San Francisco Stores Remove Self-Checkout to Fight Surge in Shoplifting
San Francisco Walgreens Now Using Chains on Freezers to Prevent Shoplifting - "Employees told CBS reporter Betty Yu the freezers are sometimes emptied overnight by shoplifters. The store also reportedly deals with at least 20 shoplifters a day. Walgreens has already announced its plans to shutter hundreds of stores across the country, all to save the company money in the wake of declining sales and a rise in shoplifting... The chains threaten to alienate loyal customers who may grow weary of summoning staffers every time they need to pull an item off the shelf. One Walgreens store in San Francisco — while still open — has been completely boarded up. The location was the scene of a fatal confrontation in April between a homeless trans woman and a security guard."
Starbucks to Close Seven San Francisco Stores - "This move comes as San Francisco is seeing retailers exit the city. A Whole Foods in the city’s downtown closed citing safety concerns and Nordstrom shuttered its flagship San Francisco store. "
Chino Yang Apologizes for Video Criticizing San Francisco Mayor - "A rapper and restaurateur has released an apology on social media barely a week after releasing a diss track that sparked controversy for its criticism of San Francisco’s mayor. Chino Yang, 35, a Chinese American rapper who grew up in San Francisco and is the owner of Kung Food near the city’s Alamo Square, slammed Mayor London Breed in his song “San Francisco Our Home.” He blamed Breed and the rest of the city’s leadership for a spate of anti-Asian crimes and a crisis of public safety after his businesses were burglarized multiple times... Breed’s supporters, including former Mayor Willie Brown and Rev. Amos Brown, president of the NAACP’s San Francisco chapter, are organizing a rally on Thursday to urge him to take down the video... Yang also said that he had received threats from a powerful—unnamed—figure in local and national politics who is close to Breed... Brown also noted to Yang that he used an art form that was birthed in the Black community."
Holding a black politician accountable is anti-blackness. But black rappers going on about robbing Asian houses is freedom of speech
MAZE on X - "California becomes the first state to provide illegal immigrants with health insurance. This is just the beginning. Nobody will be deported and no benefits will ever be taken away. It only moves in one direction."
Amy Alkon on X - "California (further!) incentivizes illegal immigration by providing free healthcare through Medi-Cal (Medicaid in other states) to illegal immigrants. Effective Jan 1, 2024. Absolutely insane. @Susan_Shelley op-ed in the LA Daily News: https://dailynews.com/2024/01/06/can-california-afford-health-care-for-undocumented-immigrants/ Assemblymember Bill Essayli just introduced legislation, Assembly Bill 1783, to “remove all taxpayer funding for healthcare for illegal immigrants in the California state budget.”"
Laura Powell on X - "As of January 1, California law requires pharmacists to receive training focusing specifically on LGBTQ+ and BIPOC people. Maybe that doesn’t sound so bad on paper (which might be why there was no opposition when the bill passed), but the provision requiring training that addresses "how sexual identity is directly impacted through intersectionality" shows this is part of a larger movement to make indoctrination in Wokeism a prerequisite for employment in every field."
San Francisco is in 'far worse shape than New York,' JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says - "Dimon said: "Any city who doesn't do a good job, it will lose its population."... Features that make a city attractive include parks, art, safety, jobs, and affordable housing, Dimon said. San Francisco needs more affordable housing so that companies can attract workers and create jobs, he said. There's been an exodus of both workers and high-profile businesses from San Francisco in recent years as it battles with a reputation crisis amid a swirl of media reporting on the city's supposed demise. San Francisco's population was around 873,000 as of the 2020 Census. But estimates from the Census Bureau suggest that it fell to about 811,000 in 2021 and 808,000 in 2022, a drop of around 7.5%. People flocked from the city for a plethora of reasons, such as to avoid crime, find cheaper rent, and escape the hustle and bustle, ultimately enabled by the surge in remote work during the pandemic. Some business owners, residents, and visitors have expressed concern about violent crime, drugs, and homelessness in the city, though the rate of homelessness in San Francisco fell during the pandemic and is actually lower than in Oakland and Los Angeles, according to city data. Both rent and property prices in San Francisco are much higher than the US average. Households also spend considerably more on food, insurance, and pension contributions, data shows."
