Grass-Roots Politics Hits A New High

Whew! That post headline was almost too easy to write.
Your MesaZona blogger, with 'a nose for the news', likes to get wind of stories like this:

The Owner of Two Pot Shops Won a City Council Seat in a Conservative, Rural Town

December 2 2017, 7:52 am

And he changed its reputation

The story was published yesterday about an election in November in Washington State. It's far from your typical kind of reporting by a long shot ....What made the guy's campaign to get elected work? 

 

According to the article, ". . . he eventually won his district over by practicing good, old-fashioned retail politics: showing up at events, talking to people, hearing them out, and recruiting them to his agenda.

Lee joked that he made his campaign less about his “evil cannabis agenda,” than a contrast between himself and the incumbent. Jones was chief financial officer at the Hanford nuclear reservation, a local Superfund site.
In his campaign literature, Lee noted that his business wasn’t that different from any business — and that it contributed to the local economy.
His website notes that his business Green2Go “has since created over 30 fulltime positions with full benefits, contributed $65,000 in local charitable giving, generated over $500,000 in local tax revenue and $2,200,000 in state tax revenue.”
“It was sort of like, billion-dollar-budget-federal guy versus hometown, small-business owner, so it was really the effort to push the narrative in that direction, and that definitely took,” he said of his campaign. 
READ MORE > https://theintercept.com 

 

What They Do Remains A Secret: The MOST ELITE Special Forces in the World

Published on Dec 2, 2017

Views: 185,657

Almost all countries have a special elite unit of soldiers that have been trained both physically and mentally to fight enemies when the job is a bridge too far for regular soldiers. Months of grueling training, which is too much for most aspiring elite soldiers, also teaches them to endure and withstand punishment and torture.
Today we’ll look at the best of them, in this episode of the Infographics Show, Top 9 Most Elite Special Forces in the World.

Can't Get New York Out-of-My-Mind :)

Bruce Springsteen w. Billy Joel - New York State of Mind - Madison Squar...

Electroquakes, Cyclone, Space Weather | S0 News Dec.3.2017

Sign-Of-The-Times > In Real Estate We Trust | The Rise of REITs

Texas mall price plunges

Nov. 29, 2017 3:41 PM ET|By: Stephen Alpher, SA News Editor

How'd we miss this one?

The WSJ's Esther Fung last night detailed the growing phenomenon of selling malls online.That mall sales are going digital shouldn't be surprising in 2017, but check out the recent sale of Vista Ridge Mall in Odessa, Texas.

 

It could give pause to bottom-fishing mall/shopping-center investors.

The two-level 1.05M square-foot mall was valued at $144M in 2001.

Then e-commerce began to happen. It was appraised at $46M in June of 2016, at $34.5M in February of this year, and ultimately sold for $18.1M.

h/t Aaron Edelheit

Among interested parties:

PREIT (NYSE:PEI), Weingarten Realty (NYSE:WRI),

Kimco (NYSE:KIM),

Inland Real Estate (NYSE:IRC),

Federal Realty (NYSE:FRT),

DDR (NYSE:DDR),

Whitestone REIT (NYSEMKT:WSR),

Kite Realty (NYSE:KRG),

CBL (NYSE:CBL),

Regency Centers (NYSE:REG),

Washington Prime (NYSE:WPG)

 

See more on Global Infrastructure ETFs » 

_________________________________________________________________________________

 

Related content:

The Retail Apocalypse Is Demolishing Mall Investors 

http://www.businessinsider.com/retail-store-closures-hurt-reits-2017-5

"  . . Some of the share prices more than doubled over those years, as part of the commercial property bubble that got so huge that the Fed keeps publicly fretting about it, naming it as one of the reasons for raising interest rates, precisely to tamp down on the valuations. The Fed is worried that an implosion of these inflated commercial property values can take down the banks.
Mall REITs were part of this inflated commercial property universe, and they soared with it. That entire universe is now peaking. But separately, mall REITs are also caught up in the relentless brick-and-mortar retail meltdown, as online shopping is taking over. This is a structural shift that will continue to progress. Mall owners are already trying to find a way to “repurpose” their malls. But this isn’t going to be smooth.
As so many times, Private Equity firms are in the thick of it. . .:
Read… I’m in Awe of How Fast Brick-and-Mortar Retail is Melting Down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brick-and-Mortar Meltdown Sinks Property Prices

