American Politics Thread V: We're Just Biden Our Time ...

[Genivaria]

At least one capitalist is openly calling for feudalism.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... of-renters

[Shrillland]

At least one capitalist is openly calling for feudalism.
(Image)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... of-renters

For my job, I just wrote a piece about BTR communities(Build-to-rent). This isn't just one capitalist, this is the future, and it looks suspiciously like we're heading back on the Road to Serfdom, and not Herr Hayek's version of it either.

[Tarsonis]

At least one capitalist is openly calling for feudalism.
(Image)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... of-renters

Not quite feudalism, and honestly not the worst outcome.

[North Washington Republic]

At least one capitalist is openly calling for feudalism.
(Image)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... of-renters

Not quite feudalism, and honestly not the worst outcome.

I think that home ownership wasn’t stressed when millennials and gen Z were children, thus why they typically like to rent. Plus, homeownership has a lot of responsibilities.

[Shrillland]

Not quite feudalism, and honestly not the worst outcome.

I think that home ownership wasn’t stressed when millennials and gen Z were children, thus why they typically like to rent. Plus, homeownership has a lot of responsibilities.

Oh, it was stressed enough, it's just that the economy changed and we entered a housing crisis that the Great Recession accelerated.

[The Reformed American Republic]

At least one capitalist is openly calling for feudalism.
(Image)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... of-renters

To be honest, while I am not in favor of this, even the left-leaning Adam Ruins Everything promoted renting over buying a home. Regardless, I'm more in favor of intervening in the market to make homes more affordable.

Also, not quite feudalism.

[Tarsonis]

At least one capitalist is openly calling for feudalism.
(Image)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... of-renters

To be honest, while I am not in favor of this, even the left-leaning Adam Ruins Everything promoted renting over buying a home. Regardless, I'm more in favor of intervening in the market to make homes more affordable.

from what I can tell from the article, and I have a what could adequately be described as a "piss poor" understanding of economics, it seems that deregulation is what's driving the trend. Maybe time to put some regulation back in.

[Cannot think of a name]

I was kinda hoping that William Braddock would have said something about his phone call discussing using hitmen on his opponent by now, but I guess there isn't really much for him to say.

I expect the Homer/Mr Burns defense..."When you make that face it means I'm kidding..."

[The Reformed American Republic]

To be honest, while I am not in favor of this, even the left-leaning Adam Ruins Everything promoted renting over buying a home. Regardless, I'm more in favor of intervening in the market to make homes more affordable.

from what I can tell from the article, and I have a what could adequately be described as a "piss poor" understanding of economics, it seems that deregulation is what's driving the trend. Maybe time to put some regulation back in.

Indeed. Neoliberalism, deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, and all that is pretty much responsible for all of our woes.

[Alcala-Cordel]

I was kinda hoping that William Braddock would have said something about his phone call discussing using hitmen on his opponent by now, but I guess there isn't really much for him to say.

I expect the Homer/Mr Burns defense..."When you make that face it means I'm kidding..."

C'mon, it was just a prank!

[Grave_n_idle]

At least one capitalist is openly calling for feudalism.
(Image)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... of-renters

Not quite feudalism, and honestly not the worst outcome.

No, it's pretty much the worst possible outcome. It's 'company town' on a national scale, and once it happens, it takes revolution to get out.

The only way it can work is if the rental properties are public, and there are independent private watchdogs. Anything else just turns into for-profit monopoly.

[Grave_n_idle]

I don't know, but definitely someone pre-Reagan. Man, sometimes I wish America was like it was in earlier times.

I don't really have opinions on Reagan, his term was before my time and I see both the positives and negatives of his legacy.

Reagan was the beginning of the end, and should ever have happened. But he was also just a symptom- any time you can run FOR government on the platform that government is bad so you want to be In it... and win? The rot was already there.

[North Washington Republic]

Not quite feudalism, and honestly not the worst outcome.

No, it's pretty much the worst possible outcome. It's 'company town' on a national scale, and once it happens, it takes revolution to get out.

