PlanktonPunkt

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

PlanktonPunkt Designs puzzles available in CreateJigsawPuzzles

link to order print on demand PlanktonPunkt Designs jigsaw puzzles (printed in China)

PlanktonPunkt Designs POD products in Printify

link to order PlanktonPunkt Designs print on demand wares from the source

PlanktonPunkt Designs POD products in Etsy

A link to order from a selection of PlanktonPunkt Designs print on demand wares from Etsy

Tag: Politics

  • Rising Rice Crisis

    Japan has a rice shortage. Of staple rice.

    While there has been sporadic rice shortages around the world recent years, Japan is a first world country and a traditional rice producer. The problem is word traditional. According to First Post, the average age of Japanese rice farmer is 71 years, and government agricultural policies in general and rice policies in particular have hit the farmers whose numbers, citing Bloomberg, have shrunk by 25% between 2015 and 2020s.

    Probably not Japanese boiled rice

    The Japanese government rice policies are strictly nationalistic, ostensibly designed to protect Japanese rice farmers and self-sufficiency by preventing rice buying from abroad. Except the consumer prices also had to be regulated, squeezing rice farmer incomes and acreage despite Japanese soft monopoly on domestic rice.

    The some explanations to Japanese rice shortages is that Japanese 2023 rice harvest was bad (already reporting rice rationing in some shops on 2024), there was an earthquake and people are panic buying (also as a hedge for rice inflation, which probably increases the rice shortfall causing more rice inflation), people are eating more rice because the war in Ukraine has increased wheat prices, and that there are hordes of tourists eating rice. And the Japanese government started selling the stored rice from reserves last year. A bit like US sells oil every now and then from strategic reserves to smooth consumer sentiment. Except that Rice News Today blames the shortage on government policy to reduce rice production, which has thinned the buffer between production and consumption to such extent that even slightest consumption increase would cause shortages.

     Now Japan is running low on rice and some shops have implemented rationing. People are upset about the steep rise in rice prices. There has been some talk about buying rice from abroad, but this is against resistance from farming lobby and conservatives, though apparently there is now a trade deal to sell Calrose rice to Japan.

    The Japanese are having an election soon, July 20th. The price of rice and the rice shortages (estimated 1.8 months of annual supermarket sales worth of staple rice – either the consumers will consume something else or Japan will soon import lots of rice) may annoy the electorate enough to lead to political upset. According to Zerohedge, SocGen (a French bank) has predicted that there is about 50% chance of election results leading to governmental crisis in Japan, which may lead to problems in yen bond market. More importantly, the price of rice is part of Japan’s inflation metrics, and if rice prices explode, the rising inflation may trigger BOJ rate hikes.

    The global bond markets are highly interconnected and the financial omnibubble is floating around in search of a pin prick. Thus, the rising rice crisis just could be the trigger of global financial collapse. Though I personally doubt it. The markets are so rigged that full collapse by contagion is unlikely. But what I have seen over the years, is that small retail investors rarely fare well in turbulence. 

  • Happy July 4th, 2025

    Or Treason Day, if you happen to live in UK. In recent years, I have been watching the fascinating news from that side of Atlantic with increasing horror. Sure makes me glad I am a US citizen, not a subject to the whimsies of Prime Minister Starmer. For the past couple of visits to Europe, I even have specified to my travel agent: no stops in UK.

    Why? When Soviet Union was a thing, if you traveled there for cheap vodka (vodka tourism) and other cultural immersion, you would only be charged for drunken and disorderly, such as might happen. Obviously, potential troublemakers would have been screened during visa application, but even people caught inside Soviet Union for the heinous crime of smuggling Bibles were sentenced merely for what they were doing in Soviet Union. Or so I think. However, according to an Internet source, officials in Starmer’s UK have stated that folks traveling to UK are subject to prosecution for doubleplus ungood on-line speech even typed outside the UK borders, even if they are not UK citizens. I think such dictatorships are to be avoided, especially when they have gone clearly bonkers. I love and I am grateful for my First Amendment rights, and this is one of the reasons I am happy this Independence Day.

    I have bought a steak and cherries, to be eaten soon, some canned fish for future, and had an Asian/Pacific Islander style BBQ beef minimeal with teriyaki sauce for breakfast.

