Regulation - Too Much or Too Little?

[Farfromgeneva]

Felt like a good piece to share not worth a new string but didnt want to drop in financial one

Kemp's New Rural Workforce Fund Doesn't Address The Heart Of Georgia's Housing Crisis

When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp included $35.7M in this year’s proposed state budget for rural workforce housing, it was a turning point for a governor entering his second term: the first time he dedicated significant state taxpayer dollars toward an affordable housing program.

The state has received nearly a billion dollars in federal aid over the last three years from pandemic-related relief bills and has set up programs to funnel its annual allocation from the Department of Housing and Urban Development toward needy households. But no dedicated funding was allocated to subsidize new affordable housing or ease Georgians' rental burdens.

Georgia was also among the slowest states in the nation to spend its federal pandemic windfall and responded to criticism by sending heaps of aid directly to localities last year, which had less than 12 months to spend it. Earlier this month, Atlanta returned to the federal government $10M in rental assistance funding it had received from the state in March 2022.

Placeholder
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp takes the oath of office in 2019.

The lack of affordable housing has become an acute condition in Georgia. Since Kemp was inaugurated as governor in 2019, fair market rents for a two-bedroom apartment in Metro Atlanta have jumped nearly 35.9% to $1,503 a month, according to HUD. In a December article, Bloomberg CityLab called the region "the poster child for the U.S. housing crisis."

Other major metro areas in Georgia also saw sharp increases in rent: a 26.75% jump to $995 a month for the Athens MSA, a 23% rise to $969 per month in Macon and a 34.5% climb to $1,200 a month in Gainesville.

The average home price throughout the state rose from $369K in the first quarter of 2019 to $582K at the end of 2022, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Housing prices have been skyrocketing throughout Metro Atlanta, but especially in the outskirts as people look farther afield for affordable housing prices.

Amid this surge of unaffordability, Kemp’s administration didn’t allocate any state funding toward housing assistance. The state spent $903M of federal funds between 2020 and 2022 from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which includes rental assistance, according to a 2022 state expenditure report by the National Association of State Budget Officers.

Georgia was one of over a dozen states that didn’t contribute additional assistance, but the majority put millions of their taxpayer dollars to work alongside the federal funding. Eight of the 12 states in the Southeast in the report contributed some general fund or other state dollars to TANF, including Arkansas and Florida, which spent at least $100M each in 2022, according to the NASBO report.

In contrast, under former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta established a $1B plan to create and preserve 20,000 affordable units in the city, which her successor, Andre Dickens, has vowed to accomplish in eight years.

Leaders, particularly in the Southeast, are beginning to feel more public pressure to go beyond doling out federal assistance to address the housing crisis as population flows from the Northeast to the Sun Belt, said Jenny Schuetz, a senior fellow focused on housing policy and affordability at Brookings Metro.

“This has spilled over to be a broad enough problem, a problem not just for poor people but middle-income people and companies needing workers,” Schuetz said.

A First Step

Kemp’s proposal would establish a rural workforce housing fund, providing grants to rural municipalities and development authorities to help install infrastructure at sites to encourage developers to build workforce-level housing.

The program is included in the budget state lawmakers agreed on last week, and it would be operated through the Georgia Department of Community Affairs’ OneGeorgia budget and funded by dollars obtained through a national tobacco settlement.

Municipalities and development authorities could apply for funding for infrastructure projects such as roads, sewers and water on potential housing development sites around parts of Georgia that have captured major economic development deals, Kemp press secretary Garrison Douglas told Bisnow.

Placeholder
Bisnow/Jarred Schenke

New home signs dot an intersection in Flowery Branch, Georgia, a city 40-plus miles from Atlanta.

“As we grow business opportunities across the state, affordable housing for our workforce will continue to be a growing need,” Kemp said in the fiscal year 2023 to 2024 budget proposal.

While the affordability crisis's center of gravity is in Metro Atlanta, the delta between housing supply and demand is a problem throughout the state, and not just in areas that will be home to new electric vehicle plants or battery manufacturing facilities.

The Georgia House of Representatives issued a report in November focused on the housing crisis. In it, housing experts detailed the growing gap between housing supply and demand throughout Georgia. The findings were stark:

To prevent the housing gap from widening further, homebuilders needed to deliver 60,000 to 65,000 new units throughout the state in 2021. They delivered 53,400, according to the Homebuilders Association of Georgia.
There were about 57% fewer homes available on the market than in 2019.
The state added more than 1 million new residents between 2010 and 2019, but homebuilders added fewer than 387,000 new houses over that period.
By 2032, Georgia is expected to see an additional 1.2 million residents while supply is projected to continue to fall behind the demand.
“I believe we need to expand, especially if you’re just targeting rural [areas],” said Georgia State Rep. Debra Bazemore, whose 63rd District covers parts of Downtown Atlanta, including portions of College Park and East Point.

Bazemore sits on the House committee that issued the report.

“I know we’re the No. 1 state to do business, but we also have to be the No. 1 state to provide reasonable housing and to make sure our constituents have what they need," she said. "This is a problem that’s statewide, so we can’t just target [rural areas]."

Many have directed blame for the housing shortage at municipal building codes and local zoning laws that restrict new development or at least make it difficult for developers to build units that could be affordable to first-time buyers.

That is a problem that is universal throughout the country, said Roger Valdez, the director of the nonprofit housing advocacy group Seattle For Growth and its research arm, the Center for Housing Economics.

“Nobody’s doing it right,” Valdez said. "Local government has got to stop regulating housing supply and then come to the government to ask for money for their bad decisions. Maybe the housing crisis has something to do with supply and demand. And maybe the housing crisis has to do with it's so damned hard to get a permit to build housing.”

That said, Valdez said Kemp’s proposal could be a step in the right direction, focusing on incentivizing one of the big costs associated with development: infrastructure.

In general, rural residents don’t make enough money to pay what it costs for new housing today, and local zoning and code requirements make it too expensive for developers to pencil out new projects affordable to middle-class workers, like those at a new factory.

But subsidizing the cost to add sewers and roads to prepare land for new development means those costs come back to earth, Valdez said, especially if coupled with more lenient permitting and zoning codes.

“Because people earn less money in rural areas, they can’t cover the costs of construction, land and operations,” he said. “You can upzone those areas all you want. If there is no infrastructure there, no one is going to build housing. So building the infrastructure underneath it helps the private side subsidize the development costs.”

Placeholder
Bisnow/Jarred Schenke

Construction workers help develop a new townhome community on the outskirts of Atlanta.

Local Obstacles

While Kemp is taking steps to spur new housing in rural Georgia, many experts say local governments are stifling it closer to Atlanta.

Last year, the city of Roswell placed a moratorium on new apartments. Leaders with the neighboring city of Sandy Springs voted to oppose new apartments for up to three years. And in January, Henry County placed its own moratorium on new apartment construction.

Kemp told business leaders in January that he would back any legislation that would relax local zoning laws in order to encourage more affordable housing.

Some owners of existing housing are contributing to the crisis as well.

While 5,000 Georgia households are on a waitlist for the Section 8 housing voucher program, which Georgia operates using federal money, the state is unable to utilize all of its available vouchers because of high rents and a “lack of interested landlords,” according to the House report.

The dynamic means more than 1,000 families have been unable to use Section 8 vouchers and another 738 emergency vouchers have gone unused. Georgia offers a low-income housing tax credit and provides first-time homebuyer mortgages through select banks, but neither program uses state funds, Kemp's spokesperson said.

The deepening crisis is starting to motivate state lawmakers to think about taking action, said Marji Stagmeier, the managing partner with the Atlanta nonprofit TriStar Real Estate Investment, which develops affordable housing complexes and establishes services for residents as well.

“They are starting to really pay attention,” Stagmeier told Bisnow in an email. “Housing is emerging [as a] bilateral political issue in the Georgia legislature as both sides of the aisles are realizing the vital importance of an affordable housing supply to attract new industry.”

State Rep. Dale Washburn drafted a bill that would force local governments to grant single-family permits for houses between 1,200 and 2,500 SF and prevent them from applying regulations that would increase construction costs, such as demanding certain building materials.

Washburn told the Georgia Recorder the legislation would allow developers to increase the supply of affordable houses to first-time buyers.

State Reps. James Beverly, Karen Bennett, Spencer Frye and Solomon Adesanya also are proposing a bill that would expand the state’s tax credit for low-income buildings to include single-family houses in rural parts of the state that are sold to lower-income families.

