America Faces No Greater Threat Than Joe Biden and the Democrat Party. Their Assault to Our Borders Is As Great As Their Assault to Free Speech and Free Elections
Saturday, June 10, 2023
GOV NEWSOM OF MELTDOWN CALIFORNIA SAYS HE WILL NOT RUN AGAINST THE MOST CORRUPT PRESIDENT IN MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY - BRIBES SUCKER JOE BIDEN OF THE BIDEN CRIME FAMILY
IS THIS FOR REAL?
GAVIN NEWSOM IS AS CLOSE TO BEING A WALKING MORON AS KAMALA HARRIS FROM THE SAME DUMPSTER STATE!
Former Resident: Why San Francisco is on the brink of losing its unique culture | Jennifer Sey
During a portion of an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity set to air on Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” that was released on Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) stated that he believes President Joe Biden has the cognitive strength to be President but refused to answer how many times people reach out to him to urge him to run because they don’t think Biden’s up to being President.
Hannity asked, “Do you think he’s cognitively strong enough to be President?”
Newsom responded, “I have conversations with him all the time, yes.”
Newsom added that he is “dead serious” about talking to Biden all the time, “I’ve talked to him when he’s been overseas. I’ve been in Air Force One, Marine One. I’ve been in the limo with him, I’ve spent time with him.”
Hannity then cut in to ask, “How many times does your phone ping a day with people saying, you need to get in this race because they agree with me that he’s not up to the job?”
Newsom responded, “Those — I see where you’re going with that, Sean.”
The population inflow alsoreduces the politicalcloutof native-born Americans, because the population replacement allows elites to divorce themselves fromthe needsandinterestsof ordinary Americans.
THIRTY San Francisco hotels could stop paying loan payments as city struggles with spiking crime, rampant homelessness and brazen drug use
San Francisco may see more than two dozen more hotels default on their loans in the next two years as bills come due and revenues remain down
Earlier this week, the company that owns the largest hotel in San Francisco announced it will stop payments on a $725million loan and cede ownership
San Francisco is facing low tourism as the crime rate has spiked in the city and homeless is unrestrained
News of Park Hotels & Resorts' plan to surrender ownership of two of San Francisco's largest hotels is the beginning of what could potentially become a mass exodus of hotels from the city as 30 additional properties are facing massive loans due over the next two years.
The company behind the hotels announced Monday it had stopped making payments on its $725million loan that is due in November for the Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Parc 55 hotels.
Though Park Hotels owns the largest and fourth largest hotels in San Francisco, they are by no means the only hotels suffering and going under as loan repayment date close in.
The Huntington on Nob Hill and Yotel on Market Street are two hotels that were recently sold in foreclosure auctions, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Analysts are now warning that more than two dozen hotels could be joining as they have loans due in the next couple of years as San Francisco continues to struggle with prevalent drug use and an exploding homeless population.
The Huntington on Nob Hill was sold at a foreclosure auction earlier this year after its owners defaulted on a $56.2million mortgage
San Francisco's largest hotel, the Hilton Union Square, left, is set to be foreclosed upon as the owner of the hotel and Parc 55, right, announced on Monday that it will no longer make payments on its $725 million loan
The Hilton San Francisco Financial District faces a $97million loan maturation in 2024 and could be the next San Francisco hotel to see its owners leave
Real estate data firm CoStar's senior director of hospitality Emmy Hise told the Chronicle 30 more hotels face massive loans due in the next two years.
She said the issue of crime and stores leaving the area have impacted the public's view of the Bay Area.
'Most downtowns are struggling with this issue,' she said. 'San Francisco has been getting a lot of the national press.'
The exact amount the 30 hotels will owe is unknown, it's also unclear which will need to pay as details of the locations has not been released.
The Chronicle reported after Park Hotels, the second-largest mortgage deadline will arrive in January of 2024, when the Hilton San Francisco Financial District faces a $97million loan maturation. As of March, less than $10million of the loan has been paid off.
