Security robot bullied and forced off the street in San Francisco
Eleanor Gibson | 13 hours ago 1 comment
A robot patrolling a street in San Francisco to ward off homeless people has been removed after complaints from locals, who also knocked it over and smeared it with feces.
The Knightscope K5 security robot was deployed by the San Francisco branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) to deter homeless people from sleeping and loitering near its building.
But it was forced to take away the 400-pound machine as it was operating in the public realm without a permit, and threatened with a $1,000-a-day (£745) fine.
The K5's presence also angered the local community, who took to social media to complain.
https://www.dezeen.com/2017/12/13/k...obot-sfspca-san-francisco-bullied-off-street/
Woohoo! Screw the homeless! Save the animals!!!
Here is an article explaining why housing costs are so high and also warning us those costs will STAY HIGH thanks to LIE-berals and wanring us that we better get used to seeing homeless people on the street if LIE-berals get re-elected!
Yes-if it moves-TAX IT! Positive proof that LIE-berals cannot think straight!
Here is a nice story-courtesy of Financial Post- about how govt can screw things up by being greedy and taxing things excessively. Bankrupt Ontari-owe govt is frantic to find new revenue tools-instead of simply cutting back on spending. Seventy five percent of ALL govt spending is on civil service Hog salaries and pensions and perks but Hog greed is so huge that LIE-berals cannot shovel in the cash fast enough.
But LIE-berals CANNOT cut back on Hog salaries due to their need to BUY civil service votes with more gravy-hence the search for revenue tools even though the new tools will MAKE more problems than they cure. I include a few comments of my own in brackets):
Ontario tried a speculation tax on property, and the market ‘collapsed overnight’ © Provided by Financial Post
TORONTO — For 32 years, Barry Lebow has kept a scrapbook of one of the most traumatic business days in life.
There are some dates you always remember, and for the Ontario real estate industry it’s April 9, 1974. That is the day the province shocked the sector by announcing a 50 per cent land speculation tax.
(One may ask why this is relevant now and its because govt is considering an extra tax on vacant housing-use it or lose it. In addition, govt is considering an extra tax on `high end` houses. The govt idea being to curtail speculation-shades of 32 years ago-and to limit the amount of foreign money buying and speculating on Cdn housing markets.)
“We had no wind of this,” said Lebow, now 69, and still a Toronto realtor. “I was 23 years old and I owned 53 houses the day (speculation tax) came in.
“We were the largest home buyers in Toronto, my partners and myself. We had a company called WFE Developments. I went to bed a millionaire and woke up owing about $1.5 million the next morning.”
The governing Conservatives under Premier William Davis imposed a provincial tax, fully independent of any federal capital gains tax, which allowed for a 50 per cent tax on any land profits. Principal residences and family-owned farm lands were exempt.
“The market literally collapsed overnight,” says Bob Aaron, a veteran Toronto real estate lawyer. “At the budget that night, the government announced the Land Speculation Tax. It’s one of those days like September 11 or Nov. 22 when Kennedy was shot, there are some days you’ll never ever forget in your life. The date is seared in memory because my law practice collapsed. It was horrible. I had been out (of law school) for two years.”
(Some LIE-berals may immediately jump on this mention of Bill Davis and Conservatives as a way of suggesting poor management by the current generation of Conservatives as well-and so sorry it does not work that way. The modern Conservative Party owes its values to the much more logical Reform Party and to a more pragmatic approach to money management than the RED TORY donkeys led by the likes of Bill Davis and Joe (who?) Clark and who almost destroyed the Conservative Party before it hooked up with Preston Manning and Harper. Clark values are clear-when federal Conservatives joined with Reform, Joe Who informed us that all `proper` Conservatives should immediately join the LIE-beral party! What a Maroon! But that the Lie-beral Party for-home of all manner of losers including that arch imbecile and creator of Rae Days-Bob (Boob) Rae-and didn.t I hear that he ended up leading the LIE-beral party for some years? Every party has a few of these hopeless Rae types-even Conservatives-but LIE-berals collect them from ALL directions!)
Aaron said the market today — the average home price is up about 30 per cent over the past year in Vancouver and 16 per cent in Toronto — is not much different than it was then. “They wanted to cool down the market. It had been booming,” he said.
Four decades later, a speculation tax is one of the remedies government could turn to again. The idea has the support of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, who also favours a tax for owners of unoccupied homes.
(As usual LIE-berals don’t know history and do believe they are smart enough to avoid pitfalls that caught up other govts and are selfishly looking for REGULATORY tools that can be turned into REVENUE tools that can be used to BUY VOTES from HOGS! LIE-berals IGNORE just who it is that is buying houses-they do not wish to admit that it’s the civil service Hogs and their well heeled kids who are buying the houses.)
(Maclean`s Magazine did a piece a while back about the amount of money being supplied by parents-read Hogs-to the kids to get them into the housing market. The quickest and cheapest way to avoid a housing bubble is simply to CUT BACK ON HOG GRAVY! Less gravy for Hogs means less money for houses generally-meaning also that people will save more for a down payment-and isn’t our LIE-beral govt TRYING to get us to save more?)
(And it would not hurt to do as the Yankees do and charge a surtax on foreigners! If they want to play in our house market let them pay-it works for Yankees so Yankees cannot complain about discrimination! And another reason for sky high house prices is the TOTAL LACK of new public transit! Traveling anyplace in our major cities is becoming a nightmare-Cdns ALREADY have the longest commutes of any people on the planet and its getting ever WORSE!)