Far more action has come at certain local levels, particularly in Atlanta. The city purchased an empty office tower from the state of Georgia with plans to convert it into a mixed-income community.

But even Dickens hasn't been without his critics as it relates to housing: He didn't include $7M in recurring housing funding, already approved by the Atlanta City Council, in his initial 2022 budget last spring. After receiving pushback, he included the funding in the city's final budget.

“It’s very encouraging to see that the state is going to engage in expanding its investment in housing,” Stagmeier said. “I don’t think the local government can ever throw enough money to solve housing. The solution needs to come from a consortium of sources.”

[Brooklyn]

corporate elitists and other delusionals of the radical far right always say that regulation is an unnecessary evil:



https://i.imgur.com/kcWvlYH.jpeg




but when things get screwed up they are always the first ones with hat in hand begging for government bailouts - you have to wonder, how can people be so stupid as to believe any of that Republican garbage?

[Brooklyn]

another train derailment, this time in Lake Wobegone:


https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-tr ... b35191a616


''ethanol fire renew safety fears''



https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod ... /1000.webp



The stupidity of deregulation is the cause. "Lawmakers pushing for railroad safety improvements say statistics show too many communities are dealing with these issues.

“Three derailments per day on average. That’s way too many,” Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson of Ohio said. “When is the next one going to occur, and what is the next village or township or community in American that is going to have to be evacuated?”"


It's time for Republicans in Congress to wake up to the truth and to impose MORE safety regulations.

[DocBarrister]

Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate, which operates the currently lost Titan submersible, despised regulations and arrogantly dismissed the importance of safety certifications.

Now the arrogant bastard may have killed himself and his four passengers in a piece of sh*t submersible in the North Atlantic.

The Titanic is an eternal symbol of hubris. Rush’s tiny Titan may just join the Titanic in tragedy and infamy. Here’s hoping for a rescue ….

Rush also told the Unsung Science podcast said that “at some point, safety is just pure waste”, adding: “At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question.

“I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.”

Rush is on board the Titan along with British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman and, reportedly, French submersible pilot Paul-Henry Nargeolet.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/missing-titan ... bmluSsbkBF

DocBarrister

[youthathletics]

Did they sign a liability waiver? A cognitive dissonance lawyer will ask these types of questions.

[DocBarrister]

Did they sign a liability waiver? A cognitive dissonance lawyer will ask these types of questions.

They did, but that won’t matter much if the company made material misrepresentations or omissions regarding the safety of the vessel.

For example did Rush and OceanGate disclose to its paying customers that serious concerns about the safety of its vessel had been raised by industry leaders and a former employee?

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... -of-vessel

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/ ... 4/full.pdf

This promotional video touts the opportunity of “safely diving to the Titanic wreckage site.” The same video also promotes alleged consultation with the University of Washington and Boeing in the vessel’s design … a claim that was denied by those institutions.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ckage.html

Boeing and the University of Washington have both denied being involved in developing the still-missing Titanic sub — despite the company’s CEO bragging about their help as proof it was “safe” and not “MacGyvered.”

https://nypost.com/2023/06/22/boeing-un ... n-sub/amp/

DocBarrister

[DocBarrister]

Regulations exist to rein in reckless and arrogant individuals like the late Stockton Rush, whose cavalier attitude ultimately killed him and his four passengers.

At one point, the CBS correspondent described the submersible as being the size of a minivan. The journalist also noted to Rush that elements of the submersible featured what he called a “jerryriggedness” that he likened to something people would see on “MacGyver,” the fictional television character known for his unorthodox engineering skills.

Rush did not agree with that assessment, saying the company worked with Boeing, NASA and the University of Washington to make sure that the pressure vessel, the carbon-fiber tube that helps keeps passengers alive onboard, was up to standards. As long as the pressure vessel does not fail, Rush said that “everything else can fail” and the submersible would still be in good shape.

“It doesn’t matter. Your thrusters can go. Your lights can go. All these things can fail. You’re still going to be safe. And so, that allows you to do what you call MacGyver stuff,” he told CBS. “You just have to be very careful that the life support system, the sub itself, the oxygen system, the carbon dioxide scrubbing, all that stuff, that needs to be buttoned down.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... kton-rush/

Stockton Rush’s statement includes lies (e.g., about Boeing and the University of Washington).

The text highlighted by me also demonstrates his cavalier attitude towards mechanical failures. He talks about all the failures his craft could experience, but failed at job 1: ensuring the pressure vessel didn’t fail.

DocBarrister

[DocBarrister]

James Cameron is one of the world’s most accomplished submersible explorers. Here are his first comments on the Titan catastrophe.

James Cameron, who directed the hit 1997 film “Titanic” and has himself made 33 dives to the wreckage, offered some thoughts Thursday after it was announced that a missing Titanic-bound submersible suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” killing five people on board.

“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result,” Cameron told ABC News. “And with a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded, to take place at the same exact site, with all the diving that’s going on all around the world I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”

… Cameron is an experienced deep sea explorer who in 2012 dove to the Mariana Trench, considered one of the deepest spots in the Earth’s oceans at almost seven miles below the surface, in a 24-foot submersible vehicle he designed called the Deepsea Challenger.

On Thursday, he told ABC News “many people in the community were very concerned” about the Titan’s suitability for the ill-fated trip.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/22/entertai ... index.html

https://www.thedailybeast.com/titanic-d ... t-unheeded

DocBarrister

[DocBarrister]

Apparently, the Pakistani father and son took the seats of a Las Vegas businessman and his son, who said they backed out over safety concerns.

The Vegas businessman posted on Facebook some of the text message exchanges he had with Stockton Rush, the deceased CEO of OceanGate. In the posted messages, you see Rush claiming the voyage was safer than a helicopter or scuba diving. Rush was clearly lying to his prospective customers about safety. Rush was, in essence, a conman.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live ... -rcna90741

https://m.facebook.com/jay.l.bloom/post ... Dg9HTQucFi

Conventional submersible voyages for tourists … for example, the sub voyages that you find in Hawaii or the Caribbean that go no deeper than 150 feet or so … do indeed have an enviable safety record.

But a voyage to the Titanic at over 12,500 feet isn’t that. As James Cameron has stated, submersibles are a “mature technology” and there are known ways to dive to 13,000 feet. Rush experimented with a carbon fiber pressure hull so that he could fit more paying customers. Then Rush ignored the pleas of more experienced experts in his field to test, certify, and maintain his submersible in accordance with established standards.

Rush killed his passengers with his recklessness.

The implosion of the Titan is more than just a tragedy, it’s a crime.

DocBarrister

[PizzaSnake]

Felt like a good piece to share not worth a new string but didnt want to drop in financial one

Kemp's New Rural Workforce Fund Doesn't Address The Heart Of Georgia's Housing Crisis

When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp included $35.7M in this year’s proposed state budget for rural workforce housing, it was a turning point for a governor entering his second term: the first time he dedicated significant state taxpayer dollars toward an affordable housing program.

The state has received nearly a billion dollars in federal aid over the last three years from pandemic-related relief bills and has set up programs to funnel its annual allocation from the Department of Housing and Urban Development toward needy households. But no dedicated funding was allocated to subsidize new affordable housing or ease Georgians' rental burdens.

Georgia was also among the slowest states in the nation to spend its federal pandemic windfall and responded to criticism by sending heaps of aid directly to localities last year, which had less than 12 months to spend it. Earlier this month, Atlanta returned to the federal government $10M in rental assistance funding it had received from the state in March 2022.

Placeholder
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp takes the oath of office in 2019.

The lack of affordable housing has become an acute condition in Georgia. Since Kemp was inaugurated as governor in 2019, fair market rents for a two-bedroom apartment in Metro Atlanta have jumped nearly 35.9% to $1,503 a month, according to HUD. In a December article, Bloomberg CityLab called the region "the poster child for the U.S. housing crisis."

Other major metro areas in Georgia also saw sharp increases in rent: a 26.75% jump to $995 a month for the Athens MSA, a 23% rise to $969 per month in Macon and a 34.5% climb to $1,200 a month in Gainesville.

The average home price throughout the state rose from $369K in the first quarter of 2019 to $582K at the end of 2022, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Housing prices have been skyrocketing throughout Metro Atlanta, but especially in the outskirts as people look farther afield for affordable housing prices.

