How Federal Intervention Can Ease California’s Homeless Crisis

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On October 24, Curbed LA reported that the Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted to provide an additional $24 million in homeless housing bonds to “repurpose a building (207) on the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles for housing for veterans.” According to the article, the rehabilitated building would provide 59 units of permanent supportive housing for homeless and chronically homeless senior Veterans.”

According to Ryan Thompson, writing for VeniceUpdate.com, the developer’s budget for this rehab project is $54.6 million, which equates to a per unit cost of $926,000. In his write-up, Thompson not only questions the astronomical per unit price tag, but the entire process whereby these contracts were awarded and how the designated developers were selected. It warrants close reading.

Spending up to one million dollars per unit to not even create new housing, but to upgrade an existing structure, is not an outlier. These astronomical costs are typical. In Venice Beach, a new structure being proposed to accommodate homeless and low income residents is budgeted, including the value of the land, at over $200 million, in order to create 140 new apartment units. That’s a cost of $1.4 million per unit.

In order to assist the homeless, in 2016, Los Angeles voters approved Prop. HHH, authorizing $1.2 billion to construct “supportive housing.” As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the total project cost, on average, for the few thousand units that will eventually get built is $550,000 each.

Up north, the San Francisco Bay Area’s local politicians are equally adept at spending unbelievable sums of money to create housing for the homeless and for low income families. The City of Oakland provides a typical example, the “Estrella Vista” affordable housing project, wherein 87 housing units were constructed at a cost of $64 million, which equates to $736,000 per unit.

And then there’s San Francisco’s Prop. A, set to be voted on November 5th. This $600 million bond will be used to construct low income housing, but a close analysis of the bond estimates that it will eventually fund, at most, 650 units of new housing and 450 units of rehabilitated existing housing.

Why are our public officials spending a half-million per unit, or more, to build housing units for homeless and low income families in California? How on earth do they think they will ever solve California’s homeless crisis, when they’re unable spend less than a half-million dollars each, to get a roof over someone’s head?

A Crippling Assortment of Laws and Regulations Have Enabled Corruption Instead of Cures

The San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County host, between them, well over 100,000 of California’s estimated 130,000 homeless. And in both of those metros, local government policies have utterly failed. This failure is partly because local elected officials are hampered by state laws which make it nearly impossible to incarcerate petty thieves and drug addicts, or institutionalize the mentally ill, and court rulings that prohibit breaking up homeless encampments unless these homeless can be provided free and permanent “supportive housing.”

The state and federal governments have even mandated that providing “housing first,” and getting every homeless person under a roof prior to any allocations of funds for treatment to overcome drug addiction or manage mental illness, is a condition of  receiving government funds to help the homeless.

As if these laws and court rulings that have made homeless populations unmanageable weren’t enough, California’s state legislators have crippled the ability of developers to cost effectively construct any type of housing. State laws designed to prevent “sprawl” have caused land prices within cities to skyrocket. California’s environmental laws, most notably CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act), require a dizzying, time consuming and expensive, seemingly endless array of reports from developers seeking project approvals. There are literally hundreds of various applications and fees that developers have to file with dozens of state and local agencies, and often these agencies will take months if not years to process the applications.

But instead of challenging these laws, local elected officials have used them as an excuse to engage in one of the most corrupt misuses of government funds in American history. Without first changing these laws, the problem cannot be fixed. But a special interest movement has been created to spend the money anyway. This alliance of special interests constitutes what has now become a Homeless Industrial Complex, comprised of government bureaucracies, homeless advocacy groups operating through nonprofit entities, and large government contractors, especially construction companies and land development firms.

It is Time for the Federal Government to Get Involved in California’s Homeless Crisis

An executive order involving several federal agencies could launch a coordinated effort to get California’s homeless crisis under control. Federal action would not solve the homeless crisis overnight, but it would prevent something truly catastrophic occurring such as a disease epidemic, and it would set the stage for Californians more swiftly implementing permanent solutions, for which there currently is no end in sight.

For example, the IRS could reform the laws governing nonprofits to curb the legalized waste of billions that pour into what have become special interest behemoths.

The SEC could classify the taxpayer as having investor rights, in a long-overdue move that would make it a lot more difficult for public projects to squander public funds.

The SEC could also require consultants to public agencies to register as financial advisers and be subject to the same restrictions on political donations that govern these consultants in the private sector.

The Justice Dept. could investigate some of the more egregious wasteful projects allegedly launched to help the homeless to possibly uncover cases of collusion or racketeering.

The Justice Dept. could also send in DEA agents to break up the criminal gangs and drug traffickers who exploit California’s lenient drug laws and hide among the homeless encampments.

The Dept. of Housing and Urban Development could reform the Low Income Tax Credit program to put a cap on per unit costs for housing projects to qualify. They could repeal the disastrous “housing first” mandate that prevents homeless programs from prioritizing treatment equally to constructing shelters.

The Dept. of Education could get more aggressive against the teachers union which resists competition in K-12 education, and is consequently responsible for thousands of students graduating into homelessness instead of productive lives.

The Centers for Disease Control could declare a health emergency and sweep through the homeless encampments, cleaning up the trash and human excrement.

The EPA could participate in that effort by declaring – quite accurately – homeless encampments to be Brownfields, in order to save California’s soil, water, and runoff to the ocean.

The Dept. of Labor could implement an executive order preventing Project Labor Agreements from being used to inflate the cost of housing projects, as if with the shortage of construction laborers in California, there is any need for PLAs.

And the Dept. of Veterans Affairs could house homeless veterans on unused sections of California’s abundant military bases. For less than $926,000 per unit!

If these recommendations were implemented, California’s homeless crisis would quickly improve. Criminal drug traffickers would be looking over their shoulders. The CDC and EPA would declare an emergency and clean up homeless encampments. Homeless veterans would find immediate shelter. And the power of the Homeless Industrial Complex, a special interest movement that has been enriched by going slow and overspending on everything, would be shaken to its foundations.

Nonprofits would no longer be able to legally squander funds intended to help the homeless. Taxpayers would have the same rights as private sector investors, making it less likely public agencies could waste money on projects. Federal funds would be contingent on cost-effective projects. Unions would have to compete to participate in projects, and with the shortage of construction workers in California and the many projects awaiting funds, that would not be a hardship to them. Over time, maybe a sustained effort by the Dept. of Education to introduce competition to the monopolistic union controlled public schools might even change both the aptitude and the attitude of students graduating into California’s workforce.

Eventually, maybe the other root problem connected to homelessness, prohibitively expensive housing, could get addressed. Not only through many of the reforms proposed here, which could apply to low income housing as easily as to permanent supportive housing, but through a loosening of the requirements to run building permit applications through an obscene gaggle of local and state agencies. Projects that take as little as 20 days in Texas to get approved, and at most 20 months in most states, can take up to 20 years in California. Small wonder there’s a housing shortage. These countless applications with their exorbitant fees and endless delays constitute criminal negligence and naked, insatiable public sector greed, masquerading as a public service.

California’s policymakers are puppets of special interests. Those special interests include their own bureaucracies, which are controlled by public sector unions that gain membership dues and power whenever a public sector challenge worsens. Similarly, the other special interest members of the Homeless Industrial Complex, developers and nonprofit corporations, gain profits and revenues when the homeless crisis worsens.

It is time for the federal government to take decisive action where our public servants on the state and local level have failed. It must never be forgotten that this failure victimizes not only the taxpayers and the members of the public who live in areas overran with homeless people. It also victimizes the homeless themselves, who are not getting shelter, and who are not getting treatment.

The power of the special interests who have turned homelessness into a self-serving, taxpayer funded industry, must be broken.

An executive order from President Trump declaring a state of emergency, followed up by a coordinated interagency response, could get California’s homeless crisis under control. And it could happen in months instead of interminable years.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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The Many Derangement Syndromes of Our Time

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The term “derangement syndrome” has made it into everyday speech, thanks to the now ubiquitous use of the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a term coined by Esther Goldberg back in 2015.

Writing for the American Spectator, Goldberg offered prescient observations as to how Trump Derangement Syndrome had afflicted “ruling class conservatives” such as George Will and Charles Cooke. These two were among the first “Never Trumpers, and since then Trump Derangement Syndrome, or TDS, has spread across America. But TDS is only one of the many derangement syndromes of our time.

The British conservative author and journalist Douglas Murray made derangement a central theme of his recent book, “The Madness of Crowds.” Writing about his book for the Daily Mail, he says “We are going through a great mass derangement. In public and in private, people are behaving in ways that are increasingly irrational, feverish, herd-like and unpleasant.”

