{"id":2737,"date":"2009-12-17T12:35:08","date_gmt":"2009-12-17T17:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=2737"},"modified":"2009-12-17T12:35:08","modified_gmt":"2009-12-17T17:35:08","slug":"san-franciscans-getting-the-government-they-deserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/2737\/san-franciscans-getting-the-government-they-deserve\/","title":{"rendered":"San Franciscans Getting the Government They Deserve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s hard to imagine rational people living in San Francisco.\u00a0 As detailed in the newest edition of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfweekly.com\/2009-12-16\/news\/the-worst-run-big-city-in-the-u-s\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>San Francisco Weekly<\/em><\/a>, 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.\u00a0 In another instance, the city tried to save money by mixing elderly patients with younger mentally disturbed ones.\u00a0 After one elderly patient was attacked four times the staff\u2019s response was to put up a sign saying, \u201cDon\u2019t Hit.\u201d\u00a0 Apparently, it was not effective.\u00a0 By the second of a six page article, the author seems exasperated by the parade of horribles.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>These are dramatic examples of how the city wasted time and money and made people&#8217;s lives miserable \u2014 with no apparent repercussions for those responsible. But these are far from isolated incidents (see the &#8220;Annals of Incompetence&#8221; 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But there is a mechanism for holding them accountable.\u00a0 However repugnant these occurrences are, though, the population most at fault isn\u2019t the one occupying the seats of power.\u00a0 It\u2019s the people who continue to elect and empower them.\u00a0 As long as a polity can vote out its leaders the system of representative democracy works.\u00a0 In a certain sense, it\u2019s hard to blame the wardens of an insane asylum for mismanagement when their superiors keep cutting checks.\u00a0 In the carnival of incoherence that is San Francisco, the first step towards rational government is as close as the next election cycle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s hard to imagine rational people living in San Francisco.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In another instance, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[656],"class_list":["post-2737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-san-francisco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2737"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2743,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737\/revisions\/2743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}