Abortion rights dogma can obscure human reason & harden the human heart so much that the same person who feels
empathy for animal suffering can lack compassion for unborn children who experience lethal violence and excruciating
pain in abortion.
Unborn animals are protected in their nesting places, humans are not. To abort something is to end something
which has begun. To abort life is to end it.
America’s Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals.
The demise of a California housing measure shows how progressives abandon progressive values in their own backyards.
To live in California at this time is to experience every day the cryptic phrase that George W. Bush once used to describe the invasion of Iraq: “Catastrophic success.” The economy here is booming, but no one feels especially good about it. When the cost of living is taken into account, billionaire-brimming California ranks as the most poverty-stricken state, with a fifth of the population struggling to get by. Since 2010, migration out of California has surged.
The basic problem is the steady collapse of livability. Across my home state, traffic and transportation is a developing-world nightmare. Child care and education seem impossible for all but the wealthiest. The problems of affordable housing and homelessness have surpassed all superlatives — what was a crisis is now an emergency that feels like a dystopian showcase of American inequality.
Just look at San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi’s city. One of every 11,600 residents is a billionaire, and the annual household income necessary to buy a median-priced home now tops $320,000. Yet the streets there are a plague of garbage and needles and feces, and every morning brings fresh horror stories from a “Black Mirror” hellscape: Homeless veterans are surviving on an economy of trash from billionaires’ mansions. Wealthy homeowners are crowdfunding a legal effort arguing that a proposed homeless shelter is an environmental hazard. A public-school teacher suffering from cancer is forced to pay for her own substitute.
And there is no end in sight to such crushing success. At every level of government, our representatives, nearly all of them Democrats, prove inadequate and unresponsive to the challenges at hand. Witness last week’s embarrassment, when California lawmakers used a sketchy parliamentary maneuver to knife Senate Bill 50, an ambitious effort to undo restrictive local zoning rules and increase the supply of housing.
It was another chapter in a dismal saga of Nimbyist urban mismanagement that is crushing American cities. Not-in-my-backyardism is a bipartisan sentiment, but because the largest American cities are populated and run by Democrats — many in states under complete Democratic control — this sort of nakedly exclusionary urban restrictionism is a particular shame of the left.
There are many threads in the story of America’s increasingly unlivable cities. One continuing tragedy is the decimation of local media and the rise of nationalized politics in its place. In America the “local” problems plaguing cities are systematically sidelined by the structure of the national media and government, in which the presidency, the Senate and the Supreme Court are all constitutionally tilted in favor of places where no one lives. (There are more than twice as many people in my midsize suburban county, Santa Clara, as there are in the entire state of North Dakota, with its two United States senators.)
That’s why, aside from Elizabeth Warren — who has a plan for housing, as she has a plan for everything — Democrats on the 2020 presidential trail rarely mention their ideas for housing affordability, an issue eating American cities alive. I watched Joe Biden’s campaign kick off the other day; the only house he mentioned was the White House.
Then there is the refusal on the part of wealthy progressives to live by the values they profess to support at the national level. Creating dense, economically and socially diverse urban environments ought to be a paramount goal of progressivism. Cities are the standard geographical unit of the global economy. Dense urban areas are quite literally the “real America” — the cities are where two-thirds of Americans live, and they account for almost all national economic output. Urban areas are the most environmentally friendly way we know of housing lots of people. We can’t solve the climate crisis without vastly improving public transportation and increasing urban density. More than that, metropolises are good for the psyche and the soul; density fosters tolerance, diversity, creativity and progress.
Yet where progressives argue for openness and inclusion as a cudgel against President Trump, they abandon it on Nob Hill and in Beverly Hills. This explains the opposition to SB 50, which aimed to address the housing shortage in a very straightforward way: by building more housing. The bill would have erased single-family zoning in populous areas near transit locations. Areas zoned for homes housing a handful of people could have been redeveloped to include duplexes and apartment buildings that housed hundreds.
State Senator Scott Wiener, center, introduced a bill, later shelved, that would have allowed higher-density housing in areas close to transit and jobs.
The bill had garnered support from a diverse coalition of business and advocacy groups, and its sponsor, State Senator Scott Wiener, had negotiated a series of compromises with some of its fiercest opponents. Polls showed the measure to be widely popular. For the first time, something extraordinary looked possible: California’s wealthy homeowners would abandon their restrictionist attitudes and let us build some new housing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/o...gtype=Homepage
Abortion rights dogma can obscure human reason & harden the human heart so much that the same person who feels
empathy for animal suffering can lack compassion for unborn children who experience lethal violence and excruciating
pain in abortion.
Unborn animals are protected in their nesting places, humans are not. To abort something is to end something
which has begun. To abort life is to end it.
We severely limit new development in major metro areas of California. Big part of why our housing costs are by far the highest in the nation and we have the highest poverty rate and the homeless we do. This state has the ultimate F you I’ve got mine attitude when it comes to housing.
Stretch (05-26-2019)
It is hilarious watching leftists and Trans Righty’s twist themselves in knots trying to come up for any reason for the massive fucked yup situation in left wing city and states other than left wing policies
We have Reagan to be at fault and we have “it’s just mental illness”
Let’s not forget how “wealthy” Commiefornia is yet those wealthy left wingers in Commiefornia don’t seem to care that much to do enough about it
What I learned in this thread from you and from others, is that when conservatives think of hispanics, they think of barbarians popping on your porch, piles of trash, and people who are unhygienic, dirty, and uncouth.
The thing is, I already knew that in general, conservatives have a low opinion of brown people. You did not need to prove it to me.
Another pertinent fact: Brown people did not just show up in Los Angeles. Hispanics and people of Mexican and Central America background have been an important part of the landscape and demographics of Los Angeles throughout its history. They were here before Walt Disney, Movie stars, and Hollywood moguls showed up. So conflating brown people with a picture of trash from last week does not cut the mustard.
christiefan915 (05-26-2019), Phantasmal (05-26-2019)
What I already knew is that people like you will cover for groups that, based on statistics, commit violent crimes on a far higher percentage than they make up in society.
Import part? Yeah, you're importing more violent ones like the POS that killed Kate Steinle.
The mustard has been cut. It's not what they are but the way they act.
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