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Category: Big Mother (page 4 of 15)

May 4, 2011

MY SENIOR MOMENT

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

A couple of weeks ago I joined millions of other Americans in the last minute ritual of rushing to the post office on April 15th and filing… my tax extension.  Brimming with pride over not procrastinating this year, a reward was in order.  Now this is normally the realm of chocolate frozen yogurt, but I wanted something more appropriate, maybe even a little dangerous; so I went down to the local Tea Party Rally.

Though a newbie to the whole “Astroturf” experience, I felt I had some idea what to expect thanks to the fine, unbiased reporting of our main stream media.  I braced myself for loud, selfish people who didn’t give a damn about the less fortunate.  I girded myself for cynical young radicals.  I steeled myself for the subtle racism reportedly running just beneath the surface. In short, I entered the raucous Public Square of the Tea Party by embracing the Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared.

Ha!  Somebody – I’m not sure if it’s the Boy Scouts or the Fourth Estate – owes me an apology.  I didn’t hear any loud, selfish rhetoric.  In fact, the speeches mainly concerned the social justice of liberty and even saving public employee pensions!  I did not see young radicals (though this was Oceanside, CA so distinguishing between subversive radicals and skateboarders is tricky).  And any “subtle racism” must have been drowned out by Ted Hayes’ standing ovation.

I spent hours looking out over the nearly two thousand people who attended, and it’s what I did see that surprised me: the predominate, if not prototypical, Tea Party activist is a woman in her early fifties who is, or soon will be, a grandmother.

Surprising, right?   I wasn’t prepared either.  (You see why I’m looking for an apology from the main stream media… or is it the Boy Scouts?)  The more I thought about it though, the more sense it made; who else would it be?  The Tea Party, at its heart, stands opposed to the generational transfer of financial devastation.  Now granted, parents are generally more protective of children than anyone else.  But most moms and dads Read more

April 23, 2011

Is Brian Brady the Easter Bunny?

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

No – he’s better.  Hey, do the Easter Bunny’s eggs tell us what the future has in store?  No, they just keep us busy looking for something that benefits us not at all.  Brian, on the other hand, is not only as sweet as candy, but he actually does give us a glimpse into what’s coming next.  He recently did it again.  This is a clip of Brian on a local television news show about two weeks ago.  Check out what he says around 1:50 into the clip.  If I didn’t know better, I’d say he just warned us that the US ability to borrow money – it’s credit worthiness – is in imminent danger.

And here, two weeks later, the Wall Street Journal reports on S&P’s decision to… downgrade their outlook on US creditworthiness from “Stable” to “Negative”.

If only we could impose on Brian to play a little Santa Claus next.  Maybe we’d all end up with more than an economic lump of coal in our stocking this year…

April 16, 2011

When all you have are fangs, everything looks like an artery

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

I’m so glad that the NAR leaders took the time to present the Town Hall meeting. It was both informative and educational and I learned quite a bit about the NAR, how they really function as an organization, and what they hope to accomplish with the Realtor Party. Ya know, the NAR leaders who took the time to prepare and present this Town Hall seem like really nice folks who truly believe in what they are saying, and I believe them when they say it really is about survival, but their solutions are based on what they’ve done in the past, and what they’ve done in the past is look at taxpayers, politicians, and members, as dinner.

Some of my favorite quotes:

“It’s the few of us who are pulling everybody else along. A few of us are making and allowing people to stay in business because of our RPAC donations. It’s time that everybody gives… We need to make this fair for everybody and everybody needs to share in what we do at NAR.”

In other words, “we need your blood in order to survive”. Something doesn’t quite follow, though. If I’m forced to join the NAR in order to be a member of the MLS, how am I being unfair to the NAR because I’m not a willing participant in their RPAC political blood-sucking initiatives?

Speaking of those political initiatives…

“(The NAR has) over a million members… about 900,000 of them don’t stand up and charge when we say charge.”

