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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 13h

I think if you’re a state legislator you should have to live on your state’s food stamps, live in public housing, and use your state’s medicaid

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 23h

Also saves you from accidentally having anything embarrassing come up on your phone in public

Nobody else needs to see your sexts or hear about your cat’s explosive diarrhea

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 23h

But yeah I think it just goes to show that for all the criticism political polarization gets, it’s actually a really useful tool for understanding the competing goals and values that people have

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 23h

I wound up voting for Alsobrooks and I can’t say I’ve been very happy with her performance

At the time I felt like I couldn’t tell any meaningful difference between their platforms and decided to vote for the Black woman, all else being equal

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 23h

Of course none of this can happen in any formal sense because anyone joining a new party would be unable to vote in congressional/statewide Democratic primaries

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 1d

You’d probably see splits within the urbanist party over policing, with the biking/transit parts being anti-police and the developers being pro-police

On the anti-urbanist side you’d see conflicts over vacants, with the landlords wanting less regulation and the community associations wanting more

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah, and I think that gets especially tricky when it comes to e.g. the state’s attorney race

If Baltimore were a purple city, we might have wound up with Bates (R) against Mosby (D), but the composition of the electorate makes it clear that everyone needs to run as a Democrat if they want to win

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 1d

In an alternate universe, we might wind up with Baltimore having an urbanist party coming from a coalition of pro-biking and transit groups along with developers, and an anti-urbanist party coming from a coalition of landlords and community associations

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 1d

Because all the pro-density/anti-density, pro-police/anti-police, pro-car/anti-car discussions are happening within the democratic party, it makes it so much harder for people to pin down politicians when it comes to where they stand or what they believe

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 1d

So much of city politics comes down to whether people want to live in an actual city or in the suburbs, and we don’t have a way of describing that conflict that’s legible to the median voter

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 1d

Blue cities get a lot of undeserved flack for having effectively one party (usually from angry republicans), but I think one real downside is that it leaves us unequipped to understand the actual conflicts that dominate city politics

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 1d

Seems bad to print lies in the newspaper!

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 1d

I’m sure the actual answer is that when they say “we should have been given notice” they mean “someone should have asked us whether we wanted this bill killed and then done it if we said yes” but that doesn’t play as well in the newspaper

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 1d

The thing that gets me is that they never explain what kind of notice they want. Like, they fully admit that they heard about it. It got news coverage and all bills and hearings are published on the city’s website.

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 1d

I don’t expect any better from the Brew when it comes to land use and zoning, but come on

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 1d

You’d be hard-pressed to find anything that they got right, honestly

They’re misleading about the legislative process, ignorant about the city’s history, wrong about basic facts, dishonest about what their sources say, and unwilling to research how these policies have worked out in other cities

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 1d

I get that this is an op-ed, but there have to be higher standards than two people pretending to have a conversation without checking whether anything they say is true

Baltimore Brew @baltimorebrew.bsky.social · 1d

The false promise of the sweeping zoning bill package pitched by @mayorbmscott.bsky.social as a path to affordable housing.
tinyurl.com/y74ary94 Visionary reform? Or just a way to help developers cut costs? There's a reason Black Baltimore residents are leery. [OP-ED]

Carson Ward and Keondra Prier in their Reservoir Hill neighborhood in Baltimore. (Corky Ward)

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 2d

Am I going to win after my opponent has played an omniscience? No. Will I make them play through the next ten minutes of the game while they search for their win condition? Absolutely.

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 3d

I’m going to celebrate by finding a nice parking spot along the route and cheering on all the runners!

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 3d

Hey @baltimorebrew.bsky.social, why does this article only quote residents opposed to the bills?

Baltimore Brew @baltimorebrew.bsky.social · 3d

At a hearing, residents said @mayorbmscott.bsky.social's zoning deregulation bills will hurt their neighborhoods and some councilmembers pushed back as well. tinyurl.com/mryzfc52 But two of the bills got committee approval . . . and are set to go before the council Monday for a vote.

Mark Washington stands with Coldstream Homestead Montebello resident Betty Lee as she speaks against a bill to permit property owners to extend structures closer to the property line. (Charm TV)

Councilman Mark Parker proposed modifying a bill that would allow buildings to come closer to the property line in rowhouse neighborhoods. (Charm TV)

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 3d

I guess instead of the big, scary, Star-Wars-style dissolution of the legislature, we’re just getting a quiet “hey, let’s just not show up to work for a while while the president does whatever he wants”

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 4d

Have you thought about getting them a heated bed? That’s how I convince the dog to stay out of my bed in the winter

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 4d

Would love to see city council members who are anti-police enough to end CityWatch

It’s bad enough that the cameras help the police, but it’s also super creepy that any random person can decide I have to be on camera when I’m just walking down the street

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 4d

Yes, absolutely! If someone is running for state house, I want to know why they’re doing that instead of running for city council or for Congress

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Wizard Hazel @rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social · 4d

If I see five dems running on “I support schools”, I can’t understand why any of them entered the race except to have a job

If one of them says “I’m running because the union contract is unfair to teachers”, I know they entered the race because they cared about something the others didn’t

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