5 ms·

It's honestly not surprising in my view. Wealthy "progressives" have always had a "rules for thee but not for me" attitude, whether it comes to homeless shelter

It's honestly not surprising in my view. Wealthy "progressives" have always had a "rules for thee but not for me" attitude, whether it comes to homeless shelters, new housing starts, police funding, or affirmative action.

bccdee 5y ago
It seems very weird that people are attributing this to progressivism. It's bad governance perhaps, but it has nothing to do with California's social policies. Since when are open container laws "progressive"? It's as if the author realized nobody would read his article about patio dining, and went back and made it about how progressivism is destroying patio dining instead, because... California.
- b9a2cab5 5y ago
  The article is about how an amalgamation of feel-good laws combined to destroy restaurants' ability to offer patio dining. Passing feel-good laws that have poorly thought out consequences is what California "progressives" do. That's why it's about how "progressivism" is destroying patio dining. If this was about actual progressivism then you'd see any number of East Coast blue states mentioned, which they aren't.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tjr225 5y ago
    How is outside dining in any of the east coast blue states? Do you even know? Outside dining in the PNW was(prior to Covid) and is chugging along just fine.
    - MathCodeLove 5y ago
      That's the point they were making.
  - stefs 5y ago
    "feel good laws", like fire codes and lost parking spots / parking spot revenue and accessibility? sounds less like "progressive feel good laws" and more like bike shedding.
    - emteycz 5y ago
      Surely it's not only California that has these
      - stefs 5y ago
        yes, that's what i meant. those issues are concerns everywhere and not "feel good laws". the differences is in how much weight you give them; do you value lost parking spots / parking spot meter income more than this? how many people do you ask for approval? if you ask the nimby-neighbors whether they're cool with guests chatting below their windows until 10pm or 11pm, you'll never get a single one through.
- magicink81 5y ago
  They are attributing it to a pattern of claims and declarations regarding one's own beliefs and desires that so-called progressives in places like SF and Berkeley make, which directly contradict their behaviors. Here's a great example: https://www.johnlocke.org/good-for-thee-not-for-me-robert-reich-edition/ https://www.johnlocke.org/good-for-thee-not-for-me-robert-re... "Robert Reich, a left-wing professor at the University of California Berkeley who served as labor secretary during the Clinton administration, is very concerned about income inequality. He urged Wall Street executives to “invest” in cities by funding low-income housing projects. He also praised a “promising initiative” to promote the construction of affordable housing units in San Francisco. Reich is not so keen, however, on a proposal to tear down a dilapidated building in his Berkeley neighborhood and replace it with a 10-unit development that would include low-income housing. Reich and some of his wealthy neighbors are imploring the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the dilapidated structure, known as the Payson House, as a Berkeley landmark in order to stop the proposed development. In a letter to the commission, Reich said the proposed housing units would destroy the “charm of an older era of Berkeley” and likened the developers’ actions to “the illegal practices and corrupt politics of the late nineteenth century.”
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    “Dilapidated building” is a loaded description. The house is the oldest in the neighborhood, from 1889, and the neighbors claim it is of both architectural and local-historical significance. (I don’t have enough local knowledge to weigh in.) Here is the neighbors’ landmark application: https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_Development/Level_3_-_LPC/2020-08-06_LPC_ATT%201A_1915%20Berryman_Landmarks%20Application.pdf https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_D... Insisting that they are just saying that as an excuse because they don’t like town houses seems uncharitable at best. Considering the sources pushing this story I’d call it more like a bad-faith political hit job vs. Prof. Reich. E.g. your link is from a far-right “think tank” in North Carolina full of climate denialists, funded by Art Pope, GOP megadonor and close friend of the Koch brothers. Not exactly the people I would trust to fairly evaluate Berkeley’s decisions on which buildings should be landmarks. In any case, the city council decided that the house isn’t important enough to qualify as a landmark, and the project is going through; the building will be torn down.
- epistasis 5y ago
  It's a tough thing to represent correctly. Are these people actually "progressive" or merely wrapping themselves with the image? Though I critique SF all the time for not actually being progressive, or left for that matter, at least where it counts for local politics and material effects that could be achieved by their politics before The Revolution, I sometimes think the author has it right. It's better to say that everybody that adopts a label gets to define it. Unless there's a really strong faction with the label that reject the politics of the others, we are left with SF "progressives" being "progressive," even if outsides find them hypocritical and counterproductive to the movement.
  - klipt 5y ago
    > Are these people actually "progressive" or merely wrapping themselves with the image? Is a Catholic priest who abuses children actually "Catholic" or merely wrapping themselves with the image? In the end that's a semantics argument which doesn't seem to do much to solve the underlying problem.
gadders 5y ago
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"

bccdee 5y ago

It seems very weird that people are attributing this to progressivism. It's bad governance perhaps, but it has nothing to do with California's social policies. Since when are open container laws "progressive"? It's as if the author realized nobody would read his article about patio dining, and went back and made it about how progressivism is destroying patio dining instead, because... California.

