Meanwhile, in Post-Racial America(tm)…
Black borrowers in Richmond are less likely to be approved for home loans and refinancing than white applicants regardless of their income levels, according to a study by fair-housing advocates.
The effect is a continuation of the “redlining” that explicitly denied loans to minorities in the 20th century, according to Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia.
“Certainly lenders and banks tell you money is all the same color and they’re an equal opportunity lender, but when you get down to it, you have individuals who are underwriting loans who have biases,” said Brian Koziol, the nonprofit organization’s director of research and the report’s author.
The group’s study found that between 2010 and 2013, the most recent year for which mortgage data is available, 13.7 percent of white borrowers had loan applications denied while black applicants experienced a 34.6 percent denial rate.
The report found that Hispanic residents also faced higher denial rates than white residents, but overall were granted loans more frequently than black borrowers.
Koziol said that a lenders’ willingness to finance home purchases directly corresponded to a neighborhood’s racial makeup.
The study found that for each percentage point increase in the minority population of a census tract, 12.5 fewer mortgages would be made.
The neighborhoods impacted are the same ones historically excluded for lending through redlining, and more recently, targeted for subprime loans, Koziol said.
While those neighborhoods have disproportionately high poverty rates, a borrower’s income doesn’t account for the difference: The report found a 9.9 point disparity in loan approval rates among black and white low-income applicants and a 27.5 point disparity among black and white upper-income borrowers.
That’s the best part, really. The higher your income as a black potential mortgage borrower, the larger the disparity in actually being approved for a mortgage. Because a black family making good money is automatically more suspect, you see. They could afford the house in the nicer white neighborhood, but why would the bank want to lower the property value of the houses of their other mortgage clients? Mortgage loan decisions aren’t made by banks, they’re made by people.
Redlining has been going on for decades, folks. It’s been going on not just in the South but all over the country, in red states and blue states and liberal enclaves and conservative strongholds.
And if you don’t think this isn’t happening in just about every decently sized US city in America right now, with the rush to segregate schools and neighborhoods through gentrification and exurban gated communities where “we don’t think it’s a good idea that you move in to this neighborhood, you see”, well I have some property for sale for you that you mysteriously can’t get a mortgage on.
Very little has changed in the last few decades, social media and instant news just makes it more visible.
max
And if you don’t think this isn’t happening in just about every decently sized US city in America right now, with the rush to segregate schools and neighborhoods through gentrification and exurban gated communities where “we don’t think it’s a good idea that you move in to this neighborhood, you see”, well I have some property for sale for you that you mysteriously can’t get a mortgage on.
100% concurrence, and inclusive of police shootings of black people. (Although I suspect there are also a lot of unjustified shootings and arrests of Hispanics, and more than a few unjustified shootings and arrests of whites as well. This is what the system has told the cops to do, encouraged them to do, protected them when they do do it, and that’s what goes on whether it bleeds and leads accurately on the nightly news or not. Mostly not.)
Very little has changed in the last few decades, social media and instant news just makes it more visible.
Well, it has changed. It’s gotten steadily worse (but didn’t become irrefutably visible until the cell phone camera).
max
[‘”Welcome to the Show! Smile! You’re on Surveillance State camera!’]
C.V. Danes
Not just red lining, but also pushing minorities, especially blacks, into high-risk variable interest loans when they qualified for traditional fixed rate loans.
debbie
Also better and slicker public relations skills.
OzarkHillbilly
SSDD.
lowercase steve
I haven’t read the study but I hope they controlled for assets/wealth. It is widely known that there is a huge wealth gap between Black and White households at the same income level. There are a lot of reasons for this (decades of racist discrimination) but the end result is that Black families end up with a whole lot less savings, and collateral to put forth as evidence of financial stability/credit worthiness when applying for a mortgage than otherwise similar White families. (And Black wealth, such as it is, tends to be tied up more heavily in housing than White wealth…one of the reasons why the housing market collapse was so devastating to the Black middle class).
My point is that this might mainly be the result of past discrimination/racism rather than racism on the part of the lenders (not that I would be surprised if it were the latter).
NotMax
Another reason happy to live in a state where whites are not the majority (nor the most numerous minority) – in both the categories of population and of business owners.
BGinCHI
Thank God this has never happened in the racially integrated city of Chicago.
