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Kamala Harris' San Francisco is a dystopian nightmare. Is this what she has planned for America?
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From 2004 until 2019, the responsibility to enforce law and order in San Francisco fell to District Attorney Kamala Harris and her protégé George Gascon. The result? By any estimation, it has been an ignominious disaster.
Even as you drive from the airport to downtown in this once great city, the sight that greets you off the highway is streets with empty storefronts — like broken teeth, jagged and sad.
In the Tenderloin District it gets worse, far worse, and it isn’t getting any better, in fact, much the opposite. The last time I was in the City by the Bay was in 2021, and I struggled then to describe the craven brutality of the homelessness and drug addiction. Let me try again.
Next week, at her convention, the hand-picked Democratic nominee — whom nobody voted for — will try to convince us that her record of failure is not her record of failure. But the chaotic streets of San Francisco tell a different story. ((AP Photo/Patrick Semansky))
SAN FRANCISCO POLICE OFFICERS FORCED TO WORK OVERTIME DUE TO STAFF SHORTAGE: REPORT
Just off Union Square, I wandered down to the nice coffee house where I spent my mornings three years ago. It’s gone now. Boarded up. Out in front, addicts assembled under the amused eyes of security guards who seem to think this is normal.
Just up the block, the smell hit me first. It didn’t last time, but now, a fetid stench of human degradation that New Yorkers know only from an unfortunate subway car choice, simply hangs in the air. You can’t even smell the weed.
A person lies on the street in San Francisco in August 2024.
Dogs abound, barking in the midst of this misery. At least they know something is amiss. In tents, the poor forgotten of this city languish, selling drugs, not joints, not a bag of weed, but life-threatening heroin and fentanyl right out in the open.
The scale of human tragedy is laid bare by the proximity of wealth to squalor, of healthy and beautiful minds and bodies to squandered lives doped out and laid out beneath signs for Saks Fifth Avenue and Tiffany & Co.
HARRIS DOES ABOUT-FACE ON SEVERAL FAR-LEFT POLICIES, DISTANCES HERSELF FROM BIDEN
The well-heeled set headed for the Apple Store seem to pretend it isn’t happening. But to an outsider, it is as clear as the summer sun.
You can’t buy beef jerky here. You can try, but at the Walgreens near my upscale hotel, the dehydrated travelers treat is behind lock and key. The customer service button might as well be connected to some remote outpost in Antarctica. After 5 minutes you just leave.
Open air drug dealing in San Francisco in August 2024.
During COVID, I used the analogy of pointillist painting to describe the ever-encroaching rules. It’s just a mask, it’s just six feet, it’s just remote learning, each was a point on a canvas, but when you stepped back, you saw a picture of a prison. So, too, in San Francisco, the little horrors add up to a city of nightmares.
Anyone from any city in the northeast of our great country will say after five minutes that San Francisco is a dystopian disaster, but many of the people here, like frogs slowly boiling, think it’s normal. Is this what Vice President Kamala Harris, one of the architects of this misery, has in mind for all of us?
Next week, at her convention, the hand-picked Democratic nominee — whom nobody voted for — will try to convince us that her record of failure is not her record of failure. But the chaotic streets of San Francisco tell a different story.
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This is real. It is horrible. And no amount of well-off liberals posting photos next to the Golden Gate Bridge can truly hide the depravity of it all. And yeah, maybe the cops and the spaghetti strainer of a District Attorney’s office wrought by Harris keep their wealthy enclaves safe, but everyone else is in dire straits.
One of the finest street clocks in all of America is in San Francisco. It also is broken.
No matter how big your britches get, you can’t hide from your hometown. There, people know you, they know your story, and the story of Kamala Harris and San Francisco is a warning bell that America needs to hear.
Not far from the Tenderloin I found a curious object; one of the finest street clocks in all America. At one point, it was insured by Lloyd’s of London. You can view its gears and workings. It is a beautiful clock, reminiscent of the one that graces New York’s Grand Central. It also doesn’t work.
The face of this storied clock is set to the advertiser’s time of 10:10, and twice a day it is right as the saying goes. But why is it broken? How much would it cost to make this piece of history tick again? Why isn’t anyone doing it?
These are all questions for the presumptive Democratic nominee, who takes no questions. But she cannot hide from San Francisco. This is her legacy. And like the broken clock, it just flat out doesn’t work.
David Marcus is a columnist living in West Virginia and the author of “Charade: The COVID Lies That Crushed A Nation.”
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RAWLINS, Wyoming (KUTV) — A man wanted for alleged rape and domestic violence in Utah was arrested in Wyoming.
He is “behind bars thanks to the work of eagle-eyed troopers with the Wyoming Highway Patrol,” WHP said on social media.