The Huntington was sold to two hotel investment and management firms that say they plan to 'restore and elevate every aspect' of the hotel, 'returning it to its original glory while reestablishing it as the single finest luxury hotel in San Francisco.'
The hotel defaulted on its $56.2million mortgage.
An open-air drug market in the SOMA District of San Francisco is pictured as city leaders struggle with how to address drug use in the downtown area
San Francisco saw a staggering 41 percent surge in the number of drug-related deaths in the first quarter of 2023
Homicides in the city are now up 5 percent from the same time last year, while robberies are up more than 16 percent
The Yotel on Market Street, a tech-savvy hotel with micro hotel rooms, was purchased last year for $62million at a foreclosure auction.
Its owner, Synapse Development Group, defaulted on $64.5million in loans last March. It was purchased by New York-based investment firm Monarch Alternative Capital.
Park Hotels CEO Thomas Baltimore Jr said in a statement Monday: 'After much thought and consideration, we believe it is in the best interest for Park's stockholders to materially reduce our current exposure to the San Francisco market.'
'Now, more than ever we believe San Francisco's path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges - both old and new.
'Ultimately, the continued burden on our operating results and balance sheet is too significant to warrant continuing to subsidize and own these assets.'
The company blames record-high office vacancy of around 30 percent, concerns over street conditions, a lower rate of return to offices compared with other cities and a 'weaker than expected citywide convention calendar through 2027 that will negatively impact business and leisure demand' for the declining value of the properties for the failure of their properties.
San Francisco has struggled to rebound following the pandemic, much more so than other major cities. Its daily hotel room rate of $234 over the course of the last year is below 2019 levels. While every other major market is above 2019 figures - partially due to inflation.
The city's highest spending group of leisure tourists were from China, and they were barred from returning until the Chinese government ended its strict travel controls earlier this year.
Corporate travel has also taken a hit as tech firms reduce firm size and attempt to cut costs. Some major conferences formerly hosted in San Francisco have also chosen new cities due to rising crime.
SF's daily hotel room rate of $234 over the course of the last year is below 2019 levels. While every other major California market is above 2019 figures
Graph of San Francisco's hotel room rate relative to other major US markets. San Francisco is the only city that has not yet bounced back to its 2019 levels
A significant handful of high-profile criminal episodes, in addition to a number of retail closures prompted by rampant and unprosecuted theft, have tarnished the city's image to potential visitors.
According to one analysis, San Francisco is suffering from the slowest downtown recovery of any of the 62 largest cities in the US and Canada post-pandemic.
Making that recovery even slower are the stores that have announced they are ditching the downtown area.
Nordstrom, Whole Foods, Saks Off 5th, Anthropologie, Banana Republic, Old Navy and Office Depot have all made the decision to abandon their downtown locations. Williams-Sonoma also announced it will shut down in 2024.
Out of 203 retailers open in 2019 in the city's Union Square area, just 107 are still operating, a drop of 47 percent in just a few pandemic-ravaged years.
Even prior to the pandemic, organizers were beginning to make different decisions about where to hold their conferences. In 2018, a major medical-industry conference said they would convene elsewhere due to the city's homelessness issue.
San Francisco is anticipating 23.9million visitors in 2023, who will spend a total of $8.7billion. The record high for the spending figure came in 2019 and totaled $9.6billion.
But that figure could be lower given the issues the city faces and without much progress in cleaning up the streets.
Nordstrom is one of several stores that announced they would be leaving their downtown location
Traveler numbers remain down in San Francisco have not return to its pre-pandemic figures
Public policy in San Francisco has continually allowed for a skyrocketing homeless, drug addicted and mentally unstable population to run the streets of the city.
The city is also facing a spiraling violent crime problem. Tech exec Bob Lee became one of the city's latest murder victims last month.
A coroner's report reveals in graphic detail how Lee was found slumped outside an apartment block with no pulse before paramedics rushed him to the hospital, where knife wounds were found on his heart and a lung.
He died with ketamine, cocaine and alcohol in his system.
