Experiencing The Money Pit In Real Life
A report from the Associated Press. “In the days after Helene razed much of western North Carolina, some store owners in downtown Boone have a lot of cleanup to do and don’t know if they’ll see much business at all for the foreseeable future — a critical problem for a town of about 19,000 people that relies on tourism, especially in the fall. Kurt Kaunath said there’s been ‘cancellation after cancellation’ for an Airbnb he owns in the area. It was almost fully booked for October before the storm hit, he said. ‘That’s when all these businesses make their money, and that’s when all the people are here supporting the hotels and all the infrastructure that’s here,’ he said. ‘And that’s not going to happen.'”
From Channel 9. “Condo owners in Central Florida are urging state officials to reform a 2022 law that dictates how condos must be maintained. In May, Channel 9 shared how one Orange County Condo board planned to pass a more than $22,000 special assessment. Bryan Pricher helped lead the effort to oust the board and now serves as the new Regency Gardens condo board president. But Pricher said several homeowners decided to sell their units before the new board had the chance to adjust the budget. ‘Like 40% of the association sold to investment companies that were offering pennies on the dollar. Essentially, you know, $180,000 units were going for $130,000,’ said Pricher. Pricher is now one of many condo owners calling for reform. ‘It’s not sustainable. They’re not going to be able to fund reserves by the end of next year, as this current legislation says,’ said Pricher.”
The Miami Herald in Florida. “The long-time president of a ritzy Aventura condominium was arrested Monday and charged with stealing $1.5 million in association fees, laundering some of it through his dead mother and using the money to buy art and chicken wings. Gregori Arzumanov, 62, was taken into custody at his apartment Tuesday morning and charged with a bevy of felony counts. Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle read off a list of alleged wrongdoings in Arzumanov’s 32-page arrest warrant and explained how he intimidated unit owners who questioned his tactics through excessive fines and lawsuits. The state attorney said he was able to do that because at the time of his arrest Arzumanov was not only president of the Turnberry on the Green Condo Association, but the building’s chief engineer and property manager. ‘It turns out there was trouble in paradise,’ Fernandez Rundle said.”
5280 in Colorado. “The problems started four days before we moved in, when one of the window washers we’d hired to clean our new Sloan’s Lake duplex walked upstairs from the basement and said, ‘Ma’am, you’ve got a leak.’ The two-year-old, never-been-lived-in duplex was on the market for around $100 per square foot less than others we’d toured, largely because the original builder had been foreclosed on. We thought we were getting a great deal. So did our real estate agent. Hot—literally and figuratively—I started to wonder who was at fault for all these mistakes. It turns out that we aren’t alone in our tribulations. The Mile High City is experiencing an unfortunate convergence of factors that’s leading to some people—like us—unknowingly moving into shoddily constructed homes and then experiencing The Money Pit in real life.”
“‘A housing shortage means builders can get away with cutting corners,’ says David Pardo, technical lead at Nookhaus, a Colorado firm that builds accessory dwelling units in Denver, and a property manager for condos and townhomes. The reality, he says, is that because of the shortage of homes, ‘builders know that every home they build will sell’—even if it’s a house of cards.”
“In a Hail Mary to solve our ongoing lack of air conditioning, we had our ducts cleaned in the hope that it would improve airflow, if not fully cool the moving air. After pulling out two beer cans, a wad of tape, and seemingly all of the drywall debris from the home’s construction, which the builders had swept into the ducts instead of a dumpster, one of the technicians looked befuddled. ‘I was just at a house where the people have lived for 40 years and never had their ducts cleaned,’ he said. ‘Yours were dirtier.'”
Bisnow on California. “When Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass received the Olympic flag at the closing ceremonies of the 2024 Games in Paris, the countdown to the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics in Los Angeles began for real. But with all these new visitors slated to descend on the LA area in less than two years, the Los Angeles County hotel sector is facing major headwinds, Atlas Hospitality Group President Alan Reay said. LA County saw an 80% decline in sales volume in the first half of 2024 — the steepest decline in sales volume statewide, Reay told the audience. ‘That obviously says that buyers are not seeing what they think are opportunistic buys,’ Reay said.”
“Reay also said distress in the hotel market is common, estimating that of the state’s roughly 10,000 hotels, a fifth are in default of some kind, whether on the basis of debt service coverage ratio or a technical default. Lenders aren’t being pushed to enforce notices of default, Reay said, so they aren’t. ‘We’re not really ready for company,’ The Hollywood Partnership President and CEO Kathleen Rawson said, speaking generally about the city’s infrastructure and streetscape. Rawson said the city is ‘a case study in deferred maintenance,’ referring to the kind of maintenance that affects how people experience the city, such as street cleaning, sidewalk maintenance and new lighting.”
Silicon Valley in California. “San Jose city leaders have signed off on a plan to attract new businesses downtown — including a two-year business tax exemption — hoping that the short-term benefits offered will lead to long-term growth and vibrancy. According to data from real estate firm CoStar, vacancies in downtown San Jose exceeded 31% through the second quarter of this year, up from 12% in 2019. ‘For a lot of businesses, it doesn’t pencil financially, so they’re not renewing their leases,’ San Jose Downtown Association CEO Alex Stettinski said in an interview with The Mercury News. ‘We have a vacancy rate that is substantial, so we have to creatively find ways to push businesses over the edge with financial incentives.'”
KCRA in California. “One of downtown Sacramento’s tallest buildings has been sold for significantly less than it was purchased for. Manulife US Real Estate Management (MUST) announced that it is divesting 400 Capitol Mall. The 29-story building is often referred to as the Wells Fargo Tower or Wells Fargo Building at the corner of 4th and Capitol. MUST plans to use proceeds from the sale to help pay off debt. The 501,308-square-foot building was sold to an all-cash buyer for $117 million. KCRA3 Money Expert Kelly Brothers said this represents a 41% drop in value from what it was most recently sold for. Brothers also stressed that this sale creates a ripple effect of less tax revenue in the future.”
The Washington Post. “The D.C. Council unanimously passed an emergency bill Tuesday to roll back pandemic-era eviction protections and rental-assistance policies that city leaders say have led to a crisis of unpaid rent, causing some affordable housing developments to be on the brink of foreclosure. While the council earlier in the pandemic sought to make it easier for people to access those funds and avoid eviction, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) has acknowledged that those changes have had unintended consequences for affordable housing providers and require urgent correction. ‘The problem is this: It’s financial. What we are seeing is, on an aggregate basis, these affordable housing providers are carrying tens of millions of dollars in uncollected rent, and that is not sustainable,’ Mendelson said.”
Bisnow New York. “In March 2023, First Citizens BancShares, which has a history of acquiring failed banks, acquired most of Silicon Valley Bank’s assets, including approximately $2.6B in CRE loans. Two months later, it pulled back from the real estate market, announcing it would no longer draft general office loans. Similarly, New York Community Bancorp bought a chunk of Signature’s assets, including $13B in loans, last year. However, that acquisition caused NYCB to spiral, nearly collapsing itself before receiving a last-minute $1B cash infusion from a group of investment funds. Earlier this year, it was reported that even investment management behemoth Blackstone, which led a joint venture that purchased a stake in a $17B portfolio of Signature loans, was looking to offload more than 10% of that purchase a month later. Blackstone Managing Director Tony LaBarbera doubled down on the asset manager’s position at the Bisnow event. ‘You can have all of our Signature loans,’ LaBarbera joked onstage.”
“Panelists discussed eyeing everything from distressed trophy buildings to residential conversions to niche properties like data centers and cold storage — and avoiding the beleaguered office sector. ‘[Lenders] spend a lot more time negotiating much tougher loan documents. They push that risk onto not just the sponsors, in general, but the guarantors as well,’ PH Realty Capital founder Peter Hungerford said. ‘There is a rule that we live by, and that is, ‘He or she with the gold makes the rules.’”
The Financial Post. “In Vancouver, Canada’s most expensive housing market , home prices compared to income growth have not increased as much, while rents have risen sharply, says UBS. It is now considered at moderate risk of a real estate bubble. Globally, the cities at greatest risk of real estate bubbles in 2022 before interest rates began to climb saw the biggest corrections in prices, said the report. ‘Vancouver, Toronto and Amsterdam recorded significant prices declines of around 10 per cent in real terms,’ it said.”