Amid this surge of unaffordability, Kemp’s administration didn’t allocate any state funding toward housing assistance. The state spent $903M of federal funds between 2020 and 2022 from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which includes rental assistance, according to a 2022 state expenditure report by the National Association of State Budget Officers.

Georgia was one of over a dozen states that didn’t contribute additional assistance, but the majority put millions of their taxpayer dollars to work alongside the federal funding. Eight of the 12 states in the Southeast in the report contributed some general fund or other state dollars to TANF, including Arkansas and Florida, which spent at least $100M each in 2022, according to the NASBO report.

In contrast, under former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta established a $1B plan to create and preserve 20,000 affordable units in the city, which her successor, Andre Dickens, has vowed to accomplish in eight years.

Leaders, particularly in the Southeast, are beginning to feel more public pressure to go beyond doling out federal assistance to address the housing crisis as population flows from the Northeast to the Sun Belt, said Jenny Schuetz, a senior fellow focused on housing policy and affordability at Brookings Metro.

“This has spilled over to be a broad enough problem, a problem not just for poor people but middle-income people and companies needing workers,” Schuetz said.

A First Step

Kemp’s proposal would establish a rural workforce housing fund, providing grants to rural municipalities and development authorities to help install infrastructure at sites to encourage developers to build workforce-level housing.

The program is included in the budget state lawmakers agreed on last week, and it would be operated through the Georgia Department of Community Affairs’ OneGeorgia budget and funded by dollars obtained through a national tobacco settlement.

Municipalities and development authorities could apply for funding for infrastructure projects such as roads, sewers and water on potential housing development sites around parts of Georgia that have captured major economic development deals, Kemp press secretary Garrison Douglas told Bisnow.

Placeholder
Bisnow/Jarred Schenke

New home signs dot an intersection in Flowery Branch, Georgia, a city 40-plus miles from Atlanta.

“As we grow business opportunities across the state, affordable housing for our workforce will continue to be a growing need,” Kemp said in the fiscal year 2023 to 2024 budget proposal.

While the affordability crisis's center of gravity is in Metro Atlanta, the delta between housing supply and demand is a problem throughout the state, and not just in areas that will be home to new electric vehicle plants or battery manufacturing facilities.

The Georgia House of Representatives issued a report in November focused on the housing crisis. In it, housing experts detailed the growing gap between housing supply and demand throughout Georgia. The findings were stark:

To prevent the housing gap from widening further, homebuilders needed to deliver 60,000 to 65,000 new units throughout the state in 2021. They delivered 53,400, according to the Homebuilders Association of Georgia.
There were about 57% fewer homes available on the market than in 2019.
The state added more than 1 million new residents between 2010 and 2019, but homebuilders added fewer than 387,000 new houses over that period.
By 2032, Georgia is expected to see an additional 1.2 million residents while supply is projected to continue to fall behind the demand.
“I believe we need to expand, especially if you’re just targeting rural [areas],” said Georgia State Rep. Debra Bazemore, whose 63rd District covers parts of Downtown Atlanta, including portions of College Park and East Point.

Bazemore sits on the House committee that issued the report.

“I know we’re the No. 1 state to do business, but we also have to be the No. 1 state to provide reasonable housing and to make sure our constituents have what they need," she said. "This is a problem that’s statewide, so we can’t just target [rural areas]."

Many have directed blame for the housing shortage at municipal building codes and local zoning laws that restrict new development or at least make it difficult for developers to build units that could be affordable to first-time buyers.

That is a problem that is universal throughout the country, said Roger Valdez, the director of the nonprofit housing advocacy group Seattle For Growth and its research arm, the Center for Housing Economics.

“Nobody’s doing it right,” Valdez said. "Local government has got to stop regulating housing supply and then come to the government to ask for money for their bad decisions. Maybe the housing crisis has something to do with supply and demand. And maybe the housing crisis has to do with it's so damned hard to get a permit to build housing.”

That said, Valdez said Kemp’s proposal could be a step in the right direction, focusing on incentivizing one of the big costs associated with development: infrastructure.

In general, rural residents don’t make enough money to pay what it costs for new housing today, and local zoning and code requirements make it too expensive for developers to pencil out new projects affordable to middle-class workers, like those at a new factory.

But subsidizing the cost to add sewers and roads to prepare land for new development means those costs come back to earth, Valdez said, especially if coupled with more lenient permitting and zoning codes.

“Because people earn less money in rural areas, they can’t cover the costs of construction, land and operations,” he said. “You can upzone those areas all you want. If there is no infrastructure there, no one is going to build housing. So building the infrastructure underneath it helps the private side subsidize the development costs.”

Placeholder
Bisnow/Jarred Schenke

Construction workers help develop a new townhome community on the outskirts of Atlanta.

Local Obstacles

While Kemp is taking steps to spur new housing in rural Georgia, many experts say local governments are stifling it closer to Atlanta.

Last year, the city of Roswell placed a moratorium on new apartments. Leaders with the neighboring city of Sandy Springs voted to oppose new apartments for up to three years. And in January, Henry County placed its own moratorium on new apartment construction.

Kemp told business leaders in January that he would back any legislation that would relax local zoning laws in order to encourage more affordable housing.

Some owners of existing housing are contributing to the crisis as well.

While 5,000 Georgia households are on a waitlist for the Section 8 housing voucher program, which Georgia operates using federal money, the state is unable to utilize all of its available vouchers because of high rents and a “lack of interested landlords,” according to the House report.

The dynamic means more than 1,000 families have been unable to use Section 8 vouchers and another 738 emergency vouchers have gone unused. Georgia offers a low-income housing tax credit and provides first-time homebuyer mortgages through select banks, but neither program uses state funds, Kemp's spokesperson said.

The deepening crisis is starting to motivate state lawmakers to think about taking action, said Marji Stagmeier, the managing partner with the Atlanta nonprofit TriStar Real Estate Investment, which develops affordable housing complexes and establishes services for residents as well.

“They are starting to really pay attention,” Stagmeier told Bisnow in an email. “Housing is emerging [as a] bilateral political issue in the Georgia legislature as both sides of the aisles are realizing the vital importance of an affordable housing supply to attract new industry.”

State Rep. Dale Washburn drafted a bill that would force local governments to grant single-family permits for houses between 1,200 and 2,500 SF and prevent them from applying regulations that would increase construction costs, such as demanding certain building materials.

Washburn told the Georgia Recorder the legislation would allow developers to increase the supply of affordable houses to first-time buyers.

State Reps. James Beverly, Karen Bennett, Spencer Frye and Solomon Adesanya also are proposing a bill that would expand the state’s tax credit for low-income buildings to include single-family houses in rural parts of the state that are sold to lower-income families.

Far more action has come at certain local levels, particularly in Atlanta. The city purchased an empty office tower from the state of Georgia with plans to convert it into a mixed-income community.

But even Dickens hasn't been without his critics as it relates to housing: He didn't include $7M in recurring housing funding, already approved by the Atlanta City Council, in his initial 2022 budget last spring. After receiving pushback, he included the funding in the city's final budget.

“It’s very encouraging to see that the state is going to engage in expanding its investment in housing,” Stagmeier said. “I don’t think the local government can ever throw enough money to solve housing. The solution needs to come from a consortium of sources.”

"Kemp’s proposal would establish a rural workforce housing fund, providing grants to rural municipalities and development authorities to help install infrastructure at sites to encourage developers to build workforce-level housing."

Modern day slave quarters. But will they come with AC? Better, or all of the slaves will die of CKD.

[PizzaSnake]

Apparently, the Pakistani father and son took the seats of a Las Vegas businessman and his son, who said they backed out over safety concerns.

The Vegas businessman posted on Facebook some of the text message exchanges he had with Stockton Rush, the deceased CEO of OceanGate. In the posted messages, you see Rush claiming the voyage was safer than a helicopter or scuba diving. Rush was clearly lying to his prospective customers about safety. Rush was, in essence, a conman.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live ... -rcna90741

https://m.facebook.com/jay.l.bloom/post ... Dg9HTQucFi

Conventional submersible voyages for tourists … for example, the sub voyages that you find in Hawaii or the Caribbean that go no deeper than 150 feet or so … do indeed have an enviable safety record.

But a voyage to the Titanic at over 12,500 feet isn’t that. As James Cameron has stated, submersibles are a “mature technology” and there are known ways to dive to 13,000 feet. Rush experimented with a carbon fiber pressure hull so that he could fit more paying customers. Then Rush ignored the pleas of more experienced experts in his field to test, certify, and maintain his submersible in accordance with established standards.

