"This year, 33
states introduced 81 bills
to ban Chinese nationals from land ownership... "

Excellent. now let's
Ban Hedge Funds
from the Same.

housing as Commodity
treats Human Beings
as commodities &
ever Wonder just
Where all these
Homeless're
From?

right There's
your Answer.

I don’t think Bush “did” 9/11, but he and his pals certainly didn’t do much to prevent it from happening.

Many of King County's workers had a 32 hour work week in the 70's into the 80's. They (we) were switched to 40 with proportional pay raises.

@3 is correct.

I love it when people hand-wring about China. Little late for that. If they are so scary, we probably shouldn't have made our entire economy dependent on them.

You got it completely wrong/backwards according to the NYTimes:

“On July 5, 2023, Trump Employee 4 informed Chief Judge Boasberg that he no longer wished to be represented by Mr. Woodward and that, going forward, he wished to be represented by the First Assistant Federal Defender,” the filing said, referring to Mr. Taveras. “Immediately after receiving new counsel, Trump Employee 4 retracted his prior false testimony and provided information that implicated Nauta, De Oliveira, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage, as set forth in the superseding indictment.”

@2 Oh raindrop, the self hating log cabin republican who thinks gays haven't been oppressed or discriminated against now cares about LGBTQ issues? Give me a break.

@9: Yes even The Golden State has it's share of right wing zealots like you, of course if you knew more about California, and the rest of the world, than what is spoon fed to you by faux news, you would know that.

@10: I know, right?! I had to re-read it twice, and then the ABC News story Vivian linked to, and it's definitely backwards in her Slog AM piece.

what’s that about letting one’s freak flag fly?

First, it is highly unlikely any additional victims of the Maui disaster will be identified. They died in a firestorm: overtaken by a fast-moving wall of flame which quickly asphyxiated them, then immediately cremated their remains. Tens of thousands of civilians died this way when the Brits and Americans firebombed Dresden in 1945, and so many disappeared so completely, historians will forever argue over how many THOUSANDS were never identified.

Second, if the Stranger wants to complain about racist hysteria-mongering against Chinese citizens buying property in the U.S., then the Stranger should start with this:

“This flow of Chinese money is looking for the next housing market, and it appears that Seattle and California cities are emerging targets. […] And what is crucial to note, again, is that this money is not being invested in productive enterprises; nearly 90% of the money is being used to purchase homes. […] it is estimated that Chinese investors purchased $1.1 billion in real estate in Seattle in 2015.“

(https://www.thestranger.com/architecture/2017/04/20/24442014/hot-money-and-seattles-growing-housing-crisis-part-one)

From the pearl clutching raindrop - "@5: Eye roll. As a gay man, I don't feel the need for the "I'm oppressed too, count me in" schtick."

And now feigning insult because TS didn't mention one LGBTQ issue? Hypocritical much?

@7 -- "Purchases
by rich investment companies
(local or international) drive up costs
for Americans who may want to buy property here."

that's a Bingo.
how many kid's
These days'll EVER
be able to afford to
purchase a Home -- let
alone an Education. the American
Dream goes to ever so Fewer. but They
Live like Pharos with jets and spaceships

we live in
Squalor

oh and Any fool*
advocating for a less
than 40 - 60 hour Work week!
is either a Commie or a Marxist and
Definitely a Deadbeat Anti-ANTI-American

*& the
trumpfster'll
see to You plenty soon enough.

"This year, 33 states introduced 81 bills to ban Chinese nationals from land ownership: Yeah, it’s as dumb and racist as it sounds."

Isn't this essentially what Mudede has been advocating for?

https://www.thestranger.com/architecture/2017/04/20/24442014/hot-money-and-seattles-growing-housing-crisis-part-one

https://www.thestranger.com/architecture/2018/01/09/25692670/seattle-is-now-number-three-us-city-for-foreign-real-estate-investors

I started to say that there’s nothing racist about national security, but then I had to bite my tongue thinking about the Japanese-American internment during WWII – a regretful and very shameful chapter of our American history. Still, I do not think it’s racist to bar foreign nationals – unfriendly foreign nationals – from buying up not only agricultural land but storied American food producers (like Smithfield). Some argue that such investment helps the trade imbalance, but I find that argument specious like when I make the announcement that my new business will create recession-proof jobs, and then you find out the jobs that are created are for underage, indentured sex slaves.

