Posts Tagged → real estate
Calling President Trump! Calling President Trump!
Americans elected Donald John Trump to represent them in 2024, because he ran on a platform of reform and reconfiguration of a tremendously bloated and corrupt federal government. Without question, President Trump hit the ground running in 2025 and began implementing huge changes.
Eliminating USAID was an important step, because it was 100% captured by one political party and was serving as a fire hose of taxpayer money going directly to Democrat Party activist groups.
Ditto for the unneeded Department of Education. If education is a state and local thing, then what the hell does America need a federal agency for, to what end? To further enrich the greedy and destructive teacher’s unions? No thanks. Not a good use of limited taxpayer funds.
Ditto for US EPA, a place I worked for seven years and for whose complete and utter corruption and ideological capture I can personally attest. Burn that place to the ground and start over with a pencil stub and a scrap of paper. Administrator Lee Zeldin is making slow but steady progress towards taming that freakshow.
But one of the problems the Trump Administration faces is the unbelievable lawlessness of the judiciary, where so many ideologically activist judges openly flout the law and Constitution to block Trump Administration policies. Policies that are solely the purview of the Executive Branch, and about which the Judicial Branch should have zero jurisdiction or oversight.
Latest in this judicial over-reach is the White House expulsion of far left ideological activist groups falsely representing themselves as “news reporters.” Included are CNN, MS NOW, and some other openly partisan group that is hardly an arbiter of fact or news, but rather an actor trying to create news and political narrative.
President Trump is within his right as Chief Executive to expel these frauds, and anyone else he wants, from access to the White House, which is the home and office of the Chief Executive. Absolutely no one else has anything to say about White House operations. Not the Congress, not the Judiciary.
And yet, another lawless activist judge has “ordered” that the White House allow these leftist activsts inside its doors…and instead of just saying no to this lawlessness, President Trump appears to be deferential to it.
Recall that judges do not run America. Their decisions are not final, nor are they binding if they are illegal. Judges do not make executive branch policy, nor do they make legislation, which is the purview and job and sole jurisdiction of the Congress. Judges who over-reach and who try to make policy, write legislation, or run executive branch operations are waaaaaay outside their constitutionally defined role, and are putting their own credibility and influence at great risk. Judges who over-reach and then get ignored are like the boy who cried wolf; people stop listening to them altogether.
Recall that American government is set up with three co-equal branches of government, and a natural tension exists between them. That natural balance is upset not only when one branch over-reaches its established jurisdiction, but when it is allowed to do so by the other co-equal branches.
Which is what is happening right now with this aggressive over-reaching judge (and many other judges) and the over-weaning White House.
Yes, America has a Constitutional crisis over press access to the White House only because President Trump is waaaaaayyyy too deferential to lawless judges, who themselves have zero standing in saying how the president runs his White House. There is no other Constitutional issue here, certainly no First Amendment right to access a government building exists, and certainly not the heart of the Executive Branch.
Freedom of the press means that fake news misinformation groups like CNN and MS NOW, as well as actual legitimate news organizations, are free to say to the American public anything they want to say. It does not mean that these disinformation activists at CNN get to go say it wherever they desire to go.
I am not going to elaborate over the double standard here, not only ignored but also sometimes protected by many of the same over-reaching judges now trying to insert themselves into the presidency, compared to when the Joe Biden White House yanked the credentials of 400-some news reporters who refused to regurgitate Biden talking points and narrative. Or when the same Biden White House ordered Twitter and Facebook to shut down political voices and information sources that the Biden Narrative opposed. Or when the Biden FBI kicked in the doors of journalists who were lawfully reporting on the salacious and disgusting contents of Ashley Biden’s diary (she made her father, Joe Biden, sound like he sexually molested her).
No, what is really at the heart of this issue is Donald John Trump’s softness, his dislike of confrontation or of prolonged difficulties. I know, his enemies describe him as the opposite, but the proof is right here in front of us.
He very much wants to make everything into a New York real estate deal, a natural and healthy give-and-take negotiation that results in an even handed resolution. He is also doing it with Hamas in Gaza, Iran’s IRGC, Turkey’s modern day Caleph Erdogan, and with America’s grossly over-reaching judiciary. All with huge problems resulting from his lack of a firm hand, a firm stance. Big mistake, President Trump!
American government involves an on-going, nonstop power struggle among the three branches of government. This natural tension is built into the framework of America’s bones. When it fails, the entire premise of American democratic rule is placed at risk. And it is failing now, because one political party is devoted to grabbing as much power as it can “by any means necessary,” while the other political party is deliberately in avoidance and refuses to fight back, regardless of the cost. One party is crazy, the other is lazy.
