Expensive Has Been Getting Less Expensive Lately
A report from the Real Deal on California. “Analysts say Downtown Los Angeles is at risk of being oversupplied with luxury apartments — a theory which will be tested as more projects open for leasing. Carmel Partners’ 33-story, 363-unit glass tower is up next. The development, which is rising at Eighth and Olive Street in South Park, will begin pre-leasing in early December. Dubbed Atelier, the project follows Carmel’s 700-unit Eighth & Grand project above Whole Foods, which is ‘over 50 percent leased,’ according to a spokesperson for Carmel. CoStar analyst Steve Basham has cited rent and parking concessions Carmel offered at Eighth & Grand as evidence DTLA’s luxury sector is slowing.”
The Midland Reporter Telegram in Texas. “The watch continues for the end of the Midland-Odessa economic contraction. Karr Ingham, the Amarillo economist who prepares the Midland-Odessa Regional Economic Index, said that area workers may continue to endure a slow labor market, which has seen thousands of jobs lost and a surging unemployment rate. Housing continued to defy expectations in the low oil price environment, but the housing markets in Midland and Odessa painted different pictures. Sales of existing homes in Midland-Odessa fell 10.1 percent in the third quarter from last year and 8.9 percent in September from last September.”
“But in Midland, sales grew 1.6 percent in September, while falling 7.5 percent in the third quarter from last year’s third quarter. The sales price in Midland-Odessa averaged $250,631 in the third quarter, up 4.5 percent, and $245,831 in September, up 6.2 percent from last September. In Midland, the third quarter average sales price was $284,031, up 8.2 percent. The September average was $270,408, up 6.8 percent from last September. In Midland, 32 new housing permits were issued in September, down 54.9 percent from 71 the previous September.”
“Ingham said it’s not that Odessa’s housing market has ‘fallen off a cliff,’ but that Midland is experiencing such a strong market. ‘I’m not sure who’s looking for housing at those prices,’ he said.”
From Bloomberg on New York. “The first apartment tower at Forest City Ratner Cos.’s mega-development in Brooklyn — planned for a decade and under construction since 2012 — will open for leasing this month, just as the borough’s run-up in rents is beginning to cool. At 320 feet (98 meters), the building at 461 Dean St. has the distinction of being the world’s tallest property whose units are stitched together from prefabricated modular blocks, according to the developer, a unit of Forest City Realty Trust Inc. Less unusual is the timing of its arrival, with thousands of other newly built rentals also coming to the Brooklyn market.”
“The glut of competition is already pushing Brooklyn landlords to cut deals to fill apartments. Property owners gave concessions, such as a month’s free rent or payment of a broker’s fee. ‘Brooklyn needs time to absorb the new supply,’ David LaRue, chief executive officer of Forest City Realty Trust, said on its Nov. 4 earnings call. Citing challenging market conditions in Brooklyn, the company wrote down the value of its real estate investments by $307.6 million, with much of that reduction related to the Pacific Park development, formerly known as Atlantic Yards.”
The Tampa Bay Times in Florida. “There will be no ‘free houses’ for Floridians who have defaulted on their mortgages but continue to live in their homes without paying. In a major opinion, the Florida Supreme Court has ruled that lenders can resume foreclosing at any time, even if they have taken no action in years. Previously, they had to act within five years of when the borrower first defaulted.”
“‘This case resolves an important issue for Florida, one of the states hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis,’ said Michele Stocker, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer who represents lenders. ‘The decision effectively removes the unfair notion that people can live in a home for free after an extended period of time. It could help clear out the backlog of cases that have been sitting around for a while.’”
“At the heart of the case was the issue of ‘mortgage acceleration.’ Most mortgages have an acceleration clause that allows the lender to sue for the entire loan amount immediately, starting a five-year clock on the foreclosure process. In their ruling, the justices agreed. They said the statute of limitations for banks to file a foreclosure suit resets each month that the borrower defaults on a mortgage payment. That means a bank can file suit more than five years after the borrower first defaulted. It also means borrowers can’t stay in their homes forever without paying.”
