So Goes California, So Goes the Nation? Let's Hope Not!

By Rich Kozlovich

We really do need to thank politicians in California.  If there ever was a group that deserves to be installed as members of the Club For the Galacticly Stupid, they absolutely qualify, ergo, just do the opposite of what they do, and success will be assured.   

It turns out San Francisco's leaders want to make sure the businesses they've destroyed can't leave or close.  Businesses they don't own, they didn't finance, they didn't sweat over to make a profit.  Businesses that now are dying because of the Democrat's failure to control crime, violence, drugs, bums on the streets, and filth everywhere.  All run by Democrats.  In point of fact these Democrat policies have created this disaster nationwide turning some of the greatest cities in the nation into sewers. 

Eric Revell posted this article on April 7th, San Francisco Proposal Would Allow Lawsuits Over Grocery Store Closures, saying:

Preston’s proposal would require grocery store owners to provide six months written notice to the Board of Supervisors as well as the Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD). The store would also be required to post notices at all entries and exits as a means of informing customers and the general public. The rule wouldn’t preclude closures due to a store being unprofitable.  “It was a good idea in 1984, and it’s an even better idea now,” Preston said in a press release. “Our communities need notice, an opportunity to be heard, and a transition plan when major neighborhood grocery stores plan to shut their doors. Meeting the food security needs of our seniors and families cannot be left to unilateral backroom decisions by massive corporate entities.”

Monica Showalter published this piece on April 8th, San Francisco to allow residents to sue fleeing groceries that don't give six months' notice before closing, saying:

Want more food deserts in San Francisco? Here's how you get more food deserts in San Francisco.........For the poor, that's bad news because all it will do is ensure that new grocery stores don't open. Who'd want to do business in a city that requires six months' notice plus the difficult task of getting a replacement or organizing a food co-op for the 'privilege' of closure when all they want to do is get out?.....Sound like a good place to open a grocery?...... What this monstrous regulation is, is a revenge move by vindictive leftists who will do anything to avoid taking responsibility for the results of their own destructive policies. It's not that stores will stop closing as a result of this new law. It's that new stores will never open.

 If I was the owner I would give them their 60 day notice and the city's six month notice .....today!  I would start transferring shelf product to other stores, stop ordering perishable goods such as milk, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, and meats. After the sixty day notice I would lay off most of the employees allowing just enough personnel to work the store from ten to seven, giving them their eight hours per shift, close on Saturday and Sunday, and only selling canned goods, and packaged products.

I would shut down lanes with permanent barriers until the store wasn't much bigger that a gas station convenience store! If they're losing money, no one can force a company to stay open and lose money, the steel workers found that out in Youngstown back in the seventies. They claimed the steel company couldn't close because the had a contract, and so they had to stay open and continue to lose money. 

The federal court disagreed.

What We're Seeing is Irreversible in America's Major Cities. 
What We're Seeing is Irreversible in America's Major Cities, Part II

As far as the people of San Francisco suffering as a result? Schadenfreude.... they broke it, they bought it.   San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, and more, are toast.   Recognize it, accept it, and get over it, because the disaster they've created is a reality that will take decades to overcome, if ever. 

Everything You Need to Know about San Francisco, in a Single Story

 January 28, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Freedom

What’s the worst-governed city in the United States  

 

• Chicago?
• New York City?
• San Francisco?
• Minneapolis?
• Seattle?
• Detroit? 
  

According to researchers, the answer is none-of-the-above. The right answer is either Riverside, CA or Oakland, CA.

But that doesn’t mean the other cities aren’t doing their best to become the worst.

Today, let’s take a look at San Francisco’s campaign to become America’s worst city. And we have a story that tells you everything you need to know.

In a report for the New York Times, Heather Knight describes how the city can’t even waste money properly.

Noe Valley still needs is a toilet. Fifteen months after city officials were ready to throw a party in the Noe Valley Town Square to celebrate funding for a tiny bathroom with a toilet and sink, nothing but mulch remains in its place. The toilet project broke down the minute taxpayers realized the city was planning an event to celebrate $1.7 million in state funds that local politicians had secured for the lone 150-square-foot structure.

That’s enough to purchase a single-family home in San Francisco — with multiple bathrooms. Even more confounding was the explanation that the tiny bathroom would take two to three years to install because of the city’s labyrinthine permitting and building process. City leaders quickly canceled their potty party, and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California took back the funds. …the episode has illustrated why San Francisco so often gets bogged down by inefficiency. …an army of more than 30,000 city employees with a $14 billion annual budget cannot build a simple bathroom in a reasonable way.

Actually, the reason things can’t get done in a “reasonable way” is in large part because there is “an army of more than 30,000 city employees.”

Those bureaucrats are part of various commissions and panels that get to review and micromanage projects. Which means they make things take longer and they increase costs. Typical government. Typical San Francisco.

P.S. Given the city’s problems with public defecation, you would think San Francisco would try extra hard to build toilets.

P.P.S. Then again, the city has long-standing problems with plumbing.

So, That's What a San Francisco Democrat Thinks Is Causing the City’s Homeless Problem

Matt Vespa  |  December 14, 2023

San Francisco is a wreck. It’s riddled with homeless people, dirty needles, fecal matter over sidewalks, and crime. It’s what happens when far-left Democrats take over. Liberal utopia consists of enabling criminality and living in abject filth, all while property values remain high, thanks to wealthy white progressives who are shielded from most of the mayhem.   It’s also geography vis-à-vis Silicon Valley—where the tech billionaires and their ilk set up shop. But one San Francisco Democrat knew what was causing the city’s homeless crisis: capitalism. It shouldn’t shock anyone that this man is a democratic socialist (via NY Post): 

San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston claimed the city’s homelessness problems were “absolutely the result of capitalism,” and it was “counterproductive” to arrest people openly doing drugs. .......... “I think we have a very, very bloated police budget. All kinds of waste in the police department. I could cut $100 million out of the department,” he said in the interview. ........To Read More....

My Take - More evidence of the "Leftist Liturgy: It's Not My Fault, It's Not My Fault, It's Not My Fault, Amen!"

California Hides Its Shame as Biden and Xi Prepare to Meet

Residents are fired up over Democrats’ double standards.

By Kelli Ballard Nov 14, 2023 @ Liberty Nation News

(Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

Most people take measures to make their homes look presentable when having company over, right? So what do you do if you are a public official preparing to host a summit with China’s President Xi Jinping? “Cleaning house” takes on a whole new meaning in San Francisco, CA, where it involves sweeping the drug addicts under the rug and hiding evidence of the City by the Bay’s overwhelming homelessness and crime. Democrat policymakers are being dubbed hypocritical for temporarily sprucing up the city, as well as building fences to protect those attending the Asia-Pacific-Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference this week.

