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You Can Buy A Château For Nothing, Because Nobody Wants Them!

A report from Local 10. “Deadlines are looming for hundreds of thousands of South Florida condominium owners. ‘We can’t afford it, we’re gonna go broke,’ a local condo owner said. Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami-Dade said there will be no reprieve on the deadline or life-safety requirements. This tough love stance is echoed across the aisle by Democratic Senate Minority Leader Jason Pizzo of Broward. ‘When our kids are born, we start saving for college,’ Pizzo said. ‘When there is a maintenance issue with our cars, we take care of it and save for it. But for an entire generation, people did not put money away.'”

ITV News on Florida. “I travelled to Tampa to meet some of the people trying to rebuild their homes and their lives. What I found were families in despair. Ashley Pangborn, her husband Greg and their two children live in Homosassa. They had just finished repairs when Hurricane Helene struck and their house was flooded again. ‘We were planning on putting our house on the market on October 1. We had our pod loaded up with stuff we saved last year. The hurricane hit and we lost all of that. We can’t sell our house anymore. We can’t move,’ Ashley told me. ‘Do you regret moving here?’ I asked the couple. ‘For sure…this has been a nightmare,’ Greg replied.”

“Even though Florida is America’s flattest state, almost completely surrounded by water, 80% of residents do not have flood insurance which must be bought separately from home insurance. ‘I don’t know what I own anymore,’ says one exhausted woman who had bought her home just three months prior to the hurricanes, and is now faced with an uncertain future. During my time here, what became apparent to me was that for many Florida is now a paradise lost.”

KHQ Non Stop Local. “Homeowners across Washington are experiencing significant challenges as tens of thousands face cancellations or non-renewals of their home insurance policies each year. Britney Inglis, a resident of Nine Mile Falls, experienced the impact firsthand when her home insurance policy was not renewed in January, following the Elk and Oregon Road fires in neighboring Spokane County. ‘We’ve gone through now six insurance companies that have offered coverage and by the end of the month are cancelling policies due to fire danger,’ she said. Inglis, who is also a realtor, highlighted the broader implications for the housing market. She noted that without insurance, buyers struggle to secure financing, and sellers face difficulties, especially in the manufactured and mobile home industry. ‘Especially in the manufactured and mobile home industry we are seeing that where a lot of the insurance companies are refusing to cover that period and that’s impacting those sales because they’ll sit on the market for years to come,’ Inglis explained.”

Orange County Register in California. “Over the past year, OC has seen a small rebound in population with about 10,000 more residents. That’s a reversal of the trend from 2020 to 2022 when the county saw about 40,000 people leave. In 1999, the median home price in OC was $275,000. Now it’s at $1.45 million, 60% higher than the statewide median home price, according to the report. ‘We are losing people to our neighbors,’ Jon Gould, UC Irvine School of Social Ecology dean said. ‘We’ve spent a lot of money educating them and we are pushing them away.'”

ABC 30 in California. “Andy Krotik has been a North Valley realtor for 35 years. He expects to see more homes coming onto the market in 2025 but can only hope more people are ready to buy. ‘The challenge that I see, I should say, is the minimum sales price of a home in Merced County,’ he said. ‘The median is like $420,000. You can’t even find houses for sale under $300,000. It’s not there, and so affordability is a challenge.’ The presence of UC Merced continues to draw interest from people in the market for rental units. ‘I still get investors from the Bay Area — they’re cash buyers,’ Krotic said.”

From AM New York. “A local business owner was convicted Thursday of defrauding taxpayer-funded mortgage lenders out of millions of dollars in a years-long scheme involving fraudulent short sales of distressed properties. Queens resident Avraham Tarshish, 40, now faces up to 30 years in prison after a Brooklyn jury found him guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, as well as related wire fraud charges. Authorities said the Brooklyn business owner and his four co-conspirators manipulated short sale transactions, which allow distressed homeowners to sell properties for less than the mortgage owed, typically with the lender agreeing to forgive the remaining balance. The scheme involved artificially deflating property values and immediately reselling the homes at much higher prices.”

“False documents were provided to mortgage lenders, concealing payments to homeowners and side agreements to flip properties at inflated prices. Many affected loans were insured by the Federal Housing Administration or backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, entities funded by taxpayers.”

From ABC News. “Throughout the country, once bustling business districts have turned into ghost towns. The pandemic has shown that many jobs can be done remotely. Now some major U.S. cities are breathing new life into empty office buildings by converting them into housing. Notable cities that are part of this trend include New York, Austin, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Boston. David Greaney and his firm Synergy are buying them up, at a deep discount. Synergy currently owns 35 properties in the Greater Boston area. Working out of one of the same buildings Greaney recently bought, small business owners and brothers Michael and Emilio Ruggeri are betting on a comeback for Boston’s downtown. ‘I’m an eternal optimist,’ said Michael Ruggeri. ‘The buildings are way too expensive to just stay empty. Someone’s going to take over the space, so we’re hopeful.'”

Wall Street Journal. “The prospect of transforming unused office space into much-needed housing seemed a logical way to resolve both issues. But few conversions moved forward because the cost of acquiring even an aging office building remained too high for the economics to pencil out. landlords began to capitulate and dump buildings at enormous discounts to peak values. One of the first projects planned by the venture of Dune and TF Cornerstone likely will be the Wanamaker Building in Philadelphia. TF Cornerstone just purchased the debt on the office space in the building and is in the process of taking title. ‘The banks are foreclosing and doing short sales,’ said Daniel Neidich, Dune’s CEO. ‘There’s a ton of it going on.'”

“Miki Naftali, who has converted more than five New York properties over the years, said he has been very actively looking at conversion candidates but hasn’t yet found a deal that works financially. One of the issues facing converters is that even if an office building is dying, it often has a few existing tenants who would need to be relocated. Some buildings would need atriums to ensure that all the apartments have sufficient light and air. ‘When you start to add everything up, if your costs get close to new construction, that’s when you get to the point that it doesn’t make financial sense,’ Naftali said.”

The Associated Press on Michigan. “Two towers at Detroit’s iconic Renaissance Center would be razed and the complex converted to a mix of housing and offices under an ambitious $1.6 billion plan announced Monday. The complex, which next year will lose the headquarters of owner General Motors Co., is the symbol of Detroit, with aerial views often shown on television sports broadcasts. GM decided last spring to leave what’s locally known as the ‘RenCen’ for a more modern building being constructed downtown. GM said in April it would join forces with the Bedrock real estate development firm and Wayne County to turn the partially vacant property into a roughly 27-acre entertainment complex across the Detroit River from Windsor, Ontario. Demolishing the two 39-story towers would free land for the waterfront project that would complement a walkway along the river, Bedrock said in a press release.”

The Globe and Mail in Canada. “188 Redpath Ave., No. 707, Toronto. Asking price: $599,000 (June, 2024). Previous asking price: $695,000 (April, 2024). Selling price: $590,500 (August, 2024). In a boutique building near Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue, this one-bedroom plus den unit was unable to get an offer while it was listed for $725,000 last year or when asking $699,000 this year. In March, the owner noticed a smaller unit one floor below fetch $507,000 and recruited the agent that helped sell it. The price was reset to $695,000 in April and then $599,000 in June. After seven weeks, one visitor negotiated a $590,500 deal. ‘There were similar units, all around the same price of $699,000 or $650,000, and unfortunately, we listed during a period when there was a lot of inventory,’ said agent Dino Capocci. ‘We know condos are not flying off the shelf, so it was a case of a lot of work, adjusting the price and eventually getting it sold.'”

