#texas economy

[bitcoinversus]

Texas Legislator Giovanni Capriglione Advocates For Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

Texas State Representative Giovanni Capriglione has expressed a desire for Texas to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve ahead of federal initiatives. Speaking at the Texas Blockchain Summit in Dallas, Capriglione stated, “It’s destined to happen somewhere. I’d rather it happen here first.” This sentiment aligns with recent discussions among Texas lawmakers about creating a state-held Bitcoin…

[brewscoop]

🎉 Dive into the rising world of Sugar Land craft beer tourism! Discover how this vibrant city is boosting its economy and creating exciting new opportunities for craft beer fans and local businesses. 🍺✨ With the Brew City Texas program leading the way, Sugar Land is set to become a must-visit destination for beer enthusiasts. Find out more about the community and economic benefits that await! 🚀 #CraftBeer #SugarLand #EconomicGrowth

[onlytiktoks]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-judge-strikes-down-biden-overtime-pay-rule-2024-11-15/

[relaxedstyles]

[fvedyetor]

american!sigma raaaaaaa 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅🍔🍔

[gideonisms]

trying with every bone in my body not to use this as a notes app and still kinda failing. anyone else feeling Tolerated but not liked irl on this fine night

[angelx1992]

[thestarlightforge]

I found out this morning that my grandmother—who is in her 70s, raised seven kids, can barely get around, has arthritis, chronic pain and other health issues, and lives largely on social security with my gramps (who is a contractor part-time, a veteran/Agent Orange cancer survivor, and a volunteer firefighter)—had to open a Rover account. Like, the pet-sitting gig economy website. To survive. To earn enough so she and her husband could finish building their house, which itself is made of two 16-wheeler containers, where they now live in a cabin in the woods in rural north Texas, because they had to sell their real house lest this little cabin—which her father, an electrician and union man who died when I was eight, built when she was still a baby, and it’s been in our family since WWII—be sold 5 years ago.

So anyway.

If anything made me something approaching a “radical leftist.” It was that.

Not TikTok.

[benjaminallhope-fulltimemind]

This is deeply ironic and funny given Elon Musk has a transgender child who refused to be related to him, he's a petty tyrant acting out against Gavin Newsom for "eroding parents rights" even though across America children are considered like property. Does anyone know how underfunded and hamstrung CPS is, parents can and do have the ability to do anything they want to their children without consequences? Anyways good riddance as while he helped start up the LA aerospace industry we've grown past him, I mean it isn't healthy economic wise to be dependent on a single company like SpaceX. So yeah it's funny this is the reason he's moving his entire company, just shows how insecure he is.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mitt Romney

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 25, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JAN 26, 2024

Today a report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed strong economic growth of 3.3% in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2023, setting growth for the year at 3.1% (by comparison, in the first three years of Trump’s term, before the pandemic, growth was 2.5%). A year ago, economists projected that the U.S. would have a recession in 2023, and forecast growth of 0.2%. 

Meanwhile, unemployment remains low, wages are high, and inflation is receding. As Gabriel T. Rubin put it in the Wall Street Journal today, “The final three months of the year looked a lot like the soft landing Fed officials are seeking to achieve.” 

There is a major political story behind this impressive economic one. Since 1981, lawmakers have insisted that cutting taxes, regulation, and the social safety net would create much faster and more efficient growth than was possible under the system in place between 1933 and 1981.

In the earlier era, lawmakers regulated business, imposed progressive taxes, and supported workers to make sure that ordinary Americans had the resources to fuel the economy through their desire for homes, consumer goods, and so on. But with the election of Republican president Ronald Reagan, lawmakers claimed that concentrating wealth on the “supply side” of the economy would enable wealthy investors and businessmen to manage the economy more efficiently than was possible when the government meddled, and the resulting economic growth would make the entire country more prosperous. 

The problem was that this system never produced the economic boom it promised. Instead, it moved money dramatically upward and hollowed out the American middle class while leaving poorer Americans significantly worse off. 

When they took office, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris rejected “supply side” economics and vowed to restore buying power to the demand side of the economy: ordinary Americans. They invested in manufacturing, infrastructure, small businesses, and workers’ rights. And now, after years in which pundits said their policies would never work, the numbers are in. The U.S. economy is very strong indeed, and at least some voters who have backed Republicans for a generation are noticing, as United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain made clear yesterday when the union made a strong and early endorsement of President Biden.  

So here is the political story: Republicans cannot run for office in 2024 by attacking the economy, although Trump has tested that message by saying the economy is “so fragile” and “running off the fumes” of his administration and that it will soon crash. He has promised to cut taxes again, which is not likely to impress many voters these days. Media stories are beginning to reflect the reality of the economy, and people are starting to realize that it is strong.