California Lawmakers Criticized for Double Standards

(Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

California Governor Gavin Newsom surprised many by openly admitting the scrubbing was done to impress the out-of-towners. During a press conference, he said, “I know folks say, ‘Oh they’re just cleaning up this place because all these fancy leaders are coming into town.’ That’s true, because it’s true.”

“The sidewalks in the APEC zone, including sticky and urine-perfumed Van Ness Avenue, have been silver polished on the Eve of APEC,” Sebastian, a San Francisco resident, told California Globe. “Walking along Van Ness Ave today was like walking along twice-a-day-mobbed Orchard Road in Singapore.”

The End Wokeness account on the social media platform X has 1.8 million followers and wrote, “San Francisco’s homeless population was entirely cleared out for Xi Jinping. The Government can easily fix our cities overnight. It just doesn’t want to.”

Of course, while San Francisco officials may try to hide behind street-sweepers and fences, they can’t escape from the crime-ridden morass they’ve created. Local news outlet SFist has already run the headline “First Crime-Related Embarrassment of APEC: Czech News Crew Robbed.” In a poignant illustration of how far the city has fallen, the site reported, “Czech newsman Bohumil Vostal was shooting outside City Lights Bookstore in North Beach when he and his crew were approached by three masked suspects with guns … Sadly, Vostal says he was trying to shoot a segment that would portray San Francisco in a positive light, adding, ‘I’m one of those many people who used to read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and I was so much looking forward to visit your city.'”

Black metal fenced barricades have been constructed outside the Moscone Center, where the conference will take place. In a city already choked with traffic, streets will be closed, some buses won’t be running, and parking is eliminated within the area. Residents in the APEC security zone must pass through security checks from Nov. 14 – 18 just to go home, according to Sebastian. He added:

“They are essentially locking the dignitaries up to keep them from discovering just how bad and dangerous the town is. And these are the Democrats who say that border fencing doesn’t work. The same leftists that claim that fences and walls do not work and are inhumane are the same leftists that live behind fences and walls.

Asians Against Wokeness posted on X about the city’s wall, saying, “Woke liberals fear/respect Xi Daddy more than their fellow Americans. Soft core authoritarians fear/respect hardcore authoritarians.”

Another X account, Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng, who writes about China and has 244,300 followers, posted, “U.S. taxpayers’ money is being used to protect the ‘safety’ of a communist dictator, suppressing the voices of the public living in America.”

Meetings with Chinese President

President Joe Biden will be meeting with Xi on Wednesday, Nov. 15, to discuss “issues in the U.S.-PRC [People’s Republic of China] bilateral relationship, the continued importance of maintaining open lines of communication, and a range of regional and global issues,” the White House announced. “[T]he Leaders will also discuss how the United States and the PRC can continue to responsibly manage competition and work together where our interests align, particularly on transnational challenges that affect the international community.”

Newsom also met with Xi recently, traveling to China in October to discuss matters of climate control and a shared partnership. The governor’s office wrote on X at the time:

“The only way we can solve the climate crisis is to continue our long-standing cooperation with China. As two of the world’s largest economies, the work we do together is felt in countless communities on both sides of the Pacific.

“Despite major differences, we share our humanity – our desire to feel protected, connected and respected is universal – and that humanity is what should drive us to work together to stop the greatest existential threat our planet has ever known.”

(Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Despite Newsom’s evident hopes when it comes to building relations with China, APEC has angered a broad swath of political activists – for all sorts of reasons.

A protest on Sunday, Nov. 12, had thousands of people demonstrating against the conference. Those in attendance included Palestinian liberation advocates, climate change activists, and anti-capitalist organizations, who packed the Embarcadero Plaza and marched up Market Street toward the Moscone Center.

“The U.S. is attempting to push free trade policies in the Asia Pacific Rim. And we see a history of those policies being detrimental to workers’ rights and the environment,” said Narissa Lee, representative of the No to APEC Coalition.

California lawmakers such as Newsom and Nancy Pelosi have been strong advocates against a border wall, calling it inhumane and ineffective, yet when it comes to protecting themselves, dignitaries, and most importantly, their carefully cultivated facade of competence and good governance, those barriers become the most necessary of evils.

Tags:  | Articles, Good Reads, Opinion, Politic

 

Read More From Kelli Ballard

The Bay Area is sinking into the abyss

May 9, 2023 By Andrea Widburg

Last month, Whole Foods shut down a year-old flagship store it had opened in downtown San Francisco. Two weeks later, word broke that Nordstrom, the Seattle-based, high-end retailer that had a major presence in downtown San Francisco was shutting down both its Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack stores. Today, news broke that T-Mobile is pulling out, too. It’s a retail exodus that is obviously bad for San Francisco. Significantly, it turns out that other Bay Area downtowns are imploding, as well.  The Whole Foods store shut down because the crime plaguing it was unsustainable, in terms of profits and worker safety. The same held true for the Nordstrom pullout:............

The latest major retailer to join the downtown San Francisco exodus is T-Mobile, which had a 17,000-square-foot store in Union Square, the heart of downtown San Francisco’s hotel and real estate district. T-Mobile hasn’t said why it decided to close the store, other than a “reshaped…retail strategy,” but it’s easy to guess that crime played a part.  After all, to stay afloat in San Francisco, a Target store had to put everything behind glass:..........To Read More

Los Angeles area cop families file a very strong wrongful death suits against George Gascon in the deaths of two officers - May 9, 2023 By Monica Showalter -  Is there a ray of hope for Los Angeles County? Up until now, Soros-backed district attorney George Gascon, has unleashed criminals onto the county without consequences. There are zero consequences for Gascon, for sure, nor are there any for his elite sponsors, and certainly none for the bad guys. Only the little guys -- civilian and police -- pay for this clown's lawless, leftist agenda as criminals are set free to continue their crime sprees. But now we see a lawsuit, from the family of a slain El Monte police officer who had been killed by a habitual dirtbag who belonged behind bars and wasn't put there, and it looks strong enough to win: According to Law.com (subscription, but first article free):.........

Gavin Newsom Calls In National Guard To San Francisco: “Increasing law enforcement presence to improve public safety and public confidence in San Francisco”

David Hawkins April 22, 2023

California Governor Gavin Newsom called in the National Guard to help clean up San Francisco in a shocking turn of events. Newsom announced a new partnership with the California Highway Patrol (CHP), California National Guard (CalGuard), San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), and the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office (SFDA) to deal with the fentanyl crisis.

Newsom said the agreement between all four agencies will focus on “dismantling fentanyl trafficking and disrupting the supply of the deadly drug in the city by holding the operators of large-scale drug trafficking operations accountable.”

He continued: “Two truths can coexist at the same time: San Francisco’s violent crime rate is below comparably sized cities like Jacksonville and Fort Worth—and there is also more we must do to address public safety concerns, especially the fentanyl crisis........To Read More...