Oh. Well. I do beg your pardon. And yet, even with such a lamentably small number of  foot soldiers willing to do their bidding, (Dear NAR- instead of looking at us as sheeple, perhaps you should consider upping your own UVP) the NAR proudly proclaims all the fine work it did in pushing for the cannibalizing Home Buyer Tax Credit. That was good for the temporary survival of Realtors, not so good for home buyers who may have paid more for their homes than they otherwise would have if the market had been allowed to work itself out and, especially not so good for taxpayers who have just flushed more than half a billion dollars down the commode Read more

April 14, 2011

Approbation Junkies

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

I wonder, with regard to an addiction to things, if there isn’t a deeper cause… maybe a hole that needs filling. I ascribe most of our eventual attacks on ego to a lack of continuity we create within ourselves, and our inability to either align our external actions or accept our internal truth.

Sean Purcell commented here, not long ago.  Good stuff.  I wanted to bring it to the forefront.

Here’s the thing: needing approbation from others has made me weaker than anything else.  It’s made me a pawn of a dilettante, a hustler for a buck and it’s made me do all of the smarmy, seedy things I’ve ever done.   The root cause has been making someone like me.

Think of this: when you’ve gone to a store with a big ticket item, and you get an ingratiating, smarmy salesperson there.  His goal in life is to make you like him.  Is there anything more repulsive?   You see a car salesperson that wants you to seem like a friend.  Is anyone fooled by the saccharine compliments?  Anyone?

And if they convince you that you need to approve of them, you leave with a bad taste in your mouth, not unlike bile.  I’ve been that guy, on both sides of the counter.  I know.

It’s like going into a gentleman’s club, as if some dude in his late 40’s is gentrified by ogling daddy issue girls in their early 20’s.

Approbation is carbon monoxide.  Seeking it in lieu of achievement means a death of a million cuts.

The Oatmeal has it right.

Jesus, also, has it right:

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.  (Matthew 6:2)

And what a reward.  Seriously.  What a reward to have dirtbags approve of you.

We clamor for it…the approval of strangers….(or in the case of Real Estate conferences, strangers that cheat on their wives.)  A standing ovation devoid of meaning?  We haven’t achieved jack, but we want the adulation anyway.  We do so much pandering.

To Read more

April 12, 2011

Thomas Sowell’s budget-cutting idea: Cut welfare for billionaires.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

So Republicans got hustled on their paltry budget cuts. What a surprise. Meanwhile, the Tea Party is busy fixing what’s wrong with America by tinkering with abortion rules and gun control laws.

This is an excellent way to blow a once-in-a-generation opportunity. It seems obvious to me that what needs to be cut is not spending but regulation. If the Feds dumped OSHA, for example, that would not only not only cut the budget by all those staff lines, it would result in an “economic miracle” of new productivity. The same would be true at the state and municipal level. Less government means more wealth twice: Fewer “broken windows” and the added productivity that results from investing the money that would otherwise have been wasted on regulatory broken windows.

This is something Realtors and other real estate professionals can be doing in this unprecedented moment: Teaching the Tea Partiers what matters in an emergency and what can wait for calmer seas. Quoted below is economist Thomas Sowell with an excellent idea: Get America’s billionaire tax-vampires off our necks:

Trying to reduce the deficit by cutting spending runs into an old familiar counterattack. There will be all kinds of claims by politicians and sad stories in the media about how these cuts will cause the poor to go hungry, the sick to be left to die, etc.

My plan would start by cutting off all government transfer payments to billionaires. Many, if not most, people are probably unaware that the government is handing out the taxpayers’ money to billionaires. But agricultural subsidies go to a number of billionaires. Very little goes to the ordinary farmer.

Big corporations also get big bucks from the government, not only in agricultural subsidies but also in the name of “green” policies, in the name of “alternative energy” policies, and in the name of whatever else will rationalize shoveling the taxpayers’ money out the door to whomever the administration designates — for its own political reasons.

The usual political counterattacks against spending cuts will not work against this new kind of spending-cut approach. How many heart-rending stories can the media run about billionaires Read more

March 29, 2011

What’s the best thing the National Association of Realtors can do for the American economy? It could drop dead — but it won’t — so here’s how you can kill it, instead.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Hey there, toothy-grinned, glad-handing Realtor: How’s the world treating you?

Business is not so good? Your house is worth less than half of what you paid for it? Your kid has three degrees but can’t get a job?

Are you looking for someone to blame for your troubles?

Guess what? There really is a mastermind of evil in the American economy. A vast parasite, a vampire king, with an insatiable appetite to devour everything that used to be known as “the American way of life.”

Are you being preyed upon by banksters? By Wall Street tycoons? By Chris Dodd and Barney Franks?

