Chicago was one of the first cities to embrace decriminalizing shoplifting and defunding the police, and now they’re reaping the consequences of their actions, good and hard.
“Crime has become so crazy in Chicago that the city now has to take over supermarkets.”
Organized gangs of looters now strip shelves while store employees watch helplessly. The video shows a crew of 14 stripping a Louis Vuitton store bare.
One clothing shop: “There have been knives, there has been girls spitting on us, there has been men throwing drinks at us, taking my female sales associates and throwing them into tables. She’s recorded 28 incidents in just the past 60 days.”
One shoplifting ring stole over $7 million worth of goods, much of it over-the-counter medicine stolen from the likes of Target, Walgreens
and CVS and then shipped off to California and New York to be sold.
No wonder major retailers are fleeing Chicago.
Four Wal-Marts closed because the thefts made them no longer profitable, losing tens of millions of dollars.
Whole Foods closed six stores.
Needless to say, Chicago’s Democratic mayor Brandon Johnson was a big fan of defunding the police back in 2020.
“Thus the very people allegedly helped by the progressive policies get hurt the worst: The poor black and brown communities in Chicago are now food deserts. There’s nowhere to buy groceries.”
“Private retailers couldn’t afford to keep stores open and let people just steal their merchandise for free. So the mayor plans to open, quote, city-run supermarkets. This is to fill the void left by the Walmarts and the Whole Foods who obviously were losing millions of dollars trying to stay open.”
I imagine putting the Democratic Party in charge of a supermarket will probably work just as well as letting the mob run your restaurant.
“We’re talking about state and federal tax dollars being used to essentially run state-run supermarkets. That’s socialism 101. That’s what happened in Venezuela. That would happen in the Soviet Union: The state ran the supermarkets.”
Democrats make a food desert and call it social justice.
Last week was incredibly busy for sundry reasons. It would be nice to get the Friday LinkSwarm back to Friday, but in the meantime, enjoy the Monday version:
“One of the reasons why Obamacare remains stubbornly unpopular is because most Americans don’t like to think of themselves as being the sort of people who would punch nuns.”
The idea that the tea-party movement is animated or motivated by racism is pure fiction.
Wait a minute, an actual useful article from Vox on the assumptions underlying the Iran deal, and the case against those assumptions? I’m as shocked as anyone.
One of the greatest advantages of sanctions as a coercive tool is their effect over time. Dismantling this thing, which in a way is what we’re doing, is kind of like taking money out of your retirement account early. As we let these sanctions work over time, by the time we got to 2012, they were really in dire straits. If a deal is signed this year and then in 2017 they cheat, it would take years and years and years of penalizing them before we could ever get back to the situation we had in 2012.
“On the Internet, when all the social context is stripped away and you don’t even have to look at the face of the person you’re being mean to, shame loses its social, restorative function. Shame-storming isn’t punishment. It’s a weapon.”
Old and Busted: Getting Montazuma’s Revenge in Mexico. The New Hotness: Thanks to Obama’s illegal alien amnesty, now it’s coming to you! (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
The Kurds are kicking ISIS’s ass: “Picking a fight with the Kurds is a little like going to war against Lebanon’s Druze or the Israelis. It’s like trying to invade and occupy Texas.”
People are burning and looting immigrant shops in South Africa. “South Africa, with a population of about 50 million, is home to an estimated 5 million immigrants….South Africa’s unemployment stood at 24 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014.” Doesn’t seem like a recipe for social harmony…