    Big white magnolias are in bloom, and I have tried to get a nice photo of them for days, but that has been difficult. Many of the trees are very big and the flowers tend to be in the upper branches, either too small for my cell phone zoom or obscured by leaves and branches. Or the flowers are not otherwise accessible to photography. When I see a magnolia bud at nice, near to eye level, getting back in time before it has bloomed and is wilting is tricky, apparently the blossoms open and are done at a quick rate.

    Here are a couple of magnolia flowers I photographed with my cell phone today.

    One of these days, I should make more jigsaw puzzles.

  • Alligator Alcatraz and Other Signs of Times

    Alligator Alcatraz

    Florida is constructing an ‘Alligator Alcatraz‘, a deportation facility in the m Everglades. An abandoned airport project will be (government) quickly converted into a 5000 bed facility with an idea that the surrounding swamp area with its alligators and pythons would be part of the security. Federal government will use FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program money for the center. Presumed Federal costs will be 450 million dollars annually. Assuming processing speed of two weeks per deportee and full occupancy, that housing alone will cost 3750$ per person though I doubt government will be that efficient. But Alligator Alcatraz is a catchy name, good marketing!

    The immigration industry seems to still provide good income for some – left loves to import immigrants with government paying the housing, whereas right loves to deport immigrants with government paying the housing.

    Nigerian Oil Production Woes

    Alleged 7.2 billion US dollar fraud in Nigeria has led to the arrest of two officials in Nigeria’s state owned oil corporation and three other officials are being investigated. Annual allocations of money meant for revamping and rehabilitation of old oil refineries had not been efficient, as Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt refineries “haven’t been producing fuel in recent years” as Oilprice.com reports. Nigeria is struggling to meet (as in has not met) its OPEC quota of oil production due to crime and “struggles to launch new projects”(ibid.)

    Sweden has illiteracy problem

    Regardless of the possible reasons for the Swedish education crisis described in this Zerohedge article (originally from Epoch Times but they require registration), about 800000 of 10 million inhabitants of Sweden are categorized as illiterate. While he definitions of literacy may have changed over the centuries, this is according to the author “the highest number since at least the mid-19th century, possibly since the early 18th century.”

    During 18th century Finland was part of the Sweden, and literacy was then enforced by strong state church that demanded that everybody had to pass confirmation (which was prerequisite for get married – premarital relationships were strongly disapproved those days) and to pass confirmation had to know how to read (the material promoted by the state church , other literacy was a bonus.) Perhaps, if literacy would again be a basis for full civil rights (e.g., one would need to be able to read a contract for their signature to be legally binding), the literacy rates would begin to climb again. Without motivation to learn, there will be a segment of population that will not make an effort.

    Also, what was alluded in the article but I think should be emphasized is that many of the modern students do not even speak Swedish, and before they learn the language they won’t be able to read or write it, either. Also the Finnish literacy levels which used to be among the highest in the world are declining, at least according to PISA statistics.

    A picture from Finland, February 2025, not directly related to Alligator Alcatraz, Nigerian oil production or Swedish literacy.

  • Civil War by Proxy?

    California and Federal government are increasingly hostile in open. California has years of experience in ignoring Federal laws, some notable example issues being cannabis, immigration, and gender identity.

    On the other hand, California has used its soft power as a major economy to enforce environmental and consumer standards on the rest of the states and even abroad.

    During Biden(?) administration, Californian values seemed to become the US standard regardless of other states’ opinions, and California became more assertive also in foreign and trade policy, most notable event being the summit with president Xi and Biden in San Francisco (preceded by a climate lobbying visit of governor Newsom to Beijing.) Various California politicians were also courting China, although also opposite happened. Does anyone still remember 2022 when the then Speaker of the House, California representative Pelosi flew to Taiwan and caused jitters over potential armed conflict between USA and PRC? (Whether this was part of a policy by a bigger faction within the administration and if so, which one of them is murky to me.)

    Now, the issues between quite untethered California and the Federal government have finally come to boil. The trigger to me seems to be the transgender athletes competing against girls, where the Federal government sees California Title IX application to this issue as violation and the regular people just unfair. California continued this practice, despite warnings from Washington DC, and the current administration threatened to withhold Federal funds for California sports. Thereafter, Newsom threatened to withhold the Federal share of California state taxes, a move somewhat reminiscent to the Nullification Crisis prior to the Civil War in 1800s.