At the same time, the Republicans are in huge trouble over their overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion. A poll taken in June 2023, a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, showed that 69% of Americans want to see Roe reinstated. But, to appeal to their base, Republican leaders are backing more, rather than less, extreme measures: a federal prohibition of abortion. 

So the MAGA Republicans, who back Trump, need an election issue. They are trying to turn the migration influx at the southern border into an issue that can win for them in November. In December 2023, extremist House Republicans refused to pass a supplementary funding bill that is crucial to Ukraine’s effort to resist Russia’s 2022 invasion, insisting that the “border crisis” must be attended to first, although they refused to participate in the negotiations that Biden and senators promptly began.

Then, after news hit that the negotiators were close to a deal, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Fox News Channel personality Laura Ingraham told the television audience that they had both spoken to Trump and he opposed a deal. Negotiations continued, and last night, journalists reported that Trump was pressuring Republican lawmakers to reject any deal because he wants to run on the issue of immigration and “doesn’t want Biden to have a victory.” 

Today, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) told CNN’s Manu Raju that “the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.” Attacking Romney on social media, Trump said: "[W]e need a Strong, Powerful, and essentially 'PERFECT' Border and, unless we get that, we are better off not making a Deal, even if that pushes our Country to temporarily 'close up' for a while, because it will end up closing anyway with the unsustainable Invasion that is currently taking place,” which he called “A DEATH WISH for the U.S.A.!...” 

Now, after insisting the border issue must be addressed and riling up their base to believe it is the biggest crisis the U.S. faces, MAGA Republicans are in the position of having to refuse to address the problem. So they are escalating their rhetoric, claiming that the bipartisan deal to address the border is not good enough. 

That dilemma is especially clear in Texas, where voters are very angry over reproductive rights in the face of Texas’s draconian laws, which have produced high-profile cases in which white suburban women—a key voting demographic—have been forced to leave the state to obtain abortions to protect their health. Texas governor Greg Abbott is also searching for a viable political issue since his signature policy, school vouchers, failed late last year. According to Patrick Svitek of the Texas Tribune, money has been pouring into the Texas primaries as Abbott and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton try “to unseat House Republicans who crossed them.” 

When the Supreme Court on Monday permitted the federal government to cut razor wire that was blocking federal agents from reaching parts of the border, including the crossing where three migrants died last week, MAGA Republicans urged Texas to “ignore” the ruling (although it came from a right-wing court), and Abbott launched a war of words against the federal government over management of the border. 

In a construction that appeared to echo Civil War–era declarations of secession, Abbott asserted Texas’s “constitutional authority to defend and protect itself.”

Twenty-five Republican governors have issued a joint statement supporting “Texas’ constitutional right to self-defense.” Their statement accuses Biden of attacking Texas, using the right-wing talking points that the administration is "refusing to enforce immigration laws already on the books" and leaving the country "completely vulnerable to unprecedented illegal immigration pouring across the Southern border."

House speaker Johnson has also posted: “I stand with Governor Abbott. The House will do everything in its power to back him up. The next step: holding Secretary Mayorkas accountable.” (Johnson refers here to the impeachment effort against Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in which the Republicans wrote articles of impeachment before holding any hearings.) Trump called for “all willing States to deploy their [national] guards to Texas.”

But Paxton (whose trial on charges of securities fraud is set to start in April), asserted this right in court last September, and Abbott suggested today that his moves are part of an attempt to create a record for a court case challenging the long-standing precedent that the federal government, not the states, has jurisdiction over border issues. 

Observers worry that Texas’s stance is a modern version of the secession of the American South from the Union in the months before the Civil War, and perhaps in one way, it is. In the 1850s, elite southerners’ management of the South’s economy had thrown huge numbers of poor white southerners off their land and enabled a few men to amass huge wealth and power. As dispossessed white men became restive against the economic policies of human enslavement, southern lawmakers shored up their own slipping popularity by warning of the dangers of federal government meddling in their business. 

Here’s another way in which that era might inform our own. In the 1860s, southern leaders’ posturing took on a momentum of its own, propelling fire-eating southerners into a war. As MAGA Republicans are talking tonight about fighting the federal government and as Trump calls for “all willing States to deploy their guards to Texas,” I think of those elite southerners in 1861 for whom threatening war was all a rhetorical game. 

Meanwhile, Ukraine is running out of ammunition.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[dkaufmandevelopment]

Texas Housing Shortage Deepens Despite Record Construction

Despite leading the nation in homebuilding, Texas faces a worsening housing shortage that is inflating housing costs statewide. Let’s dive into the data and explore what this means for real estate developers and investors.

