Whipped Cream Difficulties

This is a bit of a round-up post, and some of these are a little outside of the normal flaming hyenas.

Joel Engardio, Supervisor for the Sunset District of San Francisco, got booted from office in a recall election yesterday.

Former Supervisor Engardio has not been accused of a crime – yet, as far as I know. His fundamental problem was that he supported closing the “Great Highway”.

The election is a culmination of a more than yearlong saga that began in June 2024 when Engardio, alongside four other supervisors, placed a measure on the November ballot to permanently ban vehicles on a two-mile stretch of the city’s westernmost coastal boulevard between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard, also known as the Upper Great Highway.
Residents who said they relied on the highway to drive around their neighborhood moved to recall Engardio, outraged by what they perceived as a “betrayal.” Engardio has argued throughout the recall campaign that his district should judge him based on his entire record and not a single policy disagreement.

More from the NYT:

The city as a whole favored the change, ensuring its passage. In April, it officially became a new park — called Sunset Dunes — and it is dotted with benches, murals, exercise equipment, hammocks and a children’s play structure shaped like an octopus.
There are pianos there, too, and on a recent day, a man played Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” as people strolled and roller skated past him. Wooden signs point people to nearby shops and cafes, many of which say business is up since the park opened.

…

But residents in Mr. Engardio’s district never loved the idea of losing a thoroughfare for the sake of a park. Nearly two-thirds of the Sunset District voted against the measure and resented the fact that residents farther from the beach got a park at the expense of nearby residents’ convenience.
Some Sunset residents relied on the street to travel in and out of the city. Others felt that the Sunset District had to bear the brunt of added cars on their neighborhood streets. The data has been mixed on the traffic impacts, but advocates of the park say such frustrations were overblown.
Many Sunset District residents say that the park is not used much on the weekdays or during the area’s notoriously chilly, foggy spells. John Crabtree, a volunteer for the campaign to recall Mr. Engardio, said he drove the Great Highway one last time on its last day in operation and felt sad to be losing it.
“It was an iconically beautiful drive,” he said. “People had a relationship with it, and it meant something. People were connected to this piece of infrastructure because it was part of living out here. It was part of the Sunset.”

Meanwhile, on the other coast:

A major strip club group bribed a state auditor — including with lap dances — to avoid paying more than $8 million in New York City sales taxes over the last 14 years, prosecutors charged Tuesday.
The State Attorney General’s Office unsealed a 79-count criminal indictment against the company, RCI, and five of its executives, accusing them of engaging in a naked, tax fraud scheme.
The affair was so brazen, a top RCI accountant even allegedly made at least 10 trips from Texas to New York to treat the former auditor at the company’s Manhattan jiggle joints, Rick’s Cabaret, Vivid Cabaret and Hoops Cabaret and Sports Bar, court papers state.

“naked, tax fraud scheme”. New York Post, I see what you did there.

RCI and the top execs allegedly bribed the auditor with a slew of lascivious treats starting in 2010, including at least 13 free multi-day trips to Miami “with complimentary hotel stays, restaurant meals, and up to several thousand dollars’ worth of private dances per day at RCI-owned strip clubs,” the indictment states.
The company bigwigs texted each other about haggling over how much cash they should bribe the crooked auditor with — and how much of a tax discount they should demand in return, the AG’s office alleged.
“We need to talk about New York and dance dollars,” RCI president Eric Langan texted to CFO Ahmed Anakar, the filing claims. “We are going to be hit by 3m in sales taxes soon.”
In exchange for cash, trips and dining, the state worker — who hasn’t been publicly identified — gave RCI favorable treatment during six state audits, the indictment states.

“dance dollars”. I can not tell a lie: I love that phrase.

Robert P. Burke was sentenced to six years in prison yesterday.

Mr. Burke was a former four-star admiral in the Navy, and “was once the Navy’s second-highest-ranking officer”. Oddly enough, this is not fallout from Fat Leonard: this was a separate sleazy deal. He…

…ordered his staff to award a $355,000 contract to Next Jump, a New York-based technology and work force training company, prosecutors for the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said. He also tried to persuade another senior admiral to do the same, prosecutors said. In exchange, Next Jump offered Admiral Burke a position with a yearly base salary of $500,000 and a grant of 100,000 stock options for when he retired, according to prosecutors.

…

According to prosecutors, from August 2018 through July 2019, Next Jump provided a work force training pilot program to a small part of the Navy that was under Admiral Burke’s command at the time. But the Navy terminated its contract with Next Jump in late 2019 and directed it not to contact Admiral Burke.
In July 2021, Mr. Kim and Ms. Messenger met with Admiral Burke in Washington, D.C., where they offered him the job and stock options in exchange for a government contract. According to prosecutors, the three also agreed that Admiral Burke would push other Navy officials to award another training contract to Next Jump estimated to be in the “triple digit millions.”
Admiral Burke ordered his staff in December 2021 to award a $355,000 contract to Next Jump to train personnel under his command in Italy and Spain, prosecutors said, which was completed in January 2022. In their sentencing memo, prosecutors said the training was “widely disparaged,” receiving mostly negative reviews.

…

Admiral Burke retired in July 2022, and that October began working at Next Jump with a yearly starting salary of $500,000 and a grant of 100,000 stock options, prosecutors said.

Finally, and close to home, Lawrence has a good story up. Urban Alchemy is an organization that ran homeless shelters in Austin. They lost their contract with the city…because they were apparently falsifying records. I’m not sure if it was malice or stupidity (I know, why not both?) but I encourage you to wander over to his blog and read the coverage.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2025 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Law, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.