From the WSJ:
Regulatory Costs Inflate New-Home Prices, Builders Say
As the cost of construction permitting has risen over the past decade, Atlanta home builder Dennis McConnell has taken a new approach with customers.
He now itemizes the regulatory costs so buyers can see firsthand why the price tags for his houses are so high. Among recent charges he has outlined: $8,000 for a new type of storm-water capture device required for each house, $3,500 for customized architectural plans required on every lot and about $15,000 to remove a tree from the property.
With every new regulation, “the more expensive it becomes,” said Mr. McConnell, president of Healthy House of Georgia. “I don’t build affordable houses anymore.”
As home builders pick up the pace after a punishing downturn, they face a bevy of new regulations and higher fees governing everything from environmental quality and park access to regulations on the amount of brick on a home exterior. Builders say many of the new requirements are well-meaning, but added up they translate to higher costs that are passed on to prospective purchasers.
For the past five years, the median new home price has been 32% to 38% higher than the median price of a resale home, according to data from the U.S. Census and the National Association of Realtors, the largest such gap since the figures started being tracked in the 1960s. Compliance costs are one of many factors affecting prices of new homes, economists said. Builders have also focused more on the move-up and premium markets throughout the economic recovery, meaning a tendency toward larger, pricier homes.
Several recent studies have documented how increased regulatory and permitting costs affect prices. A report by John Burns Real Estate Consulting in Irvine, Calif., concluded that new homes have become “permanently more expensive to build” because of increased regulations.
The study surveyed more than 100 building-industry executives, asking for examples of costs that didn’t exist a decade earlier. New regulations included a survey required in some areas of the Midwest to determine whether endangered bats are on a property, which builders said can cost $10,000 or more for each new development.
A report in May from the National Association of Home Builders found that the average cost for builders to comply with regulations has risen nearly 30% over the past five years. A study from housing-research firm Zelman & Associates calculated that local “impact fees” charged to builders and developers to pay for services such as roads, sewers and parks have climbed 45% since 2005 to an average of $21,000 per home across 37 major markets.
Good Morning New Jersey
Malik Obama endorses Trump
http://nypost.com/2016/07/24/why-obamas-half-brother-says-hell-be-voting-for-donald-trump/
Cry me a river. This guy wants to build a 1,ooo houses that look exactly the same. He also can give a sh!t about the water problem I suppose. Just build to infinity, no need to worry if you exhaust the water supply. 15,000 to remove a tree? Well obviously it’s not an ordinary tree like he tries to imply. Once again, cry me a river.
“He now itemizes the regulatory costs so buyers can see firsthand why the price tags for his houses are so high. Among recent charges he has outlined: $8,000 for a new type of storm-water capture device required for each house, $3,500 for customized architectural plans required on every lot and about $15,000 to remove a tree from the property.
With every new regulation, “the more expensive it becomes,” said Mr. McConnell, president of Healthy House of Georgia. “I don’t build affordable houses anymore.””
Verizon – first AOL and now YAHOO? I hear MySpace is for sale too.
Which speaker at the DNC will be calling for Marijuana legalization, it is on their platform, along with $15 minimum wage and carbon taxes.
Who to blame for higher home prices?
The Fed. Same as it ever was.
DNC email cheat sheet:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/07/detailed-list-findings-wikileaks-dnc-document-dump/
I love a good turn of a phrase:
After inviting Ted Cruz to speak at his own assassination on Wednesday, Trump once again raised the possibility that the elder Cruz was involved in Kennedy’s death.
http://gawker.com/reince-priebus-defends-donald-trumps-right-to-imply-you-1784235843
Nobody should be named Reince Preibus
WTF are 12 year olds doing at a teen night club at 12:30 AM?
Enjoy the FB live post at the bottom.
A Facebook live post by “Juss Olivia” describes the events of the shooting. Warning, this video posted below contains explicit language.
http://www.news-press.com/story/news/2016/07/25/two-dead-up-16-injured-after-shooting-fort-myers-nightclub/87518214/
Ruh-roh! Trump leads Clinton in latest Clinton News Network poll, 48%-45%
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2016/images/07/25/trump.clinton.poll.pdf
Can’t wait for “Lock …Her…Up” chants inside convention.
