TheXReportCard on X - "2 Blacks rob and murder a gay white man in twin peaks SF, And yesterday they got a mistrial because They argued the shooter has a “low iq” and high on opioids They even stipulated they shot the man"
Family of slain Twin Peaks photographer lament jury deadlock - San Francisco Public Safety News - "While they did not dispute that their client fired the shot that killed Mr French, defense attorneys argued that, at the time of the killing, Ms Decuir was in a “sickle cell crisis” and suffering from opiate painkiller withdrawal. They added that Ms Decuir had a low IQ, a “lack of adaptive functioning” and suffers from stress and anxiety. As a consequence, they said, she did not act “consciously” when firing the gun. She was “unaware of what is going on,” attorney Mark Iverson told the jury, “She is moving, but without conscious thought.”"
Collin Rugg on X - "Tow truck driver tries stealing a car in broad daylight at a stop light in downtown San Francisco. The driver and her husband were reportedly running errands when the man tried grabbing their car. “We were at a stoplight and minding our own business… He started in reverse and all the lights came on. That’s when we were like, ‘Hey, something’s really wrong.’ His lever was coming down,” the woman said to ABC7. According to San Francisco city attorney David Chiu, incidents similar to this are ongoing problems. Some companies including Specialty Towing were “illegally towing cars of vulnerable individuals from a private commercial parking lot, limiting the times vehicles could be retrieved, and pressuring vehicle owners to pay in cash.”"
🇺🇸Travis🇺🇸 on X - "WATCH: a woman in Sacramento, CA breaks into a restaurant and police don’t stop her. Instead, they talk for a second and then continue down the road. What is happening to California?"
Meme - Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil: "France's national railway company pulled out of bidding for the high-speed rail contract in California in 2011. They said the state was awful to work in and they preferred to work somewhere less dysfunctional. So they went to North Africa."
"Housing isn't the only area where they've become awful. Rail is bad in America and troubled in Britain. You can't appreciate how bad America's rail building is without examples. French rail pulled out of California and opted to build in Morocco because it was less dysfunctional"
"The 2-hour, 40-minute Dream. Although it comes more than a half century after Asia and Europe were running successful high-speed rail systems, the bullet train project when it was first proposed in the 1980s was new to America, larger than any single transportation project before it and more costly than even the nation's biggest state could finance in one step. The state was warned repeatedly that its plans were too complex. SNCF, the French national railroad, was among bullet train operators from Europe and Japan that came to California in the early 2000s with hopes of getting a contract to help develop the system. The company's recommendations for a direct route out of Los Angeles and a focus on moving people between Los Angeles and San Francisco were cast aside, said Dan McNamara, a career project manager for SNCF. The company pulled out in 2011. "There were so many things that went wrong," Mr. McNamara said. "SNCF was very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system." Morocco's bullet train started service in 2018."
Noah Smith @Noahpinion: "YOU CANNOT BUILD EVEN ONE SINGLE MILE OF HIGH RAIL"
"Why it is taking California so long to complete its high-speed rail. In 2008, Califomnia voted yes to build the nation's first high speed railway. The plan is to build an electric train that will connect Los Angeles and San Francisco in two hours and forty minutes. But 15 years later, there is not a single mille of track laid, and there isn't 'enough money to finish the project. The latest estimates show it will cost up to $128 billion to complete the entire system from LA to San Francisco. But progress has been made and construction is well underway."
Clearly the only reason Europe can do it is because they have slave labour, and European countries don't have over 300 million people, because reasons
How can left wingers blame Republicans for this?
How California’s Bullet Train Went Off the Rails - The New York Times - "Building the nation’s first bullet train, which would connect Los Angeles and San Francisco, was always going to be a formidable technical challenge, pushing through the steep mountains and treacherous seismic faults of Southern California with a series of long tunnels and towering viaducts. But the design for the nation’s most ambitious infrastructure project was never based on the easiest or most direct route. Instead, the train’s path out of Los Angeles was diverted across a second mountain range to the rapidly growing suburbs of the Mojave Desert — a route whose most salient advantage appeared to be that it ran through the district of a powerful Los Angeles county supervisor. The dogleg through the desert was only one of several times over the years when the project fell victim to political forces that have added billions of dollars in costs and called into question whether the project can ever be finished. Now, as the nation embarks on a historic, $1 trillion infrastructure building spree, the tortured effort to build the country’s first high-speed rail system is a case study in how ambitious public works projects can become perilously encumbered by political compromise, unrealistic cost estimates, flawed engineering and a determination to persist on projects that have become, like the crippled financial institutions of 2008, too big to fail... the detour through the Mojave Desert was part of a string of decisions that, in hindsight, have seriously impeded the state’s ability to deliver on its promise to create a new way of transporting people in an era of climate change. Political compromises, the records show, produced difficult and costly routes through the state’s farm belt. They routed the train across a geologically complex mountain pass in the Bay Area. And they dictated that construction would begin in the center of the state, in the agricultural heartland, not at either of the urban ends where tens of millions of potential riders live. The pros and cons of these routing choices have been debated for years. Only now, though, is it becoming apparent how costly the political choices have been. Collectively, they turned a project that might have been built more quickly and cheaply into a behemoth so expensive that, without a major new source of funding, there is little chance it can ever reach its original goal of connecting California’s two biggest metropolitan areas in two hours and 40 minutes. When California voters first approved a bond issue for the project in 2008, the rail line was to be completed by 2020, and its cost seemed astronomical at the time — $33 billion — but it was still considered worthwhile as an alternative to the state’s endless web of freeways and the carbon emissions generated in one of the nation’s busiest air corridors.. Fourteen years later, construction is now underway on part of a 171-mile “starter” line connecting a few cities in the middle of California, which has been promised for 2030. But few expect it to make that goal. Meanwhile, costs have continued to escalate. When the California High-Speed Rail Authority issued its new 2022 draft business plan in February, it estimated an ultimate cost as high as $105 billion. Less than three months later, the “final plan” raised the estimate to $113 billion. The rail authority said it has accelerated the pace of construction on the starter system, but at the current spending rate of $1.8 million a day, according to projections widely used by engineers and project managers, the train could not be completed in this century... Quentin Kopp, another former rail chairman who earlier served as a state senator and a Superior Court judge, said the system would be running today but for the many bad political decisions that have made it almost impossible to build... “The consequence of starting in the Central Valley is not having a system,” said Rich Tolmach, who headed the nonprofit California Rail Foundation that promotes public rail transit and was deeply involved in the early days of the project. “It will never be operable.”"
Obviously, the problem is they are not spending enough money
Meme - "2010: CALIFORNIA and CHINA
I should build a high speed rail
2012: Elon Musk: no, cancel it and make a hyperloop instead!
2015: China: 8,000 miles built. California: nothing.
2018: China: 16,000 miles built. California: nothing.
2021: Elon Musk: we will have a prototype in a few more years.China: 25,000 miles built."
I love how California's dysfunction is Musk's fault
End Wokeness on X - "California politicians are finally facing the ramifications of their pro-crime policies: LA Mayor Karen Bass was robbed on the weekend. It was the 2nd time in 2 years. Yesterday, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan's security detail was attacked on a live TV interview. In October, Oakland DA Pamela Price got burglarized and didn't receive any police assistance. California Governor Gavin Newsom and California Senator Boxer (D) were both ambushed and assauIted in Oakland."
California mocked over high-speed rail bridge to nowhere - "California is taking of heat for celebrating the completion of an high-speed rail bridge that clearly goes nowhere — part of an $100 billion boondoggle project. Critics — including Tesla founder Elon Musk and Dogecoin creator Billy Markus — are ripping the California High Speed Rail Authority after it boasted about the completion of a “Fresno River Viaduct,” a mere sliver of the state’s long-delayed, bullet-train project attempting to link San Francisco to Los Angeles... “1600 feet of high speed rail after 9 years and 11 billion dollars it takes about 5 minutes to walk 1600 feet so a high speed rail for that is a really big deal,” added Markus, who also goes by “Shibetoshi Nakamoto.” ... California High Speed Rail Authority later clarified that the project took three years to finish, and that it was actually completed in 2018. Musk also chimed in, posting a sad, crying emoji to express his sentiments about the project, which is reportedly in danger of being scrapped. That’s despite $11 billion in taxpayer dollars that have already being sunk into the construction already. That figure includes the Fresno Viaduct and numerous other bridge and overpasses that have already been built for the first phase of the project — which will run from Bakersfield north of Los Angeles to Merced, which is about 80 miles from the Bay Area."
