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Posts Tagged ‘San Francisco’
July 3rd, 2012 at 6:21 pm
San Francisco’s Homeless Cure: Remove Public Seating

San Francisco’s failure to police the takeover of public spaces by homeless people is appalling, making it the West Coast capitol of violent panhandlers and surly runaways.  Heather MacDonald wrote a particularly eye-popping essay describing the depths of the city’s dereliction of duty for City Journal two years ago that is well worth reading.

But rather than get its burgeoning homeless population into treatment or at least off the street, San Francisco came up with another solution that hasn’t stopped the inflow, but has made life less livable for taxpaying citizens: removing public seating.

From the New York Times:

All around the city, San Franciscans can be found seated on steps, curbs, retaining walls and on the grass — but not on benches. In a tacit surrender to the overwhelming problem of homelessness, the city has simply removed public seating over the last two decades. Benches in Civic Center Plaza were removed in the 1990s. Those in nearby United Nations Plaza were ripped out in the middle of the night in 2001, to discourage the homeless from congregating and camping there.

“Because San Francisco has been unwilling to deal with homelessness in a serious way, we have instead removed public seating from virtually the entire city,” said Gabriel Metcalf, the executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, an urban policy research group. “It’s such a sad statement and it makes the city that much less livable for everyone.”

Many in the permanent homeless community suffer from addictions and mental problems that make it difficult if not impossible for them to meaningfully contribute to society.  But a reasonable response to that reality isn’t to cede public space to vagrants.  Rather, it’s to get the treatable into treatment, the malcontents into custody, and give back the parks and the plazas to the public that pays for them.

May 14th, 2012 at 12:12 pm
Another Big Labor Failure: America’s Only Unionized Strip Club Likely to Close
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One can only imagine the emotional travails of being a devoted liberal; of being completely seduced by the philosophical purity of your ideals, only to so regularly see them falsified by practical experience.

One area where this regularly plays out is with labor unions, where the dream of worker empowerment often yields to the reality that the high costs imposed by big labor weaken businesses and frequently undermine the jobs of the very workers the union is supposed to be defending (see “Automobile Industry, American”).

Based on a recent story in Northern California’s Bay Citizen — about a strip club on the verge of closing down — it seems that there’s no industry free from the corrosive union influence:

Most strip club dancers are “independent contractors” who earn money dancing for tips. Often they have to pay the clubs for stage time, a system that can make the dancers vulnerable to exploitative business practices.

When the Lusty Lady’s dancers voted to unionize in 1997, they wanted to protect themselves from such practices. In 2003, the workers bought the business and turned it into a cooperative, making it perhaps the most San Francisco strip club in San Francisco. The club’s employees receive hourly salaries and those who are part of the co-op also share in its revenue (when there is revenue.)

… Tempest, another Lusty Lady dancer, told the pro-labor newsmagazine “In These Times,” that she has had second thoughts about unionizing, a move she once supported. She questioned whether unionization “is conducive to strip club profits.”

She’s got a point, although the words “strip club” in that last sentence are extraneous. It’s hardly a shame that these young women will likely have to find a more edifying line of work. That being said, the Lusty Lady’s travails are representative of the plight of union shops throughout the nation. It turns out that profits, when ignored, tend to evaporate — no matter the industry.

Most strip club dancers are “independent contractors” who earn money dancing for tips. Often they have to pay the clubs for stage time, a system that can make the dancers vulnerable to exploitative business practices.

When the Lusty Lady’s dancers voted to unionize in 1997, they wanted to protect themselves from such practices. In 2003, the workers bought the business and turned it into a cooperative, making it perhaps the most San Francisco strip club in San Francisco. The club’s employees receive hourly salaries and those who are part of the co-op also share in its revenue (when there is revenue.)

Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/1bfiB)

August 23rd, 2011 at 5:41 pm
A Senik in the Bay Area
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CFIF readers in the San Francisco metro area (come on, we know you exist) be warned: I’ll be coming to a radio dial near you tomorrow morning.

I’ll be guesting on Brian Sussman’s morning show on KSFO AM 560 to discuss California state legislators’ refusal to make their official budgets available for public review.

No word on timing yet, but I’ll update the post once I know. Feel free to throw the car into park on the Golden Gate Bridge and wait in anticipation though.

