Saturday, 10 October 2020 15:04

Tax Revenue Plunge

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San Francisco sales tax revenues plunged by more than 40% this Spring--attributed to residential flight from city, not pandemic.

Saturday, 10 October 2020 14:50

Proposition 19 Confusion

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Billion dollar tax increase. A "big juicy steak laced with cyanide."

Friday, 09 October 2020 19:37

The Nobel Prize

TRUMP’S TRIUMPHS: 2 Nominations for the Nobel Prize.

After pres. Trump's 2016 victory, a friend joked how wonderful it would be if the president could transform the country, maybe the world, into a Trump Hotel - where the environment is luxurious, employees make a good wage, and every guest feels special. With two nominations for the Nobel prize - thanks to the United Arab Emirates establishing diplomatic ties with Israel on August 13, Bahrain joining the agreement, then Serbia and Kosovo normalizing economic relations on September 11- my friend’s dream seems closer to reality

As an international builder with a hotel in Dubai, and a long friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, the president not only understands Middle East politics, he appreciates its culture and respects both Jewish and Muslim faiths. Having married two women who grew up in Eastern Europe under Communism (Ivana from the Czech Republic, formerly Czechoslovakia, and Melania from Slovenia, the former Yugoslavia), the president sees citizens of these nations as family. He knows how they suffered from
oppressive regimes, genocide and war.

Contrary to views in main stream media, that the Trump administration has no coherent Middle East strategy, Ilan Berman, senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council wrote he believes the Trump administration has a clear, ambitious 3 part plan for the region: finding ways to isolate Iran and diminish its power; the Middle East Strategic Alliance - a group consisting of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, and the UAE - that has worked closely with the Trump administration in “confronting extremism, terrorism, and achieving peace, stability, and development” in the region; and lastly the Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. As Brian Hook, the U.S. State Department’s special envoy for Iran, said: “Peace between the Arabs and
the Israelis is Iran’s worst nightmare.”

Many on the Left called moving the US embassy to Jerusalem controversial, claiming doing so would inflame tensions. However, that move - plus ending US dependence on Arab oil - seems to have inspired “increasingly warm relations between Israel and the UAE … when the UAE launched its [2019] “Year of Tolerance.” As part of the initiative, the UAE invited Pope Francis to speak, hosted interfaith meetings with religious leaders worldwide, announced the construction of an interfaith center in Abu Dhabi — to house a Jewish synagogue, a Christian church, and an Islamic mosque — and invited Israel to attend the 2020 World EXPO in Dubai. (Federalist)

Then, on June 12, Youssef Al Otaiba, UAE’s ambassador to the United States, made history by publishing an op-ed in Hebrew in Israel’s largest newspaper, Yediot Ahronot Daily. In the article, Youssef warned against Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu’s annexation plan of the West Bank, and offered a possibility for improving relations between the two nations. (Federalist). With the Trump administration’s involvement, Netanyahu halted the annexation of the West Bank, a compromise that sealed Israel’s
historic agreement with the UAE. “For many long years,” Netanyahu said, “we invested in peace, and now, peace will invest in us.” (Examiner)

Then, on Friday, the president oversaw the signing of an agreement between Serbia and Kosovo that normalizes economic relations between the two countries — and also includes Kosovo recognizing Israel, and Serbia agreeing to move its embassy to Jerusalem. While most Western nations have recognized Kosovo’s independence, Serbia, Russia and China have not — keeping tensions high in the Balkans. Still, the agreement marks another victory for the Trump administration as The
European Union had mediated talks for over a decade. (Fox) Serbia still does not recognize Kosovo’s independence but it allows economic cooperation, rail and transit links, and the free movement of people and goods between the two countries. Tension and violence in the region stem back to when a Serbian national ignited World War I by killing ArchDuke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. In World War II, Nazis killed some 300,000 Serbs. Serbia became subsumed into Yugoslavia in 1945 and remained under Communist rule until 1991 when the dissolution of the country resulted in civil war and a genocidal war waged by then-Serbian strongman Slobodan Milošević which killed 10,000 Muslim ethnic Albanians. Kosovo split from Serbia in 2008, declaring independence with US assistance.

Serbia's President Aleksandar Vučić praised Trump's role in brokering the deal: "We haven’t resolved all our problems, but this is a huge step forward.” Flanked by Vučić and Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti in the Oval Office, President Trump said: “It took decades because you didn’t have anybody trying to get it done.”“As more countries normalize relations with Israel, which will happen quite quickly, we believe, the region will become more and more stable, secure and prosperous.” “There was a lot of
fighting and now there’s a lot of love.”

By coupling respect for culture, especially religious faith, with pragmatic, tough steps to decrease terrorism and motivate economic growth, the president has caused dramatic improvement in areas clouded by division and violence for one hundred years. Said Nobel nominator Christian Tybring-Gjedde to Fox News, “For his merit, I think [Trump] has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace
Prize nominees.” When the whole world is at peace and prosperous, perhaps it will feel like one big Trump hotel.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/19/what-corporate-media-wont-tell-you-abouttrumps-historic-middle-east-peace-deal/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/historic-breakthrough-trump-announcesbahrain-israel-peace-deal
https://nypost.com/2020/09/11/donald-trump-nominated-for-second-nobel-peace-prize/
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-economic-serbia-kosovo-white-hous

Saturday, 12 September 2020 15:36

CA War on Real Estate

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Proposition 15 and the Wealth Tax are the last straws. Real estate brokers warn: anti-real estate and business legislation, tax increases, rent control, have devastating effect on CRE investment, development and management
Saturday, 12 September 2020 14:39

California Apocalypto

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Power outages, fires, water shortages, rising taxes, crumbling and congested highways, dismal schools, lawlessness …

Saturday, 22 August 2020 17:19

War on Suburbs

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Trump rescinded the so-called Obama era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule which was a war on American suburban family life.

