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Cleaning Out The Homeless Encampments Just In Time For The Election
Imagine being a homeless guy in the state of California. For most of the year, you’re untouchable. You can sleep completely naked right outside of an art gallery, and if the gallery owner sprays you with a hose to get you to move, he’s the one who gets arrested — as happened recently. The district attorney will issue statements about how “unhoused folks” have the right to sleep wherever they want, wearing — or not wearing — whatever clothes they want.
On top of that, the state provides millions of free syringes to help facilitate your drug habit — complete with “safe injection sites” that function like open-air drug markets. Plus the weather’s always nice. So generally speaking, as a homeless person in the Golden State, you have it pretty good.
But every once in a while, on a dime, California’s government completely changes its approach. It’s quite a role reversal. The politicians suddenly become the schizophrenic ones. They decide, without any warning, that all homeless encampments have to be dismantled. They hose down the sidewalks themselves. They clear the place out like it’s Tiananmen Square. And they issue statements about the importance of orderly streets and ending the scourge of lewd behavior in public libraries.
You might remember that this is what happened late last year, when the leader of China’s communist party, Xi Jinping, visited the Bay Area. Ahead of the visit, Gavin Newsom ordered a crackdown on homeless encampments and drug markets. And he admitted he was only doing it because Xi Jingping was in town: “Anytime you put on an event — by definition — you know you have people over at your house, you’re gonna clean up the house.” That’s what he said.
Effectively, Gavin Newsom was admitting that California’s decline is a choice. The only reason they have so many homeless people — more than any other state by far — is that they tolerate it. In an instant, Gavin Newsom can make it all go away. Someone might have answered Newsom by pointing out that, yes, you want to clean up your house for guests but you also want to keep it orderly and clean for the people who actually live there every day.
But Xi Jinping eventually left the Bay Area, so the homeless people filed back in. They started doing meth and defecating on the sidewalks again, as if they’d never been interrupted. And that continued until yesterday, when once again, out of the blue, Gavin Newsom decided to put an end to it. Watch:
In that news report, you heard that the reason that California is suddenly able to clear all these encampments is that the Supreme Court recently allowed them to do it. That’s a reference to the Grants Pass case, which was decided a few weeks ago. In its decision, the Supreme Court ruled that it’s not “cruel and unusual punishment” to prevent homeless people from camping out on public property, even if there’s no shelter they can go to.
Gavin Newsom himself made the same argument in a video posted to social media. He said that he’s been doing everything he possibly can to clear out the homeless, and now that the Supreme Court has given him the green-light, he can finally do it:
Before I go any further, it’s important to give credit where it’s due. Solely on the merits, Gavin Newsom’s order is obviously the right thing to do. The homeless have no right to make our communities into unlivable garbage dumps. As unpopular as it is to say it, for the most part, the homeless are not mere victims of circumstance. These are not always but very often aggressive and dangerous vagrants who actively make our communities unsafe. There’s been a huge excess of sympathy for them and not nearly enough anger at what they’re doing to our cities.
It was a good idea for Newsom’s administration to file a brief at the Supreme Court during the Grants Pass case, on the side of the city against the homeless encampments. And it’s good that Newsom is sticking with that position now.
WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show
At the same time, what Newsom is doing is disingenuous. And we know that because his excuse — blaming the “courts” for hamstringing him until now — doesn’t make any sense. First of all, he was able to clean out the homeless encampments just a few months ago, for China’s president. No court stopped that. Additionally, for well over a decade, Gavin Newsom has been vowing to end homelessness in California. And courts in California didn’t say it was “cruel and unusual punishment” to evict homeless people from their encampments until 2018.
So what was the excuse pre-2018? Newsom’s going to need one, because as far back as 2008, he was saying he would end chronic homelessness in San Francisco by building more housing. He said that was the solution to chronic homelessness — not clearing encampments. And he said it again and again. Watch:
Newsom said “shelters solve sleep” repeatedly, for several years. I’ve talked about this before on this show, but it bears repeating because it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. People in shelters still need to sleep. Shelters do not “Solve sleep.” But apparently Newsom thought it was a compelling catchphrase.
He started saying it in 2008 and he was saying it as late as 2014. It was the line that Newsom used to justify spending tens of billions of dollars to “fix chronic homelessness.” And his strategy didn’t work, as this chart demonstrates:
California homeless population 2011 – 2022
The state is spending over 14 billion dollars to fight homelessness.
If we round the homeless population up to an even 200,000, that amounts to $70,000 per person. pic.twitter.com/V3cBvAc0tm
— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) May 26, 2023
Homelessness in California has only increased in the past decade. The courts in California didn’t cause this — at least they didn’t cause it on their own. It’s a product of a few things — mainly the state’s refusal to prosecute and imprison criminals, its encouragement of drug use, and the glut of NGOs and law firms that work full-time to keep these people on the streets.
