Demand Is Not Growing, It May Be Even Shrinking A Little Bit, But We Have All These Finished Units Out There
A report from KTLA in California. “If you’re among the thousands of Los Angeles County residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed in the Palisades or Eaton wildfires, there is a grim reality beyond the loss of property alone: your mortgage is still due. KTLA’s David Lazarus spoke with Los Angeles County Tax Assessor Jeff Prang on Monday about the real estate implications of losing a home to a wildfire. It is a mix of good news – and bad. So is a large portion of your property tax. ‘We’re going to reduce your assessment and your property taxes,’ said Los Angeles County Tax Assessor Jeff Prang. ‘Unfortunately, this reduction doesn’t apply to the land.’ Lazarus points out that two-thirds of the property’s assessed value is the land itself and not the house. Regarding the mortgage, Lazarus said, unfortunately for fire victims, ‘a deal is a deal.’ He equates losing a home to a wildfire to having a new car stolen the day after driving it off the lot. ‘You’re still on the hook for the financing payments,’ said Lazarus. He recommends fire victims contact their mortgage server to work out a deferred payment schedule, which could potentially delay payments for months or even years. ‘But ultimately, you will have to pay for that loan,’ he said.”
ABC 7 in California. “The estimated insured losses from the Los Angeles County wildfires could reach $20 billion, according to J.P. Morgan. The FAIR Plan provides basic fire insurance coverage for high-risk properties when traditional companies will not. Specifically, the coverage caps worries experts, and could have a long-term impact on our housing market. ‘There’s no question there’s going to be a lot of people impacted by this fire where their insurance falls short,’ said Amy Bach, with United Policyholders. So, what impact could this have on our housing market? ‘With the cap being at $3 million, you’re talking about a high percentage of homes in the Bay Area not able to get coverage up to a certain amount — that’s going to drastically change how the market is going to be moving forward,’ said Neil Canlas, who owns a real estate company that tracks market trends across the Bay Area. ‘People already can’t get insured as it is now and you can’t get a loan without a policy in California.’ Canlas says his company has already seen a hit from the insurance crisis. ‘We’re losing a percentage of buyers because they can’t get policies, or the policies are too high in price,’ Canlas said.”
From WPTV. “Take-out letters from Citizens Insurance are seemingly everywhere in Florida, and they’re not welcome news. One of those letters arrived at Carlos Nunez’s home earlier this week. ‘(The letter said) you need to go to Monarch (Insurance) because that’s the option they selected that is less than 20%,’ Nunez said. The offer to go to a private insurer now means Nunez’s premium is rising from about $6,900 to more than $8,200 per year. ‘We are not affluent, we live in Boca (Raton), but we’re not that,’ he said. ‘It’s not fair for the consumer. It feels like … extortion. You don’t have a choice.'”
From WSB-TV. “A 55-year-old woman will soon be sentenced for her role in a mortgage fraud plot spanning over three years. Kimberly Johnson, 55, of Hampton, Ga., pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to swindle the United States in a mortgage fraud scheme. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Georgia, Johnson got involved in a plan, in which homebuyers and mortgage brokers submitted false loan applications to persuade mortgage lenders to fund mortgages. The DA said Johnson’s role in the plan was to alter or forge the documents for the loans, including bank statements, pay stubs and W-2 forms. For over three years officials said the 55-year-old woman helped 450 homebuyers commit mortgage fraud by getting unqualified loans. The fake loan applications were submitted to several mortgage lenders, and some mortgage brokers who worked on getting the loans were also a part of the scheme, according to the DA. The loans totaled $161 million. Many of the loans are insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), resulting in claims being paid for mortgages that have defaulted.”
From WTOP News. “Whatever ultimately comes of the new Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Trump’s billionaire advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the potential effects on the Washington D.C.-area housing market could be significant. The federal government employs approximately 283,000 direct workers in the D.C. metro, including 141,000 in the District itself, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Many of those employees are homeowners, and DOGE — at least in early messaging and whether ultimately impractical — aims to drastically reduce the number of government employees in the D.C. area and across the country, moving some agencies out of the nation’s capital. ‘I don’t think our region has any idea about what is about to hit it in terms of recommendations from DOGE. I think it is going to be a lot of relocations and a lot of elimination of jobs,’ said Corey Burr at TTR Sotheby’s, who has been representing homebuyers and sellers in the D.C. region for 30 years. It may lead others who are unaffected by government jobs to put their properties on the market for fear that something greater might take place. This is something we’ve never seen before.'”
The Dallas Morning News in Texas. “Homebuilders in Dallas-Fort Worth started more than 53,000 homes last year — the second-best in history, according to Residential Strategies. But the market cooled to end the year and new starts slipped in the final quarter as builders battled higher mortgage rates. The stock of finished but unsold homes grew. ‘I’m concerned right now that if rates stay around 7%, we’re going to have a chilly spring market,’ said Ted Wilson, principal of Residential Strategies. ‘Demand is not growing. It may be even shrinking a little bit, but we have all these finished units out there. You got to move that and to create the urgency. You’ve got to discount, incentivize and do all the rate buydowns to get it to move.'”
“Vacant housing inventory continued to increase. By the end of the year, there were 11,264 finished, vacant homes in D-FW — up more than 10% from the previous quarter. The supply of vacant, developed lots in D-FW grew by just over 5,000 in the final quarter, ending the year at 106,059. This represents a balanced 23.9-month supply. ‘During the 2021-2022 period of construction cost uncertainty, many builders adopted a 100% speculative building strategy,’ Wilson said in the report. ‘While this approach proved effective initially, it became less sustainable by late summer 2024 when housing demand began to weaken.'”
KUSA in Colorado. “A judge has granted the city of Aurora’s request to fast track the closure of CBZ Management’s property, The Edge at Lowry Apartments, where two people were kidnapped in December. On Thursday, the city filed a petition for injunctive relief and emergency closure of the Aurora apartment complex, due to ongoing crime and safety concerns. A judge on Friday granted that emergency order, saying that the ‘properties present an imminent threat to public safety and welfare if allowed to remain open.’ Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain wrote the complex has become ‘an epicenter for unmitigated violent crimes and property crimes perpetuated by a criminal element that has exerted control and fear over others residing at this apartment complex.'”
“Chamberlain, who advocated for an emergency closure, also wrote the apartment complex has reached a ‘breaking point.’ He said without intervention, he believes criminal behavior will continue to flourish and make living conditions untenable for law-abiding residents in the neighborhood. ‘To those people that are actually in that apartment complex, this might be a hard pill to swallow,’ Chamberlain told the press Monday. ‘You might think ‘this is the only home I’ve known since I’ve come to the United States,’ but I want them to know that there is a better place to live than on Dallas Street.'”
The Globe and Mail in Canada. “289 Alexander St., No. 824, Vancouver. Asking price: $788,000 (Sept. 1). Previous asking price: $838,000 (March 11). Selling price: $768,777 (Sept. 14). Days on the market: 187. The original owner, who paid $178,400 in 1999, decided it was time to sell. It was originally listed with an asking price of $838,000 but after five months there were no offers. The owner and listing agent Ian Watt decided to relist it at $788,000. It sold quickly, at $19,223 under the revised asking price, to a buyer who’d viewed the property two months earlier. ‘Like everybody, [the buyer] was waiting for the right price,’ says listing agent: Ian Watt. ‘He loved it, but it wasn’t in the price bracket that he wanted to spend. Buyers want to know [a property] is priced for today’s market. Obviously, it wasn’t for everyone, because of the neighbourhood,’ said Mr. Watt, referring to nearby homelessness problems in Gastown and the downtown eastside.”
BBC in the UK. “There are dark stains on the outer walls of Dean Carpenter’s new-build home and when it rains, he says, sheets of water cascade down the brickwork. Since buying his Bellway property in Bedfordshire a year ago, he has found patches of damp or discoloured tiles, accretions of moss and mould growing in the loft space. Dean is one of many homeowners on two Bellway estates claiming to have endured lengthy battles with leaking roofs – and time is running out on their structural warranties. Dean, 41, paid £375,000 for his home which was built in 2015. Since then, Bellway has blocked Dean’s emails and threatened legal action if he continues posting critical remarks on Facebook. ‘I feel totally fobbed off by Bellway,’ he says. ‘The roof needs replacing, it needs re-battening, re-tiling and re-relaying correctly.'”
“Eight people on the Willow Green estate shared their concerns about stained walls, mould, or crumbling mortar in the eaves. One of them, Robert Altman, 44, says he and his neighbours in Florence Close, a 10-home development built by Bellway in 2017, are in a similar situation. They say they are the guinea pigs of a new, flat-roofed design, which has resulted in years of damp or mould on the walls of their bedrooms and bathrooms. ‘And the worst of it is, they didn’t fix the problem,’ Robert says. ‘The specialists who came in to certify the work said there were still dangerous levels of moisture in our lofts. It’s just misery after misery and we’ve been left in the cold – we’re spending time on this when we have young families, we all have jobs, and if we want to sell our houses, then we’re not going to be able to.'”
South China Morning Post. “Homebuyers from mainland China will continue to be a driving force in Hong Kong’s residential property market in 2025, after funnelling a record amount of cash into deals last year to take advantage of tax breaks and other incentives, analysts said. They were involved in 11,638 primary and secondary property transactions in 2024, an increase of 90 per cent from a year earlier, according to Centaline Property Agency. ‘The scrapping of property curbs, coupled with property prices dropping by more than 20 per cent from the peak, and the government’s introduction of a series of policies to ‘snatch talent’ and optimise immigration, have further boosted the desire of mainlanders to purchase properties in Hong Kong,’ said Louis Chan Wing-kit, CEO of Centaline Property Agency.”
“The city’s lived-in home prices fell 6.6 per cent year on year in the first 11 months of last year, taking the cumulative slide to 27 per cent from the market’s peak in September 2021, according to government data.”
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Realtors are liars.
‘The DA said Johnson’s role in the plan was to alter or forge the documents for the loans, including bank statements, pay stubs and W-2 forms. For over three years officials said the 55-year-old woman helped 450 homebuyers commit mortgage fraud by getting unqualified loans. The fake loan applications were submitted to several mortgage lenders, and some mortgage brokers who worked on getting the loans were also a part of the scheme, according to the DA. The loans totaled $161 million’
Senator running deer heap angry Kim! 450 fraudulent loans?
Sacré bleu!
Where is the lenders AI due diligence?
“Senator running deer heap angry Kim! 450 fraudulent loans?”
– That’s some sound oversight there!
– It seems like fraud is just part of the asset bubble phenomenon. Since this is the “everything,” aka “central bank” bubble, the largest asset bubble to date, the fraud is probably proportionately large. We’ll know more as the tide goes out and the bubble continues to deflate.
– Serial asset bubbles are current .gov policy. This started with A. Greenspan and “irrational exuberance.” Reference: Dot-com bubble, housing bubble 1.0, current everything bubble.
– An inconvenient truth: Asset bubbles always burst.
‘Vacant housing inventory continued to increase. By the end of the year, there were 11,264 finished, vacant homes in D-FW’
Is that a lot Ted?
“You got to move that and to create the urgency”
10YR@ 4.797% good luck with that 🤣🤣🤣
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/13/10-year-treasury-yield-rises-ahead-of-inflation-prints.html
10YR@ 4.797%
– Today’s current 30 year fixed-rate mortgage rate = 7.26% according to MND.
– This is not a historically high rate, but after extreme financial repression since the 2008-2009 GFC, including QE, and especially sub-3% rates from the wu flu pandemic period, it’s a lot higher now.
– Sub-3% mortgage rates caused the huge spike in house prices. Now 7% rates indicate a commensurately huge decline in house prices. As someone famously said: “Got popcorn?”
– Always check these ratios before buying a house: 1) house price mortgage payment (P&I) to monthly rent, and 2) median house price to median income ratios. A good ratio for (1) would be 1.0. A good ratio for (2) would be 3.0, but that hasn’t been seen for years now due multiple and continuous interventions.
