California Megathread: Best State

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tourism & Travel > California Megathread: Best State

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

And yet there is still a huge proportion of the California population that thinks there are too *few* people in prison.

I remember going to a Sunnyvale city council meeting a few years back. Among the items for discussion was a medical-marijuana dispensary. There were about three dozen people--older people, mostly Asian--who stood up to tell us how they were Very Very Scared that this would immediately turn Sunnyvale into Detroit. For all the talk about California being fruits-nuts-and-flakes, it's shockingly conservative in places that *aren't* Berkeley.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2013 15:57

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 14:05

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

FCKGW posted:

Cam someone enlighten me on the benefits of this high speed rail line?

If you want to travel from a point in the tourist district of San Francisco to a point on the outskirts of LA, and you want to do something that takes twice as long as flying, then high-speed rail is a good choice for you.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2013 22:24

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

withak posted:

Best solution would be a second transbay tube between OAK and SFO. Or further south and tell the peninsula NIMBYs to go gently caress themselves.

Well, the peninsula NIMBYs voted (twice!) for a sales-tax increase on themselves to extend the line all the way to the San Jose airport, and the only reason that isn't happenning is that the American economy poo poo itself.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2013 07:19

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

coolskillrex remix posted:

Its amazing how virtually no articles bother to discuss the drat difference between take home pay and benefits pay.

The idea of taxing benefits perpetually recurs, and from both sides of the political aisle ("If we tax benefits then people will understand the true cost of healthcare!" / "If we tax benefits then people will pay money on their actual salary instead of getting to use it as a tax shelter!") So I'm not super-concerned about pay being lumped together into a single number. Particularly when retirement compensation *does* take benefits pay into account.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2013 17:55

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

Leperflesh posted:

I really really want it to happen (and I voted for it), but frankly I'm skeptical. We need some serious eminent domain being exercised up in here, some whiny complainers, obstructionists, and anti-infrastructure conservatives need to be bulldozed without delay, and that's kind of out of character for California.

Tell me more about how thousands and thousands of people will have their property taken and their lives bent out of shape so that you can ride a train from SF to LA once or twice a year.

******

It isn't hard to solve the issue of local stops; just build out a sidetrack that goes to the town. Traffic management gets a lot more complicated, though, and with that complication comes expense.

******

The reason that HSR is using the old Union Pacific tracks is that if it had to buy 100% new right-of-way and build 100% new tracks the whole thing would cost about as much as the Apollo Program did.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2013 07:13

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

Very occasionally you'll hear a radio announcer in the SF area refer to a highway by a proper name, like "the Nimitz Freeway" for I-880.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2013 02:14

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

Illuminado posted:

SoCal

Hah. There are plenty of times when San Jose looks like that.

etalian posted:

I like the article on apartments of the future for the Bay Area:
(Only $1600 a month)

Holy poo poo, it's Koren Dallas's apartment from The Fifth Element.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2013 22:10

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

Leperflesh posted:

Well, I mean, if they're buying up homes and renting them out, isn't that going to help the rental market?

It's going to help the rental market for the five or six corporate entities that will, after a few years, own 65% of the residential property in California (and that will go up to 85% if you restrict it to the property that's anywhere near anything worthwhile.) They'll be able to dictate terms to potential renters through sheer size, rather than being subject to rent-control and eviction-notice and similar laws that forced smaller property owners to treat tenants as equals rather than income. They'll be able to control price by controlling supply (people aren't willing to pay your exorbitant rents? Just take half your units off the market! They'll *beg* to pay $2500 a month for a studio in Redwood City if that's the only thing they can *get*.) And since they're large-asset corporate entities rather than actual residents, they can just sit on empty units forever instead of having to sell them at the market price, which guarantees that whatever *does* go on the market will go for prices that make 2005 look reasonable.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2013 05:13

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

Leperflesh posted:

[citation needed]

Not to be glib, but this is the first I've heard of five or six corporate entities owning a large percentage of the total rental market, nevermind "the residential property" which is ridiculous on its face (the large majority of single-family homes in the US

I said "California", not "the US".

