So, I agree that there is a need to balance top-down and bottom-up frameworks, but I disagree that the Left is largely to blame for this problem. Partisan opposition was the nail in the coffin to all of Obama’s efforts to allow easier permitting for housing construction, clean energy initiatives, and high-speed rail among other things.
Respectfully, what is different today is that the Right has lost whatever it had of a moral compass. The exemplar of that loss is when Michigan's Republican Governor Snyder decided to make a Hamiltonian decision to appoint Hamiltonian Emergency Managers to the struggling cities of Detroit and Flint (the Doge of the day). The cost-saving decision was made to remove the city of Flint from its current and safe water supply to an interim source, the Flint River, a known health hazard because it had been and was heavily polluted, as they waited for a new hookup to the KWA pipeline from Lake Huron. Despite desperate pleas from the community to switch it back — Snyder and others ignored them as the Flint River inflicted irreparable harm. Michigan’s Supreme Court, in 2023, rejected the last-chance effort to revive criminal charges against seven of the 9 people originally indicted including Gov. Snyder. Republican Hamiltonian get-things-done ended not in revitalization but disgrace. It took Democratic mayor Mike Duggan to get things done based not on Hamiltonian power, but on Jeffersonian power of truly caring about the people of Detroit by creating partnerships across all sectors.
So, I agree that there is a need to balance top-down and bottom-up frameworks, but I disagree that the Left is largely to blame for this problem. Partisan opposition was the nail in the coffin to all of Obama’s efforts to allow easier permitting for housing construction, clean energy initiatives, and high-speed rail among other things.
Respectfully, what is different today is that the Right has lost whatever it had of a moral compass. The exemplar of that loss is when Michigan's Republican Governor Snyder decided to make a Hamiltonian decision to appoint Hamiltonian Emergency Managers to the struggling cities of Detroit and Flint (the Doge of the day). The cost-saving decision was made to remove the city of Flint from its current and safe water supply to an interim source, the Flint River, a known health hazard because it had been and was heavily polluted, as they waited for a new hookup to the KWA pipeline from Lake Huron. Despite desperate pleas from the community to switch it back — Snyder and others ignored them as the Flint River inflicted irreparable harm. Michigan’s Supreme Court, in 2023, rejected the last-chance effort to revive criminal charges against seven of the 9 people originally indicted including Gov. Snyder. Republican Hamiltonian get-things-done ended not in revitalization but disgrace. It took Democratic mayor Mike Duggan to get things done based not on Hamiltonian power, but on Jeffersonian power of truly caring about the people of Detroit by creating partnerships across all sectors.