– These are centrally planned markets. The State controls the means of production, including the housing market. Don’t expect significant changes until the State interventions are removed, including shutting down the GSEs and the Fed, but is there the political will to do what’s needed, or do we just keep Socialism, aka woke mind virus, going?
– One might ask the same question about the government in the city of LA, CA and the State of CA. All run by Communists. Don’t expect good outcomes under this political regime, at the City, State, or national level. Reference: Any Socialist utopia, past or present.
Sure sounds like schlongings galore in Texas.
Didn’t the realtors say they’re running out of space in 2021 D-FW? LOL
We’re losing a percentage of buyers because they can’t get policies, or the policies are too high in price,’ Canlas said.”
Above is CA bottom is FL
premium is rising from about $6,900 to more than $8,200 per year. ‘We are not affluent, we live in Boca (Raton), but we’re not that,’ he said. ‘It’s not fair for the consumer. It feels like … extortion. You don’t have a choice.’”
I would argue that these people are living beyond their means, or trying to live beyond their means in the CA case. If you bought a home for 50% less the ins. would be less and you could afford it. As I understand it the Bay are is expensive as is Boca, so, if you are broke, either rent or move to a less affluent area.
I see a lot of these cost issues being at least partially ego driven. “I gotta live in the right zip code man.” Not the right school district as several zip codes go into the same school, but the right zip code. People have flat out told me that and I am WTF???
“…I see a lot of these cost issues being at least partially ego driven…”
Ego is the root of so many bad life decisions.
Here in SoCal it’s ground zero for oversized ego’s.
People buying things they don’t need with money they don’t have to impress people they don’t know.
And, at the end of the day, nobody cares.
the right zip code
I knew someone who rented a PO box to have the desired zip code.
I knew someone who rented a PO box to have the desired zip code.
I rented a PO box when I lived in a bad zip code so I wouldn’t have my packages stolen.
Honestly 8k for a house in Boca right there on the coast where it’s almost GUARANTEED to get hit with a hurricane in the next 5 to 10 years, seems stupid for the insurance company. You can’t insure against certainties .
The key is don’t pay out, and when you have to use yer lawyers to pay as little as possible. That’s how insurance works.
Is the end near for the global bond selloff?
Markets
A global bond sell-off is deepening as investors pare Fed rate cut expectations
Published Tue, Jan 14 2025 3:46 AM EST
Updated An Hour Ago
Lee Ying Shan
KEY POINTS
– Bond yields have mostly been rising globally with the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield touching a fresh 14-month high of 4.799% on Monday.
– A combination of fewer rate cuts and an increasing term premium associated with widening government budget deficits are key drivers for this global selloff, said market watchers.
The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve building in Washington, DC, US, on Sunday, Jan. 12, 2025. The US Treasury market is leading a reset higher in borrowing costs, with potentially wide-ranging consequences.
Samuel Corum | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A sell-off in global bond markets is accelerating, fueling concerns over government finances and raising the specter of higher borrowing costs for consumers and businesses around the world.
Bond yields have mostly been rising globally with the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield touching a fresh 14-month high of 4.799% on Monday, as investors reassess the pace at which the Federal Reserve might lower interest rates.
…
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/a-global-bond-sell-off-is-deepening-as-investors-pare-fed-rate-cut-expectations/ar-BB1rpP6A
The real question is, how long will investors keep buying gub’mint debt that’s going to be inflated away by the central bankers?
30-Year Mortgage Rates Shoot Up, Hitting Highest Level Since May
By Sabrina Karl
Published January 13, 2025
Mortgage rates continue to climb, with the 30-year average jumping Friday to end the week at 7.09%, a new 7-month high. Rate movement was up for almost all other mortgage types as well Friday.
…
https://www.investopedia.com/30-year-mortgage-rates-shoot-up-hitting-highest-level-since-may-jan-13-2025-8773465
Why rising bond yields are such a problem for stocks: Morning Brief
Josh Schafer · Reporter
Tue, January 14, 2025 at 3:01 AM PST 4 min read
…
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-rising-bond-yields-are-such-a-problem-for-stocks-morning-brief-110056996.html
Get Used to a World of 5% Bond Yields as Risks Mount
Stocks Heading Higher Despite More Volatility, BlackRock Says
By Simon Kennedy, Michael Mackenzie, and Ye Xie
January 13, 2025 at 3:13 AM PST
If strategists at Bank of America are correct, the US bond market is now in the sixth year of the third great bear market since 1790.
Few investors would beg to differ after a week in which US Treasury yields soared, propelling the rate on the 10-year note to the brink of the 5% barrier rarely seen since the financial crisis of 2008.
…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-01-13/get-used-to-a-world-of-5-bond-yields-as-risks-mount
‘But ultimately, you will have to pay for that loan,’ he said.”
Unless, of course, you exercise your jingle mail option. The wipeout of Yellen Bux “value” and massive insurance payouts means cascading personal and institutional bankruptcies throughout the CA FIRE (no pun intended) sector. The cumulative losses & costs are going to be staggering. Heckova job, Bass & Newsom!
You will eat the bugs.
Washington Post — To save the planet, stop eating free-range beef (1/14/2025):
“To save the world from climate change, stop eating organic. That is, if you truly think the world is on the verge of a climate catastrophe, cut the grass-fed, free-range, hormone-free, happy-cow steak.
Admittedly, it would be better for the environment if the world went off steak (and lamb) altogether. Doing so would cut down on the methane belches while curbing one of the main causes of deforestation, which itself releases tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Beef production generates 310 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilo of protein — on average seven times as much as chicken.
A second-best solution, then, would be to let go of the idyllic image of a family farm we all have somewhere in our mind’s eye — of a denim-clad farmer walking from a barn to a pasture, calling out the names of his pampered cows. We need to instead embrace the reality that this guy’s operation does more damage to the climate per pound of beef than corporate farms do. Factory farms where cows don’t have names and are grown much faster, fattened in feedlots with no pastures in sight, are better for the environment.
https://archive.ph/muUf9
There will still be plenty of grass fed beef, just not for you.
Related article.
This is what Muh Resistance has been reduced to, advocating you consume corporate poison because it *OWNS* Orange Man Bad.
The Guardian — Robert F Kennedy Jr claims seed oils are ‘poisoning’ us. Here’s why he’s wrong (1/13/2025):
“the man Donald Trump wants for his health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has claimed that Americans are being “unknowingly poisoned” by them. But is any of this true, and should it change how you buy or cook your food?
To be clear, seed oils are oils extracted from – well, seeds. In the UK, the most common are rapeseed (known in the US as canola oil) and sunflower (both often called vegetable oil), though you will also find soybean, corn, grapeseed, rice bran and safflower in countless products.
Sarah Berry, a professor of nutritional sciences at King’s College London and chief scientist at the nutritional science company Zoe, says: “In the UK, the largest contributor of fat in most people’s diets is palm oil, which is often used for deep frying.” That isn’t a seed oil, but, she says: “Nearly all the rest of the oils that we consume come from seeds.”
Looks around kitchen, sees olive oil and butter, fails to see seed oils or other packaged, processed goyslop.
“Another concern of seed-oil sceptics is how the oil is produced. One way to do this is “cold pressing” – basically, squeezing the seeds so the oil comes out. This works fine but isn’t the most efficient option, because a lot of oil stays inside the seed.
Berry says: “From what current evidence there is, I don’t believe that there’s much difference between cooking with refined seed oil and the cold-pressed kind.” She adds the caveat that “there’s very little research on this”, but continues: “What we do know is that in our current food landscape, where we’re a growing population, you’re going to extract a lot more of the oil using refining techniques – and I’m not sure there’s a case for spending the extra money on cold-pressed seed oil unless it’s easily affordable.”
https://archive.ph/PhX6Q
Translation: we will make sure this is not easily affordable.
Articles like this remind me of how gym-goers were branded as being Republican and therefore evil, because being in shape was a Threat To Democracy. or something. That’s part of why 47 got so much of the young men’s vote.
This debate about refined seed oil vs. cold-pressed seed oil is new to me, and IMO it’s irrelevant. Cold-pressing does not extract enough oil from the seeds to be cost-effective — may as well use low-quality olive oil instead. So refined seed oils are all you’re going to see.
The couple of years will be interesting. Will we see yet another dividing line in America — fit Republicans and fat Democrats? Hard to tell. There are still an awful lot of fat rural whites — you know, People of WalMart.
I’m quite pleased that RFK Jr. is specifically using the phrase SEED OIL, and not some non-specific crap term like “ultra-processed food” or “junk food.” Vague terms are any marketer’s dream — they get away with clever but misleading promises. But if public gets it into their heads to avoid specific ingredients, they are much harder to fool.
Who closed the gyms but kept all the liquor stores, weed dispensaries, and McFood drive thrus open during CCP Flu?
Democrat Party, that’s who.
** ‘I’m concerned right now that if rates stay around 7%, we’re going to have a chilly spring market,’ said Ted Wilson, principal of Residential Strategies. ‘Demand is not growing. It may be even shrinking a little bit, but we have all these finished units out there. You got to move that and to create the urgency. You’ve got to discount, incentivize and do all the rate buydowns to get it to move.”
at the conclusion of Ted’s TED-Talk, he added ” Hey you there! Coffee is for closers: PUT THAT DOWN “
For HBB newbies who don’t understand the “coffee is for closers” reference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elrnAl6ygeM
‘I’m concerned right now that if rates stay around 7%, we’re going to have a chilly spring market,’
– Real estate, both CRE and RRE, are highly rate sensitive. It’s always been that way.
– Rates are rising from artificially low, financially repressed levels. They are rising because of the inevitable inflation due to $ printing.
– There are always consequences to policy actions; some intended and some unintended. We’re now getting the unintended ones, but inflation is the inevitable result of $ printing (i.e. excess growth of the $ supply). We’ve already had two examples of this in the dot-com bubble and housing bubble 1.0. How did those work out? We now have both of these combined in one larger “everything” bubble.
– Yes, I’m also expecting a “chilly” spring housing market. ❄️
– There are now too many Realtors (again). It’s a good time to find some other income source. OnlyFans or the gig economy come to mind, but the massive current inflation is making it harder to survive for everyone except the 1%.
– Serial asset bubbles are .gov policy, but asset bubbles always burst. This outcome is inconvenient, but it’s not different this time according to history. Plan accordingly…
For over three years officials said the 55-year-old woman helped 450 homebuyers commit mortgage fraud by getting unqualified loans.
Heckova job with that financial oversight, Fauxahontus & Co.
Paul Krugman muh best economy ever.
The Hill — Majorities think US lost ground in most areas during Biden presidency (1/14/2025):
“A majority of Americans say the U.S. lost ground under President Biden on immigration, the economy and federal debt and a host of other issues, according to a new poll released Tuesday, less than a week before the president is set to depart the White House.
Respondents in the new Gallup poll said the country had fallen behind on handling the federal debt (67 percent); immigration (64 percent); closing the gap between the wealthy and those less well-off (60 percent); the economy (59 percent); the country’s position in the world (58 percent); and crime at 51 percent.
Republicans and Republican-leaning independents think the country has fallen behind in 17 out of the 18 areas during Biden’s time in the Oval Office, with the electorate having the grimmest view on immigration and federal debt and the economy, according to the poll.
A Gallup survey from a week ago found that most Americans think that Biden’s tenure in the White House will be viewed more negatively than positively.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5084188-americans-lose-ground-under-biden-poll/
Stolen elections have consequences.
immigration (64 percent)
Somehow, I think the accusations of xenophobia and r@cism are going to fall flat this time. ICE agents might be greeted as liberators. And just wait until the money spigot closes.
“You might think ‘this is the only home I’ve known since I’ve come to the United States,’ but I want them to know that there is a better place to live than on Dallas Street.’””
They can live back home in Venezuela. In fact, “Venezuela” is spray painted on the building at 1328 Dallas Street.
