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> The 1978 state ballot initiative Proposition 13 benefited many California homeowners by setting limits on property tax increases. But the measure had a catacl

> The 1978 state ballot initiative Proposition 13 benefited many California homeowners by setting limits on property tax increases. But the measure had a cataclysmic effect on tax-supported institutions like the school district... “Proposition 13 was the beginning of the end,” school district associate superintendent for business services Robert Golton told Jones. “If I had been in a time machine for the past four or five years, I would be unable to believe what has transpired in the state.” Who will deliver us from this meddlesome law? It's insane to me that the now-adult students still oppose the journalist. They were victims of this law. Whatever they are saving on their taxes now, they lose in a lifetime of benefits - money and otherwise - from a better personal education and a better educated community. And here they are, shitting on someone who tried an innovative way to repeal it, in the service of the very students she covered, because of some meaningless drama. Because their emotions were insufficiently validated. The most fascinating thing about her journalism is that, by 2024, she has exposed the students as the antagonists. They only care about themselves. Then, and now.

chung8123 3y ago
They really need to get rid of RSO and Prop13 at the same time. Both laws do the same effective thing, one for the renter and one for the homeowner.
- nick7376182 3y ago
  Keep RSO but get rid of Prop13 on any non-owner occupied buildings. Multi unit buildings that are not individual condos should automatically be voided out of Prop 13 anyways.
  - KerrAvon 3y ago
    They recently got rid of Prop 13 on inherited homes -- apparently because people got real mad at Jeff Bridges for having a second home -- which is currently fucking me over personally because it's taking a long time to prep the inherited property for sale.
    - nick7376182 3y ago
      Sorry for your loss. Given that you are selling it rather than rent it out, it seems to have the intended effect. Just as when I renovated a vacant RSO duplex, I sold it rather than enter rent control again. Incentives do work, but we accidentally incentivised and subsidized a whole bunch of mom and pop landlords with prop 13.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        What is RSO? The subsidization of mom and pop landlords with Prop 13 basically translates into lower rents overall; without it rents would have to rise (or total rentals decrease, which may be a desirable outcome).
        dredmorbius 3y ago
        I'm presuming "rent stabilization ordinance", which is specific to Los Angeles, best I can tell: <https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/los_angeles/latest/lamc/0-0-0-195151 https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/los_angeles/latest/lam...>
        nick7376182 3y ago
        [dead]
        nick7376182 3y ago
        [dead]
SllX 3y ago
> Who will deliver us from this meddlesome law? Only voters can. Directly. At the ballot box. So don’t hold your breath. Any other remedy wouldn’t really be legal nor legitimate because of the nature of ballot initiatives, particularly ones that amend the State constitution. Proposition 13 is sitting on top of a long pile of ballot-passed laws that have over time convinced me the entire ballot initiative process is actually a mistake and primarily enables bad but popular laws.
- slg 3y ago
  > the entire ballot initiative process is actually a mistake It is also arguably un-American. I thought the whole idea of having a representative government was so the common citizen didn't have to deal with the tedium of actually governing, so we elect people to govern in our stead. The fact the us Californians were expected to have opinions on props related to dialysis clinics in 2018[1], 2020[2], and 2022[3] should be a prime example of this. I have no idea what those props were supposed to do. All I know is the only reason I am being asked to weigh in on them is because someone with money was finding it too hard to pass whatever law they wanted through the legislature, so they tried to circumvent the normal legislative process by coming to us directly. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_California_Proposition_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_California_Proposition_8 [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_23 [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_California_Proposition_29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_California_Proposition_29
  - mandevil 3y ago
    As a resident of a nearby state whose real estate market keeps rising because of the steady flow of people forced to leave California because they can't afford it, my favorite of the dumb propositions that is destroying California is Prop 103. Among other complicated things it specifically enumerates what tools homeowner (and auto) insurance companies can use to set rates (global climate catastrophe models? Not a thing when they voted in 1988, so now they can never be used). It also created the Consumer Intervenor process so it takes about two years for a rate hike to be approved, and companies have to prove that they are only using the approved methods and nothing else. This is the reason the California homeowner's insurance market is in grave danger: the company runs the "real" model which tells how much they will pay out in damages over the course the rate period, then they have to figure out a way to justify it to the (as a result of the prop, now elected) California Insurance Commissioner in the face of the Consumer Intervenors (who get their costs, expenses, and attorney fees covered out of the company pocket if they win and the rates aren't approved). If the company doesn't think the lines cross, then they don't offer insurance and start to withdraw from the market. This is why California's homeowners insurance market is so dysfunctional, because of a proposition that passed 35 years ago with 51% of the ballot but now effectively cannot be changed or amended.
braiamp 3y ago
> And here they are, shitting on someone who tried an innovative way to repeal it, in the service of the very students she covered, because of some meaningless drama. Because their emotions were insufficiently validated Once you accept that humans are emotional creatures first, and then capable of reasoning, it will make sense. People don't care too much about facts, they care about what they feel more.
