Berkeley Officials Look to VP Harris for Stimulus Support
During the first round of stimulus negotiations Berkeley lobbied hard for the Three Chai Lattes Tax Credit. Today local coffee merchants are citing greater economic hardship and lobbying Vice President Harris to “help the home team.” Apparently, the comparative lack of political drama coming from the Biden Administration combined with “progressive leaning” stimulus legislation has all but silenced political grievance for now.
For years, political pundits would regularly congregate at Bonita and Vine Street, Shattuck and Hearst and otter popular intersections to decry the state of political affairs at the national level over multiple rounds of coffee. 2016-2020 were a particular boon with 24/7 grievance over the sate of national politics regularly triggered by Twitter feeds and Fox News reports. Coincidently, coffee sales boomed as pundits waxed endlessly over “totalatarian governance,” “corporate tax cuts” and “the right-wing media.”
However, today Berkeley’s Pundit Class along with “media elites,” KPFA and Mother Jones are finding it increasingly challenging to “find the passion we have become accustom to.” One political junkie noted, “it’s just really hard to get triggered by stimulus check for families with children.” Consequently, coffee sales have plummeted as conversation has dried up.
One Berkeley Sociologist from UC Berkeley’s Synthetic Reality Institute suggested the phenomena was creating physiological stress among the pundit class. Referred to as Pundit Mental Stress Syndrome, or PMSS, the condition manifest in middle aged arm chair pundits with serious caffeine addiction. The SRI report noted, “it really make one appreciate the central role complaint based activism plays in our contemporary discourse. Absent, a Boogie Man many progressives find themselves lost in the woods. After years of reflexive criticism, its hard to turn on NPR and find out the issue you have been complaining about all these years are being canceled and your policy aspirations and concerns are being addressed.”
it really make one appreciate the central role complaint based activism plays in our contemporary discourse
SRI Study
One pundit being treated for PMSS stated, “It’s really hard to listen to the news only to find out your support that plan. I mean when complaint based activism is baked into your DNA, it feels really lonely when reasonable things start happening. I mean its not Medicare For All, but it feels like small bore protest these days.”
it feels really lonely when reasonable things start happening
Local Activist
Local officials are hoping Vice President Harris will include near term relief in the stimulus legislation. One local official stated, “look with a centrist Democrat in the White House, it’s just a matter of time before we will be angry about something. We have spent our whole life making the perfect the enemy of the good. We are just looking for a little relief to bridge the gap.”