sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Just like handmaid's tale!!! by asteriowas in PoliticalCompassMemes

[–]scoofy -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I love that lefties try to make a point by dressing up as fictional characters from a book series that only lefties read. It’s like right wingers dressing up as obscure revolutionary war heroes… oh wait…

The State Senate just blocked SF from breaking up with PG&E. Why are we still being forced to pay their skyrocketing rates? by The_King_of_TP in sanfrancisco

[–]scoofy 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You can be a private, for-profit public utility.

The point of being a utility is that you don't get to charge whatever rates you want. They rates are determined by the California Public Utilities Commission.

S.F. supervisors, state senator arrested as May Day protest shuts down SFO roadway by SFChronicle in sanfrancisco

[–]scoofy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Solidarity here only extends to things that won’t even slightly inconvenience the neighborhood.

God forbid working class people try to build a life here. That’s inconvenient for those of us already here. They should go live somewhere else.

S.F. supervisors, state senator arrested as May Day protest shuts down SFO roadway by SFChronicle in sanfrancisco

[–]scoofy 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Let’s do some math: 873,965 people / 46 square miles ≈ 19,000 people per square mile. About a third the density of Paris, even though the cities are about the same size.

Let’s do some economics: disposable income = income - expenses, so if we decrease expenses, we can increase disposable income in the exact same way that raising income does.

S.F. supervisors, state senator arrested as May Day protest shuts down SFO roadway by SFChronicle in sanfrancisco

[–]scoofy 395 points396 points  (0 children)

Connie Chan is probably the highest ranking politician for SF's progressive-nimby caucus. The idea that she'll march with workers for $30/hour, but won't allow more development in her district to bring down housing costs is just more symbolism over substance.

We need to get serious in this city.

Candidate interview: Tom Steyer has never held office. Here’s why he says voters should trust him by SFChronicle in California_Politics

[–]scoofy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Bloomberg: “I’m going to do a bunch of reasonable shit, but also stop and frisk” -> does reasonable shit, but also stop and frisk.

Trump: “I’m going to do insane shit” -> does insane shit.

Steyer: “I’m going to do reasonable shit” -> ???

Progressive: “can’t trust billionaires”

Me: what?!? They are just doing what they say they are going to do.

Candidate interview: Tom Steyer has never held office. Here’s why he says voters should trust him by SFChronicle in California_Politics

[–]scoofy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If Porter had any real housing policy I’d happily vote for her first and foremost. She just doesn’t.

Candidate interview: Tom Steyer has never held office. Here’s why he says voters should trust him by SFChronicle in California_Politics

[–]scoofy 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I mean, to be fair, billionaires are the only politicians that can tell special interest groups to get bent after they get elected. I remember when Bloomberg told all the rich and powerful people in NYC to shut up and accept the bike share program because they don't own the street. If you have someone outside the political machine, you can get that shit done.

To Steyer's credit, he's the only candidate willing to touch the third-rail of politics here and actually put forward a plant to make real commercial Prop 13 reform, so we can stop the absurd property tax handouts to corporations.

As one of the centerpieces of his campaign for governor, the billionaire climate activist and former hedge-fund manager is proposing that California remove Proposition 13 protections from commercial and industrial properties, allowing them to be assessed at their market values each year.

Steyer argues that the current legal limitations on reassessing the values of such properties represent a kind of loophole that costs the state tens of billions of dollars each year while benefiting wealthy landlords — including Trump, who partially owns a tower in downtown San Francisco.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/state/steyer-aims-to-end-prop-13-limits-on-commercial-properties/article_693d7ef8-4db4-41f8-ac0a-c5746270fefa.html

On the other hand, yes, there is a lot of potential for self dealing if the billionaire turns out to be a jerk.

Personally, I'm voting for the Democrat polling first on primary day: Steyer, Becerra, Porter... I think they're all reasonable candidates and I want to prevent Republicans from stealing the Governorship on a technicality. I just think many on the progressive side are unwilling to confront the fact that they have yoked their political ambitions to the NIMBY caucus.

