Same house, same street, same price

/
21 Londonderry Drive

21 Londonderry Drive

Or close enough. 21 Londonderry Drive has sold for $2.025 million, 69 Londonderry for $2.160.

21 Londonderry is a 1970 house, with pool, “renovated” (updated) in 2019. Town appraises it at $2,057,400.

69 Londonderry, 1967 build, with pool, renovated in 2020, sold for $2.160. Town-appraised value $1.953.

21 Londonderry started at $2.350 September 25, but didn’t draw a committed buyer until it dropped its price from $2.195 to $1.999 on July 1, when it drew at least two — hence the above-ask selling price. I wouldn’t be surprised if the the same two buyers jostled for both these houses, since they each went into contract almost simultaneously around, approximately, July 2 , and they both went above ask. Of course, if both went above ask, that would suggest that there was at least one other bidder out there and possibly more.

69 Londonderry came on the market June 24 priced at $1.995, so really, the same price as 21. Went pending at $2.160 July 10, contract, as noted, probably a week before then, or July 2nd(ish).

So these two sales offer a good education on figuring out values on a street on your own, because they’re essentially the same house, same condition, and on the same street. You might prefer 69’s location, buffered from Merritt noise, or the different features of 21, but the almost-identical selling prices tell the story: peas in a pod. You can take that $2.1ish number and apply it to a number of similar houses on similar streets in this neighborhood, adjusting up or down, depending; they provide a good base line for your calculations.

69 Londonderry Drive

69 Londonderry Drive

Time to cancel Marxism

/
Portland, OR: White * students at Thomas Jefferson High School take a break between their Marxism classes to strike a blow for freedom — or something

Portland, OR: White * students at Thomas Jefferson High School take a break between their Marxism classes to strike a blow for freedom — or something

N**rs, lazy Mexicans, Jews, Marx despised them all.

In a letter dated 26 April 1887, Marx writes:

“My congratulations to Paul le candidat du Jardin des Plantes—et des animaux. Being, in his quality as a n****r, a degree nearer to the rest of the animal kingdom than the rest of us, he is undoubtedly the most appropriate representative of that district.”

When the United States annexed California after the Mexican War, Marx sarcastically asked, “Is it a misfortune that magnificent California was seized from the lazy Mexicans who did not know what to do with it?”

Engels shared Marx’s contempt for Mexicans, explaining: “In America we have witnessed the conquest of Mexico and have rejoiced at it. It is to the interest of its own development that Mexico will be placed under the tutelage of the United States.”

Marx also used now rejected cranial formation theories to posit that blacks are inferior.

In a letter to Engels, in reference to his socialist political competitor Ferdinand Lassalle, Marx wrote:

It is now completely clear to me that he, as is proved by his cranial formation and his hair, descends from the Negroes who had joined Moses’ exodus from Egypt, assuming that his mother or grandmother on the paternal side had not interbred with a n—–. Now this union of Judaism and Germanism with a basic Negro substance must produce a peculiar product.

Walter Williams has more: The Ugly Racism of Karl Marx, though this particular bit of hatred would meet the rousing approval of the New Democratic Party:

What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. … Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man—and turns them into commodities. … The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. … The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.

Far be it from me to demand logic from the morons of the left, but if Amerikkka is irredeemably evil because some of its original founding fathers were racists, shouldn’t Marxism join it in the dustbin of history?

*Video of the teenage scholars here

Virtue signalling trumps reality, every time; especially for our latest generation of idiots

/
Drinking the Kool-Aid

Drinking the Kool-Aid

Millennials, Gen-Zers won’t date someone who doesn’t recycle: survey

[A]fter surveying 1,332 young Americans, Cluttr found that a whopping 47% of 18- to 29-year-olds wouldn’t want to be romantically involved with someone who neglects to recycle. In addition, 45% would reject a person that uses an excessive amount of single-use plastic.

