eXiled Alert! Dylan Ratigan Gives Shout Out To Yasha Levine, The eXiled For Pioneering Real Estate Market Reporting Out of Victorville

eXiled Alert! / February 1, 2011

By Yasha Levine

I’ve been living in Venice Beach for the past few months, convalescing after almost two years of immersion-reporting out of Victorville, California–the front lines of California’s real estate meltdown. Life out in Victorville, a remote exburb on the edge of the Mojave Desert, might be lighter on the wallet, but it can be very tough on the body and mental health–especially if one isn’t careful with the, er, shall we call them “attention-deficit-disorder brain snacks.” I often wondered what the hell I was doing out there, what I’d done to myself, if it was all worth it–and, to be honest, I didn’t have the stomach to revisit it. I was there too long.

Then yesterday, Dylan Ratigan devoted an entire excellent segment of his MSNBC show to Victorville’s real-estate-market collapse and its aftermath, and he threw a shout out to my reporting for The eXiled Online for having inspired his segment. It was even kind of weirdly gratifying seeing Ratigan interview the new mayor of Victorville, whom I was never a big fan of, to put it lightly.

For those of you who missed my reporting out of Victorville, this and this are good places to start.

Watch Dylan Ratigan’s segment here, and listen for the shout out he gives to his “friends at eXiled Online”:

Some Victorville residents didn’t much appreciate The eXiled’s contribution to the newscast. Here’s what one commenter wrote in a Victorville Daily Press post announcing Dylan’s segment to readers:

Check out the website that is mentioned at the [sic] begging of the tape.
Our good trailer trash friend Yasha Levine at Exiled and what he has to say about our Valley. Yasha, polluting our desert with lead. You should be ashamed, oh and what happened to your buddy that was arrested when he came for a visit?
http://exiledonline.com/victorville-dispatch-still-here-still-proud/#more-23410

UPDATE: I have information from a credible Victorville source that both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post are conducting local interviews in Victorville, right this minute. So look out for more stories on Victorville’s collapse, all of it inspired by reporting by yours truly. (Funny how it takes TV network coverage to motivate newspaper editors these days, ain’t it?)

Want to know more? Check out Yasha Levine’s dispatches from Victorville:

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19 Comments

Add your own

1. Roger Babson | February 1st, 2011 at 4:13 pm
Holy fuck, is the mayor of Victorville still repeating Cato Institute narratives? Yes, the government _forced_ TBTF banks to transfer wealth from municipalities and mortgage holders (and now workers and savers) to themselves. It’s totally, 100% the government’s fault. Is he mental!? Also, THIS GUY WORKS FOR THE LOCAL FUCKING GOVERNMENT! Why doesn’t he fire himself and save the city $100,000 dollars or so!
Furthermore, why doesn’t Ratigan call him out on retelling the old “it’s-poor-people-and-the-government’s-fault” meme again. While they’re firing people, MSNBC should replace Ratigan with Max Keiser.
2. Zhu Bajie | February 1st, 2011 at 4:36 pm
So why are you wasting what’s left of your life in Jia Zhou (aka California)?
3. Funonymous | February 1st, 2011 at 7:16 pm
Strange times when corporate media outlets give credit to the eXile instead of waiting six months to report on the same material without ever mentioning that maybe they read something about it here in their ‘research’.
4. Derp | February 1st, 2011 at 9:16 pm
Derp derp derp! Yeah, let’s fire Ratigan, I agree with you 100%! Let’s bring back Limbaugh’s tv show and put it his time slot, derp derp!
5. Victorville Needs Pedants | February 2nd, 2011 at 1:26 am
“[…] oh and what happened to your buddy that was arrested when he came for a visit”
That would be a a buddy _who_ was arrested, not _that_ was arrested, _who_ was arrested.
Fucking backwater.
6. Rick | February 2nd, 2011 at 4:47 am
Who was arrested and why?
7. VBC Fobbit | February 2nd, 2011 at 7:38 am
More War Nerd!!!
8. John Drinkwater | February 2nd, 2011 at 10:08 am
@5
Actually, ‘that’ is acceptable. ‘who’ is preferred, but grammar rules allow ‘that’ to refer to people or a person.
9. mikefromArlington | February 2nd, 2011 at 10:58 am
I’d link to the victorville pieces any chance I got. They were a great snapshot of result of unrestricted capitalism.
10. Victorvalley Villain | February 2nd, 2011 at 2:14 pm
I wanna read about the Venice area bourgeois Bolsheviks’ war on the lumpen proletariat. Have they given up and accepted their homeless brothers and sisters yet?
11. Victorvalley Villain | February 2nd, 2011 at 2:16 pm
I mean fascism is always funnier when enlightened liberals do it. That’s what I love about the contrast between Victorville and Venice.
12. Victorvalley Villain | February 2nd, 2011 at 3:12 pm
@6, Word on the street is that Gary Brecher got snatched up in a Victorville trailer park, because he “fit the description” of some local up to some no good thuggery.
13. my talkative ringpiece | February 2nd, 2011 at 9:47 pm
#10 Agree! I’m licking my chops thinking about Yasha’s skewering of the Venice-ians, yuppies, gangbangers, homeless, street performers, psycho street performer shaped objects, that old guy in a turban and rollerblades, all of it!
Yasha-ize me!
14. dylan, dylan, dylan | February 3rd, 2011 at 6:13 am
good lord, i like dylan, but he should have knocked some sense into that pinhead, empty suit mayor.
“it was the gov’t’s fault for making them loan to the deadbeats in my city.”
yes, douchebag, it was all the govt’s fault the mortgage banks colluded with your people to commit financial fraud and then sell those loans to F’ing Goldman Sachs and Citibank, not Fannie and Freddie who were out of the subprime market by 2006.
dylan should have laid into him for repeating talking point he doesn’t even understand.
15. Jack | February 7th, 2011 at 9:44 am
Check out the Yo! Venice blog for some alternative “socially liberal” fascists preaching hate against the homeless. Funny as hell. I went on the forum pretending to be a recently released Atascadero inmate with zoophile tendencies homeless but looking to get into section 8 housing. It was good for some laughs till they kicked me out.
16. Victorvalley Villain | February 7th, 2011 at 2:11 pm
I got baned (and had all my posts deleted) on Yo! Venice many months ago. They said I was “trolling.” lulz.
http://www.yovenice.com/forum/politics-community/enforce-the-law/
17. Victorvalley Villain | February 7th, 2011 at 2:13 pm
My posts were deleted, but see the quotes of my posts still live on,
“What a bunch of whiny gentrifying yuppie
hipster colonizer crap.
Move to Malibu or Pacific Palisades if you want to be elitist toads.”
18. Victorvalley Villain | February 7th, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Those people are no different than the ones who frequent the vvdailypress forums. Funny how people are all the same.
19. Marc | February 9th, 2011 at 6:36 pm
Yeah, that mayor guy seems like a real dick-head.