It is by now manifestly clear to anyone who cares about San Francisco’s financial health that we cannot place all our hopes in a thriving tourism industry. Much as we’dlike to keep welcoming the world to its most beautiful city, there are too many risks.A cruise line could go belly up, hospitality workers leave on a protracted strike — each unforeseen event denying The City’s economy substantial sums of visitor dollars. There are earthquakes to consider, and terrorist attacks.
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This is more than a little disturbing. A new national survey of 14,000 students at 50 universities shows that seniors at prestigious University of California, Berkeley, actually knew 6 percentage points less about American history, government, current events and the market economy than the entering freshmen. At equally prestigious Stanford University, seniors’ scores in the 60-question, multiple-choice test were less than 1 percent better than what incoming freshmen knew.
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So it’s here, the much anticipated day when the historic Emporium, done over as a state-of-the-art shopping mall, opens to all its much deserved fanfare. By its nature, the Westfield San Francisco Centre rekindles the spirit of commerce that made The City one of the world’s greatest metropolitan centers.
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Authorities have traced the contaminated spinach that has killed as many as three people and sickened at least 173 to a few counties in California’s Salinas Valley, but let’s don’t stop the investigative work too soon. There’s a lesson to be learned here, an important one about the dangers of superstitious, leftist twaddle, and the threat it poses to human life.
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When a candidate for governor starts running against the president, and on top of that promises to make major foreign policy decisions from Sacramento, it’s a fair guess he’s run out of ideas. So is Democrat Phil Angelides conceding defeat through desperation? You do wonder. Polls show Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger holding a double-digit lead over the state treasurer, and Angelides’ internal surveys could show a hardening of that lead. Just a few days, ago Sacramento’s oracular columnist Dan Walters speculated about a landslide for the former movie action hero.
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At first glance, it might seem a bit Scrooge-like to be congratulating Gov. Schwarzenegger for vetoing a last-minute bill that would have doubled workers’ compensation payments for permanent disability injuries such as losing a leg. But the governor did the right thing for California’s strongly recovering economy by holding the line on a key factor of workers’ compensation reform.
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Nancy Pelosi is a compelling national figure, destined even — if November’s political stars align in her favor — to be an historic figure. San Francisco’s very own member of Congress, if enough Democrats win seats in its chamber, could become the first female speaker of the House of Representatives, second in line to become president.
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If the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission was following that old-folk advice about training a mule — "First you hit it over the head with a 2-by-4 to get its attention" — then its threat to sue Daly City over delays in fixing the recurrent city line flooding probably succeeded.So now it is time for both city governments to meet and hammer out a realistic and practical program to double the drainage capacity of the Vista Grande basin. Daly City stormwater overflows at the San Francisco city line during particularly heavy winter rains every few years.
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We wonder if the young Thomas Alva Edison, called "addled" by his first despairing teacher, would have been arrested under San Francisco’s newest crackdown on truancy. It’s not an entirely fanciful question.
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Of course it’s true that, even when a district attorney starts winning more convictions, we still don’t have an exact index to that elusive goal called a safe city. But Kamala Harris, San Francisco’s DA, deserves appreciation for raising the felony conviction rate nearly 15 percent since winning office two years ago.
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URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/archive/19/19?page=454&L=registration.register&quicktabs_1=0
