Thursday, August 27, 2015

Progressivism vs. Liberalism

Michael Savage pegged it: Liberalism is a mental disorder


Here in the People’s Republic of Madison Wisconsin, the Berkeley of the Midwest (I live nearby along with many of the remaining sane people in Dane County), the city council refused to take any action on instilling loitering ordinances.  They will “study” the “problem” further (this is the institutional time-honored Progressive delay tactic, wherein "when it is all said and done, more is said than done").  

For about three years, “homeless” people have been gathering at the city / county building at all hours.  As is the case in De Blasio’s NYCSan Francisco and Berkeley, the vagrants are accumulating and increasing in number because they are tolerated.  

It has gotten so bad, the workers at the City / County building filed complaints that the vagrants were urinating and deficating on the steps, walkways, meeting rooms, hallways, and also smearing fecal matter on handrails and doorknobs.  Some workers have quit.  

The building manager responded by installing sanitary hand wash dispensers in the building for the city-county workers to use.  

The vagrants then took to drinking the sanitary hand wash, as it is made up of mostly ethyl alcohol.  

The dispensers were then removed.  

Progressive Socialism demands that no one take personal responsibility for anything, and therein the power of the Progressive Left movement is derived.  Highly caring, educated, correct-thinking, Progressive Left “leaders” are proffered as 'the solution’ to any issue.  Public funds are earmarked, much study ensues, and there is much discussion (or, as Al Sharpton says, "talk we much”).    

The mayor (who is no right wing tea party libertarian) has been attempting to convince the city council to act, but to no avail.  One of the council members sits next to my wife and me at Sunday mass, but he and virtually every other member of the council refuse to have city vagrancy laws, because “homeless” people are generally viewed as victims of society’s failures.  Preeminent in the endless mind-numbing discussions and meetings about the “issue” is that the city council does not want to be seen as acting harshly, but rather wants to be seen to their fellow Progressives as having offered a cornucopia of services, outreach, and thoughtful programs to “transition” the vagrants in a caring and inclusive approach.  

Apparently, every vagrant so far has refused what has been offered.  Every.  Single.  One.  The vagrants are not single mothers down on their luck, or the downtrodden in-between jobs due to the harsh shrinkage of the middle class and the lack of jobs.  No, instead the vagrants are predominately beset with mental health disorders, and substance abuse addictions; the remainder simply prefer the lifestyle (and I presume, also being fussed over by plethora of local social services people fawning over this neutron-star dense collection of ‘humanity in need’, or as the Social Justice Warriors say “a need-rich environment").  


For example, Brittany Zimmermann was a UW Madison student who was murdered on April 2nd, 2008.  During the investigation, it was surfaced that the 911 call center mishandled her call.  After more time, it was revealed that the Dane County 911 call center was mismanaged, with dropped calls, two to four times the wait times other call centers, poor morale and training, high pay, and pedantic decision tree and data capture requirements for incoming calls.  It became a national issue in May of 2008, and ever since then, there have been study committees, audits, reports, plan rejections and the commandeering of the management of the 911 call center by the Progressive Left Dane County Supervisor, Generalissimo Joe Parisi.  Note: This is always the final act of Progressive Socialism.  Assume direct control and centralize power.  

The larger emergency management dispatch system in Dane county is sill fragmented, and the Police, Fire, and EMS professionals are livid that the county-wide system has not been fixed, awaiting the fix in the 911 call center.  




† I prefer to use the term Progressive Left in lieu of liberal these days.  Western liberal values include: civil liberties and due process of law, restricted government intervention in political, economic and moral matters, protections for speech, assembly and petition, free exercise of religion, decentralized vesting of power in the lowest governmental units to manage their affairs (excepting infringements on basic enumerated rights).  By this definition, I'm a liberal.