- jdonaldson 3y ago
  Emotions let us reason about ourselves, which rationality alone can't do for us. Because, in a purely rational sense, the "self" doesn't really exist.
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  Leaders are emotional creatures too. Leaders have great empathy. They look out for people other than themselves. The problem here isn’t emotions, it’s selfishness. When people say a lack of leadership, they mean a lack of giving a fuck about someone other than yourself. These kids only cared about themselves. They still only care about themselves!
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    You are reading a great deal into the story that isn't there. I went back and reread it again looking for the reactions you describe. They're not present.
    - doctorpangloss 3y ago
      I'm reading into the story alright. > Jones’ classmates also came off as complicated figures, brilliant and with seemingly endless potential, but so used to diminishing resources that many didn’t see themselves as victims. It’s the resigned lack of ambition... [Jones] found soft drinks and apathy... > ...many of the students involved grew more resentful and felt unheard. > I’m not going to calm [the students] down. … I’m not going to try to silence them. If they’re angry and they want to march [to voice their anger at the news article], then I’m going to help them figure out how to do that. > Tigueros [the student] added: “I’ve got kids now, and imagining that somebody would reveal the secrets that my daughter gave to somebody she trusted? It sounds horrific.” > Jones didn’t write about the deepest personal secrets discussed in the center... Tigueros, a now-adult student who was friends with Jones: verbatim only thinking about himself and his family in that quote. And the thing he says verbatim he worries about the most didn't even happen. It doesn't even make sense. It isn't horrific. I know they were defenseless kids then. But there were also ambitious students at that school. Kids who would benefit from the funding that evaporated. What of them?
drew870mitchell 3y ago
The students were nonconsenting lab rats for a bizarre media experiment. They have every right to feel used or betrayed because they were.
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  Yeah, and the people in the cars on the blocked highways are also non-consenting whatevers to sitting activists, activisting about whatever it is they feel passionate about. Both suffer some kind of substantive harm right? I just wonder how you imagine change is achieved. Because you tell me, how is Prop 13 going to get repealed? Are you going to run a ballot initiative? There are lots of popular laws that are bad. And speaking of, you know, we kill tens of millions of lab mice and rats every year, and rats are quite smart, and the people working with lab mice realize the gravity of the animal suffering they inflict. They are smart people. Every single medicine you use today has animal suffering animal testing on mice related to it. The nonconsenting media experiment framework people have a much more expansive framework than the one you are invoking, you are invoking a popsci version of it, and your version doesn't accommodate the intractability of everything being consensual. You just don't know enough about this stuff, and you say something kind of reductive that is really about absolving these now-adults of responsibility for their own screwups. You're getting co-opted by people who only think to the first level of the expanding brain meme. Oh, some people got upset at my innovative form of protest. Boo hoo. I'm not going to rank one kind of suffering or using or betrayal against another. It doesn't matter. It was definitely in the students' interest to repeal Prop 13. If only they cared!
- scotty79 3y ago
  As if the high school was not already bizzare experiment they were more blackmailed into than consented to.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
solomonb 3y ago
> It's insane to me that the now-adult students still oppose the journalist. They were victims of this law. Whatever they are saving on their taxes now, they lose in a lifetime of benefits - money and otherwise - from a better personal education and a better educated community. You are significantly mischaracterizing the criticisms by the students: > Trigueros said he was not among the most distressed of Jones’ classmates and listened to both sides of the debate. He understood the Chronicle’s attempt to reveal the challenges facing teachers and students, but said a major line was crossed when Jones stepped into the Peer Resource Center, where the school’s most vulnerable students gravitated and opened up. Nov. 3, 1992: Jonny Dror hangs out at the Peer Resource Center, a gathering space where students could speak their minds at George Washington High School in San Francisco. > “She saw kids were processing divorces and death and homelessness and coming out. She saw all of that,” he said. “We wanted to consider (Shann the reporter) an ally and advocate for us, (but there was) this deep betrayal, and we didn’t consent to all of that.”
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  I am not mischaracterizing the criticisms. They should have the maturity by now to see that she was indeed trustworthy, to admit that their gut reactions were wrong, and it is especially bad of them to invoke the modern, pervasive and mischaracterized "consent" framework, today, in defense of their feeling pissed off 30 years ago. It doesn't change the fact that they are in favor of Prop 13. The average person in California is in favor of Prop 13, and that's exactly the problem! In that sense, it doesn't really matter what happened. They missed the point.
  - solomonb 3y ago
    > I am not mischaracterizing the criticisms. Yes you are. Their criticisms are about their right to privacy being violated by an undercover reporter. > It doesn't change the fact that they would vote against repealing Prop 13. I missed the part of the article where a former student said that, can you show me?
    - doctorpangloss 3y ago
gagaJo 3y ago
[dead]
scotty79 3y ago
Yeah the deptiction of students reaction feels very 2024 snowflakey

chung8123 3y ago

They really need to get rid of RSO and Prop13 at the same time. Both laws do the same effective thing, one for the renter and one for the homeowner.