The Telegraph. “There are few more inconvenient truths in modern Britain than the failure of mass migration. We wanted to believe the myth, that we could fling open our doors and into the UK would flow migrants from across the globe, transforming our nation into a prosperous melting pot. But wishing it so was not enough, and with each new dataset the economic miracle looks more and more like a mirage. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) recently showed that a ‘low-wage migrant’ who comes to Britain aged 25 will cost the taxpayer £150,000 net by the time they reach 66, £438,000 by 80, and £1.2 million if they live to 100. That we’ve recently experienced the worst GDP per capita growth since the 1970s suggests immigration does not magically boost living standards.”
“And that’s before you get to what the OBR refers to as ‘dilution of capital stock’: how the rate of immigration far exceeds the ability of our state to adapt. So we have a decaying NHS, clogged up roads, crumbling infrastructure. And it’ll only get worse: in the 27 years since 1997, net migration added six million people to the country. In the next 13 years, we could easily add half that number again. The elites expect everyone to swallow the idea that everything is fine. That mass migration is an unalloyed good, and unrelated to such issues as our chronic housing crisis. The trouble is, people no longer believe that everything is fine. They want our doors open to the best and brightest. What they don’t want is for Britain to open its welfare state to the world.”
Scoop New Zealand. “Our latest QV House Price Index shows values decreased nationally by an average of 2% throughout the three months to the end of August – a fraction of a percentage point more than in the July quarter. The average home is now worth $905,357, which is almost exactly the same as at the start of the 2024 calendar year. ‘Home values have continued to slowly ebb and flow throughout the first eight months of 2024, but they are now effectively flat overall for the calendar year,’ said QV operations manager James Wilson. ‘Now that interest rates are finally coming down, we are seeing renewed interest in housing generally across the country. However, this won’t necessarily translate into home value growth while there’s such an excess of stock available for sale. Values will tighten again when prospective buyers aren’t as spoilt for choice as they are currently, which could take a while. An abundance of real estate listings – especially in and around our largest cities – is expected to keep a firm lid on home value growth.'”
“‘Of course, we also expect to see even more real estate listings in the months ahead, as spring is traditionally when the real estate selling season starts ramping up again,’ he said. ‘More investors will look to sell properties following the changes to the bright line test back in July, and sellers who pulled their listings after trying and failing to sell earlier in the year may even look to try again now that there’s an uptick in activity and a general sense that confidence amongst buyers is increasing.'”
From ABC News. “A Perth builder which is fighting to retain its building registration after failing to complete hundreds of homes has now rebranded as a property sales company. Western Australia’s Building Services Board deregistered Nicheliving in July, saying it was not confident the company could pay its debts when they fell due. But a stay order issued by the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT) allowed Nicheliving to continue operating until a full review takes place in November. The Niche group has now moved much of its building and property work under an entity called Australian Property Alliance.”
“The initial decision to deregister Nicheliving was a huge relief to customers with unfinished homes, as it would have allowed them to claim up to $200,000 in indemnity insurance to complete the work. The stay order has since left unhappy customers in limbo, with the SAT hearing about 200 customers, some of whom signed contracts as far back as 2019, were still waiting for their homes to be completed. Some have told the ABC they were facing homelessness and were close to bankruptcy, as their properties remained unfinished years past the completion dates specified in their contracts.”
“Janine Carter, 58, who’s been waiting for her Nicheliving home in Tapping in Perth’s north to be built for almost four years, was shocked to learn of the company’s rebrand. ‘I’m worried that they’re going to be moving assets into a different company or just running under a different company name to suck more people in because the name Nicheliving has been tarnished so much,’ she said. The single mother signed on for a Nicheliving home in December 2020, which was supposed to be finished by July 2022. She said an extension was successfully sought by Nicheliving until April 2023, but the build is still largely unfinished. ‘You can’t plan ahead because you just don’t know when you’re ever going to be in, and at this stage, I don’t think I ever will be,’ she said. ‘We thought we had a light at the end of the tunnel and then it got taken away from us and I can just see that this is going to keep dragging on and on.'”
“Nicheliving director Ronnie Michel-Elhaj has also come under fire over an altercation with channel seven reporter Geof Parry on September 29. Mr Parry approached Mr Michel-Elhaj outside a house Nicheliving is currently building for Mr Michel-Elhaj’s wife. Mr Parry asked him why he was working on the house rather than prioritising his customer’s homes. Mr Michel-Elhaj attempted to grab Mr Parry’s microphone, lunged at the camera and physically grabbed Mr Parry, at one point tackling him to the ground. Mr Michel-Elhaj then followed the news crew across the street, stating repeatedly that he did not wish to be filmed. WA Premier Roger Cook condemned the behaviour in a media conference on Monday. ‘Violence is never OK,’ Mr Cook said. ‘My message to Nicheliving is: ‘Ronnie, read the room’. ‘It’s not OK that you look after yourself and your home when you have literally hundreds of clients that are still not being able to get into their own homes that you are under contract to build.'”
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Federal income taxes.
The “hostages” aren’t in Gaza, the hostage is you, the American taxpayer:
https://nypost.com/2024/10/01/us-news/all-the-us-military-assets-in-the-middle-east-as-israel-iran-tensions-flare/
Citizen! Your recalcitrance when it comes to embracing the Politics of Joy could be problematic for your social credit score.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/kamala-harris-and-the-new-politics-of-joy.html
Joy
That word doesn’t mean what Democrats think it means.
‘In a Hail Mary to solve our ongoing lack of air conditioning, we had our ducts cleaned in the hope that it would improve airflow, if not fully cool the moving air. After pulling out two beer cans, a wad of tape, and seemingly all of the drywall debris from the home’s construction, which the builders had swept into the ducts instead of a dumpster, one of the technicians looked befuddled. ‘I was just at a house where the people have lived for 40 years and never had their ducts cleaned,’ he said. ‘Yours were dirtier’
And what was in those beer cans was pissed inside yer walls too winnah!
‘You can have all of our Signature loans,’ LaBarbera joked’
This is funny Tony cuz you guys were bragging at the time how you had found gold nuggets just sitting under the El Camino parked in the front yard, and now you can’t give it away.
‘Like 40% of the association sold to investment companies that were offering pennies on the dollar. Essentially, you know, $180,000 units were going for $130,000,’ said Pricher.
No, Bryan. $130,000 units are going for $130,000. Mr. Market determines the price, so there you have it.
Florida is finished
Florida is finished
No one should buy a Condo in Florida for at least the next year.
We thought we were getting a great deal. So did our real estate agent.
Your real estate agent is all about “Always Be Closing,” not judiciary duty to “clients.” Learn something, FBs.
Fiduciary not judiciary. I hate spell check.
he Mile High City is experiencing an unfortunate convergence of factors that’s leading to some people—like us—unknowingly moving into shoddily constructed homes and then experiencing The Money Pit in real life.”
It’s a safe assumption that nearly every shack thrown up by builders and developers since at least the scamdemic is a defect-ridden money pit. I marvel at the stupidity of FBs who fail to do a proper due diligence even though the internet is rife with first hand accounts of tales of woe due to shoddy design and substandard workmanship and materials.
“since at least the scamdemic”
Since at least 2003. I’m happy I bought a Cold War era house.
While the council earlier in the pandemic sought to make it easier for people to access those funds and avoid eviction, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) has acknowledged that those changes have had unintended consequences for affordable housing providers and require urgent correction.
I’m guessing Phil has been feeling the heat from slum lords upset over officially enabled freeloading and deadbeat tenants.
‘There is a rule that we live by, and that is, ‘He or she with the gold makes the rules.’”
WIth the Fed & Biden-Harris regime hurtling us down the road to Venezuela del Norte, that rule has never been more true.
“There are few more inconvenient truths in modern Britain than the failure of mass migration. We wanted to believe the myth, that we could fling open our doors and into the UK would flow migrants from across the globe, transforming our nation into a prosperous melting pot.
I suspect the UK’s globalist scum media & globalist Quisling politicians are privately expressing alarm over the reckoning that awaits them when Enoch Powell’s prophetic predictions come to pass.
If those migrants were so prosperous, then they would have built up their home countries and wouldn’t need to migrate.
Well said
The 2020 election was stolen.
