Mamdani also not just totally reversed his position on homeless encampment sweeps but also got the NYC DSA co-chair to defend the sweeps on Brian Lehrer’s show lol
To be fair, a lot of the moderate factionalists themselves have clearly stated they like Zohran that’s why they are willing to give him a chance. Mamdani does well engaging with ideological adversaries without sounding hostile (like Bernie) and without angering his base. It’s definitely a skill, he’s a politician’s politician, which is ironic given how much Dems think they need to find someone who’s not a politician and can be “authentic”. The striking thing about Mamdani is he appears to be a good *politician* and seems to enjoy engaging in the entire gamut of politics: media theater, retail, brinksmanship, backroom dealing, base containment, coalition management, public persuasion (only thing to be seen is if he can make hard trade offs in practice).
I would say Mamdani has the excellent personality for Mass Retail Poliitics. Something that the Democrats Egghead -college educated professional class (Al gharbi's "symbolic capitalists) massively has devalued (via excessive focus on identarianism first and priviledging their own college campus mediated modes of discourse).
His policies i may think are crap - but his social-political skills are what is needed to broaden success. He has fluency, fluency in engagement.
That is an excellent observation. It explains why modern day Democratic politicians sound so stunted, they have come up the ladder by passing through so many superficial tests that we have forgotten to recruit for the the kind of natural skills that make for a good politician.
If we take protectionist logic at face value, that cheap imports destroy domestic industry, then the most devastating economic weapon imaginable wouldn't be a blockade. It would be an imposition of free trade. Economic sanctions on Cuba/Iran/Russia should take the form of forced free trade.
Time to brush up on some pre-20th century history- this is exactly how colonial powers used to behave. Britain was the 'workshop of the world', and they forced their colonies to open up to 'free trade' with them whether they liked it or not. The whole pre-1980s model of world trade was 'rich countries physically manufacture the goods and then ship them to poorer countries', and it's why first the UK and later the US were so strongly pro-free trade.
Selective free trade was literally an imperial weapon, turning weaker countries and colonies into captive markets for metropolitan manufactures. This is what the West did in China, this is why the US forcibly opened up Japan to outside trade- coercive treaties literally prevented the Japanese from enacting tariffs on Western goods until 1911. This is part of what the American colonists were so angry about it- Britain forcibly favoring their own industries- and the newly formed US immediately tariffed British goods. Historians have been documenting 'imperial free trade' like..... forever
I generally agree but to steelman the other side many rich countries did force free trade on poor countries through gunboat diplomacy in the 1800s and it was devastating in most cases; China remembers it as the “Century of Humiliation” and Chinese people actually got shorter, and it was so devastating to the Ottoman Empire that the term “capitulation” which just meant a “chapter” of a treaty now means complete surrender even in English.
Free trade is good generally but poor countries also need a developmentalist state with enough bargaining power to extract concessions like tech transfer from multinational corporations so they don’t get all the value.
The answer about homelessness doesn’t quite seem to address the question. I’m sure the guy who asked it was aware that some of the “homeless” do have places to live. The homeless issue really hurts Democrats because not only are they not fixing the problem, but they seem committed to actually making it worse by doing absolutely nothing to prevent homeless people from completely taking over public infrastructure. Admittedly Democrats in office have made progress in this area over the past 3-4 years, but much of the rhetoric on the Left is still supportive of the theory of homelessness that held that clearing homeless encampments was unconstitutional and that is still probably the view from the left most often heard on the issue.
I think his point is that this is the reason most technocratic solutions to homelessness are unsatisfying--because the vast majority of people who can't afford a place to live are not the kind of highly visible vagrants that most people think of when they think of homelessness. The problem, then, is that a policy that helps the vast majority of actual homeless people afford homes is not going to fix the problem of nuisance vagrancy, and so you have to separately address that through enforcement. And so making the homeless/vagrancy distinction is important not for some PC reason, but because the optimal policy to solve the broader problem won't address most voters' direct concerns.
I still have a bunch of antipathy towards the concept of “harm reduction,” because advocates act like it only has upsides. They dismiss the possibility of downsides, incentives, or secondary policies that go along with the advocated policies.
Needle exchanges, safe use spaces, etc often also result in policies that are de facto legalization of narcotics. This makes the public presence of these activities more prevalent and reduces punitive pressures for people to remain sober.
It’s a wicked problem tied up with the worst parts of homelessness. People don’t want to be cruel but there is a perverse cruelty that permissiveness perpetuates.
Didn’t needle exchanges start up in the early days of AIDS, back when contracting AIDS really was a death sentence? In that context you can make a strong case that keeping someone AIDS-free is way more important than enabling the addiction. But my understanding now is that needle exchanges are trying to stop stuff like Hepatitis- certainly not great to get, but not a death sentence. It seems that really does change the calculus.
Harm reduction, under their own goals and metrics, doesn't work. The main thing that was sold to the public was "we need these touch points so we can pull people into treatment programs, without them there is no where to start", if we implemented these programs we'd finally be able to pull people into treatment and reduce the scourge of drug addition on the streets. But this hasn't been successful at all, theres like a 1% or less rate of people going from a harm reduction program to treatment or other services. The problem is that the junkies really want to do drugs, and the service providers really don't want to stop them for ideological reasons.
True Housing First has never been tried...because regulatory burdens and zoning make it impossible to build enough housing. Also, no one seems to want such housing in their neighborhood? But we're all trying to find the guys who did this.
I resent "hostile architecture" because it's really unfriendly to non-homeless people too. A walkable urban environment is less useful when there are no benches, no trashcans, shops close early, tents obstruct the sidewalks, bus stops no longer have light or heat or real windbreaks...etc.
Housing first is not the answer -- or at least a bad slogan -- for the kind of homeless being discussed here. I think we need to give the drug/mentally addled homeless a private bunk and a locker but you have to expect they won't care for an apartment.
But yes the idea of giving them somewhere else to go is correct but no one wants those people to find living in their city better.
But you can't really address the problem compassionately because if you actually gave a good solution that made homeless lives better you'd get everyone's homeless.
Not really true IMO. The functional homeless folks living elsewhere have jobs and social ties and such. Making housing cheaper in your city won’t pull them your way in numbers greater than it will attract anyone else.
Helping the “bum” population will require coercive measures that won’t attract them from elsewhere.
The functional homeless ofc but I thought we were talking about the ones who are actually an issue. The functional homeless aren't a problem for democrats you don't know who they are.
See, there you go talking about "homeless" and "homeless" as two different categories, just like the post noted. I kind of like how some people in this thread have started calling the people shitting in the streets "vagrants". It's a good word.
We can start talking about what to do about vagrancy, and its clearer what the actual issue is.
" I think most of the country has reached a kind of corrupt bargain where, instead of spending money on fixing things, politically moderate and conservative jurisdictions dump the troubled people onto progressive jurisdictions where the residents either tolerate it or leave."
