Landlords in California Throw Party to Celebrate Evicting Tenants While NPR Helps US Government Scream “Look! Aliens!”

Landlords in California Throw Party to Celebrate Evicting Tenants While NPR Helps US Government Scream “Look! Aliens!”

Not even once, but twice, today. LOOK! ALIENS!!!!

Meanwhile, car insurance premiums went up 19% in the last year, but “inflation is tame”, even though the same article admits that rent and food are up like crazy.

Maybe all the Democrat rags like NPR and New York Times need to pass better notes on the talking points.

Hunter Biden indicted on more felonies, gun charges.

I thought the Democrats didn’t believe in guns?

Of course, there was also the business of his laptop that he’s apparently never going to get in trouble with even though he’s a pervert who likes little kids.

And he’s a crackhead.

But you can’t talk about all of these because he’s Bonehead Joe’s criminal son, and his dad shuts down in the middle of sentences now because he has the intellectual capacity of a parsnip.

The worse things get in this country, the more the media shouts about COVID shots and space aliens.

You can gauge this for yourself.

Things have actually gotten so bad that COVID is a good distraction again from all of the hyperinflation, Biden sundowning, his criminal son in trouble, China running roughshod over us and the Biden administration, and Ukraine making no progress in their “counter-offensive” despite trillions of dollars in aid.

Trillions! On war. While child poverty in America has doubled in only a year thanks to Bonehead Joe.

Some will say it’s just a return to normal. Yes, the American government showed us all that it could lift half of the children out of poverty with one law and put them all back into poverty again with another law.

His whole strategy is to work with the Republicans on the worst stuff.

Give trillions of dollars to war when half that would have fed all these American kids for years.

When are people going to have enough of this?

Old people don’t seem to be very smart. If Biden doesn’t care that he doubled child poverty in only a year, and his only answer is to scream “Look! Aliens!”, he’ll work with the Republicans again to take away your Social Security check.

He obviously doesn’t have a second term left in him. It will be hard for his handlers to mask his cognitive issues for another year.

What will obviously happen if the Democrats keep him around is we’ll end up with a demented old man being rolled on stage during the debate, and Trump or DeSantis being sworn into office in 2025.

Yahoo Finance: People Are Stealing From the Cheap Dollar Store Because They’re Richer Than They Think They Are. The Gaslight Continues….

Yahoo Finance: People Are Stealing From the Cheap Dollar Store Because They’re Richer Than They Think They Are. The Gaslight Continues…

I’d like to share with you some more Mainstream Media Bullshit I wandered into that I was getting at in my previous posts today.

In the first article, Bank of America says Americans have tons of money in the bank and they just think they’re broke because the savings aren’t as high as they were during the illegal “lockdown”.

In the second and third articles, retail stores, including Dollar Tree (where some items are apparently $1.25 and $1.50 now), are experiencing massive theft, and are locking items up.

Apparently, you must lock things that cost $1, $1.25, and $1.50 to protect them from the people who are “richer than they think they are”.

“Consumers are richer than they think they are, says Bank of America. They just need to stop comparing their savings to those during lockdown.“

U.S. consumers could be forgiven for thinking they’ve rarely been more strapped for cash than in 2023: Inflation is still high, the Fed has hiked up rates, and fiscal support from the government is beginning to run dry.

However, Bank of America’s analysis paints a different picture, highlighting robust spending growth and relatively high household deposits compared with 2019.

The resilience of consumer spending has surprised economists and may have even caused a headache for the Fed—which, in a bid to wrestle down inflation, has had to push consumers to the “point of pain” with the highest rate levels in more than a decade.

However, signs of a spending slowdown are emerging, with Deloitte forecasting a drop in growth from 2.8% in 2022 to 1.9% this year. Bank of America suggests this slowdown might be linked to the public’s perception that their financial situation has deteriorated somewhat during 2022–23.

“How ‘shrink’ became the biggest story in retail.“

Retail theft, or “shrink,” as business executives put it, has run wild.

In waves of earnings calls, references to shrink resemble the retail industry’s upside-down version of mentioning AI. But instead of generating hype, citing shrink softens the blow of sinking profits.

[…]

The theme of missing merchandise also featured in recent calls from Dollar Tree (DLTR), Macy’s (M), Home Depot (HD), and Target (TGT).

“Nobody wants to come out and say, ‘We are not in control,'” said David Johnston, NRF vice president of asset protection and retail operations. “To see the number of CEOs coming out and talking about shrink and loss — it’s an issue.”

