Bits Bucket for September 14, 2014
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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Any predictions on how many more years the U.S. manifestation of the housing mania will last?
By the way, 9% annual price gains are not sustainable. They represent an eight year period for prices to double, which is historically unprecedented in the U.S. before the Housing Bubble.
Housing price cuts point to a shift in Southland market
Housing price reductions are rising in the Southland
In Orange County, the region’s most expensive market, about one-third of sellers have had to cut prices, according to real estate firm Redfin. Above, a home for sale in Huntington Beach. (Bryan Chan / Los Angeles Times)
By Tim Logan and Andrew Khouri
* The number of homes with reduced asking prices has risen sharply in recent months, a reversal from last year
* No longer a seller’s market? In O.C., about one-third of home sellers have had to cut their prices
* Buyers are gaining leverage in Southern California’s housing market: Price cuts are back
The latest sign that buyers are gaining leverage in Southern California’s housing market: Price cuts are back.
The number of homes with reduced asking prices has risen sharply in recent months, a reversal from last year’s sellers’ market, when list prices seemed more like a floor than a ceiling.
In Orange County, the region’s priciest market, about one-third of sellers have been forced to cut prices, according to data from real estate firm Redfin. Across the Southland, prices have hit a plateau this summer, with sales volume slumping as buyers got pickier.
These trends have been building all year. But home sellers — often the last to see market shifts — are finally getting the message, said Paul Reid, a Redfin agent in Temecula.
“A lot of what we’ve seen over the last six or eight weeks is people lowering their prices to get buyers in the door,” Reid said.
The shift from a red-hot sellers’ market to something more balanced is reflected in price trends.
Every month for nearly two years, starting in mid-2012, the median home price in Southern California notched double-digit annual gains, according to housing data firm CoreLogic DataQuick. The growth peaked last June, with a 28% gain.
But the 9.1% year-over-year increase in August marked the third straight month of single-digit gains. In higher-priced parts of the region, gains are even slower; it was just 5.4% in Orange County.
Still, August’s median was $420,000, the highest point since the recession started in December 2007. That’s keeping many buyers on the sidelines, said Andrew LePage, an analyst with CoreLogic DataQuick.
“Prices are high enough to be a hurdle for a lot of buyers,” he said.
After two years of bidding wars and big price run-ups, some sellers have yet to come to terms with reality, said Steven Thomas, chief economist at Reports on Housing, which tracks the Southern California market.
…
the local paper keeps running stories about a market cool down.
Anything nice in a good neighborhood is 300-400k. Homes can be fetched for <200k but are dumpy, crime ridden areas. welcome to CA’s central valley.
From my observations there is very little new construction growth. The growth they keep taking about must be in the servicing of we we already have.
They keep talking about more healthcare jobs being a plus. How does that really help the economy?
Give it time Poet. Patience and remember. CA’s excess empty and defaulted inventory is in the millions so there is no need for new construction.
The shift from a red-hot sellers’ market to something more balanced
Never is the shift to a crash or a crater. Only to something more balanced.
But a balanced market of normal price increases will not work for the pimps. That would be seen as a huge disaster, and to them it would be. When you are used to making easy money in a rising market, a percentage point or two price increase a year ain’t gonna work.
But then it snowballs further. If a slowdown to only a few percent a year increase begins all those in the market speculating, flipping and “investing” can’t make anything and head for the exits. Then the market has to deal with all the inventory that this segment has been holding hoping for big gains, which is excess inventory above actual demand. The amount of this excess inventory is not normally huge, but after the last 15 years of building and speculating, now it is huge.
This is what we are seeing play out now. I am happy to go back to 2011 prices here in Az.
“The latest sign that buyers are gaining leverage in Southern California’s housing market: Price cuts are back.”
Prices falling in all 50 states now.
Prices falling in all 50 states now.
How many states is price-per-sq-ft falling in?
Serious question…
It wouldn’t matter because you’d run from that too.
You’re confusing me with someone else, as you are wont to do. I’m in _favor_ of prices going down, btw—just don’t lie about the data before they actually show what we are both hoping to see.
Refute the data then. You won’t because it’s irrefutable.
Parced from the URL on this article:
Washington apartment glut: It’s a renters market”
Real Estate
It’s a Renter’s Market in Washington
By Heather Perlberg
August 28, 2014
Alexandria’s Virginia Square Towers hopes to lure tenants with amenities like a game room
Mandy Johnson and her roommate thought they were priced out of Virginia Square Towers, a new luxury apartment building across the Potomac River from Washington, where for about $3,000 a month they would enjoy amenities such as a pool, a game room with a pool table, video game consoles, and a golf simulator. Less than 24 hours after declining to sign a lease in June, Johnson got an e-mail from a leasing manager offering two months’ free rent on a 14-month contract. The $450-a-month discount clinched the deal for Johnson, 28, who works at a nonprofit that gives scholarships to military families. “We are able to have this brand-new apartment for the same price as one in older buildings, so we went for the shiny object,” she says.
An oversupply of construction in and around the nation’s capital is giving young professionals such as Johnson the upper hand in negotiations with landlords. Haendel St. Juste, a Morgan Stanley (MS) analyst, calls Washington “the weakest apartment market in the country right now.” About three years ago the metro area had one of the lowest vacancy rates in the nation, at 3.4 percent for Class A, or high-end, apartments; the rate stood at 4.1 percent at midyear.
