Democrats must make cities work. We have no one to blame but ourselves. Cities are where Democratic Party idealism meets cold hard truth. Real solutions require understanding hard problems at a deep level - not pandering. Suicidal empathy will simply destroy our cities. Politicians need to spend more time figuring out how to make an impact in the job they have rather than the job they want. Press has to call balls and strikes rather than pander to subscribers or a reporter’s personal politics. The solutions won’t be found in DC. We have to solve our own problems. Don’t let guilt or misguided compassion force you to support policies that don’t work. Intention isn’t as import as results.

When it comes to the SF Fentanyl crisis, the problem isn’t the government, it is us. We’ve told our government to arrest drug dealers and house/treat drug users. In the past 3 years we have over 1700 dealer arrests, almost 5000 people given housing, and 25% increase in treatment (and we have excess supply of treatment). Unfortunately that strategy hasn’t worked. And it won’t work. The drugs are too cheap to produce and transport and the dealer labor supply is infinite. Giving a user housing doesn’t magically cure their addiction and scaling drug treatment in places where drugs are easily available and cheap is highly ineffective. This is a complex problem and we need a more sophisticated solution. Everyone points to Zurich as the best case study. But advocates put too much emphasis is on safe consumption sites and almost none on the role of the police. We are going to have to better educate ourselves about the problem if we are going to expect better solutions from our government. AI makes this information readily accessible.