Sunday, August 10, 2008

IHTBYB Outted on BendBB? I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!

Well, we knew it here first from marge, and The Bulletin reported it Friday that medians in Bend got killed last month.

Median prices, sales mostly down in July

Bend's median sales price for a single-family home in July dropped to $287,000, down nearly 9 percent from June, according to the latest Bratton Report, released Thursday.
July's median was about 16 percent less than the July 2007 median of $343,000.
The number of sales last month also dipped almost 9 percent from June, to 104. There were 152 sales in July 2007.
The median sales price per square foot, considered by many real estate experts to be a better measure of value, dropped to $152 in July from $166 in June, the lowest since July 2005.
...


Of the homes sold in Bend in July, the majority -- 29 -- were priced between $200,000 and $250,000. And additional 23 homes were priced between $250,000 and $300,000. Two homes sold for more than $1 million.

In Redmond, the median price in July dipped to $215,000 on sales of 42 homes. The median price per square foot rose nearly 8 percent, from $127 in June to $137 in July.
In other areas of Deschutes County, the median prices for July were $327,000 in Sisters, on sales of 7 homes; $564,000 in Sunriver, on sales of two homes; and $160,000 in La Pine, on sales of two homes.


You can see that the high end stuff is hardly selling at all. It looks like the mix has definitely downshifted. Sunriver has all but dried up. La Pine as well.

This was supposed to be our swan song, the time after we had hit rock bottom back in April. Supposed to be doing great, right?

No, well after this month, you will quickly watch things go to hell. How far? I found this piece regarding rent-to-value ratios:

Rent or Buy: Craigslist and Realtor.com
by Brent Wilson
Reochronicle.com/blog

Home ownership is a deeply ingrained desire for most Americans. Who wants to brag about how nice their rental house is? Besides, home interest is tax deductible, so it isn’t really money, right?

Normally it’s a good idea to buy if prices are in line with rents, but in many areas prices have shot way ahead of rents, although things are coming back into line.

To compare rents and home prices, what follows is a comparison of home prices from Realtor.com and rental prices from Craigslist. This study is very unscientific, since it isn’t normally possible to compare the exact house for rent with the exact same house for sale–normally a house is either for sale or for rent.

However, I’ll try to include similar sized and similar looking houses within a given city, at least based on descriptions and pictures.

Thousand Oaks , CA

http://ventura.craigslist.org/apa/776302660.html. This listing on Craigslist is going for $3900 per month, which includes gardener and pool service. The house
is 3000 square feet, 3 car garage, etc. This works out to $46,800 per year.

Realtor.com lists houses with 2700+ square feet in Thousand Oaks starting at roughly $675,000, on up to above $900,000. At the lowest price of $675,000, the total cost to own would run roughly $67,500 per year (7% mortgage, 1% property tax, 1% maintenance, 1% for insurance and general upkeep). A house more comparable to the one on Craigslist would probably run around $750,000-$800,000, or around $75,000 per year to own. Tack on $4000 a year or so for gardener and pool service for a total of $79,000 per year.

Ventura, CA

http://ventura.craigslist.org/apa/776165804.html. This house on Craigslist is renting for $2250 per month, 4 bedroom, 2 bath with a 2 car garage. Works out to
$27,000 per year.

Realtor.com lists a number of 4 bedroom, 2 bath homes in Ventura which look fairly similar, in the $400,000 price range. This would work out to roughly $40,000 per year to own.

Santa Rosa/Rohnert Park, CA

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/apa/776298792.html. This house is in Rohnert Park, just next to Santa Rosa, CA. 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath, 2 car garage, rents for $2300 per month, $27,600 per year.

Realtor.com lists a number of fairly similar looking houses for $375,000-$450,000, or roughly $40,000 a year.

Reno, Nevada

http://reno.craigslist.org/apa/776371760.html. $1600 a month will get you this brand-new looking house in Reno, 3/2/2. $19,200 per year.

Realtor.com lists a number of similar looking houses for around $200,000, so this might be one place where it could pay to buy.

Minneapolis, MN

http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/apa/776338785.html. Just for variety, here’s a split level 4 bedroom in the Minneapolis area for $1500 a month, or $18,000 per year.

Realtor.com lists a number of similar looking houses for around $200,000, so this might be another area where it could pay to buy (if you can handle the winter heat bills).

Roseburg, Oregon

http://roseburg.craigslist.org/apa/773994070.html. OK, so Roseburg is out in the boonies, but this house rents for only $850 a month and looks like new. $10,200 per year.

Realtor.com lists a number of fairly similar houses for $175,000-$200,000 or so in the Roseburg area. Annual cost $18,000 or so annually, so it seems better by far to rent around there.

Do Your Own Comparison

You can do your own comparison in your area by just multiplying your rent by twelve, and dividing the purchase price by ten, to get a very rough figure to compare.

This is assuming you have a good landlord who performs repairs on a timely basis, and that you are considering buying a well built house that doesn’t need much work.

Realtor.com is a good place to look for comparable houses for sale, since it normally includes the local multi-list. Craigslist has a good selection of rental properties, although it has been my experience that you can usually find a place for less than on Craigslist by driving around, calling yard signs, local newspaper ads, etc.

If you really want to compare prices, it’s probably best to just compare cash outlay between renting and owning. Over time, if you own, you will probably end up spending unexpected money on furnaces, air conditioners, sewer lines, water heaters, etc, and this amount of money will probably about equal whatever tax benefit you might have gotten from the mortgage interest deduction (if you are lucky). Have you checked lately what it costs to replace a roof? Or a furnace? When you rent, you don’t have to worry about what it costs–the landlord does.

Lots of people rush into a home purchase without thinking about how long they might stay in a place. In general, if you think you could move within 3 or 4 years, you might just be better off renting. When you rent, you don’t have to pay 6-10% to move (Realtor’s commission plus a fee to every real estate service provider within 5 miles). When you rent, you just pack up and go.

Overbuilding

In many areas, way too many homes have been built and can’t be sold, so property owners are renting out brand new houses to at least get something coming in.

If you can work it, you might be able to get a great deal on renting a brand new house for a few years, maybe for less than 2/3 of what it would cost you to buy. It might pay to drive around some areas where new houses have been built recently to see if you can find a rental.

Landlords Provide a Real Service

Landlords provide a valuable service–they provide you with a suitable place to call home, without you having to go into debt for decades to buy it. They also repair everything that needs it (at least most do), pay the taxes and insurance, and sometimes even take care of the yard and pay the water bill.

When you get ready to move, you just give notice, pack up, and move! Some landlords will even rent to you for less than their house payment! Renting isn’t for everybody, but it makes sense to lots of people, especially if you can rent a place for considerably less than it would cost to buy, without tying up your money or going into debt.

Regardless of what you do, it can pay to do a little off the cuff comparison of costs before you buy or rent, just to see how things stack up in your area.

Incredibly, rents in Bend compare closest to Roseburg, where they advise Not Buying. And that's for homes in the $175-200K range! That bodes ill for Bend.

This all goes back to ROI that is far below comparable investments. ROI on Bend homes while starting to rise recently, is still far below almost anything in the US.

Don't think that $287K is a bargain, just because we haven't seen prices like these since Summer 2005. It is looking more & more like sub $200K medians will ultimately happen here.

The Outrage of The Week has to AGAIN source from Don Bau-humper:

“We had a lease-back program on our project out at Eagle Crest,” said Pennbrook founder Don Bauhofer. “With the downturn in the market, the company just ran out of money.”

Nevada investor Chad Osorno purchased two homes from Pennbrook in January and February 2007.

He entered into a lease-back agreement with Highland Investors in February, according to his suit.

The companies stopped paying the $3,279 per month rent in November, Osorno’s suit says, and he’s seeking $69,158 in rent, late fees and interest.

You wonder what the THOUSANDS of incorporations that spiraled into the stratosphere over the past 5 years, that's what this is. Sleazeballs like Bauhofer enter into these agreements with almost NO ACCOUNABILITY for paying you.

Should have asked WHAT Highland Partners is? What happened to that MONEY? This thing SOLD you the houses, got a big wad of cash, and then shortly after DEFAULTED.

Where's that BIG WAD of money? That should have remained in the partnership that sold those houses, and it was almost certainly bled out to Bau-humper himself.

This guy was 100% scammed.

Of course, these are some Nevada investors who had no business swimming with the Cent OR sharks. A Sale-Leaseback of a $500K house? WTF? Here's the Humper:

But Bauhofer said the agreements ceased to make sense as the homes’ values dropped from more than $550,000 to less than $400,000. The companies, out of money, stopped making payments, Bauhofer said.

Huh? He sold a $500K house to the guy, he's GOT THE MONEY. Now, he says since the house he SOLD has gone down in value... no wait, it's not that, it's because the shell company that engaged the transaction has run out of money, that he cannot fulfill the transaction.

That's like Dunc saying he can't make his lease payments cuz the building has gone down in value. But then later flip-flops claiming poverty.

See, I have a feeling if some "normal" tried this stunt, and they were hauled into court, they'd LOSE BIG. If some shopkeeper downtown tried this, they'd declare the rent + damages DUE & PAYABLE before they even walked in the court room.

But Bauhofer will probably get away with it. It was a 100% SCAM SALE. There was NO LEASE BACK. Bau-humper had about 2 shits worth of intent to pay this guy his money. He inflated the price, with a commensurate PACK OF LIES about money he was going to pay the dude.

Standard Ponzi Scheme. 100% lies about a HUGE PAYOFF to get your money up front.

OK, moving on.

Lookie here! Little old BendBubble2 is getting some play in the Source:

Real Estate's Dead, But Weeds Look Healthy

Is it just our imagination, or is Bend looking weedier (and seedier) than usual this summer?

A month ago the BendBubble2 blog commented on the proliferation of weeds around town, attributing it to the real estate bust.

“Problem is Bend is hucked-full of empty houses,” wrote “I Hate to Burst Your Bubble.” “These things aren't getting minimal maintenance, they're getting none. And you'd think that after a long, cold winter, things would brighten, and all would be well, and that at the very least, the landscape here would ‘stage’ itself. After all, many front yards are meant to mirror desert scrub. But it's not working out that way.”

IHTBYB proves his point by posting a bunch of photos of really butt-ugly weed-filled yards (plus a lot of colorful, funny and obscene comments).

Why can’t the city do something about all this unsightly – and potentially dangerous – overgrowth that threatens to make Bend look like some 1930s Oklahoma dust bowl town? We spoke with Bend Deputy Fire Chief Gary Marshall to get the straight skinny.

The city has an ordinance requiring property owners to cut down weeds if they become a fire hazard, he explained. The problem, as always, is money.

If the fire department finds high weeds growing within 10 feet of any building, tree or fence it will give the property owner 14 days to cut them down, Marshall said. If the weeds are still not cut after two weeks the owner generally will get “a few more days” to do it.

Finally, the fire department can ask the city public works department to send out a crew to cut the weeds and bill the property owner for the work. The city also can slap the owner with a $250 fine, Marshall said. Trouble is, budget cuts resulting from the real estate collapse mean there aren’t enough city crews to get the job done.

There’s another problem, Marshall said: “We have so many property owners that don’t live in the state. We send them certified letters [telling them to cut their weeds] and we don’t get a reply. We really have no way to go after these people.”

The Eye has no way of knowing how many of those out-of-state weed scofflaws are former real estate “investors” (aka speculators, aka flippers) who just took off for points south, north, west and east when the Bend market went belly-up – but we suspect there are more than a few.

Anyway, if you spot a weed problem you can call the city’s weed control hotline, 541-317-3002, Ext. 3. Good luck.

This exacerbates the problem of selling. It's like a foreclosure in your neighborhood; it brings down the value of your house, even if you're down the street a ways.

Head over to Forum Meadows, and there aren't even fences to break up the sea of weeds. Head over to mapbend.com, and look at Forum Meadows; listings are so thick, you can drill down far enough.

From Nov 18, 2007:

How builders plan to face housing slide

Some aren’t waiting to find the bottom before they jump ship.

Buena Vista Custom Homes, a Lake Oswego-based company that billed itself as one of the nation’s fastest-growing builders when it moved into the Bend market in early 2006, announced Thursday that it will put all 200 of its unsold homes in Oregon up for auction next month, including 29 in Forum Meadows, its brand-new east-Bend subdivision.

“We were overaggressive and too slow to react to the changes in the market, and that has created an oversupply of finished homes,” Buena Vista President Roger Pollock said in a company press release. “Buyers are going to get amazing deals, but we simply have to reduce our inventory.”

Then March 20, 2008:

Bend subdivision faces foreclosure

Elsewhere in Bend, Buena Vista Custom Homes has rented 18 of the 29 homes in its Forum Meadows development near St. Charles Bend since efforts to sell the homes in mid-December at auction failed to produce a single sale, said Mike Higgins, a spokesman for the Lake Oswego-based builder.

“It was done in a loss position, but it was better than the alternative,” Higgins said. “If we can’t sell them, we’ve got to do something. We looked to auction the homes, but it didn’t work. Builders right now are just trying to make the mess go away.”

Lemme guess: Buena Vista Homes WISHES they had SOLD these dogs at auction way back when. Remember, he accused bidders of trying to "steal" these homes with their PATHETIC bids.

Now these shit-tacular STD's have gone to seed. There should be some sort of Weed Formula for calculating how the height & thickness of weeds in a neighborhood discount area home prices.

By my reckoning, Forum Meadows & several other places will be nearly invisible soon, swallowed up by an onslaught of weeds.

Another interesting stat I ran across this week. Go to Realtytrac.com, and click on Oregon on the map on the home page.

Yes, you see that "1 in 398 homes in foreclosure" gradient, The Highest Foreclosure Rate In the State?

Yes, that would be Deschutes County. More foreclosures per 1,000 homes than anywhere in Oregon.

The Source: Why don't you cover that? I ask you because I know full well The Bulletin would NEVER cover that.

For perspective, the lowest foreclosure rate is in Lake County, with a mere 1 foreclosure per 12, 138 homes. The Meth-ford market is in 2nd place, with a still mild 1:559 ratio.

And of course, we are nowhere near cycle bottoms.

OK, moving on to Rent & Invest The Diff: Well, it had a pretty good week.

I bought Lithia Motors several weeks ago, a little Medford-based car dealership with 110 locations. My own rationale was pretty simple: If these dealerships are worth about $5MM, then they might have rock-bottom cycle-low valuations of $500-600MM, net of debts & S/T payables.

Well, Lithia announced earnings Friday, and they were horrendous. Right?

Then why was the stock up 20%?

Lithia Motors Announces Second Quarter 2008 Results

MEDFORD, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Lithia Motors, Inc. (NYSE:LAD) today announced that net income from continuing operations in the second quarter of 2008 was ten cents per diluted share, excluding after-tax adjustments for asset impairments of $243.4 million (or $12.27 per share) and a net loss from discontinued operations of $2.2 million (or ten cents per share).

Then down in the dregs:

Under SFAS No. 142, "Goodwill and Other Intangible Assets," the Company is required to perform a goodwill impairment analysis on an interim basis if certain events or circumstances indicate that it is more likely than not that an impairment loss has been incurred. Recent restructuring actions taken, including the placing of stores up for sale, an adverse change in business climate, reduced earnings forecast and the significant decrease in the Company's share price required goodwill to be tested on an interim basis in the second quarter. The Company performed the required steps for impairment analysis and concluded that the entire balance of goodwill was impaired. The Company recorded a non-cash impairment charge to write-off the entire balance of goodwill of $210.6 million after tax in the second quarter, of which $24.8 million is classified in discontinued operations. In the quarter, the Company also recorded a non-cash asset impairment charge of $32.8 million after tax related to certain indefinite-lived intangible assets (franchise value) and other long-lived assets, of which $10.0 million is classified in discontinued operations.

They recorded a HUGE $210MM loss from the goodwill on their balance sheet. Did they actually lose $210MM this quarter? No, just an accounting entry.

But it creates a HUGE tax loss carryforward, essentially making most if not all of Lithia's earnings from now on, virtually tax-free. And you can see that they are in small-scale liquidation mode:

On June 2nd, 2008, the Company announced restructuring plans that would generate annualized savings of $18 million. Additionally, the Company outlined a list of steps it is taking to right-size and realign its business. Mr. DeBoer continued, "Those cost savings have all been completed, and we are now on track for $22 million in total cost reductions - as we have recently added an additional $4 million in planned annualized cost cuts. Since the beginning of the year, we have reduced the outstanding debt on our credit line from $184 million to $138 million. We have sold one domestic store and have agreements on six of the thirteen remaining store divestitures. An additional two domestic stores are pending sale as a result of an unsolicited offer, showing a demand still exists for domestic auto retail stores. These store sales are estimated to generate over $35 million in total net cash proceeds."
"Through the second quarter, financing of real estate has raised net proceeds of approximately $65 million. The depreciated value of our real estate portfolio in continuing operations has book value of over $300 million, and we are confident it would appraise for significantly more; we have real estate debt of approximately $220 million - leaving substantial room for additional financing to be completed throughout the remainder of the year. This does not include $22.8 million in development properties and our airplane which are held for sale - many of which have pending buy-sell agreements."

It's not entirely clear whether he's saying that Lithia will clear $35MM on six store, or 7. Either way, it looks like they are being forced to sell at cycle-low valuations of about $6MM/store.

And these stores are fairly decent sized operations. Lithia grosses $3.2BB on these 110 stores, or about $30MM per. So that $6MM sale price is actually a bargain... maybe.

So Lithia created a HUGE tax loss carryforward Friday, announced $.10/earnings after severe cost reductions, and showed they can sell dealerships at prices that put a valuation on the whole shebang at around $500-600MM, about half of it distributable tax free.

The market value of Lithia is $108MM.

So why do IHTBYB tout his stock? Well, I have said repeatedly that Rent & Invest The Diff is THE DOMINANT investing theme for Cent OR. Can't buy RE, you'll get killed. Can't buy bonds, you'll end up with toxic shock with the crap being sold (and now bought back) by Citicorp, USB, and others.

That leaves stocks & commodities. I faded the oil frenzy hard, because I saw $150 crude hitting a demand wall. I personally am consuming FAR LESS. people are engaging in some wholesale behavior changes that will be tough to undo in the S/T.

We're still consuming to much, and I still think inflation is a Big Problem, but commodities as an investment medium is black hole to me. I know me, and I would be easily scared out of a position. Besides, it's leveraged to much. Commodities is too much like pure gambling.

So I am buying small-scale, workout-situations that are negative delta on oil. But their real, and required feature is Deep Value. I saw stocks that hit 80-90% discounts from fair value in mid-July. And I bought several, not in huge amounts, and I scaled down.

I missed a few, such as US Airways & Six Flags which had a One Day Wonder implosion.

But I remain with what I've got, they are situations that I've studied to the extent I am able, and I still feel like they have a rough row to hoe, but they seem very undervalued in some instances.

This is what works for me. It may not be good for you. I can only recommend a widely diversified domestic & foreign blend of stocks & bonds (corp & gov't) for people who want minimal risks per the highest unit of return. This works.

Finally, some are saying that I have been disrespectful to recently deceased Cent OR RE participants. Really?

OK, use your browser search feature (Ctrl-F) right now and look for these people's names.

There is NOTHING derogatory about any of these people. NOTHING.

Have I said the RE game they were involved with is full of sleaze, slime, scum, Ponzi Scheme con-men? Well, maybe not, but it is. These guys were playing with sharks.

But I never disparaged these guys. I disagree with their choice of investments. But I never said anything against them. Look for "Audia" on this page:

  • This McDonald guy buys Meyers chunk of the Shire for an unknown amount in May, and not even 2 months later, jumps over Benham falls? Really? That's an awful long distance to cover from doubling up on REd, to committing hari kari, in such a short time.
  • And Jay Audia shot himself? This is another vulture job in the works that seems to have driven it's principle to his grave awful fast.
  • It's getting awful strange. Start combing the obits. Audia supposedly shot himself, a crime so easily done by someone else, a 2 year old could have planned it. McDonald's story just doesn't add up at all.
  • Anyway, be concerned about your privacy. I'm not AT ALL convinced the Audia & McDonald deaths are suicides. There's a LOT of money being lost, and it would not surprise me in the least that deluded RE speculators would approach some seedier types to do a refi, to bridge the financing gap & keep a project alive.
  • I don't know who this Jay Audia guy is, but he swooped in on what is now the Mirada parcel, bought it at a pretty good discount, and was going to make low-end laborer shacks. We've talked about this in the past actually. I've actually put pictures of Mirada right here in this blog.
  • Apparently Mirada, at steep land price discounts, still did not work out. And this Audia guy took it to heart. Too bad. But it illustrates a point.
  • Jay Audia, I'm sure was a nice guy. But he bought into The Bend Dream, like thousands of others. But it's a DREAM folks. This place doesn't really have a sustainable economy.
  • And it's because the media WON'T let us BURN. Audia in the papers as a WARNING? No. Put out that fire. What's after Audia then? Someone going postal?
  • See, Jay Audia is the collateral damage of this firestorm. There will ALWAYS be losses. Anyone whose been in Cent OR for the Summer season KNOWS there's always going to be a spark.
  • But no one wants anyone to know that. They think that ARTIFICIAL CONTAINMENT is a sustainable practice, it is not. Jay Audia killed Jay Audia. But in some measure John Costa killed Audia. KTVZ killed Audia. Hell, even Alan Greenspan had a hand in it.
  • Jay Audia would be alive today were the NASDAQ recession allowed to run its course. But no, Greenspan had to resurrect the Cali-Banger ASAP. Who cares about Round 2, that's Not My Watch.
  • Drugs. Business Closures. Murder. Suicide. Speed traps. Bank failures. Homocide. Fannie. Freddie. Foreclosures. The Plaza. Meth dens. Robbery. Embezzlement. Fraud. Jay Audia.


