In The States With The Worst COVID Situations MORE People Voted For Trump This Time Than In 2016! Kushner And His Ilk Are Evicting Them From Their Homes Now

 

I know I can come of like a jerk sometimes, but let me be brutally honest anyway: if people who voted for Trump get evicted, GOOD! They deserve it-- and worse. Now, Kushner-in-law would have never done this before election day but his real estate management firm, Westminster Management, has submitted hundreds of eviction filings in court against tenants with past due rent... despite the pandemic. I hope lots of Trump supporters learn a little something about who the Trumps are. It's the non-Trump supporters I'm worried about. As for the Kennedys' "Let's Lynch The Landlord," that's always been one of my favorite songs.

Washington Post reporters Johnathan O'Connell, Aaron Gregg and Anu Narayanswamy wrote this morning that "A state eviction moratorium currently bars Maryland courts from removing tenants from their homes, and a federal moratorium offers renters additional protection. But like other landlords around the country, Westminster has been sending letters to tenants threatening legal fees and then filing eviction notices in court-- a first legal step toward removing tenants. Those notices are now piling up in local courthouses as part of a national backlog of tens of thousands of cases that experts warn could lead to a surge in displaced renters across the country as eviction bans expire and courts resume processing cases. Many of the Westminster tenants facing eviction live on low or middle incomes in modest apartments in the Baltimore area, according to tenants. Some of them told the Washington Post they fell behind on rent after losing jobs or wages due to the pandemic."

Vultures in Maryland like Kushner are unable to evict anyone from their homes right now-- and the state moratorium was renewed last week. Now, they're just laying the groundwork. and  by the way, last year Kushner, personally made $1.65 million from his ownership stake in Westminster.

Last year Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh sued the company for its management practices, alleging that the company collects illegitimate fees for applications and evictions, and illegally claims tenants’ security deposits. Kushner Cos. representatives have called the suit politically motivated and are fighting the charges.

Westminster manages more than 20,000 apartments, according to its website. It is far from the only company moving to evict tenants despite the pandemic; housing experts have been warning for months that as Americans’ stimulus benefits run dry and eviction moratoriums expire, backlogs in eviction cases may be leading to a surge in renters being forced from their homes, particularly at the end of the year when the CDC moratorium ends.

Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, which tracks evictions in 24 cities, found that landlords there have filed for 92,619 evictions during the pandemic. Election Lab’s Alieza Durana said that the lack of federal data made comparing time frames difficult but that whoever is elected president will face “increasing numbers of people at risk of eviction, particularly among marginalized communities.”

Data from past years suggests that evictions have a disproportionate impact on racial minorities. From 2012 to 2016, Black renters had evictions filed against them by landlords at nearly twice the rate of White renters, according to Eviction Lab data.

Some of Westminster’s tenants, including those facing eviction, are Black, and their plight was highlighted Oct. 26 by public backlash to comments Kushner made on Fox News. Kushner said on the air that Trump wants to help Black people but that they have to “want to be successful” for his policies to work.

“President Trump’s policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about, but he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful,” Kushner said.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended Kushner, issuing a statement saying it was “disgusting to see internet trolls taking Senior Advisor Jared Kushner out of context as they try to distract from President Trump’s undeniable record of accomplishment for the black community.”

Another research and advocacy group, the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, found that corporate landlords have filed more than 10,000 eviction notices in five states-- Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas-- since September.

“There is definitely a question about what happens as time goes on,” said Jim Baker, the group’s executive director. “Clearly we are seeing some increases. It doesn’t add up to a surge yet. But with big companies making these filings and with moratoriums expiring, we are wondering if we will see more.”

Kushner is in a unique position to understand how the coronavirushas ravaged the national economy and the real estate industry.

After joining the nascent coronavirus task force with Vice President Pence, Kushner said at an April 2 news conference that “the president wanted us to make sure we think outside the box, make sure we’re finding all the best thinkers in the country, making sure we’re getting all the best ideas, and that we’re doing everything possible to make sure that we can keep Americans safe.”

