In a pretty intriguing development, Joe Biden's son, Hunter, is moving from his tony Venice, California, digs.
According to the Daily Mail:
Hunter Biden appears to have moved out of the luxury $5.4million home he was renting in Venice Beach, California amid a crime and homelessness wave that has hit the beach-front Los Angeles city.
The son of President Joe Biden was reportedly paying $25,000 a month to rent the three-story property on the Venice canals - just a block away from the beach.
But on Monday, DailyMail.com spotted a moving truck outside the palatial home with furniture being loaded into it. Father-of-five Hunter, 51, moved into the stylish property with wife Melissa and their son Beau at the end of 2020.
The Daily Mail speculates that it's because of the homeless, who've taken over the rich-hippie enclave, reaching even the gates of Hunter's part, describing scenes like this:
Secret Service officers sitting outside of Hunter's home have had to contend with the stench from a small encampment on the other side of a parking lot.
The tent city itself has its dramas just like any other human settlement. Last month a 30-year-old woman from Virginia gave birth in one of the oceanfront camps, the Venice Current reported.
A homeless man was shot and injured on April 28. The gunman calmly walked away. The victim is not cooperating with police. Earlier the same week a tent was deliberately set on fire. One local woman talks of how she was chased by a man with a sword.
The place has been sporting scenes like this:
VIDEO
And the neighbors had welcomed him, not because they like his politics and celebrity status, but because of the Secret Service agents he brings in tow. Supposedly, the agents' presence helps keep the crime and squalor and panhandling associated with the homeless down.
As I wrote here when he moved in:
Hunter Biden's neighbors are happy to see him there, not because of his politics, which is a nothingburger over there, but because of his security.
They like him there because of the quasi police he has tagging around with him as he makes his rounds.
Here's the buried lede from the Daily Mail , taken from pure street reporting. Here are what three of the locals are saying, emphasis mine:
Ricky Otterstrom, senior vice president of Ryker Flint, a commercial real estate brokerage, has lived in Venice Beach for 15 years, tells DailyMail.com: 'I see Hunter Biden's secret service parked out front of his house every morning when I walk to the beach to surf.
'They are there 24/7 which is a plus for us here on the Venice Canals. We need the extra security considering the amount of crime we have. Interestingly the homeless people who were living up along the street he now lives on are gone.
'It could be a coincidence or the city had them removed because of Hunter. I think his presence will help clean up the area and I hope he gets involved with the community. It's a tight community with great people.'
So if the Daily Mail is right, that didn't work. The Secret Service was nothing compared to the homeless onslaught on Venice. The homeless reportedly are rolling in from Los Angeles's Skid Row, which is 19.9 miles away. And in that "community," there are 40,000 of them, with Google itself defining Skid Row as the "homeless capital of the country."
As for Venice, a small tony enclave of 28,000, they've got 2,000 of them at last count, quite possibly more now:, according to KTLA :
The numbers were already increasing before the pandemic: 2020 data showed a 57% increase in the number of homeless people in Venice over the previous year — far greater than the increase in the city as a whole, which was 16.1%.
“It’s the worst I’ve seen in 20 years,” Venice resident John Betz told KTLA.
The laws being applied are such that the city cannot remove them unless it can offer them housing accommodations. With Hunter himself paying a reported $25,000 a month for his housing, and the average per capita income of Venice residents at $94,000 a pop, rest assured, the housing offering would have to be luxury housing.
Now, the original Daily Mail report is speculative as to the homeless takeover is the actual reason why Hunter is moving. Hunter hasn't said anything. And the reasons he's leaving could be a bit more embarrassing.
Did the man of uncertain income but a taste for luxury skip out on his rent? It's true nobody's being evicted as a result of COVID in California, but who knows what the deal is at Hunter's lofty housing levels. The Mail reports his rent at $25,000 a month. Dirt, a celebrity real estate website, reports it at $17,500 a month. Hunter reportedly got a $2 million payout for a book almost nobody bought about his drug-fueled lifestyle, which kind of looked like a bribe. He also got a tony New York gallery showing of his blowpipe art, which also could be some kind of money-laundering. Did some of the money not come through? One wonders, now that Joe Biden is suddenly getting tough on China, one of Hunter's cash cows. Who knows? Someone will have to investigate.
