I read where Wall Street has been negotiating this deal with the Obama Administration where the banksters will all line up and get their wrists slapped and then, having been punished will be protected from further attack by a populace bled white by their rapacity.
“Them that has, gits,” i thought, in this paradise of free enterprise where only for a period that roughly corresponded to the first half of my life did we have a tax structure in which the rich paid their fair share. It took the Great Depression to spark that, and it’s with a wave of nostalgia that i listen to an Andrews Sisters song from 1946 that reveals the popular sentiment of those days.
And then i look at contemporary San Francisco, still smeared by the right as a socialistic cesspool, when in actuality it’s anything but. Yes, average residential real estate prices dropped a bit at the pit of our recent recession, and they’re still somewhat down over in the southeast corner where the less expensive stuff is. But in Pacific Heights the market is again booming at the over $3 million level, where sellers are ending up settling for more than they’d asked owing to lots of bidding.
And i haven’t done an actual scientific survey, but it sure does look to me like i’m seeing new businesses opening in storefronts that had been dark for a few years. And certainly a couple of construction sites on Market that had been stalled at the empty pit level are again enjoying a frenzy of activity with workers scurrying like ants and huge machines gouging and roaring, most especially at that place at the corner of Noe and 16th and Market formerly occupied by a Methodist church that God smote with a great fire thirty-five years ago as a reflection of His disagreement with the Church’s hatred of gays. Should smite more of ’em, if you ask me.
And upscale restaurants! They’re sprouting like weeds. Well of course, even while it’s slashing services to the less fortunate, the city is showering high tech industry with tax breaks, the favorite being a commitment not to tax the avalanche of stock that will bury to the nostrils the better paid employees when the companies go public. Ah yes, tax breaks for young millionaires while the neighborhood health centers go unfunded. Look, i understand and support the idea of certain tax breaks to attract companies with lots of employees, but tax breaks aimed at young millionaires???? Oh please.
Still, i don’t really mind having all these delicious new restaurants available for young techies even though for me they’ll have to be rare luxuries. One’s opening soon just down on Market Street, and it’s already showing potential. Last week they had a sign up, “Jake’s. Everything you always wanted in The Castro, except with clothes on”. Here’s this week’s: