Man, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s exasperated body language speaks volumes in this clip. To set the scene, Trump and his simpering toady Tim Scott are at the Fed to “tour” a construction site, but the nature of the call is more like mob boss visits bookie who came up short.
Holy shit, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell corrected the orange felon’s lies on live television without hesitation. This is how you do it.
— Ricky Davila (@therickydavila.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 11:45 PM
Trump is eager to shit-can Powell (his own appointee from term one, even though Trump seems not to know that) because Powell won’t lower interest rates with inflation on the rise, which Trump lies about daily. For this offense, Trump bestowed upon Powell possibly his most childish and lame derogatory nickname ever: “Too Late.”
Trump has floated illegally firing Powell numerous times but always chickens out when Wall Street reacts. He has threatened to fire Powell for cause due to cost overruns on the construction project, but as Powell’s fact check indicates, that’s horse shit too.
Anyway, I like how Powell treats the clowns with the absolute contempt they deserve.
And here’s Senator Tim Kaine presenting the receipts to a morally bankrupt Trump toady who’d rather starve children than distribute food we’ve already fucking paid for:
If you watch the clip, you’ll see that Michael Rigas, the deputy secretary of state for management and resources, tries to squirm out of answering Kaine’s question by saying he’ll “have to look into it.” They all do that. But Kaine was prepared and pointed out that he’d contacted Rigas in advance to let him know this question would be covered in the hearing. Kudos to Kaine for not letting Rigas get away with that tired old dodge — and for exposing him as an amoral, unserious hack.
We’re all stuck with Orange Pedo Pal and his scumbag enablers for the next three years, but we don’t have to treat him or anyone associated with him with the respect to which they think they’re entitled due to the offices they disgrace daily. Fuck politeness, is what I’m saying.
Open thread.
On The Road – arrieve – Antarctica Part 3
Baud
It’s not like they treat us with respect.
But none of the civility centers that retired news people go to seem to care about that.
Asparagus Aspersions
Unfortunately I can’t see the second video on Instagram. I watched the first one three times though, just to enjoy the vibes.
If everyone treated Trump with the same amount of deserved eye-rolling contempt that Powell does in this video, I think it would weaken him quite a bit. Not bringing combative energy, just more of a “Christ, I have to deal with this dipshit again.” It’s very relateable.
mrmoshpotato
Ah yes. The orange dumbass getting called out for being a dumbass to his dumbass orange face.
Chief Oshkosh
@Asparagus Aspersions:
I think it’s fixed now and plays from the BJ page. It will is WELL worth your time to watch. Rigas appears to be the eastcoast version of Markywhine for Okla. Dumber than shit. But worse, he appears to be directly responsible for the starvation of 27,000 children.
I hope he has the day he deserves.
Betty Cracker
I updated the Insta embed of Kaine’s questioning to a longer YouTube version. Hopefully that’ll be more widely accessible.
hueyplong
That video is pretty repulsive, especially because of how easy it is to see how they wanted it to look.
It’s a side issue, but no instrument, however precise, could measure a drop of self-respect in Tim Scott.
If given the chance, I’d switch out Trump for Caligula in a heartbeat.
Baud
@hueyplong:
Horses would be an improvement in the Senate.
Jeffro
I’m encouraged to see Dems fighting back and doing it well – go Senator Kaine!
Speaking of VA Dems…I see in today’s news that there is an organized pushback against the corrupt trump DOJ’s attacks on higher ed, specifically George Mason U (which – gasp – has a Black president). In light of what DOJ did at UVA, it’s a good sign.
AND
The VA Dems + Spanberger campaign are taking nothing for granted this fall and have written an open letter to Winsome Earle-Sears noting her complete lack of support for reproductive rights.
Proactive? Going on the offensive? What party IS this, again? =)
Another Scott
Sen. Kaine can bring the righteous pointed questions as well as any of the best out there. He’s good, and it’s important.
But, as we all know, the policies won’t change until we get the monsters out of the government.
Here’s hoping that these types of morality and sensible use of taxpayer dollars questions break through to the folks on the edge who haven’t been paying attention…
Eyes on the prizes.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
p.a.
If I were there, and in Powell’s (employment-secure (apparently)) position:
“we’re building this to last and endure for quite a while, not like the shit you stick your name to.”
ETA: I’m not saying the project isn’t gilding the lily, as MOU projects always do.
Suzanne
Was listening to the GD Politics podcast this morning while walking the pupper, and Druke and his guests noted that, based on the data, they believe that inflation is the largest factor in FFOTUS’s terrible approval rating. That made me oddly happy to hear, because at least that’s logical. I don’t know if Imma listen to this podcast again, though….. I’ve tried it a couple of times and there are better listens.
Anyway, a few of us were discussing urbanization a few days ago, so I should share this Krugman piece “Build Baby Build” from a couple of weeks ago. He notes that NIMBY-ism is Project 2025 shit, and he explains the importance of increasing affordable housing capacity in large, productive cities…. both as a social justice issue and for greater economic prosperity.
On NIMBY:
Which makes me wonder why left NIMBY’s try to do exactly what Project 2025 calls for and then call it “housing justice”.
On why cities need more housing:
He also talks about how the surge pricing in NYC has been a smashing success. Probably why FFOTUS hates it.
lowtechcyclist
Good work, Sen. Kaine.
I’ve known about that food for months, as I’m sure most of us here have. So if this person whose job it is to manage resources like these doesn’t know why he’s going to incinerate those rations rather than give them to the World Food Program that would distribute them to starving children, nobody should give him the least pretense of respect.
Jeffg166
Powell will now fall out a window or down a flight of stairs for doing that to Dear Leader on the T&V.
schrodingers_cat
When is this ongoing tantrum of white people (and wannabes like Scott and Ramaswamy) for electing a capable black man twice going to end?
p.a.
@schrodingers_cat: When we resemble Putin’s Russia ethnically and economically.
Geminid
@Jeffro: I wonder if there will be a debate between Abigail Spanberger and Winsome Earl-Sears. I think that’s the norm. I’d listen to that one.
Governor candidates Mikie Sherrill and Jack Ciattarelli may schedule a couple debates in New Jersey. Those could be worth watching.
Fun facts: Mikie Sherrill , the Democratic candidate for New Jersey governor, was born in Alexandria, Virginia. Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic candidate in Virginia, was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. Makes me wonder if there’s some sort of Law of Conservation of Yankees going on here.
Asparagus Aspersions
@Betty Cracker: thanks, I just watched it. I was glad to see Kaine hammering the point home, especially because this isn’t hard to understand. As he pointed out, it’s either incompetence or cruelty, or both.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: J and I have lived in a 1963 suburban home for 25+ years. We have no plans to move, but we both know that things might be different in another 20+ years.
We had our share of time in apartments, basements, roommates, and the like. We didn’t like it.
I think a lot of folks in our situation would be quite happy to consider modern apartments if they were actually improvements compared to what we experienced in the past.
E.g.
We all know that suburban living made sense in a long-ago time that is in the long past. It’s too inefficient now. But people there now don’t want to give it up because, among other things, apartments are often too annoying and too financially risky.
Any hope that 1, 2 can be addressed in a cost effective way these days??
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
NotMax
What, no gold hardhat?
//
Hildebrand
My prayer every day is that we will wake up to the good news that we will not need to listen to this fascistic yam any more.
Jeffro
LOL, that’s great!
Suzanne
@Another Scott: Yes, absolutely. It might seem counterintuitive, but larger buildings are better in this regard….. anything with concrete or steel structure and floor decks transmits much less sound than wood construction. Wood construction has height and building size limitations, so it’s used commonly in low-rise structures.
As for windows, those, too, have improved significantly. Dual- and triple-pane windows and better frames than what existed in the past.
Scout211
I guess the deal still needs to be tweaked and signed.
Known lying liar gets to lie some more. The art of the deal.
Added last paragraph.
Emily B.
The Kaine video is remarkable. Worth the six minutes.
Kaine asks the question that I have asked so many times: “Is it incompetence or cruelty, or both?”
Suzanne
@NotMax: I had a coworker, back in the day, who enjoyed very flashy clothing. She hated the hard hats that we have to wear. So she bought a pink one and bedazzled the entire thing. It was hilarious.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: We have three housing/land use battles going on in my city right now. All of them are developers wanting to use land in more efficient ways (two of them are for mixed use housing to address “missing middle” housing, and of course all the objections are to the apartments and smaller houses), and all of the objectors are residents near the proposed developments, who only want more of what they already have put there even if it makes no sense (single family houses at the corner of one of the busiest intersections right across from a hospital!). The opposition doesn’t come from the city, which has a Forward SGF plan that encourages these type of developments, but is from residents who don’t wany anything to be different than it already is. I think this is the biggest thing the “Abundance” people miss, that it’s often not government that stands in the way of these things, but instead is the residents of these cities.
mappy!
