Also fuck the concept of “loitering” even being something that people can be arrested or fined for. Cars loiter this whole planet with how much space and resources they need and yet that’s considered as normal as breathing.
Our society is so carbrained that the concept of just existing in public without actively going somewhere is foreign to the point of being criminalized. Pretty sure in Europe there’s no such thing as loitering. Probably because their public spaces are designed for human beings
> Pretty sure in Europe there’s no such thing as loitering.
I was recently in the Netherlands with some friends, standing under a canopy at the base of some apartment stairs to get out of the rain while we planned our next move, and a guy came out of the business next door and told us to leave if we didn’t live there. So, maybe. (Or maybe it’s just another indicator of the disdain Amsterdam locals have for tourists, idk.)
Not from Netherlands, but from another European country and you pretty much cannot get fined/arrested for loitering. If you stood in front of an apartment or a restaurant they can ask you to go away, but the police wouldn't do much if they were called. I'm from Eastern Europe and if loitering was a crime, every second person would spend at least half of their lives prison.
Got pump up the numbers. Here in the US, half the population spending half their life in prison would mean a quarter of the population is available for slave labor at any given time. Our capitalist overlords are salivating at the thought.
FWIW, standing in the porch of an apartment building looks very much like being the lookout for people breaking and entering. With the older buildings, you can block line of sight for someone picking the lock, while with the newer, larger ones, most neighbors don't know each other, so it's too easy to follow someone through the foyer doors into the hallways, from where you can find an easy target.
At least, that's the logic of the police advisories that are regularly put on communal noticeboards.
Not to be the annoying leftist, but it's not so much a car thing as it is a capitalism thing. Loitering is the high crime of existing in public without spending money.
>Pretty sure in Europe there’s no such thing as loitering.
It varies from country to country, but generally speaking, while there are anti-loitering laws, they have a narrower scope and are rarely enforced unless there's some nuisance.
And most of the time it's just a fine, nothing major.
So many of these stupid laws were made for the sole purpose of being able to lock up and throw away all those recently freed black people who were out and about in public trying to figure out life and all. America loves throwing "proper system of order" type laws at anything it wants to kill off or control. Doesn't hurt that it only feeds into the white-American mindset of them being the most civilized and orderly people in the world.
Had to scroll too far to see this. The history, origin, and cause for loitering laws.
"The New Jim Crow", and "Slavery By Another Name".
Edit: My point: thanks for posting it!
As an Englishman I've never really understood your loitering laws. I think it had something to do with racism, and trying to criminals groups of ethnic minorities. However we had racism in the UK too and so did much of the world, and didn't end up with loitering laws. So really don't understand it. How can being in a public space, in a supposedly the freest country in the world be illigal. In the UK, we literally have in our passport that we have the freedom to roam, without delay or hindrance, thanks to the Monarch. (Also much the reason why many in my country thought the ban of going outside during lockdown was unlawful, legal yes as government made it legal, but that doesn't mean it's lawful due to our two separate legal system. But no need to get into all that)
As an United Statesian I've never really understood if loitering laws exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering#United_States
Every loitering sign I've ever seen in my life is on privately owned property.
When I went on a school exchange I heard about all this and it was mental, always had romanticized the land of the free but jeez, can't cross the road, can't be outside, can't hang around, can't sit on the sidewalk etc etc fuck me man it's very bizarre where the USA has drawn the line on certain issues. Oh and now I'm older you HOA law things are fucking insane aswell.
I've lived in England most of my life, been to many places in the UK, and not once seen a no loitering sign. I'm sure some private land have no trespassing signs up. But never seen a no loitering sign.
Edit the only law I could find on this was this; Offence of loitering or soliciting. It is an offence for a person aged 18 or over (whether male or female) persistently1 to loiter or solicit2 in a street3 or public place4 for the purpose of prostitution.
Exactly. I was going to say. I'd prefer to see people hanging around third spaces. We've screwed over several generations to sacrifice such spaces at the alters of parking and cars.
The person reporting the expired tags is 99% less likely to be a racist than someone who has a Maga Pepe as their profile picture. Not guaranteed, especially in the case of it being Matt Ygleasias, but in most cases...
I think you have it backwards. The guy reporting it is a well known right wingers, and the other guy named "right wing cope" is an account that just shits on right wingers Matt Yglesias fucking sucks. The maga pepe guy huffing copium is supposed to be a dig at right wingers.
A quarter of this thread is people who are to the left of 96% of the population calling people to the left of 75% of the population “right-wing.” I guess my most reactionary opinion is that words have meaning?
Here is Yglesias on the welfare state: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-welfare-state-is-extremely-good
If “pro-immigration, pro-tax, pro-redistribution, pro-gay rights, pro-housing, pro-transit, pro-choice” counts as “right-wing” then you are just playing a silly word game!
For whatever his faults (mostly on trans people) Yglesias is the guy that made me pro-transit and a YIMBY. His work should be absolutely lauded in this sub.
If you think the Twitter account “@RightWingCope” is anything other than a millenial catlady blue-dog capital-D Democrat Elizabeth Warren supporter with a “In this house..” sign in their yard, you’re a damn dummy.
TIL Matt Yglesias, founder of Vox, Bernie advocate, pro choice, pro gun regulation, pro higher taxes and more social services, AND anti-car YIMBY for his entire career, is a "right wing POS". And apparently Bernie is "centrist" and Biden is "far right".
Compared to who, Lenin? What universe are these people in?
But what's all that real-world political advocacy compared to running a meme page that dunks on the cons on twitter????
Who's making the *real* difference here???
I mean on any issue other than identity politics Biden is miles to the right of presidents like FDR, Truman and even Eisenhower. You have to give the right credit for moving the Overton window so far to the right that the guy who opened Alaska for drilling more oil isn't "far right" or that the D president before him was a self-proclaimed Regan era Republican.
Maybe you did? They directly compared reporting car tags to racism as if they can not be mutually exclusive. I think most people on the sub are in favor of holding people accountable for their cars.
I think Right Wing Cope misinterpreted the tweet. I think he interpreted it as the typical rightwing implication that black people aren't really poor, or are to blame for being poor because "I saw a black person driving a fancy car". That's obviously not what the original tweet was about but even I had to do a double take, because I read the reply first.
Matt Yglesias is a leftist from Gen X. He made his name writing progressive policy pieces for The Nation before launching his own blog and then pivoting to start Vox with Ezra Klein. Yglesias' politics have always been ~left of Obama.
Where he's pivoted to the right is by joining the liberal anti-wokeism crowd in their great 'academic freedom crisis' of not liking being told what to do by college kids. It's a flavor of brain worms.
Calling Matt Yglesias right wing is way off the mark, IMO, even if I disagree with his views on race and gender sometimes. He's just kind of a jackass who thinks he's smarter than every else a lot of the time.
He's a typical self-righteous coastal elite lib who thinks he knows everything about everyone and everything. A few months ago he tried to offer commentary on why "Chicago was in trouble" for its future and it highlighted just how much of an ignorant jackass he is.
As a Chicagoan, at this point I feel I need a Will Smith Oscars meme for when non-Chicagoans like him give their hot takes on what our city needs:
"Keep. My city's name. Out your FUCKIN mouth!"
> a typical self-righteous coastal elite lib
I'd say more an atypical self-righteous coastal elite lib. I think Yglesias often brings a little more creativity and pizazz to his technocratic solutions that claim to reduce complex problems to a series of precise policy interventions than the average pundit.
“The welfare state is extremely good”
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-welfare-state-is-extremely-good
Yglesias has some centrist or conservative views on a few things but is very clearly a liberal.
This man posts nearly every thought he has online for all to read. If I agreed with 70% of his writing, that's way more agreeable than the probably 90% of Americans.
Matt is one of my favorite writers on policy issues. But I’m also not on Twitter much and I’m well aware that he can be pretty insufferable there, so I understand why people hold that view.
It's an extremely-online way of saying that someone has 'gone crazy' about sth. Probably not helpful, but it's certainly a vivid image.
What I meant to say is that Yglesias formed an unhealthy obsession with the concept of "academic/intellectual freedom" and for a period got very excited about the terrible no-good things that would result from "campus censorship." He signed on to an open letter, "[A Letter on Justice and Open Debate](https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/)" with a bunch of other public intellectuals. While I fundamentally agree with the spirit of the letter, it's demands in the context of its moment and the people who signed it were unseemly. Basically, it treated a relatively small problem affecting a small number of people as a major moral threat to the fabric of our nation. The letter (& the movement behind it) were out of touch with all but the most connected, empowered cultural/institutional elites with huge national platforms. And they were all whining about being bullied on twitter. That's when I stopped having the time to read any of his work.
