It's easy to pick on San Francisco in this Era of the Progressives. I'm referring of course to the Political Establishment. It's literally a "target rich environment" as they say at the CENTCOM briefing. From preposterous stunts like the ski jump in Pacific Heights to the misguided and whimsical grandstanding on the hotel workers strike by the mayor, to the tolerance (if not outright support) of anarchy (Critical Mass; homeless vagrants in the Haight; medicalmarijuannawinkwinknudgenudge) in some cases, to the grotesquery that is Chris Daly, with petulant and vengeful Aaron "Payback" Peskin not far behind, to the Mayor's holy act of breaking State law, to an utterly demoralized and borderline incompetent Police Department and pathetically feckless Police Chief pursuing satire video crime, to the OTHER City Approved and Administered extortion racket in the form of vacancy control to... well, you get the idea.
We now are witnessing a new phase of GBS (Governmental Bipolar Syndrome): the tendency of Government behavior to be radical, impetuous, and a threat to those around them. Its called "imposed societal transformation" -- Mandated change that will impact everyones lives, imposed even though it is virtually experimental, by people (Supervisors) who could care less about what voting majorities have clearly and utterly rejected. In their opinion, if they want it, snap, its law. And don't give me no demands for statistical or reasoned justification.
So we have what amounts to an arbitrary meddlesome presence in the form of our Government. And, like Orca in your bathtub, it is swimming around everywhere. You can never get up in the morning assured that some civil right you had yesterday, like smoking legal cigarettes within 50 feet outdoors of an open air bus stop, is still in force, or whether you could get hit with a $474 fine for standing alone only 39 feet away from a busybody communist with a cell phone.
The other shoe is the City's comprehensive attacks upon the infrastructure, if not the lifeblood, of commerce and vital needs of the everyday person: vehicular traffic. Along with the propensity to find fault with virtually any large-scale employer who might think about coming here, San Francisco attacks those that are already here, even mom and pop stores.
When I conjure up an image of the Board of Supervisors having a meeting, in my mind I see immediately Eli Wallach on a horse leading a pack of scoundrel hombres in a cloud of dust they ride into the village to demand whatever their whims of the day compel them to blurt to us, the villagers. I'm referring, metaphorically of course, to the great classic film The Magnificent Seven. Only in our case, we can't simply go find some hired guns to contest their intermittent raids on our village.
The latest campaign, a sort of stealth appropriation of property and rights begun years ago, is to force all City dwellers to either stop using their car or to pay through the nose for doing so. Elimination of passages continues quietly and incrementally but unabated. Every time you turn around there is another pedestrian, bike, skate, or hiking/walking or dog owner group that thinks that some preexisting road or area of the City actually should belong to them or, the people, which is them.
It has been said, that, if you were to put communists or socialists in charge of the Sahara Desert very soon there would be a shortage of sand. In San Francisco we have an increasing shortage of access, egress, transiting and parking. Faced with this raw reality of more people in the state, and more cars, instead of seeking measures that could enhance traffic movement and, or, parking, they have sought to get rid of (or diminish) transit by constricting and or eliminating its flow as well as places to park. The collective voice of the City fiduciaries is, "Hey, let's outlaw or make it difficult to own cars." Vague concepts justify any imaginable societal change they want.
At a time when the number of cars is unlikely to become smaller, when the City policy is encouraging garage-less apartments over garage-owning single family homes, when the City, with its other policies, is killing small business with imposed overhead costs and punishing small business customers with absurd parking ticket fines, thereby kicking everyone into their car to go to the factory outlets down the Peninsula, just when we should be building underground arteries to move the transiting passing through vehicle traffic on a few major roads, from the Golden Gate Bridge to 280 South for instance, we see, instead, movement towards elimination of roads to favor bike riders, which intensifies traffic on what's left.
Normally the media is a watchdog for the public. In this town picture the watchdog in that position where the dog lays on its back with its legs spread, tail wagging, whimpering, and waiting for aggressive petting and a Milk-Bone.