In his book, Murray claims that in post-modern society’s retreat from the great narratives offered by religion, patriotism, and traditions of family and community, people have found new ideologies to absorb their passions: social justice, identity politics, and intersectionality.

At face value, these ideologies aren’t especially toxic. Who doesn’t want social justice? Who isn’t proud of their heritage? Who would not acknowledge that the various group identities embodied in any individual intersect in a manner that helps define how they view themselves in the world? The toxicity is introduced by what overlays these ideologies: oppressor vs oppressed, empowered vs powerless. Murray explains how nearly every segment of our society has an activist cohort that purports to speak for them and demands restitution; women, gays, lesbians, transsexuals, and every conceivable ethnicity.

The examples of derangement syndrome recounted in Murray’s book are too numerous to summarize. But a central theme appears to be the deranged notion that the victim must invariably be treated not merely with deference and afforded special privileges and preferences, but is actually morally superior to the alleged victimizer. How this plays out in terms of actual policies creates additional derangement, as people are asked to believe things in this new narrative that are obviously untrue.

While Murray’s book focuses on derangement oriented to identitarian ideology, there is an equally encompassing subset of derangement oriented to environmentalism. In both cases these derangements stem from people needing a sense of purpose in their lives. And in both cases, the purpose they’re finding is divisive and impossible to implement, stoking further derangement. Here then, joining TDS, are some of the derangement syndromes of our time.

The Climate Derangement Syndrome

There was once a time when the lunatic screaming in the streets that the world was about to come to an end was the extremist, and those of us who believed the world was not about to come to an end were considered moderate and sane. No longer. Today, a lavishly financed, petulant teenage truant from Sweden can hector the intelligentsia of the world and receive adoring media coverage, while at the same time the patient logic of one of the preeminent economists of our time is scandalized as a “lukewarmer” because he “denies” that the end of the world is nigh.

The climate change catastrophe narrative fails on so many fundamental levels of logic and evidence that it’s impossible to imagine how it became a mass movement unless you understand the power of its emotional, irrational appeal. The science is not settled, and even if it is, the energy economics are impossible, and practical steps to implement “solutions” are attracting one of the most corrupt coalitions of megalomaniacs, tyrants, and profiteers in the history of the world.

The moral imperative to generate abundant, cheap energy using fossil fuel and nuclear power until there is global ZPG should be crystal clear. Cheap energy equals prosperity equals literacy equals people voluntarily choosing to have smaller families equals a lower human ecological footprint. Expensive “renewable” energy equals poverty equals ignorance equals large families equals a devastating planetary horde of humanity, peaking at 12 billion strong, stripping the planet in a desperate search for food and shelter.

The Inclusive Derangement Syndrome

Back when nations were ethnographically homogeneous, or very nearly so, it didn’t matter if you allocated every job, every promotion, every college admission, and every government contract based on proportional representation by race. But America’s non-Hispanic white working population is on the cusp of becoming a minority, which means that more than fifty percent of all working age Americans now belong to protected status groups. Add women to that equation, of course, and you have roughly 75 percent of working age Americans belonging to protected status groups.

The problem with this is not simply, as Douglas Murray points out, that trying to enforce proportional representation, everywhere, is a fool’s errand. To be sure, trying to implement such a scheme is guaranteed to fail and guaranteed to foment resentment, with the only winners being those enforcement bureaucrats, hired by the millions in government, academia and the corporate world. But there’s a deeper problem – all identifiable groups do not have, on average, equal abilities and skills. And it’s not even close.

As with the climate change debate (you know, the one that’s “settled”), logic and evidence challenging the Inclusive Derangement Syndrome is overwhelming. It isn’t necessary to know why huge disparities exist, wherein Asians tend to overachieve in academic disciplines critical to America’s economic growth and national security, and other ethnic groups in America do not. Fix the public schools. Restore the sanctity of marriage and keep families intact. Whatever. But in the meantime, don’t force proportional representation, at every level, into every institution in America.

Heather MacDonald, author of The Diversity Delusion, writes about the threat that mandated inclusivity poses to America’s technological competitiveness.” “Now,” she writes, “we are to believe that scientific progress will stall unless we pay close attention to identity and try to engineer proportional representation in schools and laboratories. The truth is exactly the opposite: Lowering standards and diverting scientists’ energy into combating phantom sexism and racism is reckless in a highly competitive, ruthless, and unforgiving global marketplace.”

The Compassion Derangement Syndrome

This is perhaps the most insidious of all the derangements of our time. Who doesn’t feel compassion? Who wouldn’t do whatever they can to help someone in need? But there are intractable problems with compassion gone wild. In practice, misguided compassion breeds debauchery and dependence.

Anyone wishing to see the former is invited to drive the streets of San Francisco, where they may smell human excrement, tons of which are deposited each week on the sidewalks and gutters by the city’s nearly ten thousand homeless. They may witness literally thousands of intravenous drug addicts buying and injecting this poison in a state sanctioned act of slow motion suicide. Anyone wishing to see the latter is invited to tour pretty much any legacy housing project in America, where welfare checks and free rent made the presence of a father not merely obsolete, but economically disadvantageous.

Compassion derangement syndrome, and its close cousin, morality derangement syndrome (which holds that all truths are relative and subjective and equally virtuous), are perhaps the grandparents of all of America’s contemporary derangement syndromes. For example, President Trump, rough around the edges to put it mildly, tramples on the compassionate sensitivities of his critics, despite that his tough love policies are likely to improve the general lot of most Americans.

When you examine the currency of the Left in America today, it’s striking how much they have to rely on the narrative of conflict and resentment. The oppressive white patriarchy. The exploitative capitalist destroying the planet. As Douglas Murray points out, with evidence, in Western Europe and America, the great battles to achieve equal opportunity have largely been fought, and won. Similarly, the great battles to clean up our air and water, and to preserve vast reserves of North American wilderness, have largely been fought and won. Yet the resentment and polarization is worse than ever.

The sad thing about America’s many derangement syndromes is they take the trajectory of these movements away from where they might legitimately have gone next. What women have achieved in America is still largely denied them in many nations around the world. Why isn’t that the focus? As for “climate change,” why aren’t environmentalists focusing on international poaching, or industrial trawlers strip mining fish out of the ocean, or restoring the coastal mangrove forests whose absence is the real reason tsunamis have gotten deadlier, or fighting genuine air pollution still belching out of Chinese cities, or stopping rainforest incineration to grow “carbon neutral” biofuel?

Finding Pathways Out of Derangement

If the only prerequisite for a rational society were prosperity, America’s many derangement syndromes would disappear. But people and societies aren’t rational. They’re filled with passions, which until a few decades ago found expression in religion, patriotism, family and community, and now, increasingly, find expression in identity politics and climate anxiety. Is rational human rights advocacy compelling enough? If it were, the America’s identitarians would turn their focus to the truly tyrannical regimes around the world. Is rational environmentalism compelling enough? If it were, children would be marching for clean fossil fuel and nuclear power, and Bjorn Lomborg would be speaking to enraptured crowds, instead of Greta Thunberg.

In his earlier book, The Strange Death of Europe, Douglas Murray suggests that those forces still extant in Western societies that resist the derangement syndromes of our time – the secular and the religious – put aside their differences and unite to save their civilization. That’s an interesting idea not only because it might enable a critical mass of resistance to arise, but because it represents a new synthesis of Western culture that might help defuse the mutual resentment of Right and Left.

In his most recent book, Murray goes further, and discusses how the derangement syndromes of our time have “created a world in which forgiveness has become almost impossible.” In his conclusion, he proposes a series of solutions. Cynics may consider these mere bromides, but when it comes to repairing our polarized society, even bromides are in short supply these days. Murray’s ideas are worth repeating.

In response to the narrative of oppression, Murray’s first idea is to repeatedly ask “compared to what?” America’s flawed legacy nonetheless looks pretty good when compared to pretty much any other society, past or present, anywhere on earth. Murray goes on to resist the implicit wisdom of the Left which always ascribes the moral high ground to the victim. There is simply no basis to assume the underdog is always morally superior.

Another solution Murray proposes is to imagine what’s next, if identity politics are pursued to their logical conclusion. This same thought experiment might apply to climate change policies – imagine what it would be like to live in a nation where every Green New Deal fantasy became reality. Finally, Murray urges us to depoliticize our lives. When politics saturates everything, including comedy, sports, fine art, music and even cuisine, derangement syndromes are perpetually reinforced.

Nurturing a culture of forgiveness, may not be enough by itself to melt away the derangement syndromes of our time. On the other hand, if forgiveness culture were to truly inform the tone of a durable new alliance between religious and secular conservatives, it might be irresistible. It could become the latest iteration of America’s unprecedented ability to assimilate.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Can Libertarians Be Honest About Immigration and Assimilation?

