San Francisco is 'worse than Afghanistan': Immigrant store owner begs city for help amid theft epidemic - "A San Francisco store owner who immigrated to the United States from Afghanistan recently claimed that crime in the city is worse than in Afghanistan after violent criminals robbed his tobacco shop, stealing more than $100,000 in merchandise. Zaid, co-owner of Cigarettes R Cheaper, says that a gang of thieves robbed his store on Tuesday night and stole $80,000 worth of merchandise, along with $20,000 in cash... The Afghan immigrant slammed San Francisco's progressive policies that prevent criminals from being held accountable... Police told Zaid that the long-response time was due to the department's staffing crisis... According to Zaid, the city is seeing a mass exodus of both people and businesses due to its increased criminal nature. Zaid says he might soon be the next owner to close up shop. "The city has gone downhill, especially the last 2 years since COVID, I’ve never seen it worse. People are afraid to come shopping here because they are either going to get robbed or someone will break into their car," Zaid explained. "We might have to shut it down," Zaid said, adding, "Our safety is more important than making a living in this city." Zaid closing down his tobacco shop would add to the growing list of businesses in San Francisco that have decided to permanently shutter their doors due to the city's vast increase in crime, rampant retail theft, open-air drug use, violent attacks carried out by homeless vagrants, and loss of foot traffic. In recent months, Nordstrom, Whole Foods, T-Mobile, Walgreens, Saks OFF 5th, and Old Navy all have announced their departures from the once-beloved city. San Francisco Mayor London Breed has publicly claimed that the mass exodus of businesses in the city is not due to the increase in crime, but rather the changing directory between retailers and consumers."
Time to defund the police
Supreme Court lets stand California’s ‘sanctuary’ law on undocumented immigrants - The Washington Post - "Solicitor General Noel Francisco had asked the Supreme Court to take the case, saying the law intrudes on what is a federal responsibility. “The federal government has exclusive authority over the presence of aliens in the United States, including ‘which aliens may be removed from the United States and the procedures for doing so,’ ” Francisco told the court in a brief. He was quoting from a 2012 Supreme Court opinion in which the court struck down an Arizona law that attempted to give police a greater role in detaining immigrants. What was good for Arizona must also be right for California, he wrote. California responded that it is not hampering federal authority, it has simply chosen not to volunteer for service. The law is “consistent with the longstanding principle that the Constitution allows states to decline to use their own resources to carry out federal regulatory programs,” state Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in his brief to the court."
From 2020
S.F. launches $6 million ad campaign to lure tourists
Two of SF's largest hotels are given up by owner — here's why - "The owner of two of San Francisco’s biggest hotels — Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Parc 55 — has stopped mortgage payments and plans to give up the two properties, in another sign of disinvestment in hard-hit downtown... "Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco’s path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges — both old and new,” said Thomas Baltimore Jr., CEO of Park Hotels""
Dion Lim on Twitter - "๐๐ก๐ข๐๐ฏ๐๐ฌ ๐๐๐ซ๐ ๐๐ญ ๐๐จ๐ซ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ฎ๐ซ๐ฒ ๐๐๐ญ๐๐ข๐ฅ ๐ข๐ง ๐๐๐ง ๐
๐ซ๐๐ง๐๐ข๐ฌ๐๐จ: multiple sources tell me thousands in handbags were taken f/2 diff retailers today. ⠀ Vid used in the PD investigation shows multiple suspects run out from Fendi this afternoon. ๐งต⬇️
Earlier in the day I’m told another luxury handbag shop within a major department store was also hit for thousands in goods. ⠀ Working to confirm more details w/SFPD. ⠀ Note: this comes as several biz are leaving the city. (Cinemark, Westfield mall giving up SF Centre.)... Holy moly. Just landed ๐ฌ back in the US & according to a document I obtained, there are 5 suspects & more than a dozen handbags were stolen from the Fendi…valued at around $70,000. (During times like these I sometimes wonder/joke why I even pay for things! ๐คฆ๐ป♀️) #SanFrancisco"
Thread by @Hebro_Steele on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "You hear about how bad San Francisco is. I was filming a shot of my father , Shelby Steele, and in the ten minutes we were gone our SUV was broken into and nearly $15k of cameras stolen. Called 911 & they hung up twice... It’s so bad that my friend is calling gang members for help. At the police. Every single person here had their car broken into and we’ve been here 15 minutes! While dealing with our situation we see more robbers pulling up in a Mercedes and looking into cars. We yelled at them. They pulled a gun on my friend. He’s filing his report now. Not one police officer showed up. People asking where this was. On top of famous Lombard Street. One of richest neighborhoods in SF and America. I’ve worked dangerous neighborhoods for years and nothing like this. We just left police station. The officer was kind and took down all info. She expressed sympathy and said nothing will likely happen: “The police have been defanged.” On Monday, we attended San Francisco’s meeting on reparations — see my father in tan jacket in photo. Some of the committee members were arguing for more defunding of the police. Just crazy... Guy at Hertz car rental at SFO said they average 3O cars a day that have been broken into."