Dollar Tree, for instance, told investors it is installing locked cases on more items and even taking some SKUs out of stores in response to elevated theft. “We are now taking a very defensive approach to shrink,” Dollar Tree CEO Rick Dreiling told analysts this week.

“Dollar Tree adding locked cases, removing items from stores amid rising theft costs.“

“We are now taking a very defensive approach to shrink,” Rick Dreiling, CEO of Dollar Tree, said during the earnings call. “I do not see any trouble to getting to more realistic margin levels.”

In response, the company plans to introduce anti-theft initiatives including moving certain items behind the checkout stand and removing some SKUs altogether.

You’re richer than you think you are. Now quit stealing from the damn dollar store!

The KrugmanBot3000 will have you know there is a “Biden Economic Miracle” going on.

“I stole Tide from the Dollar Tree today. Now I can do two loads of laundry!” – Very successful country.

“We’re locking up the toothpaste.” -Very Robust Economy.

“And the baby formula.” -Totally not a failing country at all.

I was reading a blog in Geminispace yesterday. The guy was talking about natural gas prices in the UK being so high that almost 50% risk being cut off this winter.

I was reading a blog in Geminispace yesterday.

Web (Proxy)

The guy was talking about natural gas prices in the UK being so high that almost 50% risk being cut off this winter.

He said that it happened a few times when he was a kid, but they were in the lowest 5% income bracket in the country.

Then I thought about what kind of a society lets that happen to anyone and how many times I’ve gone without heat.

And then I realized in a way, 50% having their heat shut off for a winter because they can’t pay it might be a good thing from a certain point of view.

They didn’t care when it was 5%. What’s different now? They’ll have it happen to them as well?

If that’s what it takes to make people give a damn because the society is so morally bankrupt, then maybe they deserve it.

Roy on TechRights lives in the UK and is always in a feud with me over whether the UK or the US is falling apart faster. They’re ahead of us in many ways, with less violent crime perhaps.

In the US, there are utility assistance programs, but they’re very stingy. Like, the poorest of the poor (<125% of FPL) qualify for this thing called LIHEAP which is a grant to the states, but they have a set amount and it’s a race to apply for it, and then the deadline hits, and the LIHEAP program closes until next year, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

People above 125% of the FPL aren’t well off, but get to figure out what they’ll do by themselves. Last winter was the second winter of my adult life where I left the heat off.

Thankfully, the building we live in now isn’t a terrible slum like my first apartment, which I blogged about in my last post. It’s dated and dumpy and a little worse for wear, but I don’t have to fend off possums and hornets and worry about the microwave and TV being on at the same time.

In the slum apartment I had in Indiana 20 years ago, I tolerated it because my rent was $50 a week. I probably would have stayed there longer and just tolerated everything that was going on, except that the woman the landlord had collecting rent for him while he was living in Puerto Rico moved out and it turned out that she had been stealing all of the rent money for the last year from everyone who had been living in the building renting a room.

He was angry about it and called me at the place I moved to demanding a full year’s rent (that I had already paid to his “agent”), and I said it wasn’t my fault that the woman he told me to pay because he thought she had nice tits ran off with his money and called him an idiot and hung up the phone.

And that’s how the $50 a week rent ended, forever.

Nobody has ever helped me with my winter heat, so I get to turn it off. Now, the landlord we have here has to keep the building heat at about 60 degrees so the pipes don’t burst and that sort of lets me just keep our heat off and dress warm. So it’s not “see your breath” cold and all you can do is run a little bitty heater fan and aim it at your head while you sleep.

That apartment came “furnished”. And by “furnished”, I mean some cheap thrift store crap, including a pull out couch bed. A couple months in, it gave out from under me and to “fix” it, I took a bunch of sturdy cardboard boxes those massive jugs of laundry soap used to ship in from work and stacked them under the bed.

Finally, it collapsed a while later, and I was sleeping on an inflatable mattress that people were meant to go camping with. It was like $40 and I threw what was left of the couch out in the backyard. The landlord found it after he came back from Puerto Rico and part of the conversation was I owed him for that piece of shit couch as well.

The other renters were mostly on the sex offender list and I obviously wasn’t (and never have been), but I had to share a bathroom with them, so I got a spray bottle and filled it with bleach and bleached down all the fixtures, shower, and the toilet and everything before I used them.

Several years after, the house was condemned and torn down by the city. The roof was separating from the building, but things like that weren’t why they eventually tore it down. They found a meth lab in the basement.

So, I mean, I’ve lived in some pretty vile conditions over my life. Time to spend a little time in my world.

Good luck everybody else!