Have we learned nothing?

posted: 2009-05-19 00:47:53

I received an email from a real estate agent explaining some of the new housing rules.
Hot off the presses today - 'Shaun Donovan, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, on Tuesday said that the Federal Housing Administration is going to permit its lenders to allow home buyers to use the $8,000 tax credit as a down payment.'
Usually FHA buyers have to put down 3 1/2 % of their own money toward the purchase price of the house. If you are buying a $200,000 house this would be $7,000. Under this new program the buyer could use the $8,000 tax credit as their down payment and still end up with a $1,000 from Uncle Sam in their pocket. If you are a first time home buyer or haven't owned a home in over 3 years... this is $8,000 of free money AND you can get a home.

They're basically paying people to buy homes priced $228,000 and under. Aren't free money and loose credit what got us into this mess to begin with?

Am I full of shit? Tell me why. [ 210 remarks ]

A note from the author

HackerMojo.com is using a fluid layout based upon work by Dave Reeder. I'm trying to take CSS a little more seriously; but I'm having a hard time because of all of the bad syntax, browser compatibility hacks, and non-fluid layouts. If any of the other technology I used were like CSS, I'd have to set myself on fire and jump off of a cliff.

Lab Sites

* denotes django powered sites.

Hacker Mojo *
Simile Timelines *
Mmm Brains
Knoxzilla *
Haiku Dojo
Mucho Nada *
KnoxVile, the worst of Knoxville's commentors *

ifequal

posted: 2009-03-19 04:58:25

More late-nite hacking.

Local Sites

* denotes sites I'm associated with.

Do newspapers matter?

posted: 2009-03-17 17:29:02

Princeton University has released this report on the effects of newspaper closings on local elections using the Cincinnati Post as an example.

if voter turnout, a broad choice of candidates and accountability for incumbents are important to democracy, we side with those who lament newspapers' decline.

Possibly my last ride for 2008

posted: 2008-12-14 03:42:27

Took my motorcycle out today for one last ride. I think the temperatures were in the upper 30's/lower 40's.
It went really well. At one point I was on one of Knoxville's many roads that run parallel to the rail lines and followed alongside the engine ...

one wife is nott enough

posted: 2008-12-01 06:52:35

Actually, one wife is plenty.

My apologies to everyone who came to this entry this morning. I have had a password protected email gateway that I use to post entries via email ever since this was a movable type blog. Unfortunately some spam randomly hit upon the key to the ...

What's the best possible bed for a boy?

posted: 2008-11-11 20:17:09

Ben is growing up pretty quickly, and his bed which was a converted crib, was getting small. After considering things like race car beds from a department store, I decided that a castle would make a better bed because 1) it suits his personality well, and 2) it also makes ...

How certain are you about how good he is?

posted: 2008-10-16 15:42:15

"For he's a jolly good fellow! For he's a jolly good fellow! For he's a jolly good fellow, which nobody can deny!"

Am I too lazy?

posted: 2008-10-04 08:10:26

My Slicehost machine ran out disk space yesterday, so I was looking for logs to rotate, files to delete, etc and I ran across a few large groups of files that I wanted to keep. I tried gzip -9 like always, but then found myself wondering if I could get ...

Perpetual Motion

posted: 2008-09-05 08:19:34

THe funny thing about this video is that intends to sell the viewer on the concept of gasoline engine as a virtual perpetual motion machine, but then ends with the admission that it can't be. Only now we realize that it's not just the law of thermodynamics, it's the laws ...