While the globalist scum media assures us that claims of a 2020 election steal are “baseless,” the Democrat-Bolsheviks fight tooth and nail against any efforts to ensure the integrity of the electoral process. One of these things is not like the other.
https://x.com/amuse/status/1841276808186171600
It’s disgusting.
My takeaways from last night’s debate:
1. Leftists on X are dwelling on Vance’s refusal to acknowledge that DJT lost in 2020. They’re quite giddy about it, believing that Special K is going to gain a ton of votes. As if it hasn’t been hashed out already. Poor misguided souls. They can’t seem to grasp that J6 has already been maxxed out, and that any mention of J6 is just tossed in to make them feel good about themselves. They fall for it every time.
2. CBS moderators went too far again, and exposed themselves as biased. I think they were supposed to be subtle and got too carried away to where Vance called them on it. Even purple-pilled Chris Cuomo pointed out that “they made themselves a problem.”
3. Walz had some humdings: I’m friends with school sh**ters, I’m a knucklehead, muh-derrr mispoke. But to me his most memorable takeaway was 90 full minutes of nervous fidgeting and staring with his mouth so open that you could see his IQ point fall out.
4. Vance didn’t change any votes directly from Special K to DJT.
5. Vance drove some voter turnout among non-voting Republican supporters.
6. Most telling X comment I read: “I don’t like DJT but I want to vote for him just so I can get 8 years of Vance after him.” 😮
7. Vance *definitely* dispelled any doubts that anyone had in DJT’s choice.
8. Vance is fulfilling his role as the insurance pick. Anything happens to DJT, never fear, JD is here. See point #6.
Some have told the ABC they were facing homelessness and were close to bankruptcy, as their properties remained unfinished years past the completion dates specified in their contracts.”
Welp, at least you weren’t throwing away money on rent.
Another failed construction firm in Oz.
There’s no telling where all the money went.
The Washington Post. “The D.C. Council unanimously passed an emergency bill Tuesday to roll back pandemic-era eviction protections and rental-assistance policies that city leaders say have led to a crisis of unpaid rent, causing some affordable housing developments to be on the brink of foreclosure. While the council earlier in the pandemic sought to make it easier for people to access those funds and avoid eviction,…”
“…Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) has acknowledged that those changes have had unintended consequences for affordable housing providers and require urgent correction.”
” ‘The problem is this: It’s financial. What we are seeing is, on an aggregate basis, these affordable housing providers are carrying tens of millions of dollars in uncollected rent, and that is not sustainable,’ Mendelson said.”
– Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius. This is illegal. Government’s have no right to violate contract law. This also violates the Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
– This is Wa Po. They wouldn’t have mentioned this if it wasn’t about “affordable” – read government subsidized – housing. The problems with rent and eviction moratoria were much worse in the private sector. Private property rights and contract law were violated. Total communism.
– “Unintended consequences.” The outcome of BK for property owners – LLs was intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. Most all government policies during the pandemic were unlawful and very damaging to America. This was intentional. It’s almost as if they hate us or something.
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ ”- Ronald Reagan – 40th president of US (1911 – 2004)
“A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society.” – Ludwig von Mises
“Every socialist is a disguised dictator.” – Ludwig von Mises
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money [to spend].” – Margaret Thatcher
“The enduring lesson of the 20th century is that socialism is a failure, and free markets are a success. But the politicians keep advocating just a little more socialism.” – Milton Friedman
– Private property rights, legal contracts, and the rule of law are basic tenets of any sound society and economic system. Make a note. The United States is a nation of laws, until it isn’t. I’m sure this is purely coincidental:
The Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto, 1-5:
1848 by Karl Heinrich Marx
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
off housing topic: I notice the big push among Democratic politicians is to claim participation in notable causes/events in order to increase their own status, especially if it makes them look like “one of the people”.
yeah man, “I was at Woodstock”. Ok, buy can you finally buy some new jeans & cut that STUPID ponytail ?! there’s only 1 dr. johnny fever and you ain’t him!
as you were
– Exhibit A. “She’s just like me!”
https://x.com/irv_babbitt/status/1840132375537209720
Real_Irving_Babbitt @irv_babbitt
Just to let you know how full of 💩Harris is…
This👇🏻is the “middle class” home she
grew up in…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GYl2pMjWYAAkShj?format=jpg&name=small
4:52 PM · Sep 28, 2024 · 1.5M Views
Looks nicer than where I squat
That’s a really nice lawn!
LOL
How is the MSN going to re market the fact that Walz said, “I have become friends with school shooters.” Maybe something like….
The compassion Walz has shown in reaching out to troubled children is the kind of leadership we need.
or
Walz is a man that understands each according to his ability , each according to his need.
or
Redirecting troubled youth to serve in the military is something Walz will make a priority, or
President Security detail.
or
Wala never said that, Trump said that.
Mostly peaceful…..
School shooters are useful props for the Democrat-Bolshevik “gun violence” narrative, i.e. we must disarm law-abiding Americans cuz “gun violence” while coddling the criminal element. No surprise that Walz counts them among his friends.
JD Vance got Tampon Timmy to admit that the Democrat-Bolsheviks intend to criminalize free speech.
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1841308817663078697
From Newsweek:
Biden Harris do not care about Appalachia
Klaus Schwab should say….
We are engaged in a Great Reset, that we the Elite Class have committed to winning the battle again life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the billions of inhabitants of earth.
Just because our Great Narratives that carbons should be reduced to zero are a little false and would create a epic disaster , its no reason to give up a Great Narrative we painstakingly created. We don’t have the option to cast another Narrative, so that’s our story and we are sticking to it.
Now we are engaged in the battle of elimination of Global free speech, misinformation, hate speech , etc., that threatens the Great Agenda.
Our Great friend John Kerry has explained to the useless idiots that its to hard to govern with the roadblock of the first amendment, and consensus is impossible with dispute.
We are committed to going the extra mile in our commitment to Stakeholder Capitalism , controlling all earth’s resources and the consumption of what
is our inherent right to control.
We are close to the goals we set out to accomplish so many years ago. So onward comrades, don’t lose heart, even if we don’t have a heart.
disclaimer. Satire
These people aren’t even guberment dog catchers. What the heck are they going to do? They couldn’t open a can of soup if their life depended on it.
A reader sent these in:
5%! of all businesses in existence in Canada shuttered in one month
https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1841300334121234433
So let’s tally it up this morning, shall we?
Japan is in the shitter.
China is in such bad economic shape, that the central authority is throwing literally everything at the problem, trying to prop up the equity markets and spur investment into the country.
Europe has zero employment and rising inflation.
Mexico is receding quickly and prices are climbing.
The United States’ numbers are so awful that they’re simply untrustworthy. But recession is at hand and will be admitted to after they try to keep the same incompetence in office for 4 more years.
Canada… Good Lord.
2025–2028 will be really, really hard times for many people.
https://x.com/his_eminence_j/status/1840742694135697545
It’s official. Starting next year, Houston’s highways will undergo another widening project to the tune of $9 billion, impacting 450 acres and displacing 344 businesses and 1,079 homes. I truly hope that one more lane really fixes it this time.
https://x.com/the_transit_guy/status/1840742862968754273
Maybe Michael Dell will use the money to start paying his mortgage on the Four Seasons Maui. 👇🏼
https://x.com/MauiBoyMacro/status/1840873857902919752
Mississauga has fallen. Back to 2017 prices. What’s crazy is this sold after the 3rd rate cut, 2% inflation and all the other supposed bullish narratives for housing in Canada.
https://x.com/ManyBeenRinsed/status/1841232220008165828
Your average boomer complaining about his taxes after his house went from 350k in 2019 to 750k today
https://x.com/NipseyHoussle/status/1840896976436478443
the average boomer is broke and house poor
https://x.com/Rando144/status/1840900120197677121
This guy made $900,000 last year. The average port worker makes $147,000 with $35,000 in annual medical benefits.
He says a 50% pay raise isn’t good enough and doesn’t care if their strike destroys regular Americans.
https://x.com/FinanceLancelot/status/1841150742607933669
Half of all listings have lingered on the market for at least 60 days, the highest share for any August since 2019.
