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Darn that Reagan! Tucker reacts to story of how The Gipper is to blame for California’s homeless crisis …

February 20, 2019 | | Print Article

 

(Video screenshot)

According to one far-left radio show host, the blame for California’s homelessness epidemic rests with former state Gov. Ronald Reagan, who for the record hasn’t been governor for 44 years.

“We can look to Ronald Reagan, the conservative Republican when he was governor — who turned everybody loose from the psychiatric institutions and the abuses they had in the 20th century,” radio show host Ethan Bearman said Tuesday evening on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

Listen:

In 1967 then-Gov. Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, also known as the “patient’s bill of rights.” The bill banned mental institutions from holding patients against their will. The bill was reportedly coauthored by Democrat state Sens. Nicholas C. Petris and Alan Short.

Host Tucker Carlson was stunned that Bearman would attribute the relatively recent homelessness crisis in California metropolitans such as Los Angeles and San Francisco to it.

“So you are saying the homeless problem in Los Angeles and San Francisco is the fault of someone who’s dead and hasn’t been governor in 50 years? That’s really the answer?” he asked incredulously.

Bearman then proceeded to double down.

“That’s the root of it, the genesis of it,”  he replied. “When we decided that we can’t keep people who need mental health care … We have people who need mental health care, and because of what Gov. Reagan did and what the federal courts have ensured since then, we have a hard time with it.”

“You and I both know that closing down the sanitariums, the hospitals was a liberal project from beginning to end,” Carlson retorted. “Reagan was the governor. He signed it. He shouldn’t have. I agree. But if you’re blaming Ronald Reagan for modern-day homelessness in California, you’re not really looking yourself in the mirror and admitting, ‘Maybe my dumb ideas have something to do with this.'”

Fair point. Homelessness in California has jumped only within the past five or so years for a variety of reasons, none of them even remotely related to former President Ronald Reagan:

#1. Skyrocketing rent/home prices engendered by both the tech boom and liberal rent control schemes.

#2. A lack of available housing caused by liberal regulations: “Imagine government regulations making it so expensive to build cars that automobile manufacturers could only earn a profit by selling luxury vehicles. That will give you an idea of what progressive politicians have done to housing development in California”

#3. And an unfortunate preponderance of wildfires, which too can be blamed on liberal policies.

Learn more about California’s homelessness crisis via the video below:

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …

Bearman tried to counter the host’s point by pointing to the “new ideas” being touted by California’s current crop of even more radically left-wing legislators.

One such idea entails building housing projects for the homeless and mentally ill.

“So you are saying the driving problem is profound mental illness, but we want to put profoundly mentally ill, schizophrenics in their own housing unsupervised? That’s a good idea, you think?” Carlson asked in confusion.

“You have mental illness on one hand. You also have the issue of severe shortage of housing, and the courts prohibited anything being done until we had housing built,” Bearman replied.

The Fox host concluded the discussion by sarcastically shouting, “Darn that Reagan!”

The real message should be “darn those liberals,” because it’s invariably liberal policies — from draconian regulations that spur massive layoffs to bleeding-heart programs that enable drug users, promote entitlement/dependency and rob people of their agency — that cause homelessness.

It’s likewise liberal policies that only exacerbate homelessness, as argued by social media:

The key problems with liberal policies are that they incentivize the bad behavior that ultimately leads to homelessness (being financially irresponsible, consuming drugs, engaging in premarital sex) and punish the good behavior that leads to a successful life (working hard, paying taxes, etc.)

Note for instance how the liberal states keep increasing taxes and then turnaround around and using the money acquired from their hard-working citizens to fund outrageous ideas such as “safe injection sites” for heroin users:

*facepalm*

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …

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Vivek Saxena
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