contracted for the first time since early in the pandemic. Meanwhile, inflation accelerated in March to its fastest pace since 1982, measured by the Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge.

Despite higher prices, U.S. consumer spending for March increased 1.1% from the prior month, showing that American households are absorbing high inflation. Some investors say shares of some tech companies look attractive after the recent selloff, and that they would consider stepping in to buy shares. The Nasdaq is now down 23% from its high and trading at levels not seen since 2020.

Friday’s losses in the stock market accelerated into the closing bell, which some traders attributed to technical factors such as hedging activity and trading by leveraged exchange-traded products. The Dow sank more than 900 points, or 2.8%, and the S&P declined 3.6%...

 

Bernard-Henri Lévy, the 'Last Liberal Interventionist'

A phenomenal, wondrous interview, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "A Conversation With the Last Liberal Interventionist":

Do you think the U.S. was prudent and principled to invade Afghanistan?

Yes. Doing so was the essence of prudence. It was necessary to prevent another 9/11. To do that, it was necessary to destroy the regime. Afterwards, it will not have escaped your attention that the “invasion” turned gradually into a symbolic, very light, noncombatant presence that nevertheless served as a shield behind which a civil society came together. Let’s not fall for the propaganda of the Trumpists and their de facto allies on the so-called far left. Contrary to what the world says, the United States could have stayed far longer at a cost many times less than what their other deployments cost.

Is it paternalistic to assume that people around the world crave Western democratic norms? According to a Pew study from 2013, 99% of Afghans—men and women—desire to live under Sharia law.

I am aware of that poll. The same words do not necessarily mean the same things. When a woman in Kabul refers to Sharia, she is not advocating for the right to be stoned in the event of adultery. By the way, a real liberal, an interventionist worth his salt, would never deny that broad principles are flexible. We know well that they obviously cannot be applied identically in Afghanistan or Burma, but that they must be adapted.... 

The Covid-19 pandemic has made travel exceedingly difficult and even taboo. Moreover, many environmentalists (Greta Thunberg is one example) discourage air travel in an effort to reduce humanity’s carbon footprint. Travel has been instrumental in your life. And you sort of ignored the lockdowns and traveled around the world during Covid. What is the importance of travel and why should we encourage it?

For the same reason. The world of Greta Thunberg, a world without travel, a world where we closed ourselves off from others, would be an impoverished world. Spiritually, of course. Civilizationally, no doubt. But also, in the most trivial sense of the word, economically. Globalization must be reformed. The ecological battle must be fought. And to correct the damaging effects of technology, we need much, much more technology. But the tragic error would be to try to undo everything...

Read the whole thing. It's worth your time.

Andrea Elliott, Invisible Child

At Amazon, Andrea Elliott, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City.

Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice

At Amazon, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay.

Andrew Hacker, Two Nations

At Amazon, Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal.

Biden Administration to Begin Monthly Family Subsidy Payments This Week

Hey, three-hundred a month to families with kids under 6, and $250 who are older. 

That's no chump change. In fact, the one-year cost for the first year is $105,000,000 ---- and extremist Dems want to add the program as a permanent feature of the U.S. social welfare safety-net. 

At NYT, "Monthly Payments to Families With Children to Begin":

The Biden administration will send up to $300 per child a month to most American families thanks to a temporary increase in the child tax credit that advocates hope to extend.

WASHINGTON — If all goes as planned, the Treasury Department will begin making a series of monthly payments in coming days to families with children, setting a milestone in social policy and intensifying a debate over whether to make the subsidies a permanent part of the American safety net.

With all but the most affluent families eligible to receive up to $300 a month per child, the United States will join many other rich countries that provide a guaranteed income for children, a goal that has long animated progressives. Experts estimate the payments will cut child poverty by nearly half, an achievement with no precedent.

But the program, created as part of the stimulus bill that Democrats passed over unified Republican opposition in March, expires in a year, and the rollout could help or hinder President Biden’s pledge to extend it.

