because there are laws in place that prevent hotels from discriminating against customers and hotel taxes that benefit the community
But the government is just a big group of people getting together to negotiate, Rand - you disingenuous fuck.
The issue is short term rentals and their effect on long term housing costs. This wouldn't need to be a universal issue. It's the type of thing that local municipalities that have housing shortages would do away with to help the problem, but places like beach communities that have always thrived on short term summer cottage rentals wouldn't.
God dammit, watch the messaging here. We aren't trying to regulate Air BnB, we are trying to add protections to residents of these communities against sharp rent increases/artificially inflated property values.
I've backed off my fuck airbnb militancy some... the people fighting hardest against them are gigantic hotel chains, who do way more to hold down available housing (by taking up enormous amounts of real estate in cities) than some peoples' basements do... and... I feel like being able to rent out a room or two every so often helps people keep their homes while having having the flexibility to not have to take on full time boarders.
The solution again is regulating the industry, not the specific firm(s). I went to a bachelor party wherein a HomeAway rental was grabbed. It was in a rapidly gentrifying area of town and was clearly no one's residence. It was the same price as a hotel but with a kitchen and more space and so on. The houses next door, should they be listed for sale, would reflect that. Thus, more people are priced out of the neighborhood so an absentee slumlord can rent out places one weekend per month. Plus, the need to rent out a room for extra income is indicative of a bigger problem-- financial desperation amongst middle class Americans.
Speaking of the all-knowing free market providing, I'm about to move across town from a complex that had options (I went with Google Fiber) to a place that's monopolized by Spectrum. They're trying to sell me on $80/mo for 300 MB internet when I was paying $80 for 1 GB internet with Fiber I'm haggling right now but I'm fully prepared to tell these assholes to fuck off and just go without. I still have a backlog of about 60 books in my collection that I need to read.
Shit I have to pay 90 for 250mb with Comcast. It's either them or ATT who doesn't offer anything other than like 15mb or something in my area. And we aren't getting google fiber anytime soon because Comcast and ATT bought off a couple senators and shit in TN and they are fighting an ordinance that would speed up the install. Fight now we have some stupid fucking "one touch" rule where if a company is running a new line on a power pole, the other companies have to move their lines first. Obviously ATT and Comcast are in no hurry to move their lines so that Google can install theirs. A bill was sponsored where a company could move all the lines required when they install theirs and of course those douchebags bought off enough politicians to stop it from passing. Capstone 88 can vouch for the shittiness of Marsha Blackburn.
Isn't she the one that keeps trying to sell rolling back net neutrality in the name of "consumer choice" (i.e. she gets a fuckload of lobbying contributions from time warner and comcast)? My glorious gulag reeducation program for her will be to force her to use dial-up internet for $20000 a month for the rest of her life.
Yea she's so deep in the pocket of telecom it's insane. From the open secrets website, telecom is the 3rd biggest contributor to her campaign in total money. $1.13 million of $7.4 million from industries (only health and finance were bigger) and they were the 2nd largest PAC donor to her behind health. And that's only through 2016 so that amount has only gotten larger. Then you have Bob Corker who through 2016 has taken $800k from telecom and Lamar Alexander with just over $1 million. And that doesn't count donations categorized as "ideological/single-issue" of which I'm sure a lot came from those same industries.
We sell shit to Taiwan all the time. Unless there's something unique about this one, it's nothing new
https://www.recode.net/2017/6/28/15886560/democrats-raffi-krikorian-chief-technology-officer-dnc GREAT, GUYS
Uber's tech is p good even if they're completely void of morals. Dems could use some of that amoral tenacity.
[scene: internal DNC meeting] "Everyone, our manbaby of a President is losing his grip and we need to be in the best position to take advantage. Our focus groups tell us that voters are tired of us being out of touch by representing the moneyed technocratic elite and that we need to broaden our focus and appeal to younger progressives and blue collar voters. Any suggestions on what we should do?" ... ... [DEAD ASS SILENCE FOR TWO MINUTES] ... "...I know! We should become the Uber of political parties!"
For folks who want discounted books that tackle interesting and diverse topics relating to leftism: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3297-summer-reads-are-50-off
well i assume he was involved in the efforts to avoid law enforcement when uber wasn't legal in some cities. and monitoring for drivers who were also driving for lyft. and some/all of their other questionable tech-side practices.
Light reads for the beach: Reading Capital: Althusser, Balibar et al. Staying woke is a full time job
On the list. You order anything? I grabbed Direct Action, Fictious Capital, Reading Capital, Envisioning Real Utopias, and How Will Capitalism End?
DEMOCRATIC SUPERDELEGATE, IN ROOM FULL OF HEALTH INSURANCE EXECUTIVES, LAUGHS OFF PROSPECT OF SINGLE PAYER https://theintercept.com/2017/07/01/dick-gephardt-single-payer-health-insurance-lobbyists tl;dr Dick Gephardt can go fuck himself...
Armed 'patriot' accidentally shoots self in leg at Gettysburg battlefield 228 Updated on July 1, 2017 at 9:15 PMPosted on July 1, 2017 at 2:06 PM 1share BY CHRISTINE VENDEL [email protected] GETTYSBURG--A "patriot" who brought a revolver to Gettysburg National Military Park Saturday amid rumors of desecration of memorials accidentally shot himself in the leg Saturday. Benjamin Hornberger, 23, of Shippensburg, accidentally triggered the revolver, which was inside a leg holster, when he temporarily rested the bottom of his flag pole against the holster, according to witnesses. Park police were nearby when the shooting occurred and officers quickly applied a tourniquet that may have saved the man's life, said Sgt. Anna Rose, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Park Police. A tourniquet type device covered the wound on the man's left thigh as he was loaded into an ambulance. He talked with paramedics and seemed in good spirits. The gun then went off a second time about 1 p.m. when police were trying to unload the weapon. The gun was pointed at the ground in a field north of Meade's Headquarters along the west side of Taneytown Road. A PennLive reporter witnessed the second shot, which occurred as visitors at the park milled about.