Cal Thomas: San Francisco has a new definition of political insanity
Left Behind: Homeless Crisis in San Francisco
(You won’t believe this one)
Wilted Willie was thoughtful enough to bring this article up with us for posting. The once beautiful City By the Bay has become unrecognizable, a warm weather haven for the homeless. Human waste and used syringes litter the streets, tent cities have sprouted up everywhere, pan handlers accosting citizens for drug money. This is the result of decades of progressive governance. How to deal with the problem? Fortunately, the SF Board of Supervisors have a plan.
Cal Thomas relates…
San Francisco, a city described in song for its natural beauty, is descending into an abyss of homelessness, the use of sidewalks as toilets and a place you might not want to visit, much less live.
The latest, but surely not the last demonstration of insanity, is San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors’ adoption of new “person first” language guidelines meant to “change the public’s perception of criminals.” The words “convicted felon,” “offender,” “convict,” “addict” and “juvenile delinquent” are out. These individuals will henceforth be referred to as a “justice-involved person.” Someone previously called a “criminal” will now be referred to as “a returning resident,” or “a formerly incarcerated person.”
Supervisor Matt Haney told the San Francisco Chronicle the intent is to keep people from being “forever labeled for the worst things that they have done. We want them, ultimately to become contributing citizens, and referring to them as felons is like a scarlet letter that they can never get away from.”
A noble objective, to be sure, but language has — or used to have — a purpose beyond interpersonal communication. Like so much else today, language has now been appropriated to advance political agendas.
Instead of actually fixing the problem, the SF Word Police will throw euphemisms so the often drug addicted, mentally unbalanced and plain criminals will “feel” better about their lot. Never mind the filth, disease and danger the citizens face. It is a classic Progressive tactic to shift the focus from the problem to the person, who will be browbeaten for not using the “new-speak.” It’s Orwellian.
Thanks again, WW. The rest of the article may be viewed here: Fox News
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Crime, Government Incompetence, Politics
I guess next the progs writing San Fransicko’s Newspeak Dictionary will eliminate the word “homeless” as derisive and branding. Instead they will substitute “outdoor resident” or some other ridiculous euphemism.
“urban camper”
“Rent-free residents”
Real estate unencumbered
“Urban Outdoorsman”
– Neal Boortz
But 11B-Mailclerk you are not being inclusive, how dare you discriminate against our LBTQRSVPIMRS residents and label them all “…man”! They are temporarily displaced Urban Outdoorspeople!
It is not their fault they have befallen on this circumstance, just because we have raised the rents 4,000% in the last week, and allowed housing agencies to progressively change contracts on whims not beholden to any government mandated length, it makes it no one’s fault. We must strive to help our unfortunate LGBTQBLTMSNRSVP citizens to strive to exist in this environment by giving them free $H!T, and herding them into areas where their presence can be better experienced by all of our citizens.
J.R. Johnson – how dare you be so non-inclusive, your decision to only include homo sapiens identifying as”people” shows your lack of understanding. We must be willing to embrace even those who identify as blocks of wood or non-humanistic anti-coagulating gel-based organisms. Therefore we must henceforth use the terminology: outdoorsentity
San Francisco unhomed citizens doubleplus ungood.
San Fransico, the new Calcutta of America.
Makes Calcutta look clean and habitable…
Like I heard many years ago – You can coat a turd in sugar all you like, it’s still gonna be shit. The PC clowns are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, without a meaningful plan and the balls to enforce it the problem is only going to get worse. Or maybe we should just wall it in and turn it into a huge prison and detox facility (sounds like a movie I saw about NYC once).
“I guess I go in one way or the other… doesn’t mean shit to me. All right… I’ll do it. Give me the pardon paper.” ~ Snake Plissken
“Like I heard many years ago – You can coat a turd in sugar all you like, it’s still gonna be shit.”
Truth! It reminds me how the terms idiot, imbecile, moron, dolt, cretin, and, to an extent, retard used to be scientific and even euphemistic terms. But no matter what you come up with, over time any word will take on the negative connotation of the word it replaced. Even “special” is seen as an insult now. Perhaps they should focus on the root problems of the “judicially challenged” and “pharmaceutical-involved persons” instead of coming up with flowery terms to make them feel better.
