18% of American renters facing possible eviction
Have you wondered why so many Americans seem angry and stressed?
For many Americans, things are not good.
While big landlords seem to be succeeding at finding tenants who can keep up, the survey, by Apartment List, suggests escalating housing costs may be straining renters’ resources. Eighteen percent of respondents couldn’t pay the full rent due in at least one of the past three months, according to the poll of 40,000 renters. Of those who have registered for the listing site this year, 3.3 percent said they had been evicted in the past, up from 2.8 percent in 2015.
...“It you’re a renter who’s going to have difficulty paying the rent, you’re going to have a harder time finding an apartment in the first place,” Salviati said.
Formal eviction proceedings are processed through local courts, making data difficult to aggregate. Renters who have been evicted once are often blacklisted by landlords, Salviati said.
There's nothing like the impending prospect of homelessness to sharpen a person's focus.
If tens of millions of Americans are hanging over the cliff of homelessness, then this country is in an economic crisis.
Gawd forbid the economy ever turns down again, because tens of millions of Americans are in no position to weather that storm. They'll be ruined and desperate in just a few months.
However, the real kicker is further down in the article.
The Apartment List data suggest the burden is worsening from just a few years ago. The Census Bureau’s 2013 American Housing Survey included a series of questions on whether tenants were having trouble paying the rent. Seven percent of renter households failed to pay all or part of the rent in the preceding three months, according to the survey, which didn’t include a question on delinquent payments in 2015.
People unable to pay their rent went from 7% to 18% in the last four years, even while the unemployment rate dropped to 4%.
Obviously the problem isn't the number of jobs.
The problem is that wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living.
18% is a number that keeps popping up.
Yet the decrease in people facing mortgage payments means a rise in renters, and rental prices have increased 18% over the last five years, according to Department of Labor data cited by the Journal.
Wages certainly haven't increased 18% in the last five years.
Even during the housing crash, rents never dropped.
Not adjusting for inflation, today's median rent is roughly double that of 1995, far outpacing overall inflation.
The rental affordability crisis will have considerable economic consequences that go beyond just crushing the disposable income of consumers.
Many individuals and families who make too much to qualify for subsidized housing also make too little to live in urban centers that have high rents. Without the middle class, industries will endure significant shortages in much-needed jobs in education, healthcare, public safety and more.
The fact that the financial condition of renters has deteriorated so much in the last four years is scary considering what this four year old study shows.
An estimated 1 in 3 adults with a credit history -- or 77 million people -- are so far behind on some of their debt payments that their account has been put "in collections."That's a key finding from a new Urban Institute study.
It examined non-mortgage debt, including credit card bills, car loans, medical bills, child support payments and even parking tickets.
It's hard to believe that the credit environment of American workers has done anything but get worse, while the ability of Americans to pay their rent has declined dramatically.
Comments
Work buddy across from me gave impression of Africans
Got a job finally. Guy across from me is married to a woman from Senegal. He said that the Africans he has met all have said America is almost too stressful a place to live. Which is not to romanticize conditions in Africa but to highlight what life is like beneath the facades and mythologies put forward by American mass media including Hollywood. Imagine 1 in 5 people you walk past is about to face eviction. And half of Americans can't afford to pay for simple emergencies.
And too many dumbasses think raising wages will raise prices.
And they would still think that in spite of the mountains of evicence to the contrary.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
And that rich people deserve to get tax cuts
because they create the jobs.
I can't count the times I've seen comments about low income people who rely on social programs that states that they need to get better jobs and quit relying on them because of how much money they cost us.
Not one comment about how corporations get much more welfare because of their tax breaks to build in certain communities and their subsidies.
I did see one comment that said that taxes on the rich were once 90% and the country prospered because of it.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Not only that...
But even if a city loses a bid for a giant corporation to come into their town, they come into that city anyway later.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
This country needs to have a serious talk about land reform.
Nope, I'm not kidding.
