When we think of corrupt American cities, Chicago always tops the list. However, San Francisco has long had one of the more corrupt American civic governments. However, because the City was still better managed than Chicago, nobody really commented on that fact. A Twitter thread about the City’s “stupidvisors” (as I’ve always called them), turning down free internet access highlights just how corrupt they are.

I worked in San Francisco for several decades and spent a great deal of that time dealing with City Hall through the judicial system. It was an enormously frustrating place, with byzantine rules, clerks that spoke minimal English, and few corrupt judges. However, that was small potatoes compared to the Building Department. I knew a man who made a very rich living contracting his services out to people who were trying to build or remodel in San Francisco. If you didn’t have an expensive guide to handle the rules and grease people’s palms, you’d never get anything done.

Perhaps the greatest corruption, though, was at the political level, among the Supervisors, elected representatives from each San Francisco neighborhood. I never heard stories about these people demanding money for initiatives, although I’m sure some did. The real corruption was ideological. In the 1960s and 1970s, these Supervisors were mostly Democrats. Starting in the 1980s and moving to the present day, the Supervisors (or, as I said, Stupidvisors) were leftists, even if they still used the old Democrat label.

That’s why I was completely unsurprised when I read Chris Sacca’s Twitter thread about his efforts to give free internet to the City of San Francisco. Everything he writes is consistent with my understanding of how the San Francisco government operates. I’ll stop now and let Sacca take up the narrative:

One SF Supervisor told us she would vote against it unless we promised to fund quarterly field trips (eg to the zoo) for the kids in her district. Another promised to vote against it because we wouldn’t give free laptops to all of SF.

— Chris Sacca 🇺🇸 (@sacca) March 28, 2021

We built a demonstration network in a public housing project in Hunters Point. It was saturated with use. Those residents testified that laptops and phones weren’t expensive, cable and data plans were the problem. The Supes just couldn’t accept that those people were Net savvy.

— Chris Sacca 🇺🇸 (@sacca) March 28, 2021

“Stop lecturing me about the digital divide, because I don’t give a fuck. Now get the hell out of my office.” Our team walked out stunned, sat in the lobby of City Hall, and realized it was over.

— Chris Sacca 🇺🇸 (@sacca) March 28, 2021

They wouldn’t listen to their own constituents. They perpetuated racist tropes and demeaning stereotypes about their poorest residents. And for what? It was all a big game to the politicians. The winners were the Supes’ egos and the losers were the people they supposedly served.

— Chris Sacca 🇺🇸 (@sacca) March 28, 2021

Epilogue: After SF rejected our offer, we built a free, city-wide network in Mountain View, CA. About 12-15,000 people used it every day for years. The majority of them spoke Spanish as their primary language and told us they couldn’t afford regular Internet access.

— Chris Sacca 🇺🇸 (@sacca) March 28, 2021

Once upon a time, San Francisco had functional corruption – it existed, both financially and morally, but it wasn’t so bad that it prevented the City from getting things done. Once the old-fashioned Democrats retired, though, and the hard-leftists moved in, San Francisco began its slow slide into dysfunctional leftism. Sacca is describing events from 15 years ago, but there’s no reason to believe that things are any different in the once beautiful City by the Bay. As long as leftists are in charge, it will be governed by people who are racist, power-hungry, arrogant, and short-sighted.

IMAGE: San Francisco City Hall by Mike Hofmann. CC BY-SA 3.0.