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Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Stephen Colbert: ALTER EGOS, part 4

The Dotard Трамп and Other Seditionists and Grifters:

NowThis: Crisis pregnancy centers caught spreading false info about abortions

Robert Reich: Don’t believe the lies—Your wages are not driving inflation

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Trevor: Herschel Walker’s wild plan, Twitter’s new covid policy, and police robots

NowThis: Hakeem Jeffries to make history as first Black party leader in Congress

Bruce W. Nelson: ♫ On the awful secularization of Groundhog Day ♬

Electoral Dysfunction:

Robert Reich: The Fed’s inflation mistake continues

VICE News: The poetry of thriving with HIV

Jonathan Jensen: ♫ A parody tribute to Randy Rainbow ♬

The Party of White Supremacists and Holocaust Denial:

LegalEagle: FTX was (and is) a complete mess

Alex Wagner: Congress demands answers on Supreme Court Justice access scandal and accountability problem

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Stephen: Sec. Pete Buttigieg on why fixing America’s infrastructure is fun and exciting

LeagleEagle: Ghosts are legally real

Electile Dysfunction:

Jon Stewart: Why are states undercutting their own workers?

Now This: How young people are leading the way on gun reform

The Lying, Cheating and Scheming Cult of The Dotard Трамп:

Desi Lydic: Halloween—Why do we celebrate this?

Jon Stewart and friends: When states compete to win jobs, residents pay the price

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Stephen: Inflation Reduction Act is great for the environment

Mrs. Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian: What does the Bible *really* say about marriage?

Robert Reich: The real freeloaders in America? The super-rich

Vox: The fall (and rise?) of unions in the US

The Dolts, Dimwits, and Deplorables that Defend The Dotard:

Jonathan Mann: ♫ I’m So Glad The Starbucks Workers Are Unionizing ♬

Mother Jones: The racist law targeting America’s mothers

John Oliver: Monkey pox

The Late Show: President Biden had some interesting symptoms during his bout with covid

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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John Oliver: Inflation

Robert Reich: The inflation cover-up

Steve Hofstetter (With JC Coccoli): Dr. Oz Roast

WaPo: Manchin strikes deal with Schumer on economy, climate bill

The Late Show: How Washington reacted to Joe Manchin’s deal with Chuck Schumer

Ari Melber and Samantha Bee: Fighting back with comedy, truth, and late night breakthroughs

Trevor: Manchin shocks Washington & McConnell with bill compromise

The Dotard and Other Domestic Enemies of the USA:

Vox: Four ways Americans are still getting abortion pills

Jimmy Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship

Zerlina: Black father on the importance of representation

Honest Ads: Why you’ll never buy a house

Ronny Chieng: Angry Oregon residents want to move Idaho’s border

Vox: Why US gun laws get looser after mass shootings

LegalEagle: Illegal in the US, legal in the world

MSNBC: Washington’s Gov. Inslee on fighting climate change amid heatwave, wildfire threats

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Mrs. Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian: Church sex scandals!

Vice News: What happened to the Defund the Police movement?

Now This: How states can expand abortion access now

The Cult of Трамп:

Robert Reich: Why your barbecue is more expensive this year

Symone Sanders: Remembering the victims of the Tulsa Massacre

Gunz in America:

Zerlina: Medical racism rears its ugly head

Robert Reich: How corporations are using inflation to take your money

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Late Night: ♫ Song about Ketanji Brown Jackson gets interrupted ♬

John Oliver: Sex work

Roy Wood, Jr. The State of Black shit, 2022

SOTU:

SNL: COVID dinner discussion

The Daily Show: How Bill Gates plans to make energy from… Shit

LegalEagle: Rights you didn’t know you had, and SHOULDN’T USE

Putin’s bitch, Putin’s Mitch, and Other Authoritarian Wannabes:

SNL: Please don’t destroy—Good variant

The New York Times: Trayvon Martin made America confront its original sin

Amber Ruffin: If prosecutors represent America, why are 95% of them White?

Jimmy Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship

Stephen with Bernie: Sen. Sanders strongly supports Biden’s Supreme Court nominee

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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The Late Show: Taboo—White fragility edition

MeidasTouch: Exposing Alabama’s RACIST gerrymandered maps

Robert Reich: Are both sides actually getting more extreme?