[7] expat
WOW!!!
I’m old enough to remember Watergate, and studied it extensively back in the day. People went to jail for doing what the DNC has been doing here.
And the evidence of CNN and MSNBC complicity is striking because I wrote a few chapters for a book last year that described eerily similar machinations.
Wow, it’s amazing how the l1berals flee like c0ckroaches when the lights are turned on. How quiet this place has become today! The DNC exposed big time! If I was a Bernie supporter, I think I would be storming Philadelphia.
[12] expat
That’s easily explained by post-convention bounce and the fact that pollsters, like media, are to a large degree in the tank for the Dems. The more liberal outfits have been putting out the most pessimistic polls. The goal is to scare the base into getting out and voting.
Hillary could coast to victory but her experience with Obama in 2008 tells her that she cannot risk letting Trump off the mat. She will raise funds and continue a full court press to insure her victory and help downstream democrats. And you can’t do that if the polls are showing you to be winning going away.
“PHILADELPHIA — Al Gore will not be attending this week’s Democratic National Committee Convention in Philadelphia despite being a Tennessee superdelegate, a spokeswoman for the former vice president said Sunday.”
HRC just took the stage in front of a VFW crowd in Charlotte. She was brought up with a Soussa march, “The Liberty Bell”. Anybody around my age might better remember the music as the theme music for Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
I was a Bernie supporter and this just shows that your vote really doesn’t matter. Don’t know why I even waste time paying attention to politics, it’s a rigged game. No Trump isn’t changing that, over the past few weeks, he has started to look and sound more and more like a career politician. Even his kids have changed and become like typical politicians(think they now all have aspirations to become career politicians). Drink the power, then become drunk off the power, and then you become something totally different from when you started. Politics continuously does this to people, over and over again. Nature of the beast.
Fast Eddie says:
July 25, 2016 at 11:00 am
Wow, it’s amazing how the l1berals flee like c0ckroaches when the lights are turned on. How quiet this place has become today! The DNC exposed big time! If I was a Bernie supporter, I think I would be storming Philadelphia.
[19] Plumpky – Why don’t you go and make some friends with a turkey or two on on the highway out front? Maybe plan a coup?
Rut roh, Shaggy!
“Public Pensions’ Underfunding Is Much Worse Than It Seems
STEVEN MALANGA
When financial markets slumped in 2008, the assets in government-worker pension funds plunged and public sector retirement debt soared. Although pension officials rushed to assure the public that their funds would recover as soon as stocks rebounded, the long bull market that began the following year didn’t do much to cut states steep retirement debt. Now, 18 months of mediocre investment returns have sent the unfunded liabilities of state and local pension funds soaring to unprecedented levels and have raised new questions about whether some of these traditional retirement plans supported by tax dollars are sustainable.
Most state and local pension funds closed the books on their latest fiscal year on June 30, and during that 12-month period the bellwether Standard & Poor’s 500 increased by less than half a percentage point. While many funds have yet to report their results for the year, early returns suggest that the industry fell well short of its lofty investment goals. .Employees’ Retirement System, earned a mere 0.6% in the last year, significantly below its 7.5% target. Its sister fund, the California State Teachers Retirement system, which also aims for a 7.5% annual return, instead notched a 1.4% gain for the year. The New York State and Local Retirement System, which ended its fiscal year on March 31, reported a gain of just 0.2% versus an investment goal of 7%. It’s likely that other pension funds have similarly failed by a wide margin to hit their investment targets given that most government pension funds rarely perform significantly better than the broader market.
These disappointing numbers come on top of a substandard fiscal 2015, when pensions systems earned on average 3.2%, well below their average projections of 7.6% annually. In a March report Moody’s Investors Service estimated that the 2015 investing shortfall increased unfunded liabilities at government pension plans by 17%. Given that most funds likely performed even worse in the fiscal year that just ended, it’s probable that debt increased again by at least 2015 levels, if not more.
To gain some perspective on what that means, consider that in January the Rockefeller Institute of Government estimated that public pension fund debt was approaching $1.7 trillion and that the poor performance of funds since the middle of 2015 had wiped out most gains from double- digit investment increases in 2013 and 2014 (Estimates based on more conservative variables place state and local pension debt potentially as high as $4.8 trillion).”