Rush killed his passengers with his recklessness.

The implosion of the Titan is more than just a tragedy, it’s a crime.

DocBarrister

Caveat emptor? Triumph of the free market unfettered by needless "red-tape"? Innovation? Fail fast?

Good to see people with a lot of disposable cash can also have poor decision-making skills. "A fool and his life, soon go separate ways?"

[cradleandshoot]

New regulation going into effect in NYC. Restaurants will be fined for putting too many condiments and plastic ware in takeout orders. It's about time they put an end to this!!! At my local Chinese restaurant they put the extra condiments in containers on the counter. You can help your self to all the soy and duck sauce your little heart desires.

[Farfromgeneva]

Felt like a good piece to share not worth a new string but didnt want to drop in financial one

Kemp's New Rural Workforce Fund Doesn't Address The Heart Of Georgia's Housing Crisis

When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp included $35.7M in this year’s proposed state budget for rural workforce housing, it was a turning point for a governor entering his second term: the first time he dedicated significant state taxpayer dollars toward an affordable housing program.

The state has received nearly a billion dollars in federal aid over the last three years from pandemic-related relief bills and has set up programs to funnel its annual allocation from the Department of Housing and Urban Development toward needy households. But no dedicated funding was allocated to subsidize new affordable housing or ease Georgians' rental burdens.

Georgia was also among the slowest states in the nation to spend its federal pandemic windfall and responded to criticism by sending heaps of aid directly to localities last year, which had less than 12 months to spend it. Earlier this month, Atlanta returned to the federal government $10M in rental assistance funding it had received from the state in March 2022.

Placeholder
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp takes the oath of office in 2019.

The lack of affordable housing has become an acute condition in Georgia. Since Kemp was inaugurated as governor in 2019, fair market rents for a two-bedroom apartment in Metro Atlanta have jumped nearly 35.9% to $1,503 a month, according to HUD. In a December article, Bloomberg CityLab called the region "the poster child for the U.S. housing crisis."

Other major metro areas in Georgia also saw sharp increases in rent: a 26.75% jump to $995 a month for the Athens MSA, a 23% rise to $969 per month in Macon and a 34.5% climb to $1,200 a month in Gainesville.

The average home price throughout the state rose from $369K in the first quarter of 2019 to $582K at the end of 2022, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Housing prices have been skyrocketing throughout Metro Atlanta, but especially in the outskirts as people look farther afield for affordable housing prices.

Amid this surge of unaffordability, Kemp’s administration didn’t allocate any state funding toward housing assistance. The state spent $903M of federal funds between 2020 and 2022 from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which includes rental assistance, according to a 2022 state expenditure report by the National Association of State Budget Officers.

Georgia was one of over a dozen states that didn’t contribute additional assistance, but the majority put millions of their taxpayer dollars to work alongside the federal funding. Eight of the 12 states in the Southeast in the report contributed some general fund or other state dollars to TANF, including Arkansas and Florida, which spent at least $100M each in 2022, according to the NASBO report.

In contrast, under former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta established a $1B plan to create and preserve 20,000 affordable units in the city, which her successor, Andre Dickens, has vowed to accomplish in eight years.

Leaders, particularly in the Southeast, are beginning to feel more public pressure to go beyond doling out federal assistance to address the housing crisis as population flows from the Northeast to the Sun Belt, said Jenny Schuetz, a senior fellow focused on housing policy and affordability at Brookings Metro.

“This has spilled over to be a broad enough problem, a problem not just for poor people but middle-income people and companies needing workers,” Schuetz said.

A First Step

Kemp’s proposal would establish a rural workforce housing fund, providing grants to rural municipalities and development authorities to help install infrastructure at sites to encourage developers to build workforce-level housing.

The program is included in the budget state lawmakers agreed on last week, and it would be operated through the Georgia Department of Community Affairs’ OneGeorgia budget and funded by dollars obtained through a national tobacco settlement.

Municipalities and development authorities could apply for funding for infrastructure projects such as roads, sewers and water on potential housing development sites around parts of Georgia that have captured major economic development deals, Kemp press secretary Garrison Douglas told Bisnow.

Placeholder
Bisnow/Jarred Schenke

New home signs dot an intersection in Flowery Branch, Georgia, a city 40-plus miles from Atlanta.

“As we grow business opportunities across the state, affordable housing for our workforce will continue to be a growing need,” Kemp said in the fiscal year 2023 to 2024 budget proposal.

While the affordability crisis's center of gravity is in Metro Atlanta, the delta between housing supply and demand is a problem throughout the state, and not just in areas that will be home to new electric vehicle plants or battery manufacturing facilities.

The Georgia House of Representatives issued a report in November focused on the housing crisis. In it, housing experts detailed the growing gap between housing supply and demand throughout Georgia. The findings were stark:

To prevent the housing gap from widening further, homebuilders needed to deliver 60,000 to 65,000 new units throughout the state in 2021. They delivered 53,400, according to the Homebuilders Association of Georgia.
There were about 57% fewer homes available on the market than in 2019.
The state added more than 1 million new residents between 2010 and 2019, but homebuilders added fewer than 387,000 new houses over that period.
By 2032, Georgia is expected to see an additional 1.2 million residents while supply is projected to continue to fall behind the demand.
“I believe we need to expand, especially if you’re just targeting rural [areas],” said Georgia State Rep. Debra Bazemore, whose 63rd District covers parts of Downtown Atlanta, including portions of College Park and East Point.

Bazemore sits on the House committee that issued the report.

“I know we’re the No. 1 state to do business, but we also have to be the No. 1 state to provide reasonable housing and to make sure our constituents have what they need," she said. "This is a problem that’s statewide, so we can’t just target [rural areas]."

Many have directed blame for the housing shortage at municipal building codes and local zoning laws that restrict new development or at least make it difficult for developers to build units that could be affordable to first-time buyers.

That is a problem that is universal throughout the country, said Roger Valdez, the director of the nonprofit housing advocacy group Seattle For Growth and its research arm, the Center for Housing Economics.

“Nobody’s doing it right,” Valdez said. "Local government has got to stop regulating housing supply and then come to the government to ask for money for their bad decisions. Maybe the housing crisis has something to do with supply and demand. And maybe the housing crisis has to do with it's so damned hard to get a permit to build housing.”

That said, Valdez said Kemp’s proposal could be a step in the right direction, focusing on incentivizing one of the big costs associated with development: infrastructure.

In general, rural residents don’t make enough money to pay what it costs for new housing today, and local zoning and code requirements make it too expensive for developers to pencil out new projects affordable to middle-class workers, like those at a new factory.

But subsidizing the cost to add sewers and roads to prepare land for new development means those costs come back to earth, Valdez said, especially if coupled with more lenient permitting and zoning codes.

“Because people earn less money in rural areas, they can’t cover the costs of construction, land and operations,” he said. “You can upzone those areas all you want. If there is no infrastructure there, no one is going to build housing. So building the infrastructure underneath it helps the private side subsidize the development costs.”

Placeholder
Bisnow/Jarred Schenke

Construction workers help develop a new townhome community on the outskirts of Atlanta.

Local Obstacles

While Kemp is taking steps to spur new housing in rural Georgia, many experts say local governments are stifling it closer to Atlanta.

Last year, the city of Roswell placed a moratorium on new apartments. Leaders with the neighboring city of Sandy Springs voted to oppose new apartments for up to three years. And in January, Henry County placed its own moratorium on new apartment construction.

Kemp told business leaders in January that he would back any legislation that would relax local zoning laws in order to encourage more affordable housing.

Some owners of existing housing are contributing to the crisis as well.

While 5,000 Georgia households are on a waitlist for the Section 8 housing voucher program, which Georgia operates using federal money, the state is unable to utilize all of its available vouchers because of high rents and a “lack of interested landlords,” according to the House report.

The dynamic means more than 1,000 families have been unable to use Section 8 vouchers and another 738 emergency vouchers have gone unused. Georgia offers a low-income housing tax credit and provides first-time homebuyer mortgages through select banks, but neither program uses state funds, Kemp's spokesperson said.

The deepening crisis is starting to motivate state lawmakers to think about taking action, said Marji Stagmeier, the managing partner with the Atlanta nonprofit TriStar Real Estate Investment, which develops affordable housing complexes and establishes services for residents as well.

