53percenter's Blog

One-party blue city San Francisco has a corruption problem.

Turns out the sewage on the streets isn’t the only thing filthy about San Francisco. Its man in charge of that clean-up, Mohammed Nuru, was busted with a septic tank full of corruption charges.

According to the San Francisco Examiner:

In the biggest public corruption scandal to shake City Hall since 2015, [San Francisco Public Works Director Mohammed] Nuru and local entrepreneur Nick Bovis of famed Union Square sports bar Lefty O’Doul’s have each been charged with one count of wire fraud.

Nuru, 57, and Bovis, 56, allegedly attempted to bribe an airport commissioner to help win a bid for a restaurant lease at San Francisco International Airport in exchange for an envelope full of cash and an apparent vacation.

The alleged kickback scheme was just one of five that federal authorities described in a complaint released Tuesday after surveilling Nuru and Bovis with FBI wiretaps and undercover operators since at least 2018.

The allegations against Nuru also involve sharing a $2,070 bottle of wine with a billionaire developer in China and having city contractors work on his vacation home near the Mendocino National Forest.

 

The detailed descriptions of the string of corruption crimes Nuru was involved in must have made him a lawman’s dream, given the large number of violations they were able to demonstrate, a veritable sewage pit of systemic corruption. 

Nuru, whose Twitter handle was “Mr. Clean,”  and last seen in the news as the chief of San Francisco’s famous “poop patrols” now faces charges in pay-to-play set-ups for homeless toilet contracts, a bribery plot to an airport commissioner who said no, money from developers from China, and forcing city workers to fix up his planned retirement estate for free or nearly free in what lawmen said was a bid to keep contracts coming. The Examiner says the retirement hideaway is in Mendocino, but SFGate says it’s Colusa County, same obscure place ex-Gov. Jerry Brown retired to. If the latter is correct, it probably points to some additional digging to be done by lawmen on why that pair is so close they choose to retire together to that same little-known place with no electricity.

It gets worse. What the FBI found was just a Tuesday snapshot, what’s really been going on is a long deep intense sewage sludge act of crimes. There are signs it’s all over. YouTube shows videos of all this guy’s travels to fancy places like Spain. Spain, really? 

This piece, written nearly ten years ago by the HuffPost, described the problems with putting this guy in his $300,000 a year job (his street sweepers reportedly make six figure salaries, too) at Department of Public Works. It should make anyone blanch. Emphasis mine:

Nuru’s work at SLUG [an NGO called the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners] drew notice of then-Mayor Willie Brown, who took Nuru (who had already volunteered on two of Brown’s electroal campaigns) under his wing in 2000 and hired him as DPW’s second-in-command, making him the city’s point man on graffiti cleanup. Nuru’s program, Operation Scrub Down, which involved spraying down city streets with a high-pressure hose and confiscating shopping carts filled with the belongings of homeless people, earned Nuru the nickname “Mr. Clean.”

The project proved controversial when homeless advocates complained that it violated the civil rights of the people whose belongings were confiscated.

In the years since Nuru departed SLUG, the group has since shut down operations. [Like the Clinton Foundation did? -ed]

During his tenure at DPW, a series of allegations of ethical improprieties began to swirl around Nuru. It was claimed that he broke city rules by replacing city employees with SLUG trainees, pushed pork-loaded street cleaning contracts to his former organization and charged the city over $100,000 to clean up vacant lots near his home in the Bayview.

Citing his work as City Attorney investigating Nuru, Herrera charged that, “for ten years, Nuru’s questionable ethics and repeated misappropriation of taxpayer dollars didn’t seem to merit a slap on the wrist from Ed Lee. Now, as Mayor, Ed Lee thinks it merits a promotion.”

This guy’s been filthy for a long long time, it’s been out there and nothing happened, at least not during the Obama years. Nuru, though is tied to every element of San Francisco’s blue city aristocracy — Willie Brown, Kamala Harris, Ed Lee, Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown…which should make him a heckuva witness.

As Nuru was apparently lining his pockets, the city on his watch turned into a hellhole, a place where apps were developed to show visitors where the poop was, and poop-covered maps were created showing the extent of the vileness in the city, which was driving convention visitors away. This, despite the DPW’s $312 million budget and $5.6 billion with a ‘b’ capital portfolio.

It was so bad residents were last seen conducting “boulder warfare” in a desperate bid to keep the homeless from camping out on their sidewalks. The boulders, of course, were removed. Last year, I wrote this:

And yes, sure enough, it is the same people who run the unresponsive poop patrols who had that get-go to clear the boulders — the San Francisco Department of Public Works, run by one Mohammed Nuru, quoted extensively in both the poop patrol pieces and the decision to remove the reactionary boulders.  Same guy.  He can’t keep the neighborhood clean, but oh, he’s Johnny on the spot when it comes time to clear the anti-camping boulders.

