This Shouldn't Be News, It Should Be Obvious

Why is San Francisco a cesspool?

By any standard, San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. So why has it suddenly become an unappealing place to visit and to live? As with so many U.S. cities, it suffers a host of urban maladies. Blame the far-left Blue Model of urban governance, which now afflicts most major American cities...

No, San Francisco hasn't collapsed. It's still a big city, filled with nice restaurants, extravagant hotels and wealthy residents, many made rich by the Silicon Valley tech boom. It's not poor, or even struggling. But despite the superficial trappings of its tech wealth, it is changing, and not for the better.

That gives it much in common with other major American cities.

Because San Francisco's superficial wealth masks a serious problem: As with so many other major cities, it has hollowed out. Middle-class families have fled, no longer able to afford to live there, or appalled at what the city has become. The cancelled medical convention was symbolic of that disenchantment.

One recent report shows why. It notes that the city had logged more than 16,000 complaints containing the word "feces" in just one week. Many of those reports linked a growing amount of fecal matter on streets and in alley to the near-ubiquitous encampments of homeless people and vagrants, who have flooded into the city due to its tolerant and even friendly policies. It's a serious problem.

San Francisco proudly calls itself a "progressive" city. It follows what writer and scholar Walter Russell Mead calls the progressive "Blue Model" of governance. Yet, the policies it follows — high taxes, inane regulations, petty nanny-state authoritarianism, tolerance for rising lawlessness and disorder on its streets in the name of "compassion" — are the very ones that have driven middle-class and working-class citizens out. Only the rich and the so-called homeless, who have been welcomed into the city and are a growing issue, can afford to live in the city...

We looked at the list and did a bit of research of our own. What we found was that virtually all of the top 10 cities on the list that had a net loss of population to other cities and states have been governed almost exclusively by liberal or far-left Democratic regimes since at least the 1960s. Their problems aren't accidental. They're systematic.

For years, these Blue Model politicians have taxed, spent and regulated on the people's behalf, with poor or even abysmal results. That's why the massive shift of population is taking place. It also accounts, perhaps, for the surprising rise and success of President Trump.

Yep.  The worst part is that it doesn't have to be that way.