CBC News in Canada. “A disgraced real-estate lawyer who this week admitted to pilfering millions in client money to support her and her family’s lavish lifestyle was handcuffed in a Toronto courtroom Friday afternoon and marched out by a constable to serve a 20-day sentence for contempt of court, as her husband and mother watched. Singa Bui ‘consistently ignored orders of the court and complied only when faced with a warrant for her arrest or a threat of incarceration,’ Ontario Superior Court Justice William Chalmers said in sending her off to jail. It’s the latest chapter in the saga of the high-living lawyer couple whose now-defunct firm, Cartel & Bui LLP, embezzled nearly $7 million from home-buyers and sellers in southern Ontario before the scheme came crashing to a halt last year.”

“Cartel and Bui ‘breached their fiduciary duty, and as lawyers, those are the people that we’re supposed to trust,’ said plaintiff Nancy Marsilla of Richmond Hill, Ont., who is out $220,000 that the firm had been holding on to after the sale of her former home in 2021 while she settled her divorce. Marsilla attended court Friday to serve legal documents on Bui before she was taken away to jail. ‘It’s really disturbing that lawyers can get away with that. And it took so long — since 2014, I can’t believe it,’ she said. Bui said she took ‘an amount that I cannot quantify at this time’ to fund ‘unprofitable’ business ventures by her and her husband. Bui’s description reads like a Ponzi scheme: ‘I would then try to replace that money with funds received from subsequent real estate transactions. Over time, it became increasingly difficult to keep up with the repayments, and I was in more and more debt, requiring a constant flow of new client funds to pay off the debt.'”

Business Insider. “Three years ago, when Mark Goff and Phillip Engel had their first viewing of Château Avensac in the south of France, only one thing prevented the California couple from putting in an offer: Was it old enough? The main building — a 48-room château with sweeping views of the Gers, the rural, foie-gras-producing region of southwest France — was rebuilt in the 1820s. The place was certainly big enough to host weddings and artist retreats, a business the couple was counting on to help pay for the extensive renovations that would be required. By the fall of 2021, Château Avensac was theirs for $1.2 million. That’s when reality set in.”

“Everywhere they looked, there was something in need of work. So far, they’ve spent $500,000 updating the château’s electricity, heat, and plumbing, fortifying the foundations, and replacing the roof. They’ve budgeted for $500,000 more. ‘Everyone said, ‘You have to assume everything is going to be double what you expect.’ And they were kind of right,’ Engel says. ‘We didn’t really listen to that part.'”

“All across France, there’s a glut of châteaus for sale. While the average asking price is $2 million, smaller châteaus can go for a couple hundred thousand. A few, like the palatial mansion nicknamed the ‘Little Versailles of the Pyrenees,’ are even being given away. But there’s a reason they’re on the market: The properties are huge money pits. ‘You can buy a château in France for nothing,’ says one real estate agent. ‘There’s a reason for that: because nobody wants them!'”

The Daily Telegraph in Australia. “The price guidance on the Dulwich Hill investment property listing of Anthony Albanese was tweaked midweek to $1.75m, as the Prime Minister seeks to meet the falling property market. The three-bedroom townhouse had $1.9m guidance on its early September listing. But it also emerged the first couple had spotted a luxury Copacabana house in late September, which they secured for $4.3m – down from its $4,650,000 sale in 2021. The clifftop home is now up for $1900-a-week rental. His redundant Dulwich Hill property was pulled on auction-eve on October 11, with the one serious buyer apparently ‘being a bit cute with the price.’ The marketing got its first amended price guide of $1.85m after it had been pulled from auction.”

South China Morning Post. “Chen Zhuolin sold nine units in Hamburg Villa, valued at HK$213 million (US$27.3 million), for about HK$90 million Chen Zhuolin, the chairman of distressed mainland Chinese developer Agile Group, has sold all nine units he owned in a Hong Kong luxury residential project at less than half the original investment six years ago. The 62-year-old tycoon sold the units in Hamburg Villa on Eastbourne Road in Kowloon Tong, which were valued at HK$213 million (US$27.3 million), earlier this month, according to an agent from Centaline Property. The flats were sold at discounts between 53 per cent and 63 per cent. Chen was only able to recover about HK$90 million, an aggregate discount of 58 per cent, according to agents and Land Registry records.”

“The fire sales show the slump in China’s property market over the past four years has eroded the personal fortunes of local and mainland real estate tycoons, such as Hui Ka-yan, the founder of China Evergrande Group. Other high-profile casualties include the family of Ho Shung-pun and the family of late shop king Tang Shing-bor. Hong Kong’s lived-in home prices dropped by 1.7 per cent in September, taking the 12-month decline to 12.5 per cent – the lowest since August 2016.”

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This Post Has 102 Comments

    1. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston sets off firestorm with vows to resist Trump’s mass deportation plans

      Even billionaire Elon Musk, President-elect Donald Trump’s most visible benefactor and adviser, appeared to weigh in on Saturday on X, the social media platform that Musk owns.

      “Those who break the law will be arrested, and that includes mayors,” Musk posted in response to another post about the mayor’s comments.

      On Monday, Johnston reiterated his commitment to resisting what he views as a desire by Trump to abuse the power of the presidency by initiating a nationwide roundup and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

      But the second-year mayor stopped short of providing any specifics of what that resistance might look like.

      “Denver is proud to be a welcoming city, and we will do everything in our power to protect those who live here,” Johnston said in a statement. “We are considering a number of options to strengthen protections for all our residents, and we continue to provide education about the rights of our immigrant community so they can best protect themselves from any unlawful actions.”

      By Friday, Johnston was walking back some of his comments. But he also doubled down on his commitment to resist the Trump administration’s deportation plans.

      In an interview with 9News reporter Marc Sallinger, Johnston said he regretted invoking the image of Denver police officers facing off with federal troops.

      “I want to be clear, we have no plan for armed conflict with the federal government. We have no desire to do that. There is no interest and we have no plan to do that,” Johnston said.

      https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/denver-mayor-mike-johnston-sets-off-firestorm-with-vows-to-resist-trump-s-mass-deportation-plans/ar-AA1uK4UB

      1. “Those who break the law will be arrested, and that includes mayors,” Musk posted in response to another post about the mayor’s comments.

        Once the DoJ and FBI are purged of corrupt partisan political hacks, maybe it’s time to go after the REAL insurrectionists – and their financial sponsors.

      4. I want to be clear, we have no plan for armed conflict with the federal government.

        THe thought of US Marshalls apprehending him and dragging him away no doubt gave him pause.

        They set the precedent for locking up “insurrectionists”.

        1. That’s all fine and good, Mike, but the citizens of Arapahoe, Jefferson, Adams, Douglas, etc Counties would be happy to conduct a citizens arrest of you and your whole commie City Council.

        2. “THe thought of US Marshalls apprehending him and dragging him away no doubt gave him pause.”

          Indeed, the thought of polishing bananas for a few years in the Federal Correctional Institution, Terre Haute, Indiana, should add clarity.

  2. ‘The place was certainly big enough to host weddings and artist retreats, a business the couple was counting on to help pay for the extensive renovations that would be required. By the fall of 2021, Château Avensac was theirs for $1.2 million. That’s when reality set in…‘Everyone said, ‘You have to assume everything is going to be double what you expect.’ And they were kind of right,’ Engel says. ‘We didn’t really listen to that part’

    You both got a mighty a$$ pounding Mark and Phillip.

