It has been observed: “How do you know when a politician is lying?” The answer is: “When he (or she) opens his (or her) mouth!” 

I think it’s timely to recommend (as I traditionally have done since my first year on the Board of Supervisors in 1972), ballot measure votes and candidate elections. 

As San Franciscans observe the 256th anniversary of the country’s declaration of our independence from British rule, we give thanks for the successful recall of Chesa Boudin from district attorney status, the defeat of a Board of Supervisors’ ballot measure to diminish our authority to remove a non-performing public official from office, the repeal of a 1932 ordinance conferring a trash collection monopoly on Recology’s predecessors – thus enabling next month a law requiring competitive, open bidding for such public contract, and ignominious defeat of a $400 million general obligation bond which, with interest over 30 years, would have cost taxpayers $1.005 billion! 

An anonymous wit once declared in the 1950s: “We don’t seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.”