Marc Joffe
@joffemd
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Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute focusing on fiscal sustainability and transparency. Happily married for 17 years and counting!
Walnut Creek, CA
Joined January 2009
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#HouseofThedragon
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GIRLFREEN ALWAYS WITH FREEN
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Rhaenyra
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Lionel Messi
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Uruguay
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Criston Cole
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Otto
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#RejectingFinanceBill2024
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Aegon
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Alicent
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トレード
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#MondayMotivation
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#منصور_مع_اجيال_البترول
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#ParliamentSession
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Bautista
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STELL IN CALIFORNIA
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殺害予告
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コロナ陽性
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ロッキン
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JKWkeren PakBOWOlanjutkan
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MasaDEPAN LebihMAJU
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コレクション缶バッジ
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@nettermike
The $2 billion will be paid by taxpayers. Those responsible for the unnecessary school closures--politicians, unions, school officials, and those in the media who spread panic--aren't facing any specific financial penalty.
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Amazing how California gas station owners are so much greedier than those in other states! Or might there be some other explanation, Governor?
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Man dies of drug overdose on BART train @ Walnut Creek. This news makes me less likely to use BART because I wouldn't want to see that happen on my trip and I don't want to worry about being delayed by "police action" or "medical emergencies" on trains further up the line. To
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San Francisco lost a tech company to Las Vegas after one employee was struck in the face and another was groped near the office. Employers are becoming less willing to pay the premium price of operating in San Francisco when it is accompanied by insecurity.
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@semafor
@maxwelltani
Interesting piece, but this sentence is misleading: "Greenwald quit in fury to make quixotic allies on the right." You can find the reason for Greenwald's departure in an Intercept article: he wanted full editorial control over his content.
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@nettermike
So, with climate change, we get years of drought, above-normal precipitation, and average precipitation: sort of like we got before climate change.
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Rubio's Coastal Grill (fast casual) just closed 48 of its California locations, while leaving all its Arizona and Nevada locations open. I wonder why?
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I-10 fire looks like another case of government failure: Caltrans owned the property under the freeway and didn't adequately monitor the lessee. Now we have no reopening date for this crucial stretch of freeway.
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@RnaudBertrand
@davidfickling
If we're truly in a climate emergency, the US should be willing to take as much clean tech as it can from wherever it can get it. So which is it: (1) there really is no emergency, or (2) are we in the US fiddling while Rome burns?
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@thomashawk
@SFPD
And in other news, my wife had to change cars on BART yesterday evening because a nearby passenger was muttering about killing people. If we can't feel safe in public areas, we're going to avoid them more and more.
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@Wendy03855110
@KevinKileyCA
There is a range of opinion among well-informed medical experts making "misinformation" hard to define. For example, Danish public health authorities generally DON'T recommend boosters.
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@laurenlself
Former rating agency employee here. This is interesting but misses an important aspect: rating agencies lowered their standards to compete for business. Federal regulation set up a ratings oligopoly funded by bond issuers: investors lost the incentive to do independent credit
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@MattHaneySF
This will mean higher rents and/or more poorly maintained housing for tenants with and without pets. Not everything needs to be subject to legislation.
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In addition to a $360 million city bond, San Francisco voters will see a $790 million school bond on the November ballot. That's $1.15 billion on top of state and regional measures. Time to say no.
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@sfchronicle
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@TRHLofficial
Please don't let yourselves down, Argentinians! After a century of bad economic policies that have transformed your country from rich to poor, you finally have an opportunity to turn it around. Don't pass it up.
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Under the California High-Speed Rail Authority's delusional operating plan, four HSR trains will barrel through this grade crossing at 110mph each hour. What could possibly go wrong?
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@RnaudBertrand
That works out to only about 17k passengers per day and is less than half the ridership of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. On the other hand, it's new, so ridership can grow over time.
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@RnaudBertrand
A columnist in California says that the Indonesian line does not reach either city's downtown and the trains are empty. Is that true?