By Wolf Richter, WOLFSTREET.com:
"Commercial real estate prices soared relentlessly for years after the Financial Crisis, to such a degree that the Fed has been publicly fretting about them. Why? Because US financial institutions hold nearly $4 trillion of commercial real estate loans. But the boom in most CRE sectors is over.
The Green Street Property Price Index – which measures values across five major property sectors – had soared 107% from May 2009 to the plateau that began late last year, and 27% from the peak of the totally crazy prior bubble that ended with such spectacular fireworks. But it has now turned around, dragged down by a plunge in prices for retail space.
The CPPI by Green Street Advisors dropped 1.1% in October from September. In terms of points, the 1.4-point decline was the largest monthly decline since March 2009. The index is now below where it had been in June 2016 . . . 
This phenomenal bubble, as depicted by the chart above, has even worried the Fed because US financial institutions hold nearly $4 trillion of CRE loans, according to Boston Fed governor Eric Rosengren earlier this year. Of them, $1.2 trillion are held by smaller banks (less than $50 billion in assets). These smaller banks tends to have a loan book that is heavily concentrated on CRE loans, and these banks are less able to withstand shocks to collateral values.
Rosengren found that among the root causes of the Financial Crisis “was a significant decline in collateral values of residential and commercial real estate.”
But the CRE bubble isn’t unraveling as gently as the chart suggests. Some sectors are still surging, while others are plunging. According to the report, the index, which captures the prices at which CRE transactions are currently being negotiated and contracted, “was pushed down by falling mall valuations.”
Which sector is plunging, and which is soaring? 
> Lodging took a 12% plunge that started in 2015, and it never recovered. It has remained essentially flat since, currently with a 1% gain over the beaten-down levels last year.
> The industrial sector is hot. The index jumped 10% year-over-year in October. Industrial includes warehouse space for “fulfillment centers,” as Amazon calls them. They are in hot demand, not only from Amazon, which has been leasing them around the country, but also from other logistics and retail companies
READ MORE > Zero Hedge
 

Let's See What $12 Million Buck$ Makes [Originally at $5M] Hmmm ...

Pioneer Park Grand Opening Celebration

The City of Mesa cordially invites you to the Pioneer Park Grand Opening Celebration on Saturday, Dec. 16 at 4:30pm.  526 E. Main Street, Mesa. 

Come check out the amazing 9,000 sq. foot iconic playground designed to feel like you're playing in the trees, 15 foot water wall and 850 sq. foot splash pad! 

Toxic Waste FromT 2 Former Military Bases Here In Mesa?

Bombs in Your Backyard

by Lena Groeger, Ryann Grochowski Jones & Abrahm Lustgarten, 30 Nov 2017

The military spends more than a billion dollars a year to clean up sites its operations have contaminated with toxic waste and explosives. These sites exist in every state in the country. Some are located near schools, residential neighborhoods, rivers and lakes.

A full map of these sites has never been made public – until now. Enter your address to see the hazardous sites near you, or select a state

Link > Projects/ProPublica

 

The State of Arizona has 29: How States Compare Riskiest

Some of these sites are probably near you and you may not even know it.

> Many of these sites have extensive groundwater and soil pollution, or present a risk of exploding bombs and munitions, even if they are open to the public. Some have been converted to parks and wildlife reserves and even housing developments.
> Many sites were part of old defense facilities that have long since shut down, and may not be known locally, even though a risk of exposure to contaminants may still be present.
> Even sites where the DOD says it has already completed its response can present an ongoing threat or risk to the public.
> While the data pinpoints a precise location, contamination from that location may well affect a much larger area, including public and private lands

and the water supplies beneath them.










TAKE THE TIME TO  TAKE A LOOK AT THE MILLION$ OF DOLLARS SPENT BY THE CITY OF MESA FOR WATER AND WASTEWATER TREATMENTS - $190,000,000

You may want to investigate environmental concerns in an area surrounding a defense site for connections to the pollution there.





Note: The risk level of a site refers to a relative risk assessment made by the DOD to prioritize the cleanup of sites.
Data: All data comes from the Defense Environmental Restoration Program and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and will be released soon at the ProPublica Data Store.
Read our methodology »
Additional design and development by Al Shaw and Mike Tigas

The number of military installations with ongoing “high” and “medium risk” hazardous sites, by state

Calif. 131
Fla. 66
Alaska 65
Texas 62
Hawaii 43
N.Y. 32
Ariz. 29
N.M. 25
Va. 25
Kan. 24
__________________________________________________________________________
For the past year, ProPublica has been documenting the state of toxic pollution left behind by the military across the U.S. As part of this investigation, we acquired a dataset of all facilities that the Department of Defense considers contaminated.
Today we used the data to publish an interactive news application called Bombs in Your Backyard. Here’s how you can use it to find hazardous sites near you — and what, if anything, is being done to remedy the pollution.
The data, which has never been released before, comes from the Defense Environmental Restoration Program, which the DOD administers to measure and document cleanup efforts at current and former military locations.
There are a lot of great local investigative stories waiting to be done with the data. This reporting recipe is meant to help you find and report ones near you.