    Meanwhile, a group of Antifa or similar group(s) coordinated an attack on ICE that had done a raid in Los Angeles.

    This attack is curious because of its organization and its timing coinciding with the spat over ideologies and money. Reminiscent of the coordinated wave of violent riots in summer 2020, there were clashes between pro-immigration protesters in New York on the opposite side of the continent.

    More importantly, both the Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and governor Newsom publicly refused to help to quell the rioters, even opposing the Federal efforts. The rioters were attacking Federal law enforcement with stones and were painting graffiti putting things in fire. In fact, a roster of California political people have come in defense of David Huerta who got arrested for participating in the riot, but their support to anti-Federal action.

    President Trump has authorized the use of 2000 National Guard (update: now 4000 plus 700 marines), and the Department of Homeland Security is bringing in reinforcements.

    I am writing this in Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, waiting for a flight that would take me back to California Bay Area via Frankfurt am Main and Los Angeles Airports. By the time I have landed, well before the time I can post this (I need to add links to sources), we will see if the California or Federal authorities have caved in. If the California stops protecting the violent mobs, removes transgender athletes from girls competitions and possibly even ponies up some tax tithes to Federal government, the incipient civil war will be averted. If the Federal government fails to enforce its rules also in California, I fear that this was the opening shot of the active phase of the disintegration of the United States. Worst case scenario, neither gives in, we may have active civil insurgency in multiple blue states by the end of the summer. The most likely outcome will be a frozen conflict, that is: both sides will pretend nothing significant happened but neither will acknowledge that the other side might have won.

    I also predict there will be lots of pundits dissecting irrelevant minutiae from the utterances of either side, and thanks to the strong left bias of the main stream media, the reporting will mostly support California and its allies, meaning tailwinds for civil war or mostly peaceful disintegration of USA and headwinds for peace and prosperity. The biggest losers will be the regular people trapped in the middle, looting and violence disrupting supply chains, especially for groceries and fuel, and then collapsing the teetering economy in general.

    Update: Much has happened since Sunday. California did not capitulate and the National Guard activated in Los Angeles is up to 4000 and 700 marines are in readiness. When I arrived on Sunday evening to Bay Area, I took the BART from airport to hometown. The train did not take or drop passengers at Embarcadero station due to political activism nearby, but let out a handful of burly police officers and while the train waited a couple of minutes next to the platform, I could observe the officers running and so did a couple of the people already there. There was still a crowd waiting for the next train or something, though the trains had started skipping that station for the duration. Sorry, no video footage of that.

    More ominously, a Walmart heiress is funding (in a small part) a nationwide call for unrest June 14th, another weak indicator supporting my hypothesis that the riots that started last weekend are part of elites’ civil war, raging over  who gets to loot the treasury.

    In social media there are reports of incidents in Denver, Charlotte (NC), Boston (MA), Chicago, New York City and Atlanta, things are escalating fast. This indicates that this is not a question of secession (California from USA) but of civil war by proxy between the progressive left and the conservatives over the control of Federal government. The presidency and the Congress are currently held by Republicans, but vast swathes of the administrative state are governed by the Deep State currently (mostly) promoting leftist ideologies (reasons for that are too long to expostulate in a single post and in any case speculative to the tinfoil hattery territory.) Individual states and their administrative apparati are a hodgepodge of ideologies, but the Left Coast in general and California in particular is the current vanguard and bastion of progressive establishment, so troubles beginning here makes sense.

    Meanwhile, governor Newsom and Federal officials are still discussing about who pays what.

    On a side note, a major food distributor supplying thousands of supermarkets got hacked last week and food distribution is off kilter. When I yesterday visited a grocery, they had a sign on meat counter apologizing for ‘warehouse issues’. I did not ask the cause then because I had not then seen this piece of samizdata news yet. I wonder if the food shortages and riots at the same time are a coincidence?

    Finally, whether true or not, the possibility of a fleet of robotaxis fleeing LA riots in order not to get burned by Mexican flag waiving ‘mostly peaceful’ protesters shows what kind of timeline we are living in. In any case, Waymo services have been suspended in downtown LA are for the time being.

    Looks like I need to pick some canned meat while it is still available.