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@DeanPreston
Thanks for the link. It clearly states that eligible individuals should get $5 million each. If 20,000 people are eligible, the total cost would be $100 billion, which is 7 times SF's annual budget. It is not an excellent piece of work.
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Huge new tax measure coming to Bay Area ballots in 2026 to bail out local transit agencies. Options include sales tax, parcel tax, or a regional payroll tax (as if employing people around here isn't costly enough already).
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Google is shrinking its footprint along San Francisco's Embarcadero by ending its lease at One Market and concentrating remaining staff in nearby buildings. I understand that Googlers have security concerns walking around that area.
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@the_transit_guy
In California, we "demanded" high-speed rail 15 years ago and are still waiting. First leg of the system now scheduled for 2030-2033, but that is almost certain to be postponed further due to recent floods.
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@aaronjmate
48 hours ago, no one in the West even knew that the Hamas attack was being planned. How could we learn these details so quickly?
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California's 2022 audited financial statements, produced 350 days late, shows $255 billion in unfunded liabilities.
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@BriannaWu
The peace movement should be about non-violence and empathy rather than just rooting for the other side.
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@byJoshuaDavis
@SFBART
Seems like a good idea. Now we just need $40 billion and fifteen years to build the tunnel.
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@garrytan
@SequoiaHD
@DocAaron
The Sequoia Healthcare District just takes a share of local property taxes and awards it as grants to preferred organizations. Concerned citizens could ask San Mateo County's LAFCo to dissolve this district.
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@cafreiman
The wall also allowed the unimpeded operation of a secret police force that disappeared people turned in by their friends and neighbors.
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@Scott_Wiener
@Caltrain
Caltrain electrification is costing $2.44 billion and is expected to shave just four minutes off the trip between SF and SJ.
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@realEstateTrent
We were also very reliant on physical files, so there were lots of filing cabinets around, and I also remember "inter-office mail." Amazing how much things have changed in 40 years!
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@thomashawk
But #
#SFBART
still needs to spend ~ $50 billion on a second tunnel under the Bay to accommodate all the commuters clamoring to get into San Francisco.
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"S.F. homelessness rises despite city spending hundreds of millions of dollars, new count shows"
Homelessness could well be rising BECAUSE the city is spending hundreds of millions.
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@sfchronicle
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@ggreschler
Newsom is right that the felony threshold was raised to $950 before he became governor. But CA became soft on crime largely because of state and local political leadership, and he is a huge part of that. Prison population is down 28% over 8 years.
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@thomashawk
I've gone to the North Face outlet in West Berkeley a few times. I think it's still open, but the last time I visited, the neighborhood was turning into a homeless encampment. It would be a shame to lose that location as well.
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Is this why BART will be asking voters to approve higher taxes in 2026?
A time theft scheme uncovered by the BART Inspector General followed a familiar pattern of clocking in and skipping work. One flagrant example is now being charged by the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.
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@AxiomAmerican
Defund NPR. Plenty of places to get this type of content without taxpayer subsidies.
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Handling of the Maui fire is an example of government failure. Maui County has a $1.07 billion budget for just 164,000 residents yet was unable to provide emergency warning, sufficient firefighting capacity, or water.
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In Northern California, we have high gas prices and high electricity prices, so its expensive to get around in all types of vehicles. And if you think more transit is the solution, rail extensions here cost > $2 billion per mile.
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Wow, I never thought I would see this in the SF Chronicle: an op-ed calling for California governments to shift from defined benefit to 401k-style pensions.
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Looks like California Proposition 1 is squeaking by. That'll add another $350 million to our general fund deficit while not solving homelessness.
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San Francisco brought the cost of a public toilet down from $1.7 million to $725k. Can BART and VTA do the same thing with their $12.2 billion subway?
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@kaitlancollins
So, he wants to spend $60 billion (plus interest) for signaling and not to fundamentally change the outcome of the war. And each year, his successors will come back for another $60 billion.
