A weekend topic starting with The College Fix. "The 'Solidarity Journalism Initiative' at University of Texas at Austin teaches students to 'convey outrage' and and abandon neutrality with the funding of top tech companies and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. The initiative, which is part of the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Media Engagement, 'helps journalists, journalism educators, and journalism students improve coverage of marginalized communities,' according to its website. 'The decision to report – or not report – on these conditions inherently leaves neutrality behind,' the Solidarity Journalism program states. Financial backers of the initiative include Google and Facebook according to the 'About Us' page."

"The program began at UT-Austin in 2021, after Professor Anita Varma brought it from Santa Clara University. The College Fix reached out by email to Varma twice over two weeks but did not receive a response. She wrote an article in 2021 for Nieman Lab: 'objectivity as an aspirational ideal ends up encouraging journalists to avoid addressing what matters. In coverage of issues like immigration, Covid-19, police brutality, and housing instability, the idea that observations will objectively speak for themselves is quickly off the table,' Varma wrote."

"Journalism Professor Jeffrey McCall criticized this approach in an email to The College Fix. 'The journalism profession should absolutely reject this vacuous and harmful approach to ‘news,’ McCall said. 'Credibility for the news industry is already at historic lows,' the DePauw University professor told The Fix. 'If advocacy journalism becomes the norm in America, the public will simply tune it out because it will be untrustworthy,' he said. ’Solidarity reporting’ works by ‘first determin[ing] an ideological goal, and then craft[ing] content to meet that objective,' McCall said. Instead, 'professional journalism should go where facts lead and report without fear or favor,' McCall said."

Fox 7 in Texas. "Small businesses in South Austin are trying to recover after having their windows smashed. This isn’t the first time the owners have dealt with homeless-related crimes in the area. The employees in the area said a church nearby feeds the homeless, so they flock there every day, but they also linger and cause destruction at night. 'In the last probably two months, we’ve had, easily, well over $10-15,000 worth of damages,' Headspace Salon and Co-op Owner Laura North said. She said, as a small business, it hits hard. 'They’re just coming there and smashing things with rocks and just walking off and not understanding for small business owners that is a huge, huge financial hit for us, and it’s just not sustainable,' North said. 'We see a lot of drug use, a lot of open sexual behavior, a lot of defecation and urinating in public areas and a lot of that stuff, and I will say it seems like some of that has gotten better, but it seems like definitely the vandalism and the kind of destruction, especially later in the evening has gotten significantly worse'"

KOMO Seattle in Washington. "The man arrested after Monday's massive fire at a homeless encampment near the Mercer Street on and off ramp told police it was an accident, according to court documents. During his court hearing Tuesday, it was revealed that he lives in the encampment at Mercer Street and Fairview Avenue and told officers the fire started when he accidentally knocked over a candle while cleaning his tent. 'I told the city this was going to happen, they set fires all the time. We called fire department about seven or eight times this year,' said one of the residents whose apartment building borders the encampment who asked KOMO News not to reveal her identity for safety reasons. 'It's absolutely insane they are protecting 10 people over 2,000 innocent people.'"

The Boston Herald. "Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is considering an ordinance that would strengthen the city’s ability to enforce a tent ban at Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue, as part of her new approach to address escalating violence in the area. These policies proved to be ineffective the last time the mayor tried to enforce a ban on tents at Mass and Cass, at the beginning of May. 'It’s a very, very difficult situation when there are so many residents in need gathered in one location, and there are also individuals who are looking to prey on people or exploit the vulnerabilities that are there,' Wu said, later adding, 'The concern has been that when we see the types of violence or drug trafficking that is concerning, it is often connected to and shielded by tents in the area.'"

From Fox News. "New York's Erie County has put the brakes on accepting asylum seekers after a second migrant from New York City Mayor Eric Adams' resettlement program was charged with sexual assault in the community. At a press conference Saturday, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, a Democrat, announced no more asylum seekers would be sent from the Big Apple until security measures could improve. The decision comes as two asylum seekers face sex crime charges in the county, one in the alleged assault of a Buffalo hotel worker, and another with allegedly raping a woman in front of a three-year-old child."