Dropping congeniality towards these blots on the landscape would be a step forward. The Senate is the canary in the mine here. The Senate operates as a club. Members of the club interact with each other with a phony stately congeniality. The rule is to play nice.
I’m waiting to see if the entire Democratic caucus drops the nice and starts treating the dregs as they have earned to be treated, with a collective disdain… They don’t act in good faith. Never have. Don’t treat them as equals.
Suzanne
@Soprano2:
Yeah, this is deeply typical. The Councilperson or Alderperson who represents that district will often oppose, because their constituents hate it, but most everyone else in the municipality will want it. I have seen this over and over again in my career. “Apartments bring drugs and crime!”, “The senior housing will block my view!”, “This will increase traffic!”.
Betty Cracker
@Hildebrand: You and me both. I read a comment on Bluesky about that blessed event, and I’ll paraphrase: “You’ll find out first via the din of honking car horns and cheering crowds in the distance, then you’ll look at your phone to figure out what’s happening and see that you have 40 texts…”
I won’t get the car horns or crowd noise here in the swamp, but the text part checks out. ;-)
Sherparick
@Baud: Quite an improvement. Particularly over all Republican Senators.
NotMax
@Suzanne
And then there’s the all wood Gaia.
Chief Oshkosh
@Soprano2:
I see the problem(s), but generally, I don’t blame the NIMBYs. In my little Hell’s half acre of suburbia, every single project (with one exception) that’s involved outside developers (which they all are now) have been awful for residents local to the new construction, with negative impacts on the community that have lasted well beyond (literally, decades) the end of construction largely due to poor municipal planning, ongoing failures in resourcing by the same municipalities, and greedy developers.
Having lived in many places around the country, my experience is that that is the norm. There’s a track record here, and people who oppose enshittification of their neighborhoods may simply be going by lived or observed experience.
hueyplong
@Hildebrand: I check this site first, each day. Want to learn the joyous news from here.
Bupalos
The stance of rebellious honesty Powell takes is good, but the reality of dealing with Trump is that you need to go beyond “backbone” or “fighting spirit” to actually beat him. Trump will essentially win this the way he wins everything: he identifies the ground upon which the fight happens, and then the attention brought to the fight means he will win either way. This is the corporate WWF model. What Trump is doing here is establishing that the Fed (and the government, and government workers generally) are wasting money extravagantly and feathering their nests. The point here isn’t really cost overruns, it’s to publicize that the Fed renovation, which basically reads as giving the masters of the universe fancier offices, is incredibly expensive. It is incredibly expensive. It’s about the same amount as every federal dollar spent on public education in 5 or 6 flyover farm states combined. It really is one of those points of rot that Trump can smell so well. He picks fights that he doesn’t have to win in order to win. He can even get embarrassed and win.
The only way to actually win these battles is to redirect and make the attention that comes from the conflict serve a different purpose. You have to see what Trump is doing and go on offense in another direction.
Kathleen
@Jeffro: But wait! There’s more! Per Heather Cox Richardson’s 7-23 Letter, the House Dems on Oversight have performed some magic also (apologies if this has already been covered):
JML
@Another Scott: Some of these issues are also addressed by resident ownership as opposed to rental, right? So long as you’re subject to the whims/financial needs/desires of an off-site landlord, you’re at risk in an apartment of all kinds of issues. But it seems that the way we finance building construction makes it harder to put in buildings with condos vs market rate apartments and either make them saleable and/or profitable.
While I like living in my house quite a bit, I could see myself wanting to downsize in the future, especially to not have to deal with yard/snow removal if/when I get less mobile. But purchase of a condo/townhome is more attractive than renting an apartment again, which was often an exercise in frustration and dissatisfaction, especially the larger complexes with “professional” management.
Betty
Let me tell you, Senator Mike Lee is outraged that Jerome Powell would treat the President with such contempt. These clowns!
tam1MI
I am a bit agnostic in the NIMBY vs. YIMBY vs. Housing Justice debate, but I think it’s worth emphasizing that the key word here is” affordable”. The one thing this country does not have a dearth of is high-end, expensive housing, where the need is is for affordable housing. Cities shoveling millions of dollars at developers who then turn around and throw up even more units of high-end housing isn’t going to solve the problem. Worse, there have been cases of governmental entities using eminent domain to push poor people out of their houses so that the developers can then build said high-end housing. Needless to say, making the affordable housing crisis even worse is not a good use of tax dollars.
Suzanne
@JML: Lots of seniors like the townhome/patio home (basically a one-story row house, may have a garage) model. These can be built with masonry firewalls in between, which helps a lot with sound. I lived in a patio home for a few years and I loved it. Never heard my neighbors. Little backyard, basically a small patio and garden. Easy breezy. I love easy.
Mr. Longform
I really appreciated Senator Kaine saying are you ashamed, proud, or indifferent about letting the kids starve. The fact that these people are clearly not ashamed is quite obvious; and they aren’t indifferent, because they are actively pursuing these policies. That means they are proud of what they are doing. Proud of cutting aid to children while enriching the already-rich. When people say the cruelty is the point, this is a picture of that.
schrodingers_cat
@Kathleen: I thought Ds never do anything and they are feckless. Except of course for AOC and Magic Grandpa.
schrodingers_cat
I am doing a deep dive into the history of India especially when it was under the British Crown. Guess who was most invested in preserving racial distinctions between Indians and the Brits? The segregation was as rigid as the American South if not more so.
Suzanne
@tam1MI: In my personal and professional experience, the affordability factor is a big element of the opposition. I’ve shared here before about a housing development project in my neighborhood that is a mix of single-family and multi-family units, and the municipality mandated something like 25% of the multi-family units to be affordable. The neighborhood outcry was ridiculous, all kinds of “Affordable means poor! Poor people use drugs and bring crime!” rhetoric. (Never mind that we already have drugs and crime.)
People gotta live somewhere.
patrick II
Will J.D. be better or worse for Ukraine?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
“Left Nimby” is a racist term that erases the plight and the advocacy of black and brown communities and organizers for truly affordable and equitable housing solutions that don’t displace.
It’s another example of how yimby stormtroopers™ steal social justice language to promote private development for either personal gain or displacement. Glibertarians wound up a crop of mostly young, white, entitled bros (or gals if the pelaton fits), who were already predisposed to be pricks and told them they’re doing the work of MLK Jr on housing.
They are either people on the real estate industry payroll in one form or another (planners, construction, real estate, architects, etc) or people too stupid to know that the only folks who say these things are being paid.
And the developers (and funders like Peter Thiel who was behind the original CA astroturf group) are laughing at the latter from their mountain homes in Telluride, or Aspen, or a yacht.
Leto
@mappy!: regarding dropping the nice:
And:
Finally:
It’s the scorpion and the frog, leopards and spots.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: I know, right? LOL Here’s a video link to Garcia’s statement (ranking Feckless Dem ) member of Oversight:
youtube.com/watch?v=nbm9c1PSBLM&ab_channel=GlobalNews
Gin & Tonic
For those who haven’t been paying much attention nor following Adam’s nightly threads, here’s a brief rundown of Ukrainian politics: On Tuesday, the Verkhovna Rada (their unicameral legislature) rammed through a law desired (and drafted) by the President basically ending the independence of the two main anti-corruption bodies. His party and their supporters are a large majority, so it went through with like 90% support and was signed into law that day. *Later that same day* thousands of people came out in the streets of several major cities in outrage. It was all over the news. The next day, Wednesday, the protests were larger and more numerous. A fraction of parliamentarians opposed to the law grew large enough to trigger an appeal to the Constitutional court (still a substantial minority.) On Thursday the President, in effect, surrendered and proposed a new law essentially negating the ill-considered one he signed Tuesday. *This* is democracy in action, not the faded simulacrum of democracy at work in the US.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
rikyrah
Powell did it so smoothly, so calm
Yes👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Gin & Tonic
@patrick II: Worse. No question.
Anyway
@Kathleen: Rep Summer Lee’s efforts were shared here earlier – that’s when I learned about it. yep, good going Dems.
oldgold
This morning Trump had this to say:
“You should focus on Clinton. You should focus on the president of Harvard, the former president of Harvard. You should focus on some of the hedge fund guys. I will give you a list.”
Really? Ha!
