Industry Voices

-by James Cook

There is no doubt that political discussions can be heated. On this industry ezine, they are necessary to stimulate debate about issues that directly and indirectly impact the MH Industry. As demonstrated by legislation of the past, one law can have a tremendous negative or positive impact that can be felt for generations (see Tax Act of 1986.) I think that we can all agree that 1) Not one of us agree 100% with any party or candidate and 2) Continued partisan bickering only ends in lack of progress for the entire country. I want to explain why I feel political discussion in business is essential.

Admittedly, I did not support President Obama in the first election (not that I was supportive of John McCain) because Obama had too little real world private-sector experience and too many left-of-center policies. But he won with the blessing of a Democrat majority in Congress.

Despite my ideological differences, I made sure my daughter watched this historic inauguration. I was proud of our nation; that it could rise from an era of gross racism and only 50 years later, elect its first black president.

I actually remember being hopeful that I was wrong and that Obama was the leader we needed. I hoped that his policies, enacted quickly with a majority in both the House and Senate, would have a positive effect on our economy and our country. I now feel that my hope was misplaced.

While politics can be boring, angering, or infuriating, the fact of the matter is that they do have an impact on how we conduct our business. We are already seeing some impact and projected impact from the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act, the SAFE Act, and the formation of the CFPB with its new Anti-Money Laundering program.

As Boe Davis said we, as an industry, should not be blaming government for our self-imposed ailments. I agree. When we blame anything for our circumstances we abdicate responsibility and our power to change those circumstances.

However, we also have a responsibility to do all we can to influence the regulations and policies that are coming out of Washington. Yes, we have dug our own grave but now the government is threatening to start backfilling the hole we are in. We do have the power to stop them and become our own best ally instead of our own worst enemy.

Many of you may live in MH friendly states. I live in Massachusetts: A microcosm of the policies that President Obama has and will continue to impose. There is a liberal Democrat majority on Beacon Hill. Governor Patrick is a close friend of President Obama. What I have seen under Gov. Patrick is what I believe is in store for all other MHCs and retailers if President Obama gets reelected. Here's an example:

- Lengthy, burdensome and paperwork-heavy process to have rules approved by government agencies with many things (like cleanliness standards and maximum lawn height ) deemed ‘unreasonable.’

- Laws that protect residents from retaliation from owners but not vice-versa. If we seek to evict a dead-beat tenant, they can turn around and sue us under a Massachusetts state law that requires the MHC to pay their legal fees. The claims can be for the most inane and frivolous items you can think of or imagine. Our judges heavily favor the resident/tenant in our courts so much so that we have seen great attorneys leave the real estate business out of frustration.

- A further restrictive financial environment. If you think chattel lending is lean in your part of the country, it's virtually non-existent here. We have only a handful of lenders licensed in this state. US Bank, 21st Mortgage, et. al. will not carry a license in MA due to the cost and regulations.

- Further financially unbearable regulations. Right now, our state association is fighting legislation that would require all septic and water systems to be inspected annually by a state-approved inspector (who will, no doubt, be in the 'repair' business as well). In addition this bill, to pay for the administration of it, will increase our licensing fees by a factor of 10 or more. If this bill passes, many communities may be forced into discontinuance.

Ideology aside, the fact is President Obama’s policies are anti-business regardless of what his administration may believe. His policies and rhetoric are why I came to the MH industry over 2 years ago. I was a project manager for a company that primarily made coal burning power plant equipment – much of it to comply with the Clean Air Act. This equipment is large, heavy, and cumbersome so 98% of it manufactured here in the USA.

The moment he was elected with his anti-coal rhetoric, our business hit the skids. No coal plant was willing to invest a capital improvement loan (especially when lending is already tight) on a fuel source that may be made obsolete due to government fiat. Our orders became emergency only – small batches with short lead times. All major expansions and improvements ceased.

