To the Editor:
Re “What Have We Liberals Done to the West Coast?,” by Nicholas Kristof (column, June 16):
As a Georgia native who has lived in California for greater than 20 years, I used to take pleasure in returning to my dwelling state with what felt like a extra enlightened and progressive worldview. Nonetheless, at my latest highschool reunion, I might hardly defend towards the refrain of former classmates who had legitimate arguments towards the liberal insurance policies of my state (“so individuals simply stroll in a retailer and steal stuff in San Francisco with out repercussions?!”).
Mr. Kristof’s column elucidates how West Coast liberals are doing injury to a number of the very causes they’re meant to champion. I hope the leaders of Western blue states — from governors to metropolis councils to highschool boards — will realign their insurance policies with pragmatic, common sense legal guidelines that embody the spirit of the Democratic Occasion with out the madness!
All of us have to demand higher oversight and outcomes, not simply well-intended guarantees.
Susan George
Mill Valley, Calif.
To the Editor:
Nicholas Kristof’s latest critique misses the mark. He ought to spend extra time in Portland, Ore., the place results-focused individuals are successfully addressing a homeless and behavioral well being disaster on our streets each day. In response to a nationwide disaster, Portland is marrying pragmatism with our progressive values to implement efficient options to difficult issues.
Thanks to those concerted efforts, modern insurance policies and robust partnerships, crime charges are down 43 % 12 months over 12 months downtown. Greater than 5,000 individuals within the Portland area have been positioned into housing. This isn’t about ideological purity; it’s about clear, empirical progress.
Whereas there may be nonetheless a lot work to be finished, these outcomes show our metropolis’s capability to handle advanced social points in a realistic approach with out abandoning our values. You would possibly name it “West Coast liberalism,” however in Portland, we name it crafting efficient, new options to intractable issues.
Ted Wheeler
Portland, Ore.
The author is the mayor of Portland.
To the Editor:
Kudos to Nicholas Kristof for holding his personal political occasion’s ft to the fireplace. His essay is an correct and crucial evaluation of West Coast insurance policies which are extra involved with ideological purity than sensible and efficient options.
Mr. Kristof does a wonderful job of juxtaposing East Coast and West Coast liberal insurance policies. And what he finds, maybe to the chagrin of some progressive purists, is that having each main events have some sway within the debate and sausage-making (as they do on the East Coast) often results in constructive, measurable outcomes for constituents. The strain of opposites appears to assist discover a center floor that does the best good for the residents.
We reside in a harmful and sometimes ineffectual political local weather the place all sides is extra concerned with profitable social media skirmishes than truly creating honest however pragmatic laws. Amid these political failures, Mr. Kristof factors out that there’s cause for hope.
States alongside the Pacific had the maturity to see their shortcomings and are self-correcting. As Mr. Kristof notes, Oregon ended its disastrous drug decriminalization efforts. California and Oregon are within the course of of accelerating the housing provide, and homicides have dropped in San Francisco.
Let’s hope extra of this brutal honesty continues to assist drive coverage and laws that create cities and states which are secure, wholesome and sustainable for the citizenry.
Matt Tanguay
Ann Arbor, Mich.
To the Editor:
I learn Nicholas Kristof’s column with curiosity after which dismay. Mr. Kristof discusses a number of vital issues, but blames liberalism for these issues when their root causes are clearly as a result of anti-liberal free market approaches favored by these whose mantra is “starve the beast.”
Mr. Kristof is appropriate when he states that the “primary cause for homelessness on the West Coast is a gigantic scarcity of housing.” Nonetheless, he errors the trigger if he blames West Coast liberalism.
Homelessness and the extreme housing shortages in California might be largely blamed on 1) the curtailment of government subsidies for housing starting with President Ronald Reagan and a pair of) the subsidies to incumbent householders that got here with Proposition 13 — which lowered turnover in houses by capping property tax progress, and penalizes new consumers by reassessing property tax at present market values when property turns over.
The decimation of public training, psychological well being providers and different authorities providers additionally started with Mr. Reagan, and was accelerated by the drastic drop in property tax income as a result of Proposition 13.
Jim Fox
Palo Alto, Calif.
To the Editor:
As a fellow West Coaster, I consider that Nicholas Kristof’s evaluation of the Democratic Occasion’s failure to handle our state’s important, longstanding challenges is effectively based. In response to a latest research, 34 percent of the state’s households don’t earn enough revenue to fulfill their primary wants.
Contemplating California’s economic system is the fifth largest in the world, such excessive charges of struggling households are usually not solely problematic, however inexcusable as effectively. In any case, the Democratic Occasion has maintained management of the California State Legislature for nearly the entire previous 50 years. There’s nothing to cease it from enacting the transformative insurance policies it has campaigned on. And but … 34 %.
To Mr. Kristof’s level, maybe a more healthy Republican Occasion would foster extra political competitors and strain Democrats to meet their guarantees. Nonetheless, as partisan polarization continues to rise, an more and more conservative Republican Occasion is unlikely to achieve a lot floor in such a famously liberal state.
So, as a substitute of hoping the two-party system will organically reasonable itself, Californians ought to do what we do greatest: innovate. A multiparty system would do a significantly better job of representing our state’s many various communities and responding to their important wants.
If we would like extra events, we must always begin taking a look at electoral reforms like proportional representation as promising structural options to our democracy’s antiquated, unrepresentative two-party issues.
Caledon Myers
Grass Valley, Calif.
The author is govt director of ProRep Coalition.
To the Editor:
Nicholas Kristof missed the principle cause that homelessness is larger on the West Coast than the East Coast. As somebody who has lived on each coasts, I can let you know it isn’t politics or housing shortages that makes the West Coast extra engaging to the homeless; it’s the climate!
John Davison
New York