/waves Rahm foam finger
Botsplainer
If I could find the capital, I’d start a mortgage company that would explicitly ignore credit scores, and would base credit extension solely on the following:
1. Three year employment or business operation;
2. Three year timely payment of lodging and vehicles;
3. No unresolved judgments or open litigation;
4. 12 months timely payment of unsecured loans; and
5. Aggregate debt monthly repayment level no more than 70% of net.
All of my 80/20 loans would be offered at 6.5% with an origination fee of $750.
It would be a gold mine, but a lottery winner would have to start it, as no bank would want to upset the standard bullshit model.
Gin & Tonic
Tommy/Alain – the page footer still has that PayPal widget that you’re trying to retrieve from transfertools.info, which is not resolving and causing enormously long page loads. This has been pointed out numerous times.
sparrow
I agree on the exurban gated communities — they always make me think, sickeningly, of how Mexico is divided between the haves and have-nots with even their own highway systems for the 1%. But I don’t really understand the total demonization of “gentrification”, though perhaps I am misunderstanding what the term represents. Here in Baltimore, a steady decline in population over 6 decades has only just started being countered by urban types (of all colors) moving into inner-city neighborhoods. Not all of them are swanky, and a lot of the city-promoted renewal specifically includes renovated row homes aimed at lower-middle class families (you have to make under a certain amount to get in). I understand how ugly it is to see long-term residents displaced from neighborhoods when the local developers start putting in half-million dollar condos by buying homes cheap and demolishing them (I saw a lot of that in Houston where I lived in the 3rd ward), but not ALL urban renewal is like that, and I never hear what anti-gentrification people think we should do instead? Because if you somehow block everyone from moving back to the cities, people will just segregate to the suburbs and the inner city will continue to decay. At least with inner-city renewal, some long-term residents are going to see their property values rise and neighborhoods get safer, schools get better, etc, and I think you have a better shot at having really diverse neighborhoods. I think you just need to work with the system to keep the old residents from getting pushed out (freezes on tax increases due to rising property values, is one obvious thing to do).
BobS
@C.V. Danes:Didn’t one of the former front pagers here make a pretty good living foreclosing on those borrowers?
Kryptik
We as a country have not gotten any less racist…and perhaps even gotten worse. It’s just slicker in presentation and coding until it reaches that butter zone, where everyone feels emboldened enough to no longer hide what they really feel. Because they’re convinced that most of the country agrees with them (and depressingly enough are often right).
gelfling545
Actually, a local bank was recently sued for redlining by NY State. A settlement has been reached. So, yeah, it’s still happening.
RaflW
In other words, the premise that blacks just need to play along, get an education and a good job is bullshit?
Knock me over with a feather.
Also, on the general topic, are folks aware of the shit going down in Minneapolis? Our kindly, white, bleeding heart liberal mayor is turning out to be either a mega a-hole or a very badly advised incompetent. Right now I’m going with option two, but without any pleasure since I had supported her run.
Litlebritdifrnt
So now Donald Trump is saying that Muslims need to wear some sort of sign to identify them. As Zander said on Twitter, Jesus Fucking Christ.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Gin & Tonic: I got tired of pointing it out.
My solution:
Install AdBlock Plus
Click on AdBlock Plus icon and select “Open Blockable Items”
Search for “transfertools”
Right click on the result and select “Block this item”
Ad blockers are much more versatile than just blocking ads. I’m constantly using ABP to quickly hide things like those annoying bouncing headers that are in fashion now. You know, the ones that take up half the screen until you try to scroll down and then suddenly zip up until they’re about three lines of text high? And then when you scroll back up, they reappear and cover half the screen again? Yeah, those make me stabby.
Kryptik
@Litlebritdifrnt:
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
Luthe
@Litlebritdifrnt: I just did the vocal equivalent of a keyboard smash.
I didn’t even know it was possible to say “asjlfjkdsk;sd” out loud.
rikyrah
WinDiddy
@WintanaMN
Disturbing photo of @MinneapolisPD ready to shoot US Rep @keithellison son. @MayorHodges save your city! #Jamarclark
Matt McIrvin
And when there’s a mortgage crisis, it gets blamed on affirmative action pushing banks to be too kind to undeserving minorities.
debbie
@Botsplainer:
Good idea, but I cannot believe the banks would let you do this.
rikyrah
Keep on bringing the truth, Zandar.
keep on bringing it.
