About Last Week...

Sunny Money

For a bit, until Barack Obama raised $843 zillion dollars for his campaigns and everyone thought that was just neat, reporting on massive money flowing into a politicians coffers always included the obligatory paragraph or two about money in politics was bad and shouldn’t candidates be publicly funded to make everything fair?

That kind of thinking no longer appears in any regular media pieces.  Since the Democrats have been consistently out fundraising the Republicans for the past decade or so, it’s absolutely wonderful that the people are rising up to crush evil fascism with their wallets.

Last week, President Joe Biden snagged $26 million at a “star-studded event” in New York and Donald Trump raised $50 million at an event at his house.  The Biden number was greeted with joy, while stories on the Trump number seemed rather incredulous.

Even though Trump had a “better” week than Biden, he will – yet again – be vastly outspent by the Democrats this year.  He’s already behind – including last week – by about $100 million and history shows the Democratic candidate will raise more money in the next seven months or so.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton outspent Trump by about 40% - $770 million to $430 million.  In 2020, Biden was the first presidential candidate to ever pass the $1 billion mark, with Trump spending about $770 million. 

Ironic, isn’t it, that the last two election losers (asterisk here) each spent about the same amount of money.

Unlike those big numbers, in-city office rental numbers are getting smaller.  Of course, San Francisco has a nearly 40% vacancy rate in large part due to doo-doo and other “I’m terrified to walk from my car to the office” issues (pre-pandemic and pre-third worlding, SanFran had a vacancy rate of essentially zero; at about 4% it was lower than the natural churn of business moving from one place in town to another or upsizing or downsizing or what have you.)

But other cities are getting up there, too, as remote work and pampered millennials and spineless companies all argue about having to show up at all.  While it could be fun to just say “neener-neener,” there is a possible knock-on impact to the death of downtowns around the country:  there are currently $3 trillion dollars in sticky icky loans collateralized by those now empty-ish buildings so if you bank with a mid-sized, or “regional” bank you may want to ask them about their portfolios.

Or get ready to have to break into your bank to get your money.

What you won’t have to pay for is tomorrow’s eclipse, unless you live out west and are flying to Texas or Buffalo or points between to see it (seriously – a bunch of people in LA are doing just that.) 

It should be pretty cool, though the news coverage has been rather overwrought so far: It will change your life!  Dogs will be surprised so watch out for your little friend!  Wear special glasses or you’ll go blind faster than a chronic masturbator!  Climate change is, um, well, at fault but not really but – wait I got it!: the places under the path of totality will get cooler, as cool as they’re supposed to be if we all don’t want to die.  That’s it.

Oh, and here’s a good song to play during the eclipse – Steve and Edie’s version of “Black Hole Sun:”

And here’s a good site to click on for more info and exact maps and such: https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses .

But here’s a site that will not be getting many clicks – it’s the “No Labels” site:  https://www.nolabels.org/.