John T. Reed’s news blog

https://www.newsmax.com/.../2024/03/13/id/1157085/. Seriously? . The words “Duty Honor Country” were on the cover of Time once. Why? it was the caption on a photo of Oliver North admitting he lied in the Iran-Contra hearings. Those words are the motto of West Point. They are in the West Point crest which was on the front of our hats at West Point. Did Lying Oliver graduate from West Point? Au Contraire. He graduated from the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, MD the same day I graduated from West Point (6/5/68), although he entered Annapolis two years before me. Slow learner. . The coat...

A REDDIT real estate investing group member from CA posted, “In doing research, I read there is significant tax benefits to owning a out of state rental.” . No federal income tax benefits at all. . If the property is in a lower or zero-tax-rate state, and CA does not tax you on out-of-state profits, that might be a benefit. But it would probably be not worth as much as the incremental cost of owning and managing an out-of-state rental property. . Also, what tax are you talking about? Income tax on the duplex rental income? If you have a...

A Reddit reader is trying to do what is called BRRRR (Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat). That “strategy” is idiotic, but that is another topic. The would-be BRRRRer complains: . “The problem is, we have talked to many different lenders and have not found what we wanted. Listening to all of these influencer/investors on social media they all say “You can do this with $0 of your own money” referring to hard money loans. “Every hard money lender we’ve talked to is either asking for a huge down payment or seems very sketchy with little to no reviews.” . The...

I and many others keep trying to alert Americans to impending financial disaster from deficit spending. . Here is another attempt using a different set of numbers and projections. . https://www.heritage.org/.../american-taxpayers-are-now.... . Read my lips, and those of the U.S Treasury. We now collect $4.7T in taxes annually. .https://www.usdebtclock.org/ .Interest on the national debt, which is the cumulative deficits since around 1992, is now 40% of that $4.7 T. It has been worse. The worst it ever got was when Reagan and Bush I were presidents. The best it has been since then was during the Clinton administration, because of...

In the last five months, I needed to find a safe deposit box key and a marriage license. In each case, not being able to find either had the potential to cost me hundreds of dollars in the case of the SDB key and thousands of dollars in the case of the marriage license. .Apparently, if my wife predeceases me, one of her former government employers pays me a partial pension or some such. But that former employer noted that we have different last names and demanded to see the marriage license. So I decided to research this whole situation...