• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I was promised a recession.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Let there be snark.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

The willow is too close to the house.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Mobile Menu

  • Winnable House Races
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Balloon Juice 2023 Pet Calendar (coming soon)
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • War in Ukraine
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • 2021-22 Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Politics / Poverty / Fuck The Poor / Good Journalism Can Be Devastating

Good Journalism Can Be Devastating

by John Cole|  December 28, 20155:46 pm| 38 Comments

This post is in: Fuck The Poor, Post-racial America, Our Failed Media Experiment

FacebookTweetEmail

This expose on Warren Buffett owned Clayton Homes is brutal to his reputation:

The women — one in a long, colorful tribal skirt, another wearing turquoise jewelry, a traditional talisman against evil — were steered to a salesman who spoke Navajo, just like the voice on the store’s radio ads.

He walked them through Clayton-built homes on the lot, then into the sales center, passing a banner and posters promoting one subprime lender: Vanderbilt Mortgage, a Clayton subsidiary. Inside, he handed them a Vanderbilt sales pamphlet.

“Vanderbilt is the only one that finances on the reservation,” he told the women.

His claim, which the women caught on tape, was a lie. And it was illegal.

It is just one in a pattern of deceptions that Clayton has used to help extract billions from poor customers around the country — particularly people of color, who make up a substantial and growing portion of its business.

The company is controlled by Warren Buffett, one of the world’s richest men, but its methods hardly match Buffett’s honest, folksy image: Clayton systematically pursues unwitting minority homebuyers and baits them into costly subprime loans, many of which are doomed to fail, an investigation by The Seattle Times and BuzzFeed News has found.

Clayton’s predatory practices have damaged minority communities — from rural black enclaves in the Louisiana Delta, across Spanish-speaking swaths of Texas, to Native American reservations in the Southwest. Many customers end up losing their homes, thousands of dollars in down payments, or even land they’d owned outright.

There needs to be some sort of legal recourse. It’s part of a long series that is well worth your time. All the while I was reading this I was wishing this type of reporting happened more often.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Open Thread: When Fan Streams Cross…
Next Post: No Justice for Tamir Rice »

Reader Interactions

38Comments

  1. 1.

    WereBear

    December 28, 2015 at 5:48 pm

    So it’s true. Behind every great fortune is a crime.

  2. 2.

    burnspbesq

    December 28, 2015 at 5:51 pm

    If the allegations are true, there is. CFPB can hammer them for the kinds of predatory practices alleged.

    If Clayton and Vanderbilt are subsidiaries of Berkshire Hathaway, there could also be some securities law problems lurking. I doubt Berkshire Hathaway would have disclosed that its subsidiaries could be in a heap o’ trouble with the CFPB.

  3. 3.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 28, 2015 at 5:59 pm

    Heads need to literally roll in this country to put a stop to this. The 1% have made their bed. Let them enjoy the fruits of their actions, just as the Bourbons, Romanovs, and Ceausescus did.

  4. 4.

    Ohio Mom

    December 28, 2015 at 6:08 pm

    I’ve long thought of Warren Buffet as amazing for pulling off that “I’m just plain folks” act so completely, over so many decades.

  5. 5.

    rikyrah

    December 28, 2015 at 6:11 pm

    thanks for bringing this to our attention.

  6. 6.

    Ryan

    December 28, 2015 at 6:11 pm

    There does need to be legal recourse, but one can start by shaming Buffett. If he can be convinced, it’s possible he’ll end up being the guy most interested in seeing the issue taken care of. Of course, I probably have had some of that folksy charm rub off on me. Were it Jamie Dimon, you’d get zero sympathy from me.

  7. 7.

    Mnemosyne

    December 28, 2015 at 6:30 pm

    @Ryan:

    Buffett has a public image to protect. It’s the same reason that people go after Apple for manufacturing practices that all of the computer companies follow, some of whom are even worse. So going after Buffett personally will probably get action more quickly.

  8. 8.