The sluggish summer market continued with home sales dropping to the lowest level since the start of the pandemic.
https://x.com/Redfin/status/1840801443957121137
Samsung to Cut up to 15,000 Jobs Amid Struggles in AI Market. Layoffs in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand
https://x.com/dailyjobcuts/status/1841191404732559623
State Farm Expects to Shed 1M Homeowner Policies in California.. would reduce exposure 35% via non-renewals and market attrition
https://x.com/dailyjobcuts/status/1841110048325468351
🤔8 “migrant” workers accused of looting in flood-ravaged Tennessee following Hurricane Helene
https://x.com/dailyjobcuts/status/1841105403360268714
The spike in STRs on this chart perfectly coincides with the timing of the Payroll Protection Program (PPP). 🤔
https://x.com/MauiBoyMacro/status/1841312611356553400
Restaurant performance leads other types of retail businesses, and discretionary spending in general. 👇🏼
https://x.com/MauiBoyMacro/status/1841123329773879488
So much for that booming labor market I keep hearing about.
https://x.com/cherrygarciafan/status/1841131486893797807
Toronto’s job market feels like a scene from the Great Depression; lining up for hope in the 21st century.
https://x.com/ShaziGoalie/status/1841260237744898120
Just so you all know, the average dock worker who is threatening to strike for higher wages and better benefits makes $147,000 per year and about $35,000 per year in employer-paid health care.
https://x.com/RepMikeCollins/status/1840907772482756967
The longshoremen don’t seem like the good guys to me.
They want 70% raises and no technology and are willing to cripple the nations economy after a horrific natural disaster to get it?
They seem to relish the pain they will inflict on people.
https://x.com/SwissWatchGuy/status/1841099702969749853
8 “migrant” workers accused of looting in flood-ravaged Tennessee following Hurricane Helene
“They’re not sending their best”
Mexico is receding quickly and prices are climbing.
Red diaper baby Claudia Sheinbaum was installed as Mexico’s new prez yesterday. I would avoid vacationing in Mexico. If you’re on a cruise don’t bother getting off at any Mexican ports of call, or just about any other one in the Caribbean. There’s a reason why the major cruise lines have private islands where it’s safe to disembark and spend some time on the beach.
“The average port worker makes $147,000 with $35,000 in annual medical benefits.”
High-end Fed Govs make about that much, with similar bennies.
and do a lot less work.
It’s amusing watching Mr. Longshore Man of The People lecture everyone while wearing a ton of gold bling. (typical longshore union behavior)
The majority of people who come in contact with any longshore unions through their own work become very anti union very quickly. I personally loathe them.
“…while wearing a ton of gold bling.”
It really broadcasts negatively for me.
Most of them are insufferable DB’s just like him.
OPINION – That was awful for Tim Walz: he flubbed his VP debate against JD Vance
Vance couldn’t believe his luck. The Republican vice-presidential nominee was only too pleased to play the game that he and the governor were commonsensical, bipartisan people. Walz and Vance kept saying how much they “actually” agreed with each other on housing, jobs and support for families. It was sweet, in a way, to see a Democrat and a Republican spar lightly with each other, harking back to a more gentle era B.T. – Before Trump. But, “C’mon man, give me a break!” Joe Biden might have roared, if he were still awake. There is too much at stake.
After an hour and a half of watching Walz nervously sweat and stumble through the CBS debate, the end could not come too soon for Democrats. Where was the Big Dad Energy that had made their folk hero such a viral fan favourite? Walz’s voice cracked as he delivered his closing pitch to voters. The former small-town high school football coach knew he had let his side down.
After brilliantly labelling Vance “weird” at the start of the campaign – what with his peculiar obsession with childless cat ladies and, nudge, nudge, couches – Walz normalised him. It was as though there was nothing to fear after all from a Trump-Vance ticket. This was unexpected, to say the least. Donald Trump Jr smirked on X, “I’m pretty sure that by the end of this debate, Walz is going to vote for JD.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/opinion-awful-tim-walz-flubbed-074847036.html?guccounter=1
Ugh, you couldn’t get any more slanted than these screeching banshees.
She writes: ” With any luck this will be the soundbite of the night. “Did [DJT] lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked. “Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance dodged. ”
As I said, they’re still clinging to the J6 narrative. They don’t realize that the church is empty, the doors are slammed shut, and the choir have no choice but to sing only to each other. BTW the soundbyte of the night is being friends with school shooters.
More: “[DJT’s] advantage may not last. He has been sounding increasingly tired and confused of late, and is holding rallies at smaller venues than Harris. ”
This is another narrative wandering around on X; how “old” and tired DJT is, and whoops, you know, Joe had dementia at that age, and therefore everyone that age must have dementia as well. As for DJT, I’m pretty sure he’s mastered the art of living and resting on his plane. He’s still doing rallies, albeit smaller rallies because he has to ration his SS protection. He’s saving up for the big rally in Butler on Friday. Sure, he snubbed 60 minutes, but he gave an interview with Dave Ramsey. I think he’s doing just fine.
He has been sounding increasingly tired
Relentless travel makes even young people tired. I suppose getting shot at might add to it.
I’ve often wondered how stressful — or not — that it is to travel on a private plane. On the one hand, you don’t to fear missing the plane, or going through security or checking luggage. On the other hand, it’s gotta be hard to give a speech in flood-ravaged Georgia and then give a rally in Wisconsin the next day. I do hope Trump takes a couple days off if he can.
Giving political speeches in an active disaster area is too risky, e.g., might say the wrong thing, wear the wrong clothes, etc., while the victims are stressed out. It would be different if recovery was possible, but many of these people have lost everything, and they likely will not be able rebuild there.
the J6 narrative
My one criticism of Vance is that he should have said, “Trump offered 10,000 National Guard troops on J6. Why did Nancy Pelosi and Muriel Browser turned them down?”
-ed
Germany’s new normal
Why have Germans suddenly joined the far right in opposing immigrants?
“All of Hamburg hates the AfD,” tens of thousands of demonstrators chanted in Germany’s second-largest city on 19 January this year. People had taken to the streets all over Germany to protest against the far-right Alternative for Germany after it was revealed that some of its politicians had met the prominent Austrian new-right activist Martin Sellner in a Potsdam hotel to discuss “remigration,” the expulsion of millions of migrants from Germany.
That outrage is now little more than a distant memory. Late last month the parliament of the East German state of Brandenburg debated an AfD motion to exclude asylum seekers and refugees from all public events. The party argued that such a ban was a necessary consequence of the murder of three people by a Syrian asylum seeker at a “festival of diversity” in the West German city of Solingen a week earlier. The motion didn’t prompt reactions of the kind witnessed in January; the rage of a few months ago had made way for a resigned shrugging of shoulders.
That’s mainly because politicians from other parties have also turned against refugees. Another populist party, the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht, whose eponymous founder was once a leader of the left-wing Die Linke, is echoing the AfD’s anti-migrant rhetoric. Leading Christian Democrats have demanded that no more Syrian or Afghan asylum seekers be admitted to Germany. Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his interior minister, the Social Democrat Nancy Faeser, have been calling for more deportations, a tightening of border controls and a tough new asylum regime, and their government is busily announcing new administrative measures and drafting legislation to restrict the number of people seeking Germany’s protection.
Far from stealing a march on the AfD, however, these efforts seem only to have strengthened its position. Less than a month after the parliamentary debate in Brandenburg the far-right party won 29.2 per cent of the vote in the local state elections. Another 13.5 per cent voted for the Wagenknecht party, whose Brandenburg chapter was set up as recently as late May.
Not too long ago, such a result would have sent shock waves across Germany. This one brought only more shoulder-shrugging. Olaf Scholz, commenting on the outcome while attending the UN General Assembly in New York, focused on the fact that his own party, the Social Democrats, had scored 1.7 percentage points more than the far right: “It’s marvellous that we won,” he beamed.
Maybe Scholz was comparing the result with the state elections in Thuringia three weeks earlier. There, the AfD came first with 32.8 per cent, almost ten points ahead of the second-placed Christian Democrats and almost twenty-five points ahead of the Social Democrats. If they joined forces, the AfD and the Wagenknecht party would command a comfortable majority in Thuringia. That’s unlikely to happen soon, but the two parties don’t merely share a hostility towards immigration: they are also socially conservative, oppose Germany’s military support for Ukraine, and are seemingly unconcerned about climate change.