nick7376182 3y ago
Keep RSO but get rid of Prop13 on any non-owner occupied buildings. Multi unit buildings that are not individual condos should automatically be voided out of Prop 13 anyways.
- KerrAvon 3y ago
  They recently got rid of Prop 13 on inherited homes -- apparently because people got real mad at Jeff Bridges for having a second home -- which is currently fucking me over personally because it's taking a long time to prep the inherited property for sale.
  - nick7376182 3y ago
    Sorry for your loss. Given that you are selling it rather than rent it out, it seems to have the intended effect. Just as when I renovated a vacant RSO duplex, I sold it rather than enter rent control again. Incentives do work, but we accidentally incentivised and subsidized a whole bunch of mom and pop landlords with prop 13.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      What is RSO? The subsidization of mom and pop landlords with Prop 13 basically translates into lower rents overall; without it rents would have to rise (or total rentals decrease, which may be a desirable outcome).
      - dredmorbius 3y ago
        I'm presuming "rent stabilization ordinance", which is specific to Los Angeles, best I can tell: <https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/los_angeles/latest/lamc/0-0-0-195151 https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/los_angeles/latest/lam...>
        nick7376182 3y ago
        [dead]
      - nick7376182 3y ago
        [dead]

SllX 3y ago

> Who will deliver us from this meddlesome law? Only voters can. Directly. At the ballot box. So don’t hold your breath. Any other remedy wouldn’t really be legal nor legitimate because of the nature of ballot initiatives, particularly ones that amend the State constitution. Proposition 13 is sitting on top of a long pile of ballot-passed laws that have over time convinced me the entire ballot initiative process is actually a mistake and primarily enables bad but popular laws.

slg 3y ago
> the entire ballot initiative process is actually a mistake It is also arguably un-American. I thought the whole idea of having a representative government was so the common citizen didn't have to deal with the tedium of actually governing, so we elect people to govern in our stead. The fact the us Californians were expected to have opinions on props related to dialysis clinics in 2018[1], 2020[2], and 2022[3] should be a prime example of this. I have no idea what those props were supposed to do. All I know is the only reason I am being asked to weigh in on them is because someone with money was finding it too hard to pass whatever law they wanted through the legislature, so they tried to circumvent the normal legislative process by coming to us directly. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_California_Proposition_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_California_Proposition_8 [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_23 [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_California_Proposition_29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_California_Proposition_29
- mandevil 3y ago
  As a resident of a nearby state whose real estate market keeps rising because of the steady flow of people forced to leave California because they can't afford it, my favorite of the dumb propositions that is destroying California is Prop 103. Among other complicated things it specifically enumerates what tools homeowner (and auto) insurance companies can use to set rates (global climate catastrophe models? Not a thing when they voted in 1988, so now they can never be used). It also created the Consumer Intervenor process so it takes about two years for a rate hike to be approved, and companies have to prove that they are only using the approved methods and nothing else. This is the reason the California homeowner's insurance market is in grave danger: the company runs the "real" model which tells how much they will pay out in damages over the course the rate period, then they have to figure out a way to justify it to the (as a result of the prop, now elected) California Insurance Commissioner in the face of the Consumer Intervenors (who get their costs, expenses, and attorney fees covered out of the company pocket if they win and the rates aren't approved). If the company doesn't think the lines cross, then they don't offer insurance and start to withdraw from the market. This is why California's homeowners insurance market is so dysfunctional, because of a proposition that passed 35 years ago with 51% of the ballot but now effectively cannot be changed or amended.

braiamp 3y ago

> And here they are, shitting on someone who tried an innovative way to repeal it, in the service of the very students she covered, because of some meaningless drama. Because their emotions were insufficiently validated Once you accept that humans are emotional creatures first, and then capable of reasoning, it will make sense. People don't care too much about facts, they care about what they feel more.