“They are starting to really pay attention,” Stagmeier told Bisnow in an email. “Housing is emerging [as a] bilateral political issue in the Georgia legislature as both sides of the aisles are realizing the vital importance of an affordable housing supply to attract new industry.”

State Rep. Dale Washburn drafted a bill that would force local governments to grant single-family permits for houses between 1,200 and 2,500 SF and prevent them from applying regulations that would increase construction costs, such as demanding certain building materials.

Washburn told the Georgia Recorder the legislation would allow developers to increase the supply of affordable houses to first-time buyers.

State Reps. James Beverly, Karen Bennett, Spencer Frye and Solomon Adesanya also are proposing a bill that would expand the state’s tax credit for low-income buildings to include single-family houses in rural parts of the state that are sold to lower-income families.

Far more action has come at certain local levels, particularly in Atlanta. The city purchased an empty office tower from the state of Georgia with plans to convert it into a mixed-income community.

But even Dickens hasn't been without his critics as it relates to housing: He didn't include $7M in recurring housing funding, already approved by the Atlanta City Council, in his initial 2022 budget last spring. After receiving pushback, he included the funding in the city's final budget.

“It’s very encouraging to see that the state is going to engage in expanding its investment in housing,” Stagmeier said. “I don’t think the local government can ever throw enough money to solve housing. The solution needs to come from a consortium of sources.”

"Kemp’s proposal would establish a rural workforce housing fund, providing grants to rural municipalities and development authorities to help install infrastructure at sites to encourage developers to build workforce-level housing."

Modern day slave quarters. But will they come with AC? Better, or all of the slaves will die of CKD.

I bought a small (90 units) class B- (on a good day) multifamily property with mostly other peoples money in 2010 in suburban Atlanta (East point- low income area) as a short sale for $800k and out another $100-$125j into it. Was going to roll up these type of deals but couldn’t raise capital, bid one assets, close deals and manage actively the one acquired on 1.5% acq fees & 1% asset management with higher carried interest which was my plan but couldn’t make the cost of living work at that point without bleeding out too much. (to effectively buy out LPs over time at pre set IRRs, become a self funding vehicle and creep control over it my reinvesting GP cash flows)

The deal was a home run for LPs but I couldn’t finish off what I started then which was to “acquire workforce housing through high FDI, SE cities”

Workforce means a lot of things to a lot of people.

[Farfromgeneva]

Good story not sure where to drop it so here it goes

Investors Bought Nearly $1 Billion in Land Near a California Air Force Base. Officials Want to Know Who Exactly They Are.
Flannery Associates’ purchases near Travis Air Force Base have alarmed local and federal officials
By
Kristina Peterson
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,
Jack Gillum
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and
Kate O’Keeffe
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July 7, 2023 9:00 am ET




9

Gift unlocked article

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(8 min)



Flannery Associates, an investment group, has purchased at least 20 parcels of land near Travis Air Force Base in California. PHOTO: HEIDE COUCH/U.S. AIR FORCE
WASHINGTON—Government officials are investigating large land acquisitions near a major air force base northeast of San Francisco, concerned that foreign interests could be behind the investment group that purchased the land.

At the center of the probes is Flannery Associates, which has spent nearly $1 billion in the last five years to become the largest landowner in California’s Solano County, according to county officials and public records.

An attorney representing Flannery said it is controlled by U.S. citizens and that 97% of its invested capital comes from U.S. investors, with the remaining 3% from British and Irish investors. Flannery previously told Solano County the entity “is owned by a group of families looking to diversify their portfolio from equities into real assets, including agricultural land in the western United States.”

“Any speculation that Flannery’s purchases are motivated by the proximity to Travis Air Force Base” is unfounded, the attorney said.

The Air Force’s Foreign Investment Risk Review Office has been investigating Flannery’s purchases of roughly 52,000 acres, including around Travis Air Force Base, according to people familiar with the matter. But the office, which has been looking into the matter for about eight months, has yet to be able to determine who is backing the group, one of the people said.


80

Flannery-owned parcels

Additional parcels that Flannery

says it purchased or are

under contract

Vacaville

113

Travis A.F.B.

84

Fairfield

12

160

Rio Vista

Area of

detail

San Fran.

12

Calif.

680

160

Grizzly Bay

2 miles

Note: county data is as of June 6 from the Solano County assessor
Sources: Solano County property records; federal court filings

Brian McGill and Jack Gillum/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“We don’t know who Flannery is, and their extensive purchases do not make sense to anybody in the area,” said Rep. John Garamendi, (D., Calif.) the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness panel. “The fact that they’re buying land purposefully right up to the fence at Travis raises significant questions.”

Garamendi and Rep. Mike Thompson (D., Calif.), whose districts include the area where land has been bought, have asked for an investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., a multiagency panel that can advise the president to block or unwind foreign acquisitions for security concerns.

The U.S. Agriculture Department also has inquired about Flannery’s ownership, according to correspondence reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Nearly all of the land is in unincorporated parts of Solano County, and most of it is zoned for agricultural use, records show. Several of the parcels include wind turbines.

The Journal found that at least 20 parcels surround Travis, known as the “Gateway to the Pacific” and home to the largest wing of the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command, which provides planes to refuel other aircraft and those to transport military personnel and supplies, including munitions used in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion.

The Flannery attorney declined to provide more details about Flannery’s investors. Local and federal officials also say they have been unable to learn the identities of those in the Flannery group.


Rep. John Garamendi (D., Calif.) has asked the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to investigate Flannery Associates. PHOTO: MARIAM ZUHAIB/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Flannery’s statement that it is U.S.-owned can’t be confirmed or denied by federal agencies at this time, a congressional aide said. Cfius, which is led by the Treasury Department and includes the Departments of Defense, Justice, State and others, declined to comment.

If Cfius takes up the case, the Treasury Department could subpoena Flannery to get more information about its backers, but people familiar with the panel, whose operations are confidential, have said they couldn’t think of a time when the department had used that authority.

Acquisitions around Travis Air Force Base have raised security concerns among Solano County officials, who have been trying to determine the investors in Flannery and their plans for the land for years, said Bill Emlen, the county administrator.

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County supervisor Mitch Mashburn said if Flannery intends to develop the land, it would make sense for the group to engage with local officials—but it hasn’t.

“The majority of the land they’re purchasing is dry farmland,” he said. “I don’t see where that land can turn a profit to make it worth almost a billion dollars in investment.”

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
How should officials respond to the purchase of land near military bases? Join the conversation below.

A spokesperson for Travis said that its officials and other Air Force offices “are aware of the multiple land purchases near the base and are actively working internally and externally with other agencies.”

In a recent federal court filing, Flannery Associates said it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Flannery Holdings, a limited liability company registered in Delaware. LLCs registered in Delaware don’t have to publicly disclose the identity of their owners.

Use of LLCs to purchase land is a common practice. Nearly one in five homes were purchased by investors in early 2023, including LLCs and other corporate entities, according to data compiled by real-estate firm Redfin of more than 40 of the largest U.S. metro areas.

“While I can see Cfius being interested in who owns real estate near a military base, the fact that a property’s ownership is opaque does not mean anything nefarious is going on,” said Rick Sofield, an attorney at Vinson & Elkins who used to run the Justice Department’s Cfius team.

In May, Flannery filed a price-fixing lawsuit in federal court in California, alleging that landowners had colluded against it to drive up prices, in some instances overcharging Flannery and in others refusing to sell their properties.

Attorneys for the defendants didn’t respond to requests for comment or declined to comment. Flannery settled with one group of defendants in late June and filed notice of a contingent settlement with another group of defendants Thursday.

The 52,000 acres Flannery now owns in Solano County is spread out over more than 300 parcels, a Journal analysis of property records shows. The company said in court filings that it has invested more than $800 million in its acquisitions and acknowledged paying prices of “multiples of fair market value.”


A plan by a Chinese-owned company to develop land near Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota was halted after the Air Force said it posed a national security risk. PHOTO: LEWIS ABLEIDINGER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Flannery has offered various explanations for its purchases over time. In 2019, Flannery attorney Richard Melnyk said in an email to a Solano County official that Flannery planned to work with local farmers and might explore “new types of crops or orchards,” he said, ruling out any cannabis operations.

In its May price-fixing lawsuit, Flannery said it planned to use the land for renewable energy and related projects. The entity has allowed many sellers to continue farming or remain on the land and collect income from wind turbine leases for the remainder of the lease, according to court filings.

