
Stripe donates $19,999 to “No on Prop C”, avoiding ethics disclosures - abalone
https://www.noplansf.com/blog/stripe-and-gensler-join-the-no-on-prop-c-coalition
======
komaromy
This made me laugh because it's maybe the first negative piece that I've ever
seen about Stripe that wasn't "they stopped processing my payments for reasons
that I don't like". The delivery is very good.

~~~
downandout
_that wasn 't "they stopped processing my payments for reasons that I don't
like"_

If you are a business that depends on a given payment processor, when they
suddenly stop processing your payments and/or hold back funds without warning,
it can be a deathblow if you're bootstrapping. I wouldn't be so cavalier when
you're talking about taking away people's livelihoods, especially because
these things often happen without explanation or evidence of clear violations
of TOS by the merchant.

------
eridius
This website seems like it's potentially committing libel. It pretends to be
run by the SF Chamber of Commerce, including attributing direct quotes to real
people, except it's obviously not run by them at all and those quotes are
clearly fake.

~~~
abalone
Except what it's saying is true, which makes it kind of hard to constitute
libel, and as you note it's "obviously not run by them" and "clearly" satire.

~~~
eridius
What's true? The website is written to make it look like it's run by the SF
Chamber of Commerce, except it's not. The fact that it's pretending to be run
by the SF Chamber of Commerce then means stuff like

> _Everyone agrees that homelessness in SF is a crisis, but we care more about
> our Trump corporate tax breaks._

is intended to appear as though this is speech made by the SF Chamber of
Commerce, it's except it's not.

What's more, it has 3 quotations attributed to real people (such as Jim
Lazarus, on the SF Chamber of Commerce) that aren't real.

Even the footer text doesn't disclose that it's run by Our City Our Home. It
instead claims to be run by "No Plan SF".

I can tell it's "obviously not run by them" because the SF Chamber of Commerce
would have to be fundamentally lacking in self-awareness to write the things
on that site. But I can't find anywhere on the site that it actually admits to
being satire.

~~~
abalone
It’s obviously satire. Opens with “It took a little while, but we're glad to
see corporations brave enough to prioritize protecting their Trump tax cuts
over solutions to homelessness. Whew!”

Looking forward to your legal analysis of SNL.

------
ggm
When the primary complaint is lack of transparency in spending you've got to
the mythical Churchill 'we are only arguing about price madam' moment: they
realise they have social obligations and can't actually say because
shareholder worth any more than anyone else.

It's actually win-win: if they move town, rents drop. (Yes, unemployment will
rise short term too)

------
MBCook
For those of us outside valley would someone like to give a decent summary of
Prop C?

~~~
funkaster
from their website:

> Proposition C, called Our City Our Home on the November 8, 2018 San
> Francisco ballot would generate $300 million per year to address San
> Francisco's homelessness crisis by increasing the business tax on San
> Francisco's wealthiest corporations.

> Only businesses making over $50 million a year would be affected, and their
> first $50 million in revenue is exempt. Their tax rates would increase
> between 0.175 and 0.69 percent, depending on the type of business. (Compare
> that to Prop D, which will increase the tax on large cannabis businesses by
> 5%!)

~~~
daeken
This is the worst description possible. Increasing taxes doesn't address
homelessness -- doing something with that tax revenue does. I just read over
Prop C and while it's not the most clear proposal, it doesn't seem
unreasonable, and isn't very hard to actually ... summarize its effects, not
just hint at the end goal.

ETA: Prop C would add a 0.175%-0.325% tax to large companies, which would go
to: administering the taxes, permanent housing (short-term rental subsidies,
construction/acquisition of apartment buildings for the homeless, operation of
buildings for very low income households), homeless shelter expenditures,
homelessness prevention expenditures, mental health expenditures for the
homeless.

~~~
eridius
I read through part of the Prop C text and I'm not convinced it's taking the
right approach. The biggest problem with housing in this city is one of
supply. The proposition does say that the money can be used for construction
of housing, but that's just one option among many, and so the fund would be
perfectly justified in constructing zero housing and instead simply trying to
"acquire" more housing. Hell, it can even just be used to operate existing
housing without even increasing the housing supply at all, or could be blown
entirely on short-term rental subsidies.

Trying to acquire more low-income housing without increasing the overall
housing supply is not a good idea. That's just going to make the overall
housing market even worse, not to mention it will be quite expensive. I would
be much happier if this proposition explicitly set aside money to be used for
construction of new housing.

~~~
daeken
Yeah, I agree. My issue was mostly just with the site being intentionally
vague and only talking about what their goal is, rather than summarizing what
the prop ... is. That just struck me as exceptionally deceptive.

------
claydavisss
Liberal tech companies are only liberal when it's free.

