I’ve heard the same. If a property is ‘renovated’, it retains the same value, tax wise, no matter how much larger the renovated building is.

Not sure how this plays out with a formerly tax exempt property like a church once it get converted into a non-tax exempt property such as a residential apartment building.

THE HELL YOU SAY!! If I lived in Florida, I would put Christmas Lights on all of my Palm Trees.

“Trickle Down” has nothing to do with tariffs. /pedant

But yeah… any gain a company or industry receives from a tariff will be more than offset by the tariffs other countries impose upon us. The US produces and sells a lot of things world wide.

If you have the time, Amtrak is a pleasant way to go. You are right about the seats. They are very comfortable and it is nice to walk around on the train and stretch your legs.

My most recent trip on Amtrak was from Effingham IL to Chicago. They only bad part about the trip was the last couple of miles in Chicago. The train stops just a mile or two away from Union Station and we had to wait quite a bit until it was our turn to move into the station.

Edit: I have been corrected by another commenter below. Amtrak owns rails in the NE corridor. Which explains why it operates so much better there.

As far as I know, Amtrak doesn’t own any of its own rails. It leases access from freight hauling railroads. Because of this relationship, the freight lines always prioritize their own trains over Amtrak. So Amtrak will always suffer until this changes.

Very common. Almost every home built in the past 50 years would have one. Not sure about apartments.

Agreed. The “Pepper munitions” might be paint-ball style rounds shot from paint-ball style guns. I’m not sure in this case, but other police departments have had them. The grenade launchers are for tear gas grenades. Perhaps also flash-bang or stun grenades.

Socialist governance seems to require concentrating an extraordinary amount of power in elite government decision makers; this tends to produce a new ruling class, the widespread deprivation of political rights for everyone else, and crippling poverty.

Obesity isn’t a problem in North Korea. They’ve met their BMI goals.

The article is light on details, but I am assuming he was a draftee in Vietnam, which means he served for about 2 years. You become eligible for a military pension after 20 years of service. I’m not sure what you mean by “we’ll past social security” - ‘well past social security’ ? If so, He is totally eligible for social security. The catch is, your SS benefits are based on what you contributed when you were working. Again, details are scant in the article, but it sounds like this guy didn’t have many high paying jobs during his lifetime.

I like the cut of your jib, good sir (or madam).