    Starfish

    December 28, 2015 at 6:37 pm

    There was something that went on during the subprime crisis where Warren Buffet was getting some sweet financial deals due to being really really rich where I started to think that “This is bullshit.”

    I am searching for stuff from that period trying to figure out what was it that led me to believe that Warren Buffet was an asshole when I found this article from Forbes fluffing Warren Buffet about this Clayton Homes thing.

  9. 9.

    Starfish

    December 28, 2015 at 6:41 pm

    @Mnemosyne: What you are saying reminds me of when I watched one the Jamie Johnson (one of the heirs to the Johnson and Johnson fortune) documentaries. He interviewed one of Warren Buffet’s adopted grand daughters for the film, and I started looking into her. She said some minor thing about Buffet in the film, and she was disowned over it.

  10. 10.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    December 28, 2015 at 6:45 pm

    @Starfish: Buffett invested $5B in Goldman Sachs in September 2008. Fool.com:

    Buffett has always been effusive in his praise for Goldman Sachs publicly, never more so than when invested $5 billion in Goldman preferred shares in Sept. 2008, eight days after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy.

    He made a bundle (something like $2B) on that.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  11. 11.

    Mandalay

    December 28, 2015 at 6:52 pm

    @Ohio Mom:

    I’ve long thought of Warren Buffet as amazing for pulling off that “I’m just plain folks” act so completely, over so many decades.

    What makes you think it is an act? As far as I can tell he really is a regular guy who happens to be brilliant at investing.

    What is more amazing is that Buffett has managed to bury his past history of being a ruthless bastard as a businessman, and someone who fought to the death with the government over taxes. And the same applies to Bill Gates, who was just brutal at crushing the competition by any means necessary, regardless of the law.

    That said, it’s easy for me to give them passes for their misdeeds. I can’t think of anyone else on earth selflessly doing more to make the world a better place. Given that they could have been sitting on their asses counting their money for the past ten years I find their achievements both noble and stunning (without excusing Buffett for anything that may arise from Cole’s OP).

  12. 12.

    Starfish

    December 28, 2015 at 6:57 pm

    @Mandalay: They have all the money in the world. They have accountants to count it for them. The money won’t matter to them after they are dead and gone. Their place in the history books will.

  13. 13.

    Gvg

    December 28, 2015 at 7:00 pm

    Buffet has a few things going for him that make people think he has good judgement and that his advice is worth following. I don’t know that he has a nice guy or folksy reputation. 1 his hedge fund actually delivered value not hype for decades and other hot stars have never lasted so long or reliably. 2 he bought companies and made money by running them not stripping them or loading them with debt then bailing. 3 he has advocated a more progressive income tax system on the basis it’s more fair and also better business. The story about his secretary having a higher tax rate than he did etc. I think this is correct based on how things have gone here over the last few decades.
    This does not mean he can’t have flaws nor that he is nice. I actually don’t know. I will wait and see if the investigation gets proven and what he does about it.

  14. 14.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    December 28, 2015 at 7:10 pm

    @Mandalay: “Selflessly”? Really?

    His foundation is spending the bare minimum (5%/yr) to keep their legal status as a charity. At that rate, it will be an extremely rich and powerful organization for a very long time.

    You’re right that he crushed his competition. I’m not as willing to forgive and forget as you.

    We like to think that measurements and data are objective and they naturally lead to objective policies. Someone here (RM, I think) pointed out policies are never objective – they’re always designed to achive some end that is shaped by subjective views about what the proper end should be. Eradicating malaria is a good that few can argue with, though I don’t know enough about his methods in that area. Similarly, improving public education is a good, but his ideas about the way public education should be changed, and his apparent mania for working around the public in pushing his goals, is not.

    We should always be suspicious of the super-wealthy throwing their weight around in public policy debates, especially when the press fawns over how brilliant and selfless they are.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  15. 15.

    J R in WV

    December 28, 2015 at 7:14 pm

    And it isn’t like only poor folks get robbed. Thank God for Bernie for that Ponzi scheme he ran to steal billions of dollars from rich folks~!