RevRick
@Suzanne: Trump doesn’t dare shit-can Powell, because the bond market would react with absolute fury. And when Powell’s term expires in 2026, Trump will be under tremendous pressure to reappoint him, though being the stupid, stupid guy he is, Trump will try to install a toady to Fed chair. But that toady will only be one of seven votes on the Fed Board, four of whom were appointed by Democrats.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
You got pushback on here for saying that George Clooney shivving Biden had something to do with Amal Clooney. Hunter Biden confirms this, at about 2.5 hours into his interview.
Scout211
@Leto:
Sad to read that Sen. King is following the Republican playbook to cover an unpopular vote. Making it seem as though you didn’t know this nominee’s background and instead of researching his background, you took Hawley’s advice is a better look than voting no? Pathetic.
Do voters really buy this BS?
Suzanne
@Anyway: Summer Lee is fantastic. Her staff are also always incredibly kind and intelligent when I call her office. LOL. I should call today to let them know I appreciate her good work this week!
ABRUPT TOPIC CHANGE: my neighborhood group mobilized quickly yesterday because ICE was swarming. We’ve been using Signal. But I heard about an app called ICEBLOCK. Anyone have any experience or thoughts to share?
hueyplong
@Leto: Pretty sure “I took Josh Hawley’s advice” is something you only say to a priest in a confessional.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Scout211:
“I took Josh Hawley’s advice.”
JFC, Senators on our side walk right into the buzzsaw and then people get upset when we dare criticize them for doing dumb shit.
Kudos to Senator Kaine for his grilling.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: The evidence was there to see for anyone who didn’t have their eyes wide shut.
BTW I was also right about Nancy Pelosi orchestrating the whole stabbing Biden in the back by Congress critters. I got a lot of attacks for that too.
Thanks for bearing witness on this blog which according to its host is not at all a hostile place for non-white and Jewish people.
Suzanne
@hueyplong: We gotta stop being so nice when we talk about these people. We should never refer to him as “Josh Hawley”. Needs to be something more like “Josh Scared-y”.
RevRick
@tam1MI: @Suzanne: @comrade scotts agenda of rage:
The harsh reality is that private builders cannot afford to build affordable housing. And it’s not like there’s a dearth of affordable housing available. It’s called older stock houses.
The problem is that since the housing bubble burst in 2008, we have had a huge shortfall in home building of any kind and what this leads to is displacement downward with those with the least resources squeezed out and home prices and rental costs soaring.
Scout211
The App Store app was very popular during the LA crackdown and was mentioned here frequently. I have no direct experience with it
Since the wife of the app founder was fired from her auditor job at the DOJ after the app became popular, it must be somewhat effective.
Kathleen
@Anyway: Yup. Thanks! I’m always 6 chapters behind the plot twist. Or the threads.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@rikyrah: Powell looks like a man who’s sure of himself and operates on his own terms. It’s rare to see someone like that with Trump
schrodingers_cat
@Scout211: Maine voters do, they keep voting for him. Angus King is popular in Maine. I was just there at the end of June and early July.
I will post an answer to the question at #42 if there is no answer after 100 comments.
BellyCat
@Another Scott: Agree. Would add mandatory requirement for large (meaning: deep) exterior balcony that permits both sun and shade. The absence of such is a MAJOR shortcoming of the existing offerings and a dealbreaker for the very type of person you’re describing.
Geminid
@Gin & Tonic: I’m wondering what you make of Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s remarks at the abbreviated peace talks in Istanbul Wednesday.
Fidan huddled with the delegation heads beforehand, and they decided to keep the proceedings short. Then, Fidan used the brief formal session to lay out some of Turkiye’s position on this process. He described elements of a potential guarantor role for Turkiye in a prospective truce agreement.
Suzanne
@RevRick: Yes, we have underbuilt housing of all types for close to 20 years (even more in many cities), and since houses are durable goods, that problem compounds. And yes, housing has typically “filtered”, much like how new cars for middle-class people become used cars for working-class people.
As Krugman notes, though….. it’s critical to build in cities both to make them more just, as well as more prosperous.
MazeDancer
Marco Rubio, who claims to be concerned about the disposition of his eternal soul, and spouts Bible verses online, does not seem to acknowledge that he is going to burn in hell.
Not that I believe in hell, but he does.
And killing millions of children pretty much lines you up for the All Time Monsters wing.
schrodingers_cat
@MazeDancer: We are going back to the Victorian era where famines that killed millions including children in British and other European occupied countries were commonplace.
Conservative estimates put the figure of Indian fatalities at about 50 million dead due to famine during the British occupation.
Baud
@oldgold:
“We had a deal. I generate content for you, and you don’t report on my actions. Not fair!”
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: Thank you, Zhena!
Suzanne
@MazeDancer: Marco Rubio can form a human centipede with Henry Kissinger in the eighth circle, AFAIAC.
Not that I believe in Hell, either.
ETA: Don’t google “human centipede”. I made that mistake once.
BellyCat
Oh gawd…The drum beats itself. This blog is a hostile place to those with the temerity to disagree with prevailing opinion, regardless of creed, color, race, gender, et al. That’s what jackals do.
prostratedragon
@Suzanne: After Jan6 I called him Josh Haulin’.
Suzanne
@prostratedragon: Oh yeah, yours is funnier. Or “Hauls-Ass”.
Ridicule is a critical weapon against fascism!
prostratedragon
@Suzanne: Heh! There are peoples among whom that would become the name a person has to answer to.
Miss Bianca
@Soprano2: Preach it. I watched the town manager here get absolutely hammered last year by the response of the flying monkeys who got stirred up by the right-wing rag here to come out en masse to say they opposed any thought of re-zoning some town-owned lots – that are currently undeveloped and would be unable to be developed unless the town put in infrastructure – from single-family to multi-family housing.
The re-zoning ultimately passed, and the grant to put in the infrastructure was obtained, but that town manager is no longer with us.
And the kicker? None of these people actually lived in town – they were all from the unincorporated parts of the county! Oh, but God forbid anything get in the way of their views from ten miles away.
Jesus wept.
frosty
@Suzanne:
We’ve lived in two Baltimore row houses, one built in the 1920s, one in the 1930s. We never heard anything from the houses on either side. The houses were brick, so I assume the party walls were as well. We know how to build these so they’re quiet, we just decide we can’t afford it.
stinger
@oldgold:
In, say, two weeks.
Suzanne
@frosty: So the party wall thing is interesting. (Bear with me, I’m about to get nerdy.) So if the developer is building/permitting/addressing the thing as one structure (legally), they can do just regular frame partitions between units. There’s also limitations on size and height. But if they’re built as legally separate structures, most conditions will require party walls, fire rating TBD by height and construction type.
Geminid
@Kathleen: Rep. Garcia is a talented member of the Democratic House Class of 2022. Most of them had experience in elective office before, Garcia’s as Mayor of Long Beach from 2014 to 2022. Freshman classes get to pick one of their own to represent them on the larger Caucus leadership team, and the Class of 2022 chose the former Long Beach Mayor.
Robert Garcia was born in Lima , Peru in 1977 and emigrated to California with his mother when he was five years old. Garcia graduated from Covina High School and earned a college degree from Long Beach State. He began his adult life as a Republican but switched his party registration to Democrat in 2007.
Miss Bianca
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I think you’re painting with too broad a brush here, but then I usually think you’re painting with too broad a brush. There’s a whole group of us working our asses off over here in the sticks to bring in affordable workforce housing – in the teeth of opposition from the well-heeled rural property owners – so reading your perpetual sneers of “it’s all a scam promoted by white techbro suburban-flight yuppies” is kind of chapping my ass right now.
frosty
@BellyCat: Hell, we can’t even get deep front porches on new SFR houses. They’re “toy” porches, just for show. The houses we’ve owned have all been pre-WWII and sitting on the front porch is a treat. When they’re so shallow that there’s only room for a chair and barely enough to walk around it then they’re unusable. And I’ve never seen anyone hanging out on them.
/rant off/
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@RevRick:
That’s not the point. The grift was that build-build-build would bring about “affordability” which, of course, those of us pushing back on that market urbanist BS said repeatedly, said wouldn’t happen. A recent paper by Fed Board economists is just another in a long line of material confirming that:
48hills.org/2025/03/new-study-by-fed-economists-directly-contradicts-yimby-narrative-on-housing-pric…
Reminder everybody: the people nationally and here pushing this market urbanist bullshit as it pertains to housing are pushing something that was originally started as an astroturf group in CA funded mostly by Peter Thiel. They are essentially a propaganda arm laundering far-right, libertarian economic theory intended to create wealth through increased commodification of housing. It’s pushed by the most powerful financial actors on the planet, promoted by the biggest newspapers & enacted by every big city mayor & loads of electeds.
