Keeping some tracks to herself. The post The song Linda Ronstadt fell in love with but “didn’t have any business singing” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

In the wake of what happened near the fifth green at Trump International Golf Club on Sunday, it seems we should consider some implications. Grave ones, actually. Because after two attempts on President Donald Trump’s life in only 64 days, a pattern that is more suggestive of a crumbling society than perhaps anything else among a panoply of foul auguries flashing in front of us, mere happenstance is highly unlikely as an explanation. Ryan Routh is clearly a nutcase. He’s been a danger to those around him for more than 20 years since he was arrested after barricading himself inside a roofing business he owned with a fully automatic machine gun in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 2002. Routh shouldn’t have had the AK-47 rifle he pointed through a fence at the fifth hole green at Trump International, laying in wait for Trump and his party for some 12 hours before a Secret Service agent noticed the barrel of the rifle poking through that chain-link fence and frightened Routh off with a pair of shots, but he did. And somehow Routh, a North Carolinian who lives in Hawaii when he’s not traveling the world billing himself as a recruiter for the Ukrainian Army (it appears he is no such thing), knew that Trump would be golfing at Trump International on Sunday. That isn’t public information. Routh had ceramic body armor and a GoPro camera to go with an AK-47–style rifle with a scope, which indicates he was going to film himself shooting Trump dead. Which he would likely have done had it not been for the Secret Service agent scaring him off and then the local police subsequently apprehending him thanks to a tip, which included a photo of his car and license number, from an eyewitness who saw him flee the scene of his would-be assassination of Trump. This didn’t play out in the same fashion that the first attempted assassination of Donald Trump did two months ago in Butler, Pennsylvania, but nevertheless both were miraculous close shaves. But on Monday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that his state law enforcement agencies will conduct their own investigation of the attempted assassination rather than allow the FBI to lead the case unencumbered by anyone looking over their shoulders. And that’s as it should be; Routh is charged with attempted murder, a state crime, so state law enforcement is the proper investigative authority. It’s as it should be for another reason: the FBI is disqualified as an investigative agency where Donald Trump is concerned. From Peter Strzok’s “insurance policy” to the Mar-a-Lago raid, we’re nearing a decade of abuse that the agency has committed against Trump as a political candidate, president, and private citizen. There might well be individual FBI agents who are honest and willing to do a proper job, but the agency as a whole has lost its integrity. Its performance to date in investigating Butler has been hopelessly flawed, as congressional investigations have turned up far more in the way of context and details. From the reports of the congressional investigators, it’s clear that more was going on in Butler than some one-off, lone-nut attack on a Trump rally. There were key holes in Secret Service coverage, holes that were clearly going to provide a golden opportunity for an attacker to get to Trump. And it’s implausible that Thomas Crooks, an antisocial nerd barely out of high school with a menial job emptying bedpans at a nursing home, would somehow know that he could take a position on a rooftop barely 130 yards from the stage where Trump was speaking and get off at least four shots at the president before he’d be taken out. You’d expect, as a trained sniper, that there would be no way that roof could be available to you. Even as an untrained sniper with some situational awareness, you wouldn’t figure you could get to that rooftop without being accosted by security personnel or law enforcement. And yet Crooks got onto that rooftop, in plain sight of many rallygoers, casually set up his shot, and missed taking Trump’s head off by a couple of centimeters through divine intervention alone. Then 64 days later, there’s a sniper nest at Trump International where someone lays in wait for 12 hours at the fifth hole, and he’s not molested until he’s just about ready to finish Trump off. The media refuses to talk about this other than to scold Trump over his “rhetoric” while they’ve been ginning up would-be assassins for months with talk of Trump as “Hitler” or a “dictator.” But in any other context, you would have a national panic over the level of political violence being perpetrated, now at the highest levels, in this country. It all smells like not just a plot but a campaign. As I’ve noted, these seem like crab traps being laid on the waterbottom — when you lay a crab trap you don’t actually watch what’s happening; you just know that if there are crabs nearby, they will make their way to the bait. Security vulnerabilities like