Unfortunately, it might be a while before Homan can go after these Venezuelans. From what I understand, the most recent Venezuelans were brought in on CBP-1 app and TPS, which actually isn’t legal. TPS is only for illegal immigrants who were already in-country, not for bringing in new immigrants. But 47 will likely face a lot of court battles over this. Liberal lawyers have been preparing court cases probably for the past year.
Liberal lawyers have been preparing court cases
How easy is it to sue the US government from outside the country?
I’m basing my comment off of this article from last August: https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/05/politics/the-trump-administrations-most-frequent-courtroom-foes-are-preparing-a-legal-war-against-his-second-potential-term/index.html
There are plenty of advocacy group inside this country, and they have been staffing up and preparing for a DJT presidency. They’ve looked at Project 2025 and picked out the policies that DJT is mostly likely to try to implement, and they are already preparing to counter them. They already know that DJT will be much more legally sophisticated this time and he will be harder to delay or stop.
‘I don’t think our region has any idea about what is about to hit it in terms of recommendations from DOGE. I think it is going to be a lot of relocations and a lot of elimination of jobs,’ said Corey Burr at TTR Sotheby’s, who has been representing homebuyers and sellers in the D.C. region for 30 years.
The only way to drain the swamp is mass firings of the entrenched FedGov bureaucrats and drones who have openly proclaimed that they intend to undermine and subvert Trump – and the will of the electorate – at every turn. Once these parasites have to fend for themselves in Paul Krugman’s Strongest Economy Ever, the resultant reality check might cause many or most to rethink their previous dogmatic support for Bolshevism and the corrupt, crony capitalist status quo.
“bureaucrats and drones who have openly proclaimed that they intend to undermine and subvert Trump”
FedGovs are smarter than to do any open proclaiming where they can be identified. In fact, FedGovs aren’t allowed to do much political talk at all because of the Hatch Act. However, when the orders come down, it won’t be that difficult to know who is defying them and who isn’t.
Mayorkas, the DHS, and the Biden-Harris regime were all-in on facilitating mass 3rd World immigration as their most urgent policy priority.
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2025/01/14/mayorkas-we-didnt-communicate-challenges-of-migration-at-a-historic-level/
There is going to be a lot of lawfare to keep the illegals here. Of course Homan knows this, and I’m sure he has a strategy and a plan to deport as many as possible as quickly as possible.
New York Post — Trump’s incoming ‘canceled’ cabinet has fully faced the censorship regime that silenced America before — now they can flip it the ‘middle finger’ (1/13/2025):
“One could say many things about Trump’s cabinet picks. At times, they seem to embody Government by Middle Finger.
But they also, undeniably, represent Government by the Canceled: an assemblage that doesn’t need to be reminded of the administrative state’s ability to coerce the American public by calling in favors from Big Tech or pulling the levers of regulation, audit or investigation. Many have experienced such treatment firsthand.
One wonderful thing about Americans: We despise being bullied by our government. Not even our Anglosphere allies share this aspect of our national character. Yet, over the last decade, for anyone with views departing from progressive orthodoxy, American life has become increasingly suffocating.
Our posts have been censored on social media — or labeled “misinformation” by “fact-checkers” — as mine were, for criticizing Biden administration policy on boys participating in girls’ sports. We got booted from Twitter for opposing gender ideology or expressing skepticism about COVID vaccine safety.
A troubling aspect of the last decade is how many Americans started silently accepting all this.
There were, increasingly, two Americas: one enjoyed by those with approved views; the other, for everyone else.
“My body, my choice” was a sacred and undeniable maxim, unless you refused the COVID vaccine. Calling the 2016 election “stolen” was fine; claiming the 2020 election was stolen made you an enemy of democracy …
the American military seems to have a more pressing problem than its inability to exhume George C. Marshall — one related to the fact that our airmen have been marching while carrying the Pride flag, and our sailors “educated” to announce their gender pronouns and use “inclusive language.”
Recruitment across all three branches is dangerously low. Among several culprits: American families that have sent generations of their sons and daughters to fight and die for this country aren’t keen to send them into a military co-opted by leftist ideology that alternately shames and denigrates them, and that discharged 8,000 fighting men and women for their COVID vaccine status.”
https://nypost.com/2025/01/13/opinion/trumps-incoming-canceled-cabinet-know-full-well-the-censorship-regime-that-silenced-america-ready-to-embody-government-by-middle-finger/
Covid vaccines are poison.
Related article. Re-posting yet again because it is snapshot of public opinion as it neared the height of Mass Formation Psychosis. Note the specific date of this.
Gallup — American Public Opinion and Vaccination Requirements (9/3/2021):
“The variation across these party/vaccination status groups is extreme. For example, 96% of vaccinated Democrats favor the requirement for proof of vaccination before flying on an airplane, compared with 12% of unvaccinated Republicans. Ninety-four percent of vaccinated Democrats favor the requirement for attendance at events …
At this point, the actual implementations of proof of vaccination requirements across the five situations tested in this research are widely varied. Most U.S. airlines are not yet requiring proof of vaccination, nor are most hotels or dining establishments. But a number of indoor events are requiring proof of vaccination or a recent COVID test for attendance, and increasing numbers of businesses are requiring vaccinations for their workers.
The most significant implication of these attitudinal data for businesses and companies contemplating vaccination requirements is the finding that such measures will by no means be greeted with universal approval. A significant minority of Americans and U.S. workers oppose such moves, and many of those do so strongly”
https://news.gallup.com/poll/354506/update-american-public-opinion-vaccination-requirements.aspx
Let’s review the timeline.
January 2021 — installation of unelected regime into White House
March 2021 — Unelected Occupant proclaims “neanderthal thinking” for Texas daring to re-open economy
Spring 2021 — eat free doughnut, get turbo cancer
Summer 2021 — vaccine passport rollout (ex: New York Excelsior Pass)
Fall 2021 — get fired from your job for not getting injected with deadly experimental mRNA poison
Winter 2021/2022 — winter of sickness and death
Winter 2022 — Trucker convoy occupies Ottawa, participants and supporters get de-banked
Winter 2022 — Trucker convoy in western U.S. begins, scheduled to arrive in Dee Cee in March, Antifa drop rocks on convoy from highway overpasses (you thought we forgot this last part, didn’t you?)
Look again at those poll results. There will be no reconciliation with these voters, only retribution. There will be no “pandemic amnesty”
Edit to add:
January 2022 — Joe Rogan hosts Dr. Robert Malone on podcast to discuss Mass Formation Psychosis. Google immediately censors search results of “Mass Formation Psychosis” because Google are globalist vermin.
[BEWARE: Some people want this man to become President of the United States.]
Blaming ‘Climate Change’ For L.A. Fires Only Makes Newsom Look Criminally Incompetent.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/blaming-climate-change-la-fires-only-makes-newsom-look-criminally-incompetent
“All these things are connected. This is a challenging time. But we’re up to this challenge.”
That was California Gov. Gavin Newsom back in 2020 when he was busy blaming “climate change” for the wildfires that erupted that year.
“I quite literally have no patience for climate change deniers,” he said.
Four years later, Newsom is again blaming “climate change” for the fires ravaging Los Angeles.
But wait. If climate change really is to blame, why was California so obviously, so woefully, so inexcusably unprepared?
Someone needs to ask Newsom why the state didn’t spend the last four years aggressively clearing out underbrush to minimize the chances of a catastrophic wildfire. Why didn’t it carve out large and effective buffer zones to keep fires from reaching populated areas? Why wasn’t there a Marshall Plan-scale effort to build reservoirs so firefighters could get water from hydrants?
It’s not as though the state didn’t have plenty of warning. For decades, environmentalists have been screaming about how “climate change” was going to make wildfires more frequent, more all-consuming, and more deadly.
Yet in the very state where environmentalists hold all the levers of power, they dawdled and delayed, let bureaucratic red tape and environmental groups stall efforts to prepare for the worst, and put other ridiculous and massively expensive projects (such as the “bullet” train) at the front of the line.
And in the process, California has wasted fantastic sums of money.
In 2018, former Gov. Jerry Brown signed a $1 billion bill that was supposed to “prevent catastrophic wildfires and protect Californians.” Where did that money go?
A 2019 report from Newsom’s wildfire “strike force” said that “Over the next five years, the state will commit over $1 billion for critical fuel reduction projects, to support prescribed fire crews, forest thinning, and other forest health projects.”
Early in his term, Newsom launched the California Vegetation Treatment Program, which was advertised as a plan to speed environmental reviews for forest management projects.
But as the Washington Examiner shows in a devastating account of waste and mismanagement:
Those types of projects — such as thinning out dense clusters of trees and prescribed burns to remove the conditions necessary for fires to spread rapidly — have also been stifled by climate groups that regularly challenge them in court.
A Free Beacon review of the program’s latest data found that of the 525 approved projects spanning 666,450 acres, only 231 projects spanning just 6,000 acres have been completed. There are only two projects located in the Los Angeles metro area spanning 130 acres — a fuel reduction project proposed by the Los Angeles County Fire Department and a nonprofit watershed project — but both remain incomplete.
Newsom is hardly blameless. A report three years ago found that he’d been lying about his wildfire prevention efforts.
An investigation from CapRadio and NPR’s California Newsroom found the governor has misrepresented his accomplishments and even disinvested in wildfire prevention. The investigation found Newsom overstated, by an astounding 690%, the number of acres treated with fuel breaks and prescribed burns in the very forestry projects he said needed to be prioritized to protect the state’s most vulnerable communities. Newsom has claimed that 35 ‘priority projects’ carried out as a result of his executive order resulted in fire prevention work on 90,000 acres. But the state’s own data show the actual number is 11,399.
Now we learn that he’d cut funding for wildfire and forest resilience by $101 million in the budget he approved last June, and millions from other programs designed to mitigate fire damage. Is that what Newsom meant when he said in 2019 that he’d “made wildfire prevention and mitigation a top priority since taking office”?
Newsom has been just as lackadaisical when it comes to building new water reservoirs, which you’d think would Job No. 1 in a state convinced that “climate change” will cause more droughts and wildfires.
In 2014, Californians overwhelmingly approved a $7.5 billion water bond proposal, nearly $3 billion of which was set aside to build new reservoirs. More than a decade later, not a single new reservoir has been built. Where has all that money gone?
To be clear, we don’t buy the climate-change-is-to-blame nonsense.
As we noted last week, there’s no evidence that wildfires have become more common or deadly, despite constant claims to the contrary. (See: “Fire, Snow And A Storm Of Climate Nonsense.”)
But Newsom and the rest of the leftist Democrats who run the state do. It’s their religion.
Every time something bad happens in the state, they blame fossil fuels. They are endlessly warning that urgent responses are needed.
And yet, they’ve done next to nothing to protect their residents from what they repeatedly say is an existential crisis.
By their own words, they have convicted themselves of criminal negligence.
climate groups that regularly challenge them in court.
Has anyone asked these climate groups what they think, now that ALLLLLL of the brush has been cleared from those hillsides?
PAY YER TAXES.
“If you’re among the thousands of Los Angeles County residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed in the Palisades or Eaton wildfires, there is a grim reality beyond the loss of property alone: your mortgage is still due. KTLA’s David Lazarus spoke with Los Angeles County Tax Assessor Jeff Prang on Monday about the real estate implications of losing a home to a wildfire. It is a mix of good news – and bad. So is a large portion of your property tax. ‘We’re going to reduce your assessment and your property taxes,’ said Los Angeles County Tax Assessor Jeff Prang. ‘Unfortunately, this reduction doesn’t apply to the land.’ Lazarus points out that two-thirds of the property’s assessed value is the land itself and not the house.
Three years after the Marshall fire and the rebuilding has been very slow:
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/three-years-after-marshall-fire-superior-colorado-rebuilding/
yeah for Boulder County (middle finger!)
Now imagine that x10 for California.