  • Finland

    I have spent nearly two weeks in Finland and will be flying back to Bay Area this Sunday, powers be willing. The local airline is having strikes (hopefully not on Sunday) and the war in Eastern Europe is continuing.

    Finland, a gray day (108 piece jigsaw puzzle, click on photo to play)

    Finland is a beautiful country rain or shine, there will be more photos, hopefully videos and designs, too, in weeks to come once I have arranged my folders. I have also recorded hours of bird song (assuming the traffic and other noises did not overpower the morning chorus), just in case I need some soundtrack on videos I may compile in future.

    Finland, sunset (80 piece jigsaw puzzle, click on photo to play)

    Pollening (I suspect the pine) is strong right now – spend a couple of hours outdoors and your devise touch screen will show the dust. I have added here a photo of front porch tiles with accumulated pollen.

    Pollen(?) on porch (40 piece jigsaw puzzle, click on photo to play)

    I am thinking about joining TikTok and Pinterest, but those can wait until I am back in USA with my contact information back to normal.

  • Interesting Things I Wanted to Post

    I don’t usually work on Sundays (the day of rest and so on), but the recent news about heightening tensions between two nuclear powers have been alarming. No, not the war in Europe, or the slow boiling in Middle East. I am talking about India and Pakistan. Here is what I get from the non-mainstream news/commentary streams I follow.

    Negligible Chance of Mushroom Clouds

    Apparently, there was a terrorist attack in Kashmir where 26 Indian tourists were killed. This region has been contested by Pakistan and India for decades and occasionally, a war has flared up. India blames the attack on Pakistan, which claims innocence. Regardless of truth, the relationship between the countries tensed up, as in India giving 48 hours for all Pakistanis to get out of the country, whereas Pakistan closed Indian borders and Pakistani airspace from Indian airlines, while revoking visas from Indians and telling the Indian government to reduce their embassy size to 30 people, no military attaches allowed. India informed that they will no longer recognize the Indus River Treaty, which allocates the rights over this common river between the two countries. This is very important, because Indus river waters about 80% of Pakistani farmland, and if India were to block the water, it would create a famine that would collapse Pakistan. Pakistan has informed that if India messes with Indus river, it will be an act of war. Presumably, India has already been accused of flooding some Pakistani villages along Indus tributary. The same podcast claimed that there has been clashes along the border, not just small arms fire but actual artillery shelling. This is before the formal declaration of war. The Indus river question is an existential threat to Pakistan, which is estimated to have at least 170 nuclear warheads and has a first strike policy. India is estimated to have over 160 nuclear warheads and if things escalate, we could see mushroom clouds, though this is still a very small possibility.

    Oddly enough, when president Trump was asked about this issue, he seems to hint that United States will stay out of this conflict. That would be a refreshing novelty, a war that USA is not starting or participating in.

    Earthquake (Space) Weather

    A Podcast that YouTube recommended to me says that the magnetic field of the Sun is weakening. Apparently, this may be somehow connected with the likelihood of big earthquakes. Sun’s magnetic field weakens and strengthens by 11-12 year sunspot cycles but the peak magnetic field has been weakening over the latest solar cycles (data starts in 1970s, so we don’t know how things were earlier). This presentation fits the hypothesis that solar weather including sunspot activity triggers earth quakes that has been making rounds around interwebs for some time, except that in this presentation it is the weakening solar magnetic field that creates sunspots and correlates with the frequency of big earthquakes.

    The earthquake – sunspot connection has been explained by the effects of space weather on telluric currents, i.e., the electric currents going through Earth, telluric currents being stronger along fault lines. Living within a walking distance from Hayward fault, I have been interested in earthquakes, waiting for the Big One.

  • Estonia Has a Russian Problem

    No. I am not talking about their eastern neighbor, though the relationship between the two countries is currently even more strained than normal.

    I am talking about their Russian speaking stateless minority that is about 17% of their population (when Russian speaking citizens are included, the percentage climbs to 27.4%). I think that when Soviet Union collapsed and Estonia regained its independence, the native Estonians wanted to kick out the Russians and other Soviet nationals that had been imported or migrated into their country since the WWII, refusing to give citizenship to anyone who did not assimilate enough to pass the Estonian language test, but I thought that the sentiment had faded during the over three decades since, or at least something had been done to resolve the issue of large fraction of population being stateless. If I correctly remember, the newly re-emerged Russia had not wanted to take the Russians and other Russian speakers from Estonia, and I suspect many of the Russian speakers had been born in the country. Without Russian or Estonian passport, these people became stateless. To me, having about 17% of your population as a stateless minority, especially when preparing for war against their supposed native country seems very dangerous.