Bet no Indian kids were at a club at 12:30 at night. Guess that’s why they go to failing schools and come out on track to become future doctors. Go ahead take the easy way out and blame the schools instead of the parents. They go to the same school where legions of these other kids fail, but they somehow come out on top. Luck or is parenting and a drive to succeed? We can blame the schools all day, but that’s not the answer. Hasn’t been the answer for years, but the same people keep pushing that the schools are the problem, not the parents who fail to teach their kids how to learn and be a “successful student.”
Juice Box digging his own grave says:
July 25, 2016 at 10:33 am
WTF are 12 year olds doing at a teen night club at 12:30 AM?
This is ironic.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-07-22/labor-clinton-rust-belt
Sooo, the organizations most responsible for the Rust Belt becoming the Rust Belt are going back to the Rust Belt and telling the folks who lost their industries to cheaper competition, “trust us, we know what’s best for you.”
It seems to me that in the Salons of power, they feel that these unejookated white men are all mouth-breathing morons, and hell, if hey are stupid enough to vote republican, maybe they are stupid enough to buy our sales pitch.
Here’s a prediction: The DNC hack scandal has about another 24 hours of life. Bernie will get up and say something to take the wind out of supporters’ sails and bury the story.
Why will this happen? Because right now, Bernie and his campaign managers are getting some terse messages delivered from the HRC camp and the DNC to make it go away or things will get ugly for him and his platform. This is how it’s done and you will see Bernie fold like a cheap suit by sometime tonight.
Sorry Stu.
[24] redux,
BTW, I am aware that Bernie will speak tonight and endorse Clinton and propose solidarity. But I expect now that he will address this issue directly and put out the fire. He is being told in no uncertain terms to do this.
Also, I noticed that CNN’s deflection onto Russian intelligence came down off the lede awfully fast. I wonder if they got so much shiite for it, they decided to pull it?
No doubt NOM. He could sink the Clinton ship if he wanted to, but he’s a wussy.
@charliespiering
Wow. They really are booing Bernie Sanders for endorsing Hillary
https://twitter.com/charliespiering/status/757630711918505984
. @BernieSanders trying 2 control crowd after he tells them they must elect @HillaryClinton. Place erupts in booing
https://twitter.com/laurenblanch12/status/757630773964967936
Where’s anon…Mr. GOP is broken….out doing some taco bowl engagement today I suppose?
D-FENS [29];
He’ll be by just as soon as his Twitter masters tell him what to think and what to say.
Rotoprofessor | Here to help with all your fantasy sports …
After this latest scandal, could it be that anon (the broken one) is reconsidering his total devotion to the dems?
Nah, he still worships them unquestionably.
Wow…I’m watching the start of the DEM convention as I get some work done remotely and I can’t help but think how tainted the whole DNC is. There may be more Sanders protesters outside than there are inside. Which party is broken Twitiot.
I wonder if any of those choir members is LaQueenia? I’m cracking myself up over here.
Boyz 2 Men just performed “End of the Road” to open the DNC convention. Interesting song choice. What wonderful vetting the DNC is showing.
Really…both parties are exactly the same.
Am I watching the right convention? All I’m seeing is a lot of cankles.
How long do automotive batteries last these days? In our 2002 Mazda I couldn’t believe that the original battery lasted 7.5 years. Our second battery (Sears DieHard) lasted 1 year(replaced for free). The one I replaced today(Also DieHard) lasted 6 years.
non-gear heads need read no further
Sept 2009
I called AAA, they jumped it and tested the battery and said the battery was bad, so I promptly drove it to Sears in the rain and the car almost died a couple times to the point where I had to turn the lights and wipers off and rev the engine at traffic lights. When I got to Sears they gave me the bad news that the battery was bad and the alternator was “half bad”. They told me that the alternator wasn’t charging at idle, only at speeds above idle. On the way home I verified this to be true by putting the LCD display into diagnostic mode (hold the trip reset while starting the car on Ford and Mazda products, maybe others?). In diagnostic mode you can push the trip meter button a bunch of times and each press switches to one of 20 different metrics, “bat shows the charging volts.” Spent about $600 getting the alternator replaced at the dealer.