    1. Honestly only a million dollars to redo a 48 room Chateau seems really low

      Also the next owners will have a nice modern guts to start with (since they’ll run out of money before they get to the pretty parts)

        1. I’m sure the grounds look awesome, but bringing the interiors into the 21st century, updating the HVAC, plumbing, electricals, windows, etc. has to cost a pretty penny. And that doesn’t even include all the interior cosmetic remodeling that will be needed.

          As the article mentions, some chateaus are so obviously money pits that they can’t be given away for free. And there are thousands of them.

  3. “Deadlines are looming for hundreds of thousands of South Florida condominium owners. ‘We can’t afford it, we’re gonna go broke,’ a local condo owner said.

    Wah. Who knew that deferred maintenance would ever catch up with condo residents.

  4. From the CBC article:

    ‘At least 26 plaintiffs are pursuing Cartel, Bui and their firm in court. Many have already obtained judgments totalling millions of dollars, and orders for Bui and Cartel to hand over documents and answer questions about where the money went’

    They always want to know where the money ‘went’. There’s a photo at the link:

    ‘Rows of luxury shoes from brands such as Chanel and Saint Laurent, seen here in a court filing, were among the items Bui admitted to having bought with client money. (Ontario Superior Court filing)’

    And this:

    ‘Her affidavit includes photos and credit card statements showing purchases like $12,175 at Christian Dior Couture, $19,585 on a stay at the Rosewood London hotel and $119,000 on two framed photographs by Rodney Smith for the law firm’s office’

    ‘My husband and I lived well beyond our means,” she said. “Our children went to private school at a cost of approximately $100,000 a year and we had two nannies at a cost of approximately $95,000 a year… We also adopted a luxury lifestyle, which we could not afford.’

    Do you feel better Nancy?

  6. ‘I don’t know what I own anymore,’ says one exhausted woman who had bought her home just three months prior to the hurricanes, and is now faced with an uncertain future.

    All together now: “But it was cheaper than renting.”

  7. “Andy Krotik has been a North Valley realtor for 35 years. He expects to see more homes coming onto the market in 2025 but can only hope more people are ready to buy.

    Hope was the last and most dangerous thing in Pandora’s Box, Andy.

  8. Are you a coffee drinker?

    Nick Twidale spilled a flat white coffee on his keyboard when headlines on Donald Trump‘s latest tariff threats caused his phone to blow up with calls. “It’s bad déjà vu with social media posts all over again, but muscle memory is kicking in,” said the 26-year currency trading veteran at AT Global Markets, after the social media posts by Trump on Monday in New York sent the dollar soaring. “The good thing is there’s plenty of opportunity to make money here for the next four years under Trump,” said Twidale, who managed to profit from short Mexican peso and Australian dollar bets despite the spillage.

    Investors were given a taste of that volatility after the president-elect took to social media site Truth Social and pledged more tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada, his first specific threats to curb global trade flows since he won the Nov. 5 election.

    Trump’s vow to impose 25% duties on products from Mexico and Canada helped push the nations’ currencies more than 1% lower against the greenback, amplifying swings in the $7.5-trillion-a-day foreign-exchange market. The offshore yuan fell against the dollar, part of a widespread decline in emerging market currencies.

    In New York, traders and analysts rushed to their computers after the news hit. Among them was Erick Martinez Magana, a strategist at Barclays Plc, who has been recommending that clients consider long dollar-short Mexican peso positions.

    “Trump was serious regarding changes in immigration and tariff policies, with Mexico a direct target,” said Magana. He expects the peso to weaken further toward 21.50 per US dollar. It was trading around 20.60 on Tuesday.

    Trading markets is like running a steeplechase, but under a Trump presidency it’s like doing it “under mortar fire,” said Calvin Yeoh, who helps manage the Merlion Fund at Blue Edge Advisors. “It’s hard enough even with direction in hand, but you don’t see the real trouble coming.”

    More than 3,000 miles away in Singapore, Manish Bhargava is taking what is likely to be a popular step for traders across the world over the coming months: signing up to Truth Social, allowing him to keep a closer eye on Trump’s social media posts.

    “Monitoring his posts closely will be essential,” said the chief executive officer at Straits Investment Management. “Given Trump’s history of using social media to communicate his unfiltered thoughts and policy intentions, we can anticipate a similar pattern moving forward.”

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/d-j-vu-jolts-traders-055339788.html

    3. It is nice to know all the non-producing money changers and wheeler dealers will make big money. US has deteriorated in to a scam-financier-hedge fund driven society where all things (including houses for people) are part of the gambling casino.

      1. “non-producing money changers”

        The Parasite Class.

        That proud, centuries old tradition of Coin Clipping, but with computers and internets.

  9. ‘You can buy a château in France for nothing,’ says one real estate agent. ‘There’s a reason for that: because nobody wants them!’”

    True price discovery: coming soon to a central bank asset bubble near you.

    1. Just think how much it costs to heat one of those white elephants in the winter. Energy is not affordable in Europe.

    2. ‘You can buy a château in France for nothing,’ says one real estate agent. ‘There’s a reason for that: because nobody wants them!’”
      More properties with a negative value.

  10. Chen Zhuolin, the chairman of distressed mainland Chinese developer Agile Group, has sold all nine units he owned in a Hong Kong luxury residential project at less than half the original investment six years ago.

    Fake “wealth” created by fake money is evaporating like FB tears in the rain as the chimera of debt- and “stimulus”-fueled “prosperity” falls victim to true price discovery. Coming soon to a Fed-blown asset bubble near you.

  16. Does the news that the current Case-Shiller Index release shows a drop in U.S. home prices freak you out?

    1. Economic Report
      Home-price growth has ‘stalled,’ Case-Shiller says
      Home prices are appreciating less rapidly in the 20 largest U.S. cities
      By Aarthi Swaminathan
      Last Updated: Nov. 26, 2024 at 9:36 a.m. ET
      First Published: Nov. 26, 2024 at 9:00 a.m. ET
      The Case-Shiller index tracks home prices across the nation. The data generally reports with a two-month delay.
      Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images
      The numbers: Home prices in the 20 biggest U.S. metropolitan areas lost more steam in September, buckling under the pressure of high mortgage rates and historic unaffordability.

      The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city house-price index rose 0.2% in September, compared with the previous month.

      Home prices in the 20 major U.S. metropolitan markets were up 4.6% in the 12 months ending in September.

      That’s a deceleration compared with an increase of 5.2% the previous month. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal expected the 20-city index to increase by 4.8%.

      A broader measure of home prices, the national index, rose 0.3% in September and was up 3.9% over the past year. All numbers are seasonally adjusted.

      Home prices posted the slowest gain since September 2023.

      Even though prices are growing less rapidly, the 20-city and national indexes still inched to new record highs in September.

      Key details: Prior to making adjustments for seasonality, the index showed a drop in home prices.
      …
      https://www.marketwatch.com/story/home-price-growth-has-stalled-case-shiller-index-says-2d23d581

    2. Yahoo Finance
      Bloomberg
      US New-Home Sales Slump to Two-Year Low After Storms in South
      Bloomberg
      Michael Sasso
      Tue, November 26, 2024 at 7:44 AM PST 2 min read

      (Bloomberg) — Sales of new homes in the US slumped in October to the lowest in almost two years, as two hurricanes hit the South and affordability challenges continued to weigh on buyers.

      New single-family home sales decreased 17% last month to a 610,000 annualized rate, according to government data issued Tuesday. The median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 725,000.

      Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which tore through parts of the Southeast, delayed sales in the nation’s biggest housing region and dragged down sales overall. Sales in the South decreased 28% to 339,000, the slowest pace since April 2020. Sales also fell in the West, but rose in the Northeast and the Midwest.

