Posted on 10/08/2019 8:08:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The "progressive," so to speak, vision of politics and public life envisions tighter and tighter government control over economic life, along with looser and looser controls over human behavior. I think you'd refer to the overall design as a paradox: a clash of methods and objectives.
Elizabeth Warren wants corporations subjected to unprecedented government oversight. Austin's and San Francisco's ruling classes favor, for the homeless, just about all the freedom you could imagine to use the public streets as a bedroom or restroom, in the name of, I don't know ... liberty? Liberty for those who avail themselves of these governmentally granted entitlements? Everyone else enjoys the right to step over the trash, the used drug needles, the discarded food and the excrement left lying around by the governmentally entitled.
The other day, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott decided it was time the political leadership of the state's capital city clean up -- literally clean up -- Austin's San Francisco-like act. Citing statute after statute, Abbott gave Mayor Steve Adler until Nov. 1 "to demonstrate consequential improvement in the Austin homelessness crisis and the danger it poses to the health and safety of the public." Otherwise, said the governor, "I will direct every applicable state agency to act to fulfill my responsibility to protect the health and safety of Texans in your jurisdiction."
This was news because few other governmental officials in modern America go to the trouble of instructing progressive America to clean up its act.
As bad as things may be in Austin, once lovely San Francisco -- where you may formerly have left your heart and your pocketbook -- is becoming a refuse dump. Writes Heather Mac Donald in City Journal, the Manhattan Institute's peerless organ of urban analysis, "(Drug) users dig for veins in plain view on the sidewalk" in a city that distributes "more than 4.5 million syringes a year, along with Vitamin C to dissolve heroin and crack," and "uneaten comestibles litter the sidewalks and gutters," and homeless encampments are home to "Third World diseases," e.g., typhoid, and "assault seems to have been normalized...at least when committed by the homeless," and, well, perhaps you get the idea.
Down this grungy, dangerous road, progressive politics have led a community formerly envied for little cable cars climbing halfway to the stars -- now widely pitied for growing resemblance to a zoo. I cannot say whether Abbott took a look at Frisco's evident pride in letting people do what they want and, accordingly, said, "No, sir, not here, not in Austin." He performs a large public service by cracking down while the cracking is good: before political mythology crowds out good sense and good government.
The mythology of homelessness as a product of capitalist society dates back to the Ronald Reagan years. It makes no more sense now than it made in the '80s. Mac Donald, who went among the San Francisco homeless, asking questions, tells us 42% of the homeless, according to a street poll this year, "reported chronic drug or alcohol use," while 39% "said that they suffered from psychiatric conditions." (She suspects both figures are too low.) Jeff, a 50-year-old wine and drug addict, tells her, "San Francisco is the place to go if you live on the streets." Lack of affordable housing isn't the problem. "No other American city," MacDonald writes, "has built as much affordable housing per capita, according to the Bay Area Council Economic Institute." What's missing from the picture is "a commitment to a single standard of behavior for all and an insistence that rights carry with them reciprocal responsibilities."
Responsibilities? How bourgeois! How old-fashioned! We don't have a money problem around here; we have a moral problem, in that the old norms in our souls have been switched off. You could probably say that's how we got President Donald Trump. It's how we got a lot of things, such as the progressive misidentification of "bad" as just another human trait groping for understanding.
It's lonely and dangerous there on the battlefield for those who, like Abbott, would push back against civic degradation. If you want one more reason to cheer him on as he confronts Austin city government, well, there it is.
Progressives want power over people.
They want problems to increase so that greater government power becomes the needed “solution”.
Everything about Progressives is a fraud.
Crooks and useful idiots support Progressives. No one else.
I’ve been to both cities no need to ever return. Seen it done that.
Maybe homelessness is caused by people who are more “animalistic” being unable to live in society, they are living in cities with many people around them but absolutely lonely.
I really wonder if these people would do far better in a rural or semi-rural environment?
These cities are full of people, but they are devoid of community...
Just got back from 4 day stay in SF after not having been there for almost 20 years. I remember a city that was immaculate, safe, and a joy to visit. My last visit was pretty much the opposite. I actually saw used needles in the gutters, human waste on the streets, and people begging. I will not return.
I'm sure my idea isn't at all practical, but I have long thought that anyone (aside from the elderly) who ids dependent on government assistance should be removed from urban centers and moved to rural areas where they would be expected to form a agricultural community and grow vegetables and whatnot. Not to be self-sufficient or profitable. But to occupy their time and help them form solid social bonds.
Warehousing the poor in population centers seems not to be working.
Austin is really a lovely city in the Hill Country of Texas
I have relatives there
Thank goodness for Gov. Abbott
He’ll put it to rights, I hope
I don’t see them wanting looser controls on human behavior.
Many of the progs’ stands demand tight control of our behavior.
It’s only certain behavior they want to run amok, stuff that would contribute to the breakdown of society and the family so they can come in and control it.
Just got back from 4 day stay in SF...
If you don’t mind saying.....did you HAVE to go (for work, etc.), or did you choose to go (to SanFranSicko)?
Just curious.
Progressives that are part of the revolution and not just useful idiots want the Cloward-Piven effect to happen so they can declare states of emergency and take over government.
In SW Florida where I live...the homeless are picked up by the police..
Sent to a mental health clinic for evaluation..can only keep them ten days..unless they agree on treatment..
From there some go to the Salvation Army for drug treatment..
If they get jobs there given temporary housing at Catholic Charities..
If they go back to the streets it starts over...
I would guess some just move on to another more friendly area
Austin was nice in the early 70s.
Not so much today.
Curious to see what Abbott will do in 3weeks.
I’m glad Pres. Trump is planning to use the EPA and HHS to force San Francisco to clean up its streets. Maybe it will give the people there pause and start questioning what they have allowed.
Nahhh. What was I thinking?
It’s all about the weather
I chose to go...I’m retired and had such good memory, I thought it would be a great takeoff point to visit Yosemite, which I had never seen. I hated to see what happened to the city.
Thanks.
Yes, very sad.
We were there over two decades ago.
We will NOT be returning, based on news AND personal accounts, such as yours.
That city will not get ANY of our vacation $$$.
We live near Austin. You can’t pay me enough to go there. The entire atmosphere changes when you get to the suburbs. Use to be that’s where everyone had to go to shop for anything more than Walmart has. Today, thank goodness for online shopping.
My son lives in Leander. It is a very nice place.
Housing developments as far as the eye can see.
The current residents of rural and semi-rural areas would just as soon not find out, thank you.
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