by Autumn Billings, Reason, March 12, 2025.
Excerpt:
Bringing the tree house into compliance was no simple task. Polizzi tells Reason that while he had secured the necessary zoning permit for the tree house—a feat in and of itself—he’d been unable to obtain a building permit from the L.A. Department of Building and Safety (LADBS). While one would think it’d make sense to permit the structure as a tree house or play structure, Polizzi says that the LADBS took a strict stance, ruling that the roughly 120-square-foot tree house instead had to meet the arduous requirements for an accessory dwelling unit (ADU).
Los Angeles defines an ADU as “an attached or detached residential dwelling unit that provides complete independent living facilities” and must include “permanent provisions for living, sleeping, eating, cooking and sanitation.” Securing these building permits requires “soil reports, structural designs, Americans With Disabilities Act compliance, and all this stuff that is just kind of absurd” for an existing treehouse that has stood for 25 years with no safety incidences, Paige Gosney, Polizzi’s attorney, told The Los Angeles Times. According to Polizzi, meeting the ADU demands would’ve cost another $50,000 to $80,000 on top of what he had already spent. “It’s felt like a strong-arm tactic meant to get me to buckle.”
Despite ongoing good faith efforts to comply with the city’s regulations, Polizzi was criminally charged with four misdemeanors by the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office in 2020 for the tree house’s noncompliance. Unable to move forward with renovations, he applied for a permit waiver in April 2024 but never heard back from the city.
by John Hinderaker, Power Line, March 12, 2025.
Excerpt:
My wife and I attended several days in court, near the end of the Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg trial in Washington, D.C. We witnessed a dramatic moment, when Mann’s lawyers had introduced into evidence a document, which was blown up for the jury and about which Mann testified, that contained a list of grants that Mann allegedly didn’t get as a result of the defendants’ purported defamation. The value of one of those grants, per the exhibit, was $9 million.
On cross-examination by Simberg’s lawyer, Victoria Weatherford*, it turned out that the exhibit reflected sworn interrogatory answers that had been served by Mann, but later superseded by revised answers, also given under oath. The $9 million had been reduced to $112,000. To say that Weatherford’s cross-examination was effective is an understatement. And Mann didn’t get away with the misrepresentation, as the jury found only nominal damages of $1.
by Peter Guo and Yixuan Tan, NBC News, March 11, 2025.
Excerpt:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/india-six-worlds-top-10-polluted-cities-report-shows-rcna195763Six of the world’s 10 most polluted cities are in India, while California has the worst air pollution in North America, a new report shows.
New Delhi was the most polluted capital city globally, followed by N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, a country in central Africa with the world’s worst air pollution, according to the 2024 World Air Quality Report published Tuesday by IQAir, a Swiss air monitoring company.
Ten of the 15 most polluted cities in North America, including Ontario and Bloomington, are in California as the United States reclaimed the top spot as the most polluted country in the region in 2024, the report said.
India, the world’s most populous country, with more than 1.4 billion people, had a 7% decline in PM2.5 concentration last year, but air pollution remains a “significant health burden” that reduces life expectancy there by an estimated 5.2 years, the report said. The country’s major pollution sources include industrial discharge, construction dust and the burning of crop residues.
HT2 Tyler Cowen. Notiee the mention of California in the first sentence.
by Michael F. Cannon, Cato at Liberty, March 14, 2025.
Excerpt:
Medicare Advantage plans compete to capture that $84 billion by offering “nonmedical supplemental benefits” that differentially appeal to relatively healthy enrollees, whom insurers know will cost less than the government is paying. You know, stuff like “nonemergency transportation services, assistance paying for over-the-counter items, meals, and gym memberships.” Your tax dollars are even paying private health insurance companies to offer groceries, hair care, pet care, complementary therapies, and structural home improvements.
March 14, 2025.
Highlights (approximate times):
18:25: When Palestinians struggle non-violently, consistent with international law, we need to support that or at least not repress it.
27:00: States should treat people equally irrespective of their religion or ethnicity,
34:00: I (DRH) am not sure he’s right about Trump.
47:00: Anti-Zionist or anti-Israel vs. anti-semitic.
Watching this motivate me to buy Beinart’s book.