Opinion | Why In-N-Out Burger Is Out of Oakland - "California’s famous In-N-Out Burger chain announced Sunday that it is closing its restaurant in Oakland, blaming rising crime. You might also say it is the victim of a progressive backlash to law enforcement and soaring government-worker pension costs that have squeezed spending on public safety... “Despite taking repeated steps to create safer conditions, our Customers and Associates are regularly victimized by car break-ins, property damage, theft, and armed robberies.”... Oakland’s progressive City Council in 2021 bowed to antipolice activists by limiting the number of police academies for training new officers and freezing 911 surge units, all while boosting funding for putative violence prevention “alternatives.” Meantime, as federal pandemic largesse shrank, spending on government-worker benefits ballooned. Between 2019 and 2023, Oakland’s spending on public-worker retirement benefits rose 42% ($73 million) and 34% ($49 million) for fringe benefits. Last year Oakland spent more on government worker benefits than it collected in property and sales tax. To close a $360 million budget deficit, the city cut back on law enforcement even more. The unsurprising result: Surging crime... Businesses in California pay exorbitant taxes, which are supposed to provide for public safety and other essential government services. But increasingly businesses are finding they are on their own as cities slash law enforcement. Is it any wonder In-N-Out is now intent on growing outside of California in states such as Texas and Tennessee?"
'LA vs Hate' Snitch Line Is Funded By Taxes And Big Business - "Authorities in Los Angeles County are operating an ideologically charged tip line that encourages citizens to report one another to the government for non-criminal “hate incidents.” The project, called “LA vs Hate,” was founded in 2020 and is backed by a handful of corporate sponsors... Despite being central to its mission, the term “hate” is not clearly defined anywhere on the group’s website. Nevertheless, its materials are scattered with ideological indicators. A series produced by LA vs Hate and 211 LA, called “Exploring Justice,” includes videos to “challenge our own prejudices by educating ourselves on social justice topics and issues that many are still experiencing today,” with topics like “Privilege and Oppression,” “Intersectionality,” and “Racial Justice.” They also tout merchandise and graphics with pro-trans and BLM messaging... LA vs Hate did not provide a public definition of “hate” or respond to The Federalist with a definition when asked. Taxpayers, Christians, and Angelenos outside the far left should be troubled by this ambiguity, given recent efforts to use overly broad definitions of hate to smear and punish political opponents... Inez Stepman, Independent Women’s Forum senior policy analyst, said LA vs Hate is the hallmark of a leftist overhauling of institutions. Stepman said, “The greatest conceit of conservatives for the last 30 years has been that they can allow the left to take over every educational and culture-producing institution and that ‘life’ would teach indoctrinated generations better in ‘the real world.’ Well, here’s your real world, we all live on campus now.”"
This Bay Area school district spent $250,000 on Woke Kindergarten - "A Hayward elementary school struggling to boost low test scores and dismal student attendance is spending $250,000 in federal money for an organization called Woke Kindergarten to train teachers to confront white supremacy, disrupt racism and oppression and remove those barriers to learning. The Woke Kindergarten sessions train teachers on concepts and curriculum that’s available to use in classrooms with any of Glassbrook Elementary’s 474 students. The sessions are funded through a federal program meant to help the country’s lowest-performing schools boost student achievement. But two years into the three-year contract with Woke Kindergarten, a for-profit company, student achievement at Glassbrook has fallen, prompting some teachers to question whether the money was well spent given the needs of the students, who are predominantly low-income. Two-thirds of the students are English learners and more than 80% are Hispanic/Latino. English and math scores hit new lows last spring, with less than 4% of students proficient in math and just under 12% at grade level in English — a decline of about 4 percentage points in each category. Efforts to reach the organization were not successful, with an automated response saying the founder, who also provides the training, was recovering from surgery. District officials defended the program this past week, saying that Woke Kindergarten did what it was hired to do. The district pointed to improvements in attendance and suspension rates, and that the school was no longer on the state watch list, only to learn from the Chronicle that the school was not only still on the list but also had dropped to a lower level. The decision to bring in Woke Kindergarten, rather than a more traditional literacy or math improvement program, aligns with the belief by some parents and educators that the current education system isn’t working for many disadvantaged children. The solution, these advocates say, is for educators to confront legacies of racism and bias in schools, and to talk about historic white supremacy, so