Those are the folks we like to blame, when we seek explanations for the Great Recession.

But who is really at fault for your miseries?

The sine qua non cause of this disaster — of the national economic malaise and of your own personal financial situation — is… wait for it…

The National Association of Realtors.

It’s the NAR that obstructs consumers’ access to market alternatives to old-fashioned real estate brokerage.

It’s the NAR that insists on subsidizing homeownership at the expense of other, more-productive uses of capital.

It’s the NAR that manipulates the tax laws to induce thoughtless consumers to overpay for homes they never would have — and never should have — bought in the first place.

It’s the NAR that makes war on the rights of Americans to use and enjoy their real property as they choose.

It was the NAR that lobbied for each law and rule change that resulted in the housing boom, the sub-prime lending catastrophe, the wanton bundling of fraudulent loans, the on-going subsidization of the secondary mortgage market, etc.

The villain behind all the villains in the collapse of the American economy is the National Association of Realtors.

The NAR’s legislative initiatives are uniformly criminal in their objectives. The purpose of all economic legislation is to induce by force an outcome that would not occur in the absence of that force. This is crime, no different from a mugging.

As the author of every state’s real estate licensing laws, the NAR mugs consumers by preventing them from doing business with whom they choose — on the terms Read more

March 24, 2011

The Coffee House Crisis

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

With all the talk lately about the new lending regulations that will apply on April 1st, a similar set of new laws and regulations has been completely overlooked.  I felt it prudent to bring this unsettling situation to light.

As you may or may not be aware, over the past few years there have been quite a few problems “percolating” in the retail coffee business.  It seems that some customers have been over-charged, while others have ordered coffee that was too hot or just plain did not satisfy. This is a serious situation, not only because of the expense involved, but also the very real danger of severe burning.

The House sub-Committee on Agriculture and Imports has been holding hearings into this matter.  They brought a number of new regulations to the full Congress, which were subsequently voted into law and take effect April 1st of this year.  These new regulations govern the coffee purchase transaction within a retail coffee vendor.

I’ve highlighted some of the key components below:

  • The server must be paid (or tipped) the same for all beverages and may not earn more based on the time or effort involved.  (E.g. there is no difference between an Iced Cocoa Cappuccino 1 pump mocha, 1 pump white mocha, non-fat milk with a drizzle on top and a plain black coffee.
  • Customers must pay by credit card or cash, but never both.  If paying by credit card, they may not leave any cash tip for the server.
  • The Coffee House must distinguish between beans grown / brewed in-house and beans that are imported.  With beans grown / brewed in-house, the server must decide what to charge the customer before the customer ever enters the establishment and must then charge ALL customers that exact same amount.  (The server may only change what they charge once per “qualified period”.)
  • If a customer orders a beverage from the grown / brewed in-house selection and pays with a credit card, the server may receive no tip. (For purposes of this section, even the owner of the Coffee House is considered a “server”.)  Instead, they must be paid according to a compensation plan the Read more
March 9, 2011

Social Security and the Tyranny of NOOMPs

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

The debate over Social Security and America’s mind-boggling debt is going to get more heated.  We’ve seen over and over in polls that people favor cutting spending… unless that spending involves them directly.  In my industry we see it with the NAR and every Rotarian Socialist program that comes down the pike.  But we see it with everyday homeowners too.  “Yes!” they scream with their signs and their votes, “cut spending across the board.  I’ve been taxed enough!”  But suggest eliminating the mortgage interest deduction and see what happens.  “It’s way too important,” and “What would that do to the real estate industry?” (virtually nothing, by the way).  What’s to be concluded?  We are dealing with a nation of NOOMPs. (You remember NIMBYs, right?)  NOOMPs are people who support spending cuts, so long as those cuts are Not Out Of My Pocket.)  And I suggest there’s no greater concentration of NOOMPs than within the AARP.

