SB 51: the California politics thread

given the financial structure that tech VC encourage (i.e. avoid making a profit), i like that ballot measure C is a tax on revenue, not profits.

caek did you go and get naturalized or somethin

no i can't vote, so i'm telling as many people as possible how to vote instead

that's very generous of you; if I couldn't vote I don't know how I could stand researching ballot measures

anyway not californian so y'all can do whatever as long as you don't come for our water

also lol at gerry brown's veto statement for the 4am last call option

https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/SB-905-Veto.pdf

"mischief and mayhem".

xp
He's the Frederik B of California!

ha i do live here fwiw

much as I find the Salesforce tower annoying (I work right next to it), I have to say this guy's allright. Or at least better than most.

Benioff and Salesforce have donated to multiple San Francisco Bay Area causes including $250 million to support hospitals, $11 million to help the homeless, and $50 million to public schools. In his talk, he acknowledges that some of city's business leaders haven't been as generous.

"I have gone hat in hand to every high net worth individual in the city," he said. "I know who is willing to give money, and who isn't. I already have the list. I know if we're going to raise money for our schools, the homeless and hospitals, there's a group of people in our city who are willing to give. And there's a group of people in the city who give nothing based on the level of wealth they have. You're either for the kids, the homeless and the hospitals, or you're for yourself."

graded on a curve he is easily the best of the bunch. SFDC has an obscure business relationship with ICE/CBP though.

I have to admit I don't know what Salesforce does.

Aside from putting their name on things around the city and buying Metallica.

Salesforce makes Rolodex-as-a-Service for your entire company.

considering the software they sell is basically a spreadsheet/database combo from the 90s, their research team is also bizarrely good at AI/ML, which is one of their reasons their involvement with CBP is unnerving.

I've used a few Salesforce databases in my job and basically a spreadsheet/database combo from the 90s seems about accurate. tbf there was a huge need/demand for this, so their success is not really much of a surprise.

Also it’s a federal election so off topic but it’s interesting because of the top two primary so: the congressional election where I live is between jimmy Gomez (democrat) and a Green Party guy. I believe this is the only two candidate congressional election involving the greens in the country. Based on the lawn signs and the number of times they’ve canvassed our home, the Green Party guy is going to run away with it. (He won’t. He’ll lose by like 40 points.)

I can't believe I am actually going to vote for Gavin Newsom for the first time in like 20 years? ... like I actually voted against him for Lt. Gov. because I hated him so much as SF Mayor and before that as appointed stooge to Willie Brown on the Board of Supes ...

otoh I'm kinda cool with Jerry Brown as governor, and I kinda hated him as mayor,

and actually a lot of the current bullshit in Oakland can kinda be laid at his feet, though not really. Like I don't think any one person can be held responsible for the incompetence, venality, and obstructionist idiocy that is a lot of Oakland government: the people that don't have to run for office, so they can be pretty much awful and stupid with few repercussions to their careers.

There's some new local version of Howard Jarvis Taxpayers sending out mailers to Oakland addresses arguing against voting for various property tax measures on principle.

Oh yeah, Yes on Measure Y -- extending Just Cause protection to people that live in duplexes and triplexes (as opposed to currently where it's like 4+ units)

yeah latimes had a lot of dirt on newsom a few months ago but he was still one of the favorites

i'm still registered to vote but i'm not in the country anymore, but i would vote for newsom

I'm with sarahell on the mixed feelings about Newsom. He is a guy who I *really* don't like or trust, even when a lot of his policy prescriptions and positions line up with mine. He's just a fucking slimeball that wants to be president really badly. Dunno if I will bother voting for him, he's almost certain to be the winner anyway.

i remember being a local blogger about 10 or so years ago and my fave thing was comparing him to Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman

I think he is also a big fan of Huey Lewis & the News iirc

I can't hate him, he stepped forward to support same-sex marriage at a time when most of the rest of the country was charging in the other direction

comparing him to Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman

yeah you weren't alone in this the similarity is just too eerie

he stepped forward to support same-sex marriage at a time when most of the rest of the country was charging in the other direction when it was most politically advantageous to him personally, handed the GOP a wedge-issue that helped get Dubya re-elected, resulted in the passage of Prop 8 in California actually *banning* gay marriage, and did not actually result in any valid gay marriages

fixed

that whole charade was nauseating, grandstanding at his worst. He knew he didn't have a legal leg to stand on and did it for the purposes of benefiting no one but himself.

xp - even when in practice it was preaching to the choir and a high profile distraction from his pro-development/pro-corporate policies?

