LIBERALISM DOESN’T DESERVE THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT: AT Commentary, Noah Rothman explores Bill de Blasio’s indifference to the gang-related shooting of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s aide Carey Gabay and the rapid increase in New York City’s homelessness:
No New York City resident or commuter can pretend not to notice it. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of people sleeping on the streets, begging on corners, nodding off with an outstretched hand amid an opioid-fueled stupor.
“This is a historic problem, decades old,” de Blasio said in his own defense. “The fact is, the Great Recession led to something we hadn’t seen before.” The mayor’s attempt to blame the city’s homelessness spike on a recession that began six years before he took office was exposed as naked scapegoating when he was asked if Barack Obama’s economy remained subpar. “The economy’s not worse, it’s better,” he said in direct contradiction to his earlier pronouncement. The mayor sought to inoculate himself against attacks on his record by noting that his administration has transitioned 15,000 out of city shelters and into affordable housing. “Putting people in a shelter costs their lives a lot,” he added. It’s unlikely that those souls who spend their days laying face-first on a sidewalk in Manhattan’s Herald Square being literally stepped over by morning commuters would agree.
“A city with homeless on its streets is a city that has no love of its people,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani recently wrote. “A city that lets people sleep in the streets doesn’t care.” The city’s homeless population is up by an estimated 59 percent over 2013. Calls from concerned citizens about the homeless population have spiked by 35 percent in the same period. In response to Giuliani’s stinging admonition, de Blasio called him “delusional” and suggested the rise in awareness of the city’s homeless problem was due only to the media’s renewed interest in the subject. Apparently, the mayor thinks his city’s residents are “delusional,” too.
Well, the socialist elites who a decade ago publicly longed for a return to the bad-old days of the 1970s and found their man to accomplish that in de Blasio might qualify.