Author: Greg Swann (page 9 of 209)

When William F. Buckley declaimed that The National Review “stands athwart history yelling Stop!” – he was conceding Hegel’s (and hence Marx’s) argument by pretending to defy it. It would be churlish to ask how not challenging political determinism has worked out, but NR has been hugely successful at throwing off new totalitarians – who then make bank as cable news “conservatives.”

Whatever. We are at a moment where actual – not symbolic – athwartnering can do some good.

Assuming electoral redemption is possible – assuming the Grasshoppers have not taken over permanently – what we need right now is the best attainable outcome of government: Nothing.

We need to stand athwart the Biden regime demanding that it stop doing anything until it can be replaced.

The Arizona recount argues that Senator Mark Kelly should be recalled. The endless shenanigans in Georgia demand the decertification of its Senate run-off election.

Assuming neither of those things happen, Americans need to lean on their senators and representatives to make sure nothing more changes until the voters have had a chance to veto the Marxism Biden’s handlers are trying to smuggle in.

In other news:

Redfin.com: Out-of-Towners Moving to Austin Spend $22,500 More on Homes Than Locals.

The Associated Press: Sparked by pandemic fallout, homeschooling surges across US.

American Greatness: How Parents Should Talk About ‘White Privilege’.

City Journal: Year Zero: The roots of the woke revolution.

Roger Kimball: Losing Our Liberty All at Once?

At the time the election was stolen, I advised people to count the cranes on their skylines. They weren’t there three years ago, and three years from now they’ll be gone again, shunted back to Obamaville.

This is practical ontology, apprehending the universe with your own senses, so you cannot be fooled by testimony. If you don’t see trusses on trucks, no new houses are being built, regardless of the hype. If you don’t see cranes silhouetted against the sky, the big developers in your town are betting against your future.

A new structure is a forward-looking hope derived from backward-looking portents. Want proof? Note how many of your becraned buildings-in-progress are multi-family housing. A year ago we learned why that bet might not be as fruitful as it had seemed – when the plans were made three years ago.

Three years ago, the United States and all it myriad mini-states were operating in good order – a good time to plant new flags. Three years from now, who knows what will remain of America, its people or its currency? Projects already underway will be completed, at least for now, but the line for new building permits will grow shorter by the day.

Who needs whom? Taxes, regulations and NIMBYs don’t even get their chance to destroy the future if investors are in despair…

In other news:

The Epoch Times: California is Experiencing a Crime ‘Tsunami’: Sacramento DA.

Kevin Downey, Jr.: The World Has Had It With China Flu Lockdowns: Protests Rock Cities All Over the Globe.

Joel Kotkin: The coming collapse of the developing world: Covid has pushed vast swathes of humanity to the brink of extreme poverty.

James Bovard: The Coming “January 6” Train Wreck.

American Greatness: Critical Witchcraft Theory: “Systemic racism” is not a sociological theory. It is theology. More precisely, it is a demonology: a theory of witchcraft.

If the Coronavirus was a tailored pathogen – germ warfare – against whom was it tailored? People clinging just this side of death’s door, yes? People who were within months of dying, anyway. Tailored or not, that’s who it killed.

Who might you suppose are the costliest beneficiaries of the ever-so-benevolent welfare-state? It turns out that it’s people clinging just this side of death’s door, people within months – but not just days – of dying.

A country has citizens, but a welfare-state just has dependents. Some subjects are capable of warfare, others of clerical work, but everyone is ultimately just a wide-open mouth and an oscillating rectum. Money is always a problem – under every form of Marxism, the looting goes up as the productivity goes down – so shedding costs is always a priority.

When first I heard that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was sending infected patients back into nursing homes, my instant assumption was that his motive was mass murder for budgetary purposes. Whether or not the virus was intended to kill the elderly, it did so perfectly, anyway.

Cuomo’s crimes were replicated in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan – at a minimum – all palpable mass murders committed to shed the welfare-state of promises everybody knows it cannot keep.

As we should expect by now, these murders will not be prosecuted – nor even investigated.

Why is that? So they can be repeated, of course.

In other news:

SFGate.com: Californians are arriving in Montana in droves. But they’re not welcome.

Karol Markowicz: Read my lips: We’re not going back to masks and lockdowns again.