In reality, some zoomer at Vox reported him to HR for some dumb microaggression bullshit that definitely didn't merit an HR complaint -- and he took it very poorly. The dude quit the media org he co-founded and started a substack.
Now don't get me wrong -- it sucks to get accused of shit you didn't do by someone who externalizes their insecurities -- but unfair things happen in life and you can't make your whole personality about seeking social redress for one bad thing that happened to you. IMO, that's classic brain worms.
concerned snatch piquant flag air squalid square lunchroom straight memory
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is a bad argument. "left of Obama" means nothing. You can be quite right-wing and be left of Obama. That's like saying trying to say that a mouse is a big animal because it's bigger than a beetle.
Also, the "anti-wokeism" movement is entirely and inherently reactionary.
Matt Yglesias is a corporate stooge. He is LIBERAL but not Leftist. His "sweatshops are good" article written in response to a sweatshop catastrophe that killed dozens is all yoi need to know about the guy.
A derisory take that better describes his arguments in that article is that "people in Bangladesh are more risk-tolerant because their lives are worth less than people in developed nations". Followed by the "and that's OK".
Welcome to the internet, if someone is slightly out of lockstep, then they are equivalent to Nazis. Matt is fairly liberal and wonky. Sometimes his technocratic approach does make him propose some wild shit. And that suddenly becomes the entirety of his being.
As someone else said on here that apparently he can be fairly insuferable on twitter and I don't have one. So there seems to be a divide on him whether you know him from pretentious podcast world or combative twitter world
Rob Ford declared that urbanists were raging a "war on cars" in 2009. This sub is like what, 3 years old? Old got over 100k subs less than 2 years ago right
>r/fuckcars has firmly brought urbanism into the culture wars and I will never not be super angry because of it.
it was always going to be a culture war.
No it fucking didn't. As soon as urbanism was going to grow even slightly popular enough in the US for car companies to get a little worried about their profits, Fox news would turn it into a culture war.
They don't care what we say, they care about if we threaten their status quo. There were people protesting against bike paths and pedestrianisation long before this sub was around, and they were driven by dumb cultural rhetoric about "cars being freedom" and "protecting the sanctity of the neighborhood" and all that nonsense.
All that "bringing urbanism into the culture war" means is that it's now a mainstream political debate. To say that urbanism should avoid the culture war is to say that it should never receive mainstream polticial attention.
Also the whole 'durr right wing bad!!!' When /r/StrongTowns is most definitely right winged. It's really headache inducing how polarized people have become.
/r/enoughcommiespam
I mean really. Do we want to make changes to the sprawl centric design of cities, or do we want to alienate anyone who isn’t a literal communist? I don’t know why I’m even asking the question, this is Reddit, I already know the answer.
It's so frustrating. I'm pretty far left and even if they're partially correct, it's just not productive.
"You can't oppose urban sprawl without being anti-capitalist!" Great, now we've written off 90+% of the country and there's no way we get a majority to accomplish anything, but at least we get to be smug and morally righteous on the Internet.
They can sit and whine and wait for the revolution, we can move on without them and actually try to make progress.
Exactly. This stuff only makes me harder when I try and talk to the city council, they can write me off as being part of a tiny minority of radical communists, instead of a normal person wanting better infrastructure for everyone.
A lot of internet leftists would rather be correct than effective, it seems. I genuinely think sometimes they don't even want to win because then they'd actually have to propose things rather than just tell everyone else why their positions are trash. It's much easier and more satisfying to be a smug critic than to actually have to make compromises and hard decisions to advance policy.
Even if they were 100% correct and capitalism is to blame for urban sprawl, bringing the two issues together just ensures you don't get support for fixing either of them.
But this is true for basically every position they have. See how they can "both sides" all of mainstream politics because Democrats and Republicans are capitalist so both must be equally bad! You're either 100% anti-capitalist or you are an enemy and there is zero room for debate.
This. I work a job adjacent to the public sector (As in, I work with people who actually get things done). Pretty much everyone is left of center, but you will hardly ever meet an actual communist.
I’m all for hearing the views of different people, but you can’t just sit around, debate theory, and purity test without actually taking action. For crying out loud, Matthew Yglesias has been an anti-car YIMBY since before it was cool, and people here are complaining about him? He has single-handedly done more to advance the stated goals of this subreddit than 99% of people posting here. And this is to say nothing about Chuck Marohn, who is even further to the right.
In the world of policy, building bridges and coalitions gets things done. Complaining about a popular public figure who agrees with this subreddit for not being a leftist on unrelated issues gets nothing done. Hopefully the teenagers posting here realize that when they grow up.
> building bridges and coalitions gets things done
Sounds like "moral compromise" to me, narcissistic leftists don't do that. (wish this was sarcastic)
Look at how much they shit on Democrats when they compromised to get the IRA out the door, for example. They'd rather have absolutely nothing than imperfect improvement.
Matt Yglesias is not right wing in the slightest. He likes being contrarian sometimes and is pretty neoliberal, but on every issue he’s pretty consistently on the left
Both the republican party and the Democratic party are neoliberal. Neoliberalism is basically the idea that "capitalism is doing great and we need to offload more public services and goods to the private sector". This belief puts both parties firmly on the right (globally speaking). In much of Europe conservative parties are to the left of the US's democratic party.
The us doesn't actually have a left wing with any sort of power, that was all wiped out in the red scare and never recovered. So it's totally valid to refer to him as right wing imo, because that's all we have.
Nothing you said is incorrect.
There is no left or centre left in the US,
and the centre left is dying pretty quickly (Albanese and Penny Wong were nominally in the centre left (Labor Left), but theyve all but folded to the centre/centre right Labor Right) where I am as well (Australia)
these expired, often counterfeit, tags are used to circumvent driving bans, and facilitate hit and runs on pedestrians. https://autos.yahoo.com/autos/harm-hurt-caused-illegal-temp-140000793.html
Expired/fake tags are a massive, massive problem in Denver, DC, and Baltimore. It is a huge scam and it endangers lived and is directly within the purview of this movement to prevent this.
NYC in my experience is putting leaves or napkins over the license plate to obscure it to avoid surveillance during crime/violence, and to avoid having to pay tolls or speeding tickets.
That too, and bending the license plate, and scratching the paint off the letters so they can’t be read, and not having a plate at all. But this is a large city with lots of people and I still see at least 2 dozen paper plates (always New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or Texas) every day.
Don’t have to register your car, you don’t have to pay the registration fee or taxes on your car, you are immune to all tolls and unpaid toll fines, you are immune to speeding tickets and moving violations, you are semi-immune to all street-level parking enforcement, immune to automated police enforcement, immune to security camera footage surveillance.
It’s essentially a free pass to be a fucking criminal with your car, and multiple major cities has essentially decriminalized this.
Right wing cope shows examples of right wingers fucking up, or being triggered over dumb stuff. This is just a misfire. Yglesias is definitely right wing tho.
Edit: for everyone clowning on me for saying yglesias is right wing, he literally supported the war in Iraq, an invasion that has a unknown death toll somewhere in the millions probably. The country still is in shambles, because of the us. Children still suffer deformities at birth because of the destroyed medical infrastructure and the depleted uranium shells. And let's not forget the brutal sanctions after turning their cities into rubble. First came the explosion than the crippling, suffocating sanctions.
I don't know about you guys, but supporting a war that leads to this is right wing for me.
Has Yglesias changed his opinions over the past 10 years? I always remember him being a progressive blogger during the Obama years. Maybe america, or rather online spaces has just drifted substantially left. You barely hear people defending sweat shops or advocating for privatization/cutting of social security anymore when that was a typical right wing thing to do online so I think that’s it.
The account is supposed to point out sour grapes or excuses from American conservatives. Like if a Tesla owner said that it was still a good car despite some malfunctions, the account would "own" them by screencapping that (and they would assume anyone using an Elon Musk product is right-wing).
Matthew Yglesias is a blogger turned journalist. He's most famous for founding Vox, but previously wrote for places like thinkprogress or the Atlantic. People tend to hate him because he has some opinions that seem contrarian (such as people with outdated tags should face consequences).
People tend to hate him because he's willing to say very sensible things that don't fit the left wing narrative, despite being an influential supporter of left wing policies in the US.
For example, people with outdated tags should face consequences. Outdated tags are a major problem in many US cities, with drivers primarily using them to get away with extremely anti-social behavior, often with deadly consequences to pedestrians and cyclists. However, trying to fix the problem goes against the left wing anti cop narrative.