Time to blame the automobile lobby and car culture
Thread by @adampnathan on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - " Did you know San Francisco spends $2 million a year on a "Managed Alcohol Program?" It provides free Alcohol to people struggling with chronic alcoholism who are mostly homeless. I stumbled upon the building where they have this program. This is what I saw.🧵 The location is an old hotel in SOMA. Inside the lobby, they had a kegs set up to taps where they were basically giving out free beer to the homeless who've been identified with AUD (Alcohol Use Disorder). While there have been some limited studies showing some promise, I have to point out a couple of things that troubled me.
1. The Department of Public Health is spending $2 million of taxpayer dollars to give free alcohol to mostly homeless people struggling with alcoholism.
2. It's set up so people in the program just walk in and grab a beer, and then another one. All day.
The whole thing is very odd to me and just doesn't feel right. Providing free drugs to drug addicts doesn't solve their problems. It just stretches them out. Where's the recovery in all of this? This is what harm reduction refers to as "safe supply" or "safer supply." There's currently a huge debate in Canada about this idea as British Columbia has been "expirimenting" on humans by giving them free Opioids in the hopes that they won't use fentanyl. The results have been mixed at best and bad at worst in that it appears many of these "free" drugs just get resold on the street for fentanyl or worse.
I'm no doctor or "expert" on issues of drug policy. But I am a taxpayer. When did this Managed Alcohol Program get approved? Where were the public hearings? Why is it hidden away in an old hotel? Who approved a $2 million budget for it? Do you think giving free alcohol to the homeless who are alcoholics a good idea? If you want to hear from proponents of the program, you can watch this. I understand the reasoning, but it doesn't "feel" right. Especially for $2 million dollars."
Time to force people to live in big cities so they can be taxed to pay for left wing policies
Thread by @theSamPadilla on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - " Holy fucking shit. I just walked from Soma to Hayes Valley through Market St and easily sketchiest walk of my life. And dude I grew up in Brazil and Colombia. I’ve walked real sketchy shit before. Doesn’t even compare. Felt like a scene straight out of the walking dead. Sad. I walked by a corner where there were easily 100 people, many visibly high. Probably a shelter. Right then, an unoccupied FSD Waymo car drove by. It was the first time I saw one without a human at the wheel. And it just hit me. San Francisco is the epitome of a tech dystopia. This can’t be the future of tech."
Meme - Richard Hanania @RichardHanania: "In LA County, the only places where I’ve seen these solar panels that also shade your car is in public school parking lots. This means there’s no way it’s cost-benefit justified, right? Shade and power at the same time! If this made sense it wouldn’t just be gov that did it."
Joshua Davis on X - "Occasionally I wonder why California taxes are so much higher than other deep-blue West Coast states. Then I see stories about wild welfare schemes. Like, California pays drug addicts a $599 sobriety participation trophy… Even if all their drug tests come back positive for illicit substances. From the LA Times: Every time a drug test is free of stimulants, participants are paid, even if the sample tests positive for other kinds of drugs, including opioids.
For reference, California has an exceptionally high total tax burden, even vs Oregon and Washington."
California pays meth users up to $599 a year to get sober - Los Angeles Times
Left wingers want to force everyone to live in cities so they can pay for nonsense like this
San Francisco Cited This Professor To End 8th Grade Algebra. Her Research Had 'Reckless Disregard for Accuracy,' Complaint Alleges. - "A Stanford University professor, whose research was credited with inspiring San Francisco’s failed experiment to ax 8th grade algebra, is facing allegations of "reckless disregard for accuracy" in her work, according to an official academic complaint filed Wednesday with Stanford’s provost and dean of research. The anonymous complaint, backed by a California-based group of math-and-science focused professionals, alleges that Professor Jo Boaler—the most prominent influence on California’s K-12 math framework that nudges schools away from accelerated math pathways—has in 52 instances misrepresented supporting research she has cited in her own work in order to support her conclusions. These include the notions that taking timed tests causes math anxiety, mixing students of different academic levels boosts achievement, and students have been found to perform better when teachers don’t grade their work. This pattern of "citation misrepresentation," the complaint alleges, violates Stanford’s standards of professional conduct for faculty, showing a disregard for accuracy, and may violate the university's research integrity rules... The allegations come amid backlash against equity-focused educational policies Boaler has championed... On the question of timed tests causing "math anxiety," Boaler has asserted that "researchers now know that students experience stress on timed tests that they do not experience even when working on the same math questions in untimed conditions." As evidence, she cites a study by psychologist Randall Engle. However, Engle’s paper in question deals with "working memory" rather than student anxiety, and Engle himself called the assessment a "huge misrepresentation" of his