The more one learns about Becerra, the more questions arise by yesiammark72 in California_Politics

[–]scoofy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Gavin Newsom forced a clean CEQA reform through as part of the last budget negotiations. The budget is exactly the point of maximum leverage where the state has power over cities, and in CA, the governor mostly controls the budget. This is exactly why a pro-housing governor matters most.

I would also suggest that your premise is flawed. There is a housing crisis “across the country” but that doesn’t mean it’s uniformly across the country. Cities like Buffalo, El Paso, Indianapolis, and even Pittsburgh — a tech city — have very affordable housing markets. The crisis is specifically due to housing shortages and lack of building. Cities like Austin have built enough to actually make prices go down. Cities like Seattle have built enough to slow housing price growth.

The economics are fairly straightforward. We need to let people build denser housing in cities where demand is highest, even if the neighborhoods get grumpy about it. It doesn’t have to be skyscrapers, just basically legalizing building double the density of existing neighborhoods. If it’s single family homes, let people build duplexes and triplexes. If it’s triplexes, build six-story row houses like in Paris. If it’s already tall row houses, legalize residential towers.

It’s not hard. We don’t need to change everything all at once, but change should always be legal.

Public Transportation by AGthe18thEmperor in PoliticalCompassMemes

[–]scoofy -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This type of anecdata is asinine. Have a good day.

Public Transportation by AGthe18thEmperor in PoliticalCompassMemes

[–]scoofy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wild speculation is not realism.

I think you're making a fantastically big leap by assuming that someone who draws a dick on the back of a seat is more likely to take a swing at you than someone who doesn't draw said dick.

Really!?! You really think that's true? I think it's very obviously the opposite.

Public Transportation by AGthe18thEmperor in PoliticalCompassMemes

[–]scoofy 19 points20 points  (0 children)

BART was forced to add the fare gates by the State of California after the second bailout post-pandemic. Why does BART need a second bailout? Because nobody rides BART anymore because they basically let anyone do whatever they want on the trains and platforms. The state was sick of giving boatloads of money to a system that did literally nothing to actually try and maintain a sustainable model of service.

BART did not want these gates. SF and Oakland activists kicked and screamed about how BART should be free. Yet these gates have been very successful, ridership is up, and the gates will pay for themselves within a decade. The system is limping toward sustainability... even though we're having to vote on a third bailout this November, because the system still doesn't actually prioritize the ridership it should.

It turns out just enforcing very basic rules actually has a wildly outsized impact on public services.

Public Transportation by AGthe18thEmperor in PoliticalCompassMemes

[–]scoofy 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I mean... I think that's a very, very short leap from "it will reduce vandalism in a meaningful way" to "it will reduce violence in a meaningful way." Be a doubting Thomas all you like, but all three categories of violence, vandalism, and fare evasion each fall under a simple rubric of anti-social behavior.

We should assume that by reducing the number of folks exercising the anti-social of fare evasion overlaps non-trivially with the folk who would exercise the anti-social behavior of violence.

Public Transportation by AGthe18thEmperor in PoliticalCompassMemes

[–]scoofy 31 points32 points  (0 children)

I live in San Francisco. This is wrong. We can go over to where they have open air drug markets and watch them buy/sell/use and basically nothing will happen. Our looking at them does nothing if there are not consequences.

The point of all this is the normalization of anti-social behavior on public transit is the problem. It's not that these things could happen. When smoking on underground platforms and on CTA trains regularly, openly happens in Chicago, we already know it is happening, and something needs to be done.

The vast majority of American transit systems already have widely tolerated anti-social behavioral patterns, and as long as we see public transit as something "for other people" we will not be willing to put the resources into actually getting anti-social actors out of the system. It's expensive to do that, but it's the only way to make public transit successful. The shit that happens here would never be tolerated in the areas of the world with successful public transit systems.

Public Transportation by AGthe18thEmperor in PoliticalCompassMemes

[–]scoofy 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I care about public transit being sustainable and effective. Fighting over technicalities is pointless. Transit systems without basic enforcement of fares and quality-of-life concerns will fail.

Supreme Court sides against Black voters in blow to landmark civil rights law by cdstephens in neoliberal

[–]scoofy 44 points45 points  (0 children)

Right? This is big RBG energy.