If that wasn’t eco-conscious enough, … 69% of youths would boycott a brand for not adhering to green business practices, while 67% believed that global warming is a serious man-made threat. In fact, 71% even felt that the environment warranted more concern than the economy, which recently suffered its worst blow since the Great Depression amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite their enthusiasm for the environment, the so-called greenest generation is also one of the biggest contributors to the global electronic waste epidemic. The study found that “3 out of 5 people don’t know what e-waste means” while over half of the survey participants were oblivious to its toxic impact on the environment.

Even more alarming, 44% of the would-be eco-warriors don’t know how to “properly donate, resell or recycle tech” while “36% didn’t know if their items were recyclable,” according to the survey.

Ask a millennial, or even the average adult, whether they’re willing to forego the lithium-ion batteries that power their cellphones and Priuses because the cobalt used for the production of lithium-ion is mined in Congo, at horrendous cost to child laborers and the environment. Or whether they’re aware that the rare earths, also required for their electronics and windmill blades are mined in Tibet with ruinous effect on the environment. They’ll express surprise and dismay, then pick up their iPhone to call their friends and arrange their next ANTIFA meet-up.

Or ask them how much CO2 is spewed into the air from the electrical plants needed to supply the tremndous energy demands of our computer and cellphone age. Another blank stare. Guaranteed. They’ll take a long slug from their bottled water, shrug, and toss their plastic bottle into the recycling bin, satisfied that they’d assuage their guilt, and want to boast that they’ve blocked another natural gas pipeline.

Why doesn’t single-stream recycling work? Because Americans toss whatever’s made of paper, plastic, or glass is not sorted, it’s thrown into one bin: plastic shopping bags, which aren’t recyclable and jam recycling plants’ conveyor belts, broken glass, broken computers, etc. The dirty pizza boxes from college parties contaminate the paper destined for recycling: so much so that China, the major buyer of our trash, now refuses shipments from America, thereby destroying the market – it’s the incinerator or landfill for waste paper and cardboard now.

But no matter, these kids are obeying what their teachers told them to do, and aren’t they just so smug, happy and virtuous.

Of course, it’s not just our youngest illiterates who’ve fallen for the green machine: Nearly half of Americans would stop supporting a company if they [sic] weren’t sustainable

Nearly half of Americans say they would never shop with a company again if they learned they weren’t being as sustainable as possible, according to new research.

Another one in three would even take to social media and voice support against those companies and encourage others to not shop with them anymore either.

A recent survey of 2,000 Americans showed recycling and bold action toward sustainability means a lot to the modern consumer.

It’s so important, in fact, that the average American would even pay 26 percent more than retail price if it meant the product was completely sustainable. [Your editor calls bullshit – so do statistics of actual consumer behavior. Price over virtue dictates buying, even among the most woke of our teens.]

It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity.

/
Screen Shot 2020-08-18 at 8.25.06 PM.png

California’s got a power shortgage? Gee, how’d that happen?

From Red State:

“Gov. Newsom leaped into “Blame” mode. Since demand was less than what was seen in July 2006, and no blackouts were needed then, why do we need them now? Newsom knows the answer – the stupid energy policies that he and Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown before him enacted – but instead promised an “investigation,” likely headed by a blue-ribbon panel, since he’s fond of such committees.

“The Cal-ISO Board of Governors weren’t ready to bend over and take Newsom’s wrath. They held a special telephone conference addressing the blackouts and spelling out the problems…. Cal-ISO CEO Steve Berberich explained that they’d warned the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) that the state would need precisely the amount of power required Friday and weren’t given the authorizations they needed:

“We told the California Public Utilities Commission of a 4,700-MW need through 2022 and that gap started in 2020. Despite all that, only 3,300 MW was authorized for procurement and none starting until 2021.”

“While Cal-ISO attempted to import power to fill the demand, other western states were also in the midst of a heatwave and unable to export power to California. Board members explained that power importation isn’t a long-term solution…”

California is no longer able to import enough power to fill the void, [Berberich] said. To fix the problem, he added, resource adequacy must be reformed so that utilities and other load-serving entities have enough generation capacity to meet peak demand.

