More Progressive Bad Ideas To Make Things Worse For Black Americans
/The last week plus has been filled with demonstrations, as well as many violent riots, the purpose of which is said to be seeking an end to racist or oppressive treatment of black Americans. Oddly, the demonstrations (and riots) have been largely concentrated in the major cities, almost all of which have been under the political control of the Democratic Party, and generally its left-most wing, for multiple generations. (Exceptions: New York had Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg from 1994 to 2013; and Los Angeles had Mayor Riordan from 1993 to 2001.)
Could the generations of progressive control have somehow failed to end the racism and oppression? Yes; but of course, it goes far beyond just that. The very most progressive cities, with the very most progressive policies in place for decades, are known for the worst possible outcomes on any metric you can think of. For example:
The highest rates of measured income inequality. According to a 2014 study by Bloomberg of all Congressional districts, the district with the very highest income inequality was my own NY-10 (covering the West Side of Manhattan), while other spots in the top 25 for income inequality went to one progressive icon after another — all four other districts covering parts of Manhattan, Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district (# 14), and districts in Chicago, Cambridge, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Berkeley.
The largest amounts of homelessness. In just the last few years, progressive icons Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle have seen explosions in their homeless populations. New York’s homelessness explosion has been going on for a couple of decades. Here is a piece I wrote in October 2019 with full statistics on the San Francisco situation, and how they spend more and more money and yet have more and more homelessness.
The most expensive housing. San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York are the champions of expensive housing, despite decades of progressive policies supposedly designed to fix that.
The highest murder rates. In this post from January 2017 I collected statistics for murder rates for the U.S. as a whole (about 5 per 100,000), and for many of the large progressive-run cities ( St. Louis 60/100K, Detroit 44, Baltimore 50, New Orleans 42, Chicago 30). New York’s rate was about 25/100K in 1993, before 20 years of Republican mayors and pro-active policing brought the rate all the way down to about 4/100K when current Mayor de Blasio took over in 2014.
High measured poverty rates far above the national norm. What state has the highest poverty rate? Of course, it’s California. The poverty rate in New York City was about equal to the U.S. average in the late 60s when the War on Poverty was beginning, but over the intervening decades, as New York has gone for more and more progressive programs, its poverty rate has soared well above national norms. By 1999 New York City’s rate was about 10 points above the national norm (22% versus 12%); the gap has since narrowed somewhat.
High energy costs well above the national norm. Average electricity prices per kWh for 2019: U.S. 10.48 cents, California 19.17 cents, New York 17.97 cents, Connecticut 22.17 cents, Massachusetts 21.99 cents.
And on and on.
But this time they think they are finally going to get it right. Here is a small collection of some of the current proposals:
De-fund the police. This is the big proposal of the moment, coming from all over the progressive internet. As an example, here is a piece by Annie Lowrey at MSN today making the case. “[T]he United States has an extreme budget commitment to prisons, guns, warplanes, armored vehicles, detention facilities, courts, jails, drones, and patrols—to law and order, meted out discriminately. . . . A thin safety net, an expansive security state: This is the American way.”
Or from the Guardian, June 4, “Movement to defund police gains 'unprecedented' support across US.” To spend the money on what? “[A] coalition convened by Black Lives Matter LA pushed for what it called a “people’s budget”, which encouraged the city to spend only 5.7% of its general fund on law enforcement, and 44% on universal aid and crisis management.”
I for one am not a fan of the drug war, nor of increasing militarization of the police that we have seen in recent decades. On the other hand, it is very hard to argue with the huge decline in crime, most notably murders, in New York and some other places, that accompanied increased and more pro-active policing in the 90s and 00s. Close to half the victims of murders in the U.S. are black males. The decline in murders in New York City from about 2200 per year in the early 90s to only 300 or so today means almost 1000 black males who don’t get murdered each year.
Take money from the police and “invest” it into the black community. From FoxNews, June 4: “Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday that he tasked the city to ‘identify $250 million in cuts’ [to police funding] to invest more money into the black community, communities of color, women and ‘people who have been left behind.’" And what exactly would qualify as such an “investment” in the community? That’s anybody’s guess, and the progressives always seem to have an infinite wish list. But in summary, we’re not talking about private investment by businesses to create real jobs. Instead, it’s more and yet more government “programs.” Here are some ideas from Lowrey’s piece: “[De-funding the police would] mean funding housing-first programs, creating subsidized jobs for the formerly incarcerated, and expanding initiatives to have mental-health professionals and social workers respond to emergency calls.” In the Guardian, from BLM, it’s “universal aid and crisis management.” All experience teaches that money for such government programs ends up in the hands of bureaucrats and crony capitalists, and the social problems sought to be solved only get worse.
Hold black people to lower standards to “accommodate” them. An example reported at Campus Reform on June 3 comes from the University of Washington: “Students at the University of Washington are demanding that black students be given leniency on finals because they are too ‘busy fighting for [their] rights to sit down and study.’ The university is advising professors to do just that. An online petition calls for laxed grading and accommodations, specifically for Black students. So far, the petition has amassed more than 26,000 signatures.” George W. Bush called it the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” For myself, I don’t see anything “soft” about it. The whole point behind attending college is to learn self-discipline and how to meet standards. How does giving the black students a pass on that help them in life?
These proposals would appear destined to fail, just as the previous forty rounds of progressive “programs” have all failed and made things worse. When they fail, of course, the result will be another round of guilt over the failure, and then yet another round of new but equally destructive proposals.