Speaking of real estate ...

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Interior Secretary Haaland: “It’s time to return to the stone age”

Feds Want To Eat 700,000 Acres of Texas/New Mexico Land

Under the guise of “land protection,” the federal government aims to acquire 700,000 acres of private land in the Southern High Plains region—which sits along the Texas-New Mexico border.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently finalized its Land Protection Plan. The plan aims to acquire 700,000 acres of privately owned land and put it under federal control for “protection” in “perpetuity.” This is part of the federal government’s efforts to expand the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge—which feeds into the broader aim of the Biden administration: fulfilling the “30×30” initiative.

Through the “30×30” initiative, the Biden administration decided that 30 percent of the nation’s land and waters must be under federal control and management by 2030. President Biden launched the agenda via Executive Order 14008 on January 27, 2021.

However, American Stewards of Liberty explains that the initiative was rebranded as “America the Beautiful” after facing public backlash.

As the American Stewards highlight, the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge is attempting to expand the “acquisition boundary” from 6,440 acres in Texas and New Mexico to 7,000,000 acres—all without congressional authority. After they acquire more land, they plan to federalize 700,000 acres through buying the land or obtaining permanent conservation easements.

“Federally acquiring nearly three-quarter million acres from this region is a direct attack on the oil, gas, and mineral industries, agriculture production, and local economies,” the American Stewards write.

They also claim counties were not notified of the expansion.

“No direct notice was given to the counties or local governing authorities. The USFWS [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] failed to coordinate this plan with the local governments as required by law.”

The expanded area grabs land in 15 Texas counties including Bailey, Castro, Cochran, Crosby, Dawson, Gaines, Garza, Hale, Hockley, Lamb, Lubbock, Lynn, Parmer, Terry, and Yoakum. The expansion into five counties in New Mexico includes land from Chaves, Curry, De Baca, Lea, and Roosevelt counties.

All is going according to (Joe’s) plan

January 28, 2021:

Biden Makes Sweeping Changes to Oil and Gas Policy

President Joe Biden has followed through on a campaign pledge by introducing a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters. With nearly 25 percent of U.S. oil and gas production coming from federal lands, the policy shift may have significant implications for future investment and production. The backlash from oil and gas producing states will be fierce and lawsuits have already begun, but the Biden administration views this policy as a key part of its climate agenda and is unlikely to change course.

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A permanent ban on new leases would affect numerous states with oil and gas resources. New Mexico—home to the prolific Delaware Basin—is an exception to the rule that most shale oil and gas resources are found on private lands, and the state accounts for more than 60 percent of existing federal drilling permits. Rocky Mountain states including Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana would take a hit from a permanent leasing ban. The Gulf States would be harmed by declining exploration and production due to lower royalties, as well as the impact on the oilfield services sector and related industries. In general, a leasing ban on public lands would drive more investors to private and state land.

June 2, 2021:

Biden orders 20-year ban on oil, gas drilling to protect tribal sites outside New Mexico’s Chaco

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Hundreds of square miles in New Mexico will be withdrawn from further oil and gas production for the next 20 years on the outskirts of Chaco Culture National Historical Park that tribal communities consider sacred, the Biden administration ordered Friday.

The new order from Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland applies to public lands and associated mineral rights within a 10-mile (16-kilometer) radius of the park. It does not apply to entities that are privately, state- or tribal-owned. Existing leases won’t be impacted either.

The New Mexico Oil and Gas Association has argued that the plan would leave additional leases on Navajo land or allotments owned by individual Navajos landlocked by taking federal mineral holdings off the board.

Navajo Nation officials have made similar arguments, saying millions of dollars in annual oil and gas revenues benefit the tribe and individual tribal members. The Navajo Nation completed its own study last year and advocated for a smaller area to be set aside given the economic impacts a withdrawal would have on the tribe.

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Federal officials have billed the Chaco initiative as a novel effort that could provide a roadmap and lessons learned for future collaborations with tribes.

In addition to the approved withdrawal, Haaland — who is from Laguna Pueblo and is the first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency — has committed to taking a broader look at how federal land across the region can be better managed while taking into account environmental effects and cultural preservation.

