Writes Jay Caspian Kang, in "London Breed’s Cynical Swing to the Right/The mayor of San Francisco, who is up for reëlection next year, is channelling the public’s anger over crime and homelessness" (The New Yorker).
"Breed’s plan demonizes the 'service resistant' homeless population that so often becomes the center of any conversation about homelessness in California. These people, the story goes, refuse all government assistance and shelter, and choose instead to take advantage of a liberal city’s lax enforcement laws to openly use drugs and cause public disturbances. In reality, such people make up a small minority of the homeless population. But, even if we were to indulge in Breed’s fantasy, and say that there are hundreds of addicts in San Francisco who would finally enter treatment under threat of losing their welfare benefits, it seems clear that there are not enough “substance-use disorder” programs that can take on any new patients...."
Posts
44 comments:
Drug "rehabilitation" - what a risible circle jerk. Preferred approach: Remove Narcan from all the city's ambulances.
In reality nearly all the bums are “service resistant”
They’re crazy or addicts or both.
There are those who are actual working poor but they’re not street bums; they live in their cars or in RVs
"Right Wing" = common sense. PERIOD. They are nutcases in San Francisco, led by the lead nutcase....Drunk Pelosi.
I'm not following the logic of the excerpts. Breed says no government benefits to drug using homeless without rehab. The author then focuses on homeless who refuse government benefits. Huh?
The author also does not seem to understand that the purpose of cities is to service the needs of the law abiding in those cities, not drug addicted, mentally ill homeless people. If you want to make a city's purpose the serving the needs of drug addicted, mentally ill homeless people at the expense of everyone else, then the city is going to suffer. If you go further and decide that "equity" or whatever other complete nonsense insists that the city's criminals not be punished, the city loses its purpose for existing.
I dunno. Can you have an existential crisis when the "existence" does not care?
The mnemonic is CATO.
40% Crazy
30% Addicts
20% Tramps (like the lifestyle)
10% Out of luck.
The 10% you can help.
THAT's a swing to the right? LOLOLOLOL ad infinitum.
I live here. It's getting stupider and stupider. To wit: our new senator.
"In reality, such people [those who openly use drugs and cause public disturbances] make up a small minority of the homeless population."
"it seems clear that there are not enough “substance-use disorder” programs that can take on any new patients...."
Not enough programs to deal with a small minority? Really?
"Is California headed for a right-wing backlash? This question has hovered over the state’s politics for years now..."
In reality, yes.
When counting ballots, no...and not even close.
It's not a story.
This sounds like they are cracking down. In reality, they are going to create another army of government money suckers called "addiction counsellors" or some such.
If your welfare package requires you to show up at some farcical drug intervention program once a month then you will. The welfare people get paid, the "counsellors" get paid, the politicians get to buy another new constituency. A good time is had by all.
The effect on drug use and addiction will be exactly zero.
It was hard work and a long time, but finally, something got through thick Democrat skulls. It won't last long. Only until the homeless and crazies have moved on.
Last week in San Francisco, London Breed, the city’s mayor, announced a bill to deny welfare benefits to anyone 'suffering from substance-use disorder' who was not enrolled in a drug rehabilitation or treatment program.
That's the sort of policy my WWII vet, Nixon Republican father would have backed. Wonder what London Breed* would think of that?
*(That name! It's like some sort of variety of British livestock!
English Rustic 1: Wot's those ones there?
English Rustic 2: Them's London Breed, it's how the city butchers likes 'em!
Wodehouse couldn't have done better!)
What, exactly, is wrong with a pol channeling the anger of the voters? I doubt that it can be channeled to much effect in CA, which is probably too far gone into Left Coast Dystopianism, but it's not a radical notion.
California's Caucasian population is down to 35% and maybe half of them are civil service, academics, tech companies, & Hollywood types. Their political preferences are well known. So from where and from what voting bloc is this right-wing wave supposed to originate? Nonsense. The Dem pols are tightening up for the elections a smidge with a few sound bites. Much ado about nothing.
Slogged through the piece. I noted a serious lack of discussion about other ways to solve the problems.
Also, how large of a percentage of the "homeless population" stumbling naked, crapping in the streets, threatening/screaming at the normies, does it take to wreck a once-civil society?
Passing fancy, that's all.
The residents of SF should vote out every single incumbent at the city, county, state and federal level.
The elected representatives have failed them.
If they can't figure that out, just let SF burn. They deserve it.