Richard Hanania on Twitter - "They've finally done it. California approves the new math curriculum guidance. Out: explicit instruction and methods for doing math. In: "meaning-making", social justice, and an "inquiry" based approach."
Oakland police advise residents to reinforce doors, install alarms - "In a public safety advisory issued Wednesday, the Oakland Police Department recommended residents reinforce their doors and install security cameras amid a spate of home invasion robberies in the East Bay city. Thieves are ransacking homes, even when residents are present, and the department reported an increase in these break-ins across several neighborhoods, including Laurel, North Hills, Joaquin Miller and the Greater San Antonio area... Police offered several tips for residents to reduce their risk of an invasion, including making sure all doors and windows are locked and reinforcing doors with security bars or door braces. They suggested installing security systems with motion detection, surveillance cameras and alarms, as well as outdoor lighting with motion sensors. Another tip included trimming hedges and shrubs around the home to remove places where thieves could hide. In April, the department issued a similar warning about an uptick in carjackings and armed robberies, alerting Oakland residents that thieves were intentionally ramming their vehicles into victims' cars, forcing the victims to stop."
San Francisco stores lock up frozen food to deter shoplifters - "Buying a microwave dinner in San Francisco now requires a security clearance. Frozen food customers in the crime-plagued city have been forced to put their purchases on ice and find a clerk to unlock chained coolers, as retailers take drastic measures to keep shoplifters at bay. The doors in the frozen foods section at one local Walgreens are seen locked from the customers, who apparently need the staff’s assistance to access the products. “Workers said normally shoplifters clean out all the pizza and ice cream every night. They’re usually hit 20x a day. The whole store is virtually locked up,” KPIX’s Betty Yu tweeted... “And all bathrooms at stores are either locked or code access only or have a sign that said not working”... A worker at a Safeway outlet told the San Francisco Standard last week that he was quitting due to the added stress of unlocking items and carrying them to the checkout for customers... A customer, Danielle Strauss, waited over three minutes to buy a single tube of toothpaste at the Safeway store, the Standard reported. “Most of the time, I just order this stuff online to avoid going here completely,” the fed-up shopper told the outlet... The National Retail Federation’s 2022 retail security survey ranked the Bay Area as the second-most hard-hit metropolitan area by theft in the previous two years. Los Angeles was first, New York City was third and Houston placed fourth."
San Francisco’s Deathly Compassion - "Dealers selling heroin, Fentanyl, methamphetamine, and crack are ubiquitous. So, too, are the advocates for “harm reduction,” which holds that widespread drug use should be accepted but its worst effects mitigated. Organizations such as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Harm Reduction Coalition, the Drug Users Union, and even the Department of Public Health, in partnership with The DOPE Project, focus almost exclusively on “safe drug use.” In fact, the Drug Users Union’s goal is “to create a safe environment where people can use & enjoy drugs as well as receive services.” This attitude led to today’s humanitarian crisis: thousands of people living on San Francisco’s streets, languishing in an endless cycle of homelessness and addiction. Every day of the week, nonprofits and churches such as Glide Memorial partner with the city to distribute drug use supplies to addicts at designated pick-up points. With an empty backpack, I visited three such spots recently in a single afternoon. Through open doorways, friendly workers asked what I needed. They suggested items and eagerly gave me what asked for—needles (what size?), naloxone (do you know how to use it? Here, let me show you!), rubber tourniquets to pop my veins, little metal cookers for my dope, sharps containers, sheets of foil and straws for Fentanyl, and mounds of alcohol pads, gauze, and bandages. My backpack was soon bursting; I collected 170 needles. Not one person asked if I was interested in treatment. No one discussed detox or gave me a flyer with listings for local 12-step meetings. No one inquired about my physical or psychological wellbeing. I could have anything I wanted—except for help getting off drugs... Harm reduction has mutated from ameliorating the collateral negative effects of addiction to promoting drug use as a positive lifestyle choice. Yet the lives of San Francisco’s addicts clearly aren’t improving. They’re sicker, more numerous than ever, and dying in staggering numbers. The body count is rising from Fentanyl, the highly potent synthetic opioid that has become the substance of choice. Last year’s 441 overdose deaths represented a 70 percent increase, and 2020 will likely be another record-breaking year. Still, true believers carry on, convinced that they’re doing right by helping addicts do more drugs... Question the self-described experts, though, and you’re dismissed as a rube, even as their grand experiment—the giant petri dish of San Francisco—is evidence that they’ve failed. And it’s getting worse. Homeless addicts given hotel rooms during Covid-19 are offered the complete range of drug paraphernalia. Boxes of needles, glass pipes for meth and crack, and Fentanyl supplies are laid out in the lobbies like a breakfast buffet. Fatal overdoses, not surprisingly, have spiked. All the hotels should have been drug-free zones, yet not even one was designated for sober people or for those trying to kick their habits. The effects of enabling addiction are far-ranging. Low-income neighborhoods, where the majority of homeless drug users concentrate, are disproportionately affected. Poor immigrants, children, and seniors watch as addicts use drugs in front of them, stealing to support their addiction and behaving in other horrible ways. Small businesses can’t operate in such environments and are forced to close."
