Month: August 2021

Authored by Roger Kimball via AmGreatness.com,

At some point, there will be a revolt. The longer the arbitrary insanity persists, the more violent the reaction will be…

The most cheerful headline I have seen in weeks was on Glenn Reynolds’ New York Post column: “No, Karen, we’re not masking again.” I hope he is right. I do wonder, though. I have no doubt that the second part of his headline—“A winning GOP message for 2022 [and] beyond”—is correct. At least it’s correct if it is expressed as a conditional: It would be a winning strategy were it adopted. As Reynolds notes, “There is a great deal of pent-up frustration and resentment over the inconvenience, the loss of freedom and the general climate of hectoring that the government’s pandemic response has created.” Indeed. And he’s right, too, that 

It’s irritating to be lectured by officials who claim to be smarter than you. It’s infuriating to be lectured by government officials who claim to be smarter than you—but clearly aren’t.

The on-again/off-again claims on masks and vaccination are just part of it. Tired of masks? Get vaccinated, they told us. Now they’re saying wear a mask, even if you’ve been vaccinated and even if you’re associating with others who’ve been vaccinated.

And there’s talk of more lockdowns, which a growing body of scientific evidence suggests were perfectly useless and downright harmful.

As Molly Bloom exclaimed in a different context, Yes, Yes, Yes!

But to return to the question of hope, I am reminded that hope was said by some cynics to have been the last evil in Pandora’s pithos. It seems like only yesterday—in fact, it was just this past May—that both the president and the vice-president of the United States insisted that (as Joe himself put it) “Folks, if you’re fully vaccinated—you no longer need to wear a mask.” 

Of course, that was more than a year after “15 days to slow the spread,” Anthony Fauci’s steady stream of contradictory, though authoritatively delivered, advice, not to mention the recent advent of (cue the scary music) The Delta Variant.  

It was the New York Post, again, that cut to the chase on the latest (unless we’re on to the epsilon variant already) with its cover of July 30. “Insanity!” read its oversized headline and below was a large grid with a tiny bit of the upper right square marked. Of the 161 million people who have been vaccinated, only 5,601 have been hospitalized with the new version of the virus. Of those, only 1,141 have died. That’s .0007 percent. (And how old, one wonders, were those who succumbed and from what comorbidities did they suffer?)

Now it turns out that the latest CDC advice was based largely on an outbreak at Provincetown after the informal party time of “Bear Week” in early July. Andrew Sullivan treated the news with some portion of the skepticism it deserves. In fact, as another commentator pointed out, what the Provincetown outbreak really shows is that “even under perfect conditions for a superspreader event, the vaccine works spectacularly well.”

But even to talk about studies and statistics and “expert” advice is to assume that we are talking primarily about an issue of public health. We aren’t. Consider this list from Jim Treacher: 

1. Absolutely do not wear a mask

2. You must, must, must wear a mask or you’re killing Grandma

3. Don’t leave the house or you’re killing Grandma

4. If you can’t avoid leaving the house, stay at least six feet away from any other human being you see or you’re killing Grandma

5. Wash your hands 20 times a day

6. Do not touch your face or anything else, ever

7. Get vaccinated so you don’t have to wear a mask

8. You have to wear a mask even if you’re vaccinated

9. When the above rules change, and then change back, and then change back again, shut up about it or you’re a stupid MAGA-head

10. Don’t forget to vote Democrat!

Of course, the last item is more often left unspoken than it is overtly expressed, but it is a sentiment, an assumption, that infuses the whole shifting kaleidoscope of contradictory advice. Treacher is right. “This isn’t about science. It’s about control. You will do as you’re told, peasants, and your moral, ethical and intellectual betters will continue to do whatever they please.”

I think Glenn Reynolds is correct that opposing the tyrannous spirit that stands behind the lockdowns, the mask mandates, and the smug, hectoring, politically correct demands for proof of vaccination would be a winning strategy for GOP politicians. Will they adopt it? Most will do so timorously, if at all. That’s my prediction. 

