Politics California: news, discussions, and rants

[colin traveller]

SF residents buy boulders, place them on sidewalk to thwart homeless tents

Residents of a San Francisco side street are so fed up with tents pitched on the sidewalk...

trib.al

 

[Ivan le Fou]

Ah yes, boulders.

That will surely solve the homelessness problem...

 

[berkut76]

Ah yes, boulders.

That will surely solve the homelessness problem...

It's about making homeless feel as unwelcome as possible, but like I've said in order to solve homelessness issue one has to solve drug addition problem. yeah, an uphill battle that feels unwinnable.

 

[TIZER]

I lived in Montreuil for a few years, I know.

And I can say that SF, much more than LA, is much worse than anything we have in France.

my mate went to San Francisco about 10 years ago even then he was stunned by the level of poverty in the city armies of people walking the city streets with shopping trolleys containing there entire belongings

most cities have people living underground in flood channels ... i saw that video from Christmas 2017 in Los Angeles it was heart breaking seeing so many tens of thousands living on the streets of one of America's wealthiest cities and yet America spends $750 billion + on defence and no one really knows the black defence projects budget is .. America needs to put the people first no country in there right mind would invade America with all the private gun ownership

 

[Ivan le Fou]

So... about them boulders...

The city decided to remove them after they got pushed on the road. They will be replace by bigger boulders.

*insert complementary Shrek meme*

 

[bdpopeye]

tens of thousands living on the streets

I saw a statistic that stated the homeless population of the state of California in Jan. 2018 was 130,000.

"In 2018, there were 129,972 people on the streets on any given night statewide. The most recent count conducted in Los Angeles County revealed that there were nearly 59,000 homeless people in 2019, while there were 9,784 homeless people in San Francisco, including in jails, hospitals and rehab centers — a jump of 30% from 2017. "....https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-01/california-homeless-people-housing-national-model-conference

The present population of the City of Los Angeles is 4,000,000. With a total of 10,000,000 living in Los Angeles county. The present population of the State of California is 39,747,267.

California Population 2024 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs)

worldpopulationreview.com

 

[TIZER]

I saw a statistic that stated the homeless population of the state of California in Jan. 2018 was 130,000.

"In 2018, there were 129,972 people on the streets on any given night statewide. The most recent count conducted in Los Angeles County revealed that there were nearly 59,000 homeless people in 2019, while there were 9,784 homeless people in San Francisco, including in jails, hospitals and rehab centers — a jump of 30% from 2017. "....https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-01/california-homeless-people-housing-national-model-conference

The present population of the City of Los Angeles is 4,000,000. With a total of 10,000,000 living in Los Angeles county. The present population of the State of California is 39,747,267.

California Population 2024 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs)

worldpopulationreview.com

... i saw a video of Anaheim in O/C behind the houses off millionaire's there was a tent city of the homeless right next to a river/flood channel ... really bizarre i think it could only really happen in America
10 minutes of shocking footage

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[NebrHogger]

Think what it would be like to have a million dollar house across the fence from Homeless Haven - you could never sell it! I mean, the smell has to be horrible!

Makes me wonder how many rich folks pay homeless to torch the place & take what they can get from insurance.

 

[HisRoyalHighness]

I have a strong distaste toward everything California, so let's turn this into a megahread:

San Francisco is losing residents because it's too expensive for nearly everyone

For the better part of two decades, the Bay Area has been a magnet for newcomers lured by a modern-day technology Gold Rush. But increasingly only those who have struck it rich can afford to stay.

Once a bohemian mecca that welcomed the Beat poets and '60s hippies, San Francisco now lays claim to the most expensive housing in the West, with a median home price of $1.4 million. There's also $5 a gallon gas, private schools priced like universities and chic restaurants that cost nearly double the national average.


Earlier this year, the San Francisco Bay Area was second only to New York – and ahead of Los Angeles, Washington and Chicago – when it came to people leaving major U.S. cities. More than 28,190 departed in the second quarter of 2019, almost double 2017's rate, according to a regular Migration Report from real estate brokerage Redfin.

The most popular in-state option for San Franciscans fleeing high costs is Sacramento, where the median home price is $350,000. Out of state, Seattle, at a $580,000 median, offers the biggest draw, Redfin data shows.

San Francisco is losing residents because it's too expensive for nearly everyone

A former bohemian mecca, San Francisco now lays claim to the most expensive housing in the West, with a median home price of $1.4 million.

www.usatoday.com

2nd most valuable U.S. startup to leave SF as city loses another headquarters

San Francisco is losing one of its most valuable tech startups.

