The End of SF’s Homelessness Industrial Complex? Mayor Lurie Demands Accountability

0:00I mean, it's not just about money, it's about damn accountability. It's about accountability. The bureaucracy is real. Because at the end of the day, we want to hold people accountable. Accountability, accountability, accountability. If you break these laws, you will be held accountable. Welcome to the newest edition of the Accountability Podcast with John Phillips and Randy Wang. Johnny, this is our weekly tribute to the most useless word in the English language. Accountability, our politicians say it over and over and over again, and it means nothing. And if you'd like to subscribe to this podcast, Randy, that's easy to do. Well, if you're already watching it, you're already subscribed. But yes, go to johnny.com. If you want to watch it or search for the Accountability Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, if you want to just listen to it, but you got to get on the YouTube, that's the way to go. johnny.com while you're here, hit the like button and leave a comment below. All right. It is our pleasure to welcome our next guest to the podcast.

1:02He is a bonafide expert on all things Bay Area politics and he's the host of the really San Francisco podcast. He can also follow him on exit Greenberg Nation, Richie Greenberg. Welcome. Hey, thank you so much and great morning to you. And to you, one of the things it's been generating a lot of attention recently, not just here in the Golden State, but beyond, is the fraud that's been uncovered by independent journalists Nick Shirley, who originally started out uncovering all the fraud in Minnesota with the phony baloney schools. And then he came to California and he exposed the fraud with the phony baloney hospices in the San Fernando Valley. And he is a man on a mission who is looking to expose as much fraud as humanly possible in the government. And what's very interesting to me is in Minnesota, he caused the incumbent governor,

2:03Tim Walls, who had been planning on running for re-election to drop out of the race. That one issue created so much negative attention, it blew him out of the race. Not just an incumbent governor, but the Democratic nominee for Vice President in the last election. So someone with a national profile. Here in California, it seems like the reaction to the expose on fraud was very different, where you had the governor, Gavin Newsom, and you had the legislature, led by Mia Bonta, get more angry at those who were uncovering the fraud than at the fraud itself. The only one who was zagging in California, well, everyone was zgging, was the mayor of San Francisco, Daniel Lourid, didn't have to do with hospice fraud or any of that. But we know that the homeless industrial complex has led to a lot of people in these homeless services group becoming very wealthy and becoming very wealthy by using the money for purposes,

3:09other than helping the homeless. And instead of getting mad at those who are exposing the fraud, it seems like he's actually interested in rooting it out and making sure that the taxpayers aren't being fleeced by these people. Your thoughts on why he's zagging when everyone else in California is zgging. Well, there's a few different ways to look at this and there's a lot of unpacking what the intro there. So, you know, first of all, Mayor Lourid has run on doing things differently. And he is, we have to credit as well, his immense wealth. I don't know if you know that he comes from a very prominent, very wealthy family, either his own or who he married into. When you go to all these different civic events, you go to the ballet and the theater, you'll see all of the prominent philanthropist names all up there, everything and his family name and the legacy is one of those.

4:13So, he does not want a stain on his reputation as opposed to others who often don't care. Now, Lourid, he also has used some of his own wealth to buy the best PR marketing firms out there and representatives to push these feel good, feel great San Francisco is on the rise narratives. And we know this is documented out there. A lot of the local news investigative journalists find and uncover hundreds of thousands over a million dollars now in buying great press and putting him on national spotlights to try and make it look like things are really great in San Francisco. So, this is one of the reasons why I have a little apprehension, a little doubt that things are going as well as when and what he says is happening. But it is true, as you said, that in Minnesota,

5:14things went really bad as Nick Shirley went and exposed the massive fraud and here in California, it was estimated that it was going to be a hundred times or what are you know, a multiplier of how bad things were in Minnesota. You would find so much more here in California and I think that's what led to the panic, absolute panic and trying to stop Nick Shirley with an act at which passed a couple of days ago, last week I believe. So, you know, what Lourid wants to do is he wants to preserve his legacy. He wants to take action, things that have grandiose big, big things that make it look like San Francisco was doing really good, come back to San Francisco, businesses come back, you know, you all left during COVID, you left under the previous administration under London breed, come on back, everything is great, you know, come on a press junket, you'll see that we're

