In a normal year, San Francisco will go and spend $94,000,000 on homeless folks within the city. That's to handle the 'crisis' in the city for 8,000 to 9,000 people.
I sat and pondered over this.
This comes out to around $10,400 a year, per person.
In Alabama terms, if you handed me the money and said that it'd be a regular sum for at least ten years....it'd be a rather simple task.
I'd go find a huge chunk of land (say 300 acres) and lay out a mini-city of modular cabins (15 ft by 20 ft) with a basic studio appearance. I'd issue out a free breakfast each morning, some baloney sandwiches with a Sun Drop cola for lunch, and a fried chicken plate each evening.
At the end of the year, I'd still have 25-million left in my hand.
The problem here is that this all San Francisco 'cost' and not Alabama 'cost'. You toss in city managers making $90k, and a little empire of 100 homeless technicians, and you have eaten away at fair chunk of the $94-million.
What'll have to happen to change the dynamics of the SF homeless issue? Well....you'd have to go and probably triple the $94-million to around $300-million....to really retake the city and end the 'crap-on-the-streets' chatter. And where does the money come from? Yeah, that's really the big question left to answer.
Then you come to pause on this last question....with the drug-usage dynamic playing into this....why would you assume that the numbers will stay at 8-thousand to 9-thousand? I would go and forecast that the homeless numbers in SF will bump to 12,000 by the end of 2021.
Sunday, 29 December 2019
Saturday, 28 December 2019
The 'Einstein-Insanity' Style of Impeachment
It's a term that I heard this morning and you have to sit and ponder upon it for a while.
In this type of impeachment situation.....you go through the same processes.....doing the same thing, and in each single case, you expect a different outcome in the end.
It'd be like a group of eighth-grade kids in the school lab, with the five ingredients for some lab experiment, and they go down the list of processes, to discover each day for two weeks.....you can only have the same outcome, unless you radically changed the procedures, or added a sixth ingredient, or deducted one ingredient.
It's a bit comical, but readily fits into the mess we have today.
In this type of impeachment situation.....you go through the same processes.....doing the same thing, and in each single case, you expect a different outcome in the end.
It'd be like a group of eighth-grade kids in the school lab, with the five ingredients for some lab experiment, and they go down the list of processes, to discover each day for two weeks.....you can only have the same outcome, unless you radically changed the procedures, or added a sixth ingredient, or deducted one ingredient.
It's a bit comical, but readily fits into the mess we have today.
Friday, 27 December 2019
Pelosi, Impeachment and Senate 'Scheduling'
Most people don't grasp this, but there's a flowing schedule which sets out Senate priorities over the next month or two. Various committees have people scheduled to appear, and witnesses have the dates marked on their calendars.
So as each week goes by......the Senate schedule is kinda in a mess to keep organized.....if they don't get the Articles of Impeachment.
It'd be like your boss hinting of a major conference meeting next week, but as of Friday this week.....you have no idea which day it will occur, or at what time. And you might be shocked that this critical meeting.....gets pushed to the week after, or even two weeks after next week.
So Pelosi is kinda playing with this mess, and seeing how much she can probably get away with.
So as each week goes by......the Senate schedule is kinda in a mess to keep organized.....if they don't get the Articles of Impeachment.
It'd be like your boss hinting of a major conference meeting next week, but as of Friday this week.....you have no idea which day it will occur, or at what time. And you might be shocked that this critical meeting.....gets pushed to the week after, or even two weeks after next week.
So Pelosi is kinda playing with this mess, and seeing how much she can probably get away with.
Closing of the Newseum
Next Tuesday, the Newseum will shut down in DC. It was a critically placed building (fine structure) that sat between the White House and the Capital Building.
I went to the structure in 2011 and spent two hours walking around. For me, it was the biggest waste of $20-$25 that I'd ever made in my life. On that particular Saturday, there was one busload of kids in the place (mostly bored by the tour), and maybe ten tourists.
They basically tried to make a museum into something that tourists would want to come and see.....it being all about the news.
Financially, from day one (11 years ago), it's been in this profitability 'mess'. No one cared to come, and it was continually draining resources. So the structure is being sold off, and this marginal idea will come to an end.
I went to the structure in 2011 and spent two hours walking around. For me, it was the biggest waste of $20-$25 that I'd ever made in my life. On that particular Saturday, there was one busload of kids in the place (mostly bored by the tour), and maybe ten tourists.
They basically tried to make a museum into something that tourists would want to come and see.....it being all about the news.
Financially, from day one (11 years ago), it's been in this profitability 'mess'. No one cared to come, and it was continually draining resources. So the structure is being sold off, and this marginal idea will come to an end.
2019, and Great Movies
Back in the mid-1970s....there was a year or two in there where there just weren't that many great movies produced. In fact, you can go to several periods in the past 30 years where there might have been six classics put out in a year.
So I come to 2019, and this odd factor of maybe fifteen great movies, and it's kinda shocking at the level worth seeing.
The list:
- The Irishman
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
- Richard Jewell
- Little Women
- Avengers Endgame (ok, maybe not a classic but worth viewing)
- Knives Out
- Marriage Story
- Parasite (South Korean, and surprising quality)
- Joker
- Downtown Abbey
- Uncut Gems
- Ford versus Ferrari
- The Lighthouse
- 1917 (probably one of the ten best war movies ever made)
- Dolemite is My Name (Eddie Murphy ought to win a Oscar)
- Midway (actually a great war movie)
- Birds of Passage
Then behind this group....there's at least ten more which are just a step or two behind. This group would include The Kid (great western), Deadwood the Movie (another great western),
So I come to 2019, and this odd factor of maybe fifteen great movies, and it's kinda shocking at the level worth seeing.