Christopher Rufo: Critical Race Theory’s Chief Marketing Officer.

Julie Kelly: A January 6 Detainee Speaks Out.

Angelo Codevilla: Why Not Award Ashli Babbitt’s Killer the Medal of Honor?

I mock Redfin a lot, but it’s only because they deserve it. Probably, Zillow has been lying about the rioting for thirteen solid months, too, but Redfin just has the more-mockworthy Marxist take on things.

So, as everybody knows, the red-hot real estate market that succeeded the demise of George Floyd was caused by the subsequent rioting, not by the pandemic. This is obvious from Redfin’s own charts, and, as noted, they can heat-map price-appreciation by inaccessibility-to-rioters.

Again: The real estate market’s year-long frenzy was caused by the rioting. Ants who no longer had to live near their employers escaped Grasshopper urbanity at its ugliest – most of them never to return.

As if anyone needed proof of this – the truth, by now, is what no one dares to talk about – the real estate market is settling down just as gun sales are doing the same.

There is no election this year, so the remaining rioting is random dingleberrys, operating without political cover or financial support from the Democratic party. The heat is off in the rioted cities, and hence real estate and firearms sales are calming down.

This is even more obvious to Redfin, but they can’t tell the truth. I can.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates plummet to 2.78%.

CNBC: Sales of existing homes rise slightly as more listings finally hit the market.

Redfin.com: What is Dual Agency and How Does it Work? Shoe pinch? Hide and watch. Every Wall Street brokerage will be eaten alive for double-dealing, even as they are eaten alive from within by their Marxist staffers. None so deserving.

Housing Wire: Housing inventory slowly coming back as frenzy fades.

Mike DelPrete: Opendoor’s Mortgage Attach Rate Jumps, But At What Cost?

City Journal: Venice Beach Doesn’t Have a Homelessness Crisis. It has a quality-of-life enforcement crisis.

Kenny Xu: Silicon Valley’s Cynical Treatment of Asian Engineers.

City Journal: The Social Justice Network: Facebook announces sweeping new restrictions on criticism of protected groups.

Somewhere in the city of the night a lone rebel makes his mark, raising his fist in defiance of big-tech censorship as he slashes out his message:

“Graffiti is the social network of the perma-banned.” –Buck Phiden

Yes, Buck Phiden, the magatagger, the clean, serene meme-machine, the paleo-artisanal wall-blogger. Description? Never seen. M.O.? Telling the truth in the only way still allowed: Graffiti.

“When justice is outlawed, only outlaws have justice.” –Buck Phiden

Buck Phiden demands to be heard – in just the way you hear him: Telling truths the Deep State can’t figure out how to suppress. Please share any Buck Phiden graffiti you see to social media. Or just scrawl it on the nearest wall. Buck Phiden longs to be free.

“Everybody knows.” –Buck Phiden

In other news:

Redfin.com: Investor Home Purchases Hit Record, Surpassing Pre-Pandemic Levels.

City Journal: Universal Basic Wealth? If you want to reduce inequality, these new proposals aren’t the way to do it.

American Thinker: The Antifa/FBI Coalition.

Senator Tom Cotton: Breaking the Crime Wave.

If you sold a home to an iBuyer over the past 12 months, you were probably rooked – and you may have grounds for litigation.

If the iBuyer did not explicitly disclose to you that listing on the MLS would be to your best financial interest in a madly accelerating market, you were overtly and objectively misled. A licensee misleading a customer creates agency – omission is deception, deception is advice. Arguably, you were gulled out of a substantial portion of your equity in an undisclosed dual-representation: You were advised to make a mistake by the party – agent AND principal – benefitting from the error.

Until now, class action lawsuits for undisclosed dual-representation have been the belles of the real estate litigation ball. But how about a class action lawsuit against an entire class of gonophs? All of the iBuyers can and should have their licenses put to the test: Are they fiduciary – and hence massively-redundant double-dealers – or are they somehow exempt from the real estate licensing laws?

In other news:

CNBC: Homebuilder confidence is still high, but it slipped this month as construction costs grew.

Redfin.com: Interest in Relocating Remains Elevated, With Nearly 1 in 3 Redfin.com Users Looking to Move to a Different Metro.

