{"id":179082,"date":"2018-05-23T18:12:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-23T23:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/05\/23\/i-love-this\/"},"modified":"2018-05-23T18:12:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-23T23:12:00","slug":"i-love-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/05\/23\/i-love-this\/","title":{"rendered":"I Love This"},"content":{"rendered":"
It appears that the denizens of Silicon Valley are experiencing some butt hurt because a popular pastor in the area has described their world as an, “Elitist den of hate<\/a>.”<\/div>\n

Truth hurts, don’t it?<\/p>\n

These are people who make their money from regulatory arbitrage and government subsidies (patent, copyright, not having to pay sales tax, etc), collude to hold down worker wages, bust unions, etc.<\/p>\n

No sympathy from me:<\/p>\n

A Silicon Valley<\/a> pastor has resigned from his church after calling the city of Palo Alto an \u201celitist sh%$t den of hate\u201d and criticizing the hypocrisy of \u201csocial justice\u201d activism in the region.<\/p>\n

Gregory Stevens confirmed on Monday that he had stepped down from the First Baptist church of Palo Alto, an LGBT-inclusive congregation, after his personal tweets calling out the contradictions of wealthy liberals in northern California surfaced at a recent council hearing<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In emails to the Guardian, the 28-year-old minister detailed his \u201cexasperation\u201d with Palo Alto, a city in the heart of the technology industry, surrounded by severe income inequality<\/a> and poverty<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cI believe Palo Alto is a ghetto of wealth, power, and elitist liberalism by proxy, meaning that many community members claim to want to fight for social justice issues, but that desire doesn\u2019t translate into action,\u201d Stevens wrote, lamenting that it was impossible for low-income people to live in the city. \u201cThe insane wealth inequality and the ignorance toward actual social justice is absolutely terrifying.\u201d He later added: \u201cThe tech industry is motivated by endless profit, elite status, rampant greed, and the myth that their technologies are somehow always improving the world.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

The underlying messages to Stevens\u2019 tweets, however, touched on continuing tension in Silicon Valley, where some of the world\u2019s wealthiest companies and entrepreneurs have pledged to better the world through innovations, yet working-class families and poor residents struggle to afford the most basic necessities. The region has one of the worst homelessness crises<\/a> in the country and a huge shortage<\/a> of affordable housing, forcing tens of thousands of low-income workers to commute<\/a> more than 50 miles to work.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

He argued that the church\u2019s rich neighbors could afford to \u201cfeed and house\u201d all the homeless people in Palo Alto and surrounding cities, but instead focused on passing laws that further criminalized this population, encouraging police to harass those sleeping outside or in cars. The city had also made it hard for the church to provide meals for the homeless by requiring costly permits, he said. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

But Palo Alto, he said, \u201cwanted nothing to do with actual justice and was more interested in guarding their enclave of power and wealth\u201d, adding: \u201cIf the wealth inequalities are not addressed, any talk about climate change, homelessness, and migrant rights is in vain.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I agree with him completely, and I would apply it more generally to the hyper-wealthy throughout the west, particularly the US.<\/p>\n

The world has become an increasingly brutal and hypocritical place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It appears that the denizens of Silicon Valley are experiencing some butt hurt because a popular pastor in the area has described their world as an, “Elitist den of hate.” Truth hurts, don’t it? These are people who make their money from regulatory arbitrage and government subsidies (patent, copyright, not having to pay sales tax, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,364,380,508],"class_list":["post-179082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-religion","tag-social-safety-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}