As coal burning equipment fails, many power plants switched to burning oil and natural gas which are more expensive. This increased cost drives up electric rates and increases demand on these fuels. Increased demands drive up fuel costs. Now the consumer is facing higher electric bills, paying more at the pump and higher prices for all other goods they purchase that are directly or indirectly affected by increasing electric and fuel costs. Maybe supply-side economics don’t trickle-down 100%, but increased costs always do.

The Obama Administration has supported these increases. His energy secretary, Steven Chu, is on the record in favor of $9-10 a gallon gas because that would make it easier to transition into solar, wind and other green energy sources. Don't get me wrong, I'm for green energy, but I'm not willing to kill our economy in the process to get it.

If you are voting to reelect President Obama, I am okay with that. There are clear ideological differences and some people subscribe to a different belief system. However, I implore you to take a close look at your own ideology and your business. If you know business owners in Massachusetts or California, do your own survey and ask them if their state’s policies are hurting or helping their business.

We may disagree and that is fine. This is my opinion and I am entitled to it. However, politics are intertwined with every U.S. business whether we like it or not. Any industry publication that ignores politics, its policies, and legislative issues does so at its own risk. Political op-ed pieces are essential. If you disagree with me or any other author, you are welcome to write an opposing viewpoint. However, if you do not think political opinions belong on this site, I will gladly defend your right not to click on them.##

James Cook
MHC Property Manager
Member Massachusetts Manufactured Housing Association

by Danny D. Ghorbani

As announced last week, MHARR, on September 18, 2012, sent an identical package to both President Obama and Governor Romney.The Association’s communication appealed to them to help revitalize the manufactured housing industry by eliminating discriminatory federal policies and incorporating affordable manufactured housing as a core component of the nation’s housing opportunity and home financing programs, with the objective of challenging the next administration to elevate the status of manufactured housing to that of a co-equal with all other segments of the housing industry.

These communications, which dovetail with ongoing efforts in the U.S. Congress, represent the initial phase of a broader presidential initiative discussed at the MHARR 2012 Spring Meeting.They express in broad terms the prime policy agenda that the Association will pursue to advance the cause of manufactured housing and its consumers in the nation’s capital after the November 2012 election, regardless of which candidate is ultimately elected president.

In order to achieve maximum national exposure for this initiative, MHARR contracted for national distribution of these materials, and the initial response has been quite gratifying.Within the first week after this effort was launched, it had been picked-up by more than 1,000 sources across the United States and was also the subject of several independent news stories.

Furthermore, the success of this effort in generating national interest in the future wellbeing of the manufactured housing industry and its consumers, and the availability of manufactured housing as a resource for affordable home ownership, has been reflected in the number of calls and inquiries that MHARR has received regarding this matter – all of which are being addressed, as appropriate, by MHARR.

With this initiative now successfully launched, the MHARR Board will be in a position to further address the elements of this national policy agenda at its November 2012 meeting, by which time one of these candidates will have been elected the next President of the United States.

This activity also interacts with the launch of a parallel MHARR legal initiative onSeptember 25, 2012,details of which will be provided to you next week.

MHARR Appeals to Obama And Romney For Action

Danny Ghorbani, President, Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR)

by Pat Curran

Nothing says it all, but this says a lot. Manufactured housing pros, take notice.

So who makes the most sense for the next 4 years? ##

Pat Curran

Precision Financial

pat@precisionfinancial.net

by Michael Barnabas

You don't have to be Jewish to feel deep concern about what took place at the Democratic National Convention (DNC). Responding to political pressure to put the word "God" back in their platform as well as to once again name Jerusalem as Israel's national capital, DNC delegates where asked to pass the motion by a 2/3 vote. The video I've asked to be posted below tells the tale. For those who question the commitment by Democrats to fair elections, please watch this CSPAN video and share it with others.

Once you've watched this objectively, everything else is spin and commentary.

