President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

It's a gift.

 

I remember flying into Phoenix about ten years ago. All the desert and mountains in shades of brown and khaki, and then BOOM! Emerald green golf courses start appearing, vividly green and alive.

I shudder to think how much water that takes in that environment.

 

The Bay Area housing market is as crazy as they come. First tech guys want to live close-ish to their jobs where they can take public transit in or catch a company bus. Then they are getting six figures to work at those tech jobs, so they can afford a higher priced house. Then we don't have many homes available, so when one is for sale, people get into bidding wars to scoop it up and the house sells very quickly (usually). And the tech guys can afford to drive up the cost of the bidding wars since they have more wiggle room on their mortgages or can just throw cash down. Compounding all of this (at least it was true in 2014 when I bought), money from China is flowing in to buy a house so people can park money here rather than there. And they throw down cash, buy quick and can afford inflated housing prices.

In turn—and I think HanSen mentioned it—this pushes people who can't afford San Jose-Mountain View-Cupertino housing prices to go south or east (I guess north as well, but I don't know Marin and Sonoma Counties as well) which drives up property values in those places, driving people further in those directions. Curious how much longer it can last. I guess water will eventually force tech companies to reconsider where they set up shop and the ease of remote work could change things as well. All I know is my house is worth easy $300,000 more today than when I bought 7 years ago but there's no where in my city I can move with the equity that will be a worth while upgrade. I eventually will need a little more room, but to get it will basically max out what I will pull out and have to hope my wife lands a high paying job with her law degree she'll have next summer.

 

When I worked at the Daily Breeze (office was in SW Torrance), all the part-timers complained about how much apartments were, etc. The vision of working in the South Bay is Hermosa, Manhattan, Redondo, surfing, bikini beach babes ...
As a veteran, I just told them that they didn't have to live at the beach. There were plenty of nice, safe places in Gardena or Carson or Hawthorne or San Pedro. Live there, you can always go to the beach.

 

I want a deep dive on the people who paid for this.

 

Pretty sure Don Jr.’s AmEx black might have $100,000 worth of charges on it.

 

In SoCal, many golf courses use recycled water -- basically poop water -- on golf courses. The water can't be used for drinking and in households, but it's a way to reclaim waste water. I wonder if that's the case in Arizona too.

 

That's the case almost everywhere. There's a myth out there that golf courses just wantonly waste water, and it can't be further from the truth.

 

I do think we’ll get to the point where only greens and fairways are watered. People do need to get over a vision of a course looking like Augusta.

Most modern courses are getting better and better at taking water usage into account.

 

What they also discover is not everyone who moves to Montana or Idaho from California is a conservative. Trump defeated Biden in Ada County (Boise) 50-46 in 2020. He beat Hillary 48-39 in 2016, so the GOP's margin of victory was cut from nine points to four points in only four years. Lots of stupid people in Idaho (Spokane hospitals are being overrun by unvaccinated Idahoans who can't get beds in CDA) but it's getting bluer.

Bozeman and Missoula are blue, and growing.

 

Charge them about $10 a gallon. Revenge of the Rust Belt.