The Numbers: An Escalating Crisis

The Texas housing shortage grew to 320,000 homes in 2022, up from 306,000 in 2021, despite Texas building more homes than any other U.S. state. This gap underscores the fact that even with a surge in new homes, primarily in suburban areas, population growth continues to outstrip supply. The nonprofit housing policy group Up For Growth reports these figures, highlighting the significant demand-supply imbalance.

Drivers of the Shortage

Rapid population growth, particularly in cities like Dallas, Houston, and Austin, has driven up housing prices and rents. Many new Texans are moving from states with higher costs of living, adding to the strain on housing availability and affordability. Historically, Texas has managed housing demand by building detached, single-family homes in the suburbs, keeping housing costs relatively affordable. However, this approach is no longer sufficient to meet the current demand.

Need for Denser Housing Types

Experts, including David Garcia of Up For Growth, suggest that outward expansion can no longer address Texas’ housing needs on its own. In urban centers, limited land availability and strict zoning rules hinder the development of denser, lower-cost housing types like townhomes, duplexes, and smaller apartment complexes. Loosening these restrictions could ease the strain by making it easier to build multi-family homes and other affordable options.

Regional Differences

The housing shortages vary by region across Texas, with some cities making progress in expanding their housing stock:

- Austin-Round Rock: Reduced its housing shortfall by a third, leading to a 16-month decline in rent, though the area remains short by nearly 24,000 homes.

- Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth: Saw their housing shortages grow despite greenlighting more construction projects than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

- El Paso: Has seen a minor easing of its housing shortage, a unique trend within the state.

Zoning Reforms: A Path Forward

Many housing advocates argue that restrictive zoning laws contribute significantly to the Texas housing crisis. While permissive toward single-family homes, Texas cities often restrict land for denser housing types, limiting the construction of affordable housing options. By adjusting these restrictions, cities could increase the housing supply and provide more affordable options for residents. However, zoning reforms face resistance from neighborhood groups and existing homeowners who often oppose denser housing developments.

Upcoming Policy Efforts

The Texas Legislature is expected to address the housing crisis when it reconvenes in Austin next year. A major topic will likely be the extent of state intervention versus local control in setting zoning laws. Some advocates propose state-level mandates to ensure all cities contribute to solving the housing shortage, while others emphasize the need for flexibility at the local level to tailor solutions to community needs.

“While every community should be accountable, the state can set expectations to ensure all cities are helping meet the housing demand,” Garcia said. Balancing state and city powers will be central to any meaningful progress in addressing Texas’ housing issues.

For real estate developers and investors, understanding the dynamics of Texas' housing market is crucial. The state's rapid population growth and significant housing shortages present both challenges and opportunities. Addressing zoning laws and supporting affordable housing initiatives will be key to managing this demand and capitalizing on the burgeoning market.

Join the Conversation: What are your thoughts on the Texas housing shortage and potential solutions? How do you plan to navigate these trends in your investments? Share your insights and engage with our community!

#RealEstateTrends #HousingShortage #InvestmentOpportunities #TexasRealEstate

What are your views on the Texas housing market and its challenges? Let’s discuss below! 💬🏡

[tearsofrefugees]

[harriswalz4usabybr]

Speech Governor Walz gave in Houston, TX!

~BR~

[dwuerch-blog]

I Know Who Holds Tomorrow

Today, March 5th, is Primary Election Day here in Texas.  I am up and at ‘em to head to my polling location where I’ll be working from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. tonight.  I am stoked.  I can’t begin to convey how patriotic I feel about being a part of this process.    There will be long lines of voters despite the last two weeks of Early Voting opportunities.  Many people will say to us, “Thank you…

[lacisplace24]

"And we'll try anything, just to be a kid once again" - I'd Rather Sleep by Kero Kero Bonito.

When it's quiet I often find my mind wandering into a familiar place. It's a world where i'm a kid again, but instead of just playing with cheap McDonald's toys and 25 cent capsule machine stickers,I could get soft and fluffy stuffed animals like every other kid. I was so envious as a child of those who had fancier toys and trinkets, I desperately wanted some. I wish there were more inexpensive toys for my inner child, and for kids today. Many kids around the globe struggle with financial insecurity, causing a lack of toys for kids. 70% of Americans in April of 2023 struggling reported the CNBC Your Money Financial Confidence Survey. Just think, just for a fleeting moment, that more kids could get the toys they deserve. It's one of the weaknesses in most toy industries today, and especially at Unique Toys of Amarillo. They have a wide variety, but I would argue their prices are shooing people away from purchasing items more frequently.