Basically this. Conservatives want low taxes, and enough liberals believe in the right to die on the streets as an unproductive drug user (or themselves want low taxes) that nobody favors the civil commitment that would not only get these people off the street but also save a few of their lives.
The one thing I would add is it really is a form of "antisocial behavior". I get that drug addiction is real, but that doesn't mean there aren't choices involved. You can see the choices in what jurisdictions they move to, and you can also see it in their histories, which usually involve alienating their friends and family and refusing to hold down jobs or housing that would require them to obey rules and take responsibility for themselves.
My guess is if we actually shelled out the money and did the civil commitment and ensured that part of the commitment program was that they never be allowed to touch drugs again, with real monitoring, we would turn some lives around. Because, denied the option of refusing work, sleeping on the streets, and getting stoned, some of these folks would become productive citizens again. Others might just have to stay in civil commitment a long time, but we would at least save their lives.
Letting them get high on the streets, and refuse to be productive citizens, until they die young (the current policy) is cheap and cruel.
The conservatives are willing to apply the firmness but not spend the money whereas progressives are willing to spend the money but not apply the firmness. Ideally we'd spend the money and apply the firmness, but that won't happen if we're outsourcing state capacity to third parties who think it's wrong or for whatever other reason aren't able to do it.
Third parties benefit from social problems they nominally address remaining unresolved. Without a firm metric of success and timeline, they just perpetuate.
I'm not convinced it's that cynical, and indeed it might be easier if it was because it would suggest they can be bought. I think the organizations involved just legitimately believe really dumb things.
Absolutely, 100%. But it’s also easier to believe dumb things when they pay your salary. Orwell: "It is difficult to convince a man of something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it."
I don't know if you realize both how truly expensive and horrible commitment is. For people where there is no other option ok fine but that's not true for 90% of even the problem homeless.
They'd happily keep their problems private if you gave them somewhere with privacy to sleep and a locker to keep their shit in. It will be way cheaper and less cruel than commitment. It doesn't happen because of that corrupt bargain. No one wants to attract all those people without the money to pay for it and conservatives will use the fact that privacy will let them use drugs as an excuse not to allow federal funds to follow for such uses.
In fairness we have absolutely tried to give free housing and it's often just destroyed. I have a family member who was a super of a building like this in Seattle. In one year I think there were something like a 6-7 opioid deaths, a dozen more completely destroyed apts that were essentially uninhabitable after, and a parking lot where everyone's cars were eventually beaten up by drug abusing drivers returning in a stupor and just hitting other parked cars over and over. My family member left halfway through as she couldn't stomach walking into apts with dead bodies any longer. Eventually the building owner turned it into section 8 and dropped the grant money/non profit approach entirely. The level of care at the bottom end is essentially hospice level treatment not simply a room to crash.
There are levels to this. 2/3rds of homeless are not chronically homeless and do just need a place to stay for a temporary time, and we have that solution already. Of the chronically homeless, I would guess another 2/3rds need only some room and regular checks. But that final 1/3 needs no joke 24/7 monitoring to not completely destroy themselves and others imo
This kind of narrative is just pretty different from what I see with the homeless people who camp in the park near me. They are unsightly but have never bothered me when I go by them and I go by them all the time including with small children. My family members who complain most about them are the healthcare workers complaining that they treat the hospital as a hotel and take up a lot of expensive care that our taxes pay for. I do not know if they would be better off or not in civil commitment but their lives as do not seem obviously hellish, some of them have bicycles and I even saw one with a kayak once. Maybe my local homeless are exceptionally nice for some reason and I am not seeing a representative sample. But If I had to choose I think I would also prefer camping in the park over being in prison.
They steal the bikes; I live in a city where fancy bikes are popular and it's amazing how many $2,000 bikes the obviously homeless seem to ride around on.
One of my coworkers lives in an exurban area and there is an encampment along a bike trail near his house. They apparently try to entice kids to come into the encampment.
The entire chronic long term homelessness issues comes down to this one concept:
The NYTimes did an article a few weeks back about the biggest cause of preventable death in America - high blood pressure. It helpfully noted that 90% of people can get their blood pressure under control with treatment. And then an article a few weeks later about the 10% of people who don't respond to GLP1s. But when it does an article about the chronically homeless mentally ill and drug addicted they someone are under the impression that it's all 100% treatable with drugs and therapy.
I've never been able to get an answer to the question of what to do with the 10% who are treatment non-responsive. Because if someone did respond well to treatment when they had their first mental health episode they wouldn't be homeless to begin with. These people are where they are because, in many cases, they just can't be fixed.
Many of those homeless people aren't crazy crazy ... they have demons that push them to look for escape and then end up with serious drug addiction. In a way that is treatment resistant because our medical system is unwilling to recognize that some people are unhappy to a point that only extreme hard drugs are able to relieve (until we invent something better).
Honestly the solution other countries came up with is just to give them places to do that in private that don't bother the rest of us. We can't bring ourselves to do that plus the state system means you risk pulling more people in that situation.
"Honestly the solution other countries came up with is just to give them places to do that in private that don't bother the rest of us."
Right, places in state mental hospitals that they never closed*. They key is the people can't leave.
* In Germany, for example, there was a move to community based care where appropriate and state hospitals became less crowded, but they were never closed. Bed capacity fell by half not 90% like in the US.
I am very well aware and I've spent time with these people. What you are missing is there are many forms of mental illness with full on psychosis being relatively rare. There is a very large fraction of people who have serious mental health issues and take drugs to self-medicate but are perfectly aware of reality and don't want to cause anyone harm.
No I think they forcibly institutionalize them. Example:
“Finnish mental health legislation takes a medical approach to compulsory measures, emphasising the need for treatment of psychiatric patients over civil liberties concerns... Finland has the highest rates of detention per 100 000 inhabitants, about 214 compared with 93 in the UK and 11 in Italy”
I continue to be somewhat confused by Matt's analysis of the "anti-Israel" issue. This mailbag's analysis sounds reasonable, but the one about cozying up to Hasan Piker didn't. I think the main problem is that vague polling questions, e.g., "Do you approve of Israel?", make it very hard to distinguish between:
1. A view that our policy should be less favorable to Israel, e.g., cutting off aid or not looking the other way on settlement expansion.
My guess is that this is the view that's prevalent among the general public, and, in particular, the base of the Democratic party. When you ask a suburban wine mom "Do you like Israel?" she has a vague idea that Bibi is bad.
I don't think most American Jews would care too much about a Democratic party that moves away from Israel in this sense. There may be some over-enthusiastic people who call these mild policy changes antisemitism (and the left gets a lot of mileage out of trolling Jews about this), but even Bibi and the Kahanists agree with some of these policies.