we’ve seen twice in 64 days are crab traps, at minimum. Though they could be more. These crabs might be doing more than simply chasing the bait. And that’s why DeSantis’ investigation must proceed. What if the governor’s investigators find inexplicable holes in Trump’s security coverage again? What if they prove that Ryan Routh had help? Obviously, it’ll matter from whom. Are there elements within the U.S. government — or outside of it with the ability to manipulate the federal agencies — willing to plot an assassination of a presidential candidate? Well, if you were investigating a crime, you’d look to means, motive, and opportunity. Ryan Routh, a certifiable maniac with violent tendencies and a clear political animus for Trump (he’s being termed a Trump supporter because he’s said to have voted for him in 2016, but that’s hard to make stick given the Biden–Harris bumper sticker on his vehicle and the 19 separate ActBlue donations he’s made to Democrats of recent vintage; he didn’t come to assassinate Trump out of love), looks an awful lot like the sort who ends up an asset for some intelligence agency or other. Was Routh acting alone? The good news is he wasn’t killed in the attempt as Crooks was, so Routh might be able to offer some information as to whether he served as a means for someone else’s ends. Motive? I don’t think it’s difficult to see that there are Deep State operators with a motive to end Trump physically or politically. Certainly Team Biden is out to get him; they’ve programmed an illegally appointed special prosecuter to bring dubious federal criminal cases against him and similarly sent local prosecutors after him in New York and Atlanta to charge him with conduct that is not criminal. And we saw, when 51 high-ranking intelligence community spooks got together to publicly lie about the Hunter Biden laptop story and call it “Russian disinformation” that there are elements within that community willing to go rogue for political ends. Is it really so difficult to imagine an assassination is the next step when they refer to Trump as a Hitler? Is it out of the question when Trump says during a debate that he’ll negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine and 10 days later someone who careened around Kyiv claiming to be boosting their war effort with Afghan Army vets on offer shows up as a would-be assassin on that golf course? As for opportunity, that’s also clearly present. Are we talking about bureaucrats within the federal government? The intelligence community? Law enforcement? Military? All of those elements would have the opportunity once the glass of a constitutional republic in which civilian elected officials wield power is broken. And most Americans believe that glass was shattered some time ago. Rogue operators within the federal government — or even outside the government with penetration inside it — would have the opportunity to plot such an assassination as was nearly perpetrated in Butler and in Palm Beach. This proves nothing, of course. I’m not claiming to be some clairvoyant Jim Garrison; I’m merely presenting scenarios and posing questions. The proof must be obtained, which is what DeSantis’ investigation is charged with doing. Perhaps there is no “there” there, and perhaps Trump is simply outrageously unlucky and amazingly fortunate at the same time. Maybe what we’re seeing is merely the foreseeable confluence of breathtaking Secret Service incompetence and media/political irresponsibility in demonizing him in front of the crazies. One has to believe there’s more going on, but maybe that isn’t true. But maybe it is. Maybe we’re looking not just at a plot to kill Trump but a whole campaign to do it. And maybe the Florida investigation pulls at enough threads to unravel the entire fabric. Because if there is a plot to kill the former president, it can’t simply fade into the woodwork when its intended climax fails to materialize (perhaps multiple times). The plotters much be exposed and punished in the severest possible ways. And I trust Florida far more than the FBI to do that. READ MORE: Trump Assassination Attempt With GoPro in Tow The Real Reason Democrats Fear Losing in November The post Florida’s Investigation of the Trump Assassination Attempt Could Yield Frightening Results appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

WASHINGTON — There were no questions during Thursday’s White House media briefing about what the Biden–Harris administration is doing about the beleaguered city of Springfield, Ohio. No reporter asked press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre whether President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris plan to visit the town that has come to represent what happens when a Midwest manufacturing city of 58,000 absorbs the arrival of some 20,000 migrants. Imagine a one-third bump in your town’s population over four years. That’s a story. Instead, there were questions about former President Donald Trump’s claim during Tuesday’s presidential debate that Haitian migrants were eating pet dogs and cats. Does Biden believe these false stories led to