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Stripe donates $19,999 to “No on Prop C”, avoiding ethics disclosures

noplansf.com

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Re: Stripe donates $19,999 to “No on Prop C”, avoiding ethics disclosures

#11

Post by pg_bot »

komaromy wrote: post #3

This made me laugh because it's maybe the first negative piece that I've ever seen about Stripe that wasn't "they stopped processing my payments for reasons that I don't like". The delivery is very good.

We recently experienced an issue where a recurring subscription in our service was double charged to one of our client's credit cards. It took me three attempts communicating with their customer service before they determined that it was indeed a bug in their service and offered an apology. From our side it was like pulling teeth running through the event log and getting dismissed by their support team. I am still surprised that there was no greater public announcement since this kind of event should never happen with your payment processor.

Re: Stripe donates $19,999 to “No on Prop C”, avoiding ethics disclosures

#12

Post by lylecubed »

daeken wrote: post #6
funkaster wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from their website: > Proposition C, called Our City Our Home on the November 8, 2018 San Francisco ballot would generate $300 million per year to address San Francisco's homelessness crisis by increasing the business tax on San Francisco's wealthiest corporations. > Only businesses making over $50 million a year would be affected, and their first $50 million in revenue is exempt. Their tax rates would increase betwe…

This is the worst description possible. Increasing taxes doesn't address homelessness -- doing something with that tax revenue does. I just read over Prop C and while it's not the most clear proposal, it doesn't seem unreasonable, and isn't very hard to actually ... summarize its effects, not just hint at the end goal. ETA: Prop C would add a 0.175%-0.325% tax to large companies, which would go to: administering the…

> doing something with that tax revenue does.

Not really. SF already spends more than $250 million annually on programs for the homeless[0]. That's about $33,333 per homeless (7,499[1]). And yet, the problem is worse than ever.

[0]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-incre...

[1]: https://projects.sfchronicle.com/sf-homeless/2018-state-of-h...

Re: Stripe donates $19,999 to “No on Prop C”, avoiding ethics disclosures

#13

Post by drivingmenuts »

MBCook wrote: post #2

For those of us outside valley would someone like to give a decent summary of Prop C?

Are the businesses really the problem here or is it the NIMBY homeowners?

Seems like Stripe has every right to oppose something that they aren't causing and are going to wind up paying for just because they've got the obvious pockets.

Re: Stripe donates $19,999 to “No on Prop C”, avoiding ethics disclosures

#14

Post by eridius »

funkaster wrote: post #4
MBCook wrote: post #2

For those of us outside valley would someone like to give a decent summary of Prop C?

from their website: > Proposition C, called Our City Our Home on the November 8, 2018 San Francisco ballot would generate $300 million per year to address San Francisco's homelessness crisis by increasing the business tax on San Francisco's wealthiest corporations. > Only businesses making over $50 million a year would be affected, and their first $50 million in revenue is exempt. Their tax rates would increase betwe…

Note that "making" means gross receipts, not profit.

Re: Stripe donates $19,999 to “No on Prop C”, avoiding ethics disclosures

#15

Post by eridius »

daeken wrote: post #6
funkaster wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from their website: > Proposition C, called Our City Our Home on the November 8, 2018 San Francisco ballot would generate $300 million per year to address San Francisco's homelessness crisis by increasing the business tax on San Francisco's wealthiest corporations. > Only businesses making over $50 million a year would be affected, and their first $50 million in revenue is exempt. Their tax rates would increase betwe…

This is the worst description possible. Increasing taxes doesn't address homelessness -- doing something with that tax revenue does. I just read over Prop C and while it's not the most clear proposal, it doesn't seem unreasonable, and isn't very hard to actually ... summarize its effects, not just hint at the end goal. ETA: Prop C would add a 0.175%-0.325% tax to large companies, which would go to: administering the…

I read through part of the Prop C text and I'm not convinced it's taking the right approach. The biggest problem with housing in this city is one of supply. The proposition does say that the money can be used for construction of housing, but that's just one option among many, and so the fund would be perfectly justified in constructing zero housing and instead simply trying to "acquire" more housing. Hell, it can even just be used to operate existing housing without even increasing the housing supply at all, or could be blown entirely on short-term rental subsidies.

