When I was young, I thought Democrats were good people who were basically wrong about everything. As I’ve gotten older and seen how they continue to push the same policies in the face of failure after failure, I came to realize that every result is intentional or at least a price they are happy to have us pay in order to get what they want: the people’s money and the people’s power. There is no other explanation.
Listen to what they say, watch what they do, and follow the money. They "say" they want to solve a problem, but "do" things and enact policies that clearly fail and make things worse. The money, however, flows continuously to "solve" the problems that never get better in a recursive loop...which is a feature, not a bug. The old "say do gap" makes sense when you realize the actual goal of the activity. IMO, YMMV
Mr. Reynolds, love your closing. "That’s a brutal blow to a machine that has for years relied on making sure people weren’t able to talk about the things that might be dangerous to it. That will raise pressure, and likely lead to change in time anyway." Trump set the conditions for the conversation, and Elon 's purchase of X has allowed it to be heard by us "normies" in ways the machine / blob / swamp are (as you point out) desperately trying to silence. Why? As the saying goes, you get more of what you reward, and less of what you punish. The Dems had created a system of non-profits and NGOs that functioned without interference for decades, funneling money into their coffers. Suspect more than a few Rinos benefited as well, as these things tend to be bipartisan, and it explains some odd Republican behavior. Now that USAID has been exposed and dissolved by DOGE, fraud and corruption in budgetary terms has been exposed on an industrial scale that continues to amaze even the most cynical and jaded among us average US citizens. The media and academia's reputations are using binoculars to see a snake's belly in a swamp because of their blatant falsehoods (eg. Biden's "sharp as a tack", the border is secure, and if it wasn't we'd need comprehensive immigration reform to secure it, blah blah, etc). Us normies ARE talking about things because we can speak up and have a conversation, at least among ourselves, because the other side has their fingers in their ears singing "la la la" or screaming "racist / transphobe / etc. Changing the incentive structure for blue bad behavior is going to take a mammoth effort. We are by no means "winning" yet. But, we're off the bottom and fighting to preserve our "normal" way of life. Now if we can get our Rino infested "majority" in the senate to pass the save act, perhaps we can avoid losing ground in the midterms.
The Democrats and the city machines are deeply invested in the idea of crisis. If your city is is clean, potholes are filled, crime is rare, and homeless drug users are not omnipresent, where is the crisis? How can the politicians and the machine exploit you for more dollars and more votes? How will the machine bureaucrats and NGO's protect their phoney baloney jobs?
It’s almost a dependency at this point to have your comforting analysis…
May I offer that the reason the system produces violence, filth, and disorder is Marxist: _to wit_, their strategy is to destabilise the social environment until normal citizens lose faith, and turn things over to the Marxists politically (or, the same thing from a different perspective, lose the will to resist revolution).
The question is why do voters keep re-electing these incompetent buffoons? It wasnt that long ago, not really, that New York City elected for 20 straight years two mayors who's appeal was based one hundred percent on competence. Now it elects Marxist gadflies. What has happened?
We have no idea what the votes are for in NYC or any other blue-controlled area. Maybe the people are voting for Communism, etc. But the voting process is so corrupt, between fake rolls and machines that can be manipulated, we just don't know. Pratt's campaign may shed some light on just how much actual support is out there. Very little, I suspect.
"Eliminating Homelessness is a goal we can all get behind".
We've heard this is a basic "requirement" of a moral society. And how can you virtual-signaling people participate in this betterment of society? - Vote for us. Give us more of your money in taxes, but to lessen your burden, vote to raise your neighbors "contribution to the noble cause" so you can help raise them to nearly as high as the lofty level of your virtues, as you see it.
Focusing just on the homeless issue (many of them addicted and / or mentally ill), consider this.
Homeless advocates would be out of a paycheck if there were no homelessness they could bill for.
Non Government Organizations nearly fully dependent on Government grants to "solve" homelessness, would suffer likewise without headcount.
But the most important threat is to the continued flow of NGO return-in-kind campaign contributions to PACs of the politicians who voted to give the NGOs the money in the first place expecting a future return on investment. Their return, on taxpayers "investment".
The politicians' kids don't go to the public "schools" or parks in neighborhoods where the homeless industry's client base is "experiencing homelessness". They have gates to preclude that sort of possibility.
