Ahead of the Democratic president debate Thursday — in which frontrunner Joe Biden said that he’d be willing to “displace thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of blue collar workers” to transition to a “greener” economy — residents in Venice, California near where the debate was held noticed a lot of activity around homeless encampments around the city.
“Some residents in Venice say they’re seeing lots of cleanups at homeless encampments right before the Democratic presidential debate,” KFI AM 640 reported Thursday along with some photographic evidence of the cleanups (h/t Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw). “Dump trucks, homeless service workers and police have been cleaning up encampments,” the outlet reports.
Some residents in Venice say they’re seeing lots of cleanups at homeless encampments right before the Democratic presidential debate. City officials say the cleanups are routine. @KFIAM640 pic.twitter.com/fKhgZAoDqQ
— mollenbeck (@amollenbeckKFI) December 19, 2019
When KFI reached out to the city, they pleaded ignorance, Councilman Mike Bonin’s office telling the outlet that they were not aware of any additional cleanups scheduled ahead of the big debate.
While city officials told the outlet that the cleanups are “routine,” residents pushed back against the claim.
“They usually have, along Grandview, all kinds of homeless people in tents and everything,” one Venice resident told KFI reporter Andrew Mollenbeck.
“It’s completely different,” another resident told Mollenbeck. “For the most part, the city does little to nothing to combat that unless there’s a media spotlight on Santa Monica, and/or Venice.”
California, which has been run by progressive Democrats for decades, has been increasingly plagued by homelessness. Democrat-run cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, in particular, have seen homeless encampments springing up all over — and with them a spike in serious diseases, violence and crime.
While Venice reportedly scrambled to literally clean up the mess resulting from the Democrat-controlled city and state’s various progressive policies Thursday, at the Democratic debate down the road, the candidates doubled down on their progressive rhetoric. One of the debate’s more notable moments — and one potentially relevant to the Venice homeless crisis — was Biden’s response to a question about forcing the country to transition to a “greener economy,” even if it means displacing “maybe hundreds of thousands” of blue collar workers.
“Vice President Biden, I’d like to ask you, three consecutive American presidents have enjoyed stints of explosive economic growth due to oil and gas production,” Politico’s Tim Alberta said during the CNN-hosted debate that was co-moderated by Politico and PBS. “As president would you be willing to sacrifice some of that growth, even knowing potentially that it could displace thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of blue collar workers in the interest transitioning to that greener economy?”
“The answer is yes,” said Biden.
The reason he would be willing to do something so drastic, he explained, is that the “green” economy would supposedly create enough work to give all those displaced people even better jobs.
“The answer is yes because the opportunity for those workers is to switch to high paying jobs,” he insisted. “We should, in fact, be making sure right now that every new building built is energy contained, that it doesn’t leak energy, that in fact we should be providing tax credits for people to be able to make their homes turn to solar power. There are all kinds of folks — right here in California, we’re now on the verge of having batteries that are about the size of the top of this podium that you can store energy when in fact the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. We have enormous opportunities.”
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