It not only shows that taxpaying residents of the city are desperate for some kind of relief, but also shows that the city doesn’t actually care.  It’s got a homeless empire to defend.  So it’s getting Hobbesian as the city gets mired in special interest groups seeking to defend their interests, and to heck with a public polity.

and in 2018, this:

The root of the problem is in three things: the incentivization of homelessness, which draws street poopers from all corners of the world to the fair city, free to do their business. San Francisco spends $279 million on homelessness ‘programs’ having raised the amount $29 million this year, which is a great thing for bureaucrats, but serves as a magnet for more homeless to come in as mendicants of the bureaucrats. One hand washes the other. There are ‘navigation‘ programs, pregnant women programs, housing subsidies to non-profits to provide housing to the homeless, public-private partnerships, Homeward Bound, Operation Outreach, public toilets, and well, now we see Poop City as the current sum result. Throwing more money onto the problem will just create … more poop.
 

The city went downhill, not just from liberal policies, but a raw sewage pit of corruption, decisions made for personal benefit instead of the city’s interests. 

All during the Obama years as this guy made his rise, and the blue city consolidated, Nuru seemed to be protected.

Now he’s not. And opening that septic tank is one smelly project indeed. One only hopes that Nuru, the protected rat-king of corruption, isn’t the only one who’s going to be circling the drain when this gets sorted out. In a one-party blue state, the corruption runs very very deep.

Image credit: YouTube screen shot, KPIX

One-party blue city San Francisco has a corruption problem.

Turns out the sewage on the streets isn’t the only thing filthy about San Francisco. Its man in charge of that clean-up, Mohammed Nuru, was busted with a septic tank full of corruption charges.

According to the San Francisco Examiner:

In the biggest public corruption scandal to shake City Hall since 2015, [San Francisco Public Works Director Mohammed] Nuru and local entrepreneur Nick Bovis of famed Union Square sports bar Lefty O’Doul’s have each been charged with one count of wire fraud.

Nuru, 57, and Bovis, 56, allegedly attempted to bribe an airport commissioner to help win a bid for a restaurant lease at San Francisco International Airport in exchange for an envelope full of cash and an apparent vacation.

The alleged kickback scheme was just one of five that federal authorities described in a complaint released Tuesday after surveilling Nuru and Bovis with FBI wiretaps and undercover operators since at least 2018.

The allegations against Nuru also involve sharing a $2,070 bottle of wine with a billionaire developer in China and having city contractors work on his vacation home near the Mendocino National Forest.

 

The detailed descriptions of the string of corruption crimes Nuru was involved in must have made him a lawman’s dream, given the large number of violations they were able to demonstrate, a veritable sewage pit of systemic corruption. 

Nuru, whose Twitter handle was “Mr. Clean,”  and last seen in the news as the chief of San Francisco’s famous “poop patrols” now faces charges in pay-to-play set-ups for homeless toilet contracts, a bribery plot to an airport commissioner who said no, money from developers from China, and forcing city workers to fix up his planned retirement estate for free or nearly free in what lawmen said was a bid to keep contracts coming. The Examiner says the retirement hideaway is in Mendocino, but SFGate says it’s Colusa County, same obscure place ex-Gov. Jerry Brown retired to. If the latter is correct, it probably points to some additional digging to be done by lawmen on why that pair is so close they choose to retire together to that same little-known place with no electricity.

It gets worse. What the FBI found was just a Tuesday snapshot, what’s really been going on is a long deep intense sewage sludge act of crimes. There are signs it’s all over. YouTube shows videos of all this guy’s travels to fancy places like Spain. Spain, really? 

This piece, written nearly ten years ago by the HuffPost, described the problems with putting this guy in his $300,000 a year job (his street sweepers reportedly make six figure salaries, too) at Department of Public Works. It should make anyone blanch. Emphasis mine:

Nuru’s work at SLUG [an NGO called the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners] drew notice of then-Mayor Willie Brown, who took Nuru (who had already volunteered on two of Brown’s electroal campaigns) under his wing in 2000 and hired him as DPW’s second-in-command, making him the city’s point man on graffiti cleanup. Nuru’s program, Operation Scrub Down, which involved spraying down city streets with a high-pressure hose and confiscating shopping carts filled with the belongings of homeless people, earned Nuru the nickname “Mr. Clean.”

The project proved controversial when homeless advocates complained that it violated the civil rights of the people whose belongings were confiscated.