The Dem inside polls must be bad or they wouldn't be so offensively defensive. He has a chance. He is also showing the way to other truth tellers. Simply point out the obvious and make you opponent run a scattered defence. He's forcing his Dem opponent to do what Dems hate more than anything - debate and defend their record. Dems run all the shitholes in America. You'd think that would be enough to relegate them to the dustbin. They produce plenty of cracked eggs; but nary, not ever, the promised omelette.
Well, I hope Pratt wins but, if he does, he will have to overcome the city council which is solidly woke (just like Trump is constrained by a Judiciary that is infested with leftist believers and a legislature that can't produce a decent budget or pass a voting integrity bill). Also hope Hilton wins as Gov of Calif but if he does he has a legislature overwhelming hostile.
Good article Glenn. Here in California the Train to Nowhere is actually a multi billion dollar payoff to the construction unions for cooperation with the governor. Whether it gets built or not is irrelevant. In LA why would you vote for Karen Bass after the fire fiasco? The unions that run LA must have Bass as the face of the machine that feeds them. So the unions will turn out for her. Will that be enough? We’ll see soon.
Liberals love to shove their toxic altruism down your throat and then force you to pay for it. Leftists have a pathological desire to place the wants of the small fringe over the needs of the majority and then call you a racist/bigot/white supremacist/fascist/MAGA extremist if you complain about it.
Growing numbers of citizens are starting to rebel against the permanent, incompetent, unaccountable governance brought on by One Party domination of the political process in places like LA and California.
It would be nice if the politicians running cities and states were competent managers who were actually interested in doing the basic things needed to make their jurisdictions operate well instead of using their offices to socially reengineer them.
Pratt has destroyed Newsom's national aspirations - a nice side benefit. To the extent we can force the democrat's to pick an absolute disaster as a presidential candidate in 2028 (Buttigieg leads a recent poll) the better.
Don't get me wrong Newsom is completely incompetent at governing, but he looks normal and with media help can seem reasonable. Look at the rest of them, with the exception of Shapiro, they are wackos. No way they are winning a national election.
Mr. Reynolds has been right for decades. There is an uncomfortable description of bad leaders he is too decent to use. No, it is not in vile language; it is ordinary experience as we grow up. The very poor leaders we have are bullies...and bullies are cowards. Crowds of "masked demonstrators" are afraid to show their faces...for fear of punishment from those they are demeaning and bullying. The California political leaders Do Not Know How to Fix failure.
So they say the problem is something other than clean streets. They are ignorant bullies, if cornered, will briefly attack and then run. The solution is to confront each of them...and use the word coward. Good life to all of you.
Quite simply, the next time your elected local or state official holds a press conference about global warming, the Middle East, or the national political climate, expect to experience poor county law enforcement, bad municipal services, or regional insolvency.
The Democratic Party doesn't want to do normal things because it's no longer about using government to deliver social programs to make people's lives better, but about social status. The politicians and bureaucrats want public services to decline because it highlights their superiority. If you're not the politically correct wealthy, a unionized public employee (clerisy), or a member of a protected class, you will be made to feel inferior and poorer.
Glen, I appreciate your commentary and believe you raise some excellent points. Additionally, in places like Los Angeles, local elections tend to have very low voter turnout, averaging around 20% of the eligible voters. This allows machine politics—such as paying people to vote, mail-in ballots, and a small group of dedicated activists—to dominate the city's politics. When this occurs, they control the funding, thereby supporting organizations aligned with their interests. These often include the so-called 'homeless' population and individuals who have profited significantly by claiming to offer services to a large and growing class of homeless, mentally ill, and impoverished people. Of course, the supposed beneficiaries never get the services that the fraudsters claim to provide. And the system feeds on the growth of the destruction of life in the city.
In short, "the people" of the city have almost no say in this unless they can be incentivized to actually vote.
When your political coalition is a collection of abnormal/outlier groups, naturally the focus will not be on "normal" priorities. Obviously you have a few voices like Rahm Emmanuel urging them to focus on political basics but frankly I don't think they can do it because that's not where the hearts of their activist class is and it's pretty hard to convincingly fake concern in politics. It's possible the party is able to purge its crazies but it's going to take time and actual results on the part of the more normie Dems. And again, I don't know if enough of them exist anymore to reform the party or if they just drift away.
