What's Tony Thinking

At Week’s End, January 10

Well, we now know what “Make America Great Again” means, though it seems that the more accurate term would be “Make America Greater.” Add more square miles, thousands and thousands of them. Like Canada and Greenland and at least the Panama Canal part of Panama. Probably don’t want Panama itself as it’s full of brown people, not Trump’s preferred.

But heck, we’re doing such a good job with our own country, why not add a few more? Remember that before he was a TV star, Trump was a real estate developer. Not a very good one apparently what with multiple bankruptcies and having to be bailed out more than once by Daddy. Hey, the Peter Principle really does work.

Given the alternative (see above) perhaps one ought not be critical of how progressives run things, but I try to be fair and balanced — though what I actually think is neither party or ideology has much to recommend it right now.

Take homelessness in Seattle. If the goal were to spend lots of money and grow your homeless population, we would be high achievers. The highest. Seattle Times columnist, Danny Westneat, has stayed on this issue. Westneat scoured the 2024 annual federal report on homelessness and found that among U.S. cities Seattle is the big outlier. We can’t seem to get homeless people out of the woods, out from under the bridges or off street-side encampments. Here’s an excerpt from Westneat’s column:

“Compare here with New York, a state with nearly 2 ½ times more people. Washington had 16,222 rough sleepers on a given night in 2024. While the entire state of New York had just 5,638. For the hardest, chronic cases — people who have disabilities such as mental illness or substance abuse, and are homeless for long periods — Washington had 9,185 unsheltered compared with New York’s 1,337.”

A Brookings Institution study reported the following:

“’Seattle is the stark outlier in the sample: Over 57% of its homeless population is living without shelter,’ the researchers found. This compares with just 3% in New York City.”

What explains this? Well the progressives charged with relieving the plight of the homeless snubbed temporary shelters, like Tiny Houses or FEMA shelters, as demeaning for the homeless. Instead, they pushed building more low-income housing, which is good. But the latter takes time and still more money, and may not be what a lot of the homeless need or can afford. Meanwhile, hundreds of completed Tiny Homes sit locked in a parking lot in SODO because the homelessness bureaucracy can’t abide use of these small, insulated and heated homes, with a lock on the door. This mess has something to do with Seattle progressives who do not want to see the criminal element that operates under the homelessness umbrella, preying on other unsheltered, homeless people.

Meanwhile in a California, beset by terrible fires, firefighters ran out of water. Why? Well, money authorized by that big, blue state’s tax-payers 10 years ago to avoid just such a problem resulted in nothing, nothing at all, actually getting done. Here’s a bit from The Free Press on this.

“Infrastructure that could have provided more water for those fires has been on hold, tied up in red tape. Ten years ago, California voters approved spending $7.5 billion to build water storage and improve state water facilities—but by 2023 not one dam had been finished, per the Los Angeles Times. Not a single one.”

The problem with progressives in power these days seems to be that process is the most important product, that and checking the boxes on the DEI clipboard. Actual outcomes, well, not our thing. Money allocated, money spent, little to show for it. For more info on the failures of L.A., California and Forest Service, all of which that contributed to the terrible toll of these fires, check this out.

Just ten days now until Trump will be inaugurated. Last time around Trump moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Small potatoes. What I’m wondering is will Trump move the U.S. capitol from D. C. to Mar-A-Lago? Either way the sycophants who have been lining up to court his favor in Florida, are putting money in the till of Trump, Inc. It may be Elon’s $2,000 a night “cottage” at Mar-A-Lago or Rudy G. renting a suite at the Trump International in D.C. Trump has to do something. Money-wise he’s not in the league CEO’s who are making the trip to kiss his ring.

What I do think is for sure true is that Trump really prefers Mar-A-Lago to D.C., as the latter means dealing with the actual and cumbersome apparatus of the U.S. government and its laws. No such complications at the Mar. When he gets to D.C. his life will get more complicated. At least, I’m certainly hoping it will.

Jimmy Carter was memorialized this week, remembered as a man of “faith and character” by outgoing President Biden. The contrast with Trump is pretty stark. My own favorite moment of the Carter presidency was when he donned his sweater, like Mr. Rogers, told us there was a “malaise” in the land or the free and home of the brave (sounded right to me), and asked us to turn down the thermostat and drive the speed-limit. Horrors! What a terrible, preposterous, un-American thing to suggest.

Tturned out that my fav0rite moment of the Carter presidency, the sweater speech, was a political disaster for him. So, what do I know? Not much, that’s obvious.