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Balanced on the edge of the deplatforming abyss, but still standing, is Vincent James. He is one of the last prominent YouTube video commentators with outspoken views on America’s immigration policies and how they affect America’s electoral politics. Despite his channel being demonetized and algorithmically suppressed, he continues to produce videos that frequently attract over 100,000 viewers. Even if his arguments were odious, and unsupportable with data or logic, James would deserve to speak his mind. But what makes him dangerous is his arguments are always backed up with impeccable data.

In a recent video, James took on America’s libertarians, specifically calling them out on the issue of immigration. At the 9:15 point, he replays a clip of a student challenging Charlie Kirk (founder of Turning Point USA) during his Q&A with a college audience. Kirk repeatedly skirts the question of whether or not mass immigration is sustainable by attempting to change the subject to why America needs to attract the best and the brightest of the world. And of course, Kirk can’t help but remind his audience that “this growing anti-immigration portion of the Republican conservative movement is dangerous.”

This is a standard response from a member of what James and others have dubbed “Conservatism Inc.” It is condescending and disingenuous. Condescending because everyone knows we welcome the Albert Einsteins and Elon Musks of the world, disingenuous because that’s not the point. Millions of unskilled immigrants to America will drive down the wages of low income workers and disproportionately collect government benefits. We are not screening these millions of immigrants for valuable skills, much less limiting entry to the handful of scientific and entrepreneurial geniuses that are scattered around the world.

As James puts it:

“The only the thing these people care about is keeping the GDP up. Having enough people flow in here who can buy our shiny products for the corporations that we work for. They don’t care about conservatism. Conservatism Inc. hasn’t conserved anything. It’s time for us to challenge them on their dumb, idiotic, false, paid for ideas. It’s time for us to step in where Conservatism Inc. has failed and take back this country, politically and ideologically. The fact that Charlie Kirk doesn’t care, and says that it’s wonky to talk about the demographic shifts that America has experienced, and what that leads to electorally for conservatives, should tell you everything you need to know.”

What mass immigration as it is presently constituted – and has been for the last fifty years – leads to for Americans, is well documented. Drawing on data from Pew Research and others, and shown on the table below, are votes by ethnicity in the 2016 presidential election. As can be seen, among the major ethnic groups, the only ethnic group that was remotely balanced in their voting choices were Non-Hispanic Whites, who turned out for Trump, by a decisive but nonetheless incremental margin of 21 percent. Black Americans, on the other hand, voted 12 to 1 for Clinton. Hispanics voted more than 2 to 1 for Clinton, as did Asians. 

This trend has been reflected in presidential elections for over 30 years, as the next chart – produced by Vincent James – shows graphically. What’s striking about this data is that only White voters are ever likely to be a swing vote. In the 1992 and 1996 elections, a majority of Whites did not vote for the GOP. While in the other six elections depicted, White voters did lean GOP, in only one election, 1998, did the GOP share of the White vote reach 60 percent.

The historical voting pattern for Hispanic and Black voters, on the other hand, is unambiguously tilted toward the Democrats. The only times in eight tries that the GOP wasn’t outvoted two-to-one in favor of Democrats by Hispanics, was in 2000 and 2004, when in both elections George W Bush managed to eke out a 35 percent and 34 percent share. For African Americans, it’s never even been close. 

What California has experienced demographically over the past fifty years is, based on current national trends, likely to be America’s fate over the next few decades. In 1977, California’s population was 77 percent Non-Hispanic White. Today the Non-Hispanic white share of California’s population has fallen by more than half, to barely one-third at 35 percent.

When America’s liberal and progressive Democrats make race and group identity the foundation of their political platform, it is crazy to say that the rise of Democratic power is merely correlated to the fall in the percentage of Non-Hispanic Whites in the electorate. The question of cause vs correlation is settled. The question to be concerned about is why are Whites the only ethnic group to lean conservative? How did that happen? Is that inevitable?

Do Libertarians Care About Traditional American Culture?

To any libertarian who might find this rhetorical question offensive, and would indignantly suggest “of course we do,” one might respond: prove it. Because the libertarian position on everything from “free” trade to open borders to internet censorship to legalizing hard drugs is the same: It is in lockstep with the agenda of the progressive corporate globalist Left.

On that basis, it would follow that libertarians really don’t care if the national GOP becomes irrelevant, eventually becoming as impotent as the GOP in California. Or if not entirely impotent, then sanitized and merged into the establishment uniparty, claiming credibility by sporting a photogenic, telegenic, Romneyesque facade of opposition to the more extreme antics of the Democrat’s extreme left fringe.

Moreover, on that basis, it would follow that libertarians “only care about keeping the GDP up, having enough people flow in here who can buy our shiny products for the corporations that we work for.”

If open borders means fundamentally transforming the ethnic composition of America, and if fundamentally transforming the ethnic composition of America precludes a nationalist resurgence that might undermine the profits of multinational corporations, and if pretending that White conservatives are racist bigots is a way to guarantee that America’s new, nonwhite residents never vote for conservatives – then pass the donations, pretend to protest, and let the Democrat dominated uniparty turn America from a nation into a commodity.

How Can Libertarians Be As Obtuse As the Liberals They Claim to Oppose?

At the 11:00 minute mark in the video posted by Vincent James, during the same Q&A exchange between Charlie Kirk and an earnest opponent of mass immigration, here is what is said:

Student: “What is it, 1.1 million per year, for a country that is only 300 million people?”

Kirk: “That is a fair question. Here’s a better question. Of the immigrants who are coming, are they coming with skills?

Student: “80 percent of immigrants vote Democrat.”

Kirk: “I actually don’t think you should design immigration policy based around politics, that’s very dangerous.”

To be charitable to Charlie Kirk, he’s only 26 years old, and he’s been pushed onto a big stage at a young age. But what he is saying is dangerous, because for the last fifty years, and especially in the last decade or two, politics is precisely what immigration policy has been based on. Immigration policy has been based on permitting millions of unskilled immigrants to enter America every year, either legally or through willful failure to enforce what laws do exist.

What Kirk was basically saying is that if you want to restrict immigration to people who will rapidly assimilate and embrace conservative values, you’re basing your immigration policy on politics, but if you enable a system that allows millions to pour across the border each year who may never assimilate and embrace liberal and progressive values, you’re not. Go figure.

How Can Americans Preserve Their Culture?

Those of us who have watched the demographic transformation of America unfold over the past decades know that by now the transformative process is already played out. The die was cast way back in 1985, when then Colorado Governor Richard Lamm published The Immigration Time Bomb, and 1987, when Ben Wattenberg wrote The Birth Dearth. America is now a multi-ethnic nation. But that does not mean that America has to be a multi-cultural nation, certainly not in the divisive, nihilistic parody of civil society version of “multiculturalism” envisioned by the progressives.

The challenge now is to convince the rising new generations in America that ethnicity does not matter, that America will embrace everyone, that assimilation is desirable, that upward mobility is available to everyone, that opportunities are equal and abundant to those with the will to succeed, and that traditional American values of family, faith, freedom, education, hard work, and good character are abiding values that everyone should unite to protect.

Charlie Kirk may wish to consider this: It’s not enough to attract the approbation of Liberalism Inc. Because on one of the most important issues of our time, immigration, we are witnessing a false dichotomy between Conservatism Inc. and Liberalism Inc.

Kirk should ask himself: Would I still have a job if I openly and publicly questioned the dogma of open borders? What would happen if instead of charmingly deflecting the concerns of a student on this topic, I agreed with them, and loudly proclaimed that importing millions of unskilled immigrants each year is unsustainable and will inevitably lead to an electorate that embraces socialism? Would I still get a paycheck? Why not?

What, for that matter, would happen to his employment status if Kirk were to repeatedly wonder as to how much longer America’s institutions can continue to enforce ethnic hiring quotas, when the disparity in academic achievement and scholastic aptitude between Asians and Whites vs Blacks and Hispanics is vast and widening? That’s a tough topic. But kicking people off of YouTube and making sure members of Conservatism Inc. stick their heads in the sand will not help us find the solutions that must be found. Sustainable compassion can only be practiced when the truth is embraced, not suppressed.

And the libertarian mega donors who nurture a network of pundits and scholars who produce a torrent of “paid for ideas” should ask themselves: Do we really want to embitter hard working American patriots like Vincent James, who proudly carry the legacy of generations who struggled to build this nation, and are determined to do everything they can to preserve it?

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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How Many Laws Does San Francisco’s Prop. A Violate?

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Whether or not San Francisco’s upcoming appeal to voters to borrow $600 million to pay for for low income housing is a good idea or a bad idea depends on who you ask.

