Author: gbump

It might seem like the National Association of Realtors, which in the past few years has been the target of antitrust lawsuits and whose former president resigned in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal, is in crisis. Last year, a federal jury in Missouri found that the NAR, along with private brokerages, had colluded to keep broker fees artificially high and awarded nearly $1.8 billion to hundreds of thousands of home sellers. And on Friday, the NAR announced that instead of appealing it would settle the lawsuit. (Max Besbris is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the author of “Upsold: Real Estate Agents, Prices, and Neighborhood Inequality.” )

Barry Burden, the founding director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center, outlined several other reasons why votes were counted faster in the primaries than in the 2020 general election.

That may sound like a more expensive arrangement for homebuyers. But economist Abdullah Yavas at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business said under the traditional arrangement, sellers only technically pay for buyer’s agents. In reality, buyers were still footing the bill.

Nebraska and Maine long ago discarded the electoral college’s winner-take-all approach to allow split ballots if a candidate wins the popular vote in a congressional district. (Featuring quote from Barry Burden.)

Many people are disparaging or dismissive when talking about people who believe misinformation, but it can happen to anyone, said Sedona Chinn, an assistant professor in the life sciences communication department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The ruling is part of a suite of attacks in recent years aiming to chip away at section 2, said Daniel Tokaji, an election law expert who is dean of the law school at the University of Wisconsin. “These are judges who are not terribly friendly to the voting rights and in particular to protections that racial minority groups have long had to wait for,” he said.

“This will be a really fundamental shift in how Americans buy, search for, and purchase and sell their housing. It will absolutely transform the real estate industry,” said Max Besbris, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of “Upsold,” a book exploring the link between housing prices and the real estate business.

“This is a sort of $2 million question,” Till Wagner, an atmospheric and ocean scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says. “Can this actually happen? And if so, when?”

Kathleen Glass, associate director of the Food Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, describes purchasing organic as “a lifestyle choice,” adding that there’s no evidence that organic is more microbiologically safe than conventionally grown foods.  Compared with 50 years ago, she says, the amount of pesticides and herbicides allowed on food are well below levels that could cause long-term health impacts.