“These politicians run on their ‘intentions’ – never their results,” said the column from the WND News Center which provided MHProNews the op-ed that follows in Part I by Laura Hollis. Per her bio in brief from WND: “Laura Hollis is an attorney and educator. She resides in Indiana with her husband and children.” Per Hollis’ LinkedIn profile: “I have 30+ years’ experience in curriculum and other program development and delivery…I have expertise in curriculum development in entrepreneurship and innovation.” “I also do research, write, and am available for speaking engagements on multiple topics related to my other areas of expertise and interest (law, public policy, politics and current events, economics, business, society).” Her expertise includes: “Teaching law – Business Law, Civil Procedure, Corporate Law, Public Policy.” More related insights will follow including MHVille analysis and commentary in Part II.

 

Part I

CALIFORNIA BURNING

Crises directly caused by Democrat policies

These politicians run on their ‘intentions’ – never their results

By Laura Hollis | January 16, 2025

Fires continue to destroy parts of Los Angeles and its surrounding areas. At this writing, more than 40,000 acres have burned. Twelve thousand-plus structures – mostly homes but also businesses, churches and schools – have burned to the ground. Pacific Palisades is virtually gone, as are parts of Malibu and much of Altadena. Almost 200,000 people have been forced to evacuate, and thousands of them will have no home to return to. Two dozen people have been killed. Estimates of the damage done are already at almost $150 billion – 10 times the losses of the Maui fires last year – and the California fires are nowhere near contained.

Back during the Ethiopian famine of the middle 1980s that killed between 300,000 and 1.2 million people, I heard someone say, “Mother Nature creates drought; man creates famine.” So it is here: Mother Nature may create forests, dry summers and Santa Ana winds, but human policies created the conditions for the fires devastating L.A. now.

Specifically, the policies of the Democrats in power.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass cut more than $17 million from the L.A. Fire Department’s budget (and a leaked memo revealed Bass wanted $49 million more in budget cuts). The fire department itself has been the subject of criticism for its DEI hiring policies – personified by Deputy Chief Kristine Larson, caught on video defending her inability to carry a man out of a burning building, saying, “He got himself into the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.”

The Santa Ynez water reservoir – which should have had 117 million gallons of water – has been empty since last February, and L.A. has been plagued by broken fire hydrants. Both facts were known to L.A. Department of Water and Power CEO Janisse Quinones, who managed not to fix either problem despite her $750,000/year salary. California environmental laws limit controlled burns and clearing brush. State politicians have been criticized for years for their decisions to divert millions of gallons of water into the Pacific Ocean to protect a small native fish called the Delta smelt. And California Gov. Gavin Newsom is now facing another recall effort, with critics calling his tenure “a series of catastrophic failures.”

It isn’t just the wildfires in California; many of this country’s worst problems are a direct result of policies put in place by Democrats, who – without any trace of irony – claim to care about the very populations and causes hurt worst by their own policies.

Democrats say they care about the environment. How much of the environment in California has been damaged or destroyed by their policies?

Democrats say they care about the homeless. But thousands of Californians have been left homeless by these wildfires. And that is a fraction of the number of homeless in the state – estimated at around 186,000 (almost half of whom are in L.A. County) – who are allowed to live, eat, sleep, take drugs, urinate and defecate in the streets, creating health hazards for themselves and for everyone else.

Democrats claim to care about the “little guy” and “small business.” But policies like California’s Proposition 47 reduced shoplifting of merchandise worth less than $950 to a misdemeanor, resulting in massive increases in retail theft. 2022 saw $112 billion in retail theft nationally, almost $9 billion of which was in California.

Democrats claim to care about women, but they argue in favor of allowing biological males into women’s sports, locker rooms and bathrooms. Just this week in Congress, Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, accused Nancy Mace, R-S.C. – a victim of rape – of saying “trans, trans, trans” as a fundraising tactic, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., claimed that laws protecting women’s sports would result in “genital examinations.” (Has the woman never heard of a blood test?)

There’s no demographic Democrats love to tout their concern for more than “the children,” but they’re behind legislative efforts allowing physicians to stunt the development of children suffering from gender dysphoria with puberty blockers, surgically mutilate their healthy body parts and deprive them of adult sexual function (including reproduction), while leaving the real causes of their suffering and anguish (autism, mental illness, sexual exploitation) untreated.

Democrats claim to care about the vulnerable and marginalized, but their open-borders approach to immigration and soft-on-crime policies like “no cash bail” allow violent criminals to prey on the vulnerable and marginalized.

So, who exactly is benefited by Democrat policies?

Democrats are, certainly.

They run on their “intentions” – never their results – and once elected, they use their political power to stay in power – enjoying the support of a fawning (and often deceitful) press, taking money from lobbyists and other megadonors, soliciting massive donations for their “foundations,” and using the legal system to insulate themselves, their friends and their family members from their self-dealing.

How many times do we have to see this movie before the electorate – particularly those who “vote blue no matter who” – stops listening to the self-righteous speeches and starts looking at facts? How much suffering must Americans endure before they throw Democrats (and limp-wristed, complicit Republicans) out of political office, out of the media and out of academia, where their pernicious ideologies have festered and spread?

A new administration is taking over in Washington, D.C., next Monday, sent there by Americans who are sick to death of corruption and incompetence and the havoc and destruction caused by both. Now, if we could just get the same thing done in all the states.

Starting with California.

Laura Hollis

 —

Part II – Additional Information with More MHProNews Analysis and Commentary

1) Laura Hollis, Columnist and Professor of Business Law at the University Of Notre Dame, talks about her blistering Obamacare column, “We Are Not Subjects.” is from the Newsmax/YouTube page for the video posted below from 11 years ago. Hollis has been remarking on these issues for over a decade.