I wonder how many of these people will bother. If the house is totally gone, and insurance won’t pay, then ISTM that the wisest option is to move and start over in another state. Don’t pay the taxes OR the mortgage. Let the bank and the state fight over who gets to repossess the smoking plot of land. Sure, you’d have a BK on your record, but it’s worth a BK to get out from under your albatross house.
[This is a long article hence I will only offer up a snip or two.]
Ecology of Fear: Mike Davis’ history of LA and natural disaster is re-read whenever fire rages in California.
https://theconversation.com/ecology-of-fear-mike-davis-history-of-la-and-natural-disaster-is-re-read-whenever-fire-rages-in-california-247101#:~:text=In%20The%20Case%20for%20Letting,and%20fierce%20Santa%20Ana%20winds.
[snip]
Davis, who died in 2022, painted a vivid, if pessimistic picture of Los Angeles as both a real and imagined city perpetually on the brink of catastrophe. “No other city seems to excite such dark rapture,” he wrote. Its obliteration “is often depicted as, or at least secretly experienced as, a victory for civilisation”.
[snip]
In the 20-odd years since his book was published, he continued, too much new housing in California had been built “profitably but insanely, in high-fire-risk areas”. Fire experts call these areas “the wildland-urban interface”.
In 2020, Davis reported, “by one estimate, a quarter of the state’s population now lives in these interface areas – with scores of new developments and master-planned communities in the pipeline”.
Experts say there is a “perfect storm” of factors at play in the current fires, including long-term climate change and extreme weather conditions playing out in a densely populated areas.
The Case for Letting Malibu Burn
In The Case for Letting Malibu Burn, Davis harrowingly described a 1930 Malibu fire unintentionally ignited by walnut pickers in the Thousand Oaks area. It “quickly grew into one of the greatest conflagrations in Malibu history”, driven by the region’s unique geological features and fierce Santa Ana winds.
Faced with a five-mile front of towering flames, 1,100 firefighters could do little except save their own lives. As the firestorm unexpectedly wheeled toward the Pacific Palisades, there was official panic.
A hundred patrolmen were posted at the Los Angeles city limits to tell residents to evacuate.
This was nearly 100 years ago – but Malibu had already long been subjected to rampant and unregulated property development, Davis wrote. Among other effects, this had drastically altered the chemical composition of the area’s soil. Malibu was spared from total annihilation only when “the fickle Santa Ana abruptly subsided”.
“In hindsight,” Davis argued, “the 1930 fire should have provoked a historic debate on the wisdom of opening Malibu to further development”. However, no such discussion ever took place.
Despite a series of subsequent fires between 1935 and 1938, which destroyed nearly 400 homes in Malibu and Topanga Canyon, public officials persisted in prioritising real estate expansion in environmentally sensitive areas where, as Davis notes, “wildfire is king”. They chose to ignore the growing risks to people, animals and the natural habitat.
Davis took a dim – and provocative – view of the levels of state expenditure and ecological costs required to maintain the lifestyles of affluent families who choose to “seek sanctuaries ever deeper in the rugged contours of the chaparral firebelt”.
[snip]
Davis’ Los Angeles is a place where – as he comprehensively details – commercial greed overrides common sense and the social good, where institutional racism marginalises vulnerable communities, and where wilful political inertia ensures history repeats itself with devastating consequences.
[snip]
In Malibu, government resources have historically been swiftly mobilised to rebuild the fire-damaged homes of the wealthy, he writes. However, the fires in Los Angeles’ downtown slum tenements, like the 1993 Burlington Apartment fire that killed ten people (including seven children), receive comparatively little support or media attention. For Davis, it’s just one example of how socioeconomic status determines how lives and properties are valued. It’s a convincing one.
He examines how existing power structures and social dynamics intensify the impact of natural disasters. At the same time, he explores how these disasters are further exacerbated by the city’s inherent vulnerability to such events, including susceptibility to fires, earthquakes, floods and an increasingly volatile climate. These historical, longstanding factors, which Davis covers in great detail, underscore how Los Angeles’ geographical and social configurations leave it especially exposed to danger.
If there has been “a fatal flaw in the design of Southern California as a civilisation”, he argues, it has been “the decision to base the safety of present and future generations almost entirely upon shortsighted extrapolations from the disaster record of the past half-century”.
In his book, he traces natural disaster and climate change in the region over centuries – and shows that LA’s urbanisation occurred “during one of the most unusual episodes of climactic and seismic benignity since the inception of the Holocene”.
Our thinking, he insists, is totally skewed as a result. “These spans are too short to serve as reliable proxies for ecological time or to sample the possibilities of future environmental stress,” he writes. “In effect, we think ourselves gods upon the land but we are still really just tourists.”
From WTOP News. “Whatever ultimately comes of the new Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Trump’s billionaire advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the potential effects on the Washington D.C.-area housing market could be significant. The federal government employs approximately 283,000 direct workers in the D.C. metro, including 141,000 in the District itself, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Many of those employees are homeowners, and DOGE — at least in early messaging and whether ultimately impractical — aims to drastically reduce the number of government employees in the D.C. area and across the country, moving some agencies out of the nation’s capital.”
– Our Founding Fathers based our constitution on the principles of checks and balances and limited government, because human nature and “power corrupts.”
– There are over 3M federal .gov employees currently. In order to jump-start the economy and reduce undue deep-administrative state political influence, .gov spending should be cut by at least 30% to start. This is what Javier Milei did to remake the economy in Argentina under a similar Socialist regime. This includes eliminating some federal .gov employees, and especially those who have indicated that they won’t support the new Trump administration. Federal employee cuts are just part of the necessary reduction in .gov spending. I don’t know the exact numbers, but the DOGE team are smart and can figure this out. From what I read, most of the .gov waste, fraud and abuse is in procurement, so focus on that.
– BTW, the Fed employs about 24k employees and has a budget of about $7B. Start here. Eliminate the Fed. Replace it with the U.S. Treasury 2 yr. note yield. Also eliminate the GSEs and make the housing market a free market again.
– Here’s a place to start on the .gov employee cuts. I’m hoping for some real change this time.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/01/13/deep-state-gearing-nearly-half-federal-employees-swamp-plan-resist-trump-poll-finds/
Commentary
DEEP STATE GEARING UP: Nearly Half of Federal Employees in the Swamp Plan to Resist Trump, Poll Finds
Tyler O’Neil | January 13, 2025
“A surprising number of federal government employees admit they are gearing up to act like a deep state, opposing the incoming second administration of Donald Trump.”
“Most Americans, even many of the elites who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, are willing to support Trump’s administration, according to an RMG Research survey commissioned by the Napolitan Institute. Yet 42% of federal government managers who work in the Washington, D.C., swamp intend to work against the administration.”
“RMG Research conducted three surveys in mid-December to study three different segments of the population. The polling firm focused on what it calls the Elite 1% who have postgraduate degrees, earn more than $150,000 annually, and live in densely populated areas; Main Street Americans who meet none of these three criteria and who represent between 70% and 75% of the U.S. population; and Federal Government Managers—federal employees who live in the National Capitol Region around Washington and earn at least $75,000 annually.”
– DJT: “Yer fired!”
“From what I read, most of the .gov waste, fraud and abuse is in procurement, so focus on that.”
It’s pretty easy to cut procurement without cutting a single FedGov.
STEVE HILTON: In LA, you can smell the smoke and feel the rage
Rage at a governor who, when confronted over the shocking revelations of dry fire hydrants and empty reservoirs, waved his arms around and said, “ask the local people.”
Rage at the ‘local person’ — Mayor Karen Bass – who, when confronted over her failure to prepare for this disaster, her failure to even be in town, simply froze on camera. A bizarre, pathetic two-minute silence instead of the strong leadership we need.
In March, my new book, ‘Califailure – Reversing the Ruin of America’s Worst-Run State’ will catalog the terrible combination of incompetence and ideological extremism that has left California at the top of every list you’d want to be the bottom of, and bottom of every list you’d want to be at the top of — from the highest rate of poverty in the nation to the worst business climate; the highest housing costs and the lowest homeownership. Crime and homelessness out of control. All paid for with the highest taxes in America.
Now, with the catastrophe in Los Angeles, everyone can see how badly things have gone wrong.
Of course they try to blame “climate change.” But other places with similar climates and similar geography don’t seem to suffer the same way.
In California, environmental extremism stopped action to manage what’s known as the “fuel load” in our forests and chaparral. Thinning overgrown forests, clearing undergrowth and brush — blocked by misguided Democrat policies.
Their ‘green’ bureaucracy has even slowed down or blocked vital work like burying or insulating power lines that spark wildfires! How is that good for the environment?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/steve-hilton-in-la-you-can-smell-the-smoke-and-feel-the-rage-california-can-change-it-starts-now/ar-BB1ro1Vo
With her city in flames, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ political future hangs in the balance
Apocalyptic fires had been ravaging Los Angeles for more than 24 hours when Mayor Karen Bass stepped off a plane and into a now-viral encounter that may come to define her mayoralty.
She had left Los Angeles on Jan. 4, as the National Weather Service intensified warnings about a coming windstorm, to attend the inauguration of Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama. She remained out of the country as the Palisades fire ignited, then exploded, with other fires soon erupting in and around the city.
She returned Wednesday to public outrage about her whereabouts and questions about empty hydrants, an empty reservoir and, according to some, insufficient resources at the Fire Department. Her handling of questions in the days that followed has only intensified some of that criticism.
Now — while Bass navigates a calamity that will redefine the city — her political future also hangs in the balance.
In a moment of anguish where people desperately want heroes and villains to make sense of their own pain, Bass has undoubtedly become a punching bag for portions of the city.
In recent days, the hits have come from all sides, with her 2022 challenger, billionaire mall mogul Rick Caruso, castigating Bass in the media for her absence and handling of the fire.
Caruso, whose Palisades mall survived the conflagration with the help of private firefighters, told The Times last week that Bass’ “terrible” leadership had resulted in “billions of dollars in damage because she wasn’t here and didn’t know what she was doing.”
Before swaths of the city immolated, the Democratic mayor of an overwhelmingly Democratic city was widely expected to sail into a second term with no serious opponents in the 2026 election.
Potential challengers may now “smell blood in the water,” as one local political consultant put it, and reassess the viability of mounting their own campaigns amid a rapidly shifting political landscape.
“I don’t understand how they did not cancel her trip,” a senior staffer for another local elected official said, explaining that their office had begun viewing the coming wind event as a grave threat during the preceding weekend. “It was political malpractice.”
The staffer, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said it was common practice for Los Angeles politicians to cancel, or prepare to cancel, prearranged events during severe weather events.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/her-city-flames-l-mayor-231119020.html
Nothing is “hanging in the balance.” She trashed any hanging future with her non-answer at the airport in Britain.
She’s out, but don’t expect anyone to vote for a Republican. She’ll be primaried by some other Democrat who pretends to be moderate but will really be just as bad.
LA fire victims are suddenly thrust into an unforgiving rental housing market
Displaced families have been contacting LAist with multiple examples of rental listings that show huge jumps in asking rents in the wake of the fires.
LAist reported on one listing for a four-bedroom home in Bel Air that went up Saturday morning for $29,500 per month — a nearly 86% increase from the property’s advertised rent in September 2024. The listing agent told LAist she advised her client to put the home up for rent after the fires broke out.
“People are desperate, and you can probably get good money,” said the agent, Fiora Aston, with Compass. The listing was taken down later that same day.
“We’re seeing astronomical rent increases,” said Chelsea Kirk, a policy and advocacy director with L.A.-based tenant rights nonprofit Strategic Actions for a Just Economy.
Dan Yukelson, CEO of local landlord advocacy group the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, said the organization is compiling a database of available units, some with waived security deposits, for wildfire victims. He said the organization has also notified its members about the anti-price gouging limits in effect.