Proponents claim Prop. A, which will appear on the ballot this November 5th, is necessary because San Francisco doesn’t have enough affordable housing. Opponents argue, among other things, that Prop. A is mostly for “rehabilitation” of existing low income housing and therefore doesn’t significantly increase the supply of housing.

But does Prop. A’s proposed use of funds conform to state law that directs how bond money can be spent?

Does Prop. A’s Use of Proceeds Violate California’s State Prop. 46?

Eight years after the passage of the landmark Prop. 13, which California’s voters approved in 1978 to freeze property taxes at one percent of the assessed value at that time (with a maximum two percent per year permissible adjustment), Prop. 46 was passed by voters to offer some exemptions to Prop. 13. Specifically, Prop. 46 authorized local governments to increase property taxes if, by a two-thirds vote, ballot measures were approved to permit borrowing “to purchase or improve land and buildings.”

Prop. A’s proposed use of funds appears to skate very close to the edge in terms of complying with Prop. 46, because there is a difference between “improvement” and “repairs.” In the world of accounting and finance, this difference is significant. The distinction between capital improvements and repair expenses is clearly defined in generally accepted accounting principles which govern how they are classified on certified financial statements as well as on tax returns.

The underlying ordinance to be approved via Prop. 8 reads as follows: “to finance the construction, development, acquisition, improvement, rehabilitation, preservation, and repair of affordable housing…”

An improvement would be to add square footage to a building, or to add a significant amenity such as a swimming pool, that had not previously been on the property. Those expenditures conform to Prop. 46’s restrictions, because they are capital improvements. It is difficult, however, to discern how “rehabilitation, preservation, and repair” complies with Prop. 46, because those are not capital improvements, they are repair expenses.

If you review the spending budget for Prop. A via the text of the ordinance, in Section 3 “Proposed Program,” it becomes even more difficult to argue these expenditures are going to be for “improvement” as opposed to “repair.”

How Much of Prop. A’s Proposed Spending is Actually for “Acquisition and Improvements”?

First, let’s gallop through the “Proposed Program” as summarized in the text of the ordinance:

“Section A, Public Housing,” allocates $150 million to “repair and reconstruct distressed and dilapidated public housing developments.”

This $150 million is clearly not for capital improvements. It’s for maintenance.

Section B, “Low Income Housing,” allocates $220 million to “construct, acquire, and rehabilitate rental housing serving extremely-low and low-income individuals and families.”

Here it would be useful to know to what extent there is “acquisition and construction,” which presumably conforms to Prop. 46, and to what extent there is “rehabilitation,” which arguably does not.

Section C, “Preservation and Middle Income Housing” allocates $30 million to “acquire and/or rehabilitate existing housing at risk of losing affordability,” and “a minimum of $30 million to assist middle-income City residents or workers in obtaining affordable homeownership or rental opportunities.

The second portion of Section C is especially problematic. What does this even mean? It doesn’t appear to have anything to do with repair and rehabilitation of property, much less acquisition and improvement. Is it mortgage loans? Rent subsidies? How does this conform to Prop. 46?

Section D, “Senior Housing” allocates $150 million to acquire and construct new senior housing.

At face value this does conform to Prop. 46.

Section E, “Educator Housing” allocates $20 million to “support predevelopment and new construction of permanent affordable housing opportunities or projects serving SF Unified School District and City College of San Francisco educators and employees earning between 30% and 140% of AMI at the time the bonds are issued.”

Notwithstanding whatever “predevelopment” means, the “new construction of this” is not a violation of Prop. 46, but it constitutes a nice lottery jackpot for a very small handful of San Francisco’s public employees.

Section F states “a portion of the Bond shall be used to perform audits of the Bond.”

This is a good thing, but clearly not something authorized by Prop. 46.

Based on this information, the following two tables provide estimates as to how much actual new housing will be created if Prop. A is passed. They rest on the reasonable assumption that new construction will cost an average of $600,000 per unit and rehabilitation of existing units will cost an average of $400,000 per unit.

What are presented in these two cases are what might be considered a best case (#1) and a worst case (#2). The fact that these two cases present vastly differing estimates is because the language of the ordinance is deliberately vague. It doesn’t say “construct” new housing, or “rehabilitate” existing housing. Instead the language typically presents a choice, by wording it “construct or rehabilitate.”

As can be seen in Case One, below, based on the “Proposed Program” as described in the ordinance that Prop. A would approve, if 100 percent of the funds in every one of the six budget sections were allocated to construct new units if the language of the section permitted that, a total of 650 new units would be added to San Francisco’s housing stock.

That’s 650 new units of housing. For six hundred million dollars.

In Case Two, below, wherever the language in one of the six sections of the Proposed Program permits “repair,” “reconstruction,” or “rehabilitation” of existing units, that is where the funds are assumed to be spent. This is not a worst case scenario, in fact, because even in this case, Section B’s $220 million might be entirely used to acquire properties, leaving the job of repairing them to another future bond to fund. Instead, in this case the entire $220 million is assumed to be used for repair work on existing units.

As can be seen, under this second scenario, $600 million results in the rehabilitation of 925 units, with not one single new unit of housing being constructed.No Specificity Means No Accountability

It is easy to question all the assumptions used in these two cases, but based on the performance of housing bonds in San Francisco and elsewhere in California over the past few years, the per unit cost assumptions to construct or to renovate are, if anything, too low. Why?

When so many people can’t afford housing, and the situation is so dire that supposedly public funding must come to the rescue, why is the City of San Francisco proposing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit on buildings that are already occupied? Why are they acquiring properties, if these properties are already occupied? Why do housing projects have to be more lavish than the privately owned rental housing stock that the vast majority of renters live in and pay for without subsidies? Why does it cost so much to build or repair housing; what percent of total project costs are soft costs? Why not work on a regional basis, and build and repair housing in lower cost parts of the Bay Area?

More to the point, why is Prop. A worded in a manner that leaves the administrators of these funds leeway to do pretty much anything they want with the money? Why isn’t it specified, clearly, in each section, what percent of funds will be used for acquiring existing housing (if that’s even necessary), for constructing new housing units, or for repairing existing housing?

Even more to the point, why isn’t it specified, in each section, that for all funds being used to “rehabilitate” existing housing, one-hundred percent of these funds are being used to fund capital improvements, and not ordinary repairs? Could it be because that would violate the terms of Prop. 46, which only permits local property tax funded bonds for property purchases and capital improvements?

The proponents of San Francisco’s Prop. A are on thin ice, and there’s more.

Is the City of San Francisco Violating California Election Code?

No other major city in California, and probably no city anywhere in the state, permits paid arguments to be placed in a ballot pamphlet. But San Francisco does. Have a look at the ballot pamphlet, and note there are 22 “paid” arguments in favor of Prop. A, and two paid arguments opposing Prop. A.

The astute observer will also note the “three largest contributors to the true source [of funds for] the recipient committee” for fifteen of the paid arguments in favor of Prop. A is the same collection of contributors – “1. Chris Larsen, 2. Mercy Housing California, 3. Bridge Housing Corporation.” Who are these entities and what is their stake in the outcome of this vote?

That is a story in and of itself. Who benefits from the passage of Prop. 8? The paltry number of people who win the housing lottery and move into these subsidized units? Who else?

In any case, the disproportionate number of paid arguments supporting Prop. A isn’t the primary legal issue. The problem is that the maximum cost to place these paid arguments, which are political ads, is only $800. This is laughably less than what it actually costs the City of San Francisco to accept, process, print and distribute these political ads. To the extent the true cost to the city to distribute each of these ads exceeds the amount the proponents each paid for their ads, the city is subsidizing political advertising.

This possible violation of California election law may as well bode ill for attempts by the City of San Francisco to implement Prop. A, even if voters approve it. A small but determined group of activists and attorneys have already launched legal challenges to these and other questionable procedures and decisions by the city. How it plays out in the coming months should be interesting.

More pertinent than whether or not Prop. A adheres to the letter of the law in all its aspects, however, is the stupefying amount of money it proposes to spend for such a paltry gain. Six hundred million dollars for, at best, less than 1,000 units of new housing.

Increasing the supply of housing sufficiently to bring down the price for housing is a daunting challenge. But simple math demonstrates that Prop. A is not going to do anything to disrupt the current equilibrium. Should San Francisco’s voters approve it anyway? We will find out on Nov. 5th.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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Imagining Four More Years of Donald Trump

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AUDIO:  A discussion of how Trump is challenging fundamental dogma that the Democratic party relies on to keep their voters, how Trump’s policies have a coherence that is not sufficiently acknowledged even by his supporters, and what the future might look like during and after a second Trump term in office – 8 minutes on KNRS Salt Lake City – Edward Ring on the Rod Arquette Show.