that students feel safe and supported. As such anti-racism programs have spread, several more conservative state legislatures have moved to restrict or ban them. At the same time, some education experts say struggling schools need research-based literacy and math interventions that ensure all students have the basic skills to succeed... Woke Kindergarten, aimed at elementary-age students, is founded on the relatively new concept of abolitionist education, which advocates for abolition, or “a kind of starting over,” said Zeus Leonardo, UC Berkeley education professor. The idea is that certain things can’t be reformed, tweaked or shifted, because they are inherently problematic or oppressive. It’s not about indoctrinating or imposing politics, “but making politics part of the framework of teaching,” Leonardo said. But some Glassbrook teachers have questioned the decision to bring in the program, saying Woke Kindergarten is wrongly rooted in progressive politics and activism with anti-police, anti-capitalism and anti-Israel messages mixed in with the goal of making schools safe, joyful and supportive for all children... The Woke Kindergarten curriculum shared with schools includes “wonderings,” which pose questions for students, including, “If the United States defunded the Israeli military, how could this money be used to rebuild Palestine?” In addition, the “woke word of the day,” including “strike,” “ceasefire” and “protest,” offers students a “language of the resistance … to introduce children to liberatory vocabulary in a way that they can easily digest, understand and most importantly, use in their critiques of the system.” Teacher Tiger Craven-Neeley said he supports discussing racism in the classroom, but found the Woke Kindergarten training confusing and rigid. He said he was told a primary objective was to “disrupt whiteness” in the school — and that the sessions were “not a place to express white guilt.” He said he questioned a trainer who used the phrasing “so-called United States,” as well as lessons available on the organization’s web site offering “Lil’ Comrade Convos,” or positing a world without police, money or landlords. Craven-Neeley, who is white and a self-described “gay moderate,” said he wasn’t trying to be difficult when he asked for clarification about disrupting whiteness. “What does that mean?” he said, adding that such questions got him at least temporarily banned from future training sessions. “I just want to know, what does that mean for a third-grade classroom?” Another Glassbrook teacher said Woke Kindergarten offered one perspective on issues and that there was no tolerance for questions. “It slowly became very apparent if you were a dissenting voice, that it’s not what they wanted to hear,” said the teacher, who requested anonymity for fear of pushback at the school... Reimann said the district didn’t hire Woke Kindergarten for its politics, but rather its work in restorative practices, helping eliminate suspensions and removals from classrooms while luring more students back into seats. “We are in favor 100% of abolishing systems of oppression where they hold our students back,” he said. “What I do believe is we should pick providers based on their work and how effective they are.” The superintendent said Woke Kindergarten wasn’t hired to improve literacy and math scores, but that “helping students feel safe and whole is part and parcel of academic achievement.”"
Clearly the problem was they didn't spend enough
Weird. The left claim that "woke" is a term only ignorant right wingers use because they don't know what empathy is
Drew Pavlou 柏乐志 🇦🇺🇺🇦🇹🇼🇨🇾 on X - "The founder of the “Woke Kindergarten” consultancy recently awarded a $250,000 grant: “I believe Israel has no right to exist. I believe the United States has no right to exist. I believe every settler colony who has committed genocide against native peoples has no right to exist”"
Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 on X - "Of note – this video was posted on the company account, not on the personal account of this individual. The founder is professing these antisemitic messages as part of the company messaging. This is what California taxpayers are paying for."
We're still told that it's a myth that liberals hate their countries
Inside tech billionaires’ push to reshape San Francisco politics: ‘a hostile takeover’ - "“This is a $20bn hostile takeover of San Francisco by people with vested real estate and tech interests, and who don’t want anyone else deciding how the city is run,” he said, referring to the combined wealth of the most prolific new donors. In its storied history, San Francisco has always seen tycoons seek influence over city business. In the 2010s, the tech investor Ron Conway played a crucial role in the election of the mayor Ed Lee and was a major factor in the ascent of the current mayor, London Breed, after Lee died in office in 2017 . But the entry of a libertarian billionaire class into local politics is new, said political operatives and people who have been targeted by them"
Of course, when it's left wing money like from Soros, it's "supporting democracy"
Meme - Confirmed Miscer @ManDaveJobGood: "If I wanted to see a black guy punch an Asian woman in the face I'd visit San Francisco"
Film Updates: "'MR. & MRS. SMITH' starring Donald Glover and Maya Erskine debuts on Prime Video on February 2.