July 13, 2024:

Biden Proposes New Protections From Oil and Gas Drilling in Western Arctic

While applauding the proposal, climate advocates said they would "keep fighting to ensure there's no new oil extraction on a single acre" of the region.

The announcement comes three months after the Biden administration unveiled protections for 13 million acres of the 23 million-acre reserve, barring oil and gas companies from extraction there.

The young people polled here seem to have an opinion different from the kid featured in the previous post; there's probably room for both views

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John Hinderaker, Powerline: The Kids Are Not Alright

My organization sponsors a quarterly poll in conjunction with our magazine. Meeting Street Insights conducts the poll for us. For our Summer issue, we thought it would be interesting to poll young people in Minnesota, which we defined as ages 18 through 34. To my knowledge, no one has done this before. We asked young Minnesotans not about their views on politics or policy, but about their lives and concerns.

The results were stunning. Young people in Minnesota are deeply pessimistic about their futures, and their country’s future. We asked respondents whether their generation is better off economically than their parents’ generation, worse off, or the same. Fully 90% said their generation is worse off than their parents’:

Our pollster was shocked at this finding: “You can’t get 90% of the people to agree on anything.”

Further, young people’s pessimism extends into the future. Asked whether the next generation will be economically better off, worse off, or the same as theirs, 68% said “worse off.”

In other words, the vast majority of young Minnesotans think they live in a country that is in a state of permanent decline. I have no reason to think the results would be much different in other states.

We asked our poll respondents whether they are concerned about a series of issues. Again, the results are striking. The concerns of young people are mostly economic, and fully rational. Eighty-three percent say they are worried about being able to buy a house. Sixty-four percent are concerned about public safety. Sixty percent are concerned about being able to pay off student loans, and 60% worry about being able to buy a car.

Poll respondents overwhelmingly say they will vote in November, and we asked them what issues will determine their votes. The cost of living and the economy predominate:

So, memo to Republican politicians: America’s young people are hurting, and their concerns are entirely rational. They have been devastated by Joe Biden’s inflation and economic doldrums. Don’t pander to them, and forget about global warming and abortion. Talk to them honestly about the economic challenges they face, and explain how conservative policies can make things better. Young people’s votes are up for grabs, and if conservative politicians are smart, they can do what Ronald Reagan did in 1980: make young voters their best demographic.

My thoughts are that we should stop indoctrinating our kids, beginning in Kindergarten, to hate their country and “know” that it was founded by rich white slave owners whose progeny went on to keep all the wealth “created”, by others. Ahmad Alsaleh, the Syrian refugee-new homeowner in the post below was spared that “education”, and has thrived.

We could then remove obstacles to creating wealth, such as the rent controls imposed on young, would-be homeowners mentioned below, and the hundreds of thousands of regulations that do nothing but retard wealth accumulation: the efforts to ban self-employment are just one such example.

Give people hope, and they’ll dare to dream, and the best of them will achieve it. With no hope, why even try?

This is very much NOT an argument for open borders, but it is a reminder that The Land of Opportunity” still exists for the ambitious and hard working

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Yes, he got a little help from the government, but not much, and that from programs open to non-immigrants as well. Of note, perhaps, the most important assistance came from — gasp — a Republican.

Ahmad Alsaleh is no ordinary teenager. Last month, the 19-year-old closed on his first home.

That alone makes Alsaleh a virtual unicorn in today’s housing market. What makes Alsaleh’s story all the more impressive is the adversity he overcame to get to the three-bedroom home that he closed on last month on Melville Street in Augusta.

After the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, Alsaleh, his parents and four siblings fled as refugees to Jordan and got to the United States eight years ago. After two years in Arizona, the family came to Maine through Catholic Charities’ refugee resettlement program.

The charity found them an Augusta apartment, but it was cramped and in poor condition, Alsaleh said. He wanted better than that. His father works part-time and his mother has a disability, so he took it on himself as the eldest sibling to provide a home for the family like they had in Syria.

“[My parents] sacrificed everything in their country for their kids,” Alsaleh said. “It’s not even ‘motivation,’ that’s just a word. You’ve just got to do it. If I don’t carry the family, who else is going to?”

