Isn’t it interesting (and a little bit fun) to watch Democrat politicians squirm these days?
These are people who have toed the progressive line for their entire careers by supporting every insane progressive policy, all the while knowing that the states and cities they govern have isolated themselves from the very undesirable conditions to which those policies always lead.
The problem with this is that these areas can't possibly stay isolated because to continue to win, these politicians have to pile more crazy upon the past crazy and up the insanity with every election cycle.
It's funny how officials like Eric Adams in New York City are feeling the pinch for conditions the very people who are pinching conspired to create. The very people who are now complain about how much money it takes to support a permanent illegal alien underclass, are the same people who five years ago were wearing the "sanctuary city" like an ermine collared cloak made from the finest silk.
Mayor Eric is finding out that, as Uncle Miltie said, you can have open borders or the welfare state, but you can't have both.
The predictable end of sanctuary cities is coming about just like Friedman said it would - but we all know the "sanctuary" designation was always progressive virtue signaling, a way to say "we are better than you" to all conservatives who knew all along it was an obscene and obsequious farce.
Mayor Eric clearly knew it was a farce, as do many other Democrat officials, but he never expected border state governors to fly and bus illegal aliens to his jurisdiction, thereby exposing the farce.
He's going to have a problem correcting it because his governor, the awful Kathy Hochul, continues to slather on the cray-cray, mostly I think to extract more federal taxpayer money to help plug her own budget holes rather than solve any problems.
Current Democrat theory on governing seems to be based on the Dot Com Boom, when investors rushed to sink their money into losing propositions based on “burn rate”, or how fast they were burning through the mountains of investment dollars. Millions (or billions) of investments were lost in start-ups that never had a chance in hell of surviving based on the idea that spending a lot of money in a short period of time with no return was a mark of potential success.
Thinking about it though, there were some companies, like Elizabeth Holmes’ Theranos, that survived for 15 years using the model of wishful thinking. Holmes was a 19 year old student at Stanford when she founded Theranos in 2003. Theranos raised more than 700 million dollars from venture capitalists and private investors, resulting in a $10 billion valuation at its peak in 2013 and 2014 - but by 2018 the dam finally broke when it was revealed that pretty much all test data had been faked and they never had anything that worked.
Liz went to jail and investors were left with hefty losses. Too bad we can’t jail elected officials and politicians when the do exactly what Liz did.
It is also interesting to see the Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, loudly chastise the Biden Regime for not helping with illegal immigration - but she doesn't want to stop it, she just wants more money from the feds. She is running the Theranos model.
I think the state to watch is going to be California. Newsom and the Democrat controlled state government have supported illegal immigration for a long time - and now they have opened up state funded health care to all regardless of citizenship, which means the burden on California businesses and taxpayers is about to double - even as people and businesses are leaving the state. Governor Hair Gel is going to test Friedman's theory at a state level.
One aspect of these Theranos/Dot Com models is that before they collapsed, they made life good for the people in charge of the companies, but worse for the investors. It’s the same with the public sector model. The elected officials win votes by making life better for non-citizens while making it worse for the citizens who pay the bill.
Certainly doesn’t seem a sustainable model to me. Sooner or later, it has to crash.
To explain how the crash is going to happen, I propose Smith’s Corollary (I made it up, so I get to name it, right?).
Smith's Corollary is an extension of Friedman's open border/welfare state mutual exclusivity proposition - mine states that one cannot make something better for citizens by making it worse for them, which is exactly what is happening in progressive enclaves across America. It is really on display in states like California, Arizona and New York.
While Governors Hobbs, Hochul, and Newsom won’t do a day in jail, the taxpaying citizens will be left holding the bag. Only then will they learn the true cost of their ideological vanity.
Michael - there are so many historical test cases of this and its failure rate is 100%. My hometown of Ilion NY was one such test case. At its peak was 10,000 residents. Economy was great, companies like Remington Arms, Univac, Mohawk Data Science (MDS), IBM, and on and on. Then Urban renewal came to town.
The local government was convinced by Federal money to be progressive and stated that the town needed to be progressive for the future concerns. Guess what happened - I'll net it out, but you should read the book Worked Over by Dimitra Doukas, and you will realize the lies that were told, and how local politicians refused to listen. You will see how local business owners were enriched without audits, and you will see how in the end - business after business closed up and left the area, some leaving the state altogether. Sound familiar?
This all happened in the 1960's/70's and not just to my hometown. Other towns across the state had the same fate (Amsterdam being just one more). Ilion's downtown, which was the quaint downtown of what you see in the old time Christmas movie: It's a Wonderful Life, with the street of shops like that of Bedford Falls in the movie. All destroyed, with 113 buildings razed, streets moved or eliminated and a square block building with a stucco exterior erected as the main structure of downtown. No where near resembling the architectural design sold to the town's people during the many presentations made.
Lie, upon lie, upon lie, and to this day you ask the towns people about all of it, and you will find the overwhelming majority wish for the old town structure to be back.
The results are from 10,000 people about 7,500 remain. Businesses have moved out and the NY state politicians have now made it impossible for Remington Arms (essentially the founding business of the town) is leaving too. What remains is mainly public sector jobs or minimum wage jobs at the local McDonalds, Walmart, Lowes, etc.
People's attitudes that once were to help thy neighbor, now appear to be every man for themselves. What was once a beautiful small-town America where everyone pretty much knew everyone else; where we all walked to school, where mom and pop businesses flourished alongside of bigger corporate ones, where neighbor helped neighbor - all but gone in today's environment.
Yup, progressivism works alright.
BTW I'm not plugging Dimitra's book, but I found it interesting while researching for the writing of my own book titled: Ilion My Childhood My Memories. I did a lot of research and built some pretty disturbing graphs about the decrease in jobs and population and the disturbing rise in poverty.
Sorry to be so long winded here - but this progressivism is the devil's work. BTW Amsterdam has started to rebuild and taking steps to put back the old downtown that was destroyed by their Urban Renewal process.
Fear the Progressive Reaper!
I think these states KNOW that it’s an unsustainable model. Call me cynical (or just someone who’s paid attention to the slippery slope for a long while) but I think this is a model that will lead to states begging for a federal bail out. And the federal government will be ecstatic to “help” especially since it would eliminate some of this pesky federalism and sow seeds for neighboring states to ask for their “fair share”. Dominoes. Victim mentality. Slippery slope to socialism.