But his handling of the federal pandemic response, in which he quickly assembled a team of private-sector volunteers with limited expertise in health, ended with the administration leaving large parts of the response to the states.

“The bottom line is that this program sourced tens of millions of masks and essential [personal protective equipment] in record time, and Americans who needed ventilators received ventilators,” Kushner said in a May statement. “These volunteers are true patriots.”

Before Trump ran for president, Kushner had taken over his family’s real estate company from his father, Charlie Kushner. Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, reported combined assets valued at between $204 million and $783 million last year.

Kushner has passed on some chances to avoid conflicts of interest. He planned to divest his stake worth between $25 million and $50 million in the real estate start-up he co-founded, Cadre, and received an approval in February from the Office of Government Ethics to do so tax-free. But in June he withdrew the request, according to a filing with the office.

Kushner’s company has struggled to pay some of its own debts, including by missing payments to one of its lenders on the retail space at the old New York Times building on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, according to securities filings. Kushner Cos. did not comment when asked about the property.

Advocates credit President Trump, Congress and some states for moratoriums that they say have kept people in their homes despite job losses and pay decreases due to the pandemic.

The Cares Act prohibited landlords at properties supported by federal housing programs, including Westminster’s Owings Run property, from making any court filing to start legal action. That moratorium expired July 24, allowing landlords to begin filing after a 30-day grace period, as early as Aug. 25.

...Even with the moratoriums in place, tenants and advocates say landlords can effectively bully some families out of their properties without a formal eviction taking place.

Experts say they see far more “constructive evictions”-- cases in which people leave because they are pressured over missed rent and don’t know their rights. Some tenants don’t want an eviction on their permanent record because it can show up on credit ratings and other legal screenings, experts and tenants said. Others move out to avoid court fees.

“This is the warning shot-- do you want to have your stuff just thrown out on the street, or do you want to just go?” said Georgetown University law professor Adam J. Levitin. “I suspect in many cases landlords are hoping to move people out without having to go through the actual formal eviction.“ Several tenants said they were regularly being charged court fees for eviction cases that started before the pandemic and have been reopened in recent months.

Zafar Shah, an attorney with a Baltimore-based legal aid nonprofit, the Public Justice Center, said even relatively small fees “can make the difference between the eviction going through or not, or the tenant being able to take the bus to work.”

Booker, one of the Owings Run residents, described the eviction threats as “heartless” coming from a company owned by the president’s son-in-law.

“The way they’re treating us is just making us feel like we’re nothing. It feels like we’re … what’s the word … disposable,” she said. “They just want us gone so someone else can come in."

Homelessness is horrific at any time-- but during a pandemic! And remember, it was the policies of the Trump Regime that Kushner is such a big part of that has turned the U.S. into the world's worst COVID hellhole. The U.S. daily reports will absolutely be north of six figures today-- just as they were yesterday, when the U.S. had it's worst day in terms of new cases since Trump decided his role in the pandemic was to politicize it and kill as many people as possible. On Tuesday, the U.S. reported 94,467 new cases (and 1,187 new deaths). Wednesday there were new 108,353 new cases reported (and 1,201 new deaths). Numbers are still coming for today but there are already 118,204 new cases reported and 1,125 new deaths.

Any state or country with more than 20,000 cases per million residents has an out-of-control pandemic. Right now Trumpistan is the worst place on the planet earth, coronavirus-wise. These are the unlucky 13 states with their cases per million (along with what percentage voted for Trump's reelection:

• North Dakota- 65,398 cases per million residents (65.0% Trump, up from 63.0%)
• South Dakota- 57,820 cases per million residents (61.8% Trump, up from 61.5%)
• Iowa- 44,987 cases per million residents (53.1% Trump, up from 51.1%)
• Wisconsin- 49,924 cases per million residents (48.8% Trump, up from 47.2%)
• Mississippi- 41,627 cases per million residents (59.3% Trump, up from 57.9%)
• Alabama- 40,618 cases per million residents (62.3% Trump, down from 62.8%)
• Louisiana- 39,973 cases per million residents (58.5% Trump, up from 58.1%)
• Tennessee- 39,796 cases per million residents (60.7% Trump, same as 2016)
• Nebraska- 40,329 cases per million residents (58.7% Trump, same as 2016)
• Utah- 38,769 cases per million residents (58.3% Trump, up from 45.5%)
• Florida- 38,523 cases per million residents (51.2% Trump, up from 49.0%)
• Arkansas- 38,889 cases per million residents (62.7% Trump, up from 60.6%)
• Idaho- 38,935 cases per million residents (63.7% Trump, up from 59.3%)

