If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear a flower in your hair:
The Green Party is expected to take control of San Francisco tomorrow and reclaim the city’s hippy heritage with a campaign that has relied on mass yoga rallies and poetry readings to overturn 40 years of Democrat rule.
Victory in the mayoral election would provide the party with its first senior official in the United States and the result would confirm San Francisco’s status as America’s most politically radical city.
Yoga? Poetry readings? So that’s how to beat the Democrats!
Among his policies are vast investment in cheap housing and the raising of the minimum wage to the highest in the country.
Assuming, of course, that any Green Party supporters actually have any intention of working for a living.
If he wins he has promised to make the city a “laboratory” for the party’s policies.
And where have we heard that one before?
At his campaign offices supporters with Mohawk haircuts mingle with those with facial piercings. Or as self-styled “free-flowing” poet Dave Whitaker, who says he once got Bob Dylan stoned, put it: the campaign’s success has been simply “karmic”.
That place sounds like a white-hot furnace of cutting-edge political and economic analysis.
“Cast a wide net. Find the common thread. Let life flourish. Then, don’t panic. Think organic. It’s a race between history and hip-story.”
Yup, works for me.
That thundering in the distance is the sound of businesses stampeding out of the city
That’s what every good citizen wants, to live in the laboratory of the rulers.
Who ever wrote this story was smoking too much of the wacky weed at the Green Party hq. I’ve yet to see a poll that predicts a Green win. It’s been an interesting race, but the Democrat, Gavin Newsome, is a lock to win. Me thinks the author of the article was either believing too much of what the local Green party was feeding him or was fantasizing. SF continuous to work as a city because a minimum number of sane people stay there to keep the crazies in check.
PS – not to besmirtch the wacky weed, just not before writing an article predicting the outcome of a political contest.
Geez, if true, if I were Arnie, not one penny. Let them experiment and the people and tourists decide.
The entire state is one big experiment.
Uh-oh. ‘…if I were Arnie, not one penny.’ This is the second time Sandy P has said something I agree with. Hmmm. Karmic to the max, man!
Yes, SF, famous for being a place where having a fag in public is fine but smoking one afterwards is illegal. You have to admit that its an interesting zoo of daft lefties.
Some of San Francisco’s current problems, homelessness comes to mind, are at least, in part, due to green-left policies such as restrictions on land use and cash stipends for derelicts. I hope the greenie wins – it’s time a few well-compensated hard-left X-hippies enjoy the consequences of their pet policies.
it’s time a few well-compensated hard-left X-hippies enjoy the consequences of their pet policies.
Unfortunately, the likelihood is that if they do get to “experiment” and turn the place into a hellhole, instead of learning, they will move somewhere else and try to implement their policies there. As someone here (I think it was R.C.) said, the stupidity of socialists is “impenetrable”. Truer words were never spoken.
Yes, SF, famous for being a place where having a fag in public is fine but smoking one afterwards is illegal
Are you referring to cigarettes or homosexuals ?
Yoga? Poetry readings? So that’s how to beat the Democrats!
And here I was thinking of using a good stout stick.
Ian. It was a pun. W-i-t-t-y. Du-uh.
PS – David, another great headline!
I just searched sfgate.com for the latest on the elections and I saw nothing there about Gonzales leading Newsome. I did find an article which said that the election will probably be decided by mail-in votes that have already been cast (but can’t be tallied until election day.) Mail-in votes almost always favor the more conservative candidate. Why is the Europress so completely clueless when it comes to reporting on US politics.
I’m actually half-hoping Gonzales wins. On the plus side, it would be a repudiation of Willie Brown, a prominent member of the suffocating New Class that has ruled California for 30-odd years or so. Also, if Gonzales succeeds in driving business and jobs out the city, they will most likely relocate to the suburbs. This means more job opportunities and shorter commutes for those of us who live in the ‘burbs, and it also means our property values will continue to explode. On the negative side, an increase in the homeless population and shuttered service industries will decrease the value of the city’s cultural amenities such as the ballet, the opera, the symphony, the theatres, the famous restaurants, the museums, the park and the landmarks. The eight million people who live in the Bay Area have very few other choices for cultural life than those located in San Francisco.
The Green fantasy can’t last for very long. The City no longer has much real industry except finance and tourism. The unsightly homeless and fleeing tax base will take a big bite out of S.F’s leading industry.
Perhaps a brutal object lesson, such as the collapse of San Fran, is what is needed to bring people around to a healthy suspicion, if not outright rejection, of the statist policies pushed by the New Class and their pals the Watermelons (green on the outside and red on the inside).
As one of the 8 or so libertarian residents San Francisco, I’m horrified that this Green Trotskyite is in the lead for our mayoral race. The LAST thing this city needs is an anti-business mayor who uses the city as a laboratory to repeat social experiments that have failed before (particularly his cash-handout solution to homelessness). I know there is a lot of schadenfreude over leftist San Franciscans getting the government they deserve, but I’ve always felt that this city’s soul is that of a libertarian shackled to a statist corpse. From the lax enforcement of America’s draconian drug laws to the freedoms granted to its homosexual population, San Francisco has a lot to admire. The tax burden is awful, the pro-dictator drum circles in Golden Gate park are annoying, and some homeless guy named ‘Freddy’ gets paid $300 a month to piss on my front porch every morning, but I still love it here and don’t want to move. So all San Franciscans… hold your nose, and vote for Newsom, the lesser of two leftists.
Assuming, of course, that any Green Party supporters actually have any intention of working for a living.
That’s pretty unfair. I think half of them are those unwashed guys in the indie record stores.
– Josh
Oh, some of them intend to work all right. As highly paid state functionaries who feel that they should only have to do “relevant” work such as diversity coordinator, “teach-in” coordinator, “green” coordinator , homeless rights activist, etc. With the few productive people forced to pay for it all, of course, while being continually slagged off as “racist class oppressors.”
No problem gets fixed by the New Class Marxocracy. They specialize in creating societal chaos and then demanding that more of the same “medicine” be applied when their efforts produce horrifying results.
More “socially relevant” coordinators, more expense accounts, more grants, more funds. That’s how it works.
As another of those few SF libertarians, I second Andy’s remarks. I do fear that all of the ultra-lefties in town will rally around Gonzalez, which means no solution to the homeless problem.
Blowing up the Glide church and dumping Willies “$7 a plate for every homeless person who eats there” cronies would help the homeless problem too.
Berkeley was always nicer to be homeless in anyway!
This is from another SF libertarian – the Greens just lost.
BTW, there seems to be more of us than meets the eye – maybe we need to organize so WE can take back the City.
The watermelon just got squashed in San Fran. And its Commie district attorney, Terence Hallinan, went down in flames too.
The Europress fucks up again.