Nancy Pelosi lives in a walled mansion on a large expanse of land with majestic views. Her mansion could easily house thirty or forty refugee families, and she is hardly there. The expansive grounds could house dozens of refugee families in tents.
In poop-covered San Francisco, the super-rich prey on the left's merely wealthy
San Francisco is a city covered in excrement, and now even the wealthy inhabitants of its Embarcadero are going to experience more of it, up close to home and quite personal.
Here's the news from the Guardian:
Authorities in San Francisco have approved plans for a homeless shelter that had faced fierce protests from wealthy local residents.Tuesday’s unanimous vote by San Francisco’s port commissioners was the culmination of weeks of contention that began with residents of one of the city’s most desirable waterfront neighborhoods raising more than $101,000in a crowdfunding campaign to pay for an attorney to fight the construction of the Navigation Center.
They got steamrollered. This comes despite what locals say was "nearly 100% opposition," along with a swift raising more than $100,000 from a GoFundMe campaign to legally fight the coming nightmare. They're about to learn they've become the latest sacrificial lambs, because they're now the low men on the San Francisco totem poll. They've become the new peasants, and probably don't even know it.
But they do know that something has gone wrong. The Guardian continues:
“We believe that in the mayor’s haste to meet her campaign promises, she has failed to follow the law,” he said. “It’s pretty disrespectful to the people who live there to shove it down their throats like this. I have been practicing law in this city for almost 30 years and I have never seen so much disregard for the feelings, thoughts, and opinions of thousands of people.”
Maybe they should have thought of that before they elected an incompetent weakling like Mayor London Breed based on color considerations, or passed Proposition C in that same election, taxing big businesses to pay for More Homeless programs. The residents aren't the most sympathetic people out there, given their voting patterns. All the same, this could be some kind of watershed, widening a new fault line on the left, given that tech billionaires were the ones behind this, making a sort of warfare on the merely wealthy. After all, in San Francisco, there's no one else left.
The residents' interests were steamrollered and without a significant concession, as activists from San Francisco's vast 'homeless industrial complex' (who stand to make a lot of money from the project), heckled their protests as "stand up to hate.' That's not just a steamroller going over a lot of people, that's a pave-over. The ironically named 'SAFE' navigation center for the homeless will go up no matter what they think, and as part of all that safety from the "SAFE" center, the city promises two new beat cops in the vicinity to protect residents. (Assuming they show up.)
It's not going to work, of course. The city already spends $77,000 per homeless person (the money going to activists and nonprofits), which is higher than the mean average income of the average U.S. resident, wrote Rich Cibotti, in a data-filled 2017 piece for the Daily Wire. It has a $10 billion city budget (in stark contrast to the $3 billion city budgets of much larger cities such as San Diego and San Jose) and doles out $600 million among homeless agencies and non-profits to pay for 'homeless services,' which is an amount that is higher than its police or fire budgets. The homeless cash is expected to keep rolling in in coming years, with Proposition C expected to bring in another $300 million (assuming the larged companies targeted for the homeless tax stay around to pay it), and the homeless problem will proliferate.
The city itself says it's ramping up its homeless services in 2019 by about 17% even as other city services are cut to pay that.
During the next year, we will increase the number of Navigation Center beds by nearly 150 percent. In addition to increasing Navigation Center capacity and services, we will add 172 units of new supportive housing placements as well as millions in rental subsidies to assist people in need of housing. This budget also includes additional funding to expand programs tailored to the specific needs of different populations experiencing homelessness -- families, youth, LBGTQ and veterans.
Net result: A city covered in more poop than it knows what to do with. As Thomas Sowell has observed: You can have all the poverty you want to pay for.
The Embarcadero people, who likely have extended themselves financially to live there, aren't going to be happy about going underwater on their mortgages, as the homeless move in. But on the left, money talks, and these poor sould just don't have the political clout it takes in San Francisco to keep the homeless off their doorsteps the way the superrich do. They are after all, are merely wealthy, not tech billionaires.
Now the measure was opposed by residents but it was loudly supported by the super-rich, such as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff(formerly an Oracle biggie), who are fully sheltered from any 'interaction' with the city's abundant homeless or their "byproducts."
Benioff loudly supported Proposition C, which is likely to drive businesses and tax revenue from the city, but apparently not his company, which will only have to shell out $10 million in new taxes. The company itself paid $7 million to get the measure passed. (Dorsey opposed it.)
Benioff's influence is present in other areas, too. The homeless SAFE center's location is weird stuff, too.
Way back in 2014, something called the Presidio Trust squelched another project that might have eventually gone up at the SAFE site known as Seawall Lot 330, which was George Lucas's proposed "Cultural Arts Museum," at another location, Crissy Field, and Lucas was then offered the Seawall Lot 330 location, which he spurned as too little too late, headin first Chicago, and after legal challenges, he eventually took to Los Angeles. Interestingly enough, that federal board, a place where political plums are offered to political donors (and President Obama certainly played this game), has since seen the appointment of Benioff'swife, and another Oracle scion to the body in 2015. Lucas dismissed the entire board and its offers as 'they hate us,' so there was something in the air about keeping Lucas out of the site and replacing it with a homeless services center instead.