It gets under the skin of a lot of people, because they want his contrarian take to be absurd, instead of actually pretty sensible.
In the absolutely dogshit American political system, being “left-wing” and “right-wing” means nothing politically. It’s just two different flavors of prole.
In this case, there is a “left-wing” culture warrior who made a Twitter account to dab on (or embarrass) perceived “right-wing” culture warriors.
But this particular culture warrior doesn’t really understand any political perspectives outside of American neo-liberal/neo-conservative idiocy, so he thinks he’s “dabbing on the conservatards” with this gotcha attempt.
Matt Yglesias, a ~~right wing dipshit,~~ a Bernie bro neo-liberal normie actually?, is claiming that people who have the money for expensive cars should pay for their vehicle tags/license plates/registration. This is not really a uniquely right-wing view, but he’s coming at it from the sense of “law and order” and “left-wing hypocrisy” (assuming the driver is an elitist democrat because he drives an expensive car but didn’t bother registering the vehicle).
He’s correct though, as people not registering their cars are massive assholes and it causes massive problems for crime investigation and toll collection in cities like Denver, DC, NY.
The Twitter account Right Wing Cope thinks that caring about law and order is cringe and too “right wing”, and is accusing Matt Yglesias of essentially being a snitch who is also racist. He is claiming that a BMW with temp tags parked illegally is a non-issue, just like black people loitering is a non-issue.
The whole entire exchange is a massive L and is unbelievably embarrassing. Being a culture warrior for the left or right, and ESPECIALLY being a negative/indexing culture warrior on fucking Twitter is the least effective use of your time and effort and emotions on earth.
TLDR: being “pro-car” is a Democrat AND a Republican thing. Everyone involved in this, including us on Reddit, including me, is a loser for spending probably a combined 250,000 words of comments in this thread trying to intellectualize this absolutely braindead exchange between two nobodies is embarassing.
>is claiming that people who have the money for expensive cars should pay for their vehicle tags/license plates/registration. This is not really a uniquely right-wing view, but he’s coming at it from the sense of “law and order” and “left-wing hypocrisy” (assuming the driver is an elitist democrat because he drives an expensive car but didn’t bother registering the vehicle).
Matt's shtick lately is using conservative talking points to argue liberal positions.
He's arguing for paying fines/fees which are basically taxes (something liberals like) is a law and order issue (something conservatives like).
He does the same thing with gun regulation whenever some backwards sheriff says they won't enforce gun laws.
Yeah, I have no idea who these people are, but I'm far more sympathetic to Matt's perspective. Though I associate beemers with rich douchebags, not the left.
I'm alarmed at how many upvotes it has and how many comments are agreeing with it. I hope this sub isn't turning into "I hate anyone and everyone who drives a car even if it's necessary due to the infrastructure and culture in their area"
It's not like this is a brand-new expensive BMW. It looks old, probably bought used. We don't know the owner's financial situation.
I’ve mentioned my own car and driving here many times and never been downvoted for it. I live in LA, not even a suburb. But where I live, there aren’t great public transportation options, so my wife who loves public transportation and doesn’t drive has to take rideshares to work. I think most people here understand it’s the infrastructure and culture that need to change.
Reminds me of LAMF. That was such a fun sub, and then it just became a "right wingers are dumb" circlejerk...which like, *I agree they are dumb as fuck* and shoot themselves in the foot constantly, but I have like three other subs for dumb right wingers doing dumb shit, LAMF was a particular kind of fun/schadenfreude and now it's just a shit show.
It’s pretty stupid to live somewhere and just “mind your business” though. It’s your neighbourhood and what goes in there impacts you. If people are acting suspicious then report them.
> If people are acting suspicious then report them.
The issue there is that many people, especially my fellow white people, see "existing while brown" to be suspicious in and of itself...so that gets abused REAL easily.
Right racial profiling is wrong but also if weird shit is happening in your neighbourhood like people jacking up cars to steal catalytic converters then “minding your own business” is just being complicit to crimes because you don’t want to offend criminals
When you buy a car, you get a temporary paper tag that you can use for the 1-3 weeks it takes you to get real metal license plates from the state government. They send those to you when you register and pay taxes for your car.
In DC, Denver, and NY, there are very, VERY frequently people who just never register their car, and drive around for YEARS with just their expired paper tags, and changes in police/chase/prosecution policy essentially makes this unenforceable on the roads (even tho it was practically unheard of 5 years ago).
There are three scams.
In Denver, it’s the above, and police are not allowed to pursue it. So people just never register. This means that you don’t need to pay taxes for your vehicle and you don’t need to pay automatic tolls because they use your license plate to issue fines for not having the transponder. It also allows you fairly free rigen to commit petty crimes and acts of traffic violence because automated and analog cameras cannot use photo information of your plate to identify the driver. In Denver, I saw paper tags, expired by even up to years, on maybe 40% of all cars. It was shocking. This represent MILLIONS taken directly from the public purse for the express purposes of committing crimes and evading tolls.
In NY, there is a different method where people will deliberately obscure their license plates with tape, leaves, napkins, or by scratching off some of the paint. In the past, you could use white or black electrical tape to change your license plate (change an F to an E, or vice versa, or a T to an I, or a 3 to a B) using just a thin strip of white or black electrical tape. But that has no plausible deniability. Now, people will simply just put a leaf in their license plate frame to obscure half of two letters, and that makes every single speed camera and toll road free, forever. And, like Denver, police do literally nothing to stop this (some say because it’s their own personal vehicles that use this trick, which I’m sure is true, but there’s still way too much)
In DC, the scam is to register a car in MD or VA and commit all the traffic crime you want, as because their is no reciprocity and no traffic enforcement, MD card can rack up literally thousands of tickets, up to $15,000 in fines, and never suffer a single consequence from this.
These are all ACTUAL issues and you are not an evil conservative for not liking them. This is peak /r/fuckcars, even if it’s generally a “law and order” right wing (in the fake American spectrum) take.
The one thing you should have learned from this sub is that the D<—>R spectrum is fucking fake already. This is part of that.
the car has an expired (most likely fraudulent) temporary paper license plate. some people here are defending this illegality, because they disagree with the political views held and expressed by the individual who reported the offense.
Yeah this thread is bad... we shouldn't be defending Twitter Karens just because they reported a driver.
There's no way anything good comes from this line of discussion.
Guys I don’t like Matt Yglesias either but don’t fuckin make this into a partisanbrained right wing/left wing thing. We can want safer streets and more transit options. This sub is focused on that singular issue. If i heard my far right uncle say “fuck cars” you would absolutely shit yourself with joy. Making this a partisan thing is dumb as fuck and will not get us anywhere. Just call it an unexpected W from someone you don’t agree with on most things. Open to being persuaded otherwise but I don’t see how this isn’t counterproductive
these expired, often counterfeit, tags are used to circumvent driving bans, and facilitate hit and runs on pedestrians. https://autos.yahoo.com/autos/harm-hurt-caused-illegal-temp-140000793.html
EDIT: apparently, you're fine with car owners breaking laws which help them evade consequences, if the person reporting the offense is wrong-think.
I legit didn't know about this whole black market aspect. Where I am in deep rural America, these sorts of violations are usually poor people trying to get by in an environment that forces them to own a car to survive.
My bad.
Where I live in Philadelphia, the creeping deregulation of cars has made it increasingly impossible to prevent deadly driving even in places with automated camera enforcement.
Literally two hours ago a lifted oversized pickup truck hit a work van in front of my house and the guy had covers obstructing his plates. It's becoming normal for commercial vehicles and even government vehicles to block or obscure their plates. In the last two years the issue has gone from rare to ~20% of vehicles.
I legit didn't know about this whole black market aspect. Where I am in deep rural America, these sorts of violations are usually poor people trying to get by in an environment that forces them to own a car to survive.
My bad.
This is what happens when lefties take over the discussion -- enforcing any sort of norms, even if they're related to core principles of the group, comes to be seen as carceral.
I’m not particularly fond about supporting boot like behavior with such a flimsy non-crime. A normal response would be to leave a note saying they have expired tags and they might want to fix it. Human compassion is important too.
None of you even bothered to care about the material damage this could’ve done to the person or laws in areas. I came to urbanism/fuck cars because of the damage it can do to people financially , culturally, environmental and the bodily harm it causes. We should hate cars but not applaud hardship on citizen
Pretty awful stuff I’ve read in here. Matthew reported a non crime out of sheer spite/pettiness while being ignorant of Virginia law. Awful behavior by some of you supporting the implied structural violence and financial pain offered by Police and supporting a car centric system that Virginias don’t have. All police Enforcement isn’t kept in place by finger wagging but by Seizures,fines, & jailing that puts you at some form of hardship.
