Yes, Maher is often pompous and smug. I get why many don’t like him. I watch him because the conversations are often interesting and informative.
Widely reported, not the whole truth.
Not what I said, I consider Maher to be more in the moderate side. The point was that Maher also missed the dog whistle.
That’s not relevant. It says that the NRF overstated the value of losses due to theft two years ago. What is relevant here is the ranking of different cities in terms of the relative prevalence of shoplifting. According to this year’s data, LA and San Francisco top the list.
OK, fair enough, that’s different. But I don’t agree with that, either. What dog whistle did Maher miss? SF does appear to have a serious shoplifting problem. The fact that this is a favoured right-wing talking point doesn’t make it not true. At best, what is contentious is the question of root cause.
The fact is, retail stores have been closing and blaming increased shoplifting as the reason.
Another piece of empirical evidence is the number of goods that have been moving behind locked cabinets or locks on the slatboard hooks.
It’s not just San Fransisco. It’s happening in cities that have implemented the same kinds of policies, and to a lesser extent elsewhere.
One of the reasons outside of new legislation is apparently the ease of fencing goods now online. Moving shoplifted goods is now a big industry, and criminals move their stolen stuff very quickly. That means the mount of money they can make goes up, which means you get more of it.
I piece of evidence that, to my memory, started more than thirty years ago.
Speaking of not relevant, that includes Oakland in the San Francisco numbers.
A new Gallup poll finds that 74% of those surveyed who say they are Democrats or Democrat-leaning Independents think that San Francisco is still safe to live in or visit. Compare that to just 32% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters who say the same thing.
Those other 68% of Republican voters have clearly bought the narrative of SF’s demise, and while we would appreciate their tourist and convention dollars, they can also just fuck off to Nashville or Dallas or wherever until their cousin on Facebook tells them “Oh, San Francisco is just fine.”
This vilifying of cities, and the project of convincing rural and suburban voters that the Democrats who run those cities are handing out fentanyl and destroying America, appears to be working, at least for Republican voters in red states. And it certainly doesn’t help that recent “doom loop” coverage has gotten CNN and Good Morning America in on the game too.
Gallup found double-digit differences among partisans when it comes to the perception of safety in 14 out 16 cities that were asked about on the survey. And the polling outfit notes that this is a significant change since the last time they did this poll 17 years ago, in less starkly partisan times.
Of course there have always been goods locked up if they are especially easy to steal or especially valuable. But in the last few years this has gotten much worse:
One of the Seattle subreddits (there are two because reasons) is full of right-wing suburbanites and rural Washingtonians who haven’t set foot in Seattle in 20 years and literally believe vast swaths of the city were burned down in 2020, the CHOP is still active and running the city, and that if you set foot onto 3rd avenue at any hour of day or night you WILL be robbed, murdered, and be subjected to indecent liberties in that order. This is the picture that right-wing media paints of every big city these days.
This vilifying of cities, and the project of convincing rural and suburban voters that the Democrats who run those cities are handing out fentanyl and destroying America, appears to be working, at least for Republican voters in red states.
Yes, I think one can legitimately criticize Maher here. I think this discussion got sidetracked by arguments about the exact words that Maher used to describe the SF shoplifting problem. In retrospect, though, he’s making unwarranted implications about the causes.
It’s not that he’s wrong about the high shoplifting rate in SF (or general crime rate, or the drug use, etc.). He’s not wrong about that. It’s not about the wording that he used to describe it. It’s perfectly clear what he meant.
The problem is the “loony left” theory of why SF is having these problems. SF (and LA, the #1 city for shiplifting) have Democratic administrations, as of course does the state of California. Does this explain everything? Maher seems to think that when liberal policies become too extreme, it does. I think some of the decisions made by these administrations may be contributing factors, but to blame excessively liberal governance for everything is, at best, far too simplistic. There are cities all over the world with progressive administrations located in progressive national and regional jurisdictions that don’t have these problems, so there are clearly other contributing factors. If SF and LA have crappy mayors that aren’t adequately enforcing the law or enacting other measures to mitigate crime, that isn’t a “liberal” problem.
I agree with Maher that there are loony extremists on the far left. I agree that SF and LA have big crime problems. In retrospect, however, I think it’s irresponsible to claim that the former automatically explains the latter.
Every retail place I’ve ever worked make it very clear that associates and vendors are the biggest creators of “Invisible Shrink” i.e. theft. Even our training videos tacitly imply that we, the workers, are the real thieves. I opine that the SF crime wave is probably over wrought and gives retailers huge license to raise their prices because of those dirty shop lifters.