b9a2cab5 5y ago
The article is about how an amalgamation of feel-good laws combined to destroy restaurants' ability to offer patio dining. Passing feel-good laws that have poorly thought out consequences is what California "progressives" do. That's why it's about how "progressivism" is destroying patio dining. If this was about actual progressivism then you'd see any number of East Coast blue states mentioned, which they aren't.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tjr225 5y ago
  How is outside dining in any of the east coast blue states? Do you even know? Outside dining in the PNW was(prior to Covid) and is chugging along just fine.
  - MathCodeLove 5y ago
    That's the point they were making.
- stefs 5y ago
  "feel good laws", like fire codes and lost parking spots / parking spot revenue and accessibility? sounds less like "progressive feel good laws" and more like bike shedding.
  - emteycz 5y ago
    Surely it's not only California that has these
    - stefs 5y ago
      yes, that's what i meant. those issues are concerns everywhere and not "feel good laws". the differences is in how much weight you give them; do you value lost parking spots / parking spot meter income more than this? how many people do you ask for approval? if you ask the nimby-neighbors whether they're cool with guests chatting below their windows until 10pm or 11pm, you'll never get a single one through.
magicink81 5y ago
They are attributing it to a pattern of claims and declarations regarding one's own beliefs and desires that so-called progressives in places like SF and Berkeley make, which directly contradict their behaviors. Here's a great example: https://www.johnlocke.org/good-for-thee-not-for-me-robert-reich-edition/ https://www.johnlocke.org/good-for-thee-not-for-me-robert-re... "Robert Reich, a left-wing professor at the University of California Berkeley who served as labor secretary during the Clinton administration, is very concerned about income inequality. He urged Wall Street executives to “invest” in cities by funding low-income housing projects. He also praised a “promising initiative” to promote the construction of affordable housing units in San Francisco. Reich is not so keen, however, on a proposal to tear down a dilapidated building in his Berkeley neighborhood and replace it with a 10-unit development that would include low-income housing. Reich and some of his wealthy neighbors are imploring the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the dilapidated structure, known as the Payson House, as a Berkeley landmark in order to stop the proposed development. In a letter to the commission, Reich said the proposed housing units would destroy the “charm of an older era of Berkeley” and likened the developers’ actions to “the illegal practices and corrupt politics of the late nineteenth century.”
- jacobolus 5y ago
  “Dilapidated building” is a loaded description. The house is the oldest in the neighborhood, from 1889, and the neighbors claim it is of both architectural and local-historical significance. (I don’t have enough local knowledge to weigh in.) Here is the neighbors’ landmark application: https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_Development/Level_3_-_LPC/2020-08-06_LPC_ATT%201A_1915%20Berryman_Landmarks%20Application.pdf https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_D... Insisting that they are just saying that as an excuse because they don’t like town houses seems uncharitable at best. Considering the sources pushing this story I’d call it more like a bad-faith political hit job vs. Prof. Reich. E.g. your link is from a far-right “think tank” in North Carolina full of climate denialists, funded by Art Pope, GOP megadonor and close friend of the Koch brothers. Not exactly the people I would trust to fairly evaluate Berkeley’s decisions on which buildings should be landmarks. In any case, the city council decided that the house isn’t important enough to qualify as a landmark, and the project is going through; the building will be torn down.
epistasis 5y ago
It's a tough thing to represent correctly. Are these people actually "progressive" or merely wrapping themselves with the image? Though I critique SF all the time for not actually being progressive, or left for that matter, at least where it counts for local politics and material effects that could be achieved by their politics before The Revolution, I sometimes think the author has it right. It's better to say that everybody that adopts a label gets to define it. Unless there's a really strong faction with the label that reject the politics of the others, we are left with SF "progressives" being "progressive," even if outsides find them hypocritical and counterproductive to the movement.
- klipt 5y ago
  > Are these people actually "progressive" or merely wrapping themselves with the image? Is a Catholic priest who abuses children actually "Catholic" or merely wrapping themselves with the image? In the end that's a semantics argument which doesn't seem to do much to solve the underlying problem.

gadders 5y ago

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"