The ”More Housing“ Propagandists, Great Highway Bandits and Other Scallywags
• • • • • • • • • • October 2025 • • • • • • • • • •
ACalifornia taxpayer recently moaned to me: “I owe the government so much money it doesn’t know whether to throw me out or recognize me as a foreign power.
In 2022, before “Draft Dodger” Trump, there were about 3,100,000 federal employees and about 30,000 City & County of San Francisco employees in a then municipality of approximately 822,000 residents. San Francisco’s population has now declined to 767,000.
Yet, some City Hall denizens spew propaganda that more and more housing is needed. The Mighty Mayor, fresh after we recalled Stupidvisor 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 Parkmerced with its 3,000-plus empty units. Stonestown Galleria still hasn’t even broken ground on the 350 units for which it secured building permits 3 years ago.
At this writing, Mayor Lurie hasn’t appointed an Engardio successor, but only candidates who champion “upzoning” need apply. That servant of the people will then face District 4 voters in an election in June 2026, and be retired to simple citizenhood by anti-upzoning citizens who overwhelmingly oppose such home derogation and demand a supervisor who represents their desires, not Room 200s!
Additionally, the lawsuit brought by Matthew Boschetto, Albert Choward, and the great Lisa Arjes of the Sunset was postponed from November 10th until January 5, 2026, by the San Francisco Superior Court judge to whom it’s been assigned because of another case, whose trial will not be completed until the end of November.
The damage in taxpayer funds and vehicular access has been done. But the Superior Court will decide the legal issues by April 5, 2026, and, barring a City Attorney appeal to the Court of Appeal, restoration of the Great Highway can start at enormous expenses, duplicating its original cost. Maybe Engardio and his supervisorial buddies can raise money from their billionaire campaign backers to destroy it!”
The plaintiffs allege the Great Highway’s closure is a matter of statewide concern, and no court has ever upheld a local initiative (i.e., 2024’s Proposition K) that constitutes, under California law, a matter of statewide concern. Moreover, the offending November 2024 ballot proposition (Proposition K) was subject to an Environmental Impact Report (“EIR”), which Engardio and City Attorney David Chiu never secured.
The damage in taxpayer funds and vehicular access has been done. But the Superior Court will decide the legal issues by April 5, 2026, and, barring a City Attorney appeal to the Court of Appeal, restoration of the Great Highway can start at enormous expenses, duplicating its original cost. Maybe Engardio and his supervisorial buddies can raise money from their billionaire campaign backers to destroy it!
Speaking of “Bone Spur” Trump, he promised last month to rename Veterans Day on November 11th as “Victory Day for World War I” and simultaneously designate May 8 as “Victory Day for World War II.” May 8, 1945, represents the day when the war against Germany officially ended World War II in Europe. Veterans Day used to be called Armistice Day after WWI (in which my father served as an Army corporal in the American Expeditionary War in France and after November 11, 1918, in the American Mission to Armenia until March 1919) to remember the men who served in WWI and was later expanded to honor all our military veterans, becoming a holiday in 1968. A Wall Street Journal reporter wrote last month that the intent by Trump to make Veterans Day on November 11th an acknowledgment only of WWI could be considered by some Americans as barring veterans who served in wars such as Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iran. Either way, Trump dodged military service. There’s good news for U.S. Navy acolytes. The USS Hornet, berthed at Pier 3, Alameda Point for years and suffering little attention to its Sea, Air & Space museum from visitors, will move to a refurbished Pier 35 in San Francisco next year, thanks to Sam Lamonica, its board chairman, and Port of San Francisco, led by chief executive Elaine Curis. We need the Hornet and its historic WWII accomplishments in what used to be a “Navy town” in and after WWII.
Meanwhile, my pal John Horgan, San Mateo Daily Journal columnist, took readers down Memory Lane last month, reminding them of Marine World/Africa USA, which was east of Highway 101 in Redwood Shores until 1985 before shuffling off to Vallejo. It’s now Oracle Corporation. How about drag races at the Half Moon Bay Airport? Gone like Tanforan, Bay Meadows, Malibu Grand Prix and Marine World/Africa USA in San Mateo County.
