Car 54

SF's Board of Supervisors are responding to the Mayor's "draconian" health services cuts by proposing deep cuts to the police and fire departments. Makes sense!

The board is threatening to slash fire and police budgets to make up for deep cuts to health and human services, and today it will debate a resolution calling for charges to be dropped against seven men accused of killing a police officer nearly 40 years go.

(snip)

Last week, board budget committee members expressed anger at Newsom for slashing support from the city's general spending account to the Recreation and Park Department and the Department of Public Health by more than 20 percent, while proposing 5 to 6 percent increases to the fire, police and sheriff's departments. So the committee voted to move $82 million from the public safety agencies' budgets to health, recreation and human services departments in the interim budget.

Proponents of this move claim that cutting police and fire budgets will actually improve public health:

(John) Avalos and other liberal supervisors argue that protecting public safety also means saving health services, violence prevention programs and recreation options.

You bet, John! Midnight basketball will keep us safe!

No progressive would ever admit to being anti-cop or anti-public safety. Yet, they are consistent in attacking the police and fire departments (and, on the federal level, the military), whether through budget cuts, "watchdogs," harassing lawsuits, and civil rights for criminals. And then, when public safety inevitably suffers, these same progressives are first in line to blame the police for their shortcomings.

Not only that, they literally don't understand the relationship between a strong police force and the safety of everyone in the City. Often the police do their jobs simply by standing around, "showing the flag," if you will. Progressives hate paying for that. They would much rather fund a dozen "health services." Never mind whether such services are actually being used. No matter whether they are duplicative of other services provided by the state or the feds. Who cares whether the services are actually doing any good.The point is to create dependence on the government, so the dependants will be in thrall to the dispensors of "services." The police and fire department don't stand a chance in the face of those sorts of incentives.

Whether they intend to or not, the ceaseless attempts to cut public safety funds reveal one of the unspoken political divides not just in SF, but also in the US. The progressive wishes to maintain power by creating a class of voters dependent on "services." The conservative tries to govern to provide services that are useful to all, and let individuals take care of those things (like health care) that are better left to the individual than to the government.