Yeah, I know. You thought it couldn’t get worse for San Francisco. The city is going broke. The economy of the city was hollowed out by the COVID exodus to remote work. People are fleeing the excrement, junkies, and needle-ridden streets. And millions of square feet of office space are going begging for rent.
Here are addicts shooting up in the subway station with nobody paying any attention.
You want lunatic city policies? Get this. If you let your dog poop on the streets and you don’t clean it up, you can get fined … but if YOU poop on the streets and don’t clean it up, hey, no problemo.
It’s gotten so bad that there’s an iPhone app called “SnapCrap” that lets you know which streets are fouled. And here’s the problem with that … every one of the brown pins shows a location with human feces on the street.
So … what’s the solution to this slow and agonizing death of a once-proud world-renowned city, “Baghdad By The Bay”?
Well, the City government thinks the solution is …
… wait for it …
… spending taxpayer money that they haven’t collected yet on reparations for slavery that never existed in California.
It gets crazier. The San Francisco “Reparations Committee” has just proposed the following.
- A one-time payment of $5,000,000 to every black person living in SF. Yep. Five megabucks per person … there are 45,000 black people living in SF now, although if passed this will assuredly lead to a black gold rush among the homeless from other states.
Total cost?
A mere $225 BILLION dollars …
Meanwhile, San Francisco 2022 tax revenues, which of course are already fully committed to giving free money to useless bureaucrats, homeless illegal immigrant junkies, and other worthwhile causes, come to a total of …
$6.3 billion.
So it would only take 225/6.3 = 36 years of SF’s total budget to pay off that debt … and meanwhile, the poor bureaucrats would be starving.
But wait. If you don’t like that option, the Reparations Committee offers other choices:
- A guaranteed annual income of $97,000 per black person.
Total cost?
$4.4 billion per year, about 2/3 of total tax revenues.
- And here’s the beauty part … that income is guaranteed for the next 250 years.
Total cost?
ONE TRILLION DOLLARS.
Don’t like those either? How about their final option?
- A free house for every black family. There are 18,000 black families in SF, where the median house price is a mere $1.2 million dollars …
Total cost?
$21.6 billion.
For those unaware of it, obviously including the SF Reparations Committee, there’s something called “The First Rule Of Holes”. It states:
When you find yourself in a hole … stop digging.
The saddest part to me is that, far from healing racial animosity, this will only increase it. Like most white people, I never owned a single slave. In addition, I was brought up in a household where the “N-word” was never allowed to be spoken. I was a strong supporter of the civil rights movement. I lived for 17 years in black-majority countries. There’s only one color I care about—red. If you bleed any other color, I get real nervous. Here’s my explanation of racism for dummies.
Heck, I even voted for Obama … the first time …
But if I have to give Oprah money because she’s an ADOS (American Descendant Of Slaves), it assuredly will not make me feel all warm and fuzzy about black folks.
I truly don’t understand the folks living in San Francisco. Over and over, they elect city officials who ignore the real problems, cut criminals loose to offend again, and think that giving money to the homeless will decrease their number …
When I was 16 I worked as a bicycle messenger in San Francisco, pumping up and down the hills on a one-speed bicycle. When I was 20 I lived in San Francisco with a topless dancer. Nightimes I’d walk from our apartment to Broadway, to wait outside for her to get off work because I was too young to go inside … and we’d walk the hills back home, laughing and enjoying the moonlit views of the Bay. A few years later I fished commercially for roe herring in the Bay around Alcatraz and Angel Islands, with our boat docked at San Francisco’s famous Pier 39. San Francisco for me was the pinnacle of urbanity, a joy to experience, the best of the world’s cities.
And now? How the mighty have fallen. Where is the planet I grew up in?
Sigh …
My best regards to everyone,
w.
Skating Under The Ice 
Leftist Ideology is a cancer and it is killing our society.