When I was young, I thought Democrats were good people who were basically wrong about everything. As I’ve gotten older and seen how they continue to push the same policies in the face of failure after failure, I came to realize that every result is intentional or at least a price they are happy to have us pay in order to get what they want: the people’s money and the people’s power. There is no other explanation.
Listen to what they say, watch what they do, and follow the money. They "say" they want to solve a problem, but "do" things and enact policies that clearly fail and make things worse. The money, however, flows continuously to "solve" the problems that never get better in a recursive loop...which is a feature, not a bug. The old "say do gap" makes sense when you realize the actual goal of the activity. IMO, YMMV
Mr. Reynolds, love your closing. "That’s a brutal blow to a machine that has for years relied on making sure people weren’t able to talk about the things that might be dangerous to it. That will raise pressure, and likely lead to change in time anyway." Trump set the conditions for the conversation, and Elon 's purchase of X has allowed it to be heard by us "normies" in ways the machine / blob / swamp are (as you point out) desperately trying to silence. Why? As the saying goes, you get more of what you reward, and less of what you punish. The Dems had created a system of non-profits and NGOs that functioned without interference for decades, funneling money into their coffers. Suspect more than a few Rinos benefited as well, as these things tend to be bipartisan, and it explains some odd Republican behavior. Now that USAID has been exposed and dissolved by DOGE, fraud and corruption in budgetary terms has been exposed on an industrial scale that continues to amaze even the most cynical and jaded among us average US citizens. The media and academia's reputations are using binoculars to see a snake's belly in a swamp because of their blatant falsehoods (eg. Biden's "sharp as a tack", the border is secure, and if it wasn't we'd need comprehensive immigration reform to secure it, blah blah, etc). Us normies ARE talking about things because we can speak up and have a conversation, at least among ourselves, because the other side has their fingers in their ears singing "la la la" or screaming "racist / transphobe / etc. Changing the incentive structure for blue bad behavior is going to take a mammoth effort. We are by no means "winning" yet. But, we're off the bottom and fighting to preserve our "normal" way of life. Now if we can get our Rino infested "majority" in the senate to pass the save act, perhaps we can avoid losing ground in the midterms.
The Democrats and the city machines are deeply invested in the idea of crisis. If your city is is clean, potholes are filled, crime is rare, and homeless drug users are not omnipresent, where is the crisis? How can the politicians and the machine exploit you for more dollars and more votes? How will the machine bureaucrats and NGO's protect their phoney baloney jobs?
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken
The point of the machines is to never allow democracy to somehow make them have to do what the people want
It’s almost a dependency at this point to have your comforting analysis…
May I offer that the reason the system produces violence, filth, and disorder is Marxist: _to wit_, their strategy is to destabilise the social environment until normal citizens lose faith, and turn things over to the Marxists politically (or, the same thing from a different perspective, lose the will to resist revolution).
Yes. Revolutionaries don’t want to improve conditions, because that will serve only to delay the revolution.
The question is why do voters keep re-electing these incompetent buffoons? It wasnt that long ago, not really, that New York City elected for 20 straight years two mayors who's appeal was based one hundred percent on competence. Now it elects Marxist gadflies. What has happened?
We have no idea what the votes are for in NYC or any other blue-controlled area. Maybe the people are voting for Communism, etc. But the voting process is so corrupt, between fake rolls and machines that can be manipulated, we just don't know. Pratt's campaign may shed some light on just how much actual support is out there. Very little, I suspect.
"Eliminating Homelessness is a goal we can all get behind".
We've heard this is a basic "requirement" of a moral society. And how can you virtual-signaling people participate in this betterment of society? - Vote for us. Give us more of your money in taxes, but to lessen your burden, vote to raise your neighbors "contribution to the noble cause" so you can help raise them to nearly as high as the lofty level of your virtues, as you see it.
Focusing just on the homeless issue (many of them addicted and / or mentally ill), consider this.
Homeless advocates would be out of a paycheck if there were no homelessness they could bill for.
Non Government Organizations nearly fully dependent on Government grants to "solve" homelessness, would suffer likewise without headcount.
But the most important threat is to the continued flow of NGO return-in-kind campaign contributions to PACs of the politicians who voted to give the NGOs the money in the first place expecting a future return on investment. Their return, on taxpayers "investment".
The politicians' kids don't go to the public "schools" or parks in neighborhoods where the homeless industry's client base is "experiencing homelessness". They have gates to preclude that sort of possibility.