bomb threats that shut down city hall on Thursday? (It turns out, email threats prompted school and public school closures Friday as well.) Was the White House afraid the stories would spur hate crimes? That says it all about my profession. A working-class community is struggling with a huge influx of newcomers, many of whom do not speak English or know how to drive like an Ohioan — and yet the media corps sees the whole mess as an opportunity to fact-check Trump. There was no question as to whether Biden or Harris plans to visit Springfield. Most of the newcomers came to Springfield to work — so residents are not complaining about the sort of organized Venezuelan gang crimes that increased in Aurora, Colorado. There have been complaints about reduced wages and rent increases that are forcing people to move. Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine told Fox News that the new migrants are hard workers and family-oriented, but the way they drive can be problematic, hence his decision to deploy the Highway Patrol to be on the lookout for erratic driving. Team Trump has mentioned the fate of Aiden Clark, an 11-year-old who died in an accident involving a Haitian immigrant driver last year. The boy’s father publicly condemned the Trump–JD Vance campaign and asked the ticket to leave mention of his son out of the 2024 campaign. DeWine lamented that Washington opened the door to these newcomers without a plan. News Nation reporter Rich McHugh reported from Springfield that the population boom has affected nearly every aspect of life. Car accidents are skyrocketing. According to FBI data, violent crime is up 142 percent from 2019 to 2022. A resident called 911 two weeks ago — before the Harris–Trump debate — complaining that he saw four Haitians who had geese in their hands. Residents have told McHugh that they do not believe the city’s denials about the problems they see. Rents are up. The cost of living is up. Springfield is not the city folks grew up in. At a recent Springfield City Council meeting and on social media, residents complained about bad driving and overcrowding so severe that they experience it even when they’re buying groceries. Back to the geese. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost complained, “There’s a recorded police call from a witness who saw immigrants capturing geese for food in Springfield. Citizens testified to city council. These people would be competent witnesses in court. Why does the media find a carefully worded city hall press release better evidence?” Last month, a woman named Noel told the city council that after living in her home for 45 years, her husband said it was time to leave. “I have men that cannot speak English in my front yard screaming at me, throwing mattresses in my front yard, throwing trash in my front yard.” Springfield is not alone. A recent Wall Street Journal analysis estimated 10 million immigrants have entered the country over the last four years. There was no vote. It just happened. In America. Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM READ MORE: Trump and Vance Need to Articulate the Stakes of the 2024 Race Pope Francis Equates Opposition to Illegal Immigration to Abortion The post Springfield, Ohio Is About More Than Cats and Dogs appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Greta Thunberg was physically carried away by police due to her involvement in a protest that called for Stockholm University to sever all of its connections with Israeli universities. Known for her activism with climate change, Thunberg has also increasingly participated in anti-Israel demonstrations. On this episode of The Spectator P.M. Podcast, hosts Ellie Gardey Holmes, Aubrey Gulick, and Lyrah Margo discuss Greta Thunberg’s involvement with police, her history with activism, and how she continues to offer her support to all the wrong efforts. Tune in to hear their discussion! The post <i>The Spectator P.M Podcast</i> Ep. 76: Greta Thunberg Keeps Running Into Trouble With Police appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The life of a terrorist is getting more and more complicated. There used to be a time when an honest-to-God part-time terrorist could kill innocent people and wake up the next day still dreaming of having succeeded in wiping out capitalism, or Israel, or the Christian infidels. In the morning one would detonate a few bombs, kidnap 10 or 15 children and torture them, and then in the afternoon take the kids to the daycare center, pray a little bit facing you-know-where, and then arrive home ready to eat whatever the five wives had cooked. You’d get home ready for dinner, as long as the bombs weren’t belt bombs, in which case you might be a little late back. However, now things seem to be changing. After doing your regular terrorist stuff all day long, not messing with anyone, doing your own thing, which is blowing up people who aren’t even fighting in your stupid war, just chilling in the middle of the afternoon buying halal meat and whistling Islamic militia hymns, your pager gets a message, and you’ve instantly lost your balls. And, of course, remote sex-change surgery changes your life in many ways, aside from the fact that it will probably take quite some time before being able to sit down again if the pager happened to be in your back pocket. In fact, Mossad’s satirical X account last night launched an appeal that was as timely as it was hilarious: “Please donate your penises.”  