5-16-15 Hodepodge

"Democracy" at Work

I use the scare quotes only because the city council members are representatives. The result, rule by the strongest mob, is exactly what happens when government is not constrained by the proper purpose of protecting individual rights.

In Santa Monica, the city council voted unanimously and without debate to violate the property rights of anyone interested in renting space in their homes via Airbnb:

[T]he Council approved rules that will ban most short-term rentals in the city by prohibiting the rental of an entire unit for less than 30 days. The rules legalize "home-sharing" -- in which the occupant rents a couch, spare bedroom or backyard unit -- but require hosts to obtain a business license and pay Santa Monica's 14% hotel tax.

The docile reporter, without a trace of irony, noted that "housing advocates" joined union thugs in support of this measure.

Weekend Reading

"This is where it gets complicated: Many people choose friends and romantic partners based only on vague or unidentified feelings." -- Michael Hurd, in "The Psychology of Loyalty" at The Delaware Wave

"There are alternatives to summarily writing off a person's expression of their feelings." -- Michael Hurd, in "How Sensitive Are You?" at The Delaware Coast Press

Full Circle

Leftists frequently like to claim racial equality as their own cause, while manufacturing baseless grievances against imaginary oppressors. A video clip, of a college bureaucrat accusing a black man of "harassing" her because he had the nerve to sit in a waiting room, should disabuse us of the former and illustrate the latter. Her threats to call the police sound like they belong in a John Kennedy Toole novel -- A Confederacy of Dunces or The Neon Bible, I can't decide -- and not the twenty-first century.

-- CAV