A Board of Supervisors vote is coming up next week on allowing Home Depot to open a store in San Francisco. The Planning Commission approved the store, in July, with a few absurd restrictions. The Supervisor's vote may be postponed based on behind-the-scenes maneuvering, as it was last month.
This raises three issues for me. The majority of San Franciscans want a Home Depot in San Francisco. We also want an Ikea, a Target, a WalMart, a Lowe's and many other big box stores that our small-fishing-village-minded Lefty Fundamentalists are organized to stop
First, we don't get a representative government .....
First, we don't get a representative government with an elective democracy. In a true democracy "representatives" would not be chosen in elections to govern, (especially in district elections of the sort we have in San Francisco). That has nothing to do with true democracy. In a true democracy, all legislative bodies would be "selected' (like jurors) from a random sample of real people, not "elected" from a collection of aggressive self-serving and emotionally aberrant social misfits (I've known far too many elected officials in my life.)
Second, in my ideal California and my ideal U.S. Supreme Court there would be a court finding that having a whole city denied a commercial business, for over ten years, by a political body without taking a vote of the people, is unconstitutional. That is "my ideal" Supreme Court, not a real one, of course.
Third, Home Depot was co-founded by Bernie Marcus, when he was in his 50s. Bernie is out now (better management was needed than the founders could offer) with several $billion and is giving large chunks of money to create an Israeli constitution (Israel is modeled more on the British form of government than a U.S. constitutional form.)
When you are anti-commerce, as Lefty Fundamentalism is, you invariably have to deal with the fact that Jews have always played an important role in business and you verge on anti-Jewism. That sure sounds like the Lefties in San Francisco who are the most prolific and outspoken anti-Jews in America. Are they trying to get even with Bernie Marcus for being a Jew and founding a popular retail store?