We now are witnessing a new phase of GBS (Governmental Bipolar Syndrome): the tendency of Government behavior to be radical, impetuous, and a threat to those around them. Its called "imposed societal transformation" -- Mandated change that will impact everyones lives, imposed even though it is virtually experimental, by people (Supervisors) who could care less about what voting majorities have clearly and utterly rejected. In their opinion, if they want it, snap, its law. And don't give me no demands for statistical or reasoned justification.
So we have what amounts to an arbitrary meddlesome presence in the form of our Government. And, like Orca in your bathtub, it is swimming around everywhere. You can never get up in the morning assured that some civil right you had yesterday, like smoking legal cigarettes within 50 feet outdoors of an open air bus stop, is still in force, or whether you could get hit with a $474 fine for standing alone only 39 feet away from a busybody communist with a cell phone.
The other shoe is the City's comprehensive attacks upon the infrastructure, if not the lifeblood, of commerce and vital needs of the everyday person: vehicular traffic. Along with the propensity to find fault with virtually any large-scale employer who might think about coming here, San Francisco attacks those that are already here, even mom and pop stores.
When I conjure up an image of the Board of Supervisors having a meeting, in my mind I see immediately Eli Wallach on a horse leading a pack of scoundrel hombres in a cloud of dust they ride into the village to demand whatever their whims of the day compel them to blurt to us, the villagers. I'm referring, metaphorically of course, to the great classic film The Magnificent Seven. Only in our case, we can't simply go find some hired guns to contest their intermittent raids on our village.The latest campaign, a sort of stealth appropriation of property and rights begun years ago, is to force all City dwellers to either stop using their car or to pay through the nose for doing so. Elimination of passages continues quietly and incrementally but unabated. Every time you turn around there is another pedestrian, bike, skate, or hiking/walking or dog owner group that thinks that some preexisting road or area of the City actually should belong to them or, the people, which is them.
It has been said, that, if you were to put communists or socialists in charge of the Sahara Desert very soon there would be a shortage of sand. In San Francisco we have an increasing shortage of access, egress, transiting and parking. Faced with this raw reality of more people in the state, and more cars, instead of seeking measures that could enhance traffic movement and, or, parking, they have sought to get rid of (or diminish) transit by constricting and or eliminating its flow as well as places to park. The collective voice of the City fiduciaries is, "Hey, let's outlaw or make it difficult to own cars." Vague concepts justify any imaginable societal change they want.
At a time when the number of cars is unlikely to become smaller, when the City policy is encouraging garage-less apartments over garage-owning single family homes, when the City, with its other policies, is killing small business with imposed overhead costs and punishing small business customers with absurd parking ticket fines, thereby kicking everyone into their car to go to the factory outlets down the Peninsula, just when we should be building underground arteries to move the transiting passing through vehicle traffic on a few major roads, from the Golden Gate Bridge to 280 South for instance, we see, instead, movement towards elimination of roads to favor bike riders, which intensifies traffic on what's left.
Normally the media is a watchdog for the public. In this town picture the watchdog in that position where the dog lays on its back with its legs spread, tail wagging, whimpering, and waiting for aggressive petting and a Milk-Bone.
The bottom line is that, in reality, we do not have a government in San Francisco. Yes, we have elections and we have this traditional infrastructure with titles like Mayor and positions like Supervisor. But the Government here does not do what governments are supposed to do -- which is to address the present and future needs of the majority of the people. It is as if what has actually occurred here is that some loosely affiliated group of brigands kidnapped the mayor's office and real supervisors and have them stuffed in an abandoned vault at the Old Mint. They moved into the Civic Center digs and, like in some sick sitcom plot, became the de facto leaders and since then have been imposing wish list items unrelated to the general public welfare on the City.