Corporations owning property is the stupidest idea ever. They can't die, so just like money, all they can do is accumulate it. They can't or won't spend it, that's for certain.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Yes, and we need
a discussion about the corporate form of business, too. The corporate form has become completely dysfunctional.
dfarrah
IF IT LOOKS YOU WILL BE FACING EVICTION
try like hell to get a place secured before your eviction is reported to the credit agencies.
[Been there. Done that. Don't like it.]
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
You don't even have to actually be evicted
If you were in Landlord/Tenant Court for any reason in the last 7 years, you are basically blacklisted - and that's nationwide. You may find someone willing to give you an apartment, but you'll have to get lucky.
It's especially rough where I live (Brooklyn, NY) because of gentrification. The poorest, most neglected neighborhoods are now "trendy" and rents are sky-high throughout the borough. I guess it's good for home-owners, but most people are renters, and we're being forced out one way or another.
Also the Landlord can hold you for ransom
with the concept of "Housing Debt".
Essentially claiming that you are a deadbeat even if the charges are still in dispute or are blatant forgeries.
The burden is of course on the renter to clear it up, not the landlord who can freely inflate charges. (As corporations are wont to do)
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Hubby and I are going through this right now.
We had to break our lease early to move back here; we had five months left on it. We were told we could continue to pay month-to-month until they found someone to lease it again. Which they did, in September. (We also gave them 60 days' written notice, as is usually SOP.) Instead they sent the entire rest of the lease amount to collections straight away. So we're going through a lawyer there; that's illegal as hell.
There were bedbugs, they didn't want to fix shit; our bathroom sink started leaking one Saturday. We went and told them, they said they'd look at it first thing that Monday morning. Then it turned out it flooded (?) three units below ours. Then they got someone in there that afternoon to fix it. Before that the water heater rusted out and started leaking, which they also replaced the next day. We were supposed to have covered parking; but it turned out the awning where our spot was supposed to be had collapsed in a snow storm before we moved in (!!!) and they never replaced it. And there was the security gate that they could never get to work; the fobs wouldn't work and it would close and lock early; when I complained the woman in the office didn't believe me and just said 'no, they close at 10' although I had come home from work about 8:30 the night before and it was locked and the fob didn't work. (Had to wait for someone on the inside to open the other gate for people.) They eventually just gave up on fixing it altogether I guess. And there was a shooting outside the fence another time! And this wasn't even in the "bad" part of town!!
Fuck that place. I hope they get their asses handed to them legally if that's how they treat their tenants.
This shit is bananas.
Rents.
Rents would be a lot cheaper if it weren't for the financial sector bailouts. The 'bipartisan' political establishment (the swamp, for short) keeps rescuing/subsidizing the super-rich, then they wonder why the victims of the 2008 crash and subsequent bailouts can't afford to participate in a propped-up housing market, even if only to rent.
Mike Taylor
Yep. The bail-out billions “trickle down” all right —
instead of loaning them out, banks use them to place bets for their own portfolios, pouring them straight into markets like commodities and real estate, pushing up food prices and jacking up rents.
Oh, I don't think
they wonder at all. They know exactly what they are doing.
dfarrah
I saw this first hand
when I was looking for housing last summer after I received a housing voucher. The amount of rent that i was given was so low that there were very few places available to rent. And the ones I found were pretty much unlivable, plus they were located in dangerous neighborhoods.
The rental crisis is one more of Obama's legacy. If millions of people were able to refinance their homes, those homes wouldn't have been bought up by the companies that had huge amounts of money to buy them for pennies on the dollar.
This article explains how the banks committed more fraud while paying for their fraudulent activity.
I hope that people will read the whole article, especially the last 2/3rds of it.
What Obama allowed Jaimie Dimon get away with needs to go viral.
His inaction left many people who thought they were foreclosed on left holding property taxes on homes that they no longer owned. As well as leaving state's financial difficulties much worse off.
Special Investigation: How America’s Biggest Bank Paid Its Fine for the 2008 Mortgage Crisis—With Phony Mortgages!
I need to find the article on how Obama's inaction lead to companies buying 5,000 homes and then jacking up rents and becoming absent slum landlords.
Best president since FDR, my ass.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Rent-seekers are just scumbag scalpers.