And the one man America pinned a badge on to bring order to the chaos is throwing gasoline on the fire, instead of putting it out.
This failure is made worse by President Trump’s outright refusal to stand up for his office, for the Chief Executive, for his basic Constitutional rights as the only person elected by the whole country. Bizarrely, he keeps deferring to his enemies, including this rogue judge, as if they will give him a fair deal, a fair shake, fair treatment. He seems to keep on hoping that his sworn political enemies will somehow come around and see the wisdom of mutual benefit conflict resolution, when the result of his deference and kindness is just more intransigence and confrontation and undermining of his executive role and policies.
It is long past time that President Trump puts his foot down and tells these rogue judges to go ahead and enforce their illegal, unconstitutional decisions, if they can. Without his compliance, their power-grabbing decisions are meaningless. And there is no reason why a self-respecting Chief Executive like President Trump should be outsourcing management of the White House to the Judiciary, which has zero jurisdiction there, especially on White House day to day operations.
Calling President Trump! Calling President Trump! The Bat Light is flashing over Gotham, the bad guys are rampaging through society, and we need you more than ever now! Where are you, President Trump? Where did you go?
One Year Later…SoCal still a disaster
Recently I had the pleasure of visiting southern California. But the much vaunted amazing Mediterranean climate SoCal is famous for was nowhere in sight, as buckets of rain fell day after day. The temperature stayed between 45*F and 60*F, which coming from the frozen East Coast sure felt like a vacation to me. But boy did the locals beeatch up a storm of complaints about this unseasonal discomforture.
What was striking about the trip’s weather was not so much the uncharacteristic cold, but the lack of official preparation for the torrential rains that accompanied the cold. You would think that the people there have been through this enough to know what to do by now. You know, mitigate the threat, reduce the pending damage, save lives, save property.
Much of SoCal’s building surface is a weird mix of loose dirt and small rocks, and it is prone to easy erosion. This has been known since the time of Ronald Reagan’s ranching days there, an Ice Age ago. As we drove north along the 405, we could see many large, often extravagant buildings perched unsteadily over chasms below, which had once held enough dirt to comfortably, on which to confidently, build a house.
And then the summer fires came (year after year) and burned the vegetation that holds the dirt in place, and then came the winter rains that washed the loose un-anchored dirt away, and left the expensive homes literally hanging, clinging for life to shreds of dirt on the uphill side of the ever-deepening slope below.
Eventually all the homes and buildings we saw hanging out in the wind, perched over a void, will slide downhill like a toboggan, like those before them that were once closer to the growing chasm and which are now completely removed from that landscape.
Their once carefully secured electric, water, data, phone, and sewer connections will be lost forever. Many are already visible, sticking out of the dirt like veins and arteries of a heart held high in the hand of a surgeon, or of an Aztec priest.
The place, the actual land itself, that was once surveyed and measured and given a parcel number, will no longer exist. The old building lot will be seen on paper and on old aerial photos, like a ghost, but the actual dirt that it was once made of will no longer exist. That building lot will go the way of so many others right there over the past few decades: Mass wasted by heavy rains downhill into steep arroyos, and eventually washed out into the Pacific Ocean.
When I was a kid, people not from California joked a lot about how the great San Andreas Fault would eventually crack open, Biblically swallowing great swaths of expensive SoCal real estate and its fancy cars and shiny people, and then shearing off the surviving residual into the Pacific Ocean. The more culturally conservative the joker was, the more emphatic was their lack of humor about this looming armageddon. And why not?
Yes, you and I must be curious about the strange mindset of all those tanned beautiful people living their pretty plastic lives over there in SoCal, surrounded by palm trees and perennially perfect days. It cannot possibly be real. Kind of like the American Pompeii – not if it will happen, but simply when. Especially curious about the people, because They seem so damned judgmental and contemptuous of Us, the great unwashed and untanned living in Flyover Country.
And while there have been some exciting earthquakes in SoCal, it is more the tick-tock-tick-tock metronome-like regular prosaic wildfires and monsoons that are the real threat to house and home and happiness in SoCal. These natural disasters happen like clockwork, and yet are treated each time with wide-eyed amazement by SoCal residents. Yes, the rains come every winter, but these rains, oh God, THESE rains, this year, they say…
Even worse have been the elected officials, whose reactions have run from feigned amazement to outright glee at the opportunity to score so much waterfront or Pacific view properties at such low prices…and so why not wonder at both the residents and their duly, unquestioned elected leaders, who fail to prepare for the erosive rains or the wildfires. A year ago this week, catastrophic wildfires ate a lot of beautiful SoCal real estate and homes, due to no brush management, no water in reservoirs, incompetent DEI firefighters.