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Oprah is a good example. Kamala is even better. She would clearly qualify as an ADOS, even though her slave ancestors were in Jamaica, and not the US, and would be only about 20% of her genes. She is also 50% East Indian Brahmin de facto slave( Dalits) owning, and about 30% Jamaican, wait for it , White slave owner( see photos of her father). Where is the equity here if she were to qualify for the $5M? I am sure she is a nice person ( although she cackles somewhat too much), but this is not a reasonable use of scarce SF taxpayers money.
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Thomas Edsall – the “urban doom loop” driven by the pandemic – short version:
1. In response to the pandemic, lots of fairly well off white collar workers moved out of city centers and relocated (temporarily) to suburban areas or second homes.
2. The need to keep businesses running spawned the widespread adoption of ways to get around people not being in the office, i.e. zoom meetings.
3. As people who escaped the cities realized they could do their jobs from home for extended periods, a return to the cities became optional. For many, the move to the suburbs became permanent.
4. With fewer people working downtown, there was much less need for secondary businesses that were dependent on those workers. Restaurants and shops closed permanently
5. With many fewer people needing to work downtown, the need for public transport collapses.
6. As people settle in to working 3 days in the office and two days out, the need for commercial real estate drops. Like the shops that once supported them, many office buildings are partly empty.
7. With shops, restaurants and offices partly empty, tax revenue to cities declines dramatically, making it difficult to maintain services.
8. RINSE AND REPEAT
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DLK, you may have left out the last step in the fall of a once fine city. When the workers start working full time from home, it becomes easier and cheaper to out-source those jobs overseas. That then leaves only the executive and management functions at the home office. It then becomes advantageous to move the home office to a lower tax location (e.g. Texas, Florida, etc.) and the city dies a slow death as the remaining business exits.
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We need policies like this… so we can finally hit rock bottom.
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The USA has turned into an Orwellian nightmare. Why do voters elect these people?
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Because “media” lies to people. Academia lies to people. Politicians lie to people. Leftist ideology is a cancer, and it kills everything it infects.
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I am so, so glad that we visited SF when we did in 2017. There were a few guys on Fishermans Wharf asking for cash for weed but nothing like what you describe now, Willis.
Such a shame, we had a ball and SF is, or now was, one of the few places we wanted to visit again. Not now, though.
Best to the family.
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And best to your family as well, Dawg, always good to hear from you.
w.
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From Exodus 34:7 – “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.”
Slavery was abolished in the USA in 1863 by President Lincoln, a Republican. Many white people lost their lives in Civil War to keep that promise. That’s 160 years ago, eight generations, and the slave-owner sins of Democrats should have been forgiven twice over. But it is fitting that Democratic states are on the hook 🙂
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“Slavery was abolished in the USA in 1863 by President Lincoln, a Republican.” Totally Wrong! Slavery was only abolished by the 13th amendment to the Constitution. What you are mistakenly referring to is the Emancipation Proclamation which only “freed” slaves in areas not controlled by the Union. Slaves within Union controlled areas were unaffected. Images of slaves working on the capital buildings are available online to puruse.
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I keep seeing people conflating this issue. Have corrected it so many times I have gone numb.
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The Emancipation Proclamation issued as a wartime emergency order by President Lincoln was of great importance, as it legally freed 85% of the slaves nationwide( close to 100% in the Confederacy) many thousands of whom then escaped, and many of whom joined the Union Army. He had no authority to free the slaves in the Border States, but all, except Delaware, started the process following the Proclamation).
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Delaware, isn’t it where Joe Biden resides?
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ws, thank you. I stand corrected. The correct year is 1865, not 1863.
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Greetings Willis! I always get giddy when you have a new post up and since it’s been a bit that I’ve checked your blog, imagine my delight when I opened it to find two new posts!
What I’m writing about is the SnapCrap app. I use a Samsung but both of my teenage boys use iPhone. I tried to have them search for the app and nothing comes up. Is there something more specific to search on?
