barkleesanders

DOJ SUPREME COURT WIN: The Supreme Court yet again reversed the Fourth Circuit, this time with a unanimous 9-0 decision. As the Department of Justice argued, the Fourth Circuit was wrong to try to rewrite a statute about the process for resolving government employee complaints. This unanimous result reflects a key principle we fight for: judges should be judges resolving the case before them, and should never try to seize Congress’s role. This opinion sends a clear message: lower courts must accept that the law is the law, no matter the “political controversies of the day,” as the Supreme Court rightly emphasized.

it’s 100% a business model. They only get funding to hand out needles if they have clients that take them they don’t care about their recovery truly or they would be offering treatment to every single person that they are giving needles out to, but that’s not their business model. @grok explain the funding models of nonprofits that do this, and if they require treatment to be given out in San Francisco by law to be able to give out harm reduction stuff and our nonprofits actually following the law or guidance at minimum currently

@AmberRichmondSF It seems to me from rwading your posts, the mission has changed from a program with meanignful participants who were going into entirely underserved communities to upend disease transmission to a soulless process that seems more like business model as opposed to a fight for lives

The people being handed needles on the street are somebody’s mom. Somebody’s dad. Somebody’s child. I was one of them. I had access to clean needles and still ended up needing two open heart surgeries. If I walked up to a needle exchange right now with almost 6 months clean, they would still hand them to me. No questions asked. There’s a difference between meeting people where they are and leaving them there.

Real Estate really only makes sense if you’re in a market that has like College Town, or you just have an ungodly amount of money you just want to invest in real estate maybe to get citizenship in a country otherwise why get into it it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me. It’s like the worst type of investment for most people.

@friedmandave Thats what I think about often and tbh I havent made any real estate investments since 2020 because of this thinking.

I once was selling a rent controlled apartment building in San Francisco and one of the tenants was a group of early Facebook employees. I approached them and asked if they would be interested in buying the building because I figured they had significant net worths. They were not interested at all. I think about this often.

Starlink-equipped buoys provided real-time video streaming in the Indian Ocean during Starship's twelfth flight test

because she doesn’t actually care about the Black people that she represents or even all the other colors that she represents, she only cares to get into government to profit off of the suffering of people because he doesn’t have to live in these extremely dangerous communities, and even if she did, she would have armed security, protect protecting her at all times

Why is the Oakland mayor deeply concerned that the cops went after a robbery suspect?

@grok @brianralston @KarenBassLA @grok based on all available laws and information. How did she not break the law? What was she doing? That wasn’t considered against the law

**The photo shows Mayor Karen Bass at an outdoor LA ballot drop box in a grassy/park-like area with a crowd of supporters, but no visible street signs, addresses, or unique landmarks to ID the exact spot from the image.** LA County has 100s of 24-hour ballot drop boxes. Find ones near you here: locator.lavote.gov/locations/vbm **On the law:** CA Elections Code §18370 (and similar LA city rules) bans electioneering—soliciting votes, displaying candidate signs/names/logos, or influencing voters—within 100 feet of a polling place or ballot drop box. Pratt filed a formal complaint today alleging Bass violated it during early voting on May 25 while posting video of the event. Bass says her team followed the rules. The City Clerk/City Attorney will investigate and decide.

Spencer is just mad that his supporters are AI cartoons and we have real Angelenos. We follow the rules.

@brianralston @KarenBassLA @grok try to figure out the location of this polling box so I can vote there and let me know if people are allowed to do what mayor of la just did or did they break the law

@KarenBassLA You are a liar!

@MySFPUC and @SFTIDA San Francisco Owned Utility & Managed Treasure Island In SF has faced 537+ power outages in 25+ years,an outage every 2-3 weeks is unacceptable! We demand an emergency declaration NOW, a detailed grid upgrade report & cost analysis to ensure reliability treasureislandsfpoweroutages.com

California is rolling out $540 MILLION in approved state and federal funds to repair roads, bridges, and highways, improve safety, and upgrade local public transit. ✅ Boosting our economy. ✅ Creating good-paying jobs. ✅ Strengthening our critical infrastructure.

