In Lewis Carroll’s 1871 book, Through the Looking Glass And What Alice Found There, we have a 
girl who can step through the parlor-room mirror into an alternative world – a world of fantasy. As someone who spends quite a bit of time reading about political happenings around the country, and especially in California, I can tell you that there is no place that is more peculiar, in terms of enacting the more bizarre and uniquely harmful regulations, or wealth redistribution schemes, than San Francisco. You literally can’t make up the stuff that goes on there. And then there is the fact that just about anything can see the negative consequences of these bizarre ordinances – except the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco – we seem “shocked” when their efforts to create their own bizarre utopia blow up in their faces.
A great example would be the fact that the city is in an uproar about whether to adopt a “sit/lie” policy which says, now get this, that during certain hours of the day, people are prohibited from sitting or lying down in certain public places. Sound crazy? Yeah, well, just think about what happens when as a matter of policy you have some of the most generous give-aways to the homeless? Yeah, San Francisco becomes the “Mecca” of homelessness, attracting benefit seekers from all around the Bay Area and beyond.
Another great example of the poor public policy machine that is the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors is detailed in a portion a Phil Matier and Andrew Ross column today in the San Francisco Chronicle…
The San Francisco Democrat introduced a bill this year, SB1212, that would require stores to post the radiation levels of the cell phones they sold.
The phone industry immediately labeled it a job killer.
Just to get the measure out of committee, Leno had to change the word "radiation" to "radio frequency energy."
Then it was on to the floor and more opposition.
Leno first took out the requirement that signs be posted in stores. Still no go – the info could be found on the packaging and the phone’s manual, which the industry didn’t like.
Finally, he offered to take out the packaging and the manual requirement – leaving only a requirement that the radiation levels be posted online.
And still, he couldn’t get the votes to get it out of the Senate.
"This is not an issue that is going away," Leno said. He noted that San Francisco will probably have its own ordinance within a month, and predicted that like the ban on plastic shopping bags, other cities will follow in a patchwork.
"Which will have the industry back here begging for a statewide standard," he said.
In which case, Leno will be waiting to take the call.
Yes, that’s right, the King of Nanny Statism in California is back… State Senator Mark Leno and apparently some of his political allies are going to protect you from the megatons of RADS that 
are coming out of your radioactive… cell phone. You know, those devices each of which needs to go through a rigorous safety approval process by the Federal Communications Commission before they can be mass produced?
Once again San Francisco wants to prove that they are on the “cutting edge” of going-overboard. In the end, though, like with every one of these cockamamie ideas the SF Supes come up with, you can see exactly where this will end up – it’s going to make it more expensive to sell phone in San Francisco, which at some level with then get passed through to the consumer, making it more expensive to own a cell phone.
You have to wonder if at some point the voters of San Francisco are going to keep electing politicians that want to treat San Francisco like more of a laboratory experiment than a place where people are trying to live, work and recreate. Well, I guess they won’t be able to lay down for this much long, since laying down is going to be forbidden. Will they stand up? Probably not before Mark Leno convinces them to legislate Geiger counters in every cell phone!
Do the Supervisor in San Francisco even care how strange all of this looks like from outside of the science experiment? If Alice lived in San Francisco, she’d be using that looking glass to step out into the real world…
June 8th, 2010 at 12:00 am
It’s worse than Jon said. The average resident is not against the sit/lie law, even the majority of my liberal Democrat relatives and friends. It’s the majority of the Superiors who are elected in small districts and ranked choice voting, both set up to give S.F. liberal majority. The reason for the proposed sit/lie law is that a group of transient punks with pitbulls took over the famous Height Street (Summer of Love, etc) and the surrounding neighborhood. The police chief asked for a sit/lie law so the cops could take care of business. The neo-socialist Supervisors who hide behind the “progressive” label wouldn’t hear of it. They have excuse after excuse. The fact is they just don’t like productive taxpaying citizens and businesses. margin. I could continue with a few thousand more words, but won’t. The “progressive” supervisors believe that productive taxpaying citizens who go to work every day exist solely to share their paychecks, savings and other income with the homeless, illegals, bike riders , street thugs and all other non-productive tax-users. And last, this morning the S.F. Chronicle reported that our elected and appointed city leaders are trying to push through a public power scheme before the polls close tonight. San Franciscans have voted against public power several time in the last couple of decades. The will of the voters means nothing.