That’s the new normal: migration as the reputed source of all ills; a race to the bottom to keep asylum seekers out; a far-right party that, at least in East Germany, is supported by about a third of voters. How did it come to this?
https://insidestory.org.au/germanys-new-normal/
I don’t think the German Left can backpedal fast enough. It is true that they are still in charge, but they can see the handwriting on the wall.
The German “far right” knows who the globalist traitors are. They won’t forgive and won’t forget.
Climate change laws appear shelved as WA government draws closer to state election
Climate change legislation that promised to drive down WA’s rising greenhouse gas emissions looks increasingly likely to be shelved as the state government looks to finalise its agenda ahead of the March election.
The bill, which would enshrine a commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050, is notably absent from a list of priority legislation the government has circulated to the opposition.
There could be several reasons the government might put off the bill, like avoiding unwanted attention on the state’s rising emissions and limiting any further opportunities for a spotlight on climate-conscious renegade backbenchers.
What it does indicate, though, is that WA Labor may not see climate action as being a top priority for voters ahead of the March state election.
The Climate Change Bill, introduced by the WA Labor government almost a year ago, promised to “ensure Western Australia contributes to national and global mitigation efforts”.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/climate-change-laws-appear-shelved-as-wa-government-draws-closer-to-state-election/ar-AA1ry44p
Ya gotta love it. Oz is huge but sparsely populated. And this is especially true of West Australia. Just how much CO2 could they possibly cut? Even if they went to NetZero, would it be measurable planetwide on any basis?
Nissan Is So Screwed, Man
Dealer profits drop 70 percent year over year, and the automaker’s operating profit dropped 99 percent in the last quarter
Folks, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but Nissan is in some deep shit right now, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get better anytime soon. Late last week, the Japanese automaker put out some very disappointing global sales numbers, and now some are worried it’ll once again fall short of its fiscal year profit forecast. Of course, this was already cut once before back in July.
Nissan’s worldwide sales tumbled 5.5 percent in August, and that marked Nissan’s fifth consecutive monthly decline, according to Bloomberg. Its two biggest problem areas just happened to be China and the U.S., which is unfortunate because Nissan relies on those two countries alone for about half of its global sales volume. In fact, Nissan’s U.S. dealerships are earning about 70 percent less than they were at the same time last year. That is… uh… shocking.
As I mentioned earlier, Nissan’s U.S. dealers have seen a 70 percent decrease in profits over the last year, and that comes despite the fact the company is spending a ton of money on advertising and incentives, Bloomberg reports. Many Nissan dealers are having trouble even moving 2023 models. It’s not a good situation.
Sure, Nissan says it’s going to launch seven new hybrids and EVs in the U.S. by 2028, but who knows what the automotive landscape will look like at that point. It’s anyone’s guess if folks will even wait that long for a Nissan EV or hybrid rather than just getting one of the other dozens of great cars already on the market.
Nissan is in a very worrying place right now, and it’s going to be very interesting to see how it gets itself out of this pickle. Hopefully, it’ll be able to float by on Rogue and Altima fleet sales until this new crop of EVs and hybrids can hit the market.
https://jalopnik.com/nissan-is-so-screwed-man-1851662033
Hopefully, it’ll be able to float by on Rogue and Altima fleet sales until this new crop of EVs and hybrids can hit the market.
Now that’s a knee slapper. What Nissan needs to do is return to its roots and make rock solid and bullet proof ICE cars. But ever since they merged with Renault they have lost their way. They also need to ditch CVTs. Sure, if you maintain them properly the CVTs can last, but few people will do that, as a CVT service can cost upward of $400.
I loved Subarus until they switched to CVTs from reliable 5-speed automatic transmissions. That’s a hard pass – I’ve known too many Subaru owners who’ve had CVTs fail at less than 100K miles, with replacement costs averaging at least $8K. The increased complexity and unreliability doesn’t justify the paltry gas savings.
The increased complexity and unreliability doesn’t justify the paltry gas savings.
The gooberment keeps raising the CAFE numbers and the only way for automakers to meet them is to replace larger, normally aspirated engines and slushboxes with tiny 3 cylinder turbos mated to CVTs. The era of the car that lasts over 100K miles is over.
Putting a turbo on a 4-cylinder engine stresses the engine and leads to premature wear. A friend whose turbo on a Mazda CX-5 developed hairline cracks at 66K miles had to replace it at a cost of more than $4K.
A friend whose turbo on a Mazda CX-5 developed hairline cracks at 66K miles had to replace it at a cost of more than $4K.
Exactly. Most people want a car that will run trouble free for many ears. They will give up performance for that. Though people do seem smitten with the electronic gadgetry that is becoming all too common.
I had to look this up. Evidently the Nissan CVTs are trash but the Toyota hybrid eCVTs are much better. Luckily my car is only 7 years old. I’m trying to get another 6-7 years out of it. By then I hope this country stabilizes.
The CVTs on hybrids are a different beast. Toyota had a recall on Corollas with non hybrid CVTs where they replaced every single transmission.
That’s a hard pass – I’ve known too many Subaru owners who’ve had CVTs fail at less than 100K miles, with replacement costs averaging at least $8K.
Subaru automatically extended a warranty on my CVT transmission for 100k/10 years. I am following the owners manual, but so far it’s been a great car that drives well.
One cold day in Flagstaff I saw a Subaru get itself off of an ice patch in the drop entering a driveway. It was backing out and started spinning tires. Then the cars computers (I guess) were testing the tires, found one that didn’t spin and used it to get off the ice. It took around 30 seconds.
The ice there can re-freeze every night and gets stupid slick. You can’t stand on it when it’s like that. I saw a front 2 wheel drive get stuck on a small patch on a flat street trying to pull into a parking lot. The drive system was a dinosaur compared to that Subaru. They love them in Alaska.
Nissan hasn’t put out a new car/platform in like 10 years. They have been living off past glories and not investing in the future (remind you of anywhere else?). Of course they are going down, it’s all by design.
Tesla catches fire in garage, burns house down after flooding from Hurricane Helene | VIDEO
SARASOTA, Fla. — Hurricane Helene brought more than water and wind damage to one Florida home.
A Sarasota family shared a Nest video showing the moment their Tesla burst into flames, which caused their home to burn down.
Morgan Hodges said the Tesla Model X Plaid was parked in the garage during the storm on Friday.
The car was not plugged in, and the family elevated the car when six to eight inches of water started to flood the garage.
Nine people were inside the home when the fire happened, at least two were awake and quickly realized the garage was engulfed in flames. Everyone made it out safely, but the home was destroyed.
Pinellas County Officials advised residents with electric vehicles exposed to saltwater to move them at least 50 feet away from their homes.
https://abc7.com/post/tesla-catches-fire-garage-after-flooding-hurricane-helene/15379035/
Florida Teslas are finished
And don’t even need to be mostly submerged. And while an ICE car won’t catch fire in a flood, it will probably be totaled.
Moral of the story: don’t live where it floods.
I wonder if that’s covered. the car probably is, but the house is probably going to be denied as it was caused by rising water (i.e. a flood, specifically excluded). You know the insurance company could easily make that argument.
Opinion I’ve seen how Ed Miliband’s net zero dream turns into a nightmare. It will destroy Britain
Breaking news: a fire at a giant solar farm in East Anglia is raging out of control after a lithium-ion battery is believed to have failed, causing an explosion. Two nearby villages were evacuated last night as toxic gases, vapours and particulates filled the air. Fire chiefs warned residents who had not been evacuated to stay indoors. There was particular concern today for children at a local primary school and residents of a care home. Two boys, both asthmatic, were hospitalised after parents said they had suffered breathing difficulties.
One of the major hazards of lithium fires is the formation of “smokes” of nanoparticles of lithium oxide and lithium hydroxide, an extremely hazardous lung irritant. Lithium battery fires also emit hazardous pollutants like hydrogen fluoride which causes serious burns. The explosion at the solar farm, which was bitterly opposed by local residents but went ahead after gaining approval from Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, is believed to have damaged the integrity of neighbouring containers. This led to an alarming chain reaction known as “thermal runway.” Witnesses reported that trees and vegetation around the solar facility had set alight over a wide area causing a stampede of hundreds of pigs at one of Suffolk’s major pork producers.
