Vote Ron Davis

Odette, Paris France 🇫🇷

Amazon is worth $2 trillion. But it didn't deign to pay the millions of dollars it racked up in unpaid fines as its’ trucks illegally polluted our air and forced New Yorkers to breathe in their exhaust.  
We collected every dollar they owe the people of this city — and will continue to hold them accountable. In New York, corporations are held to the same standard as everyone else.  
No company — no matter how large or powerful — is above the law.

BREAKING: The Seattle Social Housing Developer has announced its first acquisition, a 150-unit apartment building near Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle, for the cost of $60.9 million. It plans to convert half the units to be affordable for low and middle-income tenants.

Bezos on CNBC: "You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not gonna help that teacher in Queens. I promise you."

Tonight, after a year of screaming about holding ICE accountable, 144 House Democrats joined 203 Republicans to pass CORCA, a bill that grants DHS and ICE sweeping new power to collect American citizens' personal information under the guise of combating retail theft.

I'm glad that the author of "Rent Control Is Fine, Actually" calls themself Unlearning Economics, bc it's good to just state things clearly, such as the open animosity that many left economic populists have for the field of economics and economists themselves. Economists aren't gods, and economics isn't a divine truth, but economists are good--better than most--at something critical for making public policy: They're good at identifying tradeoffs. "Rents are too high, so freeze them" is compelling politics. But in the absence of other pro-supply policies, if you make it illegal to increase rents, landlords will stop upgrading units and convert them to condos, which reduces the supply of units for rent, reduces mobility, and drives up rents for everybody else. The left econ populists have some clear, and clearly stated, policy ideas: - Rents are too high, so freeze them. - Electricity is expensive, so stop rate increases. - Homes are too expensive, so ban institutional investors. - Power prices are rising, so ban data center construction. ... All these policies feel like solutions because they're brisk, they name enemies, and they take on the most visible source of frustration. But they are much better as villain-naming exercises than they are as a complete public policy. On their own, each creates other problems: less housing built, less clean electricity built, abdicating energy policy by encouraging AI firms to build data centers abroad in unsavory countries with more emissions, etc. I can't think of a single economic populist idea that wouldn't be helped with a little dose of economics, which is why it's troubling when I see the left participating in, and even celebrating, the great unlearning of economics.

god I hate this faux populist bullshit. K-12 is also free for rich people, as are public parks, the fire dept, libraries etc. Study after study shows means testing is the quickest way to gut programs for the rich AND the poor because it erodes the public base of support.