Alsaleh took on three jobs while attending Cony High School and continued to work full-time through his first year of college at Central Maine Community College in Auburn, where he was able to take advantage of a free college scholarship to study business management. 

By the time he was 18, Alsaleh estimated that he had banked about $40,000. He also dedicated himself to learning as much as he could about real estate and investing. Alsaleh joined a Jobs for Maine Graduates program at his high school that connected him with state Sen. Matt Pouliot, R-Augusta, who runs a downtown real estate office focused on the region.

Pouliot, who bought his first home at 20, was immediately impressed by Alsaleh’s ambition. He hired Alsaleh to work at his real estate firm the summer after high school. He then offered to help him search for his family’s home.

“Folks who are refugees from war-torn countries [have] this other level of drive,” Pouliot said. “Ahmad is one of them. He’s like, ‘Hey, nothing’s gonna be given to me in this country. I’m gonna have to earn it.’”

The search was tough given Maine’s tight, inflated housing market. Augusta has had some of the fastest-rising prices in the nation. They remain affordable compared with other areas of Maine, but homes priced under $350,000 are still often going within days of hitting the market.

Once Alsaleh identified the place he wanted, he had to act quickly. Pouliot arranged for him to see the home before showings officially started. Alsaleh put in a $310,000 offer soon after, $25,000 over the asking price.

Alsaleh secured the deal with a first-generation homebuyer loan from MaineHousing that offered him $10,000 in down payment assistance, financial classes and low fixed interest rates. However, the program made it difficult to get accepted for a loan, Alsaleh said, extending the process. He had to appraise his home twice and secure roof repairs before he could close.

It was well worth it, he says. For the first time since they were displaced from Syria, the Alsaleh family now has a place to call their own. Alsaleh is even confident they can reconfigure the house so it has five bedrooms. His mother is most excited about the prospect of gardening and growing her own produce at home.

Alsaleh says that this is just the beginning for him. His next goal will be to retire his parents. This year, he hopes to get his real estate license. Over the next decade, he wants to work his way up to owning his own real estate firm like Pouliot.

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More young people are homeowners in Maine than they are nationwide, according to U.S. Census data. Only about 3 percent of Maine households are headed by people under age 25. Just 28 percent of them own rather than rent their homes, but it’s still only a fraction of Maine’s high homeownership rate of 74 percent.

Both Alsaleh and Pouliot want more young people to see that homeownership is attainable. Investing in a multi-family property could be a good investment for young people, since someone can live in one unit and pay off their mortgage by renting out the others.

“We want as many people to experience the wealth building opportunity of owning real estate as possible,” Pouliot said.

(I’ll take a moment here to point out that Portland, Maine, has already cut off that avenue by imposing rent controls that prohibit increases of more than 5% even to recover costs incurred repairing and restoring older homes — the practice of young couples buying dilapidated duplexes, restoring half to make it rentable, then using that rent to pay for restoring their own half has, according to interviews with several such homeowners that I’ve read, has killed that possibility.)

It's not fair: why should Connecticut always be stuck with the dumbest senators?

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locked in the Senate coat closet with only his video games to entertain himself

Sen. Chris Murphy: J.D. Vance Will Help Make America a White Patriarchal Christian Dominated Nation

Sen. Chris Murphy is just a loathsome human being, and he doesn't seem to know it. The day after Donald Trump's attempted assassination, Murphy came out with one of those "what happened was unacceptable, but …" posts so many of which we've seen. 

Murphy spoke with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on the opening night of the Republican National Convention, after Trump had revealed that his running mate would be Sen. J.D. Vance. Not to resort to hyperbole or anything, but Murphy said Trump chose Vance because he was a cult member who would help Trump make America an "autocratic white patriarchal Christian dominated nation." Way to lower the temperature there, Chris.

One of the commenters on Twitchy writes, “.[Murphy] continues to be a complete and total embarrassment to the State of Connecticut. He somehow manages to make Richard Blumenthal tolerable.”

I can’t agree with that; Blumenthal will never be tolerable, but I will concede that he’s now only the second-dumbest senator from Connecticut.