It’s pretty clear that there are real problems with drugs, crime, and homelessness in these cities. To the extent that retailers may be inclined to overstate the theft problem, I think the most likely motivation is to pressure lawmakers to be more aggressive in dealing with it.
I worked at Toys R Us for years and had my encounters with theft for sure. (I never stole, that’s just not how I’m wired.) I caught kids trying to steal a couple of times. One time a kid was in the process of shoving a huge bag of candy into his pants, I mean gigantic, something you’d buy around Halloween to hand out to trick-or-treaters. I interrupted him by saying, “Come on kid, you can at least try to be subtle about it.” He mumbled an apology, put it back, and I escorted him out of the store.
The only time I experienced a huge amount of theft was when I was moving around some huge boxes in the upstairs stockroom (my job mostly involved the big items like bikes and swing sets and baby furniture) and found a big stash of video games. I immediately ran to get a manager, pointed out what I found, and he called “Loss Prevention” (the company’s theft investigators). They had someone there quick, and it didn’t take them long to find out it was Fred, the new hire who was there temporarily for the holidays and was working with the small valuable stuff they kept locked up, like DVDs and video game stuff. He was a weirdo who looked like Ralphie from A Christmas Story but in his early 20s. Fred was fired that day.
So yeah, this definitely matches my experiences in retail. The worst theft is done by those with the best ability to do it and get away with it. Plus, you pay people minimum wage and treat them like shit, no wonder they’re tempted. Not that I cut Fred much slack, I was even homeless for some of the time I worked there and I still never stole anything.
This just doesn’t track with my lived experience in SF. There’s been a Walgreen’s everywhere I’ve lived since grade school. It wasn’t until I moved to SF that I started seeing people walk into one, take some items, and walk out without paying while employees and other customers awkwardly look away. Obviously my anecdote isn’t and can’t be a statistic, but I’d have to deny my own senses to think there’s nothing different about SF. As to retailers using it as an excuse to raise prices, I don’t see a mechanism preventing them from doing so regardless.
He mumbled an apology, put it back, and I escorted him out of the store.
Here they’d just take their shit and leave. Again, my impression of Maher is that he’s primarily criticizing the sense of impunity that it seems criminals here feel. The environment in which you can come within 30 seconds of landing your carjacked vehicle on top of a group of pedestrians, get identified as a parolee for a previous offense, and still get charges dropped. The environment in which, when I moved here for my new job, my coworkers had to warn me about active bipper disuasion techniques.
I know it sounds like I’m shitting on the city but I really do enjoy living here and I rarely feel like my personal safety is in danger (although my wife and a female tenant in the neighboring unit have both been stalked and followed home by people experiencing homelessness, so I suspect my perspective on safety might change were I a woman). But I’d have to deny my eyes to argue that SF doesn’t have a special property crime problem.
Regarding Maher himself, yes he’s smarmy, sometimes intentionally callous with regard to the challenges Transgender people face, and absolutely exhausts my extraocular muscles whenever he talks about vaccines and medicine. On the other hand, he’s not sanitized to the point of boredom like Colbert has become, preachy like Seth Meyers, or prone to fits of cringey exaggerated ridiculousness like John Oliver. For me, only about 25% of his barbs land on target, but when they do they’re quite entertaining. I’m happy to listen to them all, laugh when they elicit it, and yell at the computer screen when they frustrate me.
Fair, I don’t live there. I live in a small town in the mid-west. I know retailers rant about, “invisible shrink” to employees, so I always feel a bit jaded about shoplifting stories. It is true that we are all trained (in my experience) to not confront or go after them. I feel really bad for your wife and neighbor. That sucks.
Petty crimes like theft and vandalism aren’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but when you’re living with it constantly it can be a real drain.
It is very unpleasant to shop at the local Walmart these days. There are so many things under lock and key and so few employees with keys that it can add a very long time to your shopping trip. I do not have time for that. They don’t get my business anymore. So it may not be saving them as much as they had hoped.
Whelp, I think we have some source material for Friday’s episode!
That would require a conspiracy comprising all of the retailers in the city. If only most of the retailers are raising their prices, and it’s for bullshit reasons, then any individual retailer is highly motivated to keep their prices low and gather all of the customers for themselves. As soon as one retailer does that, all of the other overpriced retailers will suffer, compelling them to lower their prices to remain competitive against that one retailer who wouldn’t buy into the conspiracy.
While the glitter/fart bombs are funny and some level of justice I don’t think they do anything whatsoever to reduce this crime.
Not directly, but they do raise awareness. For example, I had no idea we had a Fencing R Us that the city was aware of for months and didn’t shut down. That knowledge will impact how I vote during the next election, as I generally assume that incumbents have the experience required to govern and am more suspicious of newcomers, but now I’m starting to wonder why the incumbents would allow this.