Of course, you may beg to differ. In that case here's a very simple question for anyone who lives here and is familiar with the place: How many things have the Supervisors enacted, in the form of laws or ordinances that are NOT degrading, hindering, or terminating rights in some way? How many of their measures deprive, outlaw, or obstruct something? We have become the City of No, You Can't. Policies are no longer designed to build, enhance, create or complement. They are designed to take away. To prohibit. To stop. To forcibly change. Can't park here, here, or here, there, there, or there either. This road is closed. This park is closed. This area is off limits. This building is closed. X, Y and Z is No Longer allowed. Q, R, S, T, U, and V are being scheduled for closure. Fees for C thru P will be doubling as soon as the Board can hold hearings. Even certain coffee cups, sandwich containers, and grocery bags are evil and must be rid of and thereby worthy of Supervisor time and effort.
Of course my initial statement isn't totally true. Some things have been created enhanced and augmented. Fines, fees, costs, penalties, and punishments. THEY have all grown. And grown a lot. Fines, fees, costs, penalties, and punishments are the single focus of Supervisor creativity and expeditious action. They get watered every day. Fed protein supplements and injected with growth hormones ongoing. The regime of fines, fees, penalties, permits and punishments have become a self-regenerating, self-officious Frankenstein Monster. And while 2% profit margins for a business are declared greed (see gasoline); City permits to allow you to replace your windows are as high as 7%.
Think about it. What fine, fee, permit or penalty hasn't gone up - dramatically? And the encroachment on access, egress, and pathways via street or area closure seemingly grows with every month. Sometimes in fell swoops but more often insidiously. Sure, each deprivation act was heralded by some arcane hearing held appropriately at such time as no one to be impacted could realistically object with any meaningful impact. That's the way this particular City works. Practice Government technically but not in a real way. A way in which what is best for the common good (as opposed to limited group reward) is arrived at by weighing all evidence with objectivity is utterly alien to this regime.
Traffic is a mess. What new streets, for instance, have been opened or improved in San Francisco in terms of specifically improving traffic flow? Octavia Boulevard? That simply replaced another road. Better looking, but no net increase in pathway over its predecessor, the ugly freeway. To top it off, the stretch of road that was created has come to look like some giant Legoland or erector set replication, or abandoned film set for one of the Terminator movies, loaded with metal beams and Orwellian lights. This is an improvement? This is what Government accomplishes for a couple hundred million dollars? The replacement of a raised roadway that kept traffic out of the neighborhood with a perpetually gridlocked road right outside your home and a couple hundred bright traffic control light panels always on and blinking into your bedroom.
Of course, you may beg to differ. In that case here's a very simple question for anyone who lives here and is familiar with the place: How many things have the Supervisors enacted, in the form of laws or ordinances that are NOT degrading, hindering, or terminating rights in some way? How many of their measures deprive, outlaw, or obstruct something? We have become the City of No, You Can't. Policies are no longer designed to build, enhance, create or complement. They are designed to take away. To prohibit. To stop. To forcibly change. Can't park here, here, or here, there, there, or there either. This road is closed. This park is closed. This area is off limits. This building is closed. X, Y and Z is No Longer allowed. Q, R, S, T, U, and V are being scheduled for closure. Fees for C thru P will be doubling as soon as the Board can hold hearings. Even certain coffee cups, sandwich containers, and grocery bags are evil and must be rid of and thereby worthy of Supervisor time and effort.
Of course my initial statement isn't totally true. Some things have been created enhanced and augmented. Fines, fees, costs, penalties, and punishments. THEY have all grown. And grown a lot. Fines, fees, costs, penalties, and punishments are the single focus of Supervisor creativity and expeditious action. They get watered every day. Fed protein supplements and injected with growth hormones ongoing. The regime of fines, fees, penalties, permits and punishments have become a self-regenerating, self-officious Frankenstein Monster. And while 2% profit margins for a business are declared greed (see gasoline); City permits to allow you to replace your windows are as high as 7%.