Stripe, the payment processing company valued at $35 billion, signed a lease Wednesday for a 421,000-square-foot headquarters in South San Francisco. The company will move more than 1,000 employees just 10 miles south of its current South of Market headquarters, which it plans to vacate.

The move, expected in the second half of 2021, will be one of San Francisco’s largest corporate departures and the largest by a tech company during the current boom. Stripe is the second-most valuable private U.S. startup behind Juul, which was last valued at $38 billion, according to data firm PitchBook. It’s raised over $1 billion from venture capitalists and has over 2,000 employees globally.

2nd most valuable U.S. startup to leave SF as city loses another headquarters

San Francisco is losing one of its most valuable tech startups as Stripe signs a lease in...

www.sfchronicle.com

California's tax hike in 2012 spurred mass wealth exodus, new study finds

According to the 74-page report published by the National Bureau of Economic Research and authored by Stanford University economists Joshua Rauh and Ryan Shyu, the tax hike in 2012 caused 0.8 percent of Californians who were in the top tax bracket to move in 2013, mostly to states with zero income tax (including Washington, Texas, Nevada, Idaho and Colorado).

The authors analyzed taxpayers earning more than $5 million in 2012, and found that departures spiked to 2.125 percent in 2013, compared to 1.5 percent in 2011. On the other hand, moving rates for taxpayers earning under $2 million were “negligible.”

Proposition 30, approved by voters during a state-wide referendum in 2012, raised personal income taxes over the next seven years for California residents who were earning more than $250,000 each year. It pushed the top tax rate to 12.3 percent for filers earning $500,000 and above, or $1 million per couple. The measure also increased the sales tax in the state by 0.25 percent over four years.

As a result of the exodus, the study estimated the tax hike windfall that California priced in was eroded by about 45.2 percent. According to the California Budget Project, a research group that endorsed the proposition, the wealthiest 1 percent of Californians were expected to shoulder about 79 percent of the tax increase. The measure was expected to raise $8.5 billion in new revenue, according to the Department of Finance.

California's tax hike in 2012 spurred mass wealth exodus, new study finds

Proposition 30, approved by voters in 2012, raised personal income taxes over the next seven years for California residents with an annual income over $250,000.

www.foxbusiness.com

Column: California’s pot tax came in way below projections — and not for the reason you think

The fiscal gain may not have been the only rationale for legalization and in some cases not even the prime motivation, but it was never far beneath the surface. In California, proponents of legalization, who won their battle with the passage of Proposition 64 in 2016, predicted a tax windfall of $1 billion a year.

The actual figure for the fiscal year ended in June: $288 million. The forecast for the current fiscal year is $359 million. When, or whether, the tax will reach $1 billion is anyone’s guess.

Experts have come up with numerous explanations for these disappointing results. They say the tax structures are overly complicated, the marijuana black market is still thriving, licensing of legal dispensaries is too slow.

But there’s another explanation they’re avoiding. It’s one I highlighted back in 2009, when the legalization drive in California was gaining steam: From the start, projections of the size and value of the marijuana market itself, and therefore of the potential tax take, were based on fantasy.

As I wrote at the time, valuations of illicit activity, whether it’s drug sales, street crime or porn distribution, are notoriously squishy. Yet hard figures are accepted by the media as gospel, even though their sources are typically law enforcement agencies claiming to have achieved record-breaking drug busts or experts trying to pump up the importance of their chosen field of study.

In California, the inflation took the form of a dubious assertion that marijuana was the state’s most valuable cash crop. The assertion was duly reported in newspapers across the country, including this one, and was cited on CNN and NBC. The ostensibly hard valuation of the state’s marijuana crop was $14 billion, part of a nationwide marijuana trade worth more than $100 billion a year (including imports).

Column: California's pot tax came in way below projections — and not for the reason you think

California officials are wondering why marijuana taxes haven't turned out to be a cash cow. Here's the reason.

www.latimes.com

Regulation and thriving black market burning up profits of California's legal weed business

The California law gives local governments the right to regulate the pot shops so towns can prohibit them. A whopping 80% of the state's towns and cities have turned legal pot shops down.

The law also calls for strict regulation and fees that can hamper licensed growers like Casey O'Neill, who served time for cultivating pot when it was illegal. Turns out O'Neill's vision of earning a lucrative living doing the thing he loves was just a pipe dream. After jumping through all the regulatory hoops with costs of $50,000 over a few years, he says there was no profit in growing his 45 plants. "Permits, for consulting, $2,500 a year for the water board discharge permit. It's $750 a year for the pond permit. It's $1,350 application fee to the county, plus another $675 when they actually give you the permit annually," O'Neill says.