Last year at Encounter Books, we published an admonitory book by Joel Kotkin called The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning To The Global Middle Class. Some people thought Kotkin was overstating things with his talk of an increasingly stratified society in which a tiny elite lorded it over an increasingly pauperized and disenfranchised mass. It turns out, though, that if anything Kotkin understated the trends. The weaponization of public health diktats, their enforcement by a vast and increasingly overbearing cadre of nanny-state bureaucrats, is simply the latest manifestation of the profoundly anti-democratic spirit that has taken hold in Western societies. 

It’s all about social control, as Jim Treacher says. At some point, there will be a revolt. The longer the arbitrary insanity persists, the more violent the reaction will be. The question is whether we are at or are approaching the point of crisis. Will the voters stand for another lockdown as we approach the 2022 election? Lockdowns markedly increased the opportunities for voter fraud; 2020 showed that. That is precisely why the swamp is prepping us for another go. Let’s see if we stand by grumbling impotently or if, finally, we actually do something. I am not holding my breath. 

“It sounds kind of like a combination of a tornado siren and a spaceship taking off, like the siren from the ‘Purge’ movies,” Suitland, Maryland, resident Scott Bovarnick told NBC4 Washington. 

An unidentified siren keeps Suitland residents up “all night – every night” and makes it extremely difficult to sleep. They want the noise to stop, but no one can tell them the origin of the siren. 

“We have a lot of young families in the neighborhood, a lot of children, and I know it’s probably keeping them up,” Bovarnick said. “A lot of my neighbors are having trouble sleeping, and it’s disturbing.”

Residents speculate the siren could be coming from the gated Suitland Federal Center, home to the U.S. Census Bureau. 

“I just want to know what it is, and can they turn it off because people are trying to sleep,” resident Marcus Brent said.

NBC4 reached out to the Census Bureau and the other federal agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, about the mysterious siren. None of the agencies have yet to respond to the local news station. 

Authored by Ivan Pentchoukov via The Epoch Times,

A group of 10 Republican senators is backing a bill that would require an audit of the decision-making and public health messaging by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The Senate bill (pdf), titled ‘Restore Public Health Institution Trust Act of 2021, would require the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to assess the CDC’s public health messaging and decision making and prepare a report on the matter.

The bill requires the report to include a review of the data the CDC used to make its recommendations and whether the agency’s “inconsistent messaging” had an impact on the public’s trust and willingness to take the COVID-10 vaccine.

“These guidelines, like most of the Biden Administration’s actions these days, make little sense and seem without scientific direction,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a statement, referring to the CDC recent reversal of masking guidance for fully vaccinated people.

“Americans have spent the last year and a half making tremendous sacrifices to halt the virus’s spread, but they are confused and have lost trust in our institutions. The mixed messaging could also degrade trust in the efficacy of vaccines.”

The bill would also require the GAO to determine whether outside entities, including teachers’ unions, were in a position to impact the CDC’s guidance.

The CDC revised its mask guidance last week, telling fully vaccinated people to don masks in crowded indoor settings. The agency based the decision on a study of an outbreak in Massachusetts which found that 74 percent of the people infected had been fully vaccinated. The study also suggested that fully vaccinated people who become infected with the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, could spread the virus the same way unvaccinated people do.

The CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, is the pathogen that causes COVID-19.

“The CDC’s flip flop on mask guidance sends a confusing message to Montanans and the American people, and has not been clearly justified with data,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said in a statement.

“The CDC needs to improve its communications with the public and stop undermining vaccine confidence.”

“Over the past year and a half, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued conflicting health guidance, at times only weeks apart, and at times without supporting clinical data,” Sen. Cythia Lummis (r-Wyo.)  said in a statement.

“Their actions have unnecessarily divided our country, and fueled partisan conflict. The job of the CDC is to help control and prevent disease, not play politics. It’s time for oversight and reform.”

Authored by Ivan Pentchoukov via The Epoch Times,

A group of 10 Republican senators is backing a bill that would require an audit of the decision-making and public health messaging by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The Senate bill (pdf), titled ‘Restore Public Health Institution Trust Act of 2021, would require the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to assess the CDC’s public health messaging and decision making and prepare a report on the matter.