Carmignani suffered a fractured skull and jaw. Prosecutors are able to charge him because he used pepper spray on the vagrant thereby instigating the attack, but the city's District Attorney has opted not to prosecute the homeless man because he was acting in 'self-defense.'
San Francisco is dealing with widespread crime, homeless and drug use that has driven away companies and consumers
The number of homeless people in San Francisco was tallied in February of last year at almost 8,000
San Francisco saw a staggering 41 percent surge in the number of drug-related deaths in the first quarter of 2023
The number of homeless people in San Francisco was tallied in February of last year at almost 8,000, the second highest figure of any year since 2005, according to the official government count which takes place every three years.
San Francisco saw a staggering 41 percent surge in the number of drug-related deaths in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same time last year, as fentanyl ravaged the city's homeless population.
The Californian coastal hub saw 200 people die due to overdoses between January and March, compared to 142 deaths in 2022, according to recent data from the city's medical examiner.
That amounts to one overdose death every 10 hours in a city that has seen its reputation as a coastal gem tarnished by worsening crime, drugs, and, homelessness rates, even as it remains home to tech billionaires.
DIMMING DEMAMERICA:
The Tenderloin is a heartbreaking and dangerous place. Sidewalks, doorways, and alleys are packed with tents, lean-tos, sleeping bags, broken wheelchairs, and piles of garbage. Thousands of people on the streets are unconscious, dazed, or delirious. Dogs roam about, too; some are beloved pets, but often neglected. Residents must navigate around bodies and crowds of drug dealers, trying to avoid human waste, needles, and violence.:
There is an insatiable appetite for what’s happening in San Francisco, the editor-in-chief of a British media outlet recently told me. I get it—we have controversy, conflict, Tammany Hall–style corruption, villains, and heroes, all playing out against a stunning, if blemished, backdrop. For the rest of the country, rooting for the city’s success (or failure) has become a kind of sport. For San Franciscans themselves, it can feel like being trapped in a never-ending cycle of high hopes and deep despair. For us, each week is another cliff-hanger in a long-running drama.
In the early 1990s, the dot-com boom blasted through San Francisco. Internet-based startups, some little more than a vague concept and a sign on a door, bought out legacy businesses and soon occupied entire buildings, if not city blocks. Angry denunciations of “gentrification” were met with hoots of merriment from speculators, arriving from across the globe. The city’s proximity to Silicon Valley made it the playground for young—and yes, often obnoxious—wealth builders. Rents and housing prices skyrocketed with the influx of venture-capital-backed newcomers.
Though the first dot-com bubble burst just a few years later, the next tech wave arrived shortly thereafter, crowding in with the financial district’s traditional banking, investing, and legal firms. Companies from Airbnb to Zynga planted flags at their new headquarters. Soon Marc Benioff erected his Salesforce Tower, dramatically altering the city’s skyline.
Then came the pandemic. Nearly all tech workers went fully remote, causing urban life to screech to a halt. In 2023, many of these firms’ office buildings remain hauntingly empty, including Benioff’s tower. The delicate ecosystem of bars and restaurants favored by workers has nearly collapsed, devastating a once-vibrant financial district. Today, the financial district’s skyscrapers sport “for lease” signs as mass layoffs and hiring freezes continue. The talent, accustomed to calling shots, now find themselves somewhat adrift. Those who loathed the arrogant newcomers finally have their moment of schadenfreude.
Augmenting the melodrama is Elon Musk, who swept into town to buy Twitter in October 2022. Almost immediately, this wild card fired nearly half the company’s 7,500 employees, and then ordered most of the rest back to the office. Musk’s unpredictable actions, both in the city and online, are theoretical wonders.
San Francisco, said architect Frank Lloyd Wright, was “the only city I can think of that can survive all the things you people are doing to it and still look beautiful.” In general, this observation remains true, but one particular area grapples with almost unimaginable abuse.