CNBC: Homebuyers aren’t seeing savings from falling lumber prices – here’s why.

Mike DelPrete: The Rise of Power Buyers. See above and add two more rookings: The buy-side and the financing.

City Journal: A Nation of Rentiers: The notion that homeownership should be a primary tool for building wealth is mistaken.

Helen Raleigh: Public Schools’ Systemic Problem Isn’t Racism Or Money. It’s Teachers’ Unions.

If you’ve never shopped from behind bulletproof plexiglas, your opportunity may present itself soon – but it won’t last.

I lived in Fun City, where the rule of thumb is, if it’s not locked up, it’s counterfeit. When I took my wife to my old home town in Illinois, she was amazed to shop in her very first plexiglas convenience store: You can touch the merch once you’ve paid for it. And a decent RiotScore™ for any neighborhood could be established from the number of plexiglas-shielded cashiers.

Plexiglas means the merchant believes the law can’t keep up with the crime, and he is not only almost certainly right, he was almost certainly late in every passive protection he put on his inventory. Almost no one steals, but those who do will steal beyond all reason if not actively opposed.

Witness San Francisco, where the plexiglas will only briefly precede the “Final Closeout Liquidation!” sales.

What bulletproof plexiglas really means is: Last sucker standing. But you can’t outrun the bottom-line, so even the suckers will be gone soon.

Good luck getting you prescriptions, granny. Good luck getting food. The police are no longer on your side.

In other news:

John Hinderaker: California Nightmare.

SocketSite.com: Visualizing All the Vacant Office Space in San Francisco.

The Federalist: More Americans Could Live In Beautiful Neighborhoods If The Right Stopped Propping Up Suburbia.

Roger Kimball: Are You Having a Free Speech Emergency?

City Journal: The Panic Pandemic: Fearmongering from journalists, scientists, and politicians did more harm than the virus.

LidBlog.com: Why America Is Losing To Marxist Democrats In Two Sentences.

After actually reading his settlement statement, not as common as you’d think, a seller remarked that I had paid 60% of the sales commission to the Buyer’s Agent. Why hadn’t I taken the lion’s share, or at least split 50/50? My answer was simple, one you will have read here before: Don’t bind the mouths.

Brian Brady is going to show Buyer’s Agents how to bring home the bacon by first delivering the goods, but I prize Buyer’s Agents just the way they are for their aboriginal and sine qua non function: Brokerage.

Brokerage is at its essence the introduction of buyer to seller, and Brian is correct that just that much is very easy to do without Buyer’s Agents by going to the Realty.bots. That’s how we recruit tenants for the rental homes we manage, since we don’t want Tenant’s Agents coming between us and the principals, anyway.

But we do all our own vetting on rental applicants, so a Tenant’s Agent is doing literally nothing of value to us but introducing his client to us.

Not so Buyer’s Agents. Their introductions come with elaborate qualifications – along with someone to do most of the scut work, while absorbing much of the downstream liability. In short, a Buyer’s Agent is a Sub-Agent for whom I bear no legal responsibility. I pay them 60% of the sales commission and they do 80% or more of the actual effort it takes to get to closing. I don’t hate those numbers at all – and we always pay the whole damn pizza, regardless of what I’m getting.

With a Tenant’s Agent, I’m paying for the referral and nothing else – pure brokerage – and therefore we don’t pay: I can attract thousands of semi-focused looky-loos for ten bucks a week on Zillow – and I only need one motivated, qualified party to score.

But with a Buyer’s Agent, I am temporarily onboarding a very dedicated, very focused, very highly-motivated personal assistant/transaction coordinator – for this one transaction. We’re as careful about the agents Read more

There’s Pacaso news linked below, but it’s just a regurgitated press release. I’ve written a ton about them, but that makes one of me. But if the real estate market is turning, it will turn first and worst on marginal products – those easiest to do without.

That means all luxury homes, but especially second homes – by definition ostentatiously-wasted money. Redfin has made much of second-home purchases over the last year, but Redfin can also demonstrate that the fever of this real estate market tracks perfectly with the inverse of each home’s TransitScore: The harder a house is to get to from rioters, the higher the price.