They know how desperate people are and they're playing this shit like a cheap fiddle.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Our society has
been completely taken over by thieves and grifters - people who want all of your money for nothing. This is the new business model now.
dfarrah
From the place I came from it is much worse
(edited grammar and typos)
Most low wage income earning people can't rent a place on their own, they HAVE to share with a room mate.
So the stress is not only that the rents are so high that a single person can't pay the rent, but that roommates are always scared that the other one can't pay his share of the rent, due to not having enough work hours offered (another insecure fact, people don't know from week to week if they get enough hours to work). But the stress leads to "drama" situations.
Landlords who look for tenants in that region announce in their ads they don't want tenants with "drama". Yeah right. How about undramatic rental prices?
If there were statistics about how many renters can only pay the rent, if there are two incomes coming in, it would be nice.
One of the jobs I got to see with my own eyes was the one of a "clean-up" crew member, who cleaned up evicted tenants' apartments. They throw the belonging out on the streets and the balconies have dog shit inches high, because the tenants couldn't take care of the dogs and walk them out. Dogs were caged and left behind for weeks. The clean-up crews are allowed to take the property the evicted tenants leave behind. Many tenants have drug problems and the apartments look like a place you would expect in a horror movie.
At the place I came from you can't find a one bedroom apartment below $ 1500.00 per month, the wage for a full time worker is as low as 1800.00 per month.
I wonder who is bad in math, the landlords or the tenants.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Interesting paper on proposals in Baltimore
......
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Interesting choice of wording in that infographic.
'Stay in homelessness' huh? As if homelessness is a vacation in a resort or something! *barf* (181 what?? Days, weeks, months...?)
This shit is bananas.
I think the young man who was running for mayor from the Green
Party was calling for something like this.
I think anyone running for office next cycle needs to have besides a peace plan a plan for rent control. Across the country.
Mary Bennett
Homeless Housing In L.A.
is a total farce. State voters agreed to a $2.2 Billion increase in property taxes for homeless Housing and shortly after that L.A. voters passed a $3 Billion increase in sales taxes for homeless Housing.
That's $5 Billion and still waiting for the first groundbreaking ceremony. In Boyle Heights a $23 million project was blocked by NIMBYs, because half of the units were set aside for people with mental illness, a very legitimate concern. The project was building 49 units, which pencils out to slightly less than $500k per unit. That's big Fatburger for developers and Nothing burger 250 sq. ft. SROs for homeless people, even if it gets built.
We have 40-50 thousand homeless people in L.A. County so we require 10,000 units a year for 10 years just to break even. L.A. homeless Housing stock has actually gone down since 2010.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
The developers.....
yet another set of predators who suck up public funds...
dfarrah
I am so sick of hearing
about affordable housing.
A huge driver of the problem is low wages and wages that are not keeping up with prices. Nobody addresses low wages.
dfarrah
We have this constant
drumming for affordable housing, yet not a peep about wages.
dfarrah
This is one article about slum landlords
it's not the one I previously read, but you get the drift. I'm still trying to find the other one because it has more and different information. That one talks about how these companies are not only jacking rents to obscene high amounts, but because they have taken so many homes off the market, people aren't able to find affordable homes to purchase.
In the other article I linked, one person purchased homes worth $156 million for $200,000. That wasn't pennies on the dollar, it was 1/10 of a penny on the dollar.
Thanks Obama!
Wall Street slumlords’ outrageous new scheme: How they could wreck the economy again
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Why do you hate Obama?
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Let Me Count The Ways
1.) He was a blood thirsty militaristic war monger.
2.) He bailed out TBTF banks with taxpayer dollar instead of throwing them in jail.
3.) He continued Bush's obscene tax cuts for the 1%.
4.) He made Hillary Sec. Of State.
5.) He betrayed his promise of hope & change.
6.) He pushed through a trillion dollars nuclear triad modernization program.
7.) Drone warfare.
8.) He gave military surplus weapons to American police.
9.) He refused to stop DAPL.
10.) Massive deportation of Latinos.