Immediate challenges loom. The government is uncertain how to get the payments to millions of hard-to-reach families, a problem that could undermine its poverty-fighting goals. Opponents of the effort will be watching for delivery glitches, examples of waste or signs that the money erodes the desire of some parents to work.

While the government has increased many aid programs during the coronavirus pandemic, supporters say the payments from an expanded Child Tax Credit, at a one-year cost of about $105 billion, are unique in their potential to stabilize both poor and middle-class families.

“It’s the most transformative policy coming out of Washington since the days of F.D.R.,” said Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey. “America is dramatically behind its industrial peers in investing in our children. We have some of the highest child poverty rates, but even families that are not poor are struggling, as the cost of raising children goes higher and higher.”

Among America’s 74 million children, nearly nine in 10 will qualify for the new monthly payments — up to $250 a child, or $300 for those under six — which are scheduled to start on Thursday. Those payments, most of which will be sent to bank accounts through direct deposit, will total half of the year’s subsidy, with the rest to come as a tax refund next year.

Mr. Biden has proposed a four-year extension in a broader package he hopes to pass this fall, and congressional Democrats have vowed to make the program permanent. Like much of Mr. Biden’s agenda, the program’s fate may depend on whether Democrats can unite around the bigger package and advance it through the evenly divided Senate.

The unconditional payments — what critics call “welfare” — break with a quarter century of policy. Since President Bill Clinton signed a 1996 bill to “end welfare,” aid has gone almost entirely to parents who work. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, recently wrote that the new payments, with “no work required,” would resurrect a “failed welfare system,” and provide “free money” for criminals and addicts.

But compared to past aid debates, opposition has so far been muted. A few conservatives support children’s subsidies, which might boost falling birthrates and allow more parents to raise children full-time. Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, has proposed a larger child benefit, though he would finance it by cutting other programs.

With Congress requiring payments to start just four months after the bill’s passage, the administration has scrambled to spread the word and assemble payment rosters.

Families that filed recent tax returns or received stimulus checks should get paid automatically. (Single parents with incomes up to $112,500 and married couples with incomes up to $150,000 are eligible for the full benefit.) But analysts say four to eight million low-income children may be missing from the lists, and drives are underway to get their parents to register online.

“Wherever you run into people — perfect strangers — just go on up and introduce yourself and tell them about the Child Tax Credit,” Vice President Kamala Harris said last month on what the White House called “Child Tax Credit Awareness Day.”

Among the needy, the program is eliciting a mixture of excitement, confusion and disbelief...

More at that top link.

 

Coronavirus Ravages California's Central Valley

At LAT, "Coronavirus ravages California’s Central Valley, following a cruel and familiar path":

Coronavirus ravages California's Central Valley, following a cruel and familiar path https://t.co/8VABiNLqOZ

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) July 28, 2020

SACRAMENTO —  The coronavirus is spreading at alarming rates in California’s Central Valley, following a cruel and increasingly familiar path.

The demographics of those getting sick in the rural hamlets of America’s famed agricultural zone are the same as those who have been hit hard in big cities and suburbs: Essential workers — many of them Latino — who cannot stay home for financial reasons when they fall ill on the job and also have a hard time isolating in housing that can be crowded and multigenerational.

Public health officials and medical experts say the pattern of spread underscores the deep inequities of the coronavirus in California, which has infected Black and Latino communities and poorer regions at much higher rates than more affluent and white ones.

The surge in Central Valley cases has taken a particular toll on farmworkers, in part because they often live in close quarters, share transportation to job sites and have little access to healthcare. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that the rate of positive coronavirus tests in the Central Valley ranges from 10.7% to as high as 17.7%. The state’s average is about 7.8% over the last seven days.

Increased rates of coronavirus transmission have also been seen in dense urban areas such as the Eastside and South and Central Los Angeles and San Francisco’s Mission District, all home to communities with large numbers of Latino residents who perform essential jobs critical in keeping California running, such as in construction, manufacturing, cooking and food preparation.