Think about it. What fine, fee, permit or penalty hasn't gone up - dramatically? And the encroachment on access, egress, and pathways via street or area closure seemingly grows with every month. Sometimes in fell swoops but more often insidiously. Sure, each deprivation act was heralded by some arcane hearing held appropriately at such time as no one to be impacted could realistically object with any meaningful impact. That's the way this particular City works. Practice Government technically but not in a real way. A way in which what is best for the common good (as opposed to limited group reward) is arrived at by weighing all evidence with objectivity is utterly alien to this regime.
Traffic is a mess. What new streets, for instance, have been opened or improved in San Francisco in terms of specifically improving traffic flow? Octavia Boulevard? That simply replaced another road. Better looking, but no net increase in pathway over its predecessor, the ugly freeway. To top it off, the stretch of road that was created has come to look like some giant Legoland or erector set replication, or abandoned film set for one of the Terminator movies, loaded with metal beams and Orwellian lights. This is an improvement? This is what Government accomplishes for a couple hundred million dollars? The replacement of a raised roadway that kept traffic out of the neighborhood with a perpetually gridlocked road right outside your home and a couple hundred bright traffic control light panels always on and blinking into your bedroom.
In any event, and by any rationalization, the brigands have significantly changed the role of the City leadership from shepherd, conservator, forward looking visionary, preparing the City for the future (Recall Dianne Feinstein rehabbing the Cable Car tracks) to a small but potent roving band of plunderers. Constantly taking and or taking away, pillaging something established, and demanding tribute. That's pretty much all they have been doing.
Two examples of the symptoms of both the narcissistic and naive mindset of the current board and mayor and sheer hope emerging from the storm are found in last Sunday's Chronicle: In one article, the Mayor has announced he has seen the future of what San Francisco needs desperately and it is (surprise!) a bike path and hiking trail across the last place a significant revenue generating industrial or commercial zone could possibly be constructed for the benefit of San Francisco City and county. Jobs, particularly good pay good benefits middle class jobs. I hasten to add, jobs that would definitely use the light rail metro extension down Third street to get to. Most other cities would look at this resource as a way to insure long-term fiscal health and insure greater economic diversity among the population. But no. Our leaders see this area of the city only as a place that provides the opportunity to parrot a Barbara Streisand sound-bite about wetlands preservation and expand the lands devoted not to revenue generation but to non vital self-indulgent pursuits that instead will COST someone money to upkeep.
In another article, hope comes in the form of a judge's grinding to a halt the San Francisco Kudzu Bike Plan of constantly eliminating car road space and transferring usage to bicycle users at everyone elses expense. Perhaps the Gypsies will blink now. Nah, they only respect courts that give them what they want. Whether its valuable city streets or a more remote area of the city our leaders opt consistently for the self indulgent. Maybe that ski jump stunt was a more serious symptom of group narcissism than we initially suspected. This judge has thrown, for now at least, a monkey wrench into the brigands' plan. He has said, gasp, that all these plans to take roads away from cars and the people who desperately need them have been, and are being, imposed without due process in the form of studied impacts. Imagine that. The great game of forcing anyone with a revenue producing idea to succumb to years and years of costly impact reports prior to obtaining a CHANCE to have a project go forward is now thrown back in the Supes face. So they must halt any further pac man-like pursuits. And he has stipulated that they need to do this before any more roads are taken from cars and dedicated to the religion of Critical Mass.
How this will turn out ultimately is anyone's guess. But perhaps we have reached the tipping point. The point
in which someone goes into the Mayor's office and Supervisor meeting and tells them they have to take their feet off the desk, clean up the whiskey bottles and trash from their pizzas and fast food meals strewn about their offices, and start acting like leaders doing meaningful things instead of wish listing mandates on the populace. The kinds of people who to work with the system, not dictate to it. The kinds of people who shoot for meaningful results as opposed to pie-in-the-sky social experimentation. The kinds of people who care about doing what's really best, as opposed to what's the politically favored flavor of the month.If Only.
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