Austin is NOT really Liberal (apartments, condos, crime)

[austin-steve]

I've been in San Francisco this week on business. I read this article this morning:

SF family

The article drips with victimization about people who simply made choices in life that have consequences. Of course that's just my personal takeaway. Read it and see what you're takeaway is.

Anyway, point being, when people say Austin is "too Liberal", just spend a week in San Francisco and become acquainted with its culture, social issues, and how things are viewed. It will provide a bit of context.

Austin may be "left leaning" in its core government and social norms, in the central core, but is a pale comparison to truly Liberal coastal areas. Our entire (almost all Democrat except for Troxclair) Austin City Council would probably be too Moderate or Conservative for San Francisco.

Steve

[jread]

Austin is a liberal city. San Francisco is more of an extremist version of liberalism... the place that other liberals look at as having gone off the deep end.

[clarksvillemom]

Turn Texas Blue! or at least Purple

[ATX Wahine]

I mostly agree with Steve. I didn't realize how liberal my birthplace of SF was - I really didn't - until I moved here at age 38. I see Austin teetering that direction, and I really cannot stand the apologetic and money-grabbing politics of Steve Adler, but this city still has a long way to go before it achieves SF's level of progressivism.

[Ivory Lee Spurlock]

There's alot of Liberterians in Austin. It would not surprise me one bit if there are more libertarians per capita in Austin than any other city in the country.

Seems like most everybody I know in Austin is pretty accepting of everybody else regardless of, race, religion, nationality, sexual preference, lifestyle, etc. Austin is a town that accepts and embraces weirdos, freaks, outlaws, misfits, outcasts, dissenters, beatniks, drop-outs, non-conformists, and just about anybody from outside the mainstream.

The environmentalists have had a big presence in Austin for a long time. They always seemed like they were the most liberal of all liberals, or at least the most vocal and they had alot of money behind them and they were able to fight developers who wanted desperately to develop around Lady Bird Lake. Condos, apartments, office buildings, parking lots. They envisioned Town Lake/Lady Bird Lake as a real money maker.

For years, throughout most of the 70's, 80's, and 90's, the environmentalists had successfully fought pretty much any kind of development around Town Lake/Lady Bird Lake. I don't know how it happened or how it all came to fruition, but it seems like what is happening at Lady Bird Lake is the very thing the environmentalists had been fighting all along. Only in the last decade or so has it really started to develop around Lady Bird Lake, and once it started, it steamrolled

Several years ago, maybe 30 or so years ago, there was a man who intentionally poisoned Treaty Oak Tree on Baylor Street, just west of North Lamar between 5th and 6th streets, nearly killing it. That man was sent to prison for 9 years for what he did to that tree. If Austin had been a conservative town, I don't believe for a minute that man would have received a 9 year prison sentence. He might a had 1500 dollar fine, about 80 hours of community service and a couple years of probation, and that would be it for poisoning a historical tree.

Austin may not be as liberal as San Francisco, but Austin doesn't have alot of the problems that San Francisco has, at least not on the same scale as San Francisco, and Austin now has more people living inside it's city limits than San Francisco ever has had in its existence and SF probably has 10 times the social problems than Austin has.

[TexasHorseLady]

Originally Posted by austin-steve

I've been in San Francisco this week on business. I read this article this morning:

SF family

The article drips with victimization about people who simply made choices in life that have consequences. Of course that's just my personal takeaway. Read it and see what you're takeaway is.

Anyway, point being, when people say Austin is "too Liberal", just spend a week in San Francisco and become acquainted with its culture, social issues, and how things are viewed. It will provide a bit of context.

Austin may be "left leaning" in its core government and social norms, in the central core, but is a pale comparison to truly Liberal coastal areas. Our entire (almost all Democrat except for Troxclair) Austin City Council would probably be too Moderate or Conservative for San Francisco.

Steve

What, you mean Austin is actually Texas and not California, rumors and desires of some to the contrary? Go figure!

[TexasHorseLady]

Originally Posted by clarksvillemom

Turn Texas Blue! or at least Purple

Purple would be my fondest desire. Aware of and concerned with the needs and wants of ALL Texans, not just one side or the other.

As it should be.

[ikoolu]

or another way to say i am taking yours to give to others who made stupid life choices - wake up before they take more - more more and more

[pop251808]

Originally Posted by ikoolu

or another way to say i am taking yours to give to others who made stupid life choices - wake up before they take more - more more and more

You're pretty tough on a couple of hippies who's only crime seems to be that they thought parking was free in San Francisco, a very crowded city.
Being this tough on them is going to cost you more, and you seem mighty concerned with costs.

[hornraider]

I much prefer Austin's liberal over SF's..