“If I saw somebody that had pricing before the emergency, and then you see it going up by more than 10%, they should be reported and prosecuted by the attorney general,” Yukelson said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/la-fire-victims-are-suddenly-thrust-into-an-unforgiving-rental-housing-market/ar-BB1roSoN
Displaced Los Angeles-area residents face spiking rents as authorities warn of price gouging
The stampede has resulted in some homeowners and property managers jacking up prices on short-term rentals, including dozens that appear to violate a California law against increasing prices by more than 10% during a state of emergency, according to a review of Zillow listings and interviews with real estate agents, housing advocates and home-seekers.
Authorities have asked residents to report gouging to the state Attorney General’s Office.
“This is absolutely unacceptable and illegal to do in the face of this horrible tragedy,” state Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, who represents parts of western Los Angeles, said at a news conference Sunday.
Magdaleno Rosales, an organizer with the Los Angeles Tenants Union, which advocates on behalf of renters and for affordable housing, said the group has launched an effort to track reports of rental price gouging. He said he has gotten more than 450 tips, some describing spikes of a little more than 10% and a dozen reporting 100% increases or more.
“Landlords are moving really quickly to try to take advantage of people’s desperation,” he said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/displaced-los-angeles-area-residents-face-spiking-rents-as-authorities-warn-of-price-gouging/ar-BB1roD28
Los Angeles price gouging is ‘inhumane’: Real estate agent
California law prohibits raising the cost of goods and services over 10%, a statute that also includes temporary housing. In some cases, such as a dwelling that was not rented or advertised for rent before the disaster, the cap is much higher – 160% of the fair market value.
“We are seeing landlords and agents charging astronomical numbers for rent,” Santo Pietro said during an appearance on “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.” “It’s inhumane. It’s not right, morally. It’s illegal.”
On Monday Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said they’re starting to see criminals emerge.
Nearly three dozen people have been arrested for looting since the fires began last week.
Hochman added that price gouging has been happening with hotels and short-term rentals and medical supplies. Scammers are also contacting people for fake GoFundMe efforts, though he said the official organization has done a good job of putting protections against this in place and recommended making such donations through that site.
“The criminals have decided that this is an opportunity and I’m here to tell you this is not an opportunity. You will be arrested,” Hochman said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/public-safety-and-emergencies/natural-disasters/los-angeles-price-gouging-is-inhumane-real-estate-agent/ar-BB1rp5uW
I’m not really surprised Californians are pouncing on this opportunity for that sweet equity!
Homeless encampments near railroad tracks in San Jose remain a safety concern
Officials in San Jose continue to tackle issues of homelessness, including encampments that pop up near railroad tracks, creating a serious safety hazard.
Advocates say this issue is no different from people living near the waterways. People know its unsafe, but they sometimes have nowhere else to go.
“When they’re going down the tracks, it makes a really high-pitched whine, and it vibrates the tracks for miles,” said James Padlina, of San Jose.
As someone who’s been homeless, James Padlina says he understands why some people are camping out near the railroad tracks on Little Orchard Street in San Jose.
“The tracks are a lot more open. When it’s raining you don’t have to worry about getting flooded. Because of all the rocks, you don’t get as muddy,” said Padlina.
“Nobody tells you what to do, when to eat, when to go to bed. It’s a place of freedom,” said Mike Roman, of San Jose.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/homeless-encampments-near-railroad-tracks-in-san-jose-remain-a-safety-concern/ar-BB1rpN31
SLO County couple used COVID-19 aid for a condo in Hawaii. Now they’re going to prison
An Arroyo Grande couple was sentenced to more than two years in federal prison Thursday for defrauding the federal government of more than $1.3 million of COVID-19 relief funds to help purchase a condo in Hawaii and at least three luxury vehicles, court documents show.
Husband and wife Christopher and Erin Mazzei were sentenced to 36 months and 27 months, respectively, in federal prison on Thursday after both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, court documents show.
“The Mazzeis perpetrated a gross fraud to obtain critical resources intended for members of our community experiencing devastating hardships as a result of the pandemic,” U.S. Attorney Clare E. Connors said in a U.S. Department of Justice news release.
In April 2020, the two submitted applications for Paycheck Protection Program funds to the Bank of Hawaii and two other banks in Pennsylvania and Maine in order to support their purported businesses, Better Half Entertainment LLC, Better Half Productions Inc., which are both film and television production business, and Gusto on the Go LLC, a catering business, court documents said.
Loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, were meant to help small businesses pay their employees during the pandemic shutdown and ensuing economic fallout.
As a result of the fraudulent applications, court documents said, they received $1.365 million in PPP loan funds, which they used for personal expenses.
This included buying a condo in Kapolei, Hawaii, with a down payment of $175,500, as well as a $50,000 2020 Lincoln Aviator, a nearly $76,000 2019 Lincoln Navigator and a $43,500 2019 Ford Expedition, court documents show.
The couple also used nearly $27,000 for a mortgage payment and $12,500 for a home equity line of credit payment on their Arroyo Grande home, took out $500,000 and $293,000 in cashier’s checks and transferred $50,000 between bank accounts, court documents show.
According to the news release, the couple also used $164,796 to film a promotional trailer for a television projected entitled “Ohana.” The couple hoped to produce the film in Hawaii and catch the attention of film producer and actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the Department of Justice said.
“This scheme diverted emergency relief that could have paid 25 Americans an average salary,” Adam Jobes, special agent in charge of the IRS Criminal Investigation’s Seattle Field Office, said in the news release. “While small businesses shut down all over the country, the Mazzeis lived in excess on the taxpayers’ dime.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/slo-county-couple-used-covid-19-aid-for-a-condo-in-hawaii-now-they-re-going-to-prison/ar-BB1ro7Fd
Climate Change didn’t cause the California fires, but that’s their story .
Also I was reading that a number of the fire policies
don’t cover the required building code upgrades that are required. So, for instance a house could have 200 thousand in updated code requirements , that the insurance doesn’t cover, that the homeowner has to pay to rebuild.
And some policies might limit how many days they cover paying for living elsewhere while you rebuild , which might take over 5 years.
And , a insured still has to pay mortgage and tax payments or risk foreclosure, unless the Bank gives forbearance.
Also, I am noticing that the news stations aren’t showing current live footage of fires ,all of a sudden, in spite of them saying only 17 % containment.
And I also heard that the legal system is so backed up in Ca, that this fact is going to create delays also.
A bloody nightmare.
There is a rider for your home insurance which is basically “bring it up to code upon rebuilding” which is well worth having. (also one for sewer backups (like from the city into your house) also well worth having.
any good insurance agent should be selling these when writing policies, they aren’t expensive compared to the cost of the total policy.
Hillary Ronen on progressives, messaging, hard choices, and justice
San Francisco has changed a lot since former district 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen started working in City Hall in 2009 as a legislative aide to her predecessor, David Campos. Barack Obama had just been elected president, and the most prominent issues in San Francisco were a looming fiscal crisis, the mortgage and housing bubble, mass evictions and displacement.
Now, as Ronen departs City Hall along with fellow progressives Aaron Peskin and Dean Preston, San Francisco is girding for battle with President Trump while facing a massive budget deficit and ongoing homelessness and street addiction crises.
48HILLS Within all that, do you feel that the balance of power has changed?
HILLARY RONEN There used to be a lot more people in the middle that tended more towards the progressive side in San Francisco. Maybe they weren’t working-class, maybe they didn’t have a job that required them to be thinking about how poor people are faring in San Francisco, but their heart and soul were like, we need fairness. We need to make sure that the least among us have what they need to succeed. With so much poverty being right outside people’s doors now, and the problem feeling so overwhelming, and the feeling of seeing that poverty making people feel unsafe, that middle sort of has shifted further to the right. Other than [Art] Agnos, we’ve always had a more moderate mayor. It’s a strong-mayor city, but the blaming of the situation on progressives, which is you know really laughable, because progressives have never had enough power. It’s the sort of market rate Reaganomics neoliberal system that has gotten us to this crisis. People are just so angry in general that everything feels so unwieldy and unsafe in the city that it’s been easy to blame on progressives.
48HILLS How do you see public safety from a left progressive view?
HILLARY RONEN For me police should not be doing the fundamental work of making sure that people’s basic needs are met and, and poverty work. I think so much of police’s time is spent on addressing poverty. And that should not be their job. We should have mental health professionals, we should have social workers. We should have other government agencies and employees addressing people’s poverty… So I created things to try to divert this, like the crisis response team, to divert the work of dealing with people with drug addiction and mental health, to [the Department of Public Health] and to the fire department, especially emergency services workers. … When I said ‘defund the police,’ I think that’s the worst term ever… what I meant is take some of the police money in their budget and give it to DPH and fire to do that life-saving work. I did not mean get rid of the police force altogether. That’s just not realistic.
https://48hills.org/2025/01/progressives-messaging-hard-choices-and-justice-the-48hills-interview/
“When I said ‘defund the police,’ …” “I did not mean get rid of the police force altogether.”
Yeah, right; That is exactly what you meant.
[From Wikipedia …]
In 2020, during the George Floyd protests, Ronen was a vocal proponent of cuts to the San Francisco Police Department’s budget.[32][33] She criticized Mayor London Breed’s proposal in 2020 for a 2.6% decrease to the law enforcement budget as a “slap in the face” and called for deeper cuts.[32] In October 2022, Ronen repeated calls for cuts to the SFPD (whose budget at the time was up 4.4% from its 2019 levels).[34]
Ronen has opposed proposals to fill vacancies within SFPD, or to set minimum SFPD staffing levels,[35] and rejected Police Chief Bill Scott’s assessment that there is a understaffing crisis within the department.[34] She has contended that Mayor Breed has given too much focus to police department vacancies at the expenses of vacancies in other city departments, such as the San Francisco Department of Public Health.[36] Ronen has also clashed with Scott after a series of San Francisco Chronicle reports showed that some SFPD officers ignored crimes in progress or failed to properly investigate them. In a letter to Scott, Ronen wrote that reports of officer apathy “indicate a systemic breakdown in your department” and suggested a “deliberate work stoppage”; Scott denied that this was the case.[37]
In March 2023, following a series of high-profile crimes in the city, Ronen demanded more police presence in the Mission within her district.[33] Rosen’s reversal prompted critics to accuse her of hypocrisy; in response, Ronen criticized the police department for logging more than 100,000 overtime hours through mid-2023 patrolling Union Square and other shopping areas, rather than other parts of the city.[33]
In 2023, Ronen apologized for her role in aiding Fernando Madrigal, who was a member of the Norteños gang and simultaneously an activist who promoted reform of the criminal justice and juvenile justice systems. In July 2019, Madrigal fatally shot a 15-year-old bystander with an AR-15 while hunting members of rival gangs; before he was implicated in the killing, Ronen appeared with Madrigal at a rally on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, and Ronen wrote a letter to a court supporting Madrigal’s petition for early release from his probation for a previous carjacking conviction. After Madrigal was arrested and pleaded guilty to the killing, Ronen tearfully apologized to the victim’s mother, saying that she was horrified to discover that Madrigal had murdered the teenager and that she had “no idea” of the degree of Madrigal’s gang involvement.[38][39]
[Alos from Wikipedia ”’]
Defund the police.
In the United States, “defund the police” is a slogan advocating for reallocating funds from police departments to non-policing forms of public safety and community support initiatives, such as social services, youth programs, housing, education, healthcare, and other community resources. The goals of those using the slogan vary; some support modest budget reductions, while others advocate for full divestment as part of a broader effort to abolish contemporary policing systems.
Proponents of defunding police departments argue that investing in community-based programs can more effectively address the root causes of crime, such as poverty, homelessness,[1][2] and mental health conditions, thereby serving as a better deterrent. Police abolitionists propose replacing traditional police forces with alternative public safety models, emphasizing housing, employment, community health, education, and other social support systems.[3][4][5]
Alos = Also
They had enough power to get people killed.
And of course she just won’t admit that her failed policies made everything worse. But if SF voters keep electing leftists, even if they are are little less leftist than their predecessors, then the doom loop will continue.