      The median sale price of a new home increased to $437,300 in October, the highest in 14 months. That partly reflected the drop in sales in the South, where home values are the lowest.

      A September jump in nationwide new-home sales sparked by a brief drop in borrowing costs proved short-lived. After dropping to a two-year low that month, mortgage rates are climbing again as investors brace for potentially higher inflation and budget deficits under President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
      …
      https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-home-sales-slump-two-154430741.html

  17. Markets at the mercy of ‘unrestrained Trump’ as US president-elect threatens tariffs

    “On January 20th, as one of my many first executive orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25 per cent tariff on ALL products coming into the United States,” Trump posted on his Truth Social Platform.

    He bemoaned “drugs pouring in” to the US and pointed the finger at his old foe China.

    “Until such time as they stop, we will be charging China an additional 10 per cent tariff, above any additional tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America.”

    “This time around, Trump — and the people closest to him — are more experienced in government, having had four years to plan, and we would expect them to be a lot more effective from day one onwards,” Capital Economics’ chief north America economist Paul Ashworth continued.

    “Moreover, after his comprehensive election victory, he has the mandate to push through those more radical trade and immigration policies, and to reshape the federal bureaucracy.

    “Make no mistake, his cabinet nominees will be expected to stay loyal to Trump and carry out his policies to the letter.”

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-26/us-tariffs-trump-china-australian-impact-rba-rates/104648052

  18. Trump vows to impose 25-per-cent tariffs on all products from Canada, Mexico

    “On January 20th, as one of my many first executive orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous open borders,” Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

    He said the tariffs would remain in place until “such time as drugs, in particular fentanyl, and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country!”

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-trump-tariffs-canada-mexico/

  19. Trump and his tariff threat now have to be Trudeau’s top priority

    He may be bluffing, but we can’t take the chance. The federal government must assume that Donald Trump intends to impose a 25-per-cent tariff on all Canadian and Mexican exports into the United States, as he announced via social media Monday evening. Mr. Trump is also increasing tariffs on China.

    America’s three largest trading partners will inevitably retaliate with equivalent tariffs on U.S. products. We know what could happen next because it has happened before.

    In his post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump accused Canada and Mexico of permitting illegal migrants and illegal pharmaceuticals – fentanyl, in particular – to enter the United States. He demanded both countries police their border more strictly, “and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!”

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/opinion/article-trump-and-his-tariff-threat-now-have-to-be-trudeaus-top-priority/

  20. Colleges’ Bond Tax Break at Risk From GOP Goal to Punish Schools

    A Republican sweep in November’s US election threatens a niche tax break that helps American colleges to upgrade dorms and academic buildings on their campuses for cheap.

    There are more than 1,700 private, nonprofit colleges and universities in the US which can sell tax-free bonds for infrastructure projects, providing a lower cost of debt than a traditional loan. After the GOP took the US House, Senate and White House, colleges’ tax-exempt benefit is at risk as lawmakers look for ways to offset the cost of extending tax cuts, according to muni analysts.

    “The private higher-education sector is probably one of the more vulnerable muni sectors,” as policymakers will likely have it in their sights, said Mikhail Foux, a strategist at Barclays Plc, in a November research note.

    Elite colleges have become a target of Republican lawmakers in the wake of controversies over campus antisemitism and protests against the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. GOP officials also view schools as having become too progressive and intolerant of conservative ideas.

    President-elect Donald Trump said schools could lose their accreditations and federal support, while his key backer, Tesla Inc. boss Elon Musk, alleged “something is seriously wrong” with elite universities. Vice President-elect JD Vance last year proposed legislation raising the tax on endowments of the wealthiest colleges.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/colleges-bond-tax-break-at-risk-from-gop-goal-to-punish-schools/ar-AA1uJwiX

  21. 24-year-old man dies while hanging Christmas lights at California home

    A 24-year-old man died by electrocution while installing Christmas lights on the roof of a home in Southern California, officials said. The accident happened on Thursday, Nov. 21, in Escondido, a suburb of San Diego.

    According to the San Diego County Medical Examiner, Antonio Pascual Mateo was hanging Christmas lights near a high-voltage power line. “The decedent threw the lights over the power line resulting in electrocution,” the medical examiner said.

    Someone called 911, and paramedics arrived at the home to find Mateo hanging upside down from a tree. He was transported to Palomar Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

    A GoFundMe to help Mateo’s family had raised more than $8,200 as of Monday afternoon. “He had so much to live for,” wrote the GoFundMe organizer, Jual Pascal. “He always took care of his mother and family …. Forever young he will remain. Christmas lights will forever have a meaning to us. He will remain in our hearts for eternity.”

    Pascal said the money raised would help the family pay for Mateo’s transport and burial in his native Guatemala.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/24-year-old-man-dies-while-hanging-christmas-lights-at-california-home/ar-AA1uKRzM

    1. I’ve seen lots of signs advertising putting up Christmas lights.

      I wonder what he was thinking when he threw the wires over the high tension lines. Apparently he wasn’t.

    2. I saw a neighbor walking around on his steeply sloped roof while hanging Christmas lights a couple of days ago, and had unpleasant thoughts about what might happen if he stepped on a loose tile. Luckily for him, there were no high voltage power lines nearby.

    3. “The decedent threw the lights over the power line resulting in electrocution,” the medical examiner said.

      Shocking!

      1. From a Sparky, I’ve seen videos from the 3rd world of people tapping onto live electrical lines with a grappling hook to feed juice into their shanty.

        The NEC (National Electrical Code in the U.S.) exists for a reason, updated every three year cycle under the authority of the NFPA (National Fire Prevention Association), and, as always, as anyone who’s worked with electrical inspectors, is “subject to authority having jurisdiction” per NEC.

        1. The NEC is the minimum standard; local authorities may require exceeding NEC requirements but cannot legally do less.

  22. Bay Area immigrant communities anxious about another Trump administration

    President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming border czar promised to slash funding to states that don’t assist with mass deportations, and those promises have caused uncertainty and spurred action from Bay Area communities and organizations.

    Organizations such as Amigos de Guadalupe are stepping up to offer critical support. Jeremy Barousse, the organization’s director, emphasized the importance of empowering the community with resources.

    “We have our Rapid Response Network, and we’re bringing Know Your Rights information to our community as well as recruiting Rapid Responders, in case we see ICE activity in the community,” Barousse explained.

    In addition to community workshops, organizations are distributing flyers with hotlines for reporting ICE activity and educating families about their legal options.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/bay-area-immigrant-communities-anxious-about-another-trump-administration/ar-AA1uKqXn

  23. Friends and Foes Renew Push to Close Floyd Bennett Migrant Shelter Ahead of Trump Inauguration

    The Floyd Bennett Field migrant shelter for families with children drew condemnation from all points of the political spectrum since it opened last year.

    Those sympathetic to the new arrivals raised concerns about the remote location and difficulties and dangers of the group setting for young kids, while those unhappy with their presence protested and complained about complaints about crime and quality of life concerns.

    Now, both sides are renewing efforts to pressure the city to close the 2,000-person tent shelter, just two months after the city extended its lease with the federal government until next September.

    Local Republicans see an opening to convince the incoming Trump administration to close the facility down once and for all. And advocates for the migrants living there say they’re particularly vulnerable to immigration crackdowns as residents of the only city shelter situated on federal land.

    Chandler Miranda, another volunteer with the Floyd Bennett Neighbors, said at a hearing last week that she fears Floyd Bennett Field could be used by the incoming administration as an immigration detention center, as Trump is reportedly eyeing housing such centers in the vicinity of so-called sanctuary cities.