These are the same people who think “abundance” (rebranded Reaganism) is a good thing.
The head of this astroturf group notoriously said this back then:
“Gentrification is what we call the revaluation of black land to its correct price.”
Its not only racist but Orwellian. Somehow gentrification now equals diversity, spiraling land speculation is efficient market allocation, cultural assimilation is now renewal, developer cartel behavior is now housing opportunity and housing displacement is now social justice.
Stroll around places like Williamsburg or Brooklyn (and a host of other cities like here in Denver) and you’ll see shining examples of the trickle-down, market-urbanist grift and you’ll see they’re entirely unaffordable. That was the point. The trickle-down, market-urbanist snake oil is nothing more than the real estate developer lobby set to gaslight the public for their own benefit. Not that different from the fossil fuel or tobacco lobby and they use pretty much the same messaging techniques.
Also too, the line that housing was under built since 2008 is another lie. 10 million people were foreclosed on as a result of deliberate policies by a previous administration we dare not criticize in here. Building didn’t happen because people were being tossed. That opened up the door for the commodification of housing which a Morgan Stanley analyst laid out in gory detail first in 2011 and updated in 2015:
sylvanroad.com/wp-content/uploads/Rentership-Revisited.pdf
Another phrase they use is “filtering” which is a rebrand of trickle-down and equally bogus.
Displacement is the foundation of this crap. “Filtering”, aka trickle-down affordability (never proven), requires “migration chains” (a euphemism for displacement). The policy depends on market-rate housing aimed mostly at the high end of the market, with people “migrating” from one rental to another until the crappiest, oldest housing stock becomes available to the poors.
And that only happens if the poors move further out from the city core.
You mention NOAH (Naturally Affordable Housing). The problem is cities blanket upzone selling it as an “affordability” solution when it has the exact opposite outcome: the *land* price skyrockets, the previous NOAH is scraped to put in market rate doozyplexes or fugly yimbyplexes and nothing changes…except developer profits.
Finally, this is ultimately about deregulation, a typical glibertarian holy grail. You can read stuff in the National Review that’s the exact same crap as you’ll see by entitled white market urbanists. That’s telling.
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: A friend of mine uses the IceBlock app. She notes that it’s tracking a hell of a lot of ICE activity in her neck of the woods (southeastern Michigan).
The Audacity of Krope
Politeness is a formality. It’s good when used appropriately. Without mutual consideration, kindness, or concern; it is nothing but a weapon.
Professor Bigfoot
@Gin & Tonic: Of course, Zelenskyy is an honorable man trying to do a difficult job in a very difficult time.
Disturbing thought: America has only attempted to be an actual democracy with universal suffrage since 1965. One can make a credible case that the USA has never actually be a “democracy.”
frosty
@Suzanne: So if they’re one structure, legally, then it’s an apartment building. How do you get a deed for one of the houses if it’s not legally a separate structure?
Answer: I guess the same way you do with a condo.
AM in NC
@Suzanne: Josh Hawling assy
Suzanne
@frosty: Three cheers for front porches (and balconies, and roof decks, etc.). They’ve gotten smaller over the years as homebuyers have prioritized indoor space, but my front porch is my favorite part of my house. Some of my neighbors have closed theirs in over the years, but I love the openness! I shoot the breeze with my neighbors out there.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Miss Bianca:
Live in Denver and it’s a lot of that. Our geographic and economic contexts are different.
Talk to most people here in the core who aren’t entitled white transplants looking to turn the City into an Exclusively White, Urban Living Theme Park, really welcome actual affordable, infill development. The problem is that the City hasn’t set things up for that. There’s a sop in projects to “affordability” but it remains miniscule so that the City doesn’t squash market-rate development uber alles while pointing to the paltry numbers of affordable units as “doing something”.
Plus, I network pretty closely with housing justice people here and they’ll take you down a rabbit hole on just how not-really-affordable these units are in the long term.
I’ll be the first to acknowledge that my views here are in a minority. I push back on the bullshit orthodoxy on this issue that’s been peddled because I see it and deal with it constantly.
Professor Bigfoot
We decide it’s not worth it. The tenants will still show up, the homebuyers will still buy, and that’s a couple more ducats the developer can shovel into his own pockets.
It’s all part of the natural enshittification process that comes from un- and ill-regulated capitalism.
Suzanne
@frosty: Yeah yeah. Condos, apartments, and what are often called townhomes are all — from a building code perspective — the same thing: one structure, may have shared or separate utility systems and metering. Ownership may vary.
What are usually called row houses or brownstones (used to be called townhomes) are legally separate buildings because they are separated by structurally independent walls and always have separate building systems.
zhena gogolia
@Kathleen: You’re welcome! I find the H. Biden interview full of insight. I don’t think he’s any hero, but neither does he.
ruckus
@Asparagus Aspersions:
Go with both, it is a much safer call, because they are overrun with both.
Kathleen
@Geminid: Interesting! My grandparents lived in Long Beach so I’m somewhat familiar with the area at least as it was in the 50’s/60’s/70’s. My grandparents bought their house in 1949 and I think they paid something like 9 or 10 thousand. It was a small but lovely 3 bedroom with a nice backyard which was my grandpa’s garden. I loved it there. In the mid 90’s I think she sold it for about one quarter of a million dollars to a developer who tore the block down and replaced houses with McMansions.
There are so many young and talented Dems in the House with great stories about whom we never hear anything. I get so frustrated with the constant drumbeat of “What did they do/when did they do it/it wasn’t soon enough/it wasn’t good enough/it wasn’t enough enough/Rinse/Repeat”.
Hoodie
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I suspect you’re largely correct. One of things that worries me is that it is fundamentally misguided to try to cram more people into popular places like SF and LA that are already heavily populated because there is a physical limit. Seems to me that Dems might be better off thinking about how to grow blue cities in red states. You can see potential benefits to that in states like CO and GA, where Denver (more generally, the Front Range) and Atlanta have grown to the point that they can swing the state’s politics, at least in statewide offices. Some of that is constrained by environment, e.g., the weather’s nicer in San Diego than in Dubuque, but there are plenty of cities in red states that are in what could be very desirable areas if there was more of the kind of infrastructure that attracts more liberal voters. Some of that is housing, but it’s also a lot of other stuff like social spaces, recreation opportunities, higher ed, etc.
jonas
Yep. That’s my experience, too. The second anyone sees the words “affordable” or — this is the real killer — “Section 8” in a proposal, any multi-unit housing project is DOA.
Trivia Man
@Soprano2: In my view, a large portion of that opposition from residents is that they dont trust the developers. If there is confidence the development will benefit the group long term we should be able to get something done.
My baseline assumption, so far correct in most cases, is that private short term profits override every other consideration at every step of planning and execution.
Soprano2
@Chief Oshkosh: Well, these are all local developers who are following the city’s blueprint for how they want development to happen. Opposing these things is shorthand for “People who are lesser than I am will move close to me, and I don’t want that to happen”. That’s all it is.
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: Exactly. But it was so refreshing to see love for his family expressed unabashedly and unapologetically. Plus the no BS assessment of what happened to Joe.
tam1MI
I have a friend who lives in in a well-to-do neighborhood where they built some condominiums nearby. Definitely not” affordable housing” or apartments. The residents there fought the condos, which eventually went in, on the basis that “they are eyesores” and “they cut down all the beautiful trees to put up this ugly thing”.
schrodingers_cat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: What is the orthodoxy and what is your pushback.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I have an interesting observation on porches from an urban perspective.
Our 1905 City Cottage has a great front porch. We live in a climate where sitting on the front porch is awesome.
“The Market”, however, deems front porches not desireable which is *a* reason why most new builds of any kind, don’t either have them or have them as basically entry points. It’s another manifestation of the “suburbanization of the city” in that people who come here claiming to want “community” do little or nothing to embrace what an urban community can be.
My neighborhood was redlined back in the day. The gentrification process is well underway. What’s telling is how people interact when walking past our house. If the person walking by is black or brown, in all probability, they’ll make eye contact, and say hi. Lord knows we’re always on the porch saying hi.
Contrast that with one of the white people of a certain demographic walking by, typically walking their dog. No eye contact. Ear buds in. Totally isolated.
Broad brush? Not from my front porch. I’ve got 7 years of observable reality to support that broad brush. Different people, different backgrounds and quite frankly, different cultures, on display and how they interact (or don’t) with their fellow “neighbors” is telling.