11.) He did nothing to reform our criminal justice system and continued mass incarceration.
12.) Etc., etc., etc.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
In other news, water is wet.
Is anyone surprised by this? As Snoopydawg pointed out, the recession hit but the rental/housing market just kept chugging along as if nothing happened. Gentrification is the worst thing to happen to housing since HOAs became a thing.
For $900+ a month (in most cities) you can get a one-bedroom apartment. Bedbugs included at no extra charge! And god help you if you have pets, that's another $25-50/month PER PET.
But if we expect a decent wage for our work that actually keeps up with housing costs we're 'entitled and lazy' and need to get better jobs/skills. Never mind that nobody wants to pay more than minimum wage, regardless of experience or skills. If large swaths of people are being priced out of renting and buying homes I don't think it's because people are being lazy and don't want to work, it's that JOBS DON'T FUCKING PAY ENOUGH.
So much for the American standard of living!!
This shit is bananas.
You must have read the KSL comments on this
Yep. If people need to rely on social programs then they just need to work harder and lift themselves out of this condition. And BTW, working at McDonald's isn't supposed to be a career, it just supposed to be a steppingstone for experience and then you move up to better paying jobs. Gack!
And if those people get paid $15/hour then the will raise their $1 hamburgers to $5 hamburgers. Never any thoughts about lowering the CEOs pay from $17 thousand million dollars a year to only $17 million a year. CEOs are making tens of thousands per hour while their workers qualify for Medicaid, food stamps and public housing.
The Walmart kids have talked congress into subsidizing their stores and employees. Each Walmart store costs us $900,000 each because their employees have to live off government subsidies. Great gig for them.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Wall Street is
nothing more than a predator.
dfarrah
Nah, I can't stomach reading it
makes my anxiety even worse. It's just the same garbage I keep seeing repeated in every article about how terrible the economy is. "Oh those lazy entitled millennials! Why don't they just get out of their parents' basements and get better jobs?!" I graduated college the year before the economy tanked last time, and I'm one of the old millennials. Never mind that most of us were still in school at the time, and this shit's been happening since before most of us were even born, it's still our fault somehow.
'Go to college and get a degree!' they said; 'doesn't matter what for,' they said. So we all went out and got ("useless") degrees, and now those degrees aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Older folks: Get a college degree so you can get a job! Young person: OK. *gets 'useless' degree* Older folks: No, not like that! MAKE UP YOUR GODDAMN MINDS. Is it our fault colleges were offering those 'useless' degrees in the first place?! Nobody can know how the winds will blow and what fields will be in demand by the time they graduate. I guess when they said "Don't expect to make $40k/year right out of school" what they forgot to add was "because we aren't going to pay you that much, regardless of degree/skills/cost of living etc.
Imagine being so privileged you don't think people should make enough to survive on if they work full time. God damn it.
This shit is bananas.
Republicans used to say “get a job”
Democrats now say “get a degree”. Not much difference really.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
@Hawkfish
The upshot's the same, though, in what both are saying; you and your time, energy, labour just aren't worth a living wage, are not worth keeping healthy and alive - unless useful enough to the pathologically greedy, so busily sucking up all that they can drain from society and the more vulnerable among its numbers, that they're willing to fight over you, to entice you away with higher pay. They see and set human value only in monetary/useful-to-them terms.
The psychopathic don't get the value of intrinsic human worth, not being human themselves; therefore, if you were worth anything, you'd be worth real money. Otherwise, we're all just Disposables.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I have yet to see any enticing with better pay
Mostly "competitive wages" means minimum wage, because that's what everybody else is paying.
We need to start turning the questions around on interviewers: Why should we hire you? Why should I work for YOU??
This shit is bananas.
Turning it around
And likewise, we need to turn the qualifying process around on landlords. Property owners and managers use databases and rating agencies to weed out "undesirable" tenants? Folks who rent need to have databases and rating agencies to weed out the undesirable landlords.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
Well, you can always read the Google reviews.