And I didn't say there was an Evil Special Conspiracy Plan to Take Over Everything. I said it was what was gonna happen as a natural outcome of the present attitudes toward lending risk.

You see, the bubble never popped. It just stopped inflating. Sure, "prices" went down; that was because foreclosed homes are required to be reported as sales at the market price. Property owners who weren't in trouble--who didn't lose their jobs, who didn't get caught in an ARM-reset trap, who didn't try stupid poo poo involving not paying loans or taking a bank to court--just hung on and waited until now, when buyers decided it was time to start buying again. But what that means is that prices went up and stayed up. But bankers remember what happened when they wrote all those no-down loans, and how scared they all got, and so the present market heavily favors people who can put in a big chunk of change--effectively bribing the bank to write the loan--and that means corporate entities, or private investors operating on such a scale that they might as well be corporations. And so we end up in a situation where most of the actual residential property is rentals, owned by a few giant entities with thousands of properties each.

And this sucks, but not because of Evil Plutocrats. It sucks for the same reason it sucks that the US mobile-phone market is dominated by maybe four different companies and they're all awful. It's not a "monopoly" market; there are multiple providers of the same service, and consumers can switch from one to another. But none of them gives a poo poo about any individual customer. For every user who angrily declares that they're taking their business elsewhere, there are ten thousand other suckers who hate the service but still don't want to put up with the hassle of switching, and that means the providers don't have to care what any individual user wants.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2013 06:53

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

Leperflesh posted:

I have argued that there are strong economic factors in the short term driving this activity but that the activity itself is self-limiting due to how it affects the marketplace (essentially, this is a form of arbitrage, and arbitrage is self-limiting).

Next you'll tell us about how CDOs were a good thing and the market didn't actually crash in 2008, right?

quote:

You have yet to provide any kind of actual data or reference, however.

So you're seriously butthurt that I picked a number out of the air?

Do you agree or disagree with this statement: "massive inequality in property ownership with majority holdings by a small number of owners is a bad thing".

# ¿ Jul 28, 2013 02:36

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

Leperflesh posted:

I hope I've explained above that I am objecting to an unsupported assertion that five or six real estate investment companies are engaging in illegal anticompetetive collaboration as a conspiracy to manipulate the California real estate market

I didn't say that, and I've specifically denied it.

I'm saying it's going to happen by accident. This isn't some Bilderberg Group thing, this is just the natural result of the modern market; a combination of risk-shy banks and homeowners who couldn't afford to sell at a loss.

quote:

I suggested that if investors are acting to put more rental units on the market, this should ease the tight rental market

But why would they do that? If they're making good money at existing rental prices then why would they act to reduce those prices by a significant degree? You're talking as though it's just a matter of sliding the dot along the supply-demand curve, but why wouldn't large rental-property firms *prefer* a sharply limited supply? It means they can boot obstreporous tenants, or let loudmouth complainers leave, and have a big long line of potential renters ready to move in at whatever terms are offered.

And again, this isn't evil conspiracy. This is how it's supposed to work when you've got a hosed-up market. This is like saying that a heavy rock will dent your skull worse than a small one; there's not some kind of Lepton Commission that makes the big rock hurt more.

quote:

The reason I took issue with your post is because I don't think this sort of wild-eyed doomsaying prediction is productive or useful. I think it's misinformation.

I'm sure that you mean well but I'm also sure that you have *no* idea how much like 2007 you sound right now.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2013 07:07

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

Leperflesh posted:

A museum? In our park? No! A travesty! gently caress off, philanthropist! We don't want your free, paid for by you, lovely museum full of art on our public land!

Alternate view: We don't want to give up a big chunk of public park for free so that some one-percenter can have a fancy display barn for all his possessions. "Look at ALL MY STUFF, you peons! Look at how your city BEGS me to show it to you! Look, and despair that YOU aren't as awesome as I am!"

# ¿ Aug 16, 2013 18:13

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

WampaLord posted:

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > San Francisco Megathread: There Are Other Parts of California?

As far as most people on the East Coast are concerned, California consists of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego (that is, the places with football and baseball teams.)