“‘The decision finally brings some clarity to the issue and will allow judges who have been reluctant to rule on foreclosure cases to move forward with ones that have been pending for years,’ Stocker said. ‘Now everyone knows what is and what isn’t permissible.’”
From WTOP in Virginia. “Northern Virginia’s most expensive county has been getting less expensive lately, at least based on the median price of what’s been selling. The median price of a house or a condo that sold in Arlington County in October fell below $500,000, the first time that has happened in 2 1/2 years. Long & Foster Real Estate says the median price last month was $497,000, down 9 percent from a year earlier. Just four months ago, the median price of a sale in Arlington County reached $627,000.”
“Arlington County’s year-over-year median price has declined for three consecutive months now. These are median sales price figures, and it may be Arlington’s high-end that’s dragging those numbers down. ‘The number of sales in the upper-bracket end, at $1 million or $1.5 million and up, has dropped off much more rapidly than the number of sales in the entry level house and condo market, so that affects the median number,’ Bob Adamson, with real estate firm McEnearney Associates, told WTOP.”
“‘I’m looking at numbers across the board in different price ranges year to year, and if you average it out it’s not nearly that big of a drop,’ said Adamson, who is also chairman-elect of the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors.”
Cant stop the signal #pizzagate
http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/pizzagate-4chan-uncovered-sick-world-washingtons-occult-elite/
The more it spreads, the more info comes out. Reading through the comments, I didnt know Macauley Culkin was in a band called Pizza Underground (I never even bothered to watch Home Alone, lol! Hollywood sucks). But I’m sure its just a coincidence, like the 100s of other coincidences.
http://www.celebdirtylaundry.com/2013/micahel-jackson-macaulay-culkin-sexual-abuse-child-molester-pedophile-monster-063/
I really hope this is part of the swamp they want to drain. Some real sickos there. My eyes about fell out of my head when I saw those old police sketches of the two suspicious characters involved in the Madeleine McCann disappearance. Dead ringers for John and Fat Tony Podesta.
So far, the only person who seems to be actively denying it all is James Alefantis. And he keeps hissing that it’s a bunch of racist and homophobes who came up with this stuff. It’s like “Look, over there!”
This has spread to Poland and Turkey, and isn’t it interesting not a peep about it in the fake media
not just part, drain the swamp! But Pence, Dimon, Gulaginani, Romney…etc are all swamp monsters.
Sad Pandas.
No Clinton Foundation approved candidtes in the bunch…
drain the swamp! or did he flip on that too? SNL nailed it.
The lord protects old California burnouts.
The origins of the term “Deep State” came from a 1996 fatal car crash in Turkey that revealed the symbiotic ties between the power establishment and the criminal underworld.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susurluk_car_crash
The list of the Arkancided keeps growing.
http://resistancefeed.com/2016/11/20/woman-investigating-clinton-foundation-dead/
First Trump and now this….
——
The Tampa Bay Times in Florida. “There will be no ‘free houses’ for Floridians who have defaulted on their mortgages but continue to live in their homes without paying. In a major opinion, the Florida Supreme Court has ruled that lenders can resume foreclosing at any time, even if they have taken no action in years. Previously, they had to act within five years of when the borrower first defaulted.”
Great stuff, 2banana. Now that Florida’s Supreme Court has put their foot down, hopefully other states will follow. Our neighbors lived free in their former residence 5 yrs, walked away with a nice saving acct, and used an FHA loan to buy the home next door. They are proud to game the system.
Heard a commercial for defaulters to call a number, so HUD could save them from homelessness. It was like renting was beneath their precious coddled entitlement. Poor snowflakes.
I bet the property taxes were paid on time for those 5 years.
Yep, they did pay the property taxes, because 5 years and the gig is up in Ca, the county will sell your home for the delinquent taxes. They weren’t sure when the bank would come for their keys.
This is a GREAT decision on the part of the FL Supreme Court. Miss a payment and the statue of limitations clock starts again!