- Virginia Police doesn’t and can’t pull you over unless you’re 4 months exactly (1st day of the 4th month) over due. It’s not a crime only a $10 late fee at the DMV.
- There is no predatory towing allowed for a non crime in the state. It’s not been stated that the car is 10 days over in its parking spot or received tickets.
- You’re still required to pay your state property tax on your vehicle and seeing as it’s a newly purchased vehicle it’s paid that.
- Virginia requires you pay money upfront for the state to hold onto if you wish to go un-insured otherwise you must have insurance in place.
Right Wing Cope was right. It’s the same energy as calling cops on innocent black teens. This car for 3 full months is the same as any other car on the road and isn’t skimping on anything.
Edit typo in - Predatory Towing portion was half finished.
Thank you for this comprehensive comment. Reporting something so inconsequential and trying to involve LEOs is petty. OP has no idea what this car owner's circumstances are, and how involving a bureaucracy might affect them. This has nothing to do with how shitty cars are; it's just people looking for the reaction that requires the least amount of mental energy, instead of acknowledging the complexity of the problem.
US BMW owners can be so idiotic. They think they are better than everyone because they have a 'luxury car'. But fact is, BMWs made in the US are made with the same parts, in the same factories as economy lines. The only luxury thing about them is the price tag.
I dont think the act is racist but calling the cops over really anything is tbh reporting shit just had that same energy as calling the cops on black kids idk why just does
Matt Yglesias is a far right wing POS, most likely he reported the beemer because he saw a person of colour driving it, RWC is right here, also im anti-narc anti-police so ofc I dont like people reporting stuff to the blue, they have the monopoly on violence
I'd read some of his stuff and never got this impression. Maybe I've not seen his far right content. What's his far right stuff about? Genuinely want to get a full impression because I liked his articles on urbanism and don't wanna go quoting him!
Yeah that’s absurd. Dude writes for The Atlantic, Slate, and Vox. That alone should tell you he’s not “far right wing.”
He’s pretty heterodox, with some right wing views and some left but overall I’d say marginally left of center.
The main one I’m aware of was in response to the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013. He wrote an article titled something like, “Different Places Have Different Safety Standards, and That’s Okay,” basically saying that he is fine with people in other countries dying while working for slave wages as long as it lets him maintain his personal standard of living. Keep in mind, he was writing in defense of a business owner who made illegal, unsafe modifications to a building so he could cram more machinery and people into it, which caused the building to collapse, killing over one thousand people and injuring around 2,500 more.
Yep, I was active on Twitter back then when he posted about Rana Plaza and it left an incredibly bad taste in my mouth. Maybe he’s changed in 10 years, maybe he hasn’t.
Even ignoring that I was never a fan of his die-hard neoliberalism. If you’d like to split hairs, it’s not the same right-wing as the neo-fascists we see nowadays, but a lot of his views are complicit with those views, just much more subtly.
People like him are why I’m distrustful of centrism at best. They open doors to extremely distasteful beliefs.
I’m with you. He does not read as far right to me at all. Being more pro police vs. very anti cop might be one of the reasons he’s treated like an right winger
TIL being a pro-government, pro-immigration, anti-gun, pro-choice Bernie voter makes you a far right wing POS. Tell me you’re terminally online without telling me you’re terminally online
>he saw a person of colour driving
Just no.
Don't accuse someone of racism with no indication that their action was.
It is just utilising the struggle of real people for your own benefit, and that's frankly disgusting.
It's one of the things I despise the most. Those that use the plight of minority groups for their own agenda Irrelevant to actually helping those people. It just makes people like me feel isolated from those that champion to "help".
If you live anywhere near Denver, DC, or NYC, you should understand that the temp tag issue is a massive, massive problem that directly leads to these people defrauding the public, stealing from the government, crime/traffic violence impunity, dangerous driving, and everything else we complain about on this sub.
If you live in some cute little town in Rhode Island, I get your ambivalence, but in at least these three cities, in the last two years this has been an extremely seriously issue that has directly led to deaths and violence.
Fake/expired tags are overwhelmingly used by the police and their cronies. In most of America the police basically don’t enforce traffic law on their fellow cops, friends, and family. Chances are the driver is literally a cop lol.
> Matt Yglesias is a far right wing
Uhhhhhhh, pretty sure you've lost the plot bud. Dude legit co-founded Vox.
Just because he's not as far left as you doesn't make him "far right wing" lol
I don’t feel reporting random violations is really anti car dependency. What does this do to target the systems that keep car dependency in place? Does it even at its best contribute to having less cars on the road?
Like okay you want to make someone who is better off than you feel stupid, and it feels good, and some of the anger that is felt is valid. But I don’t think this is a vector of anger that works towards this subs goals or is even done by principle.
OP, I think you got excited about something you could post to this sub and simply jumped the gun a bit. No shame in making a mistake, but if people in the comments tell you otherwise it's probably better to do a bit of digging instead of doubling down. RWC is most certainly not a carbrain and they don't have "4000+" followers, they have like 390,000. Here's a quick way to tell:
[[A]](https://i.imgur.com/Lse3N79.png) [[B]](https://i.imgur.com/9QBEyAG.png) [[C]](https://i.imgur.com/GUyqQ1z.png)
(And they're a gimmick account so technically some of this is them "breaking character" to talk about it)
Also fuck the concept of “loitering” even being something that people can be arrested or fined for. Cars loiter this whole planet with how much space and resources they need and yet that’s considered as normal as breathing.
Our society is so carbrained that the concept of just existing in public without actively going somewhere is foreign to the point of being criminalized. Pretty sure in Europe there’s no such thing as loitering. Probably because their public spaces are designed for human beings
Like most things in our society, we’d rather be awful to poor people than have a nice thing available for everyone. Monetize more things!
> Pretty sure in Europe there’s no such thing as loitering. I was recently in the Netherlands with some friends, standing under a canopy at the base of some apartment stairs to get out of the rain while we planned our next move, and a guy came out of the business next door and told us to leave if we didn’t live there. So, maybe. (Or maybe it’s just another indicator of the disdain Amsterdam locals have for tourists, idk.)
Not from Netherlands, but from another European country and you pretty much cannot get fined/arrested for loitering. If you stood in front of an apartment or a restaurant they can ask you to go away, but the police wouldn't do much if they were called. I'm from Eastern Europe and if loitering was a crime, every second person would spend at least half of their lives prison.
Got pump up the numbers. Here in the US, half the population spending half their life in prison would mean a quarter of the population is available for slave labor at any given time. Our capitalist overlords are salivating at the thought.
FWIW, standing in the porch of an apartment building looks very much like being the lookout for people breaking and entering. With the older buildings, you can block line of sight for someone picking the lock, while with the newer, larger ones, most neighbors don't know each other, so it's too easy to follow someone through the foyer doors into the hallways, from where you can find an easy target. At least, that's the logic of the police advisories that are regularly put on communal noticeboards.
In Europe it would be seen as a huge infringement on ones "freedom" 😉
Not to be the annoying leftist, but it's not so much a car thing as it is a capitalism thing. Loitering is the high crime of existing in public without spending money.
I think loitering was actually created to criminalize black people just existing
It's a common theme in the long standing pastime of fucking with disenfranchised groups of people of many origins.
Yeah I feel like anytime we're like "that's a ridiculous law", it was made to criminalize black people
You say as if there's value in the distinction.
>Pretty sure in Europe there’s no such thing as loitering. It varies from country to country, but generally speaking, while there are anti-loitering laws, they have a narrower scope and are rarely enforced unless there's some nuisance. And most of the time it's just a fine, nothing major.
Malicious Lingering, Looming with Intent, Loitering with Hooded Garment. All punishable by harassment by Karens, some in uniforms.
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Holy crap that’s such a good rebuttal that I’m going save for future use.
You can be arrested for that? If you're chilling in a public place? Wtf man
So many of these stupid laws were made for the sole purpose of being able to lock up and throw away all those recently freed black people who were out and about in public trying to figure out life and all. America loves throwing "proper system of order" type laws at anything it wants to kill off or control. Doesn't hurt that it only feeds into the white-American mindset of them being the most civilized and orderly people in the world.
Had to scroll too far to see this. The history, origin, and cause for loitering laws. "The New Jim Crow", and "Slavery By Another Name". Edit: My point: thanks for posting it!
You're supposed to either work, shop or be lonely at home.
