Columbia real estate

A few weeks ago, I started looking at some of the data on Columbia & SC real estate. Amber and I have been interested in buying, while at the same time remaining realistic about our financial situation since moving from Gainesville and expecting baby Seth. I've gotten into conversations with lots of people that are adamant that the market here is still great. Since I hate anecdotal evidence, I want numbers.

Here's what I've found so far...

Despite the protests and complaints from agents in the area, even the local markets here are being hit hard by a housing recession.

• SC MLS data, 1999-2007: pdf
  
• SC DOM data, March 2008: pdf
• SC MLS data, March 2008: pdf

1) There has been a steep drop-off in the total number of sales and the media price of homes in in the past few years.
2) Locally, in the Greater Columbia area, the average days on market (DOM) has jumped 19% since this time last year.
3) The number of homes & condos sold in the Greater Columbia area has dropped 17% since this time last year.
4) The median prices of homes & condos sold in the Greater Columbia area has remained completely flat since this time last year; in comparing Q1 08 to Q1 07, it has risen a paltry 0.95% since this time last year, far below the rate of inflation.

To me, it seems that the self-reinforcing trends will continue for at least a little while longer.

Here are some images from trulia:


the same image modified with trend lines:


The slump is real and obvious, although realtors are predicting an upturn this summer. Their jobs depend on it, obviously:

Compared to the first three months of last year, the median home price in the state dipped by 2.1 percent to $149,000, down from $152,000. The total number of sales declined by 21.4 percent to 11,240 total sales, according to the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data from SCR. Despite the overall decline, six of the 15 reporting regions in the state again showed positive price increases this quarter.

Virginia follows Texas with NCBCPS

A year ago to the day, I reported that the sectarian proselytizing tool known as NCBCPS was receiving its first legal challenge in Texas. Luckily, that case ended well for our civil liberties as the state saw its unconstitutional adoption of this tool would lead to further lawsuits and dropped it from the curriculum.

Virginians have now followed in Texans' footsteps. All it will take to remedy this one, as well, are some courageous parents who actually think the Constitution matters and are willing to act to enforce it. Craig County is smack dab in the heart of, you guessed it, Appalachia! More glorious progress for science education in the Bible Belt.

Medved's cluelessness knows no bounds

I already knew he was a moron, but this is a new low for Michael Medved.

Monty Python: "O Lord Please Don't Burn Us..."

There are many very funny Monthy Python clips available online. Everyone has their favorites. My own all-time favorite is from The Meaning of Life: Part II -- Growth and Learning, at about 2:12, with the song, "O Lord, Please Don't Burn Us..." (lyrics)

A few politics notes

*Update: 5/17 - check out Charles Blow's column on this issue in the NYT*

Being from the South, I'm allowed to say this: the results from WV are not surprising to me in the least. The blatant racism that I grew up in, being 30 miles from the WV border in the moutains of VA, make that race all-but-unwinnable for anyone of color. And idiot voters like this prove my point. Obama doesn't have a problem with whites, or with working-class whites. Other states, like Idaho and Iowa, have proven that. He has a problem with the pig-ignorant fuc*stick racists that populate the disproportionately old and uneducated region known as "Appalachia" which spreads through the states Obama has struggled in.

Getting into the sociology of it is more than I care to do over.

With respect to Obama choosing HRC as VP, here are Dowd's thoughts, via Americablog:

1) Is America ready for that much change - i.e., a black man and a woman on the same ticket?

2) Bill. He's going to eclipse Obama every time he shows his face. Do we really need the press ignoring the president and running over to the vice president's spouse? Not to mention, how many Bill outbursts are we willing to put up with? And finally, rhymes with Hannukah. Just how many "Hannukahs" are we welcoming back into the White House?

3) Hillary makes Obama less Obama. I'm going to quote Dowd on this one:

Hillary has a strange, unnerving effect on Obama, and whenever he is around her, he’s unable to do his best....

In the last few days, as Hillary has deflated and Obama and the Democrats have dashed for daylight, he has been more like his old self, flashing his all-is-right-with-the-world smile on the cover of Time, joshing and charming Democrats and Republicans as he wooed superdelegates on the House floor, taking on James Carville for insulting his manhood....

