In a speech in Parliament about parliamentary reform on March 2, 1830, Thomas Babington Macaulay declared: “I believe there are societies in which every man may safely be admitted to vote. …I say sir, that there are countries in which the condition of the labouring classes is such that they may safely be entrusted with the right of electing members of the Legislature. …Universal suffrage exists in the United States without producing any very frightful consequences.”
September used to be the month I returned to school after being released in the middle of June. That’s gone with the wind. San Francisco public schools opened up for business on Monday, Aug. 17, two weeks before Labor Day. My Napa grandsons, Emmett and Brooks (16 and 12) reported for academic duty in their schools on Aug. 10. Naturally, football practice began even before that.
Last month we learned from a reported City Hall audit that a wily operator, former Chief Assistant Treasurer Tajel Shah, ignored procurement rules to ensure that a $7 million City Hall contract for a new tax collecting system went to tech corporation Mechanical Orchard. The system handles billions of dollars in San Francisco‘s infamous business taxes. City Attorney David Chiu, City Controller Greg Wagner and the Controller’s Auditor of City Services uncovered Shah’s perfidy. Shah never revealed her friendship with the chief revenue officer of Mechanical Orchard whose subcontractor (Ratio PBC) then hired Ms. Shah’s niece. A complaint was thereafter filed by a knowledgeable citizen with the Ethics Commission in late 2024. The San Francisco Standard reported such malefeasance on Sept. 25, 2025. Mechanical Orchard pulled out of contract talk the day before Shah’s perfidy was revealed. Shah resigned on Nov. 21, 2025.
On March 5, 1946, Winston S. Churchill spoke at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, having traveled 1,000 miles with then President Harry S. Truman from Washington D.C. to do so (Churchill also observed: “I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken over me.”)
To ensure taxpayer obliviousness, the Rail Authority claims “real progress” on the project and says almost 80 miles of “guideway” are complete in Madera, Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties, plus “171 miles under design and construction from Merced to Bakersfield.”
As we reach the pinnacle of our California primary election on June 2 – early voting by mail starts May 4 – the effect of 62 candidates of which 24 are Democrats, 12 are Republican, 19 are “no party preference” (meaning they’re Independents like me!), one Libertarian and one Peace and Freedom who present themselves as worthy of serving four years as our next governor.
It’s been said that: “There is nothing quite as permanent as a temporary government program.” And, as we enter income tax month, I’m reminded of someone who observed: “Patrick Henry ought to come back and see what taxation with representation is like.”
“Some citizens are so good that nothing a leader can do will make them better. Others are so incorrigible that nothing can be done to improve them. But the great bulk of the people go with the moral tide of the moment. The leader must help create that tide.”
Then President-elect Abraham Lincoln in his farewell address in Springfield, Ill., on Feb. 11, 1861, proclaimed, “My friends … I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail.”
Last month brought cheer to many readers as AAA and Gas-Buddy data reported gasoline prices declined to a $2.90 per gallon nationwide average, although not in California where the best locations charge $3.95 per gallon. The aforementioned $2.90 is 17 cents lower than November and 7.3 cents lower than 2024. You naughty non-electric motor vehicle drivers can consider this your holiday present.
It was Thomas Jefferson who declared in an Aug. 4, 1801, letter: “Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.” Oh, how we need in Washington, D.C. those “reformers of error.” Instead, we have a government of men and women (I mean you, Attorney General Pam Bondi) which creates fear among most of the governed.
In 2022, before “draft dodger” President Donald Trump, there were about 3.1 million federal employees and about 30,000 City and County of San Francisco employees in a then-municipality of approximately 874,000 residents. San Francisco’s population has now declined to about 827,000 and the number of its local government employees is approximately 30,000. Yet, some City Hall denizens spew propaganda that we need more housing. The mighty mayor, fresh from our recall of Supervisor Joel Engardio, demands “upzoning” of the Richmond and Sunset neighborhoods plus the Marina and North Beach, meaning high-rise apartment and condominium buildings will be vacant in large part like Park Merced and its more than 500 empty units. Stonestown Galleria still hasn’t even broke ground on the 350 units for which it secured building permits three years ago.
Can we attribute the recall of SF Supervisor Joel Engardio as an example of gargling, then being excreted by District 4 voters? He must now live without the $175,370 per year salary, membership in the retirement system of the City and County, one-month paid vacation and four aides to keep taxpayers away. That’s what it costs us for the 11 beauties on City Hall’s second floor.
As summer fades, I’m reminded that the ideal summer resort is where the fish bite and mosquitos don’t!
Said an old lady to the Internal Revenue Service: “I do hope you will give my money to a nice country.”
