The Hong Kong Protests

The Hong Kong Protests

Hong Kong is a jewel in modern Asia. It has the most skyscrapers of any city in the world (355, to NYC’s 282), and is one of the busiest ports in the world.

I first visited Hong Kong in 1981 and could not fail to be impressed, even then, how modern and tech-savvy the city was. Of course Hong Kong was then under British rule, with the union jack flying over it all.

I was equally impressed in 2015, on a tour of China and Hong Kong. The fact that Hong Kong had some degree of western autonomy, even if it was now a part of China and under that red flag, was illustrated by the fact that I used Hong Kong’s VPN servers to elude China’s “Golden Wall”, and was able to successfully use Google and western social media on the mainland. (Along with several million or so other western users).

The current massive protests and civil unrest in Hong Kong started as opposition to a proposed extradition bill related originally to a murder in Taiwan, but with wider applicability to future extradition of Hong Kong citizens to the inimical, brutal judicial system of communist mainland China. The extradition bill was eventually removed by Carrie Lam and the Hong Kong government, but the protests have continued. Although they were originally aimed at maintaining democratic principles in Hong Kong under the “One Country, Two Systems” agreement hammered out by the British with Deng Xiaoping in the 1980's, they now are more separatist in nature, and seek independence from Communist China. A plethora of American flags accompany the protests, along with slogans like “Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death”. The analogy to our American independence is unmistakable. There are few, or no union jacks flying over these protesters.

Freedom loving people cannot fail to sympathize with the Hong Kong protesters who are resisting being ultimately absorbed into monolithic Communist China. Our congress, and President Trump, passed a bill backing the Hong Kong protesters, even in face of the very economically important trade negotiations with the mainland communist Chinese.

But in the cold clear light of day one cannot escape reality. After being leased from the Chinese by the British for 150 years, Hong Kong, since 1997, has been part of China. It is a special, negotiated autonomous region of China, but it is part of China.

The Hong Kong protests have “poked the bear”, in the form of China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, who is not a wild-eyed radical, but who cannot fail to respond. Hopefully this response will be diplomatic, granting some concessions that will satisfy the Hong Kong protesters. But it will not be separation and independence, no matter how vociferous the protesters are, nor how much external sympathy they elicit. Hong Kong is too valuable to the PRC.  And Xi Jinping's response may very well be a crackdown, to which the Beijing government are no strangers, either historically, or currently, as with the Uyghurs in Western China.

This article paints a realistic, but somewhat pessimistic picture of what Hong Kong might expect.

https://humanevents.com/2019/08/31/xi-jinping-will-have-his-way-with-hong-kong/



Ray Gruszecki,

November 29, 2019

Our Real Competition

Our Real Competition

We Americans are really not fighting any major wars.  We have pretty much defeated and contained the organized terrorists against us.  We have relative peace and freedom from external threats, yet we are as divided in our politics as we have ever been.



What do we do?  We fight each other.  Our national energy is sapped by an absurd, political impeachment effort.  Our cultural energy is diminished by identity politics, political correctness and an uninformed rush toward socialism bordering on communism.  And we popularly and publicly blame Russia, a second to third rate economic power, as being our main international enemy, as if they were still the aggregated Soviet Union of the 1980’s.



In the meantime, Xi Jinping’s China, with 1.4 plus billion people, continues their goal of becoming the pre-eminent economic, military and space powers in the world.  By “terra-forming” islands, they are transforming the international South China Sea into a Chinese lake.  China’s, (little reported in the USA), “Belt and Road Initiative” is their massive effort to insert China economically and culturally into the infrastructure and fabric of a major portion of Asian, European, African and South American countries.  Not restricted by the niceties of western “social justice” norms, Chinese scientists have used CRIPSR techniques to create “designer babies”.



While we have been arguing about the number of genders and which bathroom to use, the Chinese have launched numerous earth-orbital satellites, have been exploring the dark side of the moon and are gearing up for exploration of Mars in 2020.