Those who have used terrorism as their only way of life are surprised when their usual victims respond to their attacks by paying them back in a similar coin, except that here the objective was not mass terror, but a direct and individual attack on the terrorists themselves, so individualized that it was almost impossible to harm anyone else, which will make those who accuse Israel of genocide on a daily basis rage. What Israel has achieved this Tuesday is a definitive change in the technological evolution of defense, warfare, and the fight against terror. We have witnessed live another historic event and, frankly, we have already seen the Twin Towers fall, bombings in Europe, TikTok dances, and a pandemic; personally I am a bit exhausted from living through historic things. Maybe we should leave some fear for the next generations. True, it is scary to think that the ability to launch such a cyberattack could fall into the wrong hands, but in any case, that is no reason not to use a technology that you have at your fingertips if it will get rid of those who are making the murder of innocents their sole raison d’être. I wonder if now the Europeans and Americans hesitant toward Israel will finally understand that the defense of democracy and freedom in the land of the Jews is also essential to guarantee our own, that Israel’s resistance is the retaining wall that prevents terrorism from sweeping the West at will.  I imagine that those who complain that Israel is defending itself because innocent people are dying in the conflict will now complain that only the guilty die, because the cyberattack has been of overwhelming precision, and the extreme left-wing anti-Israeli gang is incorrigible in its adherence to the terrorist cause. Going anywhere near an individual electronic device again in the next few years will be difficult for these terrorists. Most likely, they will return to smoke signals. But what is certain is that their ability to commit savage attacks on Israeli citizens has been significantly reduced at this point, and their evil coordination via pager I suspect will become a dying practice now, which will drastically reduce joint operations to spread terror.  In other words: the world is a freer and more peaceful place today, to make a general assessment. I say this because it will not be long before idiots and useful fools will come out to criticize Israel’s determination to survive those who, from Washington or Brussels, will reproach Israel for defending itself, instead of asking for forgiveness and handing themselves over to the Islamists to be cut to pieces like their Oct. 7 compatriots. And what is more: from now on, any Islamic terrorist dreaming of a bloodbath in Europe or the United States should carefully consider whether the land being targeted belongs to a country allied to Israel because sometimes technology flies almost as fast as the balls of murderers who misbehave. The post Terrorists Used to Lose Their Heads. Today, It’s Their Balls. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Numerous professional writers — historians, political scientists, and journalists — have described a divided and dispirited America with no shining city on a hill in sight. In a 2023 Wall Street Journal–NORC poll, only 38 percent of respondents said patriotism is “important” to them, a measly 30 percent said having children is important to them, and just 27 percent deemed community involvement to be important. So much for Tocqueville’s praise of American volunteerism. (READ MORE: Trump and Vance Need to Articulate the Stakes of the 2024 Race) Our entertainment centers, led by Hollywood and New York, vie to see who can plumb the depths of mindless violence and gratuitous sex. Schools teach “gender fluidity” to kindergartners, sex education to preteens, and access to abortion without parental consent. Thirty-two million adults cannot read, write, or do basic math above a third-grade level. Government programs spawned by the Great Society have reduced incentives to work, making many Americans, especially African Americans, dependent on the government for income. The result has been increased poverty and crime in our inner cities.  Why, then, should we take note of yet another study of our troubled land, Stumbling Toward Utopia: How the 1960s Turned Into a National Nightmare and How We Can Revive the American Dream, by vice president of the evangelical Focus on the Family Timothy S. Goeglein? Because Goeglein has written a concise, readable study of our dysfunctional union in less than 200 pages, not a mammoth, statistic-laden volume that few people outside the academy will bother to read. He has written a succinct guideline of how to revive the American Dream.  