Greater Greater Washington --- Please Explain Why They Have Obfuscated Their Donors in The 990 Schedule B Filing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Look at the Washington Area Bicyclist Association's 990. Hardly anyone gives to them. Their main donor is the city government. Potemkin village.

You mean us DC taxpayers. "Involuntary philanthropy."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GGW is a shell of what it used to be. There’s a lot less content on the site now. I think they’ve hit some funding problems as the YIMBY movement became more progressive and started embracing things like rent control.

Not sure the best term is "shell" but GGW definitely is an echo chamber. Their content and talking points get recycled and echoed around the various funders, development lobbyists, astroturf groups, basement bloggers, and the DC Office of Planning (which also funds some of them).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GGW is a shell of what it used to be. There’s a lot less content on the site now. I think they’ve hit some funding problems as the YIMBY movement became more progressive and started embracing things like rent control.

There's also a growing pushback to the YIMBY movement, which is just trickle-down economics -- which has never worked, ever -- gussied up as "filtering."

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/01/the-only-thing-worse-than-a-nimby-is-a-yimby

There's also a growout amount of study that shows upzoning doesn't work:

https://betterdwelling.com/broad-upzoning-makes-housing-less-affordable-and-doesnt-add-supply/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:GGW is a shell of what it used to be. There’s a lot less content on the site now. I think they’ve hit some funding problems as the YIMBY movement became more progressive and started embracing things like rent control.

There's also a growing pushback to the YIMBY movement, which is just trickle-down economics -- which has never worked, ever -- gussied up as "filtering."

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/01/the-only-thing-worse-than-a-nimby-is-a-yimby

There's also a growout amount of study that shows upzoning doesn't work:

https://betterdwelling.com/broad-upzoning-makes-housing-less-affordable-and-doesnt-add-supply/

The local lobby for so-called smart growth recycles Reagan-era trickle down economic theory and Trump-era favoritism to the real estate development sector, wrapped in progressive-sounding rhetoric to resonate with a DC area audience.

[Anonymous]

You astroturfers need to translate your babble into English if you want whatever you are propagandizing to convince people.

Accusing the people who won elections of not actually being popular maks you look a little silly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a weird alliance of starry eyed idealists and rapacious developers, this whole vibrant urbanism. I think the starry eyed idealists are being 'used' and don't realize it because they have little life experience or investment in an actual city community? Maybe they are children or just moved here to implement their futurism?

An alliance of Gen-Xer “vibrancy” activists, big developer funders (JBG, Bozzuto, EYA, Chevy Chase Land Co, various DC zoning law firms) and MAGA political operatives who cynically spin a rapacious development agenda as DEI.

.

what is a “rapacious development agenda lol.” you mean … building housing where people want to live?

According to this thread, these greedy developers are getting rich by buying property at inflated prices and then not building on it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You astroturfers need to translate your babble into English if you want whatever you are propagandizing to convince people.

Accusing the people who won elections of not actually being popular maks you look a little silly.

They’ve memorized the babble but don’t understand the English.

[Anonymous]

I know nothing about this group, but I will say that no nonprofit "has" to publicly disclose their donors; any that do are doing so voluntarily and it's a huge minority of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a weird alliance of starry eyed idealists and rapacious developers, this whole vibrant urbanism. I think the starry eyed idealists are being 'used' and don't realize it because they have little life experience or investment in an actual city community? Maybe they are children or just moved here to implement their futurism?

An alliance of Gen-Xer “vibrancy” activists, big developer funders (JBG, Bozzuto, EYA, Chevy Chase Land Co, various DC zoning law firms) and MAGA political operatives who cynically spin a rapacious development agenda as DEI.

.

what is a “rapacious development agenda lol.” you mean … building housing where people want to live?

According to this thread, these greedy developers are getting rich by buying property at inflated prices and then not building on it.

Inflated prices? The only thing that is inflated is the rents that the GGW Dirty Dozen collude to fix. Meanwhile, thanks to Bowser crony developers are angling to get rights to the Chevy Chase DC library property on fire sale terms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Y'all understand that those young'uns are advocating for a future they believe in...a more dense and virbant urban area where people don't need cars to get the goods and services they want.

I am not sure why that is a bad thing. It isn't like what has been done for the last 90 years has been all that successful.

Maybe not their own cars. But they are among the heaviest users of Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Amazon Prime, etc. They've just outsourced some of their carbon footprint to gig service providers and corporations that crowd the streets with polluting vehicles.

And as for "urban vibrancy".... more and more DC voters are finding out just what that has come to mean.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know nothing about this group, but I will say that no nonprofit "has" to publicly disclose their donors; any that do are doing so voluntarily and it's a huge minority of them.

They have a long history of intentionally obfuscating their donors going back to their original founding, when they were basically a dba under the Piedmont Environment Center - which is an organization run by the DuPont’s and other gilded age families that own estates in the Piedmont region. Their entire animating purpose was NIMBYism to prevent development near their estates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know nothing about this group, but I will say that no nonprofit "has" to publicly disclose their donors; any that do are doing so voluntarily and it's a huge minority of them.

They have a long history of intentionally obfuscating their donors going back to their original founding, when they were basically a dba under the Piedmont Environment Center - which is an organization run by the DuPont’s and other gilded age families that own estates in the Piedmont region. Their entire animating purpose was NIMBYism to prevent development near their estates.

Huh? Are you saying all of this about GGWASH?

Because...no: https://www.washingtonian.com/2019/03/08/greater-greater-washington-lost-a-big-chunk-of-its-funding-now-what/

[Anonymous]

PP is getting their smart-growth organizations confused.

[Anonymous]

Coming from a capital city in Europe, and being generally informed on urban development outside of the US, I can attest that concerns about global warming and population density have pushed certain priorities to the fore in most metropoles around the developed world:

1. Dedicated space for public and shared transport, EV charging stations, fines or outright bans for the more polluting vehicles in some cities;
2. immense pressure to fill housing needs, sometimes resulting, through developers' bribes to politicians and stakeholders, in more luxury housing than what's really needed: low-income housing.

You can't please everyone. Choices have to be made. I would be fine with having more rent-controlled housing if cities were tougher on crime. I am fine with being perpetually annoyed in traffic if it means people can use more public and shared transport.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You astroturfers need to translate your babble into English if you want whatever you are propagandizing to convince people.

Accusing the people who won elections of not actually being popular maks you look a little silly.

Are you saying that Donald Trump is a popular guy?