Does it sound like someone wanted to lower property values, chasing the local residents out, and then cleaning up later. The homeless center is, supposedly, "temporary" with a lease to be renewed or not in two years. It almost sounds as though the superrich are seeking to drive enough residents out by ruining the quality of their lives as they pay high costs, driving their mortgages under water, and getting the market low enough to make a killing. The super-rich can do that, the merely wealthy cannot. Makes you wonder why Benioff and Dorsey were just so enthusiastic as advocates for the homeless industrial complex. They seem to be using the homeless as guided weapons targeting the merely wealthy hoi polloi.
California became a Democratic stronghold not because
Californians became socialists, but because millions of socialists
moved there. Immigration turned California blue,
and immigration is ultimately to blame for California's high
poverty level.
Californians became socialists, but because millions of socialists
moved there. Immigration turned California blue,
and immigration is ultimately to blame for California's high
poverty level.
Potential Speaker Candidate Marcia Fudge: Nancy Pelosi an ‘Elitist,’ ‘Very Wealthy Person’
Pelosi’s Pacific Heights needs refugees
Pacific Heights is one of San Francisco’s most expensive neighborhoods. It boasts dramatic views of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Headlands, and the blue waters of San Francisco Bay.
Oracle founder Larry Ellison is one of its more prominent and distinguished residents, as is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
For all its attractiveness as a neighborhood with its boutique shops and upscale restaurants, Pacific Heights lacks two vital ingredients to make it a truly great American neighborhood -- economic and cultural diversity.
That’s why President Donald Trump’s plan to resettle “refugees” in sanctuary cities should be embraced by Pacific Heights’ residents.
By inviting the refugees now stranded at the border, Pacific Heights would not only strengthen the sinew of its community but also contribute to alleviating the humanitarian crisis at the border.
Our strength is our diversity, and Pacific Heights lacks that strength. It is culturally homogenous in a city that is diverse.
In San Francisco, earning $117,000 a year or less makes you a low-income earner. Placing refugees in Pacific Heights where housing and other costs are truly astronomical would require the compassion and economic assistance of its residents. The former they have long signaled, and the latter they are more than able to do.
Nancy Pelosi lives in a walled mansion on a large expanse of land with majestic views. Her mansion could easily house thirty or forty refugee families, and she is hardly there. The expansive grounds could house dozens of refugee families in tents.
Imagine refugee children who survived the arduous and life-threatening journey from Central America playing on Pelosi’s lawn while breathing the clean and invigorating air from off the San Francisco coastline. Imagine alleviating the humanitarian crisis by creating additional tent cities in Pacific Heights’ splendid parks.
Pelosi also owns a second mansion in the Wine Country north of San Francisco. This too is walled and could hold dozens of refugee families.
Neither Pelosi herself nor the community of Pacific Heights can solve the refugee problem, but they could set a standard that other wealthy and pro-sanctuary communities could easily emulate.
Just a few miles away from Pacific Heights, my liberal acquaintances “Ann” and “Christopher” live in a complex that is more difficult to enter than the Central Intelligence Agency. They both support the sanctuary status of San Francisco and think the border wall, but not their complex’s barrier, is immoral. Ann is a big DACA supporter although she has been seen adroitly ignoring and bypassing the homeless that proliferate in her neighborhood and sleep on her streets. Her compassion obviously has its limits.
Their complex boasts extensive patios between the stacks of apartments. These could host a dozen or more tents and port-a-potties that could alleviate the cagelike situations at the border that they lament as deplorable. Although these facilities would constitute an eyesore and block the light and view Ann and Christopher currently enjoy, creating a tent community for refugees would demonstrate the concern and compassion that people like Ann and Christopher love to remind the rest of us that they possess.
Real compassion in Western Civilization derives from the Biblical sense of the term and means to share in the suffering and emotions of others. When Jesus saw his friends weeping at the grave of Lazarus, He wept with them and acted. Compassion means to suffer with and to be motivated to take immediate action to alleviate the suffering of others.
So, let the virtue-signaling liberals in sanctuary cities who incessantly lecture us on their commitment to taking in everyone, liberals who find the rest of us insensitive and heartless, let them manifest in deed the compassion they so relentlessly embrace in word. Let them fulfill the Biblical imperative to suffer with and take immediate action.
And they will be rewarded for this in knowing that their upscale white communities can find new strength in the economic and cultural diversity that the refugees will provide. I am looking forward to the sprouting of tent cities in Pacific Heights and elsewhere in the upscale parts of San Francisco. Diversity is truly a community’s strength.
Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science, University of Cincinnati and a distinguished fellow with the Hyam Salomon Center
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