 

 

2) The good Lord willing, the next two and four years will yield the type of results that former and future President Trump and his Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance have promised. Namely, a new “Golden Age” for Americans that will make more people “wealthy again.”

 

 

3) In one sense, it is typical in recent years for the party out of power to push back against the party in power. That reality must be acknowledged.  That said, the notion that many Democrats embedded in agencies of the federal government are planning on ‘resisting’ lawful orders by President Trump and his administration ought be both an outrage and a wakeup call for Democratic supporters and independents. Yes, the narrative has been that Trump is supposedly a ‘fascist’ who wants to be ‘a dictator’ But the curious reality is that it is Democrats and their allies who have been doing what they accuse their opponents of doing. What PINO Joe Biden warned about in part of his farewell message is ironically what he and his party have been operated as for decades. Namely, being a tool of the wealthy and corporate elites.  It is only the echo chamber of Democratic talking points routinely regurgitated by much (not all) of mainstream media, much (not all) of academia, and some powerful nonprofit interests that has allowed what Hollis has described to be as true as it is. Namely, that “These politicians run on their ‘intentions’ – never their results.”

 

 

4) As a pragmatic political independent and history buff, this writer notes the obvious. That it remains to be seen if Trump’s nominee for HUD Secretary will a) be confirmed, and b) if confirmed if he will be properly briefed on the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000 (a.k.a.: MHIA, MHIA 2000, 2000 Reform Law, 2000 Reform Act). That said, sincere, as opposed to merely posturing, affordable housing and manufactured home advocates already know what has happened to the industry in the past four years under Biden-Harris (D) regime rule.

Year	Production

2021	105,772
2022	112,882
2023	89,169

That was after manufactured housing produced the following in the mid-to-late 1990s.

Year	Production
1995	344,930
1996	363,345
1997	353,686
1998	373,143
1999	348,075

 

5) 2024 is expected to finish the year at about 100,000 new HUD Code manufactured homes produced. That would mean our industry is operating at about 30 percent of the last high achieved in 1998. Yet the population has grown significantly since then. If government was working as designed and advertised, that number should be multiple times the current size because of the potential power of federal preemption. Perhaps the best example of that is state preemption as demonstrated in California following their making Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) placement easier.

 

 

6) MHProNews has aimed to systematically document what has been occurring in the U.S. for over a decade, and to do so in the context of how that impacts our industry, but also others too.  Biden promised unity, but he delivered division. Biden promised a better economy, and he delivered a worse one. Much of what Biden said would occur was the opposite of what he delivered. How can someone do that successfully? Only because a sizable part of the institutions in our country echo the same narrative to make it possible for someone to be gaslighted into believing what he (or other so-called ‘progressives’ like him) to be true, when the opposite is often reality.  MHProNews is proud of our track record of accuracy on an array of issues, and we are just a tiny fraction of the size of some of the big media operations. How is that possible? Simple. By discerning the truth and reporting it accurately with demonstrably sound analysis. There are good sources and poorer ones. Both should be understood and navigated.

 

 

7) We sounded the alarm 4 years ago that we were entering VichyUSA. Occupied America. The experience, the living nightmare for millions has proven to be sadly accurate. But the reason we knew that would happen is because the evidence of history and the known facts about Biden and Democrats who supported him pointed to it.

 

Increased voting integrity in 2024 arguably kept a repeat of 2020 from occurring.

 

 

8) Hollis pointed out that Democrats run on intentions and not on results. Sadly, that’s true. Hollis pointed out that millions ‘vote blue no matter who’ the candidate is. Team Trump and the MAGA GOP has a unique opportunity. IF they deliver on their promises in the next two years, it can be expected that Republicans could win the midterms. IF they deliver on Agenda 47 promises then Team Trump and America First Republicans can field a successor for Trump, perhaps J.D. Vance or someone else, that will continue the march back towards the Constitutional Republic that our nation is supposed to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

9) Biden was and remains in bed with socialists and literal communists. The evidence was there to be seen. Hopefully, Congress and perhaps state officials will probe these issues and expose them for the sake of avoiding such tyrannical abuses of power and corruption in the future.

 

 

10) Tens of thousands of industry readers like you have made and kept us the runaway number one source for manufactured housing “Industry News, Tips, and Views Pros Can Use.” ^©  Millions of visits a year and even more pageviews is an honor we don’t take that trust lightly. Numbers who strongly disagree with our reports reportedly read us, or who wish that we were wrong nevertheless regularly visit our site, why? Because if they are longtime readers, they know that time after time our reports have proven to be factually accurate and demonstrably correct. We dwarf MHI’s readership and that of their aligned bloggers and trade publishers. Why? Perhaps it is because our reports stand the test of time.

 

 

11) Trump was never perfect, but he was hands down the best candidate. Scott Turner and his colleagues have their critics, but there is a good chance that he will be a hands down better HUD Secretary than Marcia Fudge was, so long as he does what the said. Enforce existing laws. Identify what has gone wrong at HUD and work to correct it. Do that, and we will be here to report on the progress that is hopefully in the future.

 

 

The first article below is a kind of executive summary or introduction to the longer and more detailed one that follows.

 

Stay tuned to MHProNews, MHLivingNews, and our ongoing eclectic series on the Patch for news, tips, and views pros can use where “We Provide, You Decide.” ^© 

 

 

 

15) The data that follows are reasons why nominee Turner and all others who are sincere about solving the affordable housing crisis should both embrace the “enhanced preemption” solution of enforcing existing laws but should also be leery of trusting MHI and its leaders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MHProNews will naturally plan to monitor and report as deemed warranted.

SkyView National Manufactured Housing Community Sale Comps November 2024 vs. UMH Properties New Site Development Cost Data Facts with Analysis; plus Sunday Weekly MHVille Headlines in Review