City council Puts New Meaning In Dumb

"military combat" not military service. There are many who , already suckered into the US imperialist army, realize their mistake. C.O. status info is for those bright service members, who realize through experience, just how unjust the the US military is.

That friend is the same thing. If you don't like the military to avoid COMBAT don't enlist.
Then youloved themilitary when your freeway fell down. Without them you would all be riding bicycles, hugging trees, and living the good life.
Without the Military you wouldn't be living in Califiornia as the United States would not exist. If the military didn't exist what is next target after WTC? The gays on the bay? They would be a start...but Radical Muslim Extremeists target Infidels, and all of you fit the bill. think about it. If the Terrorists attacked Berkeley we should just let them keep it, until you non-warriors let the City Council vote them out..what a joke.

The Peace and Civil Liberities Communities around the world, including in the entire San Francisco Bay Area, of which Berkeley is a proud and worthy part, loves all of the pro-peace actions on the part of the Berkeley City Council, from promoting conscientious objector status to passing anti-war resolutions.

Berkeley's pro-peace and pro-environmental outlook had made it a highly desirable place to live as there is not only rent control for tenants but also high property values for single family dwellings, and those dwellings are easily sold at or above the sale price. Berkeley is both a university town with the world class flagship campus, University of California at Berkeley, and a suburb of San Francisco, and serves the entire Bay Area in those capacities as well as being a beacon of progressive politics, being among other things, home to the flagship Pacifica pro-peace community radio station, KPFA.

Much more needs to be done; it would be better if the government consisted of socialists, but the Berkeley city council is far more advanced than most and its economic well-being is based on these progressive policies.

1) Ever wonder why the vast majority of immigrant workers that work in Berkeley don't live in Berkeley?

Basic supply and demand economics dictates that rent control does nothing for those who tend to move often, especially lower-income people with growing families, single people, etc. Because rent costs are held under market value for those who stay in their residences, people tend to move less often under rent control. The available supply of housing for transients, therefore, is smaller than it otherwise would be. This pushes UP prices.

So, while rent control is great for senior citizens and others who, by choice or by necessity rent instead of buy, it absolutely SUCKS for some of the people who need it the most. Of course, there is always the option of holding rent under-market regardless of whether or not a tenant moves out. Unfortunately, the byproduct of this approach is to disincentivise potential landlords from buying and improving property, which in turn lowers the community's overall tax base.

A better solution would be to keep the rental market free market, and then efficiently subsidize those who would otherwise not have the means to live in the community.

2) In my humble opinion, UC Berkeley is hardly world-class. I mean, come on, Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, etc. are in a different league entirely, and almost any academic (outside of Berkeley) will admit that.

Berkeley's good, but it isn't THAT good. It still suffers from some of the same dumbing-down/social advancement crap as the public school system, and until that changes, UC will never be world class.

3) With regard to Berkeley's (and the Bay Area's in general) so-called progressivity, i highly recommend that you read A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, hopefully the edition with an afterword by Stephen Koch. Additionally, I would highly recommend any comprehensive history of the French Revolution.

With a little thought, you will see that Berkeley's progressivity is nothing more than collective guilt that leads to a quest for purity. This quest comes in the form of revolution, where

a) anything that is perpetrated in the name of revolution is right, regardless of the act's morality, and

b) anyone who is against the revolution, no matter how good and virtuous, is impure and evil

4) In my opinion, KPFA is nothing more than a propaganda tool of the above, where Berkeleyites and others can reaffirm their collective guilt, and incentivise the revolution. You may disagree, and that's fine with me. I just wish they'd be a little more careful about the underlying motivations of their sources.

5) With regard to socialism, well, lets leave that one for another day. For now, let me end with the old adage, "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it".

Oh, and one last thing..... Ya know, treason is the lone criminal offense that is defined in the U.S. Constitution, a document that almost all of us respect regardless of our opinion of how well it has been adhered to. What the Berkeley City Council is doing is certainly not treasonous, but they may well be encouraging others to do something that is.

Berkeley is an integral part of capitalist America and not immune to its problems. The problem of housing in Berkeley is both a regional and a national problem. First and foremost, we cannot have both guns and butter. The federal commitment to affordable housing is now almost nothing, as the federal government is spending $1 billion per month to slaughter the Afghans so that Unocal can build its oil pipeline through Afghanistan from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean.

In spite of the lack of commitment to affordable housing on the part of the federal government, Berkeley is better than most precisely because rent control exists.

Another means of solving the housing crisis is a labor movement to raise the wages of the workers. That is growing now as life can no longer go on in the old way for most of the workingclass these days. We have seen an increase in strikes, and as the economic crisis deepens, we will see many more as labor faces the choice, fight or starve.

There can be no treason if there is no declaration of war. Only Congress can declare war and Congress did not declare war; it only gave the president very limited war powers for the simple reason that the government of Afghanistan did not attack the United States. Some unknown parties, most likely within the US government in the form of the CIA and part of the military, committed the crimes of Sept 11. In other words it was another Reichstag Fire, another Nero burning Rome. The rhetoric of fighting terrorism is to fight an abstraction, a ghost. In fact, the US is simply engaged in another colonial carnage war for resources and land in Afghanistan, all for the benefit of the war profiteers and the rest of the capitalist class, which is always detrimental to the workingclass. The warmongers are opposed to any labor movement, and thus labor must, in its own interests, support peace, and many unions have done just that.

The world is faced with the choice of barbarism or socialism. We know exactly what it is and we know the horrors of the society in which we live.

>>So, while rent control is great for senior citizens

I have a feeling KN will not be compalining about rent control if he has to rent and he is a Senior Citizen.

Whats wrong with Senior Citizens having affordable rent?

If you would take a minute to actually think about what I'm saying, you'd realize that I believe that there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with affordable housing for seniors.

What I AM saying, however, is that not everyone who needs it gets benefits from rent control, especially those who tend to move often. Both seniors AND younger working people often need assistance.