Time to Move on and Let Democrat Voters Do Themselves In

Derek Hunter Apr 06, 2023

It’s not nice to say, it’s not something I relish in saying, but you can only do so much to protect people from themselves. You can keep bad people away from good ones, but sooner or later, if they’re really intent on being around bad people and bad things, they will find a way. When that happens, you have to throw up your hands and walk away. That’s what we have to do for Americans in Democrat controlled cities – sadly, we have to let them deal with the consequences of who they voted for.

There isn’t a left-wing city in the country that runs risk of electing a Republican, even though the last time one did – New York City with Rudy Giuliani – it worked our really well for them as it made the city livable, cleaned up the streets and lowered crime across the board. With that as an example, no other city followed suit. Oh well, to hell with them.

I get that deep-blue cities aren’t likely to elect Republicans ever, but when presented with the opportunity to choose between a rabid, anti-American, racist, Marxist lunatic and what used to be a run of the mill moderate Democrat, the voters there chose crazy; they chose damaging. When people elect someone who will care more about the criminals than their victims, why would you have sympathy for those people?

Chicago just elected a committed Marxist, a racist piece of garbage who never met a white person he wouldn’t blame for anything – the personification of Critical Race Theory. Soft on crime doesn’t capture the reality of the situation. .............. To Read More...

• Career Criminal’ Accused of Stabbing Woman 22+ Times in D.C. Hotel Room While Out on Bond - A 43-year-old man has been accused of stabbing a 31-year-old woman to death Friday in a Washington, DC, hotel room while he was out on bond for another charge, having allegedly been found in the room covered in the woman’s blood, according to court documents. Citing court documents, WJLA reported George Sydnor Jr., 43, is being held without bond after allegedly stabbing Christy Bautista, 31, of Virginia at least 22 times...............
• Study: Over 72% of NYC Violent Crime Suspects Freed Without Bail Go On to Commit More Crimes - Felony suspects released without bail thanks to New York’s bail reform law are more likely to be rearrested for more felonies, including violent crimes, than suspects who were given bail before the law went into effect..........
• Chicago proves that FDR was correct about public unions, By Silvio Canto, Jr.  April 7, 2023- Up in Chicago, the teachers union won big and I don't mean that test scores or literacy is on the rise.  The got their man elected and who knows what happens next.  I would not be surprised if a few Chicago residents are looking at a "zip code change."   Years ago, our family would drive down to Chicago from our early days in Wisconsin to get stuff at a Cuban "bodega." We'd listen to Larry Lujack on WLS and drive home listening to the White Sox on WMAQ.  My parents complimented the clean streets, the order everywhere, and the police were so pleasant at giving you directions when we used maps rather than GPS. Going to Chicago was great. Well, I don't think that my parents would be complimenting Chicago today. Talk about decline. This is from Charles Lipson: .............  
• Self-defense has vanished in Austin, Texas (UPDATED) April 8, 2023 By  Andrea Widburg - (See the update at the end of this post). The Founders stated very clearly in the Declaration of Independence that all humans possess the inherent right to life. When they ratified the Bill of Rights, they inextricably intertwined that right to life with the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. That amendment has no meaning if it does not include the right to self-defense. However, in the People’s Republic of Austin, Texas, which is controlled by a Soros-funded prosecutor, Sgt. Daniel Perry discovered that his inherent right to defend himself no longer exists. The only thing that will save him from years in prison (which is true even if he appeals) is Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s announcement that he will immediately pardon Perry.........

'Violent Crime in SF Is Horrific': Musk Responds to Murder of Tech Executive in the City

Leah Barkoukis April 06, 2023 

Cash App founder Bob Lee was fatally stabbed in San Francisco early Tuesday morning in the Rincon Hill neighborhood, months after moving his family to Florida because of the “deteriorating” conditions in the city.   Lee, a father of two, was attacked while walking in Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s district around 2:30 A.M., San Francisco police said. First responders administered aid but he died after being taken to the hospital.   San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins extended condolences to the tech executive's family and said such “horrific acts of violence” in the city will not be tolerated............... No arrests have been made in connection to the deadly assault.  Entrepreneur Elon Musk responded to a friend of Lee’s, who said he was walking in the “good” part of the city “and appeared to have been targeted in a random mugging/attack.” ...........To Read More.....

 

• San Francisco's ruling elites go all 'Chesa Boudin' on crime in wake of tech executive's killing April 6, 2023 They're telling the alarmed local tech community that the crime they see all around them is just "perceptions," or "statistically insignificant" or a right-wing political agenda, and it's all in their heads............. But instead of confronting this complete breakdown in law and order, the ruling elites of San Franciso are trying to make light of it. Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who has a headquarters walking distance from where Lee was stabbed, made this pointed tweet about it:..............The response? Get a load of this goober, who serves as a "police commissioner" in the city:............

San Francisco, RIP?

April 4, 2023 by John Hinderaker in California, Crime, Liberals

My introduction to San Francisco came in the late 1970s, when I spent a lot of time there as a young lawyer. For a Midwestern guy, the San Francisco of that era was a revelation: great restaurants, famous hotels on Nob Hill, fog drifting in off the Bay. But today’s San Francisco is, sadly, something else.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a long, long article about the city’s demise: “Downtown S.F. on the brink: It’s worse than it looks.” And it looks really bad. The numbers are grim:..........To Read More.... 

The Only Thing Better Than Watching A Liberal Eat Their Words Is Watching Them Choke On Them

Wake up San Francisco, while there are still some clean spots on your sidewalks and people willing to stick around to walk on them

By Milt Harris ——Bio and Archives--March 22, 2023

Liberal policies are failing everywhere. When they do It is absolutely necessary to shine a bright light upon the failures so maybe, just maybe voters will stop electing these ideological screwballs into office. Out in feces covered San Francisco, the City Supervisor Hillary Ronen, is now not just eating her words she’s choking on them. Obviously, Ronen has never heard the quote, “Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it,” but then again she graduated from Berkley, so it’s understandable.

Ronen first took office in 2017 and was then re-elected in November of 2020. While she was in office, she hitched her wagon to the George Soros backed District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who based his 2019 campaign almost entirely on what this idiot believed was justice reform. Boudin promised to end mass incarceration, to end cash bail, to establish a unit to review alleged wrongful convictions, to aggressively prosecute police misconduct, and to refuse to provide any assistance to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials...............

For conservatives, it’s hard to imagine that someone can be this blind and tone deaf, and yet it comes so natural to the Marxist left..............At a Budget and Appropriations Committee meeting last week, Ronen unbelievably tried to spin her woke recklessness on the very police force she verbally denigrated and crippled financially.

“I’ve been begging this department to give Mission what it deserves in terms of police presence all year long and I’ve been told time and time again there are no officers that we can send to Mission..........It Hurts and I feel betrayed by the department. I feel betrayed by the mayor. I feel betrayed by the priorities of the city.”