Obama will never be at his best around Hillary; she drains him of his magical powers....

She's right. Hillary is like that lover your friends always hate because they bring out the worst in you.

4) There's a fourth reason to dump Hillary, one that Dowd doesn't mention. How can you be for "change" and then put the name "Clinton" on your ticket. We've had a Bush or a Clinton on the ticket since 1981. Thirty years is enough.

5) And finally, one more point Dodd doesn't raise. Do Obama really want to take another four years of this woman? Do we?

Obama is doing a great job calling BS on McCain for his voting record on the environment and on his failure to support the troops by opposing the new GI Bill.

While this isn't funny at all, this is, and so is this.

Brooks on "Neural Buddhism"

Interesting editorial by David Brooks about how science will be forcing a cultural revolution when it comes to religion. In his view, traditional belief in the Bible will continue to erode (as it has been) in the newer generations, while he thinks a sort of Buddhist approach to God will be embraced. Unfortunately, as with so many opinion pieces, his lacks any attempt whatsoever to provide evidence that this is occurring. I present mine in the form of statistics and trends.

Perhaps David thinks it's a framing issue? He never bothers to substantiate claims like:

Lo and behold, over the past decade, a new group of assertive atheists has done battle with defenders of faith. The two sides have argued about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it.

The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a scientific revolution can change public culture. Just as “The Origin of Species reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world.

And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.

Science has been doing that for decades and decades now. And I think, in large part, it's simply due to the way that science causes you to think and ask for evidence for claims and try to develop logical connections. Research has also pointed to psychological factors involved in the rejection of science in favor of creationism. I don't think it's simply a "liberal education = anti-religion" thing, although there are things to think through there. However, I've warned before against making another "failed prophecy" that science will wipe out religion, while at the same time recognizing:

f people agree that the scientific method establishes knowledge, and that faith is not knowledge, then the bifurcation of science and religion is a deep and meaningful issue. If faith has not suffered, it has certainly adapted as knowledge has been established to contradict the teachings and interpretations of the Bible. Admittedly, theists may always claim that the contradiction lies in the interpretation of their Scriptures, and not in the Scriptures themselves, but the effect of marginalization of faith via scientific progress is a real phenomenon that I think modern theists are quite well-aware of.

Next, David tip-toes up to the line of BS:

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

Not once does he bother explaining what, if anything, resembles supernaturalism in scientific research. Not once does he bother substantiating the idea that brain researchers are moving away from reductionist explanations, towards any form of spirituality whatsoever. Instead, he seems to make the same non sequiturs we've seen before from scientific findings claiming support for religious ideas. But there's biology, then there's bullshit. In fact, the more we look at morality and other previously-philosophy-only topics, the more simplified science makes them. Now, am I claiming here that some scientists and atheists don't admit that science does not yet (and maybe never will) have tools to "establish" things like qualia and morality as scientific theories? No. I've said so myself. But Brooks doesn't show us anything, anywhere, that resembles a "science is leading us away from naturalism and towards Buddhism" shred of evidence.

A few politics notes

Some politics-related stuff...

• Paul Krugman gives us reason to hope in the fall: here and here. He demonstrates that general election results (early polls are to be ignored) are almost entirely predictable on the basis of election-year economics and the sitting president's popularity:
  
  The above shows net POTUS approval: approval minus disapproval, and how much of the vote the sitting president's party got that election year.
  
  This shows (obviously) election-year GDP growth plotted against how much of the vote the sitting president's party got that election year.
  
  This shows (obviously) election-year real income growth plotted against how much of the vote the sitting president's party got that election year.
  
  Krugman's analysis:

  Also, a number of models find that there’s an 8-year itch: voters tend to turn against the incumbent party if it has held the White House for two or more terms.
  
  Right now, GDP is flat (falling in the monthly estimates); Bush has a negative net approval of 30 percent or more; and people are tired of Republicans. So it ought to be a smashing Democratic victory. When I plug current numbers into the Abramowitz model (making a guess about 1st-half GDP and assuming that Bush approval in June will be about where it is today), it says 57-43 Democrats.
  
