Fox News has been putting a lot of emphasis lately on painting San Francisco as a city run by incompetent liberals - I presume hoping some of the paint will spill onto Nancy Pelosi.
Yes San Francisco has major problems. No, the "liberal" government of San Francisco is not the reason.
San Francisco is being buffeted by forces that no other city in the America faces. San Francisco sits in a spectacularly beautiful setting with a marvelous climate. In the winter the low temperature never gets much below 40 degrees, in the summer the daytime high temperature is almost always in the 60 to 80 degree range.
Since it's founding it has been a place lots of people want to live and are loath to leave. But the city sits on 7 square miles of steep hills, landfill and sand dunes, surrounded by water on three sides, and riddled with earthquake faults. Locations within the city where it is safe to build multi-story buildings are limited. The building limitations have limited the the population of the city to under 800,000 people.
The tech industry that started in Silicon Valley loves San Francisco and much of it has moved north to San Francisco in the last two decades, pushing San Francisco to the point of being one of the most expensive cities in the world. Tens of thousands of the residents of San Francisco can no longer afford to live a normal life in a place where they grew up or chose to move to. Some left, many have tried to stay, disgruntled and feeling abused.
To understand Prop 47, which your article cites as the source of San Francisco's petty crime problem, some back story is necessary. From the late 1970's through the early 2000's Republicans, with financial support from the prison guards union, controlled California. Their main policy goals were cutting taxes and getting tough on crime. As a result California's prison population exploded and thousands of young people ended up with criminal records limiting their future options. The tax cuts usually cut social programs that helped socially disadvantaged and mentally ill folks, contributing to the explosion in homelessness.
In the mid-2000's California voters tossed out the last vestige of Republican control of the state, but the problems from 30 years of Republican exclusive focus on tax cuts and being tough on crime still haunt the state. The imbalance is demonstrated by a simple statistic.
In 2010, about 14 employees of the State of California were paid more than $500,000. One was an educator, the president of the University of California. The rest were all employees of the Department of Corrections.
The single event that was emblematic of the problem that sparked Prop 47 was a 25 year prison sentence handed down for stealing a piece of pizza.
Many prosecutors always opposed Prop 47 but a 2018 University of California study that compared the changes in crime rates in California under Prop 47 with other states found trends in California matched trends in other states.
But even though Prop 47 has worked at reducing prison populations and been good for most of California, in San Francisco the combination of a large, disgruntled population displaced by the tech industry living in the midst of vast wealth has created a culture of disrespect for the law. But Prop 47 is a state law, San Francisco does not have the power to change it and must comply with it.
Private police? High taxes or not, how many new police officers can the city afford when to lure new officers it has to offer a salary to live in or near a city where a one bedroom apartment costs around $4000 a month, and the median home price is $1.6 million?
It is going to take many years to continue to unwind all the narrow minded policies pushed by Republicans for 30 years, and the problems with wealth taking over San Francisco. As a lifelong resident of California, who spent many years registered and voting as a Republican, I know California's problems have more to do with the Republican anti-tax and tough on crime views that Fox News thrives on than with anything the left has ever done.
Friday, January 10, 2020
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
Conflict in the Middle East - Who Pays for it?
In the last couple days President Trump has authorized a drone strike killing a prominent Iranian general. Iran followed up with missile attacks on Iraqi bases where US forces were stationed.
Although his administrations vague intelligence justifications remind me off the justifications for the Bush administration invading Iraq to destroy what turned out to be a non-existent nuclear weapons program I don't feel like at this point I am in a position to second guess the President on whether his first strike was wise or foolish as policy.
What I do fault President Trump for is escalating our presence in the area after adding a trillion dollars a year to our national debt with his 2017 tax cuts.
For 40 years Republican administrations have relentlessly cut taxes on the wealthy, effectively pushing more and more of the tax burden onto the middle class. At the same time they have continuously increased "Defense" spending. As a result our National debt has grown from 30% of GDP to around 110% or GDP. As a country we owe more than we produce in a year. After 40 years of tax cuts the richest of the rich have so many tax perks and deductions they often end up paying almost no tax.
Much of the increase in "Defense" spending over the last 40 years has been to support ongoing interventions in the Middle East. This is a curious definition of "Defense". The notion of a middle eastern country invading the United States is laughable. Even the terrorist attacks spawned out of the middle east were in response to our constant meddling in their neighborhood.
We regular folks may benefit a little from our constant Middle East meddling to keep the oil flowing. But most of the benefit flows to rich folks who have business interests in the Middle East. Their investment interests have driven most of our interventions in the Middle East.
I can live with our government protecting rich folks investments half a world away. What I find indefensible is government paying vastly more for "defense" to protect rich folks Middle East investments, while the rich folks pay ever tinier fractions of their wealth as taxes, even as the National debt our kids and grand kids are going to be left with piles up. Particularly since it is mostly the not so rich that serve in the military, and die for our country in Middle East conflicts half a world way.
Although his administrations vague intelligence justifications remind me off the justifications for the Bush administration invading Iraq to destroy what turned out to be a non-existent nuclear weapons program I don't feel like at this point I am in a position to second guess the President on whether his first strike was wise or foolish as policy.
What I do fault President Trump for is escalating our presence in the area after adding a trillion dollars a year to our national debt with his 2017 tax cuts.