    “We really would love to see the closure and removal of the infrastructure at Floyd Bennett Field so that it cannot be used as a detention facility by the federal administration,” Miranda said. “It is, to my knowledge, the only shelter that exists on federal land right now and has the infrastructure that is being described as needed for large-scale detention facilities near sanctuary cities.”

    “Nobody from the city thinks having families with children living out at Floyd Bennett Field is ideal,” Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol said last December, following a chaotic evening during which hundreds of residents had to evacuate in the dead of night to a nearby school due to high winds. “This is what was given to us by the state by the federal government.”

    “I still haven’t gotten used to it,” said Isabel, 42, who has lived at Floyd Bennett shelter with her husband and 18-year-old daughter since February, speaking in Spanish. (She asked that her last name not be published due to the family’s immigration case.) Traversing the cold fields to get to the shelter in the winter months was jarring for the Ecuadorian family, and the ongoing stress of sharing space with so many other families wears on her.

    “To avoid fights we stay locked in our room,” Isabel said, adding that her teenage daughter is anxious to move out. “She doesn’t like it, she says ‘Mami, let’s go let’s go.’ But we don’t have jobs.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/friends-and-foes-renew-push-to-close-floyd-bennett-migrant-shelter-ahead-of-trump-inauguration/ar-AA1uK4hL

    1. Isabel said, adding that her teenage daughter is anxious to move out. “She doesn’t like it, she says ‘Mami, let’s go let’s go.’ But we don’t have jobs.”

      No jobs and no prospect of free cheese, huh? And wait until you see what rents cost! Maybe things weren’t so bad back in Ecuador, you just thought if came here you would get casa gratis, coche gratis, todo gratis. But instead of joining the Free Sh!t Army you’re stuck living in a warehouse surrounded by thugs and eating in soup kitchen. Not what those smiling NGO kids told you it would be like.

  24. Skinner: Backed ourselves into a corner on immigration

    The great Tracy Chapman wrote a song called, “Talking’ Bout a Revolution.”

    In it she sings:

    “Poor people gonna rise up

    And get their share

    Poor people gonna rise up

    And take what’s theirs”

    Yikes! That’s a scary thought but one I’ve wondered about for decades when looking at the vacant castles full of gold and gilt, studding the gleaming flanks of Aspen’s hills. I mean, if people knew, wouldn’t they come with stuff sacks and crowbars to plunder the overflowing treasure baskets?

    It comes as no surprise to me that brazen thieves from South America are suspected of making a bold grab of jewels and valuables from Avi & Co., a high-end retailer in downtown Aspen. I’m calling the suspects the “Hole in the Wall Gang” because they made their way into the Avi & Co. by making a hole in the wall from the business under construction next door. Clever and opportunistic.

    After reviewing all the available press about the incident it is unclear if the robbers actually stole anything from the store that sells watches valued at five and six figures and custom made diamond jewelry. Cabinets were apparently rifled through, though and that’s certainly a crime.

    In other risky South American crime news, the homes of several high-profile NFL and NBA stars were recently burgled and the FBI is talking about a “trans-national“ South American crime ring. These robberies were apparently more successful than the Aspen break-in as cash and valuables were taken from the star’s homes.

    https://www.aspendailynews.com/opinion/skinner-backed-ourselves-into-a-corner-on-immigration/article_6d42c9b2-abdc-11ef-a135-532abb1dc949.html

  25. ‘When our kids are born, we start saving for college,’ Pizzo said. ‘When there is a maintenance issue with our cars, we take care of it and save for it. But for an entire generation, people did not put money away.’

    Ouch. It’s almost as if the members of the WWII generation are not all the hard-working, thrifty saints and heroes they’ve been made out to be.

    1. It’s almost as if the members of the WWII generation are not all the hard-working, thrifty saints and heroes they’ve been made out to be.
      The entire US is doing the same thing right now with he Debt. It will explode like FL only question is: Can I enjoy the spoils/bennies and die before it blows up?
      Some of us will and some of us won’t.

    2. members of the WWII generation are not all the hard-working, thrifty saints and heroes they’ve been made out to be.

      Oh but yes they are!

  26. In November election, OC earned its purple cred

    Orange County is still tallying votes, but overall, the results are clear — O.C. is more purple (purple-er?) than ever. LAist talked to political scientists and analyzed trends to come up with five big takeaways from the November election results in this political middle-ground.

    Among the closest watched ballot initiatives in O.C. was Measure DD, which would have allowed non-U.S. citizens in Santa Ana to vote in city elections. Had it passed, Santa Ana would have become the first city in California to allow non-U.S. citizens to vote in its municipal elections. (Non-U.S. citizens in San Francisco and Oakland can vote in school board elections.)

    It was, in part, a test case of the Santa Ana City Council’s increasingly liberal agenda, and of Latino voters’ willingness to extend voting rights to their non-citizen neighbors (the city’s population is nearly 80% Latino/Latina, according to census data).

    The measure was defeated, with nearly 60% of the votes. Madrid said the results were simultaneously “jaw-dropping” and not all that surprising.

    “Latino voter attitudes on immigration are profoundly, profoundly different than they were a generation ago,” he said.

    Whereas previous generations of Latino voters were made up of many more foreign-born, naturalized citizens, today, most Latino voters in O.C. were born in the U.S. and have different concerns. “They’re not animated at all by the immigration issue, they’re residents,” he said.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/in-november-election-oc-earned-its-purple-cred/ar-AA1uJsXb

    1. “Latino voter attitudes on immigration are profoundly, profoundly different than they were a generation ago,” he said.

      All those US born anchor babies are grown up, and they don’t want “newcomers” moving into their neighborhoods.

  27. Northvolt Collapse Countdown Started With BMW Pullback

    For Northvolt AB, the Swedish startup that became a poster child for Europe’s electric-driving future, the route to collapse started in June when BMW AG canceled a multi-billion-dollar order.

    Back then, few saw the significance of the move, which effectively started a countdown that would culminate in a Chapter 11 filing less than six months later. Northvolt scrambled to keep the financing flowing, but as Germany’s car industry fell deeper into its own crisis, it became clear orders would dry up.

    The company responded to the lost revenue by retrenching expansion plans and slashing jobs. By the time the last attempt at an emergency plan failed, investors who had poured in $10 billion discovered only $30 million cash was left.

    One fund representative, who asked not to be named discussing private matters, said they were shocked at the speed with which Northvolt blew through its billions. As recently as July, the investor was confident of getting a return, but that changed in early August after getting a call from one of Northvolt’s owners, who warned that the battery maker could run out of cash by September.

    The scale of the delays, and how bad things were with building budgets and construction projects remained hidden, the investor said, recounting how excel models and slide decks were used to conceal how empty the coffers had become.

    Just how badly Northvolt and its financiers misjudged the situation a year ago has now become evident. Last fall, the company invited investment banks to pitch for roles in an initial public offering that could have valued the battery maker at $20 billion, the FT then reported.

    A little over six months later, the IPO was pushed back from 2024, Bloomberg reported. Soon after that, VW’s truck unit Scania complained after Northvolt had trouble ramping up production volumes, and then BMW pulled its €2 billion ($2.1 billion) contract to equip electric vehicles such as the i4 sedan and iX sports utility vehicle.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/northvolt-collapse-countdown-started-bmw-050000526.html

    2. Just how badly Northvolt and its financiers misjudged the situation a year ago has now become evident.

      And the EV’s are just piling up a dealerships. No one wants them.

