Number 5. The Gateway Pundit. Michigan offering locals $500 a month to house illegal aliens.
If I get de-platformed for repeating that headline, it will be the Gateway Pundit’s fault.
Michigan is once again in the news, setting the pace for us in generosity. Except that the state is setting the government’s pace for the residents’ generosity.
Migrants overflowing the U.S. southern border are flooding cities and overwhelming government-provided shelters. There has been lots of hand-wringing, but Michigan is putting their taxpayer’s money where their mouth is. The Office of Global Michigan, which has a nice George Orwell ring to it, has introduced the Newcomer Rental Subsidy program.
I am all about subsidies, because it generally means I can get some of YOUR money to cover MY expenses. Except in this case, the State of Michigan is not quite as generous as one might hope.
Surveying my own household bills over the past three years, I don’t think 500 bucks a month to house a newcomer will catch it. Here is my completely non-scientific perception of costs during that timeframe:
Electricity - up 50%
Gas - up 30%
Fuel - up 50%
Groceries - I am afraid to look, but my wife tells me it’s gruesome
Breakfast with the guys - up 25%
Drive thru coffee - up 50%
If dinner at home (something besides ramen noodles) costs $10 each, you’ll spend $300 a month just on one meal a day for your guest. That does not count utilities, laundry or other food.
Michigan is falling somewhat short of covering full expenses, so my guess is they will have to make up the gap with the reliable motivators of political agendas: guilt, shame and humiliation.
Expect an appeal to the mainstream churches soon.
I don’t know which of these is more brilliant: The way squatters are forced out of properties they don’t own, or how the guy forcing them out has monetized it on YouTube.
The dashingly named Flash Shelton became aware that property owners in California had a problem with unauthorized persons invading unoccupied houses and taking up residence: Squatters.
Generally, Flash knew it was an issue, but when his own mother fell victim, it became personal.
Flash’s mom owned a house she was trying to sell. Squatters moved in, making the sale impossible. The squatters did not ask permission and did not pay rent. In California, as in most states, evicting them is not exactly impossible, but it is quite costly and time-consuming to wade through the legal system.
Enter Flash. He asked him mom for a long-term lease on the vacant, yet occupied, house. She gave it to him. He moved in, alongside the squatters.
Flash, it turns out, can be a really annoying housemate. He films everything and posts it to YouTube. Eventually, the squatters either have to take him to court — an unlikely path for them to evict him from a house they have no right to — or leave.
Leaving is preferable.
Flash says he has been able to force some dozen families out of various houses in the past year. It may be heartless and cruel, or it may just be a reasonable way to protect your property.
“I'm not hurting anyone. I'm not throwing them out,” Shelton says. He is merely making a nuisance of himself.
And gaining a street name along the way: The Squatter Hunter.
Number 3. AP News. A loophole got him a free New York hotel room for 5 years. And the hotel.
And while we are on the subject of living where you shouldn’t, Mickey Barreto has taken it to a whole new level.
Using a 35-year-old city ordinance, Barreto requested a long-term lease at an historic New York City hotel after staying for one night. Initially denied by management, he presented a 1988 law that assured the availability of such leases. The measure was originally adopted by the City as part of a rent control program.
Barreto never paid for the ensuing nights.
When the hotel forcibly removed his belongings from his room, he took them to court, citing the 1988 law and complaining that the hotel had not followed customary procedure in his eviction.
The judge hearing the case agreed, ordered the hotel to let him move back in and issue him a key.
Barreto then studied the judge’s written opinion and discovered two juicy facts: It did not specify that he was to pay rent, and it did not provide a time limit on his stay.
Great news!
Barreto then managed to work New York’s extensive real estate bureaucracy. He forged a deed to the hotel, putting the property in his own name, and submitted it to an obscure local City department with overworked staff. The bureaucracy eventually ground out a legal deed, duly recorded in official city records. It showed MIckey Barreto as the lawful owner, just as the forged deed had said.