I know someone who moved to San Frantic with her parents and stayed there, made a good career for herself there, and bought a home. Now her husband is in the final stages of early onset dementia, requires caretakers that she has to pay for, and she can’t sell her home because she’s located in what she politely calls a shabby neighborhood.
I feel some sympathy for her, because that city used to be a wonderful place. Now it’s a latrine full of diseased rats and humans. And she feels trapped there.
People like the alleged “mayor” of that place should be forced to live on the streets, too, exposed to everything they’ve inflicted on the real populace.
It would be nice to know what her political history is.
That shithole didn’t happen overnight and California actually voted for Ronald Reagan TWICE for crying out loud.
When Bush 41 got in it was the end of the dedicated conservatives in the state and began a slide into the depths of la la land politics.
So if she voted for all those clowns for however many years she lived there, she has nobody to blame but herself…
I don’t even like flying over the place it stinks so bad…
Ike carried SF in ’52 & ’56 by slim margins. The last time a GOP prez candidate would ever win the shitty by the bay.
Jebus,
Can you guys earthquake and break off and fall into the ocean already.
Cripes
Watch the 1978 “Superman” movie.
See if you don’t cheer Lex Luthor’s plan to nuke the fault line and slide California out to sea.
Make Nevada beachfront real estate…
Didn’t that happen in a 80’s Bond movie? “A View to a Kill”?
Yup. Silicon Valley would’ve gotten it that time.
Hate to break it to you if look into the crystal ball this is going to be the ever increasing norm for all urban areas in the US.
After the TARP/QE/debt jubilee of the last 10 years there will be a flux in asset prices, this is just the beginning.
Watch as municipalities increases costs vis-à-vis permits, taxes, fines, fees far above the ‘cost of inflation’ (CPI is a farce, damn near criminal for the lower rungs of income levels).
Heaven help us, the ‘Gods of Wall Street’ have failed us and chickens are acomin’ Home
So will they now have “Human fecal distribution specialists”? “Shelter deprived individuals”?
Plus competition from Central American “migrants”…
I’ve got three friends visiting from Japan next week … they want to go to SF, ride the cable car, drive down Russian Hill, etc.
I’m really reluctant to take them though I live but 35 miles south.
Think we’ll go to Monterey and Carmel instead.
UGGH!
The otters at the Monterey Bay Aquarium rock! Don’t believe me? Here’s the world famous Sea Otter Cam:
https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals-and-exhibits/live-web-cams/sea-otter-cam
Some Things Never Change.
Anyone remember this 1967 Classic?
Remember this?
https://youtu.be/8hv0M5etXFA?t=8
Two true blasts from the past. Too bad San Fran can’t go back to before that past. The stank ass hippies got run off by the gays, lots of the gays got killed off by the aids, and the politicians allowed the inmates to take over the asylum. Have a niece and nephew in law out there with 3 children. It’s worse than the news shows. Niece and nephew (ordained ministers) are of the opinion that they are literally on a mission from God. They feel that their home towns in Lower Alabama has plenty of people ministering to the flock and San Fran needs all the help it can get. When I talk/message with them I always ask how are things in Sodom By The Bay, Gomorahfornia. It gets a very strained laugh.
Wasn’t 67 the Summer of Love?
Trying to remember, but it’s just not there. (H/T to Steve McQueen as Papillion)
Claw, unlike Papillion, I remember being in The Haight a few times that Summer. It seemed to start out moderately strange until the day tour buses began to show up. After that, it became mondo bizarro street theater. What’s also interesting to consider is that the whole Haight-Ashbury hippie/counter-culture prime time only lasted for a couple of years. What evidently put paid to things was in ’69 when the promoters of a Rolling Stones concert at Altamont decided to use the Hells Angels for concert security.
What could possibly go wrong?
The last time I was on Haight Street was a couple of years ago and the only apparent remnants were some half-way decent bars, and a few places selling tie-dye and macrame for the nostalgia market.
I remember that one.
It was a beautiful fantasy. And, dare I say it? the girls then were a lot better looking – I have my high school yearbooks to prove it.
It was a delusional dream, but a beautiful one.
Such was the ’60s.
Now, if we just get with the Progressive program, and try much harder, with the right smart people in charge, it will all finally work.
The problem in San Francisco is not enough Progressivism!
The sad part is the lunatics believe the above, minus the strobe-light /sarc tags.
They have crossed the “insanity” line and are now orbiting “barking-moonbat-crazy”.
