Blue States Slammed with Multiple Interlocking Crises
There's always that last straw that breaks the camel's back. Now there is a pile of straw that is about to break the American donkey's back. There is ample evidence of that.
Recently, the United States has faced not one, but two serious crises that have demonstrated a complete incompetence of local Democratic governments and aggravated the issues they already had. The crises we're talking about are COVID-19 and nationwide protests accompanied by violence and crime. Even though the recent touted "research" suggests that 90 percent of those protests were peaceful (would you like to be on a diet that is 90 percent non-poisonous?), that does not negate the fact that the interim results are far from the declared goals. Black lives (along with all other lives) are now more endangered by increased crime than they were before. Violent crime is on the rise in the cities that rallied the hardest demanding racial justice — Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Portland, D.C., Baltimore, Minneapolis, and Seattle.
These processes are superimposed on economic recession caused by the unnecessary shutdowns of businesses and schools. The economy — President Trump's greatest achievement — has been hit hard and mercilessly. The current‑dollar GDP decreased 34.3 percent, or $2.15 trillion, in the second quarter to a level of $19.41 trillion, adding to the first quarter's loss of $186.3 billion. Fifty million people found themselves jobless and with quickly thinning finances. The Democrats in Congress hindered much needed economic relief packages in late March, in May, and then in early August, insisting on more funds to be sent to their failing states while Republican lawmakers proposed to focus on small business support. While all Democrats-run states went to lockdown, almost half of the Republic states remained opened, with closed states imposing fewer restrictions. Still, the blue states got hit harder. Basically, Democrats would redistribute billions of dollars of aid from the working red states to the blue locked down states — it would be only "kind" and therefore "just."
The damaged economy and civil unrest serve as a catalyst, reminiscent of the graphite-tipped rods entering the Chernobyl reactor and causing it to explode. Just as the Soviet workers rushed to flee Pripyat, saving their lives from deadly radiation emanating from the burst nuclear power plant, people flee Democrat cities and states that emit high crime, high taxes, and rapidly worsening infrastructure.
New York is a notable case. The Big Apple has 118 billionaires, more than any other American city. NYC is home to nearly one million millionaires, more than any other city in the world. Among those millionaires, some 8,865 are classified as "high net worth," with more than $30 million each. The top one percent of NYC taxpayers pay nearly 50 percent of all personal income taxes collected in New York. Personal income tax in the New York area accounts for 59 percent of all revenues. Property taxes add in more than a billion dollars a year in revenue, about half of that generated by office space. The very same city contains the largest homeless population of any American metropolis. The number of New Yorkers living below the poverty line is larger than the population of Philadelphia and would be the country's seventh largest city. The city spends lots of money to accommodate the poor, but who's to bring bread to the table with earners leaving?
With COVID and high crime rolling across NYC and modern technology that made people more accustomed to work from any place that has an internet connection (sorry, California!), there is no incentive to stay there. As described by Peter Van Buren, for the super-wealthy, New York once topped the global list of desirable places to live based on four factors: a desire to live among other wealthy people (we see where it's going); investment returns on real estate (not looking great, if you can even find a renter or a buyer); lifestyle (now destroyed with bars, restaurants, museums, sport venues, theaters, and shopping shut down — with exception for looting); and, last but not the least, the future. Pre-COVID and pre-BLM/Antifa New York had the highest projected GDP growth of any city. Now it is called the worst state in the U.S. for its grim economic outlook. The government's response? "Tax the wealthy," says Mayor Bill de Blasio, while Governor Andrew Cuomo tries to allure the rich by "buying them a drink."
Notably, New York has been seeing a decline in its population for quite some time. It is certainly not the only major Democrat-run state that observes this trend. The exodus from California, Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota continues, as many red states gain population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Moreover, every few years, Gallup asks Americans whether they want to leave their states. Remarkably, seven of the eight places that people are most eager to flee rank solidly Democratic in party affiliation. These results have stayed consistent for years, and migration data reflect that. A study by demographer Wendell Cox of net flows of migrants from state to state found that the same seven of the ten states with the most net out-migration are Democratic: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. By contrast, the states winning the most residents were Republican; politically neutral; or low-tax Democratic places, like Washington and Oregon.