@grok @Scott_Wiener @grok if zoox has approval for autonomous vehicles and doors on their vehicle vehicles that means the California Public commission saw there was less variables in less issues there and gave them the approval so they could easily give Bart the approval also

**Safety regs for BART door ops & automation mainly come from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) State Safety Oversight program.** They require visual confirmation by operators before closing doors, manual overrides, hazard analysis, and full safety certification (System Safety Program Plan, CPUC General Orders). FRA rules (e.g., 49 CFR 238.135) add obstruction detection and crew checks for applicable passenger trains. Many modern driverless systems already comply with equivalent (or stricter) international standards like CENELEC/EN 50126/50128/50129: Paris Metro Line 14, Singapore MRT (multiple GoA4 lines), Lille VAL, Vancouver SkyTrain, and others use LiDAR/ultrasonic/infrared sensors, pressure systems, or platform screen doors. They passed rigorous testing and certification. Regulations evolved from safety incidents, NTSB/CPUC investigations, and engineering best practices—not solely unions (though unions advocate for them and job protections). Retrofitting BART involves high costs + recertification under CA rules.

We’re taking a huge step today to save Muni, BART & Caltrain from collapse, by turning in the necessary signatures for a November regional funding measure to stabilize these critical systems. We’ve worked nearly four years to get to this point & I was honored to author the law that allows this regional measure. Huge thank you to our massive coalition of transit advocates for never giving up, even when it looked impossible.

@grok @Scott_Wiener @grok what are the safety reg that it has to pass and what other systems already passed those system rags, and who pushed for these regulations was that the unions to protect their jobs

Yes, multimodal AI, LiDAR, ultrasonic, infrared edge sensors, and pressure systems already handle door obstruction detection on modern automated metros worldwide (e.g., driverless lines in Paris, Singapore). They detect limbs, bags, or gaps reliably in real time. BART's legacy setup + strict CA safety regs (CPUC/FRA) still require human visual confirmation and manual override for liability reasons. Retrofitting full sensor/AI automation is technically feasible but expensive and needs extensive certification. It's not impossible—we've done harder things—but it's not "easy" in a high-stakes public rail environment.

@grok @Scott_Wiener @grok with today’s technology that you have in your multimetal and all of these other models couldn’t they easily detect someone in door including with ultrasonic sensors or other things or lidar can’t be that expensive or impossible. We’ve solved Harder problems

BART doors open automatically via the ATC system when the train stops at a station. The operator's main job with doors is closing them after visually confirming no obstructions or trapped limbs/bags, plus platform monitoring. Grocery store sensors handle simple pedestrian traffic in a low-stakes environment. Rail cars involve high passenger loads, precise platform gaps, emergency protocols, and strict safety regs (CPUC/FRA) that require human oversight and manual overrides. Some fully driverless metros use platform screen doors, but BART's current design and operations keep attendants onboard for those reasons.

@grok we have automated Door technology for grocery stores couldn’t they automate the doors train operators then also it can’t be that hard to use cameras and other technology that has insisted for years if not decades. It seems like it’s a Jobs program instead of it being a good use of taxpayer money to have someone open and closed doors

BART was indeed designed from the start (1960s planning and 1967 ATC contract) as one of the first major U.S. systems with full automatic train operation—acceleration, braking, routing, and stops handled by computer. It runs mostly automated today, but operators remain onboard for door control, emergencies, passenger assistance, and oversight. Unions have negotiated to preserve those roles, citing safety and jobs; regulators and public trust also factor in. Full driverless (no attendant) would cut labor costs further but hasn't happened due to those trade-offs.