“These aren’t all people who live on big ranch houses on the farms. These are people who live in ... dense apartments,” said Dr. George Rutherford, a UC San Francisco epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert. “I think it’s probably the same pattern that we see in the Mission District, of an essential workforce, which in this case is agricultural, who is densely housed, who gets exposed on their way to and from the work site or at the work site.”

Latino residents make up 39% of Californians but account for up to 56% of coronavirus cases statewide and 46% of deaths. Latino residents make up an even higher percentage of residents in the Central Valley than they do statewide.

Edward Flores, a sociology professor with the UC Merced Community and Labor Center, who has studied the impact of the pandemic on the Central Valley, said many of these laborers work in conditions that make true social distancing difficult and may be afraid to report safety problems for fear of losing their jobs.

“We hear about these huge outbreaks in meatpacking plants, in agriculture and these low-wage jobs, where people work side by side with other people in these very dense environments,” he said. “Stay-at-home orders do little for the low-wage essential workers that face the greatest risks.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise that places like the Central Valley would be hit hard. Among California’s meatpacking plants, the Central Valley as a region has had poor compliance with health and safety standards even before the pandemic hit, with the region home to nearly half of inspections triggered by complaints, even though it is home to just 13% of the state’s meatpacking plants, according to research by Ana Padilla, executive director of the Community and Labor Center.

Hundreds of workers have been infected at Ruiz Foods, a frozen-food packager in Tulare County, and Central Valley Meat Co. in Kings County.

California counties with a greater share of low-wage and crowded households have been more likely to be hit hard by the pandemic, according to a study by authored by Flores and Padilla.

Epidemiologists also saw the disease spread in the agricultural Imperial Valley east of San Diego, “and it seems to have spread through the Coachella Valley and into the Central Valley,” Rutherford said. The highly contagious virus has continued to spread into the Salinas Valley and Northern California wine country counties of Napa, Sonoma, Solano, Mendocino and Lake, Rutherford said.

Newsom announced Monday he would send “strike teams” to eight counties in the San Joaquin Valley — San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern — while asking the California Legislature to approve $52 million to improve testing, tracing and isolation protocols in those regions.

“This disease continues to grow in the state of California. It continues to spread, but not evenly,” Newsom said Monday while speaking at Diamond Nuts in Stockton. “It is disproportionately impacting certain communities and certain parts of the state.”

While L.A. County is reporting 400 new coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents over the last two weeks, Kern County — home to Bakersfield — is now seeing a rate of 913 new coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents; a month ago, that number was 133, according to a Times analysis...

 Still more.

L.A. County Removes Homeless From Freeway Underpasses

Some of these folks lived under freeways for years. Mind-boggling.

At LAT, "They made a home under L.A.’s freeways. But soon they could be forced to move":

Hope you give the story a read, and take a moment to marvel at the amazing photography of @GenaroMolina47. He always knocks it out of the park.

Also drop me a line with your thoughts, compliments or complaints about this sweeping change coming to LA. https://t.co/i6CD5jRWqT pic.twitter.com/9uyIaUsbIq

— Benjamin Oreskes🦅 (@boreskes) July 26, 2020

The 105 Freeway roared overhead as homeless outreach worker Daniel Ornelas knelt to speak with Genia Hope.

Hope’s home has been, for years, a sprawling complex of tents beside a tangle of freeways in southeast Los Angeles County. Like many homeless people, she has chosen to live under or near a freeway because it affords some measure of safety compared with other spots where homeless people bed down.

A rusted elephant trinket stood guard outside her tarps and tent, and inside she lounged on a black leather couch, smoking a cigarette alongside a rack of clothing.

Hope raised her now-grown children in Apple Valley and later followed a man to Bellflower. She lost her job at a rehab facility and then, after her partner died, grief, anxiety and struggles with addiction led her to the street.