(If LIE-berals would actually follow through on ANY of their transit promises then house prices would fall somewhat as people resumed their migration to suburbs. But oh wait-LIE-berals DON’T WANT US IN SUBURBS-LIE-berals have decided that it is best to CRAM another MILLION people into Toronto! Jam them into 5-8 story buildings and SAVE BIG on roads and transit to suburbs-meaning MORE GRAVY for HOGS!)
Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau has announced a working group will be formed of federal officials, provincial representatives from Ontario and British Columbia and municipal counterparts in Toronto and Vancouver to look at the growing issue of housing affordability.
Critics have called for limits on foreign ownership, while others say tighter lending rules are needed to slow down the market, including shorter amortizations that would force consumers to qualify for mortgages based on a much higher interest rate than is currently in the market and a reduction in the ratio of mortgage debt relative to income that banks use to assess borrowing capacity.
(What all these dorks are ignoring is that each of their tools will promote MORE INFLATION-higher house costs translates into GREATER HOG DEMAND for gravy! Higher interest rates will reduce house prices but WILL increase profits to our already disgracefully fat cat bankers! Of course bankers will then increase stock dividends to their creditors-most of whom happen to be HOGS! And the kids will be just as indebted as before! It all comes back to grossly entitled HOGS sucking up ALL the cash!)
Would a speculation tax reign help cool specific housing markets? And what are the ramifications? “You really have to proceed carefully, you don’t want to blunder into anything that tips the markets,” said Doug Porter, chief economist with Bank of Montreal.
(That guy Porter is sharp-he vaguely realizes that govt isn’t quick thinking on its feet or anyplace else for that matter-one little detail being missed by the LIE-beral panel is that house speculators usually purchase and GUT older houses and insulate them to higher standards-and isn’t that what LIE-berals WANT? Their environmental concerns demand a smaller carbon footprint and reduced heating costs to meets that standard! LIE-berals are going in circles trying to do ANYTHING EXCEPT reduce the gravy going to HOGS!)
Porter suggests “I think they should consider a proposal coming out of British Columbia to increase property taxes especially on high-end houses and make the tax deductible from income taxes. It’s revenue-neutral and discourages people from loading up on extra houses and hits the foreign investor.”
(Again-LIE-berals are monkeying with the market-implement such a tax and immediately higher end house values PLUMMET-with resulting lawsuits as govt has PICKED THE POCKETS of `high end` property owners! And who will decide what house qualifies as high end? We already know that LIE-berals don’t want to upset their Hog pals on the Sunshine List! Hit high end Hogs with new taxes and you hit the need for MORE GRAVY as well!)
Porter believes a speculation tax is probably his next choice, but he’s not sure how it would play and wonders what the impact might be on domestic buyers.
Talk to those old enough to remember the Ontario tax and you get divided opinion on whether going after speculators actually worked.
Toronto housing prices were rising fast by 1973. According to the Toronto Real Estate Board, the average sale price of a home in 1972 was $32,513. A year later, prices had climbed 25 per cent. Even after the speculation tax was brought in — it received royal assent on June 3 — prices would still finish up 30 per cent for all of 1974.
Arthur Meen, Ontario’s minister of revenue at the time, had made it clear the tax was aimed at speculators and people who added “no real value” to land other than to flip it.
“The Land Speculation Tax is a first in North America,” Meen said with pride in August of 1974. “It is pioneering and innovative legislation. It is my feeling Ontario is setting an example for other jurisdictions to follow.”
All Aaron can remember are the calls from buyers begging to get out of every deal while every seller demanded a deal be kept alive. He said litigation from the era went on for years, related to people backing out on deals. The Ontario government eventually lowered the speculation tax to 20 per cent because Ottawa would not allow the tax as a deduction against capital gains. But for the rest of the 1970s house price increases in Toronto remained under double-digits annually.
(House price increases were modest in the later part of 1970`s-and gee-that might have been due to OPEC and the end of the oil embargo making it cheaper to commute to cheaper suburbs than in previous years? And the appearance on our roads of gas sipping Civics and Corollas made commuting easier too-encouraging a move to low cost suburbs as people dumped their gas guzzling Detroit Iron .)
Looking back, Davis, now 86, feels his speculation tax was justified at the time, but he says it really has no relation to what is happening in the housing market today.
(In other words it was LIE-beral style feel good but do nothing practical type bullshit!)
“It really was a case of four or five players, a few major developers. It was quite different than what is going on today,” Davis said in an interview, while offering no opinion of whether today’s housing market needs government controls. “We looked out 10 years and we saw it had the potential of escalating values beyond what really made sense.” His government repealed the tax in 1978.
Davis doesn’t recall a major collapse in prices and suggests those who do “are probably the ones who were speculating” at the time.
(What it all means is that if slapping new revenue tools on the market does not kill it then it wasn’t alive in the first place! Davis and Joe Who Clark are RED TORY`s and a disgrace to true Conservatives! They are too dumb to recognize that they are LIE-beral `light` in philosophy! Red Tories and jackass LIE-berals are ruining our economy with their insane need for `new revenue tools`!)
Lebow remembers things differently and says today’s housing market won’t die on its own, but will be killed by some kind of government measure that over reaches. “In the end the government (in the 1970s) didn’t have to do anything because mortgage rates went up to 12 per cent and the market died by natural consequences,” he says.
gmarr at nationalpost