6:19doing really fantastic. So, he wants to ensure that the environment, the atmosphere seems to be not only on the up and up, but that is great right now and this is why he's taking every little opportunity to make it seem a little piece of the puzzle to make it better and better and better for a multiple reasons. Well, and maybe because of his wealth, he doesn't feel as beholden to the nonprofit industrial complex as some other politicians may because if you can stand up to some of these organizations and really look at what we're spending money on and in San Francisco, it's about $800 million a year on homelessness, which by the way is what LA pays too even though LA has 10 times the amount of problems in San Francisco, but just look at one company, one organization that is very well known in the tenderloin and in San Francisco, Urban Alchemy and we pay the urban alchemy practitioners to walk the tenderloin and make what they call positive contacts with the

7:21homeless and a positive contact could mean that you connected somebody to services or it literally could mean that you handed somebody a loose cigarette and we pay $8 for every positive contact from an Urban Alchemy practitioner. Yeah, yeah, Urban Alchemy has at first seemed like it might have been a good idea. This was part of the not only defund the police movement back five, six years ago, but it was also let's bring in the non-confrontational unarmed community ambassadors and then shift part of the city budget to them and this was under London breed right before Daniel Lurie and that's an example of how there's this waste, this redirecting public funds, taxpayers funds to pet projects and that is one of the reasons why San Francisco's budget has just ballooned because you've got these kind of organizations, these kind of nonprofits and other agencies that are just

8:24unaccountable. There is the accountability podcast, right? So a perfect example and we have our population has swelled and then declined during COVID and now it's on its way back again slowly. We're not even 900,000. We're 825, 835,000 more or less in an area of 49 square miles and yet we have a budget of now I think what's almost $17 billion and this is absolutely ludicrous. It is hand-cuffing us and future generations that have to pay for all of this and this is another reason why we're so upset with Mayor Lurie. It seems like he's doing a great job but he's proposed and had approved. This is the second budget he's done with this kind of ludicrous spending where it should be at least 25% lower and we hear these excuses that well San Francisco was both a city out of county who were a

9:28charter city so we have different kind of expenses that a city would have in other parts of the state but you can look at Denver and Denver is the same thing. Denver is a charter community in a city and county and they're per person in population cost per resident is a heck of a lot lower than what we have up here. So this is another reason why we're all upset about this. So Lurie, you're doing a great job with the PR but you keep raising the taxes. Why do you think among so many politicians there is an active disinterest in rooting out fraud and I asked that question because I want to go across the bay for a minute to Oakland when former Oakland Mayor Shane Tahoe was caught or was alleged to have participated in public corruption by the federal government. Her answer at that defiant press conference that she gave was not that she was clean as a whistle. What she said is

10:31I didn't do anything that everyone else before me didn't already do. It's just my turn. Why do you care now that it's my turn? And it was almost as if who's taking the graft is more important than the graft that is going on itself and as long as the money is being stolen by the right people they're fine with it. Yeah and I think that that could be extrapolated to across the rest of the state and other parts of America as well but that actually brings back memory years ago several mayors of San Francisco before Willie Brown. He was known to be corrupt as hell but things felt good because things were getting done. The streets were clean people were relatively happy crime wasn't so rampant and yet because he was taking care of whoever it is that he needed to be taken care of even with the corruption people were happy and that actually I wonder if Luri

11:35now is trying to replicate that you know yeah there's going to be corruption people are going to be paid off but as long as everyone's happy and people are moving back to the city and businesses are doing well but I don't know if that's really a great business plan. This is true you know you've got you've got this situation where people who have no business being in government somehow say the right things and they get the backing by their their their party and they come up with the great slogans they get elected and before you know what you have someone like Sheng Town who goes down and flames so relatively quickly. It's football season on polymarket trade your football predictions against other fans before and during the game you can even combine multiple trades with polymarket combos from OCOWCFB new customers deposit ten dollars and get fifty dollars instantly

12:36to start trading 18 plus C polymarket's terms of service for more information about restrictions and eligibility the polymarket app is an independent affiliate of polymarket US and not CFTC regulated trading always involves risk complete loss can occur the fifty dollar offer is issued is not withdrawal little trading credit for use on the platform offer exclusively available to first-time depositors not available in all jurisdictions. All right well let's shift gears from someone who's happy to someone who is decidedly not happy and that is this former speaker the house Nancy Pelosi who has announced that she is not seeking another term to be the congresswoman from San Francisco that seat is now open it was long speculated that she wanted her daughter Christine who's active in state politics to replace her as the congresswoman from San Francisco but before Nancy announced that she would not be running for another term the longtime state senator from San Francisco Scott weiner announced that he was running for congress which seemed to have seems to have get not gotten under her skin not only because it came off as disrespectful to her

