Elon Musk isnât taking this lying down.
A report Monday that stated the new owner of Twitter has had beds installed in the companyâs San Francisco headquarters and a snitch-line complaint by an anonymous source have set off enough alarms at San Francisco City Hall that the cityâs Department of Building Inspections is launching an investigation of the social media giantâs property, according to Forbes.
But Musk isnât backing off a bit.
In a Twitter post published Tuesday, the Twitter boss publicly questioned the priorities of the City by the Bay, attaching a link to a San Francisco Chronicle report about a baby nearly dying from a fentanyl overdose at a public playground in November.
âSo city of SF attacks companies providing beds for tired employees instead of making sure kids are safe from fentanyl,â Musk wrote, tagging San Franciscoâs notoriously liberal Mayor London Breed (creator of a new âDrag Laureateâ program, among other pressing city needs).
âWhere are your priorities @LondonBreed!?â
For anyoneâs whoâs even casually followed the saga of Muskâs purchase of Twitter, and the scorched-earth liberal reaction to it, the question answers itself.
San Francisco, with a natural setting and architecture that makes it one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful cities in the United States, has been descending into squalor under progressive leadership for years.
Its coddling of social pathologies, like drug addiction and homelessness, has given it a national reputation for crime and disorder thatâs driving sane businesses away.
But Liberals donât obsess over the mundane realities of life in a civilized society â like clean streets and residents feeling safe to leave their homes.
For progressives, the priority that matters is stamping out any threat to their power. And as a globally known visionary and self-described âfree speech absolutistâ â not to mention being almost unimaginably wealthy â Musk presents a unique threat to that power.
His release of the âTwitter Filesâ last week â which proved to any reasonable person who still doubted it that the then-Twitter executives had manipulated the companyâs own policies to find an excuse to squelch coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story in the run-up to the 2020 election â just drove the point home.
Thatâs why White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had no problem openly declaring at a news briefing last month that the Biden administration is âkeeping a close eyeâ on Twitter. She knew liberal âjournalistsâ who would have gone bananas over a declaration of that kind from a Republican (particularly one with the intitials DJT) would simply shrug â the more bootlicking among them might even applaud.
And, no matter what bureaucratic excuses might be offered, it raises unavoidable questions about why San Francisco, a city with enough urban problems to keep even an effective administration focused for years, is interested in an investigation of a corporationâs office furniture.
âWe need to make sure the building is being used as intended,â Patrick Hannan, communications director of the San Franciscoâs Department of Building Inspection, said in a statement, according to Forbes.
âThere are different building code requirements for residential buildings, including those being used for short-term stays.â
Responding to a series of emailed questions from The Western Journal on Wednesday, Hannan wrote that his department was simply responding to a complaint like any other and tersely denied that political pressure â from any source, including the mayorâs office â had played a role.
âWe operate a complaint-based system and receive and investigate many complaints each month,â he wrote. âWe treat all complaints and property owners the same. This complaint and investigation is no different from others that are currently underway.â
The fact that the complaint came from an anonymous source doesnât play a role either, Hannan noted.
âDBI operates a complaint-based system and investigates all complaints regardless of origin,â he wrote.
(So it apparently doesnât matter if the complainer is a Forbes reader who knows no more about the interior of Twitterâs headquarters than he knows about the guest bedrooms at Area 51.)
All of that might well be true. And give Hannan credit for responding to an avowedly conservative news organizationâs request for comment.
But even if it were gospel truth, it wouldnât change how bad this looks.
Of course, San Francisco needs to make sure buildings are being used as intended. After all, without that kind of punctilious attention to detail, urban order would be impossible to maintain â and San Francisco is, if nothing, orderly, right?
Musk wasnât the only one questioning San Franciscoâs âpriorities.â
And then there was this gem of advice:
It might come to that, of course.
Twitter is a private company, and if Musk wants to install beds for employees pulling long hours to crash in, thatâs between him and his workers.
But local, state and federal governments have the power to harass even the worldâs richest man. If San Francisco and the equally progressive government of the state of California want to keep going after Musk, he might well head out to a more welcoming environment, like the Republican-led Lone Star State.
And heâd have good reason to.
Ever since Muskâs purchase of Twitter was even a glimmer of possibility, he went from being a darling of the left for his development of the Tesla electric car company and Space X aerospace giant to an ogre in a progressive childhood fairy tale â kicking over liberal toddler sandboxes and taking away their toys.
As the multi-pronged attacks on him since have shown, theyâre not taking it quietly.
Fortunately for the rest of the country, Musk isnât taking it from them either.
He doesnât have to.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
