Another lie from Scott Wiener

Scott Wiener, photo Dyami Serna, SFBC

Scott Wiener in the NY Times on the soccer field issue:

“Beach Chalet is the absolute epitome of San Francisco’s inability to have a planning process where you have a beginning, a middle and an end, and then you move forward,” said Scott Wiener, a member of the city’s board of supervisors, who voted in 2012 to approve artificial turf on the fields, along with nine of the board’s other 10 members...

“What we struggle with in San Francisco is saying ‘We had the process, you had your voice, you didn’t get your way on this specific issue, but we’re moving forward,’ ” says Mr. Wiener. “If it takes this long and this many millions of dollars to get a straightforward soccer field project through, you can understand why it’s taken over 10 years for us to get our first bus rapid transit project done.” (‘Parks and Recreation’ Comes to Life in San Francisco).

Rob's comment:
The lie is the claim about BRT in San Francisco. Presumably Wiener is talking about the Geary BRT project, which has been mired in the planning process for years, not because of appeals or litigation by opponents of the project, but because the city has yet to approve a BRT project for Geary Boulevard. There is no project to oppose. 

The reason: the inherent difficulty of engineering a BRT project on Geary, with its many cross-streets and, more important, the underpasses at Fillmore and Geary and Masonic and Geary. 

City Hall apparently wants to fill in these underpasses, which of course will create two horrendous intersections and jam up traffic on Geary, which now efficiently handles more than 65,000 vehicles a day. A really dumb idea, that City Hall tries to justify by claiming that it will unite the neighborhoods on either side of Geary. (See Worst Idea of 2008, 2013, now Worst Idea of 2014.)

Wiener surely knows he's lying, though compulsive liars often end up believing their own bullshit. Wiener also lied about the Bicycle Plan and CEQA. 

Wiener apparently resents that part of the "process" that includes people opposing City Hall's projects, which is why he tried unsuccessfully to undermine our initiative rights several years ago.

Lost Boys of Sudan and Islam

The story in today's NY Times (Film on Lost Boys of Sudan Uses Keys to Stand Out) about how a new film based on the Lost Boys of Sudan is being promoted doesn't mention why they became "lost" in the first place: The Islamic North Sudan attacked and slaughtered the non-Muslim people of South Sudan, making thousands of Sudanese children into refugees. A fatuous version of multiculturalism strikes again!

Later: George Clooney has been good on Sudan.