13:36but because he was already collecting endorsements and campaign dollars that would otherwise likely go to her daughter Christine and he made it made an environment where I don't think Christine could have gotten elected had she run against him him being a long time elected official in San Francisco so Nancy Pelosi now has six months left as the congresswoman from San Francisco and she is spending every waking moment campaigning on behalf of Connie Chan who is the opponent of Scott weiner running to replace her as the congresswoman Connie Chan seems to be a remedial candidate every interview I've seen her give yeah she looks like a deer in the headlights yes and to the extent that she answers any questions it's cliche after cliche after cliche and you go the elevator does not go to the top floor with this woman absolutely thank you thank you for yeah that's right the allegation is that Pelosi is doing all the heavy lifting

14:40in that campaign she's raising the money she's getting the endorsements she's trying to get people does not endorse Scott weiner she's making private phone calls she's appearing at public events she's going to the unions she is the one that is the brains behind this operation which means at some point the wheels are going to come off whether it's at a debate at during an interview at a candidate forum whatever things don't look stable over at the Connie Chan campaign what do you make of the fact that that Pelosi is so heavily involved in this race and that now Pelosi has become the issue yeah that's a great way of putting it and Connie Chan happens to be the supervisor the city councilperson of my district so I'm living right here in in the district where Connie Chan is the lives and and rules from yeah she not all the her dogs bark and I'm not there's different

15:49ways to put it and it's very bizarre that she actually made it as far as she did unlike like in LA with the mayor's race where you've got you know and Nithya ramen who at least can put you know coherent sentences together you may not like what she says but at least she can speak in rally the troops but Connie Chan is a complete dud and if you criticize her like many of us have her responses unfortunately she calls you racist because she's from Hong Kong and she has that heavy accent and she will use everything and throw it at you and sometimes it sticks unfortunately so why her well you know the the electorate here decided who who was going to be the top two going forward into Congress Scott Weiner and whoever else we actually had our own a weak version of Spencer Pratt we had Marie Herabial who came in actually fifth unfortunately but

16:58she would have been a good person she would have really done the job well but you know the voters didn't didn't believe in her so so now you have the situation with Nancy Pelosi she has been cultivating her role in Dex for nearly 40 years 37 38 years in Washington she has all those well well established relationships with the donors and the corporations and those who would benefit the fact that she's been in there for so long legislation and you know all the money all of this and so Pelosi's leaving who does she see is being the best to now fill her seat and where she can hand over the list of donors the database the role of Dex right that would potentially keep her interests and the interest of all of her supporters for these years who is it that she could hand this off to and

18:00definitely not Scott Weiner Weiner has his own agenda as we know all up and down california he's universally hated for so much of the legislation that he's pushed in sacrameno he's such a niche as this this this niche focus and that just would not gel with Pelosi's donors and her role at Dex base so she Pelosi can mentor can tutor can mold Connie Chan and that because she has no one else to work with you know this this is one of the easiest things that we can see is how Pelosi can just take over Chan and as many including you have said it's like Pelosi's running this campaign is the shadow candidate okay as long as it's not Weiner let's go back to the differences between the two yeah because to my eye and correct me if

19:03you're wrong Pelosi is an old timey democratic politician she's one of the remaining new dealers that still exist and her number one priority is to take care of the unions she's very close to the unions and if the unions are getting what they want and the democratic interest groups are getting what they want she feels like she's delivering Scott Weiner who you described as a niche politician is specifically about three things to my eye about housing about creating as much mixed use housing and low income housing is humanly possible going into single family home communities and just demolishing them and bringing in these monstrosities and forcing all of us to live above a pandemic stress he's all about decriminalizing sex crimes um whether it is statutory rape or sex crimes of another nature he's all about decriminalizing that and then transiting the kids he's a big

20:06believer in sex change operations for minors and I don't see Nancy Pelosi going hard on any of those subjects right it seems to be something that is a niche boutique thing in her eyes and missing the big picture and to the extent that she's weighed in on any of those subjects it's not her it's her daughter who was very involved with the women's caucus within the democratic party of California during the whole knee to era so decriminalizing sex crimes seems to be something that would likely offend someone like her yeah yeah of course and and this goes along with as I said that um you know Pelosi and her supporters and her donors and the legislation leaders and all of her clan and clique would not click with Scott weiner based on on these reasons and uh but I need to throw in here too that a lot of people have been giving credit to Scott weiner on housing