Sept 2010 (51 weeks later)
Once again the car doesn’t start. Once again AAA tells us the battery is bad. I send my wife over to Sears this time and they plop in a new battery for free. She leaves Sears and the charging light goes on and she calls me and I tell her to turn around and go back to Sears. They say that the alternator is bad. We take it back to the dealer and get a ‘nother new, but this time free, alternator (at 53 weeks I would have been screwed).
No (charging) problems for almost 6 more years.
February 2016
Car fails to start in my MIL’s driveway in NJ the morning we are heading back to MA. I jump start it and it is fine for almost 6 months. I figure a door was not closed properly and the 3 dome lights drew the battery down.
Today
I drove the car yesterday at 6PM, no problems. The car won’t start for my wife this morning, solenoid clicking, I figure maybe dome light(s) on over night again. She calls AAA but while waiting a neighbor gives her a jump start. She drives my daughter to a soccer clinic a couple miles away, comes home. Picks my daughter up at noon, car starts fine at both ends of the journey. Home for lunch, takes my daughter to her tennis camp a mile away, car won’t start when she goes to leave. She calls AAA, they jump her and say the battery is bad. I took the car to Sears and bought a new battery(25% off when you order and pay online on Cyber Monday) and verified the alternator is charging in diag mode, both at idle and at speed. I’m hoping I don’t need an alternator. It’s charging at 13.8v lights on or off, which was the old number voltage regulators were set for back in the day, but I think it used to charge at around 14.2.
Lib – Did you catch something akin to “check your privilege” already?
Am I watching the right convention? All I’m seeing is a lot of cankles.
How are your wires (to the spark plugs). As cars age, they need to have their wires replaced as the engine gets harder and harder to turn over. Though it does sounds like the alternator, Replacing the wires is really easy and pretty cheap (usually). You might want to consider it.
Yep, lotsa cankles, one Fudge, one Fudgepacker.
Those leaks are going to absolutely ruin the DNC convention. It’s awesome.
DNC just issued an apology to Bernie through Twitter. Like everything else…it took the protest on the floor to make them act. Like Hillary, the DNC is “reactive” at best.
Lib – you probably haven’t pulled the plastic cover off a 21st century engine yet. No more wires as you remember them. The thick wires that connect the plugs to the distributor are no more as each cylinder has it’s own individual coil pack atop each spark plug and the coils are each fired by a low voltage (thin)wire, not a thick high voltage wire any more. The coilpacks do themselves go bad and I’ve had the 3 difficult ones (V6 bank agains the firewall) replaced with new when the first one went bad and kept the two good ones as spares for one any of the front 3 fail, and I’ve already used one (it is about a 10 minute job to swap one of the front ones). Also if there is any problem with those the check engine light goes on and the code that is thrown. I have a $6 iPad app and a low power bluetooth low energy sending unit(about $20 if you shop around) on the OBD II port that sends me the data wirelessly. It’s also handy for when my wife doesn’t put the gas cap on correctly and the check engine light goes on; I can just pull out my iPad and both read and clear the code to turn the Check Engine Light off. It’s also the best backseat driving app as you have a complete virtual dashboard. It runs on iPhone too.
http://www.ksolution.org/outdoor/enginelink.html
How are your wires (to the spark plugs). As cars age, they need to have their wires replaced as the engine gets harder and harder to turn over. Though it does sounds like the alternator, Replacing the wires is really easy and pretty cheap (usually). You might want to consider it.
I have to believe they are trying to bait the Donald into making some fat chick tweets.
Reddit, of all places, has compiled a comprehensive case against Trump. This is well worth sharing.
https://m.reddit.com/r/EnoughTrumpSpam/comments/4teoxl/a_final_response_to_the_tell_me_why_trump_is_a/?utm_source=mweb_redirect&compact=true
I thought the REP convention was entertaining. Bernie’s speech tonight is going to be the best! I hope the Berner’s plan some FIFA style Tifo.
Excellent read on understanding trump.
“The answer requires a bit of background.