"'Months ago, when this first started, I had a press conference where I said that we needed to call a state of emergency and that there needed to be a pause to give us time, to be able to plan accordingly to what might happen to Erie County,' said Republican Chrissy Casilio, a local business owner hoping to unseat Poloncarz. Poloncarz declared such an order 'illegal' and 'morally repugnant' in June. '[He] called me morally repugnant for wanting to put a pause and asking for transparency and asking for a plan. But you know what's really repugnant? Is a woman getting raped in front of her three-year-old daughter. What's morally repugnant is a hotel worker getting sexually assaulted,' Casilio responded."

From CTV News. "That many Canadians with mortgages are seeing their amortization periods stretched in a way they've never seen before is something economists and mortgage brokers agree on. But how 'infinity mortgages' really impact homebuyers, mortgage default rates and the economy is less clear, experts say. And while they might not stay infinite for everyone, they're not benign. Unlike borrowers with fixed-rate mortgages, those with variable-rate mortgages have seen the changes reflected in their loans in one of two ways. Borrowers with variable-rate variable-payment mortgages have seen their monthly payments swell with the interest rate."

"Those with fixed-payment mortgages have seen their amortization periods swell instead, from the typical 25 or 30 years to, in some cases to 70 or more. In other cases, says mortgage broker Ron Butler, borrowers' online loan profiles have started to display an infinity symbol for their amortization period where a number should be, hence, the 'infinity mortgage.' 'The (bank's) computer cannot calculate this moment when your payment is less than the required interest,' Butler told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview. 'When the interest is more than your payment, the computer gives up and shows infinity sign.'"

"According to Randy Robinson, political economist and the director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' Ontario office, as many as one in five mortgage holders have seen their amortization periods stretch this year. Once a borrower hits their trigger rate, they are no longer paying down the principal of their mortgage. According to Robinson, borrowers can, and do, find themselves trapped in this scenario for long periods of time. 'My estimate is that there must be at least a half a million households in Canada who are facing this problem where… they're not reducing the principal at all,' Robinson said. 'That's a really, really conservative estimate, if the numbers I've been reading are correct. So it is a big deal.'"

"This is when a mortgage can begin to feel infinite. Robinson says some people in this position spend the rest of their lives paying their lender. 'People who want to become homeowners do so because they want to escape that kind of having to pay for their entire life,' Robinson said. 'And if you die before your mortgage does, well, that's what happened to you. You paid for your entire life.'"

The Australian Financial Review. "China’s police have reportedly warned investors facing financial losses against making public protests, in stepped up efforts to clampdown on criticism and head off any social unrest over the country’s increasingly precarious financial health. With concern growing China is on the brink of a financial crisis, Xi Jinping’s government has doubled down on efforts to contain negative economic data. Authorities this week stopped publishing data on the rising youth unemployment rate, while land sales figures were also missing from regular economic updates."

"Investors who put money into troubled financial giant Zhongzhi said security police had visited them at their homes this week, urging them to avoid public protests, Bloomberg reported. Investors who received the visits come from a wide area of China, including from Beijing. Experts said rising sensitivities from the Chinese authorities about the state of the economy reflected growing concern about the government’s ability to contain the country’s property, debt and unemployment problems."

"'The ship is not sinking, but it is taking on water,' Drew Thompson, a visiting research scholar at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said. 'This feels different. This isn’t like the tail-end of COVID when people protested. This is a tough one to fix. Is this a Lehman moment or a 1932 moment? It is more a question of scale than whether or not it is going to happen, and Chinese policies are exacerbating the crisis that is emerging by either cooking the books, not releasing information, or covering up unflattering data.'"

"China has a successful history of clamping down on protests, including public demands to end its zero-COVID policies late last year. For years, there have been protests by investors who have lost money in failed companies which are quickly shut down by police. The economy has also long been a politically sensitive issue, with investors and stockbrokers saying they could no longer say anything negative about China’s financial health in public. Experts said while there was the potential for widespread protests from investors in uncompleted apartments and now the shadow banking sector, the government would crack down on them hard."