2. A view that the people of Israel are something close to ontological evil while its enemies are something close to ontological good. This issue should be at the center of one's moral compass. While political violence is never acceptable, one can't help but understand why one would commit violence against those who don't hold this view.
I think this is the anti-Israel view held by people in the media, academia, etc. E.g., the Pod Bros frequently citing Drop Site, all of those obviously-false statistics alleging to show that Israel is uniquely evil (they killed more journalists than the Nazis!), people being somewhat sympathetic towards the Michigan synagogue terrorist, etc. Crucially, this latter view is what you would need to take if, as Matt suggested, you want to go on Hasan Piker's show and agree with him on Israel.
Again, the left gets a lot of mileage out of (correctly) pointing out that this derangement is not classical antisemitism. What really grinds my gears is when they further suggest that since it's antisemitic to link Jews with Israel, actually Jews should stand *against* antisemitism by adopting this view. (I.e., that the war on half the Jews is righteous.)
I think it would be utterly shameful for American Jewish institutions to take this view. When I hear American Jews say that this would be the best way to defuse antisemitism, I think it's pathetic. Barbarians are shooting rockets at half your people, and you're worried about people calling you names?
The view Matt took about Hasan is that people should go on his show and say that the government of Israel is bad and we should stop giving them money. The view that you can't go on anyone's show and express your points of agreement with them while not endorsing all the outer crazy stuff they say is part of the problem here. Joe Rogan also believes lots of crazy stuff.
I don't know about this. If you want to argue against affirmative action, e.g., I think it's very different to (a) announce it on Fox News, or (b) announce it on David Duke's radio show. Doing this sends all sorts of signals that people will draw inferences from whether the candidate likes it or not.
You’re not doing the “divided loyalties” trope any favors by calling the citizens of a foreign nation that’s been increasingly acting in a manner hostile to American interests “your people” from the perspective of American Jews.
I don’t see how this is expressing any sort of dual loyalty? Like, if the US were at war with Israel, I’d support the US. I don’t think the Jewish tradition of being a people (going beyond individual adherence to a religious doctrine) conflicts with this.
No one finds it strange that some random Bangladeshi-American has an affinity for Palestinians, or that Irish-Americans have an affinity for the Irish (even when they were terrorizing a US ally). Nor, for that matter, would anyone find it so odd if Persian-Americans were concerned for their coethnics in Iran, a country we’re at war with.
It's an alien idea; as an obviously white American I have no ethnicity. The idea that I should give a fig what some Europeans that may be distantly related to me are up to makes no sense. Assimilate already!
Arguably there are few things more American than having strong opinions relating to ancestral countries that you objectively have no ties to (unless you're British or German). You may not like this, but this is what assimilation looks like.
This would be a hugely more compelling argument if the median Jewish American’s ancestors hadn’t arrived around when mine did.
I assure you, I could not possibly give less of a shit if Germany and France started lobbing cruise missiles at one another, except for the economic consequences here in the US.
Historically our Jewish folks have, thankfully, followed the Bundist model… but if Israel undermines that then I have deep concerns about our relationship with it.
I think this is generally right and illustrates why it's just not a good 'popularist' issue. Our politics on this subject would be a lot healthier if it was easier to say Israel is a foreign country whose interests align less and less with the United States, and even better if we could concede that the relationship has become anything but normal. It's hard to imagine what's going on now happening with any of our other allies.
However it's also hard to get more than ankle deep into realism about Israel/our relationship with them without encountering the bizarre parallel universe you describe in part 2.
"they further suggest that since it's antisemitic to link Jews with Israel, actually Jews should stand *against* antisemitism by adopting this view. (I.e., that the war on half the Jews is righteous.)"
Though of course different, the relationship of American Jews to Israel, the relationship of Americans of German ancestry to Germany in WW1 and 2, and the relationship of Americans of Japanese ancestry to Japan in WW2 are related phenomenon.
Personally, I think it help clarify some thinking on this issue if people would go through the exercise of making careful and thoughtful comparisons of these three examples.
I think German-Americans did tend to be more isolationist which you can see in election results in the Midwest which was more heavily German. But even then they were not pro-affirmatively supporting Germany.
There was, however, anti-German xenophobia in WW1 and anti-Japanese actions in WW2, based on beliefs that Americans with ethnic ties to those countries were tainted by association.
I'm confused by this comparison. Not only are we not at war with Israel, we are currently fighting a war *alongside* Israel. Moreover, Israel has historically fought enemies that, broadly speaking, are aligned against American interests (even if they don't pose a big threat).
I can't think of a great example, because America's allies are usually not capable of kicking the shit out of their enemies the way Israel is. So something like British-Americans' opinions of the UK bombings in German cities during WWII is not really apt here. But that would nevertheless be closer!
Japan and Germany also fought against the US enemy the USSR.
In WWII, Japan and Germany were the expansionist powers starting the war and taking territory, while the Allies were defending. That makes Israel more similar to the Axis, as they are taking territory in Palestine and Lebanon and started the war with Iran.
The thing that continues to be very annoying to me about even normal lib takes on this conflict, reflected somewhat in MYs post, is the idea that the war is Israels "fault" or that Israel "started" the war with Iran.
Irans whole foreign policy revolver around creating a "ring of fire" around Israel and provided the means for most of the SEVEN groups attacking Israel since 10/7. As they have built up weapons supply they have been openly chanting "death to Israel" (and America) and promised to used the weapons to slaughter as many Israelis as possible.
At what point does this constant escalation warrant a response? I continue to be amazed that people can look at the current conflict and say Israel "attacked" Iran and "caused" or "started" the war. It requires a complete and total ignorance of Irans actions and their effects.
I think Matt is basically right about 10/7, Israel's role in Iran, and aid, but what I would actually say is that actual anti-Zionism in 2026 IS anti-semitic. The theory is to start a civil war that drives the Jews out, just as the theory of the far Right in Israel is to try and drive the Palestinians out.
Our policy should be to call out anyone who is calling for any sort of population transfer as a bigot. No more "technically anti-zionism is not anti-semitism". It is. The Jews are there and if you want crap that will get them killed you are a bigot.
But Netanyahu's rejection of 2 states and coddling of settlers should draw a real response.
You’re kind of eliding the distinction between “population transfer” (intentional action) and “crap that will get them killed” (passive voice, speculation about the results of policies you don’t like). I don’t think most people supporting equal rights between Jews and Palestinians would agree that this would lead to civil war or result in Jews being killed.
I just think that calling it antisemitism is increasingly not convincing to people (even if, according to some definitions, it would be accurate). It gives people who adopt this view an easy out to say "I want Israel to be overrun by the Arabs, but look, I'm at a seder! How could I be antisemitic?" ("Antisemitism" originated in the same way, actually. "I don't hate Jews, just Middle Eastern race-mongrels!")