The bill requires the report to include a review of the data the CDC used to make its recommendations and whether the agency’s “inconsistent messaging” had an impact on the public’s trust and willingness to take the COVID-10 vaccine.

“These guidelines, like most of the Biden Administration’s actions these days, make little sense and seem without scientific direction,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a statement, referring to the CDC recent reversal of masking guidance for fully vaccinated people.

“Americans have spent the last year and a half making tremendous sacrifices to halt the virus’s spread, but they are confused and have lost trust in our institutions. The mixed messaging could also degrade trust in the efficacy of vaccines.”

The bill would also require the GAO to determine whether outside entities, including teachers’ unions, were in a position to impact the CDC’s guidance.

The CDC revised its mask guidance last week, telling fully vaccinated people to don masks in crowded indoor settings. The agency based the decision on a study of an outbreak in Massachusetts which found that 74 percent of the people infected had been fully vaccinated. The study also suggested that fully vaccinated people who become infected with the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, could spread the virus the same way unvaccinated people do.

The CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, is the pathogen that causes COVID-19.

“The CDC’s flip flop on mask guidance sends a confusing message to Montanans and the American people, and has not been clearly justified with data,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said in a statement.

“The CDC needs to improve its communications with the public and stop undermining vaccine confidence.”

“Over the past year and a half, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued conflicting health guidance, at times only weeks apart, and at times without supporting clinical data,” Sen. Cythia Lummis (r-Wyo.)  said in a statement.

“Their actions have unnecessarily divided our country, and fueled partisan conflict. The job of the CDC is to help control and prevent disease, not play politics. It’s time for oversight and reform.”

With another round of economic lockdowns and restrictions on the immediate horizon as Joe Biden unexpectedly admitted on Friday, one bank has dared to ask where we would be without the pandemic, and correctly extrapolates that the worse it gets for the general population the better it is for markets… just in case anyone is wondering who the Biden administration is really working for.

That said bank is Goldman Sachs is surprising: the vampire squid is not known for calling a spade a spade, especially when telling the truth could get the bank deplatformed, or worse, kicked out of the woke corporations club. Despite these risks, Goldman’s head of HF equity derivatives sales, Tony Pasquariello, focuses precisely on this “no covid” counterfactual in his latest markets and macro note, pointing out that “as a client once put it, financial markets have no moral conscience. as we sit here today, one can argue the paradox of recent COVID variants is they’ve become a net positive for certain risk assets – on the thesis that local setbacks have kept the activity meter from going into the red, allowing for a back-footed Fed and a slower but, certainly far from slow — pace of US and global growth.”

Pasquariello then says that his sales & trading colleague Mark Wilson summarized it best, as follows: “the irony of this most recent bout of virus concern is that it actually likely exacerbates (not undermines) the durability of the medium-term growth outlook: inflation concerns have been pushed further out, central banks temptation to reduce support has been quashed, financial conditions have eased to new lows, and determination to follow through on widely heralded investment plans will have only increased.”

To take that logic a step further, Pasquariello shares a thought provoking two-liner that he saw on Twitter…

“imagine the counterfactual of the pandemic never happening; would the S&P 500 be 30% above its peak in February 2020 without it?”

… and notes that despite his normally bullish instinct, readers should put him in the “no” camp:

while the global economy had plenty of cyclical momentum coming out of 2019, in the absence of the utterly enormous policy response that COVID set off, it’s a little hard for me to think S&P would be printing 4400. here’s another approach: all else equal, without COVID, would US 10yr real yields be negative 1.17% … and, without that rate underpinning, would US equity markets be trading on multiples never sustained outside of the 1990s tech bubble?

And just in case it’s unclear, he simplifies the quite provocative point he is trying to make:

despite all of the deep awfulness of the pandemic, it touched off a series of events and reactions that are still playing out — and, largely to the benefit of the risk complex, with no better example than the NDX 100.