Among the emails that come into me are from a White House 'group.' Some months back, there was an outreach by that White House group to the business community. The president, it was said, wants to help ease burdensome regulations, to make it easier on small businesses.

Excuse me?

How can we take such an election year outreach to small businesses seriously, by those who executed Dodd-Frank and ObamaCare?

Talk to an independent manufactured home builder. Ask them, with consumer complaints at new lows, why is HUD pushing more and more 'voluntary' – and other – regulations? Why don't we have the Duty to Serve implemented by the GSEs/FHFA?

The energy sector creates demand for factory-built housing, in places such as North Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states. The current administration's policies, up until election year, were favoring gas prices of $8 to $9 a gallon for gas, as this video clip of testimony by Energy Secretary Steven Chu demonstrates.

While this next video clip has been pieced together, it reflects in President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden's own words, a path designed to foil coal fired energy production in the United States.

Without belaboring the point, some believe that anti-domestic energy policies such as these were a path to promote green energy by making conventional domestic energy sources harder to come by. Such policies directly harm domestic energy firms. But they indirectly harm our industry, which often provides housing for those workers, especially when they are in areas with high demand for housing.

We scarcely hear about enhanced pre-emption for HUD Code Homes these days. Why not? Wasn't it part of the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000?

Community operators created some 10 billion worth of paper to finance manufactured homes in their land lease locations. This was a free enterprise solution designed to fill the gaps created when lenders who vaporized – such as Conseco – went good-bye. But SAFE, Dodd-Frank and a plethora of other laws and regulations have so squeezed this 'captive finance' free enterprise solution in MHCs, that now community owner/operators are turning to rental homes in their properties instead.

Rentals?

Rentals in once all owner occupied communities?! The entire business model of community operators is being changed by the Regulators and their political allies who passed and fund those regulations. Shame on us if we let the party of Regulation be rewarded.

I'm appalled that some still want to believe in "hope and change," when we are heading "forward" towards a new fiscal cliff and a new recession in 2013. Some commentators already believe we are already back in recession.

How could we move "forward" by following the advice of those who gladly took Fannie and Freddie's PAC money? Politicians such as Congressman Barney Frank and then Senator Barack Obama? ACORN, community organizer Barack Obama and the Clinton Administration worked together to force lenders to issue loans to those who were not credit qualified. No doubt there were Republicans who colluded. Shame on all involved.

But it is gutless by Republicans to let the Democrats dish it out and not respond to such fables, blaming Bush II for the mortgage/housing meltdown when Democrats had a firm hand in the cookie jar that caused that whole fiasco.

They should call it the mortgage/financial services industry's version of Russian roulette.

When government interferes so massively in the free market, of course there will be unintended consequences.

But to falsely blame supply side economics for the mortgage/housing collapse is a creative lie or brutal ignorance. Neither the option of lie or ignorance are worthy of credence or support.

We don't hear much in Manufactured housing circles about how the run-up to the mortgage meltdown harmed our Industry. But it did! Easy qualifying, liar loans and the like created a false opportunity for hundreds of thousands of conventional housing buyers. A percentage of those buyers were or normally would have been manufactured home owners. As some manufactured home lenders about those owners who walked away from their HUD Code homes to get conventional houses during the run up to the mortgage/housing bust.

That put pressure on MH lenders and the MH market in general. As MHs where being left behind, of course values dropped, just as they have more recently in conventional housing neighborhoods plagued by foreclosures.

So federal policy harmed our industry in the early 00s, as thousands of our home owners left what become over-leveraged HUDs for what turned out to be over-leveraged conventional houses.

You can thank those politicians who made that happen to us then and more recently.

But let's not thank them by rewarding them with our support or our votes. That is like rewarding the thief by putting him in charge of law enforcement.

When politicians plunder the public treasury to fund with borrowed and tax payer money programs contrary to the Constitution and the public interest, it is time to end such madness.

Research I've seen indicates that some 44-47% of voters will vote for President Obama no matter what he says or does. That means the rest of us who are capable of a critical analysis and independent thought better show up at the polls and cast ballots wisely.