But, economic inequality will solve all the problems…..right……
uh huh
debbie
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
My version of AdBlock Plus is older, I guess. I choose “Options” and am instructed to right-click on the element I don’t want. It still worked, so thanks!
rikyrah
SMH
Once again, I ask why I’m supposed to trust Hillary Clinton on foreign policy.
Mark MurrayVerified account
@mmurraypolitics
“Our goal is not to deter or contain ISIS,” Hillary Clinton says. Instead, she says, it is to defeat ISIS
rikyrah
@BGinCHI:
this is snark, right?
Cacti
I remember when we had that thread about gentrification in Oakland, and some juicers were worried about the grave problem of red-lining keeping deserving white people from purchasing homes in historically minority communities.
It’s so hard to get ahead when you’re white in America, and minorities keep shutting you out of their exclusive communities.
/snark
scav
@RaflW: I’ve got some baseline information on the general situation, although not on any dubious eptitude of the mayor. There’s also the issue of the video of the police shooting of Laquan McDonald in Chicago bubbling along.
Pogonip
I wonder why white neighborhoods are uniformly considered nicer, even by non-whites? The last black neighborhood I lived in was great. I only moved because the complex was sold and the new owner was terrible. Kept “losing” the rent checks and trying to impose late fees. Anyway, my old neighborhood can’t be the only great black neighborhood in the country.
benw
At least Mortgage Applying While Black is not a *crime* yet, at least until some bank’s rent-a-cop in a whitebread neighborhood panics and opens fire when a black person walks in to apply for a mortgage.
Roger Moore
@RaflW:
I thought a big part of the problem there was that the police were strongly resisting the mayor’s attempts to fight entrenched police racism. If that’s true, this is just more evidence that the police are out of control, not that the mayor is an asshole.
Goblue72
@Cacti: Wait what??? When did that thread happen?
rikyrah
Virginia Mosque Meeting Gets Ugly: ‘Every One of You Are Terrorists!’
11:24 am, November 19th, 2015
A presentation on plans for a new mosque near Fredericksburg, Va. ended with a volley of racist rants made by members of the public.
According to WUSA 9, speaker Samer Shalaby was presenting plans for a new mosque the local Muslim community intended to build on property it already owned. The current Islamic Center is too small, as the community has grown steadily in recent years.
That’s when two men in attendance at the public meeting shouted down Shalaby with claims that all Muslims were “evil” and “terrorists.” The speaker said he didn’t expect such hostility.
“It just kept getting worse and worse,” Shalaby said. “People were pointing fingers and waiving arms.”
The first man to make a scene called what Shalaby and local Muslims were doing “evil,” which attracted some positive attention from the crowd. That’s when the second man came forward.
“I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that does not happen. We don’t want it because you are terrorists. Every one of you are terrorists. I don’t care what you say,” he said. “You can smile at me. You can say whatever you want, but every Muslim is a terrorist.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/virginia-mosque-meeting-gets-ugly-every-one-of-you-are-terrorists/
NorthLeft12
@Roger Moore: Yeah, I read the linked report in the newspaper and really did not see how the Mayor comes out looking all that bad. Unless you think that she personally directed the cops to get aggressive with the protestors?
They should just release the video and be done with it. I am hearing it is pretty awful, and the police look horrible, but people’s imaginations are usually infinitely worse than reality.
Bottom line is that cops that commit acts like these [allegedly] need to be charged and put on trial. Too many times it does not even get to that stage because…….whatever.
dedc79
@rikyrah:
I am a somewhat reluctant HIllary supporter in part out of concern regarding her hawkishness. But, fwiw, this quote doesn’t bother me. The question is how she plans to do the defeating.
Emma
@Litlebritdifrnt: Wake up late after a night of massive leg cramps and misery and this is what I wake up to? Good night all.
Mike J
rikyrah
sit your phucking azz down and shut the phuck up.
…………………………..
Chris Matthews: Obama Shouldn’t Be Acting ‘Snarky’ Towards Republicans
by Josh Feldman | 9:56 pm, November 18th, 2015
Chris Matthews tonight said it doesn’t help forPresident Obama to be “snarky” with Republicans on letting refugees into the United States.