Perhaps it would be more convincing to point out that antizionism is typically a violent derangement on its own terms.
Re Tariffs: As a proper economist, albeit working in finance (renenergy) among the issues (besides overly dramatic early declarations (based on Trump initial) being highlighted over more measured) is timeline / time of impact.
Rather like inflationary impacts - mass public, commentariat on-line think that if it is not happening instantly like a sugar rush - in internet comment time then it's "false" whereas a lot of what one analyses have medium term time for feed-through, and do not show up in Internet Comment Time.
This in addition to of course the fact Headline Announcements were walked back heavily.
Still it is a warning about making Drama Llama announcements in reaction to a Trump policy as one self-discredits (both due to TACO and due to frequently worst cases are mitigated by other actors, so one ends up Crying Wolf...
Median-ish people also want to be billionaires themselves. Why do you think gambling and lotteries are so popular? The many median-ish people who want to be billionaires are not going to support guillotining billioniares.
Guillotine fetishists tend to be on the upper end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Normal people generally are uncomfortable for those who openly state that are looking for the pretext to engage in wanton murder and violence.
This gets close to the reasoning behind those who fetishize the violence of the French Revolution. Downwardly mobile college graduates want to make room for their upward mobility.
If they’re downwardly mobile anyway why would they need room for upward mobility?
It’s probably more of a concern for upwardly mobile people starting out without much finding that even if they are very successful they simply cannot catch up to other people born into wealth making a couple percent returns every year meaning they cannot afford a nice house or upward mobility, without something akin to winning the lottery.
Of course we should not have violence. But we should have more progressive and wealth rather than income based taxes.
Interestingly historically the French king believed what you’re saying that it was only the downwardly mobile college kids against him which is why he tried the Flight to Varnes but the poor rural people sold him out and it got him guillotined.
If you look at the degrees some of these people who post this crap on social media have and how those fields are zero sum (non profit, culture industries, academia) what they are expressing is a purging sentiment.
Add to it geographic concentration in desirable cities, then you see how these resentments result in some people fetishizing guillotines.
Then there is probably a bunch of hedonic expectations playing into these sentiments.
"Tibita Kaneene: How should a rational dem allocate $100 give today"
<rant>
a rational dem shouldn't give any candidate $0.01 unless they promise to never sell your phone number, or text you. emails are as bad, but you can keep unsubscribing/ reporting as spam. but the texts just dont stop.
as someone who gave in 2020, I am not giving a single $0.01 via actbloo or whatever till they figure this bullshit out.
It seems technically true that there's not a perfect circle overlap in the Venmo diagram of "scruffy-looking dude* acting pretty crazy in public" and "literally homeless person"? But I am not sure the distinction is worth much, since the actual policy prescription is to still treat crime and disorder as crime and disorder, no matter who perpetrates it. We're not going to make "unhoused" a new Protected Class incapable of having the book thrown at them. (...we're not, right, asks Padme?) Or from the other angle, to still build housing of some type or other, because cerberus paribus it's just mechanically harder to be homeless if there are more homes to go around. So much of the distaste also follows fairly parochial out-of-sight, out-of-mind rules too...like, homeless people shacking up in an abandoned downtown office building isn't *good*, but better there than all along the sidewalks or in the parks or in the doorways of small businesses. It's easier to offer generosity and compassion to an abstract idea you never personally encounter. Harder when you've had to make the call to get a dead-from-OD body out of your public bathroom. (Not me personally, but it's happened to other coworkers I know. Not an isolated incident, sadly.)
*almost always a dude, at least in SF, why is this?
His point was there is actually a much larger number of respectable homeless. These are people who really are perfectly normal and just hit hard times and they live in a car or go to shelters and you never know who they are if you don't volunteer at a shelter because they are perfectly normal friendly citizens who just don't have a place to stay currently.
Matt makes some good points that Mamdani made some smart political moves that made him more appealing to centrists.
I also Mamdani is just a cool guy and that’s part of what makes those moves work. He doesn’t seem calculated so the courting of abundance Democrats and retention of jessica Tisch seemed like genuine openness to ideas and continuing policies that worked.
Post-Cold War Marxists like the Code Pink morons are the Disney Adults of American politics: they seek refuge from adulthood in childish fantasies. They should be mocked mercilessly and ignored politically.
I don't see how anyone could claim a "discrediting" when a simple perusal of stock prices shows a big obvious dip right around Liberace Day, followed by a recovery after the flip-flop was walked back (probably mostly because of the market going into freefall). Why, you'd need some sort of elaborate conspiracy theory that the dastardly duo, Standard and Poor, intentionally coordinated a stock sell-off just to snub the President. You can see the same occurring in real time, right now, with all the unfortunate implications of the Straight of Hormel being crooked. Except it's a lot harder to undo a (never formally declared!) war than to change some numbers around at the Bureau Whose Name I'm Too Lazy To Look Up That's Responsible For Implementing Tariffs. "They predicted 10 of the last 5 recessions!", tweeted from my iPhone while standing in line at the unemployment office.
Disappointed at the "do you think it's time to punch the hippies again and harder?" bait question. Audience capture isn't not a thing, although the answer was a good enough redirection rather than boring old plant-based red meat, at least.
"" I think most of the country has reached a kind of corrupt bargain where, instead of spending money on fixing things, politically moderate and conservative jurisdictions dump the troubled people onto progressive jurisdictions where the residents either tolerate it or leave.""
i live in a tier 3 city that is literally what MY says here, and the whole thing sucks. residents of the city are constantly big mad at the dem mayor and council who has literally no control over this, and the state doesnt gaf.
of course being a college town, thing are made worse because the only housing built at scale is $1400/ month apartments for rich students. all other initiatives are stuck in NIMBY hell.
Mamdani also not just totally reversed his position on homeless encampment sweeps but also got the NYC DSA co-chair to defend the sweeps on Brian Lehrer’s show lol
Charismatic leaders roll their base!
To be fair, a lot of the moderate factionalists themselves have clearly stated they like Zohran that’s why they are willing to give him a chance. Mamdani does well engaging with ideological adversaries without sounding hostile (like Bernie) and without angering his base. It’s definitely a skill, he’s a politician’s politician, which is ironic given how much Dems think they need to find someone who’s not a politician and can be “authentic”. The striking thing about Mamdani is he appears to be a good *politician* and seems to enjoy engaging in the entire gamut of politics: media theater, retail, brinksmanship, backroom dealing, base containment, coalition management, public persuasion (only thing to be seen is if he can make hard trade offs in practice).
I would say Mamdani has the excellent personality for Mass Retail Poliitics. Something that the Democrats Egghead -college educated professional class (Al gharbi's "symbolic capitalists) massively has devalued (via excessive focus on identarianism first and priviledging their own college campus mediated modes of discourse).
His policies i may think are crap - but his social-political skills are what is needed to broaden success. He has fluency, fluency in engagement.