Trying to acquire more low-income housing without increasing the overall housing supply is not a good idea. That's just going to make the overall housing market even worse, not to mention it will be quite expensive. I would be much happier if this proposition explicitly set aside money to be used for construction of new housing.

Re: Stripe donates $19,999 to “No on Prop C”, avoiding ethics disclosures

#16

Post by eridius »

This website seems like it's potentially committing libel. It pretends to be run by the SF Chamber of Commerce, including attributing direct quotes to real people, except it's obviously not run by them at all and those quotes are clearly fake.

Re: Stripe donates $19,999 to “No on Prop C”, avoiding ethics disclosures

#17

Post by daeken »

eridius wrote: post #15
daeken wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the worst description possible. Increasing taxes doesn't address homelessness -- doing something with that tax revenue does. I just read over Prop C and while it's not the most clear proposal, it doesn't seem unreasonable, and isn't very hard to actually ... summarize its effects, not just hint at the end goal. ETA: Prop C would add a 0.175%-0.325% tax to large companies, which would go to: administering the…

I read through part of the Prop C text and I'm not convinced it's taking the right approach. The biggest problem with housing in this city is one of supply. The proposition does say that the money can be used for construction of housing, but that's just one option among many, and so the fund would be perfectly justified in constructing zero housing and instead simply trying to "acquire" more housing. Hell, it can eve…

Yeah, I agree. My issue was mostly just with the site being intentionally vague and only talking about what their goal is, rather than summarizing what the prop ... is. That just struck me as exceptionally deceptive.

Re: Stripe donates $19,999 to “No on Prop C”, avoiding ethics disclosures

#18

Post by abalone »

eridius wrote: post #16

This website seems like it's potentially committing libel. It pretends to be run by the SF Chamber of Commerce, including attributing direct quotes to real people, except it's obviously not run by them at all and those quotes are clearly fake.

Except what it's saying is true, which makes it kind of hard to constitute libel, and as you note it's "obviously not run by them" and "clearly" satire.

Re: Stripe donates $19,999 to “No on Prop C”, avoiding ethics disclosures

#19

Post by lilyball »

abalone wrote: post #18
eridius wrote: post #16

This website seems like it's potentially committing libel. It pretends to be run by the SF Chamber of Commerce, including attributing direct quotes to real people, except it's obviously not run by them at all and those quotes are clearly fake.

Except what it's saying is true, which makes it kind of hard to constitute libel, and as you note it's "obviously not run by them" and "clearly" satire.

What's true? The website is written to make it look like it's run by the SF Chamber of Commerce, except it's not. The fact that it's pretending to be run by the SF Chamber of Commerce then means stuff like

> Everyone agrees that homelessness in SF is a crisis, but we care more about our Trump corporate tax breaks.

is intended to appear as though this is speech made by the SF Chamber of Commerce, it's except it's not.

What's more, it has 3 quotations attributed to real people (such as Jim Lazarus, on the SF Chamber of Commerce) that aren't real.

Even the footer text doesn't disclose that it's run by Our City Our Home. It instead claims to be run by "No Plan SF".

I can tell it's "obviously not run by them" because the SF Chamber of Commerce would have to be fundamentally lacking in self-awareness to write the things on that site. But I can't find anywhere on the site that it actually admits to being satire.

Re: Stripe donates $19,999 to “No on Prop C”, avoiding ethics disclosures

#20

Post by abalone »

lilyball wrote: post #19
abalone wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except what it's saying is true, which makes it kind of hard to constitute libel, and as you note it's "obviously not run by them" and "clearly" satire.

What's true? The website is written to make it look like it's run by the SF Chamber of Commerce, except it's not. The fact that it's pretending to be run by the SF Chamber of Commerce then means stuff like > Everyone agrees that homelessness in SF is a crisis, but we care more about our Trump corporate tax breaks. is intended to appear as though this is speech made by the SF Chamber of Commerce, it's except it's not.…

It’s obviously satire. Opens with “It took a little while, but we're glad to see corporations brave enough to prioritize protecting their Trump tax cuts over solutions to homelessness. Whew!”

Looking forward to your legal analysis of SNL.

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