The Kansas City Crank

That mass-produced uninsulated house was 800 square feet and that car sat three on a bench with no airbags, was parked on the driveway and Mom didn't have one.

@MorosKostas Kansas City is probably the worst city in the country you could have possibly used to make this point. Our city government is essentially powerless as it is preempted at every turn by Republicans in Jeff City.

@MorosKostas A lot of words for your first point to be completely factually inaccurate about KC. The Republican state government does not allow Kansas City to have any gun laws of its own. Not only that, the Republican governor also controls our police department.

As is often the case with a shooting that breaks into the national debate, we already see celebrities, media elites, and others lining up to talk down to conservatives about how heartless they are being for not passing more gun laws. To understand this apparent conservative intransigence on guns, you have to be aware of a few points: 1. Conservatives do not have any power in most large cities. Kansas City, for example, has had only Democrat mayors since 1930, save for one exception who left office back in 1991. Given these cities have completely rejected them politically, conservatives don't feel particularly responsible for their plight. 2. Much of Hollywood hates conservatives and makes that clear. Being a conservative usually means making peace with the fact that most of the artists and other famous people you enjoy following despise your beliefs. Not all, to be sure, but a very large amount. 3. Conservative voters are often not particularly wealthy, with a number of rural towns struggling a lot in recent years. Drugs have become a major problem, as have deaths of despair more generally. 4. They've watched in horror as more and more cities have increasingly let criminals walk with little or no consequences. They also saw rioters go completely unpunished in 2020 because they were rioting for "the right reasons". 5. They increasingly do not identify with the prevailing values of many large cities, which they see as immoral and irresponsible. 6. They've always had guns, and lots of them. They grew up with them and are comfortable around them. There can be problems with guns, namely as a tool for suicide. But murder with them is rare. So poverty, drugs, resentment, and lots of guns. According to the gun control orthodoxy, this should equate to a bloodbath, right? Wrong. Take Missouri as an example. It had 629 gun-related homicides in 2022, a dismal number. But 474 of those were in just two major cities - St. Louis and Kansas City. Dozens of smaller counties did not have a single homicide of any kind, gun-related or otherwise. If Kansas City and St. Louis combined to form their own state with their two million total people, they'd have a gun-related homicide rate of 23.7 per 100,000 people. The rest of Missouri, with a remaining population of over four million people? 3.7 per 100,000. About six times less. So popular culture, famous athletes and the major media come demanding of these people that they have to curtail their own rights, because cities in which they have no power can't get their shit together? When the leaders of those cities constantly talk down to them and despise them, no less? Why would you expect these conservative-leaning populations to listen to your lectures? You've accepted none of their ideas, you've tried the same thing over and over for decades, and the resulting high violent crime is, to them, entirely predictable. We've seen that it doesn't have to be this way. Look at what Mayor Suarez, one of the few Republican big city mayors, has accomplished in Miami. Contrary to racist views that success in big cities are limited to those that are very white, Miami is a very diverse city where white people make up less than half the population. It also had a horrifyingly violent past in relatively recent history ("The Year of Dangerous Days" by Nicholas Griffin is quite a good read on that topic). In 1980, homicides in the city reached an astonishing 220 dead. Last year, Miami had 31 homicides. That's the lowest in its history. In 1947, the first year they counted, it had 32, and the population back then was much lower than today. This is in a state that enacted constitutional carry recently too, for all those who warned that too would be a disaster. It hasn't been a problem. So quit lecturing conservatives, quit demanding others compromise their rights, and quit voting for the same failed leadership pushing the same trash ideologies of government dependence, tolerance for criminality, and failure. The continued devastation seen in cities like Kansas City is the CHOICE of its voters. And until they make a different one, they have only themselves to blame.

@linluv5 @adastroworld @SukritGanesh @FaithfullyBP Not splitting hairs. Different problems have different solutions.

@kccrank @adastroworld @SukritGanesh @FaithfullyBP You're splitting hairs when they all take homes away from first time buyers & long term renters.

It should be illegal for corporations to buy single-family homes.

@Ashley813672524 @linluv5 @adastroworld @SukritGanesh @FaithfullyBP Regulation (zoning) is one of the biggest reasons we don't build enough housing and it's too expensive. Regulation is important but not the solution to everything and can cause substantial issues when not done well.

@linluv5 @adastroworld @SukritGanesh @FaithfullyBP And AirBNBs are bad no matter who owns them. Individually owned or corporate owned, they're a problem.

@linluv5 @adastroworld @SukritGanesh @FaithfullyBP AirBNBs take supply off the market like vacation homes may or may not. Corporate-owned home have no effect on overall supply. They may affect ratio of rentals vs primary residences in the short-term but the same number of homes exist for people to live in.

@linluv5 @adastroworld @SukritGanesh @FaithfullyBP We were talking about corporate ownership and you brought up 2nd homes but okay. Realistically, less than 0.5% of neighborhoods in this country have vacation homes so it's irrelevant on a macro scale. That's for localities to worry about.

@kccrank @adastroworld @SukritGanesh @FaithfullyBP It's really not.

@linluv5 @adastroworld @SukritGanesh @FaithfullyBP Okay? That's a different problem.

@kccrank @adastroworld @SukritGanesh @FaithfullyBP Lots of them are sitting empty near me because they're vacation homes & not occupied year round.

@linluv5 @adastroworld @SukritGanesh @FaithfullyBP How exactly is building homes for people to live in screwing anyone over?

@kccrank @adastroworld @SukritGanesh @FaithfullyBP & in the meantime screw everyone else.

@linluv5 @adastroworld @SukritGanesh @FaithfullyBP Build more homes. This isn't complicated. Investors are only interested in getting a return. If supply meets demand, investors will no longer be buying because there will no longer be a positive ROI.

@adastroworld @SukritGanesh @FaithfullyBP & when they're outbid each time?

To many people, new housing is synonymous with gentrification. But a new analysis reinforces how building more homes can combat rising rents. trib.al/XnWN8Sl

@EricWBunch @acganahl @train_bike @bobspecht @BarsottiKlb I agree that this proposal shouldn't get a tax abatement. But, if council believes single family homes shouldn't go on this parcel, why is it zoned R-1. 5?

@KansasCity Incredibly disappointing to watch @EricWBunch, @mph4kcmo, @ForTheNorthland & @Ryana4KC seemingly make up their own development policies in NPD committee today. Infill housing on a 40+ year empty lot isn't worth abatement since... today? @QuintonLucasKC? @KCMOManager?

@PeteMundo Prices would be higher than ever even if inflation was 0.1%, Pete.

Prices are higher than ever and inflation is still 50% above the fed’s target. Way to go.

@brianmctaggart @mellinger1_d @theScottRushing KU/KSU/ISU have played each other every year since 1932 and their histories go back decades before that.

@brianmctaggart @mellinger1_d @theScottRushing Since the Southwest Conference broke up, Houston has played Cincinnati 14 times, UCF 10 times and TTU/BU/TCU combined 11 times. Makes way more sense to have Houston out east than shipping off a founding Big 12 member that never left.

Fixing your local zoning to allow diverse housing is (almost) free, and lowering the development cost of apartments stretches federal housing subsidies to cover more people.

It’s hard to overstate how bad US DOTs are at safety. American roads have been the leading cause of child death, by far, for decades. We have the worst safety record among G7 nations and are getting *worse*. We don’t need to reinvent safety. We just need to copy proven solutions.