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My line is that all this has to do with a river in Egypt. Our rulers cannot admit to themselves that their rule of about 100 years has Made Thing Worse. I reckon that what our rulers have done to blacks will rank — in the next regime — as one of the great crimes of history.
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Ref. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/14/the-temperature-field/
Dear Mr. Eschenbach,
I am a retired Hungarian chemical engineer. I run the website
http://www.klimarealista.hu
For this I translated your article https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/14/the-temperature-field/ and added my comment. The translation is here:
https://www.klimarealista.hu/a-sivatagban-melegebb-van/
The commentary is about the fact that your article unintentionally proved that
the increased concentration of water vapour (for whatever reason) does not have a temperature-raising effect, but a damping, dampening, temperature-reducing effect.
In this context, I would have some questions to you.
Have you perhaps repeated the calculations of 2015 possibly later? If so, were there any deviations from 2015?
Are images 3 and 4 available in larger resolution? How does it look over smaller seas, e.g. Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, Black Sea, Arabian Sea?
And most importantly:
Based on your data, one could assign a negative feedback for the doubling of CO2 concentration for water vapor in the atmosphere, instead of the arbitrarily assumed positive value between 1.5 and 6 °C so far. (Figures 6 and 7 in my article).
The question is how much is the negative feedback of atmospheric water vapor, e.g., °C per 1 vol-%?
I don’t speak much English, I translated this letter with deepl.com. But if you answer, I will translate the answer too.
Szeged, 2023.05.14.
With best regards
Király József
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Thanks, Kiraly.
I’m not clear why you say:
What in the study brings you to that conclusion?
Best regards,
w.
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Dear Mr. Eschenbach,
Everywhere in the world, the atmosphere in the desert contains less water vapor than the non-desert areas.
In the desert is always warmer, than in an area with the same latitude, irradiation.
Your pictures 3. and 4. confirm this.
Or do I see something wrong?
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Thanks, Királi. The desert zones at 30°N/S are a result of the Hadley Circulation. Air rises at the equator, moves poleward, and descends at ~30°N/S. It’s heated by compression as it descends.
w.
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I agree with Király József : “In the desert is always warmer, than in an area with the same latitude, irradiation.”
I believe that is true so I found a comparative example –
Maricopa Co, AZ and Wilcox County Co, GA are nearly at the same latitude.
This site https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/@5303752/climate says annual average humidity for Phoenix airport is 31%. It doesn’t have one for Wilcox Co but says 72% for nearby Houston Co airport.
Maricopa County AZ, 1201′ altitude, ~33.5 deg latitude, average annual temperature 1901 – 2000 mean is 69.2F. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/county/time-series/AZ-013/tavg/12/4/1895-2023?base_prd=true&begbaseyear=1901&endbaseyear=2000
Wilcox County GA, 344′ altitude, ~32 deg latitude, average annual temperature 1901-2000 mean is 64.8F. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/county/time-series/GA-315/tavg/12/4/1895-2023?base_prd=true&begbaseyear=1901&endbaseyear=2000
Wiki says dry air lapse rate is 5.4F per 1000′ so if Maricopa altitude was 344′ instead of 1201′ the mean temperature would be 69.2F + 5.4F*857’/1000′ = 73.8F
So I believe there is merit to the claim that, with all other factors equal, drier places have a higher temperature than humid places. The humid places have more evaporation and more cloud albedo at mid-day. My comparison is completely at odds with the NASA claim (simplistic IMO) that warming from CO2 increase is “amplified” by water vapor: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20101014/
My opinion on descending versus ascending dry air is that pressurization makes little to no difference if the gradient equals the adiabatic lapse rate. Yes, the air heats as it is compressed on the way down but .. it equally cooled as it expanded on the way up before it started down. As I see it – the column of descending air over the Sahara has to be cooler and or drier than the surrounding air in order to be descending air. We know that it’s drier; it may also be cooler as well. If so the heating of the air is solely a function of contact with the hot surface and .. that sand gets mighty hot! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCaVvHeI8jU
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