Battle lines: 2025 Agenda vs Bernie Sander's vision for America; if we must have one or the other, the choice is easy

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I’ve had this in my draft folder for a couple of days now while I considered whether to post it. Then I saw just now that Bernie’s giving a stump speech in which he promises to impose a national rent control program, which is what set me off in the first place, so I’ve cut and saved a very long essay on “The Rise and Fall of Socialism” and going with this (much) shorter version.

Biden begins touting 'working-class' agenda on advice of Bernie Sanders: report

President Biden has begun focusing on a ‘working-class’ agenda on the advice of Senator Bernie Sanders, according to a recent report in the Washington Post.

The Post reported on Saturday that Sanders visited the White House on Wednesday to discuss a potential second Biden term. Speaking to the President's closest advisors, the Vermont senator reportedly argued that Biden should focus on a 100-day plan aimed at "working class" voters.

In a social media post on Friday, Sanders claimed that Biden will enact a number of progressive policies – including ending all medical debt and raising the minimum wage – if elected to a second term.

"At a time when the billionaire class has never done better, and when we are experiencing unprecedented income and wealth inequality, President Biden tonight laid out an agenda that begins to speak to the needs of America’s working class," the tweet read.

Sanders also added that Biden would expand Social Security and Medicare benefits, lower the cost of childcare and build more affordable housing if elected, among other initiatives. On Friday night, Biden pledged to end all medical debt at a rally in Michigan. 

Biden Promises National Rent Control

“We’re going to make sure that rents are kept at 5% increase in corporate rents for apartments and the like. Homes are limited to 5%.”

Assar Lindbeck, the late left-wing Swedish economist who for many years chaired the committee that awarded the Nobel Prize, famously said: “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city–except for bombing.”

Economist David R. Henderson disputes that – he argues based on the experience of Vietnam that rent control is worse than bombing. Either way, it’s really bad.

So istead, they stayed inside, peering out for snipers, while the gunman was ON THAT VERY ROOF (UPDATED)

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Here’s the link, but really, is there anything more to be said? This woman still has her job, by the way, because she’s a Friend of Jill’s. Maybe she should look into joining the Friends of Bill’s.

UPDATE: Ok, I take it back — checking the comments on Twitchy, there are some great ones worth reading.

Even NMBC (!) is calling BS. The picture of the roof in question makes it even clearer how “dangerous” this sloped roof was. Hell, even snow wouldn’t fall off that thing, which is something the designers may want to think about.

Gold Bar Bob convicted (Update: Jonathan Turley says DC pols turned their backs on Bob because his type of corruption was so gauche)

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I was away today, and just saw this good news:

Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez guilty on all charges in federal corruption trial

Unlike the recent trial of another politician, Menendez was actually guilty of a crime (s): selling his office, and accepting bribes to influence foreign policy. Further, the man was a crook while he was mayor of Union City from 1986-1992, and continued wallowing in graft for the next three years as he made his way up the Jersey Democrqat political machine. Yes, he was just following a time-honored tradition of New Jersey pols, but stashing gold bars in shoes in the closet and hundreds of thousands of cash in his wife’s own closet(s) was beyond the pale, even for the Garden State. Or so it was declared, once he got caught.

Just to balance things out, on the west coast, the Menendez brothers are claiming that newly discovered evidence entitles them to a new trial after 30 years of incarceration. Two for one, so to speak.

Turley:

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Washington elites appear to look down upon Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez for his “prehistoric” corruption style.

A jury found Menendez guilty of all 16 counts of federal corruption and bribery charges relating to the Egyptian government and three New Jersey businessmen paying him thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars in exchange for information. Turley said the senator’s form of corruption is old-school, as opposed to modern corruption, which often takes the form of influence-peddling.

“His form of corruption views in the beltway as virtually prehistoric,” Turley said Tuesday. “I mean, the idea of getting envelopes filled with cash and cars is really sort of Capone-era corruption stuff. I mean, in some ways, some people have contempt just for the lack of sophistication. That’s not how corruption works anymore… Corruption is influence-peddling, like we’ve seen in the Hunter Biden case, where you have all of these rather curious and dubious positions with millions of dollars being passed through accounts. This is really something that Washington has long ago turned its back on.