Rents in the D.C. metro area, which includes the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, fell 0.1 percent in the second quarter of 2014, compared with an average increase of 3.3 percent nationwide, according to apartment research company Axiometrics. That follows a big jump in inventory, with 14,840 newly built apartments coming to market this year, an 86 percent increase from 2013, data from the Dallas-based firm show.
…
This article was posted here on HBB more than a week ago.
Sorry about that…been working a lot and must have missed it.
That said, reposting recent articles seems like a useful way to inform those who may have missed them the first time, so long as it doesn’t get excessive.
I don’t have an issue with it either - especially if people carry over from one day to the next to continue the conversation.
I am one of those who often can not loo at HBB until the evening, after everyone has “gone home”.
Depends…
How long will government bailouts last?
How long will $500-$1 trillion deficits last?
How long will government guarantee nearly all mortgages last?
How long will “lend money to everyone” or you are a racist bank laws last?
How long will artificially low interest rates last?
In short - how long will government controlling the housing market last?
How long will the government’s ability to control the housing market last?
until inflation impoverishes enough people.
That’s not inflation Az._Fraud. Learn the difference.
As long as it takes. They will hand you free money to buy a house.
Negative interest rates will be here soon.
Tax appraisal just came for the house I rent. It’s up 20% over last year (1.15M s 950k). Meanwhile, the custom house being built next door is moving forward - looks like it’ll be a 3500sq ft on a 1/5-1/4 acre lot.
They tell me NJ will be fine as long as the stock market keeps going up!
And it will keep going up. Negative interest rates, here we come!
The east side is ripe for a massive haircut.
The east side is ripe for a massive haircut.
I assume you know I’m in Seattle. There are a number of good paying jobs in this area (MS, Google, Tableau, etc), and quite a bit of stock/IPO money. I’m not sure how these factors reconcile with the fed’s credit firehose.
There are far more good paying jobs in NYC and prices are falling here.
an overpriced house went into contact here in queens then fell out……still waiting for the details…also almost everyone at the open houses i saw were asian.
the only way they could have gotten even close to their wishing price was the make the basement 3rd apartment legal and that failed.
“There are a number of good paying jobs in this area (MS, Google, Tableau, etc), and quite a bit of stock/IPO money. I’m not sure how these factors reconcile with the fed’s credit firehose.”
The jobs were already here pre-bubble. Trying to assign fundamentals to the massive price increases is fool’s logic. Median incomes do not support the prices. That’s a fact.
The jobs were already here pre-bubble
Not sure that’s true - many of the tech companies in this area are growing/expanding/hiring from out of state. My company certainly is.
And what were the loss of jobs over the same years?
Guillotine, are you in Seattle too??
I’m near Microsoft HQ on the Eastside, and two techies (like my new neighbors - husband 15 yr SW developer @ MS, wife tech writer for MS contractor) can easily be pulling in $250K - 300K per year after bonuses and stock awards.
You can buy a lot of house with that level of income.
I picked hardware instead of software during college (1980s) and missed out, money-wise. Not complaining, but it is slightly irritating to see 21-year-olds making more money than me with 25+ years experience in engineering. Oh well . . .
We have definitely exceeded the 2007 peak bubble pricing in my area. A new 3500SF mcCrapbox facing a divided street is “priced reduced” to $1.25M - it has been on the market all summer and is now on its second realtor. Even the DINK techies appear to be passing on this one! They are trolling for that foreign all-cash investor methinks . . .
You can buy a lot of house with that level of income.
Yep. And I think there’s a lot of that around Seattle. Folks marry late here, have kids late here (if ever), so I think lots of dual-professional couples.
Do you know what the actual tax bill is?
I don’t, though I imagine I could look it up. Zillow shows taxes of $9471 for last year
For those of you in right to work states without insane public unions…
$10,000 in yearly property taxes for an OK nothing too special house in New Jersey is on the low side…
Any predictions …….?
To quote Clubber Lang: “predictions? Pain….”
Sunday comics.
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2014/09/14/sunday-funnies-28/
French voters voted for crony capitalism and a faux-socialist Goldman Sachs errand boy, and are now getting exactly what they deserve. Choose more wisely next time around, froggies.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/14/us-france-politics-idUSKBN0H90BF20140914
The first truly medieval castle in 500 years is being constructed using ancient techniques. Seems apropos, since neo-feudalism has also staged a come-back.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/its-now-1245-and-the-walls-of-gudelon-are-rising-9731564.html
Reason is our “best defensive walls.” when the majority of people decide to use reason (and it happens very rarely, a free society follows.
On an individual basis, reason is priceless, as it guides you to optimal solutions for your life, based on your hierarchy of values. Solutions for your own health, career, investments, choice in relationships (or whether to have any). But on an individual basis it won’t give you the “best defensive wall” when the majority are thugs who vote.
The fact that 95% of the electorate continues to vote for captured Republicrat candidates who are screwing them blind tells you everything you need to know about the prevalance of “reason” among the American voters. As George Carlin said, a selfish ignorant public gives rise to selfish ignorant politicians.
