President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administrator of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) proclaimed in September 1938: “We are going to spend and spend and spend, and tax and tax and tax, and elect and elect and elect.”  

In a 1958 book about Sir Winston Churchill, the author described a woman who gushed to Churchill: “Doesn’t it thrill you, Mr. Churchill, to know that every time you make a speech the hall is packed to overflowing?” 

John Adams observed: “Public business must always be done by somebody.  It will be done by somebody or other:  if wise men decline it, others will not; if honest man refuse it, others will not.”  Someone else proclaimed: “Nothing intoxicates some people like a sip of authority.”

Crime seems to be the only San Francisco big business that escapes city government meddling, which is why District Attorney Chesa Boudin must be recalled.  Like his predecessor, George Gascon, currently the subject of a recall campaign in Los Angeles County, Boudin acts as if it’s not among his responsibilities to prosecute criminals as he protects lawbreakers rather than criminal victims. 

As the beat goes on at City Hall, the “City Family” has already begun to arrange office exchanges. Lack of professional experience is no impediment.