Walmart just pulled a T-shirt that said: ‘‘Rope. Tree. Journalist. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.’’ pic.twitter.com/WPPHFfNlBu
— Marie Connor (@thistallawkgirl) November 30, 2017
"Rope. Tree. Journalist. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED." T-shirt has been removed from @Walmart's website at RTDNA's urging. https://t.co/lA8FGCUnHt pic.twitter.com/qnDiVGIwTN
— RTDNA (@RTDNA) November 30, 2017
Omg this variety story on Lauer. Oh my god. https://t.co/Itzw15cuY6
— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) November 29, 2017
8 Million People Could Die in a Nuclear War with North Korea https://t.co/mobYHD0AC3
— National Interest (@TheNatlInterest) November 29, 2017
Use code “Blackfriday” to get 15% off on https://t.co/Smq8FeWAAB today!! pic.twitter.com/x7kjCfGVAj
— genevieve morton (@genevievemorton) November 24, 2017
Head to https://t.co/Smq8FeWAAB to order your 2018 calendar pic.twitter.com/5FoBd2VpLP
— genevieve morton (@genevievemorton) November 26, 2017
“Believe all women” is a powerful war cry, but it can be turned into a weapon to hurt us. Exhibit A: Roy Moore’s false accuser. My latest: https://t.co/TlpopSzH9m
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) November 28, 2017
Just got home from the beach. Hey, that’s the old man and the sea! #NewportBeach #California pic.twitter.com/QIHEwrppy3
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 27, 2017
Take a highway out of any Mexican city and you'll see rapidly-decaying slums, even though they're only a few years old. What went wrong? My LA Times investigation. https://t.co/JWPmnpjC8O
— Richard Marosi (@RichMarosi) November 26, 2017
Sixteen years ago, Mexico embarked on a monumental campaign to elevate living standards for its working-class masses.More.
The government teamed with private developers to launch the largest residential construction boom in Latin American history. Global investors — the World Bank, big foundations, Wall Street firms — poured billions of dollars into the effort.
Vast housing tracts sprang up across cow pastures, farms and old haciendas. From 2001 to 2012, an estimated 20 million people — one-sixth of Mexico’s population — left cities, shantytowns and rural ranchos for the promise of a better life.
It was a Levittown moment for Mexico — a test of the increasingly prosperous nation’s first-world ambitions. But Mexico fell disastrously short of creating that orderly suburbia.
The program has devolved into a slow-motion social and financial catastrophe, inflicting daily hardships and hazards on millions in troubled developments across the country, a Los Angeles Times investigation has found.
Homeowners toting buckets scrounge for water delivered by trucks. Gutters run with raw sewage from burst pipes. Streets sink, sidewalks crumble, and broken-down water treatment plants rust. In some developments, blackouts hit for days at a time.
Inside many homes, roofs leak, walls crack and electrical systems short circuit, blowing out appliances and in some cases sparking fires that send families fleeing.
The program cost more than $100 billion, and some investors and construction executives reaped enormous profits, hailing themselves as “nation builders” as they joined the ranks of Mexico’s richest citizens.
Meanwhile, the factory workers, small-business owners, retirees and civil servants who bought the homes got stuck with complex loans featuring mortgage payments that rose even as their neighborhoods deteriorated into slums.
The Times visited 50 of the affordable-housing developments from Tijuana to the Gulf of Mexico. It also reviewed thousands of pages of government and industry documents, and interviewed hundreds of homeowners, municipal leaders, housing experts, civil engineers, construction workers and government officials.
The American housing crisis and recession a decade ago also were marked by regulatory failures, and the U.S. economy eventually recovered. But the crisis in Mexico has been deepening.
Conditions at the developments vary widely. While some meet basic standards, rapid decay is evident at developments in or near every major city: Failed water systems. Unfinished electrical grids, wastewater systems and other infrastructure. Parks and schools that were promised but never materialized.
Many developments were built far from employment centers on marginal land — wetlands, riverbanks and unstable hillsides — with scarce access to water. Local officials rewrote zoning laws and approved developments with little or no review.
Developers downsized homes — building about 1 million one-bedroom units as small as 325 square feet, which is smaller than a typical two-car garage in the U.S. Many families of six, seven or more live in these postage-stamp dwellings, sleeping in laundry nooks and hallways.