It's almost as if you'd like to have a beer with him. Or whatever passes for grown up drinks with the under 35s.
CBD infused non-alcoholic beverage?
Could you pop Zyns with him?
I don't even know what that is.
Nicotine pouches that are popular with the youths
Wild. Makes me think of Krusty the Klown.
https://youtu.be/8ZmQKerRCt4?si=ytkmxuoFVS05lwmX
Believe it or not we drink beer too.
Ha yes - okay non-alcoholic if he's observant :^))
But yeah, fluid social skills able to talk to people outside his own clique - it's a real skill and talent.
Non-alcoholic beer has gotten remarkably good lately. It's a whole different ballgame from 20 years ago.
That is an excellent observation. It explains why modern day Democratic politicians sound so stunted, they have come up the ladder by passing through so many superficial tests that we have forgotten to recruit for the the kind of natural skills that make for a good politician.
If we take protectionist logic at face value, that cheap imports destroy domestic industry, then the most devastating economic weapon imaginable wouldn't be a blockade. It would be an imposition of free trade. Economic sanctions on Cuba/Iran/Russia should take the form of forced free trade.
Sadly, Substack will only let me like this one time!
Time to brush up on some pre-20th century history- this is exactly how colonial powers used to behave. Britain was the 'workshop of the world', and they forced their colonies to open up to 'free trade' with them whether they liked it or not. The whole pre-1980s model of world trade was 'rich countries physically manufacture the goods and then ship them to poorer countries', and it's why first the UK and later the US were so strongly pro-free trade.
Selective free trade was literally an imperial weapon, turning weaker countries and colonies into captive markets for metropolitan manufactures. This is what the West did in China, this is why the US forcibly opened up Japan to outside trade- coercive treaties literally prevented the Japanese from enacting tariffs on Western goods until 1911. This is part of what the American colonists were so angry about it- Britain forcibly favoring their own industries- and the newly formed US immediately tariffed British goods. Historians have been documenting 'imperial free trade' like..... forever
I generally agree but to steelman the other side many rich countries did force free trade on poor countries through gunboat diplomacy in the 1800s and it was devastating in most cases; China remembers it as the “Century of Humiliation” and Chinese people actually got shorter, and it was so devastating to the Ottoman Empire that the term “capitulation” which just meant a “chapter” of a treaty now means complete surrender even in English.
Free trade is good generally but poor countries also need a developmentalist state with enough bargaining power to extract concessions like tech transfer from multinational corporations so they don’t get all the value.
The answer about homelessness doesn’t quite seem to address the question. I’m sure the guy who asked it was aware that some of the “homeless” do have places to live. The homeless issue really hurts Democrats because not only are they not fixing the problem, but they seem committed to actually making it worse by doing absolutely nothing to prevent homeless people from completely taking over public infrastructure. Admittedly Democrats in office have made progress in this area over the past 3-4 years, but much of the rhetoric on the Left is still supportive of the theory of homelessness that held that clearing homeless encampments was unconstitutional and that is still probably the view from the left most often heard on the issue.
I think his point is that this is the reason most technocratic solutions to homelessness are unsatisfying--because the vast majority of people who can't afford a place to live are not the kind of highly visible vagrants that most people think of when they think of homelessness. The problem, then, is that a policy that helps the vast majority of actual homeless people afford homes is not going to fix the problem of nuisance vagrancy, and so you have to separately address that through enforcement. And so making the homeless/vagrancy distinction is important not for some PC reason, but because the optimal policy to solve the broader problem won't address most voters' direct concerns.
I still have a bunch of antipathy towards the concept of “harm reduction,” because advocates act like it only has upsides. They dismiss the possibility of downsides, incentives, or secondary policies that go along with the advocated policies.
Needle exchanges, safe use spaces, etc often also result in policies that are de facto legalization of narcotics. This makes the public presence of these activities more prevalent and reduces punitive pressures for people to remain sober.
It’s a wicked problem tied up with the worst parts of homelessness. People don’t want to be cruel but there is a perverse cruelty that permissiveness perpetuates.
Didn’t needle exchanges start up in the early days of AIDS, back when contracting AIDS really was a death sentence? In that context you can make a strong case that keeping someone AIDS-free is way more important than enabling the addiction. But my understanding now is that needle exchanges are trying to stop stuff like Hepatitis- certainly not great to get, but not a death sentence. It seems that really does change the calculus.
Harm reduction, under their own goals and metrics, doesn't work. The main thing that was sold to the public was "we need these touch points so we can pull people into treatment programs, without them there is no where to start", if we implemented these programs we'd finally be able to pull people into treatment and reduce the scourge of drug addition on the streets. But this hasn't been successful at all, theres like a 1% or less rate of people going from a harm reduction program to treatment or other services. The problem is that the junkies really want to do drugs, and the service providers really don't want to stop them for ideological reasons.
True Housing First has never been tried...because regulatory burdens and zoning make it impossible to build enough housing. Also, no one seems to want such housing in their neighborhood? But we're all trying to find the guys who did this.
I resent "hostile architecture" because it's really unfriendly to non-homeless people too. A walkable urban environment is less useful when there are no benches, no trashcans, shops close early, tents obstruct the sidewalks, bus stops no longer have light or heat or real windbreaks...etc.
Hostile architecture sucks but if we don't do anything about vagrant drug users it becomes inevitable.
Housing first is not the answer -- or at least a bad slogan -- for the kind of homeless being discussed here. I think we need to give the drug/mentally addled homeless a private bunk and a locker but you have to expect they won't care for an apartment.
But yes the idea of giving them somewhere else to go is correct but no one wants those people to find living in their city better.
But you can't really address the problem compassionately because if you actually gave a good solution that made homeless lives better you'd get everyone's homeless.
Not really true IMO. The functional homeless folks living elsewhere have jobs and social ties and such. Making housing cheaper in your city won’t pull them your way in numbers greater than it will attract anyone else.
Helping the “bum” population will require coercive measures that won’t attract them from elsewhere.
The functional homeless ofc but I thought we were talking about the ones who are actually an issue. The functional homeless aren't a problem for democrats you don't know who they are.
See, there you go talking about "homeless" and "homeless" as two different categories, just like the post noted. I kind of like how some people in this thread have started calling the people shitting in the streets "vagrants". It's a good word.
We can start talking about what to do about vagrancy, and its clearer what the actual issue is.
Yea but the precise measures to deal with the nonfunctional ones are exactly what won’t attract them: coercive treatment for drugs or mental health.
" I think most of the country has reached a kind of corrupt bargain where, instead of spending money on fixing things, politically moderate and conservative jurisdictions dump the troubled people onto progressive jurisdictions where the residents either tolerate it or leave."