The Tenderloin, roughly 50 blocks of mayhem cradling City Hall and adjacent to the shopping district of Union Square, has long been the place to live if you can’t afford anything else. It’s home to some of the city’s most gorgeous early-twentieth-century architecture, though most buildings are dilapidated and teeming with vermin. About 70 are single-room-occupancy hotels, designated for people with low or no incomes. Many residents are Asian, Hispanic, or Middle Eastern immigrants, poor families, the disabled, or senior citizens. Others are people with drug and mental-illness problems, placed there by the city’s homeless department and a web of contracted nonprofits.
The Tenderloin is a heartbreaking and dangerous place. Sidewalks, doorways, and alleys are packed with tents, lean-tos, sleeping bags, broken wheelchairs, and piles of garbage. Thousands of people on the streets are unconscious, dazed, or delirious. Dogs roam about, too; some are beloved pets, but often neglected. Residents must navigate around bodies and crowds of drug dealers, trying to avoid human waste, needles, and violence.
While the Tenderloin is often compared with its scripted cousin, Hamsterdam, from HBO’s The Wire, this real containment zone has porous boundaries. Outlying neighborhoods have seen an uptick in tents, as people flood the city in search of drugs and handouts, attracted by a lenient attitude toward vagrancy.
In December 2022, the Coalition on Homelessness and the ACLU brought a lawsuit against the city, preventing the police from clearing encampments. U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu issued the injunction, which City Attorney David Chiu quickly appealed. The Tenderloin remains the epicenter of civic neglect, but as similar problems reach the doorsteps of residents elsewhere, the fight for safe, clean communities is intensifying.
Perhaps no aspect of life in San Francisco is as tragic as its drug disaster. From January 2021 to November 2022, more than 1,225 people died of overdoses in the city. Opioids, cocaine, and methamphetamines are all sold in the open. Most of the dealers are part of a powerful cartel of Honduran nationals.
Fentanyl is particularly prolific and cheap. San Francisco’s toleration of the purchase and use of illegal drugs has lured addicts from around the country; all too often, they end up homeless and at death’s door.
The situation became so dire that Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in January 2022 and opened the Linkage Center in UN Plaza. The intention was to connect the city’s exploding drug-using population to addiction treatment and other critical services. Mothers who had lost children to the streets of San Francisco were hopeful. Finally, their kids would receive the support that they needed to get sober and healthy.
Almost immediately, the Linkage Center descended into a ramshackle, filthy, city-funded place to get high. Workers distributed drug-use supplies and administered naloxone when guests overdosed. Hundreds of dealers congregated outside, doing brisk business.
The Department of Public Health denied that the center was an unlawful drug-use site, until independent journalists went undercover to confirm it. I was among them, and I witnessed people shoot up and smoke fentanyl in a space created to connect them to recovery care.
In response, the mothers, who had organized into Mothers Against Drug Addiction and Deaths, staged a protest at the center. They were met by harm-reduction activists, who counterprotested. Not backing down, the women erected a billboard overlooking Union Square, bearing the message “Famous the world over for our brains, beauty and, now, dirt-cheap fentanyl,” set against the background of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Eleven months later, in December 2022, the center was shuttered. At a cost of $22 million, it had proved a humiliating failure for city officials. But the closure was a victory of sorts for the mothers who refused to accept substandard treatment for their children.
San Francisco’s police ranks are at an all-time low, with the force short by at least 500 sworn officers. As in cities across the nation, a number of San Francisco leaders chanted the “defund the police” mantra during the summer of 2020. Mayor Breed was among them. That year, she held a press conference announcing $120 million in cuts from the city’s police and sheriff’s department budgets.
The city, already reeling with escalating crime, was hit hard. Car break-ins, sawed-off catalytic converters, shoplifting, open-air drug markets, smash-and-grab robberies, home invasions, and mail theft soared; people were robbed of their bikes, electronics, and even dogs. Criminals gained the upper hand. Footage of thieves emptying out a Louis Vuitton store in 2021 went viral.
In July 2022, the San Francisco Chronicleasked residents to name the city’s most urgent problem. Crime and public safety ran a close second to homelessness (which is intertwined with drug-related offenses, since many addicts steal to support their habits).
