How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality

While many Americans assume that most poor families live in subsidized housing, the opposite is true; nationwide, only one in four households that qualifies for rental assistance receives it. Most are like Diaz, struggling without government help in the private rental market, where housing costs claim larger and larger chunks of their income.

…The standard of “affordable” housing is that which costs roughly 30 percent or less of a family’s income. Because of rising housing costs and stagnant wages, slightly more than half of all poor renting families in the country spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing costs, and at least one in four spends more than 70 percent. Yet America’s national housing policy gives affluent homeowners large benefits; middle-class homeowners, smaller benefits; and most renters, who are disproportionately poor, nothing. It is difficult to think of another social policy that more successfully multiplies America’s inequality in such a sweeping fashion.

…But no one in his administration, and only a small (albeit growing) group of people in either party, is pushing to reform what may very well be the most regressive piece of social policy in America. Perhaps that’s because the mortgage-interest deduction overwhelmingly benefits the sorts of upper-middle-class voters who make up the donor base of both parties and who generally fail to acknowledge themselves to be beneficiaries of federal largess.
…Congress blocked many nonwhites, particularly African-Americans, from accessing [FDR’s] newly created ladders of opportunity. Farm work, housekeeping and other jobs disproportionately staffed by African-Americans were omitted from programs like Social Security and unemployment insurance. Local Veterans Affairs centers and other entities loyal to Jim Crow did their parts as well, systematically denying nonwhite veterans access to the G.I. Bill. If those veterans got past the V.A., they still had to contend with the banks, which denied loan applications in nonwhite neighborhoods because the Federal Housing Administration refused to insure mortgages there. From 1934 to 1968, the official F.H.A. policy of redlining made homeownership virtually impossible in black communities. “The consequences proved profound,” writes the historian Ira Katznelson in his perfectly titled book, “When Affirmative Action Was White.” “By 1984, when G.I. Bill mortgages had mainly matured, the median white household had a net worth of $39,135; the comparable figure for black households was only $3,397, or just 9 percent of white holdings. Most of this difference was accounted for by the absence of homeownership.”
Sigh…


FBI Investigates Alleged Bank Fraud By Jane Sanders 

Sanders stated in a 2010 loan application she had secured $2.6 million in promised donations to pay for the land purchase, which helped secure a $6.5 million loan from the People’s United Bank. Only $676,000 ever materialized over the next four years and the college defaulted on the loans, eventually going bankrupt in May 2016.

Carol Moore, who served as the final president of the college until its closure, told The DCNF the FBI contacted her as recently as a month ago regarding the allegations.

FBI Interviews Donors For Alleged Bank Fraud By Jane Sanders | The Daily Caller

Mere incompetence, as suggested by the school’s final president is far from ill intent or malfeasance. It is an interesting footnote though…

Lecturing Clinton About ‘Taking Responsibility’ For Her Defeat is Bizarre

First: Donald Trump’s electoral college victory turned out to be substantial. But it was based on fewer than 100,000 votes spread across a handful of states. In other words, it was extremely close and any number of small factors could have made the difference.

Second: The FBI Director broke all precedent and DOJ guidelines to announce a criminal investigation into what proved to be the losing candidate just over a week before the election. There was little reason to believe the purported new evidence would lead to any criminal charges or indeed even any substantial new evidence. And it turned out that the ‘investigation’ was based on nothing. The entire blow up turned out to be based on nothing and knowing what we know now about what investigators and Comey knew at the time suggest he had little reason to think there was anything there.

Third: A rival foreign power ransacked the computer files and email logs of the losing candidate and strategically leaked them out over the final months of the campaign with the intention and the effect of distracting and damaging what proved to be the losing candidate.

Fourth: We don’t know whether the winning candidate actively colluded with the rival foreign power. But we know that the candidate cheered the foreign power on in their campaign of damage and disruption. How do we know? He did it publicly? On camera. Out in the open. We all saw this.

…Close victories and defeats have a million potential causes. It matters a great deal which ones you want to focus on. But just in the realm of human nature and the standards we apply in almost every other context, the ‘take responsibility’ lecturing of Clinton just seems bizarre.