  What about current polls showing a race that could go either way? Never mind, say the poli-sci people: GE polling this early tells us almost nothing.

  Keep your fingers crossed!

• The credit card debt I worried about a few months ago has grown:

  Consumer credit increased by $15.3 billion for the month to $2.56 trillion, the biggest monthly rise since November, the Federal Reserve said today in Washington. In February, credit rose by $6.5 billion, previously reported as an increase of $5.2 billion. The Fed's report doesn't cover borrowing secured by real estate, such as home-equity loans.
  
  Consumers are turning to credit cards after banks tightened standards for home-equity loans and other borrowing. The March figures brought U.S. consumer borrowing in the first quarter to $34 billion, the most since the first three months of 2001, when the economy entered its last official recession.
  
  ``Consumers are strapped as incomes are not keeping up with inflation and this is leading them to rely increasingly on credit to see them through the worst housing downturn since the Great Depression,'' said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi in New York. ``The days of extracting cash from one's home to spend on goods and services are long gone.''

  Divide $2.56 trillion by 96 million and you get $26,667 in credit card debt per household. Also, inventory buildups, rather than consumption, were probably responsible for the tiny amount of GDP growth that did occur, according to Krugman.

• According to Pentagon records, “[m]ore than 43,000 U.S. troops listed as medically unfit for combat in the weeks before their scheduled deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2003 were sent anyway.” Veterans groups say this “reliance on troops found medically ‘non-deployable’ is another sign of stress placed on a military that has sent 1.6 million servicemembers to the war zones.”

• Joe Klein gets down to business by excoriating the media (complicit: himself) on their lack of balance between substance and bullshit this campaign season:

  Clinton's paste-on populism changed absolutely nothing. The demographic blocs that had determined the shape of this remarkable campaign remained stolidly in place. Blacks, young people and those with college educations voted for Obama; Clinton won women, the elderly, whites without college educations. Clinton's slim margin of victory in Indiana was provided, appropriately enough, by Republicans, who were 10% of the Democratic-primary electorate and whose votes she carried 54% to 46% — some, perhaps, at the behest of the merry prankster Rush Limbaugh, who had counseled his ditto heads to bring "chaos" to the Democratic electoral process by voting for their favorite whipping girl.
  ...
  And with good reason. The formerly charismatic Obama had undergone a transformation of his own: from John F. Kennedy to Adlai Stevenson, from dashing rhetorician to good-government egghead. He derided the gas-tax holiday as the gimmick it was, gambling that Democrats would see through the ruse. He trudged through the Wright debacle, never allowing his impeccable disposition to slip toward anger or pettiness. On the Sunday before the primaries, he gave a dour, newsless interview to Tim Russert, enduring another 20 minutes of questions about the Reverend Wright. Meanwhile, Clinton was spiky and histrionic in her simultaneous duel with George Stephanopoulos. She made alpha-dog power moves, standing up to talk to the live audience while Stephanopoulos remained seated, forcing him to stand uncomfortably beside her and then, later, embarrassing her host by reminiscing about his liberal, anti-NAFTA, Clinton-staffer past.
  
  It wasn't until I read the transcript that I realized that Clinton's bravado had masked a brazenly empty performance. Stephanopoulos nailed her time after time, mostly on matters of character.
  ...
  In retrospect, it was easy to see that Clinton was desperate, willing to say almost anything to get over. At the time, she just seemed strong, certainly stronger than Obama on Meet the Press ... at least she did to me and many members of my chattering tribe. And our knee-jerk reactions — our prejudice toward performance values over policy — could infect the campaign to come between Obama and John McCain, just as it has the primaries.
  
  Clinton's apparent loss of the nomination was a consequence of her campaign's incompetence, but it was also a result of her reliance on the same-old. The shameless populism that seemed a possible game changer to media observers, micro-ideas like the gas-tax holiday, the willingness to go negative — which Obama tried intermittently, in halfhearted reaction to Clinton's attacks — appeared very old and clichéd to Obama's legion of young supporters, who were the real game changers in this year of extraordinary turnouts. That, and the fact that Democrats have been the party of government, tragically hooked on the high-minded: they don't react well to flagrant pandering or character assassination. This has been a losing position these past 40 years, and the media — like pollsters and political consultants — tend to look in the rearview mirror and pretend to see the future.
  