San Francisco’s controversial, ultra-progressive district attorney Chesa Boudin, who took office in January 2020, routinely let arrested drug dealers walk free, eliminated cash bail, and took steps to empty jails of dangerous suspected and convicted criminals. Prominent cases included that of Troy McAlister, a man with an extensive criminal history who was arrested for robbing two women with a fake gun. While McAlister was awaiting trial on a third strike that would have sent him to prison for 25 years to life, Boudin’s office instead negotiated a plea deal, reducing the charges and putting him back on the street. On New Year’s Day 2021, an inebriated McAlister stole a car and drove into 27-year-old Hanako Abe and 60-year-old Elizabeth Platt, killing them both.
City voters recalled Boudin in a special election on June 7, 2022, but criminal-justice-reform activists continue to make it tough for police to do their jobs. The public defender’s office accused sergeant Daniel Solorzano of racial discrimination because he arrested 53 Latino drug dealers in the Tenderloin neighborhood. Solorzano, of Mexican and Nicaraguan heritage, now faces possible disciplinary action and termination. The police commission voted to limit officers’ ability to make pretextual traffic stops, ostensibly to reduce racial profiling. Officers can no longer pull over drivers for actions such as failing to display registration tags or for not having fully functioning rear taillights.
Morale within the police department has plummeted. Experienced officers are resigning, and not nearly enough cadets are replenishing the shrinking ranks. The latest police academy class graduated just 13 new officers.
Sensing a crisis, Breed reversed her police-defunding decision, making an emergency request to the board of supervisors for more funds to support a crackdown on crime. Newly elected supervisor Matt Dorsey, a former police spokesperson, is advocating for big sign-on bonuses. Law and order is suddenly back in vogue.
Adding to the city’s salacious nature is a series of bizarre bureaucratic decisions and embarrassing political scandals.
In 2022, Matt Haney, then a city supervisor (now a state assembly member), approved $1.7 million for the construction of a single public toilet, which was to take two years to build, until he retreated in the face of a backlash. Last year, Haney and other supervisors also promoted spending $427,500 to manufacture and test five prototypes of trash cans. The price tag for each can was between $12,000 and $20,000.
Mohammed Nuru, director of San Francisco Public Works, was arrested for fraud after trying to bribe an airport commissioner and granting a trash-hauling company special treatment in exchange for payments. Facing accusations of corruption, bribery, kickbacks, and side deals dating back to 2008, Nuru pled guilty in 2022 and was sentenced to seven years in federal prison.
In 2021, the school board denied a gay father of a biracial child a spot on the volunteer-parent committee because he is white. During the pandemic, the board debated the destruction of a mural of George Washington at the high school named after the nation’s first president, tried to rename 44 schools after claiming that their namesakes were linked to slavery or racism, and revoked the merit-based admissions process at the city’s renowned magnet Lowell High School. In March 2022, infuriated parents led a recall effort, ending in a landslide vote to remove a trio of board members. In a spectacular display of hubris, ousted board member Alison Collins filed an $87 million lawsuit against the school district and five of her fellow board members. A federal judge tossed the suit for lack of merit.
The city’s massive $14 billion annual budget is itself a disgrace. San Francisco gifted over $1 billion to more than 600 nonprofits in 2022 to fix the quality-of-life issues bedeviling citizens. No substantial improvements resulted. In January 2023, news that $25 million had been awarded to revoked, suspended, and delinquent nonprofits shocked even jaded observers. Eighteen city agencies somehow failed to notice that they were paying millions in taxpayer dollars to defunct organizations.
Gorgeous, wild San Francisco has been dragged through the mud by the very officials who have been tasked to keep it clean. Years of grift and extremism have done tremendous damage. Yet serious efforts to revive the city are ramping up. Brooke Jenkins, the current district attorney, has been busy reversing Boudin’s soft approach on crime. She is revoking misdemeanor plea offers for fentanyl dealers and pursuing second-degree murder charges against dealers linked to overdose deaths. Voters have elected some moderate supervisors, and more are expected to run in the 2024 election.
