Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
A good quote: "You pass housing by electing politicians who understand the difference between political discomfort and a political liability."
Queens volunteer chapter leader for @opennewyork.org. YIMBY, pro-transit, pro-biking, anti-borders-and-cars. He/him
3,174 followers 1,537 following 9,164 posts
view profile on Bluesky Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
A good quote: "You pass housing by electing politicians who understand the difference between political discomfort and a political liability."
tocharian spongebart eatpants (@theophite.bsky.social) reposted
he did not believe that Black Americans are citizens. he sent buses to January 6th. he called for the execution of Joe Biden.
Perry Bacon (@perrybaconjr.bsky.social) reposted
Joy Reid. Karen Attiah. Gene Robinson. Jonathan Capehart. There are lots of others. Circumstances differ. But really sad to see new organizations not keeping super-talented Black staffers. The news industry spent decades talking about diversity, improved some from 2014-2020 and is now going back.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
Standing in the back coping and seething as Austin windmill dunks on NYC, playing up its title as largest US city to eliminate parking minimums.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
They're treating the national party the way they treat the New York party--the first goal is defeating their intraparty rivals, no holds barred or respect required.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
I like the 90s ESPN2 styling of "X-treme seven story buildings".
Sharon (@sharonk.bsky.social) reposted
korean reporting is nightmarish on the conditions Korean workers were contained in
☀️ Starshine (@starshine.bsky.social) reposted
hopefully puts to rest the idea schumer coordinated with mamdani and was planning to to endorse in october
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
If we're going to operate an entire industry as a jobs program, can we at least pick one that doesn't ruin our cities?
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
The speaker (chief economist at Redfin) makes a good point that people are very bad at incorporating future costs from climate risk into their ideas about affordability. Few look at insurance costs when deciding to move to Florida.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
Snippet from the opening keynote at YIMBYtown: the median income household would have to spend 38% of their income to afford the median priced home. 😬
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
This 5:30am train from Grand Central to New Haven is a hilarious mix of "people coming home from a night of clubbing" and "people going to YIMBYtown".
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
If they think affirmative action is bad, they'll flip their shit at "This apartment complex must have at least 20% ethnic Chinese people".
Radley Balko (@radleybalko.bsky.social) reposted
This is unhinged, dangerous, and reckless. At this point I don't know how you conclude anything other than that Musk is trying to foment pogroms against immigrants across the west.
Sharon (@sharonk.bsky.social) reposted
There's sort of a keyfabe that happens in both Congress and the media where Trump is basically treated as a normal president because a world where we admitted this is not normal and that democratic liberties are slowly being eroded requires the media/political class to take a stand.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
The part of the legal system that's best suited to coming up with new stuff (Congress + the amendment system) has been paralyzed for decades now, and it shows.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
This sort of thing didn't used to exist. Why not, how did we stop it back then? I would genuinely like to know.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
This is a very understated way for the Times to describe the president corruptly intervening in a criminal case. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/n...
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Yes. Gun control is a great idea, but there's basically no way to stop this particular incident.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
I mean... www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x_b...
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
This is why we need to abolish the Senate. It's impossible to truly kick their asses to the degree necessary to force them to moderate if they have an artificial floor caused by the existence of two separate Dakotas.
Tom Scocca (@tomscocca.bsky.social) reposted
He advocated for his beliefs by sending busloads of people to Washington D.C. to try to violently overturn an election
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Can this actually be shown statistically, though? Just because young people have a worse perception of the economy doesn't mean that it's actually bad for them.
jon ben-menachem (@jbenmenachem.com) reposted
If you are on the TPUSA list of professors or are an otherwise visible left academic, I strongly recommend reviewing your digital footprint. Is your address public information? What about your family members? crimethinc.com/2020/08/26/d...
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Thank you for your excellent judgement!
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
There are some parrot colonies here in NYC too, including one in my neighborhood in Queens! I have no idea how they survive the winter, but they make it work.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
I feel like you could get access to a surplus tooth if you were a surgeon who could credibly claim they needed it for practice.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
OK, one more meme, because I thought of this and now all of you have to see it
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
"These levers weren't built to obstruct--they were built to help us extract better deals for our community". @justinbrannan.bsky.social
Jon Walker (@jonwalkerpdx.bsky.social) reposted
This is how you would talk as president when you actively want more terrorism committed by conservatives
Lakeshore Drive Slut (@shredded-teat.bsky.social) reposted
THIS YOU? MASTER THREAD 1. Jeremy Clarkson
Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) reposted
note how Trump explicitly links approving disaster aid for Wisconsin and South Dakota to the fact he won Wisconsin and South Dakota
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
I guess the question is what's the goal. To house the poorest quintile, you absolutely need government subsidy. But to bring prices down for the middle class to find NY affordable, a purely market-rate building boom would be helpful and good, and NY could engineer one. We should!
