Not race

We are constantly told how we should allow immigrants illegally crossing our southern border into the nation, and opposition to that makes one a racist.

The administration is not so accommodating when it comes to Cubans, who are being sent back where they came from.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Cubans tend to vote against Democrats’ failed Communist policies.

Fair taxes?

Read this article, and laugh with me. They claim that what makes a tax fair is people pay in proportion to the amount of use they get out of roads.

The gas tax was fair because it was based on a simple principle: user pays, user benefits. Before the gas tax, all taxpayers paid for the upkeep of roads and building new ones. But this was particularly unfair to the poorest people who could not afford a car.

They go on to then admit that the tax isn’t about revenue- it’s about punishing the rich.

Originally introduced as a fair way for automobile drivers to pay for the upkeep of the roads they use, it has become less fair as rich people buy hybrid and electric vehicles.

They go on and on about those people who aren’t poor.

This unfairness is compounded by the fact that hybrid or electric vehicle (EV) owners are likely to be well-educated, young, and comparatively well-off. A study by TrueCar.com, for example, found that the average owner of a Ford Focus Electric had a household income of $199,000 a year. The people who are paying the most for road upkeep are more likely to be less well-educated, older, and poorer than the hybrid/EV owners.

So poor people don’t benefit from roads? Obama claimed that business owners “didn’t build that” because all of society made business possible because infrastructure is paid for by all. Doesn’t that also mean that everyone is responsible to pay for that infrastructure?

Since electric cars do just as much damage to roads as gas-powered cars, we will still need to spend just as much on maintaining roads in a world with electric cars as we do today. Also, as long as most of the electricity is still coming from fossil fuels, we should want the tax to discourage driving in general.

Nope- just more communism sneaking into our political landscape.

Dysfunction?

The Washington Post says that the eviction moratorium is displaying the failure of the system in this country for renting houses.

When a property owner rents the property that he owns to another, he is doing so because he wants to make money. It doesn’t matter if that property is a saw, a car, or even a home. The owner buys the property and lets the renter use that property for an amount of time in exchange for money. It’s just that simple. Let’s look at a residential rental.

  • The property owner offers to rent a home to someone. This is called the offer.
  • The renter signs an agreement, agreeing to pay money (or sometimes other commodities) in exchange for living there. This is the acceptance.
  • The renter pays the money, the owner lets the tenant live there. Consideration.

What happens when the renter lives there, but doesn’t pay? The property owner loses money and must get the renter to move out so that he can rent it to someone who will actually pay. Any property owner would rather collect the money he is owed than evict, because eviction is an expensive thing to do.

The Post claims that the trials are unfair because the property owner wins the majority of the time. I don’t see how that is a problem. If the tenant signed the lease, lived in the rental property, and didn’t pay, there are very few defenses that would let him continue to live there for free.

The Post wants the US to declare that housing is a human right. So if it is a right, who is to provide it? The only answer is the complete elimination of private property in this country.

Communism.

Hypocritical Schmuck

Arnold Schwarzenegger says:

“Yeah, you have the freedom to wear no mask — but you know something? You’re a schmuck for not wearing a mask. You are supposed to protect your fellow Americans around you.”

So here are some pictures

Here is a schmuck and his son on a maskless bike ride on August 1.
Here is a maskless schmuck and his son out for a walk.
Here is a schmuck out at an ice cream parlor on June 28.

Typical socialist. Socialism is not for the rich, only the poor.

Cause, effect

One of the many jobs I have had was at a plant that made stainless steel pipe and tube. The process was that we would buy large rolls of stainless steel, slit them to the proper sizes, then cold roll those into pipe. The edges of the roll would be welded together, then the now completed pipe was induction annealed so it would hold its shape.

We had a woman there who was in charge of QA. It was her job to test each batch of pipe to ensure that the pipe was properly manufactured. Once, the woman decertified an entire batch of pipe because the welds were faulty and had microscopic cracks in them. That batch had to go out the next day so we could meet the customer’s deadline. It was a couple of dozen tons of pipe.

Management fixed the problem by firing the QA department and shipping the pipe. Of course, the entire batch of pipe came back when the welds began to fail. Due to bad management, the company went out of business less than a year later.

I am telling you this story because there is a lesson there. One that will easily apply to the situation in this country with regards to our education. The Oregon governor recently decided that too many black students were failing tests in reading and math proficiency. To her, the obvious problem lies in the test, so the test was eliminated.

