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King Hong Kong posted:The San Francisco version was actually defensible unlike Berkeley's "Berkeley vs. Big Soda" campaign that unsurprisingly will not tax the sundry unhealthy beverages that Berkeley voters are more likely to drink and will not do anything to improve the public's health anyway. This town's politics are awful. The ironic thing is that the only reason the SF version needed 2/3rds is because the revenue was targeted instead of going to the general fund, which was the main criticism of Berkeley's version. It's a very weird and stupid rule. We're just going to see the same measure next year, except it will be worse because they'll change it to just go to the general fund.
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Nov 5, 2014 22:45
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ComradeCosmobot posted:What can you say? Insurance companies have a lot of money. Yah, and I know that the LAT editorialized against it, but even the weaksauce CA Dem party officially endorsed a Yes vote.
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Nov 5, 2014 22:46
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On another note, I have family friends telling me about how absolutely hosed their housing situations became at Cal after Berkeley lifted the rent cap.
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Nov 5, 2014 22:46
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Willa Rogers posted:I can't believe the insurance-regulation prop lost. Only 40 percent in favor. Ads for it were clever, in that they had a "IT'S ATTACKING OBAMACARE" slant to a few. Reminds me of the scattershot approach that Prop 8 took.
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Nov 5, 2014 23:12
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From what I saw, the insurance companies bought every piece of airtime they could and just said "TRIAL LAWYERS TRIAL LAWYERS" over and over again.
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Nov 5, 2014 23:14
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:On another note, I have family friends telling me about how absolutely hosed their housing situations became at Cal after Berkeley lifted the rent cap. Anecdotally, housing has been a huge issue in bay-area college towns this year. I've heard horror stories from Berkeley, Stanford, and Santa Cruz about students and postdocs being unable to find affordable housing, even well into the quarter.
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Nov 5, 2014 23:15
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FMguru posted:From what I saw, the insurance companies bought every piece of airtime they could and just said "TRIAL LAWYERS TRIAL LAWYERS" over and over again. Any prob that the insurance companies spent 10:1 or more they won. What a surprise.
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Nov 5, 2014 23:16
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FMguru posted:From what I saw, the insurance companies bought every piece of airtime they could and just said "TRIAL LAWYERS TRIAL LAWYERS" over and over again. Oh I always heard the "ONE SACRAMENTO POLITICIAN" ad. They even said at the end of the ad, "Paid for by Kaiser and other fuckers who will bend you over the barrel" and people still didn't catch on. I used to work in Cali's medical field, yowzas. Folks, you don't want those guys cutting a fart without it being regulated.
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Nov 5, 2014 23:19
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Running ads that said Prop 45 would hurt Obamacare was a savvy move by its opponents; it's basically what the LAT editorial board said when they encouraged voters to reject it. California's one of the few states where Obamacare has been popular, mainly because of its Medicaid expansion (although the last I heard there was something like a 6-month waiting period for Medicaid verification and enrollment in the state), and low-info voters would have seen those ads and figured it was "left" to vote against 45.
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Nov 5, 2014 23:33
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VikingofRock posted:Anecdotally, housing has been a huge issue in bay-area college towns this year. I've heard horror stories from Berkeley, Stanford, and Santa Cruz about students and postdocs being unable to find affordable housing, even well into the quarter. I graduated straight into a full time job with a middle class salary, which is a significantly better position than pretty much every one of my peers. Despite this I'm currently renting half a duplex from the 50's in a lovely neighborhood with two other roommates, with a discount on my rent because the landlord is a personal friend and the father of one of said roommates. I struggled to find any other housing in San Jose that wasn't going to eat up 3/4ths of my monthly income. Meanwhile a friend of mine who's only a few years older than me and only makes about $10k-ish more annually just bought her first house, and pays a mortgage lower than my rent because she's living in North Carolina. Housing in California, and particularly in the bay area, is completely and utterly hosed. And it isn't getting any better as long as the tech company boom keeps trucking along. I have no idea how new grads without crazy good prospects are supposed to sustain themselves out here, let alone people still in college.
