A street in Vancouver, BC, one of the most expensive cities in the world.
A street in Vancouver, BC, one of the most expensive cities in the world. Charles Mudede

What Were the Issues at a Recent and Packed Housing Forum in Vancouver, BC? "International capital flowing into the Metro Vancouver market, 'wild' speculative activity, shadow flipping, wholesale real estate, realtor conduct and a lack of rental housing." Most of these things have nothing to do with supply and demand, an economic law that urbanists tend to place great faith in. But most of the issues concerning affordability are related to politics and not economics. For example, international capital flows can be checked by capital controls.

The Guns and Cars and Crashes of Rainier Avenue South: According to Q13Fox, officers arrived at the 8200 block of Rainier Avenue South around 2 p.m. and found a young man who had been shot in the hand. Medics treated the wound. Moments before, a car was seen at this very scene attempting to do something that often works in movies like The Fast and the Furious. The car's driver had it in mind to make a fast getaway. He put the pedal to the metal and saw himself as really going somewhere. But he almost immediately crashed the car. Reality sucks. So does Rainier Avenue. So do cars and guns and The Fast and the Furious series. The driver was later found and arrested. The victim was also arrested.

Kirkland Car Wash Gets Hit by a Car: The vehicle was operated by a 46-year-old woman. Her machine not only hit the car wash but also one of its employees. The crash left the driver with minor injuries and the car-wash employee with a major one.

Man Shopping for a Car Finds Body in a Used Van: The body found in the backseat of the van was no more on this side of life. It was on the other side, the unknown side, the side we turn to when undone. "And another one gone, and another one gone..." The concern involved in this disturbing discovery is called Helen's Auto Sales.

Bear Cub Liberated by Humans Is Killed by a Human: A man who shot and killed an orphaned cub recently returned to nature was, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, "'perfectly legal' in shooting the bear, as it was in season." It was the first time the hunter had killed such an animal. The bear was 2 years old.

Republicans in Alaska Don't Know What to Do About the Fact That Their State Is Broke: The recent collapse of oil prices has meant the collapse of petrol socialism in Alaska. The state has a serious budget deficit on its hands. How to solve this problem? Alaska Dispatch News says that the GOP-dominated Senate Finance Committee does not want no new taxes no matter what the what be and believes it's best to survive on its savings until the holy day that oil prices rise from the dead and live again. One can only conclude that these politicians do not read the papers and are still under the impression that Iran is only a place that breeds terrorism and other fanatically anti-American behaviors.

Obama Has Decided That the People of the United States Who Exist Only in the GOP's Imagination Will Not Get to Pick Justice Antonin Scalia’s Replacement: He himself will do this thing. And he will do it now. His choice? Judge Merrick Garland. This man is considered to be a centrist (meaning, he is not as nutty as dead Scalia or his ghost of a negro). Garland starts to seek the seat today. It's more and more looking the like the GOP has been outmaneuvered by this son of a Kenyan.



Americans Are Drinking Lots of Champagne Again: Bloomberg reports that the consumption of the bubbles in the US has returned to levels (20.5 million bottles shipped from France in 2015) not seen since 2007, the year the housing crash began. By 2008, the economy was dust and the bottles stopped popping.

What We Must Remember and Always Tell Our Children on Saint Patrick's Day: Before going to the bar, remember to say to your children that Ireland was indeed the first third-world country in history. Before there was even a Zimbabwe (exploited by the English), or a Malawi (exploited by the English), or an India (exploited by the English), there was Ireland. And it was not just colonization in the mode of a conquest, but the direct imposition of capitalist relations on a foreign population. Soon after capitalism was born in rural England, it brought the closest thing to it, Ireland, into its orbit.

Ireland was the first to be forced to develop underdevelopment. And what did the English economist Nassau William Senior learn from the schoolchildren of Ireland when he visited that island in the 1850s? He asked them: What would happen if each Irish worker sprouted an extra pair of arms. And the children all said: We would be the poorer. Senior wrote in his notebook: "This must be the obvious opinion, for I have everywhere met with it." What was obvious for the first third world is still obvious today. Now, let's go to the bar.

(The information for my last item came from the 12th chapter, "Roots of Impoverishment," of Michael Perelman's masterful Farming for Profit in a Hungry World.)