It is somewhat surprising to see the latest voting records are from 2018 as I seem to recall there have been votes in 2020 and 2022 as well?
Federal election for Senator went between DEM - Dianne Feinstein and DEM - Kevin De Leon. The former won like she has done for the last two centuries. Representatives also all won by DEMs. State also went to DEMs for all electable positions.
It is also remarkable to see that Alameda County largely votes by mail - only about ¼ of the votes are cast on election day, the remaining ¾ are cast by mail.
That is how they vote in Oakland, CA and that is most likely how they will keep on voting even now that the chickens have come home to roost.
Ok, I was hoping you would explain why those votes are bad. I don't even vote anymore but when I did, I never voted any party's line, in general I wanted a moderate president, conservative senators, liberal prosecutors and house reps and very liberal judges with a mix of conservative vs moderate and liberal for the rest. The individuals also matter. But this was before trumpism, now as much as I want to, I don't care if they curr cancer, I can't support republicans after their decision to make a religion out of trump.
So when you say dems this and dems that, I mean a lot of dems downright suck, i can't believe they even let feinstein run! But if a person votes in oakland or anywhere else, is there a third option other than republicans and democrats? If not, it's either vote dem or don't vote. I choose not to vote because having only one option isn't voting and voting just to stop the other guy isn't a choice either.
To be very blunt, I hope republicans do get their fascist way, that way at least violence is on the menu again and there will be more options on both sides of left/right wing politics after that. I strongly believe ranked choice voting is the answer though (that I prefer), that and banning pacs and corporate political donations. That way conservatives who aren't absolute fascist nutjobd stand a chance and so would non-progressive and moderate liberals.
> Ok, I was hoping you would explain why those votes are bad
It is not up to me to decide whether those votes are "bad" but what I can conclude is that it is not surprising that crime rates rise when people vote for a party whose members are engaged in fighting those who fight crime either directly - "defund the police" etc. - or indirectly - prosecutors who refuse to prosecute, judges with an activist bent who are intent on "emptying the prisons" no matter the consequences, AGs who change the rules so that it becomes close to risk-free to engage in "petty theft" (<$1000 stolen per occasion is a misdemeanour and prosecutors have already shown not to prosecute those, etc).
> To be very blunt, I hope republicans do get their fascist way
You are not blunt but polarising - apart from being incorrect. Not everything you do not like is "fascist" just like not everything a conservative dislikes is "communist". Those words have meanings, use them wisely or you run the risk of losing them altogether. This has already largely happened to the term 'racist' which' willy-nilly application means it no longer means much if anything to be labelled such.
Republicans are no more "fascist" than "Democrats" are "communist". There may be some who show "fascist tendencies" in both parties but that does not mean the term is applicable to the parties in general.
>You are not blunt but polarising - apart from being incorrect. Not everything you do not like is "fascist" just like not everything a conservative dislikes is "communist". Those words have meanings, use them wisely or you run the risk of losing them altogether. This has already largely happened to the term 'racist' which' willy-nilly application means it no longer means much if anything to be labelled such.
Yeah, not willy nilly there bud. You have a literal russia controlled traitor who they support if he ate a baby on live tv, you have nationalistic propaganda (maga), overflowing xenophobia, multiple states teaching "slaves had it ok" and removing anything that paints the white race in a bad light from schools, multiple republican congress persons calling out for a civil war, what else missing? Mussolini rising from the grave?
> Republicans are no more "fascist" than "Democrats" are "communist".
No, democrats can be compared to socialism better? But even if you are right, you just made my point, who in their right mind other than a fascist would choose fascism over communism (and believe me, I abhor and am revolted by communism). Unless you are claiming a racial and nationalistic superiority centered element in the democrats you can't use fascism with respect to them. Don't get me started on "the great replacement" haha. Republicans always tolerated racists but now those people run the show. Funny thing is, republicans would run circles around democrats thanks to the growing immigrant and minority populations who are very socially conservative. It is their persitent clinging to racial and xenophopic hostility that gets in their own way.
Now democrats to me are intolerable for a whole host of different reasons. But if I were an oaklander, right out the gate republicans are not even an option because they are fighting against most oaklanders simply based on race and national origin alone (and it isn'r cheap to live in oakland anymore, most of them would be republicans if it was practical). Bush, Romney, McCain those people and their party had plenty of issues but they were not absolute nut jobs (and I voted for those republicans fyi) hell bent on destroying anything not like them. I mean even politics aside they had class, they don't brag about sexual assault, mock disabled people and veterans. I mean, "i like people who don't get caught" in reference to mccain being a PoW, and you are telling me GOP isn't a fascist cult?! An old white PoW GOP leader!
And as far as democrats' lenient prosecution, defund the police,etc... like I said before I prefer liberal judges for this reason. It is a fundamental principle of justice for "A thousand guilty men to go unpunished than one innocent person to be wrongly punished". Cops have gotten lazy because of a society that worships them and lets them do whatever they want without accountability and that in itself is a danger to society because in most big cities cops are just the cleanup crew. And they don't enforce laws they don't feel like enforcing or protect people if they get too scared (or just shoot random people/animals and hide behind their fear/cowardice). I don't agree with democrats' approach in the bay area but I do agree with their direction and hope they learn lessons and do better (e.g.: house arresr for under $1000 offenders instead of letting them go free, punish reoffenders normally but allow the convinction to be expunged if they commit no crime in 5 years,etc...).