Political writer and historian, Dan Walters, whose daughter (Staci Slaughter) is Mayor Daniel Lurie’s Chief of Staff, noted last month the array of eight times the registered Democrats in San Francisco as Republicans and Democrats carry other Bay Area counties by 5-1 or 4-1. All the U.S. House of Representatives and California legislative offices are occupied by Democrats. So, too, do Democrats control boards of supervisors, city councils, and school districts governing boards and other elected local bodies and public offices.
Walters points out, however, that middle-of-the-road Democrats are beginning to occupy such elective offices, including our mayor, Daniel Lurie, and San Jose’s Matt Mahan. San Jose’s population (over 1,000,000) is the largest in the Bay Area. I can recall in 1953 when I landed in Northern California in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War, it was about 55,000!
A recent analysis of SF voting showed that the moderates outnumbered our leftish supervisors. Walter notes our state unemployment rate tops all other states, plus we host one-half of our country’s homeless people. I pity Oakland residents with their left-wing mayor, Barbara Lee.
Meanwhile, my not-so-favorite endeavor, the California High Speed Rail Authority, continues to embarrass us dreamers of the 1990s in the legislature. The U.S. Secretary of Transportation stopped transmission of $4,000,000 in federal funds to such project. California’s Attorney-General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit last month claiming that Sean Daffy and Federal Railroad Administration Administrator Drew Feeley violated federal law by doing so and are now attempting to give $2,400,000 of it to other projects. The High-Speed Rail Authority still has a pipe dream that it can raise private money to secure the currently $35,000,000 cost of the Central Valley line, which cannot function with competition from Amtrak, lacking public funds from taxpayers. Bonta’s lawsuit is a loser and California voters who demonstrated support for high-speed rail in 2008 need either better governing board leadership or a return to the plan voters were presented in 2008. As a Wall StreetJournal letter-writer from Morago proclaimed last July: “Sacramento Democrats have every incentive to let the project take forever and cost an infinite amount of money.” Its sorry failure still constitutes cash for construction companies and their union employees.
State Senator Scott Weiner, our aspiring Member of Congress, can do battle with Congressional Republicans if he sinks my friend and fellow War Memorial Board of Trustees member, Paul Pelosi’s wife, Nancy. Or if Nancy doesn’t, at 85 years of age, run again, her daughter Christine Pelosi, who was a classmate and friend of my son, Shepard Kopp, at Hastings Law School, may. Neither Nancy nor Christine Pelosi will cover the Sunset or Richmond with high-rise buildings, while Weiner would do so if possible.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform, aka “FAIR”, reports the illegal alien population set a record of 18,600,000 in January 2025. That’s a 28.2% increase during President Joe Biden’s tenure. In July 1984, the Census Bureau estimated net international migration of almost 2,800,000 in one year. It’s estimated that in 2023, there were 16,800,000 illegal aliens in the USA. It doesn’t stop rising.
It reminds me of public transit farebox recovery. In 2019, the average fare box recovery in the largest transit agencies was 35%. In 2021, it declined to 12.8%- understandably. It’s still in the sewer, and we’re going to be asked accordingly to pay one-half cent more in sales tax to BART, Muni, Samtrans, Caltrain and Contra Costa’s system. If passed, the regressive tax would go over 10% in some counties, sponsored by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).
Before we forget Engardio’s recall, I invoke the surprising SF Police Officers Association endorsement of his retention. After the election, I discovered that the endorsement wasn’t the sense of the entire membership, or even its board of directors. It was surreptitiously foisted on voters (together with a $25,000 campaign contribution) by one person, their then-union president! That’s right. Under POA rules, she (Commander Tracy McGay) had such power. (Service promotion to Commander, McGay’s no longer able to be president) As the “cop on the beat”, you pay your income dues, then shut up! That’s a new one for me after 65 years in SF politics! Meanwhile, we still have two Commissions to supervise the Police Department (not just one). Wait for Mayor Lurie’s two special commissions to tell us how to eliminate commission redundancy in City Hall. As one wag observed: “There are more than 200,000 useless words in the English language, and at some committee meetings, you hear them all.” Then again: “A committee usually keeps minutes and wastes hours.”
Quentin Kopp is a former San Francisco supervisor, state senator, SF Ethics Commission member, president of the California High Speed Rail Authority governing board and retired Superior Court judge.
October 2025