Mickey Barreto was now a hotel owner, living in a 200-square-foot bedroom with a 42-inch TV and free cable.
He wasn’t done. He ordered the hotel restaurant to begin sending monthly profits to himself, as the rightful owner of the enterprise. Address the check to Room 2565.
He ordered remodeling of a portion of the lobby because he didn’t like the way it looked.
He ordered the floor he lived on vacated, except for his own room.
Eventually charges were filed, and this time they will probably stick. Now, Mickey Barreto faces the next 15 years in a different sort of housing situation, but still with free room and board, compliments of the State of New York.
Number 2. Run 24-7 dot come. The Barkley Marathons.
And now, for you health nuts, comes the story of the world’s worst marathon, taking place annually at Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee.
With the traditional ceremony of the Lighting of the Cigarette (hey, I’m just reading what it says, okay?) at 5:17 AM one morning last week, the 2024 Barkley Marathon began.
This event has acquired the reputation as the toughest footrace in the world. Only 17 people have ever managed to complete the course. I’d love to tell you what the terrain is like, but the article does not say, and many details seem to be shrouded in intentional secrecy.
The route changes each year and is kept secret until just before the race begins.
Apparently, the brainstorm to initiate this race came when the original organizer discovered an unlikely pace setter. James Earl Ray, convicted assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr., served time in eastern Tennessee’s Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary.
Ray managed to escape the maximum security facility once, but made it only 8 miles in 54 hours before being apprehended. Thick undergrowth and rugged terrain defeated him.
That gave Gary Cantrell an idea. Heck, he thought, I could have done better than that.
And so the Barkley Marathon idea was born.
The race is 100 miles long, 5 segments of 20 miles each, to be completed in no more than 60 hours total. That means you run for 12 hours, 5 times in a row without breaks. Elevation change on the course may be as much as 25,000 feet.
Arguably, the faster you run, the more time you have for rest between segments.
What a great idea for your next Spring Break!
Number 1. Smithsonian Magazine. This insect has the only mechanical gears ever found in nature.
And now, from an astute subscriber to the ANR, comes this story, which, like the last, is also about how legs work. Sort of.
Issus coleoptratus is a 3 millimeter long insect and gets around by hopping from one place to another. For this, Coley needs a set of powerful muscles in his legs.
However, both legs need to be exactly as powerful as each other. If one dominates, Coley will jump off-track and be unable to continue in a straight line.
Why it is important for the bug to jump in a straight line is not exactly explained here. Probably if you are reading Smithsonian Magazine you should already know things like that. But I digress.
Issus coleoptratus is the only animated entity in existence that uses tissue-based sprockets to drive his legs.
A tiny set of gears — and I mean really tiny — develop in the young insect in each leg. When he is ready to make a jump, the gears mesh (much like sliding your shift lever into low gear with the clutch disengaged) and lock the hind legs together for the launch.
(I’d like to know how far he jumps, but apparently that was something else I was supposed to know before I read the article.)
The gear mechanism, when inspected under an electron microscope, looks for all the world like those gizmos on the back of the combine that we used on the farm until about 1970: Round cogs with shaped teeth that lock together with their corresponding mate.
What is perhaps more amazing is that when Coley’s shell molts, and he passes his bar mitzvah into adult insecthood, the gears do not grow back. They are replaced with an intricate mechanism that locks the legs together by means of a growth protruding from each leg to the other.
The on-point directional jump is thus maintained.
I have tried in vain to come up with a clever application for this bit of arcane knowledge. Maybe you don’t read the Smithsonian for anything practical. But it does leave me with this sobering thought, which is admittedly out of place in The Alligator News Roundup:
God created every living thing according to their kind,
Even the creeping things, and flying fowl,
For His glory forever.
(Genesis 1:21; Psalm 148:10; Romans 11:36) But don’t take MY word for it!
Have a good weekend! When you jump, endeavor to jump straight!
And please share this with someone who needs a brief bit of illumination during this cold, dark season of finishing their taxes.
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The Alligator News Roundup