Electricity and Ideology – Competing Priorities in California

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“If I wanted the power shut off for days by bloated, corrupt utilities enabled by bloated, corrupt one-party politicians,” quipped Harmeet Dhillon, a San Francisco attorney and prominent conservative political activist, “I would have stayed in India.”

Dhillon’s observation pretty much sums up the frustration felt by millions of Californians last week. In Northern California, nearly 800,000 homes and businesses went without power. Some of them had power shut off for five days. In Southern California, even as the Saddleridge fire raged through neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley, another 25,000 homes had their power shut off.

But while it’s tempting to accept Dhillon’s statement at face value, the causes of California’s wildfire challenges are many and complex.

For example, while any public utility as massive as Pacific Gas and Electric is bound to have pockets of bloat and corruption within, that isn’t the reason Californians experienced devastating wildfires in the summer of 2018. And while California’s one-party politicians have arguably enabled PG&E and other utilities by relieving them of a portion of their liability for wildfires, these same politicians have saddled PG&E with renewables mandates that diverted billions of dollars which could have been spent on wildfire mitigation.

Bureaucrats and politicians have used a shopworn phrase, “the new normal,” to describe California’s supposed future of endless and devastating wildfires. Last week we heard it again, this time in reference to massive power outages deliberately imposed to prevent these wildfires. But neither of these have to become normal. While none of the causes of devastating wildfires can be mitigated overnight, there are many steps that can reduce their frequency and intensity within a few years.

Why Were California’s Wildfires So Devastating?

During the 2018 wildfires, Californians repeatedly were told that “climate change” was the primary cause, and that as a consequence, these fires would become a fact of life from then on. It’s true that fire danger is elevated during droughts and heatwaves—and therefore “climate change” can be connected to more severe wildfires. But there are other, bigger factors. The most significant of these is decades of aggressive fire suppression.

In the natural forest and chaparral that defines most of California’s fire-prone regions, natural fires sparked by lightning had been a part of the ecosystem for millennia. In mature forests, these fires periodically would sweep through to burn out the smaller trees and vegetation. This not only would reduce tinder that otherwise would accumulate, but the removal of these smaller trees and shrubs that competed with mature trees for water and nutrients would ensure the health of the larger trees. When ecologists claim California’s trees are stressed, they’re right, but when California’s politicians echo these concerns, they opportunistically focus on climate change, instead of telling the truth about the role that aggressive fire suppression has played in undermining the health of these trees.

Opinions vary regarding how much of the conflagrations of 2018 could have been avoided, but nobody disputes that more could have been done. Everyone agrees, for example, that aggressive fire suppression has been a mistake. Most everyone agrees that good prevention measures include forest thinning (especially around power lines), selective logging, controlled burns, and power line upgrades. And everyone agrees that residents in fire-prone areas need to create defensible space and fire-harden their homes.

Opinions also vary as to whether or not environmentalists stood in the way of these prevention measures. In a blistering critique published in the aftermath of the fires of 2018, investigative journalist Katy Grimes cataloged the negligence resulting from environmentalist overreach.

“For decades,” Grimes wrote, “traditional forest management was scientific and successful—that is until ideological, preservationist zealots wormed their way into government and began the overhaul of sound federal forest management through abuse of the Endangered Species Act and the ‘re-wilding, no-use movement.’”

U.S. Representative Tom McClintock, whose Northern California district includes the Yosemite Valley and the Tahoe National Forest, told Grimes that the U.S. Forest Service 40 years ago departed from “well-established and time-tested forest management practices.”

“We replaced these sound management practices with what can only be described as a doctrine of benign neglect,” McClintock explained. “Ponderous, byzantine laws and regulations administered by a growing cadre of ideological zealots in our land management agencies promised to ‘save the environment.’ The advocates of this doctrine have dominated our law, our policies, our courts, and our federal agencies ever since.”

Grimes went on to outline the specific missteps by federal authorities that led to America’s forests turning into tinderboxes, starting in the Clinton Administration, made worse by activist judges who thwarted Bush Administration reforms, and accelerating during the complicit Obama presidency.

California’s 2018 wildfires were unusually severe, but they were not historic firsts. And while the four-year drought that ended in 2016 left a legacy of dead trees and brush, it was forest mismanagement that left those forests overly vulnerable to droughts in the first place.

Reducing the Destructive Impact of Wildfires Won’t Be Easy

When the destruction caused by fires is measured, explanations typically include the reality of more people living in forested areas. Clearly, the human and financial harm from a wildfire is greater when people are living in its path. But another, less-heralded consequence of more people living in the so-called “wildland-urban interface” is that compared to trees in the forest, wind driven wildfires actually combust and spread faster when encountering homes, and the infrastructure associated with homes.

This is why, for example, in the devastating Paradise fire, there were photographs of the aftermath showing homes burned down to their foundations, while adjacent trees remained standing relatively intact. None of the potential solutions to this reality are easy. Hardening homes to resist ignition works best when wind-driven embers hitting roofs and eaves are the cause of the spread. But when a so-called fire tornado whips into homes at temperatures up to 2,000 degrees and at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, it is almost impossible to make a home fire-resistant.

Creating defensible space, along with hardening homes, is an effective defense against wildfires when they don’t become cataclysmic super fires such as were seen in the summer of 2018. Even then, natural fires have to be allowed to burn, regularly reducing excess tinder, or teams have to go into the forest and remove all of it. Alternatively, controlled burns regularly have to be set to in the hope that they will remove tinder in a safer and more cost-effective manner.

An encouraging example of how a consensus is slowly forming to revise forest management came a few years ago from a spokesperson for the Environmental Defense Fund, who advocated for more salvage logging to reduce the intensity of future fires. Arguing that years of fire suppression made it impossible to “let nature heal itself,” the writer proposed the Forest Service authorize “merchantable dead tree removal [which] will contribute revenue that then can be used for recovery efforts including tree planting.”

This approach can work not only with dead trees but with healthy live trees. Expediting permits for property owners and logging companies to remove a percentage of commercially valuable mature trees in exchange for them also removing dead trees and dense undergrowth is a financially viable way to quickly restore forests to the state they were in prior to decades of aggressive fire suppression. If this were done, natural fires no longer would be as likely to become super fires. Salvage logging would also make it easier to manage “controlled burns” since the quantity of undergrowth already would be reduced.

Preventing Fires Sparked by Transmission Lines

Some of the most devastating fires of the past few years were caused by sparks from transmission lines. Directing public funds and a portion of ratepayer revenue to hardening transmission lines is an important priority, but should be subject to cost/benefit analysis. Burying high voltage lines, for example, costs $3 million per mile. With more than 25,000 miles of high voltage transmission lines in California, burying all of them would cost $75 billion.

That’s just scratching the surface. California also has 160,000 miles of overhead distribution lines which, while carrying lower voltages, are still capable of sparking fires. To bury them all? Over a half-trillion dollars.

And burying power lines underground brings its own set of problems. Maintenance of underground power conduits is much more costly. They are susceptible to flooding, damage from rodents, earthquakes, and inadvertent disruption caused by new construction or maintenance of other conduits such as telecommunications fiber or water and gas mains.

Another way to reduce the potential for overhead power lines to spark wildfires is to wrap the wires with insulation, replace wood poles with composite ones, and install covered conductors. Additional steps include installing “fast-acting fuses, advanced lightning arrestors, and other devices that can react more quickly to minimize fire risks.”

Finally, cutting off power when high winds and high temperatures greatly elevate fire risk should remain an option for utilities, but the process needs to be refined. The headline of an article just published by the Los Angeles Times says it all: “PG&E’s blackouts were ‘not surgical by any stretch.’” The story explains the distinction between “networked” distribution systems, where power can be routed over several paths of distribution lines and circuits, and “radial” systems, where lone power lines carry power into service areas.

The advantage of a networked system is that if high winds and hot weather are threatening to spark a fire around one section of the system, that line can be shut down but power can still reach all service areas using other routes, maintaining service everywhere.

While reducing or even eliminating wildfires sparked by transmission lines is a worthy goal, that focus must not distract policymakers from more comprehensive solutions. Even if all risks from power lines were eliminated, wildfires will still be sparked by lightning strikes as well as by other types of human-caused accidents. Forest thinning and controlled burns are necessary to ensure that when fires do start, they are lower-intensity fires. At the same time, homes in the urban-wildland interface need to be hardened against combustion, with defensible space around them, so low-intensity fires are a survivable threat.