In the 1900’s, as part of my research in the cognitive and brain sciences, I undertook to answer a question in my field: How do the various policy positions of conservatives and progressives hang together? Take conservatism: What does being against abortion have to do with being for owning guns? What does owning guns have to do with denying the reality of global warming? How does being anti-government fit with wanting a stronger military? How can you be pro-life and for the death penalty? Progressives have the opposite views. How do their views hang together?
The answer came from a realization that we tend to understand the nation metaphorically in family terms: We have founding fathers. We send our sons and daughters to war. We have homeland security. The conservative and progressive worldviews dividing our country can most readily be understood in terms of moral worldviews that are encapsulated in two very different common forms of family life: The Nurturant Parent family (progressive) and the Strict Father family (conservative).
What do social issues and the politics have to do with the family? We are first governed in our families, and so we grow up understanding governing institutions in terms of the governing systems of families.
In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right. Many conservative spouses accept this worldview, uphold the father’s authority, and are strict in those realms of family life that they are in charge of. When his children disobey, it is his moral duty to punish them painfully enough so that, to avoid punishment, they will obey him (do what is right) and not just do what feels good. Through physical discipline they are supposed to become disciplined, internally strong, and able to prosper in the external world. What if they don’t prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. This reasoning shows up in conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and the rich as deserving their wealth. Responsibility is thus taken to be personal responsibility not social responsibility. What you become is only up to you; society has nothing to do with it. You are responsible for yourself, not for others — who are responsible for themselves.”
https://georgelakoff.com/2016/07/22/understanding-trump/
[37] BTW, Here is how low Sears customer service has dropped.
When I was shopping for a battery today I found I could order the battery online for free in store pick-up. It also looked like I could pay 10 bucks, also online, to have it installed when I got there. For another 20 bucks on top of that I could select “DieHard Battery Service”. I had to do a separate search to find out what the heck that was:
http://www.shopyourway.com/diehard-battery-service/397839305
Well, online it looked like I could order both, but the above link indicates that Diehard Service includes installation, so they should be mutually exclusive. I rang them on the phone. The auto center phone rang somewhere between 20 and 30 times before “Rodney” answered. I asked him if batteries were on sale as they seemed to be online and he said, “No, they are not on sale, but we have batteries.” I asked him for a quote and he said that the best he could do was take my phone number and have someone call me back. I thanked him and gave him my number. In the mean time I decided that the battery install was a piece of cake so I just ordered the battery online, drove to the store, took my old battery out, carried it in, walked out with new battery, installed it and drove home. I called my wife and told her were all set and I was on my way home. When I got home she said that someone from Sears called after I finished up and called her. She said the person who called said, “Someone at this number wanted to buy some tires?”
I’ll take the other side of this bet and posit that the best emails haven’t been dropped yet.
Here’s a prediction: The DNC hack scandal has about another 24 hours of life. Bernie will get up and say something to take the wind out of supporters’ sails and bury the story.
“Establishment conservative policies have not only been shaped by the political power of white evangelical churches, but also by the political power of those who seek maximally laissez-faire free markets, where wealthy people and corporations set market rules in their favor with minimal government regulation and enforcement. They see taxation not as investment in publicly provided resources for all citizens, but as government taking their earnings (their private property) and giving the money through government programs to those who don’t deserve it. This is the source of establishment Republicans’ anti-tax and shrinking government views. This version of conservatism is quite happy with outsourcing to increase profits by sending manufacturing and many services abroad where labor is cheap, with the consequence that well-paying jobs leave America and wages are driven down here. Since they depend on cheap imports, they would not be in favor of imposing high tariffs.
But Donald Trump is not in a business that makes products abroad to import here and mark up at a profit. As a developer, he builds hotels, casinos, office buildings, golf courses. He may build them abroad with cheap labor but he doesn’t import them. Moreover, he recognizes that most small business owners in America are more like him — American businesses like dry cleaners, pizzerias, diners, plumbers, hardware stores, gardeners, contractors, car washers, and professionals like architects, lawyers, doctors, and nurses. High tariffs don’t look like a problem.
Many business people are pragmatic conservatives. They like government power when it works for them. Take eminent domain. Establishment Republicans see it as an abuse by government — government taking of private property. But conservative real estate developers like Trump depend on eminent domain so that homes and small businesses in areas they want to develop can be taken by eminent domain for the sake of their development plans. All they have to do is get local government officials to go along, with campaign contributions and the promise of an increase in local tax dollars helping to acquire eminent domain rights. Trump points to Atlantic City, where he build his casino using eminent domain to get the property.