If this program was administered strictly as designed I would guarantee that over time the welfare rolls would lose at least 50% of the enrollees. Cute how they deny the reality and state with complete conviction that the service resistent "make up a small minority of the homeless population".
"Preferred approach: Remove Narcan from all the city's ambulances."
I've said it before. I'll say it again. Eliminating easily-accessible narcan would solve the opioid crisis in 24 months. Maybe sooner even.
I find the diaresis inserted by the New Yorker (all the time) into reelection exceptionally tedious.
I have lived in California since 1976 and watched a great state grow, prosper, and then start a decline that shows no sign of stopping. The decline has been directly proportional to the degree of political power held by the Democratic Party. We've crossed the tipping point, in that the population's percentage of government employees, parasites, and rent seekers now exceeds 50%. Jay Caspian King can stop worrying. California is irrevocably screwed, because of people like Jay Caspian King.
To much of "the right" has already left California (myself included). There will be a backlash, but it won't be right wing. It will merely be an authoritarian left backlash against chaos.
And those are pretty much always worse than the right wing backlashes.
Michael Shellenberger would, I think, differ from the New Yorker on the proportion of the homeless who suffer from addiction and won't seek help on their own without outside motivation.
I don't care if Breed is being "cynical." If this policy improves the situation in San Francisco and potentially improves the lot of some of the addicted homeless, then she's doing that part of her job. I think it was Amsterdam? where Shellenberger said they're having better outcomes among their homeless population through accountability requirements like this. Hardly seems as if it could hurt.
Until the "Mostly Peaceful" summer of 2020, California had blind tolerance of civic dysfunction in controlled zones. This included the Tenderloin and Mission districts of San Francisco, Skid Row in Los Angeles, the entire Oakland region, and the small cities south of LA (Compton, etc.). Just a bit away, the ultra wealthy people on Nob Hill (SF) and Beverly Hills or Westwood or the beach (LA) lived as if the dysfunction didn't exist. Walk 6 blocks and be in another world, and trust the police to keep the riff-raff where they belonged.
Then Defund the Police and Trump Derangement Syndrome. CA politics will likely drift back to domination by center-left "Business Democrats" who keep the riff-raff boxed up and away from the well-to-do NIMBYs. CA is not a kind or compassionate place, it's a bunch of selfish utopian dreamers who want to be movie stars living on the beach. Left-wing politics (i.e., government monetary support) is a financial means to that greedy end.
I’m very well acquainted with a fireman/paramedic. He has dispensed Narcan for years on emergency calls.
When I mentioned that we should stop providing narcan, he agreed!
"...who is up for reelection next year..."
Oh. That might be important.
"Is California headed for a right-wing backlash?"
Betteridge's law of headlines says no.
What, exactly, is wrong with a pol channeling the anger of the voters?
You're allowed to channel Nice, Right-Think Anger, not Awful, Wrong-Think Anger.
"Those are my principles. If you don't like them...I have others."
Groucho
"Is California headed for a right-wing backlash?”
No. Because the people who would be lashing back all moved to Florida or Texas. Or Idaho. Some moved to Arizona or Colorado or Washington or Oregon, and they’re currently planning to go further east (if they haven’t moved already.)
A move to the center would still be very welcome. As extreme as things currently are, that might look like a right wing backlash to the Californians who haven’t left yet.
London Breed? Oh, yeah, the criminal element is quaking in their stolen Air Jordans at the Wrath of London Breed.
I thought with all the revelations of the abuse of power, during covid, the left would finally come out of their woke stupor.
But then the voters of Chicago opted for a loonier leftist than beetle juice impersonator Lori Lightfoot. The Gov's of New York and Illinois are talking big....but their real motivation is getting a $billion or two of Fed aid they can to dig their grifting hooks into.
Because that is the DNA, the deep lizard brain of all Democrats.
Problem???!!....MONEY and lots of it with zero auditing
So this liberal's suggestion/solution is to enroll in some kind of 'social' therapy. Uh-huh
madAsHell said...
I’m very well acquainted with a fireman/paramedic. He has dispensed Narcan for years on emergency calls.
When I mentioned that we should stop providing narcan, he agreed!
--
Welcome to the slippery cliff.
Just looks like the next step towards socialism. The problems were caused by first running away charity services that did exactly what the mayor is proposing. They gave shelter and aid, so long as the homeless and addicted follow a routine that will help rehabilitate them. With the charities gone, the state relaxed laws on homelessness and drug use. Indeed they enabled greater drug use by giving away, without condition, needles under the guise that it made drug usage safer. The act is inherently unsafe.
