By Mark Pearson
Here is another example of history repeating itself. Back in the seventeenth-century Russia (Not to be confused with the USSR or communism) Czarina Catherine, otherwise known as “the great” had a confidante and close advisor by the name of Admiral Potemkin. At times Catherine would tell the admiral that she would like to travel out in the countryside and pay a visit to one of her cities or towns. The admiral would tell her that it wasn’t advisable at that time for some reason or another but it could be arranged in a month or two. In the meantime, he would round up a company of soldiers and proceed to the town that she wanted to visit and force the local peasants to completely clean up the place.
When this was done to his satisfaction The Czarina would pay a visit to the town and would be impressed with how clean the place was and how well her subjects were doing. Of course, this was a complete scam on his part to cover up the fact that the place was a pigsty and had just been cleaned up just to impress her.
Several years ago when I was still working in the grocery business, the company implemented a plan called Show and Tell. What was proposed was for the employees to completely clean the store remove all the nonessential stock from the back room and hide it in a semi-trailer that was parked out of sight in the back of the store. After a few days, all of the store managers would descend upon the place along with all the highly paid headquarters personnel. The managers would be shown around the nicely cleaned store and told how this is how a store should look like all the time and wasn’t it wonderful how the store looked and all the other store managers should have their stores looking just like ours.
They even had some of the non-union supervisors come in and work even though there were some of our own employees who were only getting part-time hours who could do the same work that these supervisors were doing. As a union steward at the time, I called one of them on it and told him that he was in violation of the contract by doing this work thereby replacing a union worker. His response was, Well if you want you can play your union games I won’t stop you!” I then asked him wasn’t it just what he was doing by playing this charade and making all the managers think that this store is normally kept this way?
He wasn’t too pleased with my remarks but I didn’t expect him to be. Later as I spoke to other employees about what I had said to him, I proceeded to give them a short history lesson as I am obliged to do from time to time. I told them about the Czarina and the admiral and how it was similar to what was actually going on with this “show and tell” farce. From then on every time we were put through this ordeal and all the extra work it entailed, we referred to it as pulling an “Admiral Potemkin”.
That was then, this is now. California governor Gavin Newsom has just pulled an “Admiral Potemkin” on the inhabitants of San Francisco. Think about it. He has a homeless problem that is astronomical and it is a crisis of his own making. He, along with the city mayor created this mess by designating San Francisco as a sanctuary city that has caused all of these tent cities to spring up on practically every sidewalk and street in the city. Drug needles, human excrement, and all sorts of trash imaginable litter every flat surface and the stench is unbearable. Business owners as well as patrons have to put up with this as well as the tourist trade. Millions of dollars in revenue are lost to the city and the taxpayers are left fitting the bill along with having to clean up the disgusting mess. So what does the governor do? He orders the city employees to totally whitewash, clean, and re-paint practically the whole city. How much are these employees getting paid for overtime and how much extra help is being added to the workforce? Who is paying for all of this and why aren’t all these homeless people being hired or forced to help clean up the mess that they made? Instead, Governor Newsom is moving them off somewhere and placing them out of sight just to impress Premier Chi, Biden, and all the other dignitaries who are attending the summit that is being held here.
We are now watching another “Admiral Potemkin” being played right before our eyes.
What a farce this has turned out to be and why is this man still governor?
Again, like I have stated in previous articles it is amazing how often history repeats itself.