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16 Jun, 4 tweets, 2 min read
I tried, I really did. But I could not stay silent about the "Blackrock is buying all the houses" meme, about which virtually everything is wrong, including the spelling of BlackRock, which only The Onion capitalized correctly.
prospect.org/infrastructure…
I looked up BlackRock's real estate portfolio, which includes infrastructure assets & commercial buildings in addition to residential. In 2020 (the alleged time of buying up all the houses) the portfolio increased by... $20 million. That's 100 houses tops
prospect.org/infrastructure…
Now there's an actual problem with institutional investors in single-family home rentals, but the victims aren't homebuyers, they're the renters that have to live in the houses! And the time to speak up for them was 10 years ago when this all started. prospect.org/infrastructure…
The failure here is of political, activist, economic, and media elites, who apparently knew nothing about a transformative change in our rental markets until a week ago, and learned of it too late to do anything about it.
prospect.org/infrastructure…

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More from @ddayen

David Dayen Profile picture
17 Jun
Great stuff today at @TheProspect:
First, award-winning investigative journalist @mideastXmidwest scoops about #3 at the DoD Colin Kahl recently taking meetings in Silicon Valley with Apple, Google, and Palantir
prospect.org/power/when-the…
One of the purposes of Kahl’s fact-finding trip was to facilitate “close cooperation” between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley companies, “to remain on the cutting edge of military technology for years to come”
prospect.org/power/when-the…
Then, here's a triumph of public infrastructure, in contrast to what the Senate is cooking up: the world's fastest broadband, cheaper than competitors, provided by the electric utility. It's in Chattanooga, TN. Fmr mayor Andy Berke & Jonathan Gruber write:
prospect.org/economy/infras…
Read 6 tweets
David Dayen Profile picture
17 Jun
The bipartisan gang of 20 infrastructure bill is the very privatization effort Trump's White House claimed to want all along—1,000 toll roads & asset sales to big companies would bloom. I'd be far more concerned about BlackRock buying all the infrastructure than the houses
"Asset recycling" is a named "pay-for" in the framework. This is a concept from Australia, funding infrastructure by selling it to private companies. The American fire sale
static.politico.com/0a/08/39851552…
The good news for journalists is we can just call upon all the research done in 2017 when Trump proposed this crap and re-run it. Here's a taste of In The Public Interest's brief on asset recycling: inthepublicinterest.org/wp-content/upl… Image
Read 4 tweets
David Dayen Profile picture
15 Jun
Hey so nearly 2 years ago @sandeepvaheesan wrote for us as part of the #DayOneAgenda about what an FTC with sufficient will could accomplish through rulemaking on their own authority.
Whaddya know, @linamkhan and the crew have a blueprint!
prospect.org/day-one-agenda…
Sec. 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act gives authority to identify & prohibit “unfair methods of competition.” We recommended:
-banning noncompete clauses
-banning exclusive dealing "and similar practices that monopolists use to block new rivals, & deprive customers of choice
-ending pay-for-delay deals where drug companies pay generic manufacturers to not make cheaper versions of their drugs
-ending patent evergreening to extend exclusivity periods
Read 5 tweets
David Dayen Profile picture
15 Jun
Are we doing @linamkhan rememberances? I spent the day after the 2016 election with Lina.
I was supposed to give a speech at Yale Law (Hillary's alma mater) but there was like a grief session going on among students & the speech didn't happen. It was a lunch speech & the lunch was still there, uneaten. So Lina and I went to the lecture hall to have some.
And directly above us, staring down, was a super-huge portrait of Robert Bork.
Smiling, I think.
Read 4 tweets
David Dayen Profile picture
27 May
Here's my #longread feature for our latest issue: Have you wondered why Congressional hearings are, I don't know, bad? I dove into the history of oversight, the forces hobbling it today, and how to make it great again.
prospect.org/politics/inves…
A combination of understaffing, stretched responsibilities, lack of coordination, & pervasive inattention to the importance of oversight has crippled a core legislative function. And few members have a coherent philosophy about the purpose of oversight.
prospect.org/politics/inves…
Prospect founder @rkuttnerwrites was the chief investigator of the Senate Banking Committee in the 1970s. His hearings led to the Community Reinvestment Act & the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Here's Bob picketing the NRA after the MLK/RFK assassinations. prospect.org/politics/inves…
Read 10 tweets
David Dayen Profile picture
26 May
I don't know how @schwarz got through a piece about the AP being forever right-wing without discussing how they committed espionage to get Rutherford B. Hayes elected president. It's such a crazy story I put it in my book Monopolized.
theintercept.com/2021/05/25/emi…
The Western branch chief of the AP in 1876, a guy named William Henry Smith, was friends with Hayes. He just gave him a bunch of free press, inserted into wire reports nationwide. Hayes won the GOP nomination on this basis.
Hayes lost the general election popular vote to Sam Tilden but three states were under contention. I'll let the book take it from there.
Read 4 tweets

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