I just saw this new analysis by AP that shows that 93% of the most infected counties in the country, 376 of them, went for Trump! Makes sense. Their survey showed that 36% of Trump voters described the pandemic as "completely or mostly under control" and another 47% said it was "somewhat under control," while, 82% of Biden voters said the pandemic is not at all under control. So which group wears masks and practices social distancing and doesn't get COVID and which group doesn't wear masks and doesn't parctice social distancing... and gets COVID and then spreads it to their families, colleagues and friends? The biggest tragedy of the Trump Pandemic!

Anti-Semitism In America? In New York City? A Guest Post By Playwright Gary Morganstein

America may be about to elect its first Jewish president and I was buoyed yesterday to read that Bernie has gained tremendous ground among African-American voters. According to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Bernie is now basically tied with Obama's former vice president. Before voters were made aware of Biden's record (other than what people already knew, namely that he served as Obama's VP), he led Bernie by as much as 30 points. Now Biden and Bernie are within the margin of error of each other's support in black communities.

I asked a fellow graduate of Stony Brook, Gary Morgenstein, author of the new Off-Broadway play, A Black and White Cookie, to give us some insight into the provocative new drama about racial harmony-- which opens at the Theater for the New City on March 26-- especially since Beigel's Bakery, which has made more than 100 million black-and-white cookies since opening their first store in 1949, just announced that it is pairing up with a A Black and White Cookie, "by handing out hundreds of their signature black and white cookies in an effort to raise visibility of the timely new show and its important and unifying subject matter."

Performances are on Wednesdays to Saturdays at 8:00pm, Saturdays and Sundays at 3:00pm. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased online-- or at TNC's box office (155 1st Avenue, NYC) prior to each performance.


A Black And White Cookie
by Gary Morgenstein

As the old joke goes, a train in Russia at the end of the 19th Century has been stranded for hours. A Cossack officer stomps about the car, shouting darkly that it’s all the fault of the Jews. An elderly religious Jew approaches him and asks respectfully, "Excuse me, Captain, but I am also stuck on this train with no heat or food, just like you. Why would you blame the Jews?"

The Captain shrugs and asks, "Why not?"

I set out to write my new play A Black and White Cookie, about a conservative African American newsstand owner and a Jewish Communist who must overcome anti-Semitism to confront corporate greed and their own mortality, to explore that most ancient of bigotries. You’d be hard-pressed to recall the last play that focused on Jew hatred without referencing the Holocaust.

There’s no single reason why there’s a dearth of theater or even general entertainment about this particular hatred. Since Israel won the 1967 Six Day War, Jews moved out of the underdog category. They’re considered part of the white privileged class as many discriminatory barriers are long gone. The BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement and unsettling leap in college campus anti-Semitism further eats away at sympathy for Jews through attacks on Israel. Hollywood has a long history of ignoring anti-Semitism dating back to the original movie moguls who didn’t want Gentile America to know that Jews were creating their cultural myths. The media really doesn’t much care unless Jews are attacked by far right extremists.

As the great Paddy Chayefsky said, "All Jews keep a packed bag in the hall closet." That once seemed a quaint phrase from a bygone paranoid era. But now, Jew hatred is surging world-wide, including here in the United States, home of the planet’s second-largest Jewish population. According to the FBI, anti-Semitic hate crimes rose 40 percent nationwide from 2014-2018. In 2019, New York recorded the most anti-Jewish hate crimes since 1992, reported the Center for the Study of Extremism and Hate at California State University, San Bernadino (nbcnews.com, 1/3/20).