Here's someone's reaction on BendBB:

Up until a few weeks ago, I thought a person had every right to be anonomous on the web, but seeing IHTBYB's writings about Jay Audia changed my mind. When anonymity is used to cause unneccessary and unwarranted pain to a family, it is much like using the right of free speech to yell FIRE in a crowded theater.

Huh?

You know, whoever you are, if Audia is a friend of yours, I'm sorry for your loss. I know people who knew him, and I heard he was a nice guy.

But there is NOTHING in this blog disparaging the guy.

"Jay Audia, I'm sure was a nice guy."

I don't know the guy, but I assume the best.

You are missing the point. I want people to WAKE THE FUCK up. Is it worth KILLING yourself over a RE deal gone bad? I would say HELL NO.

It WAS a warning shot that there may exist the possibility that there are some unscrupulous types who will attempt to engage you in a transaction. That is what happens when the money starts flowing, it attracts scammers, grifters, and in some cases much worse.

This is a person who wanted to distort the FACTS as much as possible, and try to take a punitive action against me. Of course, I would never confirm or deny such silliness.

But you might want to consider the idea that outting someone will be done erroneously. Certain situations can develop in situations like that, and they can have fairly unfortunate circumstances for those involved. These people own arms in abundance, and they don't take kindly to unpleasant strangers at their door.

The Eastside don't abide that shit, motherfucker.

I guess what I find most unbeleivable about this, is that people at first blush seem to believe this! Personally, I would take any such pronouncements with a HUGE grain of salt. My skepticism would be nearly 100%. Besides, what if it is correct? How will I ever KNOW that? What would I do anyway?

If you want to "out" someone using some sort of warped logic, that is your business. I guess all I can say is I disagree with it. Fuck, Buster has equated me & Dunc, me & Tim, and basically me & most other people on this thing. Fuck, it's like it's me talking to myself on this thing.

The only thing that worries me about this? Comment from BendBB:

It's very dangerous to believe an address posted on the Internet. Someone can be trying to get back at someone and post an address.

And if anyone gets hurt or harassed, the lawmen will be looking at IP. If you hid your IP, they'll be looking at ISP records.


Posting someone's address in this context can easily be construed as some sort of retaliation. Why else would you do it? Try to imagine the following scenario:

1) This person is NOT ME.
2) They are well-armed.
3) They are not pleasantly predisposed to a hostile visitor on their doorstep spewing bullshit.

Your little outting WILL come back to you. You'll need to be explaining to a Judge why you felt you needed to initiate a series of events that may have an unpleasant outcome. Think about it.

And whoever did this will almost certainly construe such statements as a threat of some sort. Of course it is not. It is a POSSIBLE consequence of YOUR ACTIONS, not mine.

"Outting" someone is an action so idiotic & fraught with negative consequences, you have to wonder about person doing it. I actually encourage people to go read BendBB's thread on this (anon proxy, of course). The comments are, as usual, the most interesting part.

Anyway, I guess stuff like this is inevitable. All I can say is I have respect for the dead, no matter the circumstances. Audia & McDonald and others MAY have made choices in the investment arena that contributed to their demise. MAYBE. If so, I just disagree with their decision to kill themselves. IT AIN'T THAT BAD. My Lord. It's just fucking real estate. Your life is WAY more important than that.

All I am saying is If You Are About To Invest In Something That Could REMOTELY Cause You To Kill Yourself:

DON'T.

258 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   1 – 200 of 258   Newer›   Newest»
IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Sorry folks... I had this set to "auto-post" yesterday @ 7:00AM, and apparently that doesn't work.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Oy, just checked previous weeks comments.

Hopefully no one thinks the content of the previous week scared me off. It was purely a technical glitch.

That said, I'm all for alt blogs re Bend RE. The more the merrier.

P.S. Sorry to ruin your Sunday marge. :-)

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

And just so there's no mistaking my possible "absence" in the comments this wk.... I'm actually out on a gig away from the internet (gasp), so I'll check in periodically.

Hopefully Buster, Tim, marge, bruce, et al can carry the day...

Anonymous said...

Glad to see that Butter wasn't smeared all over the sidewalk.

In your absence, Pussy declared that he was in charge. Kinda like an Al Haig moment, but he being no Military Man, but instead a Pussy Fairy, it didn't have the same impact.

Pussy is still working on his Manifesto, though, so hope springs eternal.

Go Obama!!

Anonymous said...

WTF, Butter? You refuse to lie low?

Glad you're OK. You're over-the-top, but I always assumed that was just delivery style. Thought it was lame that someone tried to out you.

Anonymous said...

Bend is a place smart and active people like to live. They can produce. So there is no reason Bend can't be a nexus for good jobs, producing stuff that doesn't cost too much to ship.


*

Being smart will not even get you a coffee pussy.

The road to hell is paved with fucking smart people.

BEND is a desert-ISL, this debate is so fucking old.

Look now at the BILLIONS of dollars invested in BEND during the last ten years all evaporating, and all your fucking smart PR&MARKETING folk walking away from BEND.

You would have to be complete fucking IDIOT to setup up an operation here. Bend has always been about playing, and NOT about working. Ever since the mills went down generations ago.

PUSSY its people like you that showed up in BEND in the last few years, and think they can turn a desert ISL into a NYC, you better start working on that land bridge pussy, and make sure you can provide free transportation for goods and services.

Anonymous said...

Yes Homer, its a mark twain moment, dunc all but buried you, buster buried you.

The pussy took your mantle.

Your were dead for almost 24 hours.

Then you came back from the dead, "I'm Not Dead".

Me thinks when you saw all the shit in your obituarys, like hunk-finn, tears came to your eye's, and you realized we all loved you, and couldn't fucking exist without you.

p.s. stay the fuck away from bendbb

Anonymous said...

Median prices, sales mostly down in July

Bend's median sales price for a single-family home in July dropped to $287,000, down nearly 9 percent from June

*

1-1/2 years ago here I was laughed at for suggesting 4X sales at $60k, or 240K, so we're so fucking close today, we'll most like be at $240k by xmas, then its all down.

$160k very soon, probably this time next year, and then still over priced.

When do all these people start figuring out they have been had?

Bend was only supposed to go up. Very soon all post 2002 buyers will be under-water. How smug then will everyone in Bend feel?

The $60k is the family, most households in Bend are $40k with two people working two shitty part-time jobs.

When Bend's 2nd home market goes south watch out, Petro is staying high, and all these 2nd homes, probably 1/2 of Bends dark matter, will go on the block. It's going to take much longer than 2012 to clear bend's inventory.

In the meantime lets hope that Brooks sell "Lots" of Lots to builders who jump on the new zero-SDC plan. Brooks needs cash flow, and bad.

How long before the city mandates direct payments to Brooks? How about a tax exemption for all Brooks property's that would be sweet to protect the BossHogg.

Anything is possible. How about a 'tax credit' for people with unsellable and/or empty homes? Brooks Resources is sitting on 1,000's and 1,000's of rotting empty homes, hate to see them have to pay good money in the form of property taxes.

Anonymous said...

The housing bill CHANGED THE RULES for vacation (2nd) houses. Pretty soon the word will come down from the tax advisers and financial planners to sell the 2nd houses by the end of 2008.

Anonymous said...

This all goes back to ROI that is far below comparable investments. ROI on Bend homes while starting to rise recently, is still far below almost anything in the US.

Most people don't think of their house in terms of ROI; they think of it as a place to live. Also one advantage that RE has over other forms of investment is that it's virtually impossible for your investment's value to go to zero, as stocks or bonds can. It will always be worth SOMETHING.

Anonymous said...

Bend is a place smart and active people like to live.

Active, yes. Smart? Ummm ... debatable. Smart people, for the most part, choose to live in urban areas where they have the opportunity to make serious money. Bend is inhabited by (a) lotus eaters who already have made or inherited their pile and want to kick back or (b) the lazy and/or dumb who couldn't hack it in a big city.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
The housing bill CHANGED THE RULES for vacation (2nd) houses. Pretty soon the word will come down from the tax advisers and financial planners to sell the 2nd houses by the end of 2008.

It includes investment homes that you move into for the last 2 years you own and try for the tax break as personal residence. It almost removes the $500k of profit deduction. It all starts jan 1 folks. One more reason that our inventory will continue to grow this fall. Bratton..still wrong.

Welcome back to the rant Homee.

Anonymous said...

Another well done blog, sir. Some of us over here in Portland are watching the theatrics quite intently.....

Bewert said...

Re: the lazy and/or dumb who couldn't hack it in a big city.

Some of us don't like being crammed into a city with several million others. We didn't grow up that way and while we may like to visit, Manhattan isn't a place we would like to live.

I'm one generation off the farm and MENSA smart (which I'm sure I'll be ridiculed for even stating) as measured by innumerable stupid tests over the years. Being smart isn't the issue, it's using your smarts and working hard to accomplish things. To get things done.

Smart people tend to be more widely read, more cognizant of the world around them, and harder to BS. We need people like that here. I suspect a lot of regulars here are very smart.

Can't hack it in the big city? Or simply don't want to live in a big city? Big difference.

Jobs are the issue. Many are leaving, including some of my neighbors and friends, because of a lack of decent paying jobs. The latest is one of my favorite people, whom we had over for Thanksgiving dinner. She's headed to Pittsburgh for a real job. And she is not excited about city life. Quite the contrary.

There will be a sea change towards "green" energy, especially if Obama is elected, and that is something that could work here. Software and other creative efforts as well, that can be shipped over the net. We should look outside our borders and learn from others that made the transition before. Places like Denmark, as this Friedman column tells us about:

The Arctic Hotel in Ilulissat, Greenland, is a charming little place on the West Coast, but no one would ever confuse it for a Four Seasons — maybe a One Seasons. But when my wife and I walked back to our room after dinner the other night and turned down our dim hallway, the hall light went on. It was triggered by an energy-saving motion detector. Our toilet even had two different flushing powers depending on — how do I say this delicately — what exactly you’re flushing. A two-gear toilet! I’ve never found any of this at an American hotel. Oh, if only we could be as energy efficient as Greenland!

A day later, I flew back to Denmark. After appointments here in Copenhagen, I was riding in a car back to my hotel at the 6 p.m. rush hour. And boy, you knew it was rush hour because 50 percent of the traffic in every intersection was bicycles. That is roughly the percentage of Danes who use two-wheelers to go to and from work or school every day here. If I lived in a city that had dedicated bike lanes everywhere, including one to the airport, I’d go to work that way, too. It means less traffic, less pollution and less obesity.

What was most impressive about this day, though, was that it was raining. No matter. The Danes simply donned rain jackets and pants for biking. If only we could be as energy smart as Denmark!

Unlike America, Denmark, which was so badly hammered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo that it banned all Sunday driving for a while, responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent. (And it didn’t happen by Danish politicians making their people stupid by telling them the solution was simply more offshore drilling.)

What was the trick? To be sure, Denmark is much smaller than us and was lucky to discover some oil in the North Sea. But despite that, Danes imposed on themselves a set of gasoline taxes, CO2 taxes and building-and-appliance efficiency standards that allowed them to grow their economy — while barely growing their energy consumption — and gave birth to a Danish clean-power industry that is one of the most competitive in the world today. Denmark today gets nearly 20 percent of its electricity from wind. America? About 1 percent.

And did Danes suffer from their government shaping the market with energy taxes to stimulate innovations in clean power? In one word, said Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s minister of climate and energy: “No.” It just forced them to innovate more — like the way Danes recycle waste heat from their coal-fired power plants and use it for home heating and hot water, or the way they incinerate their trash in central stations to provide home heating. (There are virtually no landfills here.)

There is little whining here about Denmark having $10-a-gallon gasoline because of high energy taxes. The shaping of the market with high energy standards and taxes on fossil fuels by the Danish government has actually had “a positive impact on job creation,” added Hedegaard. “For example, the wind industry — it was nothing in the 1970s. Today, one-third of all terrestrial wind turbines in the world come from Denmark.” In the last 10 years, Denmark’s exports of energy efficiency products have tripled. Energy technology exports rose 8 percent in 2007 to more than $10.5 billion in 2006, compared with a 2 percent rise in 2007 for Danish exports as a whole.

“It is one of our fastest-growing export areas,” said Hedegaard. It is one reason that unemployment in Denmark today is 1.6 percent. In 1973, said Hedegaard, “we got 99 percent of our energy from the Middle East. Today it is zero.”

Frankly, when you compare how America has responded to the 1973 oil shock and how Denmark has responded, we look pathetic.

“I have observed that in all other countries, including in America, people are complaining about how prices of [gasoline] are going up,” Denmark’s prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told me. “The cure is not to reduce the price, but, on the contrary, to raise it even higher to break our addiction to oil. We are going to introduce a new tax reform in the direction of even higher taxation on energy and the revenue generated on that will be used to cut taxes on personal income — so we will improve incentives to work and improve incentives to save energy and develop renewable energy.”

Because it was smart taxes and incentives that spurred Danish energy companies to innovate, Ditlev Engel, the president of Vestas — Denmark’s and the world’s biggest wind turbine company — told me that he simply can’t understand how the U.S. Congress could have just failed to extend the production tax credits for wind development in America.

Why should you care?

“We’ve had 35 new competitors coming out of China in the last 18 months,” said Engel, “and not one out of the U.S.”


America has been getting dumbed down, and we can do something about it. There are a ton of smart accomplished people in this area. Even at a school like Bear Creek Elementary, 2/3's of the teachers have Master's degrees.

I would put a lot of the blame on the BULL, because they drive the agenda and are happy with an RE/development program. Yesterday's SDC opinion is a perfect example.

And when I review a Planning Commission document from as recently as last May 23rd, less than three months ago, that states we need 500 acres for second homes and only 100 acres for large parcels for major employers, I get pissed.

That is shortchanging our future.

Bewert said...

Things are heating up at Inn of the 7th Mtn. Check out http://innowners.com/

Bewert said...

Just a little bit of the nastiness:

Foreclosure: At an unscheduled emergency telephonic board meeting on June 23 and in spite of Peter Bours’s vigorous objections Jordan and his board put in place the machinery to begin foreclosing on whole units. Under the guise of lowering interest rates to 12%, Jordan formalized the long expected plan for the Papes to take over units at the lowest possible price. Even foreclosure would not necessarily limit individual owners’ liability for the assessment. The only reason why this process has not already begun is because the the Papes and their attorneys understand that our attorneys would respond immediately to any attempted whole unit foreclosure.

Additionally and under a separate contract between INNspired and fractional owners, foreclosure proceedings on fractional owners have already begun.


These Pape folks are pulling out all the stops.

Anonymous said...

America has been getting dumbed down, and we can do something about it. There are a ton of smart accomplished people in this area. Even at a school like Bear Creek Elementary, 2/3's of the teachers have Master's degrees.

*

There is NOTHING more indicative of parasitism in the USA than the US edoocation racket. Now pray-tell the same folks that deep-sixed public education, or going to collectively combine their master degrees and tell all the rest of us in Bend how to live, and they're going to find us jobs, aka they're going to tell us what do do.

I think the PUSSY's "AL-HAIG" moment is becoming more & more clear.

PUSSY, your a kept man, by a big tough white woman, you volunteer for public schools, and spend way too much time with 'teachers'.

Just because these people have figure out how to be part of a racket thats sucks the government tit 9mo/yr for full pay, don't mean they rule the roost.

Take away the public unions, and public pig trough, and these people would starve.

The US has like medical the worst public ED, and the worst results on the face of the earth.

Do something USEFUL for these parasites pussy, fight for SDC's, so they can get better pay.

Bewert said...

Buster, you're better than that.

Anonymous said...

Nice comments, Bruce. I wouldn't blame the teachers -- they get reasonable benefits and job security but give up higher pay in the private sector.

The problem as I see it lies in the economic opportunities available to students. In China and India the only way to avoid starvation (literally) is to get educated (math, science) or to have connections. Kids who get good grades are looked up to.

In America, it's just the opposite -- kids compete to be apathetic and high scorers are nerds. There are too many ways to make money (at least historically).

Now that middle class manufacturing is having a hard time, perhaps there will be a change in U.S. culture where the kids have incentives to work harder.

Bewert said...

Thanks. I hope so, that people will realize that working hard, working at being smart, is good in the long run.

Sometimes I think there is a rough plan to milk the US of as many assets as possible while keeping the populace stupid and focused on Britney, et al. Fox is the biggest example, but everything from AP to NPR has taken a noticeable shift towards the right in the last few years. Not the little government right, but the Homeland Security/war in Iraq right.

Bewert said...

It's going to get worse before it gets better:

Fed Says Banks Toughen Lending Standards Amid Slump (Update3)

By Craig Torres

Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve said more banks made it harder to borrow money as defaults and delinquencies on home loans soared and the economy faltered.

Most ``domestic institutions reported having tightened their lending standards and terms on all major loan categories over the previous three months,'' the Fed said today in its quarterly Senior Loan Officer Survey.

Funds were scarcer for homebuyers and small businesses, credit card loans became tougher to get, and even banks' best customers were subject to greater scrutiny. Tighter credit may delay any recovery in economic growth, which economists forecast will slow well into next year.

``The credit crunch is intensifying,'' said James O'Sullivan, a senior economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut. ``It reinforces the view that the economy will be weak in the next several months and there will be renewed pressure on the Fed to start easing again.''


More: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=aHWOtQf9je04&refer=home

Anonymous said...

I hope so, that people will realize that working hard, working at being smart, is good in the long run.

*

That's pussy thinking.

Long hours of hard work make you old.

That said, leave to the pussy, our own kept man, by a woman running a bike shop in Bend. Telling us about how hardwork is about makes the USA Great!

This reminds me of my kid sister who has been on welfare her whole fucking life, she always rants about the taxes she pays, trouble is she hasn't filed a 1040 in her life, nor ever had a job.

"Working Hard" Will make you old. "Working Smart" is just code for being lazy. Get to the fucking point pussy.

Are we talking about making money? Or are we talking about feeding at the public ed union pig trough?

Anonymous said...

Higher education is losing because of the cost of college. It's getting harder and harder for a kid to make college make sense.

Best bet for smart and energetic is skip college and start a business.

Anonymous said...

Not the little government right, but the Homeland Security/war in Iraq right.

*

The prez twisted-little-shrub says "I'm a war prez", we have had this conversation before, how we're NOT in a declared war, but the FACT is we're in a state of war, with an invisible enemy.

The whole country has been NAZI ( national socialist ) since WWI, the nazis won, the germans lost. The BUSH-TRIBE is long list of great nazi-enablers.

National Socialism is when the government in its 'nanny' fashion 'nationalizes' all the jobs, and everything is decided for you by 'smart' people. Herr Pussy has a plan for you.

No pussy, I'm not better than that. I sympathize with the liberal position, and understand the conservation position, but your all Nazi's.

The American public has always been overtly conservative, this is why they despise the French, and this is why the French have so much fun.

The pendulum always swings, as the economy goes into the toilet the USA will become MORE fascist and look for scape-goats and whole world will tremble in fear.

Whether its having the most niggers in prison of any country on earth, or being best at killing Arab's we're #1.

Even in phony 'Fake Bend', the liberals & conservatives have more in common than separation, they both want cheap fuel at any fucking expense. ( Bend is a mirage built on easy-money, HELOC, everything is fake. )

Bend is the ultimate 'cargo cult' Island, and the pussy thinks that hard-work, and brains is going to turn this desert-isl into something else. The worst part is the pussy just got here.

In my 40+ years here I can tell you that you newbies always make the place worse, you destroyed that where you came from, and you come here to make this place that like where you came.

Then like locust you move on destroy another place.

The liberal-pussy is the front man, and the conservative-hard-ass is the implementer, e.g. the pussy is the enabler.