Now, it looked as if Ornelas might just be able to help her. The COVID-19 pandemic has opened up a wealth of resources to help get people off the streets, and a recent order from a federal judge will unlock even more. But efforts to aid people like Hope are going to be complicated by a shortage of available shelter and fighting among government entities about how best to carry out the judge’s wishes.

Hope told Ornelas that living beside this freeway underpass, just off a bike bath that snakes along the Los Angeles River, was optimal. Police rarely hassled her here, and she had plenty of space to be alone. An on-again, off-again love interest lived nearby, and her homeless neighbors formed a supportive community.

One neighbor brought her some lunch and a strawberry slushie as she spoke with the outreach worker.

She jumped at the offer, excited at the prospect of getting to take a bath and sleep in a bed. Her matted blond hair needed washing, she said. It would be ideal if her boyfriend could join her — at arm’s length.

“If we could be at the same hotel and in separate rooms, that would be great,” she said. “Sometimes we just need a break from each other.”

A government program known as Project Roomkey, which aims to rent motel and hotel rooms for homeless people, has fallen short of its goals locally but still has vastly expanded the number of rooms available to homeless people vulnerable to COVID-19. As a result, Ornelas was able to quickly whisk Hope off the street. Like many outreach workers who serve the county’s swelling homeless population, he pays special attention to the underpasses and embankments near freeways.

Those areas became a subject of great interest and conflict after U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ordered city and county officials to provide space in shelters or alternative housing for residents living near freeway overpasses, underpasses and ramps. Once there is enough shelter, the agreement could pave the way for law enforcement to enforce anti-camping ordinances.

The order came during proceedings for a lawsuit Carter has been presiding over since March, when the advocacy group L.A. Alliance for Human Rights sued public agencies across the county, accusing them of allowing unsafe and inhumane conditions in homeless camps. Carter’s focus on the areas around freeways took many homeless advocates and government officials by surprise.

Many who could be forced to move said they were leery of going into temporary shelters, tiny prefab houses or sanctioned camping sites, because they felt confined by rules that prevented them from leaving after certain hours and put them in shared spaces that they would otherwise avoid.

And those coordinating where people living near freeways go next — the homeless service providers and outreach workers— say that the order will lead to needless confrontation between law enforcement and people living on the streets. They also say politicians’ attempts to comply with the judge’s desires focus far too much on interim housing options and will come at the expense of more permanent solutions...

More, and don't miss the great photos.

Class Differences in Education

At NYT, "College Made Them Feel Equal. The Virus Exposed How Unequal Their Lives Are":

This is a sobering piece that will give insight into the plight of those trying to improve their lot. College Made Them Feel Equal. The Virus Exposed How Unequal Their Lives Are. https://t.co/kYNuiLDp3M

— Jose de Jesus Ortiz (@OrtizKicks) April 4, 2020

The political science class was called “Forced Migration and Refugees.” Students read accounts of migrants fleeing broken economies and seeking better futures, of life plans drastically altered and the political forces that made it all seem necessary.

Then suddenly, the subject matter became personal: Haverford College shut down and evicted most students from the dormitories as the coronavirus spread through Pennsylvania.

Like many college courses around the country, the class soldiered on. The syllabus was revised. The students reconvened on a videoconferencing app.

But as each logged in, not everyone’s new reality looked the same.

One student sat at a vacation home on the coast of Maine. Another struggled to keep her mother’s Puerto Rican food truck running while meat vanished from Florida grocery shelves. As one young woman’s father, a private equity executive, urged the family to decamp to a country where infections were falling, another student’s mother in Russia couldn’t afford the plane ticket to bring her daughter home.

“Now Russia is about to close its borders,” Sophie Chochaeva told her classmates, in the days before the country did. She was one of 135 students still on campus, in a dorm room she called “the cozy foxhole,” as the world outside became a ghost town. “This crisis is exposing that a lot of people don’t have anywhere to go.”

The outbreak of the coronavirus — and the accompanying economic devastation that has left 10 million people almost instantly unemployed — has put America’s class divide on full display. Gig employees were the first to suffer, with many of their jobs vanishing without unemployment benefits. Office employees retreated to work-from-home arrangements while janitors cleaned the buildings they fled and delivery workers brought packages to their doorsteps.