Nothing has changed a year later. SoCal residents now just as defiant and silly as they were last year, still blaming the unusually extra strong sunshine or some guy in Washington DC for their unhappiness. I think just one building permit has been issued for the thousands of homes lost last year, and yet the Los Angeles mayor and the California governor enjoy plenty of support from their victims.
But just maybe the failure to issue building permits to last year’s total loss homeowners of Malibu and Palisades is the biggest mitigation step ever taken. That would be ironic. I don’t know, can’t know, and really don’t want to know. Rather, I am sitting over here on the cold East Coast drinking a hot cocoa with a splash of whisky, watching SoCal go through the death convulsions and twitches of a dying body politic and its sick land base.
You could possibly write the script to this Hollywood movie, but I think the best one was already written a long time ago. It is called The Bible…
(My iPhone screenshots of the 2025 fire are below, taken as it developed, and they include some heartbreakers such as spectacular homes and barns catching on fire, and a homeowner racing back to his home in his pickup truck, only to be blocked by smoke and then fire, and then turning and retreating just as the flames engulf his position, his beautiful mansion going up in flames behind him. Some of the mountain cameras send messages that they cannot upload their images… because they have been burned to a crisp)
Recall that the beautiful Will Rogers homestead and farm in Topanga burned to the ground. It was my favorite hiking destination in SoCal
Note the pickup truck on the road. One of the screenshots I took showed the driver get out with his hands on his head, obviously upset
Harrisburg Candlelight House Tour 2022
The Princess of Patience and I have an annual event we enjoy, and that is the Candlelight House Tour organized by Historic Harrisburg Association.
The homes are historic, often brick and stone, but increasingly being rehabbed and rebuilt to suit modern lifestyles. Mid Town Harrisburg is the center of a great deal of this gentrification and re-use, the reclamation of its former glory days by investors, young couples, and entrepreneurs taking empty dilapidated homes and fixing them up into tax-paying structures once again.
Often the true downtown homes are as-is-as-found-as-was, somewhat cluttered and dark, filled with holiday tsatchkes, very homey and comfortable. These downtown spaces are all smaller attached homes from the 1860s-1900s, whose original materials and design often require a significant boost to make them truly livable today. And yet so many owners keep the original pine flooring, which is as attractive now as it was 130 years ago. Many owners aggressively incorporate new steel I-beams and wall materials, and install new windows in the former closed brick, while maintaining as much of the original construction as possible. The result is always a fun and harmonious combination of antique and modern, and I would say that most of them make me wish I had it as a pied-a-terre.
One of the big efforts is taking old mansions and commercial buildings and turning them into apartments. This is not an easy or cheap thing to do. When I was in graduate school, I lived in an old Victorian mansion on Lyle Avenue that had been turned into apartments by an enterprising cocaine addict named Steve. Steve lived in one of the larger apartments that spanned from the basement to the roof. One day, while watching Steve hold his own, raging drunk, buck naked and armed with a single shot .22 rifle, in an armed stand-off with the Nashville police, who had taken cover with their service revolvers over the hoods and roofs of their squad cars and a humorously deployed bullhorn, I came to appreciate the thick, strong brick construction of the building I was in. If the bullets ever flew, I was without a doubt immune to dying from acute lead poisoning behind those bunker-like walls. Ever since then I have admired the must-be-crazy people who seek to bring these clunky dinosaurs into the current day and age as livable spaces.
One of the people I spent time talking with was Nathaniel Foote, who took the old Carpets & Draperies building and provided Harrisburgers with luxury loft apartments. His emphasis is on short-term nurse housing. Another entrepreneur I spent time talking with was Justin Heinly, who has restored both the historic Cottage Ridge Mansion and the historic Donaldson Mansion next block down. Justin told me true rehab war stories, like finding old brick chimneys upstairs that had been pulled apart downstairs, thereby leaving thousands of pounds of hidden unsupported weight bearing down hard on the floors below.
This historic home rehabilitation work takes real dedication, risk, and sacrifice by people who have slight streaks of both crazy and artistic creativity. This work directly benefits everyone who lives in Harrisburg, or who owns real estate in Harrisburg. Thank you Nathaniel, Justin, and all the others who are making Harrisburg’s old abandoned areas now livable and desirable once again, one building and one apartment at a time.
And thank you to all of the home owners who let the public enter their private spaces, and to Historic Harrisburg, for bringing us all together as the community we are.
A home place that was special in 1900 and is once again in 2022.
Real estate entrepreneur Justin Heinly keeps a smile on his face, despite encountering unbelievable engineering challenges resurrecting majestic old mansions for today’s renter
The Princess of Patience listening in surprise to home rehab war stories from entrepreneur Justin Heinly
Perfectly produced home tour booklet by Historic Harrisburg