This is why other leftylands wind up with Gulags, KZs, and Killing Fields: Rage that others can’t make their insanity -work-.
They never give up on trying to pound the large, square peg of human behavior, with all its hard edges and sharp corners into the small, round hole of their liberal belief system, using as their hammer, their unflappable faith in unattainable Utopianism.
No matter how many times they smack their damned thumbs, they just keep pounding away.
Do we have an TAH approved rename for dishonorable discharge or BCD?
BCD = Big Chicken Dinner
DD = Bo Bergdahl Certificate of Achievement
(Smile)
You mean BCD doesn’t stand for “Berkeley College Diploma”? (smile)
Berrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnn!
Been Caught Dead.
They showed a street in LA on the news today littered with trash, tents and homeless people aimlessly walking everywhere.
I thought it was a street scene in Monrovia.
Isn’t Lars always bragging about what a mecca California is? This vast sprawling powerhouse economy which is the envy of the other 49 states? Yeah. Really well run progressive state ya got there, Ace.
Larsie is a strong believer in all his commie party progda propaganda. Remember those aren’t homeless people, they are “urban campers.” Only a very small percentage of them are “justice-involved persons” or those who are mentally and/or or “chemically challenged” persons.
If people in the country were smart they’d take notice and see that if this is how the state is run, imagine if those same leaders were able to control the whole country?
I am truly sad to say that Seattle, Olympia, and Portland are following in San Francisco’s footsteps in this regard as well. I have read heard the Seattle species referred to as Feral Humans.
Pretty much a WTF situation.
i wanna be mad about that….but i can’t. feral humans is kinda awesome, as phrases go.
now if only they would just fix the problem instead of describing it.
Progressives (Socialists) can’t or won’t fix the problem. Instead, they come up with flowery euphemisms so they can feel good about the garbage pit they’ve made. By forcing the use of those flowery euphemisms they can denounce as racists, misogynists, etc. those who point out the progressive policies that made the garbage pit possible.
Put out traps and bait them with ground coffee beans and cupcakes. That should draw them.
Jokes aside, this is not just a sanitation, drugs or homeless issue. These street people are carrying fleas and lice that are infected with typhus and bubonic plague. The feral cat populations can’t keep up with the rats that attract those bugs, and they’re getting into public buildings now, bringing those diseases with them.
Also, there’s a new disease on the horizon called Eastern Equine Encephalitis, which is moving westward, and is carried by birds, which feed on mosquitoes that also carry the disease. It is transmissible to humans, just as Venezuelan equine encephalitis was/is, and can be fatal if not caught quickly.
New? That was a problem in the 1980s.
A recent story out of Seattle was of Judges at the King County courthouse, wanting the city to pressure wash the urine and fecal matter from the sidewalk around the court house so jurors wouldn’t track it in. A city clowncilman objected because power-washing “brought back images of the use of hoses against civil-rights activists”.
I couldn’t make stuff like that up if I TRIED, even sadder is that it’s true.
Need to power-wash that clowncilman!
I think Jack Nicholson said it best as The Joker:
“This town needs an enema!”
The question is “what district to put the tube in to flush first”?
Start with the tenderloin, then maybe the Castro.
As I’ve said before, I support greatly increased criminal penalties for drug use and trafficking. For some reason modern “conservatives” think we need to treat degenerate drug abusers who willfully break the law. Throw all their asses in jail for life and stop legalizing illicit drugs like marijuana. Now Oregon is looking to legalize mushrooms. Pretty soon cokeheads are going to be pushing for legalizing their drug of choice.
5 years for the first offense, 20 for the second and the death penalty for the third. Done and done. There, I literally just solved the “war on drugs.”
The homelessness is cause by insane housing prices and rental prices. Which in turn is caused by massive demand by people who want to live here.
Further exasperated by the huge wealth disparity and the fact that the wealthiest in our country are moving to and buying up real estate in coastal and liberal communities.
And even further exasperated by the fact that we allow corporations and foreign investors; including foreign corporations to buy up real estate and distort and manipulate housing markets.
And even FURTHER exasperated by the fact that the US has passed laws and special loopholes that make US real estate one of the best mechanisms for money laundering. So hundreds of billions in illicit wealth and corruptly acquired public wealth from around the world is being poured into housing markets that have sustained demand for housing.
(Another popular mechanism for laundering is the movie industry).
