• “Manufactured-home owners face a unique predicament in that they own the home, but not the land. They rent the plot much like a recreational vehicle rents a space in a campground.”
We’ve often discussed here how this arrangement empowers predatory landlords — factory-built homes are not really “mobile,” and cannot be moved easily, or sometimes at all, if rents are raised unreasonably, or if landlords fail to keep up their side of the bargain. And we’ve discussed how it creates perpetual insecurity for those whose savings and roots are sunk into a home that sits on land that can be sold out from under them. This AP report gets into all that as well, but those aren’t the only issues facing homeowners in the Knoll Terrace community in Douglas County, Oregon.
The evergreen hillsides that make Knoll Terrace so appealing are shifting, melting, causing small landslides and cracking the homes’ foundations. … So what happens when the land is damaging the home? Who is responsible for the damages?
• Prudent.
• Please don’t burn a flag. It’s hurtful and never persuasive. No, it’s not nearly as bad as trying to criminalize flag-burning. And it’s far more patriotic to burn a single representation of the flag than it is to burn the Constitution itself by talking about stripping citizens of their citizenship. But it’s still not cool. Whatever point you may think you’re making by burning a flag won’t be made, and it’s likely that the opposite of it will be hardened and reinforced. So, please don’t burn a flag.
But if you walk into a church sanctuary and you see a flag displayed, turn around and walk back out. (Unless, I suppose, it’s Mission Conference Sunday and the church is displaying the flags of all the nations of the world that they sponsor missionaries to. )
• Alabama. “Hunting over bait” is sleazy and gross, but legally it’s a misdemeanor, so the oft-arrested son of the state’s suspended chief justice (and staff in the family “ministry”) isn’t in the same level of legal trouble as Alabama’s top Republican officials. Republican Gov. Robert Bentley allegedly “had an affair with a former staffer and used public funds to facilitate and hide it.” Republican Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard is “facing 23 felony charges that he used his office to obtain financial favors from lobbyists and benefit businesses he owns.” And Republican Chief Justice Roy Moore is suspended (again) “on charges that he violated judicial ethics.”
But apparently Alabamans like what they’re seeing with one-party rule. The felons in charge got a big boost on Election Day as the state went for Donald Trump by 62 percent and rubber-stamped re-election for its six Republican members of the House of Representatives.
• It’s not just Calvinist preachers who want to punish women when a pregnancy ends. This is sick and cruel. It’s also unworkable given that, again, most miscarriages occur before the person knows they’re pregnant. I suppose Texas could decide to require “burial” or “cremation” every time someone’s period is a little late and heavy, just to be sure.
• Disgraced former Baylor Athletic Director Ian McCaw has landed a new job at another university. Most schools — and most decent human beings — consider McCaw toxic given that he had to leave Baylor after it was revealed that he knew of a gang-rape by Baylor football players and didn’t do anything about it. By Liberty University is happy to have him, with school president Jerry Falwell Jr. gushing that McCaw “fits perfectly with where we see our sports programs going.” Disturbingly, that’s not wrong — rape culture is a pretty perfect fit with Liberty’s purity culture.
McCaw said he hopes to build Liberty athletics to “garner the same type of appeal among the Christian community as Notre Dame achieves among the Catholic community.” So Catholics are not Christians? This guy is gonna fit right in at Liberty.
• Crooked Still
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