In the years since Nuru departed SLUG, the group has since shut down operations. [Like the Clinton Foundation did? -ed]

During his tenure at DPW, a series of allegations of ethical improprieties began to swirl around Nuru. It was claimed that he broke city rules by replacing city employees with SLUG trainees, pushed pork-loaded street cleaning contracts to his former organization and charged the city over $100,000 to clean up vacant lots near his home in the Bayview.

Citing his work as City Attorney investigating Nuru, Herrera charged that, “for ten years, Nuru’s questionable ethics and repeated misappropriation of taxpayer dollars didn’t seem to merit a slap on the wrist from Ed Lee. Now, as Mayor, Ed Lee thinks it merits a promotion.”

This guy’s been filthy for a long long time, it’s been out there and nothing happened, at least not during the Obama years. Nuru, though is tied to every element of San Francisco’s blue city aristocracy — Willie Brown, Kamala Harris, Ed Lee, Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown…which should make him a heckuva witness.

As Nuru was apparently lining his pockets, the city on his watch turned into a hellhole, a place where apps were developed to show visitors where the poop was, and poop-covered maps were created showing the extent of the vileness in the city, which was driving convention visitors away. This, despite the DPW’s $312 million budget and $5.6 billion with a ‘b’ capital portfolio.

It was so bad residents were last seen conducting “boulder warfare” in a desperate bid to keep the homeless from camping out on their sidewalks. The boulders, of course, were removed. Last year, I wrote this:

And yes, sure enough, it is the same people who run the unresponsive poop patrols who had that get-go to clear the boulders — the San Francisco Department of Public Works, run by one Mohammed Nuru, quoted extensively in both the poop patrol pieces and the decision to remove the reactionary boulders.  Same guy.  He can’t keep the neighborhood clean, but oh, he’s Johnny on the spot when it comes time to clear the anti-camping boulders.

It not only shows that taxpaying residents of the city are desperate for some kind of relief, but also shows that the city doesn’t actually care.  It’s got a homeless empire to defend.  So it’s getting Hobbesian as the city gets mired in special interest groups seeking to defend their interests, and to heck with a public polity.

and in 2018, this:

The root of the problem is in three things: the incentivization of homelessness, which draws street poopers from all corners of the world to the fair city, free to do their business. San Francisco spends $279 million on homelessness ‘programs’ having raised the amount $29 million this year, which is a great thing for bureaucrats, but serves as a magnet for more homeless to come in as mendicants of the bureaucrats. One hand washes the other. There are ‘navigation‘ programs, pregnant women programs, housing subsidies to non-profits to provide housing to the homeless, public-private partnerships, Homeward Bound, Operation Outreach, public toilets, and well, now we see Poop City as the current sum result. Throwing more money onto the problem will just create … more poop.
 

The city went downhill, not just from liberal policies, but a raw sewage pit of corruption, decisions made for personal benefit instead of the city’s interests. 

All during the Obama years as this guy made his rise, and the blue city consolidated, Nuru seemed to be protected.

Now he’s not. And opening that septic tank is one smelly project indeed. One only hopes that Nuru, the protected rat-king of corruption, isn’t the only one who’s going to be circling the drain when this gets sorted out. In a one-party blue state, the corruption runs very very deep.

Image credit: YouTube screen shot, KPIX

Late in 2019, Boeing was awarded a $265.2 million contract modification for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense anti-ballistic missile system (GMD).  This award shows a strong commitment from the federal government to upgrade and continue funding the only technology available to protect American citizens from a long-range missile attack. The emerging threat coming from Iran shows the need for upgrading the last line of defense to a potential nuclear missile attack targeting American cities.

The Trump Doctrine, as it relates to Iran, is simple.

According to President Donald J. Trump, speaking on Jan. 8, 2020, “As long as I am president of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.” The president recognizes through his actions and words that a strong missile defense system is the last line of defense to protect American citizens on American soil if, in the future, Iran does acquire one nuclear weapon beyond his presidency.

The GMD program is the only technology that can protect the homeland from intercontinental missile attacks with either a conventional or nuclear payload. It is important for Congress and the Pentagon to continue support for further deployment of these defenses now with the threats coming from rogue nations North Korea and Iran, and traditional adversaries Russia and China, which are clearly in possession of nuclear devices of varying sophistication.

On July 1, 2019, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran exceeded its limit on its stockpile of enriched uranium, putting concerns about an Iranian nuclear weapon back in the headlines. Iran then proclaimed it had enriched uranium to about 4.5% purity.  Since then, Iran has announced numerous other accelerations of its nuclear program that specifically exceed the provisions of the Iran nuclear deal and shorten the time it would take to build a nuclear weapon. For these, and other reasons, President Trump withdrew the United States from the unratified agreement with Iran that was designed to limit their nuclear progression. Couple this with Iran’s recent ballistic missile attacks in the region and the need for continued GMD funding becomes apparent.

