Cities
August 16, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Why does anyone still live in San Francisco? Why would any group hold a convention or similar event there? Why would a tourist set foot there? That city has been so badly governed for so long that the question is no longer whether it will thrive, but rather, whether it will survive. Many San Francisco businesses have closed their doors, while others are barely hanging on. Gump’s is an upscale
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July 28, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Back when Black Lives Matter and its adjunct cause—Defund the Police—got underway following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2015 (justified, according to Obama’s Department of Justice review of the incident), critics such as Heather Mac Donald, Charles Murray, and others predicted that blacks would become the principal victims of this movement. Of course they were right, but the response was always, “Shut up, racist!” You’re not
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July 23, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Did you know that homeless people enjoy a constitutional right to free parking? That’s the main takeaway from a California Court of Appeals opinion issued Friday that ruled cities that tow cars with five or more unpaid parking tickets violate the 4th Amendment’s prohibition of search and seizure without a warrant. The Coalition on Homelessness sued the City and County of San Francisco seeking an injunction against towing scofflaw cars
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June 6, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Last week the Hoover Institution’s Lee Ohanian noted that residential homeowners in San Francisco lost $260 billion in value on their homes as home sales prices in “Detroit by the Sea” have fallen 17 percent, while nationwide home prices have fallen by only about 3 percent: San Francisco’s housing price decline reflects the fact that the city has lost more than 65,000 residents, roughly 7.5% of its population. San Francisco’s
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May 17, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Electing Lori Lightfoot as Mayor of Chicago was the beginning of the end for that city. Replacing her with someone even more far left is accelerating Chicago’s terminal decline. Tom Bevan notes that the death throes are under way: Progressive allies of Mayor Brandon Johnson have released a financial blueprint titled – and I'm not joking – "First We Get the Money" calling for $12 billion in new taxes, including:
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May 14, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The following question ought to be put publicly: If the person who died as the result of Daniel Penny’s brave act of self-defense had been white or Asian, would Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg have indicted Penny? Everyone knows the answer to this. The left is clearly trying to re-run the George Floyd drill. In the aftermath of Floyd’s death, the nation’s ruling elite had a nervous breakdown. One good indicator
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May 11, 2023 — Steven Hayward
While all sensible people recoiled against the “defund the police” nonsense of the left, the late Angelo Codevilla noted in his classic 1997 book The Character of Nations that our law enforcement bureaucracy was turning perverse in many ways: “The paradigm is this: American police in general seem to have designated as their main enemy—as the criminal they cannot tolerate—the citizens who protect themselves. In fact, the police have effectively
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April 20, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Sometimes you see a headline like this (from the Washington Post) and wonder whether Democrats who run our big cities can perform basic logic when you remember the second picture also took place in DC: Once upon a time this wouldn’t have been hard even for a liberal to puzzle out. In fact, over in Britain the Labour Party, currently poised to wipe out the Tories in the next election,
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April 11, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Americans are fleeing blue states, and especially blue cities, in historic numbers. Can things possibly get worse? They can, indeed they can. Take San Francisco. Things are so bad there that Whole Foods, an iconic liberal company, has shut its flagship store in that city after just one year of operation, due to rampant crime and drug use that, the company said, made it impossible to assure the safety of
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March 14, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Has there ever been a faster cycle of liberal non-sense to the “never mind” stage than the case of “Defund the Police”? Of course, simply refunding the police is not sufficient when there is an all-out attack on the police for their practices, or DAs who have decided to play catch-and-release. Should we be surprised that more and more police officers conclude it isn’t worth the trouble to arrest someone
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March 7, 2022 — Steven Hayward
No city matches Seattle for electing lunatic socialists to the city council as well as Congress (i.e., Rep. Pramila Jayapal). So having demonized police and letting the city descend into anarchic chaos, Seattle is now surprised and “rattled” by a sharp rise in crime, according to the Wall Street Journal this morning: Long one of America’s safest cities, Seattle had 612 shootings and shots-fired incidents last year, nearly double its
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February 20, 2022 — Steven Hayward
With the San Francisco school board recall landslide still disturbing the sleep of progressives, and a recall election of San Francisco’s pro-crime DA Chesa Boudin coming in the spring, eyes are now looking south to Los Angeles, where a new recall drive against their pro-crime DA George Gascon is picking up steam. But Los Angeles magazine has the scoop: the campaign, nearing $2 million in money raised, is being bankrolled
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January 25, 2022 — Steven Hayward
The old cliche about the news media is that “if it bleeds, it ledes,” but during the AGF (After George Floyd) madness that gripped the nation in the summer of 2020, the media was happy to run with the narrative of police brutality, and gave lavish favorable coverage to “defund the police” advocates. But there are signs that even the mainstream media is starting to have second thoughts, though I
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December 29, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Like so many interesting writers, former Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass has set up shop on Substack. Professor Glenn Loury has also set up shop on Substack. Kass connected with Loury via Twitter and wrote about it here in a December 18 post. Lightfoot, Foxx, Preckwinkle, Pritzker, Judge Evans. Look at what your liberal policies have done to Chicago, city of anarchy. You’ve killed the city. You make speeches about
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May 8, 2021 — Steven Hayward
After the left’s anti-police agitation went into hyperdrive following the death of George Floyd, the easiest prediction in the world to make was that the chief victims of this ideologically-driven rage would be the very people liberals claim to champion—low income minorities. Heather Mac Donald called it “the Ferguson effect,” after the anti-police riots in Ferguson, Missouri in 2015. Told that they are the enemy, the police are curtailing their
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August 30, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Let’s catch up on some updates to the regular themes and stores we’re covering right now. • Here’s our feel good story of the day: Mayor Bill De Blasio Plans 22,000 Layoffs, As People Flee New York City In Droves New York City may lay off tens of thousands of municipal workers. Even with this massive downsizing, it won’t be enough to stem the financial hemorrhaging plaguing the city. The Wall
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August 17, 2020 — Steven Hayward
We’re familiar with the designation of places like Somalia as “failed states,” but can’t we equally recognize failed cities when we see them? New York City in the 1970s, when it needed a federal bailout, was one example from our past, and New York’s fiscal woes were closely connected with its larger social problems of crime, welfare dependency, and all the other factors that diminished the shine of the Big
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