American, Catholic, Commercial Real Estate professional and CCIM.
Side quests include exposing absurd harm reduction programs harming distressed communities.
There was an investigative piece done in Connecticut that didn't make headlines when it should have. If you ever find yourself wondering why there seem to be so many used syringes everywhere in our cities, this is why.
https://t.co/zL497PCgGB
@CTCentinal@TonyDeAngelo7@SwickSpeak@CTGOP@cthousegop@CTSenateGOP@KristiTalmadge
You would probably find it more interesting that Ethan is part of the pioneering generation of career YouTuber content creators who had to navigate pre-standardized monitization, initial fair use lawsuits, and libel/slander tort law suits. He was there as the book was being written.
Allegations of the Minnesota congresswoman marrying her brother aside… Ilhan Omar’s father was a high-ranking military official in Somalia’s genocidal Marxist-Leninist Barre regime.
This fact would have likely disqualified him from immigrating to the U.S. as a Somali refugee — and, by extension, prevented Omar from becoming a U.S. citizen through her father’s naturalization.
Snopes and Politifact buried the truth about Omar’s father, averting a scandal that could’ve been disastrous for her political career; @ashleyrindsberg reports 👇
@jasonc_nc@HedgeDirty Yeah we unfortunately overcorrect, and then seemingly forget why we made the regs in the first place, making it even harder to course correct.
this California wealth tax thing is just incredible.
so in October 2025, a California healthcare union proposed a "one time" 5% tax on any billionaire's wealth. the ballot measure will be voted on next month. In early December 2025, California announced that it would be a retroactive tax if passed, applying to anyone with CA residency as of Jan 1, 2026. The objective is to pay for Medi-Cal, California's incredibly dysfunctional healthcare system. (which also functions as a glorified welfare apparatus, but that's a discussion for another time).
polls reveal that the CA electorate is split around 50/50 on the tax, but prediction markets only give Prop 40 a ~23% chance of passing (there are competing measures on the ballet that would nullify it).
there are 200 billionaires in CA, worth collectively somewhere between $2.3 and $2.6 trillion. 5% of that is around $100b, accounting for a small amount of attrition. proponents of the tax forecasted a significant windfall, assuming only a 10% departure rate.
supporters thought they were being clever with the retroactive concept. no billionares would leave CA in the few short months between the tax being proposed and the residency cutoff date, without the tax even having passed yet, right?
well as it turns out, they did.
a new paper [1] from two academics at Stanford called "The Net Present Value of the California Billionaire Tax Act", argues that not only did more billionaires leave due to the proposed tax than its proponents expected, but that the value of the tax, if it does pass, is actually negative.
proponents of the tax only assumed 10% avoidance, that is, only 10% of the taxable base of targeted billionaires would leave CA within the very short Oct-Dec 2025 window. Jaros and Rauh, the Stanford academics, find that a lower bound of 28.6% of the taxable base managed to leave.
just based on known departures, those departures total $577b in net worth, or $28.8b in potential tax lost. this of course does not capture everyone (many left without announcing their departure), so the authors normalize to departure rates estimated from other wealth tax events, and apply other discounts for litigation, arriving arrive at a figure of only $28-$36b in forecasted tax revenues.
but this isn't all! all of the income taxes paid by the departed billionaires are also forsaken. the authors estimate that CA billionaires pay $3.3- 5.8b in annual income taxes. they assume a midpoint of $2b lost in annual collections from departed billionaires. the net present value of that lost income stream is -$68.9 billion.
so when you add it all up you get:
+ $30b one-time tax windfall (estimated)
- $69b in present value of lost future income taxes
= - 38.9b overall net present value of the tax
of course, this analysis is highly estimate driven. the authors simulate the parameters 100k times and find a negative NPV of the implemented tax 85 percent of the time.
and if the tax doesn't pass, which it's not looking like it will, California still ended up losing at least $577b in departed net worth, and they have permanently poisoned the well with entrepreneurs who will now worry about future wealth taxes.
[1]: https://t.co/1lbZgnMTG9
Well, in the US there were a bunch of bad SROs that housed a bunch of nasty people that caused problems. And you can see this in some of the old zoning code language aluding to houses of impropriety and loud music and such.
Howevern there also used to be a bunch of very cleanly run SROs that were a great type of housing product to have out there. But the bad eggs ruined everything for all the operators.
Was looking at some of the new competition near one of our multifamily properties, and I believe I've stumbled upon the most hilarious unit staging for a matterport 3D tour I've ever seen. Studio unit, NO BED, seating for 6... or 3 siting areas for one person? Plus a kitchen desk?
https://t.co/pXqQ4fsusR
@bobbyfijan@PatCarino
I strongly suspect that people inside the labs believe that having the most capable AI model is a moat in and of itself, because they think their internal model can just tell them how to take over and win every line of business.
Our report mapped the IRS filings of 1,458 HUD-funded homeless NGOs, state by state.
In 27 states, compensation at those NGOs more than DOUBLED from 2013 to 2024.
Nationwide: revenue up 124%, compensation up 118%, homelessness up 31%, to a record 771,480.
The money went up everywhere. The results didn’t follow it anywhere.
The system pays for inputs, not outcomes.
One of the things I wonder about with this blowing up is what other hoops you have to jump through as a NYC landlord to renovate a 30 year old continuously apartment like this, the City is probably more reg heavy than any other market in the US.
Can any CRE folks speak to NYC specific quarks of turning over a legacy unit like in the video?
These NYC apartments are standing empty, not because the owners don't want to rent them, but because rent stabilization laws prohibit them from charging enough to earn back the costs of necessary repairs.
My latest for @WSJFreeEx
@Twolfrecovery For example, a few months ago I had a conversation with a methadone clinic director here in CT, who told me that the Harm Reduction people are ruining basically everything they touch, but people in the industry don't want to call them out for fear of career blowback.
Being the most charitible I can be, 20 -30 years ago it was a emerging public health response with some promising initial studies on smaller sized programs.
Now its basically just an ideology with no strong or applicable research for their current claims running rampant through parts of the public health industry aparatus.
@robbiehendricks@moseskagan Dude, that's epic. A developer in New Haven has a 110 unit property locked in a 221(d)(4) at 2.35% interest. Props to you, I'm guessing it was a project where you just powered through the covid scare in 2020 and locked in the loan early 2021?