Darla Barker

Family, mysteries, grandchildren, traveling: These are the things I love.

[Darla Barker @barker_darla]

@pgipe Happy birthday to that precious girl!

[Darla Barker @barker_darla]

@mikeworkman @aztattude Wish I could meet that handsome little Hammie. He looks like he needs a kiss on that sweet face.

[Guy Benson @guypbenson]

The great @Peggynoonannyc has written a beautiful 9/11 remembrance today. You should read it. It links to a column she wrote 20 years ago — five years on — about the sounds & words of that horrific day. Every American should read it, especially those with no living memory of the attacks. https://t.co/qDX8zcJwyy

[Mike Workman @mikeworkman]

Best overall summary of Iran I’ve heard. Worth listening to no matter your politics.

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

In 1988 Dolly Parton pulled every 7th and 8th grader in Sevier County into a room and told them to pick a buddy.

She made them sign a contract.. if BOTH graduate, she hands you both $500. One fails, nobody gets paid.

The county dropout rate went from 35% to 6%.

She handed out the checks herself.

In 1989 she offered $500 to every kid in the county who wanted to go to the local college.

When Gatlinburg burned in 2016, she sent 900 families $1,000 a month for six months.

You've probably heard that part.

Here's the part you haven't:

The fund raised more than expected, so she showed up in May and handed every one of those families another $5,000 on top.

Then she quietly put $3 million into the recovery group that handles the years after the news trucks leave.

She built her county an entire hospital.

She played a benefit concert in 2007, Dollywood and the Stampede matched it, and LeConte Medical Center opened in 2010 with a birthing unit and a women's center in it.

In 2022 she started covering 100% of tuition, books, and fees for Dollywood employees.

Full-time, part-time, AND seasonal.

In 1991 she paid for a bald eagle sanctuary because the birds couldn't be released back into the wild, no press release.

And when Hurricane Helene came through here in Western North Carolina, she wrote a personal check for $1 million and her companies matched it.

She didn't owe North Carolina anything, but she helped us anyway.

She started the Imagination Library because her daddy couldn't read or write. Before he passed, he told her it was the most important thing she ever did.

Rest in Peace, Dolly 🇺🇸

[Darla Barker @barker_darla]

@pgipe Sorry for your loss.

[Darla Barker @barker_darla]

@mikeworkman @EndWokeness @RealJamesWoods Ha!!

[Darla Barker @barker_darla]

@mkhammer 4, 4, 2

[Royally Sage @sage1411]

My brother posts this every year in the family chat on the 4th. Still hilarious.

[Tomas @Tomas1979926156]

@mkhammer Just the staggering level of the arrogance of these foolish people.
They truly believe they have Godlike powers to transform society to their will.
People like that are the most dangerous of all.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

Imagine your family worked for a generation to save enough money to buy a brownstone occupied with rent stabilized tenants on the Upper West Side. The family financed the purchase with a mortgage from a bank based on the premise that rents and cash flow would at least keep pace with inflation so you could pay interest and principal on the mortgage and hopefully have some cash flow left as a return on your investment.

While you had rent stabilized tenants, you were led to believe that the NYC Rent Guidelines Board would be required to adjudicate rental increases each year by taking a measure of the inflation of costs to own and operate a building and setting rental increases appropriately.

You believed the RGB would do its job as the board is comprised of two representatives each for landlords and tenants and five independent representatives that represent the general public.

Now, a new mayor @NYCMayor Mamdani is elected on the promise of freezing rents. There are about two million rent stabilized renters that benefit if rents are frozen so by promising frozen rents the new candidate for mayor buys votes and wins the election.

The new mayor achieves his objective by stacking the RGB with directors who do not follow their obligations and simply vote for a rent freeze as a preordained conclusion as evidenced by the statements of an RGB director who resigned in protest for this very reason.

Meanwhile, inflation in NYC is rampant in utilities, real estate taxes, insurance, repairs and maintenance, etc. and now your rents are frozen. Real estate is a high operating leverage business which means that frozen rents and inflating expenses will cause property cash flows to plummet and your after debt service cash flow to go negative.

I expect therefore there will be hundreds if not thousands of small NYC property owners who are now or will shortly be underwater on their mortgages, and without any cash flow to maintain their assets.

If you remember the images of the South Bronx burning in the mid 1970s, you can viscerally understand what is happening to small NYC real estate owners.

While the rent freeze appears to be short-term good news (long term it will lead to poorly maintained apartments) for 2 million NYC renters, it is bad news for the 2 million or more renters in the 1 million market rate apartments in the City because a landlord-hostile market is not likely to add meaningfully more supply and market rents will likely continue to escalate at a high rate.

All of this seems quite unfair and wrong unless I missing something?

Why am I wrong?

For disclosure: I do not own any NYC rental apartments.

[Darla Barker @barker_darla]

Go, Elon!! I wish everyone was a trillionaire!

[Darla Barker @barker_darla]

@mikeworkman @RoKhanna @BernieSanders And why don’t your start funding some of those things, Rho Khanna. Why should Elon Musk do it?

[Darla Barker @barker_darla]

@mkhammer My grands and their parents play board games almost every night.

[Darla Barker @barker_darla]

@guypbenson How ridiculous are you?!!

[Jacqui Heinrich @JacquiHeinrich]

bigger headline from the Homan meeting: Frey says he won't play ball on WH ask to cooperate on criminal illegal aliens, in exchange for reduced federal footprint.

FREY: "I also made it clear that Minneapolis does not and will not enforce federal immigration laws"

[The Figen @TheFigen_]

We all need friends like that.

[Guy Benson @guypbenson]

This is one of the Dem demands!

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

🤔