“… and that Cal-ISO can’t arrange for more capacity than CPUC dictates:”

“So, is there a problem with the amount of capacity CPUC allows/mandates? Why can’t California generate enough power for its needs or even the same amount of power the state generated in 2006?”

Some experts say California also is feeling the effects of dramatic changes in the way it produces electricity. Notably, the state relies a lot more heavily these days on solar power, a resource that is in ample supply during the day naturally fades as the sun goes down. Friday’s blackouts began shortly after 6:30 p.m., as solar supplies were disappearing.

While solar has grown in importance over the years, mainstay energy sources like natural gas-fired plants — which can run any time — account for a smaller portion of the state’s electricity supply as older plants have been mothballed.

“We have a lot less fossil fuel generation than we had in 2006,” said Severin Borenstein, an ISO board member and UC Berkeley energy economist.

And it’s not just electricity that California’s gone short of (or gasoline — which is next). There’s also water. Victor Davis Hanson in 2015 on California’s “Engineered Drought:” “[Jerry] Brown and other Democratic leaders will never concede that their own opposition in the 1970s (when California had about half its present population) to the completion of state and federal water projects, along with their more recent allowance of massive water diversions for fish and river enhancement, left no margin for error in a state now home to 40 million people.”

It’s important to remember in this election year that what happens in California doesn’t stay in California, it metastasizes east. Job destroying AB5, collapse of the electrical power grid, fuel shortages, they’re all on the Democrats’ national agenda.

Let them use chauffeurs

/
Back to the future

Back to the future

Uber and Lyft will shut down operation in California this Friday, exactly as the state voters demanded. That will throw a few hundred thousand people out of work, but as Lorena Gonzales, the sponsor of California’s AB5 law said, “they were shitty jobs anyway”. Now they can stay at home on the government dole, just like the millions of other independent (former) workers: free-lance writers, house painters, and musicians among them, all simultaneously protected from exploitation and thrown out of work.

This is not unintentional; the more people dependent on the government for their existence, the easier they are to rule. Witness, say, NY State’s upcoming law to require hair shampooers (!) to endure 500 hours of training (estimated cost, 13-15 thousand dollars) before they’re permitted to be employed washing someone’s hair.

Again: California voters did this to themselves, just as they voted to close natural gas and nuclear power plants and limited purchase of electricity from other states and are now suffering power blackouts. The hell with them, or, more appropriately, take a hike.

Too bad that Biden has promised to impose a national version of AB5 on the rest of us, but we too deserve to get what we ask for.

Deliberate hoax, encouraged and abetted by Twitter and Reuters

/
Okay, this one’s a spoof — the one below is “real”

Okay, this one’s a spoof — the one below is “real”

Screen Shot 2020-08-18 at 3.05.45 PM.png

PJ Media: Fake news is running with the story that Trump is having mailboxes removed for nefarious purposes and they’re using this photo to prove it. A fact check at USA Today reported, “The picture — described as originating in Wisconsin — has taken off across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and elsewhere, being shared hundreds of thousands of times and viewed millions of times within a few days of the earliest posts on Aug. 14, 2020.”

The photo was taken by Reuters and one journalist is calling them out to correct the record. It’s a doozy. It turns out that the facility is a refurbishing factory (that makes mailboxes great again) and the pile has been there for at least three years. Read the whole thread. Fake news is dangerous. The entire country is under the impression that the Trump administration is rounding up and imprisoning mailboxes because of this one photo taken out of context. Photojournalist Gary He did some digging and found out the truth. Read through this thread.

Screen Shot 2020-08-18 at 3.14.12 PM.png

You can continue the thread here, but you get the gist of it. Twitter and Facebook have taken no steps to remove Kennedy’s fake post, though Twitter did take the time to “erroneously” block the Babylon Bee yesterday. Fake news on the left, fine; rel satire on the right must be eliminated at once.