Category: News

In an article entitled "Some Finding Perils in Online Real Estate, the New York Times finds innumerable ways to blame eBay for unscrupulous sellers who will unload crap properties on "investors" who will buy properties unseen and then will pay contractors recommended by the sellers thousands of dollars for repairs. For example, the New York Times offers this bit:

Sam Hoyt, a Democratic state assemblyman and co-chairman of the Buffalo mayor’s task force on real estate flipping, whose aim is to educate consumers on the destructive effects of the practice, blames eBay, saying it enables dishonest flippers to lure buyers.

Mr. Hoyt said he had repeatedly appealed to eBay officials, asking the company to make specific changes, like informing sellers that they must comply with New York State disclosure laws and requiring a copy of written sales contracts. But Mr. Hoyt said he had received little cooperation from the company.

“What eBay is doing, in my opinion, is immoral,” he said. “They have a responsibility to not facilitate activity like this.”

I mean, Buffalo has a task force on the problem of capitalists trying to turn a profit with property, and this publicly-funded entity has determined that eBay is immoral for posting real estate listings.

No doubt the New York Times has issued a retraction for all of the overly-optimistic classified ads it has run in its history.

But hey, the NYT is "even-handed," as we can see from the "opposing viewpoint"

Representatives of eBay say the company has few legal obligations to buyers of real estate on the site. “The people responsible for house flipping,” an eBay spokesman, Hani Durzy, said, “are the people selling these houses and the people buying them sight unseen. How these sellers and buyers are connecting is not as important as the fact that the buyers are not doing the proper due diligence when buying a property.”

eBay pretty much understands the physics of the situation: fools share the same negative electrical charge as their money, and the fools will inevitably cast off their excess dollars.

The paper, on the other hand, only understands that somehow, somewhere, something is not regulated or legislated, and its heroes, the legislatures and regulatory agencies of government, should do something.

We at MfBJN, on the other hand, turn to the sublime koans of Master Kuni, who meditated: “You took the box? Let’s see what’s in the box! Nothing! Absolutely nothing! STUPID! You’re so STU-PIIIIIIIIIIID!”

Because instead of trying to outlawing stupidity, we prefer that it remain a personal choice, punishable by mockery.

In Missouri, some retail developers have mechanisms for levying surcharges on purchases within their developments. They can then use this money for things such as keeping up their developments, leaving the rent they charge the retailers available for more important things, such as their salaries and profit.

But the state is starting to look at this practice since, you know, these transportation development districts allow for the levying of taxes without accountability. The schizophrenic St. Louis Post-Dispatch cluck clucks the practice, which is odd since the paper lauds unelected boards pushing for taxes and conferring tax breaks for airports, sports teams, and myriad other things–so long as it’s not businesses who wield this ripe-for-abuse power, it’s okay with the Post-Dispatch.

But we here at MfBJN applaud Jerry Ebest, director of real estate for Dierbergs grocery stores, who tells the public it should just lie back and enjoy it:

“If you’re a consumer and you live very close to anybody’s store that is in your municipality, would you take time out of your schedule to drive to another city with a lower tax rate?” he asked. “My suspicion is you would not.”

Thank you, Mr. Ebest, for explaining how rising tax rates lift all boats.

Remember, friends, I said that eating your private papers is the only way to dispose of things, especially since recycling facility workers pay a lot of attention to what you recycle.

Well, someone braver than I am has illustrated that credit card companies will honor taped-together credit card applications. That have the “change of address” box marked. And that require a cellular phone to activate the credit line.

If you’ll excuse me, your Shidoshi will now assume the meditative position of the fetus and will chant a healing mantra which only sounds like whimpering.

Owen at Boots and Sabers asks:

We obviously need more background checks and bans to prevent these tragic deaths.

Massachussetts delivers:

Any individual who requires a machete for the purposes of cutting vegetation shall register the machete with the local police department on an annual basis and, upon payment of an appropriate annual registration fee as determined by the local granting authority, shall be issued a permit authorizing him to possess the machete solely for the purposes of cutting vegetation.

