XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.republicans, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: invalid@dont-email.me   
      
   In article    
   "Target"  wrote:   
   >   
      
   Whether you’re contemplating San Francisco voters’ recall of   
   left-wing District Attorney Chesa Boudin or the plight of   
   Democrats nationally as they face voters’ dismay at out-of-   
   control inflation, immigration, and crime, the question is   
   liable to come to mind: What were they thinking?   
      
   Actually, there are some initially plausible answers. We’ve just   
   been informed this last week by Janet Yellen biographer Owen   
   Ullmann that the treasury secretary argued in early 2021 for a   
   smaller bill than the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.   
      
   Yellen denied having opposed it outright. But she didn’t deny   
   sharing concerns that overspending would fuel inflation, as her   
   Clinton administration predecessor Larry Summers argued in the   
   Washington Post.   
      
   Whoever swept aside Yellen’s concerns perhaps bought leftists’   
   “Modern Monetary Theory” that the government can print as much   
   money as it wants without risking inflation. Or that since the   
   Obama administration ran deficits without spurring inflation   
   after an economic shock, the Biden administration could do so   
   after a quite different shock.   
      
   Which leaves you asking the question: What were they thinking?   
      
   Consider immigration. When Joe Biden became president,   
   immigration was not out of control. Most immigrants were   
   arriving legally, and the 2010-2019 decade saw a rising   
   proportion of high-skill immigrants — something those with   
   multiple views of the issue favored.   
      
   The Biden administration promptly disrupted this equilibrium. It   
   stopped construction of the border wall, presumably because   
   Donald Trump promised to build it. It abrogated the “Remain in   
   Mexico” policy Trump had pressured leftist Mexican President   
   Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to agree to. It treated border-   
   crossers with accompanying children as asylum-seekers and   
   allowed them into the United States.   
      
   Attempts to deny that this was an "open borders" policy were   
   unpersuasive, starting with assigning the border to an obviously   
   reluctant Vice President Kamala Harris. Her “do not come” speech   
   in Guatemala and her four-hour trip to El Paso had zero effect   
   on the inflow.   
      
   The result was predictable. Border crossings have risen to   
   record highs. The pro-restrictionist Center for Immigration   
   Studies estimates that 1,350,000 illegal immigrants have entered   
   the United States during the first 17 months of the Biden   
   administration, about double the number of legal immigrants.   
   That means the proportion of high-skill immigrants is lower.   
      
   Did the Biden administration think voters wanted more illegal   
   and a lower proportion of high-skill immigration? What were they   
   thinking?   
      
   As for crime, the disconnect between liberal officeholders and   
   ordinary voters is most glaring in San Francisco. The city that   
   voted for Biden 85% to 13% in 2020 voted this week 60% to 40% to   
   recall, or remove from office, leftist DA Boudin.   
      
   Boudin backers blamed conservative Republicans, and probably   
   both of them voted against him. But obviously, the biggest   
   change of mind came from San Franciscans who initially liked   
   Boudin’s ideas — eliminating cash bail, classifying under-$950   
   minor thefts as misdemeanors, sternly punishing alleged police   
   misconduct — but didn’t like the increased murders, brazen   
   public thefts, and feces-laden streets that resulted.   
      
   Political scientist Vladimir Kogan, while sympathetic to   
   Boudin’s policies, points out that academic studies suggesting   
   they’d be harmless failed to take into account the effect they’d   
   have in practice. When you let defendants pending trial on the   
   streets, you intimidate witnesses. When you defund and over-   
   discipline the police, you no longer have proactive policing.   
   All this leaves violence-prone young men free to commit crimes.   
      
   The phenomenon is not local. The death of George Floyd in May   
   2020, followed by “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter   
   demonstrations that included violent riots in some 570 cities,   
   resulted in the “’Ferguson effect’ on steroids,” not just in San   
   Francisco but around the country, and especially in cities with   
   George Soros-type “reform” prosecutors.   
      
   So what were they all thinking?   
      
   Common threads in the thinking behind policies incentivizing out-   
   of-control inflation, immigration, and crime are the inclination   
   to sympathize with those seen as victims and the assumption   
   they’ll respond with virtuous restraint.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)