Builders have all but abandoned hundreds of developments without completing infrastructure, resulting in a patchwork of public services.
In developments without working streetlights, youngsters wield flashlights to navigate pitch-black streets. In those without trash-hauling, people burn garbage in vacant lots to deter rats.
Tree stumps are placed in open manholes to alert children to the hazards of poorly maintained streets. Residents of water-parched neighborhoods lock the lids of rooftop cisterns to keep thieves from siphoning water.
The unfinished developments blight cities across the country. An estimated 300,000 people live in more than 40 incomplete tracts in the fast-growing Baja California cities of Tijuana and Ensenada.
In Mexico state, which surrounds Mexico City, developers have completed only 36 of the 235 developments started between 2005 and 2012, leaving 200,000 to 500,000 people in limbo, according to state records.
“It was a world of corruption,” said Alberto Uribe, the mayor of Tlajomulco, a suburb of Guadalajara. His predecessors in the city approved developments where the well water has run low for an estimated 300,000 people, he said. Water is now rationed, and many families receive water only every other day...
#MissSouthAfrica Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters is crowned #MissUniverse 2017 https://t.co/khfcCxIdp4
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 27, 2017
Congratulations to Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters, the winner of the 2017 #MissUniverse competition! pic.twitter.com/JYuQYc3Lvo
— Miss Universe (@MissUniverse) November 27, 2017
The face you make just before you take the @MissUniverse stage.
— Demi-LeighNel-Peters (@DemiLeighNP) November 26, 2017
RT if you're tuning in to watch #MissUniverse on @vuzutv tomorrow morning? #SouthAfrica pic.twitter.com/WffMU2bMJ7
Top 5.🇿🇦 #MisssUniverse #SouthAfrica pic.twitter.com/2XpflbDdso
— Demi-LeighNel-Peters (@DemiLeighNP) November 27, 2017
Fears of a tax hike are fueling talk of an exodus in Greenwich and Manhattan https://t.co/EI8reC8OBj pic.twitter.com/IFp50a7VLB
— Bloomberg (@business) November 27, 2017
Even Bruce McGuire, founder of the Connecticut Hedge Fund Association, understands if wealthy Northeasterners flee the region due to changes in the tax code.
“It would almost be irresponsible if you weren’t thinking about moving,” he said.
The problem for the Connecticut hedge-fund set -- and, more broadly, for a lot of the Wall Street crowd -- is that Republican proposals in both the House and Senate would drive up taxes for many high-earners in the New York City area. By eliminating the deduction for most state and local taxes, an individual making a yearly salary of $1,000,000 -- a figure not uncommon in the financial industry -- would owe the Internal Revenue Service an additional $21,000, according to a preliminary analysis by accounting firm Marcum LLP.
Billionaire hedge fund managers have blazed the trail south in recent years. David Tepper, Paul Tudor Jones and Eddie Lampert are New York-area transplants to Florida, which has no personal income tax.
A final bill could still do away with the hike, but so far there are no signs coming out of Washington that will happen. Financially struggling New Jersey had the sixth-highest individual income rate this year, according to the Federation of Tax Administrators. New York ranked eighth and cash-strapped Connecticut 12th. Nine of the 10 states with the highest individual taxes, including Washington, D.C., voted Democratic in the 2016 presidential election.
Tax Refugees
No one interviewed for this story would talk openly about making plans to move, but Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is estimating that New York City alone could lose as much as 4 percent of its top earners if the bill becomes law. In Florida, where there’s no state income tax, there’s the sense that this is a great opportunity to lure disgruntled tax refugees.
The Miami Downtown Development Authority is throwing a party next month during the annual Art Basel show, and Nitin Motwani, a real estate developer, has invited wealthy Northeasterners who’ve expressed interest in moving to the area. Because the proposed tax changes are practically begging them to relocate, Motwani expects a crowd.
State and local taxes, also called SALT, “can and should be a major catalyst,” said Motwani, a development authority board member. Tax reform will “certainly be something we’re highlighting” at the party, in the Perez Art Museum. “Inertia is a tough thing, but you add on another tax bill and maybe that pushes you over the edge.”
