THE AGNOS AND THE EX-CITY

Art Agnos was mayor of San Francisco from 1992 to 1998. If you go to artagnos.com it says he was mayor from 1998 to 1992. That seems appropriate, because the city went rapidly backwards during his administration.

I still remember when he was elected. He announced three major decisions on the first day.

San Francisco was in the running for a future Olympics. Agnos contacted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and said if they didn’t stop objecting to the “Gay Olympics” the Olympic Games would not be welcomed in San Francisco. The IOC responded by thanking Mayor Agnos and saying that at his request, San Francisco would be removed from consideration.

The Navy was looking for a permanent home for the USS Missouri. The surrender agreement with Japan was signed on the deck of this ship. Agnos said he didn’t want the Missouri, because at one point it was rumored to have included some nuclear weapons in its arsenal. The Navy thanked the Mayor and you can now visit the Missouri at Pearl Harbor, along with thousands of other people.

Then he announced that San Francisco would no longer arrest homeless people for sleeping in public. All across California, local law enforcement woke up their homeless population and told them to go to San Francisco, because it was legal there. The homeless population in San Francisco skyrocketed.

Gavin Newsom clearly read the script from Agnos. Only his promises are so dumb he is making Agnos look good. Newsom started by bad mouthing Donald Trump and promising to resist him at every opportunity. Trump immediately responded by threatening to direct FEMA to cut off federal aid for wild-fire relief. That may not happen, but we can guarantee that Trump is looking for other ways to reward this behavior. Lisa Murkowski, Senator from Alaska, has already learned this lesson. She was one of the first RINOs Republicans to recommend folding their cards and surrendering to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Out of pure coincidence, the Trump administration postponed eight public meetings scheduled over plans to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR) to oil and gas drilling. Good luck explaining this to the Alaskans who were already looking up ways to spend that oil revenue on Amazon.

Newsom forgot something really important, California NEEDS Donald Trump, he does not need California. There are numerous ways that Trump can make things miserable for the golden state. On the other hand, there is almost nothing left for Newsom to do to Trump.

Newsom promised to adopt the same approach to homelessness that worked so well for San Francisco. Have you been to San Francisco lately? They are literally handing out “poop” maps so you can try and avoid locations known to accumulate human excrement. The most beautiful city in the world is starting to look like a sewer. Now Newsom wants to do for California what he did for San Francisco. He is, after all, the expert on how to handle homelessness.

Did you know that there is even an app for tracking and avoiding human excrement on the streets of San Francisco? It is called “SnapCrap” and it invites people to take picture of feces on streets and sidewalks to deliver to the city’s 311 hotline. The city receives about 65 calls per day regarding sidewalk poop and the Department of Public works had to hire five staffers for “Poop Patrol.” It is obviously a sh**ty job, but it pays $184,000 per year. The salary is $71,760, but you get a whopping $112,918 in benefits. Now ask yourself this. Where else can one find a job that will pay over $100k per year in benefits for this kind of work?

San Francisco also set aside $1 million for updates to Pit Stop, a program that offers mobile toilets and waste stations in various neighborhoods. Of course only 12 of the city’s 22 units are open on a daily basis, and these close at 8 pm. It is a good thing the homeless population has been trained to only poop during daylight hours.  Just imagine this kind of brilliance coming to a city near you!

In case you think this is an exaggeration or that this has always been a problem consider the following. In 2008, there were 1,748 reports of poop on San Francisco sidewalks and streets. Last year there were over 20,000. Who was mayor in 2008? That would be Gavin Newsom.  He was mayor up to 2011. The problem began on his watch. Newsom developed a brilliant program to deal with homelessness. He threw money at them, placing about 7,000 people in permanent housing programs.  He also gave another 5,000 a free bus ticket, to anywhere else. This worked for about six minutes, until other homeless people all over the country started dreaming of San Francisco. So, while Newsom brags about getting people off the streets, he actually spent a lot of money to make the problem worse, much worse.

Newsom is also promising free health care and free college to everyone, including illegal aliens. Odds are people all over Central America are California dreaming. One recent caravan made a 1300 mile detour to get to San Diego, rather than Texas, because..well..California is California.

With these delightful new incentives and a promise to double down on sanctuary city status, Newsom can do for California what he did for San Francisco. The good news is that there will be a lot of high paying jobs cleaning up sh*t.

TDM