The Berkeley City Council conducted one of their most pointless votes yet: a resolution advocating for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
The city council passed the resolution on Tuesday night, hoping that Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) would follow through on it.
Mayor Jesse Arreguin declared, “Every day there’s a new ethical problem that warrants impeachment.”
Councilwoman Kate Harrison bloviated, “I think it’s going to send a powerful message. I think we have no choice but to do this.”
Of course, Trump hasn’t even been in office for 100 days and has yet do anything worthy of impeachment, so the Berkeley City Council’s resolution is asinine. But it’s certainly not the first asinine resolution the city council has passed. Here are nine more of them.
1. Divesting from the wall. Earlier in March, the Berkeley City Council voted to become the country’s first city to divest from any companies affiliated with building Trump’s wall.
“We as a community do not stand for building walls, but breaking down walls,” Arreguin said. “We’re not going to stand for what I think are racist and xenophobic policies that marginalize our immigrant population.”
A country securing its border isn’t “racist and xenophobic,” it’s taking the necessary steps to remain a sovereign nation.
2. A resolution opposing a 2015 House of Representatives bill to crack down on sanctuary cities. “When you have an attack on a vulnerable community, fair-minded people really need to speak up and stand up and support them,” Councilman Kriss Worthington told the East Bay Express. “I think it’s really important that we have a strong, overwhelming show of opposition to these mean-spirited measures.”
Berkeley, of course, is a sanctuary city. Worthington and the Berkeley City Council’s are apparently blind to the fact that sanctuary cities are a magnet for crime.
3. Increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The $15 mandated minimum wage will go into effect for businesses with over 55 employees by 2018 and will be phased in for businesses with less than 55 employees by 2020. The city council’s vote to do this in November 2015 flies in the face of the fact that higher minimum wages result in less jobs. At least they didn’t take the Labor Commission’s advice to raise the minimum wage to $19 per hour.
4. Banning products with fur from being sold. The city council voted 6-3 to ban the sale of fur goods in Berkeley, with the exception of “cowhide with hair, and sheep or lambskin with fleece.”
“These animals are often victims of cruel conditions that include ‘intense stress, distressed and repetitive movement, self-mutilation, and even cannibalism,” Worthington wrote on his agenda item. “With the availability of countless varieties of adequate fabrics, there is no need for this brutal industry.”
Worthington voted against the measure because he wanted a ban on all fur goods, not the exemptions laid out in the measures.
5. Punishing those who provide short-term rental housing. The measure, which was unanimously approved by the council in July, was focused on enforcing the city’s ban against short-term housing in the wake of people using websites like Airbnb to find places to stay. Landlords who allow their property to be rented for less than two weeks will be penalized under the measure, aimed to prevent property owners from evading rent control and other regulations.
6. Setting limits on the sales of electronic cigarettes. In May of 2015, the city council voted by a margin of 8-1 to ban “the sale of flavored cigarettes, cartridges for electronic cigarettes, and e-cigarettes pre-loaded with cartridges within 1,000 feet of Berkeley schools and parks,” which is not something the government should be getting involved in, especially since e-cigarettes are a better alternative than smoking actual cigarettes.
7. Regulating partying at the University of California Berkeley. Here are the details of these rules, which were approved by the city council in January 2016:
The new rules — which are focused on mini-dorms and housing such as fraternities, sororities and cooperatives, which the city has dubbed “group living accommodations” — would require a “responsible resident” to keep the property tidy, respond to concerns raised by neighbors, and keep a complaint log, among other duties. Annual notices to neighbors within 300 feet would be required to make sure the identity and contact info for the responsible resident is known. Adjacent neighbors would receive 48 hours notice before parties. The city says parties should “generally be limited” to fewer than 200 people.
Regarding drinking: No alcohol would be allowed in bedrooms of those under 21, in common areas where it would be “accessible to persons under the age of 21,” and — in case there was any confusion — “may not be served to any person under the age of 21 years.”
Various exemptions have been created but, generally speaking, group housing with more than 15 residents, and property owners with more than one mini-dorm, would need to comply. Rules about “entertainment events,” e.g. parties, cover events with more than 50 people other than the property’s residents, and include amplified music and the service of alcohol.
The city notes that proposed “closing” times for events (with “10 or more non-residents with alcohol present”) are “no longer binding,” but that music must cease at 10 p.m. weeknights and 1 a.m. weekends.
The city has also said group housing and mini-dorm residents are allowed to create their own equivalent protocols that could be approved by the city in lieu of the new ordinance. Noncompliance with the new rules, or their equivalents, could result in a property being deemed a nuisance, which could trigger an abatement process with the city and also allow for private lawsuits to be filed.
While there are certainly legitimate concerns about housing space and noise complaints, the rules that the city council put forward are onerous and punish students who are being responsible at parties.
8. Requiring cell phone companies to provide information to customers on how they should carry their phone. The measure, passed in May 2015, was intended to minimize customers’ exposure to radiation frequency from their phones as much as possible, despite the lack of an established link between radiation frequency from cell phones and cancer.
9. Spending $1.5 million to crack down on soda. The council allocated money in January 2016 to a campaign to discourage people from drinking soda, another issue which the government really has no business getting involved in.