Robert Samuelson wrote a good piece in Newsweek recently entitled Who Rules America? It’s The AARP.  In it, he suggests “the AARP sets overall priorities (in government).  Its power derives from the fear it inspires in senators, congressmen, presidents and political candidates.”  He went on to say “No one wants to strip needy seniors of essential benefits.  Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid provide crucial protections for millions of poorer and older households.  But for many relatively healthy and economically secure Americans, these programs constitute middle-class welfare.”  That last bit of analogy apparently caused such an uproar (ostensibly from middle-class Americans who don’t appreciate it when someone points out they are on welfare), that he felt obliged to write a second article entitled Social Security: A Form of Welfare to try and set the record straight.  I applaud Mr. Samuelson for his frank and honest discussion, but I don’t think he goes far enough…

The Social Security system has been a welfare scheme since its inception.  If it had been a situation where people paid in and then later withdrew – what we might call a retirement account – and which Congress then went in and stole from (leaving Read more

February 19, 2011

The Blindsided Realtor

by

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Author website

On January 31st I had a catastrohic retinal detachment in my left eye that rendered me blind (black, nada) for two days.  Two days later I had retinal surgery to repair the detachment.  This included injecting and filling my eye with silicone oil to keep the retina in place and the intraocular pressures where they needed to be.   In a followup visit four days later I had additional laser surgery to tack down the areas of the retina that needed it.  I was told during this time to lie face down 24 hours a day to keep the silicone oil pressing against the back of the eye.

Then, one week after the surgery I began to see a black shade covering my eye once again.  The retina had detached once more, and so for a few more days I was not just legally blind (the effect you get with silicone oil and the regular run of the mill retinal detachment surgery), but black, dark and very disturbingly blind.  It seems that the retina had not only detached, but there had been formation of retinal scar tissue in the wrong place.  This is a very serious condition called proliferative vitreal retinopathy (PVR), and if left uncorrected almost always results in permanent blindness.

Well, you’re saying, this is a real estate blog; not a Jerry Springer show or even an Oprah event.  And you all know that I’m writing this because I’ve had some sort of epiphany…right?

In truth, there hasn’t been an epiphany yet, and there might not be one.  I started off asking myself if there were any other “blind” Realtors functioning in America.  Turns out there’s a quite successful, totally blind, real estate agent in La Jolla.  So my hopes of being important because I couldn’t see just simply faded to grey like in a bad B-movie.  And any hopes I had for this being just a good story that I could share around the water cooler died this past week.

I was sent to USC Doheny Eye Center in Los Angeles by my surgeon here in La Jolla.  Was told his group was the Read more

February 18, 2011

“Greece is the word, is the word, is the word…”

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Some of us, here on BHB and elsewhere, have been arguing that a collapse is coming.  A financial collapse due to the almost incomprehensibly fraudulent practices of the local, state and federal governments.  A fraud so immense that most of us can’t even begin to wrap our minds around it.  In my home state of California, just to give one example, people still discuss the budget deficit of $19,000,000,000 to $25,000,000,000 depending on who’s talking.  (Yes, those numbers are in billions.)  They do that to avoid discussing the unfunded liabilities that are now well over $500,000,000,000.  Yes, that is $500 billion.  No, no other state is even within a factor of that.  Yes, that means the state of California is completely lost; there is no possible way back to solvency.  This ends with a massive federal bailout and/or bankruptcy.

My point here is not California, because California’s problems are dwarfed by the massive theft and malfeasance that has happended on the federal watch.  I mention them only by way of example, and in that California best portends what’s happening.  What’s interesting, but not at all surprising, is that California does not portend what’s to come.  For a glimpse through that window we can look to Wisconsin.  Today.  Why there?  Why not California?  Simple: there’s no pain in the Golden State… yet.  The good people here continue to elect politicians based on the size of their promises.  So, while the 8th largest economy in the world burns to the ground, no one seems to notice because nothing is being done about it.  In Wisconsin, on the other hand, (where the budget deficit is only $3.1 billion) the Governor has set out to make some changes and all hell is breaking loose.  Chief among these changes is to rid the state of the absurd concept of collective bargaining for state workers, which is nothing more than institutionalized bribery. Imagine a situation where the owners of a company – those in charge of employee pay and benefits – owe their position to the workers of the company!

Union Rep: “What we want is a pay raise and greater benefits.  If you give us those, we will support Read more

February 18, 2011

Obama speaks: Why lumberjacks, schoolteachers and bankers need unions.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“It’s important to remember. That public service. Is a great sacrifice.”

“Good… Good…” Manny Kant said that.

“Most of the government employees I know. Are at their desks. As early as ten every morning. And few of them ever make it home. Before three in the afternoon.”

“Yeah… That’s not so good.”