The only way it can work is if the rental properties are public, and there are independent private watchdogs. Anything else just turns into for-profit monopoly.

You’re acting like all landlord want to kick people out on the street. Plus, how can it be a monopoly when they’re are multiple different landlords? They are responding to market demand. Millennials and generation Z don’t really care about homeownership. They want to rent, and the market is responding.

[Grave_n_idle]

You’re acting like all landlord want to kick people out on the street.

Not at all, but I am certainly aware that landlords will kick people out on the street. And impose obstacles and fees to starting the rental process, and ending the rental process, and any possible stages IN the rental process.

It doesn't have to be 'all' landlords to be a problem.

Plus, how can it be a monopoly when they’re are multiple different landlords?

Two ways - one: a consortium can function as though it were a monopoly. Two: give it a little while and the bigger companies eat the smaller ones.

They are responding to market demand. Millennials and generation Z don’t really care about homeownership. They want to rent, and the market is responding.

Nothing wrong with market demand - and that's why a market that offsets purchase-property with rental property is good, it stops monopolies forming (well, stops them forming so easily). The market turning INTO a rental market alone would be bad. Even if Gen Z wants it.

[Shrillland]

No, it's pretty much the worst possible outcome. It's 'company town' on a national scale, and once it happens, it takes revolution to get out.

The only way it can work is if the rental properties are public, and there are independent private watchdogs. Anything else just turns into for-profit monopoly.

You’re acting like all landlord want to kick people out on the street. Plus, how can it be a monopoly when they’re are multiple different landlords? They are responding to market demand. Millennials and generation Z don’t really care about homeownership. They want to rent, and the market is responding.

A lot of these new BTR communities don't have multiple landlords, they're subdivisions owned by single real estate firms building cheaply and offering cheaper rents than most private landlords can manage.

[Tarsonis]

You’re acting like all landlord want to kick people out on the street.

Not at all, but I am certainly aware that landlords will kick people out on the street. And impose obstacles and fees to starting the rental process, and ending the rental process, and any possible stages IN the rental process.

It doesn't have to be 'all' landlords to be a problem.

Plus, how can it be a monopoly when they’re are multiple different landlords?

Two ways - one: a consortium can function as though it were a monopoly. Two: give it a little while and the bigger companies eat the smaller ones.

They are responding to market demand. Millennials and generation Z don’t really care about homeownership. They want to rent, and the market is responding.

Nothing wrong with market demand - and that's why a market that offsets purchase-property with rental property is good, it stops monopolies forming (well, stops them forming so easily). The market turning INTO a rental market alone would be bad. Even if Gen Z wants it.

I'll agree with you on the fees bit. Pent rent is bullshit.

[The Black Forrest]

At least one capitalist is openly calling for feudalism.
(Image)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... of-renters

What is it with this masturbatory dream of returning to the 20s?

[Tarsonis]

At least one capitalist is openly calling for feudalism.
(Image)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... of-renters

What is it with this masturbatory dream of returning to the 20s?

Bathtub Gin is a hell of a drug

[Major-Tom]

At least one capitalist is openly calling for feudalism.
(Image)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... of-renters

What is it with this masturbatory dream of returning to the 20s?

Get rich enough/be born rich enough and sometimes you lose that otherwise innate ability to really be cognizant of what's going on in the real world.

At least one capitalist is openly calling for feudalism.
(Image)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... of-renters

To be honest, while I am not in favor of this, even the left-leaning Adam Ruins Everything promoted renting over buying a home. Regardless, I'm more in favor of intervening in the market to make homes more affordable.

Also, not quite feudalism.

Adam Ruins Everything is one step up above BuzzFeed, one step below Vox's informative videos. Sometimes there's a good take, other times there is garbage such as that.

Either way, the best way to make homes more affordable is to build way more supply. Seattle, San Francisco, NYC, Boston, all these expensive cities have far, far, far more demand than they do actual housing supply.

At least one capitalist is openly calling for feudalism.
(Image)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... of-renters

Not quite feudalism, and honestly not the worst outcome.