21:12he's like the yin b of yin b's uh but that's just the legislation he has authored a lot of bills that are pushing the bulldozing of the west side of San Francisco per se he has made all of these promises he's made people happy he's gotten the support of all these yin b a line groups but yet we don't see the the the fruit of this we just see the legislation and so uh and a lot of the campaign material I just got something showed up yesterday uh from from weiner in the mail where he talks about building housing but the housing hasn't been built it's been very minorly built so it's not like he's been out there and now you can look and see so even with that he's only been minorly effective so but but going back this this is the big a big dilemma for us here in San

22:15Francisco were the only voters that get to vote in this house race it's either Chan or weiner and were the ones that make the decision and uh going back for all these years if the house is at a two-year stint and he they have to keep running every two years to be reelected and Pelosi has one going all the way back and uh so she wants to cement that legacy and weiner is just not not there for a variety of reasons speaking of her legacy we had chucked haud formally meet the press on the radio program and Tony Hall the former supervisor in San Francisco on and they both said the same thing which is one of her worst impulses is if you get on the wrong side of her if you piss her off if you upset her that's the only thing that she can think about and she will spend the rest of her life trying to get back at you and she just can't get beyond that it's been that way her entire

23:20career stenny hoyer did something to her a million and one years ago that offended her and she's been punishing him ever since and that's just the way she's wired that's just the way she is she's got a grudge against bakaria she does so it looks like she's going to spend as the first female speaker the house someone who in another world would be doing victory laps right now with her last six months in office is going to spend all the time trying to kill scott weiner's career yeah and and you know what what's interesting is a lot of us are enjoying that because we want we want to see weiner go down and flames and this is also the big the clash of the egos you know the old the old school the old guard ego versus the the newer lgbt niche trans champion ego and and and we really would like to see weiner fail

24:24he deserves to fail because he's been such a a winner per se winner weiner uh and I I want to see him I want to see him go down and flames and even if it is a dud conny chance someone's going to take him out and uh he he also does the same thing weiner also will constantly call you out I don't know if you've been checking him out what what he uh how he posts on twitter on x but he is constantly berating anyone including trump the gop maga every other word out of his mouth he criticizes them takes every every opportunity and we're seeing the record the rhetoric that he's also uh scaling up against Chan as well well we saw that whole debacle with the conny Chan ai chatbot that if you asked it the right kind of questions would give you racist responses he takes it down but he had billboards

25:25across the city telling people to go to conny Chan dot ai and then one of conny Chan supporters vandalized the billboard and wrote scott weiner is white devil yeah that that's just that was just two blocks from that two blocks from me that that that was right over on the main street here yeah kudos to the to the tagger it's football season on polymarket trade your football predictions against other fans before and during the game you can even combine multiple trades with polymarket combos from okwwcfb new customers deposit ten dollars and get fifty dollars instantly to start trading eighteen plus c polymarket's terms of service for more information about restrictions and eligibility the polymarket app is an independent affiliate of polymarket us and not cftc regulated trading always involves risk complete loss can occur the fifty dollar offer is issued is not withdrawal of trading credit for use on the platform offer exclusively available to first-time depositors not available in all jurisdictions this is Dave robbers if you're heading into summer without a medical emergency kit you're taking a risk most people don't think about until it's too late summer coldslinger and can turn into sinus infections at last for weeks getting sick right before vacation can

26:28derail everything and we're traveling finding a doctor and pharmacy is stressful that's why I ordered medical emergency kit it's like having an emergency care and a pharmacy right at home it includes essential prescriptions like a moxasillin and generic z-pack to treat a wide range of common and serious illnesses so if you wake up sick at home or on the road you already have what you need no waiting for your doctor no hours at urgent care no pharmacy lines no co-pays just match your symptoms to the right prescription in your guidebook or call their telemedicine doctor standing by start on your med sooner and feel better faster every home needs at least one medical emergency kit 40 years online in minutes and it's shipped to your door and say $45 with promo code blue at urgentcaredkit.com slash blue that's promo code blue at urgentcaredkit.com slash blue. You know one of the other issues that Scott weiner has been a huge champion of is he for years has been sounding the alarm and trying to get the five county bay area transit tax is