^^^

he has a history of this grandstanding, like when he wanted to improve the health of poor & working class San Franciscans by banning cigarette sales from chain stores with pharmacies -- that pretty much affected nothing except the ability to buy fairly low-priced cigarettes at Walgreen's stores. ... as opposed to walking a block or less to a liquor store and buying cigarettes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55cG7EytB7M

omg I pulled up this video to show how fuckin obnoxious he was at the time and the closed captioning is wild

**APPLAUSE BY HOMOSEXUALS**

xp the conversation it started was a huge push forward for gay rights

i don't think he literally tried to feed a cat to an ATM tho

the conversation it started was a huge push forward for gay rights

he didn't start it - Alaska and Arizona already had gay marriage rulings on the books - he just made the splashiest (and emptiest) show about it. which is his modus operandi.

xp Dan -- I'm not saying he's evil incarnate, just that it was a self-serving move. And it is often super useful to be reminded that in the central SF Bay Area, one lives in kinda a political bubble and that there is certain hair-splitting we do here, some more-progressive-than-thou type stuff, that looks ridiculous to most other Americans

Oh yeah, and Oakland has a mayoral election ...

Alaska and Arizona, come on. This *was* a big push forward.

Bush had already given his SOTU pressing for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Massachusetts was on track to start allowing marriages in May of that year. A backlash was going to happen in 2004. And Prop 8 was a direct response to the California Supreme Court recognizing marriage rights in 2008

agree that it was a partly self-serving move, but it was also a very good thing

yeah, on paper he has done all the right things, but you read into the details of his life and he is a total slimeball

thing is, how else would you vote if not on what he has done and the positives more or less outweigh the negatives

i feel like this single payer healthcare program was hyped a lot in california, but like it's crazy when you do the math

i'm not against it though

on paper he has done all the right things

not when he was mayor! he did a lot of not-right things

as mayor his sponsorship of Prop N (Care not Cash) was very controversial

yeah, i know what you mean

i guess i should say given the options

I agree that policy-wise I'm compelled to vote for him, more or less. At the same time, I absolutely hate watching him talk and prior to our current scandal-goalpost-moving POS chief exec I would have assumed Newsom was a lock for doing something scandalously unethical/illegal that would tank his career. I guess we're going to find out soon enough.

Well when the alternative is John Cox...

i was listening to an interview with scott weiner and he mentioned that brown had vetoed the 4am last call thing but he would bring it back next year and didn't expect any problems with newsom on that issue. there was then a weird moment where the interviewer and weiner acknowledged that yes, newsom is a known partier.

a friend of mine/former journalist wrote a semi-autobiographical novel that briefly features an obvious Newsom character riding around in a limo drinking champagne, doing blow and engaging in bisexual hijinks

"That, in turn, should be the opening line of your novel.

god damn i need a voter guide who tf are all these yahoo local judges speaking in code

i forget, are you in LA?

sandy eggo

city of

ah i cannot help you.

anyone reading this in LA:

superior court #4: sauceda on the grounds that the other guy is endorsed by the police unions.

#16: hunter. michel's husband is an NRA lawyer and her son is called Colt and her dog is called Heston. also michel is endorsed by the LAT which in court elections seems to indicate a "nice little beach community" type.

#60: hancock. ex public defender (rather than prosecutor) and woman.

no news here for anyone local, but prop c goes national

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/technology/san-francisco-taxes-homeless.html

i didn't know this though:

In 2012, San Francisco also adjusted its tax code by switching from a payroll tax to a gross receipts tax, a change that favored the tech industry, which spends extravagantly to recruit top engineers.

superior court #4: sauceda on the grounds that the other guy is endorsed by the police unions

i definitely voted against the guy that said "proud to be law enforcement's choice"

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-road-map-thurmond-tuck-schools-charters-unions-20181021-story.html

i say this as someone who routinely has seniors turn down free rides to UCLA to go to SDSU instead because they have to help with the family landscaping / maid service / restaurant on the weekends in order to make ends meet

As someone currently wearing a Juan Soto city connect friars shirsey, you know exactly where I stand on this issue, the late great.