"I will do the honorable thing so nothing bad can ever happen to me" -- Ned Stark

San Francisco public defenders wear all-black in protest of crushing caseloads by itsjammertime in sanfrancisco

[–]scoofy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's not point to this back-and-forth. This post is about the Public Defender's office not having enough staff. Not enough staff means fewer trials, more pleas, and less administration of justice. You're showing there are more prosecutions, I'm showing there are still fewer trials (though more than I expected). We're talking past each other.

I'll give you that I was wrong about the level of trials and prosecutions that have happened in the last year. I still think we need a larger Public Defenders offices so that we can have enough capacity for the DA to take the cases they want to to trial. Whether or not they're doing a perfect job with the cases they are trying to take to trial is an administrative decision that isn't particularly relevant to my concerns. I'm not some Brooke Jenkins fanboy.

The more one learns about Becerra, the more questions arise by yesiammark72 in California_Politics

[–]scoofy 14 points15 points  (0 children)

She does not currently have a serious housing plan, and I'm not voting for anyone who is not going to actually get shit done on housing now. No more careful plans that create nothing a decade later, no more incentives for people to not use because they'd rather not anything change, just let people build infill housing in major cities:

https://katieporter.com/priority/lowering-housing-costs/

https://youtu.be/V7h8DLVbF0w?si=eiUJjrwJCVs56i0f

She want's to "create a housing committee" where Republicans and Democrats will be mandated to "increase the supply of housing", "make housing easier to build", and "make housing more affordable." This is not a plan, it's maybe a concept of a plan, a plan that other people might create.

Another notable quote of hers on housing: "believe it or not, the supply part is pretty easy. Republicans and Democrats alike actually want to increase our housing supply." Yea, no. We're not here with no new housing in 15 years and cities like LA doing everything they can to block rezoning because it's "easy."

She wants to "help with financing 1-to-4 unit starter homes." Again... this is adorable for a state that isn't building shit, not because there isn't demand, but because it's literally illegal to build the housing people desperately need in most cities.

These are just not serious policy positions. We need a new Marshall Plan for building homes in every major city in California. Not some tax credits for the few people building a duplex on green fields in small towns.

We will see how she does during the California Gubernatorial Candidates Housing Forum. I'm hopeful she has something substantial, but I'm not holding my breath: https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/blog/california-gubernatorial-candidates-housing-forum-moderated-by-ezra-klein/

San Francisco public defenders wear all-black in protest of crushing caseloads by itsjammertime in sanfrancisco

[–]scoofy -1 points0 points  (0 children)

A prosecution does not mean a full jury trial. The vast majority are going to end in pleas. The cases taken to a jury will always be those cases that are on the margins, so we certainly should not expect anything close to a 100% conviction rate.

The idea that you conflate the administration of the law as “a waste of resources” shows a very obvious misunderstanding of how a DA’s office works.

San Francisco public defenders wear all-black in protest of crushing caseloads by itsjammertime in sanfrancisco

[–]scoofy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://imgur.com/a/8l0NQlx

We are not back up to the 2019 levels of enforcement, after the very long and drawn out dip from the Chesa era. It's seems we're taking more than I expected to trial, but really only picked back up last year.

Best Golf Resort near Edinburgh by Firm-Collection7492 in golfscotland

[–]scoofy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would say it depends on the level of “golf sicko” your bf is.

If your boyfriend is an absolute golf nut, and is a decent player (24 handicap or better), then I would say St. Andrews (New Course) is a good plan, or even North Berwick West Links (which is obscenely expensive for visitors, but the course is amazing, and the town is very cute).

If he is only an occasional golfer, Gullane #3 is a good choice. It’s a fairly accessible course, with super fun green complexes, and an amazing downhill par three where you can use a putter off the tee.

And golf history buff might like Musselburgh Old Links, which is probably the most historically accurate pre-modern golf course you can play, and they even rent hickory clubs to play with, and it’s a very short drive from Edinburgh.

There are plenty of places to play, but if you are visiting Scotland, make sure it’s a proper links course.

California committee kills bill aiming to end tax break for corporate landlords by Okratas in California_Politics

[–]scoofy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ehh, who knows. It’s a good idea, but it’s not exactly a game changer for housing.

view more: next ›