4 ms·

San Francisco’s Progressive Nightmare

29 points by RickJWagner 5y ago

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Basically every headline on this site fits the pattern "<progressive thing> ruins <other progressive thing>" (and if you read further, they've done so generally by being too progressive). You could easily get the impression that these were professional concern trolls. How Stonewall have sacrificed gay rights! (Someone needs to look up the origin of their name) How universities ruined feminism! And SF is causing Asian Americans to be harassed by not locking up enough criminals. A black member of the LGBTQ community is quoted as saying it's gone too far! And we all know the first rule of progressivism is that you can't disagree with black people or minority sexualities, so that's like 200% settled. Let's not bother presenting facts or statistics to support the argument. edit: just googled one of their contributors and their latest tweets are on the topic of "woke people causing a wave of anti-Semitism" and "trans-rights would appal suffragettes". You wouldn't think someone so concerned about such things would have recently admitted to posting racist and mysogynistic tweets after losing a court case.
alpineidyll3 5y ago
Ideology is strong exactly because it is no longer experienced as ideology… we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.... Please don't post ideology to HN. It's about tech.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
creamytaco 5y ago
I left SF years ago for primarily this very reason. Ideology vs reality means an ever-accelerating descend into hell.
efficax 5y ago
Right wing rags blame the Walgreens closures on shoplifting, implicitly blaming the policies of Boudin, but walgreens is closing hundreds of stores nationwide right now: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-06/walgreens-to-close-200-u-s-pharmacies-in-cost-cutting-expansion https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-06/walgreens... Stores with higher lossage rates are probably first to go, which gives fuel to the fire that blames this on San Francisco's progressive DA. But how does that explain the closures across the rest of the nation happening at the same time? Walgreens is just struggling, and was before the pandemic.
scelerat 5y ago
How does SF crime compare to neighboring SF Bay Area cities that don't have such an experimental DA? The author attributes rising crime, homelessness, and anti-Asian violence to the policies of one DA in San Francisco. Yet, sitting here across the Bay in Oakland, I note that those things have been on the rise here as well, with a noticeable uptick starting around the time lockdowns began and many people losing their jobs and/or radically changing the way they spent time in society. Is it all because of Chesa?
- efficax 5y ago
  Crime is on the rise in /all/ American cities, whether they have a progressive DA or not. https://www.vox.com/2020/8/3/21334149/murders-crime-shootings-protests-riots-trump-biden https://www.vox.com/2020/8/3/21334149/murders-crime-shooting... The causes are unclear but the widespread effect indicates that they're systemic, not tied to the policies of an individual county or city. And they have nothing to do with increased or decreased aggressiveness in policing (the cops have certainly not backed off in my city, and are as aggressive and well funded as ever, but crime is still up)
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Your first line doesn't seem like a good summary of the content. There's maybe some statistically significant increase in homicides year on year but one of the many theories to explain that is that the same level of violent crime results in more deaths when you're in the middle of a hospital filling pandemic. A chunk of the article is about the fact that it's odd other crime isn't up dramatically if homicides have risen.
refurb 5y ago
There is a good article on how this progressive approach to criminal justice is having a negative impact across a number of cities. https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/mounting-violence-casts-doubt-over-c77 https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/mounting-violence-casts... I lived long enough to see a resurgence of big cities like NYC from the crime and depopulation of the 80’s. I wonder if I’ll live longer enough to see it repeated?
ViViDboarder 5y ago
Does anyone have a source for relevant stats on arrests that result in releases of violent criminals? This appears to be the major argument here, but I haven’t seen data supporting it. When I look at clearance rates from 2019 vs 2020 as reported by the SFPD[1], they appear identical. If I look at “action taken” and “filing” rates on the DAs website[2], the rates look down from last year, but so do the overall counts of cases presented to the DA by the police. Could be pandemic influence. Also, though the rates have dipped, they are where they were only a few years back and rather within what looks like a normal range, especially considering that 2020 was far from a normal year. [1] https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/clearance-rates-dashboard https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/clea... [2] https://sfdistrictattorney.org/policy/da-stat/ https://sfdistrictattorney.org/policy/da-stat/

