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Where are those corrupt insiders the mayor wants to protect us from? We wen t and explored. Wikimedia Images photo<\/p>\nAs Alice the Anarchist and I walked toward\u00a0City Hall in San Francisco the other day, she read aloud from a leaflet just received in the mail. On the cover Mayor Daniel Lurie was smiling and saying: \u201cIt\u2019s time to clean up City Hall so it works for you, not the corrupt insiders.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mayor wants to clean up City Hall. Why has he waited twenty months since he took office to say this?\u201d\u00a0I asked Alice.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t do house cleaning himself, I guess. He\u2019s asking voters to do it through passage of Props D, E, and F this November,\u201d\u00a0Alice replied as we went inside the building.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her motorcycle jacket pockets were carefully checked by the security guard, who first studied the red lettering on the back of her jacket that declared: \u201cAnti-Fascist Social Club.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where are those corrupt insiders the mayor wants to protect us from? We wen t and explored. Wikimedia Images photo<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you tell us which room the corrupt insiders stay in?\u201d\u00a0Alice asked the guard.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou think they\u2019d all fit in one room?\u201d he responded, \u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t know where they are today,\u00a0 but you might start with Cafe Melange, ground floor, it\u2019s open to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
No one was there except the barista.\u00a0Maybe the corrupt insiders didn\u2019t like City Hall\u2019s coffee. Once we were seated with our drinks,\u00a0Alice resumed her complaints: \u201cIf the mayor has his way, his measures on the ballot could result in fewer rules, fewer participants in some decisions, more signatures needed for voter initiatives, less democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was intrigued.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis leaflet never tells us who the corrupt insiders are,\u201d\u00a0I told Alice. \u201cMaybe we should find the mayor and ask him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some names in the leaflet I\u2019m quoting. It says it was paid for by a committee to which billionaire Michael Moritz contributed $2,493,095.78 and billionaire Chris Larsen paid $1,487,500. John Pritzker paid $1,000,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut they\u2019re not the corrupt insiders? They\u2019re just the rich ones. It costs a lot to drive the corrupt insiders out of City Hall,\u201d I guessed.<\/p>\n
Alice then stood up and did her impersonation of Daniel Lurie:\u00a0\u201cIt will cost millions to clean up City Hall. But I can afford to campaign for it, to campaign against corruption (which my opponents favor) thanks to some generous friends. Critics will tell you the city suffers from an affordability crisis; but there\u2019s plenty of money to support my campaign for passage of Props D, E, and F.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alice sat down and became herself again.\u00a0Her usual persona wasn\u2019t much different from her mayoral act, but I could tell she\u00a0 speaking as Alice the Anarchist (it certainly wasn\u2019t as Lurie) when she said: \u201cWe have a wealth-inequality crisis here, democracy endangered by billionaires, and San Francisco activists with fewer friends than the mayor has in the high-income bracket\u00a0need to call for taxing wealth and A I windfall profits, raise the city\u2019s income that way, and also arrange for autonomous car industry profits to subsidize mass transit and prevent Airbnb from further reducing the city\u2019s affordable housing stock.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alice was herself again. She continued: \u201cLurie\u2019s opposed to corrupt insiders, but the mayor himself could be one of them,\u00a0corrupted by friendships with rich and powerful\u00a0 heads of high tech and A.I. companies and real estate development firms that sway his policies and fund his campaign mailers.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
A mayoral secretary told us Daniel Lurie wasn\u2019t in, and she hadn\u2019t seen the corrupt insiders either. \u00a0We went back to Cafe Melange, which was still empty,\u00a0placed our coffee cups in a trash bin, \u00a0threw away a crumpled\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0article someone had dropped on the table (\u201cAI boom is supercharging SF rent prices\u201d), and left the surface immaculate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe too are cleaning up City Hall,\u201d noted Alice the Anarchist.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at the bright side,\u201d\u00a0I mused as the security guard eagerly held the front door open for us to leave,\u00a0\u201cat least the mayor\u2019s not calling for more corruption inside City Hall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joel Schechter has written several books on satire.<\/p>\n
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