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When the Mask Slips
I’ve mentioned how San Antonio elected its most “progressive” city council a few years ago. It astonished me how these collectivists are so blithely unaware of the nature of their beliefs. This quote from an article about rising rents in the city is illustrative:
Homeowners also wouldn’t be allowed to sell their houses for much more than what they paid —a mechanism to prevent investors from driving up a neighborhood’s home values.
“What you’re trying to do is impede gentrification by keeping the property values low,” District 8 Councilman Manny Peláez said.
My first thought was that I always enjoy it when the mask slips – but that’s not what this is. In this case, it’s a complete lack of knowledge that they are essentially Stalinists.
Published in General
Are they smart enough to be Stalinists? Some of the people who manipulate them are, but ordinary Democrats just don’t understand or don’t pay attention. Some things require connecting abstractions then applying them to the real world. Their abstractions just float around unconnected to each other or anything real.
If the public didn’t figure out who they were earlier this year over the San Antonio Airport/Chick-fil-A kerfuffle, then it’s on the voters of San Antonio when the next election for those council members comes around.
By doing a virtue-signaling victory lap in public over kicking Chick-fil-A out of the airport (which also led Starbucks to be kicked out of the airport under the same bundled concessionaire contract) because the majority of the council didn’t like their owners’ religious views, they pretty much showed where they were on the political spectrum, even before the latest anti-free market housing initiative showed up. But San Antonio has been a incubator of Texas progressives pretty much since just after the Alamo; it’s actions are simply obscured by the more high-profile craziness of the progressive politicians in Austin 70 miles to the north.
But Emma Tenayuca and mayor Maverick were kept in check by the Good Government League and chamber of Commerce. No longer.
Look at the mayor choice the voters faced last time: a candidate wholly owned by a corrupt public employees union versus a maxed out progressive.
The left in Texas after Beto’s near-win last year is feeling its oats, as part of its latest belief that the state is about to turn Blue (never mind that if O’Rourke had held the same positions a year ago on guns, fossil fuels and religious freedom he holds now as a presidential candidate, he doesn’t come within 15 points of Ted Cruz, just as Wendy Davis was hammered by voters in 2014). That likely plays into the council’s mindset that they’re free to turn their most hardcore progressive biases into law. The question is now that they’ve outed themselves, do the voters smack them down, in a city where the economy, including home valuations, has risen sharply over the past quarter-century, to the point where San Antonio’s economic activity is on the same level as Dallas’ numbers.
Or do they move while they can still get a decent capital gain on their homes? My guess is they’ll move . . .
I’m sure if the same council members are re-elected, that’s going to start to happen. Once the people with home equity discover there are enough people within the city either without that, or who don’t understand the consequences of essentially extending rent control to single family home sale prices, and are willing to repeatedly vote in people who want to disable the free market, they’re going to get out while they can. And that’s especially true since the Bexar County Tax Appraisal District is unlikely to freeze the valuation on those same homes, just because the San Antonio council has locked in their sale price (because to do that would invite lawsuits from homeowners within the county, but not inside the San Antonio city limits).
I love Chick-fil-A for its food, its service and its being closed on Sundays. Let the staff spend a day at home, whether at Church or not is up to them. I’m a Christian and I honor the Sabbath to the extent that an MD can.
But I question if Chick-fil-A is an apt choice for an airport food concession. People take planes on Sundays. Unless the airport is big enough to have multiple food concessions on every concourse, shouldn’t the managers seek vendors that will be open 7 days a week?
What’s the opposite of “gentrification”?
The Chick-fil-A apparently was, along with Starbucks, part of a bundled group of restaurants and food establishments that were brought in by the concessionaire to be part of the food court area at the airport. The council didn’t directly kick out Chick-fil-A — they awarded the contract to a different concessionaire with a different group of restaurants, and then did a victory lap over specifically ejecting Chick-fil-A.
Based on that, I’d assume it would have been the equivalent of a shopping mall food court, where if Chick-fil-A is closed on Sunday there are still 4-5 other restaurants in the same area.
Ghettoization?
It was, of course, the source of Ballot Box 13 in Lyndon Johnson’s famously corrupt 1948 election to the Senate. Caro’s chapter on the election and the career of Coke Stevenson tells the story of San Antonio politics, which seems to continue.
Box 13 was Alice, TX. More Rio Grande valley than San Antonio.
LOL. I bet the property tax assessments, (which I have been told by county assessors isn’t tied to market value) will go up.
This is a convenient excuse for any entity to deny Chik-fil-A access, such as airports, sports venues, and such.
Eh. The vast majority of people don’t move over political silliness. It is too hard. Look at California. There is some movement after years and years of mismanagement, but most people are staying.
This would be more the equivalent of suburban flight, similar to what happened in the 1950s and 60s in New York when the local politicians decided the city’s middle class residents were their personal cash cows. People with homes inside of San Antonio could remain in the area, but simply move outside the city limits and pretty much keep the jobs and lifestyles they have today — California controlling 2/3rds of the Pacific Coast line, and with about a 120-150 mile buffer between the coastal population buffers and the Arizona and Nevada state lines makes it far more difficult to relocate without a major change in jobs or lifestyle (which is why it’s going to be harder for reality to hit California than it was for New York to get smacked upside the head in the 1970s and 1980s).
Yes. The point was that whole corner of Texas was corrupt even more than the big cities. George Parr was the political boss and bought the votes for Lyndon. My one visit to San Antonio was a weekend liberty from Lackland AFB in basic training.
Putrefaction.
I think that when they talk about limiting the price which sellers are allowed to charge they’re only talking about the houses on property that the land trust owned, not houses in general.
Yes it is. And it’s Chik-fil-A’s choice. They are already the most popular fast food in America with just six days a week!
FYI, the article says this policy would only apply to homes built on leased land, which is owned by the city. Even with all the Leftism, San Antonio still spends less than half what Austin does on low-cost* housing.
*-low cost is rent offset to someone, but higher taxes for others
I was not able to read the full article, but in general a large portion of a middle class couple’s wealth usable in retirement is the appreciated value of their home. By limiting the ability of people to monetize the appreciated value of their homes, the city council is blocking a major source of retirement wealth for middle class people.
As usual, policies claimed to target the wealthy end up punishing the middle class.
Of course *most* people would stay. But CA has one of the highest rates of flight in the country.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/19/californians-fed-up-with-housing-costs-and-taxes-are-fleeing-state.html
Slummification.
entropy?
San Antonio. Not a small town. San Antonio. So of course the two terminals are large enough and have multiple dining choices. [I flew in and out of San Antonio about every two months for about three year, through 2016.]
That was never the issue. It was loudly, proudly about secular supremacists seeking to drive a company out of business, cutting off one location after another, because the secular leftists will not abide Christians in the public square.
it’s like anti-scalping laws: cannot sell your ticket for more than face value.
hilarious