From Colorado’s own Jon Caldera: Denver seems determined to catch up to San Francisco in its urban shitholery. Excerpt:
If you haven’t driven through downtown Denver lately, you’re fortunate. You haven’t seen the carnage, vandalism, litter, vomit and fecal waste next to human bodies passed-out on sidewalks.
Polis and Hancock have surrendered our capital city to a mob. Tent encampments housing a mixture of the homeless, the drug-addicted and antifa protestors seem to be spreading faster than COVID.
It is turning our once beautiful city to crap, literally. We are in a race to match San Francisco and Seattle in urban decay. It is beyond ugly. It is unhygienic, dangerous and horrifically sad.
And it is inexcusable. It’s as inexcusable as letting rioters deface and vandalize the State Capitol every night for a month and a half with complete immunity.
When asked by 630 KHOW talk show host Ross Kaminsky about the tent cities popping up around the Capitol and the governor’s mansion, Polis responded, “Denver needs to do a better job on the homeless…I’m not an urban issues expert. That’s what mayors are for and city councils are for. But I’ve seen other cities handle this more effectively. But of course, Denver needs to step up and do more.”
Here’s the onion:
But the piece of Civic Center Park which hosts the largest tent encampment isn’t actually Civic Center Park at all. It’s not city property. It’s state property, under the ultimate management and protection of the governor and his Democrat-controlled legislature.
Lincoln Park is a block long, rectangular strip of (formerly) green lush grass. It is bounded by Broadway and Lincoln streets on the east and west, and Colfax and 14th avenues on the north and south. It lays just west of the Capitol. And while it looks like part of Civic Center Park, it is part of the State Capitol complex. It’s the state government’s job to protect it.
Which of the two major political parties runs Colorado and the city of Denver now?
When it comes to this (and a bunch of other) issue, both Polis and Denver Mayor Hancock have been and remain pusillanimous putzheads. Denver is becoming Frisco writ somewhat smaller.
I moved to Colorado in the late Eighties. I’ve never been a fan of cities but in my first year or two here, I occasionally wandered downtown to see the sights. In those days, Denver was a beautiful city. The area around the Capitol was clean and well-maintained. Business prospered in the downtown area. Just to the north and east were some sketchy areas, but the area around the state Capitol and the 16th Street Mall were prosperous.
No longer.
In all candor, I think I’m pretty good and turning a phrase, but I’m at an utter loss to explain what’s happening in our nation’s cities. A week from tomorrow, Mrs. Animal and I will be flying to Anchorage; I’ll return a report on that city, Alaska’s only major metro area, on our return, but from what I’ve read Anchorage has had no such issues.
Our major cities have been captured by lunatics. I don’t see any easy way to reverse that trend.