Think about it: there are places that have been run by the Democrats for decades, with little to no opposition from the "evil" Republicans. People who have had a chance to experience the results of their leadership want none of it. Today, the way the Democrats have handled COVID and the protests, the violent part of which went largely unpunished, made locals speed up the packing. Then there were eight years of the Obama presidency that failed America domestically and internationally. Americans still remember that.
Now, with Election Day less than 60 days away, why would anyone want to extend the failing leftist policies that became as obvious as Joe Biden's dementia onto the whole nation? Obviously, the Democrat establishment and its cosmopolitan donors would, but when worse comes to worst, they'll just move to their New Zealand mansions. Where will you go?
Ten Great Deceptions Designed to Destroy the Republic
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…I was a Madison Avenue copywriter. I was thrilled, until I realized I was a liar for hire.
I was assigned an ad for a diet aid. The account executive sent out the marketing strategy. When I read it, I felt something akin to an inner eye squint, the feeling you get when you suspect you’re being conned. I realized we were being asked to market this rather dubious product to young, anorexic women by capitalizing on their already-fragile sense of self and lying to them about what the product could be expected to do.
So I wrote the ad that changed my life. It featured a close-up of the product with the headline “FAT CHANCE.” I was the only one who appreciated the irony.
Ah, well.
I soon realized that in the sport of marketing (sic: lying) I’d never be a team player and that I’d have to find an honest way to make a living.
Since then, the great spin turbines in Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and D.C. have spawned a culture built on an ever-destabilizing pyramid of lies which cannot support the existence of a republic, the essence of which is self-governance.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the political arena. The other night after the live broadcast of the Republican National Convention, a friend called. She said she had been flipping back and forth from the real-time telecast to CNN and MSNBC. She was irate: “You’d never have known they were speaking about the same show. Everything they said was completely disingenuous, if not bald-faced lies.”
In the last ten years or so it has become increasingly evident that you are are either believing what the left (or the diet pill manufacturer) is saying or you are paying attention to reality.
There are at least 10 major lies that are now so ubiquitous that most people never question them:
Lie #1 – Truth is Relative
In the leftist handbook, truth is a function of feeling. This may be the greatest deception ever perpetrated on humanity since Pilate asked, “What is truth?” Yet, for so many of the academically indoctrinated, this is the fulcrum of their philosophical worldview and the secret source of their smugness.
Lie #2 – Abortion is Personal
There is no “other” in the womb, no independent life. This has become so embedded in leftist ideology that abortion has become the banner issue in nearly every election over the last 60 years. In a conversation with a friend with very progressive leanings (he needs the money), abortion came up. I questioned him about partial-birth murders and he said, “That hardly ever happens.” Really? As if one baby homicide were okay? The more irrational the argument, the more ingrained the original lie. Little lives apparently don’t matter.
Lie #3 – Utopia is Possible
Perfection is possible if we just…make solar powered air planes, dump Trump, make everyone wear masks forever. The list goes on and on and is a direct result of the Madison Avenue spin machine. Whatever ails you, we’ve got PRODUCT X. And if you’re a millennial, now you can have it all on someone else’ dime. Just ask Bernie. But whatever you do, don’t look at the facts, especially in Venezuela.
Lie #4 – Death is Avoidable and You Can Feel Safe Forever…
…if you do the right (sic: party-approved) things and take the prescribed chemical cocktails. So anything that keeps you youthful and sexually active is good, no matter what. Do I really need to elaborate on this one?
Lie #5 – Biology is an Illusion
There are no true genders; only states of mind. After 35 years in clinical practice, after hearing just about everything noble, demented, or delusional, this still astounds me. Have you ever had a conversation with someone speaking “word salad?” This is it. And the ultimate goal of this lie? The elimination of the family and the stable, present father.
Lie #6 - If you Love America, You'll Destroy It
Violence means “I love you.” This is the core BLM deception. Because they care so very much, they are driven mad by normal citizens who are minding their own business, so mad they are compelled to burn down stores, attack you while you’re dining out, break into cars, set fire to your home, and tear down historic landmarks. This lie strikes me as particularly interesting since they also claim to be the advocates of minority’s, women’s and children’s rights. “I hit you ‘cuz I love you” is the excuse of every single narcissistic abuser I’ve ever met.