I stayed in the dorms my freshman year (financial aid because I wasn't on a F-1) which were surrounded by zillion dollar mansions on the bluffs of LJ overlooking a nude beach where greased up old dudes j/o'd all day long but the waves were pretty good but yeah that area is ripe for a reassessment.

Cal is just surrounded by quaint bungalows, any neighborhood that close to a BART station should be rezoned, razed and then rebuilt from the ground up with true high-density buildings. Vote for me in Nov.

this is my ft employer so take what i say with a grain of salt but to their credit ucsd is building massive high rises to expand student housing. like way bigger than anything around even including the new university town center / golden triangle high rises, taller than midcity developments, real 20 story downtown stuff

they also fucked up by promising 2000 undergrads housing, which mysteriously vaporized. oh and they also want to entice me and other "senior staff" into $5k/mo rental units close to downtown lmao. thanks but i'm happy driving in from la mesa

i like the new uniform and it seems to be catching on with the ppl

". . . where greased up old dudes j/o'd all day long . . ."

I feel seen.

https://www.lajollalight.com/news/education/story/2023-08-17/campus-housing-shortage-leaves-more-than-2-300-uc-san-diego-students-on-waiting-lists-for-beds

hard to overstate how tall these 21 story student blocks are compared to what's around them. the tallest thing that comes to mind is the space-mountain-esque mormon temple, whose tippy top spires only reach 14 stories. the hyatt regency is 13 stories i think and the geisel library is only like 10 stories

". . . where greased up old dudes j/o'd all day long . . ."

I feel seen.

― nickn, Thursday, August 17, 2023 11:29 AM (two hours ago)

haha <3

i thought the story was "this is what i have to do to attend berkeley" which sorry but unlike basic housing attending the UC of your choice cost be damned is not a basic human right

― the late great, Thursday, August 17, 2023 1:53 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

eh, california has a bigger GDP than almost every country on earth. kids with the grades to get places at its best universities should not have to live like this. or this https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/california-vehicular-homelessness-car-dwelling-los-angeles/674901/.

i mean aside from the fact that this is morally obscene for any student (K-12 or higher ed) to have to live like this, it's also not in the interests of the state, assuming you accept the premise that the state benefits from a public university. i feel like i'm losing my mind here.

there are a lot of public universities that aren’t uc berkeley

if you’re talking abt a homeless crisis, i’m highly sympathetic. if you’re telling me it’s especially bad because some of the homeless have 4.5 gpa and 1400 SAT … no

kids with the grades to get places at its best universities should not have to live like this

i realize you are not trying to start a fight about this and neither am i, but speaking as a so called “lifetime employee”, if you think the uc/csu is actually a meritocracy / tries to function like one / even should function like one then i have opinions4u

i assume m bison has opinions on this too!

Feels like there's more to that reddit post that is not covered by the umbrella of California statewide politics.

Incoming F1 students from China that may feel slighted at being undersponsored and drop reddit posts like that to call attention to their plight could very well write a grant application or secure additional funds (China is the 2nd richest country in the world and yes, has banks). There's something off about the post in general ("*Please do not suggest any advice regarding loans; I am not considering that option." nor replying to any advice to seek part-time employment). Seems like a personal matter that went awry.

if not human trafficking, hello oxford st sweatshops

i think i mean university??

i mean

_i thought the story was "this is what i have to do to attend berkeley" which sorry but unlike basic housing attending the UC of your choice cost be damned is not a basic human right

― the late great, Thursday, August 17, 2023 1:53 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink_


eh, california has a bigger GDP than almost every country on earth. kids with the grades to get places at its best universities should not have to live like this. or this https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/california-vehicular-homelessness-car-dwelling-los-angeles/674901🕸/.

that’s what i mean by basic housing

totally different than “no student should have to live like this”

the difference with ppl that want basic housing is they’re not going to insist on walking distance to uc berkeley, they just want a place where they can work and afford to live

what % of car homeless are instagram influencers tho

I lived in a converted UHaul truck for four years in California. It was very difficult. Having a trust fund and being a van-man is very different than working a full-time job at bad pay and being a van-man.