Taking account of that – “Let’s buy a place where we can work-from-home far-from-rioters” – how many of last year’s second-home purchases will turn into this year’s permanent residences? How much of last year – in all single-family-detached homes – was a two-step buy-and-bail?

I’m not implying financial chicanery, just strategy amidst uncertain circumstances. How the future shakes out depends on whether the buyers can continue to work from home. But if there are people sitting on two houses while they try to figure out which one to shed – that implies future market weakness on both ends, as the artificial withholding of inventory wanes.

Bad for Pacaso? You figure that out. I think they have no business masquerading as a business: I think they have discovered what I knew from the first – everyone hates sharing with strangers – and are attempting to soldier on to an IPO despite the emperor’s very-hairy nudity. If they care to dispel any of those suspicions, I’m easy to find – as Pacaso’s many enemies already know.

But a weakening in demand for houses in second-home locations will be very bad for the suckers who already bought Pacaso time-shares. You paid double at the top of the market, y’all. You’re going to be together for a while, like it or don’t…

In other news:

Housing Read more

I haven’t written much about the 1/6 riot in Washington. It was obvious to me at the time that it was a set-up – piss off hot-headed Ants, then call them racists when they complain about it. The fact that Trump did not see this coming and that he abandoned his supporters as soon as the racism lies started are two strikes against his future ambitions.

But: The riot was not an “insurrection.” It wasn’t even much of a riot. It is being treated as a Reichstag Fire event by the Democrats because that’s what Marxists do – as was easily foreseeable. But that reaction is a contradiction of everything America has ever stood for, and that matters.

Everyone being imprisoned over 1/6 is a political prisoner – representing a complete betrayal of everything the United States has ever said on the subject of political prisoners.

No one deserves this treatment, but they are being persecuted precisely because they are true patriots, steady wage-earners, proud tax-payers and reliable supporters of the military, the police and of civil order as such.

Actual criminals deserve and get better treatment. The 1/6 martyrs are being persecuted for being the best Americans – by the worst.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Mortgage rates dip slightly to 2.88%.

Redfin.com: Share of Homes Bought With All Cash Hits 30% for First Time Since 2014.

The Daily Wire: Florida Boat Owners Are Running Supplies To Embattled Cuban Protesters.

Stella Morabito: Why Communism Should Be Tried For Its Crimes Against Humanity.

Christopher Rufo: Going All In: The NEA pledges to bring critical race theory to a public school near you.

Election-theft news is now dropping daily, with the Arizona audit so ripe it were wise to expect a very big “news” event to distract us from it.

If you have been paying attention, you’ve known since election night that the election was stolen. The depth of resistance to audits – from both parties – suggests that many, many races were stolen. If ever again there is fact-reporting in the “news” business, we may someday find out how many elections have been stolen, over how many election cycles.

Regardless, it is beyond stupid to pretend that Slow Joe Biden is anything other than the puppet of the corrupt forces who stole the election – second in his loyalty only to the Red Chinese, who bought China Joe fair and square a long time ago. For Republican politicians to cooperate in any way with this regime is treason-by-prostration – but that’s what they’re good at. Meanwhile, everyone else should simply mock Creepy Joe – the man who made the corruption of the Ruling Class undeniable.

In other news:

Redfin.com: Home Sales Dipped 1.2% From May to June, the Largest Late-Spring Decline Since At Least 2012.

Congressman Jim Jordan: What Did Fauci Know And When? His Emails Point To Panic, Lies, And A Possible Cover-Up.

Jazz Shaw: Good question: Where is the outrage over Biden rejecting Cuban refugees?

The Federalist: Thanks To Neil Gorsuch, The Biden Administration Is Forcing Employers Everywhere To End Free Speech And Put Men In Women’s Bathrooms.

Seth Barron: Don’t Even Think About Calling the Cops: For New York City progressives, not even violent crime warrants police intervention.

What’s worst about China Joe Biden’s stolen presidency is how thoroughly it diminishes America. We were founded on ideals – incorruptible justice, equality before the law, due process – and a banana republic junta betrays all of that, repelling allies and emboldening enemies all the while.