All that being said; you can’t claim that these cities are horrible while denying that the market says these are among the most desired places to live in the country.
And any TAH regulars reading this who own property in these markets…SELL. Housing markets will soften and liberal rural broadband initiatives are going to make a great many of currently undesirable rural areas extremely popular. Particularly any with beautiful scenery, nice climate, and within an hour of an international airport.
Could you POSSIBLY write complete sentences, Taylor, instead of letting us know, EVERY TIME, that your education didn’t include learning how to communicate effectively?
What I wrote was pretty clear.
I suspect you were triggered by my starting paragraphs with “and”.
Your assumption that a paragraph can’t begin with “and” is an anachronistic throwback to the early twentieth century when primary and secondary school educators believed they could halt the continuously shifting nature of the English language by creating and enforcing rigid grammar rules.
Over time it became clear these rigid rules were limiting and inhibiting effective communication while not making it much clearer to the reader.
Most of the “rules” anachronistic relics like you try to enforce are merely suggestions at best, and usually merely grammar “myths” that high school teachers once taught that never had a basis in any actual rules.
Yep! That Trump asshole, opening loopholes!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/08/24/a-third-of-luxe-real-estate-deals-involve-suspicious-activity.html
This is actually one of your more thoughtful comments, Lars. I’m not saying you’re wrong about some of the elements driving the homeless problem, but would add additions for the sake of completeness.
San Francisco has always had a homeless problem but it seems to run somewhat in cycles. Part of that is due to a relatively benign climate which makes it easier to panhandle on Market Street than freeze your ‘nads off in a Chicago winter.
What’s also true is that it used to be there were more affordable pockets. For example, North Beach was at one time affordable to the extent that somebody with a more-or-less regular job could live there. Another pocket I recall was the Sausalito houseboat community. Being the counter-culture kinda guy you are, you might remember that Stewart Brand lived in a converted tug boat near Gate 5 while he was putting out the Whole Earth Catalog and also starting The Well online BBS.
People who closely follow the housing issue in California also point to some additional factors which have created supply problems. In addition to gentrification, there have been environmental issues, including CEQA, that have made it more difficult and costly to build anything new. Factor in zoning, building permits, cost of construction, etc., and it’s become very difficult to put up 2500 square-foot single-family dwellings in a new suburb. Which is what drives a lot of the market, and what some developers claim is what they need to build to make any money.
Some developers have also noted that they can’t hit a financial break-even with “affordable” apartments because the money isn’t there.
I’d also venture that any big exodus to the rural Midwest based on increased broadband is questionable. The fiber backbones might go there, but you’re still going to have a last mile problem. Too, rural dwellers already have the option of satellite links, and the broad deployment of fiber isn’t necessarily going to offer a lower price point. The deployment of 5G mobile might change things somewhat, but it’s probably too early to tell.
Bingo. Hold supply nearly constant for an essential item (housing) and double the population since the 1960s and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what will happen to real estate prices and rents. Now add the rise of the high-tech industry in the Bay area (which added tons of very high-paying jobs as well as employers willing to pay top dollar for talent) along with the disappearance of many of the old blue-collar manufacturing or service jobs, and the situation got even worse.
However, I do find the irony of our resident Poodle pointing the finger at “foreigners” as being partly to blame for the problem quite interesting. I thought he was a proponent of the “right to migrate”. I guess he doesn’t feel the same about property ownership. Or maybe he regards all real property as property of the state awaiting incorporation into state enterprises, like the old Soviet collective farms and industries.
… Wonders who Commissar thinks is to blame for hight college and university tuition. 🤔
The drug dealers? Government loopholes?
So it’s the fault of rich, corrupt progressives? It seems that every one of those cesspools has been run by liberals/progressives for decades.
You blamed everyone and everything but the “homeless” person, the one person who could do the most to change their “homeless” status. Let’s just make us all wards of the state, let Uncle Sam run 100% of our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honors. San Francisco is the face of the socialist utopia you and your Berkeley cohorts dream of. I say no thank you, you can keep it.
You do not know many homeless people do you?
How many homeless people do you know?
If you are so concerned, why are they still homeless?
Why aren’t they in YOUR home?
I’ve known several. They all want to be homeless and “free”. They steadfastly reject any attempts to get them long term employment and housing. It’s just not their bag.
Sir, I understand that.