Lie #7 – The Lie of the Mask
Remember The Minority Report in which “criminals” are prosecuted before they’ve committed a crime? Welcome to the machine. Because it’s all about potential, proof is not necessary, but we all need to be afraid. Very afraid. If it isn’t the end of all life with climate changes, it’s a virus that will end yours soon if you don’t wear the solidarity mask even if you have no symptoms. In this version of leftist Utopia, we are faceless disease vectors, quarantined forever in pursuit of an impossible level of safety.
Lie #8 – Money Solves Everything
Housing projects are the answer to poverty and poverty is society’s greatest ill (as if some of our greatest citizens weren’t poor and many of our worst criminals weren’t rich). It is a monstrous lie as anyone who lives within 50 miles of a major city can attest. (See Thomas Sowell’s piece A Legacy of Liberalism.) This is the lie that decimates community.
Lie #9 – God’s A Crutch for the Unsophisticated
Anything is permissible because there is no God. And if, just if, there is a God, He’s just plain mean and doesn’t deserve our obedience. In the post-Disney age, not being nice is the greatest sin of all. This lie is, in my opinion, the crux of the matter, because it makes all the other lies possible.
Lie #10 – If It’s On Television, It’s True
They wouldn’t lie, would they? Wish it were so. Marketing, and corporate-subsidized news networks, are all about spin. Truth is never paramount. I mean, what good would it do to spend millions of dollars coaxing the public to buy a product that’s “kinda okay?” It has to be subliminally attached to a need that drives us to make purchases that are irrational. Lying is breathing in marketing.
One of the most egregious lies I’ve ever seen: Ali Velshi, in an MSNBC report , (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1mxJMIIMuE) is standing in front of a burning police precinct claiming the riots were just protests and not really “unruly.” What does lying like that do to a person? To a soul?
The Grub Effect: The Anti-Lie Instinct
Here’s what lying does: It eventually kills us. There’s something I’ve noticed about healthy people no matter their culture of origin. When exposed to a noxious substance, they instinctively recoil. I call it The Grub Effect. (They’re those critters in the soil that roll into little balls if you touch them. They don’t like us.) It’s a sane and natural response to the appropriate stimuli. It promotes survival. When it ceases to exist, so—eventually—does the organism. Even when the organism is a nation-state. And that means: When you lie to yourself enough, when you fail to recoil from noxious agents, when you no longer see good for good or bad for bad, when you cannot face the truth, you are facing your own end. Ignore it at your own peril.
Judith Acosta, LCSW, CCH is the author of The Worst is Over and The Next Osama.
The Summer of Our Discontent, Revisited
According to Wikipedia, historians use a period of between 22 and 33 years' duration to define a generation. Let’s use the midpoint of 55 years for two generations. That takes us back to 1965. That year in particular is memorable to me since Dad decided that we needed to leave Baltimore and move to Southern California. He rented a 6 foot by 8 foot U-Haul trailer; loaded my parents’ bedroom furniture and some clothing for all of us and one item of small size that was personal. That was kind of tough for a family with six kids. I lament the boxes of baseball and football cards I threw away, considering their value today. I kept my stamp collection in a book that my grandmother from Lithuania gave me three years earlier.
We were excited about living 20 miles from the popular upcoming group, The Beach Boys, seeing nightly fireworks at Disneyland, and being able to bike to the beach if we had a bicycle. We were surrounded by dairies whose odor was overtaken by the wonderful orange blossom blooms from the groves in Orange County. Some of the best strawberries I have ever tasted were sold at a street stand in close walking distance to our house. Another phenomenon hit me and sticks with me ever since. Humid summers were of a thing of the past. Sure, I missed sledding briefly in winter with sparse annual snowstorms that also brought school closure days.