The best of times for liberal hog-wash were the 1960' when everyone had a job, and fridge full of food, and their little parasitic cannon fodder rebelled in plenty. Now we go to war to kill arabs for oil, and its deja-vu WWIII.

Nothing is worse than a hungry old hippy. If you know your history you would know that Germany in the 1910-1920's was all hippy, the swastika is 'chinese' for 'rest-in-peace', its a fucking peace symbol, thats why Hitler used it.

In full cycle shit-eating liberals end up being the biggest killers of all.

That's why it always scares the shit out of me when I hear a liberal talking about making it a better place and creating jobs. You know that a robbery is going to take place.

Anonymous said...

DRUDGE REPORT: "#1 in appreciation=#2 in overvalued=3 developer suicides"

Bend, Oregon, considered one of the nicest small cities in America, has seen a rash of suspicious deaths in the last month. None have been followed up in the local media, yet the local blogo-sphere has been rife with speculation of multiple suicides, or even the possibility of "mob hits".

With Billions of dollars on the line in a city of 75,000 with as many as 5000 unnecessary homes, tensions have been increasing between the real estate/developer contingent that controls City Hall, and regular citizens that are more concerned about infrastructure and jobs.

Most recently, the City Council agreed to defer System Develpment Charges that pay for roads, sewers, and the like until a developer actually sells the building and needs an occupancy permit. Critics state that actual deferrals could stretch out as long a two years, bankrupting a city with only 1-2 months of reserves in all departments.

Real estate interests continue to insist that a turnaround is coming by or before spring, 2009. Latest monthly sales continue at approximately 25% of peak volumes.

There is also some dissension, even among the council members, over a 6% fee to be payed to Juniper Ridge Partners, the small company one on the outs with the City that worked with Cooper-Robertson on the planned residential/mixed use/employment lands development north of the city.

This development, which the city is counting on for several million dollars in revenue this fall, is currently on hold because of access issues off State Hwy 97. The failing intersection at Cooley Rd. and Hwy 97 has caused ODOT to refuse permission for continuing development.

A several month-long multi-party process for deciding on a mid-term fix played out last year, but this plan has been shelved due to lack of the necessary $40 million in funding. ODOT meets in Bend on Aug. 20-21 when the issue of a waiver will be decided. ODOT sources are hesitant to predict the approval of such a precedent-setting decision.

The 6% payments to JRP will be in return for a vague list of "assistance" services to the City to be performed by JRP, . It will apply to land sold by the City, and JRP will get a 6% discount from the appraised value of any land it buys with it's 50 acre option.

With another SDC deferral, this time for the school district, plus a $400,000 proposal to create an in-house legal division on the agenda of the first August City Council session, tensions are expected to get even higher at the next city council meeting. If the latest monthly budget update shows continuing declines in revenues in all funds, local citizens may become increasingly critical of city staff decisions being rubberstamped by the Council.

Bewert said...

You sure have it out for unions, Buster. So tell me, what's your solution to educating the future generations?

Fuck your code, grow up. If your kid sister is lazy, why didn't you straighten her the fuck up when you had the chance? My laziest kid sister is almost ready to retire from the Postal Service and go back to school for nursing. The other two are way more organized.

I was the oldest and only son, and took a definite interest in them. I grew up working my ass off, and can't imagine retiring. Throwing 80 pound hay bales as a ten-year old toughens you up.

The issue is what the fucking media promotes. I heard more about Edwards affair than about Russia invading Georgia on the news tonight. The BULL is another example.

We've got to stop dumbing down people. The Internet is a huge step forward, which is why it is under attack for censorship based on child porn and terrorism concerns. You can't have people telling the truth.

Anonymous said...

The problem as I see it lies in the economic opportunities available to students.

*

That is the essential problem NOW, you would have to be a nitwit to tell you child to go to college and study science.

It's law, med, cpa, and dat's it!

All the intellectual jobs are now done over-seas, and computers will continue to automate blue-collar, and your just starting to see auto-mate in WHITE-COLLAR.

I can see in a few years, the last bastion of US ed that law,med,cpa being done by the computer! That is how USA will probably solve the health crisis is by getting out the doc.

By then, the few who design the systems will live in gated communtiy's like pronghorn, and all the niggers in prison, and a little white trash in hollern-hotels aka NWXC.

Look at history the industrial revolution, the computer revolution, ... everything changes.

Today more&more education is meaning less and less.

The teachers like to praise the advantage of education, because its a product they have to sell. That said what is its use to a black-man who can never escape the US criminal justice system??

What is education to a child in 90% of the world, so often 'education' just means to read/write english, but as the UK/US econ-sys collapses, that will be NIL of worth, so perhaps in a few years being literate in Chinese will be what 'educated' really means.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a physicist by education, but I couldn't get a job today if I wanted to, I could start my own biz, but I'm done.

The 1960's & 70's were great for science, you could do anything, and 1980's were great for computers, you could make unlimited money, just start a fucking HW or SW company and go public.

Today all the opportunity is virtually gone, oh yea the pussy is going to tell me about people getting rich writing light-saber software for iPhones, nada closed market. Then only people getting rich on iPhones is Apple.

Today fewer and few people in the USA have opportunity.

If I had young kids today I would tell them to get involved in technology to automate law&medicine, that will make money and keep people busy during the next wave. After that we either all go back agrarian ( well past peak oil ), or we all kill each other and starve.

"Economic Opportunity" Pussy today most kids will never even pay for their fucking college education, in my day we went to college for free. Then that was cold-war and the war machine needed scientists.

Today the war-machine only needs cannon-fodder in the Middle East.

So today kids can only look forward to early death, PTSD, or being quad's, vegetables.

Bewert said...

RE: That's why it always scares the shit out of me when I hear a liberal talking about making it a better place and creating jobs. You know that a robbery is going to take place.

Buster, the robbery is taking place. I recently had a CC member tell me "I think the trick is to replace the current Council." I'm publicly bitching about it. And you are one wierd mofo.

But then your reality may trump mine in the end.

Bewert said...

Buster, why do you live in Bend?

tim said...

>>Buster, why do you live in Bend?

Talk sense, Bruce.

Buster is Bend.

Anonymous said...

You sure have it out for unions, Buster. So tell me, what's your solution to educating the future generations?

*

Buster don't solutions pussy, only liberals have solutions, I'm a doer, so I need the liberal to tell me what to do.

I hate ONLY PUBLIC UNIONS PUSSY, why do I have to repeat myself over&over.

PUBLIC UNIONS are what created PERS(KKR), public UNIONS are how the US private union system was destroyed, read the fucking book pussy from 1980's "America what went wrong" Bartlett&Steele

I think that education is reading, and learning on your own. Even though I went to college for at least 10+ years post high-school, I still learned 99% on my own.

An education is to teach you how to learn. I don't think cruising web is education.

If a child isn't interested in Algebra by 10-12, he can't be educated later. I know for myself I taught myself calculus around 12, by the time I went to college I already understood most math. I did it on my own.

I think the best thing for kids is to have educated parents who leave books around the house. I don't allow TV in my house.

ONLY A FUCKING nazi-LIBERAL ASKS the rhetoric question "HOW do WE educate the mass", parents should be edoocating their cannon-foddder PUSSY, you have NO business asking the question.

YOU PUBLIC FUCKERS THINK YOU HAVE LICENSE TO RULE THE HOME.

Anonymous said...

So buster's solution to an edoocated future is having interesting books around the house for the kids, say Newtons Principia, ... and such

Trouble is today its the Internet, and 99% of the internet is porn, and most people don't have books, they have people-magazine.

The USA is fucked pussy, the future is the USA is fucked, but like I have already said, we don't need educated people.

Like in Bend, all we need is folks who work restaurants, or change bed-pans for the dying calis. This is the real Bend pussy, its always been about low-wages, and no education required. In many ways I have just described Africa, I see many similarity's all rural places are the same.

A more interesting question is why do 'pussy' sophisticate's move to red-neck havens, and try to turn OUR paradise, into where you left?

I think timmmy said "buster is bend", and the pussy is LA, and wants to turn BEND into LA - ASAP. The reason I waste my time on this blog is to fight this trend.

The pussy talks the talk of city-hall how they're all going to create jobs, and make Bend BIG, so fucking BIG it will never stumble again. If that were fucking TRUE then Orange-County wouldn't have gone bankrupt, no matter HOW BIG BEND is if its ran by boss-hogg and his REHO bitches and a few 'kept man-twat pussy men', its always going to be teetering towards bankruptcy.

Bewert said...

Buster, I'm not kept by anyone. Ask anyone who knows me.

You still haven't told me why you live in Bend. Why not Italy? Or Thailand?

Anonymous said...

We've got to stop dumbing down people. The Internet is a huge step forward, which is why it is under attack for censorship based on child porn and terrorism concerns. You can't have people telling the truth.

*

I have used the internet since the 1960's, the worst thing for the internet, was the US public coming onboard the internet. Given that its use is porn, and most kids 'myspace'.

The internet has accelerated 'dumbing down' pussy.

What are you going to do pussy, limit the net usage to only US-public-union approved education sites?

The 'truth' doesn't feed pussy, the reason I can spend my time a few days a month and post here, is that I'm a rich man, but I did so years ago, and I did so not because of my education, but because I TAUGHT MYSELF how to get rich. Many times I have told people here what books to buy for kids, again timmy comes to mind and agreed to leave "Richest man in Babylon" around the house, it sure influenced my thinking on how the world works.

Money is FREEDOM in NAZI-USA always been this way.

Most folks on this blog such as lava get pissed when you say "We have got to do this & that".

The other day me and tim had a good conversation about Toqueville, go read the book pussy, and understand that every fucking thing thats happening was predicted by Toqueville, over 100 years ago. The USA is/was always mob rule, by the most illiterate, this is why a dumb fuck head like Boss-Hogg-Hollern can run Bend into the ground, because its mob rule, and the BossHogg controls the MOB.

PUSSY, you would have to go back in time ( & physics proves it can't be done ) and implement Tocquevilles solutions to what was wrong with the USA, now its too fucking Late, its going down, and no fucking liberal is going to stop the train.

Pussy FREEDOM in the USA is MONEY, and public education doesn't teach you how to make money. Public education in the USA is only welfare for people with liberal-arts degrees ( other pussy's ), where pussy's can all feed at the pig-trough, ergo its no wonder that US education is systemically fucked.

Public education is incapable of teaching children what they need to know to pull themselves out of poverty.


Like our HOMER, another fucking POVERTY-PIMP. Public education racket insures that future generations are beggars and destitute.

Anonymous said...

You still haven't told me why you live in Bend. Why not Italy? Or Thailand?

*

I have a house in Italy, and I don't like Thailand its too crowded.

Thailand is 90-90 24 hrs/day that means 90hum, 90deg,

Bend has always been my base-camp since the 1960's.

If you have to live in NAZI-USA orygun is a good place, when I was young I used to say that USA was the best place to make money. If you want to live, and spend money, then I would say Italy or New Zealand or Australia is pleasant.

My plan has always been to get out of the USA, once its full nazi.

The way I see it is eventually the USA becomes a prison, where like Israel the Jews have the guns and nobody else is armed. That all of the USA is walled, and nobody can leave unless your rich.

My goal on this blog was always to keep Bend small, so that it didn't become big enough to have its own regional concentration camp nearby, even though Garzini's JR camp is years off.

Live in Bend, when I came up to the NorthWest in the 1960's I was going Alaska, but I found the long winter nights too hard. I found even then Seattle too crowded, I found Portland just right. Then I found that Bend was the best base camp.

That said the BEND of today SUCKS BIG DICK as you cunts have fucked the place.

Bewert said...

Kuratek's legend, from the City's Master Developer Selection document, written by John Russell:

Juniper Ridge LLC: Primary information from lead partner (Ray Kuratek) relates to Bay Meadows mixed use development in San Mateo. Listed information for Bay Meadows includes 1,000,000 sq. ft. of office space, including world headquarters of the Franklin-
Templeton Funds; 700 new homes (single family, townhomes, lofts and apartments); 100,000 sq. ft. of retail; 3 public parks and a freeway interchange on Highway 101. Job creation is listed at over 4,000 permanent jobs. Bay Meadows was reported to be well ahead of the predicted absorption schedule and won the “Best in the West” Grand Award from Builders Magazine, and was selected by the San Francisco Business Journal in Spring 2003 as the “Best Mixed Use Project” in a Suburban Market in Northern California


The truth, from the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal:
Bay Meadows Phase I includes 187,800 square feet of office space, 575 multifamily housing units, 19 live/work units and 88,500 square feet of retail space.

Anonymous said...

Pussy,

Meee wife says its time for din-din, so I must sign off.

Our conversation tonight reminds me of a lecture I had from my high school physics teacher, in a private conversation about human ambition.

...

A student came to his music teacher and said "I want to write a concerto", the teacher replied "Why", the student said "Well Mozart wrote a concerto at five, and I'm fifteen", the teacher replied "But Mozart didn't ask anyone for help, he just did it"

...

That is the issue of LIFE pussy, 99% of humanity asks for help, generally from an idiot, and goes down the wrong track. Most Government folk are idiots ( I know that's mean, but look at the results ), their own lives are fucked, and they ( pubic school teachers ) have no business providing insight.

Every once in a while a smart young gifted child does something amazing, first Mozart's parent had every kind of instrument in the house and they played, thus by the time he was two he was playing, by the time four he was playing all, and by the time he was five he was writing concerto's with no assistance.

YOU & ME have a different definition of EDOOCATION RACKET pussy, but like I said earlier this eve, education starts in the home at an early age. I was taking shit apart at two, by five I was reading books about how stuff works, by ten I was teaching myself chemistry, physics, and math; all so I could make pyrotechnics's; I never asked anyone for help.

I started college when I was 14, I got my first job in R&D by 18. Over the years I kept taking classes. I might add that I was a poor child, again right place right time, I lived near a great university.

Then there is the issue of being at the right place at the right time. In my case I had already mastered advanced math by 16, and had access to college computers albeit punched-card at 14, but they were the best IBM computers of the day, by 18 I could code any computer algorithm in physics ten times faster than anyone I knew, by the time I was twenty I was a millionaire.

Now pussy how can the public education racket educate US kids to my standards?? I don't think so.

I have lots of friends who are public school teaches, bless their hearts, but all they can do is rote a textbook. My definition of edoocation, is the child should be doing that on his/her own by six.

This is why I'm so fucking hard on you.

It's not the end of the world PUSSY, I used to live in China, I speak Mandarin. There's a billion Chinese that want what we have, an entrepreneur today would be in China where there is future. There simply is no future here, and thus this is why its impossible to make Bend ( a sows ear ) into a silk purse.

The US is over, as Tocqueville long ago predicted, it collapsed because of mob rule. Sheep being led off the cliff by BossHogg's all over America.

Anonymous said...

Bay Meadows was a 100 year old horse track that Kuratek tried to steal from the people of San Mateo.

It was an ugly battle, and well documented on the internet.

Like OUR GARZINI, KURATEK is a strongman for banks, actually most of his work was for UBS, and not Templeton.

Take city treasures and destroy them so a few bosshoggs can get rich. What's a public historical site worth? Not much in dollars, and thus once stolen nothing is paid, its always ironic that these bastards name their project after that which they stole.

Then the pussy rhetorically ask's why do they keep KURATEK on the payroll for 6% of all projects.

Because PUSSY KURATEK is a road-tested mob enforcer that has proved himself over & over all over the country.

Anonymous said...

"I have a house in Italy, and I don't like Thailand its too crowded."

Tuscany Pines isn't really Italy.

Anonymous said...

New Bank coming to Bend to collect deposits.
Does this mean our existing bankers are newbies and neophytes, if now we're going to get seasoned veteran's? Sound's like they're replacing the kids with men?

Veteran Oregon Bankers Propose New National Bank to Be Headquartered in Bend, Oregon

Last update: 7:23 p.m. EDT Aug. 11, 2008
BEND, Ore., Aug 11, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The organizers of Crown Point National Bank (Proposed) today announced the filing of their application to establish a new commercial bank to service the central Oregon and Portland metropolitan area businesses and their owners. Subject to the receipt of regulatory approvals, the bank proposes to begin operations during the first quarter of 2009. The bank's initial offices will be located in downtown Bend at 956 NW Bond. The exact location of the Portland branch office will be finalized in the coming months, but is expected to be located in downtown Portland.
Elijah Aldinger, a central Oregon resident and an organizer of the bank, can be credited with recognizing the need and potential for a bank locally headquartered in Bend, Oregon to serve the growing local community. Upon completing significant research regarding the market, its needs and opportunities, Aldinger began his search for the top bankers in the Northwest and local individuals to provide seed capital for the bank. His efforts have resulted in a group of 43 founders who have collectively advanced over $4 million to fund the bank's organization.
The proposed bank will be led by an experienced team of Oregon banking executives, each of whom have a strong track record of serving privately owned businesses and the middle market in the Bend and Portland metropolitan areas. The senior management team will be led by Andrew J. Gerlicher as the proposed president and chief executive officer of the bank. Gerlicher has over 25 years of experience in the banking industry, with all of this time spent in the Portland and Bend markets. William F. Henle, the proposed chief operating officer, has more than 30 years of banking experience, including more than 25 years in senior management positions. Most recently, Henle was employed by Rabobank, N.A., where he served as director of country banking properties following his assignment as chief operating officer. Jesse D. Averette is the proposed chief credit officer and has over 35 years of experience in corporate and middle market credit-related positions. Most recently, he served as credit administrator for Umpqua Bank, where he was responsible for supervision of commercial and industrial loans and commercial real estate loans generated from 20 lenders out of the Portland, Bend and Seattle commercial lending centers. Donald Kalkofen is the proposed chief financial officer. Kalkofen has been actively engaged in banking and financial consulting for more than 22 years and has over 12 years of experience as a chief financial officer. Kalkofen served as the chief financial officer of both Pinnacle Bank, a de novo bank in Beaverton, Oregon, near Portland, and West Coast Bancorp.

Bewert said...

Buster, most are not as smart as you. They need teachers that can provide some individual or small group interaction. They need stable homes where they get fed regularly. A fucked economy predisposes them towards failure. The US seems intent on becoming a fucked economy. As does the City of Bend.

Here are a couple of email responses about the 6% JRP giveaway:

Linda Johnson:
Bruce,

I did read the entire agreement, including this section. I inquired about it and was assured that the 6% only applies to the properties within the 50 allocated to them by the previous agreement. If the City decides to use their services on other parcels, the 6% still applies, but it is at the City’s determination whether they get the 6% for specific services for those lots.

The City does not have the skill set nor the staff time to do the work that JRP will do for the 6%. Our other choice is to hire an outside consultant to do the work, which may cost more because of lack of background in the project. Therefore, contracting with JRP for a specific set of services defined in the agreement seems a viable option to me.

In response to your question about wouldn’t it make sense to put this money in the general fund, the answer is that if we want to develop Juniper Ridge, we need some functions performed. To not spend the 6% for these services means that we cannot close on any land sales with any hope of drafting cc&rs, design guidelines, etc. that we must have if JR is to develop the way the City wants it to. Therefore, I think we must spend the funds to develop JR, and this is a good way to do it.

Linda


Peter Gramlich:
Hi Bruce-

Thanks for the note. There was a fair amount of discussion on this the other night at the CC meeting. The case was made that JRP seems to stand to gain financially from the arrangement, but also that the services are worth it from the standpoint of the city. Ron Garzini made a compelling enough case that we collectively saw fit to move forward with the agreement as written. I believe that money you refer to will come back many times over through expedient and efficient land sales absent city staffing and resources.

Cheers

Peter


So the story is that somehow JRP will do a million bucks worth of work that the City does not have the expertise or manpower to do.

A million bucks directly out of the coffers that pay for police and firemen, and patching potholes. To say nothing about needed infrastructure like Reed Market or Cooley/97.

I believe (hope, anyway) that if we keep the pressure on, we will get some change.

But if I get nailed while making my morning ride to Widgi...

Anonymous said...

"I have a house in Italy, and I don't like Thailand its too crowded."

Tuscany Pines isn't really Italy.

*

Sheesh, its monday night, can't we all just pretend we're in Italy?

Bewert said...

I read about that new bank this morning in the BULL. Rather interesting timing, to say the least.

Anonymous said...

Buster, most are not as smart as you

*

My point 'pussy' is that you should be the one collecting 6% into perpetuity, or is that what your working on?

Otherwise you'll always be a pussy, when I see those 6% checks from JR going to BEWERT, then I'll know you have learned from buster, and that you ain't pussy no more.

Someone please tell pussy that 'smart' don't have a fucking thing to do with it, KURATEK was simply the first to come in and identify free public land ( just like bay-view in san mateo, cali ) and sell the project, and get his cut into perpetuity, this is what he does. You can do this too pussy, if you listen and learn.