 To Read More...

This story of San Francisco’s continuing degradation hits close to home

By Andrea Widburg

I grew up in San Francisco’s Sunset District, a once thriving working- and lower-middle-class neighborhood. An important place in that neighborhood was Stonestown, one of America’s first shopping malls, where generations of children shopped with their mothers and, when older, hung out on their own. It was safe, and there was food. Today, as San Francisco’s government continues its commitment to social Marxism, Stonestown is turning into a violent gang hangout, making it a microcosm of what’s happening to leftist cities across America.

Before World War II, San Francisco’s southwest corner was mostly undeveloped. There were vacation homes there because of the beach proximity, and some rumrunners’ houses, with secret garages, were built well up in the sand dunes.

In the mid-1920s, though, Henry Doelger started developing the entire region, with neighborhoods known as the Sunset and Westlake filling in the sand dunes with rows of well-built single-family homes. That stopped during World War II but resumed with a bang after the war ended because of the demand for homes from America’s Baby Boom families.............. To Read More....

Daniel Greenfield Unleashed

By Rich Kozlovich 

Once again Daniel Greenfield covers all the bases dealing with the incompetence of Democrats, the Biden administration, the Biden Crime Family, corruption of the media, academic stupidity and insanity, the folly of affirmative action, failure of all these leftists to grasp fundamental understanding of basic values and the consequences of that failure.  

Leftism is the real plague the world is facing, not covid, and it's far deadlier than any plague that impacted humanity, and killed, impoverished, and brutalized more people than any system that ever existed throughout all of history.  

We're now facing The Inevitability Factor!  That's when the awfulness of these delusional policy decisions reaches its apex and finally forces everyone to come face to face with reality.  We need to accept there really is good and evil in the world.  There really is such a thing as right and wrong.  There really is such a thing as "normal", a reality the left wishes to destroy that way there can be no such thing as abnormal.  

We really do need to get that!

San Fran Board of Supervisors Endorses Race Reparations to Cost Each Non-Black Family $600,000 - Supervisors said they were surprised to hear pushback from politically liberal San Franciscans. The slave state of San Francisco is moving forward on a plan to pay reparations for generations of slavery under the Bay Area Confederacy. And all it will take is $600,000 from every non-black family in the area. The cost, “presented on a per-household basis, will be nearly $600,000 per non–African American San Francisco household.”  And that’s a conservative estimate........

50% of Americans Says the Media Deliberately Misleads - Only 25% believe that the mainstream media are not out to lie to them.  In the last 5 years, the media claimed that we were in a crisis of “misinformation” and appointed themselves as the nation’s fact checkers, censoring social media and determining what people could and couldn’t say.  Awkwardly, very few Americans trust the media and 50% believe the media is lying to them........

Media Confirms Memphis Police Killing Caused by Affirmative Action - Memphis academy instructors said the racial dynamics ruled out disciplinary measures. Democrats and their media claimed that 5 black officers getting into a violent confrontation with a black suspect that ended in his death was somehow about systemic racism. Police sources said it was about affirmative action promoting people who were unfit to be cops. After refusing to even address the question, the Washington Post has an in-depth report that essentially confirms what police sources were saying...........

Wellesley Shows the Trans Agenda is About Getting Rid of Women - “I’ve been booed at public gatherings where I’ve referred to Wellesley as a women’s college". Wellesley College used to be a women’s college. Then it announced that it would let in any man pretending to be a woman. All Wellesley asked was that he at least do the bare minimum to pretend he’s a woman. The current policy is that “Wellesley invites applications from all those who live as women and consistently identify as women”. Paradoxically that means that men who falsely claim to be something called “trans women” are welcome, but women who actually are women, but suffer from the delusion that they are “trans men” are barred from the college. But that’s not enough. The trans agenda is about eliminating women...........

This is What Happens When Politicians Can’t Tell Reality from Fantasy - Newark became a "sister city" with an Indian nation that doesn't actually exist. Cargo cult politics briefly collided with reality in Newark, New Jersey. A bilateral agreement was signed with the United States on January 11 to recognize Kailash. United Kailash and Newark City, New Jersey, United States of America signed a “Bilateral Code of Ethics Agreement” at the Newark City Hall. Permanent Ambassador of Kailash to UN Vijayapriya Nithyananda, Mayor Baraka, Deputy Mayor Defreitas and others participated in this function. Also, representatives of Kailash from New Jersey were also present. Agreements were signed on mutual assistance in dealing with the impacts of disaster, climate change, etc., and on issues of public interest such as mental health issues, violence, poverty, illiteracy, etc. Awkwardly, Kaliash turned out not to exist..............Should Baraka or whatever politically connected idiots he hired have realized that Kailasa doesn’t exist? I doubt they cared. Their grasp of the world is mostly limited and Kailasa had all the right credentials, like climate change, mental health issues. In a cargo cult culture, the right virtue signaling is more important than actually engaging with reality. If men can be women and deficit spending is investing, the boundaries of reality become very porous and imaginary countries can easily fall through them..............

 The Pedophile Behind Prison Abolition - Foucault, who sexually abused 8-year-olds, advocated for pedophiles. When Angela Davis, a domestic terrorist, wrote, “Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition”, she began by extensively citing an ex-Marxist French philosopher. “Michel Foucault’s ‘Discipline and Punish’ is arguably the most influential text in contemporary studies of the prison system,” she argued while crediting herself with an analysis of the “racial implications” of his ideas. There is a straight line that runs from Foucault and Davis to the “prison abolition” movement that in its mildest form encompasses police defunding and reducing penalties for offenses and diverting criminals away from prison, and to proposals like Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s BREATHE Act that would create a “roadmap for prison abolition,” with the “full decarceration of federal detention facilities within 10 years”.......

Biden Denies Lifesaving Road to Alaskan Indians - “I sat there in labor not knowing if I was going to die or my kid was going to die."You may recall this story from a decade ago. It was one of the many disgraces of the disgraceful Obama administration. In one of Alaska’s most remote outposts, where a thousand hardy souls make their homes, the Obama administration has put the fate of birds and bears above the lives of people, blocking construction of an 11-mile gravel trail connecting a tiny fishing hamlet to a life-saving airport. King Cove has a clinic, but no hospital or doctor. Residents must fly 600 miles to Anchorage, via Cold Bay’s World War II airstrip, for most medical procedures including serious trauma cases and childbirth. Frequent gale-force winds and thick fog often delay or jeopardize medevac flights........ 

Cultural Collapse is Killing More Americans Than Anything Else - The death rate of youngsters ages 1 to 19 rose 20% in the three-year span - Suicide rates, overdoses, shooting sprees, gang violence: they’re all different ways of saying that a lot of people see no purpose in going on living. It’s hitting the youngest generation the hardest. Deaths of American children and teens spiked between 2019 and 2021, the result of increased car wrecks, shootings and drug overdoses, according to a Virginia Commonwealth University survey of federal data published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association....... 