May 17th, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Obamacare Waiver Corruption Continues
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Ever since its inception, it’s been clear that the waiver program being run by the Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services represents that age-old liberal trend: suffering for thee, but not for me. The waivers allow certain institutions to bypass the onerous requirements put in place by Obamacare. But since they are dispensed according to the whims of the Obama HHS, the recipients tend to be interests favored by the White House — a process that makes a mockery of the rule of law.

A piece in today’s Daily Caller reports yet another suspicious trend:

Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.

Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide, and the companies that won them didn’t have much in common with companies throughout the rest of the country that have received Obamacare waivers.

Other common waiver recipients were labor union chapters, large corporations, financial firms and local governments. But Pelosi’s district’s waivers are the first major examples of luxurious, gourmet restaurants and hotels getting a year-long pass from Obamacare.

All hail the Democrats, party of the working man — assuming he works in a San Francisco bistro.

October 14th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
Rejecting the San Francisco Mentality

The Manhattan Institute’s Heather MacDonald has an eye-popping expose on the insane delusion about the ‘root causes’ of homelessness among what passes for San Francisco’s intelligencia.  Though the entire article is worth reading, one passage deserves special mention for the way it shows how disconnected are the captains of ‘Homelessness, Inc.’ from the actual motivations of the people they claim to serve:

An unintentionally hilarious letter to the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2010 revealed just why the homelessness-industrial complex is so desperate to claim the Haight infestation for itself: government contracts. “The majority of the youth on the streets and in the park are in the Haight seeking support to address the issues that have led them there,” wrote the executive director of Larkin Street Youth Services in criticizing the sit-lie proposal. “Funding to help these youths through outreach, case management, education and employment has been severely cut over the past two years. . . . Rather than rallying in anger, a better use of our time is to focus on helping youths exit the streets so they can find work and housing and become contributing members of the community.” Translation: Homelessness, Inc. wants more money.

Larkin Street’s analysis of why people hang out in the Haight is as wildly inaccurate as the Coalition’s fingering of unaffordable rent. Few, if any, of these vagrants are “in the Haight seeking support to address the issues that have led them there,” unless “support” means money for booze and drugs. To the contrary, the “youth” are there to party, en route to their next way station. As a platinum blonde boozily announces in The Haight Street Kids: “I love this city, love your fucking life.” A tall youth draped around her adds: “It’s awesome for traveling kids to stop in when they need a break.”

Predictably, the offer of services and housing—which San Francisco’s round-the-clock outreach workers constantly put before the Haight Street vagrants—is usually turned down. As for becoming “contributing members of the community,” that’s definitely not on the agenda, either. Asked what he saw for himself in the future, a “traveler” in the Stanford documentary rolls his eyes, smiles nervously, and shakes his head for nearly a minute before replying: “A hot dog, there’s definitely a hot dog in my future.”

Sanity is dead.  Long live Progressivism!

December 17th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
San Franciscans Getting the Government They Deserve

It’s hard to imagine rational people living in San Francisco.  As detailed in the newest edition of San Francisco Weekly, voters by the bay have repeatedly approved billion dollar bond measures even though in many cases the old bonds would have been sufficient but for the incompetence and malfeasance of city hall.  In another instance, the city tried to save money by mixing elderly patients with younger mentally disturbed ones.  After one elderly patient was attacked four times the staff’s response was to put up a sign saying, “Don’t Hit.”  Apparently, it was not effective.  By the second of a six page article, the author seems exasperated by the parade of horribles.

These are dramatic examples of how the city wasted time and money and made people’s lives miserable — with no apparent repercussions for those responsible. But these are far from isolated incidents (see the “Annals of Incompetence” sidebar on page 12). And in each case, it comes back to the same basic problem of accountability: Plenty of public figures make promises, but no one is responsible for keeping them.

But there is a mechanism for holding them accountable.  However repugnant these occurrences are, though, the population most at fault isn’t the one occupying the seats of power.  It’s the people who continue to elect and empower them.  As long as a polity can vote out its leaders the system of representative democracy works.  In a certain sense, it’s hard to blame the wardens of an insane asylum for mismanagement when their superiors keep cutting checks.  In the carnival of incoherence that is San Francisco, the first step towards rational government is as close as the next election cycle.