Troopers were alerted to a Be On The Look Out (BOLO) call at approximately 7 a.m. on Thursday for a suspect in a white Chrysler Seabreeze.
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Troopers in Rawlins, Wyoming, spotted the vehicle just after 8:30 a.m.
The suspect was arrested without incident and transported to the Carbon County Jail.
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WOODINVILLE — For four straight years, at least parts of Washington have been in a drought, as snowpack has failed to meet historical norms amid climate change.
This year, all of Washington is experiencing drought, after a wet winter scuttled by warmer temperatures, according to state officials.
Washington state leaders are looking for ways to deal with the ongoing water challenges, which state Ecology Director Casey Sixkiller calls “our new normal.”
A new initiative, called Washington’s Water Future, will lead roundtable discussions across the state this summer, with recommendations delivered to Gov. Bob Ferguson before the 2027 legislative session begins in January. Local and tribal governments, utilities, industry leaders, environmental groups and community organizations will be at the table.
Officials announced the effort Wednesday at King County’s Brightwater Treatment Plant near Woodinville.
“It’s clear we need to take steps to protect our water supply,” Ferguson said in a pre-recorded video. “We need secure water supplies so we can grow our economy, support our agriculture industry, protect healthy fish runs and preserve tribal resources.”
Sixkiller said the work is about whether Washington will shape the future of water in the state, or just react to it.
“Washington is a water state,” Sixkiller said. “Water shapes our landscapes, our communities, our economy, and for many a way of life passed down through generations. We all know that where there’s water, there’s life, but these days, we don’t have to look very hard to see that our relationship with water is changing.”
Climate change is causing precipitation in the winter to fall more as rain than snow, with less stored naturally in the mountains for the summer, when farms and fish are competing for the dwindling resource. This system, dependent on snowpack, is becoming less reliable, Sixkiller said.
By 2080, the Puget Sound region is expected to get less than half of its normal snowpack, with wintertime stream flows increasing by half and a corresponding drop in the summertime, the agency director said.
“The cost of inaction is already showing up in drought emergencies, flood damage, stressed salmon runs and uncertainty for communities trying to plan their future,” Sixkiller said.
Last year, the Department of Ecology took the unprecedented step to curtail surface water usage in the Yakima River Basin, where the effects of drought are more severe. The move has drawn accusations of mismanagement against the state.
In an interview, Sixkiller said it’s too soon to say whether his agency will need to do the same this year, but noted the state declared a drought earlier than usual to give water managers in the area more time to prepare.
The statewide drought declaration last month unlocked $3 million in grants to respond to the effects.
The harms already
The Yakima-Tieton Irrigation District, which serves 28,000 acres, is bracing for its canal system to “blow out” after a wildfire burned it in 2024, and subsequent flooding and debris slides further damaged it, said Jon DeVaney, president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association.
“This is a clear example of the need to, not only plan long term, but be prepared to see that hole that we’re already in get a little bit deeper,” DeVaney said.
The low flows and higher temperatures are treacherous for Washington’s salmon. And fish hatcheries are grappling with dwindling water. The Suquamish Tribe, for example, hasn’t been able to expand a hatchery because of the lack of water, Chairman Leonard Forsman said.
Forsman, also president of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, acknowledged the priorities when thinking about the future of water availability are “people and farms, and then fish habitat comes in later.”
“And we need to try to balance that,” he said.
Meanwhile, data centers the tech sector is building to support artificial intelligence and other technologies are also driving demand for water.
Some of the ideas
In responding to the state’s water needs, Sixkiller said “all solutions and all ideas are on the table.”
He was responding to a question about desalination, a process turning salt water into potable water that communities in more arid climates have turned to in addressing water shortages. Arizona, for one, is pursuing the idea. Sixkiller called the water scarcity in the American southwest a “very big red flag of what could happen here.”
The city of Lynden in Whatcom County has grown rapidly over the past 15 years, Mayor Scott Korthuis said. So the city, located along the Nooksack River, has had to find innovative approaches to securing water.
For one, the city now recycles discharged water from the local Darigold dairy plant into the river, as a source of drinking water.
The city is also working on an aquifer recharge project to take water from the river during high flows and store it underground until it’s needed later. Sixkiller cited this type of work as an idea to be explored in the Washington’s Water Future roundtable discussions.
“There are a range of untapped solutions from different areas, from different ways to store water and to recycling,” Korthuis said, noting financial, legal and regulatory obstacles.
Aging water infrastructure that will need to be replaced or upgraded provides an opportunity for innovative solutions, Sixkiller said.
King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci noted the new initiative’s acronym matches that of the World Wrestling Federation, saying there will be some “smackdowns” in these discussions. The tongue-in-cheek comment worried state Rep. Davina Duerr, D-Bothell.
“I’m afraid it’ll be a smackdown on the Legislature for funding, and whatever else,” she said.
Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
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