Jordan Klepper takes on Canadian truckers

Samantha Bee: SAND—The sexiest topic we’ve ever covered

Vox: Why the US doesn’t have universal child care (anymore)

The Dotard Трамп:

Jon Stewart: The problem with Twitter

Zerlina: Starbucks employees fight for unionization

Rocky Mountain Mike: ♫ See Karen whine ♬:

Cracked’s Honest Ads: If internet service providers were honest

Samantha Bee: We know who Biden should pick for SCOTUS

LegalEagle: How to sue God

WaPo: What is the NFL’s Rooney Rule?

This Week in ТрампPlague:

Amber Ruffin: Black history month (Part 2)

Jon Stewart and friends: Corporate greed is causing inflation

Jimmy Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship

Levar Burton: Reading in 2022

Full Frontal: Allana Harkin goes to the Super Bowl to talk politics

Ari Melber: NRA loses big—Gun safety activists win first case ever against a gunmaker

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Jon Stewart: Is money even real? An economist explains

Stephen: No, Kamala Harris is not headed to the Supreme Court

Robert Reich: How corporate greed drives inflation

Samantha Bee: SCOTUS Justice Stephen Breyer announces retirement

Vice News: Wildfires are coming to the suburbs

Asshats, Dotards, and Other Deplorables that Make Up the Трамп GOP:

Trevor: Stephen Breyer announces retirement & Joe Rogan questions the word “Black”

Seth Meyers: Biden gets a chance to make history with SCOTUS pick as Breyer retires

Robert Reich: Five ways your company may be exploiting you

Winlar: ♫ Illegal Immigrants! ♬

Chris Hayes: Biden delivered fastest economic growth since Reagan. So why don’t voters feel it?

This Week in ТрампPlague:

SNL Weekend Update: Biden Presidency enters year 2

Stephen: Breyer stepping down from the Supreme Court

Trevor: Congressional stock trading

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Stephen: Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton reveals a 51-star American flag that includes D.C. as a state

Robert Reich: Don’t buy into the inflation scare

The Daily Show: Alabama—Religion, prejudice, and pigskin

WaPo: Why Congress decided to bring back earmarks

Keith Olbermann: Stephen A. Smith’s Ohtani comments and how they threaten the Asian-American community

Roy Wood, Jr.: The reason you can’t use the handgun emoji anymore

KKKooks & Criers, Crooks & Liars, and Other Breeds of Republicans:

Trevor: How White people can be allies

Keith Olbermann: That there was no plan to shoot up the all-star game isn’t good news

Amber Ruffin: The draft for women

Robert Reich: Why expanding the Supreme Court is not radical

Vice News: The fossil fuel industry wants you to think it’s solving climate change

LegalEagle: Gunmaker stalls Sandy Hook lawsuit with emojis and memes

This Week in ТрампPlague:

The Daily Show: Eye on Nebraska—Death penalty, serial killer tourism, & tri-faith religious spaces

Jimmy Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship

The Late Show: President Obama’s summer playlist has a very specific order:

WaPo: Why Texas House Democrats left the state

Vice News: It’s time to make Washington D.C. a state already, damnit

The Late Show: ♫ Drake helps Biden talk to China ♬

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

So, $9.47

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Goldy, as seems to be his thing now, calls some bullshit on Mark J. Perry of American Enterprise Institute. You should go read the whole thing, but basically Perry uses bad numbers to claim that the Seattle minimum wage is bad for jobs because the rest of the state is adding restaurant jobs faster than Pierce County. Again, Goldy points out that he isn’t just using Seattle numbers and tries to figure out what the actual number is, go read it. I’ll wait.

Back? Great because I’m kind of interested in the rest of the state. Perry says in a tweet that [sic for the whole thing, but if you read my Twitter, or this blog, I’m really not one to throw stones]:

In Washington state outside Seattle MSA, restaurant jobs are booming, up +5,600 since January vs. Seattle MSA -100 ??

While Goldy rightly questions in the piece why January, I can think of one thing that happened in Washington state in January: the minimum wage increased (with inflation) to $9.47 an hour. Last week I had a post noting that there are a few counties in Washington with a minimum wage high enough and a cost of living low enough that there is a living wage, at least for single people without children. Those are the only counties in the country where anyone working full time on the minimum wage has a living wage. Those are the counties where “restaurant jobs are booming” according to the AEI economist.

So that seems like a data point in favor of at least a $9.47 minimum wage nationally. Maybe we can just round it up to $10.10, like President Obama is pushing. Maybe then it will cover families as well as just some single people.

Seattle Times Editorial Board Comes Out Against Changing Any Law Ever

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By all means, the Seattle Times editorial board should feel free to argue that “rent control is not the answer for Seattle.” I look forward to a robust and informed debate on the issue. But they don’t. Rather, the editors insist that council members and candidates simply “should stop talking about rent control.”