    Not trying to excuse Buffet from failure to control his companies to compel them to be fair and honest in all their dealings with the public!

    Just being glad that rich folks are also subject to being stolen from, and there is so much more money to take, too!!

    For Buffet to shitcan his granddaughter shows what a hopelessly evil animated piece of excrement he really is. Horrible. She didn’t even criticize him, she just talked about being in his family, and then he really showed his ass to the world.

    I wouldn’t urinate on him if he was on fire after that. Hopelessly evil.

  16. 16.

    rikyrah

    December 28, 2015 at 7:18 pm

    Samuel Sinyangwe
    ‏@samswey
    Every person killed by Cleveland police over the past four years has been black. 70% have been unarmed. #TamirRice

  17. 17.

    J R in WV

    December 28, 2015 at 7:22 pm

    @rikyrah:

    And this doesn’t surprise a bit!! “Every person killed murdered by Cleveland police over the past four years has been black.”

    Fixed that for you Rikyrah! No offense!!

  18. 18.

    Ohio Mom

    December 28, 2015 at 7:39 pm

    @Mandalay: There is a fair amount of controversy over Gates’ health efforts in Africa, and as Scott points out above, his efforts at “improving” public education in this country are absolutely pernicious. You can goggle all that pretty easily. Try the articles from Dissent magazine. It’s hardly to Buffet’s credit that he joined up with Gates to remake the world in such ill-conceived ways.

    When you get down to it, the essence of Buffet worship has always seemed to me to be “He’s good at his job.” Whoop-de-do. Yes, he kept the modest house he lived in when he started out. Do you think that is the only house he owns?

  19. 19.

    Mandalay

    December 28, 2015 at 7:42 pm

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    We should always be suspicious of the super-wealthy throwing their weight around in public policy debates, especially when the press fawns over how brilliant and selfless they are.

    We should indeed. I count myself as cynical as most, and I am not blind to their past sins.

    But even if one strongly disagrees with Buffett and Gates over specific issues (e.g. Gates on polio), I find it impossible to overlook the massive overall good they have done in recent years.

    The only thing more amazing is the empty zeal of small people who sneer at them, no matter what they do.

  20. 20.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    December 28, 2015 at 7:43 pm

    @Mandalay: Wow.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  21. 21.

    Warren Terra

    December 28, 2015 at 7:44 pm

    All the while I was reading this I was wishing this type of reporting happened more often.

    You should check out the Tampa Bay Times 5+ part series on the terrible decision St. Petersburg made to de-integrate its public schools and then abandon the poor black kids in their ghetto.

  22. 22.

    Ohio Mom

    December 28, 2015 at 7:44 pm

    My husband’s best friend is from Nebraska and so feels a special kinship with Buffet. As a result, I’ve been listening to how great Buffet is for years and have only become more repelled by him (Buffet, not DH’s friend). I mean, I agree with Buffet that tax rates are unfair. Please show me how he has used his vast resources to do something about this.

  23. 23.

    Mandalay

    December 28, 2015 at 7:49 pm

    @Ohio Mom:

    Yes, he kept the modest house he lived in when he started out. Do you think that is the only house he owns?

    Oh FFS – you want to have your cake and eat it. He chooses to live in the house he grew up in, but that is not evidence for you that he is a regular guy – it’s an excuse to sneer that he must have other houses as well.

  24. 24.

    Mandalay

    December 28, 2015 at 7:59 pm

    @Ohio Mom:

    I agree with Buffet that tax rates are unfair. Please show me how he has used his vast resources to do something about this.

    Try this. No doubt it doesn’t meet your standards of how Buffett should be spending his time.

    What exactly do you want him to do? Spend all his time and energy fruitlessly arguing with the Republican majorities in Congress over taxes on the rich, or actually do something useful?

  25. 25.

    Ohio Mom

    December 28, 2015 at 8:09 pm

    @Mandalay: I don’t know how much time he spends in his regular guy house and how much time he spends in his rich guy house (s) and neither do you: keeping his other home (s) out of the spotlight is one way he perpetuates his aw-shucks schtick (compared to Gates, who wants us to know all about his little castle).