Of course, people pretend this is the same as Portugal's model. In the US, if you say anything negative at all about a phenomenon, that is "stigma"
San Francisco is allowing people to use drugs inside new Tenderloin treatment linkage center - "Shellenberger accused the city of running an “illicit drug consumption site” and a “supervised drug consumption area,” which is currently illegal under state and federal law... Keith Humphreys, an addiction medicine specialist at Stanford University School of Medicine who has advocated for more treatment options and supported the mayor’s promised crackdown on open-air drug markets, said the city should not mix active drug use with people seeking treatment. “If you’re coming into a place that’s supposed to guide you toward the end of seeking treatment and recovery and there are people using drugs around you, that becomes an incentive to keep going,” he said. “It’s like trying to have an AA meeting in a bar.”"
Meme - "San Francisco created an app asking for the publics help locating the "rare instances" of human feces found in public spaces for cleanup. This project was canceled 11 days later. But the map still exists."
Meme - Carolina Lion @CarolinaLion2: "In the latest sign of decline they have given up trying to fix California's power grid and are now touting it as a civic virtue."
"Would an occasional blackout help solve climate change? Shutting down gas plants faster could reduce carbon pollution - while also causing power shortages."
Naturally, the article has the usual misinformation about climate change
California Moving To Change Its Chemical Warning Labels - "In California, elevators, airports, restaurants, and even Disneyland all greet visitors with posted signs warning of the presence of chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects, or reproductive problems. These warnings, which stem from a state law, Proposition 65, are intended to arm people with information they can use to protect themselves from harmful chemical exposures. But the proliferation of these signs and labels on nearly every product and public place in California has meant that they are generally ignored by the people they are intended to reach, say the law’s critics and state government officials alike. Without intending to, Prop 65 has created an “overwarning” problem, explains Maureen F. Gorsen, an attorney with the firm Alston & Bird in Sacramento and former director of California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control. The California Safe Drinking Water & Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, as Prop 65 is more formally known, requires businesses to give people “clear and reasonable warning” before they expose them to any chemical known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity. About 850 chemicals, including ingredients in pesticides, household products, foods, drugs, dyes, and solvents, are subject to the law. The overwarning problem arose because manufacturers often slap Prop 65 warning labels on their products as a way to avoid lawsuits. Indeed, some plaintiffs’ lawyers troll for products or places in California that lack Prop 65 warning labels and then file suit for alleged noncompliance. In other words, manufacturers and business owners are getting sued and the plaintiffs’ lawyers are getting rich, Gorsen says."
No charges for Stockton 7-Eleven workers in viral beatdown of alleged robber - "Police said a third robbery occurred, but it was not reported to police. That robbery was caught in the viral video. In the video, a man believed to be Frazier is seen wearing a blue face covering, pushing around a trash can while allegedly throwing countless items into the can. A minute into the video, when the suspect begins to push the can away, a clerk is seen trying to stop him while another employee grabs a stick and beats the robber."
He had a gun the first two times too
Azealia Banks praises DeSantis leadership, says she feels 'way safer' in Florida than in Los Angeles - "Singer Azealia Banks offered Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis her ringing endorsement in a new interview, proclaiming that she feels “way safer” living in the Sunshine State under the Republican’s leadership than she ever did in liberal California... The 31-year-old Harlem native, who previously endorsed Donald Trump for president, said that in Los Angeles she felt like she needed a gun for protection, while in Florida people “mind their f—ing business.” Banks also attributed her newfound sense of security and comfort in part to the Florida governor. “He’s focused on the basic s–t,” she said. “There are elderly people in our country without walkers, who don’t have the money to get a septic tooth pulled. If we’re talking about divvying up healthcare funds, those situations should take precedence to facial feminization surgeries and stuff like that."