    An opinion poll comparing Estonian speaking, Russian speaking and bilingual households shows a clear rift in the opinions and attitudes of the ethnic groups. As far as I have seen, the Western media, of course, only publishes the Estonian speakers predominant opinion. The Russian speakers, anyways tend to follow their own media landscape. The pollsters comfort the readers (or themselves) telling that the Russian speakers are not a monolithic group and there is a diversity of opinions among them. This is true, but aside from the commonly differing prevalences of opinions between the linguistic groupings, the other two messages I got from reading this poll were 1) the difference in opinion about Ukrainian war between the region containing Tallinn (more pro-NATO and hawkish) and the rest of the country, and 2) the clear agreement between all groups that ethnic conflict within Estonia is possible, with Estonian speaking majority believing in it more .

  • Klaus Schwab Has Resigned

    Last weekend, it was announced that Klaus Schwab has resigned from his position as a chairman of WEF. He had been one for 55 years, and was one of the faces of the technocratic globalism that the transnational institutions and Western governments have been pushing on the populaces. You know, things like 15 minute cities, CO2 taxes, energiewende, digital IDs, central bank programmable digital currency, the Great Reset and modified RNA vaccines.

    Now it is said that he has resigned as a consequence of a whistle-blower that had implicated Klaus Schwab and his wife in fiscal (and possibly other types) of improprieties, with the WEF board having a sudden emergency meeting. Somehow I doubt this reason – whistle-blowers do not just conveniently appear after 55 years of people not noticing chairman’s practices. I suspect this has more to do with the disastrous effects of the current forced changes on economy and the cultural blowback against the zealous insistence on the Veblen ideologies of the elites enforced with a surveillance state. Since I have not detected WEF to show interest in actual well-being of the masses, rather than the insistence that masses must adapt to their betters’ vision of the Greater Good, I think Klaus Schwab’s ouster has more to do with the smarter members realizing that sawing the branch they are sitting on, i.e., destroying the countries they live in, is not a viable long-term strategy. Even bugout countries, like New Zealand, would sooner or later be destroyed by technocratic practices.

    In a WEF’s Davos meeting about a year ago, Blackrock’s Larry Fink who also sits in WEF’s Board of Trustees, surprised by praising xenophobic countries which had instead of immigration invested in AI and robotics. At that point I took it as a bad omen – what are they planning to do with the people replaced by AI and robotics? In retrospect, I think that was an outward sign that there will be changes within WEF.

    In summary, I think Klaus Schwab was forced out after his vision of New World Order had proven to be a failure.

  • How Many People Are There in China?

    Sometimes, the conspiracies of the West like chemtrails or other forms of weather modification and QAnon become boring and it is fun to look at the conspiracies in the East.

    One of the more intriguing conspiracy theories (to me) is the claim that China has way fewer people than the official 1.4 billion.

    I first encountered this claim some years ago, but did not pay much attention to it. The message sounded too crazy and was promoted by Falun Gong, which has a real reason for a grudge against the CCP government. I am also pretty convinced that part of the anti-China messaging is or was funded by US government as a psy-op against a competing power.

    However, while the figures as low as 300 to 400 million Chinese left (in the Peoples Republic of) seem extreme, I can believe fewer than 1.4 billion, probably no more than 1.2 billion, possibly below 1 billion.

    My reasoning being:

    1) There are government tendencies for inflating population numbers. In places like Nigeria, where the funds from central government are allocated partially based on provincial populations, and corruption is common, local leaders have a pressure to report their populations generously. I suspect Nigeria does not actually have over 200 million people. So many of their princes have died, that the mortality among the peasants must be horrendous. Ahem.

    Similarly, in United States, we do not know the population even at the accuracy of million, which I suspect in part resulting from allocating federal resources like Congress seats based on state population.

    Also, having a large (potential) labor force is believed to improve the economy numbers (although not universally), which is why many Western countries have been importing people en masse.