The fight between the White House and Republicans on refugees peaked last night when the president mocked the GOP’s concerns about bringing them in, saying their rhetoric is a “potent recruitment tool” for ISIS and that they’re not as tough as they say if young orphans scare them.
Well, tonight, Matthews said, “I don’t think the president should ever get snarky. Why did he do it there? Why is he making fun of the Republicans
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/chris-matthews-obama-shouldnt-be-acting-snarky-towards-republicans/
Amir Khalid
Did someone just futz with the comment system?
ETA: I hit refresh and blockquotes are once again bigger than the comment text.
Pogonip
@Emma: I get those too! Have you tried wrapping a brace around the spot on your leg that cramps? That was the only thing that worked for me.
Go to a ” working-class” area to shop for a brace. They’ll have a much bigger selection than Yuppieville will.
The Other Chuck
@Mike J: Not that the NRA isn’t a terrorist-supporting outfit, but anythig that gives that bullshit “no fly list” any respectability, credence, or secondary use whatsoever needs to go down in flames.
Roger Moore
@NorthLeft12:
At the very least, they should have a policy about when they are and aren’t allowed to release videos. If they had a policy developed before this incident, they would have a reason that didn’t look as if it were made up on the spot to justify keeping it secret.
ThresherK
@Mike J: I love the doubling-up on some folks’ scaredness. The right-wing can’t be talking into denying these arms to even dangerous terrorists.
RaflW
@sparrow: one of the gentrification issues that needs a policy fix is that long term owners with low/fixed incomes can’t always afford the higher taxes on their newly increased property values after area prices rise.
Add to that the potential for cities to strategically assess special fees for new sidewalks and other repairs, and homes get taken for back taxes.
Furthermore, a number of cities use TIF (tax increment financing) to buy things like parking structures for new apts/condos which suck tax revenue out of the area to pay construction costs, further driving up mill rates while benefitting developers.
Long time owners never get offered TIF funds (pretty much aka free money) to fix up their own places.
Moderate income programs to encourage returning residents are a good thing. But the forces arrayed for higher priced
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Amir Khalid: Test:
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Amir Khalid: The test above was an hour after your comment, but on my screen shows same sized block quotes. MBBJ is my friend.
RaflW
@NorthLeft12: the Mayor looks bad because she has been unable to do squat about her own police force. Maybe we’re naive, but it seems the Chief is in some sort of lame position of (per the mayors own statement last night) ASKING her cops to show restraint.
Meanwhile council members at the precinct calling on cops to stand down and facing down the guns-up cops.
Pretty sad day when the allegedly racial equity mayor is shown up so much
Gin & Tonic
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): The latest changes appear to also (unfortunately) reduce the benefits of MBBJ, as the background has gotten grayer, so you can barely see the alternating light/dark.
Looks like Cole’s comment yesterday about Tommy’s work being done was, as Dick Nixon would say, “inoperative.”
You’d think 2+ weeks of daily changes would be more than enough to get a graphic design dialed in.
Tommy
I often mention how much cool stuff my little town does. It is safe to say we have a lot of cool shit. Some people have asked questions and I have also noted my town is well over 95% white. People here have then noted that maybe we vote to raise our taxes and build stuff because well, we like to give people that look the same nice stuff. I used to think this was way off base, but I have thought about it more than a little and come to the conclusion that they might be right.
I can’t speak to loans, but it sure seems very strange to me we don’t have more minorities moving to our town. We have the best schools, the lowest property taxes in the county, lots of amazing stuff. It seems strange there isn’t more diversity.
gvg
I actually think things HAVE changed, just not enough. Not as much as we had told ourselves. I read about the things that happened in the past, that didn’t even get recorded and I know that the worst worst stuff has retreated. Just not enough. video evidence is a big deal and we need to push hard with the evidence to make more progress.
a lot of the things that hit minorities hard that are disguised, hurt whites too, just not as much. I will try to use that to wise up some people. tickets for revenues and confiscation of property for accusation of connection to drug trading with no recourse of evidence or trial are two that come to mind.
We can’t prevent redlining with no money for auditing and monitoring. As usual the smaller government cry is a disguise for getting away with many things. Audits would also reveal other shady practices.
The Other Chuck
@Gin & Tonic: Alternating color issue is fixed. Hopefully the darker shade is still okay for people with less spiffy monitors than mine.
