Weekend Topic Suggestions
Please post topic ideas here!
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
About Me
Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
To donate by mail, or to otherwise contact this blogger, please send emails to: thehousingbubble@gmail.com
PayPal is a secure online payment method which accepts ALL major credit cards.
Links
-
November 2024 M T W T F S S « Sep 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Photo Submission: hbbphotos@gmail.com
View the HBB Photo Gallery *updated 4/13/2008
How about a topic on cleaning up the messy aftermath of the housing bubble?
E.g.:
Shaker Heights’ effort to rehab vacant home complicated by Florida bankruptcy court
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Long gone from the local real estate scene, George and Teresa Kastanes continue to make life miserable for local officials dealing with the aftermath of their flipping schemes.
The Kastanes blew into town like so many other people hoping to make a quick buck off the detritus of Greater Cleveland’s badly damaged real estate market.
The Kastanes bought at least 69 properties in Cuyahoga County between 2007 and 2010 using Interstate Investment Group LLC as their corporate identity. They bought additional property using a company called Paramount Land Holdings LLC.
The Kastanes appear to be in a jam with the federal authorities in Detroit. They and a partner bought 1,400 properties there, securing a $10 million loan from the Detroit Police and Fire Pension Fund. They said they would use the money to rehabilitate the properties and then sell them. Instead, authorities say, the Kastanes diverted $5 million to bankroll a lavish lifestyle in Florida and the Caribbean. Their partner in the Detroit venture, Abner McWhorter, committed suicide in August 2011.
George and Teresa Kastanes fled the country after filing bankruptcy, prompting an arrest warrant. George Kastanes was arrested in May. Teresa Kastanes was finally arrested in November.
Shaker Heights acquired one of the Kastanes’s assets, through a tax foreclosure in August. But what Shaker Heights officials didn’t know was that a bankruptcy court in Fort Lauderdale filed notice in April that the property was listed in the Kastanes’ bankruptcy and could not be sold without the court’s permission. The city law director acknowledged that city must relinquish its rights to the property but hopes the new owner will deed it back to the city given that $120,000 in delinquent taxes are owed on it. Gruber said the property should never have been included as an asset in the Kastanes’ bankruptcy.
The world sucks just as bad as before it ended. Rip off.
“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” — Johnny Rotten at the Sex Pistols’ last concert, Winterland, San Francisco 1978
It seems to be an article of faith amongst many that if we had just ‘let it all fall’, then we’d be done with this economic crisis, or at least a lot further along, with less money spent, and moving on in a better direction.
I’m curious what they base this on, since GD1 was essentially ‘allowed to happen’ at first, and it became a cascading worldwide crisis that seemed to never have an end until we had a devastating world war. I assume people will say the New Deal caused the crisis to continue, but how, specifically, which programs, and why?
In short, why would it be ‘different this time’? Because the last time we ‘let it all fall’ it turned into an unimaginable disaster.
In short, why would it be ‘different this time’? Because the last time we ‘let it all fall’ it turned into an unimaginable disaster.
And what if by not letting it fall it turns into something even worse?
And what if by not letting it fall it turns into something even worse?
The future is unwritten, but surely we can look to the past and see that the ‘hands off’ approach was a disaster the last time we tried it.
Why would it be different this time?
I don’t know…last time we were generally self sufficient as a society and could make all our own stuff. We took our medicine and got to restart with a clean slate. “Disaster” is relative…this time feels more like a slide toward slavery for a population unable to survive on its own.
last time we were generally self sufficient as a society and could make all our own stuff.
Exactly. We were still a primarily agricultural country, and even many of those once employed in industry, living in cities, were able to go back home to the family farm.
Today of course, very few have that option. Which makes the idea that we would have been better off if we had just let the economy crash, even crazier. Unless recovery would have been instant, or very near to it.
We did not have a hands off approach. Not even close. You have been reading interpretations of history from so-called experts, who have their own spin.
Hoover did try to stimulate the economy and make government interventions. He thought he had solved the crises in 1932 when he supported the REfinance Corporation to provide more government help. Then came Smoot-Hawley, in an attempt to raise government revenues with tariffs.
But nothing really seemed to work.