    2) Related to governmental pressures is the individual financial fraud. Duplicate (or multiplicate) social security accounts have in abounded, at least in earlier times, whereas 100 billion in social security payments have apparently been paid to people with temporary or no social security numbers, maybe half of it obvious fraud. Since China has in recent years implemented a Draconian social credit system, I don’t know how much an individual can bilk the government there by double IDs though private sector frauds are too prevalent to list here.

    3) Mass immigration has generated a global population of hundreds of millions.Many of these individuals are undocumented, which I presume are still in citizenship lists of their home countries while being part of the head count in their current locations. I remember an apocryphal story in Europe about people getting paid social security by two countries, presumably being counted as part of the population in both. I do not know if this inaccuracy includes dual citizens or just undocumented migrants. In case of China, I think their hukou system is pretty water tight within China’s borders, but I also think that millions, maybe tens of millions of Chinese have slipped over the borders, all over the world. These Chinese exist, but reduce the population at home.

    4) Chinese population policies have been a demographic disaster. One Child Policy meant that many of the Gen-X were not allowed to be born, reducing the population growth rate. Now there are too few Millenials and even fewer Gen Z and the young people are too stressed to reproduce. Yet, China’s population was supposed to have grown during the 1970s – 2010s, though at least the recent year’s have officially had negative population growth.

    Therefore, even if we don’t go with the active depopulation hypotheses,

    I don’t think the current global population exceeds 7.5 billion, and would not be hugely surprised if it were as low as 7 billion people.

  • Death Spiral

    How do you kill a city?

    So many people complain about the homeless problem (which is very visible in many California cities), but these people and their plight are a symptom of a deeper malaise.

    It is claimed that people are homeless because they cannot afford an apartment. Actually, many of the homeless are homeless, because they get kicked out of any normal apartment due to mental illness, drug habit or just for being nasty neighbors and tenants. Poverty is a common companion of mental illnesses, drug habit and antisocial behavior. Supportive housing rarely works, the restrictions to their lifestyle are considered intolerable and most of the hardcore homeless prefer their freedoms. Which in California are accommodated. Not saying that freedoms are intrinsically wrong, I just would weigh them against infringement of other people’s rights for safe enjoyment of parks and other public places.

    In any case, California has some freedoms not available in other states, such as freedom to use cannabis products and the de facto freedom to shoplift wherever and, in many cities, to camp on sidewalks. This has led to an exploitable situation as the fuming taxpayers are told that the reason the sidewalks are choked by drugged out homeless that support their habit by shoplifting because there is not enough affordable housing. Let’s collect a new tax or municipal bond (funded by taxes) to build affordable housing to homeless.

    Homeless advocacy organizations mobilize for this initiative, after all someone must administer the funds to the indigents. Signature collectors are hired to ask good citizens (“are you a registered voter here?” to sign a petition for the tax / bond initiative. Politicians speak warmly for (or rarely against) the initiative. There may be an advertisement campaign, at which point a thinking voter should get alarmed – why would anyone pay for an advertisement campaign when hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars are proposed to be raised for ‘common good’?

    Nevertheless, many voters will back an initiative that sounds good without thinking about the long term effects. Once the initiative passes, property or sales taxes are raised, and now the small property owners and small retail businesses are in trouble. The property owners increase the rents making both apartments and small businesses renting their spaces less affordable, Poorer tenants fall behind and get evicted or move somewhere cheaper. The business owners may hang on a bit longer, raising their prices until the customers disappear, and they, too disappear. With loss of tenants, the properties will undergo distressed sales. Which was the purpose of the original initiative.

    A property developer (with sufficient contacts to the municipal bureaucracy and politics to smooth the permitting) will buy the distressed property cheaply and develop it into ‘affordable’ housing. Which somehow does not reduce the swarms of homeless camping on the sidewalks, possibly because they are still free to camp there and the homeless advocacy organizations are flush with funds to use on homeless services.

    Meanwhile, the older residents are losing their homes and the main streets are becoming ghost towns of shuttered and graffitied empty shopfronts. The city is hemorrhaging jobs and residents, with homeless numbers increasing, despite well-funded homelessness services and more affordable housing being built.

    The solution is obvious – let’s raise the taxes to deal with the homelessness and lack of affordable housing! Or maybe, stop using the homeless to exploit the tax payers to enrich the local moneyed interests.