'Smart' will not even get you a cup or coffee, nor will it get you laid at a RE-HO-house. Smart ain't worth shit in Bend, OR.

Anonymous said...

"I was taking shit apart at two, by five I was reading books about how stuff works, by ten I was teaching myself chemistry, physics, and math"

Dude, I thought you was raised by a biker clan -- WTF? And you just happen to own land in Kingman? How many 'busters' are there on this board?

Artie said...

>>I read about that new bank this morning in the BULL. Rather interesting timing, to say the least.

I suppose they have the competitive advantage of not having been around 3 years ago to make stupid loans.

Anonymous said...

Someone mentioned Mark Swisher last week, didn't they? Looks like a couple defaults in his name (as of May) in NW Crossing. Was he one of the original builders in NWX?

Anonymous said...

The Village Pussy blabbed:
"Buster, the robbery is taking place. I recently had a CC member tell me "I think the trick is to replace the current Council." I'm publicly bitching about it."

+++

Shut the FUCK up, you wimpy little "All talk, No Action" Pussy!!!

You said you were gonna file a complaint about the CC doing their illegal Exec Sessions. You lied. You did not do squat.

Until you actually file the complaint like you said your were gonna do, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!

You are all talk and no action.

Please, spare us the talk until you actually file the complaint.

Bewert said...

Jeez, Buster, I don't see you standing up in public, at all.

Anonymous said...

bruce said...
Buster, I'm not kept by anyone. Ask anyone who knows me.
---

Well, now, most of us here know you pretty well, huh Bruce?

Like you have kinda spilled your guts over the last 10 months. In fact, of all the people who comment here, Bruce E. aka Brucey Pussy, aka BP, aka just plain ol Pussy has to be the most well known person on this here blog.

I know the Pussy.
The Pussy is well known around here.

And yes, the Pussy is very much a kept man.

How many times has he said he had to go? (when SHE said it was his bed time)

How many times has he said he'd file the complaint to Judy (and SHE told him he couldn't do it)

How many times has he said SHE was the bread winner in the bike shop?

How many times has he said SHE was the buff athlete? (skier, biker, tri-athlete, marathoner)

Iv'e been here listening for months, and I know the Pussy.

The Pussy is the definition of a kept man.

tim said...

Bruce, I knew you were going to eventually play the Mensa card.

No one should ever have to say they are smart. If it's not evident it doesn't matter.

As for Juniper Ridge, I'm with you on it being stupid. The city should be hunkering down and it obviously isn't.

But are you Don Quixote here?

Bewert said...

Or, I should say, not as a real person. Just as an anonymouse.

Anonymous said...

Jeez, Buster, I don't see you standing up in public, at all.
===

I am NOT buster, you dolt!

Bewert said...

Re: But are you Don Quixote here?

I wish I knew.

Re: the pussy is a kept man.

I bring in several times as much money, and have things like gold medals I've won at the Utah Summer Games in my office. I threw away the silver because I was pissed off I didn't win everything. The wife is a beautiful person, and I am blessed she puts up with me.

I'm a hard ass, as she as told me too many times. Something about making people cry...

But I really do have a heart. I just say out loud what people are thinking, I've always done it, and it's been an interesting ride.

I'm trying to figure out how best to make a positive difference here in Bend.

Bewert said...

This rings far too true to me, and very much reflects my frustration, locally as well as globally: Daily Kos
Wise Up and Rise Up – or Kiss It All Goodbye


Sorry, Dunc.

Anonymous said...

The Pussy is the definition of a kept man.

*
Maybe, just maybe this is why the pussy thinks he's smart! or feels that being smart is important. By his definition, if your 'smart' enough to figure out how to get a middle age bike gal to house you, or if your smart enough to get a tenured public-ed job, your pretty fucking 'smart'.

Whatever, ... Smart is what you do with it, since I was a kid, I have always considered 'smart' to be worthless, its what you DO that matters.

I'm a physics person, 'smart' to me is like potential energy its there, you can drop it out of a plane, or ignite it and its gone. Then there is kinetic-energy which is actual movement, which is WORK when applied over space,

WORK requires movement of force over distance, actually doing something. I don't give a fuck about 'smart' I want to see results.

ENERGY is energy someone naive might say, but a good physicist might know three dozen different types of energy, and a dozen geometry's to model any given problem.

The 'problem' of 'smart' by my definition of the pussy is that his smart is my 'potential energy' it just sits and wastes.

My definition of 'smart' is work application of the brain, and using that energy 'brain potential', creating stuff and doing stuff.

The road to hell is paved with 'smart' people, and most died without using it, like Einstein once said even he probably only used 10% of his capacity, what did that say about the common man?

I have always felt that most are fairly equal, its how you apply yourself.

I don't give a fuck about 'smart', its just 'potential' and if you don't use it you lose.

Lastly as LAVA agreed with my 'kept man analogy, by definition a kept man', the pussy doesn't have to use it, unless you define using other people as using your smarts.

*

Pussy why do you set yourself up like this? It's like you want to be bitch slapped, its like we're in a prison and you want to be dressed up like a girl and be fucked in the ass by all the guys in the cell. Why?

Keep up the good work, and keep caring about Bend. Obviously I quit caring enough that I felt I could change things over 20+ years ago.

I'm so down on BEND now my only desire is to document the utter collapse of the city into the toilet for historical purposes.

I have no desire nor feeling of the possibility of change, the lowest common denominator rules Bend, and city is full of selfish dog-shit-eaters.

The pussy keeps asking, why not leave? Well pussy your the one that's middle age, and keep's moving, I for one decided years ago to make BEND my base-camp, that just means that its where I keep some of my toys.

I came to Bend in the 60's to climb, and I climbed. A climber needs a base-camp. I have said this over&over. It really doesn't matter where your base-camp is so long as your shit is there when you return from expeditions.

Anonymous said...

I really do have a heart. I just say out loud what people are thinking, I've always done it, and it's been an interesting ride.

[ BP did any of us ever say you didn't have a heart?? We all like what you add to the debate, you got tough skin. We just wish you would use some of your smarts to prove the loony assertions you make. ]

I'm trying to figure out how best to make a positive difference here in Bend.

[ This is where we differ, WHY would you want to help these fucking amenity parasites that fuck their own children, and eat-dog-shit, and came to bend to get rich-quick, I for one relish the thought of watching them all BK. The quickest way to FIX BEND is send all these dog-shit-eaters packing UHAUL TOMORROW ]

Anonymous said...

"Whatever, ... Smart is what you do with it, since I was a kid, I have always considered 'smart' to be worthless, its what you DO that matters."

+ + + + + +

There is a nice definition of WISDOM.


(and buster doesn't have to tell everyone how wise he is, eh tim?)

Anonymous said...

The quickest way to FIX BEND is send all these dog-shit-eaters packing UHAUL TOMORROW

*

Gollum, tell us what you really think.

Bewert said...

Re: Well pussy your the one that's middle age, and keep's moving,

I've moved twice in almost 50 years. To Utah after college and to here.

I'm not as bitter as you. Sorry.

I'm just pissed off and am congenitally unable to suppress myself.

Much like yourself. The only difference being I have the guts to put my name on it.

Anonymous said...

So maybe I come here every now and then, and remind people what the pussy said he was gonna do, but still has not yet done.

Its all about what you do, BP.

What you do.

Howz the manifesto coming along?

Anonymous said...

He that gain-th wisdom gain-th grief for in much wisdom, there is much unhappiness. - proverbs

[ The reason buster is so fucking dark is that he has studied the history of man his whole life, I know all too well the evil of Bend. I came to Bend 40+ years ago because it was a beautiful place, today I can say that no more. ]

"common sense is the accumulated prejudices acquired prior to the age of 18" - albert einstein

[ much of what the mob mass thinks and believes is usually based on childhood mythology ]

Bewert said...

I wonder how many people actually read this crap. OK, Phelps is way out front and I'm gone after he wins.

Anonymous said...

The only difference being I have the guts to put my name on it.

*

Well you saw when the BIG MAN-TWAT HIMSELF 'BENDBB" BEND-METRO-SEXUAL REHO of the year did when he outed homeboy.

Homeboy went silent, we forced man-twat to remove the post, now all is NORM.

Your badge of honor is my defn of a fucking idiot. I have been in this town too many years, and know too many people. You don't know anybody, nobody knows you, and most likely you'll have moved out by the time it matters.

For home-boy he has work, he's a renter, he has a wife, kids, ... he needs anonymity.

I'm NOT running for public office BP, you are, I know you say your not, but you forget that I have been around ORYGUN politics all my days here.

We're all different BP, don't try to make us all like you.

You got nothing to lose by being public, most of us do.

Its a recurring theme of yours that making a retarded public circus/roadshow of yourself is manly, I don't think so.

I get a kick of being a drunk virtual idiot who can say as he wishes in a MOB NAZI town. If I was public I might have to be a nice guy like Ned Flanders, I don't want to do that, I would be gone in a day, boring.

Ned is our other public persona, and he's a nice guy, he doesn't do the retard thing. I guess that is your security, if I were reading this blog, and wanted to shutdown the bend blogger's I wouldn't bother with the pussy, I assure you BP, your safe. You have never, ever said anything ever to offend the powers that be, all you do is post public doc's, which is good, we thank you for that.

Your a good self promoter, and I'm sure you'll do well in city-hall your no worse, just as smart ( which I have said means shit ), and you talk the liberal talk.

Only time will tell, but my $1 bet is that our pussy will be running for public office in BEND prior to departure in our lifetime.

Anonymous said...

(and buster doesn't have to tell everyone how wise he is, eh tim?)

*

It's wiser to remain silent to be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

Which is why the vast majority have not started their own blogs.

You never hear the pussy use that word wise, its always "The public school teachers are so smart".

'Smart' can't even be measured or defined, it usually refers to a dandy, that dressed well, we say my BENDBB looks smart today in that bikini.

'Wise' is usually what you would apply to a king. Then not often as history has shown, as most are quite vulgar.

I have always said, long before the pussy arrived, that this site is a rock in the desert where all piss. We all like the blind men and elephant, see and feel different things.

Buster things Bend is snake, he has the trunk, the pussy things Bend is a fan, he has an ear, Bendbb thinks Bend is a cave he has his arm up the elephants ass, homer thinks its a juniper as he hugs a leg. ALL are partially right all are totally wrong.

Nobody can see the elephant we call Bend, the goal here all along is to share rumors, and validate them, and understand what the fuck is Bend.

The pussy has brought much to the table.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how many people actually read this crap.

*

Enough that if you google "shire suicide" we're #1,

Enough that this week the powers had enough that they outed homer.

Enough that the Source usually quotes this site weekly.

Enough that I'm sure there that 1/2 the BULL checks this site daily to see if they should come to work the next day.

Enough that while only a dozen or so regularly piss on this rock, 100's a day stop by and sniff everyone else's urea.

Quite a lot BP, and that's why your public, and that's why you stick around.

Anonymous said...

Nobody can see the elephant we call Bend, the goal here all along is to share rumors, and validate them, and understand what the fuck is Bend.
*

Yea, I'm getting tired,

Tim said tonight "buster is bend, in a sense", I can see that me, marge, and dunc, have tried to explain the old red-neck bend, the place that we're fond of, me & marge would like to see the old return, dunc loves the tourists for his biz.

Certainly when the rubber meets the road, the busters, marges, and dunc's will soon be extinct, and the pussy's will rule Bend, until a new BOSS-HOGG comes in and flushes the toilet.

The fucking Republican boss-hoggs have so fucked this town, that I'm sure in the coming years they'll turn it over to the pussy's, and run. When the current good-old-boy boss-hoggs are done with this town, its going to be the per-capita capital of public debt. I can really see the whole town being sold to some fucking HONG-KONG investor and bringing 100's of chinese managers, and turning this place into a walmart disneyland, who the fuck knows.

What we do know is that Bend a company town will be on the auction block very soon. Given the chinese have the money, its a safe bet the future BOSS-HOGG of bend will be chinese or indian, or perhaps arab oil?

Anonymous said...

The 'source' of the stench of death in Bend, is that of mysterious death's and suicides of Bend's best known golfers and & STD (siberian tract developments) developers.

Cigar chomping Republicans of course are looking very much like the golden-boyz of wall-street in about 1932. The stench of death is that the Great Bend Bubble is now in its final stage of deflation.

The tier one good-old boyz unloaded worthless desert land. Tier two developed that land, and tier three bought the 'STD' developments at wholesale distress prices post 2006, in anticipation of the Bend-Bubble roaring back.

Today the tier-one boyz are looking at bankruptcy, the tier-two at lawsuits, and tier-three at suicide. Bend certainly reeks.

Want to see the future of Bend? Visit http://innowners.com/ and see what has happened to all the people at Innof7mtn who bought time-share condos in good faith. Note all controlled HOA service fee'd and controlled by our own ex-mayor Friedman & Crony's. The Papes are foreclosing on all the condo owners because the owners will not allow themselves to be robbed.

Bend for the past ten years has only been about selling condos to out of town suckers ( tourists ), now those dear tourists are losing their lovely condo's.

This is the future of Bend. Fitting end to Bend, reel them in, rob them, and when they get tired of being robbed, sue them. Tomorrow's Bend will 100% lawyers, today that is who COBA/EDCO financing for future Bend leadership. It's clear that COBA/EDCO knows that they'll need the best legal minds working on their behalf at taxpayer expense.

Bend is going to become hell on earth.

The Republicans of Bend are a joke, they have taken 'socialize risk/loss, privatize profit' to the extreme.

In Bend its 'socialize all costs', and 'privatize all revenue'. This is the real Bend of today.

There is a word for this style of Fascism, and Hitler called it "National Socialism" or Nazi-ism, where those that ran the government, used government money to finance chosen industry.

Anonymous said...

Tomorrow's Bend will 100% lawyers, today that is who COBA/EDCO is financing for future Bend leadership. It's clear that COBA/EDCO knows that they'll need the best legal minds working on their behalf at taxpayer expense, to protect themselves as the Bend-Bubble continues to deflate.

Bend is going to become hell on earth.

The Republicans of Bend are a joke, they have taken 'socialize risk/loss, privatize profit' to the extreme.

In Bend its 'socialize all costs', and 'privatize all revenue'. This is the real Bend of today.

1.) Low SDC's to enrich Billions of dollars to Brooks Resources is now deferred to nil. In a town where infrastructure cost was $60k, the builder's cried about paying $12k, now they're going to pay zero. Billions of dollars of SDC revenue were lost, which can found at Brooks as profit. That of course was lost on risky gambling on 20-30 year inventory developments up near Prineville & Madras.
2.) City Taxpayer revenue is used to PR&MARKET condo sales to witless tourists.
3.) Virtually everyone elected at city-hall is a HOA fee collector for condo's, or some variance of such.
4.) The entire purpose of Bend city government is to development Siberian Tract Housing at taxpayer expense, and maximize profits for owners of the one-company town.
5.) Juniper Ridge is being developed so that Billions of excavation dollars can be passed to Knife River ( was Hap-Taylor, another good old boy ).

There is a word for this style of Fascism, and Hitler called it "National Socialism" or Nazi-ism, where those that ran the government, used government money to finance chosen industry.

'Socialize all Costs', and 'Privatize all revenue'. This is the real Bend of today.

Lastly, there is the trickle down philosophy of the republican party to which all the voters of Bend buy into, that is if the good-old boyz, aka boss-hoggs get rich, so will all else. It hasn't worked in the past, and in all likelihood will not work in the future, but myths are the stuff that Bend is made of.

Anonymous said...

Full of different little cigar clubs, central Oregon is like a Russian whore.


Bend and central Oregon: An emerging golf vacation destination with many faces


By Brandon Tucker,
Staff Writer
Golf World, August 11, 2008

Pronghorn, Tetherow, Sunriver Resort's Crosswater Golf Club and the Aspen Lakes Golf Club highlight Bend and central Oregon's stellar golf pedigree.

BEND, Ore. - Full of different little destinations, central Oregon is like a Russian nesting doll.

One minute you're driving over a snowy mountain pass in the Cascades. Just a few miles later, you're in lower altitudes in the forested foothills. Then head down the road and find yourself in the region's epicenter: Bend and the high desert.

Bend has become central Oregon's high desert boomtown. At an elevation of over 3,000 feet, it's just a short drive to skiing at Mt. Bachelor. The bustling downtown district, though still easily walkable from one end to another, has brought in trendy restaurants and festive microbreweries.

Tetherow Golf ClubIts outskirts have seen posh new real estate communities, and it's also become quite a golf hotspot. Golf course architect David McLay Kidd, known for his Bandon Dunes design down the road and as designer of the new Tetherow Golf Club in Bend, moved his stateside office here.

"We really loved Bend," said Kidd, who had vacationed at the Sunriver Resort and its renowned Crosswater Golf Club for years. "So when the opportunity came along to do a project here, we decided to piggyback off it."

Golf is a year-round sport here. Winter months are on the cool side, but the dry desert air brings only a couple snowfalls every year. In the summer, there is no need to check the forecast for about three months. It's that predictable: warm and clear skies.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
Someone mentioned Mark Swisher last week, didn't they? Looks like a couple defaults in his name (as of May) in NW Crossing. Was he one of the original builders in NWX?

That was last week news, yes he was one of the Golden Boyz of NWX. Now he is gone.

Anonymous said...

Yes, we talked about Swisher last week marge, the consensus was he drank himself to death and destroyed his liver. There was no validation to the contrary, thus the count of self inflicted Bend developer extinction continues.

In a purely Darwinian Socialist world, its rather clear that it doesn't pay to be a Tier-3 developer in Bend, Oregon.

Yes, Swisher was one of the original Brooks Resource hand-picked 'golden' builders for NWXC. 50% marketing, 25% land, and 25% material.

Anonymous said...

Instead of giving builders loans at $14,000 per house, maybe the city should give qualified first-time buyers loans of up to $14,000 toward their down payment on a home of $300,000 or less. Then we might generate some demand-push at the bottom end of the market that would break the logjam and get the market moving again.- hbm

*

I see your humor HBM, but that is exactly what transpired post 911, it was called 'zero down', the government in effect through implicit guarantees to investors paid the down-payment. That is what financed the Bend bubble.

The real problem with SDC's is the actual cost of each STD ( siberian tract home ) is over $60k, during the boom ten's of thousands were built and a little less than $10k collect, which means that $50k was lost to the city for say 20k homes, which is a billion dollars, in fact it was more. What was lost? Sewers for the future, schools, infrastructure. A billion dollars lost, where did it go? Profits, profits to Bends one company town builder. Who then turned around and plowed those profits into developments north of Redmond, near Madras, and all around Prineville. Today at the current rate of sales we're looking at near 30 years of inventory.

Given that implicit down payment is what caused the bubble, throwing more fuel to the fire only postpones the collapse. Even now its clear with the permanent interest free waiver of SDC's that the city wants more building exactly what is not needed, what is needed is inventory reduction.

Then there is the 2nd home problem, where most homes in Bend were bought by Californian's as 2nd homes for retirement, or recreation. That notion is now idle. Most of Bends newcomer know all too well that its better to rent in Bend, as its a better deal.

The BendBubble was engineered.
1.) Cheap easy money, no-down payment by the BushTribe.
2.) City-Hall subsidizing SDC's, to maximize developer profit ( 1998->present )
3.) COVA/COBA/DVA city-hall PR&MARKETING: made Bend the #1 appreciation in the USA,

Today we're the #1 in foreclosure, and developer suicide. That said the bend-bubble de-flation hasn't even started. Todays median is below $280k, its will be $160k next year. Already today we're near 4X income, its a great time to buy if you have 20% down, problem is job loss, and falling income.

If the city gave away down-payments all that would do is bring back zero-down, which we already know causes walk-away. History shows that 20-30% down is what keeps homeowners as homeowners in the long term. That is what we want right?

The #1 thing BEND needs today is a moratorium on new disposable housing.

Anonymous said...

Please, spare us the talk until you actually file the complaint.

August 11, 2008 9:15 PM
Blogger bruce said...

Jeez, Buster, I don't see you standing up in public, at all.

*

BP, not all who post anonymous is buster, remember BP, I'm the one that loves you, as father loves a wayward child.

Anonymous said...

UBS the bank behind our own KURATEK is in deep doo-doo, perhaps this is why KURATEK has setup these 6% royalty deals all over the country?


UBS in revamp as losses rack up
UBS office in New York
UBS had hoped to break even in the second quarter

UBS has said it will reorganise itself into three units, after announcing another set of sub-prime losses.

The Swiss banking giant said the three units would be global wealth management and business banking, global asset management and the investment bank.

The news came as UBS reported a loss of 358m Swiss francs ($329m; £173m) for the April to June period, despite hopes it might break even in the quarter.