For 40 years Republican administrations have relentlessly cut taxes on the wealthy, effectively pushing more and more of the tax burden onto the middle class. At the same time they have continuously increased "Defense" spending. As a result our National debt has grown from 30% of GDP to around 110% or GDP. As a country we owe more than we produce in a year. After 40 years of tax cuts the richest of the rich have so many tax perks and deductions they often end up paying almost no tax.
Much of the increase in "Defense" spending over the last 40 years has been to support ongoing interventions in the Middle East. This is a curious definition of "Defense". The notion of a middle eastern country invading the United States is laughable. Even the terrorist attacks spawned out of the middle east were in response to our constant meddling in their neighborhood.
We regular folks may benefit a little from our constant Middle East meddling to keep the oil flowing. But most of the benefit flows to rich folks who have business interests in the Middle East. Their investment interests have driven most of our interventions in the Middle East.
I can live with our government protecting rich folks investments half a world away. What I find indefensible is government paying vastly more for "defense" to protect rich folks Middle East investments, while the rich folks pay ever tinier fractions of their wealth as taxes, even as the National debt our kids and grand kids are going to be left with piles up. Particularly since it is mostly the not so rich that serve in the military, and die for our country in Middle East conflicts half a world way.
Monday, January 6, 2020
Middle East Policy - Costs & Benefits
The Middle East has been one of our primary foreign policy problems since the end of the Vietnam War. We have had troops in a combat environment in Afghanistan for almost two decades, twice invaded Iraq, and actively engaged in hostilities in Syria, Libya, and a number of smaller states.
The Middle East is a tangled mass of ethnic, religious and tribal groups with grudges that go back hundreds of years. It is a region full of dictatorships or fake democracies controlled by the powerful who fix elections to provide cover for their right to line their pockets and deny basic human rights. It is literally half a world away from our borders and most of the region represents the antithesis of the ideals we strive for in our Democracy.
We scarcely lift a finger for conflicts or even genocide in Africa, Asia or Eastern Europe. But the middle east is abundantly endowed with oil, which we want for our cars, factories and industry. Our economic wealth has been rooted in cheap oil since back when European colonial empires dominated the region. But in the first part of the last century lots of new countries emerged as colonial empires collapsed. The new states wanted to control and profit from the oil within their boundaries.
2. Our meddling has made us the target for Middle East based terrorists who have killed thousands of innocent civilians. Trying to protect ourselves we have made it tediously complex to get on a plane to fly anywhere.
3. Within our country some of us have lashed out at other innocent neighbors with middle eastern backgrounds.
The Middle East is a tangled mass of ethnic, religious and tribal groups with grudges that go back hundreds of years. It is a region full of dictatorships or fake democracies controlled by the powerful who fix elections to provide cover for their right to line their pockets and deny basic human rights. It is literally half a world away from our borders and most of the region represents the antithesis of the ideals we strive for in our Democracy.
We scarcely lift a finger for conflicts or even genocide in Africa, Asia or Eastern Europe. But the middle east is abundantly endowed with oil, which we want for our cars, factories and industry. Our economic wealth has been rooted in cheap oil since back when European colonial empires dominated the region. But in the first part of the last century lots of new countries emerged as colonial empires collapsed. The new states wanted to control and profit from the oil within their boundaries.
70 years ago we orchestrated the overthrow of a socialist leaning democratically elected government in Iran to install a dictator friendly to our business goals. We have since used our military muscle regularly to protect our access to oil even if that meant supporting dictators or overthrowing elected governments. No surprise we are not popular.
Benefits of our interventionist policies:
We may still pay a little bit less to drive our cars, heat our homes and fuel our factories but much of the rest of the world now produces oil. Natural gas has become abundant and cheap. Solar and wind power are moving closer to becoming cheaper than extracting and burning oil. King oil is shaky on its throne.
Burdens of our interventionist policies:
1. We have lost thousands of young men in Middle East wars, and hundreds of thousands of veterans are physically, emotionally or mentally disabled by their service.
2. Our meddling has made us the target for Middle East based terrorists who have killed thousands of innocent civilians. Trying to protect ourselves we have made it tediously complex to get on a plane to fly anywhere.
3. Within our country some of us have lashed out at other innocent neighbors with middle eastern backgrounds.
4. Probably about 10 Trillion dollars of our National debt can be tied directly to our military operations in the Middle East over the last 30 years.
5. Our meddling has exacerbated religious and cultural tensions in the Middle East far more often than it has improved them.
6. We have undermined the development of democracy in the region. Our ham-handed efforts to impose our will allows corrupt regimes to blame us for their countries problems as they line the pockets of the rich, deny basic rights to the poor, and set ethnic and religious groups against one another.
7. As we have seen with Syria, our lack of commitment to countries without significant oil reserves allows fake Democracies to build a power base for themselves in the region by supporting the worst kind of dictators, who accept the support because they see our activities in the region as a looming threat.
7. As we have seen with Syria, our lack of commitment to countries without significant oil reserves allows fake Democracies to build a power base for themselves in the region by supporting the worst kind of dictators, who accept the support because they see our activities in the region as a looming threat.
8. Our polices have enabled the denial of global warming by using cheap oil as a crutch to avoid committing to develop cleaner ways of meeting our power and heating needs.
The Hippocratic oath seems to me instructive about an intelligent and realistic foreign policy - first do no harm. Our interventionist policies in the Middle East seem to be consistently doing more harm than good. Maybe it is time we just bought oil on the open market and let the Middle East solve their own problems.
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