Scientists say there is virtually no way to put out a lithium-battery fire. The advice is to “let it burn” or to try and use huge volumes of water to cool the surrounding modules. Fire officers, who had objected to the 2,500-acre solar farm on safety grounds, indicated that the latter course was extremely problematic because they did not have access to that much water on site. Even if they did, it could pose a major environmental risk as water containing many harmful carcinogenic chemicals would run onto farmland and contaminate protected habitats, a reservoir and springs supplying water for human consumption.
When Mr Miliband rushed through the approval of the solar farm last year, boasting that it took him just three days to approve three of these giant solar farms across the UK, West Suffolk’s Conservative MP, Nick Timothy, said he thought the decision was “quite disgraceful and quite arrogant”. However, Mr Miliband said: “Solar power is crucial to achieving net zero, providing an abundant source of cleaner, cheaper energy… This is the speed we’re working at to achieve energy independence, cut bills for families and kickstart green economic growth.”
One angry local campaigner said yesterday that the dangers of lithium-ion batteries had failed to be communicated to the public. “Building solar farms on actual farms, depriving us of agricultural land to grow food, in the race to net zero is crazy. If you ask me, Ed Miliband is a dangerous nutter.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ve-seen-ed-miliband-net-180000088.html
At least they aren’t speaking German
solar power. in England. where it rains all the time.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Even when it’s sunny in the UK there just aren’t as many photons hitting those panels.
Canadian Tire store in Toronto under investigation for alleged mistreatment of temporary foreign workers
The owner of a Canadian Tire store in Toronto is being investigated by the provincial and federal governments for allegedly mistreating and financially exploiting employees hired through Ottawa’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
At least 13 of those employees resigned or were fired by the store late last year, according to documents reviewed by The Globe and Mail and conversations with several of the workers.
They allege their wages were arbitrarily reduced by the owner and that they were forced to do jobs for which they were not hired. They also claim the owner threatened to fire them on multiple occasions when they brought up their concerns about the working conditions.
Federal government rules dictate that employers cannot arbitrarily decrease the wages of temporary foreign workers or materially change their job duties. If they do, they will have to apply for a new labour market impact assessment (LMIA), a document needed to hire foreign workers.
A spokesperson with Ontario’s Ministry of Labour, Training, Immigration and Skills Development confirmed to The Globe that the province is investigating Ezhil Natarajan, who owns and operates a Canadian Tire store in Etobicoke, which comprises Toronto’s west end.
Documents viewed by The Globe show that Mr. Natarajan worked with an Alberta-based immigration consultant, Allison Jones Consulting Services Inc., to hire some of the foreign workers. Allison Jones charged the workers more than $10,000 each to process their applications for the TFW program, according to records reviewed by The Globe. It is illegal, under federal immigration law and Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, for an employer to knowingly use a recruiter who has charged a fee to a foreign worker to bring them to Canada.
The Temporary Foreign Worker Program, an immigration stream that brings in foreign labour for one- or two-year periods, has been mired in controversy for more than a decade now. Labour advocates argue the program has become a hotbed of worker abuse and wage suppression. Economists say easy access to foreign workers does not incentivize companies to make productivity-enhancing investments.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-canadian-tire-store-in-toronto-under-investigation-for-alleged/
Shots fired at homes of two executives tied to waste management giant GFL
The homes of two executives tied to Canadian waste management giant GFL Environmental Inc., including the company’s chief executive officer, were shot at within one hour of each other in Toronto.
The shootings, which are being investigated by Toronto Police’s guns and gangs unit, took place late Sunday and early Monday in separate areas of the city, but both locations are among the wealthiest pockets of Toronto. Police believe the incidents are connected and that the houses were targeted.
GFL, which is traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange, is a serial acquirer of smaller rivals and has become one of the four largest waste management companies in Canada and the U.S. GFL’s largest shareholders are private equity firm BC Partners and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and the company currently has a $20-billion market value.
Recently, GFL has been hampered by the debt accumulated to fund its acquisitions and management has said they were considering auctioning off the company’s environmental services division, which offers liquid waste management and soil remediation services, to raise billions of dollars for debt repayment.
The first shooting took place at 11:52 p.m. Sunday in Rosedale at the home of GFL founder and CEO Patrick Dovigi. In an interview, Mr. Dovigi confirmed the shooting, saying someone ran up to the side door of his house and tried to get in but couldn’t because the door is metal. After a security guard approached, the man ran away and fired shots that Mr. Dovigi said mostly went into the ground.
What appeared to be a bullet hole could be seen on the brick exterior of the sprawling property early Tuesday, and a security guard was parked in the driveway outside. Police also said a car was hit in the attack. Mr. Dovigi spends most of his time in New York and Miami and was not home at the time of the shooting.
A second house was shot at one hour later, at 12:58 a.m. Monday. The home belongs to Ted Manziaris, who is a long-time business partner of Mr. Dovigi’s. Mr. Manziaris is currently a consultant in the GFL family of companies, advising an arm called Green Infrastructure Partners whose services include road paving, demolition, excavation and remediation.
On Tuesday morning, a tradesman was patching up nine bullet holes on the front door of Mr. Manziaris’s home in the York Mills neighbourhood. A woman who answered the door declined to comment.
GFL’s growth has made Mr. Dovigi very wealthy and the CEO recently paid US$59.75-million for an Aspen, Colo., house formerly owned by actor Jack Nicholson.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-gfl-executives-shootings-toronto-homes/
Media veterans tell inquiry of pervasive influence wielded by China, India in Canada
The Chinese community in Canada has long been caught in the crosshairs of political discourse, disinformation and propaganda originating from the Communist Party in Beijing, a media industry veteran told a public inquiry Tuesday.
If Beijing seeks to influence or interfere in Canada’s democratic processes, one of its most effective tools is the Chinese-language media, said Hong Kong-born Victor Ho, who came to Canada in 1997 and worked in newspaper and radio journalism over the years.
From Toronto to Vancouver, much of the Chinese-language media operates “under the immense influence” of the Communist Party, Ho said
In addition to controlling traditional media, the Chinese Communist Party has also exported its digital influence through popular Chinese social media platforms such as WeChat, TikTok and Weibo, Ho said. “These platforms are used to flood the local Chinese community with CCP narratives serving as vehicles for political indoctrination under the guise of social interaction.”
Ronald Leung, host of a weekly television interview show, noted the challenges of competing with misinformation and disinformation emanating from foreign adversaries.
“We are in an information war,” said Leung, who was also born in Hong Kong and came to Canada as a student in 1983.
Asked if he engages in self-censorship on the air, Leung said: “I exercise care, and I am very careful every time I talk on the radio.”
Leung said he knows not to cross “the red line,” because if he does, “I don’t think I can continue to do my job, to present a Canadian perspective on international issues. That’s how I am still working in the Chinese media.”
The witnesses largely echoed a July 2023 intelligence assessment recently tabled at the inquiry that said Communist Party-friendly narratives “inundate Chinese-language media in Canada.”
Gurpreet Singh, who hosts a daily 30-minute talk show, told the inquiry Tuesday the government of India has compiled a dossier on him that has been used to discredit him publicly over a high-profile issue in the news.
“It’s based on lot of disinformation, which is also very disturbing. They have described me as anti-India, anti-national,” said Singh, who moved to Canada from India in 2001.
Singh said he has also faced backlash on social media. “I’ve stopped paying attention to that, anyway, because it really affects your sanity.”
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/media-veteran-tells-inquiry-of-beijing-s-influence-on-local-chinese-outlets-in-canada-1.7057738
Canada is a failed state
The USA does this with Radio Free Asia and other propaganda networks in Asia.
A solid education system ought to produce adults who can sift through information and think critically.
A solid education system ought to produce adults who can sift through information and think critically.
I don’t think that is the general case in the US today.
Our critical thinkers are neutered, learned to obey or else!
Arizona housing department lost $2 million to fraud, Auditor General finds
The report, which was released on Oct. 1, states that the Arizona Department of Housing has “several statutory responsibilities” that are related to the state’s housing issues. For the 2023 fiscal year, nearly $1.26 billion in federal and state funds, along with tax credits, were committed by the department to help address affordable housing issues in Arizona.
However, the Auditor General report noted that the Department of Housing lacked “a comprehensive process to track and evaluate its programs’ performance,” thereby limiting its ability to make sure its programs are addressing the housing problems.
