5268

We don’t do residential but I doubt that would re-build you an “epic” home. It would get you a nice one you would be comfortable in but not an epic one and in many areas would never cover the complete costs.

5269

I guess maybe the construction costs are more dramatically different than I would have expected, I wouldn’t have thought the construction costs would have varied as much as the land price itself though.

Also, I think the term epic was perhaps overstated, as I wasn’t thinking about a giant mansion, but rather a normal size house with real nice stuff.

5270

5271

Well I mean yeah, that was ugly twelve years ago but I don’t know if I have it in me to get mad all over again.

5272

I do, that’s awful

5273

Well if that seems bad, don’t google Danziger Bridge.

5274

The problem here is that like 90% of the population lives in “a flood zone” because cities form around rivers and on coasts because that’s how civilization works.

5275


On Friday, Persson, who sold Minecraft to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014, tweeted “(pizzagate is real),” to his almost 3.9 million followers. The tweet immediately caught the attention of a vocal crowd of supporters that continues to believe a debunked conspiracy theory that Democrats led a pedophile ring out of a pizzeria in Washington, D.C.

I didn’t know where to put this.

5276

There aren’t enough facepalm gifs for this news.

5277

Yes and No.

Just to be clear here, I’m not saying folks in Houston can be blamed for this. They’re in 500 year floodplains, or less.

But places like the Florida Coast? I mean, come on. If your house has been damaged by more than one hurricane, maybe that’s not cool? Or if you want to live there anyway, that’s cool… but I shouldn’t be subsidizing it.

Then there are places like New Orleans, where large portions of the city are lower than sea level. That seems like a poor place to build a city at this point.

5278

I guess. I recall most of Iowa being criticized in this exact way when we had massive floods back in the early 90’s.

Basically amounted to “cities/towns near rivers should be left to die.” Which is… basically all cities and towns everywhere.

They called places miles from rivers “flood plains” and said we shouldn’t get to rebuild. So basically the entire Mississippi watershed was a lost cause (ie all of Iowa, Missouri and the better part of Minnesota).

Florida is a unique situation because the whole state is ultimately untenable. It’s a swamp in the middle of the ocean at the end of the day. Then California is built on an active fault line. Now if you’re looking at individual properties, I’d probably agree on some level, but the problem is that those specifics end up being generalities because of the nature of government and the like and it rarely ends well or sensibly.

5279

He should take his crazy back to Sweden.

5280

But again, if you look at a big city like NYC, it’s not like the whole city is in the 500 year flood plain. Only portions of it near the waterfront are. Like, for instance, if you look at the flood maps for Manhattan, despite it being surrounded by water, only the very edge is actually a real flood risk. Once you get up central park, it’s literally only the actual waterfront that has any real risk of flood.

It’s not like you can’t live near rivers or the ocean… just maybe don’t build houses at elevations of like, 1 ft.

5281

In these types of discussions it is worth noting that large numbers of Americans are too poor or financially insecure to move out of regions where there is high environmental risk. For many it is where they grew up, where their social/family network is located, and where the available work is.

5282

Very true, but in a place like Manhattan, the property on the waterfront is crazy expensive. Those folks living there are stupid rich. They shouldn’t be getting their insurance subsidized.

5283

This is fascinating.

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton canceled former Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s upcoming sentencing hearing for his criminal contempt-of-court conviction, telling attorneys not to file replies to motions that were pending before his recent presidential pardon.

However, Bolton on Tuesday stopped short of throwing out the conviction based solely on Arpaio’s request. Instead she ordered Arpaio and the U.S. Department of Justice, which is prosecuting the case, to file briefs on why she should or shouldn’t grant Arpaio’s request.

Arpaio’s attorneys asked Bolton on Monday to vacate Arpaio’s conviction in light of President Donald Trump’s Friday pardon.

Bolton has scheduled oral arguments on the matter for Oct. 4, the day before Arpaio was supposed to be sentenced.

There is case law that says a pardon implies an admission of guilt, and that will have to be argued in open court.

Mark Goldman, one of Arpaio’s attorneys, said, “We look forward to the hearing, and hope that the court will make the appropriate ruling. The verdict should have been set aside by the court already and prior to the pardon for the reason that it was never delivered to Sheriff Arpaio in open court, but instead sent to his attorneys via email, thus violating his constitutional rights to a public trial and to participate in his trial.”

5284

You aren’t making sense. The place in Manhattan doesn’t get more coverage because it is more expensive real estate. Nothing is being “subsidized” except to the extent that there’s a shared risk pool.

5285

OMG Feinstein. Where has she been and what is she thinking?

Feinstein received a standing ovation from the 850 people at the sold-out Herbst Theater when she walked onto the stage for an hour-long “conversation” with former East Bay Rep. Ellen Tauscher. But near the end of the political lovefest, the senator shocked the crowd when she declined to say that Trump should be impeached, and warned the audience that they should expect to deal with the developer-turned politician for all four years of his term.

“The question is whether he can learn and change,” Feinstein told the crowd at the Commonwealth Club event. “If so, I believe he can be a good president.”

That sort of talk is never heard in Democratic circles, where California Congress members already are talking about what they see as the need to impeach Trump or remove him from office via the 25th Amendment.

The crowd reacted with stunned silence, broken only with scattered “No’s” and a few hisses and some nervous laughter.

But Feinstein didn’t back away, reacting to a question about why Democrats aren’t being more out front in attacking Trump by reminding people that not only is Trump president, but he’s also only been in office for eight months.

“We’ll have to see if he can forget himself enough and have the type of empathy and direction the country needs,” she said.

If he doesn’t, she added, “there are things that can be done.”

I mean I know she’s apparently running again, but man.

5286

Given how CA is, she might have killed her shot tonight. Good riddance.

5287

It’s heavily subsidized, in that the price paid for the insurance is largely detached from the coverage. It’s not normal insurance. The government subsidizes it.

Pretty sure I already posted this, but here it is again: