Tim Redmond and the left

There's a lot to argue with in Tim Redmond's ultra-left version of recent city history, but this statement can't go without a response:

"Gavin Newsom, who wants to be the next governor of California, got his start in local politics attacking homeless people."

That is simply untrue. I'd call Remond a liar, but he's no doubt sincere and thinks he's giving it a straight shot.

His slur is a reference to Newsom's Care Not Cash policy that, like every other Bay Area jurisdiction had already done, stopped the city policy of giving homeless people monthly cash payments that in effect helped them remain homeless. 

Funny thing happened when Care Not Cash went into effect: More than 1,000 of the homeless disappeared from the welfare rolls. Turned out they just wanted cash, not care.

Before Mayor Newsom and Care Not Cash---and Homeward Bound, Project Homeless Connect, supportive housing, etc.---what was the Bay Guardian/Redmond left's approach to dealing with the homelessness? Supporting Food Not Bombs and the pie-throwers in the Biotic Baking Brigade..

The abject failure of the city's left on homelessness was an intellectual failure, not a political inititative that failed, since they saw the homeless as just another category of victims under our wicked capitalist system. 

The implication of the city left's lack of serious policy proposals: the people of San Francisco should just learn to live with the growing squalor on city streets and in our parks.

More on the Bay Guardian's "vision" for San Francisco here and here.

Garnering myriad single word cliches

Add "garner" and "garnering" to our growing list of single word cliches. Both of these inelegant variations on plain old "get" appear mostly in our written language. From an internet story we get two garners in two paragraphs:

Clinton’s Democratic primary rival has consistently garnered 70-80 percent support with young voters...a new Latino Decisions poll released last week finds Trump only garnering 11 percent support from Hispanic voters against Clinton’s 76 percent support.

We are now resigned to seeing our world turned into a "globe" and even mild assent "absolutely" agreed "upon."

In this morning's Chronicle, a story on the Warriors' deep bench:

Depth has been their strong point for the past two seasons, and it will be called upon now. But the task will be difficult.

It might be a little easier if the Warriors just called on it.