In addition, the report accused the department of failing to develop wire transfer polices and procedures aimed at preventing and detecting fraud, which resulted in $2 million fraudulent transfer from the State Housing Trust Fund.
“In June 2023, the Department transferred by wire $2 million in State Housing Trust Fund monies to fraudulent actors impersonating officers from a title company and nonprofit housing organization that the Department was working with to purchase property for affordable housing programs,” a part of the report reads. “The Department did not become aware of the fraud until December 2023 when it was notified that the nonprofit housing organization had not received the wired monies.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/arizona-housing-department-lost-2-225831472.html?guccounter=1
But Arizona’s elections are impeccably honest. CNN assures me of this.
Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates one day in a closed door meeting:
Klaus Schwab:” I don’t know if the masses are going to buy this bug thing and fake meat .”
Bill Gates:”Of course they are, they will buy anything if we say it enough.”
Klaus Schwab: “But historically humans have resisted bugs , spiders, ants, roaches, and they know its bird and reptile food.
Bill Gates: ” We got billions to take fake expiermental vaccines didn’t we, so bugs and fake meat will be easy. ”
Klaus Schwab: I’m getting reports they aren’t wanting the 10th Covid shot in spite of our best efforts to tell them its safe and effective.
Bill Gates: “Don’t worry, we have other Panademics to launch , that will create more fear than Covid.”
Klaus Schwab: “We have to accomplish the UN 2030 Sustainable Earth Agenda by 2030. Nothing can stand in our way. How is the release of toxic mosquitoes programs going?”
Bill Gates: I’m waiting for reports on that one. Blocking out the Sun is getting some resistance, but you know our News people can take care of that.
Klaus Schwab:” I’m getting nervous because the natives are not complying to the degree we thought , and they are asking to many questions.”
Bill Gates: ” Its ok, they will crumble with the fear mongering we plan, they always do. ”
Klaus Schwab. ” Ok, so we will meet again next week . To our future Utopia that the Rich shall inherit the earth.”
Disclaimer -satire
Bill Gates: ” We got billions to take fake expiermental vaccines didn’t we, so bugs and fake meat will be easy. ”
They will so over regulate meat production that only the wealthy will be able to afford meat. Nothing will be “banned”, and they will make a point of that, that steak is available (for $500/lb). All the inflation that is eating people alive around the globe is part of the plan.
‘We Have Upended The Whole System’: Mayor Bowser Calls For Rollback Of Pandemic-Era Eviction Policy
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser threw her weight behind emergency legislation that would close a loophole in the District’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program that has led to a crisis of rent delinquencies among affordable housing providers in the city.
“We were in unprecedented times and rose to those challenges, but those policies were never intended to be long-term, and by keeping them in place we have upended the whole system,” Bowser said. “The affordable housing ecosystem has been turned on its head.”
Housing providers have told Bisnow that if D.C. doesn’t address the crisis before the end of the year, some affordable buildings will go into foreclosure, leading them to lose their income-restriction covenants, and more housing providers will leave the market, creating further instability in the city’s housing system.
“Our communities could lose affordable housing forever if these landlords can no longer pay their mortgages and they are either foreclosed on or turn in the keys,” Bowser said.
https://www.bisnow.com/washington-dc/news/multifamily/bowser-throws-support-behind-erap-reform-calls-it-first-step-to-fixing-dc-housing-crisis-126101
More than 16,000 properties in Pinellas County are uninhabitable following Helene
Pinellas County Commissioners held an emergency meeting on Tuesday to learn of the situation on the ground in their community, which was devastated by the storm surge that flooded parts of the county as Hurricane Helene struck the area last Thursday evening.
“We experienced what we believe is the worst impact on our county we’ve seen in 100 years,” said County Administrator Barry Burton. “We’re looking at over $2 billion in residential damage that we know right now, and the recovery is just beginning.”
As of Tuesday morning, the county had assessed 26,710 properties — 260 had been outright destroyed while another 15,923 have suffered “major” damage, requiring major repairs before residents can resume living in them. Another 6,320 properties had received minor damage and 4,207 had been “affected.”
In St. Petersburg, the county’s largest municipality, more than 5,000 properties are listed as having major damage, according to county statistics.
“This is going to take time,” Burton told commissioners. “This is weeks, not days, and it’s going to require the efforts of so many in order to help our residents regain their life.”
https://floridaphoenix.com/briefs/more-than-16000-properties-in-pinellas-county-are-uninhabitable-following-helene/
Swamp land is supposed to be swamps.
I don’t know how Disney keeps their property from flooding, though I suppose that if the right storm clobbered Orlando that there could be some real damage.
I used to work on a beach in a Texas barrier island. Once I understood the ocean and how low the island really was I knew a storm surge like this could make everything go away in an afternoon. But sure, let’s pack millions of people in with their mortgages and overpriced airboxes. Sound lending!
“….let’s pack millions of people in with their mortgages and overpriced airboxes….”
But, but, the fishing is great!
Not again.
https://www.koco.com/article/toilet-paper-panic-buying-longshoremen-strike/62488730
Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel, despite Biden & Harris repeatedly telling them “Don’t.” It’s almost like weak, ineffectual, fraudulently-installed “leaders” aren’t respected by friend or foe alike.
https://x.com/saras76/status/1841205541349335047
Darkhorse Podcast, Rumble has all the speeches from the Rescue the Rebublic rally in Wash DC on Sept 29,2024.
They got the speeches broken up where you can pick and choose which speakers you want to listen to, or you can listen to them all if you want.I LISTENED to them all.
In addition at the Rescue the Republic rally they had to have a bullet proof screen protecting the speakers from the crowds.
Just a reflection of the times we live in.
Functionally illiterate members of the Free Sh!t Army don’t produce anything.
Fact Check: the above statement is untrue.
They do in fact create things like higher prices for most essentials, higher crime rates, and significantly more waste. This in turn creates more jobs for police, trash collectors, and various liberal social programs. Winning!
Babies!
‘said there’s been ‘cancellation after cancellation’ for an Airbnb he owns in the area. It was almost fully booked for October before the storm hit, he said. ‘That’s when all these businesses make their money, and that’s when all the people are here supporting the hotels and all the infrastructure that’s here,’ he said. ‘And that’s not going to happen’
And you probably borrowed a lot of money for that shack Kurt, cuz the first thing you bring up is the cancellations.
‘Like 40% of the association sold to investment companies that were offering pennies on the dollar. Essentially, you know, $180,000 units were going for $130,000,’ said Pricher. Pricher is now one of many condo owners calling for reform. ‘It’s not sustainable. They’re not going to be able to fund reserves by the end of next year, as this current legislation says’
Thank you Bryan, for introducing today’s HBB Pitfalls of Commie Urban Living™. These bashtards living next to you will sell you down the river if it suits them and there’s not a gotdam thing you can do about it! And note it blows up when they are already on their knees. It’s a failed system, time caught up with them and the storms sealed the deal.
Pricher is now one of many condo owners calling for reform. ‘It’s not sustainable. They’re not going to be able to fund reserves by the end of next year, as this current legislation says’
You have known big changes were coming from at least, 2022. More likely, 2019, if you had any commonsense, so there was plenty of time to sell, or dare I say it, save money for a future expense!
‘Rundle read off a list of alleged wrongdoings in Arzumanov’s 32-page arrest warrant and explained how he intimidated unit owners who questioned his tactics through excessive fines and lawsuits. The state attorney said he was able to do that because at the time of his arrest Arzumanov was not only president of the Turnberry on the Green Condo Association, but the building’s chief engineer and property manager’
Nobody saw anything wrong with this? It wasn’t a secret. If people are getting ‘excessive fines and lawsuits’, wouldn’t one of the comrades report it to the politburo?
‘For a lot of businesses, it doesn’t pencil financially, so they’re not renewing their leases…We have a vacancy rate that is substantial, so we have to creatively find ways to push businesses over the edge with financial incentives’
Yer right Alex, throw huge amounts of money at it. It’s the Can’t Do State™.
‘Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) has acknowledged that those changes have had unintended consequences for affordable housing providers and require urgent correction. ‘The problem is this: It’s financial. What we are seeing is, on an aggregate basis, these affordable housing providers are carrying tens of millions of dollars in uncollected rent, and that is not sustainable’
I mentioned a few times during mass formation psychosis that guberment was going to regret telling everybody to stop paying their bills.