What I wanted to examine in my play is contemporary anti-Semitism through the prejudices of decent people. Sadly that’s not an oxymoron. Apologies to the gifted Spike Lee and his fine film BlacKk Klansman, but it’s easy to portray pure hate. Violence, name calling, evil vs. good. Forgive the pun, but that’s all so black and white. As a Jew, I’m not particularly worried about the hate mongers. As history has taught those who are willing to study it, the extremists aren’t the ones who pose the real threat, but the good people. They’re the ones who look away, who don’t speak up and let the hatred flourish in their name.

But how to show that? We live in a polarized society where increasingly it’s difficult to explain why something happened. An historical event, a political choice; if you dare try, you’re as often as not hit with accusations that you’re agreeing with that point of view. If you can’t explain, you can’t reason or think and you’re certainly not listening, and very soon our society degrades its simple ability to understand.

What I did in A Black and White Cookie is flip Jew hatred upside down through the prejudices of two African Americans, leaning into the recent spate of violence against Orthodox Jews in major cities and underscoring the sad reality that the strong historic alliance between Jews and blacks in the fight for equal rights has frayed. While there’s a long list of contestants for this title, Jews and blacks have been screwed the most by the world.

In the play, Harold Wilson is a gruff, no nonsense Republican and Vietnam Vet in his late 60s, who must close his newsstand in the East Village after 30 years because of an exorbitant rent increase. His 30-something smart and very protective niece Carol Wilson owns a toy store in Clearwater, Florida, where she’s going to move her uncle once they’ve sold his house.

Hate doesn’t spring from nowhere. It has its own twisted logic. Both Harold and Carol Wilson had a tragic situation involving the death of a loved one which they blame on the Jews, who didn’t act because they were racist but greedy and duplicitous. Now they believe all Jews are that way.

The precarious balance I walk is showing the rationale for hate without justifying the hate, while still portraying Harold and Carol as otherwise sympathetic and good people. The irony is the target of their prejudice is Albie Sands, a non-practicing atheistic Jewish Communist. If you want a picture of Albie, imagine that Bernie Sanders fell on hard times early in his life and ultimately became homeless, while still preaching his political philosophy.

But A Black and White is about more than anti-Semitism. It’s a window into all hatred. There’s no difference between hating a Jew or any other minority except the reason and the pejorative names. Hate is hate and wrong no matter where it comes from and no matter whom is the target.

When a person becomes one of "those people," they’re suddenly not like us. And if they’re not like us, they can be treated differently. They don’t have quite the claim to their place in society. They’re somewhat delegitimized. A person so devalued becomes fair game to any manner of assaults and deprecations, physical, emotional and political. The good and decent people with odious views of “those people” will certainly not raise a hand against them, figuratively or literally, but nor will they raise their voice.

After all, it’s one of "those people" lying on the street, bleeding.

At the end of the day, the play about a theme is just about people. A writer can imagine themselves as Thomas Paine, rousing a rebellion against the Crown, but there are no speeches in my play. I leave that to the politicians. A Black and White Cookie is about two older guys who are superficially strikingly different, yet develop a powerful friendship because neither will go quietly into that good night.

It’s also very much about faith. Not faith in an organized religion or even faith in God. It’s about faith in ourselves and each other as human beings, a simple concept that if we care about each other and get past all the slogans and stereotypes, we might actually like what we find. Another human being.

Homelessness In L.A.-- Can We Learn From How Utah Solved Their Homeless Problem?

Local county government doesn't get a say in whether or not the U.S. gets Medicare-for-All. But I ask local candidates about it-- and other federal issues-- anyway, primarily to get an idea of how progressive they are likely to be when it comes to solving local problems. Darrell Park is running to be elected an L.A. county supervisor, in the last district held by a Republican. And it's a blue district.

He's a Berniecrat who's all the way in on Medicare-for-All and the other issues that are important to progressive voters-- things like improving L.A.'s environment by powering L.A. County with 100% renewable electricity by 2030, one of his top planks. He's an author who wrote the book, Better Than We Found It: Simple Solutions to Some of the World's Toughest Problems, much of it based on his own experience working at the Office of Management and Budget in DC and as an environmental entrepreneur here in L.A. "I believe elected officials have a responsibility to make our community better and to solve problems," he says. "When a public servant fails to meet this basic standard, it's time to elect a new leader.

