Homeowners insurance is a scam

Because our system puts protecting the profits of insurance companies above any public benefit they provide, insurance companies that have grown rich by raking in premiums for years, have now suddenly cancelled 350,000 California homeowners insurance policies. Cancelled. Done. All those premiums paid in? Ashes.
Jennifer Burt knows she lives in a fire-prone community. That’s why she’s done everything she can to fire-proof her home in Meadow Vista, in the bushy, densely wooded Placer County foothills, even installing a sprinkler system on the roof. Yet a few weeks ago, her insurance carrier — Lloyd’s of London, known for insuring high-risk properties — told her it was declining to renew her homeowners’ policy.
Uninsurable means unsellable. So these properties have been suddenly reassesed at some value approaching $0.00. The same fate is in store for coastal Delaware. It is an economic and climate change inevitability at this point.

Don’t “raise” the minimum wage – RESTORE IT!

Larry Lambert makes this point on an episode of 'Highland's Bunker', and it is a good one. Don't use "raise the minimum wage" but use "restore the minimum wage". It is more accurate. Setting the minimum wage at $15 per hour by 2024 and indexing it to the median wage growth thereafter would restore the minimum wage to 1968 levels. The wording, "raising the minimum wage" gives the impression that working people are getting some bonus. They aren't.

DL Open Thread for Nov. 1, 2019

All these investigations have Trump on the run -- literally. In another of an endless series of petulant wee-hours tweets, Trump announced he is leaving New York to make Florida…

Nobody is really defending Trump anymore, they are defending their own bad choices and low character

You may have a strident Trump "supporter" in your life. I'd encourage you to have some empathy for them. As they parrot Laura Ingram and other Fox News personalities, they aren't defending Trump at this point. They are defending themselves against the grim reality that they are gullible dummies and racist losers who have been taken in by a second rate swindler. Even the least self-aware Trumper at this point knows that Trump is indefensible. So what appears to be continuing Trump support is really nothing more that a last ditch grasp at dignity and self-respect.

Coons gave Joe “You Lie!” Wilson a pass but scolds Democrats

In September 2009, Addison Graves "Joe" Wilson-R (SC-2nd) interrupted a speech by President Barack Obama to the joint session of Congress by shouting "You lie!" Did Chris Coons pull a big sad about that? Did he pen lachrymose Op-eds lamenting Wilson's lack of civility? Did he eschew ever working with someone as lacking in civility as Wilson? Fuck no he didn't. You know what he did instead? After shit dies down a bit, he reached out to Wilson and in Coons-style bipartisan obsequiousness, he celebrated working with Wilson on a "bipartisan, bicameral bill to help drive investment in new energy technologies"
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and U.S. Representatives Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) today introduced bipartisan, bicameral legislation to establish a nonprofit foundation for the U.S. Department of Energy that would channel private-sector investments and accelerate the commercialization of innovative technologies in energy.
Coons is terrible. There is nothing Republicans can do to offend Coons, and there is nothing liberal Democrats do that doesn't offend him.