Why liberals hate Florida so much
End Wokeness on X - "This might be the most San Francisco story I’ve ever heard in my entire life A convicted child molester set up a tent across from a SF school offering “free fentanyl for new users” He has been doing this for 2 years SFPD Captain Chris Canning: "I was told he is in compliance with all the components of what his sex registration are.""
'I saw my life flash before my eyes': Singapore-based expat lists down reasons for moving from US - "There are many reasons why people choose to move to Singapore. It could be new opportunities, the year-round summer weather, and sometimes family. For one US woman, safety was the primary motivation behind her move from San Francisco to Singapore... "The dream was always to go to San Francisco cause it's the best city in the world," she said before caveating with "Or so I thought". The 28-year-old highlighted that San Francisco has been on the decline ever since Proposition 47 was passed in 2014. The new law states that all property crimes, including robbery, will be reclassified as a misdemeanour if the value of stolen property is less than US$950 (S$1305.95). This has encouraged theft, since people won't be facing felony charges. "There's this general feeling of lawlessness", recounted Heather on living in San Francisco. To illustrate her point, she mentioned how she experienced three smash-and-grab car burglaries in her first year of owning a car in 2021... she saw someone running three metres away from her with a gun when she was walking her dog. This happened in Rincon Hill, which is known to be one of the safest neighbourhoods in the US city. "In that moment, I saw my life flash before my eyes," she mentioned."
SF asks US Supreme Court to overturn homeless sweeps ruling - "Citing San Francisco’s frustration with court orders restricting its authority to remove homeless encampments from the streets, the city and Mayor London Breed are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to immediately overturn an appellate ruling requiring local governments to provide shelter for their entire unhoused population before clearing the encampments."
Noah Feldman: Why can’t California judges join the Boy Scouts? - "you need to start with the canon of judicial conduct that bars judges from belonging to invidiously discriminatory organizations. The American Bar Association first put this provision into its model code of judicial conduct in 1990. The reasoning was that judges should appear to be scrupulously fair in their private conduct as well as their judicial conduct... California’s judicial code of conduct, like others, contains an exception for religious organizations that discriminate. The Catholic Church doesn’t (yet) allow women to be priests, and Orthodox Judaism still prohibits women from receiving rabbinic ordination. Yet judges are permitted to belong to Catholic churches or Orthodox Jewish congregations — and the state doesn’t worry about the perception by women that such judges might discriminate against them"
Why do Californians pay so much for gas? - "Gasoline prices in California edged higher again on Tuesday, hitting an average of $5.84 per gallon – a little over a penny more than Monday’s average, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA). Drivers in metro Los Angeles are paying an average of $6.14/gallon, nearly 80 cents more than a month ago and 30 cents more than a year ago as gas prices tread dangerously close to L.A.’s all-time record of $6.50/gallon from October 2022. For comparison, drivers in southern states such as Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Alabama only pay around $3.30/gallon... “According to my last check, we have no less than four refineries in South California that are having either unexpected outages or are unplanned maintenance,” says Patrick De Haan, Head of Petroleum Analysis at GasBuddy. “That is putting a tremendous amount of pressure on the gasoline market and sending prices skyward very similarly to what we saw last year.” But perhaps the greatest factor, Haan says, is a lack of refining infrastructure that goes back decades and has isolated the Golden State. “California has made it very difficult to be a refinery here. In fact, the number of refineries here has fallen by more than half since 1991,” he says. “It’s a spectacular level of policy failures from pushing renewable fuels, which cut the amount of output at refineries, to [emissions regulations] that require special blends in special areas at special times of the year.”... California Gov. Gavin Newsom has essentially declared war on the oil industry, accusing companies of “lying and gouging Californians to line their own pockets.”... The Western States Petroleum Association, which represents petrol companies in California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, argues that drivers should direct their anger at Newsom and California’s policies – not them. “[Newsom] has implemented a de-facto oil production ban in the state by holding back permits, and he is set to phase out all production in the state over the next few years, making our state and nation more dependent on foreign oil,” WSPA said. “The first $1.30 Californians pay at the pump goes to taxes and regulatory fees and the programs [Newsom] is mandating on our residents.” The trade group also accuses Newsom of supporting climate policies dictated by “coastal affluent regions” of California to the detriment of the rest of the state."
