Social Issues

You know the economics of your city are a bit distorted when a married couple earning roughly 3x the national median income can't even afford to put a roof over their head.  Oddly enough, that seems to be exactly the case in San Francisco where the Board of Supervisors has just approved a piece of legislation that would allow couples earning up to $138,000 a year to qualify for "affordable housing."  Per SFGate:

In what could very well end up being just another exercise in futility, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has just released a new version of a healthcare plan which, among other things, incorporates demands from Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) to allow insurers to sell low-cost, skimpier plans all in an effort to draw conservative support for the new bill.

Called the "Consumer Freedom Amendment," we highlighted the main points of the Cruz/Lee proposal last month:

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Illinois now has a budget, the first in three fiscal years. An excellent writeup on The Stump entitled Illinois Financial Disaster: Even More Reactions to the Budget explains what passage of the budget does and does not do.

Here are some links mentioned by The Stump and a few additional links and comments by me.

The Budget Fixes Nothing

Mark Glennon at Wirepoints comments on the Many Ways Illinoisans Won’t Pay Higher Taxes

Authored by Soren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

High school seniors from all over the country considering the option of attending Reed College in Portland, Oregon have an amazing opportunity to apply for an all-expenses-paid program, including round-trip air travel, room and board, to visit campus ahead of the fall semester...there's just one catch: whites need not apply. 

The program is called the "Discover Reed Fly-In Program," but if you're a poor person, who happens to also be white, then you're just shit out of luck.