BTW, this is the same logic behind the Lilly Ledbetter gender-discrimination decision. Ledbetter was paid less for the doing the exact same job as her male coworkers. The courts ruled that each deficient paycheck re-started the clock on statue of limitations.
I’m not a free-market conservative, as you know, *but* the bleeding-heart liberals are in serious need of some tough love.
“this is the same logic”
It seems to me the court made the “limitation” into no limitation at all. That is way in favor of the banks cheating accounting standards indefinitely, and eliminating the age old principle of squatters rights. The courts are supposed to uphold the law, not reinvent it.
I couldn’t agree more, Blue. The correct course of action is to force the banks to foreclose within a reasonable period of time and re-sell the property, like the old Resolution Trust Corporation.
This is actually a travesty.
It seems to me the court made the “limitation” into no limitation at all.
+1, Blue. The statute of limitations to foreclose due to non-payment is now 35yrs for the typical new 30yr mortgage, and slowly gets reduced over the life of the mortgage. It would be really interesting to compare this new reality with the deliberations of the legislature when the passed the 5yr SOL.
Actually no, not in Florida. The legislature passed a law against adverse possession in 2013. Few FBs would meet the requirements.
————–
The state law prevents “acquiring title to real property by possession,” according to the summary. The occupant would have to pay all taxes for seven years, file a return of the land for taxes, protect the property with an enclosure or cultivate it, and maintain and occupy the land.
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2013-07-10/news/fl-brf-bill-0710-20130710_1_new-law-kicks-neighbors-squatters
————–
As for statute of limitations: They aren’t really “extending” the statute of limitations. Rather, the FB creates a new SOL each time he misses a payment. In theory, if the FB doesn’t pay for five years, the bank can foreclose during any one of 60 different statues of limitations. And since the penalty is nonpayment is to take the entire house (you can’t split up the house), I guess it doesn’t matter which nonpayent they base their foreclosure on.
PolyOxide
The legislature passed a law against adverse possession in 2013.
We’re not talking about “adverse possession” here, oxy; in this case, the FB’s already hold title.
No matter whether these FBs were residents, or squatters that walked in from somewhere else, it still doesn’t negate that each missed payment initiates its own statute of limitations.
Spank oxide
Any opinions on the effect of the human tornado on dc area ‘re?
1what dif between Midland and odessa?
2 squatters already did live for free
Arlington ,va
Example of not enough data. MAybe off 1-2% w trumpf news.
Oil city type idea for a place in Stroudsburg, PA. Near the metropolitan region and good hiking on the nearby AT, but look at the property tax hit you get:
http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Stroudsburg-PA/9837358_zpid/27300_rid/globalrelevanceex_sort/41.067963,-75.136357,40.915328,-75.356083_rect/11_zm/?
Funny. Many a person could just move into a quiet area like this and live below the radar if they have enough cash and investments. They could get a job at McDonalds to pay the property taxes. You don’t need to have a ton of money. The place needs work though.
Poor” teachers get 100% pensions
= high taxes
Look for counties w average age over 42
I saw the DTLA (Los Angeles) luxury apt oversupply coming when the 105 new projects started, brought to you by mostly S Korean and Chinese investment. Way too much “stark-architecture” in DTLA.
It will be interesting to see what happens as interest rates start to rise (read the Central Banks are ready) and people can’t discern monetary from fiscal policy, and blame Trump for a rescission.7 years of zero interest rates is the longest period in history, and no historic reference to the repercussions. Inter-bank rates are negative. Ringing out our faux economic growth from the asset bubble(s) will eventually happen, IMHO sooner, than later. Got popcorn?
DTLA- free valet parking in Skid Row.
More news on the South Korean presidents scandal
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/20/south-korea-prosecutors-say-president-park-was-accomplice-in-corruption-scandal.html
Similarities with another would be female president are pretty striking. Merkel, youre up next you worthless hag! Its the era of the wimin politician - going to jail.