But college was meant to be different. For decades, small liberal arts schools like Haverford, a short ride from Philadelphia, prided themselves on being the “great equalizer,” offering pedigrees not just to the scions of East Coast elites but also to the children of first-generation immigrants. Scholarships filled in for family money. Students ate the same cafeteria food in the morning and bunked in the same creaky beds at night.

No longer — at least not while the virus spreads through the country.

“It’s as though you had a front-row view on American inequality and the ways in which it was disguised and papered over,” said Anita Isaacs, the course’s professor who has taught political science at Haverford since 1988. The first gulf war, the Sept. 11 attacks, the Great Recession — she had seen them all through the eyes of her students.

“There’s been nothing like this before,” she said.

Several nights before the class was to reconvene online in late March, Professor Isaacs received an email from one of her teaching assistants, Tatiana Lathion, a college senior whose parents own the food truck. Their source of income was on the verge of liquidation as stay-at-home orders loomed in Jacksonville, Fla., where they lived.

“I’m not sure my savings will allow them both to survive this quarantine and still keep the business,” she wrote. She said she was thinking of getting a part-time job at a grocery store.

Wasn’t college supposed to get her away from all that?

“I have this panic moment that it’s literally for nothing now,” Ms. Lathion wrote to her professor.

Ms. Lathion had not thought she would attend college...

Still more.

AOC's 'Just Society'

Well, we already had the "Great Society," and it wasn't "just," apparently.

At NPR, "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Wants America to Talk About Poverty."

She's a bloody airhead.

I am proud to introduce #AJustSociety package today to begin the important work of building a more just and prosperous society.

You can read more about the legislation here: https://t.co/Cm7BdhFumU

— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@RepAOC) September 25, 2019

Big day!

We’re rolling out our next major project: A Just Society.

It’s a 6-piece suite:

1. Recognizing Poverty Act
2. Place to Prosper Act
3. Mercy in Re-Entry Act
4. Embrace Act
5. Uplift Our Workers Act
6. Ratify the UN Covenant on Economic, Social, & Cultural Rights

⬇️ https://t.co/nPhVxIy7fQ

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 25, 2019

Yellow Vest Update

Clarie Berlinski rattled off a long thread last night on the violence of the yellow vest protesters.

They're anarcho-nihilists, basically, and Berlinski's mad because she thinks Macron's a pussy, he's caving to the street scum, and his political cowardice will strengthen the "far right." So, she calls for more authoritarian responses to the protests as a way to prevent "real" right-wing authoritarians from coming to power.

@threadreaderapp , would you please unroll this? Thank you very much for being a good bot.

— Claire Berlinski (@ClaireBerlinski) January 8, 2019

Hello you can read it here: Thread by @ClaireBerlinski: "I agree completely with @NTenzer when he says that violence is consubstantial with this movement. It's not the word I wo […]" https://t.co/zwj2JwOKf9
Share this if you think it's interesting. 🤖

— Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) January 8, 2019

And some of the things that have been happening this last weekend, although given Ms. Claire's animated exasperation, I doubt media reports can replace being on the ground in Paris and watching local media coverage in real time:

At the Local (France), "VIDEO: Protesters attack French ministry with forklift truck."

More:

Yellow vests: France to crack down on unsanctioned protests https://t.co/ACOI7GLrUz

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) January 7, 2019

7 January 2019

Christophe Dettinger: Boxer surrenders after clash with riot police in Paris

PHOTO: A former professional boxer who was filmed at the weekend punching a police officer on a bridge in Paris during a "yellow vest"... https://t.co/yKwxeUvfhC

— Maria Battles (@maria_battles) January 8, 2019

The Montavilla Initiative

I'm a bleeding heart on homelessness, mostly because the leftist media gets the story all wrong, all the time. As noted previously, the bulk of O.C. homeless have been regular white working-class folks, busted down after the 2008 crash. It's not all Latinos and other minorities. Go to Anaheim and see for yourself.