Although most of the reviews are the same for every place: crappy management, crime and bedbugs. It's hard to get a sense of how a place really is until you actually live there. But more and more it seems like they all just want to do nothing and collect rent, and waste money on playgrounds, gyms and pools. I'm sorry but there are plenty of public places for that; I'd rather have my actual living space well taken care of!!
As for employers, there is Glassdoor--you can check out employee reviews and wage information for just about any business.
This shit is bananas.
@Daenerys
Exactly! Without regulation, the sludge ruses to the top and expects money without any return of value-for-money or of the inherent responsibility. Hedge fund managers and investors should not be running businesses and it's obvious that rental agencies aren't renting 'homes', often make it plain that they don't really want people living in their investments, just money for nothing.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
@Daenerys
Sorry, I tend to be rather unclear, I'm afraid; I was thinking more among higher-management/CEO-level, which is about where these turkeys seem to think that 'human value/living wage' kicks in, only at the top level often topped up with some of the scrapings from those 'not worthy of a living wage' and whatever's being gouged from customers and the public purse. Although where there's any shortage of specific skills, there has been head-hunting, and various IT workers for certain companies do get a living wage, and apparently some can even afford get-away bunkers in NZ, although these would obviously be in the top echelons - and living their jobs, with little time even for sleep.
Human value means nothing to the psychopathic - only the calculated as direct and not readily fungible 'market value' of human labour in any given line of work, which at top levels rather translates to having the power to take from others, matters to these.
Edit to add the (obvious) fact that I absolutely agree that this should be turned around - but the concept of democracy needs to be reinstated in and throughout America for this to succeed.
As we know, the rights, wealth and power of the American people have been almost entirely removed - incrementally - by corrupt forces infiltrating and controlling the US government. These must somehow be removed and the government properly formed of, by and for the people, as was intended by the most far-seeing of the US Founders, those who fought to have the Bill of Rights included, against the objections of self-interested slave-holders of their primitive times, the descendents of this mind-set now gaining military/corporate ascendance over the world itself.
The propaganda must be countered and stopped and the 'revolutionary' concept of equal rights, treatment and opportunity for all, with no-one 'above' the public-protective law - in a country of laws, not men - revived, before the Republicans can gain the opportunity, in the next, non-Presidential election, to play their 'bad cop' wing of the Corporate Party Trade-Off in that Constitutional Convention that demand for so suddenly arose a while back.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I'm not sure why I keep reading the comments there
maybe it's because I keep thinking that this time people are going to open their minds and see the truth. But I leave just shaking my head at their thought processes. Not one person has said anything about the huge cuts to Medicare, but they are happy to see that Medicaid is going to be cut.
The demographics of the people who comment there look like they are upper middle class snobs who thinks anyone should be able to get a good job in this economy.
How is Eric doing with his education? Does he like where you are living?
Boy ar you missing the best fall I can remember. People are wearing tank tops and shorts the last two days.
I think you should make your last sentence your sigline. It's so appropriate.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Thanks Snoopy
My father-in-law is one of those types: he has a six-figure income or thereabouts and basically everything he's ever wanted now (new car, new house, new wife-which he married like two months after meeting (smh)), and he STILL has the audacity to complain about how unfair it is that he still has to pay bills and taxes. Like, I WISH I had some of his problems!! No matter how many times we tell him how rough we have it and we can't afford to do much of anything he still doesn't get it. (What do you mean you can't come visit?? Uhh, we have no fucking income!!) They just live on a completely different plane of existence than we do.
Anyway I better stop before I go off on another rant about people blaming poor people/milennials for the shit economy.
Eric is doing well in school; he seems to like it here so far but we'll see what he thinks when it gets -20 below! We had our first snow yesterday; it didn't amount to much and already melted but we've got highs in the 30s and 40s now, which is pretty normal for this time of year. The warm falls in Utah kind of freaked me out, to be honest! But I hate really cold weather. We help my mom with the horses a lot too, which she appreciates and keeps us busy, so it's going better than when we lived with his mom in that sense.
This shit is bananas.
