611–620 of 832 posts
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If rural areas are given disproportionate political power, why can't political parties that feel this disadvantage do better in those areas? Why change the rules of the game instead of winning it?
Because the two-party system limits choice to voters and polarizes camps. A democrat could have genuinely good policy that would make an enormous difference for a lot of republican voters. But stances on social issues like gay marriage, gun control, etc, will make them unviable as a candidate. If they switch and support these issues, then they'll lose their primary.
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The good laborers are union workers, which drives the cost up significantly.
The actual labor costs for the workers are not the issue, they already don't make a lot and wages have stagnated for decades while costs have soared. Also, there's plenty of non-union areas that STILL have incredible costs. Profiteering from subcontractors and suppliers is the issue. All of these bids are public, this isn't exactly forbidden knowledge.
Union labor is really expensive. It cost my neighbor who is part owner of the SF ferry building wine shop, over $8K to install a TV set because it had to be done with union labor. And get this, he was not allowed to install it himself because of union rules.
I have another neighbor that works as a location scout for movies and commercials. He says all filming in SF has to be done by union workers and its much more expensive than filming outside SF.
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It’s easy to pile onto articles that highlight some of the city’s mismanagement, but San Francisco is one of the most naturally beautiful places in the country. If you’re out on the west side by Golden Gate Park, Baker Beach or the Presidio it feels like you’re in a nature movie. Even with all of its problems, I will always love that city.
> San Francisco is one of the most naturally beautiful places in the country. It's hit or miss. I find large swaths of the Outer Sunset desolate and depressing. Places like this: https://goo.gl/maps/QQbarT8iGEqLfNuN6
Paris has automatically self-cleaning public toilets all around and they cost around $200k each to build and install. There’s no way this is a remotely reasonable cost and is clearly a grift.
If you read the article, the main reason why it cost so much is not because of the cost of the toilet and the installation per-se, but because there is many, many red tape around doing anything in SF. So it is not necessarily a "grift" ( although many are profiting from it and are probably more than happy about the situation being the way it is ) but the result of decades of laws to regulate public work and spending…
Right, the red tape still exists to this day to allow for grifters to come in who help "expedite" the process for a fee. So it's really the same thing.
Reminds me of their $2.4B bus terminal, which opened in 2018, closed a month later when they noticed structural cracks, reopened in 2019, then closed in 2020 for covid19. Had to walk under its unfinished skeleton every day going to work.
You are making light of things for your own delight and political leanings which is exactly the kind of thing that leads to all this nastiness. The station you are talking about is multimodal and is going to get Caltrain even though it takes a long time. It has a unique structure that makes it essentially a big floating barge and the problems that came with that have since been fixed. Lots of stuff got closed for COV…
As for the bus-station-in-the-sky...talk to any AC Transit planner and they will say (privately) the agency would have much preferred for transbay buses to continue down Market St (i.e. similar to how BART works). But AC Transit is not allowed to compete with SF Muni, so instead a giant bus parking lot was built above some of the most pricey real estate in the world.
So yes, the station is yet another example of Bay Area dysfunction.
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There is nothing progressive about literally stopping progress on housing affordability.
They could certainly make arguments about "urban beautification", "community involvement", and other "progressive" causes. Unless of course those arent true progressives.
I've lived and worked in SF. Thankful that I'll probably never have another work-related reason to go back. SF is marked deprecated in my eyes.