While applauding columns like the one on Voter Fraud, I was frankly disappointed when MHProNews published an interview with Congressman Joe Donnelly. Donnelly may be a co-sponsor of HR 3849, but he also voted for HERA 2008, which gave us the SAFE Act. Donnelly voted for Dodd-Frank. So while I understand the desire for 'balance,' I question the timing or "political correctness" of publishing the Donnelly interview during campaign season.

What we need when the industry is already in the lifeboats and are looking at possible new waves looming on the horizon is enhanced clarity, not confusion.

When even Time Magazine, Newsweek and the New York Times Magazine are publishing stories and OpEds that call into question or openly attack the Obama Presidency, MH trade publications need to be coming out loud, clear and strongly in favor of less government, lower taxes/regulations, a sane pro-domestic energy program and more free enterprise leadership.

The first pair of drafts of this article I was asked to edit and tone down. So this is the toned down version. I was also told that the editor would add a disclaimer and an invitation for responses. So be it.

Back to the top. Sham votes matter. They speak volumes.

Election year political posturing, via asking independent business owners and executives how to reduce the burdens or regulations matters too. It is the age old trick of seduction at work. We are being divided and conquered.

We are watching borrowed money and our tax dollars being turned against us to destroy the greatest economic system and the most free society in world history.

9/11 and U.S. Embassies ablaze reminds us why Jerusalem and God matters to America, and why that Democratic sham of a platform vote matters.

Manufactured housing matters too. President Obama stood in Elkhart, IN – an area where so many manufactured housing plants and suppliers are – talking jobs. Are there connections between all that is being covered in this column? Yes. They are just different corners of the same bolt of American political cloth.

If we sweep the current left wing crop of Democrats and RINO Republicans aside in favor of more free market oriented leaders, manufactured housing can blossom and grow again. All we need is a level playing field.

Some speculate that Ben Bernanke may have decided on QE3 – de facto printing money – to boost stock prices short term to help Team Obama win re-election. Whatever his motivation, the credit down grade cited below reminds us that the Bernanke/FED/QE3 policy is misguided. It will harm the middle class and seniors. Economic history reminds us that you earn, not print, your way to success.

“Ratings firm Egan-Jones cut its credit rating on the U.S. government to "AA-"

from "AA," citing its opinion that quantitative easing from the

Federal Reserve would hurt the

U.S. economy and the country's credit quality.” – CNBC

If we have supply-side Republicans in charge of the House and Senate, but fail to sweep out Architect Obama – the leader of our changed and hopeless society – we have not done enough.

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”

― Theodore Roosevelt

26th President of the United States

For anyone who votes to re-elect the man who wants to move us 'forward' off the looming fiscal cliff, such a person could qualify as unpatriotic by Roosevelt's definition.

Don't let that happen. Half measures won't be enough. ##

(Editor's Note: All Industry Voices and other opinion columns, including the Masthead blog, et al, represent the views of those who write them. They do not necessarily represent the views of MHProNews.com or our sponsors. It has been our long standing policy to invite guest columns from people with opposing perspectives. You can send your own letter to the editor or OpEd column on a subject connected to factory built housing to the email address linked here, with Industry Voices in the subject line. Thank you.)

Post submitted by
Michael Barnabas

by Doug Gorman

Conspiracy theories are not hard to find or hard to generate. With that backdrop, the question can be posed, "What is the United Nation's Agenda 21 and how does it affect our industry?” Let it be said, if you liked Dodd-Frank, you'll love Agenda 21. We are learning that red flags need to come up when we hear certain terms such as "fair share" and "social justice" tossed about casually. The red flag phrase emanating from Agenda 21 is "sustainable development."

