The city of Toronto is far more progressive than San Francisco (I’d say Montreal and Vancouver are, too) and the city core population can usually be counted on to support the provincial and federal NDP, a socialist party. The current mayor is a socialist who was married to the leader of the federal NDP until he died.
Yet Toronto doesn’t have the problems San Francisco has. So obviously the problem isn’t being “progressive”. Obviously the problem is something else, something within the larger social zeitgeist. Like most right-wing nutjobs, you’re making false claims based on preconceived biases from bullshit right-wing propaganda.
In other words, they’re not getting results any different from San Francisco or Seattle. If all big cities have crime problems, then what sets liberal cities apart from the others?
I have supported many social causes throughout my life. A lot of things have changed for the better since I grew up.
I care deeply about the under privileged. I’m only one generation removed from poverty. My mom grew up being taunted as white trash in school. Simply because she lived in a tar paper building in an oil camp. Thats where grandad worked.
Just because I support law and order doesn’t make me right wing.
I live in San Francisco, and have for 44 years. Come and visit, your information is inaccurate. You can always find an example of any of those things (aside from “woke” DAs, which we don’t have) in just about any major city, whether progressive or conservative or, like this one, somewhere in between. The downtown businesses that closed, by the way, did so because Covid drove everyone away from working in their offices. Nobody is afraid of going downtown except people, like you, who have never been there.
No, you don’t support law and order. You support the policies that result in, by your own words, a high crime area with gang graffiti 2 blocks from your home. Because you believe someone unspecified who tells you without evidence that somehow, it’s even worse in liberal cities.
With regard to homeless tent encampments and outdoor drug use, I would suggest the weather as a significant factor San Francisco has a persistently mild climate, low temperatures above 45 F, high temperatures usually below 75 F. And only moderate rain, or none at all during large portions of some years.
Speaking as someone who lives closer to the core, the homeless encampments in places like Allen Gardens and Trinity Bellwoods Park over the last few years rivalled some of what I saw in San Francisco in 2022. Our mental health and drug addiction supports have not been great.
There’s nothing I can do about politics in another city. They have elections and choose leaders. I don’t know the local issues or economics.
Unfortunately it’s only the negative things that get the press attention. I know there are wonderful aspects to every city. The tourist bureau are the only ones publishing the positive attractions.
The mild weather may indeed have encouraged migration from colder parts of the US to San Francisco and LA. However, as noted elsewhere, one of the factors being blamed on “progressivism” is the high crime rate in San Francisco, one of many factors that have nothing to do with weather and are entirely due to significant socioeconomic differences. In a telling bit of irony, recently an out-of-town journalist who was in San Francisco to do a story on the problem of high crime had her rental car stolen during the few minutes that she was filing a video report. It’s just ridiculous.
Il don’t doubt that they exist, but I lived in Toronto for decades and worked in the downtown core and never saw any myself. Whereas I have the impression that in San Francisco they’re practically unavoidable in the core area; in any case, they’re constantly in the news in a way that the Toronto homeless rarely are.
Let me know when and where, and my family and I will set out some old tents on the sidewalk next to a broken or boarded up window, spread a little garbage around and eat some pork and beans out of a can, just to make you feel at home.
My point is you said people should leave San Francisco, but then said you live in a high crime place. You should leave, since you said you wouldn’t put up with it, but you do put up with it.
Also, if you want to know how Walz might govern, why don’t you look at Minnesota where he, you know, governs? It’s not rocket science.
You remind me of that weird Charlie guy that used to post here.
Everybody supports law and order. The difference between right-wing nutjobs and progressives is that the nutjobs believe that the only solution to crime is massive over-policing and hardline “justice” that fills up prisons with convicts serving very long sentences. You implied as much in a thread where you accused Harris of wanting to “defund the police” and cited an article in which it was clear that she said no such thing.
What she said was that some of the money that takes up a big portion of municipal budgets for policing could be better utilized in helping disadvantaged youth through better schools and more job opportunities, thus addressing the underlying problem. Policing alone is never going to solve the crime problem when the system just keeps turning out more criminals faster than they can be arrested, and when even the prison system fails in its basic goal of rehabilitation. If you think massive police forces are the answer to crime, then you’re a right-wing nutjob (at least in that respect) regardless of how you choose to portray yourself.
There are areas of Portland that aren’t great (like any city). COVID was hard on people, businesses, and social services. Being on the I-5 Canada/Mexico drug corridor creates issues. I’ve encountered nothing worse than in other major cities.
The mayor, running for re-election, claims that crime statistics are at their lowest point in 10 years. I haven’t tried to fact-check her, but neither have any of the local news stations. My personal experience with crime consists of one mugging and one car break-in, both over 40 years ago when I was living in a bad neighborhood. One incident happening to one reporter (tourists are unfortunately a successfully targeted category of victims of property crime) does not make for a ridiculous amount of crime.
Well, has anybody here ever complained that acey is unable to learn? Because now you’re all refuted, he lately realized, after only 55 years, that Edwin Starr’s Motown classic “War” is an anti-war anthem! Good on him, the lyrics are so cryptic that very few people would’ve thought that. (see CS thread, no link to avoid stealth pitting in another forum)