China’s efforts pay only lip service to environmental concerns.  While many of our global warming activists would have the wealthy western powers restrict our carbon producing activities, they ignore the vast amounts of high sulfur, “brown coal” being burned in the north of China to produce electrical power, that the Chinese use in big cities to run battery-powered bikes.  The Chinese then say “see, we use batteries with zero carbon footprint” (while multiple tons of pollution spew from North China into the atmosphere).



It seems that the popular media in the U. S. is ignorant, or plays down these Chinese accomplishments (and abuses), which are threatening American hegemony in economics, science and space.  We blame Russia, or Ukraine, or each other, while Xi Jinping’s monolithic dragon with 1.4 billion people behind it hover above us all, and laugh up their collective sleeve.



Donald Trump, from the business and media world, and not being cut from the same political cloth as his predecessors, is at least trying to redress the inequities imposed on our trade and technology by past arrangements with the Chinese.  Trump seems aware that China is our predominant foreign threat.  However, as with most things that Trump highlights, the popular media is in opposition or “resistance” to his ideas.  Let’s hope that reason and common sense prevail, and that China’s threat is met with appropriate economic and political vigor.



Ray Gruszecki

November 26, 2019

“Impeachment” Hearing Takeaways

“Impeachment” Hearing Takeaways

Man, were we ever impressed by the array of professional mid-level witnesses prepared for us and paraded by the Schiff show and intended for our elucidation this past week, during the so-called “impeachment hearings”.  The “coal miner’s daughter”, with her Harvard doctorate, and the Lt. Colonel with his dress blues and arrays of medals and ribbons were particularly impressive, as were the obviously accomplished and competent ambassadors and other professionals who testified at the behest of the democrats.  These knowledgeable professionals are not to be disparaged in any way for their qualifications and how they fit into our government administrative state ranks.



Having said all of the above, only one of the witnesses, Gordon Sondland, worked directly, on a personal basis for President Trump, and was given a specific answer in a phone call, as to what Trump wanted out of Ukraine – In Sondland’s words, the president “wanted nothing”, “no quid pro quo”, for “Zelinsky to do the right thing”, and  “to do what he ran on” (anti-corruption).  Of course, this was only brought out by republican questioning after the scripted opening statement by Sondland implied a positive “quid-pro-quo”, of Ukrainian investigation in return for a meeting with Trump.



All of the other witnesses, for all their attractive demeanors and positive credentials, testified only to what they “thought”, or “heard” or “read”, or “assumed”, or “presumed” about any “quid-pro- quo” or “this for that” regarding Ukraine.  Since all of these witnesses were part of the executive branch, we heard in their testimonies, the dissatisfaction of these mid-level managers in our government with their boss, President Trump.



Since the democrats did not allow Trump or the republicans to defend themselves or call witnesses, we only have the prepped witnesses allowed by Pelosi and Schiff, although the republicans did a credible job of questioning the witnesses when Schiff refrained from interrupting them.



It became clear from witness after witness, that they thought that their expertise and experience should have allowed them to set policy, rather than carry out policy set by President Trump and their supervisors.  In other words, these witnesses were members of the administrative state who were at odds with their executive, and many of their opinions were formed from bureaucratic and office gossip, tweets and scuttlebutt, presumably at the water cooler or at lunch.  One can only wonder if the so-called “whistleblower” was formed from these origins, since apparently, he/she had no direct contact with the president and was not on the infamous July 24 call with President Zelinsky of Ukraine.



So after having proven nothing, except for employees’ dissatisfaction with their boss, and hearing only hearsay and innuendo from the testimony allowed by the democrats, off the congress will trot toward impeachment.  The leftist house has the numbers, so there is very little doubt that there will be a senate trial.  In this venue, however, it will be a different ballgame.  Witnesses will be called by the republicans, and hopefully there will be a full exposure of the fascistic procedures in the house by the democrats.  Trump will be acquitted and hopefully go on to win a landslide in 2020, including both houses of congress.  That is if the American electorate is not as stupid as the democrats would like it to be, and if fairness still counts for something in this country.