I know what you mean about warm falls or any season
if your body is used to something else. I felt the same way when I lived in California and it would be 110 out at 7pm at the end of October. My body was screaming that it was supposed to be much colder because it grew up in Utah. ,
I know what you mean about not being able to do something because of no money, but others can't understand how even a tank of gas can hurt your budget. I splurged and went up to Snowbasin to take photos of the Aspens, but they hadn't turned yet. Big time bummer. Oh well, the dawgs got to go hiking and smell different scents. They had a great time.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
I make only two monthly political donations
1. The Green Party, so there is a viable national left wing party.
2. Fight for $15, so it’s potential voters aren’t dead of starvation or exposure.
Anything else is a waste of money.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
I agree with you
Good causes. Just remember, if $15 minimum wage happens,the cost hamburgers will go up.
s/
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
@Daenerys
If corporations are so inefficient that they can't afford to pay workers a living wage - especially when receiving tax breaks/taxpayer subsidies - they should get out of the way and let smaller local businesses take over.
Can you imagine what a difference it could make to initiate a relatively small starting boost to small business, spending in and supporting local economies (rather than draining them and public funds for CEO bonuses and various offshored profits,) while paying a perhaps partially publicly subsidized living wage - and without predatory chain-stores and other giants killing competition and jobs - would make, while costing (I'm guessing) probably a fraction of however many unimaginable trillions in total a year are spent in welfare for the record-profiting corporate/industry giants and in grossly insufficient aid for their grossly underpaid workers?
Not just a world of difference, but a different world.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Oh, if only!
Just another thing that will never, ever happen in this country.
But I do firmly believe in ending corporate welfare and subsidies for big oil and big ag/corn.
This shit is bananas.
Workers earning $30,000 /yr.
pay 30% of their gross pay to pay for their apartment, mobile home or old small house. Okay, that's doable. Barely. But a lot of us earn less than $25,000 /yr. ($12 /hr.) That translates to 36% of gross income, bringing the squeeze. Add a car payment for a "beater" and that brings it up to 42%, 43%. Happy living on the rest! That's about $900 /mo. for food and essentials (if one pays no payroll taxes, health insurance). I spend $500 /mo. (or more) on groceries and the occasional meal out (diner, take-out). Got another mouth to feed and add another $150. Not much left over for cable tv, internet, t.p., shampoo...
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
This is an insane way for anyone to live in this
stinking country. The reason why people are is because our government sold us out. In so many ways. How does it make sense that children in this country go to bed hungry because the asswipes in congress have gutted the social programs because they cost too much money, yet we have been giving Israel and who knows how many other countries billions of our money?
Israelis have decent health care coverage, we don't. How many other things do they have that we don't, but could if our government whores weren't so beholden to them?
No one has ever been able to explain why Israel is the 51st state in this country.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
I'm sorry to be blunt, but this is not helping.
It's a complicated/not complicated issue. Our economy sucks not because we aren't being paid enough, but because certain things are too expensive and cannot, or we believe that they cannot, be avoided. Housing prices are the most egregious example.
It's an old study now, but in 2005 Elizabeth Warrren compared prices between 1970 and 2004. She found most prices (things like washing machines, gasoline, clothing, automobiles) were actually cheaper than they were, but the "savings" were more than offset by things like housing and health care and insurance. And you have to have a place to live, and you cannot decide not to get sick. Cars are cheaper, but now the total economy requires a 2 car family. (or more) It's not simply wages, it's the distribution of living expenses, combined with societal forces that may or may not be objective. (I do not have to pay $40+ a month for a cell phone when I can keep my landline for $29, but the year after I retired my old employer required its employees carry a cell)
Until we look at the total picture and address things as they are rather than what we feel and want we will get nowhere.
On to Biden since 1973
I think your comment is very insightful.
I don't hate him, I miss him. Because....
When You Say You Miss President Obama . . .
Do you mean his bombing 7 Muslim countries?
Do you mean the terror he caused from his drones buzzing over so many foreign lands?
Do you mean the failed state he created in Libya?
Do you mean his support for Saudi Arabia’s destruction of Yemen?
Do you mean not condemning the coup in Egypt and providing aid thereafter in violation of U.S. Law?