To know what’s really happening in San Francisco, you need to listen to the city’s passionate residents and business owners. They’re mobilizing, getting louder and stronger, demanding positive outcomes. While it’s highly unlikely that the city will ever lean to the political right (nor, for most, is that the intention), there is an undeniable shift away from the hard left. This much is guaranteed: the cast of characters will change again, with hirings and firings and elections, as the next set of opportunists sails into the City by the Bay. San Francisco’s drama will be renewed for many more seasons.
Erica Sandberg is a consumer-finance reporter and community advocate based in San Francisco.
Top Photo: An all-too-common sight in the City by the Bay (BEN MARGOT/AP PHOTO)
Another Corporation Ditches San Francisco Over City's 'Major Challenges'
Two of the largest hotels in San Francisco are set to close, following a trend of businesses fleeing the Democrat-led city as it faces a surge in crime.
The owner of the city's largest hotel, the Hilton San Francisco Union Square, and its fourth-largest, Parc 55, will cease payments on $725 million worth of loans and enter foreclosure on the hotels because the city is facing "major challenges."
The decision was "very difficult, but necessary" because of "concerns over street conditions," office vacancies, and reduced conventions, said Thomas J. Baltimore Jr., CEO of Park Hotels & Resorts, which owns the two hotels.
"Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco’s path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges, both old and new," Baltimore said.
The hotels are far from the first businesses to flee. Old Navy last week announced it will close its flagship store. Whole Foods and Nordstrom have shuttered businesses in the city over safety concerns. The latter's exit is costing the city 380 jobs. The downtown area of the city has lost half of its businesses since the start of the pandemic.
Democratic mayor London Breed and several city officials held an outdoor meeting on crime last month in the city's United Nations Plaza, known for drug use and crime. A crowd of spectators screamed insults and booed the officials, and one of them threw a brick that almost hit a child, local outlet KRON4 reported. The city officials adjourned the meeting amid the disruption and continued it from inside the city hall building.
A recent study found very few people in the Bay Area feel safe on public transportation. The Bay Area Council found in a poll that 78 percent of residents said they would ride more often if trains and buses were safer and cleaner. Just 17 percent of those asked said they feel safe on public transit.
Even comedian Dave Chapelle is concerned about the state of San Francisco. He asked an audience there last month, "What the f— happened to this place?"
"Y’all ... need a Batman!" Chappelle reportedly told the crowd. The comedian recounted his experience at an Indian restaurant in the city, where he saw a homeless man defecate in front of the building as he entered.
The owner of two major hotels in downtown San Francisco is preparing to give the properties up to foreclosure as the city’s downtown decline continues, with retail shops leaving the area amid crime and homelessness.
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.
Park Hotels & Resorts said Monday that it stopped making payments on a $725 million loan due in November and expects the “ultimate removal of these hotels” from its portfolio. The company said it would “work in good faith with the loan’s servicers to determine the most effective path forward.”
The 1,921-room Hilton is the city’s largest hotel and the 1,024-room Parc 55 is the fourth-largest, and together they account for around 9% of the city’s hotel stock. The hotels could potentially be taken over by lenders or sold to a new group as part of the foreclosure process.
San Francisco has been suffering an exodus of major retail stores from the Union Square area over the past several months. The city also lost residents during the pandemic, and there are fewer commuters due to a shift to work-from-home in the tech industry. Amid a looming commercial real estate collapse, experts are advising the city to think about creative and drastic solutions to bring visitors back to the city before it is too late.
The Chronicle notes that tourism spending in the city is up, but convention attendance has fallen drastically and is not expected to recover for years. The cost of living in the city also remains high, despite its troubles.
Mayor London Breed has been at pains to deny that the downtown area is facing economic collapse, as have left-wing pundits eager to deflect criticism of years of soft-on-crime policies. But the crisis continues to worsen.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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