marriage is their most dangerous mission"
Libs of TikTok on X - "UNREAL. This store in San Francisco now has a barrier when you walk in and shoppers need to be accompanied by staff as they shop through the store because crime has got so bad. Welcome to @GavinNewsom’s California"
What if San Francisco never pulls out of its ‘doom loop’? - "Senna Matkovic passed out and turned blue. The 10-month-old had been playing with his twin brother in the grass... a paramedic undid the tiny buttons on Senna’s shirt and wired his chest to a heart monitor and put a mask over his mouth to keep him breathing. But the toddler wasn’t coming to. Senna’s pupils were constricted and, when his eyes rolled back, the paramedic decided to administer naloxone, a nasal spray that reverses opioid overdoses. Senna woke up instantly... Senna accidentally ingested fentanyl, an opioid that is cheaper and deadlier than heroin. The narrow rescue hinged entirely on the familiarity of San Francisco’s emergency services with a raging epidemic that has meant fentanyl overdoses are now so common that the city has expanded distribution of reversal kits to libraries, entertainment venues, churches and schools... Their son’s accidental overdose became a new low in San Francisco’s metastasising crisis. In recent years, drug cartels have flooded US cities with fentanyl to meet demand for opioids created by rampant overprescription. On the streets of San Francisco, a dose costs $8 and its effects last barely 30 minutes, trapping addicts in a cycle of quick highs followed by hours of painful withdrawals as they hunt for another hit. The synthetic drug’s strength means that as little as 2mg can kill users. San Francisco has the second-highest rate of drug deaths of any city in the country after Philadelphia; almost twice as many people here — about 2,000 — have died from overdoses than from Covid-19 since 2020. But San Francisco’s problems go far beyond drugs. The Bay Area is home to four of the 10 most valuable companies in the world — Apple, Alphabet, Nvidia and Meta — titanic producers of wealth, but a staggering one per cent of the city’s population is homeless, compared with less than 0.2 per cent across the US. The gulf between rich and poor — and white and black — is among the largest in America. House prices and rents soared to among the highest in the US during the last tech boom. Since the pandemic, tech companies have embraced remote working, laid off staff and slashed office space, leaving almost a third of the city’s commercial real estate vacant. In other words, houses are more expensive and scarcer, and offices are cheap and empty. Teachers and nurses can’t afford to live in San Francisco, and tech workers see fewer reasons to. There is a growing sense, too, that the city’s progressive political class has failed its citizens. Violent attacks in wealthy neighbourhoods, including the fatal stabbing of Cash App founder Bob Lee and a burglary at the home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi which left her husband in hospital with a fractured skull, were interpreted as symbols of pervasive lawlessness. (The truth of both cases turned out to be more complicated than it at first appeared.) Then there was the bizarre case of Don Carmignani, the former fire commissioner, who was hospitalised last month after a homeless man assaulted him with a metal pipe; Carmignani’s attacker was released from jail when CCTV footage emerged that appeared to show the ex-official attacking numerous homeless people with bear mace, unprovoked... “The city always had a bit of an underlying unsafe element, but it was isolated. If you stayed away from it, you were pretty much OK.” As he spoke, he watched out his window as a homeless person clutching a glass pipe rifled through his trash cans. “It has spread out,” Matkovic continued. “It feels like the probability of something going sideways here is higher.”... Urban Alchemy has reversed 1,300 opioid overdoses in the two years he has worked there. He once had to give naloxone to a dog that had licked fentanyl off the sidewalk. The Tenderloin, a neighbourhood just south-west of touristy Union Square, is home to some 35,000 people in fewer than 50 cramped blocks. Drugs and destitution are out in the open. Sticks of burning incense have been jammed into the shutters of closed businesses to mask the smell of human excrement. Glass from shattered car windows glitters in the gutter. A few people are hunched over in wheelchairs, clutching the paraphernalia of hard drug use. Urban Alchemy has around 45 people on the ground here at any given time... a small number of its employees have been shot at or injured on the job. But it is having a noticeable effect on streets where tent encampments have been cleared out. It has been mostly welcomed as trust in traditional institutions like the police has hit an all-time low and residents say the city hasn’t felt this unsafe in decades... more than 40 per cent of the homeless are black or mixed race, while the broader population has become overwhelmingly white. (Over the past 30 years, the percentage of the population that is African-American has halved, to 5.7 per cent.) The median income for white households is three times larger than for black households, the largest gulf in the country... Black people are almost 10 times more likely to be homeless than white people in the city, compared with around three times nationally... “Five years ago, it wasn’t like this,” he says about the people openly using drugs around us on Market Street, just outside