Unless every Obama Zombie, McCain Mutant, and Romney Retard suddenly realizes that for the good of the country they need to leave the civic responsibility of voting to the intelligent, and voluntarily sit out the next election (and every one after that), hoping for “reason” among these herd creatures isn’t a very sound “defensive wall”.
Please shut up. Please go away.
http://www.businessinsider.com/sarah-palin-apology-2014-9
Don’t pay attention to her, and she will cease to exist.
why its funny and so american…. I think her unpredictability would scare Putin to death and he wouldn’t dare invade the ukraine or anywhere else…. that alone could be a plus for America and we could spend the money fixing our our bridges roads and the low wage job market.
It’s a sad indictment of the intelligence (or lack thereof) of Tea Party adherents that they consider this fraud their “darling” and a conservative. Here is Palin, at her most incoherent, justifying her and McCain’s support for the 2008 bailout of the Wall Street grifters. So no, a President Palin wouldn’t spend money to fix our bridges - she would be every bit the crony capitalist patron that Clinton, Bush, and Obama have been.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txfqWzGMgmY
Don’t go getting funny ideas, Texas. You should have to enjoy that hope ‘n change along with the rest of us.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Texas-nationalists-see-hope-in-possible-Scottish-5751738.php
If Texas becomes independent it might end up becoming Tejas.
With Comrade Pelosi as Supreme Ruler?
If your brokerage account decides to Corzine you, don’t count on any protection from the regulators.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229401
If you like your crony capitalism, you can keep your crony capitalism. Bend over, taxpayers, for some more hope ‘n change.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-13/re-authorizing-ex-im-bank-or-easiest-way-make-500x-return-investment
B…b…but debt-fueled consumerism is the key to economic prosperity! The Keynesians said so!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-13/americas-poor-have-never-been-deeper-debt
I heard one of the shrills on tv the other day saying that 90% of the economy was consumption now.
I still got lots of work to do. - Janet Yellen
Ours is not a country focused on generating wealth.
Ours instead is focused on preserving it and redistributing it.
It’s no wonder we’re rapidly becoming poorer.
You are so right.
But this too will pass. Either we will turn the corner and start revitalizing opportunities for creating wealth, or else continue down the path to Third World status.
OBAMA’S SINKING SHIP
NYpost.com | 9/14/14 | MICHAEL GOODWIN
They miss the point. The disjointed speech wasn’t really about terrorism and launching a new war. It was about saving Obama’s presidency.
He is sinking fast and could soon pass the point of no return. In fact, it may already be too late to save the SS Obama.
The whole second term has been a string of disasters, with the toxic brew of his Obamacare lies, middling economic growth and violent global breakdown casting doubt on the president’s stewardship. Six years into his tenure, nothing is going as promised.
They’ve tuned him out because they’ve made up their minds about him. They no longer trust him and don’t think he’s a good leader.
Most ominously, they feel less safe now than they did when he took office. Americans know the war on terror isn’t over, no matter what their president claims.
Those findings turned up in a tsunami of recent polls that amount to a public vote of no confidence. They shook up the White House so much that the plan to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants was put on hold to try to protect Democratic candidates from voter wrath in November.
His worldview, his politics, his prejudices, his habits — they’ve been a mismatch for the country and its needs. He has been a dud even in the one area where he seemed a lock to make things better, racial relations. Only 10 percent believe race relations have improved under him, while 35 percent said they are worse, according to a New York Times survey. The remainder said there wasn’t much change either way.
So Vladimir Putin, Iran, China, Islamic State, al Qaeda and any other number of despots and terrorists know they have two years to make their moves and advance their interests, and that resistance will be token, if there is any at all.
Throw in the fact that Europe largely has scrapped its military might to pay for its welfare states, and the entire West is a diminished, confused opponent, ripe for the taking. Redrawn maps and expanded spheres of influence could last for generations.
Food stamps == welfare
$500 million fighter jets == Amerika!
A Brief History of American Welfare State
RealClearHistory.com | 05/09/2013 | Brian Vanyo
According to deficit forecasts in President Barack Obama’s latest budget, the national debt will surpass $20 trillion by 2016. If this occurs (and it is almost certain to occur), then Obama will add more to the national debt during his presidency than all prior presidents combined , despite collecting projected record-high tax receipts each year of his last term in office.
The largest expenditure in Obama’s budget — and the largest federal outlay in every budget since 1970 — is an expense item labeled “payments for individuals,” which includes spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, disability payments, and other federal welfare subsidies. These payments comprised 65 percent of all federal spending in 2012 and are expected to grow to 70 percent in 2016. (By contrast, national defense spending was 19 percent of the federal budget in 2012 and will decrease to only 14 percent in 2016.)
Well, when your President allows Goldman Sachs execs to run around in the U.S. Cabinet, what else would you expect?
Obama = Bush.
Goldman Sachs was Obama’s #2 campaign contributor in 2008. It was a very sound investment on their part.
Funny title but I don’t think Author knows what he’s talking about.
Obama’s ship is USA and that ship has been sinking even before Obama was selected as the captain. Hopefully he will submerge this shit sooner.