Among all this euphoria came a stark reality. A black parolee for robbery was pulled over in south central Los Angeles for reckless driving 55 years ago this August. That incident, reported incessantly by the media, sparked six days of riots in the predominantly black Watts neighborhood resulting in 34 deaths, arson, looting and associated mayhem. Estimated damage was $40 million. I can still picture the television scenes in my mind of looters running out of stores with television sets and stereo cabinets. These were heavy “furniture-like” items then that not just anyone could haul away. These were people who were intent on destroying their neighborhood and robbing from others under the pretense that as recourse for their plight these actions were owed to them. I was taught in parochial school by the nuns that the idle mind is the devil’s workshop. The residents of Watts were a forgotten people with high unemployment with limited opportunities. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was supposed to be a catalyst of change for the ills foisted upon those generations of blacks that suffered under slavery until Abraham Lincoln championed abolition forever.
Change did not come fast enough to many blacks, especially in Southern California. A generation after Watts, Rodney King and two of his friends had been drinking while watching basketball at a friend’s house. Rodney King was driving his friends down a freeway at 12:30 a.m. on March 2, 1991 when California Highway patrolmen noted erratic driving behavior. After the CHP lights came on for him to pull over, Rodney King sped down the freeway at speeds topping 117 mph to elude the CHP. Then he pulled off into a residential area clocking speeds up to 80 mph. He was eventually cornered by police units and a helicopter in pursuit and was stopped. LA policemen were videotaped while they were brutalizing Rodney King. Rodney King had tried to elude authorities since a DUI would violate his parole for an earlier robbery conviction. The videotape was provided to a local television station, which prompted the needed investigation and resultant indictment of policemen involved in the beating of King. They were brought to trial and all policemen were acquitted on April 29, 1992.
The (black) mayor of Los Angeles, a former police officer turned attorney turned politician, declared the verdict “senseless” and said: “The jury’s verdict will never blind the world to what we saw on the videotape.” Let the riots begin once again in south central Los Angeles. After 63 deaths, nearly 2,400 people injured, 12,000 people arrested, and $1 billion worth of damage primarily in nearby Koreatown, the riots ended six days after they started. Those protestors were not merely looking for bread to feed their families.
A friend of mine’s brother, a Latino fire battalion chief, was shot by a rioter while he was responding to the many arsons. He was injured permanently and was relegated to an inspector’s job until retirement. I watched on television as an unsuspecting big rig driver, Reginald Denny, was stopped, pulled from the cab of his truck and brutally beaten mercilessly. The young black man who threw a cinder block on his head got a 10-year jail sentence.
After the Department of Justice brought a federal case against the policemen convictions were obtained. Rodney King was awarded $3.8 million and his attorney, $1.7 million by the City of Los Angeles. As an anecdote, and my intent is not to condone the actions of the LA police officers, but PCP was the illegal drug of choice at the time. When my sister graduated from the California Highway Police Academy before the Rodney King incident, she was assigned to the graveyard shift in south central LA. I couldn't tell you how many people she pulled over who were subsequently arrested while under the influence of PCP. One 300+ pound guy ripped my sister’s clothes as she was trying to subdue him for arrest. They used batons to subdue the guy and broke several bones. The guy apologized to my sister when they were in court. He admitted that he had not been “himself” while under the influence of PCP. The “superhuman effect” of the drug is widely known.
So here we are today, two generations post-Watts riots. What has changed? Absolutely nothing! The media continues to search for divisive racial issues of social injustice for blacks and magnifies them to push an agenda. Social media is a new catalyst to accelerate inciting violence, death, injuries, and loss or destruction of property. As soon as politicians open their mouths to placate “the permanently aggrieved,” the resultant melee can be expected. If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon! Defund the police! What happened when Saddam Hussein was deposed? A power vacuum was created and that “JV team,” ISIS, was formed to establish a 21st century caliphate. How did that work out when an adult took over?
What about CHAZ or CHOP? The media and the “blue” politicians need to back off their quest to deny President Trump’s successes for we the people are through inciting false social justice memes now.
Here's a recent photo taken in downtown San Diego:
Is this not pandering? IMHO this statement that excludes non-blacks is another example of the current cancel culture. How many more generations of riots, loss of life, needless injuries, and property damage must be endured as certain groups are used as pawns to stoke the flames? Didn’t Rodney King say years before he drowned in a pool while under the influence of drugs, “Can’t we all just get along?”
Image credit: Brian C. Tomlinson
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