Keynesian Klowns like Krugman contend that Hoover failed because he “didn’t do enough”.
He did plenty. At times both he and FDR thought they had won the battle with minor changes in stock market directions, only to see the businesses fail again.
Hoover was blamed for everything since he was in office when the collapse came. It was inevitable and he did more than any president in the past in terms of intervention. He advisor Andrew Mellon, Treasury Secretary (compare Geithner) was appointed under Harding, stayed under Coolidge and Hoover, was the one who advise “LIQUIDATIONS”, immediate and thorough, to clean out the bad businesses and let them recapitalize.
Hoover did not heed he advise entirely, but thought to try and help business along and to get the business community to hold the line in firings, layoffs and cost shifting. It did not work.
FDR doubled down with countless programs.
It doesn’t matter what “make work” programs they came up with, it did not solve the problems of overly indebted companies and individuals.
The only thing I can say in favor of FDR is that he used public funds for public works, and people BUILT things that benefited society at large. In contrast, Obama has just thrown away money to keep union teachers, firefighters and police fully employed and collecting benefits, and extended every form of welfare and benefits he could concoct.
Obama’s ‘fixes’ have provided nothing, except pay and benefits to the undeserving. So, now, he talks about needing more money for “infrastructure”. We were told the previous trillions were for “shovel ready” projects. They weren’t. They were for political patronage.
If the interventions were to be any benefit, at all, they should have been toward publics works projects, not for keeping people paid to sit at their government chair and wait for retirement.
“an unimaginable disaster…”
That premise might have to be drilled into a bit. Leveraged high rollers got taken to the cleaners, and farmers in the midwest got busted by a weather event. I don’t think any of my family called it an unimaginable disaster. Half of them farmers and half steel mill workers. The horrors of WWI/WWII, that they called unimaginable. 25% unemployment, we’ve had that for six years now if taken by the same measure.
The problem I see with how we have responded so far to the economic problem, is that we have not made any progress at correcting the causes. If too much credit was a primary cause, we are only encouraging more credit. If banking rules was a primary cause, we have not reformed the banking rules. If globalization was a major cause, we are still pushing the globalization thing. If legislative capture by big money was a cause, we are further along down that path.
No one should wish for catastrophic crash, but continuing along the paths away from sustainability is going to make the payback only worse.
“Unimaginable disaster is when people start making soup out of the grass in their front yards, not when Target rejects their credit card when they’re trying to buy a new “hobo” bag.
We’ve got a long, long way to go before self-sufficiency starts to kick in again. I’ll call it when people stop using Hefty trash bags to hide their refuse and stop throwing away their used drinking water bottles.
Murka has NO IDEA what privation means. Absolutely none.
‘…when people start making soup out of the grass in their front yards, not when Target rejects their credit card when they’re trying to buy a new “hobo” bag.’
I highly recommend folks resort to eating the bunny rabbits who eat the grass and the squirrels who eat the acorns that fall from the local oat trees, before trying their hands at making grass stew palatable.
Much to mom’s consternation, her dad helped the family survive GD1 by bringing rabbits and squirrels to the dinner table. Mom found the squirrel too gamy, and the rabbit emotionally unappealing. That said, I am quite certain the human gut is far better suited to digesting these delicacies than grass stew.
I don’t think any of my family called it an unimaginable disaster.
Ha! I always thought that was coming, just not so soon. Right now, the Austrian Schoolers deny that the Long Depression even occurred (despite it being discussed in every history textbook of the time, and since), because it interferes with their grand theories. It was so long ago, there’s no one who lived through it to dispute their claims.
I was thinking that in about 20 years, as soon as all witnesses are dead, they’ll be denying that the Great Depression was any big deal, since it interferes with their ‘let it crash’ it’ll work out better’ claims. Blue just jumped ahead to their future propaganda, now.
since GD1 was essentially ‘allowed to happen’ at first
Somewhere I read a speech by Bernanke which admitted that the Fed exercised some rather perverse policies in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s which greatly worsened the collapse of the US economy up to March 1933, by which time all US banks were closed. He said he didn’t plan to let that happen again. I believe this speech was given before 2007.
Delaying the correction merely prolongs and distributes the pain. The eventual correction will be much more deep.
