Posted on 01/26/2022 3:03:46 AM PST by Kaslin
San Francisco's liberal mayor declared a "state of emergency" to try to deal with the city's "nasty streets."
How did it get so bad?
Journalist Michael Shellenberger's new book, "San Fransicko," argues that it happened because of progressive ideas.
"The town I love is sick," says Shellenberger in my new video.
He came to San Francisco when he was in his 20s to support social justice causes. He still supports those ideas, but "it just went too far."
In 2014, California politicians decided to end mass incarceration.
It's a noble goal. America locks up a higher percentage of its people than any other country. Jails are overcrowded. People in jail are more likely to learn to be better criminals than to be rehabilitated.
So California converted many nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors. People who steal less than $950 worth of items are no longer jailed. Proponents said this would divert money from prisons that could go to mental health and drug treatment programs.
But not jailing people who break laws had nasty unintended consequences.
Shoplifters steal right in front of security guards. Police look the other way. They know if they make an arrest, they'll face hours of paperwork and the person arrested will just return to the street. Cars are broken into 74 times a day.
"None of us want mass incarceration," says Shellenberger, who voted for the law to stop jailing people. "But that was a recipe for disaster."
Because no one is arrested for camping on the street, San Francisco is now filled with tent cities that supposedly house the "homeless." But most campers are the mentally ill and drug users who choose life on the street. They shoot up or light up in public, confident no one will interfere.
In my video, one crack addict said she stays in San Francisco because it is "more lenient." In other cities, she said, she'd be in jail.
Other cities, like Miami, do treat the homeless differently. "They don't let people use drugs in public, and they built sufficient homeless shelters," says Shellenberger.
In San Francisco, new homeless shelters are blocked by progressive activists who argue that everyone deserves an apartment. Yet it costs $700,000 to build one apartment in San Francisco.
A few years ago, I made a video suggesting that the high cost of apartments was a major reason for San Francisco's tent cities. California's excessive regulation discourages new construction, so there's a housing shortage. That keeps rental prices high and leads people to live on the street.
"It's not true," says Shellenberger. "If it were true that expensive places made for homelessness, why don't we see large open-air drug scenes in Carmel? Why don't we see large open drug scenes in many fancy neighborhoods? Homelessness is just a function of whether or not you allow people to camp in public or not."
But if people are homeless, should the government arrest them? The Constitution gives us the right to peaceably assemble.
"People have a right to be outdoors," I tell Shellenberger. "We don't have a right to force them off the street if they aren't directly threatening anybody."
"We should defend those rights because that's part of our freedom," he replies, "but you don't have a right to shoot heroin at the public park." There need to be "consequences for people's behaviors."
After researching his city's problems, Shellenberger decided he could no longer identify as progressive. "Progressivism has become the abdication of personal responsibility."
I think it's always meant that.
But now parts of San Francisco have become such a sewer that even liberal politicians have changed their positions. The mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, recently declared it's time to end the "reign of criminals who are destroying our city!"
Not long ago, when protesters shouted, "Defund the police," Breed cut San Francisco's policing budget by $120 million.
Now she says her town will be "more aggressive with law enforcement ... and less tolerant of all the bulls---t that has destroyed our city."
Progressive ideas almost always end badly.
So, all of the "mainlining" takes place behind closed tent flaps, where it belongs?!
And does "sufficient shelters" mean that NO ONE is homeless? Aren't there still thousands who CHOOSE to live on the streets?
Regards,
So, they have a right to "be outdoors."
Does that mean that they also have a right to camp on city sidewalks? Does that mean that they also have a right to defecate on city sidewalks?
Typical libs, still trying to avoid stating the obvious! Still trying to ignore reality!
Regards,
Long wanted to visit this physically beautiful place. Stand on Golden Gate Bridge. Beautiful old Spanish type Catholic churches. Pacific Ocean. Baseball stadium with huge Coke bottle in left field, ball knocked into McCovey Cove. Steep streets you see in TV shows and movies. Pray for Cordileone, has to witness in the belly of the Beast.
More proof about how dumb progressives are.
“He came to San Francisco when he was in his 20s to support social justice causes. He still supports those ideas, but “it just went too far.””
I wonder if he could articulate how far is the right amount, but not one inch more. What is the dividing line?
“The mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, recently declared it’s time to end the “reign of criminals who are destroying our city!””
By saying “it’s time to end it”, but not saying “this reign should never have been allowed to happen in the first place”, he implies that there indeed should have been a reign of criminals after all, but, this now has been enough of that. He should explain why criminals were given any such opportunity. Say, to an audience of crime victims.
John....they ALWAYS end badly! ALWAYS!!
One brazen lie he promotes is the existence of what he calls "mass incarceration." There's no such thing...yet. Sure. One could argue, as Constaza does in Seinfeld, that it's not a lie if you believe it.
Nonetheless, there's no mass incarceration. There's individual incarceration on a mass scale. You could call it a necessary evil but I don't. It's a necessary good; criminals should be separated from their victims, actual and potential. To do otherwise is to invite disaster, which is exactly what San Fransicko is experiencing.
Unintended, my a$$...
New York City after several 'D'onkey mayors had the same self-inflicted problems. However, their voter base got fed-up enough to elect a law&order candidate of the opposition, Rudy Giuliani. He and his police commissioner(s) started by implementing a decade-old proposition (1982) called "Broken Windows Policing" which gave policing priority to smaller public crimes and disorders. The rationale was that reducing such visible signs of crime and delinquency would engender a sense of community safety and reduce upscale crimes.
While effective and did much to make Giuliani a re-elected Mayor even before 09/11/2001, it became quite unpopular / HATED by the LEFT! The obvious reasons were that active policing meant tactics that the opposition considered as racist, prejudicial to civil rights and thus, a pre-purposed attack on civil liberties.
So, what chance is there for San Francisco? I'd say, given their FAR LEFT bent ...; 'Slim to none!'
Stossel didn’t like Trump. He thought it was good that Biden won.
Likewise; THIS sentence is poorly written: Cars are broken into 74 times a day.
The FACT is that, on average, 74 cars a day are broken into.
excrement coming home to roost
John Stossel is a libertarian. Of course he wouldn’t vote for President Trump. You think he voted for that idiot biden? You’re out of your mind if you do.
WHERE DOES HE SAY IT WAS GOOD THAT BIDEN WON? Show me the exact paragraph.
“He came to San Francisco when he was in his 20s to support social justice causes. He still supports those ideas”
well, no point in reading this guy’s book ... no ACTUAL solutions will be found there, just another serving of failing leftist ideology, perhaps with a scoop of ice cream on top ...
Reminds me of the story where the kid is masturbating and his mother walks in on him. "Stop that!" she cries, "you'll go blind!" To which he replies, "Ah, Mom ... can't I just do it 'til I need glasses?"
*John Stossel is a libertarian.* Libertarians believe in drug legalization. Allowing people to shoot up would kill them. I say give them the junk in a place where nobody sees them. They will either die or hit bottom and turn their lives around. Thats good.
The place to shoot up? The Salton Sea area. Few decent citizens and plenty of sun. Install containers where they can crash.
They tried this in Switzerland behind a railroad station in the capitol. It attracted drug dealers from all over Europe. It’s now closed.
The movie 'Escape from New York' wasn't a fiction as much as it was about a shelved plan for what to do with failed cities.
Too many cities in the United States were built to their point of failure and once they past that point, they couldn't "come back". Cities hostile to families don't have a future.
https://www.detroityes.com/fabulous-ruins-of-detroit/prologue.php
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