We know that the government of China plays fast and furious with international law. We know they can be mighty underhanded. This is not a condemnation of Chinese people. It’s a clarion call to the PRC that we’re on to your shit.

If Xi and his associates are buying up farmland and other real estate near military bases and silos, or if they are insinuating themselves in American food production, then fuck yeah, that needs big time scrutiny if not a total ban. And by the way, if you still think it’s somehow discriminatory to do this to China, well then look to other countries. We aren’t the only ones barring investment. Go and try to buy a house (if you aren’t a zillionaire) in Canada, Sweden, France, or Switzerland.

Davy’s a handsome young fellow, but if he’s freaking out at games…yeah, no….let’s don’t put him through that.

You really don’t have to scratch the surface very deep at all for the yellow pus to start oozing out of any Republican candidate, do you? I used to pride myself on keeping fairly current with the political 411, but folks, I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t watch that debate tonight. It’ll make me nothing but angry. There’s no hope of a moderating perspective from any of the candidates. It's a pit of slithering, self-serving vipers. I used to be able to dismiss it with a “get her!” Now, it just induces nausea. Everybody is tired and rolls their eyes at the Nazi comparisons, but really, you wouldn’t have caught me at the Munich or Nuremberg rallies “just to hear their point-of-view.” I know what their points-of-view are going to be, and I don’t need to hear them ever again.

I’ll be watching “Justified: City Primeval” admiring how good Timothy Olyphant still looks – at 55 – in a pair of boxer shorts.

@18:
Doncha know that, as soon as the r party is back in power, Koch industries will get massive tax cuts, and taxpayer funded subsidies and then they will piss down, er, I mean the wealth will trickle down to us, and we'll all be rich.
Just ask (Ayn) Rand fan and Koch spox Mike Rowe

@23: Please have someone, a teacher, perhaps explain to you what quotation marks mean

@22 -- we'll
all be Dead

or wishing so
floods and fires
incoming Hordes
gonna make them rs
Wishin' they'd NEVER
outlawed the Fentynal.

oh well.

Tom Tomorrow:
https://thenib.com/action-mcnews-2123/

@20: Best of all, the series begins by correctly identifying the entire reason for the affordability crisis, only to dismiss it as not alarmist enough:

“Demand is up, but it’s not simply driven by population growth. Yes, our tech sector is growing. Welcome to Seattle! Happy you’re here, you 70,000 people who have joined us since 2010. Tech workers, however, are not the problem. These fine young people who have scored a good job and want to find a decent house or apartment are only one factor increasing demand in our region. Yes, tech workers are well-paid and can spend more than others for housing and yes, they are a large cohort.”

Seattle’s population in 2010 was 610,654. An increase of 70,00 was 11.5%, almost all of them with high-paying jobs, which more than explained the situation. But the Stranger’s failed economic writer and failing mayoral candidate wanted to direct ire at the Chinese, so off they went to do so.

Oh, leave poor Raindrop alone! For a Republican, he's really nice. Nicer than some of you.

When oligarchs and corporations from corrupt countries like China and Russia buy up U.S. houses for investment purposes, we all suffer, especially younger and poorer people. But where they're from is not that important, it's what they're doing. Locking up housing (or water rights) for investment purposes--regardless of where the individuals or corporations are located--is the problem. Investment speculation should happen on the stock market rather than being targeted toward human necessities like shelter and water. You want to buy a home? You should have to live there. You want to buy water rights? You should roll up your sleeves and start farming. Not every aspect of life should be exposed to the free market.

@27 Yeah, that's Charles best work right there, he was very proud of that series. I'm surprised he hasn't been on here lately harping about a vacancy tax: but then again, he's barely churning out an article a month these days.