Do you mean how his approval of the Honduran coup led to rampant crime and murder?
Do you mean supporting the coup in Ukraine and the Neo-Nazi Svoboda who provided the muscle for it?
Do you mean initiating the plans to spend $1 trillion on modernizing the nuclear triad?
Do you mean not prosecuting the war crime of invading Iraq without defensive justification?
Do you mean dismissing the prosecution of torture?
Do you mean the erosion of civil liberties while letting the NSA, FBI and CIA run wild?
Do you mean signing the NDAA which allows the military to hold an American citizen without charge or legal representation under the Executive’s determination as a terrorist?
Do you mean the reauthorization of the Patriot Act?
Do you mean the assassination of American citizens without Due Process?
Do you mean the repeal of decades-old Smith-Mundt Act allowing for the government to propagate propaganda in the USA and towards American citizens?
Do you mean prosecuting whistle blowers instead of following up on their exposes? Like when whistle blowers such as Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Julian Asange, Bill Binney, John Kirakou were deemed criminals and not patriots?
Do you mean “Obama’s disappointing record on free speech,” including his 7 year prosecution of “two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist James Risen,” “who helped reveal Bush's program of warrantless wiretapping?”
Do you mean the continued militarization of the police?
Do you mean nominating a cabinet almost entirely chosen by Citigroup?
Do you mean the way he provided $16 TRILLION of low or no cost capital to essentially bankrupt companies during the financial crisis?
Do you mean NOT prosecuting Wall Street executives who defrauded mortgage backed investors of billions, laundered drug money and rigged the $400 - $800 Trillion LIBOR index?
Do you mean having a "Green President" who was actually globally neutral with all the fossil fuel projects supported around the world, including the Sec. State's export of fracking to 30 countries?
Do you mean giving BP a permit to drill in Alaska after destroying the Gulf of Mexico?
Do you mean standing idly by while protestors were doused with water cannons in freezing temperatures at Standing Rock?
Do you mean giving $400 billion a year to the healthcost © and pharmaceutical industries while dismissing single payer and public option on the first day of raising the issue?
Do you mean the continuation of essentially all income gains going to the top 10% of income earners and an unprecedented 95% of income gains going to the top 1% of earners?
Do you mean making permanent the taxation of investment income (which is especially applicable to the 0.1%) at lower rates than middle class wages?
Do you mean deporting over 2-1/2 million undocumented immigrants?
Do you mean changing U.S. policy to detain women and children seeking asylum and giving Corrections Corp. of America a $1 billion no-bid contract to do so?
Do you mean his not removing cannabis from Schedule 1 Controlled Substances?
I would say he earned the $65 million for his book deal. The 0.1% and their industries made fortunes with him in office.
Plus because he appointed Hillary to Secretary of State whose blood thirsty history is well known. As is her pay for play where she sold the Saudis billions in weapons which they are using on innocent civilians in Yemen.
Plus she knew that they were the biggest sponsors of terrorism which has made the world less safe. You can thank her for the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their lives in Libya, Honduras and Ukraine as well as the hundreds of thousands of people who are now living in heinous conditions in refugee camps.
She was going to continue most of Obama's policies.
Any other questions?
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
I'll add to the list
I'll add to your list his (Obama's) failure to use his Attorneys General and the DOJ to stop the killing of POC by law enforcement.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
tremendous work! (+++)
I knew there was something funny about that guy.
want to put the thirty questions to Markos?
I'm sorry for not crediting ggersh with this
he posted this first and then I saw it on this Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/ian-berman/when-you-say-you-miss-presiden...
I know where I'd love to post this, but I have seen that facts are continually going over their heads there. It doesn't matter where the truth comes from, they just keep ignoring it and telling me that I'm a Trump lover. Oh well. At least I haven't been called a Putin lover. Yet.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
@snoopydawg
Yeah, because people like us just love fossil fuel-dependent crony capitalists.