A Guideline for Reviving the American Dream The author recounts the decades-long process, initiated by progressives at the start of the 20th century, that weakened America’s moral foundations until they collapsed in the 1960s. It was then, writes Goeglein, that America discarded its fundamental underpinnings of faith, family, and community. Our nation has never been the same.    “Our relations with each other,” he says, “have worsened, our cities have become more decayed, our educational system inept, our families splintered.” National civility disappeared. (READ MORE: Trump vs. the Left’s Incitement to Violence) “We are now living, “he writes, “in the seventh decade of what the Sixties have wrought,” including, a mockery of faith, broken families, sexual promiscuity, and a massively confused youth. How do we extricate ourselves from this morass? Stumbling Toward Utopia provides a convincing answer.  Geoglein is a church-going Christian, so it is not surprising that he calls for a third revolution built on the spiritual values and ideas of the American Revolution. (The second revolution was the sexual and moral revolution of the 60s which dismissed the family as “outmoded.”) The author insists that man does not live by politics alone, that the Founders understood that you cannot have freedom without virtue, that the legacy of the 60s cannot be reversed overnight, that a new revolution will require decades of sustained reform and commitment, and that it must begin by putting God and not man at the center of our lives.  There are encouraging signs of a growing backlash against “woke” ideology. A 2023 Gallup poll found a sharp rise in the number of Americans who are embracing social conservatism. The conservative view of social issues is now seen among nearly all demographic groups. (READ MORE: The Most Important Question Harris Can’t Answer) Ignoring the soaring national debt, the family breakdown, bankrupt public education, and the rampant immorality of our entertainment is no longer an option, Goeglein writes — the unraveling of our society is too far advanced. “We must work to build consensus. And always in a way to direct people back to God.” Those over 40 may not see the complete reversal of the 1960s, Goeglein admits, “but it is possible our children and grandchildren will — if we act now.”  In Stumbling Toward Utopia, Tim Goeglein challenges every concerned citizen to join the epic battle being waged for the mind, heart, and soul of America.   The post Here’s How We Revive the American Dream appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In its continuing frenzy to see anticompetitive behavior behind every bush — and then apply the wrong remedies — the Biden Department of Justice recently sued RealPage, a technology company that helps landlords determine how much to charge in rent.  On the face of it, RealPage is one of the many new tools offered by modern technology. It aggregates national data with landlord data and suggests a figure for rent. However, while RealPage makes it easy for landlords to accept a suggestion, it makes it cumbersome to reject one (which the Department of Justice is calling price-fixing and collusion). (READ MORE: The Most Important Question Harris Can’t Answer) The DOJ lawsuit claims that “in a free market,… landlords would… be competing independently to attract renters based on pricing, discounts, concessions, lease terms, and other dimensions of apartment leasing.” RealPage, it alleges, has decreased “competition among landlords in apartment pricing and [monopolized] the market for [software] that landlords use to price apartments.” According to the DOJ’s invocation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, “RealPage uses this scheme and its substantial data trove to maintain a monopoly in the market for commercial revenue management software.” As usual, in its misguided zeal to increase competition in all the wrong ways, this latest slice of Bidenomics neglects several key factors. The Government Has Itself to Blame for Increased Rent, Not RealPage First, the average rent has indeed increased by more than 50 percent in the past decade. But prices in general have increased by more than 30 percent in that same time. Comparing these figures reveals that rental increases are real, but the magnitude is not as severe as the DOJ alleges. Second, rental increases are largely due to federal intervention in the first place. The late economist Steve Horwitz liked to point out that, after adjusting for inflation, the price of just about everything has fallen in the past 50 years. Take computers, which went from luxury to commonplace in 40 years. In 1983, an Apple IIe computer cost $6,300 (in 2024 dollars) for 64KB of computing power; today, one can buy an entry-level 32GB computer for less than $300. Last century, food expenditures represented 33 percent of average household income. In the past 50 years, they have fallen from 15 percent to 9 percent.   