Dr. Lee, king of Koreatown, is getting his tail in a crack with all his Wilshire Corridor buildings now. The concept of converting 50’s/60’s/70’s office buildings into residence apartments is getting a stake through it’s heart now that all the new, cheaper construction is coming on-line and depressing rents.
The smart Chinese, the ones with a cargo container of cash FOB Shanghai, want US land, not cubes of air. This vertical buildup along the major LA arteries is going to be a bastard to fill with paying customers…
tangouniform
So, Koreatown is now using the adaptive use ordinance? Wow, I didn’t know that. We used a UCLA referral eye clinic there until recently, and the new building of high density apts was starting to be really be noticeable. Koreatown is cleaner and less dense the DTLA, but it is still a slum. Some cool really old homes there, dating back 100 years.
It’s great news that after about a century of effort, U.S. affordable housing policy is finally showing signs of success.
payments are affordable! LMFAO
Too darn funny!
Trump picks up his phone: “Siri, how do I kill ISIS?” Turns out he was talking into a Blackberry.
Har har har. Crooked Hillary took her non-secure Blackberry into secure facilities in direct violation of security rules.
Hey! That’s not a joke. It really hapoened.
Lots of great material for SNL! funny stuff.
HRC is a neo-con warmonger.
Trump will build the wall!! $25 bill!
My understanding is that (at least sometimes) she kept the Blackberry at the security station, and needed to go back to the station if she wanted to check her e-mail.
The truly hilarious part is that she needed to go back to check her e-mail because…she couldn’t use a personal computer.
Put aside the corruption, warmongering, and complete disregard for keeping US data secure…over half the country voted for someone to be President who couldn’t use a computer.
Hillary hasn’t driven herself in 35+ years. She is completely out of touch with everyday people.
And the reason she set up a private e-mail server was to conceal her pay-to-play influence peddling. Her State Department computer would’ve had the files backed up and been subject to FOIA requests and internal monitoring. Crooked Hillary wanted secrecy for her dirty dealings.
“Crooked Hillary wanted secrecy for her dirty dealings.”
+1 Yes.
George McFly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e18eE33juE8
It keeps getting weirder:
Future First Lady Melania Trump and son Barron will not be moving to the White House after Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, The Post has learned.
The president-elect’s 46-year-old wife and their 10-year-old son are staying put at the family’s glitzy Trump Tower penthouse so that Barron can continue attending his Upper West Side private school.
He does not want the job, wont last.
Sad Pandas.
Maybe Trump should put his kids in the DC public school system like obama did.
Oh wait…
How much more is it gonna cost me to guard trump Towers too?
Or will MX pay for it? duyr!
be ready for 8 yrs of trump and another 8 yrs of pence.
<i.He does not want the job, wont last.
On the contrary, he has no intention of being subsumed into The Swamp. He has deep roots in New York and likely intends to be president for a single term before returning to the business world, after hopefully doing what he can to Drain the Swamp and and purge our entrenched, parasitic political class.
The great negotiator:
President-elect Donald Trump bragged on Saturday that he could have continued to fight three lawsuits against Trump University, but settled for $25 million because he won the election.
Trump agreed Friday to pay $25 million in restitution and fines to settle three fraud lawsuits against him and a real-estate program that promised to make participants rich. Trump will not admit fault as part of the settlement.
“a real-estate program that promised to make participants rich.”
Instead, it made the lawyers rich.
America is proud of Trump U. Geez, all he had to do was copy the Phoenix online model–was that too hard? Where did the $$ go? Portraits?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e18eE33juE8
Or the great pragmatist.
If you’ve ever been part of a legal fight, you would know that it’s often better to settle.
Are there any great calculators online that actually calculate the cost of a house based on increasing property taxes factored into the mix? I was looking property taxes on podunk places and am floored what the rates could be. Meanwhile, my brother pays $10K going on $11K a year for his place in suburban middle class NJ. I am wondering what the total of property taxes have gone into the place the past 40 odd years. I am figuring near $200,000 total at least which is heckuva lot of money for services a town renders IMHO.
thats one of the reason the authority wants prices to keep rising.