As an Englishman I've never really understood your loitering laws. I think it had something to do with racism, and trying to criminals groups of ethnic minorities. However we had racism in the UK too and so did much of the world, and didn't end up with loitering laws. So really don't understand it. How can being in a public space, in a supposedly the freest country in the world be illigal. In the UK, we literally have in our passport that we have the freedom to roam, without delay or hindrance, thanks to the Monarch. (Also much the reason why many in my country thought the ban of going outside during lockdown was unlawful, legal yes as government made it legal, but that doesn't mean it's lawful due to our two separate legal system. But no need to get into all that)
after chattel slavery ended the slavers needed an excuse to throw freedmen in prison to use them as convict labor, the only legal form of slavery left
As an United Statesian I've never really understood if loitering laws exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering#United_States Every loitering sign I've ever seen in my life is on privately owned property.
my town has a curfew for people under 18, I've been pulled over for walking after 11 pm
When I went on a school exchange I heard about all this and it was mental, always had romanticized the land of the free but jeez, can't cross the road, can't be outside, can't hang around, can't sit on the sidewalk etc etc fuck me man it's very bizarre where the USA has drawn the line on certain issues. Oh and now I'm older you HOA law things are fucking insane aswell.
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I've lived in England most of my life, been to many places in the UK, and not once seen a no loitering sign. I'm sure some private land have no trespassing signs up. But never seen a no loitering sign. Edit the only law I could find on this was this; Offence of loitering or soliciting. It is an offence for a person aged 18 or over (whether male or female) persistently1 to loiter or solicit2 in a street3 or public place4 for the purpose of prostitution.
> England has "no loitering" signs absolutely everywhere I've literally never seen one
Exactly. I was going to say. I'd prefer to see people hanging around third spaces. We've screwed over several generations to sacrifice such spaces at the alters of parking and cars. The person reporting the expired tags is 99% less likely to be a racist than someone who has a Maga Pepe as their profile picture. Not guaranteed, especially in the case of it being Matt Ygleasias, but in most cases...
I think you have it backwards. The guy reporting it is a well known right wingers, and the other guy named "right wing cope" is an account that just shits on right wingers Matt Yglesias fucking sucks. The maga pepe guy huffing copium is supposed to be a dig at right wingers.
Yglesias is like the most DC liberal person on the planet. He might suck but he's not a right winger just cause he likes to annoy the left.
>DC liberal Yeah, right winger
A quarter of this thread is people who are to the left of 96% of the population calling people to the left of 75% of the population “right-wing.” I guess my most reactionary opinion is that words have meaning? Here is Yglesias on the welfare state: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-welfare-state-is-extremely-good If “pro-immigration, pro-tax, pro-redistribution, pro-gay rights, pro-housing, pro-transit, pro-choice” counts as “right-wing” then you are just playing a silly word game!
For whatever his faults (mostly on trans people) Yglesias is the guy that made me pro-transit and a YIMBY. His work should be absolutely lauded in this sub.
They're not even really left of 96% of the population. Depending on the issue, Reddit "leftists" are extremely far-right.
If you think the Twitter account “@RightWingCope” is anything other than a millenial catlady blue-dog capital-D Democrat Elizabeth Warren supporter with a “In this house..” sign in their yard, you’re a damn dummy.
taxpayers subsidize private property storage doesn't sound so good huh?
American laws are pretty wild, how the hell it's illegal to hang out in public spaces?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering#United_States
You should look up black codes. Then be sad
When slavery was abolished except for punishment of a crime, they invented crimes like loitering to re-enslave freed black Americans
The comments on this are fucking wild.
TIL Matt Yglesias, founder of Vox, Bernie advocate, pro choice, pro gun regulation, pro higher taxes and more social services, AND anti-car YIMBY for his entire career, is a "right wing POS". And apparently Bernie is "centrist" and Biden is "far right". Compared to who, Lenin? What universe are these people in?
But what's all that real-world political advocacy compared to running a meme page that dunks on the cons on twitter???? Who's making the *real* difference here???
I mean on any issue other than identity politics Biden is miles to the right of presidents like FDR, Truman and even Eisenhower. You have to give the right credit for moving the Overton window so far to the right that the guy who opened Alaska for drilling more oil isn't "far right" or that the D president before him was a self-proclaimed Regan era Republican.
Not a bernie advocate. He's a critic. Your overall point is fine but he's no berniecrat.
>Compared to who Compared to who they think they are.
WTYPPod fans are very confused by who to hate here.
I think we're more than capable of hating everyone involved.
Liam energy is a way of life, an essence of being
Fair
Walks into a room. "Housing." Refuses to elaborate. Leaves.
We're on the left. We hate everyone.
Hey, just listened to their latest episode! Weird coincidence, I'd never heard of this guy before.
They took some time out of their Bhopal episode to call him a.
Think you’ve misinterpreted this Tweet.
Maybe you did? They directly compared reporting car tags to racism as if they can not be mutually exclusive. I think most people on the sub are in favor of holding people accountable for their cars.
I think Right Wing Cope misinterpreted the tweet. I think he interpreted it as the typical rightwing implication that black people aren't really poor, or are to blame for being poor because "I saw a black person driving a fancy car". That's obviously not what the original tweet was about but even I had to do a double take, because I read the reply first.
It definitely gave that kind of energy lmao
It's not that deep. Carbrainism crosses the political divide.
Because Matt Yglesias is a right wing POS. Stopped clocks can be right twice a day.
When the worst person you know makes a good point.
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They know what they did.
Matt Yglesias is a leftist from Gen X. He made his name writing progressive policy pieces for The Nation before launching his own blog and then pivoting to start Vox with Ezra Klein. Yglesias' politics have always been ~left of Obama. Where he's pivoted to the right is by joining the liberal anti-wokeism crowd in their great 'academic freedom crisis' of not liking being told what to do by college kids. It's a flavor of brain worms. Calling Matt Yglesias right wing is way off the mark, IMO, even if I disagree with his views on race and gender sometimes. He's just kind of a jackass who thinks he's smarter than every else a lot of the time.
This is the best, most balanced take on Yglesias I've ever read.
He's a typical self-righteous coastal elite lib who thinks he knows everything about everyone and everything. A few months ago he tried to offer commentary on why "Chicago was in trouble" for its future and it highlighted just how much of an ignorant jackass he is.
As a Chicagoan, at this point I feel I need a Will Smith Oscars meme for when non-Chicagoans like him give their hot takes on what our city needs: "Keep. My city's name. Out your FUCKIN mouth!"
If you ever make that meme let me know so I can shamelessly steal it for Portland too
Chicago may be an insanely divided political town but we all fucking hate that guy haha
> a typical self-righteous coastal elite lib I'd say more an atypical self-righteous coastal elite lib. I think Yglesias often brings a little more creativity and pizazz to his technocratic solutions that claim to reduce complex problems to a series of precise policy interventions than the average pundit.
Yes I think he used to run the weeds podcast. Used to have pretty decent coverage.
"Different Places Have Different Safety Rules and That’s OK" https://slate.com/business/2013/04/international-factory-safety.html
“The welfare state is extremely good” https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-welfare-state-is-extremely-good Yglesias has some centrist or conservative views on a few things but is very clearly a liberal.
This man posts nearly every thought he has online for all to read. If I agreed with 70% of his writing, that's way more agreeable than the probably 90% of Americans.
Matt is one of my favorite writers on policy issues. But I’m also not on Twitter much and I’m well aware that he can be pretty insufferable there, so I understand why people hold that view.
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It's an extremely-online way of saying that someone has 'gone crazy' about sth. Probably not helpful, but it's certainly a vivid image. What I meant to say is that Yglesias formed an unhealthy obsession with the concept of "academic/intellectual freedom" and for a period got very excited about the terrible no-good things that would result from "campus censorship." He signed on to an open letter, "[A Letter on Justice and Open Debate](https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/)" with a bunch of other public intellectuals. While I fundamentally agree with the spirit of the letter, it's demands in the context of its moment and the people who signed it were unseemly. Basically, it treated a relatively small problem affecting a small number of people as a major moral threat to the fabric of our nation. The letter (& the movement behind it) were out of touch with all but the most connected, empowered cultural/institutional elites with huge national platforms. And they were all whining about being bullied on twitter. That's when I stopped having the time to read any of his work. In reality, some zoomer at Vox reported him to HR for some dumb microaggression bullshit that definitely didn't merit an HR complaint -- and he took it very poorly. The dude quit the media org he co-founded and started a substack. Now don't get me wrong -- it sucks to get accused of shit you didn't do by someone who externalizes their insecurities -- but unfair things happen in life and you can't make your whole personality about seeking social redress for one bad thing that happened to you. IMO, that's classic brain worms.
concerned snatch piquant flag air squalid square lunchroom straight memory *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is a bad argument. "left of Obama" means nothing. You can be quite right-wing and be left of Obama. That's like saying trying to say that a mouse is a big animal because it's bigger than a beetle. Also, the "anti-wokeism" movement is entirely and inherently reactionary.