There are other possibilities, too -- did Hunter violate some term of the lease, such as not using drugs and creating a ruckus? Based on New York Post columnist Maureen Callahan's observations, he seems to be still in denial on his "habit.' Could he have been causing problems for the neighbors? With Hunter, let's just say that he's not too far removed from the same world of social disintegration he's purportedly leaving.
According to Los Angeles magazine :
Biden—who recounts spending time “living in $59-a-night Super 8 motels off I-95 while scaring my family even more than myself” in his new addiction memoir, Beautiful Things —has upgraded his accommodations.
According to celebrity real estate news site Dirt , Biden’s 3,800-square-foot rental was purchased by Sweetgreen co-founder Jonathan Neman and Leora Kadisha, daughter of Omninet Capital billionaire Neil Kadisha, for $4.85 million in 2017 and they’ve been trying to rent or sell it for the last few years.
Listed by Halton Pardee + Partners as a “bespoke atelier,” Biden’s villa is a long way from the fly-specked plasterboard and sticky linoleum hideouts of his literary debut, with its marble floors beneath 25-foot acoustic ceilings, combined kitchen and dining space—where the utilitarian elements are hidden behind fine wooden cabinets—and canal views from an attached balcony.
Another clue is where he's taking his gypsy camp next. Is it to fancier digs, onward and upward, as his Venice move from the Hollywood Hills (rent there only $12,000 a month) late last year, or else is it a red-state haven from leftist crime and taxes, as normal Californians are doing? Is it a gated community for the superrich where tabloid reporters can't shout questions to him and bums can't spare change him or wave knives? It probably makes a difference. With old pop president, it's quite possible his "earnings" have gone up, so where he goes will probably tell us the most about why he's doing it.
In any case, Hunter's gone, the Secret Service detail is gone, and now the residents of Venice have one less measure of protection as the homeless continue to roll in. If the homeless were what drove Hunter out, it signals that the rich have their privileges and don't put up with leftist squalor the way ordinary rich leftists do. Bidens know how to take care of their own, so Venice is out.
Image: Screen shot from video by Peter Santenello, posted on shareable YouTube .
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva revealed Wednesday that homicides were up 95% this year over the same period in 2020, and said his department would issue more concealed carry permits to let citizens to defend themselves.
In an Instagram Live post, Villanueva revealed the grim numbers, as the region joined America’s ongoing crime wave:
The county ended 2020 with a 36% increase overall in violent crime, Villanueva said, making the increase in violent crimes thus far in 2021 all the more striking. “All huge numbers, all very, very troublesome.” He said that the rise in crime was an “existential threat,” along with homelessness and the passage of poorly conceived criminal justice reform.
He said the crime was worst in African American and Latino communities, and criticized the county’s Board of Supervisors for failing to address the issue.
Recognizing that the threat of crime to residents was increasing, Villanueva said, the department would accelerate the issuing of “carry a concealed weapon” (CCW) permits.
The Biden administration, when asked about the nationwide crime wave, has cited guns as the problem. But to Villanueva, at least, guns among law-abiding citizens maybe part of the solution, providing protection police cannot.
Villanueva has been a consistent opponent of efforts by Democrats to “defund the police,” and noted the LASD had been forced to cut 1310 positions in the past year, after being cut by $145 million, with $143 million more in cuts coming.
He spoke out against the Board’s support for “Measure J ,” a referendum that passed in 2020 to provide “alternatives to incarceration” and fight “racial injustice” through 10% of the country’s budget.
Villanueva also disagreed with local leaders’ attempts to spend more money on housing for the homeless, saying it would attract more homeless from other states.
The sheriff has signed a recall petition aimed at George Soros-backed, left-wing L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón, who has pursued criminal justice reforms, over prosecutors’ objections, even as crime has soared in the county.
He also said Wednesday that L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti needed to explain why he had failed to “regulate public space” to stop homelessness, saying it was a question he needed to answer before leaving for “India,” where he is rumored to be the next U.S. ambassador.
He also criticized City Council member Mike Bonin for attempting to interfere with policing homelessness. Bonin is proposing to use beach parking facilities to house the homeless, a proposal residents oppose.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, We Told You So!: The First 100 Days of Joe Biden’s Radical Presidency RED NOVEMBER , tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak .
Chamber of Commerce Joins Alliance with Joe Biden for Mass Immigration Mario Tama/Getty Images 3:32
The United States Chamber of Commerce and President Joe Biden have seemingly hitched their agendas together in an effort to hugely expand legal immigration to the U.S. and provide amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.
During a virtual conference on Thursday, Chamber CEO and President Suzanne Clarke said the the big business lobby is leading “the charge” to increase the number of foreign visa workers that are Americans are forced to compete against for blue-collar and white-collar jobs, along with a campaign to provide illegal aliens with amnesty.
“The world’s best and brightest who want to pour their talent and energy into our economy should have every opportunity to do so which is why the Chamber will continue to lead the charge in doubling employment-based immigration, including H-1B and H-2B visas,” Clarke said.
As Breitbart News reported , the Chamber has launched the initiative to allow businesses to import more foreign H-1B visa workers to take white-collar U.S. jobs, foreign H-2B visa workers to take blue-collar U.S. jobs, more seamlessly provide green cards to foreign students at American universities, and give tech conglomerates and the outsourcing industry a green card giveaway.
Also in the Chamber’s initiative is a plan that would allow local politicians in small and rural American communities to import foreign visa workers to grow the region’s population and take U.S. jobs.
The Chamber couples its huge expansion of legal immigration with an amnesty for, specifically, illegal aliens eligible and enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
The provisions are nearly identical to that of the Biden administration’s plan.
Under Biden’s plan , introduced in the Senate by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), DACA and TPS illegal aliens would be given amnesty — in addition to the majority of all illegal aliens living in the U.S.
Likewise, the Biden plan includes Big Tech’s green card giveaway , increases to the H-1B and H-2B visa programs, makes it easier for foreign students to secure green cards, and would start a pilot program allowing local politicians to import foreign visa workers in small American towns.
The shared goals between the Chamber and Biden are in direct contrast to the opinions of most Americans. The latest Rasmussen Reports survey , for example, shows that 75 percent of likely U.S. voters said they want less legal immigration — including nearly 4-in-10 who want current legal immigration levels cut in more than half.
Whereas the nation’s workforce supports a tightened labor market where employees have the upper hand over employers, the plans by the Chamber and Biden seek to diminish the cost of labor by inflating the labor market to grow profit margins.
Currently, about 1.2 million legal immigrants are awarded green cards annually to permanently resettle in the U.S. This is in addition to the roughly 1.4 million foreign nationals who secure work visas to take U.S. jobs every year in the American economy. On top of these admissions, rubber-stamped by the federal government, hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens enter the U.S. annually and many take entry-level jobs meant for teens and the working class.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
Another Miss: U.S. Economy Adds 559,000 Jobs in May, Unemployment Rate Drops to 5.8% Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images 6:12
The U.S. economy added 559,000 jobs in May and the unemployment rate dropped to 5.8 percent, the Labor Department said in its monthly labor assessment Friday.
The median forecast of analysts surveyed by Econoday was for 650,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 5.9 percent. The Dow Jones consensus estimate was for 617,000.
The disappointing number follows April’s big miss. This adds evidence to the claim that hiring is being held back by enhanced unemployment benefits and schools that have not reopened full time, requiring some parents to stay home to take care of children. Many businesses say that they cannot hire enough workers to fill positions because of the government’s enhanced unemployment benefits program.
The economy has outperformed expectations on many metrics this year as vaccinations have boosted business and consumer confidence and restrictions on businesses have been lifted. The April and May employment numbers represent a rare misses.
April’s figure was revised up to 278,000 from 266,000, a smaller revision than many expected. March’s jobs number, initially reported at 916,000, has been revised down to 785,000.
In May, nonfarm payroll employment is down by 7.6 million, or 5.0 percent, from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020.
Average hourly earnings for all employees jumped by 15 cents to $30.33 in May, following an increase of 21 cents in April. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose by 14 cents to $25.60 in May, following an increase of 19 cents in April. The month after month increases suggest that the rising demand for labor associated with the recovery from the pandemic may have put upward pressure on wages, the Labor Department said.
