[charleslmunger]

"Ellis Act evictions, used to eject all tenants from a building to clear the way for a sale, soared 170 percent in the last three years."

This statistic is incredibly misleading - the absolute increase was only 73 evictions. [1]

“From Google buses invading the neighborhoods, to the evictions of elders, to the very real effects of speculator-fueled evictions, the tech industry’s reaction has been shameful,” said Tony Robles, an organizer with Senior and Disability Action who joined the Oakland demonstration, in an email.

This can also be read as "Large companies pay employees too much money and provide too many benefits."

[1] http://www.chicagonow.com/getting-real/2014/01/san-francisco...

[theorique]

This can also be read as "Large companies pay employees too much money and provide too many benefits."

Shame!

San Francisco should kick the techies out. Then it can aspire to be Detroit. It's not pretty when a formerly vibrant industry fades away over time.

[waps]

That's not what they say is the problem at all. Look, Google's great crime - according to the article presumably written by a tolerant person - is

1) trading a few commercials for the keystone oil pipeline for some other political card.

2) Lunching with Inhofe (not sure who that is).

Google, like most Tech giants, contributes to a hell of a lot of political organisations. Surely that's obvious to anyone ? But apparently merely a tiny sliver of contribution to "bad" political organisations is enough to demonize a 40000 person company.

I hate how "tolerant" America works like this. Associate with the wrong political idea, even a tiny little bit when you're actually apolitical and you really just kind of agree with the idea, or you just want/need to get something done, and ... bye-bye tolerance. You've just become public enemy number 1.

I am sorry, but I was raised in an area with lots of merchants, lots of factory workers and lots of small political parties. A place, like most of the countryside in Europe, where neonazi's organize parties with communists, liberals (the European, rightist, kind) and christians, and imagine this : nobody fights (we have soccer matches for that). Nobody loses their job. Nobody gets nailed to the wall in the local newspaper for having a drink with a girl who is somehow associated with an unpopular party.

You see this in practice as well. San Francisco's tech elite is full with people who openly claim to be democrat even when they're obviously not. There's plenty of Tea Partyers on the street in San Francisco, among the "tech elite", but asking them never yields that answer. I used to wonder why.

I'm saying this from a distance, so I may be wrong, but it seems to me America (and in particular the left) is the least tolerant people I've visited. Especially the part of America that's arguing for tolerance.