Workplace Political Discrimination is a Civil Rights Crisis- 1 in 4 say they know someone who has suffered at work over their politics. Federal, state and municipal governments relentlessly pursue workplace discrimination, but none of them address the most pervasive form of workplace discrimination in America. Political discrimination or viewpoint discrimination is everywhere. And yet at a time when workplaces impose unconscious bias tests to target racial prejudice and other forms of discrimination, few corporations look for viewpoint discrimination. Some even mandate it in their HR procedures which systematically discriminate against conservatives. Meanwhile the problem appears to have worsened over the last 4 years..........

Gen. Milley Won’t Stop Russia From Retrieving U.S. Drone Wreckage - The profiles in courage just keep coming. The profiles in courage just keep coming.Three U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence said the highest levels of the Kremlin approved the aggressive actions of Russian military fighter jets against a U.S. military drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday.The Russian jets dropped jet fuel on the MQ-9 Reaper, an unprecedented action, and two of the officials said the intelligence suggests the intent seemed to be to throw the drone off course or disable its surveillance capabilities.It was “Russian leadership’s intention to be aggressive in the intercept,” said one of the officials.Russia then followed that up by announcing it was going to retrieve the wreckage to count coup and gain whatever intel they liked..........

SVB Hired Major Biden Donor to Help its “Liquidity Crisis” - And he talked to Biden's deputy treasury secretary. It helps to know the right people. And Silicon Valley Bank had hired someone close to the ‘Big Guy’. A dramatic government intervention seemed unlikely on Thursday evening, when Peter Orszag, former President Barack Obama’s first budget director and now chief executive of financial advisory at the bank Lazard, hosted a previously scheduled dinner at the bank’s offices in New York City’s Rockefeller Center. Among those in attendance were Mr. Adeyemo (Biden’s deputy treasury secretary)… Blair Effron, a large Democratic donor whose firm, Centerview Partners, had just been hired by Silicon Valley Bank to advise it on its liquidity crunch, was also there. Mr. Effron and Mr. Adeyemo spoke as it became evident that Silicon Valley Bank was running out of options and that a sale — or some bigger intervention — might be necessary. The New York Times story, “How Washington Decided to Rescue Silicon Valley Bank’s Depositors” is a bit vague about who Blair Effron is............  

7 Senate GOPers Helped Make Disgraced LA Mayor an Ambassador - Republicans could have killed a major Biden nomination.This vote was one of those cases where Republicans could have killed a major Biden nomination. Nominating former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti as ambassador to India was an insult to an important ally and a clear payback to special interests. The claims that he know about sexual harassment allegations had split the Democrats. After years of trying, the nomination passed by a narrow 52-42 margin. Thanks to Senator Lindsey Graham and a few GOPers............  

Biden Family Got Over $1M in Chinese Wire Payments- The total money transferred adds up to $1,065,692. The House Oversight Committee is digging into the Biden family business. Its latest revelations raise some interesting questions. The Oversight Committee stated that, “Bank records we’ve obtained reveal Rob Walker, a Biden family associate, used his company to transfer money from a Chinese energy company to Hunter Biden, James Biden, Hallie Biden, and an unknown Biden.” “Specifically, on March 1, 2017 – less than two months after VP Joe Biden left public office – Robinson Walker, LLC received a $3 million wire from State Energy HK Limited, a Chinese company...........

SVB Went Woke, Then Broke, Then Got a Bailout- Americans can’t afford food, but leftist and Chinese companies get bailed out. Silicon Valley Bank spent billions on green energy, millions on Black Lives Matter and other leftist causes, until it finally ran out of ‘other people’s money’. That’s when the Biden administration decided to bail out its depositors. At a dinner hosted by Peter Orszag, Obama’s former budget director, Wally Adeyemo, Obama’s Nigerian assistant treasury secretary and Biden’s deputy treasury secretary, chatted with Blair Effron, an influential Biden donor, serving on Biden’s Intelligence Advisory Board, who had been hired as an advisor by SVB to deal with its financial crisis. The outcome was inevitable. “Because of the actions that our regulators have already taken, every American should feel confident that their deposits will be there if and when they need them,” Biden lied. The deposits of ordinary Americans were already protected up to $250,000................

Socialist Politicians Make the Worst Bosses- "Foaming, spitting, uncontrollable rage”. It never fails. Leftists claim to campaign for workers, yet treat them like garbage. Despite the millions of dollars he commands, he historically paid his professional staff less than minimum wage. Nader, who told Business Week during the last campaign that he offers staff “unlimited sick leave,” ordered staffer George Riley to take a two-week leave of absence to work on a political campaign, refusing him to pay for the time. When I worked for Ralph Nader in 1980-81, he paid us $8,000 a year, hardly enough to get by on even then. We could scarcely afford the time to spend money, though, because Nader expected staff to work around the clock. Staff turned over rapidly. Few people could stand the hours, pay and abuse for more than a year or two. Or Bernie Sanders............ 

Facebook Hired Minorities and Paid Them Not to Work- "We were just sitting there". In the last 5 years, Big Tech firms came under heavy pressure to publicize the racial and gender demographics of their workforce and to improve their numbers. That’s hard when your workforce is mostly white, Asian and Indian. This story may shed some light on how Facebook went about improving its numbers. Meta (Facebook), like other tech companies, went on a hiring bonanza during the pandemic, as it faced enormous demand for its products and services while people were stuck inside. Meta said it had 44,942 employees on December 31, 2019. By the end of 2021, the company listed 71,970 employees in its annual report and wrote it “expect[ed] headcount growth to continue for the foreseeable future.” Meta then said that 2023 was going to be a “year of efficiency” after laying off 11,000 people in November. The company announced more layoffs this week that will affect another 10,000 people.........

Chicago’s Downward Spiral

January 10, 2023 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

It’s not easy to identify America’s worst-governed city. You can make a case for jurisdictions such as San Francisco, Detroit, New York City, Minneapolis, or Seattle.

 

For what it’s worth, there is statistical research from last decade showing places like New York and Los Angeles are among the worst of the worst, but I wonder if Chicago actually deserves top billing

There are many reasons to criticize the Windy City. Crime is rampant, taxes are excessive, and schools are terrible.

And, to make matters worse, Chicago is in America’s worst-governed state (at least based on my poll, which is not scientific but is probably accurate).

I already wrote once about bad public policy in Chicago. Today’s column is going to show that things are getting even worse.

I’ve written about how taxpayers are fleeing poorly governed states. Well, they’re also fleeing poorly governed cities. And the AP reports that Chicago is a popular place for companies…to leave.

