Comment by ardit33 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ardit33 | Hacker News Reader

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It is a very disingenuous turnaround, as the current mayor and city council members are part of the problem. Lets see if they actually make it happened. Word on the street is that this came from Pelosi, as they saw poll numbers and San Francisco is making the whole Democratic party look awful. There was a turnaround even from the Pilly ultra progressive DA as well, who just two weeks ago was denying that there was a crime problem, meanwhile murders reached all time high. So this turnaround is a coordinated thing, which means it is coming from the DNC.

This turnaround is because the political class/establishment got scared from both the Virginia (and somewhat New Jersey race), and in Seatle where people elected a republican DA. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/06/seattle-ele...

The 'progressives' and their insane left wing policies, are causing a major regress of quality of life of everyone in the city, and the rest of the country is paying attention. This is the rest of the political establishment trying to save their skin, and jumping from the sinking ship and trying to reverse course.

Also, both CA (LA and SA), and Seattle and Chicago are what happens when a region becomes a one party state. There is no more competition and the establishment gets entrenched to the point that it hard to dislodge, and they can enact all kind of crazy policies, that don't benefit their constituents.

The same thing, but opposite ideology (right wing), is in Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. (Orban and Erdogan are the opposite side of the same coin. Super entrenched majority, that is hard to kick out, and steer the place into regress, corruption or mismanagement).

Moral of the story: Don't vote blindly for one party. If the current elected leaders are not making your life better, vote them out.

Well said. Even blind freddy can see this about-face is about trying to keep themselves and their political apparatus in power and not because they ever cared about the residents quality of life. The sad part is that their constituents will believe the new lies and keep voting for them.

This is a very disingenuous comment coming from what appears to be a right wing point of view. I like how you left out all the right wing states that are also one party rule or even how many partake in gerrymandering to cheat the results.

The Democratic party and its media arm made record levels of fundraising/profit money when Trump was in office and they were the #resistance. They are motivated by staying in power yes, but they benefit greatly from the other guys being in office as well. Its a stretch to say this is a coordinated move. While the DNC does coordinate, I suspect its more to do with complaints from corporate donors and not for any re-election efforts.

The only ones sounding the alarm over Virginia and NJ are the far left progressives but its clear the DNC does not care. Just look at Biden's actions. He has many levers he could pull right this minute to fire up the base (executive orders such as legalizing marajuanna, pardon all nonviolent drug offenders, forgive student debt, etc.) but he chooses not to. Their strategy is to blame progressives when they lose in 2022 and 2024 in an effort to further delegitimize them.

I am a Democrat btw. I just don't want to see my party shooting their own foot but adopting terrible policies that don't improve people's life.

The existing policies have failed, thats why we are even entertaining discussion of new policies that you don't like. There are only two directions from here. A more progressive approach as implemented in Europe or authoritarian far-right policies.

How are the 'progressives' causing anything when they've not gotten a single thing they've wanted, ever? What's going on now is a directly traceable result of the 'mainstream' politicians in both parties doing what they've been doing for decades. These problems are a direct result of the progressives not getting what they're fighting for.

For worse (certainly not better), we have 2 parties. One is far, far worse for the general population than the other. Yes, if the current elected leaders are not making your life better, vote them out, but that doesn't mean blindly for the other party. Vote for better democrats, progressive and (actual) working class representatives that aren't brought to you by Amazon. It's the only party that gives people like that a chance. No matter how small that chance might be, it's infinitely better than 0.

Please don't lie and try to gaslight.

Current SF DA is an ultra progressive that doesn't want to jail criminals, and thinks stealing is redistribution. Also, the proposition 47 passed in CA that makes stealing a midemenor, . Both very 'progressive' ticket items. Also, police got less funding as well.

How are they working out for SF?

How are the open drug markets working for SF? Currently there are 570 people dying over overdose, every year. More than twice than covid, which we all admitted it was a national emergency.

Time to admit, 'progressive' policies are failures. They are just a left wing form of anarchy, and normal folks are getting fed up with them.

You are cherry picking local initiatives that some progressives have won that have basis on European ways of handling these sort of issues but have been hijacked or undermined by others who want them to fail.

> Also, the proposition 47 passed in CA that makes stealing a midemenor

With the whole hijacking of BLM the police have become very cavalier towards even attempting to do their jobs. What started as a request to not shoot unarmed black people has morphed into police protesting by not enforcing their duties and using their unions as cover. This is to help encourage the failure of these proposals and revert to an exreme right wing policy.

In places like Oregon they don't even follow the will of the people (eg. ballot initiative to decriminalize all drugs just gets ignored by the mayor/police). The purpose of this law is to follow the Dutch model where people are given the drugs in a controlled environment and offered treatment options to wean them off. At least thats the end goal. But like everywhere else in this country where these bills get passed, they will be sabotaged by people at all layers that want to keep the crappy status quo(ie. a permanent racial underclass that serves the upper classes\corporate interests)

You are also ignoring all the big ticket items that they never get. Did you see how Bernie Sanders was totally curb-stomped by the DNC and afterwards they went back to sleep? Where is universal healthcare? tuition free college? federal jobs program? Green new deal Infrastructure/Jobs/R&D investment? Almost nothing progressive gets passed and when it does it gets sabotaged immediately.

> that have basis on European ways of handling these sort of issues

I suggest you try shoplifting in any European country and see what happens.

Entering the European prison system is not a life ending experience like it is here in the US. Once you get out of prison, you have a record and because of that you are ineligible for many jobs. That leads to a cycle that lands you back in prison. Like they say, once you are in the system it is extremely hard to get out.

Its even joked about in American media[1]:https://youtu.be/q7GiJHBNqvU?t=54

These laws that are causing all this chaos are a desperate attempt to break this cycle but clearly poorly implemented. But the fundamental truth is that we cannot achieve the European method without overhauling the whole system. That takes either a very brave politician at the top or people elected in the various multiple layers that form the current apparatus. I don't see progressives capable of doing this. It is near impossible to get just one person elected so overhauling the prison system? Forget about it.

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