Lecturing Clinton About ‘Taking Responsibility’ For Her Defeat is Bizarre – Talking Points Memo

 

mhmmm

Low pay, high SF housing costs equal 1 homeless math teacher 

Etoria Cheeks teaches math at a public high school in San Francisco, explaining algebra and statistics to teenagers. In a shocking indication of just how bad San Francisco’s teacher housing situation is, Cheeks is homeless.  

…She was renting a room in a house in Daly City when she learned in December the house was in foreclosure, and she was evicted. With no family here, few friends and no savings because of a dispute over the security deposit, Cheeks had to scramble.

She put her belongings in storage and paid $30 to $50 a night for dorm beds in downtown hostels, moving around because they prohibit stays of more than 14 days. She looked at the below-market-rental lotteries run by the Mayor’s Office of Housing, but she made too much to qualify. She applied for apartments on Craigslist and other sites, but there was very little she could afford, and she kept striking out.

When her money ran low after two months in hostels, she was forced to sleep in a South of Market emergency homeless shelter called A Woman’s Place.

Low pay, high SF housing costs equal 1 homeless math teacher – San Francisco Chronicle

Sigh…

Bye bye, Bernie: He’s not fit to captain the Democratic ship if he can’t stop chasing the great white male

The Democratic Party is selling out women and all marginalized groups in favor of  [fiction]

Sanders is clear that he is not a Democrat — except when he needs to be one in order to run for president. 

…Economic populism and what are commonly erroneously and dismissively referred to as “social issues” — such as reproductive rights, immigration reform and civil rights for people of color, those who have disabilities, people of all faiths, LGBT people and women — are indivisible. Sanders routinely demonstrates his own lack of progressive values by dividing them.

There is no economic populism without abortion rights and civil rights. No one can have economic justice if he or she doesn’t have fundamental rights. Yet Sanders has made it plain that abortion rights are negotiable and brushes off [what he terms] “identity politics.” He consistently argues that his values — and his alone — should define what it is to be progressive. (Which can’t help but remind one of Donald Trump’s unilateral defining of terms.)

…The Democratic Party, which has a deeply progressive platform and whose candidate won the popular vote by 3 million and lost the Electoral College tally by only 77,000 votes in just three states, need not look for its soul. Its soul is right there in its platform and its voters, not in Sanders’ white-male dog-whistle rhetoric.

Bye bye, Bernie: He’s not fit to captain the Democratic ship if he can’t stop chasing the great white male – Salon.com

Mmmmhmmm.

 

 

New Orleans Begins Confederate-Monument Removal

New Orleans is severing its ties to the racist Confederate history that lingers in the city by removing several Confederate statues. Early Monday morning, city workers were to begin to take down the statues while it was still dark to avoid clashing with those wanting to preserve the [white-washing.]

New Orleans Begins Confederate-Monument Removal

Yeah you right! Good on ya, New Orleans.

In response to a LOT of comments I saw when the mayor went live to talk about this:

1.) Yes confederates were traitors. (What are you, f’ing stupid?) They were literally waging war against the US government. How much more of a perfect definition of treason do you want?

2.) No one is erasing history. They are just refusing to elevate a totally twisted and slanted version of it above the truth anymore.

3.) You want to boycott New Orleans because of this? Great! If that’s how you feel nobody wants your backwards, hateful, fucktard self on their streets anyways. Please, stay where you are. No need to slither out from under your rock, trash!

And finally, wooohoooo!!

Red Pill Boss: All Feminists Want to Be Raped 

GOP State Rep. Robert Fisher denies he is still involved with a misogynistic Reddit forum, but an investigation suggests he may be posting incendiary comments under a new alias.

Fisher, now 31, described women as having “sub-par intelligence,” suggested that women’s bodies are the only thing that makes their “lackluster” personalities “worth it,” and commonly expressed paranoia about what he perceived as a growing plague of “false rape accusations” supposedly used as a weapon by feminists.

…redpillschool had said, “There’s no discussion of rape strategies [on the forum.]” But to his fellow red-pillers, he joked, “You don’t need a strategy for rape, other than ‘where do i buy roofies, and what’s the best brand of duct tape?’”