“Hillary Ronen…”
Wealthy, liberal, white women are modern society’s cancer.
Struggling Quebec Liberals looking to reset as leadership race kicks off on Monday
As the federal Liberals prepare to choose Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s successor, another Liberal leadership race is getting underway in Quebec this week.
The stakes are high for the Quebec Liberals, who have been in the political wilderness for years, with dismal polling among francophone voters. Candidates and observers say the party needs to broaden its appeal beyond Montreal if it’s to have any chance of forming government in the 2026 provincial election.
The campaign will unfold in the shadow of the race taking shape in Ottawa. And with Trudeau’s former Quebec lieutenant, Pablo Rodriguez, the likely front-runner, the Quebec Liberals will have to set themselves apart from a federal party in turmoil.
“Let’s face it,” said political analyst Karim Boulos. “It’s not a great time to be a Liberal.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-struggling-quebec-liberals-looking-to-reset-as-leadership-race-kicks/
Donald Trump’s constant talk of annexing Canada is about forming an economic union, Kevin O’Leary says
Donald Trump’s persistent talk of annexing Canada is partly bombast and means he wants an economic union, Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary says.
Mr. O’Leary, also a reality TV star, has visited the U.S. president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida a number of times since Mr. Trump won the 2024 presidential election, most recently with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith this past weekend.
“Everyone in Canada should understand that Trump is bombastic and controversial, and they have to learn how to distinguish between the signal and the noise,” Mr. O’Leary said in an interview.
“The noise is: ‘I want to buy Canada, and I want it for a discount price, and everybody’s going to lose their sovereignty,‘” he said.
He said Canadian leaders should visit Mar-a-Lago as soon as they can, suggesting it’s more important right now than the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which takes place Jan. 20-24. An invite to the Palm Beach club offers access to Mr. Trump and his team that will not be possible once the Republican leader takes office next week.
“Mar-a-Lago has become effectively Davos. I’d argue I don’t have to go to Switzerland this year. I’ve done everything I need to do there.”
He said when he talked to Mr. Trump earlier this month, he advised the president-elect to wait until a federal election in Canada before negotiating with the Canadian government. Mr. O’Leary said he told Mr. Trump before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he would resign that it was a “complete waste of time” to deal with Mr. Trudeau given his party’s standing in the polls.
“I’m not representing Canada or any other Canadian,” he said. “I’m just saying Trudeau is going to zero. He’s going to get wiped off the map. This was on the Saturday before he quit,” Mr. O’Leary recalled.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trump-oleary-canada-us-51st-state-economic-union/
‘I want to buy Canada, and I want it for a discount price, and everybody’s going to lose their sovereignty‘
That’s the spirit!
It crosses my mind that we could acquire Greenland by:
1) Building a new house for every Greenland household
2) Giving every adult a new truck or SUV
3) Giving every adult a gooberment job. Some of those could be on military bases.
4) Giving everyone US citizenship
In exchange for their agreement to our annexing the island.
INCO, you could take over Greenland faster & easier by just giving out free cellphones w/Starlink. aka “electronic crack”.
people in every corner of the globe now spend all their time staring into these time sinks. I’ve noticed, to my utter dismay, that people, my spouse included, use every available moment to whip out the cell phone (wife: iPad Mini).
humans cannot STAND to be bored. not for one nanosecond!
(just observe, when you come to a stop light, how allllll of the drivers heads tilt down to the cell phone. modern day Forest Gump’s life story would never get told to fast friends on a bench as he would be glued to the glow.)
back to the main topic: just hand out free cellphones w/unlimited data/Starlink and access to the Daily Mail.
no military invasion. no economic hitmen.
ez peasy. no fuss.
no bother.
“when you come to a stop light, how allllll of the drivers heads tilt down”
And this is why only three vehicles get through a left turn arrow each traffic light cycle.
I suspect they already have phones, at least in the few towns.
How Biden tarnished his own legacy
Standing at a lectern at Washington’s National Cathedral last Thursday, Joe Biden delivered the eulogy for former President Jimmy Carter while three other former presidents – Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama – and the once and future president, Donald Trump, looked on.
Each spectating president had achieved the validation of the American people (re-election to a second term) that has eluded Biden. And as Biden, whose term comes to an end next week, paid tribute to Carter, a fellow one-term president, it was hard not to draw other parallels too.
Earlier in the week, however, Biden was making the case for his own legacy and how history should judge him.
“I hope that history says that I came in and I had a plan how to restore the economy and reestablish America’s leadership in the world,” he said in a television interview. “And I hope it records that I did it with honesty and integrity; that I said what was on my mind.”
Whether that happens is subject to vigorous discussion – but he exits the White House with his approval ratings near their lowest mark of his presidency. Only 39% have a positive view, according to the latest Gallup survey, down from 57% at the start of his term.
Next week, the man he defeated in 2020 returns to power, marking what must feel to him like a dour end to a presidency.
His current place in history is as the Democratic interregnum between the two Trump presidential terms. A blip, rather than a pivot.
“He’d like his legacy to be that he rescued us from Trump,” says author and Democratic strategist Susan Estrich. “But sadly, for him, his legacy is Trump again. He is the bridge from Trump One to Trump Two.”
What would Biden’s legacy have been if he had simply stepped aside – “passed the torch” in his words – without seeking a second term? No video campaign launch. No grasping for campaign messages or Trump debate disaster. Instead, a robust race for the Democratic nomination with Biden floating above it all.
“We should have had primaries,” argues Ms Estrich. “His successor would have had time to make the case.”
In the end, Biden’s age and Trump’s enduring appeal were the fires that his administration could never put out, and the ones that ultimately consumed his presidency.
In exactly one week, Trump will take the oath of office and will likely set about dismantling much of what Biden accomplished over the past four years. How effective he is at doing this will go a long way towards determining Biden’s lasting legacy.
A few weeks ago, I asked Attorney General Garland how he thought history would judge Biden and this administration.
“I’ll leave that to the historians,” he replied.
That, in the end, is all Biden has left.
https://www.aol.com/inside-story-bidens-undoing-infighting-001254370.html
“I came in and I had a plan how to restore the economy”
40% of every dollar in existence was printed since the beginning of CCP Flu.
Stolen elections have consequences.
And I hope it records that I did it with honesty and integrity
So, a fairy tale it is?
Harry Truman: The buck stops here
FJB: 10% for the big guy
You know times are tough when booze companies have layoffs:
It’s been pretty well documented that Millenials are staying away from alcohol, at least the hard liquor. No more bar carts and “what’ll you have” to any guest that walks into the house. They love their craft beer tho.
How the Left Turned California Into a Paradise Lost;
Gavin Newsom promised to ‘Trump-proof’ the Golden State. If only he’d fireproofed it instead.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-the-left-turned-california-into-a-paradise-lost-government-policy-wildfires-48b88d6a?st=3P53i5
After the November election, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his plans to “Trump-proof” the Golden State. How about fire-proofing? Los Angeles’s horrific fires are exposing the costs of its progressive follies, which even wealthy liberals in their Palisades palaces can’t escape.
Start with its environmental obsessions. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in 2019 sought to widen a fire-access road and replace old wooden utility poles in the Topanga Canyon abutting the Palisades with steel ones to make power lines fire- and wind-resistant. In the process, crews removed an estimated 182 Braunton’s milkvetch plants, an endangered species.
The utility halted the project as state officials investigated the plant destruction. More than a year later, the California Coastal Commission issued a cease-and-desist order, fined the utility $2 million, and required “mitigation” for the project’s impact on the species. This involved replacing “nonnative” vegetation with plants native to the state. You have to chuckle at the contradiction: California’s progressives want to expel foreign flora and fauna but provide a sanctuary for illegal immigrants.
Since the milkvetch requires wildfires to propagate, the only way to boost its numbers is to let the land burn. A cynic might wonder if environmentalists interfered with fire prevention in hope of evicting humans from what they view as the plant’s rightful habitat. To radical environmentalists, every human is a colonizer.
Next, consider the government’s misallocation of resources. Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley complains the city cut her budget by $17 million last spring, which she says reduced overtime compensation and interfered with wildfire preparation. Maybe, though the veteran firefighter may also be saying this to get more money for her department.
In truth, the fire budget didn’t shrink since city leaders last autumn approved a new union contract that boosted pay and benefits by $76 million—about $20,000 per firefighter. Even before this raise, firefighters on average earned about $200,000, plus $90,000 in benefits. Many can retire at 55 with pensions equaling 90% of their final salaries.
Los Angeles spent $350 million this year on firefighter pensions and benefits. Much of that would have been better spent on fire prevention, which made up only 5% of the department’s budget. Ms. Crowley calls “diversity, inclusion, and equity” a top priority, and the Fire Department boasted nine DEI positions.
Bloated union contracts and DEI may not have directly hampered the fire response, but they illustrate the government’s wrongheaded priorities. It’s the same with water. Donald Trump blamed dry fire hydrants in L.A. on protections for the delta smelt fish. The real culprit was an overwhelmed water system, but both reflect government mismanagement.
Smelt protections restrict the amount of water that flows from the state’s north to the south. This has led to billions of gallons of water being flushed out to the Pacific Ocean each year, along with chronic water shortages, high unemployment, overpumped wells and environmental degradation in the state’s Central Valley. Mr. Newsom opposed Mr. Trump’s first-term efforts to ease the fish protections. You can lead California progressives to water, but you can’t make them think.
Consider the state’s response to crime and homelessness, which may have contributed to the fires. Last year’s Park Fire—the fourth largest in state history—was allegedly ignited by a man with two prior felony convictions who was on parole for a DUI. The Los Angeles Times reported in early 2021 that 24 fires on average were breaking out each day in the city’s homeless encampments. A fire in an encampment shut down an L.A. freeway last November, the second time that had happened in a little over a year.
Good Samaritans on Thursday detained a homeless man who they said used a flamethrower to incinerate Christmas trees and garbage cans, around the same time as a major fire erupted. Police arrested the vagrant on a felony probation violation—meaning he had been on parole for another felony—because they said they lacked probable cause to charge him with arson. The suspect reportedly claimed he was using a blowtorch to smoke marijuana.
Wealthy liberals have long been shielded from the consequences of their government’s blunders. State regulators until recently even suppressed insurance rates for high-priced homes by barring insurers from fully pricing in wildfire risk and reinsurance costs.
Like King Canute, who tried to command the tides, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara on Thursday prohibited insurers from dropping homeowners in areas affected by the fires. People who lose their homes deserve sympathy. But if insurers aren’t allowed to limit their liabilities or adjust premiums based on risk, they will instead raise rates on everyone.
Democrats think they can wave away economic reality, much as they do when they pretend there are no costs to raising the minimum wage or taxes. Will the fires prompt Mr. Newsom and company to rethink their delusions? Forget it, it’s La La Land.
California Withdraws Requests for Some Tighter Climate Rules.
https://dnyuz.com/2025/01/14/california-withdraws-requests-for-some-tighter-climate-rules/
California has withdrawn requests that the Biden administration allow the state to enact limits on pollution from trucks, locomotives and ferries that are more strict than federal standards, on the expectation that the Trump administration would revoke them.
The move will leave the state, which has become a global leader in the fight against climate change, without some tools to lower planet-warming emissions at a moment when Los Angeles is being devastated by historic wildfires. Scientific studies have concluded that pollution from fossil fuels is intensifying wildfires in the West.
Under the 1970 Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency has for decades granted waivers to California, which has historically struggled with smog, to enact tougher pollution limits than those set by the federal government. Federal law also allows other states, under certain circumstances, to adopt California’s standards as their own.
Waivers can be used to rein in pollutants like soot, nitrogen dioxide and ozone that cause smog and lead to asthma and lung disease. But California officials have also used waivers to curb carbon dioxide, a chief cause of global warming. Gas powered cars and other forms of transportation are the biggest source of carbon dioxide generated by the United States.
