California, Oregon and the State of Washington (also known as the Left Coast) are known as left-wing elitist bastions controlled by one-party Democratic majorities. They have sold their futuristic world-based electorates on climate scares, imminent environmental disasters, abortion restrictions, government compassion and other modern slogans granting passage to the favorable future. But they are the Democrats, the party of compassion—that is until you encroach on the turf of the moneyed class. Then it becomes the party of the rich.
Proof of this lies in a National Review article by Michael Gibson who reports that “San Francisco has virtually banned new housing. It forbids apartments of all shapes and sizes, limits the number of units per property, caps the number of small “shoebox” units to a few hundred and has outlawed building anything higher than 40 feet in 80 percent of the city.” He goes on to say: “The medium price for a one-bedroom rental is the highest in the nation, at $3700 per month. To buy a single-family home, a starter home with flaking and rotting surfaces, a family needs $1.5 million on average and had better be paying cash. The cost to construct a single new apartment unit is over $700,000 nearly triple what it was a decade ago.”
San Francisco has robbed its citizenry of the means to live in their own city. Teachers, police, and other emergency personnel can’t afford to live in the city they protect. Through environmental and historical preservation rules and regulations, the city has made it nearly impossible to build new shelter. The city government accommodates this arrangement. The canary in the coal mine is African Americans. Their population has gone from 13 percent in 1970 to 5 percent today. When did the Democrats become the party of racism? Perhaps a little affirmative action is due our friends in the cable car city.
In another article in National Review, Kevin D. Williamson describes how Aspen, Colorado has become a play center for “billionaires and baristas.” Millionaires need not apply. You haven’t got what it takes to break into this elite spot unless you own something really big or important—a football team, a large dotcom corporation will do nicely. Another legal monopoly insulates the moneyed class from the rest of society. The baristas are regarded as a needed exception to the rule. Lesser mortals need not apply.
Portland, Oregon is undergoing a similar transition to an elitist playground. What it is becoming is the result of spillage from some of California’s lesser lights who have left the Bay area for cheaper, more politically neutral territory, not unlike the homey places some of them grew up. Portland has the virtue of being an incipient San Francisco. In an effort to trump the agents of change, the governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, placed the territorial designation intended by the Trump Administration as an “Opportunity Zone” on some of the most valuable property in Oregon. The purpose of the opportunity zones was to help develop impoverished and blighted inner cities by making tax concessions to developers in the area who were least likely to need any help. She placed the opportunity smack dab in the middle of the most prosperous growth area in downtown Portland. No doubt, this was intended as a smackdown of Trump Administration Populism, despised by the ruling class, and also the effect was to give impetus to cheaper construction of expensive properties, many of which would have happened anyway. Other than spiting Trump, a part of the motivation for the curious designation was the Governors desire to benefit the city’s client construction companies, which in turn rewards the city with “affordable housing.” Cheap housing is not possible in much of the downtown environment, so the Federal advantages cover some of the extra cost of the affordable housing. Affordable housing is in the eye of the beholder though, and for sure, affordable in the swank area does not even enter into the conversation of the homeless lying in tents in the street below. Another strategy redistributes the poor to the better-off outlying area of town so they reap the benefits of suburban life and learn from the example of middle class Portlanders. It is a condescending approach to social engineering that will fail as the affordable homes become less affordable over time.
Sadly, the egalitarian spirit which once limited the elites to their closely held property has been lost. Now the monopolistic tendency reinvents itself as a modern version of the serfdom of the Middle Ages in which a large castle surrounded by a moat separates the producers from the users. Human behavior remains the same. Uniting with those with whom you have something in common and separating from the “other” is a common value of wealthy elites. They might make the argument that it is genetics, but why bother. They have it and you don’t. Some separation is a quality of the huddling effect our ancient ancestors felt when they were small in number, couldn’t explain much about their environment, and heard the growling of sharp-toothed carnivores off in the distance during the night. The fear of the unknown has been translated into its modern equivalent.
The nature of huddling is also a power move. It gives the appearance of elevating the one in charge at the expense of the obedient servant. To the elite, it gives the false impression of security. But security is an illusion. Just ask Marie Antoinette. Actually, you can’t. The legal exclusion of the larger piece of society as determined by power and wealth through legal means, will only put the revolution off so long.
For most people, living in San Francisco does not have great value. Average citizens make themselves happy or unhappy, wherever they are. But the use of legal means to determine a narrowing of the human race, is fundamentally undemocratic. It is a spreading disease of bad faith. The social contract is a myth, but we live together in a common desire for peace. There is a struggle going on. Rules still apply, but only barely. The practice of not enforcing laws as a matter of acquiring political mileage is another step backward. Those who profess opposition to exclusion are often the leaders of the most exclusive clubs. In Los Angeles, the golden triangle of Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, and Bel Air lie well above the day to day events of the common folk in the smog filled low lands. But here is a lesson. You must look the part and act the part. Just ask Charles Belk. A black man with upright A-credentials as an upstanding citizen was humiliated and arrested while walking black in Beverly Hills. Officers on the scene identified him as the perp in a Citibank robbery. He matched the description of the thief—a tall, bald black man. Turns out there are more than a few of those in LA. However, none of the others were handy, so Mr. Belk became the catch of the day.
The quintessential modern mote is found in the State of Washington. Bill Gates and a host of Microsoft digital cowboys have come to rest behind the safety of Lake Washington. Reputedly, Gates has drilled a hole for access to the grounded earth through the hills backstopping his estate. Mountains and water are visual proof of the landed plutocrats running a portion of the left coast not generally accessible to the public.
The holy alliance between elitist Democrats and America’s version of the landed gentry is an ever-expanding growth opportunity for two parasites feeding off each other in an unholy symbiotic arrangement that marginalizes everyone else. It is as if the plutocrats where ahead in the game, dumped the board, and announced, “I win.”