The bank's sub-prime debt write-downs in the quarter totalled $5.1bn.

The second quarter loss was still much smaller than the 11.54bn Swiss francs it lost in the first quarter of the year.


Our review has clearly revealed the weaknesses associated with the integrated 'one firm' business model
UBS chairman Peter Kurer

Bank losses shame disgruntled Swiss

But UBS said that it did not expect to see any improvement in the adverse economic and financial market trends that affected the quarterly results.

"The positive sentiment seen at the end of first quarter 2008 that the credit crisis may be easing was short-lived, as trading conditions deteriorated significantly in the second half of May," the bank said.

'More effective'

UBS had been under pressure from one of its investors, Olivant, to separate the investment bank from the wealth-management division.

The bank said splitting itself into three autonomous units would make it, "more effective and agile in managing trends in the financial industry".

The UBS brand will continue to be used by all its divisions. Bonuses in each unit will be linked to the performance of that unit instead of the whole group.

UBS chairman Peter Kurer said the decision came after a review had found several weaknesses in its "one firm" business model.

"Some of these weaknesses, such as the blurring of the true risk-reward-profile of individual businesses, are the source of substantial risk, as we have seen in the past few months," he said.

Last month, UBS said a 3bn Swiss franc tax credit "in connection with the losses to date" would offset further losses from its investment banking business in the second quarter.

As a result it predicted that it would break even or at worst make a small loss in the quarter.

News Junkie said...

..not all who post anonymous is buster

*

Ya know, this blog is like listening to an old tyme Abbott and Costello radio show. Except here, everyone has the same voice.

Anonymous: Look, you gotta pitcher on this team?

Anonymous: Now wouldn't this be a fine team without a pitcher.

Anonymous: The pitcher's name.

Anonymous: Tomorrow

Anonymous: You don't wanna tell me today?

Why don't you just pick a pseudonym, stick with it, end the confusion, and make this blog a more intelligible and intelligent discussion?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

and have things like gold medals I've won at the Utah Summer Games in my office.

Really? Good job brucey. Any links? I looked, and I keep finding a guy named Larry Miller...

tim said...

Bruce, you're like a name dropper who is only interested in dropping his own name.

Anonymous said...

Why don't you just pick a pseudonym, stick with it, end the confusion, and make this blog a more intelligible and intelligent discussion?

*

This rock in the desert is many things, to many people, but 'intelligible & intelligent' are two words that I never heard used to describe this rock.

Nope, obfuscation rules here.

Like all bathroom walls, the notes left only make sense to those that known the code.

Anonymous said...

"I see your humor HBM, but that is exactly what transpired post 911, it was called 'zero down'"

Not exactly -- I said QUALIFIED buyers. That means buyers with good credit and enough income (real, verified income, not claimed income) to make their mortgage payments. The bubble was caused (in part) by lenders giving zero-down loans to anybody who could fog a mirror.

*

2 or 3 years ago I had this debate with the blog-heads, and they told me I was full of poop. The argument went, "When the bubble is over, we're going back to max of 4X of income you can borrow, and 20% down, and good credit ( 700 fico or better ); That be 'qualified' HBM, now I have just knocked 95% of 'first-time' buyers out of the market.

The trouble is the BEND HOME market is over-sold, all that could buy did buy. Like down in CALI, the reason they're not buying here is they can't sell, and the reason they can't sell is they can't find a 'qualified' buyer. Now the bank actually requires 80% max LTV, 20% down, good credit, and income, and proof of down source. That is 'qualified' these people don't exist except in the 3% fringe.

All that could buy did buy, and now most want out, at 70% its going to take years to get back to 50% home-ownership, so many people are going to be hurt on this over-sale of high desert crap shacks that for a generation folks aren't going want to own a high desert disposable crap-shack ( STD ).

It's clear the present trend is that the taxpayer is to get saddled with lots of Brooks Resource Crap-Shacks, then the city really can go into the low-income housing business as it has always wished.

I know that these new deferred SDC's units will not sell, they'll foreclose the good city will go into the property biz, don't laugh PDX has been doing this for years, its called "Reach", or "Portland Development Commission". The powers in Bend would like nothing more than to indirectly have city purchase all the excess inventory. The liberals will salivate, and the right-wing will profit. Chomsky calls it 'manufacturing consent'.

Anonymous said...

This current handout or corporate welfare of Permanent SDC's to be given to Brooks Resources and championed by the BULLetin ( Brooks gave them their land in 1998 ) is illogical.

I can see why liberals in Bend want to expand low-income housing.

The only logic I see given that this is a one company town, and all is done on behalf of Brooks Resources is that Brooks owns a ton of land. Their flat ass broke from investing 100's millions into remote central Oregon housing, they need cash flow.

The logic is if the city of Bend gives SDC's for free, builders all over the country will rush here, and buy land from Brooks which starts a new builder gold-rush, trouble is nobody will buy those STD crap-shacks, but nobody cares, Brooks gets CASH by selling high-desert land that it paid for virtually zero by the fact that its all historical Shevlin-Hixson Mill town land that Hollern inherited years ago.

During the last economic Bend collapse HOLLERN almost went down over Black-Butte, he was CASH poor and land rich. Today its the same, but insult to injury he's sitting on 1,000's of unsaleable STD crap-shacks all over central-oregon rotting in the sun.

It's one company town, and that company controls city-hall, COBA, COVA, EDCO and every acronym in Bend. What's good for Brooks is good for Bend, and this weeks its waive the SDC and get the building boom going, which means that folks come in from abroad and buy over priced lots from Brooks. That cash will hold them over.

Will it work? NO, not this time, Brooks survived last time because they were sitting on land that couldn't be sold and no cash-flow, now they're sitting on 100's millions of dollars of depreciating housing, and no cash-flow, the new scenario is 1000X worse than 1983.

The City of Bend, and the one Company town has fell off the wall, and all the corporate-welfare ain't going to put it back again, or put it back together again.

The FUBAR this time was simply too big, and too terminally stoopid. The blog-heads are fond of saying that Bend elite drank their own kool-aide, certainly there is no bigger argument for the loss of billions of dollars of good money.

Anonymous said...

Nope, obfuscation rules here.

Like all bathroom walls, the notes left only make sense to those that known the code.

+++

So true. More wisdom.

Know the rules and they will set you free.

BP sometimes makes wrong assumptions since he never learned the rules (like buster doesn't use plus signs, only *'s).

Obfuscate, don't retaliate! On the bathroom walls.

Anonymous said...

A FUCKING RUN TODAY on the BANKofKURATEK aka UBS.

WE don't MAKE THIS SHIT UP!

***

Boston Globe
UBS rips up bank structure as rich clients flee

Forbes - 1 hour ago
By John O'Donnell and Sam Cage ZURICH, Aug 12 (Reuters) - UBS (nyse: UBS - news - people ) will separate its troubled investment bank from its prized wealth management arm, paving the way to sell the business that made it Europe's biggest casualty of ...
UBS swings to loss as customers withdraw cash MarketWatch
Yvan Lengwiler, banking analyst, Basel University BBC News

Anonymous said...

BP sometimes makes wrong assumptions since he never learned the rules (like buster doesn't use plus signs, only *'s).

*

Some truth to Homee's statement today about pussy only dropping his own name, I might add he only read what he want's to see, he wants to believe that its just him & buster here.

FYI - the other today when we did the request for posts on now defunct BB3, I got a dozen different people who volunteered and signed up, think about that BP, there is more than one person here.

I estimate 1/2 take the anonymous route.

We probably have 100X that just read this shit in total free of logging their IP, and forever being on some kink of GayEdgarHoover watch-list.

Anonymous said...

If the city gave away down-payments all that would do is bring back zero-down, which we already know causes walk-away.

Not talking about zero-down. Say a couple wants to buy their first house for $250,000. Lender wants 10% down -- $25,000. With a $14,000 low-interest loan from the city toward the down payment the couple would need to scrape together only $11,000. Makes more sense to me than a handout to builders. AND the SDCs would be paid in full up front, same as now. I mean, same as before.

The powers in Bend would like nothing more than to indirectly have city purchase all the excess inventory.

Hell yes.

The liberals will salivate ...

Not this liberal.

... and the right-wing will profit.

Hell yes again.

Anonymous said...

I came to Bend in the 60's to climb, and I climbed. A climber needs a base-camp. I have said this over&over. It really doesn't matter where your base-camp is so long as your shit is there when you return from expeditions.

I never thought I'd agree with anything he said, but this is exactly why I came to Bend... about 5 years ago, definitely not in the 60's when I wasn't even born yet. So what really is different now? Probably you're just old and bitter. Bend is still a good base camp if you aren't hurting for cash (which I'm not). I'm not smart either, I just decided I was going to get paid if I was going to do any work.

Anonymous said...

Bend is still a good base camp if you aren't hurting for cash.

*

Thank you, Bend is a great place if you have money, and don't have to work.

It's always been a great place for those lucky DOGS.

What Bend isn't is Detroit, even though most are hell bent on making Bend, OR into Detroit, to date all have lost their ass.

Or perhaps Love-Canal, would be a better descriptor of the future Bend.

Anonymous said...

The liberals will salivate ...

Not this liberal.

[ What I mean, is that the 'so called liberals' in Bend are always clamoring for low-income housing, or are they? Perhaps that clamoring is just HOLLERN cheerleaders that are in liberal-drag? At city-hall using a liberal theme for justifying Republican Pork? ]


... and the right-wing will profit.

Hell yes again.

[ Yes, its scary on how much we agree on. ]

*

You know better than me HBM, your closer to the true liberal in Bend, I have been looking for him/her for a zillion years, and all I ever meet here is Republicans, oh I know quite a RICH YUPPY' high-tech stock market millionaires who talk 'liberal', but I don't count that shit, to me you need to be Saul Alinsky poor or George Seldes to 'talk the liberal talk' with credibility.

That's why I consider myself to be an Emma Goldman Anarchist.

Anonymous said...

Probably you're just old and bitter.

*

FUCK YOU.

I'm old and I'm MAD at what the orcs, goblins, nazgul, and such have done to Bend, I'm just a fucking hobbit.

Long after these locust leave Bend, once they're dead or broke, those of us remaining are going to get the bill for the party. I'm mad as hell.

Anonymous said...

Not talking about zero-down. Say a couple wants to buy their first house for $250,000. Lender wants 10% down -- $25,000. With a $14,000 low-interest loan from the city toward the down payment the couple would need to scrape together only $11,000. Makes more sense to me than a handout to builders. AND the SDCs would be paid in full up front, same as now. I mean, same as before. - hbm

*

Yes, HBM you logical, and fair, ... and a good man, what the hell are you doing in Bend?

The good points with your proposition is ...

1.) Ease inventory pressure
2.) clear existing inventory, before building MORE Brooks crap-shacks in siberia.
3.) increase home ownership amongst bend's underclass
4.) Stabilize the collapse of home values in the affordable range which is going to lead to more NOD's.

The bad point is that it would ..

1.) Fuck Up Team Brooks plan, which is to sell MORE land to more outsiders for cash today, something that HOLLERN needs ASAP.
2.) Not subsidize Brooks to build more tracts.
3.) Decrease the BROOKS profit, as your plan means they have to pay the actual SDC cost, which for years is how they made their profit post 1998.
4.) Your plan fucks the good-old-boyz in the ass, what's the chance of city-hall fucking the hand that feeds them?


America is ruled by interest to quote HAMILTON, Jefferson lost the debate America is ruled by business interest. The little people of Bend have no weight there is not a chance of hell in your plan being adopted unless there was a complete uprising in BEND that recalled all the rascals and forever purged BROOKS WHORES from the political system. Given BROOKS is the main employer, and main enabler of EDCO/COVA/COBA, et-al there isn't a chance in hell of anything changing unless all these people go bank-rupt.

They'll bankrupt the city before they give up.


HBM does have good point, if you MUST provide HOUSING CASH WELFARE, why not give it to the little to help buy their first house if they qualify, that NATIONAL announcement would bring people here to BUY homes, the current announcement of Deferred SDC will only bring IDIOT-BUILDERS, what BEND needs is qualified BUYERS.

See HMB is neither LIBERAL no CONSERVATIVE he has a solution to the problem. The problem is excess inventory caused by morons. The solution is take 10% of what we give out right to TEAM HOLLERN/KNIFE-RIVER and give it to prospective qualified home-buyers.

Lastly I don't anybody in city-hall wants to solve the problem, my deep suspicion is they have every intention of bankrupting the city, and creating a new NAZI state in their own image from the ashes of Bend.

Anonymous said...

Long after these locust leave Bend, once they're dead or broke, those of us remaining are going to get the bill for the party. I'm mad as hell.

I would say this applies to the whole USA, not just Bend. In any case, can you attempt to quantify what you think we will have to pay

Anonymous said...

Probably you're just old and bitter.

*

FUCK YOU.

I'm old and I'm MAD at what the orcs, goblins, nazgul, and such have done to Bend, I'm just a fucking hobbit.


hahahaha your a hobbit and

...I'm Tom Bombadil

Anonymous said...

I would say this applies to the whole USA, not just Bend. In any case, can you attempt to quantify what you think we will have to pay.

*

The USA is systemically fucked. Use the 'earth first' paradigm, think global, act local; ergo fuck the national.

Back to Bend, well we're well over $2 BILLION in missing SDC's that were sent HOLLERN way and good-old-boyz in the last ten years. Thus if you just take that figure and divide by the 10k taxpayers left, assuming only 40k stick around and only 1 in 4 have a job. That be what $100k per tax payer, hell the current US person debt is what $500k/person? Right Homer? That's just what every USA citizen owes in terms of USA debt.

The $100k is just the per person missing SDC. Then there is all the other miscellaneous debt the city has hawked itself into during the last ten gold-rush years, and never set anything aside. 100' of millions of city money to knife-river ( hap-taylor ) to move dirt around using PAPE big-yellow equipment. BEND IS AN INCESTUOUS KLUSTERFUCK.


Then you got say 30k homes that have all lost $300k or $400k on average, right there your talking tens of Billions of lost money. Where did it go?

Just the SDC if they put it on our water bill, $100k for ten years plus interest, your talking over $1,000/mo for you sewer bill, that's the kind of stuff this town will need to do to cover the missing money.

Let's just stay on SDC's, I mean hell, if you go national with war and debt that is why the National is $500k/person. I'm sure that Bend is 1/2, but all things equal the US government will just write the debt off, and print money.

But here in Bend, we're a community, we'll have to go bankrupt, but then we'll have to pay, very high interest rates thereafter, there's no free lunch.

Just the SDC, that's a lot of fucking money $100k/person, just to make HOLLERN rich during the last ten years. What the fuck did we the taxpayer get? NWCX? Brasada? Yarrow? all these fucking Siberian resorts all over central-oregon, that's where OUR MONEY went.

A good fucking right thinking law-firm in the future will be going after all that shit, to recover Bend's missing money, that said I'm sure when HOLLERN put together the 'new' post 1998 SDC system, his lawyers made sure that their miserly contribution would be all they ever had to pay.

It's going to be very interesting in the future, ONE THING IS CLEAR. When the SHIT hits the fan, we know what they'll say "WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?"

Anonymous said...

hahahaha your a hobbit and

...I'm Tom Bombadil

*

At least we got someone new here, I guess this is a good thing?

Anonymous said...

Have some RE news.
Bends 5 year average vacancy rate for industrial bldgs has been 5.58%and now is 12.1%. Office space was 10.6 and now is 13.5%.
Total retail SF in Bend is 4,227,893 and there is 188,564 sf vacant. This information came from a Compass Commercial handout.

Anonymous said...

lambaste away, but I feel a twinge of optimism that there is still a bunch of tough old hobbits here in this town. we've got our pipeweed and stores in our tunnels. if that's the case, Bend will survive all this

Anonymous said...

Tunnels are full and so is the varmint gun.

Anonymous said...

Bruce said:
Sometimes I think there is a rough plan to milk the US of as many assets as possible while keeping the populace stupid and focused on Britney, et al. Fox is the biggest example, but everything from AP to NPR has taken a noticeable shift towards the right in the last few years. Not the little government right, but the Homeland Security/war in Iraq right.

Hell yeah there's a plan and more than a rough plan. New World Order, Illuminati, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations... sound familiar?? They're all the same group of fucks. And they're scared... too many people are waking up to the truth. Bruce, you seem to have a desire to find the truth... check into it. And to those of you who will roll your eyes and say this is crazy talk... you are absolutely uninformed, ignorant and/or in denial. The peaceful revolution is now.

Bewert said...

Busy day, but this made me just laugh:

"BP, not all who post anonymous is buster, remember BP, I'm the one that loves you, as father loves a wayward child."

The DQ angle from Timmy is how I feel at times.

Anonymous said...

HBM does have good point, if you MUST provide HOUSING CASH WELFARE, why not give it to the little to help buy their first house if they qualify, that NATIONAL announcement would bring people here to BUY homes, the current announcement of Deferred SDC will only bring IDIOT-BUILDERS, what BEND needs is qualified BUYERS.

Bingo. Thank you for your support.

Of course we would need to make damn sure the first-time buyers coming here (or already here) HAD JOBS (or some other steady, dependable, reliable, verifiable source of income) that paid enough for them to handle the mortgage. There's the rub.

You're right also, of course, that it would never fly. We don't believe in "percolate-up economics" in Amurka; that's "socialist." We only believe in "dribble-down," or what John K. Galbraith called "horse-and-sparrow" economics -- you feed more to the horse in the hope he will produce more for the sparrows in the street to eat.

Bewert said...

Anyone else notice Bend made USA Today?

As the biggest loser in numbers of sales of RE...

Bewert said...

HBM, great analogy.

...more for the sparrows in the street to eat.

Anonymous said...

Another advantage to lending the $14,000 to buyers instead of giving it away to builders is that for each $14,000 the city loaned there would be a house BUILT and OCCUPIED, SDCs paid in full, instead of a vacant crap shack left to deteriorate and grow weeds while the city tried to unload it.

Bewert said...

Buster, you are getting really fucking angry.

I'll take some pics of JR in a few, when I head up to the airport. I'm curious to see what the area where the waterfall is planned looks like.

Bewert said...

HBM, can you get Eric to publish your manifesto?

Bewert said...

BTW, anyone who had the Olympics on earlier has Oprah on now, with a key person who knows how badly our health care system is fucked up.

This one thing makes us less competitive in the world economy. Anyone here in a small business knows how hard it is to provide employees with decent healthcare.

We could fix it for less than 1/5th of what we have spent on our Iraq adventure.

If there is one person I wish had never been born, it's Dick Cheney. Sorry, Homeland Security.

tim said...

Doesn't a $14,000 loan just prop up the market and do nothing for the affordability problem?

Anonymous said...

tim said...

Doesn't a $14,000 loan just prop up the market and do nothing for the affordability problem?

*

Tim, meet hbm, hbm tim used to be a reporter.

The issue here that hbm is trying to raise is that the SDC cost is over $60k, and we were charging HOLLERN $12k ( or $14k today ) during the last few years. Now the BULL has proposed HOLLERN pays NOTHING, and what will that do for BEND?

Thus what HBM is proposing, that rather than throwing $14k into the toilet ( HOLLERN WELFARE ), we give that cash to 'qualified buyers', given that beast doesn't exist that means they would have to come to Bend, and buy STD's. Yes, it would prop up the price which is good, yes it would help people with good credit but without the down-payment. Yes, it would be better to give $14k/home to a hard-working qualified buyer, than $14k/home to HOLLERN for no fucking reason other than he owns the fucking town.

TIM do you now get what HBM is proposing, its more of a rhetorical proposition. It's not real of course because the powers that be are counting on the $14k/home corporate welfare to help them bring in suckers to BUY Bend lots and improve HOLLERN's cash-flow, which is all our priority here in Bend.

HBM, Tim really is intelligent, he just likes to ask obvious questions, I guess its a reporter thing.

Anonymous said...

Blogger bruce said...

Buster, you are getting really fucking angry.

*

Pussy what did I do now, was it the father/son reference?

I'm really not an angry drunk.

Anonymous said...

HBM said...

Another advantage to lending the $14,000 to buyers instead of giving it away to builders is that for each $14,000 the city loaned there would be a house BUILT and OCCUPIED, SDCs paid in full, instead of a vacant crap shack left to deteriorate and grow weeds while the city tried to unload it.

*

Well said HBM, I think with this group your going to have to understand that if you said 2+2=4, 1/2 the people would disagree, and the 1/4 would firmly believe you were wrong, and another 1/4 wouldn't know what you were talking about. Welcome to BB2.

Anonymous said...

Hell yeah there's a plan and more than a rough plan. New World Order, Illuminati, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations... sound familiar?? They're all the same group of fucks. And they're scared... too many people are waking up to the truth.