I liked NM, very low prop taxes, wild west law, you are on your own.
I used to live in Albuquerque. The crime was the final straw. Loved the weather and scenery and there is great hiking out west but the level of theft out there hit home a few times and I decided never again to even think about living in NM. It is just me though. Plenty of people live there and love it. Nota place for me anymore though.
I had to use a 401k calculator to determine the series of payments type sum that property taxes add up to. Yeah, my brother’s place, which he got from my father, has been in the family for at least 40 years. Well, assuming back in 1975 annual property taxes of $2400 growing 4 percent a year, adds up to $237,000 of payments for 40years. The kicker is that if that annual payment of taxes was instead put in the stock market, the math points to at least $1,000,000 of stock value by now, and that is only using the $2400 invested each year, no allowance for increases in investment amounts. Now, my brother’s house may be worth at best $400,000 where it is. There you go, houses are money makers for who? I need to compare renting costs after this. The millennials may be avoiding a disaster in the making by renting the next 20 years. My generation and the boomers will be leaving plenty of houses to buy on the cheap.
Public union votes and “donations” to the democrat party don’t come cheap.
There is a reason why public unions are the BIGGEST CAMPAIGN DONORS OF ALL TIME.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?cycle=ALL
When you rent you are paying property taxes, plus a landlord profit. Add up the sum of rental payments….
Hows that working out for the growing number of underwater landlords and price slashers?
“thats one of the reason the authority wants prices to keep rising.”
+1 A bumper-crop of retired public employees to support.
Democrat patronage and graft isn’t going to pay itself. Collectivist parasites need hosts to feed off of.
Buttercup Pence offended by booing at the theatre….awww…. and Trump cant handle SNL, yet these two want to go up against Putin?? uh oh!
Its too bad your kind are incapable of understanding humor/sarcasm, but this millenial explains the fine art of trolling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v_R24ih4-c
Trump is crushing it.
That is one spooky dude.
That’s Portland and Seattle right there.
Except he’s some flavor of Alt-Right and appears to be into witchcraft or the occult or some weird sh*t.
Give it a rest. Pence said he wasn’t bothered by the booing - he called it the “sound of freedom” - and gave the play a rave review.
The election is over. Crooked Hillary lost. You need me to call a Wahmbulance?
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/11/19/the-wambulance/
I love me some California fried brains.
Reminds me of George McFly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e18eE33juE8
Did Correct the Record get more Soros funding? Most of that sorry army of lame online trolls oozed back to their flophouses after Crooked Hillary lost the election and their contracts ended on Election night, but it looks like a few remnants are still at it with the same DNC-Narrative talking points and attempts to spread disinformation.
What’s the difference between winning and whining?
http://knuckledraggin.com/2016/11/your-political-lesson-for-the-day/
Did we ever find out how much hillry was paid to throw the election?
Someone has power-mad as Hillary could never be paid to throw the election. The Clinton Crime Family stood to take its pay-to-play rackets to a whole new level had a few million more votes-for-entitlements social parasites been pursuaded to make the effort to cast a vote on election day.
The globalist, neocon Sarkozy tried to dupe French voters by masquerading as a populist (while calling for a new “Marshal Plan” for Africa financed by his oligarch pals but paid for by French taxpayers), but French voters, despite their abject stupidity in supporting him previously, weren’t fooled in the least.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/frances-sarkozy-bling-bling-bust-215026592.html
The EU, an artificial construct run by and for the sole benefit of globalist oligarchs, will not be able to withstand the populist-nationalist uprising that is sweeping f**ked-over western voters.
http://www.euroweeklynews.com/3.0.15/news/on-euro-weekly-news/world-news/142098-fears-over-surge-in-populism-lead-eu-leaders-to-adopt-hard-brexit-stance
Wow, Trump will inherit the worst fiscal situation other than Truman - and its from a big brother approved media source, CBS! That means even the libs can read it.
https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/800380128824004608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
O was handed 10% unemp and ISIS. Gives Trump 4.9% and you say what??
no complaints from the educated and skilled. Life is good.
