By Mike Huckabee
June 6, 2019
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Sean Hannity presented an update Wednesday on the homeless problem in major cities with far-left leadership, featuring Los Angeles this time, and I returned to the show to talk further about it along with fellow FOX News contributor Emily Compagno. The response to my newsletter commentary from a few days ago about the leftist “plague” has been huge, and the topic is just too important to drop.
Wednesday’s segment started with a man-on-the-street interview montage with FOX News reporter Lawrence Jones asking LA residents what they thought about the problem. Most of them blamed the mayor –- who “makes a lot of promises” –- and city government for not handling the problem, which obviously stems mostly from mental health and drug issues. One woman who might be assumed from her T-shirt to be an advocate for the homeless said there were about 30,000 (!) nearby in a small area of “Skid Row.”
Jones included shocking video evidence of the extent of the problem in downtown LA --- block after block of sidewalks made completely impassable by filthy, rat-infested, ramshackle tents. Not that anyone would want to set foot on these sidewalks. Never mind the risk of assault or a needle stick; just the smell would knock you down, and trust me, you do not want to be down there.
California has a 13-1/2 percent state income tax. Along with New York --- NYC also has a serious homeless problem --- they have the highest tax rates in the country. This should tell us that leftists are wrong to think money and lots of it is the answer to social problems. As I told Sean, the truth is that we have an industry of poverty in this country. Most people would probably be surprised to learn that the typical “poverty” program spends about $18,000 or more per person in a year –- it works out to over $73,000 for a family of four. Campagno said that Seattle spends an incredible $100,000 per year for each homeless person in the city, adding up to a billion dollars a year. In Los Angeles alone, the homeless population is up 16 percent from last year, 75 percent from six years ago. Spending just keeps climbing; they recently voted to spend $4.5 billion to build houses for homeless people.
Obviously, if a city like Seattle is spending $100,000 a year for each homeless person, the money is not being used to benefit that person. As is typical of any government bureaucracy, the money doesn’t get to the people who need help. It’s going to people who are making a great living off the poverty of others. This has been going on since President Lyndon Johnson’s War On Poverty; they used to call them “poverty pimps.” That’s how “progressivism” works --- it’s all about making those on the left feel compassionate when they aren’t actually solving the underlying problems. They’re just enablers. They’re not meeting the basic needs of the people who are hurting the most, to help lift them out of their situations.
The focus on short-term solutions means that billions of dollars are just down the proverbial rathole. (I thought “rathole” was a really appropriate word in this context.) The debt these cities are accruing is phenomenal, and their tax base shrinks as middle class residents, priced out, understandably flee to more competently run places.
Hey, Nancy Pelosi is great at raising money, so why doesn’t she do something? As I told Sean, she’s raising it, all right, but for the most important thing: electing Democrats, who will vote to spend even more tax money on those short-term solutions that don’t solve anything.
Some blocks in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle look worse than places in Afghanistan. We don’t need to look any farther than this to see what happens when far-left people control the government. It’s a disaster, a disgrace, a human tragedy.
When you combine this with the observable results of toothless immigration laws and an open border, it’s impossible to deny that leftism is actually reinforcing poverty, drug addiction and contagious disease. While leftists scream about a manufactured border crisis, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is now saying we have a “full blown emergency” at the southern border. While leftists scream about impeachment and debate which bathrooms and pronouns to use, the REAL problems just get worse.
The numbers are alarming. For May, we had the biggest monthly number of apprehensions at our border in 13 years. It’s the third consecutive month that border detentions topped 100,000 in one month. There is no more room in our detention facilities. As CBP’s chief operating officer John Sanders said on FOX News, “We re in a full blown emergency, and I cannot say this any stronger, the system is broken...this ongoing crisis has placed a a tremendous strain on our resources and operational effectiveness. To address these unprecedented numbers of family units and unaccompanied children, up to 60 percent of our agents are being pulled away from law enforcement operations.”
Even a former CBP commissioner under Obama, Gil Kerlikowske, said on FOX News that it’s a mistake not to admit that the numbers reflect both a humanitarian crisis and a logistical crisis at the border. It’s something that has to be dealt with, he said.
I would add that it’s also a danger to national security. Only a confirmed, Trump-hating leftist would believe this mess is simply “manufactured.” Congress needs to pass legislation to change the rules at the border, especially the asylum law, and they’ve got to appropriate needed funds, but the left is never going to do anything about this. When they do acknowledge a problem, they, unbelievably, blame Trump for it, and still do nothing. Joe Biden, noted plagiarist, woman-squeezer and Presidential candidate, is telling voters that “this is a crisis created by Trump.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whom I understand is a congresswoman, is going around saying we need to simply abolish ICE. So why should it be a surprise that leftists can’t deal with the homeless problem, either?
As we’re now seeing on the streets of major cities AND at our border, problems eventually reach a tipping point. This is why Trump was elected President, to actually DO something that will work. Yet leftists continue blocking him, mostly through the liberal courts but also by dividing his attention with bogus investigations and threats of impeachment. It’s 100 percent politics, while people suffer and once-great cities decline. Leftism really is a plague, and it’s going to take some strong medicine to stop the destruction.
Speaking of plague, regarding it and the other contagious diseases that I wrote about in Part I of my commentary, Tammy Bruce, a frequent FOX News guest and president of Independent Women’s Voice, is speaking out about this health crisis and addressing it on the organization’s website, linked to below. As I said, typhus is moving through Los Angeles, even affecting the police department. In addition, there have been about 1,000 reported cases so far of red measles, which can be very serious, even deadly. The CDC has warned about tuberculosis. They’re not screening people at the border for communicable diseases, even though some come from ebola-ravaged nations. From South America, there’s the threat of Zika, the disease that causes microencephaly (small head syndrome) in newborns. Unless someone is coming across legally on a migrant visa, there is no requirement for proof of vaccination. You’ll find much more information about this at the IWV website.
This problem is going to take some tough action, and soon. Independent Women’s Voice has launched a petition at IWV.org to tell the White House we must redouble the effort for border security and also require proof of vaccination for anyone coming in. Remember, this is about EVERY family, EVERY human being who could possibly be affected down the road. I hope you’ll go to their website and sign the petition.
RELATED READING: The "plague" of leftism is evident in our filthy cities
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