In a June 5 email to Emlen reviewed by the Journal, Melnyk said Flannery was considering leasing “a substantial portion” of its land to olive growers, including some near Travis Air Force Base.

“Nobody can figure out who they are,” said Ronald Kott, mayor of Rio Vista, Calif., which is now largely surrounded by Flannery-owned land. “Whatever they’re doing—this looks like a very long-term play.”

Flannery’s holdings near Travis raised concerns similar to those sparked by a Chinese-owned company’s plan to develop land 12 miles from the Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota. The plan was halted after the Air Force said it posed a national security risk, and lawmakers have continued to introduce bipartisan legislation restricting foreign ownership of U.S. farmland or increasing transparency around these acquisitions.

The Chinese company’s U.S. arm said at the time the planned facility wouldn’t be used to spy on the U.S.

Flannery told USDA in June that it didn’t need to register its holdings in Solano County because no foreign person “holds any significant interest or substantial control” of Flannery, according to a letter provided by the group’s attorneys.

Write to Kristina Peterson at [email protected], Jack Gillum at [email protected] and Kate O’Keeffe at [email protected]

[Brooklyn]

Contrary to the demented views of the delusional right wing, there isn't sufficient commercial regulation which causes the sale of hazardous products to the public. This results in lawsuits which lead to massive damage awards such as this:


Monsanto Ordered to Pay Over $1.5 Billion in Roundup Verdict


Bayer AG’s Monsanto unit was ordered by a Missouri jury to pay more than $1.5 billion to three former users of its Roundup weedkiller who blamed their cancers on the controversial product in one of its largest trial losses in the five-year litigation over the herbicide.

Jurors in state court in Jefferson City, Missouri, late Friday awarded James Draeger, Valorie Gunther and Dan Anderson a total of $61.1 million in actual damages and $500 million each in punitive damages over their claims that years of using Roundup on their lawns and gardens caused their non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas.

Monsanto has been hit with a recent spate of jury verdicts finding its Roundup contains carcinogens after winning nine cases against it. The more than $1.5 billion verdict is one of the largest damage awards handed down against a US corporate defendant this year. A federal-court jury in Kansas City concluded Oct. 31 the National Association of Realtors and others conspired to artificially inflate commissions paid to real-estate agents across the US and must pay at least $1.78 billion in damages — a figure that could balloon to more than $5 billion.

Bayer officials said Saturday they believe US judges have allowed former Roundup users to mis-characterize regulatory decisions governing the product’s safety before juries, and that led to the recent round of plaintiffs’ wins. “We have strong arguments to get the recent unfounded verdicts overturned,” a company spokesman said in an emailed statement.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... nd=premium




The government needs to create regulations that prevents the sale of this dangerous stuff in order to reduce social welfare costs and to protect the public from the spread of illness.

[Farfromgeneva]

Not about volume of regulation but when agencies and regulators lose the plot (outside of all the issues at both the FDIC and OCC) - and where “dat analysts” is a poor term for certain people’s jobs. Their analysis is lacking critical thought-but it’s civil servants so they of course won’t get “AI’d”. It’s a very Union indexing mentality-each ring in the trade has a title and that’s it no evaluation of quality beyond that.

https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/a-movi ... 3c?mod=mhp

A Moving Company Touts Its Young, Chiseled Workers. Feds Say That’s Age Discrimination.

Biden-appointed EEOC commissioners are taking closer look at alleged age bias in the labor market

Austen Hufford

Commissioners voted seven times on age-discrimination matters since Democrats gained control in August, compared with three age-related matters earlier in the year. EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows, whom Biden elevated, has said she would vigorously enforce age-discrimination laws as older workers regularly face age bias, stereotypes and discrimination.

The focus on age discrimination comes as America’s workforce is getting older. Nearly a quarter of U.S. workers are 55 and older, and the Labor Department estimates that the number of people 65 and older in the labor force will grow by a third over the next decade.

“They are very interested in bringing aggressive enforcement actions,” Andrew Maunz said of the EEOC. He was the agency’s legal counsel during the Trump administration.


Pump iron, lift furniture

Some Meathead Movers’ trucks are stamped with the moniker “student athlete movers.” Youthful-looking employees pump iron before grabbing furniture, according to a recent social-media advertisement.

Employees compete in the Meathead Olympics in which they compete to assemble and leap over boxes. Numerous corporate Facebook posts show workers flexing with biceps bulging. Employees, dubbed “Meatheads,” must jog from truck to house when not carrying furniture. The Meathead Movers Invitational is a company-sponsored wrestling tournament.

‘We had no idea we were doing anything wrong by being a moving company that hires a lot of student athletes,’ says Meathead Movers owner Aaron Steed. Photo: Meathead Movers & Mini Storage
Meathead Movers executives say that the company is providing good jobs and quality services to the community and that it isn’t discriminating against anyone—older workers just don’t want to carry chests downstairs.

“We are 100% open to hiring anyone at any age if they can do the job,” said company owner Aaron Steed. “People love working at Meathead, or they are turned off by how hard it is. You have to move furniture and run to get more.”

Many of the EEOC’s allegations against Meathead focus on marketing and hiring practices that could discourage older workers from applying. Current employees are asked to scour local gyms, colleges and places where they would hang out normally for new hires, according to the EEOC.

Discouragement bias can be present in job ads, marketing materials and job application questions, such as asking about a student’s class schedule, the agency said.

“Word-of-mouth is never a good way to recruit,” said Nicole St. Germain, a spokeswoman for the EEOC.. -FFG comment; this is just absurd on the surface by someone who literally does not understand meritocracy. Almost every job offer I’ve had in the last fifteen years has been through relationships not some idiot HR filter. This is a blind statement that thinks everyone is modeling their numbers before hiring and has no earthly idea how a market for fees driven business works

The investigation into Meathead Movers was started in 2017 by the EEOC itself and not by a complaint. The agency typically investigates companies after someone files a complaint. It received more than 70,000 complaints in its latest year and filed 91 employment-discrimination lawsuits.

The agency and the company tried to negotiate a settlement. The agency initially wanted around $15 million and then lowered that to around $5 million, according to an email from a Meathead representative to commissioners that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Meathead offered $750,000 to settle. Meathead and the EEOC declined to comment on the details of the negotiations.

In September, the agency filed the lawsuit.

“We had no idea we were doing anything wrong by being a moving company that hires a lot of student athletes,” Steed said. “We want to change and evolve, but we can’t agree to go out of business doing it.”

Who could be a good mover?

The country’s employment law enforcer is working to put its stamp on civil-rights law. The lawsuit against this moving company shows how the agency is taking a more aggressive approach to how it enforces certain federal laws, labor lawyers said.

In September, the agency also sued the Florida branch of Enterprise Rent-A-Car for allegedly not hiring enough older workers to its management-training program. Enterprise said the allegations are meritless.

Advocates for older Americans applaud the EEOC’s focus.

“Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is over 50. I’m pretty sure he would be good at moving boxes,” said Bill Alvarado Rivera, senior vice president for litigation at AARP, an association for the rights of older people. “That kind of stereotype about who could be a good mover has no place in an economy that values individuals.”

Others disagreed, saying that antidiscrimination lawsuits could hurt the types of workers they are trying to protect. Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said age-related lawsuits could make companies less likely to hire older workers because they are a liability risk.

“It is the most counterproductive of all the major areas of discrimination law,” he said. “It makes them less employable late in their careers because they are known as litigation dangers.”

The EEOC’s focus on age cases could impact a broader segment of American businesses that recruit recent college graduates and could even threaten early-career training programs. “A lot of jobs are just naturally held by young people,” Olson said. “Early-career trainings are hard to square with the EEOC’s view.”

An Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit against Meathead Movers comes amid a focus on discrimination against older workers. Photo: Meathead Movers & Mini Storage
‘We charge by the hour’

The case could have direct implications for other companies that hire young people and college students to transport everything from IKEA furniture to pianos. Collin Flynn, the founder of Iowa-based UniMovers, said students make great employees with schedules that fit with what the industry needs. The job is also physically taxing, and customers think students are more likely to work faster. .

“They know they are going to get young people with strong backs, and they are going to be moving quick,” he said. “We charge by the hour.”

Another moving company with a similar setup to Meathead Movers is trying to recast its image. College Hunks Hauling Junk says “Hunks” stands for “Honest. Uniformed. Nice. Knowledgeable. Service.”