If businesses have to pay for their employees’ health care benefits, Trump would want them to have to pay as little as possible to maximize profits for businesses in general. He would therefore want health insurance and pharmaceutical companies to charge as little as possible. To increase competition, he would want insurance companies to offer plans nationally, avoiding the state-run exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. The exchanges are there to maximize citizen health coverage, and help low-income people get coverage, rather than to increase business profits. Trump does however want to keep the mandatory feature of ACA, which establishment conservatives hate since they see it as government overreach, forcing people to buy a product. For Trump, however, the mandatory feature for individuals increases the insurance pool and brings down costs for businesses.”
“Establishment conservative policies have not only been shaped by the political power of white evangelical churches, but also by the political power of those who seek maximally laissez-faire free markets, where wealthy people and corporations set market rules in their favor with minimal government regulation and enforcement. They see taxation not as investment in publicly provided resources for all citizens, but as government taking their earnings (their private property) and giving the money through government programs to those who don’t deserve it. This is the source of establishment Republicans’ anti-tax and shrinking government views. This version of conservatism is quite happy with outsourcing to increase profits by sending manufacturing and many services abroad where labor is cheap, with the consequence that well-paying jobs leave America and wages are driven down here. Since they depend on cheap imports, they would not be in favor of imposing high tariffs.
But Donald Trump is not in a business that makes products abroad to import here and mark up at a profit. As a developer, he builds hotels, casinos, office buildings, golf courses. He may build them abroad with cheap labor but he doesn’t import them. Moreover, he recognizes that most small business owners in America are more like him — American businesses like dry cleaners, pizzerias, diners, plumbers, hardware stores, gardeners, contractors, car washers, and professionals like architects, lawyers, doctors, and nurses. High tariffs don’t look like a problem.”
I rarely step into Brick & Mortar anymore due to the lack of service.
Fun times….some pretty scary weather this evening. After picking up my son we decided to wait inside for the storm to break. We were watching kids hockey practice at Middleton Ice World. Booming thunder in the place made it sound like the little kids were really hitting the boards hard. Then the lights went out and for a few seconds it was pitch black before the emergency exit lights clicked on. My three year old was screaming like a banshee the whole time saying he needed to go to the Hospital because he was too scared.
14 dead, 45 hurt in mass knife-ing
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/world/japan-knife-attack-deaths/index.html
The DNC Stasi are confiscating Bernie signs at the convention.
https://twitter.com/regated/status/757690019138117632/video/1
grim # 52 in Mod…
46-
“2. Framing: Crooked Hillary. Framing Hillary as purposely and knowingly committing crimes for her own benefit, which is what a crook does. Repeating makes many people unconsciously think of her that way, even though she has been found to have been honest and legal by thorough studies by the right-wing Bengazi committee (which found nothing) and the FBI (which found nothing to charge her with, except missing the mark ‘(C)’ in the body of 3 out of 110,000 emails). Yet the framing is working.
There is a common metaphor that Immorality Is Illegality, and that acting against Strict Father Morality (the only kind off morality recognized) is being immoral. Since virtually everything Hillary Clinton has ever done has violated Strict Father Morality, that makes her immoral. The metaphor thus makes her actions immoral, and hence she is a crook. The chant “Lock her up!” activates this whole line of reasoning.”
Lol
https://www.facebook.com/DisdainForPlebs/videos/1111813468899099/
Lots of Bernie chants tonight….
Here is the crime, structuring around campaign finance laws.
Even a broken and beaten down Matt Taibbi has to mention it tonight.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/dnc-leak-shows-mechanics-of-a-slanted-campaign-w430814
Was the first lady wearing body armor/bullet proof vest during speech? My wife notices such things and something did look very weird.
Yes, she is absolutely wearing body armor.
GoDaddy technology support is so frustrating. First, I utilized their applications panel to set up joomla, but when I uploaded my local site through ftp, this didn’t function. I called GoDaddy support and they do not give support for migrating a local site to their host. You just need to build it from scratch using their installation. That stinks. Solutions?.