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@sfstandard
One possible silver lining in the story is that Macy's allegedly committed to remaining open until they find a buyer for the property. But my wife visited the other day and said the store looked sad, sort of like Nordstrom in its final months.
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@tparsi
Let's follow the example of Reagan. After Iran-backed terrorists killed 241 American soldiers in Beirut in 1983, the Administration's response was deliberate and measured. We also pulled out of Lebanon depriving the terrorists an American target.
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@nettermike
California government is very good at extracting revenue from the tax base, but it is particularly bad at using this revenue to provide services.
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@Scott_Wiener
@SFBART
Yesterday, I had two pleasant rides on BART. Clean, new trains, and no drama. But it's going to be hard to get riders back since the negative experiences people have had are widely publicized and long remembered.
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@nettermike
There are a lot of fixed costs like retiree pensions for the shrinking rate base to cover.
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@Scott_Wiener
Failure of SB 532 need not doom BART. All the board would have to do is cancel Link21 (the second unneeded subway tunnel) and flex the capital funds offered by the state to subsidize operations. This is a true non-emergency.
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At a Bay Area Project Roomkey motel, a 38-year-old resident died of a drug overdose but was not discovered until a neighboring resident complained about the odor. Non-profits charge $3000 per month to "service" each Homekey unit.
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@sfchronicle
Phillips says: "Chabot, located in the affluent Rockridge neighborhood, is predominantly white." State data says the school is 22.6% white. Facts matter.
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@lhfang
@LechatRick
One complex aspect is that a person who converts to Judaism MAY be able to get citizenship as well. So the discrimination is based on a mixture of ethnicity and religion.
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As acting federal Labor Secretary, Julie Su may write off up to $32.6 billion in debt owed by California as a result of its mismanagement of fraudulent unemployment claims--from back when SHE ran the CA unemployment program!
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SF is broke. It can't afford to give muni operators $21 million over and above the pay raises it has already offered. But operators have a point about needing to be compensated for the dangers they face: 494 assaults in the last 3.5 years.
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@Wendy03855110
@KevinKileyCA
I think we have to take individual cases with a grain of salt. I got COVID-19 for the first time just one month after receiving the bivalent booster, which was my 4th shot. Maybe my symptoms were milder than if I was unvaccinated, but there is no way to know.
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@thomashawk
There is a role for civil disobedience, but it shouldn't threaten public safety and the daily lives of regular folks.
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@richieSF2016
Ridership around 2000 per day according to muni stats I reviewed. Not a lot for a $2 billion project.
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At a CA state legislative hearing today, we learned that LA Metro is facing $1 billion annual operating deficits and that it is hard to recruit operators because they are afraid of being attacked by passengers. California transit is in deep trouble.
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Some quick math on California homelessness. In 2015, 1 out of 336 people in California were homeless; in 2023, it was 1 in 215. This despite tens of billions of government spending at all levels.
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A US streetcar system is transporting an average of two passengers per hour at an operational cost of over $150 each. Is there any point at which basic economics can affect transit policy in this country?
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@realEstateTrent
I came in just as personal computers were taking over. In a corporate finance department, the legacy world included calculators and physical spreadsheets on which tables of numbers would be handwritten.
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@GavinNewsom
Unfortunately, you have the authority to close our schools and businesses, but you can't tell us how to vote. Yes on the recall!
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New official projections call for California's population to peak at under 40.2 million in 2044 before falling back to near current levels in 2060. This is a huge comedown from previous projections used to justify megaprojects like high-speed rail and the second BART tunnel.
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@SusanDReynolds
Thanks for posting my op-ed! Glad to see that others think this extension doesn't make sense.
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@TripleNetInvest
Holders of Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities will take the loss. It is possible that even the most senior bonds originally rated AAA will be affected. Echoes of 2008.
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Apparently, Californians working at fast casual restaurants need to earn a "living wage" only if their restaurant lacks an on-site bakery. Please make it make sense!