Oh please, no one believes the cooked unemployment numbers. If it was really 4.9% we would all be getting huge raises every year.
So then it must have come down from 20% to 10% during the Obama years.
Far more people have given up looking during the last 8 years, and they’re not counted in unemployment numbers. But you know this perfectly well.
I don’t any know such thing. It’s probably not true in the first place. The situation has improved by any useful measure.
Please provide a snail mail address where I can send you a safety pin and baby bottle.
So then it must have come down from 20% to 10% during the Obama years.
Shadowstats still shows ~23%.
I don’t know what planet you live on but you should check yourself into a mental ward as you have a severe case of Analcephalic compaction from too much Soros indoctrination.
Hillary’s neocon regime-change fiascos are the gift that keeps on giving.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/21/monkey-attack-in-libya-sparks-tribal-clashes-that-kill-more-than-a-dozen
Don Rickles at the Reagan ‘85 inauguration. LOL. Could this fly at a Trump inaugural celebration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9XGGZ0kQ5w
Colorado is a desert, the high desert, in case anyone forgot. Just one prolonged drought away from becoming totally unsustainable.
All of the West is a desert:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071315/?ref_=nv_sr_1
I’ve visited the ruins of mesa dwellings in Colorado where Indians lived until a 50-year drought forced them to go elsewhere in search of water.
That global warming really did them in, causing the 50-year drought and all.
What is snow pack and rivers for?
what are pipelines? 21st-century technology? and de-sal?
Pipe it from where? The SW is a huge place. Of course once the desperation sets in, the inhabitants will be willing to pay for a multi thousand mile pipeline, but then there’s the environmental issues of taking those amounts of water out of rivers and lakes, generating the power to transporting them thousands of miles, the pipelines themselves, etc.
It’s more likely that green lawns would become a thing of the past in the Centennial state. Unlike what happened to the Anasazi Indians, water won’t completely run out, there will just be less of it. So green lawns will go the way of the dodo bird. Golf courses and parks will probably be watered with reclaimed sewage.
Brooklyn has been a borough of 2-4 story brownstone row houses and 6-7 story apartment buildings. The main exceptions were built in the 1920s, the St. George Hotel (now condos) and the Williamsburg Savings Bank building, later the “tower of pain” (all dentists) and now condos.
Not long ago I was riding the F train and looked out toward downtown Brooklyn. It looked as if I had moved to another city. In NYC the foundations took forever, but the rest of the building can go up a floor a day.
There has been a residential tower, then another, then after a while another still. Now suddenly its a whole skyline.
From Portland, Oregon.
I guess the story is the white SJWs felt bad for kicking out black people from their neighborhoods in the north part of town, so they decided to build them new apartments. Problem is, nobody wants ‘em because they are too small.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2016/11/why_portland_cant_fight_gentri.html
I think this is funny, the city people admit they don’t know what the heck they are doing.
“”It is a learning process,” said Javier Mena, Portland’s assistant housing director. “I wouldn’t say that we underestimated or overestimated” demand for the condos. “We didn’t know.”"
This is a related article about the point-ranking system they invented to categorize people for eligibility. They got it down to a science.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2016/08/portland_gentrification_housin.html
“City leaders spent the spring and summer culling the list, awarding applicants up to six points based on how much urban renewal had shaped their old neighborhoods. Residents who were displaced, or are at risk now of being displaced, from neighborhoods between Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and North Interstate Avenue received three points. Former residents of Northeast Portland neighborhoods such as King earned two points.
The city also awarded points to applicants whose ancestors were displaced. If the city took an applicant’s parents’ property through eminent domain — as it did during the construction of the Memorial Coliseum as well as during the planning of a later-shelved Emanuel Hospital expansion — that applicant moves to the top of the list.
The higher the score, the higher a person is on the waiting list.”
“Hardly anyone wants to live in the tiny, well-appointed condos that government leaders agreed to subsidize.”