I disagree. The problem here is too much debt in the hands of too few people. The solution is to inflate the currency (more available dollars to pay the debt) and get that debt spread around across more people.
The correction can be (and seems to be so far) delayed by devaluing the currency. Taken to the extreme, if the goverment came out tomorrow and announced a “10 for 1″ program, where you could take 1 dollar into the bank and get 10 back, the debt crisis would be over immediately. Now, of course, that would be a disasterous policy, but, at the same time, I think those who say “you can’t push on string” or that the Fed is “powerless” to stop deflation aren’t thinking through the nuclear level options they have at their disposal. They can fix this, the question is, and always has been, how much pain will it take to fix. The 10 for 1 program would be a shockingly painful fix. However there are other steps; you could do a 2 for 1 program (every dollar you pay, 2 dollars of debt is extinguished) for old mortgage loans and just hand the banks the other dollar to make them whole. That would be VERY painful, but not nearly as bad as the 10 for 1 program.
I’m no inflation believer, I don’t own gold or non-US currency. However, I’m also not blind to the fact that with currency that has no backing value (gold), there’s no real “debt crisis” possible on a national level. We can print as much as we want/need to pay off debts. The only question is how much pain will that cause the country/world and, right now, the answer is “more than letting the debt default”.
“The correction can be (and seems to be so far) delayed by devaluing the currency.”
Well…. not really.
The .dxy today is right where it was in 1991. When you hear some loon yammer “they’re printing money!”, the follow up question should always be, what are they doing with it??? What if they were stockpiling it in Fort Knox? Would there be any inflation? Not really. Inflation requires the $$$ get in the hands of people to spend and that’s not happening. Granted, it is clear the fed is targeting various commodities in order to support prices (housing and oil), presumably to continue chasing the fantasy of “jump starting the economy”. It might have worked if their media machine were able to convince the public to become debt junkies again but I don’t see the public buying into that lie again.
And always remember, when the Fed’s media machine invokes the word “confidence”, they’re talking about the public ignoring risk and jumping on the debt train to hell.
Delaying the correction merely prolongs and distributes the pain. The eventual correction will be much more deep.
Yes, that’s the article of faith, the question is, is it true?
the question is, is it true?
Question is not answerable, unless you can generate an alternate universe to work out the solution.
Question is not answerable, unless you can generate an alternate universe to work out the solution
Then people should recognize it for what it is: an article of faith, and not in any way self-evident or provable. Quit presenting it as if it’s ‘gospel truth’.
Recent experience has shown it to be wrong, so in all likelihood, it is still wrong.
Wouldn’t going over the ‘fiscal cliff’ effectively levy a tax on the 1%, thanks to crashing asset prices?
How deep is the cliff dive for stocks?
December 21, 2012, 7:11 AM
Reuters
Dictionary makers may begin printing John Boehner’s photo alongside the definition of “hapless” after the House speaker was humiliated Thursday by fellow Republicans, sending global markets into a swoon amid fears his inability to corral enough votes to among his own party to back a proposed “Plan B” bodes ill for efforts to avert the dreaded fiscal cliff.
…
It would also levy a tax on pension funds, endowments, and 401ks.
How?
Endowments are exempt from tax on income from interest, dividends, and a number of other types of income. Pension funds, 401(k)s and IRAs are also exempt from tax on many forms of current income (not all), though the beneficial owner pays the tax when it is distributed.
You need to look at his comment, then you’ll get it…
He’s saying that since the 1% hold lots of assets, they will suffer most (ie. be “taxed”) if we go over the fiscal cliff, since the value of their assets will crash. He’s not talking about an actual tax.
I’m saying that not just the 1% have the assets…so do people’s retirement accounts and pension funds.
“He’s not talking about an actual tax.”
Thanks for spelling it out in black and white terms for the DC attorney. She struggles mightily to read between the lines of my posts, so I am sure she appreciates your elucidation.
Deal or no deal?
I guess no deal then what ?
What Now on Debt? ‘God Only Knows,’ Says Boehner
By JONATHAN WEISMAN
Published: December 21, 2012
WASHINGTON — House Speaker John A. Boehner, in the wake of the embarrassing defeat of his backup plan to avert a fiscal crisis in two short weeks, on Friday called on the Senate and President Obama to find a way out, but added that “God only knows” how Washington is going to get control of its finances.