It’s why front porches aren’t considered desireable by many despite the inherent community-building they represent.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@schrodingers_cat: It’s not just a guy who wore a tan suite was president – they are upset at other white people daring to be more intelligent than they are. I mean look at the video of Powel and Trump, Powel is an Trump appointee, whiter than Trump is and Trump is crapping his pants in rage because Powel understands economics by doing commie shit like reading books.
Betty Cracker
@Leto: I’ll go with “dumb fucks.”
Trivia Man
@tam1MI: and then the units remain vacant as a place to park wealth. Especially for foreign money. i dont know the nuances but some version of punitive fees or taxes for owning more than one personal residence might be a start. Some places are trying that now, my impression is that it is still too easy to find loopholes.
Soprano2
@Leto: This is about Democrats and independents who are still unable to reconcile the new reality with how they think government should operate.
schrodingers_cat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Some people can deal with other cultures only when they are subjugated or they are in a museum.
jonas
Also, good public transportation. Not having to rely on a car all the time is a big draw for younger, more educated people. States like TX and FL have a lot of pro-growth policies, but virtually all for suburban single-family homes outside the urban core and absolutely no investment in public transportation. Traffic in and around cities like Miami, Atlanta, Dallas tells the story.
Baud
@Leto:
I’m not excusing her, but I vaguely recall that a tie vote doesn’t prevent the nomination from being placed on the floor for a full Senate vote. But maybe that rule only applies when the committee has the same number of Dems and Republicans.
schrodingers_cat
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Agreed we do seem to be in a phase where stupidity is celebrated.
Trivia Man
@Suzanne: Maybe an entry level compromise – instead of “affordable” make the affordable units only available to teachers, medical workers like xray techs and phlebotomists, bus drivers, things like that.
Professor Bigfoot
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Same here. Exact same.
It’s only barely started here, but the demographic aspect to the behavior is definitely happening.
Baud
schrodingers_cat
Answer to the question at 42: White women.
ETA: They treated other British men in their social circles with disdain if they were caught treating Indians in their employ in a humane fashion.
I have read something similar about slave owners wives as well. So the current voting patterns are not a huge surprise. That around 45% ww vote D is the surprise. It would be interesting to see a regional breakup of women’s vote.
Peale
@Leto: Democrats run for office because they want to make friends. Republicans run because they want power and to destroy Democrats.
Josie
@Suzanne:
I live in a one-story town home, and I love it. There is no problem with noise, and the neighbors are a diverse mix of race and age. I’ve been here for five years and have had no problems with anyone. People here are generally pleasant and welcoming. I am glad we found a place with no stairs to climb after a lifetime of living in two story homes.
Professor Bigfoot
@jonas: Let me add Nashville to that list.
I hated that place when I ran away 45 years ago, and now it’s a completely different place from back then and I hate it for completely different reasons: ye gods, the traffic is hideous.
Miss Bianca
@jonas: And of course, it turns out that a lot of the drug use and crime that people keep wailing about are *already there* – and Section 8 housing folks usually have a lot of other things to spend their limited funding on than drugs.
People are so odd.
Suzanne
@jonas:
It’s such naked bigotry. I live next door to a house that the owner has divided into units and rents them out separately. The owner accepts Section 8 vouchers and vouchers from other social programs, including housing for disabled adults. I have never had one single problem with them. Contrast that to the methheads who pay market rate down the street.
I did a number of senior housing projects. One that is memorable was along a major arterial roadway in a very Republican, pretty wealthy, single-family area. The building was going to be similar in architectural character and size, but the developer was renting to some low-income seniors and so they were partially funded by HUD. The residents of the neighborhood threw up every bit of resistance that they could….. including — and I am not making this up — they objected to potentially seeing old people smoking outside as they drove down the street.
Harrison Wesley
@schrodingers_cat: I’m guessing Winston Churchill,who proposed dropping poison gas on uppity rebels in the Brit colonies in the Middle East.
Trivia Man
@schrodingers_cat: High caste indians were probably big fans of enforced segregation. Maybe willing to give British residents honorary high caste status.
Baud
schrodingers_cat
@Trivia Man: All Indians despite their caste or color or educational attainment (There are many light skinned Indians in northern and coastal India who could pass for white) were treated like Black people were in the south by the British.
Harrison Wesley
@schrodingers_cat: Sorry – I posted before I read your comment.
ruckus
@Another Scott:
Somewhat it depends on how the apartments are built. The one I live in has 11 two story buildings with 8 or 16 units rather than one gigantic building with 5 floors like my last place. It’s somewhat quieter and more accessible – and feels less like a barracks. But to each their own. Now on the other hand a single family home has more room and your own yard. With more work required overall and often costs a lot because it is a less efficient use of land. Now it places with a less dense population it’s not a bad concept but in high population areas it seems like a waste of land. Six of one…..
And the units have most of the things that you want. Each unit has a patio, opening windows….. but no garage. But then it is an apartment.
Jackie
Waaaay off topic, but. This is FFOTUS’s administration:
Much more in the link.
schrodingers_cat
@Harrison Wesley: No worries. Churchill was pretty racist. I was talking about a British demographic that was most interested in preserving the color line.
Oh BTW Anglo-Indians (progeny of Indians and the British) were treated pretty poorly as well.
kindness
I see some here are still upset about Joe Biden dropping out and whom to blame. I’m curious…are you blaming people because Trump won? Because after that debate, there was no way Biden was going to win. Now I love Joe Biden. He was great in almost every office he held. But the MSM had sharpened their knives and had them out for Joe because that is exactly what the MSM does to Democratic presidents. Joe wasn’t going to beat Trump. Age clearly had caught up with him. Substituting Kamala was our best chance. It was racism and misogyny that killed Kamala (with that same MSM’s help).
Suzanne
@kindness: I see you chose violence today.
Harrison Wesley
@schrodingers_cat: Thanks.People’s perception of themselves and others baffles me.
schrodingers_cat
@Harrison Wesley: People like to preserve their privilege and they see it as a zero sum game. That explains a lot of hierarchies.
zhena gogolia
@kindness: Joe didn’t get a chance to run against Trump, although he had been selected by the primary voters, so we’ll never know. As we have said again and again.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Yeah we will never know because the chicken littles in the Democratic party allowed the MSM to dictate terms on our party’s nomination. Expect a repeat in 2028.
Baud
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: He will be dealt with kid gloves by the media.
tam1MI
He is, however, providing a valuable service in giving a voice to people who’s own party tried to silence and gaslight.
Suzanne
@Baud: Yes, similar comments on the GD podcast. It made me feel hopeful that we’re not living completely in a fact-free universe.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Already has been.
Even the Epstein stuff is less than we’d see with a Dem president in the same position.
Geminid
@Baud: I read that Republican lezders worry that advancing Waltz’s nomination without committe approval would make it more easily rejected by the full Senate. I hadn’t thought Waltz’s nomination would be in trouble, but apparently it is. Repulican Senators could be flexing their hind leg muscles.
tam1MI
Getting pushback on things is part of healthy debate. Complacency is the enemy that will kill us.
Rusty
@Soprano2: The problem is Shaheen is a lame duck, she has announced she is not running again and I sense she is looking for an off ramp after, so she wants to maintain her “bipartisan ” credentials. (She is my senator). Its all very frustrating but calling her office is useless. Hopefully we can nominate and elect a better Democrat. Pappas, currently in Congress is the likely front runner for the nomination, and he has been more aggressively anti-Trump.
Baud
@Suzanne:
People don’t like Dems not being vocal, but given how much the public hates and distrusts us, I’m not sure it’s not better to let the public come to its own conclusions.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve also seen stuff saying the same was true in England at the time, it was the wife’s duty to put their servants in their place by treating them like shit. It sounded like the stick up their behinds crowd didn’t like that a lot of upper class men were big into the “Me, leader of manly men” which meant they had to do things like treat the little people like humans so they would follow them during bayonet charges and the like.
schrodingers_cat
@tam1MI: The gaslighting continues.
schrodingers_cat
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Very believable.
ruckus
@Suzanne:
I think some of this concept depends on do you live in a highly populated area or a less populated one. Because a lot of people do like their separation, which is harder in a higher population area. I’ve lived on both the Pacific and Atlantic sides and in the northern middle of the country. I’ve traveled to every state on my job before last and there are different views on land use, often seemingly depending on the population on something like how many per square mile. But the population has grown just a tad over the last few decades and there is only so much land left to build on. Up seems necessary, rather than just next to.
Baud
Josie
@zhena gogolia:
This!
schrodingers_cat
@Baud:
The only reason we have T2.0 is because a white majority which is the default demographic has backed him 3 times in a row.