It’s true that the Supreme Court’s ruling makes it easier to clear homeless encampments. But that ruling is not why Newsom is suddenly reversing course.
He’s reversing course because Democrats are now realizing they have to pretend to care about the basic security and safety of American communities if they want to win in November. It’s pretty telling that they only care about crime and homelessness during elections and if foreign dignitaries are visiting.
I’m reminded of some of my teachers in public school growing up. They were awful, incompetent and angry all the time — but they suddenly became chipper and on the ball when the parents were visiting. It’s a similar phenomenon here. Last November, Newsom sprang into action because he got a call from Xi Jinping. Maybe this time he got a call from Kamala Harris.
That would make sense, because right on cue, Harris is also acting more like a centrist Republican than the most liberal senator in Congress, which is what she really is. She’s even disavowing rioters. The woman who raised bail money for BLM thugs is now claiming to be appalled by vandalism and political violence.
After her silence on Wednesday, Harris posted this statement on social media on Thursday:
Yesterday, at Union Station, we saw despicable acts by unpatriotic protesters and dangerous hate-fueled rhetoric. I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas. … Pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric is abhorrent and we must not tolerate it in our nation. I condemn the burning of the American flag. The flag is a symbol of our highest ideals as a nation and represents the promise of America.
Obviously everything she says there is true. But like Newsom, she’s saying it for transparent and cynical reasons — which will immediately become null and void the moment the election is over. You’ll notice that nowhere in her statement does Harris mention the police officer who was violently dragged on the ground at Union Station yesterday. She also doesn’t demand any kind of accountability. She doesn’t call for an FBI dragnet like the one after January 6 — which she compared to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor.
That’s notable because, in this case, Harris is effectively the sitting president. She has the authority to order the DOJ to create a “sedition and conspiracy task force,” like the one the Biden administration oversaw after January 6. Harris could ensure that every single one of the vandals and rioters yesterday is hauled to prison, just like the grandmothers from January 6. She could ensure consequences for the rioters who raised a foreign flag a half a mile from the nation’s capital. That would ensure nothing like this ever happens again. But she’s not doing any of that because she understands that those rioters are her voters. They are her base. She can wag her finger at them, but she’ll never touch them.
We’re seeing this kind of faux moderation all over the place. It’s the same reason Democrats are pretending Harris was never named the “border czar.” They know she was put in charge of the border for the sole purpose of making sure it stayed open. The corporate press, including the entirety of Left-wing media, reported on that at the time. But they know that open borders don’t play well in the general election. So now they’re pretending she had nothing to do with the border.
You’d think if the Left thought their position was tenable in election, they’d play this differently. Harris would come out and say “Hell yeah, I was in charge of the border and I opened it for everyone. America is an idea, after all. And everyone has a right to participate in this idea!” She’s not saying that. Instead she’s disavowing the whole mess, and the media is helping her.
Along the same lines, they’re reacting with outrage that conservatives are calling Kamala Harris a DEI hire. They’re claiming this is a Right-wing conspiracy theory to make people afraid of the DEI bogeyman. But they know that Joe Biden explicitly limited his VP search to women. And they know that, just a few months ago, Biden publicly called Harris a DEI hire. Watch:
Why did Joe Biden refer to Kamala Harris as a DEI hire?
"To me, the values of diversity, equality, inclusion are literally the core strengths of America. That's why I'm proud to have the most diverse administration in history that taps into the full talents of our country. It… pic.twitter.com/rpaWILblpI
— Owen Gregorian (@OwenGregorian) July 25, 2024
“To me, the values of diversity, equality, inclusion are literally the core strengths of America. It starts at the top with the Vice President.” Now Democrats are pretending Joe Biden never said this. They’re pretending they never demanded that Joe Biden pick a black woman during the summer of George Floyd.
There are obvious signs of weakness here that Republicans can exploit. Democrats understand that their policies simply aren’t popular among normal people. They understand no one wants rampant homelessness, or DEI hiring, or unchecked illegal migration, or rioters who wave terrorist flags while assaulting police officers. They understand that leftist policies actively make people’s lives worse. They actively destroy the well being of millions of people. That’s why, with just a few months to go until the election, Democrats are pretending to disavow all of those things. They do this all the time before elections, and normally it works.
This time, though, they’re saddled with the single least authentic politician imaginable. Kamala Harris, of all people, is trying to convince Americans that she’s tough on Left-wing rioters and illegal immigration. She’s using Gavin Newsom’s schtick with a fraction of his charisma. And the reason Democrats are panicking right now, as they look at the polls, is that they realize most people see right through her.
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