Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

sihtydaernacuoytihsy t1_j6nhur5 wrote

Reply to comment by RailRoad_Candy in Wu wants to cut fares at Boston’s commuter rail stations. Is that really a good idea? (NO PAYWALL) by GlobeOpinion

I'm sorry, but that's the entire game.

Housing: we'll mostly defer to nimbys, but will give away land to a handful of developers and annoy everyone with ineffective rent control.

Education: we'll keep doing BuildBPS, but we'll call it a Green New Deal and staff it with recent graduates who have no business running a two billion dollar redevelopment project. (Edit: they added today (1/31/23) a new Chief of Capital Planning. I can't tell if she has any construction project management experience; she's former BPS transportation head.)

More education: black lives matter, but we'll skip the part where we adequately resource majority-black schools. Hell, we won't even guarantee the buses will run on time or translators will show up.

Climate: 400 ppm is an existential threat to the city, but you're gonna have to drive to work if you want to be on time.

Police reform: We'll fully fund the police and will not start a significant alternative social services response team. Hell, we won't won't even change the overtime rules that allow hundreds of police to make more each year than the mayor.

(I hope she proves me wrong, since her promises are largely good ones.)

11

sas92398 t1_j6nk2l6 wrote

She’s all about “innovative” gimmicks that don’t actually improve anyone’s life

6

sihtydaernacuoytihsy t1_j6nn1ih wrote

I mean the problem to me is that real solutions involve tradeoff and piss off the losers.

We need massively more units of housing, hundreds of thousands, which will require annoying the nimby's and neighborhood defenders, building over thousands of single family homes and two story businesses, etc. (I also think they should not have many affordable units; the affordability benefits should come by bending the supply:demand ratio, not from creating stupid lotteries.)

Likewise, real police reform isn't possible without pissing off the police.

Likewise, a real Green New Deal school building program will require hiring mid and late-career professionals, pissing off the campaign staffers who wanted patronage.

Don't get me started on busing, school and neighborhood integration, or bike lanes.

She's too ambitious, and maybe too much of a lightning rod, to accept those tradeoffs. The former is on her; the latter rooted in class, race, gender, and just weird GOP conservative insanity, and I feel bad for Wu on that stuff. She should be able to make hard decisions without jagoffs threatening her and her family, expressly or implicitly. I loathe the bullhorn brigade because they unduly constrain Wu's policy choices (also they're just assholes). But I roll my eyes at Wu's please-them-all attitude, too.

11

septagon t1_j6o06jc wrote

See: every major American city with full progressive/democrat leadership. They NEVER fix the things they claim to care about.

−5

sihtydaernacuoytihsy t1_j6oeij5 wrote

That seems like a littttttle bit of a stretch. Many fail to live up to their own intentions, and adopt half-measures and can-kicking. Weirdly, however, crime is down, guns are down, teen pregnancy is down, unemployment is down, trash is down, education is up, incomes are up, amenities are up, in most of those cities over the course of the last couple decades.

Indeed, the reason we have the housing price crunch and the gentrification and displacement is that American cities (all major US cities are varyingly blue) have become much more desirable locations over the last couple generations. Maybe that's a result of progressive leadership, maybe it's not, but a lot of things that we cared about a generation ago are a lot better now. Change is slow and imperfect.

Edit: PS the adjective is "Democratic", when you're not watching Tucker.

7