California's new $20 minimum wage rule will exempt restaurants that sell bread, handing a lucrative break on wages to the Panera chain and one of Governor Gavin Newsom’s longtime allies
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From me today in the Merc: Bay Area $20 billion Affordable Housing Bond is a costly way to provide new housing. Better to lighten up on regulations.
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@nettermike
Another reason to stop wasting tens of millions of dollars sending out printed ballot guides. Just send out postcards with a QR code so voters can read the ballot guide on their phones. Send printed guides only to those who ask.
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@Noahpinion
Regarding the F-35 could it be simply a matter of throwing so much money at a problem, you ultimately solve it?
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News outlets as far away as India are taking note of the embarrassing situation at California High-Speed Rail. The Authority should consider pausing its campaign on X until it had meaningful progress to report.
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I disagree. Store closures have affected other cities but are worse in SF due to city policies, which raise the cost of doing business.
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California finally released its FY 2022 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report revealing a new financial problem: the state added $29 billion in liabilities reflecting the possible need to repay the federal government for fraudulent unemployment payments.
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@ArmandDoma
Maybe she'll make enough from monetizing this video to stay current on all three vehicles.
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If the climate crisis is truly an emergency, then building a costly high-speed rail system that won't be operational until the 2030s isn't the solution. If California government has its way, most of us will be driving electric vehicles by then anyway.
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@LondonBreed
@IKEA
@sfoewd
Couldn't they pull together more of a crowd for this grand opening? This seems like a nice food hall, but I'm not so excited about walking from Powell Street BART to get to it.
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After having to correct the misinformation about California becoming the world's 4th largest economy last year by passing Germany, I see that it may now, in fact, drop to
#6
behind India.
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@jeffreyatucker
So I guess it wasn't just supply chain issues after all. Team Transitory was wrong.
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Personally, I don’t like restaurant add-on fees, but this owner makes a good case against the impending statewide ban on them. And, I don't understand why small businesses have to pay Healthy SF fees when we have Covered California.
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@jeffreyatucker
I'll admit to being a masker until about halfway through the pandemic. Today, I am not insulted by those still masking, but I am afraid of them: they are the core constituency for the next round of "public health measures."
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@jeffreyatucker
Remember that Tony Bennett was able to put on a show despite having advanced altzheimers. It seems that dementia victims can hold onto their core competence well into disease progression.
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SF's war on cars has collateral damage: those of us who might like to drive in from the suburbs to shop and sightsee. But, honestly, fear of having my windows broken has already scared me away. Transit could help if it was clean/safe.
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@sfchronicle
Here's the money quote: "we still have a little bit of work to do to identify the matching sources." To get the federal $, the authority has to find $2.75 billion of additional state & local funds, which is why you'll be seeing more taxes on the 2026 ballot.
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@UrbanizeLA
@SoFiStadium
@thekiaforum
@IntuitDome
Construction time is also a huge problem. As others have said, this won't be ready for the 2028 Olympics. Simpler transportation solutions are needed.
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What do BART, SF City College, and many other California local agencies have in common? Rather than downsize to accommodate reduced demand, they go to the state legislature and the ballot for more tax dollars.
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@sfstandard
Making driving in SF more miserable might get some drivers to switch to transit,but it could also encourage them to avoid SF altogether. Not good for a struggling downtown.
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California State Senate just passed
@Scott_Wiener
bill authorizing MTC to put a 1/2% transit sales tax on the 2026 ballot. So, after raising property taxes on the 2024 ballot, MTC can come back for even more taxes two years later.
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San Francisco Supervisor candidate identifies a new human right: the right TO mobility. Like all positive rights, this right can only be provided by taking resources from others. That is why negative rights, i.e. the freedom FROM x, are the only legit rights.
Today I'm excited to share my public transportation platform for mobility justice ⚖️🚎☀️
Mobility is a fundamental right that should be guaranteed by the city to all. Safe streets, increasing MUNI ridership, and community-led planning ftw 🏆
Read more 👇
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Based on an analysis of 2022 state audited financial statements, New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois (in that order) are the least solvent states. New York, California, and Texas don't look that great either, but Florida does well.
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