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Nov 5, 2014 23:39
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Sydin posted:I graduated straight into a full time job with a middle class salary, which is a significantly better position than pretty much every one of my peers. Despite this I'm currently renting half a duplex from the 50's in a lovely neighborhood with two other roommates, with a discount on my rent because the landlord is a personal friend and the father of one of said roommates. I struggled to find any other housing in San Jose that wasn't going to eat up 3/4ths of my monthly income. Meanwhile a friend of mine who's only a few years older than me and only makes about $10k-ish more annually just bought her first house, and pays a mortgage lower than my rent because she's living in North Carolina. They just need to build Chinese style factory dorms inside the silicon valley cult compounds. Willa Rogers posted:Running ads that said Prop 45 would hurt Obamacare was a savvy move by its opponents; it's basically what the LAT editorial board said when they encouraged voters to reject it. California's one of the few states where Obamacare has been popular, mainly because of its Medicaid expansion (although the last I heard there was something like a 6-month waiting period for Medicaid verification and enrollment in the state), and low-info voters would have seen those ads and figured it was "left" to vote against 45. Yeah it was also a turf war since a Yes 45 vote would have moved additional protection against insurance hikes to the state government. etalian fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 01:08
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H.P. Hovercraft posted:Oh drat, yeah it's only up at 55% All the non-hipsters I've talked to here seemed to be against it because "I don't want to pay more for muh soda."
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Nov 6, 2014 01:33
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Sydin posted:I have no idea how new grads without crazy good prospects are supposed to sustain themselves out here, let alone people still in college. Live with roommates or even with parents if they have the choice, work multiple jobs (or job + freelance) and refrain from doing dumb stuff like going out every weekend and upgrading their smartphones and tablets every year. Besides that, just save save save.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:43
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etalian posted:They just need to build Chinese style factory dorms inside the silicon valley cult compounds. You joke but they're sorta doing almost exactly that.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:45
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Sydin posted:Housing in California, and particularly in the bay area, is completely and utterly hosed. And it isn't getting any better as long as the tech company boom keeps trucking along. I have no idea how new grads without crazy good prospects are supposed to sustain themselves out here, let alone people still in college. Well a good chunk of property values in California are just a net present value of their massive state subsidy through Prop 13 tax expenditures. Any effective policy to make housing in California affordable again would have to address Prop 13.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:48
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While I understand how Prop 13 messed with the tax system and budget in the state, it's not clear to me right now how repealing it or revamping it would address housing affordability and rent prices.
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Nov 6, 2014 01:55
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Sydin posted:Housing in California, and particularly in the bay area, is completely and utterly hosed. And it isn't getting any better as long as the tech company boom keeps trucking along. I have no idea how new grads without crazy good prospects are supposed to sustain themselves out here, let alone people still in college. Housing has basically completely exploded in the bay area in the last 15 years, and even with massive amount of building there just isn't enough room/places going up quick enough. The housing bubble popping was barely a blip on the radar, although prices did almost universally drop 300-400k. I have no data to support this either, but I for whatever reason it's really loving easy for nice, 6-8 story office buildings that will house ~1500+ workers to go up in like 1.5 years, but actual housing towers and whatnot is really hard and probably not as lucrative. It's funny because up until the last year or two there was a shitload of empty office space all over the South Bay that had mostly sat unused since the early 2000's, but new buildings/complexes continued to be built, many of which were empty for a while, but they are all full now. Towns want to be the place where jobs are, rather than where people (the shlubs like me) live. At least townhouses and rowhouses seem to have gone up in a lot of places, mostly filling old warehouse/industrial land, even out in the East Bay. It just hasn't been enough. We'd need some massive municipal authority to basically plan and extend BART and build massive mixed-use residential/commercial buildings around the new extensions as well as the other stations. Of course you'd also want to somehow extend BART well in to the south bay and make it useful for all the people down there, too. Running both down the peninsula and down the 880/680 corridor and connecting somewhere down at say, SJSU would be nice. My wake up call regarding rent being absurd was in ~2008, when a friend of ours was renting rooms out of her house in Hayward, and someone wanted to rent her couch/living room, and put up a blanket, for ~1200/mo. I had rented a 2 bedroom townhouse in Mountain View for 1600/mo in 2004, and a room in a townhouse in Fremont for 700/mo utilities included, from 2002-2004. The same places are of course massively expensive now. Of course when housing (and traffic) do improve, it'll be because the economy sucks. Maybe the Colleges could use some of the construction funds to build student housing for more than just some Freshmen, I dunno. I doubt they have that much land left in usable places though.