Prosecutorial Indiscretion: Ray Rice vs. Shaneen Allen
By Ian Tuttle
September 9, 2014 12:19 PM
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a.k.a. Instapundit, makes an interesting connection between NFL wife-beater Ray Rice and a very different New Jersey “criminal” — single mother-of-three Shaneen Allen, who inadvertently ran afoul of Garden State gun laws last autumn, and who now faces a felony charge. Writes Reynolds at USA Today:
When Ray Rice beat his wife unconscious in an elevator, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Michael Donio and New Jersey District Attorney Jim McClain agreed to put him in a diversion program for 1st-time offenders to keep him out of jail. But when Pennsylvania single mom Shaneen Allen was pulled over for a traffic violation and volunteered to a New Jersey police officer that she was carrying a legally-owned handgun with a Pennsylvania permit, the response of Donio and McClain was to deny her the same opportunity as Rice.
National Review has written extensively about Allen’s case. Here are the details, from our July editorial:
In October of 2013, a Pennsylvania resident named Shaneen Allen drove into New Jersey’s Atlantic County and was pulled over by police for an “unsafe lane change.” When the detaining officer arrived at her car window, Allen informed him that she was carrying a concealed firearm, and presented her Pennsylvania carry license as proof of eligibility. Unbeknownst to her at the time, however, was that New Jersey is among the 20 states that do not recognize Pennsylvania’s permit. In consequence, she was arrested. If convicted of the charges that the state has elected to bring, she will be locked in prison for up to a decade.
Allen’s case offers a prime opportunity for beneficent prosecutorial discretion. But anti-gun zealotry has trumped common sense, such that a violent offender was let off and a non-violent one locked up. If only Rice had been carrying a firearm at the time of his assault, he’d be facing the chair now.
http://www.nationalreview.com/…cutorial-indiscretion-ray-rice-vs-shaneen-allen-ian-tuttle - 76k
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Video: Ray Rice Knocks Out His Fiancée In An Elevator - Deadspin
deadspin.com/heres-video-of-ray-rice-knocking-out-his-fiancee-in-an-1631864196 - 77k - Cached -
Ray Rice — ELEVATOR KNOCKOUT … Fiancee Takes … - TMZ.com
http://www.tmz.com/…/09/08/ray-rice-elevator-knockout-fiancee-takes-crushing-punch-video/ - 163k - Cached -
Different justice for the rich who can afford good lawyers who know the system and may have worked in the prosecutor’s office a few years before and be friends with all their old colleagues.
Versus some schmuck caught on the end of someone trying to make a political statement.
By the way, it is a flat out lie that this person would be locked up for a decade unless they have a huge prior criminal history. A flat out lie.
“By the way, it is a flat out lie that this person would be locked up for a decade unless they have a huge prior criminal history. A flat out lie.”
You are correct.
Single Mom Faces Mandatory Minimum Three Years In Prison For Apparent Inadvertent Gun Violation
by Josh Israel Posted on July 28, 2014 at 5:01 pm
Though her attorney has characterized it as “an honest mistake,” a single mother of two is facing at least three years in prison, without parole, for bringing a gun into New Jersey.
Shaneen Allen was stopped in Atlantic County, NJ, at 1:07 a.m. on October 1, 2013, for an unsafe lane change, according to charging documents. She informed the cop that she possessed a .380 Bersa Thunder handgun and hollow-point bullets. While she apparently has a valid Pennsylvania Licence to Carry Firearm, New Jersey does not permit transporting these arms and does not have a reciprocity agreement with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
New Jersey’s Graves Act establishes mandatory minimum sentences and parole ineligibility for illegal gun possession. If convicted, this means Allen would have to serve at least three years for the violation. Though some non-violent defendants in New Jersey can be diverted to a pretrial intervention program, focusing on rehabilitation, the prosecutor in this case denied the Allen the necessary waiver, in February. A spokesman for Atlantic County Prosecutor James P. McClain, a Chris Christie appointee, told ThinkProgress that McClain, “has declined to comment about particulars of a prosecution in-progress, or in response to recent media stories.”
This is not the first case in which McClain has prosecuted illegal gun violations of Pennsylvanians who brought their guns into New Jersey. His website notes convictions in two cases in the past two years, including one in which the Superior Court judge told the jury that, “permits must be obtained in accordance with New Jersey law. Therefore, a non-resident gun owner may not avoid New Jersey’s gun control laws on the basis that possession of the weapon was legal in the owner’s state of residence and that the owner was merely transporting weapons through New Jersey without criminal intent and knowledge that New Jersey would regard the possession as illegal.”
thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/07/28/3464970/philadelphia-moms-gun-arrest/ - 178k -
“Though some non-violent defendants in New Jersey can be diverted to a pretrial intervention program, focusing on rehabilitation,”
Which in this case would be learning how to read a Road Atlas so you don’t inadvertently drive outside of the United States and into New Jersey.
If she gets an all white jury she is going up for 10 yeas.
Or free.
A black with a gun? No way she is going free with a white jury.
A black single working mom with kids who buys a gun to protect her family after being mugged/robbed an by accident drives in the people’s republic of NJ from PA and turns into an instant felon…
Only a white jury made of hard core progressives/liberals would convict her. Just like the kind of people who run NJ.
