What’s the only thing worse than politics?
No politics. Or, rather, no need for politics, since someone is making all the decisions without any need for all that pesky “compromise” and “discussion”.
History is full of the big examples – the USSR, East Germany, Germany itself, Communist China, India under Indira Gandhi, and on and on – places where politics was essentially a one-party exercise in internal spoils division.
The examples come closer to home, of course; places like Baltimore, DC, Newark, Camden, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Oakland, Stockton and Sacramento – all one-party cities where “politics” is a matter of internal Democrat party power utilization.
And of course, there’s California, where even some liberals are figuring it out:
We’re a case study in what a political community looks like when Republicans wield little or no power — and an ongoing refutation of the conceit that but for the GOP, the United States would be free of dysfunction.
Sure, the Golden State gets a lot right. It’s the sixth-largest economy in the world.
But California ranks in the lowest fifth of states in education. Housing costs are out of control. Our major cities face a crisis of homelessness. Our police officers kill citizens at rates comparable to the rest of the country. Our infrastructure is severely overstressed due to underinvestment. The bullet train project meant to connect L.A. to the Bay Area is a national joke. Our counties, cities and schools are being crushed by an unsustainable pension burden. Our taxes are already among the nation’s highest.
And it is no longer plausible to blame any of this on Republicans. For the foreseeable future, Democrats own every Golden State success and failure.
That particular article, written by the LaTimes’ token moderate-lefty (moderate = he hasn’t called for any violent overthrows laterly) Conor Friedersdorf, is mere acknowledgement that California Democrats had best be alert, since they’ve got no other parties to pass the buck to. Victor Davis Hanson is more forthright.
Closer to home? Horowitz’s Frontpage says what nobody in Minnesota dares say; Minneapolis is burning, whether you admit it or not. After “only” forty years of one-party DFL rule (challenged, briefly, from the left by the Green Party in the nineties and early 2000s), Minneapolis’ decay has accelerated with DFL hegemony:
The result has been disastrous. As of 2015, the poverty rate in Minneapolis was 25.3%, nearly twice the 14% statewide rate for Minnesota and the 14.3% rate for the United States as a whole. In 2010, a study of 142 metro areas in Minnesota found that only 15 bore a heavier property-tax burden than Minneapolis, and that was before the city raised its property taxes by 4.7% in 2011.
More recently, Minneapolis property taxes increased by 3.4% in 2016, and by a crippling 5.5% in 2017. Notwithstanding the growth in revenues generated by these taxes, the government of Minneapolis has been incapable of balancing its budget. In 2015, for example, the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority’s budget included $84 million in federal subsidies and grants. In 2017, the Metropolitan Council—which describes itself as “the regional policy-making body, planning agency, and provider of essential services for the Twin Cities metropolitan region”—received $91 million in federal funding. That same year, the Minneapolis Public Schools operated with a budget deficit of nearly $17 million.
But massive deficits, coupled with ever-increasing dependency on federal assistance, have done nothing to persuade the political leaders of Minneapolis to question their zealous devotion to leftist political solutions, including an unwavering commitment to the “sanctuary” policies that prevent city employees from assisting federal immigration authorities. When President Donald Trump in 2017 announced that he planned to cut off all federal funding for sanctuary cities, for instance, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges stated defiantly: “As long as I stand as Mayor, he’s going to have to get through me.”
He probably won’t, though. Because as Minneapolis’s decay inevitably accelerates, and Betsy Hodges cashes in her sinecure points and moves on to a non-profit that contributes to the problem, the decay and collapse of the city will do what Donald Trump can not.
And it will make no difference. Is Democratic policy or control threatened in any of the cities or towns you mention? No.
The key for Minnesota’s survival is to make sure that Minneapolis doesn’t get so large that it doesn’t matter what the rest of the state thinks. That’s the core problem that’s driving CA, IL, and NY into the Red Sea of budgeting and that will eventually cause their states to spiral downwards.
I pay for a hedge fund guy that says he would short the whole state of California if there was a way to do it.
MN is similarly nice, so they can abuse the attracted taxpayers until it breaks just like CA.
Not sure how much money Trump can re-direct from cities that declare themselves safe harbor for criminals, but I do hope he re-directs every penny he can.
“As long as I stand as Mayor, he’s going to have to get through me.”
Showing a vast reality denial of
A) Politics,
B) Economics, and
C) Physics.
Mitch: In 1993 my wife and I moved out of Mpls because A) the schools were showing signs of serious decay and our kids were 8 and 3, B) the only kids on our block for my son to play with came from dysfunctional families of dubious legality (I used to tell my wife the kids had already been assigned prison numbers) and, C) the costs to live in Mpls were becoming undeniably onerous.
And for the open borders Democrats….Rockville Maryland. An 18 year old illegal alien high school freshman (yes) raped a 14 year old girl. In the school.
An elementary teacher from that school district said 1 out of 3 grade school students there do not speak a word of English.
But hey…..Crazy Al Franken sent his kids to a private school that costs $49,000 a year per student.
If you people want to see what a real governor is like, follow Governor Walker on Facebook. He is constantly traveling throughout Wisconsin promoting various causes.
I lived in Minneapolis from 1975-1980, when I was still a teenager. What they now call the “white working class” (WWC) was disappearing fast. It was moving to the suburbs. In the 1970s, and through the early 1980s, Nordeast was still Nordeast. In the 70s and 80s there were still a lot of oldsters in Minneapolis who spoke with Central European accents. By 1990 they all seem to have died off, and the kids and grand kids were living in the ‘burbs.
The population of Minneapolis peaked at 521k in 1950 (https://www.biggestuscities.com/city/minneapolis-minnesota). It’s about 420K now. If it wasn’t for the U and the lakes it would have as much cultural cachet as Des Moines.
I view California as the hot, yet ungrateful girlfriend of the United States who while not perfect will tolerate all the crap California gives them. Remember Calexit? Classic case of hot girl overplaying their hand. California thought if they threw a hissy fit after the election people would ‘come to realize’ how lucky they were to have them and beg them to stay. Instead we called their bluff and said don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out, by the way here’s the bill you owe us. Talk of Calexit went away quickly once they realized the conseqences they’d actually face if they did it.
Question: What would happen if the FBI simply walked into the Mayor’s office and frog-marched her off to a cell somewhere, awaiting trial for conspiracy to evade immigration law, and accessory to every crime committed by an illegal alien in her “sanctuary city”?
constitutional crisis, and shed be a martyr for lefties nationwide. Trump is smarter than that. Frankly I bet she hopes they do something like the JW
Regarding sanctuary cities, it’s worth noting that a lot of towns around here are effectively sanctuary cities because ICE apparently isn’t willing to pick people up when their sentences are completed. Noting that they don’t have the right to arbitrarily lengthen jail terms, they let them go.
How to solve this part of the problem; ICE workers with vans picking up illegals who have completed their sentences. They’re going to be released at 11am Monday? Get your butt there by 10am, ICE. No excuses.
Get that solved, then pass a law allowing civil damages for citizens and legal residents who are victimized by illegal immigrants who are let go by sanctuary cities. Even San Fran and Chicago will take notice after losing a few million bucks.