Fox cable hosts are doing the job of the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Jared Bernstein, by admitting that the economy under President Biden is strong. Bernstein joins MSNBC’s Ali Velshi to discuss the latest “expectation-busting” jobs report.
For sure, completely agree it needs addressed. But like most things, the origin of this housing crisis largely falls on Republicans. Here’s what I’d do if I were Democratic strategists going into this year. Pivots. Lots of pivots.
If Republicans push back on Gun Control talk, you go, "okay, if you don’t want to solve that and deflect, then let’s solve root problems like societal stress, education, single-payer healthcare, and guaranteed access to a therapist at any age
If republicans push back on the boRDeR cRiSis, (a) point out the net-positive economic impact these hard workers fleeing crime & poverty have while (b) pivoting to the domestic terrorist threat from right-wing extremists home-grown here in the US that are the #1 threat per the DOJ.
Combined with the border crisis and affordable housing, Democrats need to go, "Why focus on the small fish at the border and not the foreign investors from China, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia who’ve bought up large swaths of land, stifling the American dream? Hell even the King of Jordan owns 2 Beach-front Malibu properties. Look at all the real estate investors and AirBNB jacking up the prices.
Most of the housing crisis needs to be solved at the local level. Zone for density, support social housing (where the city builds the houses rather than developers), design walkable neighborhoods, and support public transportation.
The federal government can play with interest rates, regulate banks, and provide funding for cities to do the above. It certainly affects things, but it’s highly abstracted from the actual work of getting more people into affordable housing.
I agree zoning is a big one.
There are some top-down factors that need to be addressed in my view; chief among them is cracking down on rental properties, and foreign investors/ownership.
Another facet to this is the deterioration of small and rural communities across the country. We have a massive amount of land and yet the population density in certain hot-spots is off the charts. In this respect, I think we need an investment in bridging the rural-city divide. That means promoting work-from home jobs with federal tax incentives, high-speed rail infrastructure akin to the Interstate system that helps link the rural communities to the cities, and high-speed internet for all akin to the investments FDR made for rural communities in bringing electricity to the masses (The REA).
The ultimate effect of this will be de-congest cities where stress is high, bring people closer to nature, and tap into unused land and foster smaller more tightly-knit communities that aren’t so disconnected from the world.
Democrats aren’t going to fix shit lol they’re just going to bail out the banks again after the economy collapses like Obama did in 2008.
And then pepper spray the protestors on Wall Street
… That was a University police officer on UC Davis campus in California and literally had zero to do with Democrats’ direction, lmao. Wtf you smoking this early?
And don’t care — One side is objectively orders-of-magnitude worse. Progress or damage-control, it makes little difference to me.
Them protesting against the direction of Obama bailing out the big banks?
Seems kinda relevant.
One side is objectively worse but you don’t have to spread the fairy tale that Democrats are going to ever fix anything. They are just slightly less worse.
There’s also NYPD cops pepperspraying the protestors if you like that one more but the picture doesn’t look as funny:
New York City settles Occupy Wall Street pepper spray lawsuit for $50,001
I’m certain the lives of these people would’ve totally improved if the banks and economy completely collapsed, right? As with most things, the direction and anger of these Occupy protests — which I was a part of — had a long list of grievances including “banks got bailed out, we got sold out.” But universally all these problems are squarely of Republican origin; and their solutions are almost all squarely obstructed by Republicans.
After all these years, do people forget that Democrats and Obama only had a filibuster-proof control of Congress for literally only months early in his first term? These protests came after the disastrous 2010 midterm election when many of these Occupy Wall Street protesters stayed home and let the Tea Party (pre-MAGA if you’re unfamiliar) take control of Congress with the Freedom Caucus and other bullshit. So that sure did wonders for all the bankers, didn’t it?
I’ll say they’re considerably-less worse. Obama sympathized with Occupy Wall street. I wonder what Trump would’ve done… Send in FBI vans like he did in Portland?