Intel

A member of the NFAC shot a cop awhile back. The Orlando media did a story about how he was tracked down. Read the story, and think for a minute. The shooter got rid of his car because he knew the police would be looking for it, but kept his cell phone. That’s how they knew where he was.

The same station published photos from inside of the man’s house, taken during the police execution of the search warrant. One of the things in the house was publications that he had been reading. I link to a story from one of those papers. It is an interesting read and will help you understand the mindset of the NFAC and the New Black Panther Party. In order to defeat an enemy, one must know how they think. I recommend reading it. It is eye opening in its revelation of the indoctrination coming out of the black separatist movement.

Ban the box?

There is an entire movement in the US to prohibit employers from considering an applicant’s criminal history when making hiring decisions.

Do you have a cash handling position? Why not hire someone who has been convicted of embezzlement? Daycare center? Why not hire a pedophile? This is the dumbest shit I have heard this week, but to be fair, it’s only Wednesday.

That doesn’t matter to many employers- they are all in. The city of Lakeland, Florida has done it (although they are excluding police and fire departments from that policy, because hiring criminals to be policemen and firemen is against state law).

The state of Maine is the newest one to jump on this bandwagon. It is now unlawful in Maine for an employer to enquire about an applicant’s criminal history until after they have been offered the job, unless otherwise required by law to screen for criminal history.

So now we have a situation where the left is saying that I can’t get a job if I am a gun owner, or if I have ever opposed gay marriage, abortion, owned a gun, or any other ‘icky’ thought crime, but employers should be forced to hire criminals who have committed actual crimes.

Trump signed it into law, so he wasn’t the panacea that many on the right think he was.

Finally

Today is finally the day that most American landlords can begin getting rid of the people who have been stealing their property. That’s right, the eviction moratorium is finally going to be allowed to expire. The Biden administration refused to extend it and even the Communist wing of the Democrat party couldn’t muster the votes in Congress to make it a law.

For some landlords, it has been YEARS since they were paid a cent in compensation for the use of the property that they purchased and were still required to maintain, insure, and pay taxes on, while the government refused to intervene as people were living there for free, even while destroying the place.

In the beginning, it was the government who created the problem- they forced everyone to stay home, which caused businesses to shut down, some permanently. What began as “two weeks to flatten the curve” became “until there is a vaccine.” Then the government mailed out billions in free money, paid billions more in enhanced unemployment benefits, all the while telling people that they didn’t have to pay rent because evictions were prohibited.

Instead of paying their bills, many Americans went on a shopping spree. Amazon, Netflix, and other companies saw record profits. Many businesses, including landlords, were bearing the costs of this orgy of spending. A year and a half later, and people are now upset that the evictions are coming, as if landlords are the villains.

Yes, landlords are being made into the villain here. Read this piece from Politico. They claim that 12 million people are behind on rent, including 50 percent of all black families. The article blames landlords for that, pointing out that  Forty-eight percent of voucher holders are Black and 18 percent are Hispanic, so the refusal to accept vouchers is a coded form of racial discrimination, in other words, calling landlords racist. Why?

The reasons that many landlords, myself included, don’t accept government Section 8 vouchers is purely financial.

  • People who are poor have poor rental payment histories and are likely to default
  • People who are paying for things with someone else’s money don’t value the things that the money bought, because they didn’t have to work for it
  • the government puts too many restrictions on the landlord, including more paperwork, more bureaucratic administrative burden, and more headaches. All in exchange for taking less money

All of the above increases my financial risk, my workload, and decreases my income. The only way to make money with Section 8 is to buy cheap, shitty, substandard housing. In other words, be a slum lord. I don’t want to do that, so I avoid Section 8.

The fact that most people who are receiving Section 8 housing vouchers are black has nothing to do with it. I am not in business to do people favors, I am in business to make the most money that I can by doing the least amount of work and taking the smallest risk that I possibly can. If I could make money selling goods to black people by taking little risk and expending minimum effort, I would do so. The money just isn’t there.

That isn’t enough. Some governments have made it illegal to discriminate against those who are receiving Section 8 vouchers. The latest effort is a push to get banks behind an effort to refuse loans to landlords unless they agree to rent to low income, Section 8 recipients. This will drive more landlords out of the market, especially smaller ones, leaving nothing but larger, self funded landlords in the market.

This is a push for the removal of the entrepreneur from the American experience.