*

Wow big boy when I was younger half the old farts on my street were members of the John Birch Society. They were talking this shit fifty years ago.

Like the blind man and the elephant all are partially right, and all are totally wrong.

The problem is we have passed peak-oil, and the entire world is dependent upon cheap portable energy, and the next few years everyone is going to kill each other for it. All your references while true, were 1950's bogey-men, and still are, but now we're coming on 2010, we have passed the fucking peak-oil, and BUSH-TRIBE fiddles while ROME BURNS.

All these groups in their day had power, hell when I was a kid the Free-Masons still had power, and the Shriners, today they have all been neutered.

The real problem is the AA problem that HBM brings up, and that I have brought up all along here, which is we have to admit we have a problem, and discuss the problem. The problem of course is energy dependence, and most people simply want to kill in order to get cheap liquid portable energy. Trouble with that is most of the world is mad as hell, and now with the internet any idiot can make a bomb and take out a city. We're creating such idiots quicker than BUSH&CHENEY can kill them.

WRT to Bend, I really think the reason that HOLLERN has gotten away with robbing this town for ten years, is that its everyone for themselves. Certainly if Bend organized and collectively dealt with reality we could make this town a nice place, and not just a place to sell condos to stupid calis.

The way it was going in the last five years in Bend everyone was going to be rich, but then what? Sit at the Martini Bar?

There are no simple solutions to problems, renting versus owning doesn't solve them either.

I think the first step is identifying the problems.

HBM, at the top of this tombstone is BEM website, on his last post which is still the last he writes what I asked him which is "HOW CAN WE FIX BEND", BEM did a good job of defining and starting the debate we should be having.

The problem isn't the ILLUMINATI, or WORLD-GOVERNMENT, the problem is good men sit on their ass and do nothing while guys like HOLLERN rob their town for ten years.

Going back full cycle to this AM, think global, act local. Elect good people, and NOT kleptocrats, and we could make a Better Bend tomorrow, and better country next week.

I know I'm talking naive pussy shit, but we're all going down together with the SHIP-HOLLERN, and if we don't steer this ship around, its going down with all of us. If we can't fix Bend, we have no business talking about EDOOCATION, or fixing the USA, or anywhere else.

Bewert said...

Buster, are you becoming a fucking socialist?

I agree on the turn this shit around. Telfer told me "I think the trick is to replace the current Council."

I replied "On replacing them, the only people that seem to have a chance to get elected are even more tied into RE/development interests. Eager as an example. The Bulletin has a big hand in this."

So we are fucked unless we have another method of reaching the masses than the BULL.

Suggestions?

tim said...

>>HBM, Tim really is intelligent, he just likes to ask obvious questions, I guess its a reporter thing.

I suppose I'm asking to be psychoanalyzed every time I show up here. :-)

Anonymous said...

How about other ideas in lieu of giving HOLLERN $14k/home as a cash-bail out? Any ideas out there, ya'll don't want the needy getting the money, you seem silent on HOLLERN getting even more corp-welfare than he already gets, ...

I mean if the city is going to hand out tons of cash, what would be the best way to soft-land the great bubble implosion, using taxpayer money???

Given the suicide crisis amongst our builder, certainly its a public-safety crisis, which under the city allows emergency ordinances without public debate. How about given Bends unlimited credit standing, how should we blow our was on the big finale of the BendBubble??

Should HOLLERN get it all, and if not him, then who?

Anonymous said...

Below is what BEM said to do back almost six months ago, its still all good ideas, and was pooh-pooh'd, maybe its time that people really start thinking about fixing this town? Now that everybody knows we're going down.

***

What can Bend do now? Well, maybe we should put the question a little differently: what should people do when they're stuck in the middle of nowhere with no money? The answer is to protect their own interests, make their little corner of the world the best possible place to live, and band together to prevent outsiders from coming and taking their stuff. Because life's not going to get easier around here for a while.

1. RAISE TAXES. That's right. Bend needs money. For deferred infrastructure and maintenance, for police and other essential services, for schools, for public transit. Revenues are already down, but the big whammy's yet to come: reduced property tax assessments due to falling property values. Bend needs to resist the urge to cut taxes, and actually needs to increase revenue this year and going forward.
2. INCREASE FUNDING FOR ESSENTIAL SERVICES AND PARKS. Especially police. Bend needs to regain its reputation as a safe, relatively drug-free, violent crime-free town if it's going to keep residents and attract new ones. What's the point of living in a small town if you can get carjacked in the Costco parking lot, same as Compton? And parks too. There's no point in living in small-town Oregon if there's no place to push a stroller or walk a dog.
3. SUSPEND MASTER-PLANNED PROJECTS. Forget about Juniper Ridge. Forget about the Third Street Corridor. Pay off whoever's owed, terminate the consultants' contracts, stop buying new land, stop land grants, stop all city-funded development activity. No more Lava Court or whatever it's called. Keep the land for the future (a university, for example) or sell it to the private sector at market prices, with restrictions if necessary. Maybe in other cities, the local authorities have the vision and competence to carry out big-concept projects. Not in Bend.
4. CUT THE DESTINATION RESORTS LOOSE. No matter what they say in public, not one of these destination resort subdivisions around here is "penciling out" the way its sponsors thought it would. Soon the destination resorts will come calling to city and/or county and/or state governments asking for property tax breaks, regulatory exemptions and other goodies, and they should be told "NO." I'm not an anti-destination resort activist. Some say that their drain on services and infrastructure exceeds their economic benefit. But let's assume for sake of argument that they create jobs and are generally a net benefit to neighboring communities. It doesn't matter - they don't deserve a handout. They should be treated like any other business. Either destination resorts make economic sense or they don't. In a county where almost every business besides Trader Joe's is hunkering down for tough times, 5,000 homeless people are living in the woods, the desert, motels, vacant homes and the streets, and 19% of the population (including kids) has no health insurance, luxury golf course developments don't deserve any subsidies or breaks. And making them nicer does almost nothing to make Bend or other Central Oregon communities nicer.
5. LOBBY FOR A FOUR-YEAR UNIVERSITY. And don't let up! The best way to secure Bend's future is to get a 4-year university here. Natural resources is gone. Real estate is gone. But Bend is an excellent candidate for a 4-year school. OK, so far it hasn't worked out. But that's because these fool good-old-boy local business interests have been put front-and-center. Bad idea. Those guys' money should be welcome in the effort, but all these fat, white local artifacts should be kept safely out of sight when we're selling this area as a site for a new 4-year university. It might take another 5 or 10 years. It might take longer. But it makes sense. Bend would be a great college town. We just need the right people to plan our approach and the whole community needs to be on board, like what happened in Merced.

tim said...

This city doesn't think straight.

It doesn't even know what it is so it doesn't know how to allocate its money.

After a city has been through a boom is when the savvy of the gov't is revealed. Smart cities build up infrastructure and parks and libraries--durable good works--during booms.

I feel like Bend's gov't was lazy about being smart and efficient during the boom because they were so sure it was going to last a long time. No need to hurry--we can be smart tomorrow.

Well, now it's over and the city has one way of thinking, and that's "hair of the dog."

They woke up with a nasty-ass hangover and they can't think of anything new, and the boom is gone so there's no fun in it, even.

These people are unable to listen. That's why I'm skeptical about Bruce's fight, or about the ability of anyone to be heard, beyond the usual power sources that know how to work the levers.

You can flap your lips, but they can't hear.

I don't it sounds hopeless, but I really think Bend is going to be unable to learn its lesson until all the booze is gone.

tim said...

I agree BEMs ideas are good. I just wonder when the right time is to push. Maybe not yet.

Or, on the other hand, maybe it is worth it now just to tenderize the meat for later grilling. I really don't know. Whose job in the Bend city gov't is it to listen to good ideas? Is there such a person?

Anonymous said...

This rock in the desert is many things, to many people, but 'intelligible & intelligent' are two words that I never heard used to describe this rock.


Looks like Edward Abby joined the blog. god bless HAYDUKE....

Anonymous said...

I think a loan to buyers is a non-starter in the eyes of the banks. It'd have to be a grant.

Anonymous said...

I agree BEMs ideas are good. I just wonder when the right time is to push. Maybe not yet. -tim


*

Homer is a poverty pimp, he has always approached the system with how can I get the best deal, and as soon as things aren't rozy he'll be gone. I have defined for several years here now, there are many of us that are going to die here, that be me, marge, ned, and maybe bem; I'm not sure, and I'm sure hbm is here for the haul. Why? Because some of us just don't like to move, or maybe cuz we know its all the same everywhere.

Yes, tim I'm not saying bem's ideas are great but a start. There are several kinds of people in Bend today.

1.) Parasites like HOLLERN that run the show.
2.) HOLLERN REHOS in city-hall / city-staff that keep the machine running.
3.) Folks who don't give a fuck whats going on, or know what's going on
4.) Folks like us that knew the bend-bubble was a bubble from day-one.

Ok, the bubble is over, and now its imploding, and we're 1/2 way down to the bottom. Ahead of the fucking curve, while homer said he was here to catch a fucking house on a good deal at bottom, I already own too much real-estate bought 20+ years ago.

When we hit bottom folks are going to be looking for solutions, and we got to have those solutions in our fucking hand before bottom, and so now is the time. BEM knew exactly what I was talking about, that's why most likely he doesn't hang out here any more "We're redundant, and the blog-heads are boors".

Homer says let's have a debate and we do this, BEM says the same thing as ME all along, "AA", "TWELVE STEPS", I haven't been in AA, but I was raised in AA. The reason I was raised by AA, is why taken from my parents as small child because the government didn't like my mothers lifestyle, and then I was tossed between foster-homes until 18, and everyone of them were run by drunks. This is why I hate the government to this day. This is why I relate to Malcolm-X, in his autobiography he says that when the government took his brothers & sisters from their mother that it drove her to suicide. I can relate to that.

AA say's "YOU CANNOT FIX A PROBLEM, UNTIL YOU ADMIT TO YOURSELF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM"

Bend is a cesspool ran by HYPOCRITS & KLEPTOCRATS. In the next two years they're all going down BK bigtime, thus their exists an vacuum, in the pussy's words to "DO GOOD", the pussy does have a good heart, HBM has a good heart.

We just have to pull enough FUCKING CUNTS in bend together that have a good heart to over-ride the existing system.

When do you push? The pussy is pushing, I give him credit for that.

This is why I'm not active any more in politics, because I got tired of PUSHING, ORYGUN politics like everywhere is a finger in the dike, for every Mayor Friedman you recall, theres an Abernethy in the wings, after a while we all get tired of doing the same thing over&over. This is while many of us DONT like Sizemore, I give him credit for sticking it out.

Years ago in gun-control, many good people spent over 20+ years of hard work securing the concealed carry permit that you all take for granted today. The battle never ends. It's imperative that we bring in youth, so that when we get burned out, others can continue.

When I first started wasting my time Here the first thing I did was write articles on "HOW TO GET RICH IN RE", because young people need to have money in order to fight to protect their freedom. Being poor you have no power or freedom.

I don't expect any fucking thing to come of this site, but we re-hash good ideas, and some PUSSY or maybe even the pussy himself will run with them and get elected, and start SEEDING this fucking city with new ideas other than "HOW CAN I HELP HOLLERN MAKE MORE MONEY".

"BENDS PROBLEM IS THAT THE WHOLE TOWN ONLY CARES ABOUT MAKING HOLLERN & HIS GOOD-OLD-BOYZ RICH".

This is a fucking problem.

Anonymous said...

I think a loan to buyers is a non-starter in the eyes of the banks. It'd have to be a grant.

*

It was an ideological proposition, along the lines of ... If you MUST had out $14k checks, give them to people that NEED the money, not to HOLLERN so we can build for crap-shacks at tax-payer expense.

The fact is this city is broke, we can't afford to give anyone $14k checks.

We can't afford to SUBSIDIZE HOLLERN to build MORE fucking STD's.

Anonymous said...

Smart cities build up infrastructure and parks and libraries--durable good works--during booms.

*

OUR CITY is owned by HOLLERN, he has his own people loaded in city-hall, during the BOOM all the bucks went to HOLLERN.

The boom is over, but HOLLERN is like a vampire, used to sucking blood like a parasite, and city-hall ONLY knows his cock up their ass, they're incapable of any other decision making process, other than handing candy to HOLLERN & the good old boyz.

Bend was NEVER 'smart', unless raping, robbing, and destroying a town for self interest is/was smart.

Anonymous said...

Tim, meet hbm, hbm tim used to be a reporter.

So did I. Still am, on a very modest scale.

Anonymous said...

I think a loan to buyers is a non-starter in the eyes of the banks. It'd have to be a grant.

I'm not sure about that. Like many young couples my wife and I borrowed money from relatives to make the down payment on our first house many years ago, and we loaned money to our kid to help her make the down payment on her first house a few years go, and the banks didn't care. I don't think the banks give a damn as long as they have first lien on the property. I could be wrong, of course. But it's something that could be checked out.

News Junkie said...

HBM, you'll have to excuse the newbies here who don't know your background. They weren't around when you were riding through that rough water at the Bulletin.

tim said...

A family loan is not a city loan.

The reason banks won't put up with other loans is that they will add to the monthly payment, increasing the likelihood of default.

The way to do this is a grant. The REAL way to do it is with a tax break. The loan idea is hopeless, in my opinion. It's another debt. It's a car loan without a car.

Anonymous said...

"Bend would be a great college town. We just need the right people to plan our approach and the whole community needs to be on board, like what happened in Merced."

Take a look at what DID happen in Merced! Just like Bend.

Anonymous said...

"Bend would be a great college town. We just need the right people to plan our approach and the whole community needs to be on board, like what happened in Merced."

Take a look at what DID happen in Merced! Just like Bend.
*

We have this debate a 100 times here, the problem of course is Bill-Smith stole the logical location for the campussy, and second the State of OREGON has NO MONEY available for a new CAMPUSSY.

Anonymous said...

Take a look at what DID happen in Merced! Just like Bend.

*

So what happened? I remember merced being a gate-way to yosemite, like stockton, just another shit-hole of STD's today, like everywhere else in the cali ag zone of yesterday.

merced was not Bend, merced was like stockton, just a place where area farmers brought their shit for distribution, hideous & hot in the summer, filthy air, ... Bend is high-desert, in the middle of fucking no where, merced is near hwy-99, and I5, tons of shit-holes in cali have universitys, the ONLY one that comes to my mind that is NICE is US-DAVIS, they did it right, and made the WHOLE town into bike paths.

Anonymous said...

Until we PURGE the toilet in BEND of boss-hogg power, I'm afraid that even a good university would get fucked up.

What you would get is building by hollern, excavation by knife-river, and security by garzini, the campus would be in the bad-lands, and their would never be any money for teachers or equipment because the hoggs would have got it all.

UNTIL we have 'citizens' running BEND, there is NO POINT in dreaming of more public-works projects as being the salvation, MORE PORK TO TEAM-HOLLERN will NOT fix Bend.

Anonymous said...

The Oregon University System definitely doesn't have enough money for another campus -- unless there is sizable economic growth in the state, along with strong population growth.

Oregon has already overextended itself with too many campuses (La Grande, Monmouth).

Still like the idea of Old Mill for a campus . . . The Plaza would make swell faculty offices - a hottub in each one!

Anonymous said...

Last year bilbo at bendbubble.blogspot.com wrote a whole blog on just the old-mill campus, had the whole area mapped out, yes hot-tubs for staff, all those REI retail stores as class rooms, all those 'plaza' dinosaurs for admissions, its all going to go at auction, its all documented.

Remember the snow up at COCC this year, why in the fuck did THEY build a campussy on a hill?

WHY in the fuck are we talking about a CAMPUSSY in the badlands(JR)??

Bill-SMITH made his money, somebody with some balls better grab the Old-MILL for a campussy when it goes down, cuz it will make the greatest UNIVofBend in the world, and have bike trails like UC-DAVIS and it will be a ten.

NOT A FUCKING OUTLET STORE MALL YOU FUCKING BILL_SMITH BOSS_HOGG

Anonymous said...

Blogger News Junkie said...

HBM, you'll have to excuse the newbies here who don't know your background. They weren't around when you were riding through that rough water at the Bulletin.

*

News Junkie, please tell your story, 90% of what we have to do here, is educate these newbies who say they care about Bend.

That is the primary reason the boss-hogg's are able to run this one company town, is that all the newbie cunt just assumes that its always been this way.

Please tell everyone the HBM story, don't just be a burning-man spectator, take your clothes off and show us what you got.

Anonymous said...

HBM, you'll have to excuse the newbies here who don't know your background. They weren't around when you were riding through that rough water at the Bulletin.

I didn't ride through the rough water at The Bulletin -- I quit to start a PR business while Bob Chandler was still editor. The paper's editorial page was conservative and pro-growth back then too, but at least Chandler understood journalistic ethics and didn't use the news pages to advance his agenda (or the advertisers'). Chandler and I were almost 180 degrees apart politically but we respected each other, he let me run the news side without interference, and I admired his integrity.

I thank my stars I left before Chandler died, Greg Cushman resigned as publisher and the Gordon Black/John Costa Boise Mafia took over. A lot of good people (Rick Attig and Doug Bates, who went on to win a Pulitzer at The Oregonian, to name two) were driven out because they wouldn't be Costa's toadies; I'm sure I would have been too.

Anonymous said...

The REAL way to do it is with a tax break.

Tax break would lower the carrying costs but it wouldn't help with the down payment, unless it made the lender willing to accept a smaller one and write a bigger mortgage.

But I'm a pragmatist. Tax break, loan, a combination -- I'm for whatever works. SDC deferral for builders will NOT work. Of all the possible approaches the city could have taken, it is the worst.

But it's what COBA and CORA wanted so here we are, up Shit Creek in the proverbial wire canoe.

Anonymous said...

somebody with some balls better grab the Old-MILL for a campussy when it goes down

The OMD ain't goin' down.

Anonymous said...

Remember the snow up at COCC this year, why in the fuck did THEY build a campussy on a hill?

Because Brooks-Scanlon (progenitor of Brooks Resouces) gave the land to them. The thought it was too steep to log and didn't foresee how valuable that real estate would become.

Anonymous said...

Bill-Smith stole the logical location for the campussy

Exactly how did he "steal" it? Who did he steal it from?

It was the old Brooks-Scanlon (then DAW, then Crown Pacific) sawmill. The mill closed (all the big old timber having been cut down) and Smith and his partners bought the site.

If the State of Oregon had been there with the money to buy it for a campus they could have bought it. They weren't.

Do you know ANYTHING about local history or do you just make the shit up as you go along?

tim said...

I understand, HBM, but I guess I don't see any reasonable way to help downpayments. A downpayment prop is a leveraged prop, which is the opposite of what I want. I don't want any help until affordability happens, because you're just helping buyers lose money. Getting people without down payments in was the problem and, to me, is no part of the solution.

And watch the banks. An Australian bank last week horrified the market by selling its AAA mortgages at 90% off. This is what banks have been trying to avoid.

JP Morgan then sold theirs at 22 cents on the dollar, but FINANCED 75% of the deal, and the buyer won't own if the paper fails. This means that JP Morgan essentially said it's work 6 cents on the dollar.

Watch the system for repercussions all fall & winter.

Anonymous said...

so where is the post on bendbb where someone tries to out homer?

LavaBear said...

Given that $14k "loans" to developers has got to be a top 3 of the stupidest ideas coming out of the council in decades...I tend to agree with Tim regarding downpayment assistance. We're on our way to being lucky if you can get a loan with 20% down, 80% LTV and 30 year fixed. I fully expect that banks will over correct on the tightening before they come around. (Mostly because the 80% LTV is a rapidly moving target at this point and I understand that we aren't at 80/20 yet but it is coming fast.) What that's going to do is make a shitload of the inventory we have truly affordable. And with affordable housing available then if you can't afford the downpayment....then you really can't afford it in the first place.

Anonymous said...

so where is the post on bendbb where someone tries to out homer?

*

FUCK YOU, that's why we forced the NAZI BENDBB to remove it, its gone.

HOMER gets his life back for awhile.

Anonymous said...

This means that JP Morgan essentially said it's work 6 cents on the dollar.

*

Shit tim, your starting to write like buster, I'm sure you meant 'worth', and not 'work'.

Senior fucking moment?, you must be as old as me & hbm.

Anonymous said...

What that's going to do is make a shitload of the inventory we have truly affordable. And with affordable housing available then if you can't afford the downpayment....then you really can't afford it in the first place.

*

That's what its all coming to, and NO MORE 70% homer-ownership, back to 50% or less. Prior to the turn of the century it was less than 5%, I think the Sears disposable mail-order, and then Levitton created the ability. In the old days there were many skilled finish carpenters to go around. In 1890 it cost $100k in todays dollars to build a real home. By 1920 with cookie-cutter homes they cost $500, because they could be pre-fab'd in a factory.