White PA rednecks would throw her a party and take her to dinner…
I’m white (well, 98% I think), conservative, a Second Amendment supporter, and can well understand why any single mom, especially one at risk of being victimized by criminals, would carry a firearm. Color is irrelevant in this scenario. The only condition I would levy is that she has received training on how to use the firearm and is not not barred from owning a gun.
I had a civil discussion with my young second cousin, a disabled veteran who attended West Point, regarding e U.S. involvement in the Middle East. He is politically “progressive” AND very much a hawk on American imperialism, as if it’s Starship Troopers. He is well aware now that I want the U.S. to be neutral like Switzerland. We basically agreed to disagree. He has not addressed my reasons: $17 trillion dollar debt and we can no longer afford to be world cop; and the blatant example that we were chummy with the very same ISIS folks last year and now trying to battle them.
Starship Troopers - where you had to earn the right of citizenship and the right to vote.
The free sh*t army would not exist…
Do you mean defense contractors?
Defense spending is approx 18% of the federal budget and shrinking
Entitlement spending is apprix 55% of the federal budget and growing
You can do the math…
You CAN’T do math.
That 55% includes benefits to those military free loaders.
That 55% includes benefits to those military free loaders.
Can’t be. Wars don’t cost anything.
Entitlement spending is apprix 55% of the federal budget and growing
That’s mostly Social Security and Medicare. Your retired parents and grandparents are the FSA.
A Brief History of American Welfare State
RealClearHistory.com | 05/09/2013 | Brian Vanyo
According to deficit forecasts in President Barack Obama’s latest budget, the national debt will surpass $20 trillion by 2016. If this occurs (and it is almost certain to occur), then Obama will add more to the national debt during his presidency than all prior presidents combined , despite collecting projected record-high tax receipts each year of his last term in office.
The largest expenditure in Obama’s budget — and the largest federal outlay in every budget since 1970 — is an expense item labeled “payments for individuals,” which includes spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, disability payments, and other federal welfare subsidies. These payments comprised 65 percent of all federal spending in 2012 and are expected to grow to 70 percent in 2016. (By contrast, national defense spending was 19 percent of the federal budget in 2012 and will decrease to only 14 percent in 2016.)
Wikipedia has the same numbers here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#mediaviewer/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png
And don’t forget farm subsidies, that’s part of the 55% as well.
And those oldsters are by far the wealthiest generation that ever lived in the United States, both nominally and in relation to all other living generations.
Not long ago, the scenario was nothing like this. Mummy and Dada often moved in with the kids.
Today’s youngins don’t get to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Instead, grandma and grandpa do. Forty years ago, today’s grandma and grandpa were already considerably better off than THEIR grandma and grandpa.
Funny how this all works out.
My guess is that it’s Gen-X that will be the first old generation out on the street. They’ll be called upon to sacrifice what they’ve saved so the youngsters can have a life. In other words, quite opposite that which has happened the past 50 years.
Means test now.
Shut it down and send my money.
I still dont think you get the idea their only choice will be to inherit mom and dads house and live in it the rest of their lives…unless they miraculously get a very high paying job.
My guess is that it’s Gen-X that will be the first old generation out on the street.
The problem with Starship Troopers is that it was not graduated enough. There need to be more levels to be earned. If you can prove yourself responsible you should be entitled to do pretty much whatever you want drugs, guns, sexual relationships.
We are slowly instituting this by default anyway. Look at the TSA precheck line.
HuffPo: Raise Taxes and Bring Back Draft to Fight ISIS
Lib-left establishment calls for sacrifice in the name of the state
by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars.com | September 14, 2014
H.A. Goodman, a regular at The Huffington Post, Salon and a former State Department employee, believes the only way to fight the Islamic State is to confiscate more hard-earned dollars from the American people and bring back conscription.
According to Goodman, we’re a nation of selfish sloths, television watchers who expect a volunteer army to fight our existential battles. “It’s time to get off the couch, America, and collectively sacrifice for national security, both through taxes to fund the next conflict and a draft, like previous generations in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam,” he writes.
Goodman runs to Jon Meacham, a CFR insider, who argued back in 2012 for a return to conscripted slavery, otherwise known as the draft, in order to fight the empire’s wars. Body bags, missing limbs, PTSD and all the other horrors of large scale organized mass murder are a small price to pay to protect America against enemies of its own making.
He quotes R. Russell Rumbaugh, a military analyst at the CIA, who took the pages of the nation’s premier war propaganda broadsheet, The New York Times, to argue we couch-sitters are under taxed and a “permanent tax surcharge to pay for wars” is required to “ensure that we… achieve our interests throughout the world.” Rumbaugh, of course, believes the interests of the CFR and the American people are one and the same.
It is hardly surprising this screed in favor of forever war and endless sacrifice to the state appears at the Huffington Post, supposedly a bastion of lib-left political thought. It is, instead, another crafty corporate front peddling propaganda for the state and wars that centralize its power and enrich its bankster and corporatist overlords.
