The Democrats have wrecked California and Britain must learn the lesson or face ruin, says Erbil Gunasti
Downtown San Francisco has changed beyond all recognition...and not for the better
Reuters
San Francisco, once one of the world’s most dynamic cities, is in a death spiral. The life is being sucked right out of it.
Workers who fled to work from home during the pandemic have stayed away for good. More than a third of its offices are now empty.
Public transport is increasingly abandoned and may need a $5billion bailout just to keep going. In the once thriving downtown area – homelessness is becoming a huge problem.
The city’s landmark Westfield mall is half empty after brands like Nordstrom left, partly because of “rampant criminal activity” in the local area.
This beacon of the free world is in a total mess. Stuck in a doom-loop, much like Detroit in the 1970s.
And yet, while this is shocking, it’s not new. Not for California.
The current problems have a clear start date and it was NOT the beginning of the Covid pandemic. No, it was 1992, when globalism arrived in America.
I first noticed this reality in 2015 when I ran for Mayor in Palm Springs, in a campaign managed by renowned journalist Daphne Barak.
Palm Springs used to be the beating heartland of traditional, conservative America. The refuge of legendary Hollywood stars from Bob Hope to Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy David Jr. Entertainment – and common sense – ruled the world.
When I ran in this most desirable of desert cities, there were 3,000 or so committed Republican voters – with maybe another 1,500 in the closet - versus perhaps 7,000 fully committed Democrats. But the maths, like everything else in California, is changing. Republicans continue to shrink in number. The amount of Democrats has tripled.
As a result, since 1992, Democrats have had trifecta control of the state - except when Arnold Schwarzenegger was the Republican governor for a short while - meaning all three branches of government sit in the hands of Democrats.
They hold a 62–18 supermajority in the 80-seat California State Assembly. They have been the majority party in the assembly continuously for the past 27 years.
Republican politicians have been completely marginalised. And where has this socialist trifecta sent California? Into a spiraling decline with a decaying economy, widespread homelessness and a relentless increase in crime.
Today, the crisis engulfing Los Angeles and San Francisco is as staggering as it is heartbreaking.
Even LA’s Skid Row, the area long given up to homeless people, is hopelessly overcrowded. There are nearly 10,000 on the streets there and getting on for more than 100,000 without a permanent home in LA County – many under bridges and along highways. And nobody seriously questions it. Ever.
Nearly 10,000 people are now homeless on the streets of Skid Row
Reuters
We commute every week between the desert cities and Beverly Hills by car and pass through LA County, downtown Los Angeles. We come across tent cities along the way.
The tragic truth is, we – like everybody else - avoid certain exits in the downtown area because the traffic lights are too dangerous. If you stop, it’s just not safe. It isn't.
Meanwhile in San Francisco, homelessness is spreading like a virus downtown where the main shopping, leisure, business, and residences are, choking off the lifeblood of the city - people.
When asked why major stores are shutting up shop and fleeing the city, former mayor - and now Governor of California - Gavin Newsom replied simply: “They realised it is not the right place for them to do business. Pathetic.
And with homelessness out of control and crime rampant, California’s Democrats – who should be protecting hard working taxpayers and law abiding citizens with extra police protection - are instead planning to pass new legislation that will exacerbate the problem.
A new law (SB 553) will, and this isn't a joke, make it illegal for store owners and employees to confront shoplifters.
So first they enacted laws to cut prosecution against shoplifters. Then they soften legislation releasing serial criminals back onto the streets. And guess what followed – a crimewave!
Finally, they threatened to prosecute victims of crime for merely defending themselves from criminals - such as the recent effort to indict a Walmart security guard in San Francisco who shot a violent shoplifter WHILE he was being violently assaulted. And all the time, society slides further down into the swamp.
The truth is California is no longer a Democratic but an Autocratic state. Life is, in a very real sense, precarious for the decent, law-abiding good citizens who live there.
As a result, so many of our famous friends have left or are planning to move - proving that even celebrity and wealth can’t shield you from the horror.
Mark Wahlberg has already left for Las Vegas. Superman Dean Cain, Hercules Kevin Sorbo, actor Robert Davi, and Happy Days star Scott Baio, all fled California too. Dean went to Las Vegas. Kevin, Robert and Scott are all in Florida.
Everybody - from the homeless to Hollywood stars - in despair. And for what? A globalist experiment that started with Bill Clinton and George Bush and Barack Obama mindlessly continued.
Clinton killed any sense of public morality or civic duty with his Oval Office escapades with Monica Lewinsky. Bush decimated the military when he spent $14 trillion and was left with nothing to show for the Iraq war. Obama blew a staggering $8 trillion to implement Obamacare and utterly neglected the US economy. As a result, China closed the gap and will soon become the biggest economy in the world.
Superman star Dean Cain (seated, left) - with Daphne Barak and Erbil Gunasti (right) - has fled California
Erbil Gunasti
California sums up the core economic problem facing America: The tax-paying base is constantly getting smaller while social service spending is constantly increasing.
All the while, an open borders policy means Democrats allow an increasing number of migrants in, from the southern border but also from elsewhere in North America, as the wealthy flee to states where there are no personal or real estate taxes.
And as taxpaying voters leave in their droves, less affluent Democrat voting migrants move in – creating a total economic imbalance.
At the same time a real estate crisis grips the state. Home prices have tripled in some areas. Too many people are chasing too few homes, but because average salaries are now, in real terms, so much lower, they can’t afford even cheaper housing, meaning they have to rent in less desirable neighbourhoods.
People working like slaves, all their lives, to live in moderate rental units they could never afford to buy. All as a direct result of a mindless internationalist agenda, neglecting the needs of the wider US population, which has been allowed to continue unchecked for far too long.
And so we come to perhaps the most terrifying truth of all: That our mainstream media refuses to even acknowledge that this is happening, or worse, knows and fails to report it.
One prime time ABC News show recently went to San Francisco and the reporter refused to enter the downtown area because it was “too dangerous”. That isn’t reporting. It’s cowardice.
Refusal to be honest about profound problems doesn’t mean they’re going to just go away.
This is the perilous state of San Francisco, of California, increasingly of America and, if we’re not careful, Britain and the entire western world.
When you neglect truth and blindly follow somebody else’s social experiment without understanding why, the ugly truth will – sooner or later – come knocking on your own door.
Just ask the few remaining residents of downtown San Francisco.
* Erbil Gunasti writes daily about domestic issues in America and US foreign policy objectives at https://substack.com/@erbilwrites