The Dem inside polls must be bad or they wouldn't be so offensively defensive. He has a chance. He is also showing the way to other truth tellers. Simply point out the obvious and make you opponent run a scattered defence. He's forcing his Dem opponent to do what Dems hate more than anything - debate and defend their record. Dems run all the shitholes in America. You'd think that would be enough to relegate them to the dustbin. They produce plenty of cracked eggs; but nary, not ever, the promised omelette.
Well, I hope Pratt wins but, if he does, he will have to overcome the city council which is solidly woke (just like Trump is constrained by a Judiciary that is infested with leftist believers and a legislature that can't produce a decent budget or pass a voting integrity bill). Also hope Hilton wins as Gov of Calif but if he does he has a legislature overwhelming hostile.
Good article Glenn. Here in California the Train to Nowhere is actually a multi billion dollar payoff to the construction unions for cooperation with the governor. Whether it gets built or not is irrelevant. In LA why would you vote for Karen Bass after the fire fiasco? The unions that run LA must have Bass as the face of the machine that feeds them. So the unions will turn out for her. Will that be enough? We’ll see soon.
Liberals love to shove their toxic altruism down your throat and then force you to pay for it. Leftists have a pathological desire to place the wants of the small fringe over the needs of the majority and then call you a racist/bigot/white supremacist/fascist/MAGA extremist if you complain about it.
Growing numbers of citizens are starting to rebel against the permanent, incompetent, unaccountable governance brought on by One Party domination of the political process in places like LA and California.
It would be nice if the politicians running cities and states were competent managers who were actually interested in doing the basic things needed to make their jurisdictions operate well instead of using their offices to socially reengineer them.
Pratt has destroyed Newsom's national aspirations - a nice side benefit. To the extent we can force the democrat's to pick an absolute disaster as a presidential candidate in 2028 (Buttigieg leads a recent poll) the better.
Don't get me wrong Newsom is completely incompetent at governing, but he looks normal and with media help can seem reasonable. Look at the rest of them, with the exception of Shapiro, they are wackos. No way they are winning a national election.
Mr. Reynolds has been right for decades. There is an uncomfortable description of bad leaders he is too decent to use. No, it is not in vile language; it is ordinary experience as we grow up. The very poor leaders we have are bullies...and bullies are cowards. Crowds of "masked demonstrators" are afraid to show their faces...for fear of punishment from those they are demeaning and bullying. The California political leaders Do Not Know How to Fix failure.
So they say the problem is something other than clean streets. They are ignorant bullies, if cornered, will briefly attack and then run. The solution is to confront each of them...and use the word coward. Good life to all of you.
Quite simply, the next time your elected local or state official holds a press conference about global warming, the Middle East, or the national political climate, expect to experience poor county law enforcement, bad municipal services, or regional insolvency.
— Victor Davis Hanson
“The Bloomberg Syndrome”
The Democratic Party doesn't want to do normal things because it's no longer about using government to deliver social programs to make people's lives better, but about social status. The politicians and bureaucrats want public services to decline because it highlights their superiority. If you're not the politically correct wealthy, a unionized public employee (clerisy), or a member of a protected class, you will be made to feel inferior and poorer.
Glen, I appreciate your commentary and believe you raise some excellent points. Additionally, in places like Los Angeles, local elections tend to have very low voter turnout, averaging around 20% of the eligible voters. This allows machine politics—such as paying people to vote, mail-in ballots, and a small group of dedicated activists—to dominate the city's politics. When this occurs, they control the funding, thereby supporting organizations aligned with their interests. These often include the so-called 'homeless' population and individuals who have profited significantly by claiming to offer services to a large and growing class of homeless, mentally ill, and impoverished people. Of course, the supposed beneficiaries never get the services that the fraudsters claim to provide. And the system feeds on the growth of the destruction of life in the city.
In short, "the people" of the city have almost no say in this unless they can be incentivized to actually vote.
When your political coalition is a collection of abnormal/outlier groups, naturally the focus will not be on "normal" priorities. Obviously you have a few voices like Rahm Emmanuel urging them to focus on political basics but frankly I don't think they can do it because that's not where the hearts of their activist class is and it's pretty hard to convincingly fake concern in politics. It's possible the party is able to purge its crazies but it's going to take time and actual results on the part of the more normie Dems. And again, I don't know if enough of them exist anymore to reform the party or if they just drift away.