Slow Joe yesterday went to the scene of the crime – Pennsylvania – there to slime the people uncovering his election fraud despite near-universal opposition. America is holding hundreds of decent tax-paying Americans as political prisoners, this to argue that Antifa is not the Brown Shirts. Sleazy Hunter Biden is openly selling presidential favors, which crimes no one is permitted to notice. And the United States is refusing refugees from where? From Cuba, where they’re running from political persecution and not in pursuit of loot.

If America is ruined, it will have been ruined by all of these tragically-underfathered children oscillating out of control, screaming into the void in ravenous hunger for the loving restraint that will never, ever come. But ruined nations are led by men like Sleepy Joe Biden – raging incompetents racing from here to there to paper over their lies while everything else goes to hell.

Everybody knows the election was stolen – and thank goodness for that! The worst shame of all would be to think that Americans chose to afflict themselves with Creepy Joe Biden.

In other news:

Housing Wire: Mortgage applications jump 16%.

CNBC: ‘New York is back’ — broker says the city’s real estate market is heating up at all levels. Ahem: “We still are at near-record levels of inventory. So the sellers are going down to meet the buyers at their prices. The buyers have options.”

City Journal: California Fleeing: Some deny the Golden State’s demographic decline, but data make it hard to ignore.

The Federalist: Will Movie Theaters Become The Next Blockbuster Video Stores?

City Journal: Why Cops Are Quitting: Police officers no longer feel that they have the public’s support.

Newsweek: Critical Race Theory Has No Idea What To Do With Asian Read more

I was a kid on my own in the Manhattan you see in Moscow on the Hudson – a chaos made of polyglot aspirations and anti-literate violence.

The building I lived in was a mini-United Nations in beehive form – that plus opera singers. Notably, we had two distinct populations of refugees, very dark Haitians fleeing Papa Doc’s predations and very white South Africans evading the eternal peace plans of Winnie Mandela. They set themselves apart among all New Yorkers by speaking in whispers – the indicia of paranoia – camouflaged, I’m sure they thought, by their languages.

Not so much, as it turns out, if you make the mistake of speaking near me. I’m not an eavesdropper, per se, but I am very much a scavenger of small, arcane details: It’s the stuff of good fiction. I had enough French in those days that the Haitians had no secrets from me, and Afrikaans is Dutch is English. Whichever spies they were hiding from surely overheard them, too.

I muse on all this now, with both Haiti and South Africa in the news. South Africa may have fallen by now, and Haiti has yet to rise – ever. Marxists versus the sane? Grasshoppers devouring Ants? Cads overwhelming the few remaining Dads? Or is it just bad luck that shunts Nemesis to the places that can suffer her least?

In other news:

Redfin.com: Homebuyer Competition Eases in June as More Homes Hit the Market.

The New York Post: DNC, Biden allies want phone carriers to vet anti-vax messages: report.

Victoria Taft: Democrats Move to Take Over Your Credit Score and Go Full ‘Woke’ – Just Like Communist China.

Daniel Payne: Sharp increase in police resignations after Black Lives Matter protests in 2020: study.

Brad Polumbo: Exclusive: Cuban Activist Explains What’s Really Motivating the Cuban People’s Uprising.

Citizen Free Press: South Africa looks like Civil War…

J.D. Tucille: Do People Want Their Pre-Pandemic Freedom Back? Polling finds wide support for draconian lockdowns and permanent restrictions.

City Read more

Yesterday in Cuba people were doing the work Americans won’t: Fighting for their freedom. The New York Times is correct in describing this conduct as ‘anti-government’ – just as the January 6th protests were anti-THIS-government. In both countries, the protesters love their country but hate its predatory salve-masters.

The difference? This is the very best ‘anti-government slogan’ I have heard so far: A Cuban protestor to a commie thug: “Shoot me in the chest, motherfucker!”

I don’t drink, but I am delighted to shout “Cuba libre!” Every Marxist dictatorship shames the allegedly civilized, but for America to turn a blind eye to tyranny ninety miles from its shores – to shun a people who have given us so much – this is a stain as ugly any in our history.

In other news:

CNBC: Homebuyers are finally catching a break as new listings rise and mortgage rates drop.

The Daily Wire: Bankers Are Begging Their Employers For Transfers From New York To Florida.

City Journal: The Boomer Wealth Boom.

Martyr Made: The Disillusionment of the Deplorables: How Trump voters formed an ugly—and accurate—view of America’s ruling regime.