Behold the power of the blogosphere! Or, more importantly, the power of full time governments to enact satire as actual law.

What else can we infer, since he blows up their levees:

A levee break in the southeastern corner of Sonoma County has flooded part of state Highway 121 and may be threatening a half-dozen homes and a winery on surrounding farmland, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The levee, built on private property near the Sonoma Creek, broke just before 8 a.m. Monday, flooding the property owner’s vineyard and possibly threatening six homes and another vineyard about a half-mile south of the site, according to CHP Officer Gerald Rico.

If the affected residents are not flown immediately to Houston for long, government-paid hotel stays, I demand a Congressional panel!

Apparently, the Air Force has had its Crossbow Project orbital popcorn maker for 15 years.

Get in on the ground floor with your very own non-profit idea in a new agitation industry! You, too, can have jets, spacious hotel accommodations, audiences with kings, reporters, and senators, as well as a good salary paid by your donors while you can simply “educate,” raise funds, and not produce anything but enough money to cover your expenses and fundraising efforts.

To get into this lucrative industry, be the first on your block to be a:

CosmicEnviro Activist!

I got the idea from this post wherein Michael Williams talks about mining asteroids in space for big dollars. I mean, let’s face it, the idea has dangerous sides that can really make excellent bullet points in fundraising letters, such as:

• Could destroy the cobalt industry in Zambia, driving that country into poverty.
• Profit-oriented corporations will use asteroids as weapons to pulverize the competition (Did you notice that the bad guys in Niven and Pournelle’s Footfall were elephants? Do the math!)
• Disruption of celestial bodies will ruin star charts and astrologies for everyone!

Hurry and establish your charity now while there’s no glut in the market! You’ll be able to use Since 2006 in your promotional material henceforth. And by the time the other usual suspects arise to protest, you’ll have the cachet–and the wealthy database of previous contributors!

It would be much funnier if I didn’t fear it’s satire today, semipowerful actual lobbying group tomorrow, and taking credit for the UN ban on space commerce two weeks from now.

Overland Students Walk Out In Support Of Teacher.

You know it’s about that geography teacher who helped his students find Germany or the United States on a world map by comparing Bush to Hitler (both liked dogs! They are just the same!).

I don’t care about the story about its grassrootsification of students walking out of class–hell’s belles, today’s students know they won’t get punished for “political expression,” so they go on these little short-term field trips when the cafeteria is out of chocolate milk. No, I like a story that includes multiple implications for what’s wrong with our public education system (the teachers, the students, the administration, to name a few) that offers insight like this:

“I think he inspires so many students and he’s a great teacher,” one student said during the rally. “I mean he makes people do there work and he makes people care about things.”

If you don’t know what’s so pleasantly wrong with that, I’m not going to explain it to you. Ask your fellow alumni from Overland High School.

Sort of. I mean, action:

The Senate gave final approval Thursday to broad anti-methamphetamine provisions that will impose tight curbs on the sale of popular cold remedies used to make the highly addictive drug.

The long-stalled crackdown on cold medicine sales – initially opposed by retail and drug lobbyists – passed after months of intense negotiations with those industries over the scope of the new restrictions.

The measure, part of legislation reauthorizing the Patriot Act, has already passed in the House. The president is expected to sign it.

Reaction:

Missouri drug investigators say there are fewer makeshift labs churning out methamphetamine, but they also warn the state’s menacing meth problem might be taking a new direction – changing from small-time illegal operations to a fertile market for imported drugs.

Police say imported meth is starting to sneak into Missouri as area drug labs shut down. Just last month, seven Mexican citizens pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of conspiring to distributes large quantities of meth in southwestern Missouri. Police in the St. Louis area say they expect to see similar cases in the area as organized crime, particularly Mexican drug-trafficking groups, take over the local meth trade.