I have had relatives call me and ask if I was in any danger from the wildfires burning outside Los Angeles. "No grandmom, those are actually four hundred fifty miles away."

# ¿ Aug 17, 2013 03:32

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

And yet there is still a giant pipeline that sends the SF Bay to Los Angeles.

# ¿ Aug 24, 2013 18:21

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

That is one of the very few arguments against city-to-city mass transit that I think are valid; that is, the idea that if it's easy to go from one city to another, then everyone will live in the less-expensive place and commute to the more-expensive place. And so the less-expensive place gets fat off of all those property taxes and home-provisions spending, and the more-expensive place has to raise business taxes because that's their only source of revenue, and then all the businesses go somewhere else and everything sucks.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2013 21:05

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

And what's amusing is that the federal government did that and nobody said "boo", but now that local governments want to do it and sell the properties back to the homeowner the banks are suing to stop it happening.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2013 01:56

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

Welcome to the new economy, where fast food service is expected to be a viable career path.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2013 19:33

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

GrumpyDoctor posted:

If it requires a full day of work you should be able to live off of it.

I remember when McJobs were a bad thing, when they were proof that Republican idiocy had permanently damaged the economic makeup of America, when it was horrific to think that someone would have a multi-year full-time career as a fast-food worker.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2013 06:16

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

GrumpyDoctor posted:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Are you advocating paying fast food workers less than a living wage as a way to incentivize them to get "better" jobs or something?

Up until very recently--like, a couple of years ago at most--it was considered a sign of economic failure that people's primary family-supporting careers were in fast-food service. And the focus was on improving these people's earning ability (or at least supplementing it in some way) so that they could move on to a more productive and lucrative career. Fast-food service was never looked on as more than supplemental income or as introductory work experience.

If you want to say "gently caress that, fast food jobs are the only ones left" that's fine, and I can't completely disagree, but it's also a measure of how far our attitudes have changed regarding low-skill or low-education workers. "A McJob is all that you can hope for" is not exactly the most inspiring rallying cry.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2013 17:46

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

Going to a Chipotle in California is like going to a Sbarro in New York.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2013 04:59

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

That actually sounds good. It's true, as they say in the article, that most of the historical restrictions on abortion are based on it having been a felony crime--and most of the new restrictions (or requirements, or regulations) are really just about restricting access to it.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2013 02:35

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

From the sound of things, what hosed up the deal was the management wanting to go to ten-hour shifts (or to write up the schedules to get overlapping shifts). Management wants to do this because paying two hours of overtime on every single shift is incredibly expensive, and the union doesn't want this because getting two hours of overtime on every single shift is incredibly lucrative.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2013 03:45

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

withak posted:

The union offered to end the strike at 10pm tonight if management agreed to go to arbitration over the work schedule issue, and management refused. Which basically means that they are aware that this is a pretty ridiculous demand and don't want it near any kind of neutral third party for comment.

Or it means they want to deal with the issue now and not just kick it another six months down the road, which is all that "submitting to an arbitrator" will actually do.

Keep in mind that the union's "offer" is really more like "do everything we want and we'll consider going back to work...tomorrow."

# ¿ Oct 19, 2013 08:24

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

withak posted:

Their offer was everything that has been negotiated and agreed to by both parties so far, with the single outstanding issue to be decided by an independent arbitrator after everyone goes back to work.

So I was wrong; the union had agreed on a deal, and then management wanted to talk about the work rules, and the union decided gently caress THAT poo poo WE STRIKE.

quote:

There is literally no reasonable excuse for management to not agree to that if they have any interest in negotiating in good faith.

Except for the part where the union went on strike and *then* said "okay maybe we'll allow a negotiator to take a look at it".

Also, do you believe management when they say that eliminating overtime through rescheduling was the reason they agreed to the deal in the first place?

# ¿ Oct 20, 2013 00:04

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

etalian posted:

It's also amusing how the mayor of San Jose seems to pursuing a course of action that has a good chance of getting shot down in court.

He already did that, and it's in court. What he's trying to do is expand the vote from only San Jose to the entire state of California.

Because, y'know, the Supreme Court takes such a positive view the validity of direct democracy through ballot propositions.