Basically this. Conservatives want low taxes, and enough liberals believe in the right to die on the streets as an unproductive drug user (or themselves want low taxes) that nobody favors the civil commitment that would not only get these people off the street but also save a few of their lives.
The one thing I would add is it really is a form of "antisocial behavior". I get that drug addiction is real, but that doesn't mean there aren't choices involved. You can see the choices in what jurisdictions they move to, and you can also see it in their histories, which usually involve alienating their friends and family and refusing to hold down jobs or housing that would require them to obey rules and take responsibility for themselves.
My guess is if we actually shelled out the money and did the civil commitment and ensured that part of the commitment program was that they never be allowed to touch drugs again, with real monitoring, we would turn some lives around. Because, denied the option of refusing work, sleeping on the streets, and getting stoned, some of these folks would become productive citizens again. Others might just have to stay in civil commitment a long time, but we would at least save their lives.
Letting them get high on the streets, and refuse to be productive citizens, until they die young (the current policy) is cheap and cruel.
The conservatives are willing to apply the firmness but not spend the money whereas progressives are willing to spend the money but not apply the firmness. Ideally we'd spend the money and apply the firmness, but that won't happen if we're outsourcing state capacity to third parties who think it's wrong or for whatever other reason aren't able to do it.
Third parties benefit from social problems they nominally address remaining unresolved. Without a firm metric of success and timeline, they just perpetuate.
I'm not convinced it's that cynical, and indeed it might be easier if it was because it would suggest they can be bought. I think the organizations involved just legitimately believe really dumb things.
Absolutely, 100%. But it’s also easier to believe dumb things when they pay your salary. Orwell: "It is difficult to convince a man of something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it."
I don't know if you realize both how truly expensive and horrible commitment is. For people where there is no other option ok fine but that's not true for 90% of even the problem homeless.
They'd happily keep their problems private if you gave them somewhere with privacy to sleep and a locker to keep their shit in. It will be way cheaper and less cruel than commitment. It doesn't happen because of that corrupt bargain. No one wants to attract all those people without the money to pay for it and conservatives will use the fact that privacy will let them use drugs as an excuse not to allow federal funds to follow for such uses.
In fairness we have absolutely tried to give free housing and it's often just destroyed. I have a family member who was a super of a building like this in Seattle. In one year I think there were something like a 6-7 opioid deaths, a dozen more completely destroyed apts that were essentially uninhabitable after, and a parking lot where everyone's cars were eventually beaten up by drug abusing drivers returning in a stupor and just hitting other parked cars over and over. My family member left halfway through as she couldn't stomach walking into apts with dead bodies any longer. Eventually the building owner turned it into section 8 and dropped the grant money/non profit approach entirely. The level of care at the bottom end is essentially hospice level treatment not simply a room to crash.
There are levels to this. 2/3rds of homeless are not chronically homeless and do just need a place to stay for a temporary time, and we have that solution already. Of the chronically homeless, I would guess another 2/3rds need only some room and regular checks. But that final 1/3 needs no joke 24/7 monitoring to not completely destroy themselves and others imo
This kind of narrative is just pretty different from what I see with the homeless people who camp in the park near me. They are unsightly but have never bothered me when I go by them and I go by them all the time including with small children. My family members who complain most about them are the healthcare workers complaining that they treat the hospital as a hotel and take up a lot of expensive care that our taxes pay for. I do not know if they would be better off or not in civil commitment but their lives as do not seem obviously hellish, some of them have bicycles and I even saw one with a kayak once. Maybe my local homeless are exceptionally nice for some reason and I am not seeing a representative sample. But If I had to choose I think I would also prefer camping in the park over being in prison.
They steal the bikes; I live in a city where fancy bikes are popular and it's amazing how many $2,000 bikes the obviously homeless seem to ride around on.
One of my coworkers lives in an exurban area and there is an encampment along a bike trail near his house. They apparently try to entice kids to come into the encampment.
The entire chronic long term homelessness issues comes down to this one concept:
The NYTimes did an article a few weeks back about the biggest cause of preventable death in America - high blood pressure. It helpfully noted that 90% of people can get their blood pressure under control with treatment. And then an article a few weeks later about the 10% of people who don't respond to GLP1s. But when it does an article about the chronically homeless mentally ill and drug addicted they someone are under the impression that it's all 100% treatable with drugs and therapy.
I've never been able to get an answer to the question of what to do with the 10% who are treatment non-responsive. Because if someone did respond well to treatment when they had their first mental health episode they wouldn't be homeless to begin with. These people are where they are because, in many cases, they just can't be fixed.
Many of those homeless people aren't crazy crazy ... they have demons that push them to look for escape and then end up with serious drug addiction. In a way that is treatment resistant because our medical system is unwilling to recognize that some people are unhappy to a point that only extreme hard drugs are able to relieve (until we invent something better).
Honestly the solution other countries came up with is just to give them places to do that in private that don't bother the rest of us. We can't bring ourselves to do that plus the state system means you risk pulling more people in that situation.
"Honestly the solution other countries came up with is just to give them places to do that in private that don't bother the rest of us."
Right, places in state mental hospitals that they never closed*. They key is the people can't leave.
* In Germany, for example, there was a move to community based care where appropriate and state hospitals became less crowded, but they were never closed. Bed capacity fell by half not 90% like in the US.
No I mean the street drug users who those countries mostly do not institutionalize but move them out of public view.
I think you're not recognizing the venn diagram of serious mental illness self medicating with drugs and alcohol.
I am very well aware and I've spent time with these people. What you are missing is there are many forms of mental illness with full on psychosis being relatively rare. There is a very large fraction of people who have serious mental health issues and take drugs to self-medicate but are perfectly aware of reality and don't want to cause anyone harm.
No I think they forcibly institutionalize them. Example:
“Finnish mental health legislation takes a medical approach to compulsory measures, emphasising the need for treatment of psychiatric patients over civil liberties concerns... Finland has the highest rates of detention per 100 000 inhabitants, about 214 compared with 93 in the UK and 11 in Italy”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychiatric-bulletin/article/compulsory-psychiatric-detention-and-treatment-in-finland/4757FEDD5BB56849744DDE76A7FEBBE1
In NY there is now a bribery scandal being prosecuted over funding nonprofits to service asylum seekers. I was like “this overlaps so many issues!”
I continue to be somewhat confused by Matt's analysis of the "anti-Israel" issue. This mailbag's analysis sounds reasonable, but the one about cozying up to Hasan Piker didn't. I think the main problem is that vague polling questions, e.g., "Do you approve of Israel?", make it very hard to distinguish between:
1. A view that our policy should be less favorable to Israel, e.g., cutting off aid or not looking the other way on settlement expansion.
My guess is that this is the view that's prevalent among the general public, and, in particular, the base of the Democratic party. When you ask a suburban wine mom "Do you like Israel?" she has a vague idea that Bibi is bad.