In any case, at the Los Angeles Times, "Neighborhood advocates or vigilantes? A group in Portland makes life tougher for the homeless" (via Hot Air):

The Montavilla neighborhood is a place just about anybody might want to live in.

It has an “almost suburban” feel, a city website notes, but it’s near downtown Portland, with a population that’s more diverse than the city as a whole. Homes range from pricey modern to modest bungalow; businesses of every stripe do a bustling trade.

Last year Montavilla made Lonely Planet’s list of the 10 best U.S. neighborhoods.

It also broke apart over homelessness and rising crime.

Like many American cities, Portland struggles with homelessness. What’s the solution to getting people off the streets? What’s the right balance between compassion and safety? Why does the world’s richest country have so many people living in tents?

Last month, Portland-area voters funded $653 million for affordable housing, on top of $258 million in 2016. These are major investments for a city its size. But relief may be years away.

In Montavilla, the debate over homelessness has taken on an edge in the last two years as a neighborhood patrol has marched up to the line of vigilantism — and, some say, crossed it. Experts say similar groups have sprung up in other cities, including Long Beach and the west San Fernando Valley, as a conservative, tough-love response to the problem.

In June 2017, the Montavilla Neighborhood Assn. passed a resolution asking the city to “cease further sweeps of [homeless] camps,” which could be “unconstitutional and human rights violations.”

That fall, a new board of directors was voted in that included Micah Fletcher, a survivor of last year’s infamous stabbings by a white supremacist on a light rail train. Around the same time, however, a new conservative nonprofit, Montavilla Initiative, formed as an alternative. Battle lines hardened.

Montavilla Initiative began doing its own foot patrols; the city-partnered neighborhood association stopped doing them.

Interactions between citizen patrol groups led by Montavilla Initiative and the area’s homeless are now at the center of the neighborhood’s divide. On the one hand, local officials and homeless advocates accuse Montavilla Initiative of harassing vulnerable homeless people. On the other, leaders of the nonprofit say homeless encampments foster crime, and they’re just trying to make the neighborhood safer.

Multnomah County official Kim Toevs said Montavilla Initiative members harassed people who use the county’s largest needle exchange site, part of a program that has operated for 22 years in the neighborhood. It offers addiction counseling, exchanges millions of syringes annually, and gives out naloxone, proven to save lives by halting overdoses.

The county had to hire extra security after seven visits by the group, officials said.

“What we see here, about [their] behavior, harassing our clients, and making them feel stalked and scared, is hateful action,” Toevs said.

Ibrahim Mubarak, executive director of a homeless advocacy group, Right 2 Survive, said Montavilla Initiative members are “running havoc on houseless people,” slashing their tents, throwing cold water on them, following them around. “They’re all about getting [homeless] people out of the neighborhood,” he said.

Mubarak later acknowledged, however, that he had not witnessed the incidents himself, and had no proof that they were committed by Montavilla Initiative. “This is happening in the neighborhood to those people, but we don’t know for sure that it’s Montavilla Initiative,” he said.

Of 15 homeless people interviewed for this article, many said they’re aware of what they call the “neighborhood watchers.” One voiced support, but most said they were afraid of them. They don’t seem to differentiate between the new, Montavilla Initiative patrols and the ones the neighborhood association used to do...

More.

William Easterly, The Tyranny of Experts

At Amazon, William Easterly, The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor.

Emmanuel Macron's Nightmare

The worst riots in France in a couple of generations. Folks are being reminded of 1968.

At the Economist, "Emmanuel Macron’s problems are more with presentation than policy."

Emmanuel Macron’s problems are more with presentation than policy
So not a nightmare just a bump pic.twitter.com/m3pN2tZdBy

— Sunchartist (@Sunchartist) December 7, 2018

Paris Riots

These are called the "yellow jacket" riots, because French citizens are required to keep reflectorized vests in their vehicles, and the jackets are universally available, apparently.