“I myself. Have given my whole life. To public service. So I know just how much. Sacrifice is required.”

Manny Kant could swear profusely with his eyes, but what he actually said out loud was nothing.

“On any given day. The typical public employee may not know. If the man he has just met. Is a peaceful villager. Or a Taliban irregular.”

“No! Madison, Wisconsin, not Afghanistan.”

“That public employee. Could lose a limb. At the slip. Of. A simple chainsaw.”

“Schoolteachers! Not lumberjacks.”

“That public employee. May have to work. In searing. Heat. For hours on end.”

“Yeah,” said Manny, well beyond frustrated. “That guy works in a foundry.” To me he said, “You wondered about the teleprompter?”

[continue reading at SplendorQuest.com.]

February 17, 2011

California’s State Mascot: the Super Nanny

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

I’m just throwing out a guess here, but I’ll bet man has been burning wood and creating fire for around 40,000 years.  Fire: creator of warmth, food, light… you get the picture.  Basically, it comes down to this: if you’re in the wild and you can’t get a branch lit, odds are your odds are short.

Except, of course, here in California.  Here in California (State Motto: Don’t do Nuthin’ Till We Tell You the Right Way to Do It), the state in its infinite (and infinitely superior) wisdom, knows better.  No, I’m serious.  California (State Bird: the Red Ink Buttinski) actually thinks for us.  As a matter of fact, the state of California (State Seal: the Finger Wagging Nanny) states very clearly in this Warning found hanging by my firewood, that ideas and concepts are known by it.

CA Warning Label

All I can think of now is all the fires over all the millenia… those poor saps.  Thank the god of Nannidom I’m taken care of here in California (State Song: “I’ll Be Watching You” by Sting… which is also the State MO).

February 15, 2011

“Let’s unleash the genius of free markets on the capital of the American people simply by refusing to load the dice in favor of housing.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

President Barrack Obama released his proposed 2012 budget yesterday. The jeers greeting this event, from all wavelengths of the political spectrum, suggest that, at long last, people have finally begun to take the measure of this pathetic little man-boy. Even so, there is at least one tax increase in the midst of the typically Obamaesque frenzy of insanely excessive “spandering” — spending in pursuit of political pandering.

Which tax? The mortgage interest tax deduction is on the chopping block at last — at least for the most prosperous Americans. This will be hugely beneficial to the rest of the economy, as CNBC points out:

If we eliminate the mortgage interest deduction, we can stop re-directing capital away from innovation. Working Americans will be free to spend, save, and invest according to their own perceptions of their needs and their sense of the future.

I expect that eliminating the government incentives for spending on housing would promote dramatic innovations, making Americans more productive and allowing the economy to grow with renewed vigor. Instead of building up a Ponzi-scheme illusion of bubble-dependent wealth, we can genuinely improve our lives by allowing wealth to flow to where individuals perceive it will be best used.

[….]

In short, let’s unleash the genius of free markets on the capital of the American people simply by refusing to load the dice in favor of housing. Isn’t time to at least give the market a chance?

This is not what we will hear from the National Association of Realtors, of course, nor from very wealthy crocodiles shedding very salty crocodile tears.

Oh, well. Here is the very best thing prosperous people can do for their country in this hour most dire:

Get you fat, pouty lips off the welfare tit!

If you want to be free, stop pointing a gun at your own head…

February 12, 2011

Coming to the silver screen Atlas Shrugged.

by

Realtor, Newlywed

Author website

Could this be a movie for Bloodhounds everywhere?

I know that just about everyone who reads here at BHB has read Ayn Rand and has their opinions on whether she was a brilliant author. I personally find her works Anthem, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged to be some of the most enjoyable reading that I get to partake of.  I seem to always be reading one of these at any given time.

For many years there have been discussions of how to best bring Atlas Shrugged to the big screen. On April 15th. 2011 the first installment of the book will be released for all of us to watch. Could this be a movie that will inspire everyone? I know that it is a very tall order to bring a work of such magnitude to the masses.  I for one will be watching it on opening night. Right after I have mailed my annual documentation to the looters who are taking more and more from me and always wanting more. I love the fact that the movie is opening on Tax Day. The only other day I can think that might have been more fitting was Independence Day.

Here is the trailer to the movie. I am interested in hearing what you think. Will this be something you will be going to see in the theater in April?

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