Looks like Wagner chief (and former mutineer) Prigozhin was on a plane that went down/was shot down in Russia today. I'll shed a tear for him as soon as there's some real accountability for Wagner's serial war crime violations in Syria, Ukraine, and a large portion of sub-Sarahan Africa. I'm just kind of surprised it wasn't a fall out a window or a wee bit of nerve agent that topped him.

@boatgeek
perhaps pooty needed to thin
the Ranks of a little more than merely
his former Sandwhich maker.* Efficiency's

what got Pooty where he is today
that and a little psychopathy.
War Crimes takes a
Special kinda
guy

*driver
caterer?

I’d like to point out that not every Chinese immigrant to the states is a puppet of their government - some where invited here to fill jobs, attend school, attempt to improve their economic status. If the ban was somehow a less veiled swipe at China, I might buy the national security crap - but given our willingness to do business with corrupt countries like Saudi Arabia, this is just more of the same yellow peril of yesterday year (Chinese exclusion act 2.0).

Thanks for calling out the racist BS

@31: Charles’ writings on economics should remain confined to long-winded ‘explanations’ as to why his bar tabs always seem to grow exponentially faster than the Consumer Price Index. I’m sure analyzing this deeply inscrutable mystery will require extremely long-winded quotes from hipster economists no one outside of academic cloisters in North-Western Europe can even name. ;-)

@35: “Thanks for calling out the racist BS.”

As noted above, @16, @20, etc., the Stranger had no problem pushing exactly this very same “racist BS” when their favored mayoral candidate needed a simple, easy, and apparently promising explanation to sell younger voters.

@35 - Hey, B. I'm an admirer of parts of the Chinese culture and its many historical contrubutions towards the history of man. Please enjoy educating yourself here and working here. Enjoy every aspect of American life you wish to indulge in, but you are not entitled to try to discover, for instance, where the nuclear codes are kept. And let's be real. Were I to do that in China? Boy oh boy.

I wish you safety and protection while you are here. Stories have surfaced in places like Vancouver where Chinese nationals residing there are warned to stop publicly bad-mouthing Chinese policy else they may be grabbed while walking their dogs and shipped back home under cover of the night.

No one here wants that for you, and I daresay you'd never be threatened with that unless, of course, you were indeed proven to deal in espionage.

Best wishes.

Whether promoting this racist fear-mongering or denouncing it, the Stranger still manages to ignore the most important thing about it: foreign nationals’ ownership of American real estate brings many benefits to America. Having foreign money pay our local property taxes is not a bad thing; ditto paying local wages and salaries to maintain developed properties.

But there’s a really neat advantage if the foreigners are from a despotic country with which the US may find itself in dispute: foreign-owned asserts may be seized by the US government, and damn is it hard to move buildings and land on short notice. The greater the value of asserts under foreign nationals’ ownership, the bigger the stick the US government has available to wield against their government.

@21, 37,

Thanks for chiming in here. Was mildly concerned when I didn't see anything from you in the immediate aftermath of the storm down there.

@29: are you claiming this is not an exact quote of what you wrote?
"@5: Eye roll. As a gay man, I don't feel the need for the "I'm oppressed too, count me in" schtick."

https://www.thestranger.com/race/2023/08/09/79112667/was-montgomery-brawl-the-twilight-of-black-twitter/comments/1

If someone were to call me a "Left-Wing Zealot" I wouldn't care

So sad about what is happening in Maui. And how tragic that it was all preventable.

Agreed with several commenters: foreign land investment needs to be regulated.

Here's to getting the Sourdough fire--and ALL wildfires--at 100% contained.

@21 Bauhaus I and @30 periwinkle for the WIN!

"Investment speculation should happen
on the stock market rather than being
targeted toward human neces-
sities like shelter and water."

--@Periwinkle, brilliantly

unless of course you happen to Believe
the Citizenry's here solely for thee
most Cunning amongst us to
harvest as they see fit. so a
few Win and the Rest LOSE

let's
VOTE
on that.