With the House headed home for the holidays and the Senate soon to depart, Mr. Boehner gave no hints of a path to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff,” when more than a half trillion dollars in automatic spending cuts and tax increases kick in beginning next month. He said that on Monday, he had delivered his demands to the president for a broad deficit-reduction deal to avoid the crisis. The president delivered his “bottom lines” and told him “he couldn’t go any further.”
“Because of the political divide in this country, because of the divide here in Washington, trying to bridge these differences has been difficult,” the speaker said.
He did not blame House Republicans for bringing down his legislation that would have extended Bush-era tax cuts for all but the richest Americans, nor did he say their rebuke was a personal slap at his leadership.
“There was a perception created that that vote last night was going to increase taxes. I disagree with that characterization of that bill,” he said. But, he added, “we had a number of members who just really didn’t want to be perceived as having raised taxes. that was the real issue”
,,,
Here’s what I don’t get about all this; why are two guys doing the negotiating in secret? Is that how the system is supposed to work? What about committees and sub-committees? Put things to a vote, if it doesn’t pass, draw up a new bill, etc.
“…why are two guys doing the negotiating in secret?”
Makes it less likely they will get caught in the cross-fire between the warring factions which back them up?
“Here’s what I don’t get about all this; why are two guys doing the negotiating in secret? Is that how the system is supposed to work? What about committees and sub-committees? Put things to a vote, if it doesn’t pass, draw up a new bill, etc.”
It’s a friggin’ media charade for international consumption and to provide cover for the moneychangers.
If Boehner said that he would be OK with the tax increase going all the way down to $300K but only if the medicare age was raised to 68 and SS full retirement age was raised to 69, then all you would hear is the partisans (on both sides) saying that X (whichever X they dislike) would be the end of the world. They can’t get to a complex package of changes where neither side likes all or even most of them if they tell everyone what is going on all the time. Or, they could, but they won’t. The received wisdom in DC is that the fewer leaks (the more secret they are being) the closer they are getting to an agreement. It means that both sides are giving in to something their base doesn’t want to hear.
They also do it in secret so there is time to score the changes so they can agree on what the message is about the changes - exactly how much the tax increase or spending reduction will be. That takes time to do and they don’t want to present a package where they don’t have the numbers nailed down.
“The received wisdom in DC is that the fewer leaks (the more secret they are being) the closer they are getting to an agreement. It means that both sides are giving in to something their base doesn’t want to hear.”
But yesterday’s vote showed how the top-secret negotiation strategy can fail…
“Plan B” wasn’t a negotiated package. It was an attempt to have something that the House had actually passed so they would have something to point to that would be an alternative to the package that the Senate has already passed. The fact that it couldn’t even pass on partisan lines was rather unexpected but it has nothing to do with negotiating with the other side in secret or in public.
The fact that it couldn’t even pass on partisan lines was rather unexpected
Really? Not by me. I would have been surprised if the tea-partiers/norquisters had agreed to compromise on anything. Their idea of a compromise is everyone finally agreeing with them.
I assure you. Boehner was surprised. He wouldn’t have spent this much time on it if he didn’t think he could get it passed. I understand that the White House was also surprised.
They must not know the Tea Partiers like we who live with them do. They don’t mind crashing the economy, especially if they just lost the presidential election.
Raising Medicare to 68 actually makes it more expensive as you remove the healthiest people in the plan.
“Their idea of a compromise is everyone finally agreeing with them.”
It’s known as the Luther bargaining position:
“Raising Medicare to 68 actually makes it more expensive as you remove the healthiest people in the plan.”
You are confusing the average expense with the total expense.
The total, which is what’s relevant, goes down, even as the average increases.
Because negotiating in secret allows for the cross-party horse trading that doesn’t play well in either the press or within the party itself. “Vote for this and I’ll ensure the vote for your pork barrel project” is a time-honored form of negotiation in Congress, as is “give me your support on this and we’ll make sure you get appointed the X committee, over Y’s objections and Z bill will make it to the House floor.