  28. KC church feeds homeless every morning — but neighbors say aftermath is getting dangerous

    It’s not as if Molly Hastings, a defense attorney used to helping those in trouble, isn’t sympathetic to homeless people. “We are very houseless-friendly, the people in my firm,” the defense attorney said.

    But in July, Hastings moved her law office to Ninth Street and Baltimore Avenue across from the headquarters of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, a historic 12-story brownstone built in 1890 as the New York Life building.

    It is also where, every weekday for the last 18 months, the diocese has been running its Morning Glory Ministries breakfast that it had operated for more than a decade near its gold domed cathedral— feeding some 180 homeless people who tote their belongings inside for a prayer, meal and coffee to make their difficult lives a bit easier.

    Except in the wake of a lawsuit and complaints by residents and businesses regarding defecation, urination, break-ins and harassment, the question of whether the program is benefiting anyone — the homeless included — has become fraught with tension.

    Chief among the program’s critics are Kansas City officials who insist that although church leaders may be well meaning, programs like theirs — focused primarily on feeding needy people — are not helpful. They may, in fact, do more harm than good in that they make it easier for people to live on the street, which is both dangerous and deadly.

    Kansas City Assistant City Manager Melissa Kozakiewicz said that effective programs work to get people off the streets, by helping them access the medical, psychological, housing and other help they need. The city, she said, has asked Morning Glory to either do more or work with effective organizations that do, but have been turned down.

    “The goal is to end homelessness,” Kozakiewicz said. “So anything that doesn’t do that, anything that doesn’t send us on the pathway to do that, is not helpful. In fact, it’s detrimental.

    “No one ever gets better by living outside. So if you give someone food and nothing else, then you are prolonging their homelessness and increasing their chances of dying on the street.”

    “Their (Morning Glory’s) goal is to make homelessness comfortable. You can’t make homelessness comfortable. It’s literally not a thing. Living outside is always dangerous.”

    We have asked them multiple times, ‘Can we help you do a thing that helps the community that you think you are helping?’ And they said, ‘No.’ They’re not interested. They want to do it the way they’re doing it because that’s their ministry. We have talked to them about this. And they don’t care.”

    But since the move, those who live and work in the district insist that the result has ranged from disturbingly eye-opening to dangerous.

    “We’ve had more incidents in the last few months,” Hastings said, “then in the 10 years I worked at 10th and Walnut.”

    The problem, they say, isn’t the breakfast, per se. It’s the stream of people it draws and what happens at 7:45 each morning when the breakfast ends and people leave to walk the neighborhood.

    “The first week we moved in, there was a naked homeless gentleman taking a (expletive) on the rooftop,” Hastings said. “There was a couch up there that people used to sleep on.”

    “They had to erect a fence with barbed wire to keep people from this little stoop where people would do drugs and hang out,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of police contact.”

    “Another naked woman lit a dumpster on fire in the middle of the night and it just burned to the studs because no one attended to it.”

    Hastings revealed photos on her phone of a naked man, half-naked woman, a dumpster turned to ash. She walked behind her building to show a fence erected to prevent people from gaining access to a building alcove.

    Homeless people have long occupied the streets of downtown. But homeless advocates concede that number is growing.

    Jon Gerner, who has run the Milwaukee Delicatessen Company at 101 W. Ninth St. for 11 years, said that both the population and negative incidents have risen in the time the breakfast program began.

    “I’ve had my life threatened,” Gerner said. “I’ve had guys in here that have just come in and taken food off of tables (while people were eating) and have told me they’re going to kill me. It’s a real deal. I’ve been here for 11 years and it never happened.”

    Female employees and customers, he said, have been harassed. “There’s been vandalism,” he said.

    Veronica Garcia-Ibarra and Roberto Vidal, who in 2020 relocated their restaurant, Wrap It Up Tex Mex Grill, to 104 W. Ninth St., have been broken into twice since the breakfast began, the same number of break-ins they had in the 10 years prior.

    “This is last week,” Vidal said. Security camera photos on his phone showed their ransacked register. Another showed a thief carrying away a black garbage bag stuffed with equipment.

    “I love what they’re doing, feeding people that are homeless,” Garcia-Ibarra said. “But it’s intimidating for the customers. … They have to move it.”

    Clayton Ashby, who co-owns Mildred’s Food & Drink at 908 Baltimore Ave. with his brother, is likewise sympathetic to the church’s mission.

    “I’m anxious about looking uncaring. We’re certainly not that,” Ashby said. “The issue is the security afterward. Most people go about their day. But we’ve had people who are unstable.

    “We had the lady who started a fire in our dumpster. There was another person who came into the restaurant bathroom and the lady found a crack pipe in there. We got a bad Google review because of that: ’Don’t go to that place because they have crack pipes in the bathroom.’ Another person came in and started flushing a T-shirt or a sweater down the toilet. We had to close early and it cost people their wages. It’s been difficult.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/kc-church-feeds-homeless-every-morning-but-neighbors-say-aftermath-is-getting-dangerous/ar-AA1uInF0

  29. ‘This is alarming’: littered needles causing problems in Manitoba municipalities

    Two Manitoba municipal leaders want action from the province to deal with they describe as an alarming number of needles turning up in rural communities.

    Swan River Mayor Lance Jacobson said needles are littering his community, as well as The Pas. He said over the past year, more than 500,000 needles have been handed out in harm reduction programs in his community of around 5,000 people.

    He described this as alarming. “We need to see change if this program of needle distribution continues, which, in my opinion, it should not,” Jacobson said.

    He said a needle exchange program is needed, along with the distribution of retractable needles.

    “The biggest thing is a plan of rehabilitation for those individuals, which we just recently learned that there is no plan for rehabilitation,” Jacobson said. “This is alarming, and we need to call for action.”

    https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/this-is-alarming-littered-needles-causing-problems-in-manitoba-municipalities-1.7122824

  30. For LA council member, new homeless services audit was ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’

    The fallout continues from an audit last week that found serious accounting issues at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA).

    The findings leave LAHSA’s fate unclear. Created 31 years ago, the agency is jointly overseen by the county and the city of L.A. This year, the city contributed nearly $307 million to LAHSA’s annual budget of $875 million. The agency also receives $348 million in funding from L.A. County, and additional money from the state of California and the federal government.

    Some top city and county officials are now openly questioning whether that money is well spent.

    First, L.A. County Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Kathryn Barger last week called for pulling hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to the agency. Now, some L.A. city council members want to follow suit.

    Councilmember Monica Rodriguez introduced a motion — seconded by Councilmember Bob Blumenfield — that aims to sidestep LAHSA and keep homelessness funds in the city’s hands.

    “The audit was just, for me, the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Rodriguez told LAist. “I’m tired of the people’s money being expended in a manner that has zero transparency, zero consequences for failure to perform and zero feedback on what the outcomes are.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/for-la-council-member-new-homeless-services-audit-was-the-straw-that-broke-the-camel-s-back/ar-AA1uK4ZT

    1. “LAHSA’s annual budget of $875 million”

      Administrative and executive salaries, the Homeless Industrial Complex.

      1. “…Administrative and executive salaries…”

        In the city of Los Angeles, the top 10 ‘non-profit’ Homeless Industrial Complex CEO’s salaries all were north of $800K [1]

        Such a complete scam, even the scammers must be a little embarrassed.

        [1] Per KFI AM 640 radio, John Kobylt show, earlier this year.

        1. “In the city of Los Angeles, the top 10 ‘non-profit’ Homeless Industrial Complex CEO’s salaries all were north of $800K [1]”

          Clearly they’re hiring managers who understand, first hand, the lack of adequate nutrition and shelter due to the region’s economic challenges.