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Nov 6, 2014 02:02
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Bizarro Watt posted:While I understand how Prop 13 messed with the tax system and budget in the state, it's not clear to me right now how repealing it or revamping it would address housing affordability and rent prices. It's just a bit of NPV analysis. Ceteris paribus if you have two investments, investment A with recurring costs at x% of its current market value every year and investment B with recurring costs of x% of its market value from thirty years ago in un-adjusted for inflation dollars, you're going to be saving a truckload every year in recurring costs by picking investment B. That future discount is worth a lot of money today. e: Nimbyism and underdevelopment is for sure a problem with affordability in the SF Bay area but it already gets much more discussion than this. Shear Modulus fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 02:38
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Pervis posted:Maybe the Colleges could use some of the construction funds to build student housing for more than just some Freshmen, I dunno. I doubt they have that much land left in usable places though. That would be nice if it was affordable. At UC Santa Cruz at least graduate student housing is actually more expensive than the housing downtown. A small single-person room in a university-owned 4-bed-1-bath townhouse would cost around 60% of my post-tax income.
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Nov 6, 2014 02:51
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Pervis posted:We'd need some massive municipal authority to basically plan and extend BART and build massive mixed-use residential/commercial buildings around the new extensions as well as the other stations. Of course you'd also want to somehow extend BART well in to the south bay and make it useful for all the people down there, too. Running both down the peninsula and down the 880/680 corridor and connecting somewhere down at say, SJSU would be nice. Until it actually connects to commuter destinations in SJ, any BART expansion (including the ones in progress right now) is going to turn the system into a clusterfuck under normal traffic levels. Right now during rush hour the tube is basically at capacity in terms of the number of trains that can go through and the number of people on those trains. Anything that bumps up the number of people wanting to cross the bay at rush hour is going to result in people at the innermost stations having to regularly wait for a full train or two to pass by until they can get one. Even a single 8-car train at the wrong time can cause this right now. They should have built another bay crossing before expanding south of Fremont.
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Nov 6, 2014 04:20
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etalian posted:They just need to build Chinese style factory dorms inside the silicon valley cult compounds. I vaguely remember reading a while back about Google looking into building on-campus housing and running into zoning issues.
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Nov 6, 2014 04:23
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withak posted:I vaguely remember reading a while back about Google looking into building on-campus housing and running into zoning issues. They also tried a giant container ship off the coast.
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Nov 6, 2014 04:25
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withak posted:Until it actually connects to commuter destinations in SJ, any BART expansion (including the ones in progress right now) is going to turn the system into a clusterfuck under normal traffic levels. Right now during rush hour the tube is basically at capacity in terms of the number of trains that can go through and the number of people on those trains. Anything that bumps up the number of people wanting to cross the bay at rush hour is going to result in people at the innermost stations having to regularly wait for a full train or two to pass by until they can get one. Even a single 8-car train at the wrong time can cause this right now. I don't think the expectation is that people will be commuting SF-SJ via the BART. Its instead to allows people to live in Fremont et al and work in SJ and commute by BART. The expanded tunnel is coming with High Speed Rail 
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Nov 6, 2014 04:31
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Trabisnikof posted:I don't think the expectation is that people will be commuting SF-SJ via the BART. Its instead to allows people to live in Fremont et al and work in SJ and commute by BART. Yeah Fremont is fairly low cost area, while SJ still has a decent number of tech jobs. Also it's pretty lol how all the different counties blocked BART back in the day by refusing to raise the extra bond money. 
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Nov 6, 2014 04:35
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Trabisnikof posted:I don't think the expectation is that people will be commuting SF-SJ via the BART. Its instead to allows people to live in Fremont et al and work in SJ and commute by BART. You'd be surprised how many people around here want the BART expanded into the VTA light rail so they can commute back and forth without having to take 280 every day.
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Nov 6, 2014 04:36
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Trabisnikof posted:I don't think the expectation is that people will be commuting SF-SJ via the BART. Its instead to allows people to live in Fremont et al and work in SJ and commute by BART. Yeah but the current expansion just reaches a little farther south of Fremont. The vast majority of the people using those new stations are going to be commuting towards SF. I doubt that Warm Springs or Irvington will see heavy inbound commuter traffic.
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Nov 6, 2014 04:53
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withak posted:Yeah but the current expansion just reaches a little farther south of Fremont. The vast majority of the people using those new stations are going to be commuting towards SF. I doubt that Warm Springs or Irvington will see heavy inbound commuter traffic. I don't think Irvington got the station, though? I remember a bunch of new apartment buildings/condos going up around where it was projected to be built, but they decided to just build the Warm Springs one instead. Speaking of which the Warm Springs station is currently pretty much "middle of nowhere", the nearest strip mall is like a mile-long walk away, WalMart in another direction, and then a bunch of mostly empty industrial parks in the vicinity.