Almost as if the covid pandemic is precisely what bull markets ordered (and according to a growing number of people that’s precisely what happened, but that’s a topic for another day)

Taken together, the balance between a strong runway for growth (increasingly more first derivative than second) and remarkably easy financial conditions (the same statement applies here) is still healthy for risk assets over the near-term. So, if the biggest dynamics remain in favor of the bulls, the Goldman trader argues that “the main thing” is to keep your eye on the ball amidst the inevitable noise and volatility; That means: (1) be long, on a responsible and flexible risk setting, given how far we’ve come; (2) maintain a split between secular growers and cyclical plays, with a shade towards the former; (3) yes, favor the US over all other markets.

Recapping his market sentiment, Pasquariello shares the following sentiment (first brought up by his Goldman colleague Dominic Wilson): “the environment is still one where you want to be buying dips and reducing on good news. there’s probably too much negativity around the growth outlook, and thus cyclicals. the overall balance of underlying growth and real yields is very healthy. so, stick with the game plan.”

To dig a step deeper into the biggest question of the day, if the UK analog for how a highly vaccinated country handles the Delta variant is the best available stress test, there should be a reasonable limit to concerns even as US case growth accelerates (and, objectively, may not peak for another month).

This means that we have a reference point that looks reassuring on the biggest risks as we are within 1-2 weeks of the Delta wave peaking around the globe. Pasquariello also notes that it is interesting that the bank’s pandemic basket (GSXUPAND) and back-to-office basket (GSFINOFC) outperformed the S&P this week – those are the high quality gauges to measure investor anxiety as we get into and move through August…

We concludes with some parting observations from Pasquariello: “if you take a big step back, the underlying strength of asset markets is stunning. This, of course, includes risk assets — particularly equities and credit markets. It also extends to luxury goods, be it boats or watches or art or fine wines. It also includes the interest rate market, where persistently lower nominal yields in the face of many countervailing factors calls to mind the “conundrum” word choice of prior years. If there’s one pattern of fact that helps to rationalize all of this, it’s the simple point that there’s a ton of cash still looking for a home — again, recall our work on $5tr of excess savings globally or the rise of family offices and their considerable war chests.”

So going back to the original question – how much has covid boosted stock returns – The Goldman traders says that while he doesn’t know how this story ends, “but apropos of nothing, if you told me in March of 2020 that I’d be typing this, there’s no way I’d believe it.”

By Ted Dabrowski of Wirepoints

As gas prices jump in Illinois, so do the gas taxes Illinoisans must pay. Illinois is one of just four states to impose a general state sales tax on gasoline, and that’s helped push Illinois’ gas taxes to the 2nd-highest in the nation, according to the American Petroleum Institute.

Illinoisans pay an additional 6.25% for every gallon of gas, on top of the standard excise taxes that were doubled in 2019. Hawaii, Indiana and Michigan are the only other states that apply their general sales taxes to gasoline.

Just over a month ago, Wirepoints reported that Illinois gas taxes were still the nation’s 3rd-highest, a position the state has held since lawmakers hiked the excise tax in 2019. But this summer’s higher gas prices have pushed Illinois to second place as of July 1st, surpassing Pennsylvania’s own sky-high taxes by about a cent.

Now Illinois is only behind California, whose residents pay both the highest gas prices and gas taxes in the nation. Illinoisans, meanwhile, paid the 11th-most for a gallon of gas as of July 30th, according to AAA.

For comparison, Wisconsin and Iowa’s gas prices are about 40 cents lower than Illinois’, while Kentucky and Missouri’s prices are about 50 cents cheaper. Indiana’s prices are 30 cents lower.

Chalk this up as another failed policy in Illinois that causes Illinoisans to cross the border to spend their money in neighboring states.

All those who have followed the writings of JPMorgan’s Nick Panagirtzoglou and Josh Younger, for whom no bitcoin bashing opportunity was too small or too insigificant (we too are patiently waiting for Panagirtzoglou to observe which way bitcoin’s momentum has been moving in recent weeks following the cryptocurrency’s longest winning streak since 2015, a fact he has oddly failed to discuss), may be surprised to learn recently the bank quietly launched a report for its clients looking at all the top crypto developments.