I dunno, seems odd for an op-ed page to advocate for less opinion and editorials. But whatever. For the thing I really find silly in this op-ed is the second clause of their headline: “Rent control is not the answer for Seattle, and is illegal.”

Really? We should stop talking about rent control because it is illegal? You know what else until recently used to be illegal? Marijuana. Same-sex marriage. Charter schools. Private liquor stores. That’s the whole point of talking about rent control—it’s a conversation about changing the law! 

Look, I can’t really say whether I support or oppose rent control, because I haven’t actually seen a specific proposal. Would I prefer to avoid price controls? Sure. They’re messy. But might a cap of some multiple of inflation prove useful as a temporary complement to a comprehensive affordable housing program aimed at dramatically increasing supply? Maybe. I welcome that debate. And so should all serious parties.

After all, if rent control is such an awful idea then the editors have nothing to fear, right?

 

Kshama Sawant: Rent Control Is Like a Minimum Wage for Tenants

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Kshama SawantLast week Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant* and I got into a conversation about rent control via email, and she provided such a clear and straightforward explanation of her position, that I asked if I could just repost it here to HA. Instead, she got back to me with the following slightly expanded, better formatted, and presumably copy edited version of her initial off-the-cuff response.

Critics have attempted to dismiss Sawant’s affordable housing advocacy as narrow, divisive, and unrealistic—at best a distraction from the real work at hand. But as you will read from the thoughtful response below, that is a gross mischaracterization. Sawant calls for a “comprehensive” approach. She supports using bonding capacity to build publicly owned housing. She supports most of the HALA recommendations, but would go further by including a “robust linkage fee.” Still, I specifically asked about rent control, and that is the focus of her response.

To me, the most compelling policy and political argument Sawant makes is the way she compares rent control to the minimum wage: they are both minimum standards necessary to protect against the natural imbalance of of power between landlord and tenant, or employer and employee. Rent control is not about repealing the market; it’s about reining in its excesses. And according to Sawant, the alleged construction-destroying impacts of rent control are just as unsubstantiated as the alleged job-killing impacts of the minimum wage.

Makes sense. But you can read for yourself:

Which Way for Affordable Housing in Seattle?

Seattle is booming with job growth and a major influx of working people. Yes, we need increased housing supply. Yes, we need zoning changes to build more housing, and to enable a denser and more walkable and accessible city. But why is there such a severe shortage of affordable housing in Seattle? And what is the solution to the problem?

Is It Just about Supply and Demand?
We are told that we need only rely on the so-called “free market.” We are told it is simply about supply and demand. Let developers build, let the supply of market-rate units increase. And at some point, magically, prices will come down and create housing affordability.

Not one of the proponents of this trickle-down theory can give a plausible idea, or even so much as a rough estimate, of how many units would have to be built for that point of affordability to be reached. We are asked to go on faith.

Amanda Burden, the director of New York City’s Department of Planning, a couple of years ago acknowledged that she had truly believed that NYC could build its way out of an affordable housing shortage. She said the city “built tremendous amount of housing” with that hope, “and the price of housing didn’t go down at all.”

Why Are We Losing Existing Affordable Units?
Supply and demand do explain why Seattle rents are going up. How much your rent increases, however, is determined by the relative balance of forces between tenants and the real estate lobby. Much the same way that wages and benefits in the workplace are a reflection of how much power workers have, including whether or not they have a union, to allow them to negotiate better working conditions.

In the absence of substantial tenant protections, rents tend to not only increase in a high-demand market, but to skyrocket. Why? Because developers and landlords can get away with it.

This opportunity to jack up rents means that tenants residing in market-available affordable units experience massive rent increases, which implies economic eviction. After the tenants are driven out, the previously affordable units are renovated, sometimes even minimally, and then rented for twice or three times the original rents.

What Policies Would Make Housing Affordable?
To actually create new affordable housing, we need a comprehensive policy program. I support most of the recommendations of the HALA committee, although they don’t go far enough. We need a robust linkage fee on big developers to generate a billion dollars to build affordable housing. We must also leverage the City’s bonding capacity to build thousands of units of City-owned affordable housing.

But it will take years to build the thousands of affordable housing units that Seattle desperately needs. In the meanwhile, policies that stabilize rent increases are essential in order to prevent price gouging. The citywide wave of economic evictions and displacement will not be stemmed without rent regulation.

Why Rent Control and What Does it Mean?
Price gouging is not inevitable. It happens in the absence of any real protections for tenants in the form of regulation on rent increases, just like worker exploitation happens in the absence of a minimum wage. That’s where rent control comes in.

