Shitty By The Bay 1

FuelMix has no religious or political affiliation

Side headings, underlining and bold print by FuelMix:

1.   San Francisco's Current State

San Francisco is earning a growing reputation for more than just its unmatched tech sector – for critics, the city stands as a profound example of the damage ultra-liberal policies can do. 

After 20 years of envelope-pushing changes to grow government and ease law enforcement, the once-shining City by the Bay has turned into a place where:

• Property crime runs amok
• **An online map is needed to track human feces on city streets**
• Discarded syringes are common sightings
• Public urination is so widespread it has damaged subway elevators and escalators, building walls and power poles

2.   Too Much Tolerance

“There’s a very tolerant attitude, you can very much do anything on the streets you want,” said Marc Joffe, director of research at the California Policy Center think tank. “As members of a civilized society, there are things you should ​not accept. But we have ignored that … and there is nobody on the other side setting limits.”

San Francisco’s lax attitude is nothing new and has served as a beacon for the American counter-culture dating back to the Beat Generation. But the city’s embrace decades ago of free love and drugs has morphed into something else.

Depending which list you read, San Francisco has the dubious honor of being at or near the top of numerous national surveys tracking homelessness, the cost of housing and other issues. One distinction is not disputed: it has the most property crime in the nation  according to the FBI. ..........

3.   Just Fuckin' Shitty - Literally

And in the media, San Francisco’s brand has taken hits, with headlines such as “Why San Francisco is the Worst Place Ever,” “34 percent of Bay Area Residents are Ready to Leave,” and “Complaints of Syringes and Feces Rise Dramatically in SF.”

Local officials..... contend the city as a whole, with its iconic landmarks and top-notch dining and steep surreal streetscapes shrouded in fog, has not lost its luster.

4.   But...But...

“San Francisco is a world-class city with tremendous natural beauty and diverse progressive residents,” said Democratic state Rep. David Chiu, of San Francisco. “We value inclusiveness and innovation, which is why so many social justice movements and tech companies have started here. We must be doing something right when 25 million visitors came last year and our economy is thriving.”

Chiu admitted the city faces challenges, which are being addressed with a $300 million bond measure for affordable housing and hundreds of millions more spent to combat homelessness.

Housing indeed represents one of the biggest challenges.........

It is among the wealthiest places in America, where median home value and yearly income are $1.1 million and $84, 160  respectively. In other words, few can afford to live there.

This bubble dates back years.

5.  Left Wing Politicians.....You Know What's Coming

California as a whole has long put a premium on clean air, open space and modern buildings. But in 1996, San Francisco took a hard left turn with the mayoral election of former state speaker Willie Brown. His ensuing policies increased government, taxation and building regulations while shying away from creating more affordable housing. Brown worked with developer lobbyists he knew from his legislator days to demolish single-room occupancy hotels and other low-income homes, making room for well-heeled dot com workers..........

Within three years, Brown had increased the city budget by $1 billion, or 33 percent. This included new programs, 4,000 new employees, and pay raises to make the existing city workers the highest paid in the state.

He then did away with ordinances against sleeping in public and blocking sidewalks, while counterpart Rudy Giuliani was doing the opposite in a drive that ultimately reversed New York City’s growing crime and blight.

San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan....... also refused to prosecute “victimless” crimes involving drugs and prostitution, saying his focus was on violent crime. The DA’s resistance to taking a hard line against drugs prompted dealers to flood into the city from across the nation, City Journal reported.

6.   And The Mindset Remains...And So Does The Shit

Years later, the mindset remains. Smash-and-grab thefts from locked cars are so common that car repair shops have waiting lists. The city does not want to install surveillance cameras, and its aversion to tougher law enforcement had until recently left its police force at 1980s staffing levels.

And there's this: “With a crime rate of 70 per one thousand residents, San Francisco has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes,” says the data collection site Neighborhood Scout. “One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 14. Within California, more than 98% of the communities have a lower crime rate than San Francisco.”

On the hazardous waste side, the city is reporting an increase of syringes and feces sightings at 41 and 39 percent, respectively, over 2015 levels​. That's just an average. The hardest-hit area reported a 77 percent rise in discarded syringes and a 140 percent rise in feces. The city spends about $2 million a year on urine and feces cleanup.

Despite $9 billion in tourism revenue and $4 billion in tax revenue last year, San Francisco faces a perennial budget deficit in the billions factoring in generous pension costs, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.......... 

“It's unfair to just say this is a San Francisco thing,” Chiu said. “These are the same issues across the state and the nation.”

-----"San Francisco grapples with growing crime, blight after years of liberal policies" by Tori Richards, Fox News.com December 27, 2016.

 FuelMix says:

1.  ** For the curious ones, here is the link to the online Human Shit Map for the streets of San Francisco.  Click on the heat link for a more dramatic image: **

http://mochimachine.org/wasteland/#

2.   10 years ago, (actually, it was longer than that) we noticed a shocking urban decline in San Francisco.  When we pointed out to the (gay and str8, resident and non-resident) Liberal Fascists, the six factors set out in the above article (urban vandalism, shit on the streets, syringes lying around, increasing numbers of homeless, rising crime and the stench of piss everywhere) we were shrieked at for being socially arrogant, right-wing, homophobic and "completely out of touch with San Francisco's cultural mentality of inclusiveness".

3.  Suspecting that things would get worse there, we shrugged and decided to spend our travel dollars elsewhere.  We haven't been back.  As we came across the Fox News article, we ran into some non-US airline pilots who fly into San Francisco from Asia and stay in various hotels in different locations.  We asked them what they thought and they rolled their eyes in disgust.  Ten years later, their observations matched ours.  These macho flyboys didn't feel safe downtown.

4.   We're not here to bash the city.  What we are pointing out is a paradox: there cannot be freedom without discipline.  San Francisco's historical reputation for hedonism, allegedly progressive thinking, political correctness, fiscal deficits and an entitlement mentality is not only physically destroying the city, it has created one of the most astounding wealth inequalities in the northern hemisphere.

5.   Although they will never admit it publicly, we suspect that wealth inequality works just fine for Left-Leaning politicians:

• it provides cover to assert they are fighting for the underdogs;
• property tax is a major source of revenue and a bubbling frothy real estate market is just perfect;
• property tax funds the ever-growing entitlement programs for the social underclass;
• word gets around and more social underclass flood into the city - hence San Francisco's politically enshrined "sanctuary" status;
• "sanctuary" status + more social underclass = more homeless = crime and drugs =  more shit and piss on the streets = more money needed to clean it up = more innovative and higher taxes;
• left-wing politicians court property developers. That creates concentrations of urban wealth and pockets of luxury consumerism. Yet the social underclass continue to flood in;

6.   In effect, it is a business model.  The same phenomenon can be observed in other cities managed by Left-Leaning politicians:  for example, check out Honolulu, Hawaii (they don't call it the "People's Republic of Hawaii" for nothing) or Vancouver, Canada.

7.   To paraphrase Mr Lee Kwan Yew, the founding Prime Minister of Singapore, (regarded as an  example of a country that works), it isn't about Law and Order.  It is Order first then Law.  San Francisco's out of control budget deficits and entitlement programs are an example of a lack of Order, and a lack of discipline.  Deficit spending and entitlement programs are highly addictive drugs in their own right.  Once you're hooked, it's tough to get off them.  The political correctness doesn't help either.

8.   We don't claim to have the answers to San Francisco's issues.  But if crime rates have gone up and police staffing levels are allegedly still at 1980s levels, there is a definite lack of social and financial Order.  That's not rocket science.

Copyright © 2006 – 2016 FuelMix All Rights Reserved