The Billionaires’ Crying Game

Tim Redmond schools Micahel Moritz, the"whining" billionaire publisher of the San Francisco Standard, who complained recently in the New York Times that the left has run SF into the ground. Writes Redmond, who edits the scrappy 48 Hills:

"I am getting tired of fighting this fundamental misconception about San Francisco politics. The progressives aren’t in charge; the moderates are, because they have the mayor’s ear, and any problems that exist are more the fault of the billionaire class than they are of anyone on the left.

"if, for example, the 60 or so billionaires who live in San Francisco, and the hundreds more who have wealth of more than $100 million, each put up (or were taxed at) just three percent of their wealth, the city would have enough money to house all the homeless people they keep complaining about."

As I recently told billionaire Ron Conway at a tech forum, plutocrats like him (and Moritz) and their political pawns run this City. San Francisco hasn't had a progressive mayor in 40 years, Redmond reminds Moritz. This broken City, with its homeless squalor and gaping wealth divide and boarded-up downtown, is on YOU, I told Conway.

Mayor London Breed does whatever Conway and his crowd tell her. Breed has no vision for uplifting SF. She's a corporate stooge.

Full disclosure: I was called on by Moritz to advise him before he launched the Standard. Moritz is a former journalist, and the Standard has a well-paid newsroom that has broken some good stories. But editorially, the Standard reflects Moritz's moneyed perspective. I should know: I recently emailed him that he should hire me as a columnist to broaden his daily's perspective. He quickly shot me down.

Michael Moritz