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Nov 6, 2014 05:14
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Zeitgueist posted:How in gently caress did such an unabashedly good prop get on the ballot and pass? Prop 47 is okay. I wouldn't call it "unabashedly good." I agree it's a good thing that drug crimes are being reduced to misdemeanors in favor of treatment. I doubt it will help very much with addiction, but at least it isn't as crippling for people who eventually quit. My problem with Prop 47 is that it's pretty convoluted and ill-thought as far as everything else goes. For example, it used to be that if you had three petty thefts on your record, the fourth would be a felony. Makes sense: a repeated disregard for the law for the same offense should have escalating consequences. But now it can't be felony unless the person has a prior for one of a very narrow few serious crimes like murder or rape. That's a pretty arbitrary line, in my opinion. The real-world effect of 47 is that a lot of cases will get kicked over from felonies to misdemeanor land, where courts in impacted counties (more crime, less funding) will really suffer. In those counties, basically what will happen is that the realities of jail overcrowding and budget constraints will force prosecutors to lowball their offers and basically offer no jail or reduced jail time on crimes people otherwise ought to face more reasonable consequences for. These budget constraints are already a serious problem in a lot of places, and 47 exacerbates that problem without helping to ease the transition in any way. There won't be funding for new courts, judges, or government attorneys to handle the influx of cases. It was a decent idea in theory, but the execution looks pretty bad. I'm not surprised that all about two DAs were opposed to the measure. Edit: I also don't see why stealing guns should be a misdemeanor instead of a felony, but that's another Prop 47 change we have to live with now. AshB fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 05:15
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AshB posted:
And they should lowball the offers more. To quote my (deeply red) county sheriff, "We should be housing the people we are afraid of, not the people we're made at." In any event, our jails are already massively overcrowded. DAs were opposed to this because they can't leverage people into plea deals on weak cases with the threat of long prison sentences. It makes their job harder, boo loving hoo.
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Nov 6, 2014 05:19
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AshB posted:For example, it used to be that if you had three petty thefts on your record, the fourth would be a felony. Makes sense: a repeated disregard for the law for the same offense should have escalating consequences. But now it can't be felony unless the person has a prior for one of a very narrow few serious crimes like murder or rape. That's a pretty arbitrary line, in my opinion. These are good things, not bad.
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Nov 6, 2014 05:20
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nm posted:Uhm what? A felony 666 is going to take way more money to prosecute than a misdemeanor 484. I agree a felony 666 would take more money to prosecute than a misdemeanor 484. But at the same time, I would expect more new misdemeanor cases going to trial because there wouldn't be early resolutions. I am not totally opposed to this in principle, but I think there should be funding to support it. Because there won't be funding, it just means lowball offers with virtually no consequences for repeat offenders. I'm not sure how that's a good thing. Things don't have to be so black-and-white. A bill can have good and bad consequences.
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Nov 6, 2014 05:29
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Prop 47 is an interesting if flawed outlet for people to basically vote against prison spending. Since 3 strikes didn't really have an effect beyond increasing prison population AFAIK, effectively rolling back some parts of it are a good indication that 3 strikes isn't viewed positively, or at least people aren't willing to either increase taxes or decrease education spending in order to do it. Eventually the state learned that everything has it's cost, and that throwing poor people in jail for things that a lot of the populace does anyways isn't that big of a priority. Combined with a high likelyhood of legalized weed in 2016 it should have a drastic impact on the prison population over time. VikingofRock posted:That would be nice if it was affordable. At UC Santa Cruz at least graduate student housing is actually more expensive than the housing downtown. A small single-person room in a university-owned 4-bed-1-bath townhouse would cost around 60% of my post-tax income. That's insane. Are they trying to turn a profit or just trying to make up for some absurd construction contract? withak posted:Yeah but the current expansion just reaches a little farther south of Fremont. The vast majority of the people using those new stations are going to be commuting towards SF. I doubt that Warm Springs or Irvington will see heavy inbound commuter traffic. Yeah, the peninsula and south bay are where SF commuters head to, rather than Fremont. Caltrain works for that commute if your office is near a station or has a shuttle, but getting to those areas from the more affordable parts of the bay are a lot harder nowadays, hence the Yahoo/Google/Facebook buses from all over (including SF).