“Regarding the brand name of College HUNKS, it has nothing to do with targeting a college audience,” the company said.

Write to Austen Hufford at [email protected]

Advertisement - Scroll to Continue

[PizzaSnake]

Not about volume of regulation but when agencies and regulators lose the plot (outside of all the issues at both the FDIC and OCC) - and where “dat analysts” is a poor term for certain people’s jobs. Their analysis is lacking critical thought-but it’s civil servants so they of course won’t get “AI’d”. It’s a very Union indexing mentality-each ring in the trade has a title and that’s it no evaluation of quality beyond that.

https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/a-movi ... 3c?mod=mhp

A Moving Company Touts Its Young, Chiseled Workers. Feds Say That’s Age Discrimination.

Biden-appointed EEOC commissioners are taking closer look at alleged age bias in the labor market

Austen Hufford

Commissioners voted seven times on age-discrimination matters since Democrats gained control in August, compared with three age-related matters earlier in the year. EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows, whom Biden elevated, has said she would vigorously enforce age-discrimination laws as older workers regularly face age bias, stereotypes and discrimination.

The focus on age discrimination comes as America’s workforce is getting older. Nearly a quarter of U.S. workers are 55 and older, and the Labor Department estimates that the number of people 65 and older in the labor force will grow by a third over the next decade.

“They are very interested in bringing aggressive enforcement actions,” Andrew Maunz said of the EEOC. He was the agency’s legal counsel during the Trump administration.


Pump iron, lift furniture

Some Meathead Movers’ trucks are stamped with the moniker “student athlete movers.” Youthful-looking employees pump iron before grabbing furniture, according to a recent social-media advertisement.

Employees compete in the Meathead Olympics in which they compete to assemble and leap over boxes. Numerous corporate Facebook posts show workers flexing with biceps bulging. Employees, dubbed “Meatheads,” must jog from truck to house when not carrying furniture. The Meathead Movers Invitational is a company-sponsored wrestling tournament.

‘We had no idea we were doing anything wrong by being a moving company that hires a lot of student athletes,’ says Meathead Movers owner Aaron Steed. Photo: Meathead Movers & Mini Storage
Meathead Movers executives say that the company is providing good jobs and quality services to the community and that it isn’t discriminating against anyone—older workers just don’t want to carry chests downstairs.

“We are 100% open to hiring anyone at any age if they can do the job,” said company owner Aaron Steed. “People love working at Meathead, or they are turned off by how hard it is. You have to move furniture and run to get more.”

Many of the EEOC’s allegations against Meathead focus on marketing and hiring practices that could discourage older workers from applying. Current employees are asked to scour local gyms, colleges and places where they would hang out normally for new hires, according to the EEOC.

Discouragement bias can be present in job ads, marketing materials and job application questions, such as asking about a student’s class schedule, the agency said.

“Word-of-mouth is never a good way to recruit,” said Nicole St. Germain, a spokeswoman for the EEOC.. -FFG comment; this is just absurd on the surface by someone who literally does not understand meritocracy. Almost every job offer I’ve had in the last fifteen years has been through relationships not some idiot HR filter. This is a blind statement that thinks everyone is modeling their numbers before hiring and has no earthly idea how a market for fees driven business works

The investigation into Meathead Movers was started in 2017 by the EEOC itself and not by a complaint. The agency typically investigates companies after someone files a complaint. It received more than 70,000 complaints in its latest year and filed 91 employment-discrimination lawsuits.

The agency and the company tried to negotiate a settlement. The agency initially wanted around $15 million and then lowered that to around $5 million, according to an email from a Meathead representative to commissioners that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Meathead offered $750,000 to settle. Meathead and the EEOC declined to comment on the details of the negotiations.

In September, the agency filed the lawsuit.

“We had no idea we were doing anything wrong by being a moving company that hires a lot of student athletes,” Steed said. “We want to change and evolve, but we can’t agree to go out of business doing it.”

Who could be a good mover?

The country’s employment law enforcer is working to put its stamp on civil-rights law. The lawsuit against this moving company shows how the agency is taking a more aggressive approach to how it enforces certain federal laws, labor lawyers said.

In September, the agency also sued the Florida branch of Enterprise Rent-A-Car for allegedly not hiring enough older workers to its management-training program. Enterprise said the allegations are meritless.

Advocates for older Americans applaud the EEOC’s focus.

“Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is over 50. I’m pretty sure he would be good at moving boxes,” said Bill Alvarado Rivera, senior vice president for litigation at AARP, an association for the rights of older people. “That kind of stereotype about who could be a good mover has no place in an economy that values individuals.”

Others disagreed, saying that antidiscrimination lawsuits could hurt the types of workers they are trying to protect. Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said age-related lawsuits could make companies less likely to hire older workers because they are a liability risk.

“It is the most counterproductive of all the major areas of discrimination law,” he said. “It makes them less employable late in their careers because they are known as litigation dangers.”

The EEOC’s focus on age cases could impact a broader segment of American businesses that recruit recent college graduates and could even threaten early-career training programs. “A lot of jobs are just naturally held by young people,” Olson said. “Early-career trainings are hard to square with the EEOC’s view.”

An Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit against Meathead Movers comes amid a focus on discrimination against older workers. Photo: Meathead Movers & Mini Storage
‘We charge by the hour’

The case could have direct implications for other companies that hire young people and college students to transport everything from IKEA furniture to pianos. Collin Flynn, the founder of Iowa-based UniMovers, said students make great employees with schedules that fit with what the industry needs. The job is also physically taxing, and customers think students are more likely to work faster. .

“They know they are going to get young people with strong backs, and they are going to be moving quick,” he said. “We charge by the hour.”

Another moving company with a similar setup to Meathead Movers is trying to recast its image. College Hunks Hauling Junk says “Hunks” stands for “Honest. Uniformed. Nice. Knowledgeable. Service.”

“Regarding the brand name of College HUNKS, it has nothing to do with targeting a college audience,” the company said.

Write to Austen Hufford at [email protected]

Advertisement - Scroll to Continue

“The job is also physically taxing, and customers think students are more likely to work faster.”

I worked briefly as a mover in college. The best movers I worked with the “oldheads” who weren’t in a rush. Fast is nice, but not breaking shite is even nicer.

Any idiot can carry a box. Now, two guys maneuvering an oddly shaped solid through irregular space, i.e. through interior to staircase, and then up the stairs…

That takes a specific mental facility, experience, teamwork, and yes, often a great deal of physical strength.

So, if I hired movers and a bunch of preening young “hunks” showed up for box aerobics, I’d pass. I people to not fcuk my shite up; I’m not interested in fcuking them.

What is up with modern corporations? They stooopid, as my children would say?

[Farfromgeneva]

Not about volume of regulation but when agencies and regulators lose the plot (outside of all the issues at both the FDIC and OCC) - and where “dat analysts” is a poor term for certain people’s jobs. Their analysis is lacking critical thought-but it’s civil servants so they of course won’t get “AI’d”. It’s a very Union indexing mentality-each ring in the trade has a title and that’s it no evaluation of quality beyond that.

https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/a-moving-company-touts-its-young-chiseled-workers-feds-say-thats-age-discrimination-c50a773c?mod=mhp

A Moving Company Touts Its Young, Chiseled Workers. Feds Say That’s Age Discrimination.

Biden-appointed EEOC commissioners are taking closer look at alleged age bias in the labor market

Austen Hufford

Commissioners voted seven times on age-discrimination matters since Democrats gained control in August, compared with three age-related matters earlier in the year. EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows, whom Biden elevated, has said she would vigorously enforce age-discrimination laws as older workers regularly face age bias, stereotypes and discrimination.

The focus on age discrimination comes as America’s workforce is getting older. Nearly a quarter of U.S. workers are 55 and older, and the Labor Department estimates that the number of people 65 and older in the labor force will grow by a third over the next decade.

“They are very interested in bringing aggressive enforcement actions,” Andrew Maunz said of the EEOC. He was the agency’s legal counsel during the Trump administration.


Pump iron, lift furniture

Some Meathead Movers’ trucks are stamped with the moniker “student athlete movers.” Youthful-looking employees pump iron before grabbing furniture, according to a recent social-media advertisement.

Employees compete in the Meathead Olympics in which they compete to assemble and leap over boxes. Numerous corporate Facebook posts show workers flexing with biceps bulging. Employees, dubbed “Meatheads,” must jog from truck to house when not carrying furniture. The Meathead Movers Invitational is a company-sponsored wrestling tournament.