So for those tired of listening to JPM’s conflicted musing as it tries to create a lower entry point for its prop traders, here is nothing but facts from the Crypto Weekly report at the world’s largest bank:

• Bitcoin, Ether, Dogecoin, and other major cryptocurrencies rose sharply during the week after the market took cues from a recent job posting by Amazon seeking to hire a “Digital Currency and Blockchain Product Lead.” It sparked questions among the market participants if the move could lead to Amazon accepting cryptocurrencies as a method of payment soon. Further, the upward movement of the market was fueled by short covering as more than $950mm of crypto shorts were liquidated on Monday, the most since May 2019, as per data from bybt.com. Post the market’s sharp rally, Amazon clarified that the speculation around its specific plans for cryptocurrencies was not true and it remains focused on exploring this space. Despite Amazon’s clarification, the market remained buoyed as Bitcoin ended the week at $39.7K, up 23.2% from the prior week. Meanwhile, Ether rose 14.7% w/w to $2,314 and Dogecoin rose 7.1% in the week.
• Coin Spotlight: Theta serves as the native token for the blockchain-driven video sharing platform of the same name. By enabling faster and cheaper transmission of high-definition streaming, the Theta network shows promise of becoming a central part of the entertainment ecosystem. Tesla revealed that it’s holding Bitcoin worth $1.31B. Moreover, it booked $23mm of impairments related to its Bitcoin holding in 2Q21 and did not buy or sell Bitcoins during the quarter.
• Goldman Sachs filed an application to offer an ETF focused on securities of cryptocurrency-related companies with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The proposed ETF would track the Solactive Decentralized Finance and Blockchain Index.
• Twitter’s CEO announced that Bitcoin will be a “big part” of the company’s future. He also remarked that the company would continue to look at the space and invest aggressively in it.

Key Developments in the Week

Key Regulatory Updates on Crypto

Crypto Adoption by Non-Financial Services Companies

VC Corner: Key Blockchain/Crypto VC Investments

• Fireblocks (7/27): The blockchain infrastructure firm Fireblocks recently raised $310mm in a Series D round that valued the company at $2B. Fireblocks’ technology can implement direct custody without having to rely on third parties. Its platform has been used by over 500 institutions with more than $1T in digital assets. Its list of clients include Revolut, BlockFi, Celsius, Crypto.com, and eToro. The latest funding round was led by Sequoia Capital, Stripes, Spark Capital, Coatue, DRW Venture Capital, and SCB 10X, the venture arm of Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank. (link)
• Figure (7/28): Figure, a blockchain-based solution provider to the financial services industry, closed $200mm Series D round backed by Apollo Global Management, Inc., Blockchain.com, Rockaway Blockchain, HOF Capital, Endeavour Capital, National Bank Holdings, Goldentree Asset Management, and L1 Digital. This round valued the firm at $3.2B. Figure provides blockchainbased solutions for loan origination, equity management, private fund services, and payments. (link)
• Eco (7/27): Eco, a cryoto wallet company, raised $60mm financing in a latest round led by Activant Capital, L Catterton, a16z Crypto, Lightspeed Venture Partners, LionTree Partners, and Valor Equity Partners. Eco offers an all-in-one digital wallet with rewards and no fees and has average deposits of around $6,000. Eco’s top priorities are accelerating product roadmap and scaling user base. It is looking to significantly grow its team, build up marketing, and pursue regulatory approvals while expanding its services. (link)
• Dibbs (7/27): Fractional sports card marketplace Dibbs announced $13mm Series A funding from Foundry Group, Tusk Venture Partners, Courtside Ventures, and Founder Collective. Dibbs provides a platform for fans to trade fractions of sports cards, in real time. It assigns NFTs to physical assets that are then fractionalized on blockchains. The ownership of these cards is defined using smart contracts. Dibbs will use the incoming funds to increase its team size, add new range of products, and expand globally. (link)

Global Crypto Market Size and Landscape

The size of the global market increased in the past week, with the global crypto sector’s market cap rising 18.2% w/w from $1.31 trillion to $1.55 trillion as of 7/29.