The black market growers are the ones making the money says Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman. "The black market has greatly increased," he says. That product takes customers away from California's legal growers. Black market growers also sell their illegal weed out of state, a market closed to California growers who may only sell in-state. So the black market growers have a huge market. Allman says, "Once a week we get a call, it's usually some trooper back east, you know, at 3:00 in the morning, who stopped a car for not having a taillight. Says, 'You won't believe it. You know, we got 35, 40 pounds.'" 60 Minutes was told by highway patrols in six states east of California that they have seized up to three times more pot on their roads since Proposition 64 was implemented.

In a state, much of the illegal weed isn't just being sold by shadowy dealers, but in illegal storefronts in strip malls, where buyers aren't being taxed at 45% and the dealers don't buy expensive permits from the state. Legalization has actually made illegal weed cheaper and easier to buy. It's frustrating for entrepreneurs like Steinmetz. "Unlike other industries, we have this kind of in-the-shadows, unspoken-about competitor, right? So it's not like California is fully raging, fully legal."

How red tape and black market weed are buzzkills for California's legal marijuana industry

When voters legalized marijuana three years ago, advocates said illegal operations would be pushed out and the state would make hundreds of millions in tax revenue. So far, those dreams have not panned out

www.cbsnews.com

TLDR: California sux lol

 

[Ivan le Fou]

Think what it would be like to have a million dollar house across the fence from Homeless Haven - you could never sell it! I mean, the smell has to be horrible!

Makes me wonder how many rich folks pay homeless to torch the place & take what they can get from insurance.

Isn't kind of funny though?

These millionaires and their mansions, being separated from the homeless by... a wall... yet criticizing Trump and his.

 

[primer]

Oddly the stars always leave when their elected fabulous socialists increase their taxes. Those that said they were leaving after outrageous Trump was elected all still have US residences..

 

[Fluff]

As a child in the uk, in the 70’s, I recall a tramp lived at the bottom of the street, seemed perfectly normal....

The next ‘tramp’ I saw was in S Francisco, on my first day there, rooting through a dumpster, seriously I has assumed this was a tv stereotype.

But the first shanty town I ever saw was in Sardinia, I was shocked.

The uk did a lot to solve this, but it seems to be coming back.

As a taxpayer, one of the reasons I accept paying, is literally to avoid stepping over bodies on the street.

I understand that mental health and drugs are big factors, but as a rich nation we can afford to provide beds, help etc, and not just at Christmas. Drugs needs to be tackled as a supply issue, but I am also swayed to the legalisation and taxation option.

And I hope I never end up there.

 

[Chazman]

ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

 

[berkut76]

 

[riderboy]

How long before an epidemic of bubonic plague begins? I say it's a real possibility.

Better stock up on antibiotics now....Doxycycline I believe works.

 

[primer]

New Zealand has exported measles cases to the United States, according to the American Centre for Disease Control (CDC).

While the overall number was small, New Zealand exported more measles cases to the US than countries like China, India, and Australia, despite far larger numbers of those countries' citizens travelling to the US.

Supposedly vaccinated out of existence. NZ has a very militant feely greenie movement. They also banned timber preservatives. There was a phase they went through when everything in houses was toxic. Yeah well now their houses are more likely to kill them from structural collapse.

 

[Ivan le Fou]

Column: California’s pot tax came in way below projections — and not for the reason you think

Column: California's pot tax came in way below projections — and not for the reason you think

California officials are wondering why marijuana taxes haven't turned out to be a cash cow. Here's the reason.

www.latimes.com

Regulation and thriving black market burning up profits of California's legal weed business

How red tape and black market weed are buzzkills for California's legal marijuana industry

When voters legalized marijuana three years ago, advocates said illegal operations would be pushed out and the state would make hundreds of millions in tax revenue. So far, those dreams have not panned out

www.cbsnews.com

What?

But wasn't legalization supposed to put an end to the criminal/outside the law selling of drugs?

So... you are saying it didn't work??

 

[NebrHogger]

The new California state flag is spot on! I lifted it to post on my site.

 

[colin traveller]

I'm not doubting that it has. This homeless problem in California has been ongoing for many ,many years.

When developers build homes that far exceed the average persons income ...and local Goverment officials don't set a cap on the prices of new flats, rents etc etc .. it becomes far harder to afford a roof over your head therefore many see the streets as the cheaper unfortunate option ..



Cost of living is astromonical especially here . Average rent for a flat in Glasgow is like 600 PCM that's so called affordable not including extra's ... SNP Manifesto stated they were building 80,000 affordable homes which are non existant .

 

[ao_sepia]

View attachment 193185

are other states like this?