Category: Politics

Soft-on-Crime Congressman Has Luggage Stolen in SF

by · Apr 30, 2024 10:52 am

Kevin Fagan reports for the San Francisco Chronicle:

Hello to the city, goodbye to your luggage. That was U.S. Senate candidate Adam Schiff’s rude introduction to San Francisco’s vexing reputation for car burglaries Thursday when thieves swiped the bags from his car while it sat in a downtown parking garage.

The heist meant the Democratic congressman got stuck at a fancy dinner party in his shirt sleeves and a hiking vest while everyone else sat in suits. Not quite the look the man from Burbank was aiming for as he rose to thank powerhouse attorney Joe Cotchett for his support in his bid to replace the late Dianne Feinstein.

“I guess it’s ‘Welcome to San Francisco,’ ” Cotchett’s press agent Lee Houskeeper, who was at the dinner, remarked dryly.

Congressman Schiff is a “progressive” on criminal justice, meaning that he seeks to water down the consequences of crime to criminals. See his congressional website, where the crime page is a collection of all the left’s standard fallacies and buzzwords. His approach necessarily means weakening deterrence and incapacitation. Yet he claims that his program will make us more safe, selling the old snake oil that rehabilitation programs will transform criminals into law-abiding people in large enough numbers to make a real difference in crime rates. This is the criminal justice equivalent of Lucy promising Charlie Brown that she won’t pull away the football. The promise has been made for decades, but the programs only change recidivism rates slightly at the margins. Yet people still fall for it.
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Deja Vu All Over Again

by · Mar 13, 2024 2:22 pm

A March 4 article by By Paul Demko, Jeremy White and Jason Befferman published in POLITICO reports that liberal Democrat politicians in some of the nation’s most progressive cities are abandoning the soft-on-crime policies that they vigorously supported a few years ago. Back in 2020, as the George Floyd riots were tearing up these same cities, politicians running New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and San Francisco were insisting that sentences for so-called “low level” drug and theft related crimes be reduced, that cash bail be eliminated and that criminals, including violent gang members, be released early to rehabilitation programs. The motivator for these policies was the systemic racism narrative promoted by progressive academics, non-profits like Black Lives Matter, race-baiting politicians and the national media. While this narrative had been pushed since the 1990s, it got major traction after Floyd’s death as deep blue cities reflexively cut police budgets, elected pro-defendant prosecutors and swept away consequences for crime. Then something happened.

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Poll on LA DA Election

by · Feb 12, 2024 9:58 am

You know an incumbent running for re-election is in deep kimchi when he (1) polls only 15% before the primary and (2) has a “disapprove” job rating from an outright majority and more than double the number who approve. The latest California Elections & Policy Poll* is available here. Continue reading . . .

Coalition Grows to Overhaul California’s Thief-Friendly Law

by · Feb 9, 2024 11:28 am

The San Francisco Chronicle has this article on Mayor London Breed joining the coalition to overhaul California’s disastrous Proposition 47. And of course, being the Chronicle, the main thing they emphasize about the initiative is that it is “GOP-led,” generally regarded as a kiss of death in The City.

But Mayor Breed is not the only Democrat to climb on the fix-47 bandwagon. Continue reading . . .

Soft-on-Crime DA Ousted in DC Exurb

by · Nov 18, 2023 11:29 pm

The WSJ has this editorial on the DA’s race is Loudoun County, Virginia. Loudoun is an “exurb” county, one county removed from the collar of Virginia and Maryland counties that border the District of Columbia. The DC suburbs and exurbs have moved steadily left over the years, changing the formerly conservative Virginia into a “swing state.” The WSJ opines, “Voters don’t want politicized prosecutions, and the Virginia vote shows that progressive prosecutors can be defeated even in Democratic-leaning areas no matter how much Soros cash they may have.” Continue reading . . .

A Point of Inflection in the California Legislature?

by · Sep 20, 2023 8:21 pm

For several years now, it has seemed like the California Legislature had written the soft-on-crime advocates a blank check. It was passing one bill after another to reduce the consequences to criminals of committing crimes across the spectrum from relatively minor ones to the very worst. Legislators seemed to be competing among themselves to see who could put the most thugs back on the street.

This year, the folks who call themselves “progressive”* are lamenting that so many of their cherished bills failed to pass. Bob Egelko has this article in the San Francisco Chronicle. Continue reading . . .

Why aren’t office workers returning to Philadelphia?

by · Aug 24, 2023 10:28 am

“The City of Brotherly Love has a new reputation as one of the emptiest office districts in America, sparking a debate over what’s keeping Philadelphia workers at home,” Katie Mogg reports in the WSJ.

Philadelphia, like many U.S. cities, has gone full throttle on efforts to lure people back into downtown areas. But the combination of the office-worker exodus, taxes and crime has resulted in more empty office space on the market today than during the 2008 recession, theorize researchers, Philadelphia employees and real-estate professionals.

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Can San Francisco Save Itself From the Doom Loop?

by · Aug 13, 2023 10:07 am

The WSJ has this article, with the above title, by Jim Carlton and Katherine Bindley. The article begins:

Local leaders are trying anything they can to keep San Francisco’s struggling downtown core afloat, including paying retired, unarmed police to keep an eye out for trouble.

In many cases, though, “local leaders” are the problem, not the people who are going to find the solution. Continue reading . . .