No matter what the outcome, I am ready to vote on this in November.

vote on what now? what's on the ballot that would address this?

housing at Cal has always, always been bad. I started there in 1990 and was told it was a longshot to get housing (I lived at home and commuted, which was a mistake for multiple reasons; wound up getting an apartment a year later). Cal admits entirely too many students these days, IMO, given their lack of housing. They need to build more but I frankly think they will always find a way to admit more than they can house regardless of how much they build.

santa cruz is even worse, from what I understand.

As in, I was agreeing with you, tlg— that caek’s post made it out as tho it was unseemly for students to be living out of cars or storage units when so many people live that was is what I was objecting to. No one should have to live like that, I know because I fucking did it.

Wealthy Berkeley residents want to live in a college town, but they don't want any college students there.

yeah those people are shitheads. also I don't know that they really want to live in a college town. they maybe think they do, but they don't.

anywhere can be a college town if you just act like you’re in college, duh look at guerneville

spring break twelve months of the year

their tuition is $3500 and tuition plus dorm lodging is $4100

what???? it doesn't say tuition is $3500 unless I missed something. tuition at UC is quite a bit higher than that even for in-state.

worth noting that one of the major NIMBY assholes in Berkeley is Robert Reich.

it was in the reddit thread?? idk all my kids get free rides basically

In state tuition to berkeley is 14k/yr. The poster said their sponsor paid the tuition. I'm not sure who their sponsor is and why they didn't also agree to pay for housing, that doesn't seem like a very good sponsor to me.

I think you saw this: "The cost for a full UC meal plan is $3,535. Is that what your sponsor is paying? The cost for one semester room and board in the coops is $4,131"

ohhh thx. yes i misread that

BTW, calling out NIMBYs should not absolve the UC from decades of dereliction when it comes to building student housing. It's not just Berkeley:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-14/fixing-californias-student-housing-crisis-faces-roadblocks

Why hasn’t UC Berkeley built more student housing? (good historical background - not just Berkeley, but the UC in general)

Of course no one should have to live like this, regardless of GPA or whatever.

And if the specifics of the reddit thread are bothering you then read the thing I linked about UCLA students living in their cars.

My point is not that these people _in particular_ should not be homeless. It’s that things have gotten so fucked up that some of the otherwise most privileged people in the richest state in the country are living in cars and storage units.

santa cruz is even worse, from what I understand.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Thursday, August 17, 2023 9:54 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/santa-cruz-is-a-housing-nightmare

And https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/traumatized-by-santa-cruzs-housing

yeah that's where I first read about it (followed him on twitter, when I was still on twitter)

i think santa cruz is only "worse" in the sense that people go there not expecting to commute from like Salinas or Hollister ... whereas people I know who went to UCSD and UCLA and even Berkeley were more prepared to commute.

I wondered whatever happened to that proposed Dormzilla project at UCSB, and thankfully it's dead.
https://therealdeal.com/la/2023/08/08/ucsb-wants-to-replace-charlie-mungers-dorm-design/

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/national-international/federal-judge-california-law-gun-magazines/3230467/

Courtesy of this prize.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Benitez

yeah that guy is a POS

Can't wait for more of this genius at work -- Steve Garvey confirms he's running for Senate and says things like this:

He was less anxious to touch base with what may be one of his political liabilities: his personal life. His Mr. Clean image took a hit shortly after he left baseball, when news broke that he fathered two children with different women before marrying a third, his current wife, Candace.

“You know, Joe, life is a journey,” Garvey told me. “We all go through chapters in our lives. That was back in a transitional period. I don’t talk about my family or history. People will judge me as to who I am in 2024. I pray for my children and my family every day.”

"Release the tapes!"

How many mispredictions can you spot? https://t.co/IaH8k4Cnjk pic.twitter.com/N7q4TlTmlK

— Common Ground California (@CACommonGround) February 14, 2024