jdonaldson 3y ago
Emotions let us reason about ourselves, which rationality alone can't do for us. Because, in a purely rational sense, the "self" doesn't really exist.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
Leaders are emotional creatures too. Leaders have great empathy. They look out for people other than themselves. The problem here isn’t emotions, it’s selfishness. When people say a lack of leadership, they mean a lack of giving a fuck about someone other than yourself. These kids only cared about themselves. They still only care about themselves!
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  You are reading a great deal into the story that isn't there. I went back and reread it again looking for the reactions you describe. They're not present.
  - doctorpangloss 3y ago
    I'm reading into the story alright. > Jones’ classmates also came off as complicated figures, brilliant and with seemingly endless potential, but so used to diminishing resources that many didn’t see themselves as victims. It’s the resigned lack of ambition... [Jones] found soft drinks and apathy... > ...many of the students involved grew more resentful and felt unheard. > I’m not going to calm [the students] down. … I’m not going to try to silence them. If they’re angry and they want to march [to voice their anger at the news article], then I’m going to help them figure out how to do that. > Tigueros [the student] added: “I’ve got kids now, and imagining that somebody would reveal the secrets that my daughter gave to somebody she trusted? It sounds horrific.” > Jones didn’t write about the deepest personal secrets discussed in the center... Tigueros, a now-adult student who was friends with Jones: verbatim only thinking about himself and his family in that quote. And the thing he says verbatim he worries about the most didn't even happen. It doesn't even make sense. It isn't horrific. I know they were defenseless kids then. But there were also ambitious students at that school. Kids who would benefit from the funding that evaporated. What of them?

drew870mitchell 3y ago

The students were nonconsenting lab rats for a bizarre media experiment. They have every right to feel used or betrayed because they were.

doctorpangloss 3y ago
Yeah, and the people in the cars on the blocked highways are also non-consenting whatevers to sitting activists, activisting about whatever it is they feel passionate about. Both suffer some kind of substantive harm right? I just wonder how you imagine change is achieved. Because you tell me, how is Prop 13 going to get repealed? Are you going to run a ballot initiative? There are lots of popular laws that are bad. And speaking of, you know, we kill tens of millions of lab mice and rats every year, and rats are quite smart, and the people working with lab mice realize the gravity of the animal suffering they inflict. They are smart people. Every single medicine you use today has animal suffering animal testing on mice related to it. The nonconsenting media experiment framework people have a much more expansive framework than the one you are invoking, you are invoking a popsci version of it, and your version doesn't accommodate the intractability of everything being consensual. You just don't know enough about this stuff, and you say something kind of reductive that is really about absolving these now-adults of responsibility for their own screwups. You're getting co-opted by people who only think to the first level of the expanding brain meme. Oh, some people got upset at my innovative form of protest. Boo hoo. I'm not going to rank one kind of suffering or using or betrayal against another. It doesn't matter. It was definitely in the students' interest to repeal Prop 13. If only they cared!
scotty79 3y ago
As if the high school was not already bizzare experiment they were more blackmailed into than consented to.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

solomonb 3y ago

> It's insane to me that the now-adult students still oppose the journalist. They were victims of this law. Whatever they are saving on their taxes now, they lose in a lifetime of benefits - money and otherwise - from a better personal education and a better educated community. You are significantly mischaracterizing the criticisms by the students: > Trigueros said he was not among the most distressed of Jones’ classmates and listened to both sides of the debate. He understood the Chronicle’s attempt to reveal the challenges facing teachers and students, but said a major line was crossed when Jones stepped into the Peer Resource Center, where the school’s most vulnerable students gravitated and opened up. Nov. 3, 1992: Jonny Dror hangs out at the Peer Resource Center, a gathering space where students could speak their minds at George Washington High School in San Francisco. > “She saw kids were processing divorces and death and homelessness and coming out. She saw all of that,” he said. “We wanted to consider (Shann the reporter) an ally and advocate for us, (but there was) this deep betrayal, and we didn’t consent to all of that.”

doctorpangloss 3y ago
I am not mischaracterizing the criticisms. They should have the maturity by now to see that she was indeed trustworthy, to admit that their gut reactions were wrong, and it is especially bad of them to invoke the modern, pervasive and mischaracterized "consent" framework, today, in defense of their feeling pissed off 30 years ago. It doesn't change the fact that they are in favor of Prop 13. The average person in California is in favor of Prop 13, and that's exactly the problem! In that sense, it doesn't really matter what happened. They missed the point.
- solomonb 3y ago
  > I am not mischaracterizing the criticisms. Yes you are. Their criticisms are about their right to privacy being violated by an undercover reporter. > It doesn't change the fact that they would vote against repealing Prop 13. I missed the part of the article where a former student said that, can you show me?
  - doctorpangloss 3y ago

gagaJo 3y ago

[dead]

scotty79 3y ago

Yeah the deptiction of students reaction feels very 2024 snowflakey