Berkeley doesn't hate the poor, and it's an insult to all thinking people to suggest that.

Berkeley just hates proles, you know, who like paper cups and straws and stuff.

Who just happen to be poor. But that's not Berkeley's fault!

Hah -- love ya, Old RPM.

PS The subway in LA is so stupidly done. The best is how they have two blue colored lines (out of about eight). The blue line (to Long Beach) is blue and the Expo Line is blue. So, if you're a tourist, and someone says to take the blue line, do you end up in Santa Monica instead of Long Beach, which is about a zillion miles away in So Cal traffic?

It's so fulfilling to enact legislation that bans things you don't use. You can feel morally superior without having to suffer any of the consequences of your actions.

Berkeley just hates proles.... ~ Old RPM Daddy at January 25, 2019 5:26 AM

✔︎

Berkeley has always been snobbish. And it's spreading. Between Berkeley and Oakland, in northern Oakland, is a neighborhood called, Rockridge. Rockridge residents will tell you they live in Rockridge. They won't say Oakland. If you say Oakland, they'll correct you to Rockridge.

They don't want to be a part of Oakland. Even the BART station is called "Rockridge," not "North Oakland" or "College Avenue."

There's a huge island of trash in the ocean, and China is balking on taking everyone's recycling. What alternative solutions do you propose, or do you disagree that these are problems?

They already pay by the mile. That's what gas taxes are supposed to support. Not bike lanes, not mass transit, the roads.

If it isn't sufficient, raise that. Oh, and come up with a way to tax plug-in electrics appropriately. Probably a meter at the plug.

Thanks, NicoleK.

As I said in 2017:

I'm sure plenty of honest, hard-working people suffered terribly when asbestos was banned, but it clearly had to be done for everyone's health, not "just" the environment's. Not quite the same thing, of course, but it's always less of a burden to make a sacrifice on your own before the government has no choice but to force you to do it. So people try to give each other a heads-up beforehand so the listeners can make the sacrifice and beat the government to the punch. You COULD say one example of that was China's one-child law - but it's hard to imagine the people beating the government to the punch on that one.

There's a huge island of trash in the ocean

And what's the source of that trash?

What I've read indicates that the bulk of that trash comes from third world countries. Places were they don't recycle, or even have reliable trash pick up.

But hey, let's spend billions to make a 1/10 of 1% difference in the size of that island. Bonus: they can make other people spend that money!

...here in Los Angeles, we've got our own plans to screw the poor (and the under-wealthy), making them pay by the mile to drive on the roads. ~ Amy

The mileage tax has been floated before as a California-wide thing. It's gaining traction because more efficient cars and the popularity of electrics and hybrids have cut deeply into the revenue from gasoline taxes.

The mileage tax is being touted as a "replacement" for gasoline taxes. However, if you think gasoline taxes will go away when the new tax is enacted, you haven't been paying attention.

Oh, and come up with a way to tax plug-in electrics appropriately. Probably a meter at the plug. ~ I R A Darth Aggie at January 25, 2019 7:30 AM

Au contraire, mon ami. One cannot tax electrics and maintain one's green bona fides. One must couch new taxes in SJW language, i.e., the mileage tax is "fair."

That the mileage tax does little to promote efficiency by manufacturers of internal combustion engines is of no matter, for those must be destroyed.

That California was short-sighted and did not establish public transit in its cities, preferring to promote automobiles and driving with years of highway building and urban sprawl, does not matter today. Condemn sprawl and pass a mileage tax. Let the proles pay for the decisions made years ago by the same people decrying them today.

Electric cars, hybrids, and bullet trains to nowhere are magic pills. They'll make up for years of junk-food eating, melting the weight right off and clearing those clogged arteries. No hard work necessary.

California will become clean and modern overnight, all paid for by those who insist on driving themselves. Let the plumbers and electricians and general contractors driving those huge pickups from job to job pay the freight for the rest of us to get clean.

"Even the BART station is called "Rockridge,"

I direct the reader to Haley v. United States

"What alternative solutions do you propose, or do you disagree that these are problems?"

You want to know what the solution is? Fly bombers over China and bomb every factory that makes disposable containers. Then put Asia and Africa under seige to make sure they can't import any. Problem solved!