Despite the new contract, GMD is not in good shape. Barely one percent of the U.S. military budget is spent on missile defense, and only a fraction of that goes to defense of the homeland. GMD is facing challenges in assuring the reliability of its interceptor missiles and preserving the supply chain for essential parts as the system ages. As it grows older, the sole defense of America against a long-range missile attack is gradually degrading. This is in no small part to a handful of bureaucrats at the Pentagon who have undermined the program and the Trump efforts to strengthen our national defense infrastructure.

Earlier in 2019 an effective pause was placed on the GMD putting millions of Americans and our national economy in jeopardy. Despite the pushback many elected politicians disagreed with the unelected bean counters at the Pentagon. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) argued on January 17th of last year, “Missile defense is vital to securing our homeland, our forces abroad and our allies, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.” He made the case that the Trump Administration was going in the right direction with the release of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Review, including “smart and strategic policies that will guide our missile defenses and posture to counter our adversaries through an increased focus on advanced technology.”  These are laudable goals that have not yet been met.

It is time for the bureaucrats to catch up to the president’s rhetoric and promises to do more to protect America from Iran, China, North Korea, Russia and any other nations, or non-state actors, who want to fire a missile at American citizens. American citizens cannot afford 13 days, or 13 minutes, of nuclear threat.

Phil Kiver, Ph.D. is an Army veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He received his doctorate in Strategic Studies at Henley-Putnam University.

Image credit: U.S. Missile Defense Agency, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0

Late in 2019, Boeing was awarded a $265.2 million contract modification for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense anti-ballistic missile system (GMD).  This award shows a strong commitment from the federal government to upgrade and continue funding the only technology available to protect American citizens from a long-range missile attack. The emerging threat coming from Iran shows the need for upgrading the last line of defense to a potential nuclear missile attack targeting American cities.

The Trump Doctrine, as it relates to Iran, is simple.

According to President Donald J. Trump, speaking on Jan. 8, 2020, “As long as I am president of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.” The president recognizes through his actions and words that a strong missile defense system is the last line of defense to protect American citizens on American soil if, in the future, Iran does acquire one nuclear weapon beyond his presidency.

The GMD program is the only technology that can protect the homeland from intercontinental missile attacks with either a conventional or nuclear payload. It is important for Congress and the Pentagon to continue support for further deployment of these defenses now with the threats coming from rogue nations North Korea and Iran, and traditional adversaries Russia and China, which are clearly in possession of nuclear devices of varying sophistication.

On July 1, 2019, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran exceeded its limit on its stockpile of enriched uranium, putting concerns about an Iranian nuclear weapon back in the headlines. Iran then proclaimed it had enriched uranium to about 4.5% purity.  Since then, Iran has announced numerous other accelerations of its nuclear program that specifically exceed the provisions of the Iran nuclear deal and shorten the time it would take to build a nuclear weapon. For these, and other reasons, President Trump withdrew the United States from the unratified agreement with Iran that was designed to limit their nuclear progression. Couple this with Iran’s recent ballistic missile attacks in the region and the need for continued GMD funding becomes apparent.

Despite the new contract, GMD is not in good shape. Barely one percent of the U.S. military budget is spent on missile defense, and only a fraction of that goes to defense of the homeland. GMD is facing challenges in assuring the reliability of its interceptor missiles and preserving the supply chain for essential parts as the system ages. As it grows older, the sole defense of America against a long-range missile attack is gradually degrading. This is in no small part to a handful of bureaucrats at the Pentagon who have undermined the program and the Trump efforts to strengthen our national defense infrastructure.

Earlier in 2019 an effective pause was placed on the GMD putting millions of Americans and our national economy in jeopardy. Despite the pushback many elected politicians disagreed with the unelected bean counters at the Pentagon. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) argued on January 17th of last year, “Missile defense is vital to securing our homeland, our forces abroad and our allies, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.” He made the case that the Trump Administration was going in the right direction with the release of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Review, including “smart and strategic policies that will guide our missile defenses and posture to counter our adversaries through an increased focus on advanced technology.”  These are laudable goals that have not yet been met.

It is time for the bureaucrats to catch up to the president’s rhetoric and promises to do more to protect America from Iran, China, North Korea, Russia and any other nations, or non-state actors, who want to fire a missile at American citizens. American citizens cannot afford 13 days, or 13 minutes, of nuclear threat.

Phil Kiver, Ph.D. is an Army veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He received his doctorate in Strategic Studies at Henley-Putnam University.

Image credit: U.S. Missile Defense Agency, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0