Nearly all waivers requested by California have been granted, except during the first Trump administration, when President Donald J. Trump seemed to relish revoking California’s waiver to tighten state controls on pollution.
In December, the Biden administration granted California a waiver to enact one of the most ambitious climate policies in the world: a ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles in the state after 2035. Eleven other states plan to enact the same ban. Mr. Trump has already said he will revoke it. “California has imposed the most ridiculous car regulations anywhere in the world, with mandates to move to all electric cars,” Mr. Trump has said. “I will terminate that.”
California submitted requests to the E.P.A. more than a year ago to tighten controls on additional sources of pollution, including a requirement that commercial truck fleets begin a transition to all-electric or other zero emission vehicles, starting in 2024. Under those requests, now withdrawn, operators would have been required to achieve 100 percent zero-emissions fleets in the state between 2035 and 2042, depending on factors such as the size and weight of the trucks. The state also wanted to require that new heavy-duty trucks sold in California must be all-electric or zero-emissions by 2036.
Other withdrawn requests would have required operators of refrigerated trucks and trailers to begin transitioning to all-electric or zero-emissions fleets in 2024 and to reach 100 percent zero-emissions vehicles by 2030. The state also wanted to require operators of short-run ferries to use zero-emissions vessels by the end of 2025. And finally, it wanted railroad operators to begin transitioning to all-electric or zero-emissions locomotives in 2030, reaching 100 percent clean locomotives by 2053.
California regulators estimate that the rules, together, would have resulted in at least $50 billion in public health benefits because of avoided pollution.
E.P.A. officials said the agency had run out of time to review the waiver requests, prompting California to withdraw.
“Frankly, given that the Trump administration has not been publicly supportive of some of the strategies that we have deployed in these regulations, we thought it would be prudent to pull back and consider our options,” said Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board, the state’s clean air and climate regulator.
Ann Carlson, who helped write the Biden administration’s policies to cut tailpipe emissions and now teaches law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that the state’s inability to tighten limits on pollution from truck fleets was a particular blow.
“Trucks are a huge source of emissions and California has been leading on electrification of trucks, and the Trump administration is not going to fill the gap,” Ms. Carlson said.
She noted that although Mr. Trump has also said he would end federal support for electric vehicles, they now make up about 10 percent of the nation’s auto sales and have begun to find a global market.
The same is not yet true for electric trucks, which today make up less than 2 percent of heavy-duty vehicles sold in the United States.
Truck operators had criticized California’s plan.
“It set unrealistic time frames for converting a fleet over,” said Mike Tunnell, senior director of environmental affairs and research at the American Trucking Association. “It would increase your cost of transporting goods. The vehicles are much more expensive. The argument is that it saves money on fuel by going to with electricity, but it takes years to recoup that expense.”
Ms. Carlson and others said that they expected the state to find ways to use its own authority to curb emissions.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who has publicly feuded with Mr. Trump for years, particularly over California’s authority to impose its vanguard climate programs, has developed plans to “Trump-proof” the state’s policies.
When Mr. Trump revoked the California waiver during his first administration, the state secretly struck legal agreements with four of the world’s largest automakers — Ford, Volkswagen, Honda and BMW — to reduce their tailpipe emissions according to limits set by California.
The state attorney general’s office has already begun outreach to companies to strategize on how to reach such agreements in the new Trump era.
The office hopes to create a foundation for such deals following its lawsuit last year accusing five of the world’s largest oil companies of knowingly contributing to climate damage, and its lawsuit last month alleging that Exxon Mobil misled consumers into believing that many plastic products were recyclable when they were not.
Regulators could also limit emissions stemming from vehicles that are linked to enormous facilities like warehouses that are a hub for diesel trucks. A similar rule recently took effect in Los Angeles.
“We still have some existing strategies,” Ms. Randolph said.
Deflation is the mortal enemy of profligate governments & debt donkeys.
https://asiatimes.com/2025/01/in-defense-of-chinese-deflation/
The wipeout of Yellen Bux CRE values in blue cities and states shows no sign of abating.
https://x.com/FCNightingale/status/1879224472043245687
Dear Democrats: This Time, You Can’t Blame the Republicans.
The fires in Los Angeles are a direct result of failed progressive policies and to pretend otherwise will lead to more tragedies.
https://sashastone.substack.com/p/dear-democrats-this-time-you-cant
Six years ago on Medium, I wrote the following:
The Republicans have systematically turned climate change into a partisan issue, you know, like abortion, and have done so to manipulate their gullible electorate into believing the lie that there is no such thing as man-made climate change. They spew the dumbo rhetoric any time they can, that “oh the weather changes all the time.” Or “I don’t believe climate change is real — even if the planet is warming, it isn’t our fault.”
Yeah, it is. You dig up fossil fuels and you burn them, that warms the planet. They were buried for millions of years which, in turn, cooled the planet, making it an ideal atmosphere for all kinds of different forms of life, including us. What’s coming next is uncharted territory for humanity. We have no idea how bad it’s going to get. We just know it WILL be bad.
I was not only furious with rage, but I was quick to blame the other side for deliberately sabotaging our noble efforts to stop the warming of the planet, as though we ourselves were not contributing to it. We acted like we could buy a hybrid here, go vegan there, recycle our plastic, and be absolved from contributing to this existential crisis we all now must face.
It isn’t that I don’t believe the planet is warming, or that sea level won’t rise, or that it is directly the fault of so many people on the planet. What has changed is that I no longer blame the other side, and I no longer see my former side as the good guys in the fight. No, I see them as hypocrites. I was a hypocrite too.
I’d been in a bubble for much of my adult life because I lived online, in virtual spaces. Yes, I was raising my daughter in public schools, but those were a bubble too. We all belonged inside the same utopia. We read the same articles. We watched the same news. Our worries were the same worries. We spoke the same language, and all of us shared the belief that the biggest threat we faced was climate change and that the biggest obstacle we faced was the Republicans.
And then, my daughter moved across the country, and I got a couple of dogs. Rather than fly and leave my dogs at home, I began driving across the country. Those drives changed everything for me, not just how I saw climate change but how I saw my fellow Americans. This was how people actually lived, not how we did, inside our haze of paper straws and cotton diapers.
I saw the trucks driving on the interstates to deliver food and goods, the many hotels that require air conditioning and heating, the slaughterhouse trucks providing food for so many in this country, and the tiny houses in the middle of the desert with one embattled air conditioner sticking out of the window.
Looking at all of this, all of these places, and all of these businesses, it was easy to see that there was no turning this thing around. There is no way to convince every state and citizen to hop aboard what is an existential crisis for the upper class. Life just isn’t like that.
Everyone wants things that work, cars that run, planes that fly. They want washing machines, dishwashers, flat-screen TVs, office buildings, emergency rooms, and new computers and tech support lines, to buy groceries they can afford, to get fruit in the middle of winter, to watch movies and doom scroll social media — and “every Tweet warms the planet,” as Roy Scranton once wrote.
Even if we could convince every single American to accept our fixes, what would we do about Russia, India, or China? We seemed to have gone all in on fantasy but we’re disconnected from reality.
What we believe on the Left, or at least we used to, was climate change was Armageddon, doomsday, the end of everything. Therefore, what mattered to us isn’t so much that we solve the problems to survive climate change, but that we convert everyone else to our way of thinking. If we could do that, we believed, we could start making the big changes to our country and world.
The Left is still haunted by the ghosts of the past, back when we really did have the power and the opportunity to make real change. We squandered that power, and then we blamed the other side. In so doing, we could wash our hands of real solutions, whether it was gun violence, poverty, failing schools, floods, fires, or hurricanes.
And now, in the perfect cocktail of high Santa Ana winds, no rain for months, and a city caught off guard, the fires rampaged through the beaches of the Pacific Palisades and Malibu and the mountains of Altadena and continue to burn.
There were rumors of not enough water, not enough firefighters, and no way to control the speed of the flames as they ripped through the dry brush, burning one house after another as we watched the tragedy unfold on live television or YouTube.
This time, the narrative swirled around California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and the Los Angeles Mayor, Karen Bass, newly elected in 2022 as the first female and second Black person to serve. Bass had left the country in January, known as the last month of the Santa Ana cycle that comes every Fall.
From the University of California:
The region sees about 10 Santa Ana wind events a year on average, typically occurring from fall into January. When conditions are dry, as they are right now, these winds can become a severe fire hazard.
Because she was out of the country, she could not address the city’s immediate needs. The scene was pure chaos, with the firefighters risking life and limb to keep the flames away from homes and neighborhoods. Everything burned. The Humane Society was overwhelmed. Whole histories of places and families were wiped clean, flattened by a force of wind we were not prepared for.
But why weren’t we prepared? We’ve been warning about this very thing happening for decades. Did we really mean it, or was it just a way to gain more donations and political power, and none of it was real? Well, just as the unsinkable ship did sink, the big fire did come, and the progressive Left was exposed for ineffectual leadership yet again.
And as the power went out, no one really tied it together as they screamed about climate change – power, we need it. We need it for everything. We need so much of it. Only fossil fuels will suffice unless we go nuclear, and that, too, was a problem for the Left.
But why, Mayor Bass? Why doesn’t the most wealthy state not have enough firefighters? Why were we caught with our pants down?
Don’t politicize this tragedy from the people who politicize not only every tragedy but also everything else—our culture, schools, relationships, language, food, friendships. Nothing is not political on the Left.
What do we have to show for it? Nothing. We have an industry devoted to absolving the rich of their sins of wealth—DEI and hybrid SUVs. We have actors like Leonardo DiCaprio broadcasting their concerns on Instagram. We have film directors like Jim Cameron and Adam McKay saying, “I told you so,” and we’re supposed to do what? Keep listening to them as our leaders fiddle while LA burns?
Adam McKay’s carbon footprint came secondary to making his climate film, Don’t Look Up, one of the worst movies ever made, starring every sanctimonious, unbearable celebrity known to man. I watched that movie and thought about the energy it took to make it, screen it, and stream it. The energy it took to mount the Oscar ceremony, the private jets to fly the stars around. What hypocrites, I thought, even back then as a Democrat.
Here is a scene from Don’t Look Up:
[A video appears here …]
Right, Adam, sure thing. So just give me an approximate estimate of the plan here. To keep making movies starring Jennifer Lawrence? To keep tweeting? Or is there some solution you have to offer? In the movie Jaws, they don’t waste time shaming everyone on the boat and telling them how dangerous the shark is. They try everything, every tool they have at their disposal, even the ineffectual shark cage.
[Another video appears here …]
What have the Democrats done instead of killing the shark? Well, let’s look at the year that Don’t Look Up was released. 2020. Remember that year, Adam? Remember the Great Awokening? Remember what happened after that?
Suddenly, climate change only mattered if they could somehow tie it into social justice. “Climate change is transphobia” might have worked.
Do you think I’m kidding? A quick google search and look at what pops up:
[A series of misc. stuff appears here …]
All I’ve heard from the Left is blaming the Republicans year after year, decade after decade. But when the Republicans try to suggest ways to manage the coming fires and storms, what do we get? More purity tests, more conversion therapy, believe what we believe. But solutions? Nowhere in sight.
How can we face ourselves if this has been our message for over 20 years now and yet they’re still trying to explain away the fire hydrants not having enough water or having to fly in firefighters from Mexico or Canada.
And what of the young? Full of hopelessness and anxiety about the future because they’ve been told the planet is ruined and doomsday is coming. Why bother having kids, they have been convinced to believe. And there’s nothing we can do about it because those mean old climate deniers on the Right won’t let us, so sorry kids, you’re just going to have to live with it.
The buck has to stop somewhere, and in Los Angeles, this was a massive failure of leadership across the board.
Here is Michael Shellenberger:
[Another video …]
Here is Chamath Palihapitiya:
[A video …]
I’m guessing nothing much will change in California because what would happen if they decided to stop blaming Republicans and start listening to them? What would happen if they started doing the controlled burns they didn’t want to do? Or following Trump’s warnings and advice about dealing with the hard realities of actually preventing wildfires?