Home ownership allows for people to make even more money, encourages people to "couple up," and helps stabilize the market for rentals. We ought to really heavily promote home ownership even more once this artificial bubble finally bursts in the next year or two.

[Picairn]

At least one capitalist is openly calling for feudalism.
(Image)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... of-renters

Homeowners are generally far wealthier than renters. No surprise since rent, often the biggest monthly expense, is no longer a factor. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/renter ... asic-needs
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lawrenceyu ... bcee42480f

We should encourage more homeownership, not more feudalism.

[Grave_n_idle]

At least one capitalist is openly calling for feudalism.
(Image)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... of-renters

What is it with this masturbatory dream of returning to the 20s?

Ironically, given the subject matter, this probably has to do with the end of homesteading. The 1920s was the last time you could just get given land by the government to go build your house (not entirely, it continued up until the 70's, theoretically, and even the 80s in Alaska - but it basically ended in the 20s).

So this return to the 'dream' of how home ownership was is ironically based on the fact that most people have either forgotten, or never learned about, homesteading in America.

[Kowani]

A reminder that there are schools which are still not integrated

After years of bitter feuds over funding and segregation, the Sausalito Marin City School District will merge its controversial charter school with its largely Black traditional public school, in what will be the state’s first mandated school desegregation effort in 50 years.

The unification plan, which will create a K-8 school across the two campuses this fall, will combine two disparate school communities sharing the same ZIP code, but divided by race, income and Highway 101.

On one side is Sausalito, a 92% white community known for its restaurants, art galleries, houseboats and luxury homes overlooking San Francisco Bay, where the median income is $112,000 and a district charter school serves 346 K-8 students.

On the other is Marin City, where African American shipbuilders settled during World War II, a community that’s 60% people of color with a public housing complex and a median income of $45,841, where a traditional public school serves 111 K-8 students.

Following a harsh audit of the district in 2016, the state ordered the district to desegregate in 2019, pointing to discrimination, varying academic outcomes and other problems.

At the time, Black students were suspended 66 days for every day a white student was sent home for misbehavior, the largest disciplinary disparity in the state, officials said.

Test scores also showed wide gaps. At Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy, 21% of students were proficient in math and English, far below the share at Willow Creek Academy, where 65% of students were proficient or above in English and 55% met or exceeded proficiency in math.

Bayside had been neglected for years, with the school board shifting resources and focus to the charter school, the 2016 audit confirmed.

While Willow Creek has been more diverse than Bayside MLK, with 38% white students and 14% Black this past year, the Marin City traditional school was 8% white and nearly 50% Black.

At Bayside MLK, 68% of families are considered low-income, compared with 41% at Willow Creek.

Brooklynn Conway,10, plays on a playground near Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Marin City, California on Friday, June 11, 2021.
Brooklynn Conway,10, plays on a playground near Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Marin City, California on Friday, June 11, 2021.Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle
Creating a single school out of two disparate communities felt nearly impossible not long ago, with racism, privilege and anger too embedded in the relationship between the communities.

Despite its reputation as a bastion of liberal politics, Marin is the most segregated county in the Bay Area, with most communities fighting affordable housing or even market-rate apartments. Many cities are 90% white, with pockets of people of color in Novato, San Rafael and Marin City. Racial covenants in decades past prevented African Americans from buying homes in certain cities. The effects linger today.

But with the racial reckoning and push for equity set off by the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd last year, a new urgency took hold, officials said.

“The pandemic really doubled down on the ‘why,’” said Terena Mares, county Office of Education deputy superintendent, who has overseen the troubled district for years. “It was a baptism into the real crisis behind the social justice and equity issues that have plagued that district and community.”

But the roots of the conflict over desegregation in the district date back decades.

“What’s been going on in this community goes back all the way to when they were building boats,” said county Superintendent Mary Jane Burke, citing a policy that prevented African Americans from buying homes in Marin County after World War II. “Of course people are absolutely bitter about the historical racism that existed.”