the Urban Alchemy headquarters, where he sells souvenir photographs of local liquor stores. “Five years ago, a black guy with a pipe got arrested; now the police walk past a white guy with a needle in his arm,” he says... In 2014, the state downgraded many theft and drug possession crimes from felonies to misdemeanours. San Francisco is particularly alluring because of its historical embrace of counterculture and progressive politics, funding free food and shelters. Adisa calls it a “sanctuary city”... San Francisco’s city budget this year is $14bn — almost twice the budget for the entire state of New Hampshire — for about 810,000 residents... It has been the slowest city in the US to recover from the pandemic; mobile phone activity in the downtown area is still only a third of 2019 levels, a sign of tourism’s decline and tech companies’ retreat... Boudin was kicked out of office last summer by voters who said he had made the city less safe. Petty crime like burglary had risen on Boudin’s watch. He pledged to approach crime differently than his predecessors, in part by no longer prosecuting lower-level offences such as recreational drug use... Many Silicon Valley luminaries won’t be around to find out what happens. They have long since lost confidence in San Francisco. Libertarian billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel relocated to Los Angeles in 2018, indignant at what he saw as a left-leaning political class that had become intolerant of big business. Two years later, Charles Schwab, founder of the brokerage giant and once one of San Francisco’s most generous philanthropists, relocated headquarters to Texas in protest at high tax rates and regulations"
Opinion | San Francisco’s Decline Frustrates Even Democrats Like Me - The New York Times - "Like it or not, San Francisco has become a prize example of how we Democrats have become our own worst enemy. Causes that we have long espoused — respect for human rights, plenty of housing that’s within reach for most people, care for the mentally ill, fair pay, high-quality public education, a dignified retirement — have all been crippled by a small coterie who knows how to bend government to its will. This astonishing city that I have been lucky enough to call home for more than 40 years has become subject to the tyranny of the minority. For several years, I have tried hard to figure out the reasons for our civic confusion. San Francisco’s problems didn’t occur overnight. And they don’t bode well for other cities, long considered Democratic fortresses, where the consequences of the fentanyl epidemic, homeless encampments, housing that is unaffordable for most, deteriorating school systems and high tax rates are also evident. Here, janitors, nurses, teachers and bus drivers are forced to endure 90-minute commutes; two-income couples cannot afford to start families; young children have become increasingly rare sights; and the Police Department cannot fill its ranks. Charles Schwab, founder of the brokerage giant and one of the city’s most patient and generous philanthropists, moved to Florida, and his company relocated its headquarters to Texas. Even major figures who hail from San Francisco and who in many parts of the country are viewed as irredeemable leftists, such as Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, seem at times embarrassed by the condition of their hometown... The core of the issue, in San Francisco and other cities, is that government is more malleable at the city level than at higher levels of government. While there have been just 16 amendments to the U.S. Constitution since 1800, there have been 106 changes to San Francisco’s City Charter since 1996. If the U.S. Constitution requires decades and a chisel and hammer to change, San Francisco’s City Charter is like a live Google doc controlled by manipulative copy editors... mayors have been stripped of much authority while remaining convenient heat shields for the board... Many of these changes have been triggered by referendums that are a staple of the city’s elections and which have often been controlled by the board. Since 2000, 321 initiatives have appeared on the city’s ballots. This process spawned eight different business taxes in the last decade that have doomed many small businesses, as well as driven away large companies whose headquarters are now located in less hostile settings. This has resulted in a sharp drop in projected tax revenue which, as usual, will result in cutbacks in city services for those most in need. Then there is the matter of San Francisco being a one-party town."
Police post photos of suspects with Lego heads to comply with new law - "Getting arrested is no child’s play — except for these California cops. The Murrieta Police Department has been posting hilarious arrest and lineup photos with suspects’ faces replaced by Lego heads to comply with a woke state law protecting offenders’ rights... The Photoshop-savvy law enforcement agency explained Monday that it is shielding detainees’ faces to comply with a new state law prohibiting the release of mugshots and booking photos of those accused of nonviolent crimes... But the practice is nothing new for the Murrieta police: the agency has been obscuring suspects’ faces for a couple of years now, also using emojis, Barbie dolls and even “Shrek” characters... Many commenters, however, argued that shielding suspects’ identities under the new state law essentially amounted to protecting criminals. At least on one occasion, the agency used a Barbie head in a booking photo"