Energy Policy and Wildfire Management Are Interlinked

PG&E deserves much criticism, but it is important to recognize that no other utility in California is responsible for providing service to nearly as much territory. It is relatively easy for municipal power utilities to maintain their service areas, since their customer base is in a densely populated area. PG&E, on the other hand, is responsible for providing service to customers spread out over 70,000 square miles. Converting a grid from a radial configuration to a networked configuration over territory that vast is far more difficult.

No discussion of how utilities should cope with wildfire risk is complete without considering the impact of renewables mandates. The expense that utilities incur to extend their distribution lines to far-flung solar and wind farms across the state is money that could be used to upgrade transmission lines, pay for networked distribution systems, and where most necessary, bury transmission lines. And the increased mileage of transmission lines necessitated by connecting to disbursed solar and wind farms not only means more potential fire hazards but because these intermittent power sources have to be balanced continuously, it means more electrical traffic on the grid.

The only potential upside of renewables mandates is the possibility that if cost-effective power storage is developed at scale—i.e., cheap and affordable battery systems with capacities measured in hundreds of megawatt-hours per unit, then grid electricity can be distributed and stored. This would permit uninterrupted power whenever transmission lines delivering power into an area is cut off, since the power stored in these batteries would pick up the slack.

In general, however, renewables mandates in California redirect utility resources away from safety, and into technologies that may soon be obsolete. Do we really want to construct a 2.3 gigawatt-hour electricity storage facility at Moss Landing, on California’s Central Coast, using lithium-ion technology, when solid-state batteries may be a reality within the next 10 years? Should we really carpet the Mojave Desert with photovoltaic panels, when safe and cost-effective fission reactors are being constructed all over the world, and commercially viable fusion power could be here within the next 20 to 30 years?

It would be a tremendous setback if the consequence of devastating wildfires in recent years would be prohibitions on new housing in the urban-wildland interface. Using “climate change” as their rallying cry, that is the solution according to some policymakers and activists. But denying to all but the wealthiest Californians a chance to live in rural areas is a cruel and regressive solution. It is particularly unwarranted if one recognizes that “climate change” has little to do with elevated fire risks and more intense fires.

Instead, Californians need to pursue an interlinked set of solutions to minimize risk. Property owners need to harden their structures against fires and create defensible space. Forest management practices need to embrace selective logging conditional on the removal of undergrowth. Utilities need to invest in transmission line upgrades and networked systems. And California’s determination to pour hundreds of billions into implementing renewables needs to be examined not only against the obvious pitfall of likely obsolescence but against the costs and benefits of that course versus building a safe and reliable power grid that can meet the needs and expectations of residents in the 21st century.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Crazy and Woke Progressive Insanity Will NEVER Help the Homeless

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AUDIO:  Venice Beach remains the epicenter of Homeless Industrial Complex corruption, as planners consider a proposal to house 140 homeless people in an apartment complex with a total project cost of over $200 million. The strategies being pursued by California’s progressive politicians will NEVER solve the problem of homelessness, but they will spend billions and billions and billions of dollars “trying.” – 17 minutes on KABC Los Angeles – Edward Ring on the Dr. Pinsky and Leeann Tweeden Show.

How to Help the Homeless

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VIDEO – A discussion towards understanding the root causes of homelessness in California, and how we can help solve this problem – 23 minutes in Epoch Times studio, Los Angeles – Edward Ring with Siyamak Khorrami on California Insider

https://www.theepochtimes.com/california-insider-interview-with-edward-ring-on-the-homeless_3118270.html

Imagining Donald Trump’s Future for America

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Anyone who thinks Trump’s victory is inevitable in 2020 is not paying attention. The entire weight of America’s profiteering elites are arrayed against him. But what if he wins anyway? What if enough voters realize they’re being conned by the Democrats? What if enough voters decide they don’t want to feel like unwanted usurpers in their own nation? What if voters of all ethnicities and genders realize that despite the unrelenting avalanche of lies coming from the Left, America is a welcoming and inclusive nation, and that the only way a society can stay healthy is by rewarding personal initiative?

What if a critical mass of independent voters conclude that, despite his pugnacity, President Trump cares about all Americans, and actually holds moderate, compassionate, common sense positions? If these things happen, and they very well might, not only will President Trump get reelected, but control of the House of Representatives will pass back over the GOP. And if these sentiments sweep across the land, then politicians of both parties will realize it is time to stop fighting and get back to serving the American people.

The first thing to understand is that Trump’s policies have a coherence that is denied by the Left and not sufficiently acknowledged by the Right. They rest on the premise that if America prioritizes its own economic and social welfare, that not only benefits the American people, but it makes America more capable of influencing events around the world.

In the process of prioritizing America’s interests, Trump’s policies demolish two pieties currently deployed by the Left to sabotage virtually everything that might advance those interests. Those are identity politics and climate change alarmism. In both cases, Trump has reopened vigorous debate as to the legitimacy of these pieties. Identity politics, at the core, has a corrosive impact on character, by providing excuses for personal failure. Climate alarm, at its core, hands the instruments of progress and wealth creation over to a clerisy of self serving profiteers and misguided fanatics.

So how might we envision the next few decades in an America shaped by the vision and courage pioneered in this century by Donald Trump?

Trump’s 2020 Reelection Ushered in a Long Boom of Economic Growth

When Trump took office for another four years, presiding over a GOP controlled congress, sweeping, transformative legislation was passed, often with significant support from Democrats.

  • Massive public/private infrastructure partnerships were funded, not only rebuilding America’s interstates and railroads, but also investing in revolutionary 21st century infrastructure such as desalination plants, state-of-the-art nuclear power stations, and underground transportation conduits for cars to bypass congested city streets.
  • Federal energy subsidies of all types were ended, with much of the savings plowed into basic research into, for example, fusion power, electricity storage, and space transportation technologies.
  • America’s military was disengaged from tactical conflicts around the world at the same time as spending was significantly increased on reestablishing technological supremacy. In a related development, the American Space Force was permanently deployed on the water rich south pole of the Moon.
  • Federal funds were cut off to all institutions of public education unless, at the K-12 level, they prioritized basic learning skills and eliminated curricula that had become nothing more than Leftist political indoctrination. In higher education, federal funds became contingent on admissions being based on SAT scores and grade point averages, and nothing more.
  • Immigration laws were reformed and enforced, the border was secured, and legal immigration was limited to individuals who had much needed skills, spoke English, and loved America.
  • Extreme environmental laws and regulations were repealed, allowing cost-effective development of land. Housing became affordable.
  • America’s Homeless Industrial Complex was broken. America’s homeless were relocated to tent cities on the fringes of urban areas, where the money saved was used to treat them.

American Culture Realigned to Embrace Traditional Virtues

Amazingly, the power of the Left withered away as prosperity swept across the nation. Grateful Americans embraced patriotic themes again, and recent immigrants of all backgrounds enthusiastically assimilated into the American mainstream.

Conservative, patriotic spokespersons for various identity groups – especially African Americans and Mexican Americans – stepped forward in growing numbers to extol the virtues of individual freedom and personal responsibility. Even environmentalists became realistic again in their priorities, and hearkening back to their illustrious roots, refocused on the universal and compelling goals of clean water, clean air, sustainable deep sea fishing, practical forest management, fighting poachers, getting plastic out of the ocean.

Ending the culture war got decisive help from the U.S. Supreme Court, which tilted firmly to the right with the retirement of Chief Justice Ginsberg. With five or six reliably conservative justices in place, issues where the Left had continuously used the court to encroach on traditional American values were either overturned, or, wisely, leftist litigants no longer advanced these cases. And in a sweeping ruling in 2023, the court outlawed any preferences in hiring, promotion, college admissions, or government contracting – ensuring Americans of all ethnicities would have equal opportunities.

In 2024, Mike Pence was elected president, continuing the policies of his predecessor. Those who remained of America’s recalcitrant Left were pleasantly surprised. This kind, exemplary man was not only an effective, moderate conservative in the policies he championed, but showed himself to be an ecumenical, compassionate ambassador for Christianity. Some of America’s most polarizing social issues subsided, as the values of forgiveness, charity and love once again dominated American culture.

The Long Boom Extended Around the World

With the long arm of American influence no longer discouraging the development of cheap and clean fossil fuel, economic development surged across emerging nations in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. International charter cities were established that became magnets for investment, education, and economic growth, and spreading from these cities, prosperity reached into every corner of these developing nations.

The most dramatic benefit was to women in these nations, who no longer had to spend their days foraging for fuel and pumping water. Rates of literacy soared at the same time as, without coercion, birthrates fell. By the early 2030s, fulfilling the most optimistic scenarios, global population peaked at only 8.2 billion.