work. Anna Stokke, a mathematics professor at the University of Winnipeg who has studied this claim and found that it contradicts available evidence, said many math teachers nonetheless seem to believe it—and that their belief seems to stem from Boaler... Boaler has said students have "achieved at significantly higher levels" if teachers offered "diagnostic comments" on their work instead of grading them—citing a 1988 study that involved giving a random sample of students a basic language task and some puzzle questions outside of their normal classrooms. The study did not involve an actual academic class taught over the course of several months—a limitation acknowledged by the study’s author but not by Boaler. Boaler has also claimed that students reached more advanced levels of math, and enjoyed the subject more, if students of all achievement levels learned together. This assertion was reiterated in California’s math framework as a reason to avoid separating advanced students from their lower-performing peers. But the study cited in both cases was not looking solely at the virtues of classroom diversity, but rather the benefits of teaching an accelerated algebra course to all 8th graders in a "diverse suburban school district"—a fact that went unmentioned by Boaler... Boaler runs a center out of Stanford called Youcubed, which produces data science courses promoted in the California math framework and offers consulting services. Records from one California public school district showed she charged $5,000 per hour in fees. She has also cultivated a high profile in educational and progressive circles. After she drew negative press for the initial drafts of the equity-focused California math framework that she led, she sought help from Democratic megadonor Laurene Powell Jobs to advocate for the guidelines to California governor Gavin Newsom, according to emails. In correspondence with the Free Beacon, she has downplayed her influence in San Francisco public schools’ 2014 decision to ditch middle school algebra for equity reasons—a policy that was just reversed by San Francisco’s school board and rejected by a voter referendum. Yet she frequently praised the elimination of that course—in a Stanford video, in her research, and op-eds. The district’s former superintendent also credited her research as an inspiration for the policy."
Beloved Richmond burger joint will close after 40 years after wheelchair user sued over obstacles that stopped him entering, with owners saying they're too poor to build a ramp - "A beloved Richmond burger joint has closed its doors after a wheelchair user sued the restaurant over a 'high threshold' that prevented him from entering. After 38 years of operation, the Great American Hamburger & Pie Co.'s Post in Richmond, California, bid farewell to its longtime customers on Thursday, with the lawsuit being the final blow. 'Two harsh years of COVID, high food inflation, and a recent ADA compliance lawsuit have taken a toll on our small family business,' owners George and Helen Koliavas announced the closure. George told SFGate that there were discussions about constructing a wheelchair-accessible ramp, but the cost was too high. After the Americans with Disabilities Act compliance lawsuit was filed against the restaurant last year, George and Helen decided that the best moved was to close"
"Inclusion" excludes people
Outmigration cost California $24B in departed incomes as poorer people move in - "Outmigration to other states cost California $24 billion in outgoing personal incomes across 2021 and 2022, according to new IRS data. Departing Californians were significantly wealthier and more likely to have children or spouses than incoming Americans, suggesting wealthy families are leaving the state as poorer individuals come to seek their California dream... “This will not bode well for California and its future personal income tax revenues,” said government and pension finance expert and former state Sen. John Moorlach to The Center Square. “It's not only employees that are leaving, it's entire businesses. Consequently, it's not as if we need in-migration to fill empty positions. The positions left, too.”... California Governor Gavin Newsom touted the state’s return to population growth this year thanks to rising foreign immigration and a slowdown in outmigration, but this financial data shows the state is trading higher income families for lower income individuals. A new state report found the state’s private sector has lost a net 154,000 jobs and gained 361,000 public sector and taxpayer-supported jobs since September 2022. California is shedding jobs even in sectors growing nationally, such as the information, real estate, finance, and insurance industries. With the state cutting or delaying spending to fill a $47 billion deficit — thus potentially cutting into taxpayer-funded employment — it appears remaining opportunities for many of these new Californians could be drying up."
Left wingers keep mocking the idea that high taxes push rich people out, and they hate the rich people who leave. Good luck paying for the left wing agenda after you kill the golden goose
California Lawmakers Urge Court to Lower Passing Score for Next Bar Exam - "Four state lawmakers have called on the California Supreme Court to immediately drop the score required to pass the bar exam, saying the test has a “racially discriminatory impact” on would-be lawyers. In a June 18 letter to justices, the Democratic lawmakers cite the historically low 26.8% pass rate on the February exam. While half of whites taking the exam for the first time passed, the success rates for Asian applicants (28%), Latinos (25%) and African Americans (18%) were markedly lower."