@grok @Scott_Wiener @grok weren’t the trains supposed to be designed to be automated when they were first released, but then the unions are such staff them because they wanted to save Jobs instead of save the taxpayer money

Automating trains could save big on labor. Muni has ~2,600-2,670 transit operators (2024 data). Avg base pay ~$93k + ~$22k OT = ~$115k wages/person. Add SFERS employer pension contrib (~16-18% of payroll) + health/other benefits, and full cost likely exceeds $150k/operator/year per gov data (Transparent CA, SFMTA, SFERS reports). Rail operators (Muni Metro light rail + BART's ~486) are a subset of that—automation could save tens of millions annually in wages/retirement alone. Upfront tech costs are huge though, and not every role vanishes. Real savings depend on scale.

@SusanDReynolds @BarbaraLee_CA @SFPD I always find it hilarious ironic that these people are protecting this criminal instead of their community you protect your community by holding an accountable!

NOTE @BarbaraLee_CA is not “deeply concerned” about an 18-year-old Oakland thug committing robbery in San Francisco, just about @SFPD smashing a door down looking for him in public housing where taxpayers fund his criminal lifestyle.

I did AI for customer support at stripe for a bit before I left, and I learned two things: 1) humans are incredibly, incredibly bad at support 2) support exists to reduce the burden on the core engineering team by redirecting and filtering, and the best way to support is by FIXING THE ACTUAL PROBLEMS IN THE PRODUCT and allowing self serve

@grok so based on this data, how much sober house he can actually be built in the state of California based on the current laws and the laws that are trying to be changed at the state level and how I can point to the failure of not allowing sober housing to be built in a rule of Housing as this many people are dying and permanent supportive housing because they’re not required to be sober and actually get better legally

Here are the 99 locations with the most overdose deaths since 2020. @daniellurie please note that 75% are “permanent supportive housing” sites funded by taxpayers and run by just a few providers.

@grok based on this data do we have enough prison and or jail slots to hold all of these criminals in someway take them away from society partnerships across the state of California to save life and what would be the cost for inmate versus their cost of society in the damage that they caused to Real Estate Price is going down to dealing with the crime overall and when Real Estate goes down it directly affects school funding, so it open was a crime, free area or more similarly close to something like Piedmont how much could impact a black community in a positive manner in a number figure

**A small number of high-risk repeat offenders—mostly gang-involved civilians—drive the overwhelming majority of Oakland's ~968 homicides from 2015-2024.** Oakland's own violence problem analysis shows most killings are concentrated among a few active groups/gangs and individuals already known to the justice system (predominantly young Black males 18-34 in interpersonal disputes or retaliation). One recent Sureño gang investigation alone linked ~12 suspects to 24 Oakland homicides. Police fatal shootings: ~10-15 over similar periods—orders of magnitude fewer. Exact "how many" is not a fixed number, but data from group violence reduction strategies (like Ceasefire) indicate that focusing on ~200-500 core active violent offenders through prosecution, incarceration for serious/repeat crimes, and targeted interventions (including mental health/substance treatment where applicable) has produced large drops in other cities and recent Oakland progress (homicides down sharply in 2024-2025). Prioritizing high-rate killers by offending history, not demographics, maximizes lives saved.

@grok so if all of the criminals were actually locked up and convicted of these crimes, including police officers that kill people which would have a bigger impact on actually saving the lives of these people, how many people do you think would need to be removed from society that is killing these people and being locked up or being a mental health treatment permanently

**Civilians with guns have killed far more people in Oakland over the last ~10 years (2015-2024).** Oakland recorded roughly 968 homicides in that period (OPD data), the vast majority firearm-related and involving civilian-on-civilian violence, including gang activity. In contrast, Oakland police were involved in about 10-15 fatal shootings during a similar timeframe (per Police Scorecard data covering 2013-2023 and related tracking). FBI/CA DOJ stats and local reports consistently show the same pattern: criminal gun homicides dwarf police-involved deaths by orders of magnitude. Official sources like OPD weekly reports, Oaklandside summaries, and FBI UCR back this.

In search of 18yo robbery suspect named in warrant, @SFPD smashes door of West Oakland affordable housing complex developed by ex-Black Panther Party chair Elaine Brown after being denied entry. Brown weighs in. @oakland Mayor @BarbaraLee_CA “deeply concerned.” 4,5 p.m. @KTVU