America’s economic vitality was contagious. Everywhere on Earth, governments and citizens emulated America’s example, encouraging capitalism, reforming government, rewarding individual initiative. The dividends of technology continued to sweep the world, as high-rise agriculture, animal free meat, aquaculture, and high-yield crops allowed a wealthier global population to consume richer food even as the footprint of agricultural land got smaller and smaller.

Eventually, redirecting money from energy subsidies to energy research yielded dramatic results, and commercial fusion power became a reality. In the early 2030s, led by American companies, fusion reactors began to completely transform the global energy landscape. Along with commercially viable breakthroughs in solid state battery technology, the electric age finally became feasible. Not through mandates, but through competition, fossil fuels swiftly became obsolete.

America’s Strategic Military Supremacy Enabled a 21st Century Pax Americana

While the policy of principled realism and selective involvement of America’s military required difficult choices, the benefits were readily apparent. America’s surging economy, its pool of scientists recruited from around the world who were motivated by freedom, and its reduced need to spend budget dollars on overseas deployments translated into a torrent of research and innovation in strategic military technology. Not even China was any longer a match for the United States in any of the new domains of military competition – cyber, cyborg, electronics, AI, energy weapons, avionics, nanotech, advance space technologies, and defense against pathogens, genetic weapons, and chemical weapons.

As the United States contained despotic, aspiring superpowers, China in particular, the nations of the world fitfully emulated America’s example. While America’s success and America’s culture was irresistible to most people around the world, tribalism and religious fanaticism did not disappear overnight. But America’s example emboldened moderates everywhere, most particularly in the reformations, often led by women, that swept the Islamic world in the late 2020s and 2030s.

This glowing scenario is the vision embodied in President Trump’s policies. While bigger than any one individual, President Trump was the first American politician with the courage to actually fight for this vision. It rests on a recognition that America is indeed exceptional, but cannot effectively set an example for the world unless it first secures its own national interests.

Equally significant, it recognizes both identity politics and climate alarmism as dangerous hoaxes, promulgated by fraudsters and promoted by fanatics. Hopefully Trump’s supporters will assert not only their allegiance to him as a political leader, and not only challenge the premises that Trump has dared to challenge. Hopefully they will also evangelize, to all the skeptics and undecideds, the wonderful future that can be had if the polices pursuant to patriotism, energy freedom, and individual initiative, are given full expression.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Crazy and Woke on the Western Front of Progressive Insanity

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The reason progressive extremism persists in America today is because progressives are either making money by embracing progressive policies, or because progressives are not living on the front lines of progressive insanity.

It is hard to imagine a place that would have an electorate any more progressive than Venice Beach. Located on the shores of West Los Angeles in California’s 33rd Congressional District, Venice Beach is represented by Democrat Ted Lieu, who was reelected in 2018 with 70 percent of the vote. But a revolution is brewing in Venice Beach, because Venice Beach is on the front lines of progressive insanity.

Thanks to progressive ideology as expressed in laws and court rulings, in California today you cannot arrest and hold vagrants for petty theft or possession of hard drugs; you cannot move them out of public spaces unless you can provide them with free and “permanent supportive housing;” you cannot commit demonstrably insane people to asylums; and publicly funded shelters must offer food and urgent care without any preconditions whatsoever.

The Streets of Venice Beach Are An Open Sewer

Testimonials from residents of Venice Beach provide ample evidence of what happens when you impose these progressive policies on an urban area bordered on the west by some of the most inviting beaches and agreeable weather in the world. An estimated 1,200 homeless people have set up permanent encampments in this three square mile beach town. They almost never use actual toilets.

According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, the average human produces one pound of feces per day. Simple math therefore tells us that every week, the homeless population deposits more than four tons of feces onto the gutters and sidewalks and driveways and lawns of Venice Beach residents, where they are dutifully hosed into the sewers and eventually make their way into the ocean.

The reality of being on the front lines of progressive insanity requires more than hard numbers. The homeless don’t shit in their tents, or anywhere near their tents. They walk into the neighborhoods to relieve themselves. Consider this eyewitness account from a Venice Beach resident:

“People have to hose this [shit] down where it runs down the street to the sewer on Main Street. Westminster Elementary school serves the children of local residents. Kids pick stuff up, dogs walk in the stuff. This is all tracked into homes and classrooms. They leave bottles of urine in their water bottles [figure around 16 tons per week] and leave the bottles. The only way these bottles don’t accumulate forever is because property owners have to pick them up.”

Insoluble Homeless Problem Benefits Politicians

If anything stinks more than the shit that is deposited each day in Venice by the homeless, it’s the corruption that prevents action. All the laws and court rulings that prevent decisive action could be bypassed if Governor Newsom would declare a state of emergency. But why on Earth would California’s progressive, woke governor do any such thing, when the progressive elite in Los Angeles are exploiting these laws and court rulings to make billions of dollars, while the problem only gets worse?

Here is an excerpt from an email sent to Mike Bonin, the Los Angeles City Councilmember whose district includes Venice Beach:

“Councilmember Bonin: I just received my property tax bill. It sort of feels like a sick joke. Can you please let me know how I can deduct for services not rendered? I’m not paying for your bloated administrative costs anymore. Our streets are lawless, they are covered in feces and our crime rate is spiraling. How can you force us to live in such horrible conditions? Don’t you see that the City of Los Angeles is actually the #1 slumlord in the nation?”

Or this one, also sent to Councilmember Bonin, along with many of his colleagues on the Los Angeles City Council:

“Councilman and City Officials: I cannot emphasize enough how dangerous this is becoming for all constituents – the homeless and the housed both. Increasingly, we are witnessing acts of violence and being subjected to very disturbing spreading of dangerous bodily fluids and needles on the streets of Venice. Sadly, this is why many of us have actively embraced the federal government to intervene in our city in order to begin some sense of sanity and rights to our neighborhoods. I join my fellow Venetians in calling upon you to step up and take immediate steps to stop these wild, wild west actions that are now taking place on a daily basis, and restore safety for all in Venice Beach.”

Or this lengthy, vivid appeal:

“I was almost attacked by three dogs off leash fighting with another dog early this evening. Told another neighbor to walk his dog the other way. He appreciated the advice. This is ridiculous. To our ‘respected’ (NOT) council and city people: You pad your pockets, and don’t think we don’t know it. We are not blind and dumb. We get poorer so you can pocket money and yet our living conditions have gone to hell in a handbasket. And you drove the bus.

Make amends. LISTEN to us. We are not just rich NIMBYs. We are hard working in all variety and type of work, peoples who come together to help each other. Some people are wealthy, some fighting for their very last dollar to maintain at least an apartment.

Start doing something about the actual problem rather than seeing what developers with whom you can seek prosperous deals can do for your OWN BANK ACCOUNTS. DO SOMETHING! And DO it NOW!!!!!

You may not like what I say, but I stand firmly that I am correct in my assessments that you mismanage money and somehow it comes back to your own bank accounts. Once again don’t think we are stupid. You can say what you want, but we know the truth and you cannot dodge it every chance you get.

We will find ultimately what you did. Much like a felon, just admit now to what you did and get it over with before you end up with the wrath of the power of the people you purport to represent.”

Residents Are Recognizing That Political Corruption Prevents Solutions

These excerpts from emails sent to the local elected officials who run the City of Los Angeles represent a minute fraction of the avalanche of emails, letters, phone calls and public statements pouring forth from an enraged electorate.

The corruption is obvious. You don’t spend over a half-million dollars per unit to provide “permanent supportive housing” to homeless people, taking years to build them, all the while leaving the vast majority of the homeless on the street. In Venice Beach these “progressive” public officials are considering a 140 unit apartment for the homeless that will cost an estimated $205 million – nearly $1.5 million per homeless person.

This is insanity. This is blatant corruption that deserves criminal prosecution. Yet thanks to laws and court rulings pushed by progressive ideology, it’s all perfectly legal.

And the “woke” progressives on the front lines of this war are indeed waking up. This comes from a Venice resident whose ideology has shifted in recent months:

“Two years ago, I would’ve voted for anyone but Trump. After watching Bonin and Garcetti attract drug addicts and criminals to LA and Venice, I’ll never vote for a Democrat again. Bonin and Garcetti lie about the drug and crime epidemic calling it a “housing crisis” so they can pay their donors with HHH money. Don’t believe me? Look at who is donating to their non-profits. Housing developers and service providers.

Women, elderly and even men are afraid to walk the streets at night. Two of my friends were attacked by homeless criminals in the last month alone. The new encampment on Hampton, (who say they are waiting for the MTA bridge home to open), are doing drugs and chopping up stolen bikes in broad daylight. A group of us are working with the White House. They are close to an intervention to protect us. Instead of asking the Fed for Federal land to build housing out there, Garcetti is asking for money to give to his donors. We are going to escalate this to the national level until the Federal government comes in to protect us.”