Agenda 21
And just like that, the Clinton Foundation pay-to-play racket dries up. Hard to peddle influence when you don’t hold an actual cabinet level or above position and your BFF Lynch turns a blind eye to your family crime syndicate.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-20/norway-slashes-clinton-foundation-donations-87-clintons-political-clout-dried
It will be very interesting to see how much money stops flowing into the Clinton’s Foundations.
The 2017 filings will be quite interesting…
Meanwhile, the Chinese Yuan just broke 6.9 to the dollar.
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/currency/usdcny?mod=MW_story_quote
“there is unlimited wealth because there is unlimited fiat.”
Once again, younger generations will foot the bills from the Boomers’ fecklessness and profligate spending on themselves as pension funds fall short.
https://spectator.org/the-state-level-pension-crisis-jacksonville-florida-edition/
Having a candidate as uninspiring as Hillary Clinton, whose weaknesses ought to have been obvious to the party that nominated her and even more so after she lost the white working classes and the young people to Bernie Sanders in the primaries, as it was to many other Americans, including those like me who voted for her, turned out to be a catastrophic error. Not that it is easy to run a national campaign in a country so polarized as ours, split between liberal and conservative voters, urban and rural, educated and uneducated, religious and secular, rich and poor, with the predictable class animosities between them; and with the Internet and social media as our main source of information, a medium ideal for spreading lies and brainwashing the gullible. Without it ISIS could not have gotten all those tens of thousands of recruits and an outright huckster could not have become president of the United States.
It took years of deliberate effort by vested interests to create this “proudly ignorant populism,” as someone called it, know-nothing voters who are easily led by the nose, incapable of distinguishing lies from truth, or an honest person from a crook. Easily duped, they can be depended on to act against their own self-interest again and again. Throw into the mix racism, misogyny, hatred of immigrants, gays, and other minorities, the dumbing down of the population by inadequate education, suspicion of learning, rejection of science and history, and dozens of other things like guns and violence, and you have the kind of environment in which people chose their next president.
“Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will,” Goebbels said. Everywhere one turns one hears people parroting lies as if they were their own carefully considered personal opinions. The upshot is that an alternate reality has been constructed for millions in this country over the last couple of decades thanks to TV, talk radio, and the Internet. Spreading falsehoods, of course, is very profitable, as con artists of every type from mealy-mouthed preachers addressing their mega churches to those touting loans that require no background check can tell you. Lies sell everything from fattening foods to “your computer is damaged and we’ll help you fix it” scams. The basic requirement for democratic governance—that the majority of the population agrees on the parameters of what is true and what is false—has been deliberately obfuscated in this country. The absence of accountability for repeated fraud by those in power, both in government and in the private sector, the proliferation of fake grass-root organizations, think tanks, and lobbyist firms funded by the wealthy to deceive their fellow citizens and turn them against one another, has become the most characteristic feature of our political life. A genuinely functioning democracy endangers powerful interests and those working so hard and making so much money to destroy it, since they may sooner or later end up in jail.
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/19/trump-election-expendable-america/
Your safety pin and baby bottle are in the mail.
Maybe, just maybe, all those easily led rubes decided that they weren’t going to vote for an establishment candidate, GOP or Dem, even if it was “Her Turn”. Maybe, just maybe, they were fed up with propagandists who had a track record of throwing them under the bus time after time, in the name of the economy, “social justice”, especially when those candidates didn’t even attempt to hide their disdain for them and called them names.
But no, it was the voters fault that they didn’t choose to vote “the right way”. Because they’re just a bunch of stupid, white, racist, ignorant, “Fill in the blank” phobics.
Keep it up Dems, keep it up.
My MIL said to me the other day that the next four years will be “scary”.
I’m guessing it was parroted directly from MSNBC. I almost asked her “why?”, to see what kind of BS she spouted off.
Debt-fueled growth is good, according to the Keynesians. Until it’s not.
http://wolfstreet.com/2016/11/21/online-lending-fiasco-credit-bubble-peak/
Isn’t globalism grand?
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/nov/21/malaysia-forced-labour-casts-dark-shadow-over-electronics-industry