Don's Tuesday Column

          THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   6/04/2019

    A plague on cities; Mueller fail

Given news from our “left coast” bastions of progressive governance, “woke” cultural, political wisdom and subsequent societal degeneration, one cannot avoid the shock, even disgust, at the plague of homelessness, drug usage and accompanying filth. Diseases—rightly, proudly thought eradicated since pre-enlightened, backward societies—now show up in supposedly advanced metropolises like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.

We notice reports on news media, in articles, recordings and essays, with documentation, anecdotes and studies. Understandably, those with the means are migrating to less degeneration-friendly locales not dominated by the progressive Democratic elite. That ironically dovetails with the bunkering of the well-off in walled (funny, that) enclaves with gated access, even private security.

It’s as if those with political power overlap the economically wealthy among the information industries benefiting from cheap workers. Remarkably, their values oppose development and support protecting open spaces from “sprawl,” defined as the “BANANA” approach (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody— “anybody” being themselves). Have they even heard of the “law of supply and demand”? The dearth of housing development creates unaffordable units of legacy housing.

Then enter the new, enlightened world guided by an aversion to telling anyone or any group “No!” No, you may not set up camp, roll out sleeping bags, or endlessly reside in your RV at a public curb or space. No, you may not use drugs in those same public spaces. No, the addicts and obvious mentally ill will not be tolerated among the otherwise law-abiding and well-behaved homeless. No, the outdoors is not your trash receptacle and toilet.

That all seems unnecessarily harsh. Unnecessary, perhaps, until those being effectively told “anything goes,” “make up your own rules” while living free and easy absent any kind of traditional responsibility, begin to overwhelm the space they occupy. Too harsh unless such overflowing encampments force themselves on the taxpaying, working, upstanding residents of what were once tidy, safe neighborhoods. Too harsh until kids start finding needles and condoms and feel scared to walk to school.

Getting and keeping a job is such an imposition on a lifestyle of sleeping in and declining personal hygiene. Staying alcohol- and drug-free, acting responsibly with good work habits, saving one’s earnings and avoiding the company of druggies, bums and criminals—you must be joking to ask that from people. What a hater you must be. As Deputy Barney Fife would say, “Nip it! Nip it in the bud!” That time is long passed for the above listed cities. Can we say “no”?

In “Woke Los Angeles is the New Typhus Hotbed: Homeless Catastrophe Makes City of Angels Unlivable,” you’ll find videos, photos and links to “Sky High Piles of Trash Making Downtown Los Angeles Unlivable,” and “Rats and other vermin infest LAPD downtown station…” It starts “Why are Democrat-run cities such hellholes of infectious disease and humanitarian catastrophe? And don’t even get me going about San Francisco, where the current California Governor Gavin Newsom left behind a legacy of human feces, heroin junkies shooting up on the sidewalks, and progressive NIMBY losers turning away with indifference. California really is a lost cause.” Rest assured, Red Bluff will never join that trend, will it?

Another week, another polling result pointing to a likely, even assured, reelection of President Trump. In the Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll, 48 percent of voters approve of Trump’s job performance, 62 percent of voters approve Trump’s handling of unemployment and 59 percent approve of his handling of the economy. 71 percent believe Trump has made the economy “somewhat strong or very strong,” while 51 percent say the economy is heading in the right direction.

Meanwhile, even with the news media continuing to shield voters from news unflattering to Democrats, we saw a candidate got booed when he told a California Democratic Party convention that talking about “socialism” won’t win the election. A little secret: “Medicare for All” is literally socialism for health care, and more socialistic than any other Western, advanced nation.

Victor Davis Hanson pulled the dark curtain back in “Tired, Boring—and Dangerous—Celebrity Death Wishing” (directed at President Trump, of course). I won’t even type the names of the Hollywood luminaries using their limited intelligence (check their academic underperformance) to concoct vicious, bloodthirsty and sick fantasies of killing President Trump. That cricket sound, that dead silence? That’s just the lack of condemnation from the Democrat candidates for president.

Mr. Mueller’s 8-minute nothing-burger of a press statement was a sad sign of the political times. He literally said nothing new, nothing that put his 480-page report on any firmer ground than when A.G. William Barr issued his 4-page summary: No collusion, no obstruction. It appears that Mueller’s partisan Democrat team and staff could not abide that 1) No "collusion" crimes were committed by Trump et al; 2) Barr’s summary could not be refuted publicly in principle;

3) Mueller’s rationale—that he couldn’t charge Trump with a crime because of Justice Dept. restrictions against indicting a sitting president—was destroyed by Barr who said that Mueller could have stated the crimes he thought Trump committed; 5) Even with the wide latitude Mueller’s team gave themselves to bend the Special Prosecutor rules to allow the “no exoneration” finding—which threw centuries of Western and American jurisprudence, “the presumption of innocence,” on its head—they had no prosecutable crimes.

These titles sum it up: “Mueller Just Proved His Entire Operation Was a Political Hit Job That Trampled the Rule of Law,” by Sean Davis. “Congress Can’t Outsource Impeachment; Democrats want to use Mueller’s probe as cover to oust Trump. They need to bring their own facts and charges so the public can hold them accountable,” (Wall Street Journal). Mueller provided neither “high crimes” nor “misdemeanors” so Dems are left with nothing beyond wanting to remove a President they wish hadn’t been elected.