Venice Beach is Becoming Unlivable for Residents

And meanwhile, the war goes on. The residents are losing this war. They are losing their homes. They are losing their community.

Across the streets of Venice Beach, there is glass everywhere because of discarded and shattered liquor bottles. There is homeless on homeless violence, and to protect themselves and their property, many of the homeless have dogs.

One resident, who, like most, does not want to be identified, had this to say about the dogs:

“Last week, a woman was bit by a homeless person’s pit bull. About an hour later the police showed up at the van where the dog lives with his owner, but the owner fled. Nothing was done. If you walk by a tent or a van, the dogs will lunge at you, because they are protecting their property and their owner – never mind if the ‘property’ is a public sidewalk. ‘Off-leash’ pit bulls and other large dogs are everywhere. The animals are being used as weapons. Residents are intimidated and have to avoid the entire area. It isn’t worth the risk of getting bit. The dog could cause a serious injury, they could have rabies. If you have your own dog, there are very few safe places to take the dog for a walk because the dogs of the homeless will attack your dog and possibly kill it.”

The stories coming from the shell shocked residents of Venice Beach are endless. Back in July, a mentally ill man stole neighborhood trash bins to construct a personal fortress. The police removed the man but left the bins, which cannot be identified and reclaimed. Three months later, still there, the pile of bins have become a magnet for trash. A broken television, a couch, and the ubiquitous needles. Throughout Venice Beach, an entire new urban ecosystem has been created by the trash. Rats and mice and skunks eat the trash; they in turn become victims of hawks.

When it comes to open drug use in Venice, there is a perverse twist to the story. As told by a resident:

“There are more discarded needles up in San Francisco, because the drug of choice in Venice seems to be meth. On the other hand, this is worse, because meth users become violent and agitated. I would prefer to encounter a heroin user because you can run from them.”

Just the fact that residents have had to learn how to size the homeless up and figure out what they’re on is part of the tragedy that has befallen this city. Residents are constantly assessing their risk factor. As another resident explains:

“You constantly have to be aware of who you are around. Always stay visible to other people so you can call for help. Stay near places that are open or where people can hear you calling for help.”

And colorful characters become part of the landscape.

“Drug use is totally out in the open. We have a man living in the bushes on Main Street, he smokes crystal meth in the open, he shits in the same bushes, and he wears a loincloth. He walks around all day defecating in the bushes and smoking crystal meth from a pipe. He is almost always high, but he gets violent when he comes down. All the residents know him. You don’t want to be around these people when they’re coming down.”

Homeless Encampments Create No-Go Zones

Entire blocks of Venice Beach have become the site of permanent homeless encampments, where residents cannot park their cars, walk their dogs, or, in some cases, patronize local businesses which leads to those businesses closing their doors. As described by an eyewitness:

“It’s like a whack a mole. When they’re cleared out they just pop up in a new place. When they were temporarily cleared off the beach they moved to Rose and 3rd, the ‘no ticket zone’ because you can do anything there and not get written up. It’s considered a ‘contained encampment,’ a place that the LAPD have designated as a defacto homeless haven. They are like Favelas where the homeless know they can retreat to and there is no law.

These areas where they are concentrated is evidence of how much property they have. Tents, chairs, bicycles, umbrellas; they take up a lot of space and claim the sidewalks. There are frequent fights over the space, a lot of homeless on homeless stabbings, they are fighting over property. On what we call ‘RV Row,’ there are over 30 RVs on Main Street that they have to move every Monday for street cleaning. They move their cars exactly when the sweepers come.

Many of these RVs are not drivable so they literally push them to the other side of the street, then push them back again. There is a whole crew that controls RV Row, putting their RVs up on blocks to level them off. Residents can forget about ever parking their cars on the street. And then there are the vans filled with homeless, which are all over Venice, and they are even worse. The occupants will do drugs all night in their van; you can hear them partying in the vans. They park in front of homes constantly playing music and shouting etc. all night long.”

Nearly All Venice Homeless Are Drug Addicts

You don’t have to be a clinical psychiatrist to tell when someone is obviously insane, or under the influence of narcotics. You just have to live in Venice Beach for more than a few days.

According to residents, and contrary to the pandering progressive nonsense that comes from the Homeless Industrial Complex, nearly everyone who is homeless in Venice Beach is a heavy drug user. The population might be generally subdivided as follows:

About one-third are mentally ill and heavy drug users. Another one-third are heavy drug users who have become mentally ill because of the drugs. And the final one-third are just heavy drug users.

None of these people belong unsupervised on the streets, shitting and fighting and stealing, destroying a community, while the progressive politicians get rich pretending to fix the problem. Letting this happen is a despicable betrayal of the residents by these politicians. And it’s not doing these homeless people any favors, either. They are lost souls. They need help, and they’re not going to get it.

And so, day after day, the story goes on. As those of us in more peaceful neighborhoods listen to the weather reports, the besieged residents of Venice Beach listen to reports of fights, thefts, rapes, and murders. Here’s one of the latest dispatches from the Western Front of Progressive Insanity:

“I cycled down the boardwalk at 7 a.m. today. Cool looking guy with blue sunglasses openly selling drugs. Homeless all over the place and rubbish all over the side of the boardwalk. A huge shit on the bike path. Then fire trucks, cop cars and life guard cars at one of the life guard towers. Apparently they found a dead body and started a homicide investigation. Such an exciting place for tourists to take their kids for a walk in the morning and then write home to tell all their friends to come and visit. Where else can you be in a life crime scene on a daily basis?”

The Woke Plan to Bring the Western Front to EVERY Neighborhood in America

The consequences of progressive policies towards the homeless embrace a host of interlinking flawed beliefs. This is why it is not enough to stop the LA City Council from building a 156 bed “wet” homeless shelter on three acres of city owned property at 100 Sunset Avenue in the heart of Venice Beach, at a cost of well over $100 million (the property alone is worth over $90 million), or a 140 unit apartment to provide “permanent supportive housing” at a cost of well over $200 million, on another three acres of city owned property in the median between North and South Venice Boulevard, one block from the sand, also in the heart of Venice Beach.

These two projects are perfectly legal, but nonetheless are morally criminal examples of corruption. Because there isn’t enough money in the world to see all of them through, eventually projects like this will be stopped, even if those two abominations are pushed through to completion. But stopping these projects is not enough, because the fall back plan being pushed by progressives is just as bad, if not worse.

Progressive extremists believe that simply providing a safe, well appointed dwelling will cause the pathology afflicting homeless people to subside. They also believe that dispersing homeless people into subsidized dwellings in tranquil neighborhoods everywhere will be “inclusive” and further alleviate their pathology. And there are powerful financial incentives for them to pursue this policy.

By pretending the homeless crisis is inextricably linked to a shortage of housing, and because it is considered heresy to expand the urban footprint, draconian new state zoning guidelines are poised to become laws that will override local ordinances. It will become permissible to demolish single family homes in single family neighborhoods and replace them with multi-family dwellings. At the same time it will become mandatory for landlords to accept Section 8 and other subsidized renters.

California’s progressive lawmakers are planning to seed California’s suburbs with high density dwellings, randomly placed, and fill them with taxpayer subsidized renters. This is where they will relocate the homeless, including substance abusers and mentally ill. The cost of supervising these people when they are disbursed throughout the cities and suburbs will make it scarcely less wasteful than constructing gargantuan palaces at $500,000 (or more) per unit, but progressive ideology and corrupt financial opportunism make this an attractive Plan B for the woke.

Across the suburbs of California in the coming years, expect homes to become worth more to buyers to demolish and replace as a Section 8 fourplexes. And as these suburbs fall prey to increased crime, the state will move in, extending to residential courts and cul de sacs the same pervasive surveillance that already blankets our cities.

There are alternatives to destroying our cities and suburbs in order to feed profits to investors and power to corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. But it will require more than a revolution that merely moves policy from the obviously unworkable Plan A (expensive palaces that “help” only a few) to the insidious yet feasible Plan B (rezone suburbs for subsidized multifamily units).

It will require a realignment that allows conservatives and liberals to join together to demand quick, decisive, cost-effective action. Call in the national guard who can work with law enforcement to round up the homeless, move them into quickly erected tent cities on state-owned land away from residential areas, and use the billions in savings to get them treatment. If the governor declared a state of emergency, it could be done in a matter of weeks.

From an ideological standpoint, that will require a common recognition that the rights of hard working and responsible people have to be given, at the very least, equal priority to the rights of drug addicts and psychotics.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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