A small glimmer of hope for California
Congrats Mayor London Breed, for finally stepping up to do the right thing for the citizens of San Francisco!
Dec 17, 2021: Mayor London Breed Declares the State of Emergency in the Tenderloin area for the city. This allows the Mayor to bypass normal bureaucratic hurdles to implement an emergency plan to control the Tenderloin area.
Here are a couple of important parts of the announcement:
“….focus and coordination to disrupt the illegal activity in the neighborhood, to get people the treatment and support they need, and to make the Tenderloin a safer, more livable place for the families and children who call the neighborhood home.”
The emphasis is on two parallel tracks of getting people off opioids while also enforcing law and order in the area.
Both of these initiatives and goals have been long overdue.
Finally, one California politician has developed the guts to step up to make bold decisions. In the meantime, the rest of San Francisco and California political leadership is still trying to play both sides cynically in order to keep their hold on power.
California, the Golden State, has slowly been losing its shine. Rampant homelessness, deteriorating infrastructure, unaffordable housing, deteriorating law & order…..the laundry list goes on.
In the meantime, other states have actively stepped up to entice the innovation economy, along with the lucrative tax base. For the first time, California has had a net outward migration. Corporations like Oracle, Tesla, and HP have joined a list of other storied names out of this state.
In the meantime, California seems to be at a loss about how to move forward. Having become the largest economy in the US and the 5th largest in the world, it is struggling to find a worthy next act.
The Golden State leadership does not seem to be bothered by the self-harm and reputational harm being self-inflicted on our state.
One such key area is law and order.
As a first-generation immigrant, who moved here in my mid 20’s, and has lived and worked across the world, I understand better than most Americans the value of law and order.
Strong rule of law and fair enforcement are key roles of the Government. In fact, maintaining law and order and defending the borders are probably the two most basic roles of any civilized Government. Without these in place, nothing else matters. If there is no rule of law, or if the laws are randomly applied, nothing else will work.
But it seems like that we as Californians and Americans have become spoilt over the past few generations. Having had the luxury of a strong law framework has blinded us to the dangers of a society where this does not exist anymore.
This problem is probably most evidenced in liberal cities like San Francisco. For too long, the city has allowed the infrastructure to crumble. Homeless are flooding the streets. People are openly flouting the law. Break-ins and random attacks are getting more common and blatant.
In the name of a ‘fair’ society, the powerful are playing a naive or cynical racist game of having a different set of rules for a section of society.
The fundamental premise seems to be that we can not treat the poor, or some minorities, the same way we can the rest of the citizenry. These poor souls obviously have some defect in their upbringing as a result of their race or demographics or current financial or mental situation. So it is ok to have violence on the streets or have people steal from stores, or have neighborhoods be taken over by drug addicts or the homeless.
I want to be clear. This is not a simple problem. It is a shame that the richest state of the most powerful country in the world has an ever-growing underbelly of the poor, the homeless, the mentally unstable (what is the right term??)
I am seeing these issues first hand as I have got involved with some local volunteer organizations that feed the homeless and the poor. It breaks my heart to see this hidden poverty and hopelessness in the richest part of the country.
But conflating issues does not help. We can not go easy on law and order in the name of helping the poor. Both problems need to be solved, and independently.
That is what Mayor Breed’s initiative seems to be doing: get the homeless and drug addicts into shelters while enforcing the law strongly.
The police’s main role is law enforcement and keeping the population safe.
Of course, they need to treat everyone with respect. But their job is to enforce the law and to keep law and order. If anyone breaks the rules, they should feel the full force of the long arm of the law.
We can not ask the Police to fix other areas that are broken in society. That is the role of other groups.
In a big corporation, every department is responsible for different functions. We do not expect sales to make products, or finance to sell. Similarly, the Police have their role. Other departments have to step up to their charters.
The police have been hobbled over the years by politicians. And it is not the strawman of left vs right or Democrats vs Republicans. It is relentlessly ideology-driven groups vs civil society.
Unfortunately, the US and California seem to be held hostage by the increasingly intolerant on both sides of the aisle.
So it is a breath of fresh air to see Mayor London Breed take a firm stand. It is late in the game, but at least it is a start.
I had the pleasure of conversing briefly with her at a political event. And was impressed by her common-sense approach to solving problems.
She won’t have an easy time. The ideologically driven liberal elites won’t let go of their power that easily. Already I see the DA, the supervisors throw up a dust cloud of “…but this is not the problem, how dare she treat these poor people so roughly…” etc blah blah.
Cynical people who are safe in their homes go ahead and bombard the helpless citizenry with platitudes to fulfill their dreams of winning the next political prize or chair.
The same people who would rather see a swelling number of homeless and poor, and deteriorating law and order rather than fix things.
The kind of people who are slowly pulling this great state into mediocrity.
The same people who made me decide to get engaged in this game called politics to help drive common-sense-driven change.
Last year I decided that I needed to step up and contribute my bit towards a better and stronger California and the US for future generations. I ran for Governor last year and have started getting engaged at the local and county level.
We the people need to take back our country from the insane on both sides of the aisle and from special interest groups. Otherwise, we will slowly sink into mediocrity.
My website is LetsMakeCAWork.com. Take a look. Send me your input. We need to band together to move the needle and make politicians listen.