Three sectors of the economy remain stubbornly immune to the widespread price decreases from increased productivity and better technology: education, healthcare, and housing. Of course, these are three of the most highly regulated, subsidized, and government-directed sectors of the economy. If the Biden/Harris administration were serious about fostering competition in housing and lowering prices, it would examine zoning laws that prevent new construction, subsidies (from federal mortgage assistance to the mortgage interest deduction) that drive up prices, and a bevy of other interventions. (READ MORE: Welcome to the Permission-Slip Economy) The result of these regulations is clear: a glaring underproduction of housing. In fact, the housing advocacy group, Up for Growth, estimated that this is as high as 3.9 million missing homes, affecting all 50 states and Washington, DC. By preventing the construction of new housing, policymakers are inadvertently causing increased prices for both rental properties and housing. If the Biden/Harris administration wants to lower housing prices, the only real solution is to make it easier for construction companies to build more housing, a point that even Barack Obama made during his speech at the Democratic National Convention. Trying to lower prices through increased regulation is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. Antitrust Policy: A Solution in Search of a Problem In any transaction, there are both buyers and sellers. While economists often assume that both sides have “full and complete information,” this rarely holds in the real world. Often, one side of the exchange has better and more information than the other. These information asymmetries are often cited as justification for government action. In the case of RealPage, the supply side (the landlords) allegedly has much more information than the demand side (tenants) and thus has stronger bargaining power.   That may have been the case 40 years ago, but in a world that is deeply connected by the internet, this seems unlikely. As Peter Boettke and Mark Steckbeck argue, reputations matter in today’s society far more than they ever have and are far more communicable than ever before. The rise of websites such as Zillow, Trulia, and a dozen others shows that information, both about market prices and landlord reputations, has grown on both sides. Because of this, even if landlords enjoy an advantage in the sense of understanding the market for rental properties better than prospective tenants, tenants can quickly and accurately discover which landlords treat their tenants fairly and honorably and which do not. Because of this, the ability of landlords to dictate monopolistic prices to tenants is undermined severely. Problems arise in the application of antitrust policies to market phenomena. In any instance, the result is always the same: less innovation. In the case of the housing and rental properties, this would be disastrous. First, it shields existing firms from the competition of new entry. In this case, RealPage is yet another algorithm-based entity that attempts to determine fair market value for a rental property. A quick search online reveals that Zillow.com, Rentometer.com, RentCafe.com, Apartments.com, Rentcast.com, and RedFin.com all provide nearly the same service, with plenty of additional websites not listed here. Second, the true innovation of these services, RealPage included, is much more consumer-friendly than has been alleged. In a new paper by Sophie Calder-Wang and Gi Heung Kim of the Wharton School of Business, algorithmic pricing “helps building managers set prices that are more responsive to market conditions.” What they found by studying the Seattle rental market is that property management companies that used AI tools were quicker to “[lower] rents during the [economic] downturn and [to increase] rents during the upturn.” The result is that occupancy rates remained higher among properties that used AI tools to help set prices than those that did not. Higher occupancy rates mean fewer properties went unused and more people were in housing, not less. Third, by allowing rental prices to rise, homebuilders are incentivized to build more homes. Rising prices, especially prices that rise faster than inflation, reveal that there are more potential buyers than the current market can serve. This impels producers to increase production and invites new entry into the market, further increasing availability. In the case of housing, however, this is prevented by restrictive zoning laws and NIMBYism. (READ MORE: Trump and the Kennedys for Tax Cuts, Kamala Not) In addition to the problems antitrust policies create after implementation, there are also problems in deciding when to apply them. The telltale sign of alleged anticompetitive behavior is prices, specifically rising prices. But this should seem strange. In other contexts, producers charging a price that is too low is considered illegal because of anti-dumping laws. While these are usually applied in the context of international trade, the same logic has been applied to domestic firms as well, with regulators seeking to punish large firms such as Walmart and Target for destroying small, locally owned mom-and-pop shops through undercutting their competitors’ prices. Likewise, charging a price that is identical or near-identical to one’s competitors is seen as evidence of potential collusive activity. As a result, sellers are faced with the possibility of being subject to the ire of regulators no matter what they do. If they price too low, they can be accused of anti-competitive behavior; if they price the same as their competitors they could face charges of collusion; if they price too high they could be charged with being a monopoly and prosecuted under antitrust legislation.   