Unfortunately, Agenda 21 was embraced by George H.W. Bush at the U.N.'s Earth Summit in 1992. Fully embraced and implemented, Agenda 21 would oppose private ownership of land and funnel middle class Americans into high rise complexes in cities. The radical left wing discovered they can use the environment as their weapon of choice to wage war against the founding principles of our country which were embedded in our constitution by the brilliant founders of our country.

Andrew Phillips recently published the following concerning Agenda 21:

"Maurice Strong was the Secretary General at this conference. He stated that “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work air conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable.” Agenda 21 is all about environmental control. It seeks to ration natural resources in the same way that Obamacare will ration healthcare. Energy will be rationed based on the assumption that our government owns all resources including food, water and land. Local Agenda 21 initiatives will mandate certain appliances and outlaw others based on energy consumption, and your energy consumption will be monitored so that you don’t “go over your limit.” Homes and buildings will have to be built or rebuilt to meet new “green” building codes or else face hefty fines. It seeks to transition citizens away from rural areas and into cities. It wants to “wean” people off private vehicles (because of “dirty” fossil fuels) and have them start using public transportation like high-speed rail. Outdoor recreational activities will be restricted because those practices are not “sustainable.”

“Social justice” means the abolition of private property. Here’s an excerpt from a report published at the U.N.’s Habitat I Conference in 1976:

“Land…cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. The provision of decent dwellings and healthy conditions for the people can only be achieved if land is used in the interest of  society as a whole.”

It’s not fair that individuals own land or property. What will make it fair is if it is collectively owned. The United Nations wants to mandate global communism. They just don’t call it that. They call it “social justice.” And they’re going to execute “social justice” through “sustainable development.”

These things are already happening in our own country. Over 600 cities and counties across the U.S. have become members of ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives), “an international association of local governments as well as national and regional local government organizations who have made a commitment to sustainable development.” Check here to see if your town, city or county is a member.

Participating in a UN advocated planning process would very likely bring out many of the conspiracy-fixated groups and individuals in our society…This segment of our society who fear ‘one-world government’ and a UN invasion of the United States through which our individual freedom would be stripped away would actively work to defeat any elected official who joined ‘the conspiracy’ by undertaking LA21. So we call our process something else, such as comprehensive planning, growth management or smart growth.

In 1993, a year after Bush Sr. signed the Agenda 21 protocol, President Clinton issued an executive order that created the PCSD (President’s Council on Sustainable Development). This group made Agenda 21 public policy and sought to implement its goals at the local level through ICLEI. J. Gary Lawrence was an adviser to this council. He advised that people should not know about Agenda 21 because if they knew about it, they would be opposed to it:

And this is why we don’t ever hear about it. They control the language in media. Their agenda is shrouded in vague terms that could mean anything, and people are naive enough to give them the benefit of the doubt. Since the creation of Clinton’s PCSD, Obama has issued executive orders creating similar and more expansive “councils” that work to further the U.N.’s agenda.

Tom Madrecki is a spokesman for Smart Growth America, another one of those Agenda 21 type organizations. He doesn’t like the fact that Agenda 21 is in the new Republican platform. He said, “The fact that it’s in the platform gives credence to something that just shouldn’t get any.” He’s concerned that such a mainstream position opposing Agenda 21 will only serve to stir dissent and will “continue halting beneficial conversations about community planning.” There’s another one of those buzz phrases…”community planning.”

It’s great that the Republican Party has officially taken a stand against the United Nations and its global communist agenda. I hope it stays in their platform, and I hope Romney and other elected Republicans will work tirelessly to expose the U.N. for what they really are and to extricate the U.S. from the organization itself, thus restoring our national sovereignty."

To its credit, the Republican party has finally seen the errors of its ways and has formally opposed Agenda 21 in its party platform adopted at the party convention in Tampa. Let's hope they are unified in that opposition and maintain it as they go forward.  ##

Doug Gorman is president Home Mart, the industry's most award winning retail center, located n Tulsa OK. He is also a recent inductee into the RV/MH Hall of Fame.