HuffPo is owned by AOL, the corporate leviathan that sucked up Time Warner, and was owned by Arianna Huffington, the right-left chameleon who, according to Adam Davidson, “conned progressives with the promise of a new, different, post-ideological model — and then delivering a cold hard dish of the same old exploitation, betrayal and hypocrisy.” Libs, of course, should have seen this coming when they saw Huffington team up with Ken Lerer, the flack who covered for the poster child of a criminal financial class and the epitome of Wall Street corruption, Michael Milken.
There is very little difference between the so-called right and left sides of the establishment political spectrum when it comes down to war. There is a dedicated, albeit heavily marginalized and routinely ignored, antiwar faction located at the outer fringes of the Democrat party. Republicans have begrudgingly allowed a small and equally marginalized libertarian and Ron Paulian antiwar faction in their oligarchic club, but it does not dent the war pig domination of the party.
Remember, many of the wars over the last sixty or so years were initiated by Democrats, most notoriously Vietnam inaugurated by Lyndon Johnson (who used a classic false flag to get things rolling).
Obama’s ISIS war and the vastly exaggerated threat supposedly posed to the heartland by Islamists — in fact Wahhabist Salafi-Takfiri, or apostates who deviate from mainstream Sunni Islam — is merely the latest scam perpetuated by the military-industrial complex and its neocon intelligentsia to keep war going forever. The grossly over-cooked Islam threat was devised in the late 1970s as the U.S. worked to take down the supposed Soviet threat and supplant it with another, more permanent enemy.
ISIS, IS,ISIL, whatever tag you affix, is wholly a creation of the CIA, British and Israeli intelligence, and their partners in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Turkey. It does not pose a threat to America and does not require more confiscation of wealth and forced conscription at gunpoint.
Send the First Congressional Battalion. Now. With John McCain and Lindsey Graham in the lead.
Meet the left wing do-gooders same as the right wing do-gooders.
It spells neo-liberal-con. It’s a massive Con.
It’s called crony-socialism. I saw a need to coin the term, so I did. There’s crony-capitalism; thus, there’s also crony-socialism. Naturally, the term isn’t seen elsewhere, not even in the MSM!
We need to support the State, at the cost of freedom. Yours and mine. And if that includes anyone else’s - such as those living outside the borders - so be it.
After all, their right to self-determination isn’t greater than ours - so, therefore, why not invade and install there the same policies our government is busy installing here?
Remember - our brand of domestic imperialism is better than their brand of domestic imperialism.
Who ever is advising those ISIS people is one smart cookie.
My money is on Putin.
Obama incubated them.
Funny how on one hand people say Obama is incompetent, but on the other had smart enough to take an organization unknown 12 months ago a provide it the funding, leadership and training to become one of the most dangerous organizations in the world.
You sound proud!
However conscription would only apply to gentiles, from households earning less than $60k/yr, that can pass the physical exams and have the discipline and maturity to adapt to military life.
“There is a dedicated, albeit heavily marginalized and routinely ignored, antiwar faction located at the outer fringes of the Democrat party. Republicans have begrudgingly allowed a small and equally marginalized libertarian and Ron Paulian antiwar faction in their oligarchic club…”
NeoCon-Progressive Party Members all.
Nearly two years ago now, I first equated NeoCons with Progressives on this board. Slowly but surely, an increasing number “get it”.
Bush Sr. and Reagan did not get along. Why was that exactly?
Chris Christy became a darling almost overnight among East Coast progressives. Why was that?
Judith Miller of the NYT worked hand-in-glove with the neocon cabal around Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, etc. to sell the Iraq war (and neocon disinformation) to a dubious public. The NYT has no journalistic credibility or integrity whatsoever. It is effectively AIPAC’s propaganda arm - one of them, anyway.
Cedar Mill, OR Sale Prices Crumble 18% YoY On Cratering Housing Demand
http://www.zillow.com/cedar-mill-or/home-values/
S H A D Y
Try to be more data driven Az._Fraud.
like your data has any credibility? you dont even understand the BS you post.
You have a beef with zillow Az._Fraud.
“these things just don’t happen in a vacuum.”
Thank you, Tesla, and thank you again, Harry Reid
By Brian Greenspun (contact)
Sunday, Sept. 7, 2014 | 2:01 a.m.
There are plenty of congratulations to go around for this major piece of good news. Certainly, Gov. Brian Sandoval’s leadership has to be recognized for making this happen, together with all of the economic development people who worked so very hard to bring this home.
But there is someone else who hasn’t sought, nor will he, any limelight when it comes to sharing this great news. That man is Nevada’s senior U.S. senator, Harry Reid.
While everyone else was appropriately basking in the glow of the good news during Thursday’s news conference in Carson City, Reid was presiding over the seventh annual Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas. His guest of honor, among many honored guests, was former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who gave the keynote address. I would not be doing my job as editor if I didn’t report how “presidential” she sounded!
The Sun’s Kyle Roerink wrote Thursday that Sandoval asked Reid to weigh in with his friend, Elon Musk, chairman of Tesla and the man whose genius and drive have led the car manufacturer to the top of the charts on how to make a brilliant American company actually work!
I was thinking about this reference to Harry’s help and Hillary’s speaking at the energy summit in the context of landing Tesla, and it was not lost on me that these things just don’t happen in a vacuum.