The list:
- The Irishman
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
- Richard Jewell
- Little Women
- Avengers Endgame (ok, maybe not a classic but worth viewing)
- Knives Out
- Marriage Story
- Parasite (South Korean, and surprising quality)
- Joker
- Downtown Abbey
- Uncut Gems
- Ford versus Ferrari
- The Lighthouse
- 1917 (probably one of the ten best war movies ever made)
- Dolemite is My Name (Eddie Murphy ought to win a Oscar)
- Midway (actually a great war movie)
- Birds of Passage
Then behind this group....there's at least ten more which are just a step or two behind. This group would include The Kid (great western), Deadwood the Movie (another great western),
Thursday, 26 December 2019
The Billion Euro Loss in Health Funds?
In the past week, if you follow German health insurance news.....the companies all came up and admitted that together.....they went past their normal budget by about one-billion Euro, and so they had to dip into reserves.
A long-term problem? Well, yeah.
The bulk of blame? You could assign blame to around a dozen factors, but the biggest issue was nursing salary increases which had to be prioritized in 2019 because of nurses walking out of the profession, and trying to make up for shortfalls in the nursing population (recruiting from outside of Germany).
The odds this shortfall will continue into 2020? About a hundred-percent chance. So by 2021's national election....a national crisis and more costs for the insurance fund? It'll likely become a top five topic for the national election.
A long-term problem? Well, yeah.
The bulk of blame? You could assign blame to around a dozen factors, but the biggest issue was nursing salary increases which had to be prioritized in 2019 because of nurses walking out of the profession, and trying to make up for shortfalls in the nursing population (recruiting from outside of Germany).
The odds this shortfall will continue into 2020? About a hundred-percent chance. So by 2021's national election....a national crisis and more costs for the insurance fund? It'll likely become a top five topic for the national election.
The Homeless Story
President Trump basically gave the 'warning' to the California state government (particularly the governor) to settle it's homeless problems, or face federal intervention.
The Governor Newsom problem? He's basically locked into a lose-lose situation at this point. The city councils of San Francisco and Los Angeles (all Democratic-controlled operations)? They now face an extreme problem.
What happens now? I'll lay out three likely things to occur over the next six months.
First, President Trump simply sent a 'warning'. There is no schedule attached to this, and it might be twelve months before you see the threat go to the next level.
Second, the President will use this chaos to arrive in California and talk in a campaign message that the Governor and Democratic councils are screwing the general public and triggering the crisis to continue. Whether they like it or not....you could see a million voters walk away from the Democrats in 2020's state election. Enough to change the outcome? No....Hillary picked up 8.7-million votes, and Trump barely managed 4.5-million, so a million flipped votes wouldn't matter.
However, in district races.....if you scattered a million extra votes around....it'd probably flip at least five Democratic House seats over to the GOP. I suspect the bulk of this 'pressure' is about flipping House seats.
Third and final....in the stakes of a poker game....he's trying to force them to take measures that would be extreme.
Trying to resolve the homeless issues? I would go and suggest that the last thing that the federal government wants to do....is draw a line and say they want to fix this. You'd basically end up with three chief things that would be forced down:
1. Judges would be brought in and if you were mentally unstable....you'd be sent to some isolated federal controlled facility way out in the desert where the mental-case people would be isolated.
2. Drug-addicted folks would be given a one-shot rehab deal, and then if they failed that....they'd go to the desert facility described in the paragraph above.
3. Finally, you'd build cheap housing units with private security attached, and if you demonstrated you weren't willing to play by society rules....you'd also go to the desert facility described in the paragraph above.
At the end of this 'mess', I suspect that three-quarters of the homeless crowd would not be allowed into the public scene and live out their lives in a quiet compound area surrounded by security fences.
The Governor Newsom problem? He's basically locked into a lose-lose situation at this point. The city councils of San Francisco and Los Angeles (all Democratic-controlled operations)? They now face an extreme problem.
What happens now? I'll lay out three likely things to occur over the next six months.
First, President Trump simply sent a 'warning'. There is no schedule attached to this, and it might be twelve months before you see the threat go to the next level.
Second, the President will use this chaos to arrive in California and talk in a campaign message that the Governor and Democratic councils are screwing the general public and triggering the crisis to continue. Whether they like it or not....you could see a million voters walk away from the Democrats in 2020's state election. Enough to change the outcome? No....Hillary picked up 8.7-million votes, and Trump barely managed 4.5-million, so a million flipped votes wouldn't matter.
However, in district races.....if you scattered a million extra votes around....it'd probably flip at least five Democratic House seats over to the GOP. I suspect the bulk of this 'pressure' is about flipping House seats.
Third and final....in the stakes of a poker game....he's trying to force them to take measures that would be extreme.
Trying to resolve the homeless issues? I would go and suggest that the last thing that the federal government wants to do....is draw a line and say they want to fix this. You'd basically end up with three chief things that would be forced down:
1. Judges would be brought in and if you were mentally unstable....you'd be sent to some isolated federal controlled facility way out in the desert where the mental-case people would be isolated.
2. Drug-addicted folks would be given a one-shot rehab deal, and then if they failed that....they'd go to the desert facility described in the paragraph above.
3. Finally, you'd build cheap housing units with private security attached, and if you demonstrated you weren't willing to play by society rules....you'd also go to the desert facility described in the paragraph above.
At the end of this 'mess', I suspect that three-quarters of the homeless crowd would not be allowed into the public scene and live out their lives in a quiet compound area surrounded by security fences.
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