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
"Affordable in comparison to CA and NY" is in fact a win, as evidenced by the large numbers of people leaving CA and NY and moving to TX/NC. I don't like it either, but the demographic shifts are clear. Most of the fastest growing places are Sun Belt sprawl.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
There are places in the US that have achieved pretty high levels of construction and affordability for all but the poorest through market-rate development. I'm a lot more hopeful about the chances of getting that than I am about achieving Red Vienna in Long Island.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
No it's not. www.404media.co/charlie-kirk...
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
We need to raise the congestion charge for Ubers apparently
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Also, the assumption that 25% of casino visitors would arrive via FHV or personal car is wild to me. Who takes an Uber to 8th and 45th? If that's true (and who knows), we need to shift those people to other modes, not give up pedestrian space to accommodate the
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
This made me significantly more hostile to the Times Square casino proposal
ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper.com) reposted
this is just a ridiculous way to describe a guy who built an enemies list of professors so his shithead followers could send them hate mail and death threats
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
If people on the left think that, they should say so publicly! Not doing so would be lying to your audience.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Being president is actually a weirdly dangerous gig--we've only had 47 of them, and 4 of them were shot to death and Reagan survived his shooting. That's a higher rate than pretty much any other profession.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
I can't really summarize this in post length, but it's weirdly fascinating. www.curbed.com/article/myst...
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Took me a second to parse Shinzo Abe out of that rather than Abe Lincoln
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
If Klein feels that he has to glaze Kirk in order to stave off a pogrom, he should say so plainly--to do anything else would be dishonest to his readers. Either he actually believes that Kirk did politics the right way, or he's lying to me, and either option is unacceptable.
Pareto Optimizer (@paretooptimizer.bsky.social) reposted
My theory on why he is getting the hagiography treatment is (1) it was on video in public and (2) he knew a lot of media people. Melissa Hortman and David Rose should have done that if they had wanted the media to care about them.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
I've seen that term used for weighted population density, so probably that. (Essentially, what is the population density of the census tract that the typical person in a jurisdiction lives in). www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainab...
Nicholas Grossman (@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social) reposted
It’s so surreal seeing prominent right-wing figures—an influential presidential advisor, the last campaign’s biggest donor, etc.—call for violence, the GOP president lie and stoke violence, every Dem officeholder condemn it, and mainstream media treat those as the same, or the Dem reaction as worse.
Radley Balko (@radleybalko.bsky.social) reposted
Losing my goddamned mind. We can condemn political violence without valorizing a destructive, hateful bigot.
Ar-Fredazôn (@thefred.bsky.social) reposted
Glad to see only 3 of 9 justices think it's a national emergency which bathroom one child uses.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Fair--maybe I'm being too pessimistic!
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
I don't think this is true! You could do a lot to discourage gun ownership without repealing the Second--there are plenty of good-faith interpretations of it that don't allow very much room for unrestricted civilian ownership, all you need to do is get people who share that view onto the court.
Andy Craig (@andycraig.bsky.social) reposted
This (and it's worth watching the whole clip and not just this quote, he both offers condolences and cautions we don't know motive yet) is a reasonable way to talk about it, to thread a difficult needle. It is relevant, it is true, and it will be an inevitable part of the discussion.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Even if it didn't prevent a single shooting, it would still be a good idea--carrying a gun is an inherently threatening act towards everyone around who's unarmed, and making it less common is a good thing. An armed society kind of sucks.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Seems like state law allows open carry on campus, which seems like a big problem to me. attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff...
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
And the fact that this was foreseeable will not do nearly as much as I'd like to push people towards expansion in NYC or elsewhere.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Yeah, this is a problem that needs a layered approach (it's similar to traffic safety in that way). You try and have as few guns as possible in the civilian population; and you try and limit carrying guns, even if they're owned; and you try and keep guns out of mass venues in particular.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Yeah--compare to Trump's dismissiveness when those state legislators were shot in Minnesota the day of No Kings.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
I'd say this is still deeply uncertain. You might get rid of some parking; but in exchange, you would gain a lot of additional deadhead miles. A ton will depend on the ownership model (taxis or personal?), pricing structure and prevalence of self-driving vs. traditional cars.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Cast whatever shitty votes you have to on high-profile issues that are important to your home state (guns, EPA); but on things that will undermine GOP power and make Dems more powerful, you have to be reliable, and Manchin wasn't.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
The problem with Manchin is that he got high on his own bullshit. The system is tilted towards the GOP; even our marginal members need to understand that we need to fix that, through things like DC statehood and eventually making the Senate less powerful and important.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Yeah, the economics question is a lot more unsettled than the technological capability question.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
The problem with self-driving cars in Manhattan isn't going to be the "self-driving" part, it's the "car" part--they're just an inherently inefficient mode in a place where space is at a premium.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
The opposite, actually! Waymo is going to be traveling Manhattan streets in a couple years; but I think it'll be much longer than that before you can buy a car that can take you from any randomly-picked US address to another without driving.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
I honestly don't know anything about his stance on crime policy, but I don't think the fact that he's a generic partisan Dem means he's earned the benefit of the doubt. Plenty of generic Dems have shitty views on crime!