Over/under on how long it’ll take to fix the site logo?
Tommy
@rikyrah: Not long after 9/11 a huge mosque was built in the city next to me. Strange thing nobody got outraged by it. Nobody. Then a few amazing things happened. A housing complex, of really nice homes, sprung up across the street from it. A ton of businesses opened. And maybe best of all, they have a waiting list for their daycare service, most of them non-Muslim. My brother and his wife wanted their daughter to go, but she couldn’t get in.
BTW: This might be something of a unique situation because we have a massive air force base a few miles away, and there are a lot more Mulsim in the military than I was aware of. When you have 65,000 people at the base it is an economic powerhouse for this region and anything the population can do to keep the base here and the government spending billions, well we are all in on that.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@The Other Chuck: Darker shade still rocks. Vielen Dank.
Gin & Tonic
@The Other Chuck: Thanks. Looks good for me on a bog-standard Dell laptop screen.
Not going to wager on anything else.
Goblue72
@Goblue72: oh wait, the TWiB thread on Nextdoor.com racial profiling.
Gin & Tonic
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): And that non-resolving widget in the footer is gone.
Tommy
@Gin & Tonic: Well somebody outside of me is making edits, which I am happy to see because this template is world’s more advance than the previous one so you can do a lot of stuff with point and click and not have to edit the actually CSS file.
As to the question about the logo, I have no idea what will happen with that, because it seems nobody can locate the original Photoshop/Illustrator file. And what we have is so low res I can’t even use the “Magic Wand” in Photoshop to remove the background and make it transparent.
Another Holocene Human
Dedham. Massachusetts. Which is a shithole that thinks its fancy, imo. (Watertown of NIMBY fame is the same way. It actually went downhill after they stopped the train which is a one-way thievin’ Negro funnel, doncha know.)
Cacti
@Goblue72:
It was Elon’s thread a while back about how the Oakland PD was getting inundated with calls from the new gentrified population nearly any time a black face was seen in public.
Punchy
Holy shit, every time I refresh this blog’s look is different. At first, the top has been radically changed. Now the color is diff. Pretty soon I’ll be forced to gay marry and buy a Segway.
smintheus
@dedc79: She’s talking about putting ground forces in Syria and Iraq. The one thing I trust Clinton to do more or less forever is to pander to whatever bad policy idea appears to be popular at any given time. When invading Iraq appeared popular, she was for it. When it became undeniable that occupying Iraq was unpopular, she suddenly was against it.
Tommy
@Cacti: Yes that is a thing that happens. I was about the first “white” dude that moved into an area of DC (By H Street/behind Union Station) that was almost 100% African American. Within a few years the entire area was gentrified. We’d have monthly block meetings and the police came one time to beg us not to call the police for no reason. It would seem, but nobody would admit it, people would call the police if they saw somebody with a different skin color. Pretty darn sad actually.
Big ole hound
@lowercase steve: This rings a lot truer than the headline by Zandar. “How to lie with Statistics” keeps coming to the forefront. Like you said, total financial stability is what the banks are looking for yet this post does not even make mention of it.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Punchy: Will you gay marry the Segway before or after you buy it?
Amir Khalid
Don Tate and his successor Don Ate are now gone. The Random Quote, although still unnecessarily so labeled, is random again. So that’s good. Unfortunately, the Balloon Guy is gone too. Pout.
Tommy
@dedc79: I get the Middle East is so darn complex. But the other day I did like 10 minutes of research. Our allies in the area have about 2M people in their military. And then you take Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates we give them billions in military aid and sell them a shit load of equipment. I will never understand why they can’t “police” their own backyard.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Amir Khalid: I suspect the Balloon Guy was a close personal friend of Don Tate, and stomped off in a huff is solidarity with his banished bro.
Tommy
@Botsplainer: Wow that is so darn straightforward and common sense it could work, and I would agree a potential gold mine. And something needs to be done. I lived for many years in a part of DC where it was mostly lower income African Americans. It is foreign to me you don’t have an ID or a bank account. But clearly this is par for the course for many. The sheer number and the lines on payday at check cashing places highlighted to me this a very real thing.
I can’t even wrap my mind around just getting by and then having to get racked over the coals with fees at a check cashing place. Then you factor in not being able to get a loan ….. and don’t even get me started on how much of a food wasteland this area was.
