AMA (YYW)

I don't know that I'd make a lot of changes to local property tax codes, beyond the obvious points of having both a state and local property tax; the state property tax would fund schools, and other common resources like community colleges, police, libraries, and infrastructure improvements in general.  

Education is the big one, though.  With tax bases varying so acutely from zip code to zip code, there are a lot of American kids who get the short end of the stick when it comes to preparing them for meaningful participation in the society.  That's not just a problem for the locality, but for each state and the country as a whole.  

Nothing is more important than investing in human capital, after all.  Infrastructure is a close second.  

Tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and handouts to multinational Republican donating companies doesn't even make the list. 

More questions are encouraged.

Maybe you would like to ask me about Robert Muller... lol

One of the really big problems with Detroit is the property tax problem. Almost all of the properties are overvalued, some as much as ten times overvalued. The government is currently unable to reassess properties on such a large scale. Many property owners are abandoning their properties in order to repurchase them from the government at the market value because it's easier than getting the property reassessed.

As Mayor, what would you do to fix it?

I will think about that.  That seems like a problem more complex than I could reasonably begin to address with a ten word answer.

Meanwhile, enjoy the music of my people:

So how is Mueller doing? 

Eckhart Tolle: Intellectual or quack?

"You've said that the US has more power than several of our most viable rivals combined. Can you justify this claim, considering that China's GDP is now considerably larger than ours (and the gap is growing)?"

 ^In particular, I'd appreciate an answer to this question.

Will Flint ever not be a shithole?

I had an alright weekend, thanks. 

Foreign companies in Detroit because I want to bring capital from abroad, not take it from another state.  Unions do not factor into the analysis. 

>Can't you just post as YYW on DDO something like, "I am now coal on DArt" and then link it here?

No.

>So how is Mueller doing? 

Looks like the report's first draft is done.  And, to the surprise of none, Muller has found that Trump conspired with Putin to undermine American interests and to promote Russian ones.  None are surprised, but the Republicans will distort this in every conceivable way.  Stupid Americans will be mislead by propaganda efforts driven by a shameless conspiracy theory organization (Fox News) in support of a spineless, weak, cowardly president (Trump) whose agenda will destroy this country and already has weakened our place in the world on at least fifteen different dimensions. 

>Have you ever seen the 1939 movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"?

Yes.

>Eckhart Tolle

I had to google him.  I didn't know who he was, which tells you something in itself.  From a brief review of the first page of the Google Results, and a skim reading of his Wikipedia page... the guy looks like a quack.  

>Will Flint ever not be a shithole?

Depends what you mean by "shithole".  The property tax base there has been depleted and depleting since the late 1970s; things got much worse (as they did for nearly everyone except for rich white people) under Reagan, because he gutted the unions, broke apart favorable trade deals, and generally laid the preconditions for the complete destruction of the American middle class.  HW sort of didn't improve things, but Republicans in Congress in the 1990s basically reduced Flint to a status approximating that of a third world country.  Now, anyone with any marketable skills has left.  All who remain are those who couldn't leave.  There is zero indication that the cycle of poverty will ever correct itself.

Notably, it didn't have to be that way.  Were it not for Republican policies for the last 40 years, Flint would be probably indistinguishable from Rockford, IL.  Nevertheless, the factories closed.  The work left.  The economy crumbled.  

Filmmaker Michael Moore tweeted, “Flint has voted for Dems for 84 straight yrs” and wanted to know, “What did it get us?” He's on to something.

Your implication is in vain.  Republican national economic policy was the proximate cause of Flint's decline; local Democrats can't even stop the bleeding.  

If only there were more Unionized monopolies of labor, that would surely would have killed those geese laying the golden eggs for the fatcats.

Marxism shrugged.

Also, it was clearly "the war on poverty" Hugo Chavez style that gutted the middle class, especially in California where the middle class is voting with their feet.

Almost 100 years of the war on poverty, trillions of dollars later, and the rates of poverty have not moved as much as a percentage point.

So many conservatives wrong about California...

The state, back in maybe the 1930s, tapped into something that made it a magnet for intellectual capital and entrepreneurs. That is to say, the state managed to thrive like no other despite a lack of many vital natural resources (*cough* water *cough*). California is nowhere close to a "sh*thole". Historically it's had both democratic and republican governors; while very socially liberal, it's done much to uphold its business-friendly atmosphere these past 80-90 years.

Unfortunately, the fact that so much business is happening in California has driven up the cost of living for the average citizen, so that California is more expensive than most states. THAT is why many middle-class people are leaving, most probably. They want to find somewhere cheaper to live, and of course also somewhere that hasn't been suffering from drought this past decade.

HAHA 

This is such a ridiculous statement. It sounds like California is suffering from "too much winning"

Alas, no. Costs of living are sky high mainly because of the taxes. Period. Rents are mainly sky high because the mountains of crony regulations prohibit new construction anywhere as gentrification is fiercely resisted as part of the ongoing tradition of the "war against poverty"

Marxism drove the middle class out, not "too much bidniz"

That's a very unidimensional assessment of California's cost of living.  There are numerous factors that come into play; taxes and regulations play a part, sure, but they aren't the only part.  They're not the whole picture, and you're smart enough to know better.  Rejecting one proximate cause in favor of another when neither are mutually exclusive is not an argument.  It's a weak dogmatic claim.

I deliberately used the word "mainly"

And you know well enough that there is no one "main" cause, and even if there was, taxes by their nature can't account for why the cost of living is so high in California.  Hold yourself to a higher standard... 

Thoughts on Ojeda? What kind (refering to your past post on this subject) of candidate is he?

The reason why Gillette is making a female-friendly ad is because they know that about 1/2 of all their sales are from purchases made by women; and of those sales, about 1/3 of are for female use. Why, you may wonder? Because the Gillette Fusion razors are better than anything that exists on the market for women, and Gillette knows this. They are also generally cheaper than the razors and blades targeted for women. Gillette desires to expand this demographic.
Now, is the ad stupid? Of course it is. Corporate virtue signaling is beneath contempt. But, the world we live in is the one where moral virtue is commoditized just as indulgences were commoditized before the Reformation. What a time it is to be alive.

>Thoughts on Ojeda? What kind (refering to your past post on this subject) of candidate is he?

I think Ojeda is outstanding.  He's the first democrat in a while who actually genuinely cares about the working class.  

(I have paid very little attention to the Trump-Russia allegations/investigations, and as a consequence I know very little about such. This is just me speculating with whatever knowledge I have or at least think I have.)

You claimed that the Trump towers are themselves laundered assets of Russian oligarchs. Even if this is true:

Most of these are located in the United States, correct? And though they might be sold, the buildings themselves, along with the land they're sitting on, cannot simply be withdrawn from the United States and put in Russia. Since the US government could in theory just confiscate ownership over all of these buildings, wouldn't Trump's cooperation with the oligarchs in this respect have the long-term benefit of giving the US government significant leverage over them (say, to keep Putin in check and keep him from doing anything really stupid or else forfeit all of these assets)? Would this not serve to advance the cause of peace in Eastern Europe and the world, since Putin has to answer to the oligarchs? If this is the case, isn't it even possible that all this time Trump might've been a double agent for the FBI or the CIA?