Isn't this the same forum where, just a few days ago, people were arguing that parents have the obligation to teach their own kids to do the right thing, even when they're surrounded by parents who refuse to teach THEIR kids to do that?

Why shouldn't governments do the same thing? Even if it's a flawed start?

Example: England didn't mind profiting from American slavery during the American Civil War, BUT, at least, they abolished slavery in their own country decades before the U.S. did. Better than nothing - if not much.

I would advise any friend to leave California, but the rest of us need to be shielded from Californicators who are mentally incapable of understanding cause and effect. Like the "move blue" girl who was advertising for California liberals to come to South Carolina (where she moved from California) because she wanted to be around more progressive people in a state with "low taxes, great job opportunities, low cost of living", our own palmerworms, locusts, cankerworms, and caterpillars need to stay in the rotten Golden State.

I wonder how many fast food restaurants will stop dine in service rather than try to find room to stock dishes, silverware, glasses and set up dish washing stations and hire more help to clean the dishes?

Going to compostable seems less of a problem.

Going to compostable seems less of a problem. ~ Carol at January 25, 2019 9:35 AM

I worked for a company once that had a soup booth at a road race. The weather was chilly (as chilly as it gets in San Francisco ≈40º). The booth served hot soup to runners and spectators.

Since it was in San Francisco, the powers that be were concerned about being environmentally sensitive. The company handed out compostable and biodegradable spoons made from corn starch.

Yep. The spoons melted in the soup. Someone had to run to a nearby convenience store and get plastic spoons.

I direct the reader to Haley v. United States ~ Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at January 25, 2019 8:57 AM

Gog, I couldn't ride BART through Rockridge without that movie coming to mind.

"I wonder how many fast food restaurants will stop dine in service rather than try to find room to stock dishes, silverware, glasses and set up dish washing stations and hire more help to clean the dishes?"

This. Washing dishes by hand is a waste of $15/hr labor that could be cooking food or waiting on customers. As for the alternative: ever priced a commercial dishwasher? And they need lots of water. Very hot water.

Oh, and I don't quite understand how the REALLY poor can afford to eat takeout food anyway. In cities, at least, if you have access to more than one average supermarket (not Whole Foods), it IS possible to eat healthfully for under $100 a month - far less if you forfeit sugary desserts. You can't do that if you're buying takeout three or more times a month.

The subway in LA is so stupidly done. The best is how they have two blue colored lines (out of about eight). The blue line (to Long Beach) is blue and the Expo Line is blue.

This I've never understood. The Chicago CTA has eight lines, each with a different color, and still has room for a Gold Line, a Silver Line, a Magenta Line or whatever.

> spoons melted in the soup

Whaddit do for the flavor.

Just had a brilliant idea: City council types inclined to worry about fast food packaging and other trivialities should per required (not/permitted/but/required) to live in the housing facility for the adult mentally retarded in their district.

The places tend to be a little bit noisy, but they're clean, and the food is nutritious if not appetizing. And they'd get to interact with a broad rainbow of the community families who come to visit.

I think this would help them focus.

"Why shouldn't governments do the same thing?"

Because government is not your parent, duh!

Because government is force exerted under threat of violence. Don't do what the government says, they send men with guns.

Do not ask government to make people do anything you would not feel comfortable personally forcing them to do at gunpoint, and shooting them if they refused.

A researcher at a Canadian university did the full lifecycle analysis, and found styrofoam is actually greener than paper. Just try showing that to places that switch to paper for the environment.

The environmental movement seems dominated by what I call "hair-shirt (or sackcloth and ashes) environmentalism" - an approach where they evaluate the environmental benefit of a measure as a function of how much suffering or inconvenience it causes people.

"Oh, and I don't quite understand how the REALLY poor can afford to eat takeout food anyway."

One wonders what, if anything, you know about being "REALLY poor." One also wonders at your ability to BOTH virtue signal AND sneer that the "REALLY poor" in the same thread.

Your post carries a whiff of the suffocating conformity that might have been demanded in the Great Leap Forward.

One takes note of your contemptuous attitude toward individual liberty and personal autonomy.