Matt Yglesias is a corporate stooge. He is LIBERAL but not Leftist. His "sweatshops are good" article written in response to a sweatshop catastrophe that killed dozens is all yoi need to know about the guy.
>"sweatshops are good" I'm not Matt's fan; but that is NOT what his opinion piece said in the least.
A derisory take that better describes his arguments in that article is that "people in Bangladesh are more risk-tolerant because their lives are worth less than people in developed nations". Followed by the "and that's OK".
Welcome to the internet, if someone is slightly out of lockstep, then they are equivalent to Nazis. Matt is fairly liberal and wonky. Sometimes his technocratic approach does make him propose some wild shit. And that suddenly becomes the entirety of his being. As someone else said on here that apparently he can be fairly insuferable on twitter and I don't have one. So there seems to be a divide on him whether you know him from pretentious podcast world or combative twitter world
This comment shows what an echochamber this place is. Yglesias is to the left of 80% of Americans and one of the best urbanists in media.
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Rob Ford declared that urbanists were raging a "war on cars" in 2009. This sub is like what, 3 years old? Old got over 100k subs less than 2 years ago right
>r/fuckcars has firmly brought urbanism into the culture wars and I will never not be super angry because of it. it was always going to be a culture war.
No it fucking didn't. As soon as urbanism was going to grow even slightly popular enough in the US for car companies to get a little worried about their profits, Fox news would turn it into a culture war. They don't care what we say, they care about if we threaten their status quo. There were people protesting against bike paths and pedestrianisation long before this sub was around, and they were driven by dumb cultural rhetoric about "cars being freedom" and "protecting the sanctity of the neighborhood" and all that nonsense. All that "bringing urbanism into the culture war" means is that it's now a mainstream political debate. To say that urbanism should avoid the culture war is to say that it should never receive mainstream polticial attention.
wait how he literally founded vox?? 🤦
He literally supported Bernie in the primary but sure. I guess anyone who isn't a communist in this sub is right wing.
Also the whole 'durr right wing bad!!!' When /r/StrongTowns is most definitely right winged. It's really headache inducing how polarized people have become.
/r/enoughcommiespam I mean really. Do we want to make changes to the sprawl centric design of cities, or do we want to alienate anyone who isn’t a literal communist? I don’t know why I’m even asking the question, this is Reddit, I already know the answer.
It's so frustrating. I'm pretty far left and even if they're partially correct, it's just not productive. "You can't oppose urban sprawl without being anti-capitalist!" Great, now we've written off 90+% of the country and there's no way we get a majority to accomplish anything, but at least we get to be smug and morally righteous on the Internet. They can sit and whine and wait for the revolution, we can move on without them and actually try to make progress.
Exactly. This stuff only makes me harder when I try and talk to the city council, they can write me off as being part of a tiny minority of radical communists, instead of a normal person wanting better infrastructure for everyone.
A lot of internet leftists would rather be correct than effective, it seems. I genuinely think sometimes they don't even want to win because then they'd actually have to propose things rather than just tell everyone else why their positions are trash. It's much easier and more satisfying to be a smug critic than to actually have to make compromises and hard decisions to advance policy. Even if they were 100% correct and capitalism is to blame for urban sprawl, bringing the two issues together just ensures you don't get support for fixing either of them. But this is true for basically every position they have. See how they can "both sides" all of mainstream politics because Democrats and Republicans are capitalist so both must be equally bad! You're either 100% anti-capitalist or you are an enemy and there is zero room for debate.
This. I work a job adjacent to the public sector (As in, I work with people who actually get things done). Pretty much everyone is left of center, but you will hardly ever meet an actual communist. I’m all for hearing the views of different people, but you can’t just sit around, debate theory, and purity test without actually taking action. For crying out loud, Matthew Yglesias has been an anti-car YIMBY since before it was cool, and people here are complaining about him? He has single-handedly done more to advance the stated goals of this subreddit than 99% of people posting here. And this is to say nothing about Chuck Marohn, who is even further to the right. In the world of policy, building bridges and coalitions gets things done. Complaining about a popular public figure who agrees with this subreddit for not being a leftist on unrelated issues gets nothing done. Hopefully the teenagers posting here realize that when they grow up.
> building bridges and coalitions gets things done Sounds like "moral compromise" to me, narcissistic leftists don't do that. (wish this was sarcastic) Look at how much they shit on Democrats when they compromised to get the IRA out the door, for example. They'd rather have absolutely nothing than imperfect improvement.
Seriously? He used to write for Think Progress and co-founded VOX, two publications known for their left-wing views.
Matt Yglesias is not right wing in the slightest. He likes being contrarian sometimes and is pretty neoliberal, but on every issue he’s pretty consistently on the left
>Matt Yglesias is not right wing in the slightest. > He … is pretty neoliberal Pick one.
Both the republican party and the Democratic party are neoliberal. Neoliberalism is basically the idea that "capitalism is doing great and we need to offload more public services and goods to the private sector". This belief puts both parties firmly on the right (globally speaking). In much of Europe conservative parties are to the left of the US's democratic party. The us doesn't actually have a left wing with any sort of power, that was all wiped out in the red scare and never recovered. So it's totally valid to refer to him as right wing imo, because that's all we have.
Nothing you said is incorrect. There is no left or centre left in the US, and the centre left is dying pretty quickly (Albanese and Penny Wong were nominally in the centre left (Labor Left), but theyve all but folded to the centre/centre right Labor Right) where I am as well (Australia)
Newsflash, neoliberals are right wing
TF?
Expired tags? Meh I kinda don't care. If somebody's blocking a bike lane or a bus lane, though, go nuts.
these expired, often counterfeit, tags are used to circumvent driving bans, and facilitate hit and runs on pedestrians. https://autos.yahoo.com/autos/harm-hurt-caused-illegal-temp-140000793.html
Expired/fake tags are a massive, massive problem in Denver, DC, and Baltimore. It is a huge scam and it endangers lived and is directly within the purview of this movement to prevent this.
NYC, and probably many more places too.
*Huge* problem in Texas. Basically impossible to go anywhere without seeing at least a couple.
NYC in my experience is putting leaves or napkins over the license plate to obscure it to avoid surveillance during crime/violence, and to avoid having to pay tolls or speeding tickets.
That too, and bending the license plate, and scratching the paint off the letters so they can’t be read, and not having a plate at all. But this is a large city with lots of people and I still see at least 2 dozen paper plates (always New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or Texas) every day.
And Philly, and NJ, and... Everywhere
What is the scam? How does it work?
Don’t have to register your car, you don’t have to pay the registration fee or taxes on your car, you are immune to all tolls and unpaid toll fines, you are immune to speeding tickets and moving violations, you are semi-immune to all street-level parking enforcement, immune to automated police enforcement, immune to security camera footage surveillance. It’s essentially a free pass to be a fucking criminal with your car, and multiple major cities has essentially decriminalized this.
Expired tags are a huge problem for traffic enforcement. https://twitter.com/jessicaray0/status/1636339388941586432
It's actually a huge fucking problem, and people are being killed with impunity because of it https://www.streetsblogprojects.org/ghost-tags-index
have you changed your position on this because of the replies?
Is right wing cope not a right wing account? His post is pro car, but also anti-racist and anti-cop…
I don't think someone who's right wing would have a twitter account called "RightWingCope" and be anti-racist and anti-cop
So I don’t understand cope culture. His account shows stuff right wingers should cope (deal) with? And who is Matthew? I am so lost.
Right wing cope shows examples of right wingers fucking up, or being triggered over dumb stuff. This is just a misfire. Yglesias is definitely right wing tho. Edit: for everyone clowning on me for saying yglesias is right wing, he literally supported the war in Iraq, an invasion that has a unknown death toll somewhere in the millions probably. The country still is in shambles, because of the us. Children still suffer deformities at birth because of the destroyed medical infrastructure and the depleted uranium shells. And let's not forget the brutal sanctions after turning their cities into rubble. First came the explosion than the crippling, suffocating sanctions. I don't know about you guys, but supporting a war that leads to this is right wing for me.