I don't think most American Jews would care too much about a Democratic party that moves away from Israel in this sense. There may be some over-enthusiastic people who call these mild policy changes antisemitism (and the left gets a lot of mileage out of trolling Jews about this), but even Bibi and the Kahanists agree with some of these policies.
2. A view that the people of Israel are something close to ontological evil while its enemies are something close to ontological good. This issue should be at the center of one's moral compass. While political violence is never acceptable, one can't help but understand why one would commit violence against those who don't hold this view.
I think this is the anti-Israel view held by people in the media, academia, etc. E.g., the Pod Bros frequently citing Drop Site, all of those obviously-false statistics alleging to show that Israel is uniquely evil (they killed more journalists than the Nazis!), people being somewhat sympathetic towards the Michigan synagogue terrorist, etc. Crucially, this latter view is what you would need to take if, as Matt suggested, you want to go on Hasan Piker's show and agree with him on Israel.
Again, the left gets a lot of mileage out of (correctly) pointing out that this derangement is not classical antisemitism. What really grinds my gears is when they further suggest that since it's antisemitic to link Jews with Israel, actually Jews should stand *against* antisemitism by adopting this view. (I.e., that the war on half the Jews is righteous.)
I think it would be utterly shameful for American Jewish institutions to take this view. When I hear American Jews say that this would be the best way to defuse antisemitism, I think it's pathetic. Barbarians are shooting rockets at half your people, and you're worried about people calling you names?
The view Matt took about Hasan is that people should go on his show and say that the government of Israel is bad and we should stop giving them money. The view that you can't go on anyone's show and express your points of agreement with them while not endorsing all the outer crazy stuff they say is part of the problem here. Joe Rogan also believes lots of crazy stuff.
I don't know about this. If you want to argue against affirmative action, e.g., I think it's very different to (a) announce it on Fox News, or (b) announce it on David Duke's radio show. Doing this sends all sorts of signals that people will draw inferences from whether the candidate likes it or not.
You’re not doing the “divided loyalties” trope any favors by calling the citizens of a foreign nation that’s been increasingly acting in a manner hostile to American interests “your people” from the perspective of American Jews.
I don’t see how this is expressing any sort of dual loyalty? Like, if the US were at war with Israel, I’d support the US. I don’t think the Jewish tradition of being a people (going beyond individual adherence to a religious doctrine) conflicts with this.
No one finds it strange that some random Bangladeshi-American has an affinity for Palestinians, or that Irish-Americans have an affinity for the Irish (even when they were terrorizing a US ally). Nor, for that matter, would anyone find it so odd if Persian-Americans were concerned for their coethnics in Iran, a country we’re at war with.
It's an alien idea; as an obviously white American I have no ethnicity. The idea that I should give a fig what some Europeans that may be distantly related to me are up to makes no sense. Assimilate already!
Arguably there are few things more American than having strong opinions relating to ancestral countries that you objectively have no ties to (unless you're British or German). You may not like this, but this is what assimilation looks like.
I don't think many Irish, Italian, or Polish Americans have substantial views about the homeland either anymore. Greeks also headed in that direction.
Some ex-Yugoslavian emigrants do but that's because they're first-generation.
This would be a hugely more compelling argument if the median Jewish American’s ancestors hadn’t arrived around when mine did.
I assure you, I could not possibly give less of a shit if Germany and France started lobbing cruise missiles at one another, except for the economic consequences here in the US.
Historically our Jewish folks have, thankfully, followed the Bundist model… but if Israel undermines that then I have deep concerns about our relationship with it.
I think this is generally right and illustrates why it's just not a good 'popularist' issue. Our politics on this subject would be a lot healthier if it was easier to say Israel is a foreign country whose interests align less and less with the United States, and even better if we could concede that the relationship has become anything but normal. It's hard to imagine what's going on now happening with any of our other allies.
However it's also hard to get more than ankle deep into realism about Israel/our relationship with them without encountering the bizarre parallel universe you describe in part 2.
"they further suggest that since it's antisemitic to link Jews with Israel, actually Jews should stand *against* antisemitism by adopting this view. (I.e., that the war on half the Jews is righteous.)"
Though of course different, the relationship of American Jews to Israel, the relationship of Americans of German ancestry to Germany in WW1 and 2, and the relationship of Americans of Japanese ancestry to Japan in WW2 are related phenomenon.
Personally, I think it help clarify some thinking on this issue if people would go through the exercise of making careful and thoughtful comparisons of these three examples.
I think German-Americans did tend to be more isolationist which you can see in election results in the Midwest which was more heavily German. But even then they were not pro-affirmatively supporting Germany.
There was, however, anti-German xenophobia in WW1 and anti-Japanese actions in WW2, based on beliefs that Americans with ethnic ties to those countries were tainted by association.
I'm confused by this comparison. Not only are we not at war with Israel, we are currently fighting a war *alongside* Israel. Moreover, Israel has historically fought enemies that, broadly speaking, are aligned against American interests (even if they don't pose a big threat).
I can't think of a great example, because America's allies are usually not capable of kicking the shit out of their enemies the way Israel is. So something like British-Americans' opinions of the UK bombings in German cities during WWII is not really apt here. But that would nevertheless be closer!
Japan and Germany also fought against the US enemy the USSR.
In WWII, Japan and Germany were the expansionist powers starting the war and taking territory, while the Allies were defending. That makes Israel more similar to the Axis, as they are taking territory in Palestine and Lebanon and started the war with Iran.
Fun fact: the US and USSR were allies during the Second World War!
The thing that continues to be very annoying to me about even normal lib takes on this conflict, reflected somewhat in MYs post, is the idea that the war is Israels "fault" or that Israel "started" the war with Iran.
Irans whole foreign policy revolver around creating a "ring of fire" around Israel and provided the means for most of the SEVEN groups attacking Israel since 10/7. As they have built up weapons supply they have been openly chanting "death to Israel" (and America) and promised to used the weapons to slaughter as many Israelis as possible.
At what point does this constant escalation warrant a response? I continue to be amazed that people can look at the current conflict and say Israel "attacked" Iran and "caused" or "started" the war. It requires a complete and total ignorance of Irans actions and their effects.
"At what point does this constant escalation warrant a response?"
From whom?
I think Matt is basically right about 10/7, Israel's role in Iran, and aid, but what I would actually say is that actual anti-Zionism in 2026 IS anti-semitic. The theory is to start a civil war that drives the Jews out, just as the theory of the far Right in Israel is to try and drive the Palestinians out.
Our policy should be to call out anyone who is calling for any sort of population transfer as a bigot. No more "technically anti-zionism is not anti-semitism". It is. The Jews are there and if you want crap that will get them killed you are a bigot.
But Netanyahu's rejection of 2 states and coddling of settlers should draw a real response.