…In December 2016, redpillschool conducted an exhaustive three-part “thought experiment” called “All Women Lie About Rape.” …“Every woman I know has a rape or attempted rape story… But on the other side I don’t know a single man who is interested in raping women,” he wrote.

“Feminists are obsessed with rape because we live in a rape fantasy culture, where feminists wish they were hot enough to be rape-able,” he wrote in April 2014. “

“Every woman wants to be attractive enough to be raped. It’s like the pinnacle of male desire, when he can’t stop no matter what.”

And marital rape—a crime in all 50 states—shouldn’t exist as a concept in his view. “If a woman does not wish to submit to her husband she should not marry him. The contract of marriage is the verbal and written consent for sex,” he wrote in 2013.

…On The Red Pill, redpillschool wrote a lengthy post entitled, “‘Sexual Assault’ is why I’m Endorsing Donald Trump for President of the United States.”

…In 2015 and 2016 redpillschool posted a column titled, “Women are Children.” …He contends that he has “met enough women” to make an accurate generalization.

“I’m saying that women, by function of who they are, cannot have the same perspective or experience as men, and therefore cannot be expected to have the same maturity level. Even if a woman is well behaved and well mannered, her thought process still comes from a limited and childish perspective,” he wrote in May 2016.

…This perspective is one reason some on The Red Pill advocate stripping women of the right to vote.

Red Pill Boss: All Feminists Want to Be Raped – The Daily Beast

Stay classy, NH GOP!

Missouri City Banishes Domestic Violence Survivors for Calling the Police 

In 2012, the city of Maplewood, Missouri ordered Rosetta Watson to vacate her home. But the city wasn’t done punishing Watson yet and also barred her from living anywhere in the city for six months. Her offense? She called the police four times seeking protection from her abusive ex-boyfriend.

Under Maplewood’s local ordinance, more than two calls to police regarding domestic violence within 180 days qualifies as a “nuisance,” as do commission of acts prohibited by federal, state, or local laws at a property. The ordinance does not exempt situations where residents need to call police for help or where they are crime victims.

Maplewood officials concluded that Ms. Watson should be removed from her home and banished from the city because she made calls for help with domestic violence, even though it was clear from the city’s own records that her ex-boyfriend had physically assaulted her. She was forced to move to St. Louis, where he again attacked her. This time, he broke in and stabbed her in the legs.

Because of her experience in Maplewood, she feared calling the police and instead took herself to the hospital. When the hospital contacted police, she was relieved to learn that law enforcement would not punish her. Her ex-boyfriend was arrested, convicted, and incarcerated.

This Missouri City Banishes Domestic Violence Survivors for Calling the Police | American Civil Liberties Union

sigh…

And Jesus Said Unto Paul of Ryan …

Jesus turned to her and said: “Fear not. Because of your faith, you are now healed.”

Then spoke Pious Paul of Ryan: “But teacher, is that wise? When you cure her, she learns dependency. Then the poor won’t take care of themselves, knowing that you’ll always bail them out! You must teach them personal responsibility!”

The truth makes the best punchlines.

Here’s How Frequently Women Supreme Court Justices Are Interrupted by Men 

A new study shows that in 2015, when a record-high three women sat on the Supreme Court, 65.9 of interruptions happened as the women made their oral arguments.

…Interestingly enough, the women on the court actually speak less often and use fewer words when they make their argument (it’s unconfirmed if this a defense mechanism to cope with the inevitability of a male justice interrupting them). However, that doesn’t stop their male colleagues from interjecting at a much higher rate than they would for the other men sitting on the bench. Case in point: In 2015, Ginsburg was interrupted 11 times by Anthony Kennedy; Sotomayor was interrupted 15 times by Kennedy, 14 times by Samuel Alito, and 12 times by Chief Justice John Roberts; Kagan was interrupted over 10 times each by Kennedy, Alito, and Roberts. In contrast, only two of the men court were interrupted upwards of 10 times and the highest number of interruptions coming from one of the women was seven.