[Video …]
Just as in the movie Jaws when Quint’s harpoons didn’t work and Hooper’s shark cage didn’t work, they had just to bring in the city cop to get the job done. And that is why God invented Republicans.
[Video …]
We’re finished with excuses by now. We’re done with the blame game and the sanctimonious lectures. It’s too late to turn things around in the ways the utopian Left dreams about. Now is the time to find ways for all of us to survive the coming storms and wildfires. We need to face the hard realities of this being our new normal.
[Some misc. stuff …]
Those who have fled the Left to join MAGA understand this, which is why so many of us voted for them. We know only one side has the right tools to get the dirty job done and kill the shark, whether you believe climate change is real or you don’t. Something is happening, and we need people prepared to stop blaming the other side and start rolling up their sleeves.
So yes, do politicize this tragedy because there is no excuse for the most progressive government in the country to have gotten it so wrong.
I love my state. I grew up here. I may never leave. We will rebuild. When I grew up, California was a red state. Something tells me that with all of the red pills flying off shelves, that might just be how this story ends.
The Great Retreat: A Eulogy for the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/01/14/the-great-retreat-a-eulogy-for-the-net-zero-asset-managers-initiative/
Ladies and gentlemen, gather round for a moment of silence—or perhaps a loud guffaw—for the untimely suspension of the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative. Once the darling of “woke capitalism” and self-proclaimed savior of the planet, this alliance of investment giants has decided to fold its tent, apparently under the weight of its own contradictions and a little nudge from reality.
An alliance of investment giants-turned-self-styled climate change crusaders looks to be in tatters after it suspended its activities on Monday amid a backlash against “woke” capitalism.
The Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative was rocked last week by the exit of BlackRock, the world’s biggest investor, as The Post exclusively reported.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/climate-group-net-zero-asset-managers-suspends-activities-days-after-blackrock-quits/ar-BB1ro5bQ?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=bf7c5905139e48f18d996522bfb69b44&ei=10
NZAM was touted as a coalition of climate-conscious asset managers promising to steer trillions of dollars into sustainable investments. It had all the buzzwords: net zero, decarbonization, stakeholder capitalism. But as we now see, when rhetoric meets resistance, even the mightiest of “green” alliances can crumble.
BlackRock’s Dramatic Exit
Larry Fink’s BlackRock, managing a modest $11.5 trillion, was the largest player in NZAM. But last week, BlackRock bolted, citing “confusion” over the initiative’s goals and the growing heat from legal and political scrutiny. Confusion? For a group that allegedly led the charge on climate finance, confusion is an odd defense.
But let’s not kid ourselves. The real story here isn’t confusion; it’s the political backlash. Republican lawmakers had been turning up the heat, questioning NZAM’s anti-fossil fuel stance and labeling it as a threat to free-market principles. For a firm like BlackRock, whose fiduciary duty is to maximize returns, the last thing it needed was to be dragged into a legal and political firestorm.
The Woke Facade Collapses
This retreat is about more than one firm’s exit. NZAM’s decision to suspend activities is a tacit admission that its grand vision of global decarbonization through financial engineering was built on a house of cards. It turns out that arm-twisting investors into abandoning fossil fuels—still the lifeblood of modern economies—isn’t as easy as issuing a press release.
What NZAM and its allies failed to grasp is that most of the world isn’t ready to trade reliable energy sources for expensive “green” dreams. They didn’t count on a backlash from those who actually like to keep the lights on without bankrupting their economies.
“Woke Capitalism” Meets Reality
This debacle also lays bare the hollowness of so-called woke capitalism. For all the chest-beating about saving the planet, NZAM and its members were quick to run for the exits when the going got tough. They’ve proven that their commitment to climate goals was conditional, a mere marketing gimmick rather than a principled stand.
This is a classic case of virtue signaling gone awry. Companies like BlackRock were happy to bask in the glow of green virtue as long as it was profitable—or, at least, painless. But when real-world pressures mounted, from legal inquiries to political challenges, those lofty ideals were quickly jettisoned.
The Broader Implications: A Lesson in Overreach
NZAM’s suspension underscores the dangers of pushing aggressive, top-down policies without a clear understanding of economic realities or public sentiment.
The truth is, the world runs on fossil fuels, and no amount of corporate virtue signaling can change that overnight. Initiatives like NZAM ignore the complexities of global energy needs and the fact that renewables, aren’t ready to replace hydrocarbons on a large scale.
Even more damning is how NZAM’s failure exposes the elitist arrogance of the climate crusade. These financial titans thought they could dictate policy from their boardrooms, ignoring the voices of everyday citizens and lawmakers. That hubris has now come back to bite them.
A Final Thought: The Emperor Has No Clothes
The suspension of NZAM is more than just a setback for one initiative—it’s a symbolic defeat for the entire ideology of climate authoritarianism. It’s a reminder that policies based on coercion and moral grandstanding are bound to fail when confronted with economic and political realities.
So, let us raise a toast to NZAM, not in mourning but in mockery. Its collapse is a victory for common sense and a warning to all who would attempt to impose utopian visions on a world that isn’t interested. May its demise serve as a lesson to the climate cartel: the road to net zero is paved with good intentions—and bankrupt ideologies.
[Be sure to especially check out the last paragraph of this article.]
Elizabeth Warren in trouble after using ActBlue to fundraise for California fires.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/elizabeth-warren-inarch-trouble-after-using-actblue-to-fundraise-for-california-fires/ar-BB1ro0uA?ocid=BingNewsVerp
Democratic fundraising platform, to facilitate donations to California charities involved in wildfire recovery.
Warren posted an ActBlue link Saturday on X in support of two California charities but soon received a Community Note saying it “is not a link to charity. It is a link to a Democrat fundraising platform.”
When clicked, the link leads to a page with “Warren for Senate” at the top with descriptions of two charities, the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation and the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, below.
“Your full donation will directly support these two organizations,” the page says.
Donations are in increments of $5, $15, $28, $50, $100, $250, and $500. The $28 amount appears to be a reference to the 2028 presidential election.
The commenters also pointed out that ActBlue collects a 3.95% processing charge on every transaction.
The donation is processed via ActBlue’s charity arm, ActBlue Charities. Warren does not appear to be reaping financial benefits directly from each donation, but visitors to the page can click through to her Senate campaign page, where they can donate directly to her.
ActBlue also collects the information of every person who donates, allowing the platform to later use data to provide “information, tips, and offers about ActBlue services.”
Republicans blasted Warren for her choice to use the platform to raise money for charity.
“Just when I think ‘my’ Senator can’t sink any lower she tries to loot well-meaning donors that want to help California fire victims,” Cecilia Calabrese, director of Mass For Trump in Region 3, posted on X. “ActBlue is a Democrat fundraiser platform only. Shame on you, Senator, for pushing this scam!”
Chester Tam, a Massachusetts Republican National Convention delegate and vice chairman of operations and digital media for Trump in Massachusetts, also slammed Warren.
“Donating through the Warren for Senate campaign site is the last thing you should do if you want to support efforts for the California fires,” he posted on X. “How much of that money do you think will end up benefitting Warren’s campaign? Once again Democrats exploit a disaster for their own gain.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) also used ActBlue to raise money for the California Fire Foundation, which provides emotional and financial assistance to families of fallen firefighters, firefighters, and the communities they serve.
ActBlue is also under fire for continuing to accept monthly donations for Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 failed presidential campaign. If subscribers don’t turn off their monthly donations, they will continue contributing to her campaign even if they don’t wish to.
That $20 million isn’t going to fall out of a tree.
Random find on /r/Denver:
“Another glaring example of elections having consequences. Maybe don’t vote for people who are cool with druggies shooting up by elementary schools, but nah, we all know you all will “vote blue no matter who”. Man, Denver and Colorado at one point was one of the coolest places in the nation. Then it swung hard left with no checks or balance to it and this is what we have now…. a total dump.”
Sounds about right.
CR8R alert!
Moneywise
Peter Thiel warns young Americans of US real estate ‘catastrophe’ — but also sees ‘giant windfall’ for some boomers
Jing Pan
Tue, January 14, 2025 at 5:02 AM PST 5 min read
Peter Thiel warns young Americans of US real estate ‘catastrophe’ — but also sees ‘giant windfall’ for some boomers
As a co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook, Peter Thiel is widely recognized for his expertise in the tech world. But lately, the billionaire venture capitalist has been sounding the alarm on an entirely different sector: real estate.
During a recent interview with The Free Press, Thiel drew upon the insights of 19th-century economist Henry George to underscore the gravity of America’s real estate crisis.
…
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/peter-thiel-warns-young-americans-130200266.html
‘(The letter said) you need to go to Monarch (Insurance) because that’s the option they selected that is less than 20%,’ Nunez said. The offer to go to a private insurer now means Nunez’s premium is rising from about $6,900 to more than $8,200 per year. ‘We are not affluent, we live in Boca (Raton), but we’re not that,’ he said. ‘It’s not fair for the consumer. It feels like … extortion. You don’t have a choice’
Thank you Carlos for today’s HBB Pitfalls of Commie Urban Living™.
‘The fake loan applications were submitted to several mortgage lenders, and some mortgage brokers who worked on getting the loans were also a part of the scheme, according to the DA’
$160,000,000 and it’s only reported in this local website.
‘It may lead others who are unaffected by government jobs to put their properties on the market for fear that something greater might take place. This is something we’ve never seen before’
So it is different this time Corey.
‘During the 2021-2022 period of construction cost uncertainty, many builders adopted a 100% speculative building strategy,’ Wilson said in the report. ‘While this approach proved effective initially, it became less sustainable by late summer 2024 when housing demand began to weaken’
‘many builders adopted a 100% speculative building strategy’
Let us be clear here Ted. The lending was sound at the time.
‘‘You might think ‘this is the only home I’ve known since I’ve come to the United States,’ but I want them to know that there is a better place to live than on Dallas Street’
Yeah Todd it’s called Matamoros Mejico ése, vámonos!
‘The original owner, who paid $178,400 in 1999, decided it was time to sell. It was originally listed with an asking price of $838,000 but after five months there were no offers. The owner and listing agent Ian Watt decided to relist it at $788,000. It sold quickly, at $19,223 under the revised asking price, to a buyer who’d viewed the property two months earlier. ‘Like everybody, [the buyer] was waiting for the right price,’ says listing agent: Ian Watt. ‘He loved it, but it wasn’t in the price bracket that he wanted to spend. Buyers want to know [a property] is priced for today’s market. Obviously, it wasn’t for everyone, because of the neighbourhood’
Just like that Ian, you gave it away.
‘Dean, 41, paid £375,000 for his home which was built in 2015. Since then, Bellway has blocked Dean’s emails and threatened legal action if he continues posting critical remarks on Facebook. ‘I feel totally fobbed off by Bellway’
We called it fooked over here Dean.
‘Altman, 44, says he and his neighbours in Florence Close, a 10-home development built by Bellway in 2017, are in a similar situation. They say they are the guinea pigs of a new, flat-roofed design, which has resulted in years of damp or mould on the walls of their bedrooms and bathrooms. ‘And the worst of it is, they didn’t fix the problem,’ Robert says. ‘The specialists who came in to certify the work said there were still dangerous levels of moisture in our lofts. It’s just misery after misery and we’ve been left in the cold – we’re spending time on this when we have young families, we all have jobs, and if we want to sell our houses, then we’re not going to be able to’
It’s still way cheaper than renting Bob.
People Really Don’t Want These Homes (Toronto Real Estate Market Update)
Team Sessa Real Estate
1 hour ago
In this episode, we look at the current Toronto Real Estate Market specifically the detached home prices and market trends for the week ending Jan 8, 2025. We also discuss how people talk about multi-family homes like it’s a great thing that everyone will love, but in practice, buyers aren’t actually buying them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Ns_saVcwc
16:28.