    I’m done with this topic. We’ll just have to agree to disagree.

  26. 26.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    December 28, 2015 at 8:09 pm

    @Mandalay: Oh, a pledge counts as doing something useful. I see.

    If he really thought that he wasn’t paying enough in taxes and wanted to pay more, he could act on his own. He could send a check to the Bureau of the Public Debt.

    But I guess that doesn’t count as much as a pledge. Thanks for straightening that out for us.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  27. 27.

    The Lodger

    December 28, 2015 at 9:01 pm

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Also, he owns Moody’s, which was complicit in the re-rating of crap mortgages as AAA, which fueled the real estate crisis in the late 80s. Buffett himself would have canned anyone who invested his own money that sloppily, yet he allowed millions of people to be decieved with faulty ratings. So much for St. Warren.

  28. 28.

    Goblue72

    December 28, 2015 at 9:37 pm

    @burnspbesq: Why is it your knee jerk incredulity on these things perfectly eludes with corporate paymaster ass kissing?

    Jesus Christ, don’t you have a corporate overseas tax shelter to go work on?

  29. 29.

    Goblue72

    December 28, 2015 at 9:42 pm

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Bingo.

  30. 30.

    Goblue72

    December 28, 2015 at 9:44 pm

    @Mandalay: You need some chapstick?

  31. 31.

    burnspbesq

    December 28, 2015 at 10:15 pm

    @Goblue72:

    “Knee-jerk incredulity?”

    Suck a chainshaw. You have a problem with wanting to know what actually happened before jumping to conclusions, that’s your pathology. I’m under no obligation to follow you into madness.

  32. 32.

    Prescott Cactus

    December 28, 2015 at 10:20 pm

    @Gvg:

    his hedge fund

    It’s not a hedge fund. It’s a publicly treaded stock named Berkshire Hathaway on the NYSE: BRK-A or BRK-B aka Baby Berkshires (1500 B shares= 1 A share) . BRK-A is a hair under $200,000 a share.

    @The Lodger:

    Also, he owns Moody’s,

    Berkshire Hathaway owns around 13% of Moody’s (MCO – NYSE)

    You may now resume the sharpening the pitchforks and the lighting of the torches.

  33. 33.

    mclaren

    December 28, 2015 at 11:52 pm

    It’s nearly impossible to make money in America in 2015 without brutalizing and exploiting people.

    Once upon a time, capitalism involved building useful stuff and creating a win-win situation where both the customers and the manufacturers benefited.

    Today, capitalism has turned into an asshole factory. American capitalism in 2015 is a lifeboat filled with 320 million people, and to stay afloat you have to throw someone else out of the lifeboat. Trouble is, everyone else is trying to throw you out too.

    My good friend Mara has not one but two graduate degrees. From fine, storied universities. Surprise, surprise: the only “job” she was able to find was at a retail store.

    Hey—it’s only minimum wage, but at least she’s working, right? And at a major-league, blue-chip company, An American icon; an institution; a name every man, woman, and child in this country knows; an historic company that rings of the American Dream the world over, besides. Surely, if nothing else, it’s a start.

    Perhaps you’re right. Maybe it isn’t the start she always dreamed of…but at least it is one. If so…then awaits her at the finish?

    What is Mara’s job like? Her sales figures are monitored…by the microsecond. By hidden cameras and mics. They listen to her every word; they capture her every movement; that track and stalk her as if she were an animal; or a prisoner; or both. She’s jacked into a headset that literally barks algorithmic, programmed “orders” at her, parroting her own “performance” back to her, telling her how she compares with quotas calculated…down to the second…for all the hundreds of items in the store…which recites “influence and manipulation techniques” to her…to use on unsuspecting customers…that sound suspiciously like psychological warfare. It’s as if the NSA was following you around……and it was stuck in your head…telling you what an inadequate failure you were…psychologically waterboarding you…all day long…every day for the rest of your life.

