Democrats: Pay Attention to What’s Happening in California

[@WilliamSalazar]

California in one word: unaffordable

[@patrickdover7229]

Such a great channel, thank you.

[@samw4758]

The projects he talks about wont be in big money Democratic donor's neighborhoods.

[@tristan7216]

All for tearing down ridiculous planning barriers and building more housing, but I fear that building it's like adding more lanes to a commuter highway - it's never enough, because building just generates more demand. More people will move to SF if housing costs start to come down, and then the price will pop right back up. The only solution I can see to this is policy that intentionally spreads growth around geographically, so you don't have everyone forced to be in one city or metro area to get a decent job. I'm not even sure that would do anything though.

[@nancybartley4610]

There are many problems about living in the state. I live in the foothills. In the past few years wildfires have dominated our lives from roughly May through October. It is demoralizing to know billions are spent on a "bullet train" while the lives of humans and animals are destroyed. So much could be done to clear underbrush, build more fire departments, hire more fire personnel, educate the public on how to prevent fires and enforce existing laws about property maintenance. For the wildfire months the air quality is awful. You cannot go outside. The smoke reaches the big cities, too. Our insurance companies have dropped us, and we are forced onto a state run program called the Fair Plan. What a ironic name! Nothing about it is fair. Our insurance has quadrupled. However, work goes on on the bullet train. It is still far from being completed. This only one serious problem we live with. Add: water is a huge issue. Again, instead of addressing the water shortage, we are building a bullet train. Add crime, homelessness (not just in the big cities), taxes, the price of gasoline (also related to taxes), awful schools, catering to the needs of illegal immigrants while tax paying citizens pay through the teeth for everything. Would love to leave. But who will buy a home in the foothills and pay the price for fire insurance, etc.? Many of us are stuck hoping we will not burn to death, see our land become a desert, be taxed to death.

[@BLK-LA]

A bullet train will help lessen personal transportation which will lessen the impact on the environment which will lessen the wildfires we have. So this is part of the solution to your problems (including EVERYONE) not an addition.

[@nancybartley4610]

@@BLK-LA The decrease in personal transportation will be insignificant. Fares will be so prohibitable, it will be impractical. If you think a bullet train will not have a carbon imprint, you are confused. Look at BART's parking lots. Did those riders take a bus to get to BART? Did BART solve pollution? In the meantime, money continues to be pored into the bullet train while every summer California burns.

[@nancybartley4610]

@@BLK-LA According to my pollution control engineer husband, a life-cycle analysis of the bullet train will show you the fallacy in your thinking.

[@amosbatto3051]

The massive increase in wild fires is caused by climate change, which is why California is pushing for renewable energy and zero-carbon vehicles. While the bullet train has become a hugely expensive, and I think California could have built it for much cheaper, it does reduce CO2 emissions. The important thing is that California is setting the standards for the rest of the nation, so the rest of the states follow its example. California is such a big state, that the auto industry can't afford to ignore it, so the standards that California sets tend to become the standards for the rest of the country. Kenetech->Enron Wind->GE Renewable Energy, Sunrun, SunPower->Maxeon, Telsa/Solar City, Nikola, Aptera got off the ground in part because California gave it the market and investors to fund these companies. I think that Aptera is going to set off the solar car revolution, just like Tesla kicked off the electric car revolution, and part of the reason why Aptera is able to attract investment is because it is getting a $20 million grant from California. I might feel differently if I were paying taxes in California, but I have to say how grateful I am that California is making a lot of the new green tech become reality.

[@naughtiusmaximus7103]

The "hypocrisy" of homelessness is in reality coping with the utter callousness Reaganism (cut taxes and spending) does to the poor. Where in California the poorest largely contribute to the homelessness rate, in redder states, particularly with no blue islands carrying the area, the poorest rapidly contribute towards the death rate. California has some of the lowest per capita death rates in the US. Meanwhile redder states are hundreds per 100,000 worse at providing for its population. To provide a scale of the systemic murder, sorry, negligence, of the populace, murders per 100,000 sit at the single digits, 20 or so at the *highest.* Yet murders are constantly on the news, while Republicans fervently practicing larger scale Reaganism, aka murder.....sorry, negligence, are given a pass because nobody likes to think about death. Then right wing news outlets have the gall to point at California's homelessness problem, one where California's efforts have separated it from the death rate, as if the red areas are doing better. Edit: worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/death-rate-by-state

[@gridley]

Exactly. California has been greatly hurt because it's way too conservative, way too rightwing. Grrr.

[@naughtiusmaximus7103]

@@gridley Hurt by Republicans? Sure, at the federal level perhaps. They're still in the mantra of cutting taxes and services. If you mean state level hurt, you mean places like Texas, which sit above the federal average on death rates. Without their large blue cores resisting right wing policies, namely tax and spending cuts, they'd be even worse as places like nearby Mississippi or Louisiana would attest to. Naturally can't have any poor or homeless when they're already dead. It's the Republican MO, just murder, sorry, I mean neglect, their poorest and homeless to their literal death.

[@robertruschak7083]

Blaming on taxes lolololol take a jab 💉