Tim L retweeted
If I could relive anything from childhood, it wouldn't be a special occasion. It would be riding home in the backseat after dark, half asleep, listening to my parents talk up front. Nothing extraordinary. Just a moment I'd love to have back.
Tim L retweeted
Portland’s Royal Sonesta: bought for $108.3M in 2016. Now reportedly sold for $6.83M for 220 rooms—just $31,000 per key. A staggering 93.7% price collapse.
This is what happens when government fails at public safety, downtown disorder spirals, Measure 110’s consequences go unaddressed, and Multnomah County’s mental-health system fails people in crisis.
Tourism doesn’t thrive where visitors feel unsafe and downtown businesses struggle to survive.
Portland didn’t get here by accident. Policy choices have consequences—and taxpayers, workers, businesses, and property owners are paying the price.
@mitch4portland
@pnwpolicyangel
@TeacherTiff4PDX
@kanalforpdx
@MayorKWilson
Tim L retweeted
On @fox32news tonight I broke down Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s “fair share” budget, and a recent conference on Chicago bankruptcy hosted by @ProfSchleich.
NEW: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s “fair share” budget hits everyday Chicagoans far harder than corporations.
Go deeper in this week’s edition of The Last Ward.
thelastward.org/p/how-johnso…
Tim L retweeted
Remember a couple years ago when Elon bought twitter and told the advertisers to get lost while laying off most of the employees and people who still post on here every day said that those moves would destroy the platform?
Tim L retweeted
BREAKING: Switzerland suspends funding to Doctors Without Borders after it failed to report that its staff exploited refugee women and girls for sex—in exchange for aid, jobs and money. Previously, 🇨🇭 called MSF “a source of best practice and inspiration.” swissinfo.ch/eng/internation…
Tim L retweeted
Justine is 100% right. It’s become their identity and it’s eaten up the other facets of who they are.
Perhaps the reason so many people are holding on to political “activist” identities is that they are afraid to go back to just being them. Just a plain person. @ClubRandom_ @billmaher
Tim L retweeted
He is a builder.
You are a taker.
He creates prosperity.
You stole naive people to have a good life as parasite.
STFU, comrade.
Tim L retweeted
The US National Debt is now officially over $40 TRILLION dollars
Right now it is $40,454,762,673,582
That’s over $118,000 per person in America
Interest alone on the national debt is at a record $1.05 trillion per year. That’s more than our entire Defense spending
Tim L retweeted
This post reminds me of a conversation I had last week with a friend.
He told me he was on the left. Proudly. Fine by me.
So I dug a little.
I asked him: "Have you ever seriously looked into economics? Because anyone who studies it in good faith, without intellectual dishonesty, will have a hard time staying on a Marxist line."
His answer stopped me cold:
"My entire social circle is on the left. If I'm not on the left, I'll be excluded."
Not "I read the arguments and they convinced me."
Not "the data supports it."
"I'll lose my friends."
That's the whole problem in one sentence.
His politics aren't a conclusion. They're a membership card.
And that's exactly what our schools stopped teaching. Too busy passing down an ideology instead of a method, they skipped the one skill that makes every other skill worth something: critical thinking. The ability to put your own beliefs on trial. To follow an argument where it leads, even when it costs you socially.
Being on the left isn't the problem. You can be left, right or center and still be intellectually honest.
The problem is never testing your views. Staying in pure emotion. Choosing belonging over truth.
When that becomes the norm at scale, you get a sick society. One that would rather collectively accept decline than individually admit it might be wrong.
A society that can't question itself can't fix itself.
Teach kids how to think. Not what to think.
Tim L retweeted
Katharine Birbalsingh for Education Secretary. 👏🇬🇧
She runs Michaela, a school that's 60% Muslim, and her rule is simple: everyone puts the good of the group above personal demands. Otherwise it doesn't work.
Bending to every religious or cultural demand isn't kindness. It's a failure to serve the WHOLE community.
And let's be honest, it often feels like everyone's faith gets bent over backwards for except Christianity. Nativity plays scrapped, crosses frowned on, Christmas watered down.
One rule for everyone. That's fairness.
Tim L retweeted
Why not to vote for @JulianaStratton, part bazillion.
As Lt. Gov., Juliana Stratton hired an ex-con convicted in a gang murder to assist her with — get this — crime policy.
Illinois is run by idiots.
westcooknews.com/senate-hope…
Tim L retweeted
Open the FIGHT for ILLINOIS link below and learn more about how your tax dollars are being spent in Illinois
Then download the free FIGHT for ILLINOIS APP and join in to FIGHT back
mailchi.mp/fightforillinois/…
Tim L retweeted
Downtown Chicago still has 27% of its office space empty, 1 in every 4 floors is empty.
Well above the national average of roughly 20%.
Companies have been giving back more space than they’re taking for three years straight (net absorption negative), while most of the country is starting to recover.
Chicago’s central business district is lagging.
Chicago CBD Q3 Office Vacancy 27.2%
Net absorption negative for the 12th consecutive quarter. YTD absorption -1.4M SF.
Class A 23.3%
Class B 34.2%
Class C 24.2%
Central Loop 31.1%
East Loop 34.6%
Fulton Market 15.4%
North Michigan Ave 27.0%
River North 29.0%
West Loop 22.8%
-Cushman and Wakefield
#CommercialRealEstate
Tim L retweeted
Chicago’s mayor has a police detail of 150 officers, or 4 more than the number of total CTA train stations
Tim L retweeted
Imagine the Supreme Court stopping the count after polls close and ordering polls reopen for two hours ONLY in Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Atlanta, and you sort of get the scope of what's currently happening in Brazil.
Tim L retweeted
Notice the move. Don’t answer the concern, just laugh at it. When a real worry gets turned into a punchline, the goal isn’t to inform you. It’s to make you feel silly for asking. Ridicule isn’t a rebuttal. Stay sharp, and don’t let anyone laugh you out of your own questions.
Tim L retweeted
Striking detail in the big NYT piece on Taiwanese families adjusting to working at the huge new TSMC chip plant in Arizona: their surprise at the lack of rigor in US schools.
Tim L retweeted
A college student tries to lecture Will Witt that capitalism and billionaires are the root cause of young people’s pain.
Then he asks her to explain what capitalism is, and it’s over.
WITT: “How does capitalism cause the problems that you’re seeing for young people in this country?”
WITT: “What does capitalism do?”
STUDENT: “I feel like I already kind of explained that…”
WITT: “So what is capitalism?”
STUDENT: “What do you mean what is capitalism?”
WITT: “What would you define capitalism as?”
He keeps handing her chances. She keeps refusing to take them.
WITT: “Just a definition, so we’re on the same page, because definitions are important. What would you describe capitalism as?”
Cornered, she tries changing the subject to immigrants.
STUDENT: “No, I’m saying that it’s not immigrants that are causing the problems for America.”
Witt drags her right back.
“So what is capitalism? Just tell me what capitalism is.”
STUDENT: “Okay.”
Then she walks away.
She’s not the exception. She’s the rule. A poll of 2,000 young Americans found most couldn’t define socialism or capitalism. And the more they learned about socialism, the less they liked it.
These people can tell you exactly what to hate. Just don’t ask them what it means.
CONTEXT: Capitalism pulled 1.5 billion people out of extreme poverty since 1990. Worldwide, the rate fell from 43% to 10%. Nothing else in human history comes close.