Very easy for me to understand why many African Americans that live in major metro areas are more than a little pissed off.
redshirt
@Amir Khalid: I really like all of today’s changes. Keep up the good work!
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@rikyrah:
Shit like that makes me want to beat the shit out of something (or somebody). There are hundreds of thousands of young Muslims in this country who were born in the last 20 years. Born here in the U.S., as citizens. And these people have spent their whole conscious lives listening to assholes tell them that they’re terrorists, that they’re violent, that they’re killers, that they’re disloyal, and on and on.
Think about that. 16, 18, 20 year old kids are still kids. They’re trying to work out what they believe and what’s important, and how they fit into society and the world. And they’ve lived their whole lives so far listening to a crowd of ignorant, gutless assholes telling them they aren’t welcome in their own fucking country. Shit. If we were trying to breed a whole generation of angry, bitter young people who were just perfect for some nihilistic death cult to appeal to, we couldn’t do a better job of it, thanks to these soulless, gutless, bigoted scumbags.
scav
@Amir Khalid: Perhaps The Balloon Guy doesn’t want to cloy our appetites with an over-frequent appearance. I think both Richard II and Henry VII went off on long speaches about the practice once Shakespeare got his quill good and inked. So he’s perhaps in good company and can surprise us later with a limited run starring cameo.
Tommy
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): The stats I’ve seen both in the US and in the Middle East highlight the majority of the population is under 25. I can’t see how it is remotely positive or productive for them to hear, their entire lives, people in the West say their religion is evil and they are terrorist.
PurpleGirl
@Tommy: One of my nieces works as a cashier at a gasoline station/convenience store. She is definitely low income and with her son still lives with her mother. She does not have a checking account nor a savings account. She gets money orders to pay bills or she uses cash. I don’t understand it.
BobS
@Tommy: Certainly the ‘policing’ by our good friends Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Israel in Gaza & the West Bank & the Golan Heights and semi-regularly Lebanon (not to mention inside of their own borders, wherever those borders may be) is working out pretty well. Did your “10 minutes of research” determine how many billions of military aid and/or weaponry go to those two of our trustworthy “allies” alone?
Capri
@rikyrah: One doesn’t win elections with nuance.
BR
Btw, still have to reload the front page multiple times to see the latest posts. Some caching issue?
MattF
OT. Ever heard of ‘Captagon’? It’s an addictive amphetamine, manufactured and consumed mostly in the Mideast. WaPo article.
Paul in KY
@C.V. Danes: The person also has to know they can/should get a fixed loan & refuse any Variable BS. Go to a different lender, even if it takes 12 trips.
Sorry that someone has to go thru that BS, but I would never get a VR loan, no matter how many hoops I had to jump through.
Patricia Kayden
Talk about post-racial America, what I found most infuriating about this article is the low punishment given to the White perpetrators.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/iowa-neo-nazi-stomps-helpless-black-mans-face-knocks-out-woman-who-tries-to-intervene/comments/#disqus
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: I want to ‘defeat’ those scum also. I just think ‘defeating’ can be done without our troops there or anywhere close.
Amir Khalid
Test:
This is bold
This is italic
This is a link but the dogs in it are being rather noisy.
Bold and italic are no longer blue. Good. Tommy’s contemptuous dismissal of those who wanted it changed back still rankles.
Tommy
@BobS: It would take a lot more than 10 minutes to see what we give to Saudi Arabia or Israel. The public number for Israel is $10B a year. Saudi Arabia totally not clear. What I didn’t realize is the US government has to approve any hardware sales to Saudi Arabia.
I wrongly assumed that a foreign state could just pick up the phone and call a military contractor and buy something. Not so much. Which begged the question to me if they are paying full price. Or are they getting aid under the table by paying lower prices for a F-16? I honestly don’t know.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: Fuck Chris Mathews. Pres needs to be more snarky.
PurpleGirl
@Paul in KY: Paul, you may know that but if you’re the first one in the family to be able to maybe buy a house, you may not know that. And if ALL the banks and mortgage companies in your area are ONLY offering you the same thing, what do you do? Where do you go? I know that CT has an educational program about the process and getting a mortgage for first time buyers but I don’t know how many other states or localities have such programs and who advertizes them and where.