That is also the reason for the media’s behavior.
jonas
@Suzanne: A lot of landlords actually prefer renting to Section 8 tenants becuase the process to get a voucher and then an apartment is so arduous and cumbersome that they behave like angels once they get in and the rent is guaranteed to be there on the first of the month.
It’s the bigots in the neighborhood who pitch a fit every time.
Suzanne
@Baud: I tend to think that “strategic silence” is an ineffective tactic. It leaves a vacuum that bad actors are all-to-eager to fill. I think we have been poorly served by the idea that we shouldn’t dignify certain ideas or media outlets with our responses. But — and this is indeed a big issue — we’ve got to address things in clear and relatable ways.
I think Mamdani’s instinct of coming back to cost of living over and over and over again as a uniting theme is the right one for this period. It’s hard out there. I think messaging that reflects that back would be better received.
jonas
@Baud: I’m not sure how persuasive that is. His supporters know the math in the Senate and that he’ll never be convicted/removed. They’d probably actually *enjoy* the spectacle of seeing him get impeached and just skate once again.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I truly don’t know. What you say makes sense for a society not conditioned to reacting negatively towards us and our people. But that’s not our society IMHO.
trollhattan
@Hoodie:
It’s a hobby for certain folks to “fix” San Francisco’s notoriously and chronically tight housing supply. To which I can only say good damn luck fixing its being a seismically assaulted vertically oriented rock surrounded by ocean on three sides, connected by just the Peninsula, two bridges, and a BART tunnel and relying on a water supply 160 miles away.
OTOH a constant source of amusement.
Baud
Propaganda
Suzanne
@jonas:
I don’t even know what to do about the level of privileged suburban-ness that leads people to object to witnessing, from a distance, people standing outside and smoking. Like, are you for real?! You legitimately think that this is a valid way to be a human?!
I have many, many anecdotes like this, from years of City Council and public meetings that made me think that standing in a closet and hitting my head with a hammer would be a better use of time.
trollhattan
@Jackie:
Certainly mangles the accepted meaning of Bliss.
The grift never sleeps.
Ksmiami
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I hate to argue but really it’s a combination of high land prices and high building costs. That’s why leaving most housing policy to the market has its own set of problems
zhena gogolia
@Baud: The idea that any Democrat could have been elected after the kind of revelations we had BEFORE NOVEMBER 2016 is totally ludicrous.
stacib
@jonas: I’m not sure where you guys live, but my experience with Section 8 tenants is nightmarish, and I would never rent to anybody under that program on the south side of Chicago. I don’t know if it’s less oversight of the program from administrators, some people are just shitty tenants or something I can’t identify, but the experience has been repeated so many times I’m now convinced if I want to maintain my property, don’t participate in rental programs.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Mamdani is the new AOC.
stinger
@zhena gogolia:
This. Not just the pussy-grabbing video, but the making fun of a disabled reporter video, the insulting of Gold Star parents video, a half-dozen others that don’t as readily spring to mind. Every single time I’d think, “That’s done it. He’s toast.” And still half of America ate it up.
tam1MI
@schrodingers_cat: The gaslighting continues.
As does the DARVOing. And the explosions of anger that the Biden supporters aren’t bending the knee to the backstabbers.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
But her emails.
Geminid
@Suzanne: Evidently Rep. Mikie Sherrill understands this. When she won the New Jersey Democratic governor primary on June 10th, Sherrill used her victory speech to emphasize making New Jersey a more affordable place to live, and said that was what her campaign would be about.
I expect both Zohran Mamdani and Mikie Sherrill to win, but I’m still interested in how they campaign and how they center the affordability theme in their campaigns, particularly housing affordability.
Of course, Mamdani’s and Sherrill’s real tests will begin when they take office next year and try to put their programs into practice, in a city of ~8.5 million residents and a state of almost 10 million.
RevRick
@Another Scott: If wishes were horses, even beggars would ride.
The laundry list of like-to-haves would definitely make the place unaffordable. There’s a reason why developers in cities throw up those generic four-on-steel apartments. Renters expect amenities like granite countertops and exercise rooms, and zoning codes dictate minimum parking requirements plus other fire, safety and ADA regulations.
It’s also the reason that only big developers can afford to build anymore. Only they can afford to wait out all the zoning clearances, construction costs, and occupancy permits, not to mention the huge upfront loans that need to be serviced before a single apartment gets rented.
zhena gogolia
I’ve gotten to the part of H. Biden’s interview where he talks about how much he loves Kamala Harris and how loyal she was.
Baud
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
👍
Omnes Omnibus
I was a Biden ride or die person, but the shoving was a year ago and so fucking much has happened since then. I have made judgments about how much I would trust certain politicians going forward. But we happen to be in a fucking mess right now and chewing over the events of last summer isn’t helping us now. In my view*, we really need to be working on how to obstruct and remove the the fascists who are currently running our federal government. We need to be trying to protect the vulnerable who are being oppressed. Too much focus on the past won’t do that.
*Admittedly my pov is educated, white, cis-het, middle aged dude so take it with as many grains of salted as needed.
Geminid
@Baud: Yeah, Republicans need ways to rally midterm voters, and waving the prospectively bloody shirt of impeachment could be one of them. A CNN article from a couple months ago said as much; that Mike Johnson and company want to make the issue of impeachment a salient one.
Another Scott
@JML: Yes, ownership addresses some of the other issues.
But then, of course, you have to worry about whether the condo management company is putting enough money away for future maintenance and upgrades, and taking care of water infiltration and rust rather than papering them over…
:-/
As always, as others say, there are no guarantees, 6 of one, half-a-dozen of another, etc.
I have no doubt that some of my concerns are going to be mitigated or reduced over time – the market of Boomers retiring and down-sizing is too big – but I wonder about the pace and what other compromises will go with them.
Susanne is right that concrete construction can help with noise, but we’ve all been in modern hotels with thick floors and decently thick wall where we can hear the neighbors taking showers at 0430 AM while we’re trying to sleep… :-/
It’s always something!!1
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: You’re a historian. I would think you’d be interested in understanding what actually happened. The H. Biden interview provides insight into that.
Peale
@Baud: Yep. This is one of those areas where we were hurt by not being able to overpromise last year. BIDENOMICS CAUSED THE PRICES TO RISE! TRUMP BRING PRICES BACK DOWN. Lol. You mean that’s not how it works? I want to keep my current salary, but I want candy to cost a nickel like it did when my grandpappy used to bring me to the store.
RevRick
@frosty: Alot of older row homes lack firewalls in the attic. This, unfortunately, allows fire to spread quickly. Over the years, Allentown has suffered the loss of several row homes in multi-unit fires.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Baud:
Oh hell… horse shit would be an improvement in the Senate.
Peale
@Suzanne:
well you have to admit, the eldery deliquency problem has gotten out of control! These are the same “troubled youth” that inspired “West Side Story” aged up 60 years.
The Republic of Stupidity
I love watch Rigas’ sphincters tighten up in real time as Kaine grills him.
And I have a new level of respect for Kaine, for being willing to go after Rigas so directly.
If only ALL Dems would find their spines and start pushing back harder.
trollhattan
@stacib: Section 8 went a bit sideways when they shifted the focus more to vouchers. While it remains an important program, and a complicated one, it’s underfunded along with HUD. (Hard to guess how that happened.) IIRC our city has tens of thousands on the waiting list and it’s not a big city.
trollhattan
@Peale:
Lifetime Jets aging out.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: I am interested in history, but I do not have the qualifications to be a historian. And, yes, I am interested in what happened and how it can inform our perceptions and actions moving forward, but the fights over it whether started by either side have long been counterproductive imo. I am not telling people what to say or not say. I would just ask people to think about letting it rest.
rikyrah
Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) posted at 8:48 AM on Fri, Jul 25, 2025:
Trump on pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell: “I’m allowed to do it” t.co/e9bjwFqfYr
(https://x.com/atrupar/status/1948742263091163340?t=TtRtuQGjJ3m5RhjztKv7TQ&s=03)
The Audacity of Krope
Eyes on the road, people.
The Audacity of Krope
@Omnes Omnibus: the fights over it whether started by either side have long been counterproductive imo
What fights? Some politicians put their name to the act, most stayed quiet, and some spoke up for Biden. Anyone who, say, doesn’t attribute names and just goes ahead and attacks a group they’ve been attacking are just confirming priors.
Ain’t nothing to fight about, just simple facts.
trollhattan
@kindness: The third part of the triangle was a very strong wave of anti-incumbency sweeping across western democracies. My theory, which is mine, is to a significant extent triggered by post-covid PTSD. Of course we know why covid killed so many Americans and Biden found himself with a bucket and mop the day of his inauguration.