…Worse, this behavior even carries through to advocates who appear before the Supreme Court. These men show less deference for the women on the Court and interrupt the women regularly, even though Court protocol prohibits such behavior and the Chief Justice is expected to intervene when such a matter occurs.

Here’s How Frequently Women Supreme Court Justices Are Interrupted by Men | Glamour

Unacceptable to show such disrespect to SJC justices.

F*ck Roberts and the hack horse he rode in on if he can’t a tighter lid on interruptions in his courtroom. Clearly his own respect for the rule of law and the institution and the country he serves is nil. Until he regulates and insists on respect for all justices ont he bench, he’s simply a useless, inequality fomenting, injustice perpetrating f*ckstick.

The GOP’s Attack on Voting Rights Was the Most Under-Covered Story of 2016 

There were 25 debates during the presidential primaries and general election and not a single question about the attack on voting rights, even though this was the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act.

27,000 votes currently separate Trump and Clinton in Wisconsin, where 300,000 registered voters, according to a federal court, lacked strict forms of voter ID.

On Election Day, there were 868 fewer polling places in states with a long history of voting discrimination, like Arizona, Texas, and North Carolina. These changes impacted hundreds of thousands of voters, yet received almost no coverage. In North Carolina, as my colleague Joan Walsh reported, black turnout decreased 16 percent during the first week of early voting because “in 40 heavily black counties, there were 158 fewer early polling places.” Even if these restrictions had no outcome on the election, it’s fundamentally immoral to keep people from voting in a democracy. The media devoted hours and hours to Trump’s absurd claim that the election was rigged against him, while spending precious little time on the real threat that voters faced.

The GOP’s Attack on Voting Rights Was the Most Under-Covered Story of 2016 | The Nation

sigh…

‘Trump’s mouth is only good as Vladimir Putin’s c*ck holster’: Colbert brutalizes Trump in 2-minute blitz

Colbert noted Dickerson has too much “dignity to trade insults with the president of the United States to his face,” adding “But I, sir, am no John Dickerson.”

Colbert said Trump “attracts more skinheads than free Rogaine,” has “more people marching against [him] than cancer,” and talks “like a sign-language gorilla who got hit in the head.”

Going all-in against the president, Colbert added: “Sir, the only the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s cock holster.”

‘Trump’s mouth is only good as Vladimir Putin’s c*ck holster’: Colbert brutalizes Trump in 2-minute blitz

Heh.

 

Donald and Ivana Trump’s Divorce: The Full Story 

Donald is a believer in the big-lie theory,” his lawyer had told me. “If you say something again and again, people will believe you.”

…Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. 

…Trump’s negotiations, according to one lawyer who worked on the acquisition of the Atlantic City casino of Resorts International, were always unusually unpleasant. After the success of The Art of the Deal, Trump’s lawyers began to talk about “Donald’s ego” as if it were a separate entity. “Donald’s ego will never permit us to accept that point,” one lawyer said over and over again during the negotiations. “The key to Donald, like with any bully, is to tell him to go fuck himself,” the lawyer told me.

Donald and Ivana Trump’s Divorce: The Full Story | Vanity Fair

An oldie but a goodie.

A majority of the American people either voted for this or refused to support the only plausible alternative.

A majority of the American people deserve what they get.

#snakeoilsalesman

The Republican Lawmaker Who Secretly Created Reddit’s Women-Hating ‘Red Pill’

A web of secret online identities connects the creator of the misogynistic Red Pill forum to a New Hampshire state representative.

…The Red Pill—an online Reddit community of nearly 200,000 subscribers that promotes itself as a “discussion of sexual strategy in a culture increasingly lacking a positive identity for men.”

…On Reddit’s Men’s Rights forum, [Fisher’s associate] Youssef described “the corruption, greed, lies, and abject depravity of the feminist system…” 

Youssef and Fisher aren’t the only New Hampshire politicos to have espoused anti-feminist beliefs. In 2015, New Hampshire State Rep. Al Baldasaro, a Republican, publicly mocked the breasts of fellow female lawmakers in the name of protecting “family values.” 

And yet Fisher’s past comments on a host of Reddit forums are arguably far more disturbing than what his colleagues have said in public. He blasted women for their “sub-par intelligence.” He said that women’s personalities are “lackluster and boring, serving little purpose in day to day life.” And Fisher once commented, “It is literally the [female] body that makes enduring these things worth it.”