I was at the Clean Energy Summit two years ago and happened to find myself in a room with former President Bill Clinton, the husband of my friend Hillary, Fred Smith of FedEx, Reid and Musk. We visited for about an hour while they waited to speak to the conference attendees.
Without divulging the specifics of that informal visit, I can say with certainty it was not lost on Musk that President Clinton and Reid were very much interested in Musk’s plans for building more manufacturing plants where they could do the most good. We weren’t talking gigafactories at the time, but it was clear that people in positions to help were clearly interested in helping an American company that was willing to help create U.S. jobs.
Thank you, Tesla, and thank you again, Harry Reid - Las Vegas Sun …
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2014/sep/07/tesla-announcement-economic-shot-arm/ - 103k
——————————————————————
Nevada Gives $1.3 Billion Tax Break to Electric Car Maker Tesla
Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval signed a package of bills on Thursday to provide $1.3 billion in tax breaks and other incentives for Tesla Motors, putting a bow on the deal for the electric car company to build a massive factory in the state. Sandoval said the agreement has “changed the trajectory of our state forever” during the signing ceremony late on Thursday, shortly after the four bills were unanimously passed by both legislative chambers.
Sep 12, 2014
By Sandra Chereb
Another provision will require at least half of all workers hired by Tesla be Nevada residents, though it allows for waivers.
Lawmakers also agreed to buy right of way to build a road connecting I-80 and U.S. 50, a project estimated to cost $43 million that will improve access to the industrial park from other regions of the state.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nevada-gives-1-3-billion-tax-break-to-electric-car-maker-tesla/
You ARE aware that Sandoval is a Republican, right?
‘Washington’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said the U.S. has provided more than $104 billion to rebuild Afghanistan — more money than the United States has spent on reconstruction for any one country in history.’
‘But John Sopko said despite the massive investment, corruption and the narcotics trade are flourishing, and Afghanistan is unable to pay for and maintain projects the U.S. has started.’
“The bottom line,” Sopko said Friday in remarks at Georgetown University, “it appears we’ve created a government that the Afghans simply cannot afford.”
“it appears we’ve created a government that the Afghans simply cannot afford.”
Did anyone expect anything different? We can’t afford our own government — you think the folks somehow got smarter when it came to setting up a structure for someone else?
You beat me to it - +1000
It doesn’t have anything to do with smarts.
Neocons call it a great success.
I think there was hope that oil would be found in Afghanistan.
Still not a loss. We still found WMD there.
Oh, wait….
Post of the day!
That’s funny. We’ve created a monstrosity in Washington D.C. that we can’t afford either.
Beaver Creek, OR Housing Prices Crater 18% YoY As Excess Housing Inventory Balloons
http://www.zillow.com/beavercreek-or/home-values/
The neocons and their minions are in full force making the rounds of TV shows, spouting garbage for more war. It seems borrowing and spending trillions on war is the main foreign policy. The military industrial complex exploits Americans for their lavish life style and power.
It is sickening.
Plans for putting troops in Ukraine seems to have been shelved for invading Syria and Iraq.
I think Russia has one or two nukes. No wonder every $shit country in the world wants one.
Perhaps from the orders at Aipac.
Why Renters are Not Buying Into the “American Dream” of Homeownership
The Bryan Ellis Investing Letter | September 11, 2014 | Carole VanSickle Ellis
We’ve all heard that millenials are the key to the housing recovery and that home prices are set to skyrocket just as soon as all the people renting or living in family homes (read: basements) get out, get married, get employed, and settle down in their new homes. However, for some reason, the estimates for when all this will happen just keep moving farther and farther out. In an effort to determine just what is delaying renters from becoming homeowners, the New York Federal Reserve conducted a Survey of Consumer Expectations to address the issue. The study found that while most renters have a “desire to own,” a number of factors are preventing them from buying. Some of these factors are very real hurdles to homeownership, while others are literally all in the renters’ heads.
The biggest hurdle to buying a home for most renters is a very large, very real one. More than half (55.7 percent) say that they simply do not have enough money saved or that they are paying too much money out toward debts. 52.7 percent report that they do not make enough money to purchase a home, and 41.4 percent report that their credit is not good enough. Interestingly enough, however, many renters do not actually do any research before coming to these conclusions. About two-thirds of renters reported that they simply think it will be “somewhat or very difficult” for them to get a mortgage versus actually knowing this to be true[1]. Furthermore, many renters do not even check their credit to determine whether they have a viable score for buying but simply assume that they do not; more than a third (35 percent) “think that their credit score is below 680” rather than actually knowing this to be true. “They are convinced that they would not be granted credit and thus may fail to apply for a mortgage even after an easing in standards,” explained Fed researchers in their report. The researchers also added a caveat regarding lowering borrowing standards. “Relaxing credit standards may…have undesirable consequences down the road since borrowers with lower credit scores are at higher risk of default,” they wrote [2].