‘We had no idea we were doing anything wrong by being a moving company that hires a lot of student athletes,’ says Meathead Movers owner Aaron Steed. Photo: Meathead Movers & Mini Storage
Meathead Movers executives say that the company is providing good jobs and quality services to the community and that it isn’t discriminating against anyone—older workers just don’t want to carry chests downstairs.

“We are 100% open to hiring anyone at any age if they can do the job,” said company owner Aaron Steed. “People love working at Meathead, or they are turned off by how hard it is. You have to move furniture and run to get more.”

Many of the EEOC’s allegations against Meathead focus on marketing and hiring practices that could discourage older workers from applying. Current employees are asked to scour local gyms, colleges and places where they would hang out normally for new hires, according to the EEOC.

Discouragement bias can be present in job ads, marketing materials and job application questions, such as asking about a student’s class schedule, the agency said.

“Word-of-mouth is never a good way to recruit,” said Nicole St. Germain, a spokeswoman for the EEOC.. -FFG comment; this is just absurd on the surface by someone who literally does not understand meritocracy. Almost every job offer I’ve had in the last fifteen years has been through relationships not some idiot HR filter. This is a blind statement that thinks everyone is modeling their numbers before hiring and has no earthly idea how a market for fees driven business works

The investigation into Meathead Movers was started in 2017 by the EEOC itself and not by a complaint. The agency typically investigates companies after someone files a complaint. It received more than 70,000 complaints in its latest year and filed 91 employment-discrimination lawsuits.

The agency and the company tried to negotiate a settlement. The agency initially wanted around $15 million and then lowered that to around $5 million, according to an email from a Meathead representative to commissioners that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Meathead offered $750,000 to settle. Meathead and the EEOC declined to comment on the details of the negotiations.

In September, the agency filed the lawsuit.

“We had no idea we were doing anything wrong by being a moving company that hires a lot of student athletes,” Steed said. “We want to change and evolve, but we can’t agree to go out of business doing it.”

Who could be a good mover?

The country’s employment law enforcer is working to put its stamp on civil-rights law. The lawsuit against this moving company shows how the agency is taking a more aggressive approach to how it enforces certain federal laws, labor lawyers said.

In September, the agency also sued the Florida branch of Enterprise Rent-A-Car for allegedly not hiring enough older workers to its management-training program. Enterprise said the allegations are meritless.

Advocates for older Americans applaud the EEOC’s focus.

“Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is over 50. I’m pretty sure he would be good at moving boxes,” said Bill Alvarado Rivera, senior vice president for litigation at AARP, an association for the rights of older people. “That kind of stereotype about who could be a good mover has no place in an economy that values individuals.”

Others disagreed, saying that antidiscrimination lawsuits could hurt the types of workers they are trying to protect. Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said age-related lawsuits could make companies less likely to hire older workers because they are a liability risk.

“It is the most counterproductive of all the major areas of discrimination law,” he said. “It makes them less employable late in their careers because they are known as litigation dangers.”

The EEOC’s focus on age cases could impact a broader segment of American businesses that recruit recent college graduates and could even threaten early-career training programs. “A lot of jobs are just naturally held by young people,” Olson said. “Early-career trainings are hard to square with the EEOC’s view.”

An Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit against Meathead Movers comes amid a focus on discrimination against older workers. Photo: Meathead Movers & Mini Storage
‘We charge by the hour’

The case could have direct implications for other companies that hire young people and college students to transport everything from IKEA furniture to pianos. Collin Flynn, the founder of Iowa-based UniMovers, said students make great employees with schedules that fit with what the industry needs. The job is also physically taxing, and customers think students are more likely to work faster. .

“They know they are going to get young people with strong backs, and they are going to be moving quick,” he said. “We charge by the hour.”

Another moving company with a similar setup to Meathead Movers is trying to recast its image. College Hunks Hauling Junk says “Hunks” stands for “Honest. Uniformed. Nice. Knowledgeable. Service.”

“Regarding the brand name of College HUNKS, it has nothing to do with targeting a college audience,” the company said.

Write to Austen Hufford at [email protected]

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“The job is also physically taxing, and customers think students are more likely to work faster.”

I worked briefly as a mover in college. The best movers I worked with the “oldheads” who weren’t in a rush. Fast is nice, but not breaking shite is even nicer.

Any idiot can carry a box. Now, two guys maneuvering an oddly shaped solid through irregular space, i.e. through interior to staircase, and then up the stairs…

That takes a specific mental facility, experience, teamwork, and yes, often a great deal of physical strength.

So, if I hired movers and a bunch of preening young “hunks” showed up for box aerobics, I’d pass. I people to not fcuk my shite up; I’m not interested in fcuking them.

What is up with modern corporations? They stooopid, as my children would say?

Oh I’m not defending the business model, their specific approach or that I’d hire them. That’s for the avocado toast that subscribes to everything and wins nothing but doesn’t understand their just slaves. Stitch fix, razors stuffing the channel, win cases filling up, etc. they are marketing to morons-no doubt. There’s a lot of stupid homeowners as we know.

But the approach, lack of a complaint deviating from practices and deviating for this specific case is like someone trying to make a name for themselves.

And that absolute comment on what is or isn’t a bad way to recruit as presented if accurate has no place in a few regulatory body. And completely ignoring the physical requirement is pretty silly as you acknowledge it exists.

I do discriminate when I see “white caps” doing strange things in cars in front of me. But for my business? Can you make me more money without increasing my risk? The only question that should matter.

[dislaxxic]

Gorsuch Gleefully Leads Right-Wing Cohort In Fulfilling Their Federalist Society Quest

The OTHER thing (besides authoritarianism) you get when conservatives of today's ilk stealing SCOTUS seats.

The right-wing justices hit talking points that have grown very familiar to anyone who has listened to recent oral arguments.

Empowering agencies, they argued, shifts power to unelected agency staff from Congress, the people’s branch. If Congress had wanted to afford the agencies the option to interpret a given law in a range of possible ways, the lawmakers would have said so explicitly. This vein of argument has helped the conservatives spin up the major questions and nondelegation “doctrines”: the first of which demands a level of specificity rarely present in congressional delegations of power in matters of great “economic and political significance,” and the second of which holds that Congress can’t outsource its legislative responsibilities. In this Court’s hands, these largely made-up and embellished notions have become tools to beat back Obama and Biden administration actions the conservatives don’t like.

What Gorsuch and co. don’t say is that weakening agencies does not actually empower Congress. The legislature, hamstrung by the Senate filibuster, a polarized Congress and a lack of interest in policymaking on the right, can barely fund the government each year, much less pass a bill every time the Occupational Safety & Health Administration wants to tweak a factory workplace regulation or the Food and Drug Administration has to decide if a new product qualifies as a dietary supplement or a drug. It also lacks the expertise to do those things, given that much of what agencies do is highly technical. This is the reason justices devised Chevron in the 1980s — the recognition that neither Congress, nor the courts, had the ability and expertise to speak to all questions in American federal policy.

What went unsaid in Wednesday’s arguments is what a post-Chevron administrative state would look like. With a handicapped Congress and handcuffed agencies, the remaining branch — the judiciary — is itself the arbiter of what agencies can do.

So, a decades-old wet dream of the radical right and the Federalist Society...about to become reality.

Thanks to Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump...

..

[Brooklyn]

Boeing planes pose a great danger to society as we all have read or seen on tv:


https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202401/1306021.shtml

Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci revealed the carrier found "some loose bolts on many" Boeing 737 Max 9 planes. "I'm more than frustrated and disappointed. I am angry," he said, according to excerpts of the interview.

There is every reason for airlines like United and Alaska to be disappointed. For the aviation industry, safety is the utmost bottom line, as any problem is likely to cause significant damage to life and property. Boeing's safety problems have posed a great challenge, becoming a major disruptor of the operation of airlines.



Boeing’s Profit Seeking Puts Passengers in Danger

https://jacobin.com/2024/01/boeing-malf ... k-buybacks

While the companies responsible for the door plug that blew out of a plane in midair last week were cutting corners, outsourcing manufacturing, laying off employees, and working to evade expensive safety upgrades, they paid their top executives $817 million and showered Wall Street investors with $68 billion in dividends and stock buybacks over the past decade.



Profits before people. Further proof that idiotic right wing deregulation simply does not work.