Ray Gruszecki

November 21, 2019

Holocaust and World War II Statistics

Holocaust and World War II Statistics

This is from my write-up of my visit to Auschwitz death camp in August, 2013.



“On Thursday, August 22 we visited Auschwitz (Oswiecim, pronounced  “oss vien chiem”) and Birkenau (Brzezinka), also known as Auschwitz 2, about 1 ½ hours west of Krakow.  We watched an orientation film on the bus by Lech Piotrowski about the concentration camps.  Our tour guide in the camps was Gabriella a young Polish college graduate.  We observed the sorting areas, gassing “showers”, crematoria, and medical laboratories that I had previously read about.  I had seen the concentration camp, Dachau, outside of Munich, in 1967, but I had never seen anything on the scale of these two extermination camps.



It is difficult to comment with some measure of equanimity on the horror elicited by these extermination camps.  The Nazis created an industry concerned with killing people that they considered “undesirable”.  Not just Jews: also Poles, Gypsies, Communists, homosexuals, cripples. 

5.1–6.0 million Jews, including 3.0–3.5 million Polish Jews
1.8 –1.9 million non-Jewish Poles (includes all those killed in executions or those that died in prisons, labor, and concentration camps, as well as civilians killed in the 1939 invasion and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising)
500,000–1.2 million Serbs killed by Croat Nazis
200,000–800,000 Roma & Sinti
200,000–300,000 people with disabilities
80,000–200,000 Freemasons [23]
100,000 communists
10,000–25,000 homosexual men
2,000 Jehovah's Witnesses



The following groups of people were also killed by the Nazi regime, but there is little evidence that the Nazis planned to systematically target them for genocide as was the case for the groups above.

3.5–6 million other Slavic civilians
2.5–4 million Soviet POWs
1–1.5 million political dissidents
Additionally, the Nazis' allies, the Ustaša regime in Croatia conducted its own campaign of mass extermination against the Serbs in the areas which it controlled, resulting in the deaths of at least 330,000–390,000 Serbs.



The Nazis engineered the camps to kill more efficiently and to make use of all of the raw materials resulting from this slaughter – hair, teeth, skin, clothing, eye glasses, etc. Nothing was wasted in this efficient Nazi endeavor. 



I take care to use Nazi, rather than German in this discussion.  By “Nazi” I mean specifically the National Socialist German Workers' Party government dictatorship headed by Adolph Hitler and in power in Germany from 1934 into 1945.



A horror even more sociologically relevant than the killing industry and the extermination camps is the fact that this happened in Germany, which is a fount of western values.  This is the country that gave us Beethoven, Mozart, Kant, Goethe; and on and on.  The fact that a modern western country like Germany could come under the influence of the group of Nazi megalomaniacs headed by Hitler is beyond belief.  We certainly should never forget.



It was encouraging to see that many young people were in the crowds visiting the camps.  I believe that this is extremely important.  It’s fine for us older folks who were alive during WWII and for us mavens of historical knowledge to remember these horrors, but the younger generation needs to know what happened and to prevent such a thing ever happening again.

The following shows the deaths during WW 2 from various causes.  Sorting the table by “Total Deaths”, or “Military Deaths” is instructive.



 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties



 We Americans like to say that we won the war, and indeed American financial and industrial might were instrumental in the Allied victory.  But look at the death figures.  The Soviet Union lost upwards of 11 million soldiers and 27 million total people.  Can we not see a rationale for them saying that they won the war?  In comparison, we lost slightly over 400 thousand people.





Ray Gruszecki

November 16, 2019

Dallas Holocaust Museum and Related Stories

Dallas Holocaust Museum and Related Stories

After visiting the Holocaust and Human Rights Museum in Dallas, several memories, people and places associated with that time period come to mind.



