“Progressive Paradise”

By the end of November, homicides in Cook County, which includes Chicago, reached 1,000 for the first time since 1994. A 71-year-old Chinese immigrant who came to the United States almost penniless and worked his way to success as a restaurant operator was shot 22 times and killed in broad daylight near his home. A Christmas-light decorator was killed in front of his home; several others, working for a neighborhood nonprofit, were mugged.

The fall season also kicked off a spree of organized looting at high-end city and suburban stores.

LOS ANGELES—Amid a wave of “smash-and-grab” robberies and other crimes, a former prosecutor is claiming that more than 50 prosecutors, support, and victim services staff have quit their jobs over San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s progressive criminal justice reform policies.

“The office is imploding,” said the former prosecutor, who produced the list of those who’ve left their jobs since Boudin was sworn into office on Jan. 10, 2020.

“Not all of them quit, but most of them quit. Some were fired,” said the individual, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. “The list isn’t up to date. I think more have left.”

In my home state of California, smash-and-grab is fast becoming a way of life. Crime is a rampant, daily occurrence. Just this week, two of my close friends were robbed near San Francisco.

One owns a popular restaurant; the front door was destroyed, and the cash register robbed. The other was renting a car, the entire rear window of which was smashed to bits and the contents swiped. So common is this sort of looting and thievery that when he returned the rental car, he noticed that the car company’s lot was full of vehicles with broken windows.

… You might be living through The Turn if you ever found yourself feeling like free speech should stay free even if it offended some group or individual but now can’t admit it at dinner with friends because you are afraid of being thought a bigot. You are living through The Turn if you have questions about public health policies—including the effects of lockdowns and school closures on the poor and most vulnerable in our society—but can’t ask them out loud because you know you’ll be labeled an anti-vaxxer. You are living through The Turn if you think that burning down towns and looting stores isn’t the best way to promote social justice, but feel you can’t say so because you know you’ll be called a white supremacist. You are living through The Turn if you seethed watching a terrorist organization attack the world’s only Jewish state, but seethed silently because your colleagues were all on Twitter and Facebook sharing celebrity memes about ending Israeli apartheid while having little interest in American kids dying on the streets because of failed policies. If you’ve felt yourself unable to speak your mind, if you have a queasy feeling that your friends might disown you if you shared your most intimately held concerns, if you are feeling a bit breathless and a bit hopeless and entirely unsure what on earth is going on, I am sorry to inform you that The Turn is upon you.

San Francisco’s brazen crime, open drug use and trashed streets have made even the most progressive of the city’s famed liberal residents demand a return to law and order as they seek to recall the woke district attorney.

News of attacks on Asian American seniors, burglarized restaurants, and boarded-up storefronts in the city’s once-vibrant downtown greet the citizens of the City by the Bay on a near-daily basis.

And that was before a series of headline-grabbing crime stories in which mobs of looters smashed windows and grabbed luxury purses in the downtown Union Square shopping district.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Caitlin Foster fell in love with San Francisco’s people and beauty and moved to the city a dozen years ago. But after repeatedly clearing away used needles, other drug paraphernalia and human feces outside the bar she manages, and too many encounters with armed people in crisis, her affection for the city has soured.

“It was a goal to live here, but now I’m here and I’m like, ‘Where am I going to move to now?’ I’m over it,’” said Foster, who manages Noir Lounge in the trendy Hayes Valley neighborhood.

A series of headline-grabbing crime stories — mobs of people smashing windows and grabbing luxury purses in the downtown Union Square shopping district and daytime shootings in the touristy Haight-Ashbury — has only exacerbated a general feeling of vulnerability. Residents wake up to news of attacks on Asian American seniors, burglarized restaurants, and boarded-up storefronts in the city’s once-vibrant downtown.

Chicago’s Loop encompasses the city’s central business district, which is also the second largest commercial business district in America (or so Wikipedia tells me), filled with restaurants, offices, retail stores, hotels, and historic attractions. It lies at the heart of Cook County, the same county that elected Kim Foxx, the Soros-designated district attorney who doesn’t believe in prosecuting crime. When you couple Foxx’s aversion to enforcing the law with generations of people who have grown up without any moral grounding, you get a weekend in the loop complete with beatings, a shooting, and general misbehavior.

Usually at this time of year, San Francisco’s luxury stores are decked with holiday garlands. Instead, they’re boarded up after widespread “flash mob” looting turned Union Square — the city’s most fashionable shopping district — into an area resembling a blighted neighborhood in Detroit.

“It’s a ghost town,” said Michelle Tandler, a San Francisco native and high-tech entrepreneur, whose photos of the stores barricaded in plywood went viral on social media this week. “Every store has a security guard. People are going to lose their jobs. And these things have a ripple effect.”

Two weeks ago, San Francisco was the first of several progressive cities hit by smash-and-grab mobs of thieves, sometimes as many as 80 in a group. Video from the San Francisco looting of Louis Vuitton shows criminals walking casually out of the store, goods in hand. Other cities hit include Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis.

I encourage you to read Michelle Tandler’s Twitter posts. SF is even more fecked than we know. She’s a self described “moderate liberal” but not for long I suspect.

If you want to see my notes they are linked in this Notion Doc.

However – to summarize there were a few categories of critical responses:
1. You are evil
2. Rich/businesses/property is evil
3. Gov/System is broken
4. This is justified
5. Misc/other https://t.co/THsFFdrbfN

— Michelle Tandler (@michelletandler) December 5, 2021

Do read her notes.

American cities on the Democrats’ watch are drifting away from civilization. The most obvious problem is the rise in crime, everything from murders to mass retail theft. Just open any Chicago or New York newspaper to see what I mean. But the decline in civilization happens in smaller ways, too, as a story out of San Francisco perfectly illustrates.

Nearly 40 people were shot by Sunday in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago during the 2021 Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

At least two of the shooting victims succumbed to their wounds.