Extremes are bad for everyone except the extremists.
I can see that it does not make sense to appeal to moderation when phrases like "literal russia controlled traitor" and "removing anything that paints the white race in a bad light from schools" are used...
...but I'm stubborn.
When you write something do a quick check: drop all epithets - "Russia!" "Racist!" "Fascist!" "Mussolini!" and that is just the first line - and if you're left with nothing but an empty <textarea> it is probably better not to press that [reply] button.
Also, consider voting next time. If you can't find any good candidate just vote for your favourite band. Not voting does not solve anything as it just strengthens the votes of those who do vote - who could be exactly the people who you least agree with.
It's incredible that reporting on crime and poverty has been so captured as to sound delusional. The article even goes so far as to link this rise in piracy to an increase in homeless encampments, but somehow declares the latter a "catalyst" as though it just came from nowhere and caused the piracy, instead of even bothering with lip service to the obvious third variable causing both. Noting that the police have been more active in removing people who can't pay what is no doubt an ever-inflating rent just to anchor their boats, I can basically just model the "pirates" as an obvious consequence of this sort of approach, directly parallelling the dynamics of homelessness on land
We know where the homeless people came from: they were mostly displaced from homes in the area they now camp in by policy that has inflated cost of living while also harming renters and anyone working for a living's ability to remain in their home, as is true of most homeless people in the US, and the pirates are likely of similar origin
It is an incredible testament to how civil we have managed to make people in the last fifty or so years that the present situation the poor of the bay area are in has resulted in mostly property crime so far, and a testament to the absurd, fearful, propagandized bubbles the wealthy live in that the small but locally-unprecedented rise in actual violent crime isn't serving as a long-needed wakeup call to more of them
Who do you think is being organized? Office workers with free time? No, they are using the vast untapped labor pools located nearby, who already have incentive and little to lose.
That's good news for the climate given that there is a negative correlation between the number of pirates on the high seas and the global average temperature [1]. That is, as long as these are the right types of pirates of course which remains to be seen. Do they sport wooden legs? Parrots on their shoulders? Do they speak the right language? It now being only 17 days - a prime number, clearly this has some deeper meaning - to International Talk Like a Pirate Day I sense a convergence of the forces of good coming up.
Title was originally about "pirates" in San Francisco Bay. It has since been changed. A dictionary definition of "pirate" refers to (a) robbery and (b) international waters, aka the "high seas". HN commenters often react negatively to dictionary definitions.
18 U.S. Code section 1661: Robbery ashore: Anyone engaged in a piratical cruise or enterprise who lands the vessel and commits robbery on shore can be considered a pirate and could be imprisoned for life.
I wonder if piracy has just not been a danger for so long that some people think of it as some quaint activity of the past, like cavalry charges and top hats. "Thieves on a boat? That's not piracy. Elements of the crime require peg legs, tricornered hats and parrots. The law says if they don't raise a Jolly Roger, then it's not piracy."
If setting out sailing etc., three regions, in particular, absolutely warrant a look into advisories etc.: the waters around Malaysia / south of China / etc., off the east / west coasts of Africa (more recently, west, but sometimes east), and certain areas of the Caribbean.
The ocean is much like other regions with human traffic in the sense of there being "bad areas" ... but, it's also different in ways that kill people all the time. It's not worse than land, per se, but, definitely easy to get into trouble without at least a little education (generally, best to get from reputable people / services that exist in particular regions - of course, you can still get into trouble, but, much less so than people who just hop on vessels with no real experience for "an exciting adventure" ... too easy for it to get way more exciting than almost anyone raised on "Hollywood" movies wants in real life).
Note that piracy - robbery by boat - is associated with lawless regions. It will be hard for some people to accept that the Bay Area has declined so far.
I was raised and worked as an adult in San Francisco. It has always had two faces: the truly friendly, groovy, nice side; and the truly dangerous, menacing, lawless side. There are people who firmly, even angrily, deny that San Francisco is any more dangerous than any major urban center, not to mention actually lawless. For them, perhaps it is not. But these are the same people who will deny that this kind of thing - robbery by boat - is piracy. Because to them, and this is my point, piracy only happens in lawless places (or the quaint past) and San Francisco is not lawless QED.
Cute, but the normal definition above is what I immediately thought of too. After I started reading the article, I thought it was using the word "pirate" as clickbait.
Piracy under law of nations - 18 U.S.C. Section 1651 (2013)
1651. Piracy under law of nations
Whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States, shall be imprisoned for life.
High seas is a synonym for international waters.
To be a pirate, one must commit the crime of piracy on the high seas at least once.
Therefore I'm glad they function as a magnet for people who are up to no good. Keeps the rest of us safer.
Once they vote to rejoin and participate in our law abiding civilisation, I'll be concerned with their plight.