That's why I am running." The current occupant of the seat, Republican Kathryn Barger, has a very different approach to solving L.A.'s problems: "America needs President Donald Trump's approach" and on Trump's inhuman treatment of immigrants Barger said, "I'm hoping tough love does it because obviously playing nice in the sandbox has done nothing."

I asked him about the issue that is foremost in the minds of many Angelenos-- homelessness. His "let's Fix It" approached is why I asked him to write a guest post. If you like what he had to say, please consider contributing to his campaign here.








Fixing Homelessness
by Darrell Park


L.A. County gets an F for its handling of homelessness. It is a humanitarian crisis worthy of a third world country-- not the richest county in America. More than a billion dollars of your taxes are spent every year on the problem-- but where does it go? And the problem gets worse every day.

I found amazing solutions to the problem in Utah, where they have reduced their homeless population by more than 95%-- with the radical idea of actually putting the homeless into housing. During my stay, I counted only five homeless folks during my time there. Had I done the same in L.A. County for the same period of time, I would have counted thousands of homeless neighbors.

Although the problem seems insurmountable, we can follow Utah's lead and get 200 of our homeless into permanent supportive housing every day for a year and reap the humanitarian and monetary benefits. You may not realize this, but every unhoused person costs you as a taxpayer $40,000-- while permanent supportive housing costs only $20,000. You don't have to be a math professor to realize that you will save more than $1 billion per year just by providing permanent supportive housing. And that doesn't even include the economic growth that occurs by a double-digit percentage of the homeless becoming taxpayers within 30 days. We often forget that 50% of our homeless are without housing because of job loss. The quicker we can get them into housing and back to work they enjoy, the better off they (and we) are.

The key to getting our homeless neighbors off the streets and into permanent supportive housing is to make sure that every single person gets into a permanent supportive housing situation that fits their particular set of needs. 50% of the homeless became unhoused due to job loss. For those folks, quickly helping them get into housing and finding a job close to where they live is imperative. Each person in this circumstance will be provided with a mentor and a support group that helps them with things like figuring out transportation to and from work, getting job training so they can advance and get promoted.

For those that are severely mentally, they will be treated with the kindness, dignity, and respect that upper middle class folks undergoing treatment for mental illness receive. Their housing will reflect the level of support which is appropriate for them on a person by person basis, with no one being pigeonholed.

For homeless families, housing will be provided that enables them to live in community with other families yet with enough privacy and individual support So they can thrive and not just survive. Parents will be given job training In areas such as solar, that pay extremely well and kids will be given extra support including tutoring, and whatever else is needed to help them in school.

This is not a pipe dream. We have all the tools, money, and experience to have ours every single homeless person in LA County. And when we do We will save $20,000 per homeless person, Or more than $1 billion per year.

Too often in L.A. County our government just throws up its hands and pretends that problems cannot to be solved. Utah is the proof that these problems are solvable and if they can do it, so can we-- and they are willing to help us get there. Please join me in committing to end homelessness. I will take only 50% of my salary if elected, until 99% of the homeless are housed in permanent supportive housing.

______________________________________



This is a video from a couple years ago but it will give you an idea of Park's thought process and way of looking at problem-solving.

The Difference Between Bernie And Elizabeth And The Rest Of The Field-- Bernie And Elizabeth Aren't Full Of Crap

Beto has lost a lot of momentum since he decided to run for president instead of taking on John Cornyn for the Texas Senate seat. Even some guy named Andrew Yang is polling better than he is. When Beto joined the presidential race, his fresh face gave him a startling 8.5 in the polls. Since then, though, Domocrats have reconsidered and his average polling number is now 2.8, seventh. The most recent credible poll, by YouGov for The Economist last week, has him at a dismal 1.0.