Currently, the top five cryptocurrencies by market cap are (1) Bitcoin, (2) Ether, (3) Tether, (4) Binance Coin, and (5) Cardano. Below we give brief explanations of each of these major cryptocurrencies

d

 

 

 

Authored by Momica Showalter via AmericanThinker.com,

San Francisco’s broad-daylight retail heists have shocked the nation in their brazenness. They’ve triggered the closings of stores, such as Walgreens, and the shortening of hours from retail giants such as Target. Forty-four percent of city is planning to move out, with 80% citing out-of-control crime.

But the shoplifters have got a defender, too — in San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. So do the drug dealers. The only problems that Chesa sees are the victims.

Which tells us a lot about the state of moral bankruptcy of the wokester movement, and what the New Yorker dismisses as the “backlash.”

According to the Daily Mail, citing an interview in the New Yorker, after a viral video surfaced in June of a thief stuffing oodles of goods from a Walgreens into a trash bag and then riding his bike through the store unencumbered on the way out:

‘When I watch that video, I think about five questions that people are not asking that I think they should,’ Boudin told The New Yorker. 

‘Is he drug addicted, mentally ill, desperate? Is he part of a major retail fencing operation? 

‘What’s driving this behavior and is it in any way representative, because it was presented as something symptomatic?’ 

The question that doesn’t occur to him is whether the thefts are illegal. Or whether continuous unpunished crime is seriously disruptive to any society of lawful order.

In fact, according to the New Yorker, Boudin embraces the logic of looters from Black Lives Matter from over the summer:

Boudin said, “If Walgreens has insurance for certain goods or they expect a certain amount of loss, if they would rather not risk lawsuits or escalation to violence—then maybe that’s something we should know about.” 

Well, gee, if they had insurance, then of course it’s all right, right, Ches? That was what the Black Lives Matter looters were saying as they hauled out the Nike tennis shoes and large-screen TVs.

He sounds like a sleazy defense attorney, crafting a case for a scummy defendant with nothing else for his defense than to blame the victim.

Worse still, he does the same thing for hardened drug dealers in the country illegally:

Greenberg showed me a video of Boudin at a town hall at which residents had asked what could be done about some drug dealers. Boudin noted, in his reply, that many of the drug dealers had been brought to the United States by human traffickers—that they were, in a sense, victims themselves. “He’s excusing the Honduran drug dealers,” Greenberg said. “Not holding them accountable greenlights.”

You see, they had a bad childhood, so dealing drugs is therefore all right.

The New Yorker piece is a total puff piece, giving Chesa’s point of view on several things with nothing to counter it. It describes the huge broad-daylight retail heist at Neiman-Marcus as ‘zany’ and actually kind of cute. Get a load of this:

Earlier this month, a bystander captured the final stages of a ten-person larceny of designer handbags from Neiman Marcus. One by one, they spill out the front door, each clutching oversized bags to the chest; the final thief races out carrying half a dozen handbags, still attached to a multipronged security chain. Their movements are encumbered, zany, almost Chaplin-esque; when they exit, some look uncertain about which way to run. This is disorder without menace, but not without effect. 

Well isn’t that charming.

As for the Walgreens video of the shoplifter riding out:

The video crystallizes the subversive, Banksy-ish quality of the San Francisco theft wave.

It’s all so artsy, who couldn’t be cool with it?

Three big points from Chesa in the interview, however, do stick out:

One is that Chesa keeps claiming that crime in San Francisco is down, citing city statistics:

The way the video had been presented suggested that shoplifting had become a raging problem in San Francisco, but, he pointed out, the official data showed that over-all theft was down from the previous year.

Two is that he fails to cite the reason, even though the evidence is right in front of his eyes:

Boudin turned to the matter of the security guard: Why, Boudin asked, had he reacted so passively?

…here, too:

He mentioned a fact he often cites when confronted about property crime—that the police make arrests in just two-and-a-half per cent of reported thefts. “Maybe that’s a good thing—maybe that means they’re prioritizing murders,” Boudin said.