The problem has always been an issue on the major intersections in the city where I live, but they are creeping into the smaller intersections around the house.
Amazing how they always have the fancy JANSPORT backpack and a cell phone that is always charged;That device
never seems to be used by these POS’s when traffic stops.
Will never understand the shitbaggery, but it is fun to watch, when documented facts are thrown into the mix.
Peace to all, not just to those of us who served honorably, but honorable people in general.
Thanks.
b out.
My father was left a comfortable home in Charlotte by my grandparents, he sold it so he could live on the streets. When he died he had almost a half a million dollars in assets, but he was shuffling between the city and the mountains depending on the season and taking advantage of naive college students. He had serious mental health issues and there wasn’t a whole lot we could do for him (notwithstanding the fact that he had alienated most of us years earlier). I could go on and on, and I don’t know how typical his story is, but I do know the truth about him. Lars can’t help but try to tell us what we know or don’t know because hubris is almost synonymous with arrogance and hubris is part and parcel of modern progressivism. He really can’t help himself, but he ought to try not to be such a prick.
Taylor, you incredible moron, these people are homeless because they WANT to be that way. Oh, you don’t believe me? Tough shit, stupid.
Homeless people in Chicago number some 80,000 and they DON’T want to get out of that. You are so stupid about this entire thing that you don’t even know you’re alive.
https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/home-sweet-home-for-the-homeless/Slideshow/26452798/26452788
HUH!??
Not one of those feral humans would be able to rent a one-room flat even in Mobile Ala. The price of real estate in San Francisco has zero to do with the ongoing tragedy in the “Sewers of San Francisco.”
The market might soften, but so far my property value has gone up well over 100%; it will continue because with Google, Facebook, Cisco, PayPal, Yahoo, and other high tec companies having their HQs within a 10 mile radius, (plus Levi Stadium just down the road) housing will continue to be at a premium. People might have a nice house in Gilroy, Livermore, or Tracy … but they soon get tired of the 2hr commute each way and will find something closer; it happens all the time in Silicon Valley.
I wouldn’t call it zero, but you have a point. It seems to me there also needs to be a distinction made between San Francisco, the city, and Silicon Valley which is mostly Santa Clara County.
In San Francisco, the homeless seem to break down roughly into three groups: (1) Some choose to be homeless because the city has always somewhat tolerated those who seek a Bohemian lifestyle; (2) The truly moon-bat crazy or addicted, which the city doesn’t have the resources to cope with, and; (3) Those who might have a place to live, but have chosen the occupation of professional panhandler.
Personally, it wouldn’t surprise me if most of those in SF city government, at least the ones who are supposed to handle the homeless problem, would rather click the heels on their ruby slippers and wish very hard the problem would go away, or that they might wind up in Kansas where they won’t have to deal with it anymore.
Silicon Valley can be somewhat similar, but it depends on where you’re talking about. Try setting up an urban campground in Atherton, for example, and see how long that lasts.
My own view is that the real housing concern in Silicon Valley should be that segment of “working” homeless who might be a canary in the societal coal mine. These are people who might be working, for example, a part-time contract at Google while holding down a second part-time gig and living in their cars. According to a New York Times story last May, Google has an estimated 121,000 lower-paid contract workers compared to 102,000 full-time employees. Welcome to the gig economy.
If you’ve been around Silicon Valley for awhile, you might also remember that Apple founder Steve Jobs wanted to put in a mixed-use housing/commercial development for Apple workers in the Coyote Creek area between San Jose and Morgan Hill. Here’s a link with some of the background, why it failed, and what’s alternately in the works now. The piece tends to have a Big Tech bias, but is worth a glance:
http://news.openspaceauthority.org/blog/google-coyote-valley-comparison
Last one to leave California, please light the fuse.
Whoever it is needs to turn off the lights and take the Flag down as well.
“We want them, ultimately to become contributing citizens…”
But they are contributing! They contribute human waste, used needles, and endless crime. C’mon San Fran Board of Supervisors! Don’t denigrate the “contributions” of those “returning residents” and “pharmaceutical-involved persons.”
You left out the rather vile diseases like typhus and bubonic plague which they are carrying around withe the fleas and lice that occupy their “clothing” and “shelter”.
And those two aren’t the only things cropping up now.
Normal folks are “Anally challenged”.
Ass clowns are “Anally Open”.