Leperflesh posted:

Because that was what we agreed to when we hired those public sector workers. If we hadn't agreed to a defined-benefit plan for them, presumably we'd have had to agree to some other system to support their retirement savings; employer-matched 401(k), perhaps, or perhaps just much higher salaries.

The issue with that is that when these contracts were originally written, defined-benefit was how everyone did it. The only difference between public and private was the balance of salary versus pension. Over the years, private enterprise realized what a suicide deal defined-benefit pensions were, and ditched them; municipalities couldn't make those same moves, because there was nobody who could fight long enough to actually win. The unions knew that even if someone tried to get in the ring, all they had to do was wait for an election or two and he'd be gone (particularly if there were a few strikes and a lot of "Mayor Brown Shut Us Down" kind of chants). And municipalities can't make the ultimate fuckyou move of dissolving the company to get out of further obligations.

quote:

Nonetheless, it's not really fair to the public employees to try to bail out of a contract you (we (the country)) signed with them when we hired them.

Thus far, pension reform measures have focused on new hires from the date of the measure, or on actual screwjobs like spiking. There have not, as yet, been clawbacks. Not to say it wouldn't happen, but it hasn't yet.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2013 04:24

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

no guys you see it took brains and skill to invest in Apple Computer

that means they should be in charge now

FRINGE posted:

Also right wing CRAZY people write good stories sometimes. (This can help with making money in marketing and games .. like that idiot Draper.) Enders Game was a good story.

Actually, the good parts of Ender's Game were written nearly forty years ago. And Orson Scott Card's first published novel, written around the same time, was about a future society that depends on castratoes, and features pederasty and explicit homosexual encounters between teenage boys. Don't make the mistake of assuming that OSC in 2013 is the same as OSC in 1977.

It's really surprising to read the original short story of "Ender's Game" and realize how much of the book is complete bullshit that exists only to set up a backstory for "Speaker For The Dead".

Miss-Bomarc fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Dec 21, 2013

# ¿ Dec 21, 2013 07:40

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

Leperflesh posted:

Well OK then, so that'll be carbon taxes, public transportation subsidies, and nuclear power for everyone. That's what they meant, right? So we can fight global climate change? We might get a good result in fifty or so years if congress acts now! In the meantime we can massively convert our farming to low-water-intensity crops, so like, no more rice.

I'd actually be on board with nuclear power for everyone. You can do a lot if electricity is cheap. Desalinization, for one thing.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2014 01:20

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

I *guess* you can say that the added jobs are "due to the technology sector". I mean, all those new-money millionaires need SOMEONE to mow their lawns and wrap their burritos.

Saw an article today about how half the cab drivers in San Francisco have quit their jobs and signed up with Uber. I'm actually kind of amused by this whole thing. One the one hand you have rear end in a top hat government people who've regulated the taxi business to a degree that would make Stalin envious; on the other hand you've got assholes who think that "I made a message board where people can ask for a ride" means they're the next Steve Jobs. Whoever loses, I win.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2014 04:14

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

Leperflesh posted:

I've never had that happen. Business travelers in SF are extremely common...

But so are tourists, and tourists are easier to spot and easier to scam. The only two times I've taken a cab in the SF area, both times I heard "oh the card machine's broken, oh I don't have change". Hope you're happy with a tip that's $2.19 then, because all I got is twenties and the fare is $57.81.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2014 05:24

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

According to the State of California, homeless people are now pollution.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2014 08:00

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

This is the liberal equivalent of those anti-gay congresscritters who get caught trolling for anonymous handjobs in airport bathrooms.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2014 06:01

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 14:05

Miss-Bomarc: Aug 1, 2009

FCKGW posted:

"We'll be staying in San Francisco for a couple days but we thought we would head down to Disneyland for a day trip, it doesn't look too far. "

Stuff that happens in LA keeps making the national news (fire! flood! fire truck crash!) and my grandmother will call frantically begging me to stay safe and be careful because California is a very dangerous place. (I live in San Mateo.)

# ¿ Apr 17, 2014 15:32

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tourism & Travel > California Megathread: Best State