Unless any propagandists might see this, in which case I'll have to point out that Putin did cut back military spending, with a horde of ravening militant fanatics massing and posturing on Russia's borders, in part to be certain that his people had their pensions. And that he seems to be more popular with his people than Trump and Hillary put together are with the American people. Not that that takes much...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Homelessness is a Democrat profit center in California
I'd rather kill myself then become another professional service product of the D-Value machine in California. Fake programs abound. No actual results yet, but good salary and pension for a few friends of the elected Clinton tools. Public/private. Inside/outside. This is not a game, it is real life and the D response is pathetic, in my view.
Medicare for All? What about Housing for All? Can't even do the basics here, MfA is diversion from the continual slide of the middle-class in to poverty. "That's the system." "We're capitalists." $10.50/hour STFU. Right to work.
Kaiser is the largest "non-profit" "healthcare" provider in California, after the executives get paid what is left? Dick.
Nixon HMOs
good luck
Bingo!
The entire homeless population knows we are a huge profit center for capitalism. Every homeless person supports countless bureaucratic and private sector jobs. The General Relief office always makes you come back 3-4 times to get routine benefits you obviously qualify for, because job security!
There are massive counter-incentives to solve the homeless problem, because of all the jobs and profits that any solution threatens.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
I've Been Trolling Public/Government Auctions for Stuff for
the bus.
The amount of shit from schools and government and the sheer scale has made me far more sympathetic to the conservative argument about bureacracy that you make above than I was before.
It's really kind of jarring when you see it.
If you stop buying the idea that they are on your side or helping people, the cons have a point, and the liberals get a "new" look (neoliberal).
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Editorial: Opening doors to our displaced friends and neighbors
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/opinion/7564387-181/pd-editorial-opening-doors-to
Keep going and read nothing about the thousands of poor people in Sonoma County who've been homeless for years, zero sense of urgency about their plight. But when the professional class suddenly has to go without, it's all hands on deck! Tiny homes, Burning Man shelters, RVs, city, county, and state codes waived, assistance abounds. The worthy.
"Moar opportunities for living space". Ding! Like "moar access to healthcare"? LOL Dog forbid you lose workers and can't attract new ones at $10.50 minimum. Right to work.
Democrats own the media group that spews forth from the Press Democrat these days. They own the PD, bought up the Healdsburg paper, Cloverdale paper, Windsor paper. It is all the same boring corporate template now. Sensational headlines and emo stories everywhere. Buried news, facts, plain information, have to dig for it.
I couldn't watch the county sheriff's press conference videos during disaster, no facebook account.
No Facebook? Die in a fire!
Zuckerberg 2020
good luck
Plus there aren't enough people who do construction anymore
and this is going to effect the reconstruction in Huston and Florida too. It's going to take years before people's homes are going to be live able again.
And since financial institutions have bought up so many of the foreclosed homes, where are those thousands of people who lost their homes in the fires going to live? The tiny houses are going to get old by the end of the month for people who are used to living in much bigger homes. And it depends on where they are being built. Will they have access to the sewer lines or how long until they can be connected to the electrical grid again? The rebuilding should be handled like the WPA jobs system that Roosevelt created. Not given out to the companies that will then hire subcontractors to be paid minimum wages.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
I'm pretty sure there are still parts of
New Orleans that still haven't recovered from Katrina. Sad!
This shit is bananas.
@Daenerys
Isn't that why Those Who Matter thoughtfully decided to help preserve such disaster victims forever, while they wait (forever) for adequate housing replacement, by pickling them in formaldehyde trailers?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
@snoopydawg
I think we're supposed to think of such disasters 'as a business opportunity' (like war-torn, US PTB-attacked countries) for American corporations/investors/billionaires getting close to finally becoming trillionaires, and be glad that those still having any money can contribute to their ever-increasing prosperity. At least, I seem to remember somebody saying something of the sort, at one point.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Absolutely
I've known what was going to happen to Puerto Rico's recovery since it happened. This is what happened in New Orleans and Haiti. Private contractors made millions while imported workers made minimum wage. Same thing with Haiti except the Clintons also screwed them and pocketed billions off the recovery donations.
Just one more reason they should be in prison.
I can at least take comfort in knowing that they will be shuffling off the mortal coil eventually.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.