Post WWII everybody bought a HOME with GI-JOE help. During the depression it was farmers who lost their homes, most americans were farmers.

Then the US government did the great tax write-off scam, and home-ownership went above 50%.

As a land-lord I so all my renters get WAMU loans 2002->2006, these folks went from $1k/mo to $3k/mo, and they did it to get RICH! They're ALL NOW LOSING their homes, and they'll be back renters for the rest of their lives. People are going to be really fucking angry they got burnt.

I don't fucking care either way as a landlord, rent a nice little home close-in for 1/4 income has always been easy in any market.

Most these cali second homes cost $3k/mo to MTG, and cant' compete with me, as I own my property's. I could rent for $500/mo and still make money.

The reason I like HBM's proposition is that it actually does something about inventory. By helping the poor working class BUY a home.

The HOLLERN $14k package just means more SIBERIAN-STD's, just what we fucking need.

What we need to clear inventory, not add too it, its almost like these fuckers running city-hall are trying to engineer a fucking blood-bath. They're really throw gas on the fucking fire.

They're going make things much worse by adding more inventory of disposable crap-shacks ( affordable dumps in the desert ).

This is what happens in a greedy town that has been kissing ass and telling lies for so long, they simply don't care anymore about reality, they have now taken it the BUTT by boss-hogg for ten years now that they don't know anything else.

IT's all YESS-sir massa Hollern, we city-council niggers will rubber-stamp anything for boss-hogg.

Then you have the BULLetin which backs it up, the council/staff of the city can't get a real job, and if they vote against the BOSS-HOGG, the BULLetin will black-list then, do a negative story, and they lose the next election.

Vote the way of the HOGG, and you stay in office and eat PORK.

Anonymous said...

. I fully expect that banks will over correct on the tightening before they come around.

*

It's never been about banks, its like tim said today, AAA paper is worth 5% of face value.

FANNY & FREDDY are BK, there is NO FUCKING RE money.

What was it two years ago here I said, "4X, 20% down, 80%LTV, and 700FICO", that is 5% of US citizens, I have living relatives in Cali that do RE, and they haven't closed for two years now.

The problem is that sellers can't sell, and buyers can't qualify, the sellers have NO buyers, the buyers CANNOT QUALIFY. The homes are over 80% LTV.

Here in ORYGUN as I watch this stuff closely especially with BofA, as they have a 4% deal no-doc good credit on RE loans, and their APPRAISAL is 40% of the 2006 high. That's what SAFE banks are doing boyz.

That means if you had house in Bend you bought in 2006 for $500k, the bank says its worth $200k and you can borrow $160k from it as an equity loan.

Almost all people who bought in the last ten years on the west coast were habitual FLIPPER's. $160k/$500k is 30%, that means if you bought 2004-2006 your home today is face value 30% on the paper, and that's IF YOU HAVE perfect credit.

Ok, no problem Bend median today is at $260k, in a year $180k, so by next year the LTV will match, problem is with HIGH GAS and bills, and low income nobody has the $40k down. That's where the HBM idea works.

Anonymous said...

That means if you had house in Bend you bought in 2006 for $500k, the bank says its worth $200k and you can borrow $160k from it as an equity loan.

*

That's if you PAID cash for the house in 2006, if you bought LIKE all the cunts in BEND did with NOTHING DOWN.

YOUR FUCKED.

Bought a home in Bend in 2006 or earlier? You just lost 70%, welcome to Bend.

Anonymous said...

The mill closed (all the big old timber having been cut down) and Smith and his partners bought the site.

*

'Steal' as in they got a good deal on good old boy terms, back in the day when Bend was bargain, aka steal.

TIER ONE BOYZ, got a 'steal', they were the originators of the GREAT BEND-BUBBLE, they are the BOSS-HOGGS, TIER-TWO are BAUHOFER, TIER-THREE Brennke,

It's the tier-3 boyz that are killing themselves.

They made a killing turning the old mill dump into a 'outlet strip mall', now all that fucking RETAIL will go BK, in this great depression-2.

We got to be ready, to pick up that property to build a great university, at a great site.

Right nows its just the fucking 'condo canyon'. REHO, COUGAR, and other varmin,

Anonymous said...

HBM,

Given that 'news watcher/junky/voyeur' ain't going to give us a history lesson, why don't you give us a history lesson from YOUR perspective of the last 40 years in Bend??

Anonymous said...

One of the arguments I haven't heard yet with HBM's proposition of helping 'first time, qualified buyers", is the argument, ...

"Well HOLLERN is just getting a $14k loan, ..."

NOT true, for the past ten years the actual cost of SDC's was over $60k, and HOLLERN paid an average or less of $10k, thus HOLLERN&CO(old-boyz), got $50k for free for every crap shack they built, this where the PROFIT came from the BEND taxpayer.

Thus, given that HOLLERN got BILLIONS of dollars, its not much to ask that a small pittance go to 'first time qualified buyers'.

Especially given that the program would actually HELP newbie home-owners, albeit it would be better to wait for $180k medians next year.

Giving HOLLERN $14k no-interest loans on top of the $50K no-string handout per house he has already gotten during the last ten year boom that was largely engineered by him, is not only unfair, its BEND-STOOPID.

Anonymous said...

I don't know if any of you are following, but today on BBC they said that the Kabul is very close to falling to the TALEBAN.

If this happens its going to be like the the Tet-Offensive and the fall of Saigon.

Evacuation of 1,000's of US employees from the 'green-zone' in Kabul.

A few weeks ago I said 'o-boma-a' would create a draft, and "ask not what the country can do for you, but what you can do for the country', its sounds like we're very close to getting what we have wanted all along, e.g. WWIII.

We have been slicing & dicing the middle east to our pleasure during the BUSH-TRIBE tenure. This week the rusky's went into Georgia for some of the same (OIL).

We have carved up the Asian ( japan, singapore ) oil market, and Russia the EU oil market, WWIII is getting very close.

Bewert said...

Three thoughts:

-the idea of a starter grant to buy a home makes a ton of sense. Just not yet, let medians drop for another six months at least. Might take another two years.

-HBM, news junkie, etc., educating us newbies is very important. We can and will pass it on.

--Davis, Cali is actually a really good model. Especially as we are obviously headed into a much more green model.

Bewert said...

FYI: http://daviswiki.org/

Bewert said...

Re: Georgia (and the Ukraine)

Fights from the oil era. In another 20 years or so things will be quite different. It's time to start planning for the no-oil era.

tim said...

>>Senior fucking moment?, you must be as old as me & hbm.

I know. Sorry. As is the case with many people, my first drafts are crap. "The" for "they," words that just roughly sound alike, funny things my fingers do.

I SHOULD edit after I write, but my wife was talking to me as I was typing, so I couldn't think, and I had to get out the door in a couple minutes.

Good writing is really good revision. Sometimes I have time for it and sometimes I don't. I know I sound more intelligent when everything is correct, so I do try to edit myself. Sometimes, though, life gets in the way.

Also, I DON'T correct all errors I see. Just funny ones and cases where I see someone do something repeatedly and I think there's some chance I can change the pattern for the other person's benefit. I rarely correct just to be mean, except when I'm really cranky.

Anonymous said...

An off topic post but can't help myself: I just learned how much cheap land is available in places like Christmas valley. Anyone ever bought there? Is it utterly worthless, or potentially worth anything in 30 years? Any groundwater for crop & grazing?

Anonymous said...

>>Senior fucking moment?, you must be as old as me & hbm.

I know. Sorry.

*

I just pointed it out, because you rarely ever do it, and homer hardly never, and BEM never, dunc hardly ever,

Me ALWAY's, I feel that given I'm not getting paid for this, I never edit, yes I agree it just takes a second glance to see shit like 'want' instead ' worth' and I know exactly what you mean, and I hope all of you generally know what I mean, this is why I don't care about WHO HOMER is, or how people spell or write, I only care about ideas.

Anonymous said...

An off topic post but can't help myself: I just learned how much cheap land is available in places like Christmas valley.

*
I think we have a live one. ALERT, ALERT.

We brother, long ago it was our own 'death valley', then about the time that HOLLERN was selling Black-Butt some smart codger figure he could sell 'Oregon's Death' and marketed it as xmas valley, back in the 80's during last bend-bubble lots were going for a whopping $10k for acres, not bad when you consider the land is largely an alkaline lake bed, sort of like buying 'burning-man' land, aka black-rock-desert.

Most folks out there have their water transported, the winter is zero or below all winter, and did I mention there are no trees for a 100 miles? Oh, yea there is the 'lost forest' up NE, but that's why they call it lost, nobody can figure how a little forest got lost in the biggest sand-dunes in eastern oregon.

xmas valley, surely some cali just might buy, a few years ago about ten years, a bunch of lesbians from PDX bought up a bunch of lots and took out city-hall, not since rajaneesh had their been such a ruckus.

Theres a little air strip, a pacific-pride self-serve fuel depot, and little lesbo diner, and that be xmas valley surrounded by a million acres of alkaline lake bed.

Sort of like the North Pole for santa during the summer.

Last time I was out there, you could find real nice 40 acre lots for $5k, that included your own single wide.

Be sure to bring a canteen.

Anonymous said...

-HBM, news junkie, etc., educating us newbies is very important. We can and will pass it on.

*

BP your going to have to kick these old goats the ass, we got to get HBM to do a brain-fart before he dies.

HBM did you ever write a book about the BULL?

If you didn't we would sure like you to write a synopsis.

It's got to be as long as BP's manifesto to count.

BP did you see the FBI has Kasinsky's cabin on display? His manifesto was 35k words?

tim said...

>>The reason I like HBM's proposition is that it actually does something about inventory.

Yeah, but...

What do you think happens the moment inventory starts to dip?

There's no way you can put money in housing without the money making its way to the big developers.

Macro policy is really tough. You give someone money IN ANY FASHION for housing and it almost inevitably goes toward Hollern.

So maybe you just take him out of the equation.

What is really GOOD for the people and the town? I don't think the answer has anything to do with real estate. Enough money has been thrown in to help people buy. That's what the banks have been doing. Forget the bloody inventory.

What helps housing and people both permanently?

ONLY jobs.

Jobs and infrastructure, parks, libraries, schools, college, baseball diamonds, hospitals, good (not corrupt) fire & police.

Yeah, DON'T give money to the builders. Don't build more homes. Tax the shit out of anyone who wants to build a house for now.

You want the contractors and builders working? Public works. Have them build shit FOR the benefit of the city and people. Five year moratorium on building houses. No more building anything speculative commercially. If you can't prevent it, tax the hell out of it.

Have those workers build schools, hospitals, bridges, seers, whatever.

Anonymous said...

Tim,

I agree that was my first response to HBM, "But we already had zero-down, that is what created the mess".

I'm not saying I agree, but if we're going to GIVE $$$ to HOLLERN, why not give it to the poor? I think HBM is saying, how about a little trickle-up for a change, rather than all trickle-down??

The way I see it is ..

1.) The fact is there is NO money, but at least we're talking about how to fix things, there is NO money, nobody is going to get help from the city of Bend for buying a home. Fact.

2.) Home-Ownership will decline to less than 50%, too many people have been burned I have long predicted this, you can't have a cyclic max of homer-ownership and over-sale, and not expect to see tons of people never opt-in to home owner ship in their life.

3.) This is great-depression 2, folks are going to be telling the next generation how buying a home wiped out the kids college education for years to come.

Again, I think HBM just brought up this topic to WIPE salt in the anal-hollern wound and the hypocritic handout to those who need it the least.

The $14k SDC handout will only draw new builders to BEND to buy HOLLERN empty land, it will only throw fire on the inventory problem.

At least we have drawn HBM over to the dark-side, and we have him discussing how to fix Bend. Nobody knows where the debate will end.

Anonymous said...

Jobs and infrastructure, parks, libraries, schools, college, baseball diamonds, hospitals, good (not corrupt) fire & police.

Yeah, DON'T give money to the builders. Don't build more homes. Tax the shit out of anyone who wants to build a house for now.

You want the contractors and builders working? Public works. Have them build shit FOR the benefit of the city and people. Five year moratorium on building houses. No more building anything speculative commercially. If you can't prevent it, tax the hell out of it.

Have those workers build schools, hospitals, bridges, seers, whatever.

*

Good ideas TIM, now format that and put it on BB3, you got the password.

We need to start posting IDEAS of how to fix BEND.

I completely agree, I'm actually quite surprised I never see the moratorium word from HBM, I suspect its because ten years ago that side of the debate lost, and they just gave up.

Anonymous said...


One Third of New Owners Owe More Than House Is Worth (Update1)

By Bob Ivry
Enlarge Image/Details

Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Almost one-third of U.S. homeowners who bought in the last five years now owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth, according to Zillow.com, an Internet provider of home valuations.

Second-quarter home prices fell 9.9 percent from a year earlier, giving 29 percent of owners negative equity, said Zillow, the Seattle-based service that offers values for more than 80 million homes. For those who bought at the 2006 peak of the housing market, 45 percent are now underwater, Zillow said.

tim said...

>>Good ideas TIM, now format that and put it on BB3...

Not a bad idea.

Anonymous said...

THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END!

***

Aussie Bank to Bring America’s Biggest Bankers to Their Knees?
August 12, 2008 | From theTrumpet.com
With American banks already in trouble, an Australian bank made matters worse—by telling the truth! By Robert Morley


July 25 was a particularly bad day for Australia’s four biggest banking stocks. In a matter of hours, $16.2 billion in stockholder value was erased from existence—the worst fall since Black Monday in October 1987.

Investors jumped ship following the decision by the National Australia Bank to take a 90 percent write-down on a chunk of mortgage-backed assets that were supposedly aaa-rated. Yet, the full implications of the announcement were largely missed by the media. To them, July 25 was just one more bad day in a bad year in which Australian financial stocks ground lower and lower.

The “aaa” assets in question were bundles of U.S. mortgages that National Australia Bank (nab) had purchased for around $1.2 billion prior to the U.S. real-estate and lending bubble bust. The problem with the mortgages arose after American home valuations plunged and homeowners began defaulting on their mortgages in record numbers. All of a sudden, the market for mortgage-backed investments dried up, and no one wanted to buy the formerly triple-A-rated securities anymore.

LavaBear said...

>>Good ideas TIM

Fuckin A...I'd vote early and often for that platform. If you are gonna spend our money might as well spend it on something for EVERYONE. At least try....a little. I know the dumb fucks at the city think that by giving developers more money they will build more and employ more and so forth. It's just that it's done. It's OVER. Hello? Didn't get the memo? The Bubble has ended.

Bewert said...

Infrastructure Only.

Problem is Infrastructure First couldn't get enough sigs, and Bill is going to spend several minutes rebutting them at the next CC meeting.

RE rules this town. How we can break this is the $64 question. Even Telfer agrees, a Republican. A stop spending money Republican.

For all our bitching, I'm the only one who actually personally confronts the local establishment.

Twenty or more of us and we could make some noise.

I'm really starting to think there may by a schism developing between the numbers folks, like Sonia, and the pie in the sky folks, like John Russell. We need to loudly support the former.

Bewert said...

The reality of that Aussie writedown, along with many, many others, makes our borrowing much more problematic.

Since our country lives on foreign borrowing, this is going to be problematic going forward. Higher costs for one, availability for another.

Interesting times are coming.

Anonymous said...

I know the dumb fucks at the city think that by giving developers more money they will build more and employ more and so forth. It's just that it's done. It's OVER. Hello? Didn't get the memo? The Bubble has ended.

*

Didn't they tell you lava?, that if everyone in Bend gives HOLLERN $14k cash, the bendbubble will come back??

They're going to bankrupt this town and run, just like they have bankrupted this country. Most of these birds already have their nests off-shore all ready for post bubble settlement.

Remember it's tier-3, and the citizenry that will be doing the suicide.

Bewert said...

Re: They're going to bankrupt this town and run, just like they have bankrupted this country.

Next CC meeting, votes on SDC deferral for modulars at schools, and $400K for an inhouse legal department.

Spend, spend, spend, while reducing revenue.

That's called fiscal suicide.

I just can't believe it is actually accelerating in this 1-2 month of reserves per department we are currently running in.

Just plain stupid.

Burrow in and survive? Or blow everything and whatever?

Anonymous said...

For those that don't know about history... here is a condensed version.

Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.

The two most important events in all of history were:

1. The invention of beer, and

2. The invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer.

These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:

1. Liberals

2. Conservatives

Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the Conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement.

Some of these Liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girlie-men.

Some noteworthy Liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that Conservatives provided.

Over the years Conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu , and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are Liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, game wardens, constitutional law lawyers, corporate executives, athletes, Marines, and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other Conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans are. That is why most of the Liberals remained in Europe when Conservatives were coming to America . They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.

Here ends today's lesson in world history...

It should be noted that a Liberal might have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before forwarding it.

A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately to other true believers and to more liberals just to piss them off....

Bewert said...

One last note, on a national basis, about how fucked up we have become. From Jessie Radack, my kind of woman:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/13/75930/0376/305/567175

Dear Sir or Madam,

I would like to return to public service, which I intended to be my lifelong career before I was forced from the Justice Department for blowing the whistle in the case of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. Basically, I advised not to interrogate him without his counsel, which advice was ignored and then "disappeared" in contravention of a federal court order. After I recovered the advice, which concluded that the FBI had committed an ethics violation, and it was still not turned over to the court, I provided it to the media.

Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Eric Lichtblau recently revealed that Alberto Gonzales, as White House counsel, had decided not to turn any documents over to Lindh's defense lawyers. I tried to stop this blatant and illegal discovery abuse and was forced from the Department, put under criminal investigation, referred to the state bars in which I am licensed and put on the "no-fly" list.

A few months before the whole Lindh episode, I also applied for a counsel position in the Office of Deputy Attorney General. That office sent my application to the White House for vetting and I was asked to provide my voter registration card, which is clearly illegal.

I think that my working at the Justice Department would be a first-step in rehabilitating the department to repair the extreme damage that has been done to the Department over the past seven years. Thank you for your consideration, and please do not hesitate to call me if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Jesselyn Radack


This shit propagates to all levels. Including ours.

Bewert said...

Re: Liberals produce little or nothing.

Tell that to Buffett or Branson, to start.

tim said...

Bruce,

Don't respond to the bait.

Bewert said...

Fuck you. I just ate elk tenderloin last night.

Get over your BS. Libs (or progressives, as I prefer) actually give a shit about their neighbors. They take care of them.

Conservatives (the current Repug form formost) will let them starve to make a buck.

Asshole.

Bewert said...

Sorry, you not an asshole, just an angry drunk...

Bewert said...

T, sorry...should have waited a minute.

Fuckin' Buster plays me like a drum sometimes.

Bewert said...

Re: Conservatives are...constitutional law lawyers...

Like Obama.

Buster, that was way to literate. A cut and past job. Hello, Grover.

Anonymous said...

Did some research on the history of Christmas Valley. In the late 1950s some land baron blew in there, bought up all the land from ranchers, and flew in Californians to see it, who then bought it all up. Problem is: no one actually moved there.

Striking similarities to current situation in Bend -- but note how the Bend Bulletin responded -- very different from today! Back then they didn't give a rat's ass about the development community.

***

In July of 1961 the M. Penn Phillips development company hit town, before Christmas Valley really was a town, riding high on a wave of newspaper, television and radio advertisements, then quickly snatched up over 72,000 acres from the ZX and Century ranches at ten dollars per acre. One year and a million dollars later, the company had bought even more land, for a grand total of 90,000 acres, an area roughly twice the size of the District of Columbia.

In that first year they built 30 miles of roads, 15 homes, the Christmas Valley Lodge, a motel, a 5,000 foot airstrip, a 40 acre experimental farm, and a 3,000 foot long lake. They renamed our valley, shortening the name from "Christmas Lake Valley." Phillips started the first newspaper here, called the Christmas Valley Gazette, that featured a column by Phillips revealing many insights into his character and the challenges he faced.


Phillips already had a score of successful developments under his belt, including Hesperia, Salton City, Palmdale, Azusa, Compton, Ensenada, and Coos Bay, Oregon. He had even bought and sold property on what is the present day site of "The Strip" in Las Vegas, Nevada. "Man can do anything he dreams," Phillips was inclined to say. His columns make it clear that in his mind, it was just a hop, skip and a jump from draftsman and engineers' drawings to the realization of his dreams. "Now it's real, not a dream," Phillips wrote. At the age of 72 in a 1959 article that appeared in Time magazine, Phillips claimed to have sold more parcels of land (around 100,000) than any man alive.

Almost before valley residents knew it, and shortly after the airstrip was complete, the Phillips company had set up shop in three trailers and started flying in land buyers from California on a DC-3. The humongous plane would land at our airport every weekend, dwarfing the Trailways bus that came to take land buyers on tours of the valley.

