1) Republicans Buy Into the “BlackRock Myth” on Housing

President Trump announced yesterday that he's suspending sales of homes to "institutional investors" - such as hedge funds and big banks. The White House and many GOP members of Congress think this will reduce the price of buying a home.

It won't. What we have here is called the "BlackRock Myth."

One almost comical blunder is that this is a case of mistaken identity. Blackrock doesn’t buy housing. BlackSTONE DOES. But some how Blackrock became the whipping boy here.  

Now, as to the facts of this argument that investors are driving up the cost of buying a home, ace reporter Jerusalem Demsas has done the best reality check:

Cotality (formerly CoreLogic) tracks investor purchases by size and at no point have large or mega investors (those owning hundreds or over 1,000 properties) constituted a significant share of the housing market. Notably, these are just purchases: at any given moment the vast majority of homes are not for sale, meaning the share of homes investors own is even smaller. As you can see, purchases by mega-investors have never even been 4% of total home purchases...

The other important variable is that a significant share of the single-family homes owned by institutional investors are built-to-rent. That means these investors are not converting existing properties that are potentially available for sale to individuals, but creating totally new rental supply.

She’s absolutely right. And one unintended consequence of banning institutional investment in housing is this will surely reduce the incentive to build new homes.

2) Washington State's Climate Change Program Benefits Inflated by a Factor of 1,000!!!

Does anyone in the climate change industrial complex ever tell the truth about ANYTHING?

Here's the latest whopper lie from Washington state's Commerce Department, which has spent $1.5 BILLION in recent years on reducing carbon dioxide emissions:

"Due to a data entry error, Commerce reported that 7.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced as a result of eight rebate projects funded by the Climate Commitment Act supporting home electrification and appliance rebates for low-income and vulnerable communities. The corrected data now estimates that 78,000 tons of emissions will be reduced over the lifetime of those projects."

Their pitiful excuse is a "data entry error?" How about calling the mistake blatant fraud.

The state's Commerce Department wasted more than $1 billion on a project that achieved 1% of its target.

This wins our Maxwell Smart "missed it by that much" award for exaggeration.

We hope all our readers will remember this when the climate fanatics lecture us about “following the science.” These people can’t even add.

3) Another Win for UP in Our Crusade To End ESG Madness

It's another banner day for our efforts to take political issues like climate change and racial quotas out of pension fund management. We hope that all other big money management firms follow suit and stop taking the advice of lefty “proxy advisors.”

4) Venezuela: South America's Murder Capital

Our graphs in Monday's HOTLINE on how poverty, inflation, and out-migration soared under dictators Chavez and Nicolas Maduro got a lot of response from readers. One reader correctly noted we left out a chart on the quadrupling of homicides.

When Chávez took power in 1999, homicide rates were at around 25 per 100,000, and now that rate has jumped to 90. There were just under 6,000 violent deaths at the end of 1999, and now there are 26,000. This is one of the highest homicide rates in the world.

5) Minnesota Welfare Scandal Has Spread To Many Blue States

Over 95 people have been indicted in the mushrooming Minnesota fraud scandal that prosecutors estimate could top $9 billion. The Trump administration is gathering evidence of massive welfare fraud in four more Blue states beyond Minnesota: New York, California, Illinois, and Colorado.

In California, even Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna, representing Silicon Valley, cites state mismanagement of as much as $72 billion in taxpayer funds. He admits his office has been "inundated" with constituent complaints about unemployment fraud during the pandemic (losses estimated at a minimum of $20 billion) and homeless programs.

Meanwhile, many other Democrats in Congress aren't outraged, and they are ignoring the theft of taxpayer money. On Wednesday, Democrats disrupted testimony on the Minnesota fraud at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee.

The Daily Caller reports Massachusetts Democrat Ayanna Pressley screamed at the top of her lungs as she fought to distract attention from the scandal.

6) Mission Impossible

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