Egos, egos, and more egos; money, money, and more money, invitations, appearances, proper mentions, appointments, and whose mistress is dating whose lobbyist. None of this can be discussed out in the open, but it’s how legislative “compromise” comes to be.
Will going over the fiscal cliff cause a recession ?
Is this when Government debt finally takes down the economy and we go straight into Deflation as spending is cut and taxes are raised ?
Or do we weasel out of it again and put it off for another day ?
We went over the fiscal cliff a long time ago. What they are debating now is how much more “printed money” will be conjured up to keep the illusion of “growth” in the economy as the government “sector” drains private wealth.
The big issues, hidden by the press, is that we are at war with the government. Those getting money FROM the government are fat and happy. Those paying in are getting fleeced.
Mish Shedlock did a piece today on the increased spending by government since 2000, and the average increase in wages (which should provide the tax revenue for more government spending).
the data are highly skewed because the high earners have gains that grossly exceed the lower income wage earners.
BOTTOM LINE:
Average salaries are up 44%
Average government spending is up 112%.
That is the problem.
WE don’t have the revenue, so the solution has been deficit spending since the 2000 stock market collapse.
I’ve been following this blog for a long time now. We seem to have the usual commentaries from the same posters who take a position that the Left or Right are to blame for where we are. I am usually on the more conservative side, though I oppose military interventions and drone attacks. I opposed the gulf wars and the “hunt for Ben Laden”.
However, I thought it might be interesting, with the nomination of John Kerry to be the new Dept of State appointee to replace the “can’t testify” Hillary, to see how much this group sees as a World-wide global conspiracy, the actual events taking place in the past 50 years.
John Kerry is another Skull and Bones member. I assume he is a member of the Trilateral Commission, and like Obama, who denies it, a working member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the working group for the “new world order” here in America.
The “outsourcing of America” has been the plan of globalists to make the world more fair, by creating incentives for Corporations to more evenly distribute the wealth of nations.
The North American “free trade” issue started by Bush and continued by Clinton was part of a plan to create world-wide trading blocks among the world’s nations. The EU was created as part of this global plan.
The sociological view of this “world trade” concept is that people engaged in “trade” are less apt to engage in war.
The United Nations has thousands of world-wide regulations they wish to impose to help in the redistribution of world wealth. The “cap and trade” scam promoted by Al Gore was just one of many schemes to provide incomes to the rich and re-distribute the wealth of nations. Outsourcing is another means, meaning dismantling operations in rich countries and setting up shop elsewhere.
In allegiance to their plans, the US Congress and the President work diligently to see that OUR laws conform to “international law” as dictated by the UN.
There are only a small percentage of people involved in these world-wide organizations, and most times, the same people are working in top corporate positions, government, Bilderburg, Trilateral Commission, CFR and a hand-full of “world-fixer” organizations that know how best to direct the masses to the benefit of all, but mostly to themselves.
I am curious as to the extent that a few people here have looked into the machinations of the various organizations. I also expect the usual commentaries that it’s ridiculous to even conceive that a handful of really rich people would actual conspire to create a world government that guarantees they they and theirs continue to get rich and stay rich from here to eternity. NO, that could never happen. Meetings in places like Jekyll Island, Ga. to create the Federal Reserve System by a bunch of international world Banksters just don’t happen.
Conspiracies are for kooks. But for those who are watching the movements of political hacks doing backroom deals, where do you see this shadow government moving?? Any thoughts?
John Kerry to be the new Dept of State appointee
Why does Obama hate the world?
Kerry is going to be kick as.
Who?
Progressives.
Dio,
Most people are poor at linking events that occur over a long timeline.
Is this a good time to permanently exit the stock market?
Stocks Fall as Republican Leader Loses Control of His Party
Written by: Andrea Tse 12/21/12 - 4:39 PM EST
NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Major U.S. stock averages fell Friday, dragged down by House Speaker John Boehner’s failure to get Republicans to follow his back-up plan on the so-called fiscal cliff.
Boehner, undone by more extreme members of his party, canceled a Thursday night vote on his “Plan B” budget proposal because he didn’t have enough votes to get the measure passed.