Friday, 21 August 2020 18:25

Left's Assault on Trust

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Trump’s Trials: Protecting the Republic against the Left’s Assault on Trust. 
 
As Francis Fukuyama said in Trust, his landmark book on how culture shapes political and economic systems, “People who do not trust one another will end up cooperating only under a system of formal rules and regulations, which have to be negotiated, agreed to, litigated, and enforced, sometimes by coercive means.”
 
In short, to turn America into a socialist state undermine the trust Americans have in one another. Through bullying and propaganda, the Leftist attack on trust has spread to every aspect of our lives and is probably the greatest threat to Donald Trump. Christians following the Ten Commandments are depicted as hypocrites. Lincoln, who freed the slaves, is portrayed as a racist. During the pandemic, liberals, like NYC’s Bill de Blasio, encourage neighbors to snitch on neighbors. Add to the mix the promotion of gender dysphoria as a form of oppression, and the Left has gotten us to distrust not only our neighbors, but our own identity.
 
Trump, mercurial and combative, is an experienced negotiator. He knows trust is essential to deal-making and re-establishes it using common negotiation techniques: 1) he calls a spade a spade, backing up his opinion with facts,  2) he avoids giving credibility to ridiculous claims, and 3) he counterpunches ad hominem attacks with ridiculous statements of his own.
 
Take, for example, the recent battle over whether or not the president is manipulating the November election through the Post Office.  It began when Democrats asked Congress for two items totally $28.5 billion to fund universal mail-in voting, and the president, on Fox Business, responded by saying “if [the Democrats] don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in-voting because [the Post Office is] not equipped to have [universal mail-in voting].”  The media punch back, exaggerating his comment to mean a direct threat to a fair election. Then, a few photos of mail boxes being removed as standard maintenance are posted on the internet, with a claim that the president ordered the USPS to remove mail boxes and sorting machines nationwide, and that because of this order people aren’t receiving federal checks. Lastly, Speaker Pelosi calls the House back in session to address the matter, and in so doing, get sound bites of her people asking Post Office officials what they knew and when they knew it as a kind of political theatre to undermine our faith in the election. The fact that the USPS was doing business as usual by removing rusty mailboxes or relocating unused ones to areas of denser traffic matters little. It’s the theater that counts, and the erosion of our trust in election fairness. 
 
The president fights back with details about the USPS, its budget, and how it runs - plus how inefficiently it operates compared to competitors like UPS and Amazon.  He avoids giving credibility to ridiculous claims - so you never hear him say things like “I’m not trying to dismantle the USPS and here’s why…”  Lastly, among other more practical tweets, he tweeted the silly “Save the Post Office,” which caused numerous critics to give him headspace, tweeting pithy replies like “Hey, douchebag, you’re the one who’s trashing the Post Office,” etc.  
Though many Republicans neither like nor understand the president’s tweeting strategy, it’s effective. Saul Alinsky wrote about the value of emotional strategies like name calling, and the president isn’t afraid to employ emotion on the battlefield. Now, thanks to “Save the Post Office,” the emotional attacks fizzle, and the public is redirected to opinion supported by fact: the USPS has become an inefficient organization compared to its competitors. People don’t trust the USPS to deliver their regular mail. So, even with an infusion of cash, the USPS would be ill equipped to handle a massive influx of ballots that must be delivered by a specific date and time.
 
Though die hard liberals won’t be swayed by the president’s tactics, people who use common sense will. They’ll think of the long lines they encounter at the PO or how their Christmas presents always arrive late. Moreover, “Save the Post Office” may get voters to ask why the president who’s allegedly out to destroy the PO would ask voters who prefer mail to request an absentee ballot.  (The answer: absentee ballots are safeguarded by a signature check, whereas universal mail-in voting is not.) 
 
“Because culture is a matter of ethical habit, it changes very slowly—much more slowly than ideas.” (Fukuyama) Our culture is based on trust, so our constitution includes freedom of speech and religion, and the right to bear arms. Because culture changes slowly, the president is not only right to defend it by upholding the constitution, he’s right to poke holes in the attempts of his opponents to destroy our way of life by putting them in charge.
 
 
 
Friday, 21 August 2020 18:20

CA Wealth Tax

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California Dems’ wealth tax follows people who move out of the State. Tax ‘avoidance’ will not be allowed; it’s California’s money
Friday, 21 August 2020 17:59

Covid Inmate Death

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A recently released San Quentin inmate was found dead last week at the Novato hotel where he was sent to quarantine.

Friday, 21 August 2020 17:54

CA Water Distopia

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Newsom’s water plan previews a future Calif. that ignores history – at its peril. California will look a lot different than it does today.
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