On paper, the district just north of the Golden Gate Bridge looks flush with money — spending $35,000 for each student at the traditional school in Marin City in recent years, nearly triple what most other districts spend — with funding based on excess property taxes.

While that’s about three times what San Francisco Unified spends per pupil, in the tiny Marin County district, with just over 100 students and the standard overhead costs required to run a public school district, it sounds like more than it is.

Willow Creek Academy, which opened in 2001, was eligible for limited funding, spurring fights over the property tax funding, as well as services, staffing and more.

Over the years, Willow Creek pulled students, money and power from Bayside MLK. A school board majority, aligned with the charter, hired a Southern California charter school consultant to be a part-time superintendent making $165,000 a year. He was granted a paid leave when he faced felony conflict-of- interest charges in San Diego. He later pleaded guilty and resigned.

Mares stepped in about that time. Her first impression of the conditions at Bayside MLK, the largely African American school, were devastating.

“All the children and adults just felt abandoned,” Mares added.

Following the fiscal review in 2016, Burke reported the concerns to the state, leading to an investigation, which found “intentional racial and ethnic segregation” and discrimination.

In 2019, then Attorney General Xavier Becerra ordered the district to desegregate.

The district had several years to complete the process, but finished the merger in two. The pandemic and racial justice protests resulted in “epiphanies about social inequity,” creating momentum to move forward, said district Superintendent Itoco Garcia.

“We got this unification process done in the middle of a global pandemic and amid social unrest,” he said. “It was the right thing to do for kids for families, for staff.”

Parent Jahmeer Reynolds, whose son will be in the fourth grade in the fall, moving from the Marin City site to the Sausalito campus, hopes the community can start breaking down barriers and myths, including fears that the Bayside MLK campus was chaotic or unsafe.

His autistic son thrived there, made friends, felt safe, he said.

“We’re breaking down all of the walls, destroying all of the negative comments and rebuilding with a solid foundation,” he said. “I just believe we’re going to come out on the other side stronger.”

As of July 1, the former Willow Creek campus will become the district’s new K-5 school, while Bayside MLK will enroll middle school students as well as preschoolers.

Willow Creek parent Jennifer Conway, a longtime supporter of creating one district school, said she is “super excited” about the merger. Her daughter will attend sixth grade at the middle school in the fall.

“I just didn’t see how two schools and two sets of infrastructure made any sense whatsoever,” she said. “The division that caused bifurcation of energy and resources was not productive and certainly not helping our kids.”

She called the desegregation order “the wake-up call that the community needed to get to work and make it happen.”

Overall, per student spending will dip to about $27,000 because of the merger, still well above state average.

Kurt Weinsheimer, president of the Willow Creek Board of Directors, said he believes the timing is right to bring the schools together.

A decade ago, he said, “you didn’t have a lot of trust in public schools,” and there was a “big sense of separation,” between Marin City and Sausalito.

“From a parent and family standpoint the idea of unification just makes sense,” he said. “Kids are already going to school together, and live in different communities that have different backgrounds.”

Merging the two schools, however, is only the first step, Mares said. She added that the effects of historic racism still linger and adults need to check their bias.

“The really hard work is in front of us,” she said.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Biden's new anti-terror strategy includes people opposed to capitalism and corporate globalization, just in time for the upcoming mass wave of evictions at the hands of capitalists that still seems set to happen at the end of the month.

He's still a socialist though : )

[Shrillland]

A reminder that there are schools which are still not integrated

snip

Now all we need to do after that is desegregate school funding....which actually is linked to increased renting leading to reduced property tax revenues in all but the wealthiest and predominantly white communities, leading to worse schools for all involved but especially for black students.

[Page]

Biden's new anti-terror strategy includes people opposed to capitalism and corporate globalization, just in time for the upcoming mass wave of evictions at the hands of capitalists that still seems set to happen at the end of the month.

He's still a socialist though : )

The story of American counter-terrorism is a right-wing terrorist attacking with impunity because police are too busy beating up a Muslim, but then when peaceful left-wing protesters assemble, the cops say to the Muslim "eh whatever go do your jihad, I gotta mow these people down."