Why are California gas prices so high? Winter blend approved - "prices hit an average of $6.03 per gallon, according to AAA. "There’s a lot that’s going wrong. First, the rising price of oil, but the lack of refining capacity, a special blend that’s only required in California, high taxes, a cap-and-trade program all of that. When prices are running normally, California is still about a dollar a gallon above everyone else," said Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy. The national average for gas across the U.S. today sits at $3.83, according to AAA, more than $2 less than the California average. "There is no justification for that. You can look at all the environmental rules and regulations and taxes that the state imposes compared to the national average and you’re not even going to get to a dollar. So where is that mystery surcharge?" Newsom said."
California gas prices: 4 charts explain why they're so high - Los Angeles Times - "The proportion of foreign crude fed into the state’s refineries should rise as a state ban on new hydraulic fracking permits takes effect in 2024 and the governor pushes to phase out all drilling in the state by 2045."
Outrage as San Francisco boots vagrants off streets ahead of Xi Jinping visit - as California Governor Gavin Newsom admits woke city was only given polish to impress world leaders - "San Francisco has cleaned up several well-known homeless encampments ahead of China's dictator Xi Jinping's visit Wednesday - an effort Gov. Gavin Newsom admitted was only done to provide a good impression for other visiting leaders. In the span of a few days, the city scrubbed seven intersections in the notorious Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods - a decision Newsom this past week defended ahead of the anticipated Asian summit. The cleanup left multiple overrun hotspots virtually unrecognizable, and left many asking why similar efforts had not been enacted sooner... Also absent was the open-air drug den directly outside the Pelosi building - which ordered staffers to work from home over the summer due to conditions in the area -and the small tent city across the street. All had been there for months, with city officials instead electing to use more than $2.8 billion in taxpayer money on humanitarian and outreach efforts."
Cernovich on X - "They literally cleaned up San Francisco for a world dictator, not for their own people. It’s hard to not find this extremely funny."
Meme - "What people say they hate *West Coast of the US*
What people really hate *Seattle to Eugene corridor, San Francisco to Sacramento area, Los Angeles area*"
Leighton ๆ Woodhouse on X - "This is just a jaw-dropping example of how city governments transfer wealth from working residents to staffers of non-profit groups that do nothing but shuffle money while spouting activist rhetoric. Malcom Kyeyune calls this NGO racket "make-work for the PMC.""
The Dream Keeper Initiative: How San Francisco Defunded the Police for a Historic Racial Equity Cash Grab - "in 2020, san francisco announced it would defund its police department of $120 million to fund a racial equity program called the dream keeper initiative — here's how the money was spent... DKI’s own impact analyses, which rely on survey responses from grantees with a vested interest in receiving more money, provide little quantitative detail upon which to judge how efficiently the funding was spent. The Initiative also has a complicated administrative and fiscal relationship to the rest of San Francisco’s labyrinthine bureaucracy. It disburses much of its funding to other city departments like the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development and the SF HRC — a convoluted passing-around of public funds brokered largely by the dozens of new city employees tasked with spending DKI’s huge budget. In many ways, the Initiative emblemizes how bureaucracy tends to relentlessly expand outwards, transforming eye-watering amounts of taxpayer dollars into new government jobs, meaningless impact reports, and no-strings-attached grants of dubious merit. It also illustrates how local politicians took advantage of the chaos in 2020 to raid ‘enemy’ coffers, leveraging the cash to stake out new territory and expand their base of client-constituents who, in turn, get to enjoy the war spoils as long as their patrons remain in control... Do its taxpayers need to fund another multimillion-dollar department tasked with pouring money into nonprofits and direct cash transfers to select citizens? The Board of Supervisors’ recent expression of strong support for the African American Reparations Advisory Committee’s (AARAC) final reparations report, which recommends — among other things — “one-time, lump sum payments of $5 million” to eligible black San Franciscans, suggests that some think the answer is ‘yes.’ As AARAC member Rev. Amos Brown recently said, “the time for talk is over…the bill is due and the city needs to just [pay] it.” But if Dream Keeper shows us anything, it is that the city has already paid up."
Nothing will ever be enough. The grievance-industrial complex never stops
Libs of TikTok on X - "Beginning in 2024, Democrats in California are requiring kids in K-12 to take “media literacy” courses. It will help kids spot “fake news, misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories” on social media and news sites. Can’t imagine how this can go wrong…"