27:29approved. He famously held a funeral for muni and Bart in San Francisco a few years ago and in November voters in the five bay area counties are going to vote on that transit tax to bail out Bart and in San Francisco a second tax to bail out muni how do you see the voters in the bay area reacting to those ballot measures so you have to die hard never you know and the anti-car pro bicycle pro pro public transit and they will do everything that they can to convince themselves their neighbors and everyone to to vote for this because we have to support the public even though it's dirty and there's needles and people smoking fentanyl and and still they're not you know the Bart and muni are not raining in their expenses they're they keep paying more and they're asking for more and where fairs go up service the clients and there's no accountability

28:37and this is a continued problem I mean it's not just with with this issue of course but they're not learning their lesson to cut back on this spending make best use of the money that you are getting stop stop screwing over the taxpayers and and and and and fix the problems make a leaner a leaner meaner machine and and but we know one of the big problems are the pensions and benefits and their retirement and all of that that the public employees are getting and that is another huge amazingly huge problem all up and down the state it's not just here what do you think Scott weener does if he loses this election because I can't see him just going away and what I fear is that he's going to run the replace route banta's attorney general and we're going to have this guy as a g of the state I don't I don't know about that would he go private sector

29:44that's it's another possibility but you know I've discussed this at length with with many people and we we think that he is pretty universally hated up and down the coast and one of the main reasons why he keeps succeeding in getting elected here in San Francisco is because this is his larger supporter base voter base if he tried what he's doing now and ran for office somewhere else or a a state wide office I think chances are he would not win I don't see him winning but you know maybe he would work for a nonprofit that seems to be a way to make money I think all right let's shift gears here for a second and talk about what Gavin Newsom is doing in his last six months as governor he oddly enough is trying to screw over fire victims by doing the solid for the public utilities by limiting their liability when they start fires that

30:48create billions of dollars of destruction the insurance companies and fire victims are pushing back on him but all of this leads to the question you're running for president you want to look like a guy who is run your state well and going out the door you're kicking people who lost everything down to their toothbrush it's a really bad look yeah it's a bad look is great sound bites for any opposition to him coming up in the next few years if he does actually pull the trigger or warrant for for office you know as I was alluding to be for it's hard to believe that there are politicians out there that that have such baggage and that we in San Francisco and in California have learned what it's like to be under the rule of these elected officials and then other states

31:48are across the country federally they don't see how bad he has run this state and and somehow they feel that this is a a great thing that he has done that he has done a great job as governor of California and based on that he deserves to run and win president so you know we really need to be collecting up a whole file that we can use against him which is already kind of bursting at the seams at this point it seems against him to try and push back against the presidency now yeah victims there's plenty of victims out there that have been verbally very vocal against him there's this latest thing that happened what was at late last night where the this bill that he suffered a defeat at you know he's trying to spin it that he actually won in a sense it was a

32:52small victory but the big picture he lost so how does that make him look on a national state not that good I think that you know this is unfinished business I think there's this problem with the with the the victims still need their right they're right in their redress and he's making it seem that he he's still got their backs when I don't think he does at all he's trying to protect the the interest and I don't think that I don't think that it's a good look for him and Randy a point that you make all the time is that all of this goes back to the French laundry well it it goes back to how Gavin Newsom started his first term as governor bailing out PG&E after the campfire when COVID happened and Gavin got caught at the French laundry without a mass-chugging $12,000 worth of wine he was at his buddy's birthday party his buddy the lobbyist for PG&E and as Gavin is just a few

33:59months out the door what is he trying to do limit the liability of so Caledison and PG&E everything goes back to PG&E with Gavin Newsom yeah yeah and that's that's that's a big a big problem for us because then who's gonna pay you have victims you have to you have damage you have destruction you have loss um are do you protect the insurance companies do you want the rates to go up do you want ultimately the taxpayers to be responsible for this we don't want that and and yet he doesn't seem to be care all right we're gonna have to leave it there Richie Greenberg thank you so much for stopping by on this edition of the accountability podcast you can listen to his podcast the really San Francisco podcast and follow him on x at Greenberg nation Richie thinks so much for stopping by thanks my pleasure and Randy that's gonna do it for us this week make sure to hit that like button and leave a comment tell us what you think about Daniel Laurie's plan in San Francisco Scott

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