Firstly, I would like to comment on how well the museum exhibits are presented.  I have personally visited Dachau, outside of Munich, in 1967 while driving from Athens to Rotterdam. I also spent the good part of a day at Auschwitz in 2013, while touring Poland and Eastern Europe.  While both physical death camps inspire horror at the magnitude of the Nazi extermination efforts, our museum in Dallas does a credible job of presenting the historical record in easily understood exhibits.



While at Auschwitz in 2013, I was encouraged by the number of young Europeans who were visiting the museum there in Oswiecim, Poland.  It is incumbent on us older folks to ensure that the horror of what happened in Europe in the 1930’s and 1940’s is not lost to our gen-xers, millennials, gen-zers, etc.  The exhibits at the Dallas Holocaust Museum are vivid enough to engage and interest young and old alike.



I have several stories from people whom I knew, who lived in Europe at the time of the holocaust and the second world war.



Mark Raczinski?sp shared some of his story with me in the 1960’s at our Caltex offices in New York City.  Mark’s family were minor peerage in Poland (as was mine), and Mark was a colonel in the Polish cavalry when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.  Mark’s horse mounted units were among the poorly equipped defenders trying to stop the Nazi panzers.  Mark later was a defender of Warsaw, and eventually joined the free Polish forces in London.  He had pictorials and compelling anecdotal stories of Warsaw before its virtual levelling by the Nazi’s.



Jan Baazer was in my car pool in Rotterdam in 1961-62.  Jan was a student in Amsterdam, and later part of the Dutch resistance after the Nazi’s invaded Holland in 1940.  Jan was captured by the Nazi’s and impressed into slave labor in a German factory.  Jan and a friend escaped and made their way into Switzerland and then into Southern France just as the area came under the control of the pro-Nazi Vichy government.  After several close calls, they entered Spain, where the neutral, but fascist government imprisoned them.  Through efforts of the Free Dutch in England, they were eventually released and made it first to England, and later to the United States.  Jan spent the rest of the war training Dutch marines in the U.S.  After the war he got his engineering degree from M.I.T. and joined Caltex.  Jan left Caltex for C.E.R.N. in Switzerland during my stay in Holland.



Another Dutch patriot was Jan Veetsma?, who was working at the Palembang refinery in South Sumatra in what was then the Dutch East Indies during the Japanese invasion in 1941-42.  I do not know Jan’s full story, but as I gathered it, refinery personnel drew straws on who would remain to set off demolition charges to blow up the refinery before the Japanese could take it over.  They destroyed part of the refinery and oil storage and were captured and ultimately tortured by the Japanese.  Jan did not discuss details.  He walked with a limp and a cane because of damage done to his legs.



The chap that replaced me as Supervisor of the “Persian Gulf Group” for Caltex in New York was Ray Driksna, Latvian, Australian American.  Ray lost his family in Latvia and was a displaced person after the war.  He made his way to Paris and was partly educated there.  He emigrated to Australia, where he obtained his engineering degree and joined Caltex Australia.  He eventually got to New York in a mid-management role.  Ray was a taciturn type, so details are sketchy.  Ray drank a lot and had a Norwegian girlfriend.



Various estimates show that there were between 70 to 85 million total deaths during the second world war.  Multiply this by 3 or to get the total number of war stories related to these deaths.  We simply cannot forget that most of these deaths were the result of some form of socialism forcing itself upon mostly modern, sophisticated countries by promising free stuff resulting from some form of income equalization.  Lest we forget!



Ray Gruszecki

November 16, 2019

“Impeachment” Hearings

“Impeachment” Hearings

Those of us who have worked for and are familiar with, large, major corporations, or for government entities, or who have managed their own companies, can pretty quickly recognize what is going on not only at these “impeachment” hearings, but also during this whole process to remove Donald Trump from office that began as soon as he was inaugurated in 2017.  It’s a turf war, endemic to any large entity that develops “pockets of power”.