    Mara’s boss sits in the back. Monitoring all twelve, or fifteen, or twenty people that work in the store. On a set of screens. Half camera displays, half spreadsheets; numbers blinking in real-time. Glued to it like a zombie. Chewing slowly with her mouth open. Jacked into a headset. A drone-pilot… piloting a fleet of human drones…pressure-selling disposable mass-made shit…as if it were luxury yachts…through robo-programmed info-warfare…like zombies…to other zombies…who look stunned…like they just got laser blasted, cluster-bombed, shock-and-awed…

    WTF?

    It’s bananas. The whole scene is like a maximum-security mental asylum designed by sadomasochists in a sci-fi movie. If Jeffrey Dahmer, Rasputin, and Michael Bay designed a “store” together, they couldn’t do any better. Her “job” will begin to drive her crazy—paranoid, depressed, deluded—in a matter of years if she continues doing it. No human psyche can bear that kind of relentless, systematic abuse.

    Source: “The Asshole Factory,” Harvard economist Umair Haque, themedium.com, 21 April 2015.

  34. 34.

    mclaren

    December 29, 2015 at 12:01 am

    @Goblue72:

    Why is it your knee jerk incredulity on these things perfectly [aligns] with corporate paymaster ass kissing?

    It’s a great big co-inky-dink. Tax avoidance lawyers like burnsie just coincidentally happen to find reports of exploitation and sadistic brutalization of workers implausible. Why? Because we live in the best of all possible capitalistic worlds, that’s why. The Invisible Hand assures us of it, and magnificent edifices of modern economics like Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium prove it mathematically.

    So all those armies of working poor people living in their cars that form vast rings around America’s major cities are just a huge optical illusion. Now get back to cleaning out that toilet with a toothbrush, serf!

  35. 35.

    mclaren

    December 29, 2015 at 12:03 am

    @burnspbesq:

    Suck a chainshaw.

    With sublimely wrought arguments like this, you can see why burnspbesq commands his 1-percenter income. Clearly burnspbesq is the flower of America’s intellectual elite.

  36. 36.

    M. Bouffant

    December 29, 2015 at 12:44 am

    What reputation? He’s a blood-sucking, rent-seeking parasite like the rest of them.

  37. 37.

    Paul in KY

    December 29, 2015 at 10:02 am

    @WereBear: A ‘great’ crime.

  38. 38.

    Paul in KY

    December 29, 2015 at 10:06 am

    @Starfish: Sorta shows to me how scared they (the .001%) are at the exact circumstances of their wealth/privilege being disseminated to us lessers.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

2023 Pet Calendars

Pet Calendar Preview: A
Pet Calendar Preview: B

*Calendars can not be ordered until Cafe Press gets their calendar paper in.

Recent Comments

  • Bill Arnold on War for Ukraine Day 347: Bakhmut, Vuhledar, and Waiting for the Next Offensive in the East (Feb 7, 2023 @ 9:56am)
  • different-church-lady on Late Night Open Thread: Elon Musk Is SAD! (Feb 7, 2023 @ 9:56am)
  • Baud on Tuesday Morning Open Thread: State of the Union Prep (Feb 7, 2023 @ 9:56am)
  • Immanentize on Tuesday Morning Open Thread: State of the Union Prep (Feb 7, 2023 @ 9:56am)
  • Omnes Omnibus on Tuesday Morning Open Thread: State of the Union Prep (Feb 7, 2023 @ 9:55am)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
We All Need A Little Kindness
Favorite Dogs & Cats
Classified Documents: A Primer

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Front-pager Twitter

John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
TaMara
David Anderson
ActualCitizensUnited

Shop Amazon via this link to support Balloon Juice   

Join the Fight!

Join the Fight Signup Form
All Join the Fight Posts

Balloon Juice Events

5/14  The Apocalypse
5/20  Home Away from Home
5/29  We’re Back, Baby
7/21  Merging!

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2023 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!