Might it occur to this Machiavel that these crimes are not being reported given his refusal to prosecute? If every theft is considered by the D.A. a junk case not worth prosecuting, then maybe people don’t bother reporting crimes anymore. Boudin announced early on that he would refuse to prosecute “quality of life” crimes, such as noisy hookers in the upstairs apartment and drunks peeing in doorways, a detail the New Yorker left out, along with young Chesa’s early associations with Venezuelan Marxist dictator, Hugo Chavez, a man who turned Venezuela into the mother of all crime-pit hellholes. It did, however, cite this:

His office eliminated cash bail and announced that it would no longer use gang affiliation to seek longer sentences or bring cases in which police pulled over a car as pretext for a drug search. When the pandemic shut down San Francisco, and infections began to rise in prisons around the country, Boudin saw an opportunity for decarceration; by May, 2020, he had cut the city’s jail population from a daily average of about twelve hundred people to about seven hundred.

Let them out, refuse to prosecute, and somehow, crime is down?

When crime is never prosecuted, and reporting is simply futile, people don’t report crimes. Why bother? Nobody’s going to do jack.

Third, he can’t stop blaming the victim. Get a load of his inability to use the word ‘rob’:

Boudin said, “If your car gets broken into, you’re outraged or angry or inconvenienced or incurred an expense. If your home gets broken into, it feels much scarier.”

Getting your car stolen with payments still due on it, and being forced to pay $600 for a police tow you didn’t ask for once the car is recovered (this happened to me in the ’90s), is merely an “inconvenience,” you see, an expense incurred, something you can put on your expense sheet or tax loss returns the way rich people do, same as Walgreens can claim insurance. You shouldn’t be upset about it. Nowhere does Boudin ever use the term ‘robbed’ or issue recognition that most people don’t have expense sheets or tax qualifications, and can only eat the loss.

As for public sentiment turning against the current crime wave, Chesa explains that it’s all in their heads:

He said, “From a public political standpoint, what matters more is the ups and downs and if people feel less safe. It doesn’t matter that crime is down. People feel less safe. They want to feel safe.”

Maybe they don’t feel safe because they aren’t safe. Maybe they’ve been robbed one time too many. 

The recall petition seems to suggest just this kind of trouble, but Boudin compares it to Trumpism, “Trump’s big lie,” as he stated at a July 9 Mission District community meeting. It’s not about crime, you see, it’s about closet-Trump people somehow living in a place like San Francisco, with anyone who doesn’t like his act rightfully name-called a Republican. In Chesa’s passive-aggressive, Ayers-like mind, that’s something that ought to guilt-trip the locals, though it may in the end annoy them.

The New Yorker, still having Chesa’s back, calls it “backlash,” Chesa being innocent and all, with none of the public discontent having anything to do with his actions you see. Just “backlash.”

It’s unknown whether two recall petitions against him are gathering all the required signatures. The New Yorker writer dismisses both as unlikely to succeed, but the signature-gatherers say they are making progress ahead of the August and October deadlines.

According to the California Globe:

“Both Newsom and Boudin had their first recall petitions filed one year after they took office, the minimum to do so in California,” said former lobbyist Harry Schultz, who has monitored and advised on recall campaigns in California since the late 90’s, in a Globe interview on Thursday. “As you mentioned, both saw support increase following huge nationwide stories that painted them negatively and decisions that proved to be very controversial. And both recall movements have been doing quite well despite being in largely Democratically held areas, Newsom having California and Boudin being in the more liberal San Francisco County.”

“For them to face a recall in California it’s incredible, but it goes to show just how upset they’ve made people. When voters say we want someone not as extreme as you, or in Newsom’s case, a Republican, in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans four to one no less, well, they did something wrong.”

“And now Boudin is starting to go through what Newsom did recall-wise this year. These huge spurts of funding against him are a big indicator there. I wish we had signature data, but once we have that, or at least see what the group with the August-expiring petition wound up with, we can see where we are big-picture wise when it comes to a possible Boudin recall either this year or next.”

One can only hope that with revolting leftist who blames victims, defends shoplifters, stands up for drug dealers, abetted by a press that calls crime ‘zany,’ that San Franciscans will finally come to their senses.