You’re kind of eliding the distinction between “population transfer” (intentional action) and “crap that will get them killed” (passive voice, speculation about the results of policies you don’t like). I don’t think most people supporting equal rights between Jews and Palestinians would agree that this would lead to civil war or result in Jews being killed.
That’s mainly because they’re delusional imbeciles.
The non-delusional 1.5-state solution is using overwhelming American military might to guarantee a Dayton Agreement version of Israel-Palestine.
Oh Christ no.
I want to spend less time sending American kids to get blown up in the Middle East, not more.
I just think that calling it antisemitism is increasingly not convincing to people (even if, according to some definitions, it would be accurate). It gives people who adopt this view an easy out to say "I want Israel to be overrun by the Arabs, but look, I'm at a seder! How could I be antisemitic?" ("Antisemitism" originated in the same way, actually. "I don't hate Jews, just Middle Eastern race-mongrels!")
Perhaps it would be more convincing to point out that antizionism is typically a violent derangement on its own terms.
Re Tariffs: As a proper economist, albeit working in finance (renenergy) among the issues (besides overly dramatic early declarations (based on Trump initial) being highlighted over more measured) is timeline / time of impact.
Rather like inflationary impacts - mass public, commentariat on-line think that if it is not happening instantly like a sugar rush - in internet comment time then it's "false" whereas a lot of what one analyses have medium term time for feed-through, and do not show up in Internet Comment Time.
This in addition to of course the fact Headline Announcements were walked back heavily.
Still it is a warning about making Drama Llama announcements in reaction to a Trump policy as one self-discredits (both due to TACO and due to frequently worst cases are mitigated by other actors, so one ends up Crying Wolf...
Median-ish people also want to be billionaires themselves. Why do you think gambling and lotteries are so popular? The many median-ish people who want to be billionaires are not going to support guillotining billioniares.
Guillotine fetishists tend to be on the upper end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Normal people generally are uncomfortable for those who openly state that are looking for the pretext to engage in wanton murder and violence.
That logic doesn’t seem to follow, a lot of people have killed kings because they wanted to be a king.
This gets close to the reasoning behind those who fetishize the violence of the French Revolution. Downwardly mobile college graduates want to make room for their upward mobility.
If they’re downwardly mobile anyway why would they need room for upward mobility?
It’s probably more of a concern for upwardly mobile people starting out without much finding that even if they are very successful they simply cannot catch up to other people born into wealth making a couple percent returns every year meaning they cannot afford a nice house or upward mobility, without something akin to winning the lottery.
Of course we should not have violence. But we should have more progressive and wealth rather than income based taxes.
Interestingly historically the French king believed what you’re saying that it was only the downwardly mobile college kids against him which is why he tried the Flight to Varnes but the poor rural people sold him out and it got him guillotined.
If you look at the degrees some of these people who post this crap on social media have and how those fields are zero sum (non profit, culture industries, academia) what they are expressing is a purging sentiment.
Add to it geographic concentration in desirable cities, then you see how these resentments result in some people fetishizing guillotines.
Then there is probably a bunch of hedonic expectations playing into these sentiments.
"Tibita Kaneene: How should a rational dem allocate $100 give today"
<rant>
a rational dem shouldn't give any candidate $0.01 unless they promise to never sell your phone number, or text you. emails are as bad, but you can keep unsubscribing/ reporting as spam. but the texts just dont stop.
as someone who gave in 2020, I am not giving a single $0.01 via actbloo or whatever till they figure this bullshit out.
</rant>
It seems technically true that there's not a perfect circle overlap in the Venmo diagram of "scruffy-looking dude* acting pretty crazy in public" and "literally homeless person"? But I am not sure the distinction is worth much, since the actual policy prescription is to still treat crime and disorder as crime and disorder, no matter who perpetrates it. We're not going to make "unhoused" a new Protected Class incapable of having the book thrown at them. (...we're not, right, asks Padme?) Or from the other angle, to still build housing of some type or other, because cerberus paribus it's just mechanically harder to be homeless if there are more homes to go around. So much of the distaste also follows fairly parochial out-of-sight, out-of-mind rules too...like, homeless people shacking up in an abandoned downtown office building isn't *good*, but better there than all along the sidewalks or in the parks or in the doorways of small businesses. It's easier to offer generosity and compassion to an abstract idea you never personally encounter. Harder when you've had to make the call to get a dead-from-OD body out of your public bathroom. (Not me personally, but it's happened to other coworkers I know. Not an isolated incident, sadly.)
*almost always a dude, at least in SF, why is this?
His point was there is actually a much larger number of respectable homeless. These are people who really are perfectly normal and just hit hard times and they live in a car or go to shelters and you never know who they are if you don't volunteer at a shelter because they are perfectly normal friendly citizens who just don't have a place to stay currently.
They also just aren't the issue.
I absolutely love "Venmo Diagram"...
I was fond of "cerberus paribus" myself.
Matt makes some good points that Mamdani made some smart political moves that made him more appealing to centrists.
I also Mamdani is just a cool guy and that’s part of what makes those moves work. He doesn’t seem calculated so the courting of abundance Democrats and retention of jessica Tisch seemed like genuine openness to ideas and continuing policies that worked.
Don’t under estimate the rizz.
Post-Cold War Marxists like the Code Pink morons are the Disney Adults of American politics: they seek refuge from adulthood in childish fantasies. They should be mocked mercilessly and ignored politically.
I don't see how anyone could claim a "discrediting" when a simple perusal of stock prices shows a big obvious dip right around Liberace Day, followed by a recovery after the flip-flop was walked back (probably mostly because of the market going into freefall). Why, you'd need some sort of elaborate conspiracy theory that the dastardly duo, Standard and Poor, intentionally coordinated a stock sell-off just to snub the President. You can see the same occurring in real time, right now, with all the unfortunate implications of the Straight of Hormel being crooked. Except it's a lot harder to undo a (never formally declared!) war than to change some numbers around at the Bureau Whose Name I'm Too Lazy To Look Up That's Responsible For Implementing Tariffs. "They predicted 10 of the last 5 recessions!", tweeted from my iPhone while standing in line at the unemployment office.
Disappointed at the "do you think it's time to punch the hippies again and harder?" bait question. Audience capture isn't not a thing, although the answer was a good enough redirection rather than boring old plant-based red meat, at least.
"" I think most of the country has reached a kind of corrupt bargain where, instead of spending money on fixing things, politically moderate and conservative jurisdictions dump the troubled people onto progressive jurisdictions where the residents either tolerate it or leave.""
i live in a tier 3 city that is literally what MY says here, and the whole thing sucks. residents of the city are constantly big mad at the dem mayor and council who has literally no control over this, and the state doesnt gaf.
of course being a college town, thing are made worse because the only housing built at scale is $1400/ month apartments for rich students. all other initiatives are stuck in NIMBY hell.