The Chicago area saw an exodus of corporate headquarters in 2022, including investment firm Citadel, which moved to Miami along with its billionaire founder, Ken Griffin; Caterpillar, which relocated from north suburban Deerfield to Irving, Texas; and aerospace giant Boeing, which moved to Arlington, Virginia, after more than 20 years in the West Loop. The most recent high-profile departure was announced in November, when Lake Forest-based auto parts manufacturer Tenneco said it was shifting its headquarters to Michigan. …vacancy rates in the central business district rose to 19.6%, while the Chicago metro ticked up to 21.8%… Meanwhile, Citadel principals and employees generated billions of dollars in tax revenue for the city and state over the past decade, according to the firm, money that has also headed south.

And why are businesses escaping?

As Adam Schuster explained last October in National Review, the city’s economic management is getting worse.

Can anything be done to save the financial future of one of America’s largest and best cities? …Let’s go through the numbers. The business community is right that a property-tax increase is unnecessary considering the $3.5 billion in pandemic-related federal aid. ..The property-tax hike could be prevented by using just 2.5 percent of Chicago’s $1.9 billion in American Rescue Plan funding. But instead of using the aid to prevent tax hikes that would impede Chicago’s economic recovery, the city has proposed to use those billions to create new programs. The mayor’s proposed budget increases spending by roughly $1.2 billion… Unfortunately, that spending is propped up by one-time federal aid that expires by 2024 — meaning many programs will have to be…financed with significant tax hikes within just two years. And about those pensions: Pension costs will consume more than $2.3 billion of the city’s budget, or 21.4 percent of its own source revenue, excluding state and federal grants. That’s more than a $967 million increase in pension spending since Lightfoot became mayor and $461 million more than last year alone.

In other words, the city is trying to raise taxes today while also making decisions (especially regarding unfunded pensions) that will almost surely mean additional tax increases in the future.

No wonder people and business are fleeing the state and the city.

P.S. To make matters worse, Chicago still has major problems with corruption.

P.P.S. My long-run fear is that politicians in DC will provide bailouts for profligate cities and states.

In Case San Francisco Doesn’t Disgust You Enough, Human Sewage Runoff Causes Mass Fish Kill in the Bay

By Mary Villareal September 10, 2022

 

It will cost the San Francisco government around $14 billion to upgrade their aging wastewater facilities that are dumping nutrients from treated human sewage into the Bay Area. Currently, wastewater is feeding a giant algae bloom, which has lingered for two months and has killed tens of thousands of fish.  The algae bloom started appearing in late July but have since grown due to the number of nutrients from the urine and feces of the eight million Bay Area residents that are released into the water daily. One plant alone dumps 85 million gallons a day containing around 5.5 tons of nitrogen.

Scientists say the bloom was triggered by climate change, but its size, amount of organisms and how long it has lasted so far are due to human waste. It has resulted in the death of up to 10,000 fish that were suffocated by the algae covering the bay.  No sewage leaks had been found from the 37 plants in the area................To Read More......

 My Take - This is the state that forced farmers out of business by diverting water they needed in order to save the delta smelt.  Imagine that! 

Latest Progressive Policy Disaster: Homelessness In San Francisco

April 29, 2022 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

Three and a half years ago, in November 2018, the good people of San Francisco enacted by a referendum called Proposition C a new special corporate payroll tax which would raise multiple hundred million dollars per year for the specific purpose of finally and once and for all solving the problem of homelessness. During the run-up to that referendum, in October 2018, I had two posts discussing Proposition C, the nature of the progressive thinking behind it, and its prospects for success. On October 26 it was “The Morality Of Our Progressive Elite”; and on October 30 it was “More On The Morality Of Our Progressive Elite.”

Toward the end of that second post, I posed this question: “[What are] the prospects that San Francisco’s new $300 million might actually reduce the population deemed ‘homeless’?” My answer was: “Right around zero.”

In the intervening three plus years, I have from time to time checked back to see how it was going with San Francisco’s great project to end homelessness. But up until now I haven’t been able to find good information. Among other issues, the implementation of the new tax was delayed for two years by litigation. However, the information drought on this subject has now ended. On April 26 the San Francisco Chronicle ran a big feature article on the subject, with the headline “Broken Homes” (behind paywall). On April 28, that article was then reviewed and commented on by Steven Hayward at PowerLine (“California’s Ongoing Suicide Attempt”), and by Erica Sandberg at the City Journal (“San Francisco’s Housing First Nightmare”).

And the answer is: The results are far, far worse than mere failure to reduce the population deemed homeless. Since 2018 San Francisco’s spending on the homeless has soared by approximately a factor of four. But meanwhile the number of people deemed homeless has increased by somewhere between 47% and more than 250% (depending on what data you believe for the number of homeless in SF back in 2017). And, at least if you accept the Chronicle’s current reporting, the conditions under which the homeless live have seriously deteriorated. It is an epic disaster of progressive public policy.

How could everything have gone so terribly wrong?

Let’s begin by reviewing where we were back in 2018. The occasion for my October 26, 2018 post was that an op-ed had appeared in the New York Times on October 24 advocating for the passage of Proposition C, and raising some $300 million annually of incremental tax money, as a matter of basic morality. The headline was “The Social Responsibility of Business,” and the author was Marc Benioff. (In case you don’t recognize the name, Mr. Benioff is the founder of salesforce.com, and at the time in 2018 his net worth was estimated as around $6 billion (today it’s more like $8 billion)). Although his personal wealth would have been more than sufficient to fund the $300 million annually should he have chosen to do so, Mr. Benioff argued in his op-ed that the funding should be imposed as a matter of tax obligation on all of the City’s larger businesses:

The business of business is no longer merely business. . . . It’s time for the wealthiest businesses and business owners to step up and give back to the most vulnerable among us.

In the op-ed, Mr. Benioff used a figure for the then homeless population of San Francisco as 7500. For that number Benioff cited to this official San Francisco government report titled “San Francisco 2017 Homeless Count & Survey.” (Go to page 12 of that Report and you will find that they give the very precise figure of 7,499.)

And to those objecting that these kinds of government spending programs never work and always make the problem at hand worse, Mr. Benioff was ready with the answer:

Under a comprehensive plan developed by experts in the field, this new funding would address this crisis from every angle. It would provide more bathrooms, so that people wouldn’t have to relieve themselves on city streets. More than 1,000 new shelter beds. Up to $75 million to treat the severely mentally ill. Up to $150 million for 4,000 additional units of housing, including for youth and families with children. And assistance or subsidies to help thousands of residents stay in their homes — to help prevent San Franciscans from becoming homeless in the first place.

We have a “comprehensive plan.” It has been “developed by experts.” It addresses the problem of homelessness “from every angle.” Obviously, it will work. How could it not?