  31. Ottawa plans clamp down on foreign jobs-for-sale scam, and asylum reforms

    Ottawa is preparing fresh reforms to the asylum system and to puncture an immigration scam where people hoping to find jobs in Canada are being forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars to potential employers here.

    Immigration Minister Marc Miller said on Monday that he is looking at reducing an incentive for would-be immigrants to pay to get a Canadian employer to apply for a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA), a document showing there is a need for a temporary foreign worker so they can enter Canada.

    “In the Labor Market Impact Assessment world … there’s a lot of money changing hands where a labour market assessment shouldn’t cost anything,” Mr. Miller told MPs on the House of Commons immigration committee.

    The Globe and Mail has reported on open discussions on social media, including by an immigration consultant, about people in India paying to obtain an LMIA job. Ottawa faced pressure from legitimate immigration consultants and lawyers to clamp down on those illegally profiting from the LMIA program, including some in their profession who take a cut.

    Once an employer obtains the LMIA from Employment and Social Development Canada, the foreign workers, many of whom hope to apply for permanent residence, can apply for a work permit to get to Canada.

    Having an LMIA is worth 50 bonus points toward their application for permanent residence. Ottawa is looking at reducing the points an LMIA is worth so there is less of an incentive to obtain one.

    The minister said he also plans “to put forward more measures” to reform the asylum system. He faced questions from MPs about a spiralling number of claims from people whose visas have run out.

    Mr. Miller said the vast majority of those who come here temporarily do leave. But he said an increasing number of international students are making asylum claims with “very little hope.”

    He said being in Canada temporarily has to “actually mean something” and some people have been given false hope that they can stay. “It is not a right” to become a permanent resident or citizen, he said.

    Earlier this month a senior official at the Immigration and Refugee Board disclosed it now takes almost four years for asylum claims to be processed in Canada.

    “I want to reform the system. It’s not working in the way it should. That’s a function of volume, but also a function of efficiency,” Mr. Miller told MPs on Monday. “The growing claims that we see now inland are not unexpected. They’re ones that we saw with people having increasingly fewer hopes to stay in Canada and being counseled to file – I think unjustly – asylum claims where they shouldn’t have the ability to do so.”

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ottawa-plans-clamp-down-on-foreign-jobs-for-sale-scam-and-asylum/

  32. Dave Weldon, Trump’s CDC pick, could bolster an RFK Jr. anti-vaccine agenda

    As President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the CDC, Dave Weldon, a former congressman from Florida and a physician, is positioned as an important anti-vaccine ally for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for health secretary.

    Weldon served 14 years in Congress, representing the 15th District of Florida, where he was an outspoken critic of the public health agency and its vaccine program.

    If confirmed by the Senate, Weldon will have considerable influence over vaccine policy in the U.S. The CDC is responsible for tracking and responding to infectious diseases, developing vaccine guidelines, collecting and analyzing health data and managing public health emergencies.

    He would also work under Kennedy, since the CDC is one of 13 divisions overseen by HHS.

    In a Friday post on Truth Social about Weldon’s nomination, Trump said the current health of Americans is “critical” and the CDC must “step up and correct past errors.”

    It’s unclear what Kennedy or Weldon, if confirmed, would do about vaccines that have already been approved or the agency overall, although Kennedy told NBC News this month that despite previous comments, he wouldn’t “take away anybody’s vaccines.”

    Still, Kennedy and Weldon could have enormous influence over how vaccines are recommended in the U.S., including for children.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/dave-weldon-trumps-cdc-pick-could-bolster-an-rfk-jr-anti-vaccine-agenda/ar-AA1uJSHa

  33. Elon Musk slams ‘idiots’ making costly, manned F-35 fighter jets as he prepares to slash costs

    Elon Musk again fired insults at the Pentagon’s F-35 program as he prepares to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency and advise the White House on how to slash federal spending.

    The billionaire backer of Donald Trump’s election campaign slammed the “idiots” who continue to build manned fighter jets like the F-35 in a Sunday post on X, adding a trash can emoji.

    In a separate post on Monday Musk, who is CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, doubled down.

    “The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level, because it was required to be too many things to too many people,” he wrote. This made it an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none. Success was never in the set of possible outcomes.

    “And manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway,” Musk added. “Will just get pilots killed.”

    Musk has long claimed that the Lockheed Martin fighter jets are headed toward obsolescence, arguing that drone warfare is the future. Specifically, he has called for fighter jets that are remote-controlled by humans with the capacity for autonomous maneuvers.

    The Pentagon’s F-35 costs rose 10% to about $485 billion this year to deal with overheating issues, according to a Bloomberg report.

    The US government has delivered around 1,000 F-35 jets to its military and allies, out of a total of more than 3,000 planes planned for production over its lifetime.

    The aircraft is expected to remain in service until 2088 and the program in its entirety is estimated to cost more than $2 trillion, according to the US Government Accountability Office.

    Musk previously said DOGE can cut “at least $2 trillion” from the federal budget.

    In a joint opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Musk and agency co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy took aim at the Department of Defense.

    “The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote.

    And Musk has certainly laid into the F-35 jets in particular.

    “It’s a s–t design,” he wrote in a post on X on Sunday.

    In another post, Musk wrote: “Crewed fighter jets are an inefficient way to extend the range of missiles or drop bombs. A reusable drone can do so without all the overhead of a human pilot. And fighter jets will be shot down very quickly if the opposing force has sophisticated SAM or drones, as shown by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.”

    “Fighter jets do have the advantage of helping Air Force officers get laid. Drones are much less effective in this regard,” Musk added with a laughing emoji.

    Musk said “it is laughably easy to take down fighter jets” because their “stealth” can be defeated with elementary artificial intelligence and sensitivity cameras.

    https://nypost.com/2024/11/25/business/elon-musk-slams-idiots-making-costly-f-35-fighter-jets-as-he-prepares-to-cut-costs/

    2. “The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent”

      Not sure why we even need a department of defense, let alone one with an $800 billion budget, when the US has rolled out the red carpet for the invasion at the southern border.

  34. Fighting the Right’s Narrative Dominance

    Our strategists, donors, and leaders need to get real about the stakes for meaning-making in America.

    I’ve spent my career as a policy advocate focused on solutions to inequality, but the 2024 election caused me to rethink the centrality of policy to politics. The Biden-Harris Administration did more to battle the material suffering of working-class voters than Donald Trump ever will, but Democrats have surrendered in the war to make meaning about why folks are struggling, who’s to blame, and who can fix it. The consequences are far-reaching.

    We are now three decades into a radical takeover of our information ecosystem. Democrats have yet to take this threat seriously. One out of every three newspapers in America has died since 2005. More than half of American counties have little-to-no access to local news. Your local news broadcaster has likely been bought up by a right-wing corporation called Sinclair, which now reaches over 70 percent of the American population, with a deliberate conservative agenda and a focus on crime, homelessness, and drugs.

    Whole segments of the population depend on social media to interpret the world, unaware of how the profit-seeking algorithms are tuned to serve up the most outrageous and divisive content. And that indictment of social media’s basic financial model was valid before Elon Musk spent $44 billion to transform Twitter into a white supremacist and misogynistic message board. Meanwhile, about 75 percent of the country’s rigorous journalism is stuck behind a paywall. When facts are expensive, democracy is the cost.