Phillips had a magnetic effect on the Californians. His dream was so engaging, the picture he painted so inviting, that many came to believe in and focus on what "could be" in Christmas Valley. Phillips had a reputation as a fast talker, and enticing slogans abound from his days here. "Buy land and keep it. Some day it will keep you." And, "Will you be ready for the boom years ahead?" Phillips proclaimed as he sold real estate as a hedge against inflation. In mid-September of 1961 a full page ad appeared in three Los Angeles area daily papers announcing the "Christmas Valley Rural Retirement Project." According to Phillips' records, these early ads resulted in 1,600 mail inquiries and a deluge of phone calls to his Azusa, California base office.

In an October 1961 article that appeared in Ruralite, Phil Washington, Phillips' General Project Manager, stated that "H-bomb jitters and the war scare" were partly responsible for prompting people to move from Los Angeles to a remote place like Christmas Valley. "Our idea is to fulfill a need that is rapidly developing in Southern California. There's too much congestion. People want to get away. They want to get back to the farm, to the ranch," Washington said.


Carlo Giuntini, President of the M. Penn Phillips Company and son-in-law of the man behind the dream started calling Christmas Valley "the town that had to be built." It was true that by 1963 all of the developers' goals had been met, perhaps save one. The construction projects were complete and most of the land had been sold, but where were all the people? Where was the bustling main street? The census of 1963 reports 57 families and 203 people living in Christmas Valley. Most were employed as surveyors, road builders, or in service jobs for the Phillips company.

"Our company enjoys the enviable reputation of completing any community it undertakes to develop," Phillips said from a 1963 column that carries a reassuring undertone. "Have you ever thought why a town grows in a certain spot? Someone builds it," he wrote. Perhaps Phillips was trying to reassure himself? Yet, by the end of 1964 there were only 34 telephone customers in Christmas Valley. An ad in the Oregonian in 1964 proclaimed, "For almost 50 years, M. Penn Phillips has accurately forecast when and where land values would increase most rapidly. Now this pioneer developer pinpoints Christmas Valley, Oregon as the best land investment opportunity in the United States today."


On May 31, 1962, Phillips' sales manager in Bend told the Oregonian that the company was now stressing the area as suitable for retirement and that it would take too much of an investment (an estimated $25,000) to make an ordinary-size ranch profitable. What he neglected to say to prospective retirees was that, in the 1960s, it might cost over $10,000 to install electricity if land was three miles from the nearest power pole. In these days the company was still claiming to expect completion of the development and the arrival of 5,000 people by 1965, and almost got its wish with the dawning of that year and the proposal of the Ontario to the Ocean highway.

"O.T.T.O.," as it was called, would have connected Ontario, Burns, Wagontire, Christmas Valley, Silver Lake, Roseburg, and Coos Bay with one continuous stretch of interstate. Hopes ran high that the creation of this new super highway would allow farmers in Christmas Valley to truck their crops to the Coos Bay harbor and sell them to overseas buyers at a premium. The highway, proposed in 1965, was never completed. Over 56 miles of the proposed route consisted of Lake County roads that needed considerable upgrading.





According to an article in the Oregon Journal in April of 1963, Phillips had arrived in Christmas Valley in 1961 on the heels of a 160 day license suspension by the state of California against his development company and eight of its members; a period of time that he later euphemistically referred to as his retirement.

"Sold out completely and retired...for three months. That is, sold Hesperia and Salton..." Phillips wrote in the March 1962 first edition of the Christmas Valley Gazette and his first installment of Penn Points. According to the Oregon Journal, the suspension stemmed from "substantial misrepresentation in land sales and failure to exercise reasonable control over sales personnel."


By March of 1962 the Statesman newspaper from Salem reports that some of Phillips' visions of what "could be" in Christmas Valley, like artists' depictions of small farms with deep grass and large trees, are in question; his methods are under fire. "Already the Real Estate Commission is planning recommendations for new laws to give the state more control over subdivisions and their advertising. The Christmas Valley development has been the chief incentive," the article states.

The BEND BULLETIN took the nearly identical course and wrote, "This newspaper objected loudly to the original promotion of the area, which we felt was misleading. As a result of our protests, which were joined by others around the state, action is being taken which could cure some of the evils in the original promotion. The M. Penn Phillips Company, promoters of the project, has voluntarily removed much that we found objectionable in its promotional material. Our objection to the original Christmas Valley advertising and publicity was that it painted the Christmas Lake area as a veritable Garden of Eden, located in a banana belt, with low priced land which would provide sufficient side income to augment retirement resources. And this is a far fetched picture, as anyone familiar with the country is aware."

"...A man has to take a chance. Buy something that looks good at the moment and hold onto it. These were things I guess I was doing right; plunging headlong into something I believed in, even if others didn't," Phillips wrote in March of 1968. According to a Willamette Week article of September, 1979, Phillips at the age of 86 "abandoned" the venture in 1973. Only a few dozen people had moved here, and most of the land had changed hands and was being bought by Willamette Valley residents.


*

If you invest in irrigation equipment it looks like you can grow alfalfa and possibly even make a profit given today's high prices. It still amazes me that within a short drive you can get whole bunch of land for $20,000.

Anonymous said...

Bruce,
You've been here so long but you still have NO ability to figure out who's writing. You think everyone is Buster. You wrong.

Anonymous said...

If you invest in irrigation equipment it looks like you can grow alfalfa and possibly even make a profit given today's high prices. It still amazes me that within a short drive you can get whole bunch of land for $20,000.

*

Like I said alert-alert, we have some suckers, they have bought the bait, they're here for the sunriver golf sleaze, and they're ready to open the checkbook, they search the MLS, and found out you can buy land for $500/acre in xmas valley, ...

Shit boyz, why be 2hrs from Bend, when I can sell you land for that price in Millican or Brothers and have a 1/2 hour drive to Bend, OR!!!

Anonymous said...

Bruce,
You've been here so long but you still have NO ability to figure out who's writing. You think everyone is Buster. You wrong.

*

I think BP, wish everyone was buster.

LavaBear said...

>>You think everyone is Buster. You wrong.

Hank, is that you?

Anonymous said...

$400K for an inhouse legal department.

*

THat dar is the best idea in twenty years, the way I see it so many people are going to be SUING the city of bend, and its polly-tick-ians, that hiring a team of lawyers to represent them at taxpayer expense is the only possible mechanism to keep Friedmand, et-al out of Garzini's prison.

City-Hall will go from taking it in the arse by HOLLERN, to taking it in the arse by TEAM-GARZINI.

Only in BEND.

The only way that city-hall can protect themselves is put the BEST lawyers in BEND on retainer in city-hall, bet ya all this retainer ends up being over $1M.

Anonymous said...

yes... but let me lurk in peace, okay?

hank is really anonymous.

THE anonymous... before all those other posers.

Anonymous said...

Hank, is that you?

*

Only hank fucks with the pussy in a mean spirited way, buster always does it with kid-gloves.

BP just maybe if you sent your complaint to the State AG, hank might cut you some slack?

Bewert said...

Yeah, I know, I figure all anonymouses are Buster or Homer.

That was one hell of a piece of reporting on Xmas Valley, whomever wrote it back then.

The glory days of the BULL.

tim said...

What I know about Christmas Valley is that for as long as I've been reading bend.craigslist, there have been people trying to sell me a hunk of Christmas Valley.

Bruce, I know great conservatives and shitty conservatives, great liberals and shitty liberals. Judge people by deeds.

Anonymous said...

BP just maybe if you sent your complaint to the State AG, hank might cut you some slack?

===

Too true.

But we both know THAT will never happen!
-----------

Only hank fucks with the pussy in a mean spirited way, buster always does it with kid-gloves.

===

Now, you finally messed up and spoke a falsehood.

BP has many fans who can play him like a fiddle. I am one of many.

And isn't it kinda fun to see the Pussy chase his tail, yelling FUCK YOU, BUSTER! DAM YOU BUSTER, I AM GONNA GET YOU YET!

Okay, I am sick that way... pickin on a poor sap like the Pussy... that is way too low to smile about. Sicko, I am.

Anonymous said...

On a happy note in Bend, ...

What's happening is that American society is sliding into a greater depression than the one Grandma lived through. On the technical side, there has been unending controversy as to whether we're gripped by inflation or deflation. It's certainly deceptive. Food and gasoline prices are rising faster than the rivers of Iowa. But the prices of assets, like houses, stocks, jet-skis, GMC Yukons and pre-owned Hummel figurines are cratering as America turns into Yard Sale Nation.

We're a very different country than we were in 1932. In that earlier crisis of capital, few people had any money but our society still possessed fantastic resources. We had plenty of everything that our land could provide: a treasure trove of mineral ores and the equipment to refine it all, a wealth of oil and gas still in the ground, and all the rigs needed to get at it, manpower galore (and of a highly disciplined, regimented kind), with fine-tuned factories waiting for orders. We had a railroad system that was the envy of the world and millions of family farms (even despite the dust bowl) owned by people who retained age-old skills not yet degraded by agribusiness. We had fully-functional cities with operating waterfronts and ten thousand small towns with local economies, local newspapers, and local culture.

We had a crisis of capital in the 1930s for reasons that are still debated today. My own guess is a combination of a bad debt workout that sucked "money" into a black hole (since money is loaned into existence, but vanishes if the loans are not systematically paid back) plus a gross saturation of markets, meaning that every American who had wanted to buy a car or an electric toaster had done so and there was no one left to sell to. (The first round of globalism -- 1870 - 1914 -- had shut down after the fiasco of World War One.)

Our debt problems today are of a magnitude so extreme that astronomers would be hard pressed to calculate them. By any rational measure our society is comprehensively bankrupt. From the federal treasury down to the suburban cul-de-sacs so much loaned money is either not being paid back, or is at risk of never being paid back, that the suckage of presumed wealth has passed through an event horizon out of the known universe into some other realm of space-time, never to be seen again in this realm. This would seem to be the very essence of monetary deflation -- money defaulted out-of-existence.

This condition is partly disguised by both the loss of credibility of US currency and real-world scarcities of oil and food, but the upshot will be something at least twice as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s: people with no money in a land with no resources (with manpower that has no discipline), hardly any family farms left, cities that are basket-cases of bottomless need, comatose small towns stripped of their assets and social capital, an aviation industry on the verge of death, and a railroad system that is the laughingstock of the world. Not to mention the mind-boggling liabilities of suburbia and the motoring infrastructure that services it.

The banks have been doing their death dance for an entire year now, pretending that their problems are those of mere "liquidity" (i.e. cash-on-hand) rather than insolvency (no cash either on hand or in the vault and nothing else to sell to raise cash except worthless "creative" securities that nobody would ever buy). But the destruction of money (resulting from loans not paid back) is now so intense that the game of pretend has reached its terminal point. The question for the moment is exactly who and what will be crushed as these institutions roll over and die.

Complicating matters is a global oil predicament that is really not hard to understand, but which the organs of news and opinion have obdurately failed to explicate for an anxious public. Call it Peak Oil. There are only a few elements of it you need to know. 1.) that demand has now permanently outstripped supply; 2.) that new discoveries are too meager to offset consumption; 3.) That under under the circumstances, the systems we rely on for daily life are crumbling. I've called this situation The Long Emergency.

Our chances of mitigating this, and of continuing our current way-of-life is about zero. I've tried to promote the idea that rather than waste remaining resources in the futile attempt to sustain the unsustainable (i.e. come up with "solutions" to keep suburbia running), that we should begin immediately making other arrangements for daily life -- mainly by downscaling and re-scaling everything from farming to commerce to the way we inhabit the landscape -- but my suggestions have proven unpopular even among the "environmental" elites, who are too busy being entranced by new-and-groovy ways to keep all the cars running.

So where we are at now is the equivalent of standing in the slop by the ocean shore under a gathering hundred-foot-high wave that is about to come crashing down on our heads. Since I sure don't know everything, I can't say how this will all play out in the months ahead, especially with the presidential election coming at the exact moment that voters will be turning on their furnaces for the cold and dark winter beyond. I would venture to say that so far our society as a whole has done a piss-poor job of comprehending the situation. But there is still the possibility, with four months of politicking left, that the nature of our predicament can be articulated in a way that few can fail to understand, the way Mr, Lincoln articulated the terms of the Civil War on the eve of its fateful outbreak.

Anonymous said...

http://benddenial.blogspot.com/
Enough said!

News Junkie said...

>For those that don't know about history...here is a condensed version...

>...a greater depression than the one Grandma lived through.

*

Plagiarism at it's best and worst.

News Junkie said...

Way to go, Marge! Keep it up, girl.

Or guy.

Doesn't matter.

Anonymous said...

Way to go, Marge! Keep it up, girl.

Or guy.

Doesn't matter.

*

Or both. Haven't you heard about Bend's Pregnant Man? He/She/It gave birth to a baby girl.

Could Marge be her?... I mean him? It?

Anonymous said...

Striking similarities to current situation in Bend -- but note how the Bend Bulletin responded -- very different from today! Back then they didn't give a rat's ass about the development community.

*

Had the man who bought xmas valley bought the BULL, then things for xmas may have turned out different.

This time around, HOLLERN bought the BULL in 1998, he being the 500LB gorilla of Bend well the rest is history.

In many ways, its as IF, they had filled xmas valley with 20k STD crap-shacks, and nobody came, the diff of course is that back in prior years the only thing that got erected in xmas valley is/was single-wides.

Developing 20,000 STD siberian crap-shacks in all corners of central oregon post 1998, all rotting in the sun, in land as friendly as xmas valley, as there is a reason these lands had never been developed. ( yarrow, brasada, ... hollern-villes )

For good history there are books about how during the great depression okies settled eastern-oregon to farm xmas valley and millican/brothers, badlands, and they all lost their ass. In the 1940's there were towns all over far eastern oregon down south of Burns, that today are all ghost-towns, all hold-overs from the great depression era land rush, the difference was then they didn't have enough cash to survive and the land couldn't grow enough straw to buy food, nor feed lifestock. Those that did survive did so on eating rabbit and coyote.

In many ways the okies(calis) that came to Bend, to HOLLERN's post 1998 CALL "all can get rich in BEND", ended the same, they came, they got outfitted ( bought a crap-shack ), and they ran out of money and perished.

There really is no difference between land east of SE27th, and land 2 hrs south of Bend, like xmas valley, its all non-sustainable, lacking water, and historical worthless desert.

The brilliance is/was HOLLERN being a CALI MBA, he could PR&MARKET desert-swampland by attracting the most human need, greed.

HOLLERN WON, BEND LOST.

Anonymous said...

The pussy is fond of saying, "Bend would be a great place, if I could just make $100k/yr".

Yes, pussy, but its never happened in the past, and most likely will never happen in the future.

There never were jobs in eastern-oregon, unless you consider the pre-timber days, or the days before the cattle wiped out the edible grass.

It's always been hard to make a living in EASTERN OREGON, always, and always will be.

Folks come from elsewhere, and stay until their savings are depleted, its always been that way, and always will be that way.

Anonymous said...

Haven't you heard about Bend's Pregnant Man? He/She/It gave birth to a baby girl.

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An artificially inseminated lesbian with a beard. Bends latest craze.

Last week it was big dicks, and big tits, ... this week bearded lesbians, what will be Bend of the future?

Anonymous said...

If you want to know why the pussy says such dumb shit, then you need to understand how&why the Pussy's were created.

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America's Secret Establishment has had little publicity, few reviews ignored by mainline distributors yet, has sold steadily for the past 16 years at a rate of several hundred copies a month.
This activity, in turn, has generated other articles and books by other authors. But my real intent, to generate an exploration of Hegelian influence in modern America, has not been fulfilled. In great part, this can be attributed to
an educational system based on a statist-Hegelian philosophy, and which has already achieved the "dumbing down" of America.
This disastrous, destructive philosophy, the source of both Naziism and Marxism, has infected and corrupted our constitutional republic. Much of the blame for this corruption is with an elitist group of Yale "Bonesmen." Their symbol of Skull and Bones, and their Hegelian philosophy, says it all, although with typical duplicity, they would have you believe otherwise.

Hegelianism glorifies the State, the vehicle for the dissemination of statist and materialist ideas and policies in education, science, politics and economics.
Wonder why we have a "dumbed-down" society? Look no further than the Bonesman troika who imported the Prussian education system into the U.S. in the 19`h Century. A political philosophy in direct opposition to the classical liberalism nurtured in 19`h Century British and American history. In classical liberalism, the State is always
subordinate to the individual. In Hegelian Statism, as we see in Naziism and Marxism, the State is supreme, and the individual exists only to serve the State.
Our two-parry Republican-Democrat (= one Hegelian party, no one else welcome or allowed) system is a reflection of this Hegelianism. A small group - a very small group - by using Hegel, can manipulate, and to some extent, control society for its own purposes.
More than that, reflect on their pirate flag. An emblem found on poison bottles, the symbol of the Nazi Death Head Division in World War Two. Not only did Skull and Bones become a major force in drug smuggling (the Bush and Prescott families in the 1860s), but in true Hegelian fashion, generated the antithesis, the so-called "war on drugs." This hypocritical policy maintains the price of drugs, controls supply, and puts millions in jail while the gainers, in great part, are none other than the same "Bonesmen" who pass the laws to prohibit (Bonesman Taft, 1904).

Right and Left - A Control Device

For Hegelians, the State is almighty, and seen as "the march of God on earth." Indeed, a State religion. Progress in the Hegelian State is through contrived conflict: the clash of opposites makes for progress. If you can control the opposites, you dominate the nature of the outcome.
We trace the extraordinary Skull and Bones influence in a major Hegelian conflict: Naziism vs Communism. Skull and Bones members were in the dominant decision-making positions - Bush, Harriman, Stimson, Lovett, and so on - all Bonesmen, and instrumental in guiding the conflict through use of "right" and "left." They financed and encouraged the growths of both philosophies and controlled the outcome to a significant extent. This was aided by the "reductionist" division in science, the opposite of historical "wholeness." By dividing science and learning into narrower and narrower segments, it became easier to control the whole through the parts.

In education, the Dewey system was initiated and promoted by Skull and Bones members. Dewey was an ardent statist, and a believer in the Hegelian idea that the child exists to be trained to serve the State. This requires suppression of individualist tendencies and a careful spoon-feeding of approved knowledge. This
"dumbing down" of American education is not easily apparent unless you have studied in both foreign and domestic U.S. universities - then the contrast becomes crystal clear.

This dumbing down is now receiving attention. Two excellent books are The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt (Conscience Press, Revenna Ohio, 2001), and The Dumbing Down of America, by John Taylor Gotta. Both books trace this process to the impact of education, and both give remarkable detail of the process. We go further, in that we trace the import of the system to three Yalies members of Skull & Bones.
For Iserbyt, in The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, the American education system begins with Rockefeller and Gates. But in fact, this statist system is a reflection of the Hegelian ideas brought to the United States by the Skull and Bones "troika" of Gilman, White and Dwight, and then financed by Rockefeller.

Anonymous said...

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production.

That must explain why the red states get more from the federal government than they pay in taxes while the blue states pay more in taxes than they get back. IOW the red-staters are getting welfare from us blue-staters.

Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans are.

And they're right.

That is why most of the Liberals remained in Europe when Conservatives were coming to America.

The Founding Fathers were liberals (actually, radicals). Today's conservatives would have been Tories.

Who produced this load of horse shit? Does he have an IQ higher than his shoe size?

Every improvement in the well-being of ordinary Americans that this country has made -- EVERY SINGLE ONE -- was the result of efforts by LIBERALS (progressives) while conservatives fought them tooth and nail. Anti-child labor laws, consumer protection laws, the minimum wage, anti-pollution laws, the 40-hour week, Social Security, Medicare -- if conservatives had their way, NONE of these would ever have happened.

It's the role of liberals to change things; it's the role of conservatives (by definition) to stop change.

Anonymous said...

Two excellent books are The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt (Conscience Press, Revenna Ohio, 2001), and The Dumbing Down of America, by John Taylor Gotta. Both books trace this process to the impact of education

I hope they give equal credit/blame to our debased popular culture and news media, which evidently believe their readers/viewers have the mentality of 8-year-olds.

Anonymous said...

On the more popular subject of dumbing down, is spying and bringing our computers to a grinding halt.

While not addressed last post by KING-CUNT homer, that he has 50 spybots and trojan horses on this fucking site the issue not addressed for a year is HOW DO I KILL THIS SHIT, as homer add's NEW fucking TROJANS WEEKLY to his site, you must manage the fucking list.

Which leads to the question? BENDBB is a know trojan with explicit IP logging, while BB2 can easily be disable if you study the following.

The rhetorical is/was, was HOMER really outed? Or was this a trojan decoy duck move?

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