Gavin Newsom admits that, yeah, they cleaned up San Francisco for Xi Jinping's visit

California's governor, Gavin Newsom, played Mr. Straight Talker for all those questioning peasants out there, wondering how San Francisco could clean itself up so fast for China's leader:

And there's no question the mess that has come to define that city has been cleaned up. The local reaction is here:

It raises the basic question: If you could clean it up that fast, why didn't you clean it up earlier, when the citizens were stepping in excrement, their cars were sporting broken windows from robbers, their stores were getting looted, their elderly were getting assaulted, and residents and businesses and conventions were moving away from the city in droves?

That wasn't so hard, now, was it? They had it in their hands to clean up miles of filthy, crime-strewn, drug-addicted disorder that has made life a living hell for residents ... and they didn't do it. They sat on their hands all this time and let the poop fields grow bigger, the old people get assaulted, the women get robbed, and schoolchildren step over drug-addicted bodies ... until China's dictator, Xi Jinping, blew into town for the APEC summit of nations and then they put on a show.

Then Newsom steps in and says that's exactly what they've done, as if Xi has a right to walk through streets without stepping in poop and getting his car broken into, while citizens do not. 

He justified his remarks later in the speech on the tweet by saying that he was having "conversations" about maybe bringing those clean safe streets for everyone.

But it was just talk. It wasn't the Xi Jinping treatment, which was immediate action, as if the citizens could be a priority here.

And yeah, that admission, which for all the world sounded like Walter Mondale telling voters in 1984 that he would raise their taxes, was received about the same way as the message sank in. Mondale, like Newsom, thought nothing was wrong with what he was saying.

It indicates to us that decline and sludge and crime and garbage and all the things plaguing San Francisco is a choice, the choice of its public officials and they can clean the place up when they want to.

It demonstrates how larded up with power the NGOs, the unions, the activists, and the other organs of power are calling the shots in San Francisco. Those are the ones who are preventing city officials from cleaning up the city.

That may be who a majority (but not all) of the voters in San Francisco voted for, but it also shows that these elites in San Francisco pretty well hate their constituents. They are about themselves, not serving the public.

It ought to become a campaign issue for Newsom and his Democrats, who can fix any social problem they want to, except that they just don't want to.

 

 

 

 

Image: Twitter screen shot

 

 

 

If you experience technical problems, please write to helpdesk@americanthinker.com