The Progressive mismanagement of American cities has reached epidemic proportions.
Unlike the drastic fiscal errors Washington has committed since the current Administration took office, or the dangerous foreign and defense polices it has adopted, it doesn’t take research to see the results of the absurd errors, based on bankrupt ideological extremes, committed by the current leadership in major urban centers across the nation. They are as commonplace as your uncomfortable daily commute, and as obvious as the unaddressed crime you walk around and the excess taxes you pay.
Writing in The Week, Joel Kotkin states that “Crime rates are spiking and homelessness, once an exception, is increasingly widespread. Those very streets once said to be ‘paved with gold’ are now are filled with discarded needles, excrement and graffiti.
NYC crime statistics released by the NYPD indicate that murder, rape and robbery have skyrocketed 40% over a year ago.
The New York Times recently noted: “California’s cities have become unlivable. The basic problem is the steady collapse of livability… traffic and transportation is a developing-world nightmare. Child care and education seem impossible for all but the wealthiest. The problems of affordable housing and homelessness have surpassed all superlatives — what was a crisis is now an emergency that feels like a dystopian showcase of American inequality…Just look at San Francisco… the streets there are a plague of garbage and needles and feces, and every morning brings fresh horror stories from a “Black Mirror” hellscape… At every level of government…representatives, nearly all of them Democrats, prove inadequate and unresponsive to the challenges at hand.”
Once a great city, Chicago is collapsing. An analysis in The Week notes: The nation’s third-largest city is riddled with dysfunction. Chicago is “a fiscal basket case,” says urban analyst Aaron Renn, with a lower credit rating than any major metropolis except Detroit…Its strapped school system seems perpetually on the verge of collapse…Chicago routinely ranks among the nation’s most politically corrupt cities, with a Democratic machine controlling City Hall for 90 years. That machine has incurred $20 billion in unfunded pension debt by giving generous public pensions to unions. But above all, what’s tearing at the city’s heart [is] crime…”
Philadelphia is, plainly speaking, a mess. Detroit, the very symbol of urban decay, continues its tragic decline. The list could go on, but the point is already clear.
The problems aren’t the result of an unexpected, unforeseen, or unstoppable challenge. They are the direct and specific result of very poor ideological policies enacted by hyper-politicized left-wing government officials who have demonstrated neither remorse nor concern over the serious harm caused to their constituents. Rather than tackle crime and other essential problems, absurd urban governments spend most of their time on ideological battles attacking the very principles that made American metropolises great. They consistently find new ways to spend taxpayer dollars on issues that have little to do with the needs of its citizenry.
New York is a prime example. Its government is considering asking taxpayers to foot the bill to provide legal services to illegal aliens. It has carved up its already too-narrow streets to provide barely used bike lanes. It seeks to charge motorists tolls to go from one part of the city to another. City Hall has declared a jihad against middle class neighborhoods, seeking to place oversized low-income buildings that bring numerous problems to even the safest communities.
Ryan Streeter, writing for the American Enterprise Institute, stresses that “Platitudes against inequality and injustice notwithstanding, today’s left-leaning urban overseers are responsible for the unaffordable housing, poor school outcomes, income segregation, and policing problems that characterize much of urban life today. These problems predate our current crisis, which has merely blown the top off for all to see.”
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