Trump is an outsider, and a particularly abrasive billionaire New York builder-type outsider, and he has challenged the enfranchised administrative state establishment.  The most recent resistance and rebellion to his foreign and domestic policies by people that in fact work for him as president and chief executive of the country, have ranged from critical op-eds in the sympathetic mainstream media, to this so-called whistle blower, who seems to have been set up by the more extensive embedded establishment, to this ersatz “impeachment”, orchestrated by the democrats in the locked, dark bowels of the House of Representatives building.



Listening to some of the questions and testimony of the first day’s democrat produced and run hearings highlights the disagreement that two highly qualified, mid-level bureaucrats have with the policies of their boss, the president.  They seem to think (or wish) that the state department or the diplomatic corps, set our foreign policy, rather than the president.  They seem to feel that the president (and whatever means he chooses to use), should not question the level of corruption in a country to whom we were about to give a half billion dollars in aid.  The implication of the whole “impeachment inquiry” is that that the Biden’s are above the law when it comes to said corruption, and questions about their nepotism and influence peddling should not be asked.



Since the transcript of the controversial telephone conversation between our president and President Zelinsky of Ukraine has been released and is available for all to read for ourselves, we are reduced to commentary by the democrat’s staged witnesses as to what “they heard” or what “they feel”, or what “they think” about the transcript and its contents.  And this is mostly by people who were not on the call, or who have not even met President Trump.  One congressional democrat even spent his question time extolling the benefits of hearsay testimony over hard evidence.  And the latest breathless headlines are that Ukrainian embassy staffers overheard a cell phone conversation in a Kyiv restaurant between Trump and Ambassador Sondland discussing a quid-pro-quo associating defense money for Ukraine with investigation of the Biden’s.



The above comments are from watching some of the first day’s hearings.  One would never get such direct commentary from the main stream media such as ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, who for the most part report the democrat exploitation of hearsay and innuendo, as representing gospel, and republican efforts to point this out, as some sort of grandstanding.  Only Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, National Review and other rightist publications come close to truthful reportage, albeit with a right-wing slant.



This is not some minor congressional disciplinary action against the executive branch.  It has to be remembered that the democrats have termed these efforts “impeachment hearings” aimed at impeaching a duly elected president and removing him from office.  Since conviction in the senate and removal from office is virtually impossible given the republican majority in the senate, one has to ask what is the purpose of the house impeachment effort?



Impeachment and/or removal of Donald Trump from office has been on the democrat (and the administrative state agenda), since his inauguration in 2017, and was exacerbated by the election of a vociferous extreme left socialist democrat contingent (“the squad”) in 2018.



After failures to “get Trump” via Emoluments. Stormy Daniels. 25th Amendment. $30+ million wasted on Special Prosecutor/Russia collusion, now we have the Ukrainian Phone Call, which seems to have formed a convenient cause celebre to assuage the rabid socialist democrat left.  Even though the whole impeachment effort is doomed to failure, the only rationale for such whole-hearted democrat involvement seems to try to smear Trump, particularly by engaging the mainstream media, whose reporting has been loudly and over 95% pro-impeachment, notwithstanding the lack of legal foundation.



It can only be hoped that the broad range of the American electorate is not as stupid as the democrats seem to think, and that our electorate can see through the duplicity and dishonesty of the continued left-wing effort to impose a coup on our duly elected government.  (Now by “impeachment”, after emoluments, Stormy, special prosecutor, etc.).  We vote in less than a year, and hopefully we can continue to weed out the embedded administrative state who think that they run the country, and not our executive, as monitored by our legislative and judicial branches, and  as established for our republic.





Ray Gruszecki

November 14, 2019

Homelessness in America

Homelessness in America

A friend of mine opined that homelessness in our large American cities was not a result of the democrat administrations of these cities as I had posited, but was apolitical and more endemic to socio-economic issues.  I have now done a rather extensive survey of homelessness in America, and whilst I do not change my main conclusions about the ineffectiveness of democrat administrations vis-à-vis the deterioration of our cities, I have a more thorough grasp of the causative issues of homelessness.