Now that the city is overrun by homeless drug users, up steps the mayor to provide the government as the solution. They’ll give a person a shelter and aid, but only if they follow a routine that will help rehabilitate them. This time it is secular, so it is ok.
In other news, the mayor of Chicago, a city overrun by shoplifters because it is no longer a crime, has declared that the state will now provide bread lines, err I meant state run grocery stores, in the areas that have now become “food deserts” as looted businesses have closed up. Did I mention Target is closing stores in DC and NYC due to looting?
Oh wait, none of that is news. The news is Trump is evil, Guiliani is a drunk, Gaetz is an idiot, and McCarthy is spineless. Perspective is needed here.
"S.F. Mayor Breed’s brother’s sentence reduced in case of woman’s death."
As to the woman's 'death': she died of injuries after she was pushed (or 'fell out of' as the Chronicle suggested) from a getaway car she was driving. Her deathbed confession accused Breed's brother of knocking her out of the car following an armed robbery he and another gentleman had just completed in SF.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/napoleon-brown-breed-brother-sentence-18258162.php
Something that cannot go on forever, will not go on forever. What the end looks like seems bad, to me.
Enigma,
Walk 6 blocks and be in another world
Ya got that right. I've been in OR for a decade and a half or so, but before that I spent 25 years in the Bay Area. One of my gigs was reviewing concerts for an online classical music zine, and so I spent rather a lot of time around Civic Center Plaza. Used to get off somewhere on Market -- Montgomery or Powell -- and browse Tower or Virgin for CDs before heading to Davies or Herbst or the Opera House or whatever.
So . . . I used to walk up Turk Street to Van Ness. I didn't know until some time had passed that I was in fact traversing Crack House Central, aka the Tenderloin. The funny thing about Turk St. was that it was unbelievably poor, full of homeless people and passed-out druggies and so forth -- until you got to one block from Van Ness. Then it was like a fairy transformation scene: all the squalor disappeared, and suddenly you had corporate buildings, and the sidewalks were swept clean, and absolutely none of the Tenderloin folks were anywhere to be seen. Bizarre.
Libertarian or far-right anarchists are leftists?
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...
"Crack House Central, aka the Tenderloin. The funny thing about Turk St. was that it was unbelievably poor, full of homeless people and passed-out druggies and so forth -- until you got to one block from Van Ness. Then it was like a fairy transformation scene: all the squalor disappeared, and suddenly you had corporate buildings, and the sidewalks were swept clean, and absolutely none of the Tenderloin folks were anywhere to be seen. Bizarre."
It's the same thing in France: walk three blocks into the interior of any tourist attraction, and you'll find the reality behind the façade. Poor people. I think that's why San Francisco is called "the Paris of the West." The difference is, in France, you're not allowed to insult people for being poor. (Here, you can do anything you want, for someone being down on their luck.) I think, if you visit another country and haven't seen how they're poor live, you're not much of a traveler and don't really know the place. It's just the bright lights distracting you. BTW - here's how I got my title with the band Consolidated - these should be played in order:
Hip O Crits
Industry Corporate
Crack House
One more thing - if you want to know what being "canceled" means: find my Wikipedia page.
Typical election year bullsh*t for lefties - see Biden, Mayorkas in b building three border walk.
Dave Begley said...
"The residents of SF should vote out every single incumbent at the city, county, state and federal level.
The elected representatives have failed them.
If they can't figure that out, just let SF burn. They deserve it."
The residents hardest hit by those policies don't vote for the incumbent. The people that vote for the incumbent are the residents(and others) that the incumbent pays to vote for them. In democrat enclaves the vote fraud is baked into thier electoral system.
Voting in this town is a joke. Between the caliber of candidates and the ranked choice system the whole thing is doomed. There are only various shades of left and they're all engaged in some flavor of grift.
The latest outrage has been a ridiculous uptick in car break-ins, and when arrests were finally made, it turned out to be two SF City government employees. How nice.
Crack: "down on their luck"
Ok, have it your way. I'm in SF every day. Yeah some people are hard-up no lie, but it appears that most are not doing much to change their luck except by panhandling for food or drugs. Plus, they've got a bunch of city teams fighting hard for their right to be panhandlers sleeping on the sidewalks. Here's a good example: for dozens of down-on-their luck RVers, the City opened Candlestick Point and supplies them with approx $140K per year, PER RV. It's unbelievable the amount of money tossed out in this town - changing nothing, certainly not incentive.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/bayview-safe-parking-rv-18395769.php
Post a Comment