No evidence of pandemic ‘mass formation psychosis’, say experts speaking to Reuters
By Reuters Fact Check
January 7, 2022 Updated 3 years ago
“Mass formation psychosis” is not an academic term recognized in the field of psychology, nor is there evidence of any such phenomenon occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple experts in crowd psychology have told Reuters.
Online searches for the phrase have spiked this month, as seen in worldwide Google trends data here: bit.ly/3JPW685, after it was used in a popular podcast as the reason why people comply with public health measures.
Dr Robert Malone, previously fact-checked by Reuters here and here, told The Joe Rogan Experience that “mass formation psychosis” is a phenomenon that occurred in 1920s and 30s Germany when a highly educated population “went barking mad”.
“And that is what’s happened here,” he said, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic (here).
According to Malone, the condition occurs when a society “becomes decoupled from each other and has a free-floating anxiety in a sense that things don’t make sense… And then their attention gets focused by a leader or series of events on one small point, just like hypnosis.”
He added: “They literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere… They will follow that person – it doesn’t matter whether they lie to them or whatever, the data are irrelevant.”
As of Jan. 3, the term has gathered more than 100,000 interactions (likes, comments and shares) on public Facebook pages, groups and verified profiles, according to social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle.
Users on Twitter have also shared the term, applying it as if it were a legitimate condition to describe those receiving COVID-19 vaccines, tests and following other health measures (here and here).
The phrase does not appear in the American Psychological Association (APA) Dictionary of Psychology (dictionary.apa.org/), (dictionary.apa.org/browse/m) nor does it appear in the PsycNet database of published research articles (here), (here).
Numerous psychologists have also told Reuters that such a condition is not officially recognized. “I have never heard of this concept,” John Drury, Professor of Social Psychology and Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange at the University of Sussex, wrote in an email to Reuters.
Jay Van Bavel, Associate Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University, said the term “doesn’t exist as a real academic concept”, adding: “I’ve been studying group identity and collective behaviour for nearly two decades and just published a book on the topic (www.powerofus.online/) and not once have I come across this term.
“It seems to have been made up recently. There are similar-sounding concepts, like ‘mass psychogenic illness,’ (here) but the scope of these is relatively narrow compared to what is being proposed here.”
Reuters also spoke to Steven Reicher, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of St Andrews, who has studied crowd psychology for more than 40 years. He described the concept of a “mass psychosis” as “more metaphor than science, more ideology than fact”.
“It arises out of mass society theories and crowd psychology theories which developed in the 19th century, and which reflected a fear of the masses,” he said. “The claim was that people in the mass lose their sense of identity and their ability to reason, they regress to an inferior mental state where they are manipulable by unscrupulous leaders.
“It has been totally discredited by contemporary work on groups and crowds.”
Van Bavel, who said he found the idea of mass formation psychosis “reductionist”, highlighted a different account of the role of psychology, groups and leadership in the rise of Naziism (here).
He also pointed to a study he co-authored and released in November 2020 analysing the movement of approximately 15 million Americans during the early stages of the pandemic, finding that one of the “single biggest predictors of following social distance guidelines was political partisanship” (here).
“What is true, of course, is that people do have to make sense of a confusing and complicated world with different accounts coming from different sources,” said Reicher. “We are not vaccinologists so when people tell us contradictory things about vaccines, who do we listen to. That is a matter of trust and of our social relationship to the source of information. So, the politicisation of the pandemic, the creation of a sense of an establishment enemy who wants to control us is certainly important. It makes the establishment of trust an absolutely critical aspect of the pandemic and hence such things as transparency, respect, clarity etc. become critical.”
He added: “But telling people who disagree with you that they are deluded and in a state of psychosis is essentially a device to silence them and a form of disrespect. It alienates and hence undermines an attempt at dialogue. It isn’t an explanation of the problem; it is part of the problem.”
Chris Cocking, Principal Lecturer at the School of Humanities and Applied Social Sciences at the University of Brighton, told Reuters that a preferred way to explain crowd action was in terms of “shared identities, relations between different groups and leadership influence”.
He said: “We have all spent our careers trying to undo irrationalist approaches that pathologise crowd behaviour.”
Recent studies on urban disorder, including the 2011 riots in England (here) and the 2005 London bombing (here), have shown that “crowds behave in ordered and normative ways depending on the shared identities experienced by crowd members and the social context in which they happen and they often limit their own behaviour,” Cocking added. “The idea that crowds fall under a mass psychosis which means they are no longer responsible for their actions is a total myth that’s not supported by any credible evidence.”
VERDICT
Missing context. There is no evidence to suggest a “mass formation psychosis” has occurred during the pandemic, experts told Reuters. The term itself is not recognised among academics, and modern research into crowd psychology has shown that crowds do not behave in mindless or non-individualistic ways.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team.
https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/no-evidence-of-pandemic-mass-formation-psychosis-say-experts-speaking-to-reut-idUSL1N2TN1RE/
Financial markets have proven over and over again that men, in fact, do not think in herds and behave rationally!!!11!1 🙂
The gas lighting is getting intense lately.
What if the masses were simply defrauded, with mass censorship and obstruction of dispute to the fraud that they swallowed hook line and sinker.
Also, what is the tendency of people to follow Authority figures, Experts, and Follow the Science type B.S.
Fraud is a act to deceive . Would people developed mass psychosis if they were given correct information, or informed consent?
People flipped out over Covid 19 Panademic and the fear mongering, bribery, medical tyranny, threat of job loss if you didn’t take a questionable vaccine , was warfare.
41/2 trillion was transferred to the Industrial Complex of Monopolies, while small/med business was destroyed .
Ok, so if people have a mass psychosis tendency if they are the victims of a mass fraud, than my feeling would be why are you traumatizing people based on a fraud. Of course a certain percentage flipped out thinking they were under threat of death from a invisible virus.
‘Reay also said distress in the hotel market is common, estimating that of the state’s roughly 10,000 hotels, a fifth are in default of some kind, whether on the basis of debt service coverage ratio or a technical default. Lenders aren’t being pushed to enforce notices of default, Reay said, so they aren’t’
That’s not banana republic or anything.
‘The elites expect everyone to swallow the idea that everything is fine. That mass migration is an unalloyed good, and unrelated to such issues as our chronic housing crisis. The trouble is, people no longer believe that everything is fine. They want our doors open to the best and brightest. What they don’t want is for Britain to open its welfare state to the world’
Even if the globalist scum thought illegals were a good idea they would try to recruit or encourage some sort of quality. Nope, the scum of the earth from every sh$thole country you can name. This was intended to be a disaster.
‘I’m worried that they’re going to be moving assets into a different company or just running under a different company name to suck more people in because the name Nicheliving has been tarnished so much,’ she said. The single mother signed on for a Nicheliving home in December 2020, which was supposed to be finished by July 2022. She said an extension was successfully sought by Nicheliving until April 2023, but the build is still largely unfinished. ‘You can’t plan ahead because you just don’t know when you’re ever going to be in, and at this stage, I don’t think I ever will be,’ she said. ‘We thought we had a light at the end of the tunnel and then it got taken away from us and I can just see that this is going to keep dragging on and on’
Think of it as an unfinished dream Janine. If you hang in there, make yer payments and don’t give it away, you will be a winnah!
This Condo Problem Will Only Get Worse (GTA Condo Real Estate Market Update)
Team Sessa Real Estate
40 minutes ago TORONTO
In this episode, we look at the current GTA Condo Markets – Toronto, York Region & Peel Region for the week ending Sept 25, 2024. We also discuss the problem that occurs as many preconstruction projects from around 2018 are now closing and going for less than what they were purchased for. Where things get really dire is when we think of the projects purchased after 2018 where preconstruction prices saw significant premiums.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKHfvTjDXPM
17 minutes. Oh dear…
Brian Jonestown Massacre — Vacuum Boots:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTEfHnIRDHE
Blur — Advert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSghzRZsxwM
Smiths — What She Said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-tk_cCMN3M
In The Year 2525
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXJ8-mVo_WY
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/3/dominican-republic-says-will-expel-up-to-10000-haitian-migrants-a-week
Doing the jobs Americans won’t do.