The top Republican in the House indicated at a news conference Friday that he was still open to continued negotiations with the White House, and wasn’t ruling out bringing up a bill that could pass with a significant amount of Democratic votes. Meanwhile, he reiterated the difficulties of bridging the political divide, a sentiment that stuck with most investors.
…
The sinking of “Plan B”; the U.S. “fiscal cliff” disaster of John Boehner
U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) (R) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) speak to the media on the ”fiscal cliff” on Capitol Hill in Washington, December 21, 2012. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
By Thomas Ferraro and Richard Cowan and Rachelle Younglai
WASHINGTON | Sat Dec 22, 2012 1:04am EST
(Reuters) - Had there been a vote on Republican House Speaker John Boehner’s “Plan B” to avert the so-called U.S. fiscal cliff on Thursday night, it would not have been close. He was probably 40 to 50 votes short of the number he needed to avoid a humiliating defeat at the hands of his own party, according to rough estimates from Republican members of Congress and staff members.
It was not for lack of effort. Boehner and his two top deputies, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy, along with other House Republican leaders, tried for three days to muster support for the measure, which would have cut government spending and raised taxes on millionaires to head off across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts set for January.
They failed for a variety of reasons, according to interviews. But chief among them was this: They were asking anti-tax conservatives to take a big risk for no discernable reward. Plan B, as Boehner named his alternative to President Barack Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on earnings of $400,000 a year and above, would never become law because the Democratic-controlled Senate would not pass it. Nor was it likely to put pressure on Obama to reach a deal, as Boehner intended.
Indeed, based on interviews with Republican members of Congress and some of their staffers, the wonder is not that Plan B crashed and burned, but that Boehner apparently thought - and announced in advance - that it would fly.
…
Solution to gun violence in schools?
A GUN IN EVERY CLASSROOM!!!
“In case of emergency, break glass, grab rifle, return fire.”
Best idea since windows that roll down on airplanes.
Hmmm…. yet this same crowd suggests anatomical knowledge and birth control in the classroom to prevent unwanted pregnancy is unacceptable.
I wish these people would make up their minds.
How patently absurd. Some folks clearly read too many superhero comics during their childhoods.
N.R.A. Envisions ‘a Good Guy With a Gun’ in Every School
Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
Wayne LaPierre, vice president of the National Rifle Association, took no questions at a news conference addressing the shootings in Newtown, Conn.
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and MOTOKO RICH
Published: December 21, 2012 1893 Comments
WASHINGTON — After a weeklong silence, the National Rifle Association announced Friday that it wants to arm security officers at every school in the country. It pointed the finger at violent video games, the news media and lax law enforcement — not guns — as culprits in the recent rash of mass shootings.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A. vice president, said at a media event that was interrupted by protesters. One held up a banner saying, “N.R.A. Killing Our Kids.”
The N.R.A.’s plan for countering school shootings, coming a week after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was met with widespread derision from school administrators, law enforcement officials and politicians, with some critics calling it “delusional” and “paranoid.” Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, said arming schools would not make them safer.
Even conservative politicians who had voiced support this week for arming more school officers did not rush to embrace the N.R.A.’s plan.
…
I won’t pretend to have the solution to this problem but I do know the solution is not disarming the good citizens of this nation.
Even conservative politicians who had voiced support this week for arming more school officers did not rush to embrace the N.R.A.’s plan.
What does that mean?
More media prevarication?
Did not rush to embrace?
Did they oppose it? Well, gee, I guess not.
Did they support it?
We don’t know. It doesn’t say whether they supported it or opposed it.
It’s just a way of trying to say the Oppose it, but they would be a lie, so they didn’t say that.
It says they didn’t “embrace it”.
How did they arrive at this conclusion?
……..was met with widespread derision from school administrators, law enforcement officials and politicians, with some critics calling it “delusional” and “paranoid.”
What about the ones that thought it was a good idea?
Is “widespread” a Majority, or just the ones that the media interviewed? and agreed with?
They even got a Republican to say he thought it would not help make schools more safe. They found one. Gee, how tough was that?
Most of the others must think the same way.
Leftist propaganda, devoid of facts, and leading conclusions that are supported by evidence presented and counter-positions ignored.