WHAT WE THINK: While we want to believe what so many rose-colored-glasses-wearing analysts are selling (namely that we can get back to a serious real estate boom before 2020), reports like this indicate that we are simply living in a new era for real estate in which appreciation is not fast and not guaranteed, in large part because an increasingly large portion of the population is opting out of homeownership and feeling okay with that decision. While the NY Fed did determine that most renters think buying a house would be a good investment, those renters’ perspectives on their own personal homeownership experience do not indicate that they will actually buy. As long as they keep renting, the face of the housing market is going to continue to change and the dream will be less and less universal because these individuals are going to raise families and socialize among friends who do not necessarily think homeownership is crucial to happiness, productivity, or professional success.
Home ownership these days really paying the bank rather than the landlord.
I wonder what % of the homes are actually owned by the owner, no mortgage?
The advantage of renting from the bank is that u have a shot at some free equity if the market goes up and u do build a little equity if you stay there and pay for a long time.
Renting does have some benis too. Its all what you want.
Keep in mind the losses associated with paying 2x rental rates to a bank.
HA! Maybe all this incessant whining from the real estate and lending stiffs about credit being too tight has backfired -
If this report is to be believed, a big percentage of the ‘pool of first time homebuyers’ now believes that they can’t get loans, even though in many cases that might not be true.
Poetic justice, I say.
I should add, they’re better off, anyway. They’re doing the right thing (not buying an epically overpriced house with loads of debt they can’t afford) even if it’s for the “wrong” reason (believing they cant get a mortgage when maybe they could).
Hey kids - life is short, enjoy while you can. Don’t tether yourselves to a 30 year debt sentence, on top of all the other debt the system has lured you into. Who knows what next year will bring,
Clarice Feldman: Crazy Things Progressives Believe
American Thinker | September 14, 2014 | Clarice Feldman
Mark Landler of that same publication reported on the president’s brief remarks on ISIL (or ISIS, take your pick) this week, with this gem: “Unlike Mr. Bush in the Iraq war, Mr. Obama has sought to surround the United States with partners.”
There must be a new disease, Progressive Dementia, affecting the Old Gray Lady. Though they aren’t the only publication to be struck dumb by it
26 days after the September 11 attacks, Operation Enduring Freedom commenced in Afghanistan. The campaign to oust the Taliban from power, rid the region of al-Qaeda, and build a sustainable post-war Afghan government eventually involved 58 nations, many of them non-NATO members. In Iraq, 45 nations joined the United States in the March, 2003 mission to oust Saddam Hussein from control in Baghdad. By April, Angola and Ukraine had committed to joining the mission, raising the total number of coalition countries including the United States to 48.
So who are our allies in this latest Obama creation — a sort of video game conflict where we have no boots on the ground and yet somehow know where the enemy is?
After meetings at last week’s NATO Summit, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel spoke of a newly formed “core coalition.” President Barack Obama said it would take on ISIS. The nations are Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Turkey, in addition to the United States.
Two short days later Australia, Britain, and Germany aren’t so certain to be forming part of the war core any more.
By September 11 Turkey made clear it would not allow its airbases to be used to fight ISIS.
Oddly it appears we are counting mostly on Iran’s help in Syria and Saudi Arabia’s in Iraq although I had thought they were major enemies of each other and certainly no reliable allies of ours. Pity the U.S. servicemen and women with the hokey-pokey commander-in-chief (we put the troops in, then we take the troops out).
Obama also keeps insisting that ISIS/ISIL is not “Islamic”. Most think this defies belief, given that the first “I” in either acronym stands for “Islamic”, the slaughters are being carried out in Islam’s name and are perfectly consistent with the Koran and the long history of that religion. As are the demands that non-believers either convert, pay the Jizya tax, or be executed.
One of the clerics in Iran already clarified their position on Saudi/US -”the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
Yeah, that whole “enemy of my enemy” thing gets complicated.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/islamic-state-widespread-fear-of-isis-is-producingstrange-bedfellows-across-the-middle-east-9732382.html
Wenatchee, WA Sale Prices Plummet 9% YoY; Inventory Soars
http://www.zillow.com/wenatchee-wa/home-values/
what do you pay your cheap labor?
Stick with the data and don’t take it personal Az._Fraud.
we know home appreciate. your data is rubbish.
Refute the data Az._Fraud.
there is nothing to refute
Good. I’m glad you like the data.
You can’t fix stupid.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/14/hillary-clinton-democrats-iowa-steak-fry-2016
Even California’s super-rich aren’t impervious to Mother Nature. Though I’d like to think God is visiting well-deserved plagues on California for foisting oligarchs Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein on the nation.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11094232/Super-rich-make-last-stand-against-California-drought.html
Spain, run by yet another “former” Goldman Sachs exec, faces a huge breakaway movement in Catalan that could hand the EU it’s next crisis regardless of how Thursday’s vote in Scotland plays out. This is what happens when governments act as adjuncts of the banksters instead of paying attention to the needs and concerns of their people.
http://www.businessinsider.com/qa-on-catalan-independence-2014-9
With Angela Merkel putting German taxpayers on the hook for trillions in liabilities run by Eurozone banksters, the German electorate is belatedly waking up and pushing back as an anti-EU party continues to gain momentum.
http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-german-anti-euro-party-gains-seats-in-two-states-exit-polls-2014-9
Tune into the HBB tomorrow for more compelling links to data, analysis and discussion.
See you bright and early!
Look forward to it!
http://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-c1-dream-house-20140908-story.html#page=1
phony scandals