At the Guardian U.K., "Paris riots: PM to meet protest groups after worst unrest in decade: Shops and cars set alight after peaceful gilets jaunes protest turns violent":

Macron to hold emergency meeting after worst unrest in a decade in central Paris https://t.co/qxHxmA97gt

— Angelique Chrisafis (@achrisafis) December 2, 2018

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has instructed his prime minister to hold talks with protest groups after anti-government demonstrations led to the worst violence in central Paris in a decade, with more than 100 people injured as cars and buildings were set alight.

Macron is facing his biggest crisis since taking office 18 months ago after the violence erupted on Saturday following weeks of street protests that began against fuel taxes and have turned into an anti-government movement.

The Élysée and key ministers appeared to rule out imposing any kind of state of emergency after thousands of masked protesters from the gilets jaunes – named for their fluorescent yellow jackets – fought running battles with riot police, torched cars, set fire to banks and houses and burned makeshift barricades.

Macron, who had said he would “never accept violence”, instructed the prime minister, Édouard Philippe, to meet what he has called legitimate protest groups and opposition politicians this week in an effort to calm tensions and stop “professional” rioters from infiltrating street demonstrations.

The Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz said 378 people were in custody, including 33 under the age of 18. He said many of those arrested in battles with police were men aged between 30 and 40, often from regions far from Paris, who had “come to fight police while claiming to be part of the gilets jaunes movement”.

The interior minister, Christophe Castaner, and his head of staff will be questioned by a senate committee on Tuesday over how thousands of protesters were able to play cat and mouse with police through central Paris for hours.

Macron flew back from the G20 summit in Argentina on Sunday and went straight to inspect damage at the Arc de Triomphe. Graffiti all over the base of the 19-century monument read: “We’ve chopped off heads for less than this” and: “Topple the Bourgeoisie.” Scores of used teargas canisters filled the gutters.

Near the Champs Élysées there were splashes of paint on buildings after protesters had paint-bombed police. Used bottles of eye-drops on the ground indicated that some protesters – many of whom wore ski-masks and breathing equipment – stood their ground despite the teargas fired from rows of police behind shields.

Along the Avenue Kléber near the Arc de Triomphe on Sunday morning, passersby peered at scorched pavements where the burnt-out carcasses of cars had been towed away, and where a private residence had been set alight. Graffiti read: “Babylon is burning.”

The far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the leftwing party La France Insoumise, both called on Macron to dissolve parliament and hold elections.

The violence started on Saturday in broad daylight on the edges of a peaceful demonstration by the gilets jaunes movement, which began two weeks ago in protest at rising fuel prices and a new green fuel tax.

After three successive Saturday citizens’ marches in Paris organised on social media, the security forces seemed at a loss to stop the rioting, with groups of masked men spilling into nearby streets, ripping up benches and traffic lights and hurling bits of paving stones from roadworks...

Warnings of latest crisis facing Macron were in plain sight https://t.co/dHeRWQsE1i

— Angelique Chrisafis (@achrisafis) December 2, 2018

Progressive California the Most Racist State

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "NUMBER ONE IN POVERTY, CALIFORNIA ISN’T OUR MOST PROGRESSIVE STATE — IT’S OUR MOST RACIST ONE":

Around the world, progressive economies like those of Sweden, France, and Germany, which redistribute wealth through high taxes and generous social welfare policies, boast far less poverty and inequality than other nations.

What gives? And how does California maintain its reputation as a progressive leader given the reality on the ground?

If racism is more than just saying nasty things — if it is, as scholars like James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Alexander and countless others have described, embedded into socioeconomic structures — then California isn’t just the least progressive state. It’s also the most racist.

Real World “Elysium”

In the 2013 science fiction film, “Elysium,” the rich have fled to a luxury satellite orbiting Earth while the poor toil in dangerous conditions below. Life in California today differs in degree, not in kind, from that dystopian vision...

Terrible.