…“You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill… and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”

In manosphere-speak, the rabbit hole is feminism, which the red pill reveals to be a War on Men. In this [delusional departure from] reality, the “feminine imperative” reigns; masculinity is its victim. As a result of this power struggle, old gender dynamics formerly seen as mutually beneficial, such as marriage, have all but disappeared, but female expectations of a pedestalled life unfairly remain. A common refrain among men’s rights activists is “take the pussy off the pedestal.”

The Red Pill ….community also subscribes to the beliefs that women lack both intelligence and substance, are programed to cheat on their partners, and expire after the age of 30. Its darkest sections are heavy with rape denial and apologia.

…On The Red Pill, Fisher commonly expressed disappointment that the institutions of marriage and religion were destroyed by women’s equality. He maintained that as a result of financial independence, women were no longer compelled to remain faithful and as a result, men needed to protectively adapt their sexual strategy.

“Marriage, and yes, female oppression, slut shaming, religion, these were all a means to control hypergamy [infidelity]. Marriages might be considered loveless, and women might have been unhappy, but for men it meant marriages that lasted, commitments that continued, and protection against the fickle whims of females,” Fisher wrote on The Red Pill in November 2012.

“To give women autonomy is to take away the very thing that made marriage a realistic institution… what I dislike is the general attitude that somehow we owe [women] something for sex…” …Fisher wrote.

…“Understand that in the old days, women were not brought up the way they are today. Before feminism, there was less freedom, and therefore it was not necessary to teach women consequence. Consequence was strictly a man’s game. Feminism took the lid off pandora’s box, but the mothers, and the daughters of those mothers never internalized, learned, or passed down the concept of responsibility for their freedoms, only the freedom itself.” Fisher wrote in 2013.

In addition to anti-feminist screeds, The Red Pill teaches “sexual strategy.” This includes how to “spin plates,” or balance sleeping with several women at once; how to respond to women’s “shit-tests,” a social device used to determine a suitor’s “fitness”; and how to practice “negging,” a game tactic involving a backhanded compliment calculated to undermine confidence and make a woman more vulnerable to advances. Red Pillers practice “dread game,” or intentionally instilling “dread” in a partner that you have other options, and various other techniques.

Of gaming women, Fisher said, “[Women have] absolutely done this to themselves. I feel zero regret or shame pumping and dumping.”

…Fisher seemed obsessed with the negative effects feminism was having on his dating experience.

…He felt  …that women get a free ride, believing “a pair of boobs grants [them] equal footing with somebody bringing intelligence or a personality.” 

…Fisher posited that the notion that “rape is bad” was not an absolute truth. He wrote, “I’m going to say it—Rape isn’t an absolute bad, because the rapist I think probably likes it a lot. I think he’d say it’s quite good, really.”

Though he stated he “doesn’t advocate breaking the law,” Fisher said online in 2012 that a 40-year-old man asking to see the breasts of a 15-year-old wasn’t creepy. Instead, he said it was “evolutionarily advantageous and perfectly natural.”

Besides, Fisher argued, historically, statutory rape and age of consent laws gave the sexes unequal treatment in that only females were given protection under such laws. He noted that these laws were intended to protect “teenage girls” from having their virginity stolen. Indeed, age of consent laws were originally intended to preserve virginity—a “commodity” at the time—however, in Colonial America, where statutory rape was considered a property crime, the age of consent was generally 10 or 12.

…“Regret-rape” accusations refer to the theory that women, to alleviate feelings of guilt, shame or promiscuity, accuse men of rape to detach themselves from responsibility. Men’s rights activists refer to this as an “anti-slut defense,” and have an acronym for it, ASD.

…Among Red Pillers, the notion that women commonly abuse the judicial system for means of retaliation, or “cry rape” for attention, is viewed as a matter-of-fact element of the feminist “agenda.”

The Republican Lawmaker Who Secretly Created Reddit’s Women-Hating ‘Red Pill’

And this is what NH GOP has to offer women… Charming!