Finally, there is the difficulty of defining a monopoly. At its root, it is a simple term to define: a market condition where there is but one seller of a good in question. But the real world is full of nuance. For example, consider the simple question: is McDonald’s a monopoly? At first blush, the answer appears to be a resounding “no,” as one can come up with a myriad of alternative fast food options. But if we consider the fact that McDonald’s is the only seller of “Big Macs” in the entire world, suddenly the question becomes much less clear. Because of this, defining the good in question is paramount for any antitrust case. In determining when to apply the standards of antitrust legislation, regulators often refer to the “Potter Standard” of “I know it when I see it.” The problem is that different people see the world differently. What looks like anticompetitive behavior to one person might reasonably look like perfectly innocent, competitive behavior to another. As a result, charges brought against companies are often politically charged, reflecting an underlying crony capitalist sentiment. Greed As the Solution? In an ironic twist that only the likes of Michael Douglas’s 1987 character, Gordon Gekko could appreciate, where greed may be the impetus behind alleged collusions, greed is also the collusion’s undoing! Consumers are not mindless automatons, simply obeying the orders of malicious sellers. They actively seek out the best deals for their purchases because doing so helps to stretch their dollars further. This is true in a world coming off record inflation, where prices for all goods and services have risen dramatically, and is especially true for purchases that represent a greater share of one’s monthly income. Rent is frequently one of the most expensive items in any monthly budget and as such, consumers are very responsive to changes in price especially when they have more than one option. Imagine a town with two landlords in it, each looking to rent identical apartments. If they both agree to raise rent, then potential tenants might be in trouble. But this sort of collectivist thinking pits landlords against tenants. It does not address that landlords are also pitted against one another. If both landlords greedily agree with one another to raise rents, but only one of them does so, the landlord who does not raise rent would enjoy a significant advantage in attracting new tenants. Seeing this, the landlord who greedily raised rents would be forced to lower them back to the pre-collusion level — lest he attract virtually zero new tenants. Because of this, greed may be the source of collusion in the first place, but greed is also the collusion’s undoing. If policymakers are serious about helping people get into homes, they need to stop approaching the problem as if it were one of insufficient funds on the part of potential renters or excessive prices on the part of landlords.  The problem is one of supply. Plain and simple. By allowing prices in areas with high demand for rental properties to rise, investors are informed that there is money to be made in providing new, affordable housing in precisely these areas. While investors may be receiving such signals, further interventions in the housing market are preventing them from acting on this information and building more housing. The U.S. housing market doesn’t need an antitrust lawsuit. Instead of hurting markets even more, policymakers need to stop meddling. They need to cut regulations for new housing permits and end subsidies to buyers. They need to allow more space to be freed up to build housing by eliminating or severely curtailing exclusionary zoning laws. In short, they need to allow markets more freedom. David Hebert is a Senior Research Fellow with the American Institute for Economic Research. Nikolai Wenzel is a Professor of Economics at Universidad de las Hespérides and an Associate Research Faculty Member at the American Institute for Economic Research. The post Saving Us From Scheming Landlords? Biden DOJ Sues Real Estate Tech Company RealPage appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Meet Oregon State Rep Jules Walters (D). She repeatedly tells her fellow legislators to "shut up" and "f*** off" during a meeting. She seems totally normal and stable… She's up for reelection this November.pic.twitter.com/vjPvVb5daZ — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 16, 2024

This is a very powerful report. If you want to know where the rabbit hole ends this is for you! https://t.co/ipB2euHxEf — Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) September 18, 2024