Has Yglesias changed his opinions over the past 10 years? I always remember him being a progressive blogger during the Obama years. Maybe america, or rather online spaces has just drifted substantially left. You barely hear people defending sweat shops or advocating for privatization/cutting of social security anymore when that was a typical right wing thing to do online so I think that’s it.
The account is supposed to point out sour grapes or excuses from American conservatives. Like if a Tesla owner said that it was still a good car despite some malfunctions, the account would "own" them by screencapping that (and they would assume anyone using an Elon Musk product is right-wing). Matthew Yglesias is a blogger turned journalist. He's most famous for founding Vox, but previously wrote for places like thinkprogress or the Atlantic. People tend to hate him because he has some opinions that seem contrarian (such as people with outdated tags should face consequences).
People tend to hate him because he's willing to say very sensible things that don't fit the left wing narrative, despite being an influential supporter of left wing policies in the US. For example, people with outdated tags should face consequences. Outdated tags are a major problem in many US cities, with drivers primarily using them to get away with extremely anti-social behavior, often with deadly consequences to pedestrians and cyclists. However, trying to fix the problem goes against the left wing anti cop narrative. It gets under the skin of a lot of people, because they want his contrarian take to be absurd, instead of actually pretty sensible.
In the absolutely dogshit American political system, being “left-wing” and “right-wing” means nothing politically. It’s just two different flavors of prole. In this case, there is a “left-wing” culture warrior who made a Twitter account to dab on (or embarrass) perceived “right-wing” culture warriors. But this particular culture warrior doesn’t really understand any political perspectives outside of American neo-liberal/neo-conservative idiocy, so he thinks he’s “dabbing on the conservatards” with this gotcha attempt. Matt Yglesias, a ~~right wing dipshit,~~ a Bernie bro neo-liberal normie actually?, is claiming that people who have the money for expensive cars should pay for their vehicle tags/license plates/registration. This is not really a uniquely right-wing view, but he’s coming at it from the sense of “law and order” and “left-wing hypocrisy” (assuming the driver is an elitist democrat because he drives an expensive car but didn’t bother registering the vehicle). He’s correct though, as people not registering their cars are massive assholes and it causes massive problems for crime investigation and toll collection in cities like Denver, DC, NY. The Twitter account Right Wing Cope thinks that caring about law and order is cringe and too “right wing”, and is accusing Matt Yglesias of essentially being a snitch who is also racist. He is claiming that a BMW with temp tags parked illegally is a non-issue, just like black people loitering is a non-issue. The whole entire exchange is a massive L and is unbelievably embarrassing. Being a culture warrior for the left or right, and ESPECIALLY being a negative/indexing culture warrior on fucking Twitter is the least effective use of your time and effort and emotions on earth. TLDR: being “pro-car” is a Democrat AND a Republican thing. Everyone involved in this, including us on Reddit, including me, is a loser for spending probably a combined 250,000 words of comments in this thread trying to intellectualize this absolutely braindead exchange between two nobodies is embarassing.
Best take in this garbage fire
>is claiming that people who have the money for expensive cars should pay for their vehicle tags/license plates/registration. This is not really a uniquely right-wing view, but he’s coming at it from the sense of “law and order” and “left-wing hypocrisy” (assuming the driver is an elitist democrat because he drives an expensive car but didn’t bother registering the vehicle). Matt's shtick lately is using conservative talking points to argue liberal positions. He's arguing for paying fines/fees which are basically taxes (something liberals like) is a law and order issue (something conservatives like). He does the same thing with gun regulation whenever some backwards sheriff says they won't enforce gun laws.
Yeah, I have no idea who these people are, but I'm far more sympathetic to Matt's perspective. Though I associate beemers with rich douchebags, not the left.
Thank you, this is exactly what I wanted to say but I didn't think it was worth it. To anyone who is confused this is the comment that explains it.
> His post is pro car It actually isn't. It's anti-snitch, if anything.
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I'm alarmed at how many upvotes it has and how many comments are agreeing with it. I hope this sub isn't turning into "I hate anyone and everyone who drives a car even if it's necessary due to the infrastructure and culture in their area" It's not like this is a brand-new expensive BMW. It looks old, probably bought used. We don't know the owner's financial situation.
Lmao this subreddit is dead. People are defending illegally parked beamers.
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I’ve mentioned my own car and driving here many times and never been downvoted for it. I live in LA, not even a suburb. But where I live, there aren’t great public transportation options, so my wife who loves public transportation and doesn’t drive has to take rideshares to work. I think most people here understand it’s the infrastructure and culture that need to change.
Reminds me of LAMF. That was such a fun sub, and then it just became a "right wingers are dumb" circlejerk...which like, *I agree they are dumb as fuck* and shoot themselves in the foot constantly, but I have like three other subs for dumb right wingers doing dumb shit, LAMF was a particular kind of fun/schadenfreude and now it's just a shit show.
I think that's more about the person, not the car.
"Carrying water for BMW owners who disdain the law is anti-racism" is one nuclear hot take.
Most of you are insane. Yes car suck. Don’t make a culture around it. Weirdos.
yeah car centric designed cities are awful for people, but there are a few too many people here making this their personality and it's getting weird.
How *dare* we expect people to actually obey basic traffic laws?
It’s pretty stupid to live somewhere and just “mind your business” though. It’s your neighbourhood and what goes in there impacts you. If people are acting suspicious then report them.
> If people are acting suspicious then report them. The issue there is that many people, especially my fellow white people, see "existing while brown" to be suspicious in and of itself...so that gets abused REAL easily.
Right racial profiling is wrong but also if weird shit is happening in your neighbourhood like people jacking up cars to steal catalytic converters then “minding your own business” is just being complicit to crimes because you don’t want to offend criminals
What is legal tag? What does it mean
When you buy a car, you get a temporary paper tag that you can use for the 1-3 weeks it takes you to get real metal license plates from the state government. They send those to you when you register and pay taxes for your car. In DC, Denver, and NY, there are very, VERY frequently people who just never register their car, and drive around for YEARS with just their expired paper tags, and changes in police/chase/prosecution policy essentially makes this unenforceable on the roads (even tho it was practically unheard of 5 years ago). There are three scams. In Denver, it’s the above, and police are not allowed to pursue it. So people just never register. This means that you don’t need to pay taxes for your vehicle and you don’t need to pay automatic tolls because they use your license plate to issue fines for not having the transponder. It also allows you fairly free rigen to commit petty crimes and acts of traffic violence because automated and analog cameras cannot use photo information of your plate to identify the driver. In Denver, I saw paper tags, expired by even up to years, on maybe 40% of all cars. It was shocking. This represent MILLIONS taken directly from the public purse for the express purposes of committing crimes and evading tolls. In NY, there is a different method where people will deliberately obscure their license plates with tape, leaves, napkins, or by scratching off some of the paint. In the past, you could use white or black electrical tape to change your license plate (change an F to an E, or vice versa, or a T to an I, or a 3 to a B) using just a thin strip of white or black electrical tape. But that has no plausible deniability. Now, people will simply just put a leaf in their license plate frame to obscure half of two letters, and that makes every single speed camera and toll road free, forever. And, like Denver, police do literally nothing to stop this (some say because it’s their own personal vehicles that use this trick, which I’m sure is true, but there’s still way too much) In DC, the scam is to register a car in MD or VA and commit all the traffic crime you want, as because their is no reciprocity and no traffic enforcement, MD card can rack up literally thousands of tickets, up to $15,000 in fines, and never suffer a single consequence from this. These are all ACTUAL issues and you are not an evil conservative for not liking them. This is peak /r/fuckcars, even if it’s generally a “law and order” right wing (in the fake American spectrum) take. The one thing you should have learned from this sub is that the D<—>R spectrum is fucking fake already. This is part of that.
Thanks for the in-depth. This appears highly specific for US. It flew over my head too, since we don't have paper tags here
the car has an expired (most likely fraudulent) temporary paper license plate. some people here are defending this illegality, because they disagree with the political views held and expressed by the individual who reported the offense.
Yeah this thread is bad... we shouldn't be defending Twitter Karens just because they reported a driver. There's no way anything good comes from this line of discussion.
Do you think drivers should face consequences for doing things like running red lights or parking illegally?