29 points by RickJWagner 5y ago

Basically every headline on this site fits the pattern "<progressive thing> ruins <other progressive thing>" (and if you read further, they've done so generally by being too progressive). You could easily get the impression that these were professional concern trolls. How Stonewall have sacrificed gay rights! (Someone needs to look up the origin of their name) How universities ruined feminism! And SF is causing Asian Americans to be harassed by not locking up enough criminals. A black member of the LGBTQ community is quoted as saying it's gone too far! And we all know the first rule of progressivism is that you can't disagree with black people or minority sexualities, so that's like 200% settled. Let's not bother presenting facts or statistics to support the argument. edit: just googled one of their contributors and their latest tweets are on the topic of "woke people causing a wave of anti-Semitism" and "trans-rights would appal suffragettes". You wouldn't think someone so concerned about such things would have recently admitted to posting racist and mysogynistic tweets after losing a court case.

alpineidyll3 5y ago

Ideology is strong exactly because it is no longer experienced as ideology… we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.... Please don't post ideology to HN. It's about tech.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

creamytaco 5y ago

I left SF years ago for primarily this very reason. Ideology vs reality means an ever-accelerating descend into hell.

efficax 5y ago

Right wing rags blame the Walgreens closures on shoplifting, implicitly blaming the policies of Boudin, but walgreens is closing hundreds of stores nationwide right now: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-06/walgreens-to-close-200-u-s-pharmacies-in-cost-cutting-expansion https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-06/walgreens... Stores with higher lossage rates are probably first to go, which gives fuel to the fire that blames this on San Francisco's progressive DA. But how does that explain the closures across the rest of the nation happening at the same time? Walgreens is just struggling, and was before the pandemic.

scelerat 5y ago

How does SF crime compare to neighboring SF Bay Area cities that don't have such an experimental DA? The author attributes rising crime, homelessness, and anti-Asian violence to the policies of one DA in San Francisco. Yet, sitting here across the Bay in Oakland, I note that those things have been on the rise here as well, with a noticeable uptick starting around the time lockdowns began and many people losing their jobs and/or radically changing the way they spent time in society. Is it all because of Chesa?

efficax 5y ago
Crime is on the rise in /all/ American cities, whether they have a progressive DA or not. https://www.vox.com/2020/8/3/21334149/murders-crime-shootings-protests-riots-trump-biden https://www.vox.com/2020/8/3/21334149/murders-crime-shooting... The causes are unclear but the widespread effect indicates that they're systemic, not tied to the policies of an individual county or city. And they have nothing to do with increased or decreased aggressiveness in policing (the cops have certainly not backed off in my city, and are as aggressive and well funded as ever, but crime is still up)
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Your first line doesn't seem like a good summary of the content. There's maybe some statistically significant increase in homicides year on year but one of the many theories to explain that is that the same level of violent crime results in more deaths when you're in the middle of a hospital filling pandemic. A chunk of the article is about the fact that it's odd other crime isn't up dramatically if homicides have risen.

refurb 5y ago

There is a good article on how this progressive approach to criminal justice is having a negative impact across a number of cities. https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/mounting-violence-casts-doubt-over-c77 https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/mounting-violence-casts... I lived long enough to see a resurgence of big cities like NYC from the crime and depopulation of the 80’s. I wonder if I’ll live longer enough to see it repeated?

ViViDboarder 5y ago

Does anyone have a source for relevant stats on arrests that result in releases of violent criminals? This appears to be the major argument here, but I haven’t seen data supporting it. When I look at clearance rates from 2019 vs 2020 as reported by the SFPD[1], they appear identical. If I look at “action taken” and “filing” rates on the DAs website[2], the rates look down from last year, but so do the overall counts of cases presented to the DA by the police. Could be pandemic influence. Also, though the rates have dipped, they are where they were only a few years back and rather within what looks like a normal range, especially considering that 2020 was far from a normal year. [1] https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/clearance-rates-dashboard https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/clea... [2] https://sfdistrictattorney.org/policy/da-stat/ https://sfdistrictattorney.org/policy/da-stat/