Shocker

greenwich invisible ladies demand multi-story low income housing in Belle haven, merger of stamford and greenwich schools — not

(a couple of liberals) at the NYT wonder: why aren’t Blue States progressive utopias?

Ed Morrisy, Hot Air: “What do Democrats really do when they have all the power?” The New York Times asks that questionin a video from earlier this month, and … Democrats and progressives will not enjoy the answer.

Of course, anyone in urban centers or California figured this out decades ago, but the Gray Lady’s belated realization is worth noting (via Matt Vespa):

Harris teamed up with Times editorial board writer Binyamin Appelbaum to examine why famously liberal states — such as New York, California, and Washington — struggle to advance the progressive policies despite little to no Republican opposition.

They focused on three core initiatives of the Democratic Party platform: affordable housing, economic equality, and educational opportunity. And in the end, they discovered that “liberal hypocrisy,” not Republican opposition, “is fueling American inequality” and that things are actually much worse in blue states than they are in red.

“In key respects, many blue states are actually doing worse than red states,” the journalists noted in a written report accompanying the video. “It is in the blue states where affordable housing is often hardest to find, there are some of the most acute disparities in education funding and economic inequality is increasing most quickly.”

“Blue states are the problem,” Applebaum, who covers economics and business for the Times, exclaimed.

“Blue states are where the housing crisis is located. Blue states are where the disparities in education funding are the most dramatic. Blue states are the places where tens of thousands of homeless people are living on the streets. Blue states are the places where economic inequality is increasing most quickly in this country. This is not a problem of not doing well enough; it is a situation where blue states are the problem,” he added.

The most amusing aspect of this revelation isn’t that progressive policies don’t work — which they don’t, as we see in urban areas that haven’t elected a Republican to office in decades. It’s that progressives mostly don’t even bother to try those core policies at the state level. Affordable housing gets the NIMBY treatment, something I saw up close in the Twin Cities. Affordable housing is a policy best applied to other people’s neighborhoods, which is all the more infuriating given efforts by Democrats in Washington to eliminate suburban autonomy through HUD policy.

It’s on education, however, where progressive hypocrisy shines brightest in the bluest areas. Progressives fight hard against a truly progressive policy in school choice, which would allow parents to choose their own schools for their children, which the wealthy already do — in more ways than one. Johnny Harris looks to one of the bluest enclaves in the US, Cook County and Chicago, to see how the wealthy ensure that their tax dollars only go to the schools where their own children are being educated. It’s less egregious in other blue-state cities with larger municipal school districts, which run under the control of the hard-Left, but the outcome is essentially the same. Wealthier families send their children to private schools, while everyone else is consigned to failing urban school districts obsessed with social-justice indoctrination rather than focused on actual education.

As for economic equality, the problem is both hypocrisy and progressive policies. California has transformed into a deep-blue, high-tax, highly regulated state, forcing the costs of everything to skyrocket. It’s not just housing, but that’s certainly a large part of it, and the skyrocketing costs there aren’t just about the NIMBYism over affordable housing. It takes an act of God to get anything built in California now, especially commercial development that might support middle-class jobs. The environmental regulations alone have practically produced stasis in business expansion in California, except for the high-tech industries that married themselves to the Democratic Party over the last couple of decades. The energy shortages in the state make it an unreliable place to do business. The end result of all these progressive policies and hypocrisies is increased economic stratification as the middle class migrates out of the state for better economic opportunities.

“The blue states are the problem,” Binyamin Applebaum concludes at the end.

RELATED: John Conlin. STFU About Racial Justice If You Don’t Raise Your Voice About Our Failing Schools

Even for those children with supporting, dedicated parents a chance for a better life does not come easy. A hand up is not an easy thing to find in these neighborhoods.

Yet, do we hear from the race-baiters and the usual subjects about the profound injustices done to these children whose only sin is being born poor? Nope. 

Rather than ranting about the latest performative injustice of the day, perhaps they should raise their voices to actually do something to change the trajectory of these poor, young lives.

The inner-city schools these children are forced to attend are a national disgrace—and have been for decades. Education has been called the civil rights issue of our time by political leaders across the political spectrum. I disagree. It is the moral issue of our time.

These children are often pretty much screwed from the womb with their only hope being a chance for a decent education. Without that they are lost. Without that they have little hope. In the face of this desperate need, the schools that are forced upon these children are an obscenity.

Yet where have the race peddlers been for the past few decades as hundreds of thousands of young black lives have been destroyed by the public schools they are forced to attend?

The NAACP says the Rittenhouse trial was worse than Emmett Till! They spend their time suing over January 6 yet where is their righteous anger over this decades-long destruction of the poor, black family?

Where have they been all this time?

As for others, it is quite easy for someone who has never witnessed these realities to talk about hard work and pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. It is much easier said than done. What future truly awaits a 14-year-old with very poor reading and writing skills, little to no math skills, and no command of the English language? Is he supposed to happily pursue jobs pushing a broom or flipping burgers? 

… And I loudly say STFU to all the others who seem to be ok with the present state of a poor child’s K-12 public education yet are outraged by the latest social media story of the day

Your words and actions are hollow—and in many cases they have been for decades. Until you step to the plate to demand this obscenity end, and end today, no one should give a damn what you think about any other subject.