That he did a damn good job pulling the plane out of its nosedive was lost on pretty much everyone.
tam1MI
@Peale: well you have to admit, the eldery deliquency problem has gotten out of control!
Indeed. 😏
trollhattan
@rikyrah: Wouldn’t that just be the bee’s knees.
“I can honestly say I never saw Donald Trump so much as speak with any of the girls, who by the way all wanted to be there because we got them out of some really terrible situations.”
“Never heard of her. How do you even say that name?”
Peale
@rikyrah: Yep. She’ll be singing how she procured girls for Hillary Clinton and confirm that Obama was a well known gay rent boy in New York when he was at Columbia and married to his Turkish “room mate.”
The fever swamp needs to parade out its greatest hits.
Suzanne
@RevRick:
Yeah, fire resistance is one of the things in the Code that has unquestionably gotten better over time. Unfortunately, it’s one of those “every regulation is written in blood” things.
The term “firewall” has a colloquial meaning, but in its technical implementation, a fire wall (as opposed to a fire partition) has to protrude a minimum of 3’ above the highest adjacent roof.
ETA: We get complaints often from the public when we have public meetings that the fire walls are ugly or unsightly, because they stick up like fins. Usually, when I explain what they are, people are like, “Oh, that’s nice!”. So the more you know! LOL.
Ben Cisco
Jerome Powell, King of Draggins
me
@rikyrah:
I’m allowed to eat my own shit but I’m not doing it.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
Our metroplex has a 70′ limit to wood-framed multifamily structures and I can’t figure out if it’s fire or seismic derived. (porques no los dos?)
Sure results in a lot of 5-story infill apartment buildings. In fifty years people will note “Boy, that place is really ’20s.”
Suzanne
@Geminid:
Agreed, I’m watching, too. It should clearly demonstrate that cost-of-living is top of mind for many people right now, and there’s a ton of common ground to be found between the progressive and more centrist wings of the coalition.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: This is the obvious comparison. Assemblyman Mamdani and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez are both New Yorkers, and both are affiliated with the NYC DSA chapter which is the party’s largest. And like Ocasio-Cortez, Mamdani has become a famous politician before he’s even taken office.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s win in 2018 must have impressed Mamdani, who was only a year older than her at the time.
A few years later, Mamdani beat an incumbent Democrat on his way to winning office. In Mamdani’s case it was a state Assemblywoman who also happened have been born in Africa, in what was then Rhodesia but is now Zimbabwe.
Mamdani’s state Assembly experience is one advantage the Mamdani of 2025 has over the Ocasio-Cortez of 2018. I thought it took the Bronx/Queens Representive some years to grow up to the expectations people had for her after she beat Joe Crowley. Mamdani being an aware and politics-minded person, I expect he watched her progress and may have benifited thereby.
So I’d say Mamdani is a more seasoned politician now than Ocasio-Cortez was then. That’s a good thing too, because Mamdani will be taking on a much tougher job than she has, with a steeper learning curve. I’ll be interested in seeing how he does.
Layer8Problem
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ll mostly let things rest, but there are certain folks’ judgements I’m going to question going forward, and they can feel free to judge mine.
Suzanne
@trollhattan: That’s straight out of the Code, and it’s for fire. Once a building has an occupied level at 75 feet or higher above the street, it’s legally a high-rise, and then you’re required to go to fire-resistant construction (concrete or steel structure of rating dependent on height), and include pressurized stairways and a whole bunch of other stuff that adds cost and complexity, like fire standpipes.
ETA: The U.S. grows a lot of trees, so wood is a pretty environmentally-efficient and cost-efficient way to build. Rapidly renewable and less carbon-producing than steel and concrete.
lowtechcyclist
@kindness:
So nice of you to bring this up in this thread out of the blue.
Needless to say, that’s sarcasm.
Layer8Problem
@trollhattan: It was the egg prices, and starter home costs. The economy wasn’t perfect!
Omnes Omnibus
@Layer8Problem: I agree with that. I certainly drew lessons from it. And I could go on about them for paragraphs…. But that would be contrary to the spirit of my previous comments.
JML
I got into a civil, but fairly intense discussion with someone this week, who was incensed that the DNC’s AAR won’t be considering Biden exiting the race and Harris taking over as one of their study questions. Seeing how people still feel about the topic around illustrates quite clearly why they’re not doing it, as I explained to this person: it won’t get you anywhere. Relitigating that particular flashpoint (whether Biden should have run again, whether he should have dropped out at all, whether he should have dropped out sooner, whether there should have been an open convention, a flash primary, another candidate, and all of the other associated permutations of these questions, etc) won’t really tell you anything integral for the next election, will almost certainly infuriate people (regardless of where they stand on the questions) and it will be impossible to publish a result that will have any kind of real consensus and will once again infuriate a wide swath of people regardless of the answer you come up with.
We’re going to have to find a way to move forward from this, though, or we risk losing again. Best way for the GOP to win is for Democrats to rip the sh!t out of each other.
RevRick
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Nice rant. Do you have any solutions?
The fact is the US housing stock loses one million units per year to fire or abandonment (either dilapidated or in a shrinking population area.) The city of Detroit, for example, has had a massive headache of abandoned homes.
A lot of those 10 million homes have since been turned into rentals. Like it or not the reality is we have a housing shortage. Shaking your fist at developers accomplishes nothing.
As for racism in the housing market, as Richard Rothstein documents in The Color of Law, it’s zoning itself that is racist. Redlining was not a banking issue; it was caused by the FHA. Without the assurance of FHA loan guarantee, banks shunned the risk.
Baud
@JML:
I like their odds.
Paul in KY
@hueyplong: That is a tough one…Trump or Caligula. Biased sources but Caligula seemed even more uninterested in actually ruling than TACO. Also quite bloodthirsty. Trump may be just as, except modern laws stop him from doing some of the atrocities that Caligula was just able to order.
I think (narrowly) that I would have to choose TACO. Must say that if Sauron was not immortal, etc. etc. I would choose him over TACO.
Layer8Problem
@Omnes Omnibus: We got bad guys to stop, a fight more important than intramural disagreements. That’s our cause.
Omnes Omnibus
@JML: That is where I am at on this topic.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: You have no equity to borrow against when in an apartment.
Paul in KY
@Scout211: Poor Sen. King. Has no aides or underlings that can do research and then brief him. Gee whiz…
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@RevRick:
Classic yimby stormtrooper™ response “Our ideas have never been proven to work and the data indicates they make things worse but you got anything better?” You, and others here, are on the opposite side of this which also seems to break down along political lines, ie, people who punch anybody to the right of Bill Clinton, not surprising.
Again, Thiel and the rest of the techbros (along with other longstanding libertarian groups like CATO, the Kochs, etc) just loves self-professed progressives pitching their crap.
Actually, I do have something that I was gonna post when I saw your reply.
This just came out of Vancouver which is North America’s poster child for why all of this is a grift and has the opposite of what’s being pitched by shills:
cityhallwatch.wordpress.com/2025/07/23/advancing-housing-affordability-expert-letter-carney-robertso…
It’s an outline that could be applied to any US city dealing with this. If you have the time, please read thru it. There are some common ground approaches there
The history of NIMBY was people fighting against biohazardous plants in their neighborhoods. The history of yimby is fighting for the right of wealthy interests to build whatever they want anywhere–“deregulate zoning” is at the heart of it.
The schtick is to brand the left as anti-housing and themselves as pro-housing, as if the question is about more or less, rather than how to control rents and deliver affordable homes. Wonderful forced-birther messaging techniques there.
Y’all don’t want to deal with the hard truths of redlining & racial segregation in land use nor view their attempts to upzone marginalized communities as the same urban renewal racism of the 20th midcentury.
That was always about creating inclusionary neighborhoods, not about fighting zoning and structures which again, is at the heart of a deregulatory mission that underpins all of this.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
Thanks, makes sense.
We had an interesting downtown multifam project where instead of stick building it had an out of town factory build the apartment units, trucking them and hoisting into place via cranes. It was 1. fascinating to watch and 2. eased the time of construction and very annoying lane closures a normal construction project requires. It was in the heart of downtown near the Capitol where those blockages aren’t very welcome.
Much of our lumber comes from Canada so Donny’s hobby horse hits our construction costs bigly. I think it’s intentional.
trollhattan
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Your axe, it is shiny and well-ground.