With that, let’s move to the latest data as reported in the Chronicle (via Hayward at PowerLine). Here is the chart:

The number of homeless is now given as 19,086 for 2020, the latest year available. If the number of 7,499 provided in that very official-looking Report for 2017 were accurate, the 19,086 in 2020 would represent an increase of some 254%. Oh, but they now give a figure for 2017 of 13,014. And how did the number of homeless in San Francisco five years ago suddenly nearly double? I can’t find any explanation for that. It would not be the first instance of bureaucrats changing the data of the past in order to make themselves look better in the present. (See, e.g., my series on The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time.). And even if you believe the new figure of 13,014 homeless for 2017, there would still have been an increase of some 47% to get to the most recent count of 19,086.

And meanwhile the spending has gone completely wild. The $300 million of Prop C funds added to 2018 spending of $285 million would have brought total spending to around $585 million; but the chart says that the Department of Homelessness budget actually soared all the way to $1.1 billion by 2021. And according to the note, they apparently didn’t even use the Prop C funds, but instead those funds were “put on reserve” while a gusher of federal “Covid-19” money flooded in. If the number of homeless in 2021 remained at the 2020 figure of 19,086, the $1.1 billion of spending in 2021 would represent almost $58,000 per homeless person, or $232,000 for a family of four. Even if the number of homeless experienced another significant increase in 2021 (highly likely), the spending would still likely represent well over $50,000 per homeless person.

For that kind of money, at least San Francisco should surely be able to buy decent housing accommodations for the homeless people. And indeed, the principal idea behind Prop C and the massive increase in spending was a so-called “housing first” policy, where the problem of homelessness was to be instantly solved by the simple device of providing the housing that the homeless people lacked.

But in fact, it turns out that the conditions under which San Francisco’s homeless live are more squalid than ever. Indeed, the terrible conditions of the housing are the chief focus of the Chronicle piece, as well as of the reviews by Hayward at PowerLine and Sandberg at the City Journal. From the Chronicle:

But because San Francisco leaders have for years neglected the hotels and failed to meaningfully regulate the nonprofits that operate them, many of the buildings — which house roughly 6,000 people — have descended into a pattern of chaos, crime and death, the investigation found. Critically, the homelessness crisis in San Francisco has worsened. . . At least 166 people fatally overdosed in city-funded hotels in 2020 and 2021 — 14% of all confirmed overdose deaths in San Francisco, though the buildings housed less than 1% of the city’s population. The Chronicle compiled its own database of fatal overdoses, cross-referencing records from the medical examiner’s office with supportive housing SRO addresses, because HSH said it did not comprehensively track overdoses in its buildings. Residents have threatened to kill staff members, chased them with metal pipes and lit fires inside rooms, incident reports show.

From Sandberg at the City Journal:

A long-term SRO resident who wishes to remain anonymous notes the lack of oversight and accountability. “The Departments of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and Public Health are in violation of housing rights and human rights,” she says. “Supportive housing? There is no support. DPH could give a rat’s ass about health. If you’re a woman, your life will be a living hell. No one cares. High functioning people regress. Some want to stay sober, but they can’t. Eventually they pick up a pipe again because almost everyone around them is using.”

There was never any real question about where this was headed. The fact is and always will be that a government bureaucracy tasked with solving a social problem will never solve the problem, and instead will manipulate the problem to increase so as to justify ever increasing amounts of staff and funding for the bureaucracy. Sorry, Mr. Benioff. You may be a very smart guy, and you may be very good at starting and growing a tech company and making a billionaire of yourself. But you don’t understand the first thing about how government spending on social programs works. In that, you have plenty of company from the whole world of progressives and leftists.

 

San Francisco’s Out of Control Crime No Longer Deniable

March 21, 2022 — Steven Hayward

 

The Wall Street Journal is out this morning with a long feature about out-of-control crime in San Francisco. It is no longer possible to obfuscate the problem. Terry Asten Bennett’s family has been running Cliff’s Variety Store since 1936. In all that time, they’ve never experienced the amount of burglaries and property damage that they have recently, Ms. Bennett said. Thieves smashed a display window and broke down a door » Read more..

 

Slow-Motion Suicide in San Francisco

The city is carrying out a bizarre medical experiment in which they are helping homeless drug addicts use drugs. ‘It’s handing a loaded gun to a suicidal person. 

Michael Shellenberger February 7, 2022

Homeless men sleep on Larkin Street in June 2019. (Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

At this point all I can say is: go and see it. Over the past two years, more than 1,360 people have died from drug overdoses in San Francisco. That is more than double the number who have died from Covid.  But you don’t need more stats. You don’t need more numbers about how the tent encampments are exploding. Or about the amount of money that the city is paying for each person doing drugs on the sidewalks. You need to see it.

I’m serious. Everyone in San Francisco should make a trip downtown. Walk around. And do not avert your eyes to the people dying slowly on the streets. The politicians that run my hometown are relying on you not noticing what’s going on because it’s been bad for so long and who cares if it gets a little worse. Don’t let them. Go see it.  The city is using intimidation. They used it on me when I went to see what was going on at a new addict-services facility, which they’d set up in a public plaza. And they tried to intimidate my friend Michael Shellenberger, as you’ll read below .........To Read the Main Article...

Criminal Justice Reform Bans Stealing From the Rich, Legalizes Stealing From the Poor

Daniel Greenfield December 04, 2021@ Sultan Knish Blog

After Proposition 47 effectively legalized stealing anything under $950 in California, shoplifting, porch piracy, and all sorts of thefts took off. San Francisco became the epicenter of what the Wall Street Journal described as a “shoplifter’s paradise” with pharmacy chains and numberless small businesses disappearing from the city at a pace unmatched in the country.

But then the social justice looters went too far.

"Last night what we saw was horrible," Mayor London Breed declared. What she saw was gangs of thugs systematically looting Louis Vuitton, Bloomingdale's, and Burberry to protest the Rittenhouse verdict.

"This is unacceptable," Chief Scott declared.

San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin, who had yet to find a criminal he wouldn't release, claimed to be outraged by the looting.

"We are exploring every single possible criminal charge related to the conduct. We will use every tool in our tool belt," he blustered.

Those are harsh words from a progressive prosecutor who has been blamed for singlehandedly enabling the robbery craze in the city.

"We're gonna be making some changes to Union Square and how cars are able to access. There will be limited access in terms of when you come to this area," Mayor Breed vowed.

Why was looting luxury retail stores “horrible” and “unacceptable” while looting local pharmacies wasn’t? The cops showed up at Union Square guns drawn, smashing car windows, and taking down the thieves even while shoplifters routinely haul garbage bags of stolen goods out of CVS.

Without a police officer in sight.

