Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Color Me Surprised

San Francisco is not the best-run city in the country:

Despite its good intentions, San Francisco is not leading the country in gay marriage. Despite its good intentions, it is not stopping wars. Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, its homeless problem is worse than any comparable city's. Despite its spending more money per capita, period, than almost any city in the nation, San Francisco has poorly managed, budget-busting capital projects, overlapping social programs no one is certain are working, and a transportation system where the only thing running ahead of schedule is the size of its deficit.

It's time to face facts: San Francisco is spectacularly mismanaged and arguably the worst-run big city in America. This year's city budget is an astonishing $6.6 billion — more than twice the budget for the entire state of Idaho — for roughly 800,000 residents. Yet despite that stratospheric amount, San Francisco can't point to progress on many of the social issues it spends liberally to tackle — and no one is made to answer when the city comes up short.
But they're good "progressives" so we must look the other way.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

But they care so much, so it doesn't matter!

Anonymous said...

And yet, last summer, the CTA excreted some $1 million into Comrade Newsome's brief bid for governor.

KauaiMark said...

"...bid for governor"

Now, aborted bid for governor! Does the CTA get it's money back?

Forest said...

I don't think liberals really care about the problems. They just care about their own self-image. They use government action to address problems and then get to walk away, back to their rich lives, feeling they are good people.

They spend other people's money and everyone knows you don't spend other people's money as carefully as your own so that you get something real in return.

Ellen K said...

But it all looks so good on paper. Just like the healthcare bill and cap and trade. Good intentions are a dime a dozen-give me a business man who wants to make some money and let him or her run the show and things will get done.