RevRick
@trollhattan: When people attribute their votes to inflation, I believe them. The last time we experienced inflation that high was forty years ago which means that we’ll over half the population has no memory of that trauma. And inflation hits the bottom half of the income scale the hardest. Since raises usually lag price increases, the pain was real.
Suzanne
@trollhattan: I mostly work on large-scale projects now, and we do a ton of that kind of thing….. prefabricate entire rooms and entire corridors’ worth of utilities offsite, and then haul them in and a crane picks them up and slides them in. It’s so awesome.
Housing is the one market where this doesn’t work as well….. prefabrication requires a high degree of standardization and a fairly high quantity of units to be cost-effective. Housing projects are mostly smaller and permitting nuances (between municipalities) don’t support that kind of standardization. There’s a whole lot of startups that are trying, though! If we could have standard width lots and standard setbacks and standard floor plans……damn, we could do this much faster!
Layer8Problem
@RevRick: Let’s hope for their sake inflation gets better under this administration.
ruckus
@Another Scott:
Everyone wants the government to work well for them, many DO NOT WANT it to work well for anyone other than them.
I’d be we all know the group that want’s that second part to be the absolute norm. They want their one big beautiful life and the rest of us can go and fornicate ourselves.
taumaturgo
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Hanlon’s Razor
trollhattan
@RevRick:
Stagflation era was brutal–said as somebody faking adulthood back then. High unemployment, high inflation, high interest rates. Something like three consecutive oil crises. This is not what I was taught in econ! My early friends buying houses had mortgages in the mid-teens and car loans were in the same territory. (Luckily for us all, rents did not comprise a huge fraction of one’s monthly expenses.)
Ah, the ’70s.
Biden-term inflation wasn’t bad per se but the messaging was brutally effective highlighting items in people’s faces. Heck, they had people who hate eggs fixating on the price of eggs.
ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s going to take a while.
Many white people think that they are the top of the heap.
Unfortunately for them that heap they are on top of is excrement, pure and smelly.
And I say this as a person with very limited skin color.
We are all a part of humanity. Just because some think that just having more of the same chemical in one’s body as they do, just more, makes bad humans is bullshit. I’ve made this statement here before and will likely make it here again in the future, but as long as assholes think the color of one’s skin makes one unacceptable as human, we will have issues. Along with all the ignorance, stupidity and pompous arrogance.
Suzanne
@RevRick: @trollhattan: Inflation numbers also didn’t include the rising cost of housing, which shot up relative to income. We have a record-high percentage of renters who are officially cost-burdened. So a lot of people are having a genuinely difficult time, and that is a significant burden.
mrmoshpotato
@prostratedragon:
@Suzanne:
That’s unfair. The POS just didn’t want to get murdered by a Trump trash mob of insurrectionists that his dumb ass helped rile up.
Shalimar
I finally looked at this video and Tim Scott does not have a hardhat like everyone else. “Sorry, Tim, we’re one hardhat short and you are the only black guy, so….”
ruckus
@Soprano2:
Well in the US it is the citizens that actually have the power. We hire and can fire the people we elect to run the place. That is sort of the point of the type of governing that we have, that it’s not royalty or money that owns the government. (OK most of the time it isn’t….) It’s us. Of course we are not all on the same page, or often not even reading the same book, but still, it belongs to all of us. We have a responsibility to hire good help in running the place, we have ability to remove those not doing their jobs. It may be somewhat indirectly at times but it exists. What we are seeing now is a very wide concept of governing and how it should be done. A not insignificant segment wants this not to be an actual democracy. Now they may not see it in exactly these terms but that is what they think they want, a government of, by and for the monied, because money is the most important thing – don’t you know that?
The question is how do we fix this mess, where money is more important than humanity? Sure money is necessary, but so is equality, so is not being screwed by the monied. What I’m leading to is that the uber wealthy need to have their tax rate brought back to enough that they have to pay for their pompous arrogance of having too much money for their own (and our) good. Now all that money is nice but what does it do to a democracy if it isn’t distributed a tad more fairly. They will still have far more than the average and necessary and yet life will be better for far more of the rest of us.
Paul in KY
@frosty: There’s a couple in my neighborhood, on houses built the most recently. I call them ‘Display-Only Porches’.
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: They operate generally any place that is within 100 miles of a US border. Large swaths of MI would fall under that.
schrodingers_cat
@Layer8Problem:
I have lived in all types of housing. I have lived in college towns, old textile mill towns that have seen better days, in older suburbs and I grew up in an apartment in the downtown of one of the biggest metros of the world. I never thought of blaming the President for my housing situation. I was renting until 2016.
That there is this perfect house, preferably in an area where there is public transport that you should be able to afford when you are right out of college is a patently ridiculous ask.
And dinging the Biden admin for not providing this magical item on their wish list, I have no words for that level of entitlement.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: I just could not have a job there where I got stuck in that traffic morning and afternoon. Would have to become an outlaw or hobo or influencer…
Omnes Omnibus
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: You are doing a fine job of persuading people there, hoss.
Paul in KY
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Militarilywise it was more so the officer (toff) could order men to die without giving it too much deep thought, etc.
trollhattan
@stacib:
Section 8 kind of went sideways when they went to vouchers.
IIRC our city has an S8 waiting list in the tens of thousands, and we’re not a big city. Republican serial funding cuts have made it practically irrelevant as an affordability scheme. HUD in general has been hollowed out. Once a big resource for new affordable housing. Cities and states cannot backfill their former role.
TEL
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: So not doing anything is preferable to building more housing? I assure you, there is a major housing crisis where I live (SF bay area) due to there being a housing shortage. It is NOT a scam to push out poor people and gentrify neighborhoods. Gentrification is what will happening when nothing is done, as when there isn’t enough existing housing, poorer people will get pushed out and rents increased to accommodate people who can afford to pay more.
TEL
@Hoodie: High density living can be very sustainable, much more so than urban sprawl. SF bay area housing is mostly comprised of a series of neighborhoods with a surprising number of single family homes, and relatively few apartment buildings, with the exception of parts of San Francisco proper.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@TEL:
Nice strawman, nobody said “do nothing”. That is again, another variation of “Our proposals make the problem worse, although we’ll never admit that, so what do you have in mind?”
Per a previous comment, a good template for “doing something” just came out of Vancouver:
cityhallwatch.wordpress.com/2025/07/23/advancing-housing-affordability-expert-letter-carney-robertso…
There are all kinds of approaches as outlined in that paper, none of which are part of the deregulatory aim being pushed by parties as described above.
Nobody’s mentioned the impact that corporate ownership (back to an earlier link about creating a “Rentership Society”) is having. There’s a recent piece out that I can’t verify that shows the latest CA numbers in which almost 20% of homes are owned by investors. Admittedly, this gets over-hyped in some quarters but it’s a real and growing impact.
Plus the impact of short-term rentals is very significant in many markets having a negative impact on affordability.
Again, the Vancouver letter in the link is recent and one of the better “here’s another set of approaches” pieces to come out that doesn’t repeat the trickle-down, glibertarian trope of “build our way out of this”. It. Never. Happens.
dnfree
@JML: We have a relative who lived briefly in a newer, supposedly luxury, apartment complex of multiple buildings. The management group was incompetent, clueless, and unsupportive. The mail receiving area was poorly set up and packages got “lost” frequently and management didn’t care. The move-in time had to be scheduled and then management wasn’t in the office to give out the keys. They were rude. And this was an expensive complex with nice features. She couldn’t wait to move out.
dnfree
@kindness: Thank you for responding to the ongoing discussion about who forced Biden out and how that kept us from winning. I too saw the debate and concluded that there was no way Biden could win after that. I am so sorry that all the best efforts of Harris and Walz didn’t work, but in my opinion there’s no way even with the racism and sexism that Biden would have done better after that performance.
Whatever Hunter Biden says, he loves his dad and I’m not going to take his opinion on what occurred as objective truth.
dnfree
@Suzanne: Whoa! Chose violence?
Suzanne
@dnfree: We’ve been asked — months ago — to stop beating the decayed, stinking corpse of the horse that is the topic of Biden leaving the race. It brings a ton of heat and very little light. Yet some cannot release it. So at this point, in internet parlance, bringing it up again is “choosing violence”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: No one listens to me.
dnfree
@Suzanne: I’m tired of discussing it too. Hard to stop though when those who talked Biden into stepping down, like Obama, Pelosi, and even George Clooney, are blamed.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia commented about an interview that happened this week. That’s not a dead horse or other tired metaphors used in this thread.
If one finds certain comments annoying there is always an option of scrolling on.
The Lodger
@Suzanne: Doesn’t Tim Scott deserve a hard hat? A pink one with glitter seems appropriate.