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Nov 6, 2014 05:31
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AshB posted:I agree a felony 666 would take more money to prosecute than a misdemeanor 484. But at the same time, I would expect more new misdemeanor cases going to trial because there wouldn't be early resolutions. I am not totally opposed to this in principle, but I think there should be funding to support it. Because there won't be funding, it just means lowball offers with virtually no consequences for repeat offenders. I'm not sure how that's a good thing. I work in a county where I see people getting 8 year offers on 666s involving <$100 with nothing but 459, 484s, and 666s because of prison priors. No amount of my tax dollars is worth housing that person for 4 years to save wally world $100. It will have some bad consequences, but it will do more good than harm especially in inland counties where insane offers on petty poo poo are the norm. We'll probably go to trial less, because felons will take something less than a county year all day. nm fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 05:31
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What the hell are 666s and 484s? E: and 459s.
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Nov 6, 2014 05:40
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Kobayashi posted:What the hell are 666s and 484s? 484=petty theft 666=petty theft with a prior (I would have saved that one for murder [187] or child loving [288]). 459=burglary. Generally 2nd degree commercial which is generally shoplifting. "459 1st" is residential burg. Lawyering broke me.
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Nov 6, 2014 05:49
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nm posted:I work in a county where I see people getting 8 year offers on 666s involving <$100 with nothing but 459, 484s, and 666s because of prison priors. No amount of my tax dollars is worth housing that person for 4 years to save wally world $100. I can understand your reasoning on these points, but it's really an ideological difference as to whether recidivists should get jail instead of prison. If a person gets convicted for stealing three times, I don't have a problem with him going to prison. Criminal justice has a punitive function, and if that person didn't give a poo poo about going to jail the first three times and will probably steal again, it's reasonable to up the ante and send that person away for a longer period of time (maybe not 8 years though; I agree that's too much). A community does not need that kind of person on the streets. I do think though, that in an ideal world, misdemeanor prosecutors could keep on upping offers and taking these cases to trial. I think a year in jail would get the point across without the burden of several years in prison. But 47 will probably exacerbate the issue of overcrowded jails, and unfortunately it's the poorer communities that will suffer for it. AshB fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 05:50
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AshB posted:I do think though, that in an ideal world, misdemeanor prosecutors could keep on upping offers and taking these cases to trial. I think a year in jail would get the point across without the burden of several years in prison. But 47 will probably exacerbate the issue of overcrowded jails, and it's the poorer communities that will suffer for it. Long jail sentences don't really work anyhow because they won't even have CDCRs minimal programming in most places (we only have one small jail doing that with 2 massive jails and 1 medium jail with basically no programming).
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Nov 6, 2014 05:56
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Pervis posted:That's insane. Are they trying to turn a profit or just trying to make up for some absurd construction contract? I have no idea, but my guess is that it's a combination of scarcity and location (graduate student housing is on-campus, and the layout of campus makes that a bigger deal than other places). Another factor is that they don't really pay us that much, so 60% of our income is not quite as crazy as it may seem at first. In any case, I don't really understand how graduate students afford those places on our salary, but apparently people do because as far as I know the housing fills up. Edit: Also I just checked and it's 2 bath. The page is here for the curious. VikingofRock fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 06:05
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:Speaking of which the Warm Springs station is currently pretty much "middle of nowhere", the nearest strip mall is like a mile-long walk away, WalMart in another direction, and then a bunch of mostly empty industrial parks in the vicinity. This is the best kind of place for transit to expand to. It is cheaper to build out, and denser, transit-oriented development can follow. If you are expanding your transit system into places that are already sprawled-out hellish suburbs then you are doing it wrong.
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Nov 6, 2014 06:16
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VikingofRock posted:I have no idea, but my guess is that it's a combination of scarcity and location (graduate student housing is on-campus, and the layout of campus makes that a bigger deal than other places). Another factor is that they don't really pay us that much, so 60% of our income is not quite as crazy as it may seem at first. In any case, I don't really understand how graduate students afford those places on our salary, but apparently people do because as far as I know the housing fills up. $1000 a month for a 1 bedroom in CA is fine. The real issue is that grad students in the UC system without extra grant funding make like $18K a year.
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Nov 6, 2014 06:26
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