As a result of the Talent-Feinstein meddlings and the happy Federal determination that some states could not use common sense in their retailing of certain cold remedies and that all must abide by an asinine standard since Talent and Feinstein know better than individual legislatures, crank heads will still get their meth, but my wife will not be able to stock up on Claritin when it’s on sale.

Thank you, Senator Talent. Hopefully, this year we can send you on the next step of your career: lobbyist.

Telescopes ‘worthless’ by 2050:

Ground-based astronomy could be impossible in 40 years because of pollution from aircraft exhaust trails and climate change, an expert says.

Hurricane season could match ’05: UN:

Don’t make it unleash the havoc again.

All blowed up:

Some women have their book clubs, and others belong to professional groups. Some connect in therapy and others through sororities. But here is a relatively new connection: a group of 11 sharp, educated and independent women brought together on the Internet by one man’s sperm.

Not one of them has met the donor — his identity is kept secret by Fairfax Cryobank in Virginia. Known only as donor 401, he has fathered all of their children — 11 so far, and Leann Mischel, 41, a Pennsylvania college professor, has a second child by way of his sperm on the way.

“It’s an emotional connection. We have a common base,” explained Carla Schouten of San Jose, who adds that the women have less interest in knowing the donor than they do one another. “Most of us are single. We all desired children, and we were all attracted to the same donor.”

Perhaps these women hope for a future that looks a lot like Utah, but where men are only kept in barns to be milked when needed. However, more traditional people will outbreed these cretins and hopefully their fatherless children will grow up well-adjusted enough to be Republicans or Libertarians.

Were I this 401 guy, though, the thing I’d dread most is the possibility of getting on the hook for child support. It hasn’t happened, gentle reader, but that just means it hasn’t happened yet. One creatively-reasoned (i.e., made up) legal argument and one progressive judge is the narrow distance between the increasingly tenuous reality and settled law.

The fence along the Mexican border shows how many bugaboos the left can fit into a single action: Not only is it bad for the poor people of color and other nationalities who would only come to this country for noble purposes, such as they can, but also, we should note, the fence along the Mexican border is actually strangling baby seals and clubbing baby spotted owls. Or something:

But in the name of national security, the Department of Homeland Security wants to build 3.5 miles of fencing just south of this federally protected land — a project environmentalists say could spell disaster for the sensitive ecology of the region.

Coming soon, studies will no doubt show that steps taken in the name of border security also:

• Dramatically reduce Social Security benefits for seniors.
• Have been proven to cause cancer in laboratories. Not in laboritory animals, mind you, because opponents of the fence also oppose animal testing; however, somewhere, someone in a lab right now is getting news that he or she has cancer, and what, you’re going to attribute that to smoking two packs of unfiltered cigarettes for twenty years?
• Are linked to childhood obesity, as children will no longer be able to run back and forth across the Mexican frontier unimpeded.
• Will result in the loss of health coverage for 60,000 working Americans.

How evil are conservatives? So evil that everything they do makes the world worse in innumerable ways!

Because she wasn’t killed by police: Elderly woman struck and killed by car:

An 85-year-old woman was fatally injured Monday evening when she was struck by a car while walking across the street in the 4500 block of Arsenal Street, near Lackland Avenue, St. Louis police said. Louise Dodenhof, who lived in the 3100 block of Portis Avenue, died at 9:52 p.m. at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Contrary to claims of Kelo backlash, Missouri municipalities continue their plans for land seizure and redistribution unabashed. In the latest news, the city of Eureka has annexed Allenton and will raze it for commercial development:

But most of that will be gone soon – not just Janet’s Barber Shop, but most of Main Street, as the core of this one-time farm and railroad community is bulldozed to make way for a 1,000 acre project that includes 1,200 houses and a shopping center. The $539 million Eureka South I-44 Redevelopment also would include parks and land for at least one school and a new Eureka recreation center. The city annexed the Allenton area, directly south of Interstate 44 from Six Flags, several years ago.