From 2020. Of course, they did
Outmigration cost California $24B in departed incomes as poorer people move in : r/business - "Only people who obey laws because they have too much to lose follow zoning regulations. Poor immigrants can turn a rental house into a hostel subletting rooms to multiple occupants and live at low cost so the housing prices that seem to make it impossible to live in California don't apply. You see a lot of this in California, old geezers who insist they can't afford to get a permit to build on their abundant land living next to people running completely illegal group living facilities and not giving a rats ass about stinking regulations."
"Why do they follow the law? Is it because it’s understood they the authorities will hold them accountable but not the others?"
KTVU on X - "The San Francisco Board of Supervisors gave final and unanimous approval Tuesday for a pilot program that will limit the hours retail businesses can operate in the Tenderloin neighborhood."
Swann Marcus on X - "This is fucking incredible. San Francisco has problems with gangs and drug dealers in the Tenderloin so their solution is to use the power of the state to force legal businesses to close early instead of going after the actual criminals. How large is the Tenderloin. Can't you just swarm the neighborhood with police officers every night. The entire fucking city is only 49 square miles. San Francisco has approximately 2 police officers per 1000 residents and most major European cities have around 4 cops per 1000. Hire more officers and have them sit on every high crime street corner in the Tenderloin every night like they do in Camden. Problem solved"
Sacramento City Attorney threatens to fine Target for reporting too many thefts to police - "It has been revealed that the Sacramento City Attorney's Office threatened a Target store with public nuisance charges on claims that the store has called the police to report too many thefts. City officials warned the Target location at 2505 Riverside Blvd that if they continued to call the police to report thefts, they could be fined. The warning came from City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood's office... city officials may issue warnings so there could be a reduction in crime statistics."
The Associated Press on X - "BREAKING: California Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued an executive order for the removal of homeless encampments in the state."
i/o on X - "There won't be an honest mea culpa, just like there won't be a mea culpa once California and its many deep blue local jurisdictions start retreating on their "progressive" crime and education policies. And then 20 years after this inevitable retreat the process of "progress and reform" will start once again — an endless cycle of dreamy and destructive utopianism."
sherrilynJonesfreed on X - "Everyone is going to scream, but as someone who have volunteered at a homeless shelter for most of my adult life, I can tell you the biggest problem is getting the people to spend the night. They would rather sleep out on a street so they can buy alcohol or drugs. And it’s incredibly unsafe. So yes, force them to go to the shelter. And make more beds. Fix this. Bravo, Gavin.
“68% of men and 76% of women who were homeless and in treatment for substance abuse.” “Most research shows that around 1/3 of people who are homeless have problems with alcohol and/or drugs, and around 2/3 of these people have lifetime histories of drug or alcohol use disorders.”"
Matthew Veverka on X - "Only 1/3 have problems with substance abuse! It's a housing problem!"
Grant Slatton on X - "You can get these really handsome prefab micro studio houses from the factory in China for $20K each California spends like $500K per unit of government homeless housing Can we work out a deal?? China factory bros, save us"
The homeless-industrial complex won't be happy
Maddy Middleton’s killer did not think he would face consequences
Kane 謝凱堯 on X - "sorry, someone that raped and buried alive a child is going to be released early into san francisco? what does someone need to do in california to be considered dangerous?"
Senator Shannon Grove on X - "In CA purchasing a child for sex is only a misdemeanor. My bill SB 1414 is trying to make it a felony punishable by prison time. Today, the CA Department of Finance openly opposed my bill because they said it costs too much to lock up predators….the ones that like to have sex with children. You can’t make this stuff up!"
White Flight from Asian Immigration: Evidence from California Public Schools - "Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the US but we know little about how Asian immigration has affected cities, neighborhoods and schools. This paper studies white flight from Asian arrivals in high-socioeconomic-status Californian school districts from 2000-2016 using initial settlement patterns and national immigrant flows to instrument for entry. We find that, as Asian students arrive, white student enrollment declines in higher-income suburbs. These patterns cannot be fully explained by racial animus, housing prices, or correlations with Black/Hispanic arrivals. Parental fears of academic competition may play a role."
What an anti-racist state