Thursday, April 05, 2018

Anybody but Breed for mayor


The video above shows that London Breed doesn't really understand the homeless issue: "The city's economy is thriving but not for everyone," over a shot of a homeless man out cold on the sidewalk. 

The implication: the city's homeless are simply poor city residents, not people with crippling drug and psychological problems, probably like that guy and most of the city's homeless.

Breed also tells us that she has "achieved the improbable dream of becoming supervisor and acting mayor." Neither she nor any other city kid has ever "dreamed" about becoming a district supervisor or acting mayor.


From the above video: "San Francisco needs a strong leader, someone who won't back down and won't let politics get in the way."

As supervisor Breed was quickly co-opted by City Hall and city departments, since she was a blank slate on policy from the beginning. 

She rarely has any significant political stands to back down from. But her recent waffling on Scott Wiener's SB187 housing bill---and being endorsed by Wiener!---is not likely to help her in SF, where even the Planning Department opposes Wiener's heavy-handed approach.

"Politics" is the business she's in and the process by which we choose our leaders. The implication of Breed's derogatory comment is that it's somehow an obstacle to good government, instead of democracy itself, not a sordid process that Breed is supposedly above.

As a District 5 blogger, I've followed London Breed's undistinguished career as supervisor from the beginning, when she emerged from well-deserved obscurity and was elected District 5 Supervisor in 2012 due to our misguided Ranked Choice Voting system, as I pointed out at the time:
...Breed was the most acceptable default candidate. In an issue-free campaign, the least objectionable candidate---not a racist, not a homophobe, a woman of color, photogenic, etc.---can win. Without RCV there would have been a runoff where there might have been a real political discussion of her record and specific issues.
As supervisor Breed quickly made a remarkable record as a dim bulb on the issues.


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From the Daily Beast:

The immigration wave is over, but Trump is sending troops to the border anyway. The president’s order to deploy the National Guard to stop migrants comes after the government closed two jails because there weren’t enough detainees and a drop in crossings.

President Trump said he will send National Guard troops to the southern border to stop immigrants from crossing. Yet his own administration quietly closed immigrant detention centers on the border because crossings are down sharply.

Two facilities were built in 2016 to deal with a surge in migrants who rushed to cross the U.S.-Mexico border before Trump became president, according to a Customs and Border Patrol Office of the Inspector General report released last October. That surge subsided and illegal border crossings subsequently dropped significantly, according to the report.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who oversees CBP, nevertheless announced the deployment of National Guard troops on Wednesday...

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