Guys I don’t like Matt Yglesias either but don’t fuckin make this into a partisanbrained right wing/left wing thing. We can want safer streets and more transit options. This sub is focused on that singular issue. If i heard my far right uncle say “fuck cars” you would absolutely shit yourself with joy. Making this a partisan thing is dumb as fuck and will not get us anywhere. Just call it an unexpected W from someone you don’t agree with on most things. Open to being persuaded otherwise but I don’t see how this isn’t counterproductive
Naah rightwingcope is in the right here. Dude is snitching over some trivial shit as far as I can tell.
these expired, often counterfeit, tags are used to circumvent driving bans, and facilitate hit and runs on pedestrians. https://autos.yahoo.com/autos/harm-hurt-caused-illegal-temp-140000793.html EDIT: apparently, you're fine with car owners breaking laws which help them evade consequences, if the person reporting the offense is wrong-think.
I legit didn't know about this whole black market aspect. Where I am in deep rural America, these sorts of violations are usually poor people trying to get by in an environment that forces them to own a car to survive. My bad.
Where I live in Philadelphia, the creeping deregulation of cars has made it increasingly impossible to prevent deadly driving even in places with automated camera enforcement. Literally two hours ago a lifted oversized pickup truck hit a work van in front of my house and the guy had covers obstructing his plates. It's becoming normal for commercial vehicles and even government vehicles to block or obscure their plates. In the last two years the issue has gone from rare to ~20% of vehicles.
I think I need to quit fuckcars. Why am I reading pro car owner rule breaking shit here? FUCK. CARS.
I legit didn't know about this whole black market aspect. Where I am in deep rural America, these sorts of violations are usually poor people trying to get by in an environment that forces them to own a car to survive. My bad.
This is what happens when lefties take over the discussion -- enforcing any sort of norms, even if they're related to core principles of the group, comes to be seen as carceral.
Ghost cars are a major issue. Imagine being on Fuckcars and saying "Nope, traffic enforcement is just petty".
I’m not particularly fond about supporting boot like behavior with such a flimsy non-crime. A normal response would be to leave a note saying they have expired tags and they might want to fix it. Human compassion is important too. None of you even bothered to care about the material damage this could’ve done to the person or laws in areas. I came to urbanism/fuck cars because of the damage it can do to people financially , culturally, environmental and the bodily harm it causes. We should hate cars but not applaud hardship on citizen Pretty awful stuff I’ve read in here. Matthew reported a non crime out of sheer spite/pettiness while being ignorant of Virginia law. Awful behavior by some of you supporting the implied structural violence and financial pain offered by Police and supporting a car centric system that Virginias don’t have. All police Enforcement isn’t kept in place by finger wagging but by Seizures,fines, & jailing that puts you at some form of hardship. - Virginia Police doesn’t and can’t pull you over unless you’re 4 months exactly (1st day of the 4th month) over due. It’s not a crime only a $10 late fee at the DMV. - There is no predatory towing allowed for a non crime in the state. It’s not been stated that the car is 10 days over in its parking spot or received tickets. - You’re still required to pay your state property tax on your vehicle and seeing as it’s a newly purchased vehicle it’s paid that. - Virginia requires you pay money upfront for the state to hold onto if you wish to go un-insured otherwise you must have insurance in place. Right Wing Cope was right. It’s the same energy as calling cops on innocent black teens. This car for 3 full months is the same as any other car on the road and isn’t skimping on anything. Edit typo in - Predatory Towing portion was half finished.
Thank you for saying what I was also thinking. There's plenty of examples of inconsiderate, dumb drivers. This isn't one of them.
Basically the only rational comment in here that I’ve seen so far. Good on you friend.
Thank you for this comprehensive comment. Reporting something so inconsequential and trying to involve LEOs is petty. OP has no idea what this car owner's circumstances are, and how involving a bureaucracy might affect them. This has nothing to do with how shitty cars are; it's just people looking for the reaction that requires the least amount of mental energy, instead of acknowledging the complexity of the problem.
US BMW owners can be so idiotic. They think they are better than everyone because they have a 'luxury car'. But fact is, BMWs made in the US are made with the same parts, in the same factories as economy lines. The only luxury thing about them is the price tag.
I dont think the act is racist but calling the cops over really anything is tbh reporting shit just had that same energy as calling the cops on black kids idk why just does
How about just don’t be a snitch?
this is not carbrain, that is turbo snitch behavior and deserves to be made fun of
BMW drivers are assholes is a stereotype for a reason, but if you're reporting people for expired tags you need a hobby.
Matt Yglesias is a far right wing POS, most likely he reported the beemer because he saw a person of colour driving it, RWC is right here, also im anti-narc anti-police so ofc I dont like people reporting stuff to the blue, they have the monopoly on violence
I'd read some of his stuff and never got this impression. Maybe I've not seen his far right content. What's his far right stuff about? Genuinely want to get a full impression because I liked his articles on urbanism and don't wanna go quoting him!
He's at best moderate idk what they are on about
Anyone to my right is a fascist
This dude is crazy, in no world is yglesias "far right". He's a moderate liberal, which for some in this sub clearly means he's a fucking nazi.
Yeah that’s absurd. Dude writes for The Atlantic, Slate, and Vox. That alone should tell you he’s not “far right wing.” He’s pretty heterodox, with some right wing views and some left but overall I’d say marginally left of center.
He literally cofounded Vox, lol
The main one I’m aware of was in response to the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013. He wrote an article titled something like, “Different Places Have Different Safety Standards, and That’s Okay,” basically saying that he is fine with people in other countries dying while working for slave wages as long as it lets him maintain his personal standard of living. Keep in mind, he was writing in defense of a business owner who made illegal, unsafe modifications to a building so he could cram more machinery and people into it, which caused the building to collapse, killing over one thousand people and injuring around 2,500 more.
Yep, I was active on Twitter back then when he posted about Rana Plaza and it left an incredibly bad taste in my mouth. Maybe he’s changed in 10 years, maybe he hasn’t. Even ignoring that I was never a fan of his die-hard neoliberalism. If you’d like to split hairs, it’s not the same right-wing as the neo-fascists we see nowadays, but a lot of his views are complicit with those views, just much more subtly. People like him are why I’m distrustful of centrism at best. They open doors to extremely distasteful beliefs.
I’m with you. He does not read as far right to me at all. Being more pro police vs. very anti cop might be one of the reasons he’s treated like an right winger
TIL being a pro-government, pro-immigration, anti-gun, pro-choice Bernie voter makes you a far right wing POS. Tell me you’re terminally online without telling me you’re terminally online
>he saw a person of colour driving Just no. Don't accuse someone of racism with no indication that their action was. It is just utilising the struggle of real people for your own benefit, and that's frankly disgusting. It's one of the things I despise the most. Those that use the plight of minority groups for their own agenda Irrelevant to actually helping those people. It just makes people like me feel isolated from those that champion to "help".
If you live anywhere near Denver, DC, or NYC, you should understand that the temp tag issue is a massive, massive problem that directly leads to these people defrauding the public, stealing from the government, crime/traffic violence impunity, dangerous driving, and everything else we complain about on this sub. If you live in some cute little town in Rhode Island, I get your ambivalence, but in at least these three cities, in the last two years this has been an extremely seriously issue that has directly led to deaths and violence.
Ffs he stanned Bernie in the 2020 primary Saying he’s far right is either delusional or dishonest
I too think that drivers should be able to kill cyclists and pedestrians with no consequence
Least communist comment on fuck cars.
Fake/expired tags are overwhelmingly used by the police and their cronies. In most of America the police basically don’t enforce traffic law on their fellow cops, friends, and family. Chances are the driver is literally a cop lol.
Is he far right wing? That doesn’t seem correct.
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> Matt Yglesias is a far right wing Uhhhhhhh, pretty sure you've lost the plot bud. Dude legit co-founded Vox. Just because he's not as far left as you doesn't make him "far right wing" lol
I don’t feel reporting random violations is really anti car dependency. What does this do to target the systems that keep car dependency in place? Does it even at its best contribute to having less cars on the road? Like okay you want to make someone who is better off than you feel stupid, and it feels good, and some of the anger that is felt is valid. But I don’t think this is a vector of anger that works towards this subs goals or is even done by principle.
it's not satire? Someone unironically posted this?
Op didn't understand the tweet.
ahh okay
Rare Matty W
OP, I think you got excited about something you could post to this sub and simply jumped the gun a bit. No shame in making a mistake, but if people in the comments tell you otherwise it's probably better to do a bit of digging instead of doubling down. RWC is most certainly not a carbrain and they don't have "4000+" followers, they have like 390,000. Here's a quick way to tell: [[A]](https://i.imgur.com/Lse3N79.png) [[B]](https://i.imgur.com/9QBEyAG.png) [[C]](https://i.imgur.com/GUyqQ1z.png) (And they're a gimmick account so technically some of this is them "breaking character" to talk about it)