    The COVID-19 pandemic further eroded many Americans’ trust in government and expert authority. QAnon and the Big Lie about the 2020 election mainstreamed massive conspiracy theories. Disinformation, chiefly from Trump-supporting Russian operatives, reached a record high in 2024, but the right wing has effectively worked the referees by crying censorship. The country’s top cyber officials had to admit that they have been powerless to stop foreign powers from manipulating our voters with deepfake videos, salacious memes, and false threats. Voters are bombarded with a glut of information, and they turn to narrative frameworks like the us-versus-them zero-sum explanation to make sense of it all. Democrats lack both that kind of framework and the means to communicate it over and over again until it becomes common sense.

    For too long, the party has relied on liberal Hollywood and celebrity Democrats to press a cultural advantage. But 2024 saw those celebrities fail to deliver, a great example of the misunderstanding Democrats have about cultural power today. Our side asks multimillionaire superstars like Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen to sing at rallies; their side makes superstars out of lesser-known people who are willing to ride shotgun in people’s lives, offering folks daily podcasts and multi-hour video streams that interpret everyday life through a right-wing lens. MSNBC is often touted as the liberal counter to Fox News, but it has no central organizing narrative about the world; it covers the news of the day with whack-a-mole criticism of Republicans and Trump.

    The problem has never been with our policies. The problem is Democrats’ failure to make human-level meaning of our policy prescriptions, to highlight how they address what is broken, and who’s to blame.

    https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/fighting-the-rights-narrative-dominance/

    1. “The COVID-19 pandemic further eroded many Americans’ trust in government and expert authority”

      Expert authority what a f*ing joke.

      1. The trade ratios show how much we’ve been getting ripped off all along. Now President Trump can snap his fingers and say, China, Canada, Mexico: our worst drug problems come from or through you. Fix it. I read all that in the wee hours of this morning and I still can’t see a downside to tying tariffs to drugs and illegal immigration.

    2. Meanwhile, the Mexican Peso is falling,

      Sheinbaum’s only been in office for two months and it’s already a shi!tshow in Mexico.

      1. Pierre Poilievre wants to kick Mexico out of the current free trade block.

        From El Universal:

        Solo me preocupa Canadá, quiero poner a nuestro país primero. Estados Unidos es responsable del 60% de nuestro comercio.

        Translation: All I care about is Canada, I want to put our country first. 60% of our trade is with the US.

        Imagine that, a leader who puts his country first. He also says that he wants Canada to negotiate a new trade agreement that excludes Mexico.

        Claudia must be Sheinbauming her pants.

  36. ‘Even though Florida is America’s flattest state, almost completely surrounded by water, 80% of residents do not have flood insurance which must be bought separately from home insurance. ‘I don’t know what I own anymore,’ says one exhausted woman who had bought her home just three months prior to the hurricanes, and is now faced with an uncertain future’

    It’s amazing how FUBAR this insurance thing is.

    1. “It’s amazing how FUBAR this insurance thing is”

      States’ insurance commissioners face a delicate balancing act between protecting consumers and ensuring insurers remain profitable. Flush with COVID money, auto and house prices shot upward defying economic gravity. Unable to raise insurance rates commensurate with repair or replacement costs insurance companies are forced to withdrawal from renewing or selling new policies. That said, losses on existing auto and property policies will likely bankrupt a number of insurance and reinsurance firms.

  37. ‘Inglis, who is also a realtor, highlighted the broader implications for the housing market. She noted that without insurance, buyers struggle to secure financing, and sellers face difficulties, especially in the manufactured and mobile home industry. ‘Especially in the manufactured and mobile home industry we are seeing that where a lot of the insurance companies are refusing to cover that period and that’s impacting those sales because they’ll sit on the market for years to come’

    The foreclosures will follow Britney. In about 2010 Fannie and Freddie said, we are not financing mobile or manufactured shacks in Mohave County, AZ. That market was already spiraling and that made it splatter. You could take yer pick for less than 10k, and I know some guys who made mucho dinero in Kingman doing that.

    But yeah, the insurance companies will kick you when yer down, the GSE’s will fook you when it suits them and Jerry continues to break it off in their a$$.

  39. ‘The banks are foreclosing and doing short sales…There’s a ton of it going on’

    That may be Dan, but the lending itself was sound.

  40. ‘Two towers at Detroit’s iconic Renaissance Center would be razed and the complex converted to a mix of housing and offices under an ambitious $1.6 billion plan announced Monday…Demolishing the two 39-story towers would free land for the waterfront project that would complement a walkway along the river’

    Saw it a mile away.

  41. ‘The price guidance on the Dulwich Hill investment property listing of Anthony Albanese was tweaked midweek to $1.75m, as the Prime Minister seeks to meet the falling property market. The three-bedroom townhouse had $1.9m guidance on its early September listing. But it also emerged the first couple had spotted a luxury Copacabana house in late September, which they secured for $4.3m – down from its $4,650,000 sale in 2021’

    The market needs knife catchers Tony.

  42. ‘The 62-year-old tycoon sold the units in Hamburg Villa on Eastbourne Road in Kowloon Tong, which were valued at HK$213 million (US$27.3 million), earlier this month, according to an agent from Centaline Property. The flats were sold at discounts between 53 per cent and 63 per cent. Chen was only able to recover about HK$90 million, an aggregate discount of 58 per cent’

    Another massive a$$ pounding fer the goldfish collectors in Hong Kong! We’ve got a decade of this stuff at least.

  43. Buyers Backing Out Of Deals (Toronto Real Estate Market Update)
    Team Sessa Real Estate

    23 minutes ago

    In this episode we look at the current Toronto Real Estate Market specifically the detached home prices and market trends for the week ending Nov 20, 2024. We also discuss the most common misconception people have when trying to back out of a firm agreement.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsUx3B9YyGk

    12 minutes.

    1. Sudden Panic Sparks $200 Billion Bitcoin And Crypto Price Crash
      Billy Bambrough
      Senior Contributor
      I write about how bitcoin, crypto and blockchain can change the world.
      Nov 26, 2024,06:01am EST
      Updated Nov 26, 2024, 06:30am EST

      Bitcoin and crypto prices have crashed following their huge rally on the back of Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory (despite Elon Musk quietly confirming a crypto market game-changer).

      The bitcoin price has crashed toward $90,000 per bitcoin, down from almost $100,000 on Monday. The crypto price correction has wiped around $200 billion from the combined $3.2 trillion market.

      Now, after a leak revealed a huge Wall Street earthquake could hit bitcoin next year, traders are nervously eyeing how low the bitcoin price could fall after crypto billionaire Michael Novogratz warned it could drop to $80,000 before bouncing back.
      …
      https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/11/26/sudden-panic-sparks-200-billion-bitcoin-and-crypto-price-crash/

  47. Can you imagine a real estate corporation predicting future price declines? Even though prices are already reportedly falling?

    Neither can I.

    1. Will House Prices Fall in 2025? Zillow Issues Housing Market Forecast
      Published Nov 26, 2024 at 8:36 AM EST
      Updated Nov 26, 2024 at 12:51 PM EST
      By Aliss Higham
      US News Reporter

      The U.S. housing market has been a tough place for buyers in the past few years, with homes becoming more expensive, interest rates staying high, and housing inventory being low. Now, real-estate marketplace Zillow is predicting house prices will again rise modestly next year.
      …
      https://www.newsweek.com/will-house-prices-fall-2025-zillow-housing-market-forecast-1991678

      1. “The U.S. housing market has been a tough place for buyers in the past few years, …”

        How has it been for sellers, thinking they will be able to sell for 2021 prices with no buyers in sight?

    2. “Can you imagine a real estate corporation predicting future price declines?”

      Sure, but it’s just a gully.

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