Also, the underbanked aren’t that way just because they don’t have accounts. The areas where they live also do not have many banks — so many banking companies closed branches in these neighborhoods years ago. The options aren’t there. Yes, so many of us are accustomed to seeing a bank on every other block, several on the same block but in poor neighborhoods, the banks aren’t physically there.
Amir Khalid
As I understand, there are supposed to be laws against the sort of discrimination described in the post. I take it there are issues with enforcement?
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: It makes no sense to me as well. Given if you have a checking account, most banks will charge you a monthly fee if your balance is below X. I had to get a money order a few years ago, long story of why, but I recall it was $18. I was like WTF. If your niece is paying more than a few bills a month this way, the fees for a checking account would be next to nothing then paying for a money orders.
BTW, as you might guess I do almost everything online. But I pay two bills via check. Waste Management and Ameron (my gas). Both are billion dollar companies but if I pay online they charge me $3. I am not “cheap” but when the bills are around $10/month (trash) and $22/month (gas) I got kind of got an issue in 2015 paying a $3 fee to pay a bill.
I couldn’t imagine paying $18 just to pay a bill with a money order. That is just throwing money away, money I am sure your niece doesn’t have. I mean lets break it down. At minimum wage that is working almost three hours to pay a bill.
Cacti
@Paul in KY:
Hear, hear.
Eff Chris Matthews, Kevin Drum, and other upper middle class liberals pining for Republican daddy to make them feel safe and warm from the scary brown baddies.
Treating the irrational fears of the right as reasonable is conceding to their framing of the debate. After the lessons of 9/11 and the Iraq war, that’s a mistake that no Dem should ever repeat. Going along to get along ended with over 100,000 dead, and 2 trillion flushed down the crapper, and the entirely foreseeable consequences of the moment.
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: You speak the truth. My father is a major shareholder and sits on the board of directors of the only locally owned bank left in his town. It is a town of 15,000 or so and the local banks that were bought by Bank of America and Regions, they have done away with all tellers. You ATM bank. To find a person to talk with you have to drive to the next town, about 30 minutes roundtrip.
As a marketing guy I keep telling him that digital sign outside shouldn’t show the time and temp. It should say we have live people working here or we still give loans.
Paul in KY
@PurpleGirl: You have to do some amount of research (IMO), before you make such a large purchase. I did research (wasn’t hard as I could ask friends & relatives about the game). So the research would be harder/more pain in ass (I guess), but you have to do it.
Can never be in a rush to make a purchase like that.
Don’t know what to do about the banks, just expand your search radius & also reduce the loan amount, (get a cheaper house), if that’s what it takes to get a fixed loan. You also need to tell them up front that you are only interested in a fixed loan.
It sounds absolutely frustrating!!!! Anyone who says it’s easier to be Black in this country is a fucking liar (and knows it).
MattF
@Tommy: For about the past year I’ve been using my bank’s (free) Bill Pay service, which (I think) circumvents that problem. I don’t think, AFAIK, that paying any of my bills online would require a fee– but it doesn’t matter with Bill Pay because the bank will send a paper check if necessary.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Miracles do happen. Thanks you, Alain, thank you. Front page shows up so much better now, too.
And yes, it does still rankle. You’re far from alone in that camp.
Still awaiting the reduction of font size in Categories so the entire list shows above the fold. Not a high priority, but would be a convenience.
Instead of a static or a rotating random quote, now getting a blank space. No bother personally (it’s a frill, after all), just pointing it out.
(Have to chortle a little at how it was affirmatively stated that Mr. Cole was totally on board and “happy” with all the changes, and then John announced work underway to make changes to the changes just several hours later.)
Calouste
@Litlebritdifrnt: I guess we should start referring to him as Adolf Trump.
J R in WV
@Tommy:
Thanks again for all your work.
I know how hard it is to figure out buggy behavior with no idea what platform the complaint was received from. I think all of you working on this are doing a good job. Things continue to improve, too, which is a good thing.
Tommy
@MattF: My little rural bank doesn’t have that. And with each service, they use Western Union to take payments, so pretty sure the fee is from them. Pisses me off to no end. Feel like I am getting nickeled and dimed non-stop. I mean these are billion dollar companies and they want to charge me to pay my bill online. Just makes no sense to me.