The pertinent and repeatable mantra of homelessness and poverty across the country is affordable housing, unemployment, mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence, lack of education, racial discrimination and LGBTQ and gender issues.



There seems to be an emerging consensus that providing safe and affordable housing first goes a long way toward providing a basis from which to address many of the other issues.  Though apparently successful in Utah, real estate is simply too highly priced in places like New York City or Los Angeles to make affordable housing to indigents readily viable.  These large cities have programs addressing homelessness, but seemingly with that liberal democrat habit of “throwing money at it”, without proper administrative or fiscal responsibility or control.



Although this is somewhat anecdotal and not at all scientific, a look at democrat run cities New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, on the one hand, and republican run San Diego on the other hand, is enlightening.



Los Angeles, with democrat mayor Eric Garcetti, increased their homeless population by 18% to 59,000 last year.  San Francisco, with democrat mayor London Breed, increased homelessness by 7% to 9,800.  New York City, with democrat mayor Bill DeBlasio, increased homelessness by 3% to 62,400.  Other large U.S. cities, Houston and Philadelphia, with democrat mayors, also increased homelessness last year.



San Diego, with REPUBLICAN mayor Kevin Faulconer, REDUCED HOMELESSNESS BY 11% last year.  Also, San Diego have instituted a proactive $1.9 billion, 10-year program to house and rehabilitate their homeless. 



So my original point stands.  Democrat administrations in our largest cities are exacerbating, rather than ameliorating the homelessness issue, and it has reached alarming proportions, particularly in our socialistically oriented California cities (republican run San Diego excluded).



The solution seems to be – house the homeless first and create a relatively stable point from which to address the other societal issues.  This may be easier said than done.  Not only is real estate ridiculously expensive in our large cities, but also running through the literature is the fact that the homeless are reluctant in many cases, to move from the streets and public areas of these cities.



Once there is a roof and some stability as to immediate creature comforts, gainful employment is at least a possibility.  So is the additional education possible that is required for most non-entry level jobs, if bridging type funding can be made available.  All of this assumes that it is possible to break through the lethargy imposed by a life on the streets, and sufficient enthusiasm generated to work toward a productive life.  Again, expert counselling seems called for.



Rehabilitation itself, although it is necessary in many cases, is not exactly straight forward.  Substance abuse is a topic unto itself, involving 12^th step programs and sometimes, medical and psychiatric facilities.  Mental health issues are not always as simple as throwing a psycho-active drug at the individual with no control as to continued use of the proper dosage.  Also, in-patient care has been deinstitutionalized by infrastructure cutbacks over the years.  These latter comments pertain equally well to many homeless veterans’ issues, PTSD and other mental and psycho-physical illnesses.



Concerning racial, gender and LGBTQ issues, these have been part of the “woke” movement, loudly held to be very important by vociferous liberals in our ongoing culture wars.  It seems that now is the time for those democrat administrations in LA and NYC and SF and other big cities to practice what their liberal cohorts have been preaching for the past 10 or so years.  We Americans are a lot more tolerant than we once were, but bigotry and intolerance die slowly, and even more slowly if they are revived on our college campuses by the very liberals who champion equality for certain groups, but not for opposing views.



There is a long list of references that hopefully cover all (or most) sides of the very thorny homeless issue in our country.





