1. The criminal behavior affecting us all
If you’re reading this in the suburbs, or in a small town, or on a farm, chances are you’ve never been to the stores now being overrun by crime and looting. By now, most of us have seen too many videos of thieves in big cities blatantly robbing retail stores. Dick’s Sporting Goods lost 23 percent of its profit from theft in the second quarter.
Just as we heard with the riots in the summer of 2020, there are people downplaying retail theft and breezily saying that insurance will take care of things. Or making excuses for “underprivileged” kids.
But the people actually paying the price are all of us. When these stores lose money out the front door, prices rise for everyone.
And, like people who vote with their feet and move to a non-nonsense state, stores do the same. Three Target stores in the San Francisco Bay Area are closing. Two Seattle Targets are closing. Six Wawa convenience stores are closing in Philadelphia.
The behavior of district attorneys who are afraid of arresting or punishing these teens for bad behavior ironically even hurts lower-income folks in the communities these DAs believe they’re protecting. From not having access to stores because they’re closing to the downward spiral of a neighborhood where businesses are fleeing, none of this is good for impoverished areas. Meanwhile, everyone else faces rising prices to offset the theft.
2. Both parties agree conservatives can’t speak freely at colleges
A new AP-NORC poll shows that both Republicans and Democrats see college campuses as more welcoming to liberals than to conservatives. 47% of adults says liberals have “a lot” of freedom to express themselves, while just 20% of adults say conservatives have that same freedom on college campuses.
Sadly, the looting problem in the Detroit of yesteryear was so bad that today residents are hoping for major stores to re-open in the city. There isn't a major branded supermarket within Detroit's city limits, except for one Meijer store on 8 Mile Road, and residents either have to pay inflated prices at convenience stores or have transportation to the supermarkets here in the suburbs.
So, it's not unprecedented that a major city would lose its retail outlets. It happened here in the 1980s and 1990s, and the poorest of the poor were the ones most affected. I remember as a child and early teenager going to the "big box" stores of the day (1980s) in the 7 Mile Road/Gratiot area on the city's east side: Montgomery Wards. It closed up well before the chain foundered sometime in the early 2000s. Just too much theft, and too few paying customers who could afford the merchandise. You won't find a Lowes or a Target. Google it; they don't exist. They're all around in the suburbs, places where law enforcement could (just barely) keep up with prosecuting the retail thefts. Shouldn't a city of 632,000 have more than one Home Depot store within its borders? What about a Walmart? (None within the city limits.) Kroger? Absent.
Even yet today, the stores closest/most accessible to the city limits are besieged with shoplifters. We have a Walmart on a major north-south artery about 6 miles north of the city limit. The police are there constantly rounding up shoplifters. It's a real drain on the suburb I live in.
A few adages come to mind, such as … we get the government that we deserve.
And then one of my favorites …
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” ― H.L. Mencken, A Little Book In C Major
I don’t think he meant it this way, but words can cut both ways …
“Elections have consequences.” ― Barack Hussein Obama
(How is that working out for you San Francisco? Portland? Los Angeles? NYC?)
Lastly, there is Walt Kelly’s Pogo … “We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us”