Wordpress Developers
@Gin & Tonic: FYI we don’t spend our lives monitoring comments for issue reports! And I fixed that!
– Alain
Amir Khalid
@MattF:
The whole point of bill payment by electronic fund transfer is to expedite the process, so that you get your payment out right away, and to eliminate the paper processing by humans, which is supposed to be the costly part. I can’t see how banks justify a fee except as compensation for the loss of “float” — that period between the debit from your account and the credit to the payee’s, when the money and the interest it generates belong to the bank handling the transaction.
Riley's Enabler
The CONTACTS list over to the side doesn’t lead to any email addys, but if one of the people working on the front page will contact me I have redrawn the damn BALLOON JUICE logo and have it in vector and raster formats for you to drop in the damn header so it’s not so damn pixellated. And yes, I do this for a damn living. And yes, I’m cranky. But it’s done so if you want it, reply to this post and I’ll give you an email addy.
Gin & Tonic
@WordPress Developers: Thank you. But there doesn’t seem to be any means of submitting trouble reports *other* than posting them in the comments.
scav
@Amir Khalid: The justification of fees is increasingly fantastic and baroque in general. Extra fees on air travel to use the airports (clearly an optional luxury), O! you want luggage too (see before), and we won’t even get into food or that other luxury, space between your knees and your chin while sitting.
Wordpress Developers
FYI big backend server update Saturday afternoon around 4 Eastern. Should take care of many flaky and FYWP issues. I’m out of town over weekend so will be back Monday to tweak more post-change.
I did some sidebar and footer tweaks and more coming. Sick of tracking down php errors in plugins and theme functions. Also, too, Mistermix is adjusting caching and similar site speed ups. This is a very complicated site with about 100 difference pieces, so tweaks can have side effects that are initially missed. Apologies to anyone so affected.
– Alain
NotMax
@Alain
Your perseverance is greatly appreciated.
If you have the time, please glance at #90 above. Thanks in advance.
(Win 7 with FF 42.0, BTW.)
Tommy
@Riley’s Enabler: tonmmy [dot] young [at] gmail.com. I would very, very much like to see what you have done.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Amir Khalid:
It would be delightful if there were enough enforcement of appropriate laws. Sadly, some of the more subtle discrimination in lending practices have very few legal or regulatory prohibitions. And that’s before you look at the cultural issues. Sigh, as the kids say.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Tommy: Money orders from retail establishments tend to be more in the $1-3 range than what a bank charges for a money order, but that’s only part of the issue. Unfortunately there are bigger issues for the unbanked than fees. Locations (or lack thereof) in their neighborhood is one, and transportation availability and cost is another. Not to mention banking hours. Many of the people who work the kind of jobs that leave them unbanked don’t have the luxury of time off to go to a bank even if there is a location that’s reachable.
It’s hard to believe people can manage in those situations, yet they do. It puts things in perspective for many of us that folks not only manage, but so many do so in good cheer – as compared to say, WATB RWNJs.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@WordPress Developers: I’m not sure I’ve managed to say thank you for all your hard work, Alain. Thanks. I know the code is not only quite squirrelly to wrangle, but the commentariat is well, let’s just say, particular. And vocal. Thanks very much.
Tommy
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I somewhat misspoke. That was a bank check/certified check. I have no idea what a 7/11 like store would charge for a money order.
But I recall being dirt poor in grad school. Three dollars here or three dollars there mattered.
It just seems to me banks, utilities, they do everything they can to screw their customers.
I got rid of my cable and VOIP and just get my Internet connection through Charter. They keep sending me these pretty amazing deals to go back to them.
The other day the deal was so amazing I called them. $79.98 for 200 HD stations, free DVR, and 100mbps (I currently get 60mbps for $49.95/month) Internet connection.
I start to ask questions. The DVR isn’t really free. The hardware is, but $15/month for the service. Another $25/month for each of my other two TVs. Oh and a one-time fee of $200 to go from 60mbps to 100mbps.
I am like so the “deal” you offered me isn’t really a deal.
Guess this is a terrible “first world” problem for me to have, life could be way worse, but pisses me off almost as much as having to pay a fee to pay some of my bills online.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I left San Francisco 15 years ago. It was the most segregated city I’ve ever lived in when I got there, and was even worse when I left.
My family’s from the Deep South, to give you an idea of the yardstick I’m measuring things by.