Louis Vuitton handbags go for upwards of $1,000 to over $15,000. That’s well above the $950 limit. Rob a corner bodega of its stock and you get a slap on the wrist, but steal a pricey purse and laws actually get enforced. That’s the two tier system of social justice in San Francisco that protects Breed’s handbags while leaving small businesses exposed with no protection.

The legalization of looting means that San Francisco’s progressive elites will have their luxury boutiques protected even as seniors can’t get medications because the pharmacies are closing.

It’s not just San Francisco. In Chicago, Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx raised the bar for felony retail theft to $1,000. The city's big bout of Black Lives Matter looting led to 392 arrests and only 7 prison sentences.

An elderly Korean store owner had stood in the doorway, pleading, "Please, don't loot this store. I don't want to look -- my heart is broken."

There were no arrests and no consequences.

But when Magnificent Mile was looted, Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned, "Let's be clear. We are coming for you. We are already at work finding you."

With progressive prosecutors like Foxx, such threats were rather hollow, but they came in sharp contrast to the daily toll of ordinary burglaries which occasioned no such political grandstanding.

Pro-crime supporters and criminal justice reformers claim that they’re putting people ahead of property, but as the response to the looting of Louis Vuitton shows, the French Laundry Democrat elite put their own property ahead of the property of ordinary taxpayers.

It’s not that they’re incapable of being tough on crime or at least talking tough. Nor do they suffer from principles that leave them unable to be outraged at retail theft. They just differentiate between Korean grocery stores being robbed, and “horrible” and “unacceptable” robberies at luxury boutiques that turn even a pro-crime prosecutor like Chesa Boudin into Dirty Harry.

Stealing isn’t a problem. As long as you’re stealing from someone else.

“We will do what we need to do to put an end to this madness,” Police Chief Bill Scott warned.

The madness here was allowing California lefties to legalize shoplifting and then create a two-tier justice system in which crimes against ordinary people go unpunished.

The amount of a theft should factor into investigating and prosecuting a crime, but California’s criminal justice reform legalized stealing from poor people and criminalized stealing from the rich. That has been the overall effect of all criminal justice reform, from police defunding, which strips public safety from poor neighborhoods while its wealthy backers retreat behind gated communities, high walls, and private security, to setting loose criminals to return to their old minority neighborhoods where they shoot each other, and any women and children in between.

Minorities and the poor, the very people whom lefties claim to want to help, are more likely to be victims of crime and suffer disproportionately from the decriminalization of crime.

Under the pretext of creating a fair justice system, the radicals have turned the formerly democratic public safety systems of major cities into a medieval class system in which only the wealthy reformers who legalize crime deserve to be protected against those same criminals.

The noblesse oblige that impels political elites to set criminals loose doesn’t extend so far as tolerating the rabble when they look beyond the Korean markets to their own establishments.

In the name of progress, the Left has turned back the clock to the dark ages.

While Big Tech bosses, like Facebook’s executives, call for criminal justice reform, they’re protected by 1,000 security officers in the Bay Area alone. The San Francisco Police Department has less than 2,000 police officers. Facebook’s force is half the size of the SFPD.

And the social media monopoly even funded its own private police station.

Facebook's private army, whose Chief Security Officer is a former CIA agent, which uses one of Biden's former Secret Service agents to protect CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and which maintains a watchlist tracking anyone who criticises him, is why elites can promote police defunding.

It’s not their police that are being defunded, it’s yours.

And in the event that their security solutions don’t work, they know that the politicians, the police, and even the most cringingly pro-crime prosecutors will rush to their defense.

America’s public safety system used to be based around equality under the law. And that meant, among other things, that the same cops would answer your 911 call as anyone else’s. The destruction of the law also brought down equality and left a deeply unequal system.

While San Francisco elites have their private armies, Kenosha small businesses had Kyle Rittenhouse. When people can no longer rely on the systems of public safety and criminal justice to protect them, they buy guns and they turn to anyone who will protect them.

What does criminal justice reform look like? It’s the police rushing to stop luxury handbag thieves after doing nothing while the same thugs terrorized working class neighborhoods. 

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

Click here to subscribe to my articles. 

Thank you for reading.

San Francisco is a Mess, and They're Shocked, Outraged and Terrified! Imagine That!

By Rich Kozlovich

On November 2021 Michelle Thompson and Brian Stieglitz posted this article, The rich door and the poor door: Terrified millionaire residents of luxury San Fran condo building hit out after adjoining alleyway becomes city's BIGGEST homeless encampment, saying:

Residents of a Tenderloin-area building say they're scared to go outside because of aggressive homeless people who've set up the city's biggest vagrant camp.  They are occupying an alley near their high-end building, where units have fetched more than $1 million.  One man living in the encampment is known to throw feces, while others steal, break into the garage, and litter the area with garbage, attracting rats  ‘This seems to be a safe space for chop shops, drug trafficking,' one woman said.  The encampment grows as data shows that San Francisco's attorney general is taking a more lenient approach to charging criminals with thefts.

  

Well, that's a great big schadenfreude!  

 

These leftists, especially the wealthy leftists, stood atop their own self-righteous mountain and looked down their noses at the "dispicables" and those bitter Americans "clinging to their guns and Bibles".  After all, if you disagreed with them you were either racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, or crazy!  Or worse yet, you thought the Constitution was supposed to be the law of the land, and even worse than that, you think laws should be enforced, criminals prosecuted and sent to jail.  Imagine that!

 

Well, they've gotten what they wanted, a totally leftist government at every level of government in California. California is now a state totally controlled by lunatics.  So, how's that working out for them?  Apparently not very well, and they're whining about it!  Imagine that! 

  

 

Well, oodie boodie boo, poor little muff muffs.   It turns out the little muff muffs don't like the mess, having a homeless lunatic throw feces at them, thugs breaking into their garages, the litter and garbage everywhere along with the accompanying surge in rats, and I'm sure other pests including bed bugs.  Not to mention the stench from these misfits urinating and crapping wherever they please, or being accosted by them.  Imagine that!

 

In their arrogance they elected officials that are refusing to prosecute criminals, and crime surged. Imagine that!  All of this was perfectly predictable, except to these arrogant, smug and self righteous leftist minds, because ideology really does make smart people dumb.  

 

This isn't an exclusively California problem, it's a massive leftist problem nationwide.  It's the same in NYC, L.A., Chicago, Detroit, Portland, Seattle and Minneapolis, all run by leftists, all going up in flames.  Filled with bums, thugs and misfits, all of whom are a massive non-productive burden socially and economically in these cities, and it's become so rampant, it's a burden on the nation, and now the nation is bring run by the same kind of lunatics who are working to make this America's standard, and they, and their co-conspirators in the media try to convince the nation's "dispicables", and those "clinging to their guns and Bibles", who are the ones who are insane.  Imagine that!  

 

Well, they talked the talk, shouldn't they be required to walk the talk?  Yes, but get this. They don't want to.   

 

Imagine that!