By rent control, we mean linking rent increases to inflation. Landlords could still make profits and finance maintenance, but the massive rent hikes and economic evictions that we are seeing in Seattle would be prohibited.

Contrary to the myth that rent control slows construction and hurts housing supply, the two largest building booms in New York City history occurred in periods of strict rent control, first in the 1920s and again from 1947-1965. Demonizing rent control is inconsistent with what the numbers tell us.

But Republicans Control Olympia, So We can’t Win Rent Control Anyway, So Why Even Discuss It?
Rent controls are most needed in areas with runaway prices, which is typically localized metropolitan regions such as cities or counties. So the real estate lobby has always fought rent control by pouring money into the campaigns of conservative state-level politicians running from rural districts, where constituents are not demanding rent stabilization. Nothing unique about Washington State there.

And the only way metropolitan areas have won rent control despite all the real estate lobby money is by building a mass movement in their cities and counties and pushing back against the state. This is exactly what I have proposed as a political strategy here in Seattle. As a first step, Councilmember Licata and I have introduced a resolution to demand that Olympia repeal the ban on all rent regulations. I urge you to sign the petition in support of this resolution.

Rent Control is One of Many Tenant Protections Seattle Needs
We need rent control, but in the meantime we also need to urgently enact other laws to protect tenants. Developer loopholes need to be closed so relocation assistance can be expanded to tenants experiencing economic evictions. Tenants need more than 60-day notice in case of large rent increases (greater than 10 or 20%). Tenants with expiring leases need just-cause eviction protections.

Additionally, late fees and move-in costs for renters need to be capped. Penalties for deposit theft need to be increased. And we need a law that will require interest accrued on deposits to be returned to tenants.

To make all this possible, the City must fully fund the enforcement of tenant rights in the same way that we are setting out to enforce labor laws with the new Office of Labor Standards.

I would view the full spectrum of tenant protections (including regulating rents) with a lens similar to workplace rights. Laws such as minimum wage, paid sick leave, anti-discrimination, occupational safety, and the right to unionize haven’t killed jobs or prevented companies from making profits.

These laws protect workers and provide for a better quality of life for working people. Even the proponents of the free market theory are themselves beneficiaries of the gains of labor struggles. The gains from successful housing affordability policies will be no different. The victory on the $15 minimum wage shows what workers can win when they organize and fight back. We need to build a similarly powerful organized movement for housing justice. Let us begin.

* Duh-uh, I’m a Kshama Sawant supporter. Only an idiot would need this disclaimer, but, well, you know….

It’s the Land Value, Stupid (or Why Seattle’s Affordable Housing Debate Shouldn’t Really Be About Making Houses More Affordable)

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Source: King County Department of Assessments

Source: King County Department of Assessments

What with Seattle Mayor Ed Murray dramatically backtracking from HALA recommendations that would have allowed denser housing in many single-family zoned neighborhoods, I thought I should take a moment to elaborate on a point I made in my recent affordable housing post regarding the impossibility of making single-family detached housing affordable. “We all need to give up this fantasy that every middle class family can own a bungalow and a yard,” I insisted. And the table above helps explain why.

That’s the past 15 years of tax assessment records for my own bungalow and yard, copied and pasted from the King County Department of Assessments website. And assuming the total appraised value in the righthand column comes anywhere close to tracking the actual resale value, I’ve earned a surprisingly modest return on my “investment” over the past decade and a half: an average of only 4.29 percent a year, just twice the rate of inflation (Consumer Price Index) over the same period of time.

Thanks, Great Recession!

But that righthand column only tells half the story. The truth is, adjusted for inflation, the house itself has actually decreased in value over the past 15 years. Which makes sense. Depreciation. My house is old. It’s the value of my land that has figuratively gone through the roof.

According to King County, the land value of my 6,800 sq ft lot increased by almost 10 percent a year, from $54,000 in 2000 to $224,000 in 2014. That’s a fourfold increase—threefold even after adjusting for inflation. And unless our population growth projections are totally wrong, there’s no reason to expect Seattle land values not to continue to grow faster than the local economy as a whole.

Why? Because the supply of land in Seattle is finite. We can build more housing, but we can’t build more land. In fact, as the HALA recommendations acknowledged, to address our housing needs we really need to reduce the amount of land in Seattle restricted to 5,000-plus sq ft lot single-family detached houses. The mayor’s decision to reject these recommendations may or may not be good politics, but it’s certainly bad policy. Though either way, homeowners like me ultimately win.

