Are you owed housing? Oil and gas (and Ag) are politically expedient targets, once they're exhausted, who is next? Making a single edge razor into a scraper.
What do you think: is housing a right? Are you owed a place to live?
In their own inimitable fashion, the Sun covered a group protesting a landlord's association meeting. I'll leave it to you to read up on all the details if you'd like. I'll be honest, it didn't interest me that much ...
except for wondering about the following. Take a look at the protestor's signs in the screenshot. I circled the ones in blue that I mean.
Are you owed a place to live? Does everyone deserve housing?
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts if you want to share. Please feel free to add them to the comments.
This is a tough one for me. I say it's tough because I can see it from a couple perspectives.
The way I was raised, and the way I see things psychologically, I never felt like I was due something from life. I didn't feel like I was owed anything other than the same opportunity that everyone else has to make my way in the world.
Both now and when I was younger, my thoughts when making major life choices (college, buying a home, buying a car) have always included questions related to whether or not I could support this decision financially.
e.g. if I go to college, can I put a roof over my head? Can I afford to eat too?
I also never felt like I was owed a certain standard of living. If a downmarket studio apartment above a bunch of shops on a busy street was what I could afford to live in while going to school and working, so be it. I never felt like I should slide right into the penthouse level. Even now, I have a very modest house because it's what I can afford.
So, this side of me gives a loud "no" in answer to the question of whether housing is a right. You're not owed. I'm not owed. No one is.
But then I think back to people I have known--decent people, hardworking people--who hit a rough patch in life and who, without a safety net, might have ended up homeless (and their kids with them).
Put that with the fact that I recognize how lucky I've been in life, and I don't think I can so emphatically say no about housing. Let me put it this way: if you say a mother with a young child on a cold winter night without a warm place to stay, would you say no?
I think the problem we as a society run into with questions like these is the temptation to see them as black/white, either/or. I don't think that's always the case. There are reasonable, middle paths here.
I am not going to sit here and tell you I have the answer. I'm past the age where I think I'm that smart and I am also at the age where I realize that the best solution likely comes from a series of ideas and the tension among people who see things differently.
I can, however, tell you my little corner of it. Why does housing assistance need to be forever?** To return to the example from above, if a mother and child on a cold winter's night needed a roof, give it to them. Give it to them with strings and not permanently.
You can't turn them out, but there has to be an end or some disposition of things. After all, if someone is so scattered as to not be able to support themselves, they shouldn't be raising a kid, and they need more help than just a room. I say this informed by the decent, hardworking people I met who, true, needed help, but used that help as a bridge to get them back on their feet, not a permanent crutch.
One last thing and then I'll turn it over to you if you want to chime in. There is something absent from the Sun's article and likely also from anything that the protestors chanted and parodied about. The question (let alone any answer) of "who gets to pay if housing is a right?"
**I could just as well say this about any government safety net, but that's a whole other post.
https://coloradosun.com/2023/06/26/metro-denver-apartment-association-slummy-awards/
Going after the politically expedient targets.
Let me start with a quote from the article linked below:
"Gov. Jared Polis on June 7 signed House Bill 1242, which requires oil and gas producers to report more data on water usage and mandates the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to pass new rules in 2024 on how to reduce fresh water going into wells and boost recycled water."
When it comes time to fund "free" kindergarten and you don't want to piss people off with taxes, it's politically expedient to make backroom deals with giant cigarette companies and to tax those dirty, filthy, nasty smokers.
When it comes time to discuss how we prevent violence, it's more politically expedient to go after the tool (the gun) than it is to have harder discussions about culture and mental illness.
And, when it comes to water, it's politically expedient to go after agriculture and, now per the quote above, the beleaguered energy industry in this state. Why piss off developers and people who move here right?
Sooner or later, we're going to have to recognize that, despite the rhetoric from the governor and his ilk, the trajectory we are on in this state is to eliminate the fossil fuel energy industry in this state. Plain and simple.
It will die by a thousand tiny regulations and do it slowly over time so we don't speak up too much.
https://tsscolorado.com/next-up-for-oil-and-gas-companies-reduction-of-fresh-water-in-their-operations/
Turning a single edge razor into a scraper.
This is the last one of the day, and it will be the last one til the 5th since I'm not going to post on the 4th.
If you're thinking that this means the following is going to be something for fun and not related to politics, you are correct.
I've been dipping my beak into making movies using my home computer and I decided to make one about how to turn a razor into a scraper (a trick I learned that came in handy when I color-sanded my car after repainting it). Since it's related, I tossed a tip in there too about how you can do something similar with your disposable razors to save some money.
Enjoy and I'll see you on the 5th!
I hope you, like me, take some time tomorrow to celebrate our country and the freedoms we all enjoy thanks to people who have worked to preserve them.