Chamber of Commerce Wants to Save You From Democracy
What is it with the people in this city and their obsessive need to tinker with things that aren't broken as a way of drawing attention away from things that actually are? It's like, Muni doesn't work, so let's ban salt within city limits because that's like a far more serious issue to contend with than like getting people to actual places away from their houses, you know?
See, Thursday's Comical reported that the Chamber of Commerce has hatched a nefarious plot to tamper with the city's legislative branch by potentially shifting some supervisorial seats away from individual districts and into at-large positions for which the whole city can vote. The reason? Just cruelty, apparently. Excluding the excuse that electing supervisors by district leads to the rise of alleged zealots (i.e., Chris "Fuck!" Daly), none of the other justifications for this nonsense hold water.
Keep in mind that this is hardly a new idea. Back in April of 2008, town whiner Michela Alioto-Pier went running off to Stepmother of the Century, Dede Wilsey, with complaints of how this pesky thing the peasantry calls democracy was getting in the way of her being able to do her job and, gee, wouldn't it be all great if we could just elect a bunch of rich white guys from Pacific Heights to the Board of Supervisors instead of actual humans from actual neighborhoods who might have a clue as to what's actually going on around town, etc.?
Of course, local commuter and rumored strip mall shopper Chuck Nevius thinks the Chamber's scheme is a grand idea. Why? Basically because:
- Supervisors are too focused on their neighborhood issues to pay any attention to problems that plague the entire city;
- Districts, from a geographic perspective, are too small to justify their own supervisors; and,
- For every Sophie Maxwell we elect, we get stuck with a Chris Daly, who, while kinda hot in a pencil necked sorta way, dresses way too much like the President of Iran to get any constructive work done.
The Bay Guardian does a good job of pointing out to Chuck that, contrary to his argument, the supervisors do focus on citywide issues (almost too much, in this writer's opinion). Examples like Dreamy Mirkarimi's plastic bag shenanigans or Tom Amiano's Healthy San Francisco healthcare for the poors are good examples of that. Similarly, Chuck's attempt to compare San Francisco's tiny supervisorial districts to Los Angeles County's mammoth equivalents is just as half assed. Los Angeles County may have giant districts of two million people each, but those districts are also broken up into cities with representatives with much smaller constituencies. In SF, the county and the city is all we got.
As far as the issue surrounding the ease with which young firebrands like Chris Daly can get themselves elected to the BOS goes, maybe we should take into account the fact that as far his bedraggled constituents are concerned, he's been an effective supervisor. Hence their desire to keep sending him back to City Hall. Sorry kids, until we've finally banned democracy for the good of the people and have driven out the last of the downtrodden refusing to buy into that forced faux-Tuscan lifestyle we totally adore, we're basically stuck. Nice try though, Chamber of Rich Old White Guys.