If we do nothing to loosen density restrictions, then the value of my land continues to increase as demand for bungalows with yards increasingly outstrips supply. If we rezone my lot to accommodate greater density, then the value of my land probably increases even more, as it could then hold two or more $255,000 homes where it now holds just one. But either way, my land value goes up.

Of course, economics is a lot more complex than that. “Supply and demand” isn’t a law, per se; it’s more like economic shorthand. But while there are many factors that could alter demand, the supply of in-city land can never increase.

“Early growth skeptics would have found it hard to imagine the era of the $1 million bungalow,” Lesser Seattle booster Knute Berger recently bemoaned on Crosscut. But I don’t know why—it was inevitable. For you can build as many duplexes, triplexes, apartments, and condos as you want, and the iconic Seattle bungalow would still remain in short supply.

I dwell on this point to emphasize that when we talk about affordable housing, we’re not really talking about making houses more affordable—at least not those of the single-family detached variety. We’re mostly not even talking about affordable homeownership, what with renters bearing the brunt of the affordability crisis. And yet the pundits and policymakers driving this debate—as well as the reliably voting constituents most politicians tend to answer to—are disproportionately single-family detached homeowners like me.

Which I think tends to color the debate with a glaring lack of perspective.

Look, I love both my bungalow and my yard. And I’m very happy to have been born early enough to be able to afford it on less than a six-figure income. But unless she strikes it rich, I know full well that the only way my daughter is going to own a house like the one she grew up in is if I die in it. So if I really care about keeping Seattle affordable for my daughter’s generation then I know we’re going to have to radically change our expectations about what housing will look like for Seattle’s future middle class.

Seattle needs to grow denser and taller. And if we want to adequately address affordability, we need to grow denser and taller throughout the city. That doesn’t mean eliminating zoning. And it doesn’t mean eliminating single-family zoned neighborhoods entirely. But it does mean making smarter use of the limited land we have as we grow into a city that lacks the space to house the majority of residents in single-family detached homes. All options should be on the table.

So fight to preserve these neighborhoods if you want (politics is an adversarial process, after all), but understand that you are ultimately fighting to preserve these neighborhoods for the relatively well off. And please don’t pretend that there is anything we can do to keep the iconic Seattle bungalow affordable.

[Cross-posted to Civic Skunkworks.]

If “Property-Tax Bill” Was a Living Human Being He Could Sue the Seattle Times for Libel

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It’s maybe not the most shockingly dishonest thing the Seattle Times editorial board has ever printed—that would be this. But in terms of sheer disrespect for the intelligence of their readers, it’s hard to sink any lower than this unapologetic libel of Mayor Ed Murray’s proposed Move Seattle levy:

The size of Move Seattle is breathtaking. The property-tax bill for a $450,000 house would nearly double, to about $275 a year. That won’t help rapidly escalating rents or middle-class homeowners dealing with rising home values.

And you know what else won’t help rapidly escalating housing costs? Lying.

To be clear, Move Seattle would not double your property-tax bill. It wouldn’t even come close. It would double the amount you’re paying on the expiring Bridging the Gap levy, but that amounts to only a $145 increase on a $450,000 home—just 3.3 percent of the total property-tax bill (and a mere .03 percent of the value of your home)—not the 100 percent increase that the editors imply. Big difference.

To understand how breathtaking this lie is, imagine if “Property-Tax” Bill was an actual living, breathing human being. The editors’ assertion is so clearly erroneous, misleading, and defamatory that Bill could easily sue the paper for libel, and win big!

No doubt the proposed levy deserves careful scrutiny; all levies do. But so does the editors’ larger implication that Seattle homeowners are overtaxed: “Seattle is the city that doesn’t say no to taxes,” the editors emphasize in a pull-quote.

And yet according to the tax records on my own median-value home, my property-tax rate has actually gone down over the past decade, from 1.06 percent of assessed value in 2004 to only 0.96 percent in 2014! Compared to a lot of other cities, that’s a bargain, especially considering that we don’t even have an income tax. Despite rising property values, in raw dollars, my property-tax bill has barely outpaced inflation.

Yes, we pass a lot of levies here in Seattle, and we tend to pass them with ease. But these levies are constantly expiring. So while it may feel like we’re always being asked to raise our own taxes, our effective property-tax rate is actually quite low, and has remained low over time. In fact, tack on this allegedly “breathtaking” Move Seattle levy, and my property-tax rate would still be less than it was back in 2004.

Not that you’d ever know this from reading the blatantly misleading op-ed pages of the Seattle Times.

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