Leisure and hospitality added 292,000 jobs, including 186,000 jobs in restaurants and bars. Casinos, amusement parks, and recreation centers added 58,000. Hotels and motels added 35,000. April’s gain of 331,000 was revised down slightly to 328,000. Despite the gains, employment in the leisure and hospitality category is down by 2.5 million, or 15 percent, from its prepandemic level.
Construction lost 20,000 jobs in May and residential construction added just 4,000, a surprising result given the strength of the housing market. The prior month was originally reported as flat but was revised down to show a loss of 5,000 jobs, including a decline in residential construction.
Some of the weakness in construction employment may be due to the softness of office and commercial construction, as suggested by the fact that nonresidential specialty trade contractor employment shrank by 16,8000. As well, heavy construction and civil engineering employment fell by 5,500. Public safety construction spending—which includes prisons, police stations, and border security—fell 15 percent in April .
Manufacturing added 23,000 jobs in May but April’s loss was revised down to show a loss of 32,000, worse than the 28,000 loss reported initially. Durable goods manufacturers added 18,000 jobs. Makes of cars, trucks, and auto parts added 24,800 jobs, partially recovering from last month’s chip shortage-driven contraction of 37,700 jobs.
Employment at food and beverage stores fell by 26,000, following a 46,800 job loss in April.
The private sector overall added 492,000 jobs, following April’s addition of 219,000 jobs. Governments added 67,000 jobs and April’s figure was revised up from 48,000 to 59,000.
The labor force participation rate slipped one-tenth of a percentage point to 61.6 percent in May. This has remained within a narrow range of 61.4 percent to 61.7 percent since June 2020, suggesting that the reopening has done little to draw workers back into the workforce and perhaps indicating that some former workers have decided to retire early or otherwise permanently exit the labor market. The participation rate is 1.7 percentage points lower than in February 2020. The employment-population ratio, at 58.0 percent, also did not budge in May but is up by 0.6 percentage point since December 2020. However, this measure is 3.1 percentage points below its February 2020 level.
The number of people employed “part time for economic reasons” was essentially unchanged at 5.3 million in May but is 873,000 higher than in February 2020. These are people who would have preferred full-time employment but say they are only working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs. Some economists regard this as the best measure of tightness or slackness in the labor market.
The number counted as not in the labor force but say they currently want a job was essentially unchanged over the month at 6.6 million but is up by 1.6 million since February 2020. These people are not counted as unemployed in the survey because they were not actively looking for work during the last 4 weeks or were unavailable to take a job. Many may still be collecting unemployment benefits because the requirement to search for work was suspending in many states due to the pandemic and is not closely monitored in most states.
Fewer workers are working from home. In May, 16.6 percent of employed persons teleworked because of the coronavirus pandemic, down from 18.3 percent in April and 21 percent in March.
Price Shock: Inflation Soars to 29-Year High Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images 2:09
A key measure of inflation accelerated to a faster-than-expected 3.1 percent annual gain in April, the Commerce Department reported Friday.
The last time the core personal consumption expenditures index hit 3.1 percent was in May of 1992, when George H. W. Bush was president and inflation was still recovering from the stagflationary 1970s era.
Federal Reserve officials consider core PCE inflation, which excludes food and energy, to be their primary gauge of price stability, one-half of the central’s bank’s core aims in formulating monetary policy. The other half is maximizing employment.
Prices of many items fell last year as the pandemic struck and lockdowns were implemented in an effort to contain the spread of the virus. As a result, year-over-year measures of inflation are expected to be very high over the next few months, reflecting what economists call a “base effect.”
But April’s record inflation is not entirely a base effect. The month-over-month core PCE inflation, at 0.7 percent, is the highest since October 2001. In fact, monthly inflation has only climbed above 0.4 percent in one month since then, in January of 2007.
On Friday, the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey revealed that near-term and long-term inflation expectations were at the highest level in a decade. On Thursday, the Kansas City Fed said inflation reported by manufacturers in its region were at the highest levels ever recorded . The Richmond Fed’s survey of manufacturers also revealed record high inflation in May. Last week, the Philadelphia Fed also reported record high price increases.
The broader PCE index jumped 0.6 percent in April, the biggest monthly increase since 2008. The 12-month rate of inflation also jumped to a 13-year high of 3.6 percent in April from 2.4 percent in March.
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