  In his victory speech after the smashing North Carolina results came in, Obama went directly after both McCain and the media. "[McCain's] plan to win in November appears to come from the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election," Obama said. "Yes, we know what's coming. I'm not naive. We've already seen it, the same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas, the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives, by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy, in the hopes that the media will play along."
  
  That may have been unfair to McCain, since the Senator from Arizona won the Republican nomination in much the same way Obama has triumphed — as an outsider, an occasional reformer, a pariah to blowhards like Limbaugh. But it's also true that McCain has a choice to make: in the past month, he has wobbled between the high and low roads, at one point calling Obama the Hamas candidate for President after a member of that group "endorsed" the Senator from Illinois. If McCain wants to maintain his reputation as a politician more honorable than most, he's going to have to stop the sleaze.
  ...
  In the end, Obama's challenge to the media is as significant as his challenge to McCain. All the evidence — and especially the selection of these two apparent nominees — suggests the public not only is taking this election very seriously but is also extremely concerned about the state of the nation and tired of politics as usual. I suspect the public is also tired of media as usual, tired of journalists who put showmanship over substance ... as I found myself doing in the days before the May 6 primaries. Obama was talking about the Republicans, but he could easily have been talking about the press when he said, "The question, then, is not what kind of campaign they will run; it's what kind of campaign we will run. It's what we will do to make this year different. You see, I didn't get into this race thinking that I could avoid this kind of politics, but I am running for President because this is the time to end it."
  
  Politics will always be propelled by grease, hot air and showmanship, but in the astonishing prosperity of the late 20th century, we allowed our public life to drift toward too much show biz, too little substance.



• The virtual media blackout on the Pentagon war propaganda-PR program that involved sending supposedly objective military analysts to media outlets still remains. But, now some of the junk is getting out:

  RUMSFELD: Mm-hmm.
  
  UNIDENTIFIED 1: But we would love — I would personally love — and I think I speak for most of the gentlemen here at the table — for you to take the offensive, to just go out there and just crush these people so that when we go on, we’re — forgive me — we’re parroting, but it’s what has to be said. It’s what we believe in, or we would not be saying it.
  
  [crosstalk]
  
  UNIDENTIFIED 1: And we’d love to be following our leader, as indeed you are. You are the leader. You are our guy.

  The rest of the junk is here.

Finally, a non-politics issue: just how FUBAR is Scientology? It's hard to even quantify.

McCain's pastor problem

Finally.

I've whined and whined about the media's lack of interest in comparing McCain's ties to Parsley with Obama and Wright, the latter story receiving more coverage, literally, than Hillary Clinton herself during the same period!

Mother Jones to the rescue, bringing some balance.

PS: See this Daily Show humor on Billy Graham and other pastors in politics.

Hillary's off-the-wall "elite" comments

I watched the town hall meeting with HRC and Snuffleupagus yesterday, and I have to agree that Hillary's "elite" remarks were both wrong and worrisome:

“I think we’ve been for the last seven years seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion behind policies that haven’t worked well for hard working Americans,” she said.

“Elite opinion” hasn’t been “behind policies that haven’t worked well for hard working Americans”; elite opinion has been pushing in the other direction. Bush hasn’t been operating with the support of policy experts; he’s been blowing off policy experts as liberal eggheads who think too much. And now Clinton appears ready to join him.

A bit later she added:

“It’s really odd to me that arguing to give relief to a vast majority of Americans creates this incredible pushback… Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that don’t benefit” the vast majority of the American people.

Good news: Barack won Guam and Dems won in LA.

The "liberal media"

Every time I hear "the liberal media" for the next few months, I'll think of these two things:

1. the media blackout on the use of White House and Pentagon propaganda in Big Media
2. the media's complete absence of balance in comparison of Rev. Wright to Evangelical pastors who say similar (or worse, depending on your perspective) things and enjoy the respect of news organizations during interviews and coverage; this includes Hagee's endorsement of McCain

PS: Frank Rich on 5/4 had a great column about issue #2.
PPS: It appears that a few House members are demanding an investigation on #1.