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_the_50_largest_cities_in_the_United_States



How to live on the streets:  https://www.wikihow.com/Live-on-the-Street



Reasons for living on the streets: All  3 by Kylyssa Shay, Kylyssa Shay is a middle-aged American woman living with autism who enjoys sharing hard-earned life hacks with people who need them.

https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/Reasons_for_Homelessness

https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/why-homeless-people-dont-just-get-a-job

https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/homelessness-myths-misconceptions



Homelessness in Los Angeles by the not exactly liberal LA Times: 

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-homeless-how-we-got-here-20180201-story.html



https://www.thebalance.com/deinstitutionalization-3306067



https://nlchp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Homeless_Stats_Fact_Sheet.pdf



https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness-report/



https://invisiblepeople.tv/causes-of-homelessness/



https://www.reference.com/government-politics/causes-homelessness-united-states-508e26409e814f12



Interesting take – Teach ‘em to code (remotely)

https://medium.com/@_ericelliott/the-cure-for-homelessness-83ef0d621c71



https://www.useful-community-development.org/homelessness.html



The conservative approach

https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2019/02/05/homelessness-is-a-democrat-disease-heres-the-cure/



The Atlantic’s, somewhat liberal take – tax, federal involvement, etc.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/end-homelessness-us/479115/



A psychiatric take

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beyond-schizophrenia/201608/homeless-mentally-ill-and-neglected



Services in Los Angeles & NYC – do they work?

https://www.lahsa.org/ces/about

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hra/help/homebase.page







What Utah did – “housing first”

https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how



Los Angeles

https://laist.com/2019/06/04/los_angeles_homeless_rate_increase.php

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/us/los-angeles-homeless-population.html

https://ktla.com/2019/06/04/l-a-county-to-release-results-of-homeless-count-on-tuesday/



San Diego

https://www.sandiego.gov/mayor/priorities/homelessness

https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/nonprofits/three-big-myths-about-san-diegos-homeless-population/

https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/oct/14/san-diego-city-council-approves-10-year-homelessne/



San Francisco

https://sf.curbed.com/2019/7/8/20686653/san-francisco-sf-homeless-count-number-population-2019

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/16/san-francisco-homeless-increase-tech-ipo

https://www.city-journal.org/san-francisco-homeless-problem



New York City

https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/basic-facts-about-homelessness-new-york-city/

https://www.bowery.org/homelessness/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/nyregion/homeless-nyc.html





Ray Gruszecki

November 8, 2019

Deterioration of Our Cities

Deterioration of Our Cities

I have written extensively on politics, and it is no mystery that I am a republican and lean toward the conservative right on most issues.  That is not to say that I back all right-wing causes and have a closed mind.  I am willing to discuss political differences with anyone, of any political stripe, in a rational and intellectual context.  I do not evangelize my political beliefs.



Having said all of that, I have to ask – what is wrong with our deteriorating society and culture?



The following is only one situation being largely neglected by our mainstream media in their raucous fervor to unseat the president by any means.  The only people that seem to be covering the deterioration of our cities seem to be the network much reviled by the mainstream media, Fox News.



Most of our large cities have democrat mayors and administrations and have designated themselves as “sanctuary cities”, where illegal aliens, including hardened criminals among them, are safe from immigration authorities.



Nearly all of these cities are plagued by hordes of homeless people living, camping, shooting up, urinating and defecating across large swaths of their downtown areas.  Rather than cleaning up these areas up and providing sanitary facilities, the democrat administrations in these cities somehow consider these filthy conditions fostering medieval diseases as somehow humane, and ignore this human disaster.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_the_50_largest_cities_in_the_United_States



It’s even worse in some cities like Chicago and along the Mexican border where shooting deaths some weeks are greater than in the war zones of Afghanistan and the Middle East.



How can reportedly educated and enlightened voters in these heavily democrat cities and states support democrat city administrations that are allowing and even facilitating portions of their major cities becoming festering medieval cesspools or shooting galleries where multiple children are shot each week?



Forget impeachment, forget the uninformed rush toward socialism, forget the gender/bathroom wars, forget the ludicrous $52 trillion health plans, forget the $93 trillion green new deal.  If we continue to allow the democrats to further ruin our cities, is their any doubt that a massive controlled society and economy like China’s will eclipse us in the near future? 



WAKE UP AMERICA!





Ray Gruszecki

November 7, 2019