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
I don't think intended, per se; it's more that they were totally indifferent to the actual quantity of housing being produced as long as they can be seen as protecting their political allies. The dream of a legislator is addressing a problem without ever acknowledging a tradeoff.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
If you guys were capable of revising zoning quickly enough to build a sufficient amount of housing, we wouldn't have to have a whole ballot initiative process to take away your ability to block. But you guys can't do your job, so where do you get off complaining when voters turn to someone who can?
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
The thing that's really striking about the city council here is the amount of main character energy. The power balance between the mayor and council is just not that important! What actually matters is the outcome of policies that get passed in the real world.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
Because they're gluttons for punishment
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Yet another reminder that moderates not only don't have solutions to our brutal and overcrowded prison system, but they don't even think it's a problem.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
This is just flagrantly dishonest. Every city in the US saw a spike in crime post-COVID, and a decline after the pandemic faded, and Tisch wants to blame it on bail reform? What a joke. nypost.com/2025/09/08/u...
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
I don't think this is correct. For example: if Dems win the '26 elections and yet there are no consequences for GOP lawbreaking, that's not a win. A democracy where one side is allowed to impound funds and try to steal elections without repercussions isn't a democracy.
parker higgins (@xor.blue) reposted
the results so far on congestion pricing in new york have been so outrageously good that opposition to it works as a convenient identifier of unserious buffoons www.reuters.com/world/us/new...
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Also nobody believes that Trump understands enough to actually care about it
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
Thanks to everyone who emailed and called!
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social)
When a legislative provision is this specific, very high likelihood of shady goings-on
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
The people who aren't don't have to live there. It's not like single-family homes will vanish.
Benjamin Schneider (@benschneider.bsky.social) reposted
In the primary, Cuomo distinguished himself from the Democratic field by pledging to protect low-density neighborhoods from development. That kind of NIMBYism is fine if you're a sophisticated mega-developer used to operating under the status quo. benjaminschneider.substack.com/p/cuomo-is-t...
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Somebody who was significantly older than 50 in 2003 would narrow it down a little.
Doug Gordon (@brooklynspoke.bsky.social) reposted
In a different and sane world, the Democratic establishment would be working behind the scenes to get Cuomo and Adams to drop out so the actual Democratic nominee can run away with this thing and claim a big mandate as a very public rebuke to Donald Trump and fascism.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
He's not! He's saying that the only solution to the crisis is endless SFH sprawl. The article as I read it is a warning to libertarians that once market urbanism fails, socialism will take hold.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Kotkin is not at all on the left!
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
This guy is an idiot who's been operating in bad faith on urban issues for decades. He's best ignored IMHO.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
I think the most likely way thisloses is a Sliwa surge, although I'd call it a bargain at 70 cents.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Yeah, I'd imagine that this would shrink the industry by a lot, which seems fine.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
And with limits! It seems like there could be a way to keep normal/small-scale gambling behavior legal, while banning the compulsive people who lose their kids' college funds.
John Pfaff (@johnpfaff.bsky.social) reposted
This reads like a literal police state: no civilian can govern without support of the police. That is not remotely how it should be. But the fact that this is treated as just “how things are” reflects our entrenched view of the police as a baronial class.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Desalination gets a lot easier, which probably has some geopolitical implications that I can't foresee
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
I think this. nypost.com/2021/05/12/s...
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Why is Obama convening a secret summit any different than Bernie assembling a campaign team dedicated specifically to making him the Democratic nominee? That's just doing politics in a primary.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Damn, I hope they start voting for Democrats so we can get them the help they need.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Speed cameras are also actively opted into. If you don't want to be on camera, you should take the bus rather than operating your personal piece of heavy machinery in public with the potential to do serious harm to others.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
Everyone is already carrying a cell phone with GPS.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
The benefits of increased traffic enforcement are worth the extremely marginal increases in surveillance.
Will Stancil (@whstancil.bsky.social) reposted
There‘s probably not a single market in the entire US that’s LESS of a monopoly than housing! The vast, vast majority of sellers are selling exactly one unit
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
I'm not convinced there were even 48 Senate votes for that in 2021 tbh
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
So it's not that I'm opposed to a vacancy tax per se, it's more that it's a sideshow that isn't really helpful.
Dan Miller (@meelar.bsky.social) reply parent
The main benefit of a vacancy tax would be discouraging pied a terres and second homes, but the quantity of those units is pretty small--the estimate I've seen is about 10k units. That's not nothing, but it's nowhere near the quantity we need. www.brickunderground.com/buy/what-is-...