The Eureka Board of Aldermen is expected to vote tonight to approve a redevelopment agreement that will allow the project to proceed. The agreement allows the use of eminent domain, if needed. Two weeks ago, complaints prompted the board to postpone a vote to give the residents more time to negotiate with the developers. At the time, Eureka officials estimated that only ten of the dozens of property owners had not signed sales contracts.

Ten of dozens. Which means possibly as many as 10 of 24 (42%) or maybe 10 of 36 (28%). But who cares about the right to private property, as long as the city of Eureka gets more tax revenue to feed its ever-growing gluttonous appetite.

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)

One more reason I am not voting for Jim Talent next election: he brings home the bacon.

Just north of St. Louis, the nation’s two largest rivers merge at a spot that few people visit.

That may be about to change.

On Monday, Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., announced plans to introduce a bill that would provide a special federal designation for the 200-square-mile area around the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers that would be known as the Confluence National Heritage Corridor.

“This is an extraordinary natural landmark and this designation is long overdue,” said Talent, of suburban St. Louis.

The designation seeks federal funding for several conservation, heritage and recreational attractions that are part of an organization called Confluence Greenway.

Talent’s legacy:

• Turned the Arch pink.
• That Sudafed Protection bill he co-sponsored with DiFi.
• The Confluence National Heritage Boondoggle.

And I thought it made a difference when I helped unseat Jean Carnahan.

Another day, another future land seizure slipped into conversation all casual like. The story’s headline? Can Northwest Plaza rebound? The epic tale about whether a dying shopping mall can continue to provide needed revenue for a small St. Louis County municipality.

Even though it’s losing revenue from a failing commercial enterprise, the plucky local government will carry on by seizing homes from its citizens to roll into another commercial enterprise, even though its previous plan to seize the land drew no interest from the commercial community:

The city plans to seek bids to redevelop 227 acres near Cypress Road and Interstate 70 into retail, hotel and office buildings. The project could force the buyout of more than 200 homes.

The proposed development differs from a previously planned business park in the same area, which failed due to a lack of bids during the economic recession following the terrorist attacks of 2001.

I find the “If at first you don’t succeed, seize, seize again” attitude of the duly-elected land robber barons quite inspiring.

Another high-speed criminal chase ends in an innocent death, and again certain segments of the population of St. Louis uproariously protest police who would try to capture dangerous people who might want to hurt innocent people and who then do actually hurt innocent people.

Fortunately, capitalism provides a liability-free solution: Tag-and track might slow car chases:

Is there a solution to high-speed police chases?

A company in Virginia is proposing one: a sticky dart with a homing device that police can fire at a fleeing car and track electronically at a distance.

Instead of pursuing the getaway car at high speed, police can lay back and set a trap for the fleeing car up the road.

The company believes its product, called StarChase, will save lives and reduce police liability by slowing some hot pursuits and stopping others altogether.

Yeah, liability-free, and the protestors will go home.

Until the police miss the bad guys’ car with the sticky dart and the sticky dart kills/injures/spoils the shirt of some bystander.

At which point the aggrievement machine will once again creak and grind into its public indignation over the dangers of sticky darts, etc.

Lance Armstrong vs. Sheryl Crow: George W. Bush to Blame?:

Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crow have said all the right things so far as the speculation for their break shifts gears. One tabloid even examines that it may be President George W. Bush’s fault as Lance is a Bush fan while Sheryl is a Bush basher.

The Star details that a friend of the singer said they knew the bust up was coming.

“Sheryl said Lance didn’t just support Bush, – he’d go off and fight if the president asked him too.

Well, guys, we all know that those hot hippyesque chicks from the English department are kinda exciting, and they tend encouragingly toward the promiscuous, but ultimately, you’re going to want to settle down with a wife and mother….and if you’re cagey about it, you might end up with a hot bicyclist, too.

(Story seen on Ace of Spades HQ.)

Memo to Lance Armstrong: Find your own, mister.