Save DC Public Property — March 30th Meeting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Empower DC is holding a forum on  District of Columbia  laws about the sale and other disposition of District public property at  6:30 PM to 8:30 PM on March 30, 2009 at 1419 V Street, NW (U Street/Cardozo Metro).  For more information or to RSVP, contact Parisa Nourisa, parisa@empowerdc.org or (202) 234-9119

 Bill 18-0076,  the Public Land Surplus Standards Amendment Act of 2009,  introduced by Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr.and co-sponsored by Councilmembers  Michael Brown and Phil Mendelson, will be a focus of the discussion. Read it here for a head start on the meeting.

 

 Image: Empower DC/People’s Property Campaign.

Eliot Spitzer Buys Low in DC

Eliot Spitzer, disgraced former governor of New York, just bought a real estate bargain in Washington, DC. Mr. Spitzer and his father paid $180 million for a $209 million office building at 1615 L Street, NW. Tenants include PR giant Fleishman-Hillard, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, and the Nixon Center think tank (Dimitri K.Simes, President), a division of The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace Foundation.

The 418,000-square-foot L Street building is convenient to the Mayflower Hotel, where Mr. Spitzer is better known as “Client Number 9.”

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

 

No More Foreclosed Homes

What’s all this blather about falling real estate values and home foreclosures? Stuff and nonsense.

Just look around you. There are no more “Foreclosed Homes” —  just “Bank-Owned” houses and “Motivated Sales.”

Just ask any Realtor®.

 

Caution:There are many underperfoming assets on the Real Estate Euphemism Market today. Not all semantic shifts and short sales of logic are bank-approved. Demand documents written in a language actually understood by some living human population without third-party approval.

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

The Economy — Top 25 People to Blame

Time picked the “25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis” and invites you to rank-order the most culpable meltdown miscreants. Number one to date is – no surprise – Texas Republican and Swiss banker Phil Gramm, PhD.

Here are the current poll standings for these polecats, and Time’s rationale for the feature.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Downtown Art Picture Fades

Margery Goldberg is closing Washington’s Zenith Gallery on March 29th.  The gallery was founded in 1978 as part of Zenith Square, a complex of 50 studios at 14th Street and Rhode Island Avenue, NW that offered DC artists a place to create art as well as show it.

The gallery moved to 413 7th Street NW twenty years ago as part of the city’s effort to create an Arts District. In another triumph of DC urban planning, the area is now characterized by chain restaurants, shopping mall retail, loitering teenagers, and bewildered tourists.

Hypocritical Housing Policy

It is the height of hypocrisy when self-proclaimed Free Market Fundamentalists support subsidizing borrowers through tax law and mortgage assistance and approving billions in lender bail-outs.

Allow housing prices to be determined by use value, not resale value (speculation). 

Stop debasing The American Dream by reducing it to a cheap sales pitchfor real estate

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Holiday Housecleaning at Eastern Market

Washington residents got a holiday gift from the DC Government today. DC’s Office of Property Management is finally rousting the rascals who have mismanaged Eastern Market and is taking direct administrative control on January First.

Management of historic Eastern Market has been contracted out to a phantom DC nonprofit called Eastern Market Ventures (or Venture – documents differ). Who is EMV? Primarily Maryland’s Site Realty Group, with apparent participation by principals of  MilleniuM Real Estate Advisors (which provides the notional DC address — at the Watergate) and New York’s Capital Properties .

Astronomics

 

The economy. What happened?

 

At last: An explanation that doesn’t depend on blind faith in some “Invisible Hand of the Market” or sleight-of-hand conspiracies in the Swaps market. Dr Neil Hair of Sydney, Australia offers this insight:

Capitol Hill Coffee Shop Closed

Yet another catastrophic Bush legacy for the Obama administration: Capitol Hill’s Bread and Chocolate café and bakery is gone. The landmark on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Seventh Street, SE closed November 10th. They started gutting it today.

Residents and habitués of the Eastern Market area are frantic; the next coffee shop is a whole twenty feet further down 7th Street. With the closing of B&C, only three coffee shops remain in the two entire blocks of 7th Street between Pennsylvania and North Carolina Avenues, SE. We get caffeine shakes just thinking about it.

Trickle Treat!

Last night we put on our John McCain and Sarah Palin masks to greet the cute little trick-or-treaters of Capitol Hill. We want our young people to grow up as Real Americans, not Socialistic Redistributionists like That One, so we used Halloween as a “teachable moment” for a Supply-Side Economics lesson. That basic, Real American philosophy, so ably espoused by John McCain, has given our economy Strong Fundamentals, no matter what whiners may say.