Brilliant! And Beto has been trying to walk it back ever since

Sometimes Beto wants to get some traction with progressives so screams "fuck" or he stakes out a position to the left of everyone else and then argues for it passionately-- like he did with assault weapons at Thursday's debate, going way beyond what any other Democrat is calling for. "We’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore," he asserted, arguing for mandatory confiscation, an ultra unpopular position at this point. "If the high-impact, high-velocity round, when it hits your body, shreds everything inside of your body, because it was designed to do that, so you would bleed to death on a battlefield. Not be able to get up and kill one of our soldiers... When we see that being used against children. And in Odessa, I met the mother of a 15-year-old girl who was shot by an AR-15. And that mother watched her bleed to death over the course of an hour, because so many other people were shot by an AR-15 in Odessa and Midland, there weren’t enough ambulances to get to them in time. Hell yes. We’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used against fellow Americans anymore."

Right now David Cicilline's assault weapons sales ban-- not confiscation-- bill, HR 1296 is being kept from being voted on by... not by Trump, not by MoscowMitch... by Pelosi. There are 211 co-sponsors, 210 Democrats and one Republican. Only 25 House Democrats, led by walking garbage dump and DCCC chair Cheri Bustos, have refused to co-sponsor the bill. Beto's self-serving grandstanding isn't helping; it's hurting the cause. Since the spate of NRA-GOP massacres this summer, some of the conservative Blue Dogs and New Dems-- Beto's compatriots when he was a New Dem member of Congress-- have reluctantly signed on as cosponsors to a bill they shunned when Cicilline introduced it last February 15. Of the 20 converts who co-sponsored since the deadly mass shootings began, one is a Republican (Peter King) and 14 are from Beto's New Dems Caucus.

New Dems-- like Beto-- the House's yellow-bellied cowards. Beto wasn't a progressive when he was in Congress, not on much of anything. Occasionally he sounded a little like one. After all, he represented a solid blue district that was clearly to the left of himself. Trump only scored a puny 27.2% there and the PVI is D+17. Beto did nothing in Congress-- nothing good, nothing bad... nothing. It was a waste of a good seat. And I don't mean to single out or pick on Beto (who I like). But most of these presidential would-be candidates don't do crap, or, worse, did actual bad while they had the chance.




Biden, of course, was worst of all-- a complete villain for his entire career, the definition of a DINO from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, a war-monger, a vicious racist and the very worst kind of corporate whore you'll ever find. Kamala's résumé is so thin as to be nearly non-existent and what there is of it is mostly puke-worthy, illustrating how assiduously she worked to assure wealthy liberal and moderate campaign fonors that just because her skin was a little darker than theirs it didn't mean she leaned left on anything. She was my attorney general and my senator and I never cast a vote for her in a primary or a general election. She may not be as bad as Biden but that's because he's had more time to do more evil.





Compare the rest of the schlubs who were on the stage Thursday night to Bernie or Elizabeth Warren. What Bernie and Elizabeth talk about in their platforms and on the debate stage is what they've spent their entire political careers working on. That's what makes them different from Beto and Biden and Kamala who are just trying to curry favor with voters as though there were no yesterdays. While Biden and Kamala were locking African-Americans away in prisons and Beto was eating lunch with the New Dems-- it's what he told me he did with them-- Bernie spent his life pushing exactly what he talks about with the voters today: Medicare-for-All (aka, original Medicare before conservatives whittled it down, between 1905 and 1965, to what it is today), human rights, peace, environmental justice, workers rights, women's rights... 

Take his newest announced policy position: a national housing policy. Bernie started working on that-- successfully-- in the 1980s when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont (and when Beto was a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow-- a computer hacking collective that stole long-distance phone service-- and listening to Hawkwind and writing poetry based on their songs). Not even a dedicated Bernie-hater like NY Times slime ball and twisted Wall Street shill Sydney Ember could make Bernie's plan to end homelessness and nationally limit rent increases sound bad. And even the hateful, vile Ember admitted that Bernie "has long advocated for affordable housing, even during his days as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in the 1980s." Here he was in 2000 on the floor of the House talking about the issue he's bringing to the fore of the presidential campaign today. That's who Bernie is. He shines with integrity and authenticity, especially when you put him next to the sad-sack opportunists like Biden, Mayo Pete, Kamala, Beto...