From Reuters. "Buy the state, sell the capitalist - that's how global investors are trying to play China's latest anti-graft crackdowns as they see private enterprise increasingly sidelined in Beijing's quest for 'common prosperity.' Several government bodies in July launched a year-long anti-corruption campaign into the medical system, making clear that China's drive to deliver affordable housing, education and healthcare to its masses was more important. That forced many investors to quickly draw parallels with last year's crusade against private tutoring and a long-running one against tycoon Jack Ma's consumer finance firm Ant Group. The one unanimous conclusion they came to was that Beijing wants a greater state presence in these sectors."

"Investors now believe Xi will be relentless in his social and economic agenda, much of which draws on Mao Zedong's Marxist and socialist thinking. Thomas Masi, a partner and equity portfolio manager at Boston-based GW&K Investment Management, spoke to heads of several Chinese firms that he reckoned were at the fore of innovation in healthcare. 'Basically the message they were getting from the government was that they should be doing some of this innovation for national service, as opposed to for profitability only. That was a lightbulb for us,' said Masi, who was once bullish on healthcare. 'We basically understood…we were not necessarily going to be paid as shareholders.'"

From 1945. "Klaus Schwab, the infamous leader of the WEF (World Economic Forum), who bears a striking semblance to Dr. Evil, proclaimed in 2016: 'You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.' While some write off the concern for the WEF’s agenda as nothing more than the rants of conspiracy theorists, Schwab’s words are less prophetic than they are an inevitable outcome of orchestrated urban planning. Take real estate, for example. Several monumental events have set the stage for a large buyout of individual family homes and along with it, a huge transfer of wealth."

"The Great Recession (2007 – 2009), largely precipitated by the burst of the housing market and subprime mortgage crisis, was probably the largest contributor to the shift away from home ownership to rental in recent history. Millions of homes entered foreclosure and the government did what it does best: intervene. Many financial institutions and investment firms either shut down, merged – consolidating assets into more centralized command centers – or were bailed out by the government."

"The Obama administration launched a pilot program for investors to buy foreclosed homes in bulk and convert them into rentals. 'It was ‘get this off of our balance sheet and our plate’ kind of thinking,' says Desiree Fields, an associate professor at the University of California-Berkeley. 'And it was a real once in a generation opportunity for these investors.'"

"Private equity firms like Blackstone Group (Invitation Homes), Pretium Partners (Progress Residential), and Amherst (Main Street Renewal) convinced public pension funds and other large institutional investors to bankroll their homebuying sprees. Their sales pitch: With tighter lending standards, slow wage growth, and a mountain of student debt, many millennials might never be able to afford a home of their own. One of the biggest profiters from these buyouts has been the goliath investment firm, Blackstone."

"In 2021, Blackstone bought 66 relatively low-rent apartment buildings in San Diego County from a charitable foundation. Tenants of those 5,800 dwellings say they see rent increases, maintenance issues, and evictions in their future. Also in 2021, the firm acquired Home Partners of America Inc., which owns more than 17,000 houses throughout the U.S. In early 2022 Blackstone expanded its portfolio of rental housing and commercial real estate in the United States. The firm spent roughly $6 billion to acquire Preferred Apartment Communities, a real estate investment trust based in Atlanta that owns 44 multifamily communities and about 12,000 housing units in the Southeast. Not surprisingly, Blackstone is a partner of the WEF."

"Globalists like Schwab tout a shared economy where everything belongs to everyone and we all ride off in the sunset on our electric bikes on impeccably paved, tree-lined streets within the borders of a 15-minute city. Fun fact: the concept was initially designed and advocated by the Chinese government to improve overall health and reduce the risk of noncommunicable diseases. However, what the masterminds don’t tell you is everything doesn’t actually belong to everyone – it belongs to a select few. Everyone else is borrowing just about everything from elite owners, or ultimately, the state, as governments increasingly cozy up to private investment firms."

"If you still think this is all just a conspiracy theory, watch a video entitled '8 Predictions for the World in 2030' from the WEF. Again, less predictions and more deliberate planning. Western values, the video says – undoubtedly including free markets, individual liberty, religious freedom, and private property – 'will be tested to the breaking point.' In the wise words of Maya Angelou: 'When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.'"